Winner of the 2014 Cleveland Arts Prize, Richard Myers has been producing experimental and documentary films for over 40 years. The Films of Richard Myers chronicles his work, along with descriptions and reviews by critics such as Roger Ebert, Arthur Knight, Roger Greenspun, Kevin Thomas, and Amos Vogel, as well as short reviews by Stan Brakhage and Pauline Kael. The major part of the book includes 180 stills from the films, all photographed by Myers. While his background is in painting, printmaking, and still photography, Myers emerged as a filmmaker in the early 1960s when independent experimental films were truly independent. Myers conceived, wrote, photographed, directed, and edited the films. His actors are family and friends, from his wife Pat to his grandmother, mother, and son, to Kent State University faculty and students. Myers’s films have been shown all over the United States, from the Cleveland Cinematheque to the Museum of Modern Art, from the Ann Arbor and Chicago Film Festivals to the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, The American Film Institute, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2014 he was awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize.

The Films of Richard Myers

Arts & Photography

Myers, Richard

Photography & Video

The Kent State University Press

This is an introduction to the principle writers of the Enlightenment in Eighteenth Century France. French thinkers of this century made a long series of devastating attacks on old ideas, usages, and institutions that had been handed down from the past. And, at the same time, these thinkers proposed a series of thorough-going reforms in social, economic, political, religious, and educational ideas and institutions. France was the center of the Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, but there were important thinkers that belonged to the movement in other countries, such as Vico and Beccaria in Italy; Lessing, Herder, and Kant in Germany; and Hume, Adam Smith, and Bentham in Britain. France, though, took the lead, and, outside of France, there were no thinkers of quite the influence of the French writers, Voltaire and Rousseau. The whole climate of opinion was changed in France and the rest of Western Europe by these publicists and propagandists, or as they were commonly called, the Philosophes. The Eighteenth Century in France began with certain currents of opinion in the ascendency, namely, divine right and absolute monarchy, uniformity of religious opinion (Gallicanism in France), a controlled economy (Mercantilism), and Classicism in art and literature. And the Eighteenth Century ended with a widespread belief in some form of representative and Liberal government, with the idea that religion is an individual matter, with Laissez-faire economics, and with growing Romanticism in the arts. This change of opinion was largely due to the Philosophes. Napoleon once said that “cannons destroyed the feudal order but ink destroyed the old monarchy.” That is too simple an explanation. The French Revolution was actually the result of both: abuses of all kinds in the political, economic, and social order of the Old Regime and propaganda for all types of change. In spite of the excesses of the French Revolution and the Conservative reaction that followed it, the Philosophes’ ideas of Liberalism and democracy went on to mold much of the thinking and institutions of the Western World.

The Enlightenment in France

Artz, Frederick B.

Literature & Fiction

Published in 1589, The Arte of English Poesie can be considered the first full-scale work of poetic criticism in England―“a noble monument,” in Professor Hathaway’s words, “astraddle the rude beginnings of the speculative aspects of English literary culture.” Its three main parts are a treatise on poets and poetry, an analysis of English prosody, and a discussion of rhetorical ornamentation―all treated compactly and thoroughly. While little of its thought was strikingly new for its time, since it drew on traditions going back through the Middle Ages to classical roots, its value lay in its synthesis of these ideas and its summation of an aesthetic movement. As such it provides important insights into the aesthetic philosophy of the English Renaissance.

The Arte of English Poesie (Kent English Reprints. the Renaissance)

Puttenham, George

British & Irish

"Ohio Indian Trails: A Pictorial Survey of the Indian Trails of Ohio" - beautifully illustrated with watercolor paintings & woodblock-type drawings - very well-written & a valuable historical source of information.

Ohio Indian trails;: A pictorial survey of the Indian trails of Ohio,

Wilcox, Frank) McGill, William (editor)

Volume One contains the history of Wooster Ohio from 1866 to 1910.

Wooster of the Middle West, Volume 1

Education & Teaching

Lucy Lilian Notestein

Schools & Teaching

First published in 1962 as a special edition of Civil War History journal, Civil War Prisons remains the standard on the topic. Editor Hesseltine tackles the historiography of northern and southern prisons during the American Civil War. He attempts to bring closure to the legendary northern myth that the Southern government did its best to “exterminate” Union prisoners by calling the effective northern war propaganda a wartime “psychosis.” Furthermore, the author offers his analysis over the much debated prisoner exchange system, and comes down hard on the North, especially its government and General Ulysses S. Grant, for their questionable approach to this issue. For all the serious scholarship and popular writing devoted to the American Civil War, the topic of prisoner-of-war camps, more than any other, retains the feeling of horror and passion that characterized the war years themselves, “Men held captive under such circumstances, guilty of no offense other than the deplorable misfortune of having been captured by the enemy, suffer tremendous psychological punishment as well as physical hardship. Monotony, estrangement and fear, along with privation and often brutality, combine to create nearly as wretched a quality of human life as is imaginable. The sufferings of Civil War prisoners (are) documented in this re-issue of an early number of the journal Civil War History ….Recounted there….are prisoner experiences in four Confederate installations: Andersonville, Georgia; Libby in Richmond, Virginia; Cahaba, Alabama; and Charleston, South Carolina. The remaining articles treat conditions in four Union prisons: Fort Warren in Boston harbor; Rock Island, Illinois; Elmira, New York; and Johnson’s Island on Lake Erie….in addition to some examples of sparkling and vivid prose, this volume contains a number of excellent photographs as well as an introduction by the late William B. Hesseltine….”―Kenneth B. Shover, The Historian

Civil War Prisons

History

Americas

Book by CAIN, Louis P. n USELDING, Paul J. eds.

Business enterprise and economic change;: Essays in honor of Harold F. Williamson

Cain, Louis P. (Ed.) and Uselding, Paul J. (Ed.)

This first volume in Kent State University's Bicentennial Edition of the Novels and Related Works of Charles Brockden Brown presents critical texts of Brown's first published novel, Wieland, and of the fragment, "Carwin," which he began in 1798 as a companion-piece to his novel. The texts are based on the first printings: the book edition of Wieland printed by T. and J. Swords in New York and published there by Hocquet Caritat in 1798, and the installments of "Carwin" that appeared in the Literary Magazine in Philadelphia in 1803, 1804, and 1805.The Historical Essay by Alexander Cowie, which follows the texts, discusses the facts surrounding the composition, publication, and reception of both works and their place in America's literary history, and the Textual Essay by S.W. Reid discusses the copy-texts for the present edition, the transmission of the texts, and the editorial decisions that have been based on these considerations. Also appended are photographs of the notebook pages containing Brown's "Outline" of Wieland, along with our transcription of it. Moreover, as the first in a series of volumes, this volume offers, as well, a note on the principles and procedures guiding the editing of all works in the Bicentennial Edition.

Wieland or the Transformation, An American Tale: Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist, Bicentenial Edition

Brown, Charles Brockden

History & Criticism

The definitive biography of America’s 20th president, James A. Garfield. Exhaustively researched and skillfully written. Winner of the Ohio Academy of History Award, the Ohioana Book Award in History, and a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year. “Garfield’s military career, the congressional years, the Presidency, receive thorough attention and evaluation, and one of the delights of this massive biography is that Peskin writes so well … This is a brilliant and skillful portrait of a man of many parts, of the political and social landscape of his time.”―Publishers Weekly

Garfield

Biographies & Memoirs

PESKIN, Allan

Historical

Redefines the vocabulary of metalsmithing. In print for more than three decades. A master artist and teacher of metalwork presents a bold new approach to creative expression in metal. Believing that the time has come for the artist to free himself from the functional forms that have dominated the metal smith’s craft―the cup, the box, the pitcher, etc.―Heikki Seppa urges the craftsman to create in terms of pure form, and in this book he shows him how. Two Things are essential. The first is a thorough understanding of the special properties of metal as an artistic medium and an intimate knowledge of techniques for working it. Only when he has mastered the physical means of working with metal can the artist free his imagination for unimpeded creation. Though not addressed to the beginner, Seppa discusses the fundamental techniques of planishing, soldering, and hinging―all the basic means by which metal is shaped. The second is to free the artist from thinking in terms of function, since this limits his concepts of what can be created. Even such traditional forms as the cube, the cone, the cylinder, and the dome have their limitations, and Seppa opens new possibilities by creating a new vocabulary, new terms by which to identify the many shapes metal can take under skilled hands. A major feature of this book is an extensive glossary of these terms, each one illustrated with a sketch by the author. The book is profusely illustrated throughout with the author’s own sketches of the ideas and techniques discussed. It will be of significant value to the accomplished craftsman as well as to teachers and advanced students of this exciting and growing art form. The artistic metal creations of Heikki Seppa have won international acclaim, from his award of master status in silversmithing from the Ministry of Education in his native Finland to numerous exhibits and awards here and abroad. As a teacher of metalsmithing in the School of Fine Arts of Washington University, Mr. Seppa’s work with young artists led to the formulation of the new approach to creativity in metal that he details in this book.

Form Emphasis for Metalsmiths

Seppa, Heikki

Sculpture

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