Current Issue
This issue of «AOQU» stems from the project entitled World Epics in Puppet Theater: India, Iran, Japan, Italy, co-sponsored by the "Humanities War and Peace Initiative, through the Division of Humanities in the Arts & Sciences, Columbia University", conceived and coordinated by Jo Ann Cavallo of the same institution. Yet the volume extends beyond the four above-named countries to explore epic narratives in oral tradition, primarily puppet theater, in several different regions across Europe, Africa, and Asia. As the contributors make evident, the dramatization of epic stories is both a genuinely local and quintessentially global art form that invites comparative analysis and critical thinking on a number of themes essential to the human condition that remain utterly relevant today.