2007-04-01,"Stephen Swanson, Michael Mooradian Lupro, and Sarah Tebbe",Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America,Hardback,9781847181459,39.99,"Stemming from an interdisciplinary conference sponsored by Culture Club: The Cultural Studies Scholars’ Association that included scholars from various disciplines and from around the world, this volume collects the work of graduate students and junior faculty which all examine the meaning of cultural scholarship in an ever-changing and increasingly global milieu. These voices, which often become marginalized and go unheard, represent what we see as the futures of interdisciplinary academic work in the humanities.
The conference and this book are opportunities for scholars of diverse backgrounds and disciplines to come together and engage in a real dialogue with one another. Bringing disparate thoughts on politics, film, television, history, policy, and literature together counters the pressures pushing individuals to take political, religious, scholarly, and ideological sides. Through the efforts represented here, we gain a distanced, yet engaged, view on the many threads that bind us together and the forces that seek to separate us.
Looking at this volume, the reader encounters many different approaches, from critical analysis of individual texts to autoethnography. The contributors and compilers of this book do not place these in separate sections or in any hierarchy but rather wish that all of these appear on an equally vital level that displays the ways in which each of the subjects and approaches might open up a piece of culture in a way that draws attention to the connections between them all.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,"Tuomas Huttunen, Kaisa Ilmonen, Janne Korkka and Elina Valovirta",Seeking the Self – Encountering the Other: Diasporic Narrative and the Ethics of Representation,Hardback,9781847186317,39.99,"Seeking the Self – Encountering the Other offers new insights into diasporic experiences, encounters and representations. This collection of texts examines diaspora narratives and the ways in which different encounters with the other are represented, as well as how these encounters might be read and interpreted in ethical terms.
The anthology explores questions of ethics in narratives of displacement or belonging, nationalist narratives of exclusion and borderline narratives, constructed on the foundation provided by encounters with the cultural, sexual, gendered and ethnic other. The contributors’ aim is to explore questions of responsibility and ethics in the study of diaspora, migration, and alterity from a wide range of perspectives. Following a Levinasian one, if the other is always ultimately transcendental and ungraspable through language, we are required to consider ethics every time we write, read or interpret an encounter with the other.
","“The fields of diaspora studies and postcolonial ethics are gaining in popularity and prestige. The collection provides very comprehensive coverage of both the issues and debates that animate diaspora studies in the humanities and a series of distinctive and careful mappings of these issues.”
Dr Alison Donnell, Reader at the School of English and American Literature, University of Reading
""Seeking the Self-Encountering the Other is an important and powerful volume of essays, which asks how ethics can be responsive to the kinds of otherness thrown up by living in a diasporic world. What kinds of encounters with others are possible when unfinished histories of colonialism shape the landscapes of the present? With a remarkable willingness to proceed from the particular, and a patience for thinking through the complexities of history and inheritance, this volume has much to teach us about the practical as well theoretical value of ethical thinking. Individual contributors reflect on questions of trauma, power and conflict, and attend with optimism to the ongoing living potentiality for new cultural forms in situations of encounter. Showing us on every page that ethics is also about how we read and know about others, as well as how we allow ourselves to be affected by others, this volume will open up a much needed dialogue between postcolonial studies of diaspora and ethical criticism.”
-Sara Ahmed, Professor in Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London
“[the book’s] analysis of diasporic cultural traditions and the ethics of representation are of particular interest not only in a postcolonial context but also in terms of our contemporary phase of ‘globalisation’. With its interlinked focus on philosophical/theoretical and literary texts and its exposition of central notions, such as the ‘self’, ‘nation’ and ‘home’, it promises to extend critical and academic discourse in the field.”
-Tabish Khairm University of Aarhus, Denmark
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Bernd Herzogenrath,An [Un]Likely Alliance: Thinking Environment[s] with Deleuze/Guattari,Hardback,978-1-4438-0036-5,39.99,"This volume presents an original and in-depth study devoted to the discussion and relevance of the notion of ‘the environment’ and ‘ecology’ within the frame-work and ‘ontology’ of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Their non-dualist and materialist re-thinking of these issues is analyzed from various positions within Cultural Studies and the Sciences.
‘Thinking Environment[s]’ with Deleuze|Guattari is thus far removed from what might be termed ‘(intellectual) tree-hugging’—it is a call to think complexity, and to complex thinking, a way to think the environment [and environments] as negotiations of human and nonhuman dynamics. Such a thinking by default carefully evades [Cartesian] dualisms such as ‘nature’ versus ‘culture,’ ‘biology’ versus ‘technology,’ or ‘natural’ versus ‘artificial.’
At a time when the distinctions [as well as the transitions] between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are getting more and more fluid, Deleuze|Guattari's alliance with environmental thinking turns out to be a rather fruitful, exciting, and likely one, one that allows for a single mode of articulating environmental, evolutionary and technological registers and relations and for the conceptualization of a general, non-anthropocentric ecoscience.
This book thus aims at a radical re-thinking of these concepts from a Deleuzian|Guattarian (i.e. non-dualist and materialist) perspective.
","""..the diversity and high standard evident throughout this collection convincingly underlines Herzogenrath's claim that the most effective way fo environmental philosophy to proceed is through the cultivation of multiple ecologics.""
Sam Wiseman, The Kelvingrove Review, Issue 5, 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,Gypsey Elaine Teague,Presentations of the 29th Annual SW/Texas Regional Meeting of the Popular Culture and American Culture Association: Gender,Hardback,978-1-4438-0135-5,39.99,"
Gender is an often misunderstood subject area, even within the discipline even to those who teach and write about it. One of my presenters, when she first approached me to present at the conference, asked, “What does my paper really have to do with gender”? To me the answer was obvious; everything has to do with gender.
Gender is everywhere from the cradle to the grave. What color blanket are we given at birth? What clothes are we laid out in at death? We are bombarded with advertisements specifically targeted at our gender, either male, female, or somewhere in between. We are judged by our gender, which is often synonymous with our sex, although in many of the presentations through the years it is becoming evident that more and more people understand the difference. Our clothing, food, entertainment, and reading material are all tied to gender, in one form or another. Gender is like the air. It is all around us, seldom thought of, but always present.
In an area that spans literature, politics, sex, religion, and personal choices it is hard to get finite and clear cut delineations. The contributors are the main focus here and I have just been the ringmaster of this incredible circus of ideas. Without them this could never have gone to press and it is all our hopes that you enjoy the volume and take something away from it that you did not anticipate.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Joan Allen and Richard C. Allen,"Faith of Our Fathers: Popular Culture and Belief in Post-Reformation England, Ireland and Wales",Hardback,978-1-4438-0487-5,39.99,"The study of popular culture has been an abiding preoccupation of historians and other academics, not just in the British Isles but elsewhere too. This volume of essays explores the manifestations of popular culture and belief in England, Ireland and Wales from the Reformation onwards. As an interdisciplinary collection it brings together specialists in English Literature, History, Celtic and Religious Studies. It offers new insights thematically via a selection of diverse contributions. The nexus between religion and popular culture links the contributions together, while the geographical spread of the topic facilitates a dynamic comparative methodology. What emerges from these explorations of rites of passage, festivals, revivalism, print culture and gender is the remarkable resilience of popular culture and the extent to which all levels of society were prepared to compromise.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Nelson R. Block and Tammy M. Proctor,Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement’s First Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-0450-9,39.99,"Despite the fact that Scouting has touched the lives of a quarter of a billion boys and girls and their leaders around the world in the past century, its history has been largely ignored. Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement’s First Century is the first book to discuss the history and principal themes of the Boy Scout and Girl Guide movements on an international scale. Inspired by presentations at the ground-breaking 2008 Johns Hopkins University symposium, ""Scouting: A Centennial History,"" the authors examine the world's greatest youth movement through the diverse experiences of its members and their organizations. From Muslim Scouts in Wales to French Scouts in Syria to Girl Guides in colonial Kenya, Scouting has responded to the challenges of international expansion and transformed itself to address cultural, political and social diversity. Scouting Frontiers focuses particularly on the intersections between Scouting’s origins and its transformations over the last century as it faced frontiers of nation, empire, religion, race, class, and gender.
","By drawing together a number of the eminent names in the history of youth movements and empire, and ranging - appropriately - across a variety of different contexts and geographical spaces, 'Scouting Frontiers' gives a richly layered account of the alluring concept that has fundamentally shaped and informed Scouting - its challenges for the young, its identity, its history - since its inception just over one hundred years ago: the far frontier.
--Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford, and editor of the Oxford edition of Baden-Powell's 1908 'Scouting for Boys'
The great virtue of this volume is that, for the first time, we have a set of excellent essays reflecting Scouting and Guiding's astonishing international reach. Many non-religious institutions and movements claim to be world wide, but only the Scouts and Guides can really claim the status.
In addition to the book's global sweep, it is unique in the way that it brings together Scouting and Guiding. It not only places them side by side, but explores how they interacted and how gender affected both movements. The analysis presented here reflects a high level of sophistication with respect to gender and age relations. It is aware of the complications of race and class, as well as religion. Indeed, it reflects the cutting edge of a new frontier of historiography.
-- John R. Gillis, Professor of History Emeritus, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and author of Youth and History
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,"Konstantina Georganta, Fabienne Collignon and Anne-Marie Millim ","The Apothecary’s Chest: Magic, Art and Medication",Hardback,978-1-4438-0494-3,34.99,"‘The Apothecary’s Chest: Magic, Art and Medication’ was a one-day symposium held at the University of Glasgow on November 24, 2007. The symposium called for a discussion on the evolution of the notions of mysticism, knowledge and superstition in the way they are intertwined in both science and the literary imagination in the figure of healers such as the apothecary, the alchemist, the shaman. There were three main areas of interest. The first involved traditional perceptions of physicians, who combined knowledge and superstition and thus bordered, in their practices, on the sphere of the occult. The second theme, evolving from the first, proposed an inquiry of the overlapping interests and processes of science, magic and prophesy, as well as of the implications and consequences of a privileged access to medical knowledge, while the third subject of discussion concentrated on the development of the symbolism of the healer in literature, history, philosophy of science, anthropology, theology, film and art.
The twelve papers included in this volume, papers presented by doctoral candidates and young scholars from across a range of geographical regions and disciplines, result in a collection of approaches to an investigative field with topics ranging from mystical traits of mundane materials to the origins of the occult and gender struggles. The thirteenth and final essay included in the volume, Professor Bill Herbert’s ‘From Mere Bellies to the Bad Shaman’, is an exploration of the modern role of the contemporary poet in the form of an extended conversation initiated at the closing of the conference, when Professor Herbert was asked to combine a poetry reading with a few observations on the relationship between the poet and the shaman.
","“Open up this treasure chest to find twelve essays filled with verve from early-career researchers who are unafraid to revisit old paradigms, who do not shy from the difficult, and who get to grips with complexity in a wonderfully upbeat way. The future of the humanities – history, ethnography, textual scholarship, anthropology, art history – is in good hands as these energetic scholars take on Chicano literature, shamanism, the Renaissance arts of memory, taxidermy, medicinal stones, and more – in a volume that is a reader's delight.”
- Dr Amy Wygant, Senior Lecturer, French Department, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Glasgow
“It's difficult to write about magic, more so across material that ranges from Renaissance Europe to twentieth century Mexico. This collection of essays by emerging scholars crosses conventionally disciplinary and conceptual boundaries by collectively offering fresh approaches to what it means for people to engage with the occult, whether through artistic representations, spiritual pursuits or medical practices. The eclecticism of this volume is its strength.”
- Dr Lauren Kassell, Lecturer, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Fatima Festić,Betraying the Event: Constructions of Victimhood in Contemporary Cultures,Hardback,978-1-4438-0516-2,39.99,"In gaining an instrumental part, becoming a fashion, the victimhood theme has drawn attention to its fascinatory and manipulative aspects, and has asked for a critical reconsideration.
This volume makes note of an attempt to sustain a conversation about changes in the ways the processes of victimization are written out and comprehended. The contributors aim to expose some recent instances and modalities of cultural and political constructions of victimhood in various parts of the world. Our concern with the overlapping areas of victimhood and rhetoric points to the ambiguous manner in which language and images thread their way into the critical discourses of today, and even devise a vicious reversal of the victimized/victimizer positions.
Although we ask: can the victim’s real ever be fully represented?, we keep holding on the simple assurance that only an attempt at representation of the real in an actual performance can bring us closer to the victimizing event, make us grasp its other contested constructions and foresee the materiality of the effects of its linguistic implications.
We try to suggest a comparative approach that would link different experiences of victimization, possibly enabling a cognitive exchange, and emphasize the necessity of raising the writers’ and readers’ awareness of the narrative consequences of victimizing processes and the policies following on from them.
","“Bloody the spectacle; tamed its society. Yet, even if atrocity is our contemporary, rather than curating a gallery of token victims, Fatima Festić offers a collection that attempts to give victims the right to not speak on the stage that the lobbyists of pity keep unfolding. From Singapore’s minorities to the Romanian communist Holocaust, from the rape trials in South Africa to the crushing theatricality of the Bosnian war, and from the Turkish coup d’état narratives to the heavily biased Western broadcasting of the horrors of the war in Iraq, banalized victimhood comes undone. Against white guilt’s self-mirroring display, if you think you are a victim, read this book and think again.”
- Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu, Professor of Critical Theory, University of Western Ontario”
“’In ""Betraying the Event’, Fatima Festić brings together a significant collection on the construction of victimisation in contemporary cultures that takes a comparative approach. This volume is a reconsideration of a vital topic. Rhetoric, imagery and political manipulation are all part of the representation and reception of victims. Festić and her contributors examine key questions of power and authority in legal, political, literary and other forms of communication, such as the media. What event occurred in the world and how and the way that events are represented become central to the task at hand. Otherness and genocide are also at the core of the collection. The very victims and their representations and narratives of victimisation come to be challenged, misused and exploited and can be displaced into political metaphor. This impressively wide-ranging collection reconfigures a pressing question about victims and genocide, the nature of texts and the world, the place of literature between actual and possible worlds and in the context of social and political stresses.“
- Jonathan Hart, Professor of English, Comparative Literature and History, University of Alberta
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Evan Torner and Victoria Lenshyn,Myth: German and Scandinavian Studies,Hardback,978-1-4438-0555-1,34.99,"Myth presents the latest interdisciplinary research by graduate students in the fields of German and Scandinavian studies, compiling papers that were introduced at the eponymous 2008 graduate student conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Focusing on myths in and about German and Scandinavian societies, these essays provide exemplary analyses of how cultural and social practices mutually inform and influence each other.
This anthology is primarily intended for scholars across the disciplines looking at trends and narratives in northern Europe. From history to film studies, theater and philology, the contributions represent the teeming variety of approaches to German and Scandinavian studies now emergent in the Academy. Myth showcases not only new inquiries into diverse subject areas, but also new methods of inquiry for future interdisciplinary research.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Jennifer Craig and Warren Steele,"R|EVOLUTIONS: Mapping Culture, Community, and Change from Ben Jonson to Angela Carter",Hardback,978-1-4438-0508-7,34.99,"Can art change the world? Or can art produce new knowledge that facilitates radical change in our slowly-evolving communities? If so, then we must ask: How does cultural transformation, whether super or slight, affect our understanding of culture and the world? Operating under the rubric of resistance and reform, R|EVOLUTIONS: Mapping Culture, Community and Change is a unique scholarly collection that seeks to illuminate current understandings of art, aesthetics, and the revolutionary impulse. The resulting work interrogates intersections between culture and community, revolution and evolution. At the same time, it examines how enduring social issues intertwine with current concerns, such as representations of the body or the book. Multidisciplinary in approach, topics run from subversive uses of the body in Renaissance drama to the effect of the atom bomb on postmodern culture. From Mark Wallinger’s Turner Prize-winning performance in a bear suit, to Angela Carter’s concept of sexual multiplicity in The Passion of New Eve. Cutting-edge and politically engaging, R|Evolutions will appeal to general readers as well as the specialist, and it is designed for scholars not only interested in issues of cultural production, but also in the evolution of politics and perception over time.
","“In this excellent collection of essays the editors have assembled an international line-up of contributors to debate the parameters and problems of cultural transformations from the early modern period to postmodernity. Collections of this kind which offer such wide historical coverage can sometimes fall between two stools – neither sufficiently focused to fix the attention of scholars or students working in particular historical periods, nor comprehensive enough to satisfy the general reader. This volume manages to avoid both pitfalls, and for two reasons. First, the quality and precision of the contributions allows readers unfamiliar with debates around a specific historical moment access to the archive in a lucid and lively manner. Second, the theme of the collection – or rather, themes – are so expertly handled by the editors and so thoroughly marshalled by the essayists as to offer something serious at the level of theory, so that the individual historical engagements are supported by a series of meditations on the nature of culture, community and change. That holds a great deal of merit for the non-specialist, and is an example of the sort of clarity and comprehensiveness that the best work in cultural studies aspires to. Effectively, what the collection offers – and the editors are to be commended for maintaining such a strong through-line – is a kind of critical cartography of the modes and measures of cultural change across different periods, never losing sight of the big picture, producing finally the effect of an overview that enables close-ups and sidelights as well as snapshots and highlights. Any book of essays that can range from Ben Jonson to Angela Carter, and examine a wealth of material from Jacobean masque to the Atom Bomb, is not short on ambition. A materialist mapping of mindscapes as well as landscapes, I would certainly recommend this text to students as an engaging and energetic encounter with an open and ongoing debate in literary and cultural studies.”
Professor Willy Maley, Dept of English Literature, University of Glasgow
“'R|Evolutions: Mapping Culture, Community, and Change' represents the best kind of cultural history: theoretically informed, conceptually adventurous, and closely attuned to the various interconnections between texts, disciplines and periods. Taken together the contributions cover a wide expanse of theoretical and literary territory, demonstrating the possibilities for literary studies in the twenty-first century. Rarely has the future of field been so energetically presented under one cover.”
Dr. Alex Benchimol, Lecturer in English Literature and Cultural History, University of Glasgow
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Fatima Festić,The Body of the Postmodernist Narrator: Between Violence and Artistry,Hardback,978-1-4438-0520-9,39.99,"The goal of this book is to elaborate the theoretical framework with regard to reading postmodern fiction from the perspective of the bodies of their narrators as textual occurrences.
It centers on Lacanian psychoanalysis and the intersection between its various political interpretations and feminist theories. The emphasis is on the register of the real, on the domain of trauma as it appears in contemporary world, literature and history and on attempts at artistic resolution of its consequences. Since postmodernism is widely interpreted as a Western phenomenon, the book tries to show its dependence on much broader spatial, political, cultural and ideological dimensions, taking as index the darker side of literature, such as murder and destruction, dark courses of desire and the repercussions of their externalization in the reality of life.
Focusing on the conditions that link contemporary cultures to the narratives and narrators’ bodies, the book exposes the potential of bodies revealed in the act of narrating and the ambiguities of their fictionalizing and subjectivizing aspects, taking the body as the site of repressed knowledge, traumas, resistance and manipulative desires. The analysis of the fictional works aims to point out a missing link between imagination and the real historical conditions from which imagination derives as well as the discursive struggle to save the tormented, territorialized body from the prismatic world by holding to the “absent referent” and prevent violence caused by the uncritical “pleasure principle”.
","“Literature is fiction! However literature speaks of real murders and genocides. This is one of the basis of magic realism in Gabriel García Márquez’s novels. Then, what is fiction? The question is crucial particularly when one thinks that media and official discourses often deny genocides. René Girard focusing of the victimization process and the invention of scapegoats insists on the fact that mythical narratives speak of real murders and real violence. And the site of real violence is the body. Hence, literature connects violence, the body, the other and desire. These elements are the main focus of Fatima Festic in The Body of the Postmodernist Narrator. Reading Christa Wolf, J.M. Coetzee, Salman Rushdie, D.M. Thomas and an impressive number of theoreticians, Fatima Festic focuses on the place of the narrator and on the body as the place of repressed knowledge, traumas, resistance and manipulation of desires. Through her capacity to read trans-culturally different texts, she is able to focus on important dynamic in postmodern writing. For example on the performativity of texts which emphasizes the split inherent in subject, agent and author, that of the horrible, the abject as precised by Jacques Lacan. Thanks to her reading, Fatima Festić also transforms the critical and theoretical text, her text, into a performative text. It is based upon a speech act which is a promise. The promise is that the body of the victim will not have been thrown into a mass grave and lost in universal oblivion.”
- Patrick Imbert, Professor at the University of Ottawa and President of the Academy of Arts and Humanities of the Royal Society of Canada
“Fatima Festić’s innovative, personal, feminist and exemplary scholarly approach to literary theories relating to violence, trauma and the body, sheds new light on important texts from Wolf to Coetzee, Rushdie and others. In our chaotic, frightening world, she brilliantly gives us Hope against all hopes!”
- Evelyne Accad, Professor Emerita, University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign
“Fatima Festić explores an important subject in her examination of the liminal space between violence and artistry in terms of the body of postmodernist narrators. She discusses the externalization of the darker forces of desire in this context and the spaces between modernism and postmodernism. The issues of closeness and alienation and subjectivity and otherness arise in this discussion. This book ranges from novels such as Christa Wolf’s Cassandra and J. M. Coetzee’s Foe to Salman Rushdie’s Shame and D. M. Thomas’ The White Hotel with an eye to the vital question of the human body. Festić presents significant insights on recognition and knowledge as key aspects of the relation between sexuality and the body. That body in narration becomes a crux in this study because it is the locus of repressed knowledge. Trauma and desire are central topics in Festić’s contribution to the theory and practice of literary and cultural studies and to a number of fields across the humanities and social sciences. The connexion between literature and everyday life is also at the heart of this book. The split in author, agent and subject and its relation to trauma concerns Festić, who has written a provocative, thoughtful and accomplished work.”
- Jonathan Hart, Professor of English, Comparative Literature and History, University of Alberta
“This is a fascinating collection of essays on gender and trauma across history, nations and the disciplines. Violence as both product and process links war, genocide from 16th century South America to 20th century Europe and Asia, mastectomies, slavery, rape, pornography and refugee camps. This is a book that should be used in the interdisciplinary classroom to teach students how violence structures gendered, racial and sexual identities. It illustrates from a number of different angles how memory narratives break the silence around atrocities and create communities where before traumatized individuals had thought they were alone. The reader learns how the telling of an individual story stands in for collectively shared pain and allows mourning to play its role in therapy.”
—Miriam Cooke, Professor, Duke University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Floriane Reviron-Piégay,Englishness Revisited,Hardback,978-1-4438-0595-7,49.99,"What is Englishness? Is there such a thing as a national temperament, is there a character or an identity which can be claimed to be specifically English? This collection of articles seeks to answer these questions by offering a kaleidoscopic vision of Englishness since the eighteenth century, a vision that acknowledges stereotypes while at the same time challenging them. Englishness is defined in contrast to Britishness, the Celtic fringe—Scotland in particular—Europe and the Continent at large. The effects of the Empire and of its loss are examined together with other socio-economic factors such as the two World Wars, de-industrialization and the different waves of immigration. Through a careful analysis of the arts, literature, philosophy, historiography, cultural and political studies produced in England and on the Continent over the last three centuries, a composite image of Englishness emerges, somewhere between centre and periphery, tradition and innovation, transience and timelessness, rurality and urbanity, commitment and isolation. Englishness is thus revealed as a protean concept, one which, whether it is a historical or political construct, a genuine emanation of a national desire or a simulacrum, retains its fascination and this volume offers keys to understanding its diverse expressions.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,M. B. Hackler with the assistance of Ari J. Adipurwawidjana,On and Off the Page: Mapping Place in Text and Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-0568-1,44.99,"This collection of essays, comprised of research first presented at the seventh annual Louisiana Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture, explores one of the most pervasive, vexing, and alluring concepts in the Humanities, that of place. Including essays which encompass a broad range of research fields and methodologies, from Geography to Cybernetics, it presents a cross-section of approaches aimed revealing the complex cultural machinations behind what once may have seemed a static, one-dimensional topic.
Investigations into the function of place as a force in contemporary culture inevitably reveal a long history of the interplay between place and cultural product, between 'context' and 'text'. Just as traditional cultures mythologize sacred spaces, so too has Western culture sanctified its own places through its literature. Imagined places such as Faulker’s Yoknapatawpha or Joyce’s Dublin become the focus of conferences and festivals; authors’ homes, birthplaces, and gravesites are transformed into sites of pilgrimage; locales created for television shows and movies become actual businesses catering to a public for whom the line between fantasy and reality is increasingly blurred; and persisting through the great cultural shifts of the past two hundred years is the popular and romantic notion that words, performances, narratives, and even national identities are always in some way an expression of the places in which they are created and set. With the idea of place foregrounded in so much contemporary discourse, this collection promises to enter into an already lively debate and one which, due to its relevance to where we live and how we make sense of our own “places” within them, does not show any signs of flagging.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Marija Knežević and Aleksandra Nikčević Batrićević,Recounting Cultural Encounters,Hardback,978-1-4438-0566-7,39.99,"Contributions reprinted in this book highlight some of the wide ranging ways in which the issues of culture and identity can be approached in a literary text, while focusing on the ways in which cultural encounters have been changing both the world and its reflection in literature. The beginning of the twenty first century is an appropriate time to repay careful attention to these issues. Understanding how our perception of the Other changes with the concept of the world we inhabit, we want to emphasize the rising importance of fostering cultural pluralism and global understanding.
Having based their research on widespread readings in academia, such as deconstruction, post-colonialism, post-modernism, new historicism, and narratology, the authors of these papers proceed by addressing the metaphor of travel as one of the strongest metaphors for the evolution of mankind, especially if considered under the light of the historically and politically imposed opposition between the progressive western and the static eastern or African societies. However, as the end of the imperialist era brought about poignant awareness of cultural relativism, as well as deconstruction of the great narrative of progress, facing the Other as an unconceptualized entity became a major moral concern of a modern traveller. It is pronounced that this concern should be textually testified to dramatize the human inability to avoid verbal appropriation of the other. The final question we seek to answer is whether the era of advanced technology and globalisation, along with a post-modern ironical attitude to hyper realities and textual transparencies, has rendered the sphere of the text the only available point of concern of contemporary literature and thought in general.
...
For its argumentation strongly founded in recent literary studies and humanities in general, its interdisciplinary nature and its focus on the actual global problems of abrupt cultural change and exchange, its heightened understanding of the necessity of coexistence of differences in a changing world, its spirit of tolerance, and its international spirit in general, we assume this collection will not only attract academic literary scholars but will also appeal to the general reading public.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,"Rana P. B. Singh, with Oskar Spate, David Sopher, and A.B. Mukerji",Uprooting Geographic Thoughts in India: Toward Ecology and Culture in 21st Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-0579-7,39.99,"Under the cultural turn and transformation the new intellectual discourses started in the 21st century to search the roots, have cross-cultural comparison and to see how the old traditions be used in the contemporary worldviews. This book is the first attempt dealing with roots of Indian geographical thoughts since its beginning in 1920. It emphasises identity of India and Indianness and consciousness among dweller geographers in India, development and status of geography and its recent trends, Gaia theory and Indian context in search of cosmic integrity, ecospirituality and global message towards interrelatedness, Hindu pilgrimages and its contemporary importance, Mahatma Gandhi and his contribution to sustainable environmental development for global peace and humanism, and new vision to see meeting grounds of the East and the West on the line of reconstruction and reconciliation in the globalising world. These essays are selective and thematic, therefore overall view of comprehensiveness is lacking. But this book is not the end; obviously it is a beginning as already other volumes in sequence and continuity are in progress. At the end, the lead essays, representative of the three eras, by Spate (1956), Sopher (1973), and Mukerji (1992) are reprinted with a view to assessing the relevance of their challenging message even today.
","This book presents a compassionate and rational critique of the 'Roots of Indian Geography', and opens new ground for the younger generation and those interested in the understanding of the stories of the evolution and practices of geography in India, narrating both the sides, 'insider' and 'outsider'. … This is possibly the first attempt in the history of Indian geographical thought to explain and expose ancient thought linked to the present, and presenting a balanced critique of the achievements and weaknesses of each historical phase.
—Prof. David Simon (from the foreword), Royal Holloway, University of London
This is a national geography with a difference. Much more than a history of geography in India or a description of the work of Indian geographers, it is an insightful account and interpretation of the Indian geographical imagination as this is informed by the Hindu tradition. Singh's innovative work will be of great interest to cultural geographers, ecologists, and other scholars concerned with our human use of the earth.
—Prof. William Norton, Dept. of Environment and Geography, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
On the line of growing critiques to post-colonialism and post-traditionalism, this book is a pioneering attempt in interdisciplinary manner appraising the 'Roots of Indian Geography'. If geography is a way that interlinks ‘locality’ to ‘universality’, this book will serve as milestone for the contemporary generation of social sciences that embedded with issues of ethics and moral turn in philosophy and practice, i.e. crossing the borders.
—Prof. Fukunaga Masaaki, Director, Centre of South Asian Studies, Gifu’s Women University, Japan
There come times in the evolution of all institutions when critical assessments of past and present achievements need to be made, with a careful and caring eye on future developments. Imbued with a long and honourable institutional identity, the study of geography in India is fortunate to have in this volume just such an assessment at a crucial time in the history not just of the interdiscipline of Geography in India, nor even of the wider academic matrix within which so much valuable geographical work has been accomplished in India, but of the intellectual traditions of India as a whole. In matters academic as in so many other realms of human endeavour, the twenty-first century is India’s time on the global stage, and we can expect to see still more of India’s scholars and Indian scholarship, geographers and geography among them, stage front and centre. This volume helps to explain how and why.
— Prof. Jamie S. Scott, Institute of Advanced Study for Humanity, University of Newcastle, Australia
It was unfortunate that in spite of rich and long philosophical and textual traditions of thought, in Indian geography there was no attempt to produce a book-length study in search of its roots and comparison with the contemporary Western thoughts. This book has successfully filled in this gap by rationally linking ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ viewpoints and also projecting the vision of ‘moral turn’ in geography. This book is a wonderful blending of philosophy and history where geography serves as bridge.
— Prof. Gerhard Gustafsson, Department of Geography and Tourism, Karlstad University, Sweden
Working together with the author since over last fifteen years, I realised the comprehensiveness and interrelatedness of geography in Indian classical thoughts that have now taken as a way for ‘new vision’ in the era of New Age. This book is a welcome addition in ‘global understanding’ through the great message of Indian geography for peace and harmonious relationship between mankind and nature.
— Prof. John McKim Malville, Emeritus Professor of Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder, U.S.A.
On the line of the IGU’s current focus on ‘Bridging Diversity in a Globalizing World’, this research monograph could indeed serve as a beacon for other Asian countries to follow and present a cross-cultural perspective, which is one of the most important aims of the International Geographical Union and its permanent archive at the Home of Geography in Rome. I hope that the message of this book will encourage the young geographers in making their path for creating better world.
— Prof. Giuliano Bellezza, Vice-President: IGU, & Director Home of Geography, Rome, Italy
For many years, it seemed that the Cultural Turn in Geography led into just a single culture, a Western hegemony of ideas, discourses and sentiments. Professor Rana P.B. Singh, however, provides an alternative ― the authentic voice of Indian tradition and philosophy. He brings to Geography, all Geography not just its Cultural wing, perspectives from ancient yet living traditions, which truly have heard most of these ‘exciting new ideas from the West’ long, long before. …. These days it is recognised that our species greatest challenge is to change our human attitudes and lifestyles to a condition where we become fit for long term life on Earth. It could be that Professor Singh, Geographer, scholar and pilgrim can help show the way.
— Prof. Martin J. Haigh, Oxford Brooke University, UK
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Frank A. Salamone,Global Cultures,Hardback,978-1-4438-0994-8,34.99,"This work grew out of the Northeast Popular Culture Conference at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire in October 2008. It presents material noting how American popular culture has had an influence throughout the world. Chapters range from Nigeria, Ghana, Japan, China and points in between. Topics cover music, art, holidays, romance, and toys. In all, the book illustrates the vast scope and popularity of American popular culture both in the world and on it.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-09-01,Nandita Batra and Vartan Messier,Of Mice and Men: Animals in Human Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-1232-0,39.99,"Of Mice and Men: Animals in Human Culture is a book-length collection of essays that examines human views of non-human animals. The essays are written by scholars from Australia, East Asia, Europe and the Americas, who represent a wide range of disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Addressing topics such as animal rights, ecology, anthropocentrism, feminism, animal domestication, dietary restrictions, and cultural imperialism, the book considers local and global issues as well as ancient and contemporary discourses, and it will appeal to readers with both general and specialized interests in the role played by animals in human cultures.
","“One of the most remarkable features of our times is the realization through a rediscovery of animality that the human exception has effectively come to an end. In the last few decades, extensive research in the natural and social sciences has addressed this topic, but cultural approaches have been few and far between. In an area of inquiry that will most likely grow in the coming years, Of Mice and Men: Animals in Human Culture opens a fascinating pathway to the study of the representation of animality in film, literature, the visual arts, and popular culture. Thanks to its wealth of analyses and the diversity of its perspectives, the volume edited by Nandita Batra and Vartan Messier is already a seminal work in the field.”
—Marcel Hénaff, Professor of Philosophy and Anthropology, University of California at San Diego; Author of The Price of Truth: Gift, Money, and Philosophy
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-09-01,Herman du Toit,Pageants and Processions: Images and Idiom as Spectacle,Hardback,978-1-4438-1249-8,39.99,"Nowadays pageants often take the form of parades of effervescent young women competing for popular recognition in hyped up media events. However, these “beauty pageants” are a mere pastiche of the elaborate historical parades of the medieval period that took significant, social, religious, or civic events and their protagonists, as subjects. Pageants were historically characterized by resplendent costuming and elaborate processions that were often given to much pomp and ceremony. Pageantry has formed an important part of the civic life of most societies, both ancient and modern, serving a variety of cultural and political purposes. The use of drama and public spectacle as an instrument of civic, social, and religious activism has recently become the focus of renewed academic inquiry. The essays in this interdisciplinary anthology provide carefully researched insights into the phenomenon of pageantry over the centuries and across broad cultural boundaries.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Amanda du Preez,Gendered Bodies and New Technologies: Rethinking Embodiment in a Cyber-era,Hardback,978-1-4438-1323-5,39.99,"In this era of ubiquitous information flow, heightened mobility and limitless consumer convenience, human interaction with new technologies has become increasingly seamless. In the process, the human body is effectively and steadily reduced to just another interface, or a “second life”, so to speak. What is easily forgotten during this translucent transaction is that being human also necessarily implies being embodied. In other words, to constitute a body in its non-negotiable physicality is still what it entails to be human (amongst other things). To live daily in and through the complicated and dynamic intersection between “mind” and “body”, psychology and physiology―also known as embodiment―is what makes us human.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Finn-Einar Eliassen and Katalin Szende,Generations in Towns: Succession and Success in Pre-Industrial Urban Societies,Hardback,978-1-4438-1301-3,39.99,"The existence and changing of generations in family life, business and politics was a central feature of towns as well as rural societies in earlier times. Even so, it remains understudied by urban historians of the pre-modern period. This book aims to fill some of this gap, containing twelve studies of generations in late medieval and early modern European towns, ranging from the Mediterranean to the Nordic countries, with a time-span from the fourteenth to the early nineteenth century. Dealing with topics like succession and inheritance, family consciousness, as well as relations and conflicts within and between generations, the articles demonstrate the importance and potential of generational studies on pre-modern towns. The book will appeal to anyone who takes an interest in urban social and cultural history, legal and family history in medieval and early modern times.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Tina L. Thurston and Roderick B. Salisbury,Reimagining Regional Analyses: The Archaeology of Spatial and Social Dynamics,Hardback,978-1-4438-1328-0,44.99,"Reimagining Regional Analysis explores the interplay between different methodological and theoretical approaches to regional analysis in archaeology. The past decades have seen significant advances in methods and instrumental techniques, including geographic information systems, the new availability of aerial and satellite images, and greater emphasis on non-traditional data, such as pollen, soil chemistry and botanical remains. At the same time, there are new insights into human impacts on ancient environments and increased recognition of the importance of micro-scale changes in human society. These factors combine to compel a reimagining of regional archaeology.
The authors in this volume focus on understanding individual trajectories and the historically contingent relationships between the social, the economic, the political and the sacred as reflected regionally. Among topics considered are the social construction of landscape; use of spatial patterning to interpret social variability; paleoenvironmental reconstruction and human impacts; and social memory and social practice. This book opens a discourse around the spatial patterning of the contingent, recursive relationships between people, their social activities and the environment.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,Catherine Morley and Alex Goody,American Modernism: Cultural Transactions,Hardback,978-1-4438-1357-0,39.99,"Encompassing writers from Edith Wharton, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot to Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser and Gertrude Stein, American Modernism: Cultural Transactions is a comprehensive and informative companion to the field of American literary modernism. This groundbreaking new book explores the changing patterns of American literary culture in the early years of the 20th century, in the aftermath of the great American Renaissance, when the United States was well on its way to becoming the most economically powerful and culturally influential nation in the world.
It brings together some of the most eminent British and European scholars to investigate how the United States’s unique cultural position is in fact the by-product of a range of cultural transactions between the United States and Europe, between the visual and the literary arts, and between the economic and aesthetic worlds. And it presents a stunning re-examination of the social, cultural and artistic contours of American modernism, from the impact of a liberal Scottish speaker on T.S. Eliot’s considerations of Shakespeare to the generic hybridity of Edith Wharton’s writing, from the influence of Oscar Wilde on Hart Crane to the effect of Anglo-European experimentalism on Native American fiction – and much more.
Through close textual and archival analysis, backed up with compelling historical insights, these nine new essays explore the nature and limits of American modernism. They address such topical issues as geomodernism, transnationalism and the nature of American identity; they examine the ways writers embraced or rejected the emerging modern world; and they take a fresh look at American literature in the broad context of international modernism.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,Robert Clarke,"Celebrity Colonialism: Fame, Power and Representation in Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures",Hardback,978-1-4438-1351-8,44.99,"Celebrity Colonialism brings together studies on an array of personalities, movements and events from the colonial era to the present, and explores the intersection of discourses, formations and institutions that condition celebrity in colonial and postcolonial cultures. Across nineteen chapters, it examines the entanglements of fame and power fame in colonial and postcolonial settings. Each chapter demonstrates the sometimes highly ambivalent roles played by famous personalities as endorsements and apologists for, antagonists and challengers of, colonial, imperial and postcolonial institutions and practices. And each in their way provides an insight into the complex set of meanings implied by novel term “celebrity colonialism.” The contributions to this collection demonstrate that celebrity provides a powerful lens for examining the nexus of discourses, institutions and practices associated with the dynamics of appropriation, domination, resistance and reconciliation that characterize colonial and postcolonial cultural politics. Taken together the contributions to Celebrity Colonialism argue that the examination of celebrity promises to enrich our understanding of what colonialism was and, more significantly, what it has become.
","""In this engaging and highly original collection of essays, Robert Clarke and his contributors direct our attention to the relationship that has developed over the past century or more between the cult of celebrity and the ongoing efforts of the West to impose its own moral regime on the rest of the world. This volume is both a sophisticated analytical inquiry into this unlikely but important intersection of interests and, it must be said, a guilty pleasure to read.""
- Professor Dane Kennedy, Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs, Georgetown University
Author of The Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World
""Celebrity is one of colonialism's most potent, most prized commodities, and a point of confluence for the often obscure connections that exist between politics, ethics and entertainment. In tracing the entanglements of fame, representation and power in colonial and postcolonial societies, these essays edited by Robert Clarke make a signal contribution - at once theoretical and applied - to the emerging, interdisciplinary field of 'Celebrity Postcolonialism.'""
- Robert Dixon, Professor of Australian Literature, University of Sydney
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Yasmine Abbas and Fred Dervin,Digital Technologies of the Self,Hardback,978-1-4438-1419-5,39.99,"Inspired by the “technologies of the self” theorized by Michel Foucault in the early 1980s, this volume investigates how contemporary individuals fashion their identity/identities using digital technologies such as ambient intelligent devices, social networking platforms and online communities (Facebook, CouchSurfing and craigslist), online gaming (SilkRoad Online, Oblivion and World of Warcraft), podcasts, etc. With high-speed internet access, ubiquitous computing and generous storage capacity, the opportunities for staging and transforming the self/selves have become nearly limitless.
This book explores how technologies contribute to the expression, (co-)construction and enactment of identities. It examines these issues from various perspectives as it brings together insights from different disciplines – design, discourse analysis, philosophy and sociology.
","“As a resource for teaching about the impact of technology upon humanity, at the university level, I would recommend this work.”
– David T. Macknet, University of Glasgow in The Kelvingrove Review, Issue 5, 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Katherine Dillion,Friends Watching Friends: American Television in Egypt,Hardback,978-1-4438-1426-3,39.99,"Friends Watching Friends: American Television in Egypt is a media study on the impact and influence of American television in Egypt. Based on personal and small group interviews and research from 2004–2006, the work includes ways that Egyptian women view the influence of American television in their daily lives as well as showing ways that Egyptians use the media to develop their ideas about Americans. Using the sitcom Friends as a focal point, the study probes commonalities about humor between Egyptian and American women that make Friends particularly appealing as an international text. Additionally, using an ethnographic approach, the research examines relevant social trends in employment, relationships, and the economy. It celebrates a diversity of opinions among Egyptian women and gives voice to those who want to share their views with others internationally and who have a strong tie to their own culture and heritage.
","“Kathy Dillion's important book could not be more timely, thoughtfully researched, or tenderly composed. Her examinations of Egyptian response to American pop culture and media examine so many of the ‘differences’ and conflicts dominating the world conversation in the 21st century, while exploring deeper realities of tradition, variation and the confusions of change. Always, always, she writes with respect, personal interest and care.”
—Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab American poet and writer
“Dillion's must-read book brilliantly illustrates how cultural dialogue shatters myths, strengthens relationships.”
—Dr. Jack Shaheen, writer and professor, author of Reel Bad Arabs
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Franziska Schroeder,Performing Technology: User Content and the New Digital Media: Insights from the Two Thousand + NINE Symposium,Hardback,978-1-4438-1445-4,34.99,"This volume emerged out of the discussions during the 2009 edition of the Two Thousand + symposia series at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast. In 2009 the symposium focused on user-generated content and it is the refined and reworked writings that have been included in this volume. The texts in this book cover the development of design strategies for addressing rich media environments that incorporate user-generated, locative content. Chapters cover areas such as choreography/dance, virtual worlds, music performance, network music and computer games.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-01,"Cécile Cottenet, Jean-Christophe Murat and Nathalie Vanfasse",Cultural Transformations in the English-Speaking World,Hardback,978-1-4438-1642-7,39.99,"In a context where cultural transformations have become a basic feature of modern life as people and nations are brought closer together, this book tackles transformations occurring within and across cultures of the English-speaking world in the fields of literature, painting, architecture, photography and film. It helps readers decipher these dynamic phenomena and situate them in a historical perspective. The articles move within and across cultures and mirror the broad range of approaches to cultural practices that have appeared in the past few decades. They provide readers with tools to work out the transformations these practices undergo and the new life and meaning this process infuses into cultures of the English-speaking world. This book will be useful to graduate and doctoral students as well as post-doctoral researchers working in film studies, cultural studies, art history, literature and creative writing. Its clear language and pedagogical approaches will also make it accessible to the general public.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-01,Victoria Watts and Robert W. Gehl,The Politics of Cultural Programming in Public Spaces,Hardback,978-1-4438-1694-6,34.99,"In our digital media saturated lives, where we spend increasing amounts of time in “virtual worlds” such as Second Life or online on blogs and video sites, it can be easy to forget about public spaces. Unlike content in virtual worlds, cultural programs in public spaces are events that are lived and experienced bodily and sensuously. Museum exhibits, public music performances, sports, art festivals – these events and spaces are truly immediate, which is to say that they are lived bodily by those that participate in and produce them. While media might be involved, these phenomena are wholly different from broadcast mass media objects. This book, The Politics of Cultural Programming in Public Spaces, interrogates these events and spaces in order to discover – and recover – the ways in which they affect subjectivity. We offer this not in lieu of interrogations of our heavily mediated world, but as a reminder that public spaces and public events still matter to millions of people worldwide.
To this end, this collection groups together two seemingly different objects: events and institutions. Cultural events, such as festivals, protests, and concerts, are often considered one-time phenomena. Even events that are annual are seen as relegated to a brief period of time. Institutions, such as museums, are seen as more permanent, even timeless. Yet both are caught in complex political and economic webs, and both mutate through time as various constituencies struggle over their uses and meanings. Short-term events persist in cultural memory through news reports, eyewitness accounts, and documentaries. Museums and exhibits, for all their persistence, often undergo turnover in personnel and subsequently are sites of shifting political and cultural mores. Moreover, since this book deals with cultural programming in public spaces, all of the objects considered here are seen as intimately tied to heterogeneous geographical/political spaces. Seen in this light, the distinction between, say a book festival and a sculpture garden, is more arbitrary than helpful. In the final analysis, no object is free of the web of determinations, and the essays in the book explore the ramifications of this fact.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-02-01,Fiona Williamson,"Locating Agency: Space, Power and Popular Politics",Hardback,978-1-4438-1448-5,39.99,"In the latter half of the twentieth century, historians came to consider “politics” to mean more than simply the formal institutions and apparatus of government, run by a small minority of wealthy, educated elite men. The word has been adopted by historians of different genres as synonymous with power, or agency, and the scope for “political” activity has been widened to incorporate a variety of everyday events and ordinary people.
These collected essays explore the quotidian experience of politics in the form of popular politics, religion and popular culture. The contributors consider, for example: the politics of the alehouse, the politics of Methodism, the interrelationship between plebeian agency, custom and memory, the politics of economics, dramatic agency and the politics of the spiritual parish. Collectively they suggest that political activity was embedded in almost every aspect of life. In addition they draw on interdisciplinary theory, in particular the “spatial turn” and how it can be used to better understand popular agency.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,"Elodie Lafitte, Christina Wall and Mary Cobb Wittrock","Culture as Text, Text as Culture",Hardback,978-1-4438-1848-3,39.99,"Culture as Text, Text as Culture represents a novel, interdisciplinary analysis of textuality as it pertains to Cultural Studies. More specifically, the work examines how the analysis of texts has shaped the most vital contemporary debate of Cultural Studies: the recognition that all texts and their contexts are constructs. Building upon a Post-structural/Post-modern understanding of truth as a construct, Cultural Studies has long since acknowledged the ability of texts to express the time and culture of their origin. This work, however, expands this idea, demonstrating not only how a culture is preserved in a text, but how that text can in turn define its culture, even redefine its history.
This compendium is structured around four of the most prominent contemporary topics of Cultural Studies: the relationship between historical and fictional writing, the ability of authors to recreate or redefine history, the relationship between language and image, and the ability for traditionally marginalized groups to reassert their place in history. The book presents articles from a large spectrum of disciplinary fields and civilizations in order to demonstrate how the application of Cultural Studies can unite seemingly disparate disciplines.
","“The essays in Culture and Text represent an exciting and significant contribution to the burgeoning field of cultural studies—by drawing together these seemingly disparate elements not just from a traditional narrative perspective, but from a close examination of textual images, imagery, non-linear, subaltern, and other non-hegemonic approaches, this collection provides a comprehensive study of the realities underlying what Spivak refers to as a ‘space of difference’ that represent the hybridity inherent in any culture, allowing fresh interpretations of old and new texts.”
—Sheila Turek, Assistant Professor of French, Department of Languages and Literatures, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
“Written in a lucid and extremely engaging style, rich in rare and uniquely interesting archival content, and bringing into light issues that clearly hold an important relevance in the field, this timely edited volume maps out the directions that current scholarship in cultural and global studies can take and promises to open windows to paths of inquiry that favor a richly textured understanding of our human past and present, by promoting the emergence of new and multi-forms of knowledge about them.”
—Safoi Babana-Hampton, Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Department of French Classics and Italian, Michigan State University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Shant Narsesian,"Football Fans, Their Information, The Web and The Personal Home Page",Hardback,978-1-4438-1862-9,49.99,"From the early days of the Internet to the present day, the World Wide Web has developed into one of the world's largest information resources. One of the first genres of web pages, which was also one of the first information resources, was the Personal Home Page (PHP). Over this same period of time, professional football in England has created the world's richest league and by extension an abundance of football-related PHPs. This book examines the role of the PHP as an information resource using the subject area of professional football in England.
A holistic approach was taken so as to view the PHP in a broader context, as one information resource amongst many, including non-PHPs and even offline information resources (e.g. reference books). Within this study, football fans were interviewed along with web authors, surveys were carried out (by distributing both online and offline questionnaires) and additional research was also carried out online, examining football-related PHPs and online web collaborations.
Results suggest that whilst there are many informational benefits to be found on PHPs, such as plentiful unique information, they have low levels of use amongst football fans. The study concludes by proposing an avenue to the maximisation of the informational benefit of PHPs through a blueprint for a type of communal football website called the Club Community Composite Page (CCCP).
Overall, several contributions are made to the field of information science, most notably attaining an improved understanding of PHPs as unique and accurate information providers online and devising new research methods for PHP research. In particular, the method of identification of PHPs developed here will be a useful tool for future researchers of PHPs. The contributions of this work are likely to be of value to researchers working in relevant sub-fields of information science, such as information seeking, web genres, grey literature and virtual communities.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,"Vicenç Torrens, Linda Escobar, Anna Gavarró and Juncal Gutiérrez",Movement and Clitics: Adult and Child Grammar,Hardback,978-1-4438-1847-6,49.99,"This volume gathers selected papers from the workshops Facing Movement and Meeting Clitics held in the context of the Barcelona Linguistic Institute. The authors explore a wide variety of languages, from Icelandic to Mayan, from Japanese to Russian and Italian, from various data sources: adult grammar, first and second language acquisition, developmental language disorders and language change.
The papers on movement address the issues of reconstruction in parasitic gaps; the alternation between short and long distance movement in Germanic; subextraction from subjects; wh- in situ in Greek; word order alternations derived by movement in bilingual acquisition; intervention effects in L2 acquisition of Chinese; multiple wh- fronting in L2; and production of wh- questions in L1, L2 and SLI in French.
In the papers on clitics, the theoretical issues considered include: the affixal character of subject clitics in L1; the morphological complexity of clitics; proclisis versus enclisis; the restrictions on cooccurrence of clitics in causative and other constructions; clitic placement in relation to L2 and language change; clitics as demarcative markers; and the acquisition of pronominal clitics in European Portuguese.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,"Heather M. Morgan, Jernej Letnar Černič and Lindsay Milligan",Perspectives on Power: An Inter-Disciplinary Approach,Hardback,978-1-4438-1849-0,49.99,"Although ‘power’ can appear a vague term, the dichotomy between haves and have-nots, the desire to gain autonomy, and the dire consequences of subjugation, are three issues that resound across the arts and social sciences. In this book, postgraduate students from the constituent disciplines use the freedom of their positions as early-career researchers to boldly explore power relations. From a legal perspective, papers are included geared towards human rights issues and violations. Further, the applied perspectives from business and education researchers consider how access to wealth and education, and to equal education, can and must be achieved. Then, interpreted through the perspectives of anthropological, sociological, and historical approaches, power has become a resonant issue among the creations of culture and human interaction(s). Finally, within the ‘soft’ sciences, the very same preoccupations, as they appear in creative expression, are examined within literature and music. Indeed, through the twenty-one articles chosen for inclusion in this collection, distinct in their disciplinary origins, approaches and foci, together the authors are emphasising the many similarities that exist among the arts and social sciences subjects.
‘Perspectives on Power: An Interdisciplinary Approach’ was conceived as a result of the quality and reception of papers presented at the 2008 Moving Forward Postgraduate Conference, held at the University of Aberdeen. The volume comprises twenty-one articles on the theme of ‘power’, carefully chosen by the editorial team from in excess of eighty presentations. These represent and tender a wide range of scholarly approaches to and within the arts and social sciences; the remit of Moving Forward. The collection is aimed at scholars and scholarly institutions within the United Kingdom in particular, but contains contributions from scholars across the globe. The collection should especially appeal to and inspire delegates visiting the Moving Forward Postgraduate Conference in the years to come.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Fabio Akcelrud Durão,Culture Industry Today,Hardback,978-1-4438-1955-8,34.99,"The concept of culture industry leads a double life. On the one hand, it appears as transparent, being used widely and freely in reference to a branch of business; on the other, it is a notion belonging to a critical tradition that wants to preserve the tension resulting from the juxtaposition of these two words. Culture Industry Today is a contribution to the latter trend, which takes into account the current prevalence of the former. By offering interpretations of the term in relation to philosophy, media, television, the Third World, the psyche and the culture of consumption, the book aims at showing the continued relevance of an expression whose muteness is the corroboration of its darkest content.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Jeremy Roe and Marta Bustillo,"Imagery, Spirituality and Ideology in Baroque Spain and Latin America",Hardback,978-1-4438-1913-8,34.99,"This volume offers a series of essays that explore the significance of visual imagery as a medium for the representation of spiritual and ideological concerns by the Catholic Church in the Spanish Habsburg Empire. Each of these essays provides a valuable contribution to established areas of research such as Velázquez studies, St. Teresa of Avila as spiritual exemplar for the Counter-Reformation in Spain, the iconography of St. Francis of Assisi, or the evolution of Peruvian Christian iconography. A valuable contribution of all these essays is their discussion of new visual and textual sources which are revealing of the diverse modes of representation developed by the Church to ‘Delight, Move and Instruct’ the many and diverse spectators of its artistic message. Together these essays provide a range of critical perspectives on the complex cultural, political and spiritual context that shaped the evolution of Religious Art in cities as distant as Cuzco and Madrid.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,David A. Powell and Tamara Powell,Queer Exoticism: Examining the Queer Exotic Within,Hardback,978-1-4438-1928-2,39.99,"Queer Exoticism: Examining the Queer Exotic Within joins the growing bibliography of queer postcolonial and queer race studies. The authors assembled here examine the queer tendency to visit decidedly different and unusual subjects of desire in an effort, partially at least, to find oneself. The identity quest that is inherent in the search for the exotic often results in something quite the opposite of foreign since it forms and articulates that which is ourselves. Thus experiencing the exotic becomes a path to self-knowledge, not unlike the work of therapy wherein the examination of elements that appear at first peculiar or unfamiliar end up opening channels to self-discovery. In this way, the gaze outward turns inward to exhibit an inner exoticism that, at times, is at once, always and already, inner and outer. These essays also focus on various questions of imperialism, race, exoticism, along with other aspects of the exotic. Going beyond Said’s sense of orientalism, this volume examines the otherness of oneself and the notion of desire for the Other as something different from purely an act of domination and colonization, thereby refusing perceptions of ascendancy. Insomuch as they represent various geographic and cultural groups, the studies lend themselves to a variety of different methodologies and analytical approaches.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Simon McKeown,"The International Emblem: From Incunabula to the Internet Selected Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of the Society for Emblem Studies, 28th July-1st August, 2008, Winchester College",Hardback,978-1-4438-1930-5,64.99,"The emblem, a Renaissance literary genre which combined text and image, conveyed erudition, admonishment, propaganda, and piety with unparalleled concision and economy. It arose out of humanist circles in the early sixteenth century and quickly became established as a staple tool in religious, political, and social discourses across the major European languages. In recent years the emblem has come to be regarded by scholars working in all areas of the humanities and cultural studies as an interdisciplinary matrix of extraordinary utility in gaining insights into the mentalities and preoccupations of the early modern era. Within its apparently slender frame, the emblem embraces questions of foremost philological, semiotic, and iconographical importance, and encompasses ideas and assumptions of exceedingly far range and reach.
This collection of essays attests to the pervasiveness of the emblem, both within Renaissance and Baroque Europe, and in those parts of the wider world where European influence came to bear. It seeks to follow the development of the emblem from its beginnings in various forms of bimedial artefact, from early illustrated books and hieroglyphs, to medals and ancient coins; we then witness its deployment as a propagandistic tool in the temporal and confessional disputes of Europe. Thereafter, the emblem appears in non-European contexts, emerging as a place of cultural exchange as it became assimilated within indigenous visual traditions. The latter parts of the book concentrate on the often subliminal role emblems played in diverse literary texts, as well as their ongoing vitality in praxis or in the burgeoning area of emblem scholarship within early modern studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Dualta Roughneen,The Right to Roam: Travellers and Human Rights in the Modern Nation-State,Hardback,978-1-4438-1871-1,34.99,"Nomadic groups and sedentary society have been in conflict throughout the ages and the conflict continues to this day. For the most part it is nomadic groups who have been the losers in these conflicts. The idea of human rights has traveled around the world in response to some of the great conflicts of our time. ‘The Right to Roam- Travellers in the Modern Nation State’ examines the right of nomadic groups to maintain a way of life that is contrary to the drive toward sedentarisation and modernisation. If human rights are to exist, one approach to the derivation of rights is that they are to exist as protectors of the autonomy of individuals. When the autonomy of individuals is threatened by restrictions on their liberty then the protection of human rights is required. For Travellers in Ireland, restrictions on the freedom to maintain a Travelling lifestyle have consequences for members of the Travelling community. “The Right to Roam- Travellers in the Nation State’ explores the impact of recent legislation such as the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 2002 on Travellers in modern Ireland and whether progress driven be sedentary society should be required to include the needs of nomadic groups.
","""A quick glance at Irish social and cultural history from the Gaelic period onwards points to nomadism as an accepted and valued mode of living within society, a fact which was true until well into the twentieth century. The advent of the modern nation-state changed all of this this, however, and as poet WB Yeats so eloquently put it – “A terrible beauty was born”. There is no small irony in the fact that Ireland, a country where a wide range of Travellers and peripatetic groups were once an accepted part of the social fabric, now has some of the most restrictive legislation in the world with respect to nomadism. Dualta Roughneen has written an excellent book. With consummate skill, he has traced the process whereby human rights are nomadic minorities have been subordinated and deemed inferior to policies and provisions deemed appropriate for the development of a modern European nation-state. ""
- Dr. Mícheál Ó hAodha, Department of History, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Damien W. Riggs,"What About the Children! Masculinities, Sexualities and Hegemony",Hardback,978-1-4438-1874-2,34.99,"What About the Children! takes up the important task of examining the role of hegemonic masculinities in propping up a normative social order in which children are constructed as the property of adults. By examining adult-child relations in the context of a wide range of family forms and social contexts, the book provides some hard answers to questions relating to what exactly are the best interests of children, and how they should be determined. The book responds by suggesting that there is a pressing need to recognise the capacity of children to voice their own desires and needs, and that in failing to recognise this all adults (and men in particular) only serve to further perpetuate a possessive logic that, at least in part, gives rise to the mistreatment or abuse of children. Covering topics such as the experiences of foster fathers, gay adoptive fathers and sperm donors, and exploring phenomena such as books on raising boys and movies about gay parents, the book offers important insights as to the operations of hegemony in the lives of a broad range of men. Importantly, the book moves beyond simply identifying the operations of hegemony in relation to possessive investments in children, and goes on to propose a ‘non-indifferent’ approach to understanding adult-child relations that at its heart examines the operations of power that produce children as supposedly docile subjects (and only certain adults as capable of caring for them). As a result, the book makes a significant contribution to setting an alternative agenda for child protection both within Australia and internationally by asking the question ‘protection for whom?’.
","“Damien Riggs is a unique voice in the Australian academic world. His work has crossed lesbian and gay studies, critical race and whiteness studies, gender studies and, as here, studies of reproduction and parenting. In What About the Children! he critically examines the edges of mainstream conceptions of parenting and in each instance of this he teases out the ways that normative forms of masculinity, parenthood and childhood haunt even the most apparently historically new and socially challenging expressions of men's contributions to reproduction and parenting. In so doing, Riggs shows us how hard it is to forge new and creative forms of gender and parenting, yet he also manages to clear the path for precisely those forms which will encourage men and boys to challenge hegemonic forms of gender and sexuality. For this reason it is to be commended and deserves to be read widely.”
—Barbara Baird, Associate Professor, Department of Women's Studies, Flinders University, South Australia
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,May Telmissany and Stephanie Tara Schwartz,Counterpoints: Edward Said’s Legacy,Hardback,978-1-4438-2066-0,39.99,"Revolving around the theme of “counterpoint” extensively used by Edward Said as the interplay of diverse ideas and discrepant experiences, this book aims to explore Said’s contribution to the fields of comparative literature, literary criticism, postcolonial theory, exilic and transnational studies, and socio-political thought among many others. Overshadowed by his legitimate political positions in support to the Palestinian cause and at odds with Islamophobic hostilities, Said’s intellectual achievements in the fields of humanities and philosophical thinking should equally be acknowledged and celebrated.
Said articulates his notion of counterpoints through a vivid description of the composition of Western classical music. In the counterpoint of Western classical music, various themes play off one another, with only a provisional privilege being given to any particular one; yet in the resulting polyphony there is concert and order, an organized interplay that derives from the themes, not from a rigorous melodic or formal principle outside the work. This book pays tribute to Said’s contrapuntal methodology as well as to his academic and humanistic legacy.
","“Edward Said stood on the shoulders of many giants and looked beyond, and now former students, scholars and admirers are doing the same, taking intellectual risks and building on what he has given us. That is exactly what he would have wished.”
—Mariam Said
“Written at the intersection of diverse forms of what Said himself called ‘adversarial scholarship,’ Said’s work further consolidated what came to be the burgeoning fields of multicultural and postcolonial studies.”
—Ella Shohat, New York University
“The difference between Said and Foucault always lay in Said’s concern with worldliness. The rejection of Enlightenment humanism ran counter to Said’s concern for the human world and to his desire to generate a theory of community. It is in communities that individuals gain their most resonant material existence; it is within communities that political life is generated and it is in communities that ways to change societies and power structures are developed.”
—Bill Ashcroft, University of New South Wales
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,"Ross P. Garner, Melissa Beattie and Una McCormack","Impossible Worlds, Impossible Things: Cultural Perspectives on Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures",Hardback,978-1-4438-1960-2,39.99,"The successful regeneration of Doctor Who in the twenty-first century has sparked unprecedented popular success and renewed interest within the academy.
The ten essays assembled in this volume draw on a variety of critical approaches—from cultural theory to audience studies, to classical reception and musicology—to form a wide-ranging interdisciplinary discussion of Doctor Who, classic and new, and its spin-off series, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.
With additional contributions from Andrew Pixley, Robert Shearman, Barnaby Edwards, and Matt Hills, the volume is intended to be accessible to everyone, from interested academics in relevant fields to the general public.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Lena Martinsson and Eva Reimers,Norm-struggles: Sexualities in Contentions,Hardback,978-1-4438-1975-6,39.99,"Norm-Struggles explores and challenges normativity in general and heteronormativity in particular. A common trait in all chapters is the focus on contradictions, changes, disruptions and uncertainties that follow with different norms and structuring forces. The authors discuss and explore how norms are produced, and reproduced but also disrupted, subverted and changed. The chapters are based on observations from different settings such as preschools, schools, universities, factories, social welfare, popular culture, passanger ships, and the fire service. They are also based on observations from different countries; Lithuania, Canada, USA, Sweden, Finland, and Great Britain. The book presents studies of media, policies, machines, organisations, academic sexual theory, and the ongoing constructions of nations and nationalities.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Solrun Williksen and Nigel Rapport,"Reveries of Home: Nostalgia, Authenticity and the Performance of Place",Hardback,978-1-4438-1979-4,39.99,"Reveries of Home considers understandings of home in the world today and the means by which feelings of homeliness are secured. In particular, the volume explores the relationship between the phenomenon of globalisation and the ways in which home-making entails acts of practical and symbolic emplacement in landscapes felt to be meaningful and authentic. A series of case-studies, from Norway and West Africa, the mid-western USA, Egypt, Scotland and elsewhere, offer an illustrative array of homes made in rural communities and urban worksites, in personal life-histories and the policies of diasporic groups, in ceremonial revivals and mundane routines: in postcards, house furnishings, dreams, clothes and smells. Home-making appears as a kind of work; and it is ongoing, for ‘place’ and being ‘emplaced’ are not givens. Instead, home-making exists in time: in moments of individual and collective performance which are both mundane and memorial. Reveries of Home offers a set of cases and a set of arguments that reveal the close connections that remain between home and identity, even in a world of movement.
","“With its rich ethnography, Reveries of Home shows what “home” can be … Very satisfying reading, and with a promise to inspire more studies of this enduring focus of human sentiment!”
—Emeritus Professor Ulf Hannerz, Stockholm University
“Reveries of Home provides philosophical depth in a context of vibrant ongoing anthropological research … This is an excellent collection and it deserves widespread success.”
—Professor Caroline Knowles, Goldsmiths, University of London
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Micaela Muñoz-Calvo and Carmen Buesa-Gómez,Translation and Cultural Identity: Selected Essays on Translation and Cross-Cultural Communication,Hardback,978-1-4438-1989-3,34.99,"Translation and Cultural Identity: Selected Essays on Translation and Cross-Cultural Communication tackles the complexity of the concepts mentioned in its title through seven essays, written by most highly regarded experts in the field of Translation Studies: José Lambert (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium), Raquel Merino (University of the Basque Country, Spain), Rosa Rabadán (University of Leon, Spain), Julio-César Santoyo (University of Leon, Spain), Christina Schäffner (Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom), Gideon Toury (Tel-Aviv University, Israel) and Patrick Zabalbeascoa (Pompeu Fabra University, Spain). The essays are varied and innovative. Their common feature is that they deal with various aspects of translation and cultural identity and that they contribute to the enrichment of the study of communication across cultures.
These major readings in translation studies will give readers food for thought and reflection and will promote research on translation, cultural identity and cross-cultural communication.
","“This collection brings together an impressive line-up of top scholars in Translation Studies. From the clear-headed erudition of its opening essay on literary self-translation to the polemical discussion of community-forming myths in Translation Studies in the final chapter, the book not only illustrates the nexus between translation, cross-cultural communication and cultural identities but also engages with current research models for studying these phenomena, critically reviewing methodologies and proposing new research avenues. This stimulating and often challenging volume is without a doubt a worthy companion to New Trends in Translation and Cultural Identity!”
—Dirk Delabastita, University of Namur and CETRA, Belgium
“The collective volume Translation and Cultural Identity: Selected Essays on Translation and Cross-Cultural Communication has, in my opinion, at least two major strengths. Firstly it gathers together the opinions of some of the most outstanding scholars, both international and national, in the field of Translation Studies. And secondly, thanks to this diversity of focus, it covers facets of these Studies that range from general overviews to very specific case studies, thus offering one of the most interesting state-of-the-art accounts of Translation Studies today.
I have no doubt that this collection of essays will become essential and enlightening reading for all those interested in this matter, and a work of reference in their research and teaching activities.”
—José Miguel Santamaría, University of the Basque Country, Spain
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Michele Byers and David Lavery,"On the Verge of Tears: Why the Movies, Television, Music, Art, Popular Culture, Literature, and the Real World Make Us Cry",Hardback,978-1-4438-2160-5,39.99,"The idea for this book began with David Lavery’s 2007 column for flowtv.org. “The Crying Game: Why Television Brings Us to Tears” asked us to consider that “age-old mystery”: tears. The respondents to David’s initial survey—Michele Byers among them—didn’t agree on anything ... Some cried more over film, some television, some books; some felt their tears to be a release, others to be a manipulation. They did agree, however, as did the readers who responded to the column, that crying over stories, and even “things,” is something that is a shared and familiar cultural practice. This book was born from that moment of recognition.
On the Verge of Tears is not the first book to think about crying. Tom Lutz’s Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears, Judith Kay Nelson’s Seeing Through Tears: Crying and Attachment, Peter Schwenger’s The Tears of Things: Melancholy and Physical Objects, and Henry Jenkins’ The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture also offer forays into this familiar, if not always entirely comfortable, emotional space. This book differs markedly from each of these others, however. As a collection of essay by diverse hands, its point of view is multi-vocal. It is not a history of tears (as is Lutz’s superb book); nor is its approach psychological/sociological (as is Nelson’s). It does not limit itself to very contemporary popular culture (as does Jenkins’ book) or material culture (as does Schwenger’s study).
What On the Verge of Tears offers are personal, cultural, and political ruminations on the tears we shed in our daily engagements with the world and its artifacts. The essays found within are often deeply personal, but also have broad implications for everyday life. The authors included here contemplate how and why art, music, film, literature, theatre, theory, and material artifacts make us weep. They consider the risks of tears in public and private spaces; the way tears implicate us in tragedy, comedy, and horror. On the Verge of Tears does not offer a unified theory of crying, but, instead, invites us to imagine tears as a multi-vocal language we can all, in some manner, understand.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Janusz Mucha and Katarzyna Leszczyńska,"Society, Culture and Technology at the Dawn of the 21st Century",Hardback,978-1-4438-2156-8,39.99,"The articles in this collection analyse methodological aspects of today’s hard sciences and humanities and of applied research in the field of high technology. The authors explore structural and cultural contexts of scientific research, relations between information technologies and our everyday life, as well as relations between innovation and business culture.
","“In this book we see scholars attempting to bridge the percieved gap between social and natural sciences. Through detailed observation of past and present events they try to foresee future trends and contribute to the establishment of a new transciplinary paradigm that can help us cope with new types of social challenges. ‘Society, Culture & Technology at the Dawn of the 21st Century’ is strongly recommended for anyone interested in socio-cultural framework of recent and future scientific and technological progress.”
—Professor Franc Mali, University of Ljubljana
“This collection is a methodologically diverse multiplicity of perspectives on the relationships between technology, society, and culture. The authors offer a strong foundation for the collection; a well-grounded and wide-ranging review of literature from classical sociology and philosophy of science to more recent studies of science, technology, and society. The result is a timely, often fascinating, and generally thought-provoking comparative analysis of society, culture and technology as we complete the first decade of the new millennium.”
—Professor Mike Keen, Director of the Center for a Sustainable Future, Indiana University South Bend, and author of “Stalking the Sociological Imagination: J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI Surveillance of American Sociologists”
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Robert D. Morritt,Stones that Speak,Hardback,978-1-4438-2162-9,49.99,"As a child I would often wonder when I saw an illustration of a stone tablet, and ask myself: What did the inscription mean? How did these people sound when they talked? What would that piece of clay say if it could speak!
The enigma of the Phaistos Disc is revisited here in the light of new findings. From the various interpretations of the origin of the symbols depicted on the disc.
Kober, Ventris, Chadwick and Bennett, the cryptologists are remembered for paving the way for us to understand the language and culture of early societies.
Archaeological excavations, archaic languages and Myths are explored, together with theories of archaic Cretan relations as far away as the Black Sea. If this book enthuses just one person to forge ahead to uncover new information to allow “The Stones to Speak,” then I will be satisfied.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Paul Hardwick and David Kennedy,"The Survival of Myth: Innovation, Singularity and Alterity",Hardback,978-1-4438-2158-2,39.99,"What are myths and what are they for? Myths are stories that both tell us how to live and remind us of the inescapability and pull of the collective past. The Survival of Myth: Innovation, Singularity and Alterity explores the continuing power of primal stories to inhabit our thinking. An international range of contributors examine a range of texts and figures from the Bible to Cormac McCarthy and from Thor to the Virgin Mary to focus on the way that ancient stories both give access to the unconscious and offer individuals and communities personae or masks. Myths translated and recreated become, in this sense, very public acts about very private thoughts and feelings. The subtitle of the book, ‘Innovation, Singularity and Alterity,’ reflects the way in which the history of cultures in all genres is a history of innovation, of a search for new modes of expression which, paradoxically, often entails recourse to myth precisely because it offers narratives of singularity and otherness which may be readily appropriated. The individual contributors offer testament to the continuing significance of myth through its own constant metamorphosis, as it both reflects and transforms the societies in which it is (re)produced.
","“Myths are stories of transformation which enable cultures to explore and propagate new forms of identity, whether through nationalist narratives of power and appropriation, or through ambivalent and transgressive icons of sexual and religious power. This collection of essays is a very welcome contribution to this rich field, re-energizing the study of myths as a tool for the analysis of the representations that channel cultural change.”
— Prof Adam Piette, University of Sheffield
‘Myth continues to exert a pull on contemporary culture because, as this book argues, it thrives on innovation and imagination, always succeeding in somehow being contemporary. The essays here amply illustrate just how diverse, yet significant, the role of myth continues to be. In particular, myth’s irreducibility, along with its narratives of singularity and alterity, compel us to pay attention and perhaps enable us to get the measure of our own culture(s).’
— Prof Steven Earnshaw, Sheffield Hallam University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Waltraud Ernst and Thomas Mueller,Transnational Psychiatries: Social and Cultural Histories of Psychiatry in Comparative Perspective c. 1800-2000,Hardback,978-1-4438-2217-6,44.99,"This book offers something new in the history of psychiatry. Within a transnational research framework, it presents original historical case studies and conceptual reflections on comparative and related methodologies. Systematic comparison and transfer studies as well as aspects of entangled history are employed in relation to themes such as different cultural meanings pertaining to the same term; transfer of treatment practices and institutional regimes; localised practices and (re)-emerging forms of patient care; circulation of early anti-psychiatrists’ views; impact of war and politics on patients’ welfare and on psychiatric discourse; and diversification of psychotherapeutic and physical practices. The book includes chapters on the history and historiography of psychiatry and psychotherapy in different geo-cultural regions in South America, Asia, the Pacific and Europe. The contributors present multilayered interpretations, emphasising commonalities and interconnections as well as contrasts and discontinuities. With its wide-ranging geographical focus and attention to conceptual issues, this collection will assist to integrate and reconfigure the historiography of psychiatry.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,"Noritah Omar, Washima Che Dan, Jason Sanjeev Ganesan and Rosli Talif",Critical Perspectives on Literature and Culture in the New World Order,Hardback,978-1-4438-2265-7,39.99,"The fifteen chapters in this volume explore both new and tested theoretical perspectives on literature and culture at large; this multiplicity of discourses is a reflection of the implicit discontent in conforming to the New World Order, and a contestation against hierarchical relationships between countries, which inform the social, cultural and political climates of weaker nations. With the political and economic hegemony of stronger nations, weaker nations run the risk of being dominated, or at the very least, having their own national identity and sovereignty steeped in ambivalence in the face of a globalised culture. This volume hopes to bring together critical views in relation to the construction of cultural studies in the Western framework, the application of literary theory in the readings of vernacular literature, contestation of the mainstream scientistic methodology of cultural evaluation, the role of English literature in Asian cultures, the application of postcolonial theory in literature, literary ethics in relation to Islamic literature, as well as the Islamic and Western conceptions of democracy. More than half of the articles in this collection centre on Islam as a guiding principle, or as a context through which critical perspectives are made on literature and culture in today’s globalised world order. This inadvertent foregrounding of Islam reflects a continuing dialogue on and with Islam and its significant impact on existing academic discourses founded upon Western-style scholarship.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,Şebnem Toplu and Hubert Zapf,Redefining Modernism and Postmodernism,Hardback,978-1-4438-2268-8,44.99,"Literary and cultural studies in the later twentieth century were very much shaped by debates about modernism and postmodernism as labels for successive periods, but also for different competing interpretations of recent cultural history. In the twenty-first century, the shock waves that were sent through the global system on political, cultural, economic, and ecological levels by terrorist attacks, regional conflicts, poverty, the financial crisis and the threat of environmental disaster raise anew the question of how and to what extent the tradition of modernity can be newly defined in a situation where the problematic aspects of these ideas have rightly been exposed, but where they nevertheless appear to be crucial for any responsible assessment of contemporary world culture and its future perspectives.
Redefining Modernism and Postmodernism offers a collection of critical articles that resulted from the International Cultural Studies Symposium at Ege University, Izmir, Turkey in 2009. Scholars from around the world have contributed to this volume reflecting the current perspective on modernism and postmodernism, shedding new light on literature, literary theory, philosophy, politics, religion, film and art. Providing an account of this field, this book enables readers to navigate the subject by introducing essays on transformations of modernism and postmodernism in the twenty-first century, and the debates beyond the modernism/postmodernism dichotomy.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Karyn Hollis,Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals In and Out of Academe,Hardback,978-1-4438-2260-2,34.99,"The notion that public intellectuals in the US are in decline has again become fashionable with their portrayal as trapped between Academe and the “real” world. The questions addressed by this volume are: How can the voices of scholars and erudite thinkers penetrate the globalized, corporate media and how does media receive and represent the contribution of intellectuals to the academic and public spheres, all the while recognizing what Paul Bové calls the “the nonidentity of intellectuals as a group.”
Dedicated to the memory of Howard Zinn, whose life work is a model for intellectual engagement, this collection of intriguing articles with an introduction by the editors and a foreword by Henry A. Giroux presents new scholarship on the role of the intellectual in a society, and specifically in Academe, from many different perspectives. Indeed, intellectuals have been negotiating access to public discourse for centuries, but never have their opinions been more crucial to the public good, because of the privately owned media’s domination of public discourse. The inspiration for this volume comes also from Edward Said’s notion of intellectuals whose role is to “uncover and elucidate the contest, to challenge and defeat both an imposed silence and the normalized quiet of unseen power, wherever and whenever possible.”
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Yarma Velázquez Vargas,A Queer Eye for Capitalism: The Commodification of Sexuality in American Television,Hardback,978-1-4438-2279-4,34.99,"This study uses critical discourse analysis to conduct an examination of the reality television program Queer Eye. The goal is to help understand the manner in which the representations of queer culture in the show reinforce the binaries of sex, gender and sexuality. By investigating the evolution of Queer Eye this study provides insights into American popular culture’s understanding and depiction of sexual difference and evidences the strong link between these representations and the commercial interests of the producers.
In the show Queer Eye, the male guests sell access to their lives for a makeover and in the process they are indoctrinated into new patterns of consumption. The identity of both the five main characters and the guest character is represented as a reflection of their aesthetic choices, and audiences are exposed to numerous product placements and advertising messages. In encouraging materialism, the show transforms the term queer into a commodity sign and redefines masculinity as represented through wealth and accumulation. Moreover, consistent with the stereotypical representation of gay males in American culture the queerness of the Fab is depicted as asexual and a form of aestheticism.
","“This volume is a must read for media scholars who seek to understand the commodification of masculinity and sexuality in the media.”
—Youngrak Park, Columbus State University
“This book addresses a matter of concern to all those who study queer representation in media. It makes a significant contribution to debates concerning the transformation of queer into a commodity and the representation of masculinity through wealth.”
—Donna Marie Nudd, Florida State University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,G. Mitchell Reyes,"Public Memory, Race, and Ethnicity",Hardback,978-1-4438-2277-0,39.99,"Scholars across the humanities and social sciences who study public memory study the ways that groups of people collectively remember the past. One motivation for such study is to understand how collective identities at the local, regional, and national level emerge, and why those collective identities often lead to conflict. Public Memory, Race, and Ethnicity contributes to this rapidly evolving scholarly conversation by taking into consideration the influence of race and ethnicity on our collective practices of remembrance. How do the ways we remember the past influence racial and ethnic identities? How do racial and ethnic identities shape our practices of remembrance? Public Memory, Race, and Ethnicity brings together nine provocative critical investigations that address these questions and others regarding the role of public memory in the formation of racial and ethnic identities in the United States.
The book is organized chronologically. Part I addresses the politics of public memory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on how immigrants who found themselves in a strange new world used memory to assimilate, on the interplay of ethnicity and patriarchy in early monumental representations of Sacagawea, and on the use of memory and forgetting to negotiate labor and racial tensions in an industrial steel town. Part II attends to the dynamics of memory and forgetting during and after World War II, examining the problems of remembrance as they are related to Japanese internment, the strategies of remembrance surrounding important events of the Civil Rights Movement, and the institutional use of memory and tradition to normalize whiteness and control human behavior. Part III focuses on race and remembrance in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, analyzing Walter Mosley’s use of memory in his literary work to challenge racial norms, President George W. Bush’s strategies of remembrance in his 2006 address to the NAACP, and the problems of memory and racial representation in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster. Taken together, the essays in this volume often speak to each other in remarkable ways, and one can begin to see in their progression the transformation of race relations in America since the nineteenth century.
","“This collection of essays moves rhetorical and cultural studies in new and important directions, situating the study of race and ethnicity within public contexts circumscribed by materiality and historicity. Blending the voices of emerging and established scholars, Public Memory, Race and Ethnicity offers powerful and provocative analyses of the ways in which identity and difference shape, and are shaped by, the visual and verbal dynamics of space and place that define and constrain borders of being, and margins of memory.”
—Mark L. McPhail, University of Wisconsin, USA
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Krista Cowman and Ian Packer,Radical Cultures and Local Identities,Hardback,978-1-4438-2386-9,39.99,"This edited interdisciplinary collection draws together recent original work on the connections between radicalism and localism in a variety of international locations over the last two hundred years. The areas covered include the United Kingdom, North America, South Africa, the Caribbean, Germany, Italy and Spain. The book questions whether certain political issues have more impact at a local level and whether common radical responses can be discerned across space and time. The contributors’ essays also consider to what extent the local offers a space in which new political possibilities can be explored, and especially the extent to which radical participation from groups who are under-represented in many national campaigns appears more easily available at the local level. Finally, the essays in the collection examine the distinctiveness of local political radicalism. This involves looking at the activities of communal organizations and political parties that defined themselves against nationally-situated sites of power, but also at how the many cultural manifestations of radicalism, such as music, theatre and art, were shaped distinctively at local level and how radical ideas were spread across wider areas from local bases.
","“This imaginative selection of essays seeks to use local history to shed new light on the nature of radical activities, defined as movements beyond the margins of the political and cultural mainstream. Such radical expressions tend to be local rather than national, which makes this approach especially welcome. The twelve detailed essays, ranging across and beyond Britain, truly provide multum in parvo as they combine crisply focused local studies with more general insights into the nature and impact of radical politics and cultures on their wider societies.”
—Edward Royle, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of York
“I am delighted to be able provide a strong endorsement for this exciting, timely and relevant edited collection. The book emerges from a highly-successful and important conference held at Lincoln University a couple of years ago. The conference attracted a wide range of established and younger scholars and this blend is amply demonstrated in the current collection.”
—Donald M. MacRaild, Professor of History at the University of Northumbria
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Kathy Justice Gentile,Sexing the Look in Popular Visual Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-2408-8,39.99,"With dramatic advances in media technology, the practice of sexing or erotically enhancing images has become an increasingly widespread phenomenon. The eroticized “look,” as both noun and verb, the thing or image that draws our look, and the look that we bestow on images that elicit our visual, physiological, and emotional attention, is the focus of the essays in this volume. Every day, whether we are out in the world or in the workplace or in the privacy of our homes, we enter visual fields that heighten and distort reality, distortions that often emphasize sexuality and erotic promise. The contributors for this collection look at the sexualization of visual culture from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including literature, film studies, history, philosophy, art history, and media studies, with gender and sexuality studies providing the encompassing critical framework that binds these essays into a coherent analytical project.
The essays in this collection offer new theoretical conceptions of perception and representation, as well as rigorous reconsiderations of the polarized feminist debates over pornographic images. Essays on literature and film range from an interrogation of Baudrillard’s theory of seduction that posits femininity as a strategy of illusion and subversion to Bridget Jones’s challenge to the prevailing disciplinary regime that prescribes rigid standards for feminine beauty to a reevaluation of the subversive potential of sexy female robots. Other contributors consider the history of nudist images in US periodicals, the proliferation of eroticized images of girls in new digital technologies, gentlemanly masculinity in men’s fashion in late Victorian England, and a rape prevention campaign’s unintentional reinforcement of persistent heterosexist misconceptions about rape.
","“A marvelous collection: theoretically rich, empirically grounded, and analytically sharp. [The editor presents] a new generation of scholars, building on earlier theoretical frameworks, who are interrogating the casual associations among images, their audiences, and the act of looking itself. The book will be a welcome contribution to gender and sexuality studies—indeed to studies of representations more generally.”
—Professor Michael Kimmel, Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA
“Sexing the Look combines a vibrant array of topics with thoughtful academic insight. By including chapters about everyday life—masculinity, advertising, femininity, violence prevention, and pornography—Kathy Justice Gentile’s timely anthology blends theories of visual imagery with the politics of contemporary culture. Sexing the Look provides challenging new insight into the philosophy of erotic and gendered imagery. This collection of essays will appeal to anyone who has both enjoyed and questioned our sexualized and increasingly visual surroundings.”
—Shira Tarrant, PhD, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, California State University, Long Beach, USA
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,"Susan Bracken, Andrea M. Gáldy, and Adriana Turpin",Collecting and the Princely Apartment,Hardback,978-1-4438-2591-7,39.99,"Collecting is an obsession that goes back to the mists of history. While spare time and spare cash seem an absolute necessity for this kind of activity, every collector has his or her own approach to the formation of a collection. The way in which one’s treasures are displayed is another important instance in which one collector differs from another. Glass cases, niches, trays, cupboards, or drawers have been adopted; sometimes cards offer information on the subject, its age and provenance; an overall theme may have prompted the choice of the actual objects displayed together; security reasons suggest one room over another.
While some collectors keep their treasures as close as possible—in their bedroom, throughout their living quarters, or in a locked up closet nearby—others may find that they want to be able to show off their collection without being disturbed by visitors in the rooms in which they actually spend most of their time. Certainly, our notions of private and public have changed considerably over the centuries and this has had an impact on questions of display and on the separation of particular parts of the house from other less accessible ones, in particular in great houses that allow for the establishment of a museum. The museum, in such cases, is quite separate from the living quarters, for example situated on the ground floor off the main hall.
Not all displays were so defined; there were many forms of exhibition just as there were many forms of collections. The aims and ambitions of the collector are often discussed in terms of the display of their collections; in part because we believe that analysing how a collection was shown and how it was received are key contributors to our understanding the role and purpose of the collection. In lieu of any other documentation, inventories, sales catalogues and wills remain essential tools for the historian of collecting, both in terms of what was owned and where it was housed.
This volume, the second in a series of four, presents ten articles that explore the connection between collections and their display in, near, or separate from the princely apartment within a time frame that runs from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth and within a geographical area that includes courts on the Italian peninsula, in England, France, The Netherlands and Germany.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Silvia Pilar Castro Borrego and Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz,Cultural Migrations and Gendered Subjects: Colonial and Postcolonial Representations of the Female Body,Hardback,978-1-4438-2646-4,34.99,"The present volume explores through cultural and literary representations the contributions of women to the construction of knowledge in an ever changing, global world as migrant subjects. The essays contained in this book also focus on the female body as a site of physical violence and abuse, fighting prevalent stereotypes about women’s representations and identities. This collection intends to enter a forum of discussion in which the colonial past serves as a point of reference for the analysis of contemporary issues. Women’s strategies for building possible identities are seen to be based on their own experiences, seeking the ways in which the public marking and marketing of the female body within the western male imaginary contributes to the making of women’s social and personal identities.
The different articles contained in this volume examine issues of gender and boundaries, the realities of women as colonial and postcolonial subjects, and darker realities such as alienation and discrimination as a result of migration, racism, and colonization analysed through a variety of critical perspectives. The gendered, raced, classed dimensions and mixed heritages not only of white women but also of women of the African Diaspora; these are important issues for the construction of knowledge and identity in our present multicultural societies, and can potentially change the ways we conceptualize, situate and engage the humanities in our scholarly work and in our social and cultural policies. These women, their presumed sexuality and their capacity to produce hybrid subjects, as well as their supposed irrationality make them a singularly disruptive figure in our contemporary world; this interpretation has its roots in the treatment of women in colonial times, especially when they were out of the margins of respectable society.
The volume is addressed to a wide readership, both scholarly and those interested in investigating the dynamics of the social and cultural conceptualizations of our multicultural and multiethnic contemporary societies, marked by the intercultural exchanges of migratory subjects from a gender perspective.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Ngambouk Vitalis Pemunta,Health and Cultural Values: Female Circumcision within the Context of HIV/AIDS in Cameroon,Hardback,978-1-4438-2642-6,39.99,"This book provides a nuanced analysis of the transformations that the ritual cutting of Female Circumcision (FC) recently underwent within the changing medical and institutional context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic among Ejagham tribes in Southwest Cameroon.
Based on local level ethnography, it captures the multivocal perspectives and agency of participants thereby putting to question the uncritical feminist stance that “Third World Women” lack agency and are chattel. As the highest rite of patriarchy, the quintessential icon of gendered personhood and femininity, FC remains salient even when it is no longer the criterion for membership into the Moninkim secret society especially within the new medical and institutional context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic because it is intertwined with the whole cultural political economy of the Ejaghams. The commercialization of this feminine institution charged with feminine personhood through its spectacular performances (enacting matrimonial relations) within and beyond the Ejagham locale is evidence of its continuous centrality in the life world of participants. By focusing on health alone, anti-HIV/AIDS and anti-FC interventions by both the state and civil society actors miss the point. FC is increasingly becoming a human, social, gender rights and development issue calling for a multi-pronged development approach. The threat of the HIV/AIDS pandemic led to ferocious intergenerational debates over moral values about female inordinate sexuality and to the double appropriation of the concept of human security. Conservatives maintain that FC tempers women’s sexuality and is therefore a useful mechanism to keep women in matrimonial service, a moral check on inordinate sexuality and a ‘‘native’’ antidote against the scourge of the pandemic. Anti-FC advocates point to the bloodletting entailed by the ritual procedures as fuelling the spread of the pandemic through the spread of diseases with HIV/AIDS inclusive among participants. A third group of cultural insiders opt for the cautious appropriation of modernity while simultaneously maintaining tradition: medicalisation of the ritual procedures. By reducing the complexity and nuances of the ritual cutting to health alone, anti-FC activism has instead produced a backlash marked by simultaneous contestation and practice. Paradoxically, the anti-FC campaigns have resulted in the privatization of FC on increasingly younger girls. However, the recent waiving of the ritual cutting as a precondition for membership into the Moninkim cult—because of the ageing of the initial initiates, the health risk of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and anti-FC advocacy campaigns by local NGOs—shows that change is underway. Simultaneously, inter-tribal marriages with members of non-circumcising tribes and romantic love relationships beyond the purview of the traditional patriarchal orbit have led younger lovers increasingly to seek mutually satisfying love relationships for which FC, a “virtuous cut,” becomes an obstacle.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Graham H. Roberts,Other Voices: Three Centuries of Cultural Dialogue between Russia and Western Europe,Hardback,978-1-4438-2644-0,39.99,"This volume highlights the diversity and complexity of cultural dialogue between Russia and Western Europe since the end of the eighteenth century. Part one contains contributions which focus on how these cultures have viewed each other. There are chapters on the myth of Dumas père in Russia, the Russian travelogues of Henry Lansdell, Konstantin Leont’ev’s views on Great Britain and France, and the Russian Symbolists’ construction of a mythical European past. Authors in the second part compare the account of the year 1793 in novels by Hugo, Dickens and Dostoevsky, and the representation of female beauty by Bunin and Proust. Part three looks at ways in which these different cultures have influenced each other. Subjects include echoes of French Impressionism in Soviet painting, John McGahern’s rewriting of a Tolstoy play, and actress Renata Litvinova’s reworking of the story of Marguerite Gauthier from La Dame aux Camélias. The subject of part four is the actual physical encounters between Russia and Western Europe. There are contributions on Karamzin’s experiences in revolutionary Alsace, the impression on Russian national consciousness made by invading French soldiers in 1812, and the experiences of leading French émigrés in inter-war Paris.
","“Other Voices is a timely and welcome addition to the literature on a particularly interesting and important topic, namely cultural dialogue between Russia and Western Europe. The book is divided into four sections which, although not of equal length (the section ‘Comparisons’ contains just two chapters), complement each other perfectly. The contributions, from Russian, West European and North American scholars, are of a uniformly high standard. A number of them are outstanding. The broad range of topic—from Karamzin’s stay in Alsace to star of post-Soviet cinema Renata Litvinova—is especially impressive. Scholarly and informative, this volume will be of great interest to students and academics in Slavic studies, comparative literature, and cultural history.”
—Professor Rosalind Marsh, Professor of Russian Studies, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath, England
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Charlotte Appel and Morten Fink-Jensen,Religious Reading in the Lutheran North: Studies in Early Modern Scandinavian Book Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-2643-3,39.99,"Religious Reading in the Lutheran North opens up the doors to a part of early modern European history that has often been overlooked. In the Nordic countries, an abundance of religious literature in the vernacular was produced in the centuries following the Reformation, and reading was almost exclusively taught to children in a Lutheran Protestant setting. Literacy rates were high, and by the mid eighteenth century around ninety per cent of both men and women could read. The eight contributions to the present book investigate different aspects of religious reading in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Greenland, looking at the publication and dissemination strategies of authors and clergymen, as well as reading habits and interpretations among Scandinavian readers.
","“The Scandinavian kingdoms were famously literate. Yet it is far from clear how these essentially rural societies achieved such impressive rates of reading ability. This outstanding collection of essays draws together a range of sophisticated and original studies, probing the reading practice, pedagogy, oral and print cultures of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Greenland between the 16th and the 18th centuries. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in this critical aspect of Early Modern Society.”
—Andrew Pettegree, Professor of Modern History, University of St Andrews
“This excellent collection of essays underlines the significant role of Lutheranism in generating a culture of reading and high levels of literacy in the Nordic countries in the early modern period. For anyone interested in the culture of reading and literacy in the early modern period this volume of essays on ‘the Lutheran North’ is important reading.”
—Ole Peter Grell, Reader in History, The Open University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Will Rollason,"We Are Playing Football: Sport and Postcolonial Subjectivity, Panapompom, Papua New Guinea",Hardback,978-1-4438-2589-4,39.99,"Sport is an important part of the lives of rural Papua New Guineans, and a significant connection to global imaginaries for economically marginal villagers. Such grassroots sport, however, is rarely studied and has never previously been the subject of an ethnographic monograph. This book represents a pioneering study of the history and effects of grassroots sport in Papua New Guinea.
We Are Playing Football explores Panapompom people’s attempts to recreate the international game, and the social and subjective effects of this effort. From a raw ethnographic starting-point, the book moves through historical and interpretive materials, exploring the motives, methods and results of Panapompom people’s work to recreate global images of football, and to turn them to their own political ends. As the argument proceeds, we see how playing football implicates Panapompom people in circuits of domination, power and humiliation that tether them to colonial modes of control, and derogatory racialist identities, which they themselves reproduce in their communities.
From its effects on the most intimate self-understanding, through the embodied experience of playing football, to the details of colonial history and the values and ideas underpinning community life, this book offers an original and challenging assessment of what it means to be “globalised.” It charts the new outlooks and imaginaries, the disruptions, failures and disappointments, and above all the vital synergies between different people that define the global situation of Panapompom people.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,David Hutchison and Hugh O’Donnell,Centres and Peripheries: Metropolitan and Non-Metropolitan Journalism in the Twenty-First Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-2671-6,44.99,"The essays in this collection explore centre/periphery relationships in journalism on a wide geographical canvas—the British Isles, Europe, North America and Australasia.
The authors—academics and journalists—discuss a range of issues including:
• Varying news agendas
• News agendas and regional/national identities
• News agendas and ownership patterns
• The viability of regional/non-metropolitan media hubs
• Media policy at national and non-national levels
• Language and non-metropolitan journalism
• Peripheries within peripheries
The authors take full account of the technological and financial challenges facing journalism in the digital age.
","“Centres and Peripheries provides a timely and much-needed focus on the implications of digital technologies and cultural politics for that large and important segment of the journalism industry which is carried on away from the metropolitan mainstream. Incorporating original, empirically rich material, Hutchison and O’Donnell have put together an immensely valuable set of essays by practitioners and scholars.”
—Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism, Queensland University of Technology
“This book tells a story that everyone interested in public discourse should read. It takes the reader on a journey covering rich and varied examples of how big media sometimes override local media, and how local media in many cases adjust, adapt and also develop new ways forward. Books that are equally suited to inform practitioners, scholars and students alike on such important topics as the future of journalism are rare and precious. This is one of them.”
—Tom Moring, Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of Helsinki, Finland
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Steven N. Lipkin,Docudrama Performs the Past: Arenas of Argument in Films based on True Stories,Hardback,978-1-4438-2682-2,34.99,"Docudramas, films and movies-of-the-week based on true stories, offer their audiences performance as persuasion. As docudramas re-create actual people and events, these works perform their material. The premises of docudramas’ persuasive arguments operate within the basic settings that stage performances of noteworthy events, the events of war, and the lives of noteworthy individuals.
In performing the past, docudramas offer us a performance of memory. Through docudramatic performance, the memories of others become ours. The performance of memory roots docudramatic representation in actuality, and indicates the responsibility to serve the past that helps make docudrama a distinctive mode of representation. The spirit of obligation to the past also frames the ethical considerations docudrama raises, as performance in docudrama shapes public memory.
Docudrama Performs the Past examines the spectrum of arguments docudramas offer as their re-creations reason from the arenas of events such as the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93, wars ranging from World War II to Iraq, and the lives of actors, athletes, and politicians. The case studies developed in each chapter show how docudrama’s re-creation of “true stories,” its performance of memory, warrants the claims it forwards about how to remember the past. The aggregate of examining works made since the late 1990s allows us to see how, as recurring contexts, the arenas of docudramatic argument ground action and identity in the settings that frame performance, structure the moral value of the contestation that ensues, and shape the public memory of the past that docudramas perform.
","""Using case studies for his basic material, Stephen Lipkin's 'Docudrama Performs the Past' is a brilliant survey of the rationale, theory and practice of current docudrama on film and TV. This book is a 'must' for anyone interested in the place of this increasingly popular genre in modern media.""
Professor Alan Rosenthal, The Communicatiosn Dept., the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
""I hae known Steven Lipkin's work for over ten years, and I regard him as one of the foremost international scholars on the subject of screen docudrama.
His writing is unfailingly intelligent, lucid and informative, his appreciation for an often undervalued genre inspirational. Any student who wants to know about this controversial but indispensable hybrid form can do no better than read Lipkin's work.""
Dr. Derek Paget, Department of Film, Theatre & Television, University of Reading, October 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Michael Johnson Jr.,Gender and Sexual Identity: Presentations of the 31st Annual SW/Texas Regional Meeting of the Popular Culture Association,Hardback,978-1-4438-2663-1,34.99,"Gender and sexuality are complex discursive forces that are in action and enacted on a daily basis in people lives through the United States. How we navigate these complex forces takes shape in a variety of ways, often unknowingly and with our complicit consent. Popular cultural studies is one vehicle by which scholars, theorists and others assess both the extent and impact that these discursive forces have on us and the degree to which we interpret, adapt, internalize and accept or reject our participation and engagement. Thus this volume possesses a number of interesting essays which look to a variety of popular cultural phenomenon that illustrate the complexity of our position in the world in relationship across the wide spectrum of genders and sexualities. The essays included in this collection examine the construction of masculinity through celebrity status; transsexuality in literature and the pyschotherapeutic modalities of transsexual counseling; polyamourous sexualities; discourses of fertility/infertility; gender identity and feminine warrior spirit in various literatures; as well as critical gender analyses of a variety of films. It is the editor’s hope and the hope of the contributors to this volume, that the reader finds within these pages some intellectually exciting and theoretically challenging ideas that push the boundaries of what and how we know gender and sexuality is and can be in our society today.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Laurence Talairach-Vielmas,"Science in the Nursery: The Popularisation of Science in Britain and France, 1761-1901",Hardback,978-1-4438-2680-8,44.99,"This edited collection aims to examine the popularisation of science for children in Britain and France from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of the Victorian period. It compares and contrasts for the first time popular science works published at the same time in the two countries, focusing both on non-fictional and fictional texts. Starting when children’s literature emerged as a genre to the end of the nineteenth century it addresses the ways in which popular science for children engaged with wider debates and issues, concerning such topics as gender or religion. Each individual essays brings home how children’s literature revealed contemporary tensions which professional scientists confronted. The wide range of scientific topics examined, from physics and astronomy to natural history and anthropology, offers a large spectrum of types of popular science works for children.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Jana S. Rošker and Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik,"The Yields of Transition: Literature, Art and Philosophy in Early Medieval China",Hardback,978-1-4438-2714-0,44.99,"The present volume is dedicated to the Wei Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties (220–589 AD), which is generally regarded as one of the most fascinating phases in Chinese history. The collection opens new theoretical and methodological pathways in sinological studies, bringing to the forefront a new idea of intercultural encounters based upon a culture of recognition.
It highlights the significance of transition in the making of Chinese culture and history, revises prevailing historical approaches in the study and research of China and develops and enhances existing theories or methodologies in this specific area of research. The wide diversity of contributions to the present volume reflects the multifaceted potential for creativity and renewal of this period.
The focus is upon the interaction of ideas, researches and perspectives concerning a broad scope of relevant and significant issues in contemporary sinology. In order to understand this diversity, a wide range of cultural, theoretical and historical aspects are considered. The book reveals a new image of the period, thereby undermining the absolute authority and putative objectivity of common historical sources and interpretations. It shows that this was a period rich with political, economic, cultural and theoretical achievements that would prove decisive for the future development of Chinese culture and society.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Maria Emília Fonseca,Touching Art: The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting the Tree of Life,Hardback,978-1-4438-2712-6,34.99,"This study focusses on the exhibition of the Tree of Life, a sculpture made in Mozambique of decommissioned, dismantled weapons, created to celebrate peace and commissioned by the British Museum, chosen to be the symbol of the “Africa 2005” season of cultural events and exhibited in its Great Court between February and October 2005. This artwork was first exhibited in Maputo before being dispatched to Britain and it is presently on display at the Sainsbury African Galleries of the British Museum, in London.
This dissertation moves along two converging routes: the articulation of the meaning(s) produced within the exhibition and the role of exhibitionary institutions in the creation of social knowledge. A central topic of discussion is the different practices and sites of exhibition of the Tree of Life sculpture in Britain and in Mozambique, in an endeavour to illustrate/establish the differences which determine and/or condition the specific approaches used in the two distinct cultural contexts within which it was exhibited.
The discussion evolves towards exploring how a new discourse on the exhibition of contemporary African art questions and challenges both curatorial practices and cultural concepts of collecting, displaying and interpreting art objects and negotiating meaning.
","“The Tree of Life is an important symbol in many cultures and has different ways of being perceived and represented according to time. Until recently, there were no cultural approaches to the symbol and the present work deals with various ways of decoding the representation not only in its specific African environment but also in the context of a museum – the British Museum. The selected perspectives include also ways of theorizing the interdisciplinary dimensions of the work as well as the various ways of displaying it. This book will appeal to anyone interested and doing research in Cultural Studies and Museum Studies, as well as in Contemporary African Art.”
—Professor Teresa Malafaia, Academic Coordinator: Culture Studies, Media and Culture Studies, Alameda da Universidade
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Catalina Florina Florescu,Transacting Sites of the Liminal Bodily Spaces,Hardback,978-1-4438-2693-8,34.99,"This book focuses on liminal bodies and their delicate transaction with themselves and other people’s bodies. More specifically, it explores the spatiality and discourses of the body dying; the body opened in surgery, or through MRIs, CATs, and sometimes in autopsies; the body preserved through computerized images such as those created by the Visual Human Project; the metonymic body that continues to live in another body through organ replacement; and the bodily parts cast in silver, and then abandoned in a museum.
This study also analyzes the discourses of the contemporary body commissioned by the vast industry of mass-media. This type of body has started to direct itself toward frugal, almost furtive pleasures; consequently—unlike those seriously affected by illnesses—a body constantly guarded by fear eventually runs on empty, becomes a corps-déjà-vu, and thus moves toward different types of minimal and liminal topology. The primary works examined include memoirs (Marjorie Williams’s “Hit by Lightning: A Cancer Memoir,” Arthur W. Frank’s At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness, Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals), films (Alejandro Amenábar’s The Sea Inside, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, Pedro Almodóvar’s All about My Mother), stories (Marisa Silver’s “Night Train to Frankfurt”), visual artworks (as accomplished by Jo Spence, David Wojnarowicz, Félix Gonzales-Torres, and Natalie Horne) and plays (Bryony Lavery’s Last Easter, Paula Vogel’s Baltimore Waltz, William Hoffman’s As Is), which are read comparatively, namely as works positioned at the intersection between literature/visual art and social diaries.
This book has become part of the collections of the world’s leading universities: Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, the Library of Congress, and more.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,"Cathy Covell Waegner, Page R. Laws and Geoffroy de Laforcade",Transculturality and Perceptions of the Immigrant Other: “From-Heres” and “Come-Heres” in Virginia and North Rhine-Westphalia,Hardback,978-1-4438-2695-2,39.99,"No other issue in our times of globalization has aroused such passionate debate as the increasingly complex transborder movements of people of all ethnicities, with the self-perceived “from-heres” often struggling to maintain the illusion of separateness from intruding “come-heres.” The paradigm of transculturality offers prospects to rethink, demystify and represent cultural unity and difference, assimilation and alterity, in a manner that acknowledges the fissures and the fictions in traditional cultural dichotomies such as the melodramatically instrumentalized “national” vs. “foreign.” The interdisciplinary essays compiled in Transculturality and Perceptions of the Immigrant Other focus on the ways in which new diasporic and migrational patterns arouse ill will and conflict, but also negotiation and transcultural impulses, resulting in transformed meso-structures in media, schooling, and business. Investigating regional immigrant groups in the states of Virginia and North Rhine-Westphalia as well as the discourses and images in public media, films, literature, and cultural events, the studies both document the contest for geographical, work, and community space and place it in larger theoretical and specific historical contexts. Arising from an international project undertaken by senior and junior scholars from the fields of cultural studies, history, and sociology at Norfolk State University in Virginia and University of Siegen in Germany, these essays suggest that cultural citizenship can embody dynamic expressions of belonging and strategies of empowerment which shape political and economic communities, engendering in the process innovative forms of constantly negotiated, hybrid identity and transmigratory affiliation.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Marxiano Melotti,The Plastic Venuses: Archaeological Tourism in Post-Modern Society,Hardback,978-1-4438-2843-7,39.99,"A wooden horse in the archaeological site of Troy, plastic “Greek” statues on the seabed, resin columns at the Roman Forum, painted copies of Altamira and Lescaux grottos, Tutankhamun’s tomb in a casino of Las Vegas, fake Roman fortresses with legionnaires and gladiators, “Etruscan” vases in a hotel in Milan, Valentino’s creations on display in a Roman monument, voyeuristic attractions at Pompeii, ancient and new thermal baths with Roman-style treatments, “real” Roman wines produced in archaeological sites, and shows, plays of light, cocktails and fashion parades, a lottery for spending winter solstice at Newgrange . . .
Museums and archaeological areas host all the contradictions of late modern society. Consumerism, media, advertising and virtual reality transform the relationships between archaeology, tourism, collective imagery and political identity. We are witnesses to the success of archistar museums, “event” exhibitions, sensorial and virtual tourism, archaeotrekking and archaeodiving, even tourism of the non-existent. Authenticity itself takes on a different meaning when finds and monuments are not original or are exhibited in theme parks, hotels or subway stations. This book is an innovative, critical and stimulating appraisal of the situation.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Geetha Ganapathy-Doré,The Postcolonial Indian Novel in English ,Hardback,978-1-4438-2723-2,39.99,"Indian writers of English such as G. V. Desani, Salman Rushdie, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Allan Sealy, Shashi Tharoor, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Chandra and Jhumpa Lahiri have taken the potentialities of the novel form to new heights. Against the background of the genre’s macro-history, this study attempts to explain the stunning vitality, colourful diversity, and the outstanding but sometimes controversial success of postcolonial Indian novels in the light of ongoing debates in postcolonial studies. It analyses the warp and woof of the novelistic text through a cross-sectional scrutiny of the issues of democracy, the poetics of space, the times of empire, nation and globalization, self-writing in the auto/meta/docu-fictional modes, the musical, pictorial, cinematic and culinary intertextualities that run through this hyperpalimpsestic practice and the politics of gender, caste and language that gives it an inimitable stamp. This concise and readable survey gives us intimations of a truly world literature as imagined by Francophone writers because the postcolonial Indian novel is a concrete illustration of how “language liberated from its exclusive pact with the nation can enter into a dialogue with a vast polyphonic ensemble.”
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Silvia Pilar Castro-Borrego,The Search for Wholeness and Diaspora Literacy in Contemporary African American Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-2837-6,39.99,"This volume has as a cohesive argument the exploration of the different manifestations of the search for wholeness and spirituality in the writings of contemporary African American women writers, covering different literary genres such as fiction (both novels and short stories), drama and poetry. Together with the issue of spirituality, the African American search for wholeness is analyzed as a source of creativity and agency. As expressed in the contemporary literature of black women writers, starting in the 1980s, the search for wholeness reflects a beauty realized through the healing of the spirit and the body, and is a process that takes on dimensions of reconciling the past and the present, the mythical and the real, the spiritual and the physical—all in the context of an emerging world view that welcomes synthesis and expects both synthesis and generative contradictions.
The book will be a valuable collection for scholars of African American literature, comparative American Ethnic literature, American literature, and spirituality, as well as women’s studies. In addition, it will be an important text for both undergraduate and graduate students in those fields. As Professor Johnnella Butler (2006) points out, the African American search for wholeness is tightly linked to the search for freedom and agency. Ever since the 19th century, African American writers have given expression to an African American self which functions in Western civilization simultaneously as a “colonized” other and an assertive “self.” Due to the continuous ordeal of the African Diaspora, this self is caught in between the binaries proposed by the material and the spiritual world, seeking a balance where the person can become whole. The search for wholeness feeds from cultural roots that imply the presence of ancestral spiritualism, rememory, and double consciousness. Contemporary black women writers reflect the metaphor of building spiritual bridges, seeking the possibilities of building a bridge to the archetypal African past that is carried in their memories as a presence that offers sustenance via spiritual reconnection. Their works seek to bridge the gap between the myths and traditions of the past and contemporary African American culture. The texts included in this collection are examples of writing as an exercise of what Vévé Clark calls “Diaspora literacy.” The texts written by contemporary African American women writers explicitly show how to recognize and read the cultural signs left scattered along the road of progress. In this way, material acquisition is achieved along with cultural dispossession, becoming a metaphor for the history of the African in America. The powerful message is that one should not exclude the other.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Deveryle James,"""A Zoo of Lusts…A Harem of Fondled Hatreds"": An Historical Interrogation of Sexual Violence against Women in Film",Hardback,978-1-4438-2898-7,34.99,"“A Zoo of Lusts . . . A Harem of Fondled Hatred”: An Historical Interrogation of Sexual Violence against Women in Film explores the pernicious nature of rape in films from the silent era to the 21st century. Film is an excellent medium through which to hold this discussion, because film, like the body, as Judith Butler, et al. suggest, is fluid and indeterminate, and it is often contemplated as a site for negotiation and resistance. This book addresses three major questions: (1) why does rape persist as a recurring theme in film, (2) how is this subject manifested in film and (3) what does this manifestation say about the act of rape itself, its victims, its perpetrators and our culture?
Rape is a sexual manifestation of aggression with the purpose of overpowering, humiliating, and hurting its victims. An examination of media accounts has revealed that before the evolution of feminist film theory and the dismissal of the Production Code, the rape victim in films usually fits into one “neat” set of criteria (e.g., young adult, white, single, middle class, heterosexual). When the victim’s physical makeup deviated from the traditional set of criteria (e.g., a child or a mature person of color, married, poor, homosexual), the rape was portrayed more violently. The research for this book dwells on the portrayal of the latter type of victims because their sexual violations evoke an absorbing commentary on society’s reaction toward those who do not easily fit within the status quo. What is it about the makeup of these victims that makes their violations more horrific?
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,"Robert G. Weiner, B. Lynn Whitfield and Jack Becker","James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough, Second Edition",Hardback,978-1-4438-2867-3,54.99,"James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough provides the most comprehensive study of the James Bond phenomena ever published. The 40 original essays provide new insights, scholarship, and understanding to the world of James Bond. Topics include the Bond girl, Bond related video games, Ian Fleming’s relationship with the notorious Aleister Crowley and CIA director Alan Dulles. Other articles include Fleming as a character in modern fiction, Bond Jr. comics, the post Fleming novels of John Gardner and Raymond Benson, Bond as an American Superhero, and studies on the music, dance, fashion, and architecture in Bond films. Woody Allen and Peter Sellers as James Bond are also considered, as are Japanese imitation films from the 1960s, the Britishness of Bond, comparisons of Bond to Christian ideals, movie posters and much more. Scholars from a wide variety of disciplines have contributed a unique collection of perspectives on the world of James Bond and its history. Despite the diversity of viewpoints, the unifying factor is the James Bond mythos. James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough is a much needed contribution to Bond studies and shows how this cultural icon has changed the world.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Bianca Maria Pirani,"Learning from Memory: Body, Memory and Technology in a Globalizing World",Hardback,978-1-4438-2884-0,44.99,"This challenging book, with excellent contributions from international social scientists, focuses on the link between body and memory that specifically refers to the use of digital technologies. Neuroscientists know very well that human beings automatically and unconsciously organize their experience in their bodies into spatial units whose confines are established by changes in location, temporality and the interactive elements that determine it. Our memories might be less reliable than those of the average computer, but they are just as capacious, much more flexible, and even more user-friendly. The aim of the present book is to outline, by the body, what we know of the sociology of memory. The authors and editors believe that an analysis at the sociological level will prove valuable in throwing light on accounts of human behavior at the interpersonal and social level, and will play an important role in our capacity to understand the neurobiological factors that underpin the various types of memory.
This book is an ideal resource for advanced and postgraduate students in social sciences, as well as practitioners in the field of Information and Communication technologies. Scholarly and accessible in tone, Learning from Memory: Body, Memory and Technology in a Globalizing World will be read and enjoyed by members of the general public and the professional audience alike.
","“Learning from Memory: Body, Memory and Technology in a Globalizing World, edited by one of the most distinguished and internationally acclaimed scholars on the body in social sciences, Bianca Maria Pirani, is a compendium of excellent contributions by international social scientists from several research traditions and focuses on the link between body and memory that specifically refers to the use of digital technologies. Without slighting the perspectives ranging from the social sciences to cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience and biology, a sociological analysis of the concerned phenomena has been undertaken profoundly. The book contains ideal resource material both on the sociology of body and memory and will surely be read and enjoyed by members of the general public and the professional audience alike.”
—Ishwar Modi, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur; Director, India International Institute of Social Science; ISA Executive Committee Member
“The relationship of the body to technology has become a paradigmatic topic of our times. The volume entitled Learning from Memory: Body, Memory and Technology in a Globalizing World, edited by Bianca Maria Pirani addresses a vast array of questions, from memory to social bonds, through a perspicacious focus on subjects such as the technique of the body, implicit memories, actor-centered decision making, and social networks. Historians, socioanthropologists, anthropologists and neurosociologists, bringing their disciplines to bear on the subject, yield some stunning perspectives on these issues.”
—Professor Pierre Bouvier, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, Laios/Iiac, France
“In more recent times the memory as philosophy has been studied profoundly by various authors and philosophical schools of great importance, and is present particularly in the Hermeneutic philosophical tradition. The search by Bianca Maria Pirani, Learning from Memory: Body, Memory and Technology in a Globalizing World, is a landmark study aimed to expand and modernize the social research on ‘memory’ by the most advanced acquisitions of psycho-cognitive sciences, and opens to the future as perspective of dialogue, under-standing and brotherhood.”
—Gaspare Mura, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Urbaniana University in Rome; President of the Academy of Human and Social Sciences (ASUS) in Rome, Italy
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Samuele Grassi,Looking Through Gender: Post-1980 British and Irish Drama,Hardback,978-1-4438-2873-4,39.99,"This contribution to Theatre Studies explores the shaping and performing of gender identity in British and Irish theatres since the 1980s. It highlights contact zones, conflict areas, and divergencies between the two theatre contexts with reference to historic, socio-political, and cultural clusters. Largely from a queer theory standpoint, this book reads several plays in their attempt to unmask exploiting mechanisms of sexuality and gender regulation. It focuses on alternative notions of sociality, shared spaces, and bodies, and offers political suggestions in order to resist confining notions of identity and gender.
","“Dr Grassi draws extensively from debates carried out by contemporary theorists in support of the political implication of his volume. A cutting-edge and much needed record of key plays from a queer-theory perspective, the book undermines the foundation of debates concepts like gender essentialism, power and ‘the political.’”
—Dr Fiorenzo Fantaccini, University of Florence
“Samuele Grassi is adept at expanding an engagement with queer theory into wider cultural and political contexts. While he chooses to work with current theory, that approach is well integrated with shrewd and original social perceptions, with a concern for historical changes as informing influences on creativity and with a genuine understanding of dramaturgy and the ways in which ideas may be shaped into performance. It is the complexity of his engagement with gender issues and his ability to trace subtle discriminations between Irish and English cultural expression of such issues that continually impress one in reading Dr. Grassi’s study.”
—Prof. Richard Cave (Royal Holloway)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,"Eckehard Pistrick, Nicola Scaldaferri and Gretel Schwörer",Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe,Hardback,978-1-4438-2930-4,44.99,"The edited volume Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe is an attempt to meet the challenges of text-based scholarship, to break medial one-dimensionality dictated by textuality and to shift the focus to the aural and visual dimensions of identity in a part of Europe heavily marked by the dynamics of political, cultural and social change, particularly during the last decades. The objective of this endeavour is to examine identity in Southeastern Europe by means of its communication media, specifically that of the photographic image and the sound recording.
How are identities communicated? How are they performed and made physically perceptible? Brought to a point, the primary issue is one of how people perceive themselves and their environment on the basis of communication media, seen through a lens of different disciplines (social anthropology, ethnomusicology, media studies, sociology and history) and methodologies from the point of view of scholars from Southeastern Europe and their Western European colleagues. The book pursues a distinct comparative and historical perspective, examining the media representations from socialist and pre-socialist periods in relation to the role media play in the postsocialist discourse. Another focus is laid on local media representations and their impact on local self-images. This distinct historical and local approach allows new insights into how identities are constructed, performed and negotiated in the light of media, resulting in different forms of interpreting, re-appropriating and re-evaluting the past and traditions. This opens up questions on the role of media in relation to cultural policies and their potential to preserve or to transform local cultural heritage.
The book is also an important contribution to the field of postsocialist studies in anthropology. It sheds a distinct cultural view on postsocialist transformation processes. Through a wide range of examples and first-hand results of basic field research from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Albania and Slovenia this volume provides an opportunity for a comparative reconsideration of similar phenomena across national borders. It may serve also as a methodological reference work for scholars who are interested in the different ways of how to develop and practice “media reflexivity” in their own field research.
","“What I find so valuable about the volume . . . is its realization in and of a four-part harmony. It is a harmony of theory and ethnography, of media criticism and media practice.”
—Steven Feld, University of New Mexico
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Erika Fülöp and Adrienne Angelo,Cherchez la femme: Women and Values in the Francophone World,Hardback,978-1-4438-2933-5,39.99,"Throughout history, the most fundamental values at the basis of societal organization and culture were determined and sanctified almost exclusively by men—including the values traditionally associated with women, such as corporeal beauty, purity, motherhood, or empathy. However, from ancient times, and increasingly toward the end of the second millennium, women have succeeded in finding ways to overcome such limits and have made their contributions to the revision of values and to the establishment of new ones.
Cherchez la femme offers a selection of essays inquiring into the nature of aesthetic, linguistic, cultural, and social values created, informed, or reformed by women in the French-speaking world, as well as studies on how the discourse of (male) power used female figures to strengthen its own position. With topics ranging in time from Semiramis’s ancient legend to today, and in space from Québec to Haiti, metropolitan France, and New Caledonia, the volume shares the richness and fruitfulness of the female perspective in art, culture, theory, and political action.
","“Cherchez la femme . . . [makes] a considerable contribution to feminist literary and cultural studies of France and the French-speaking world. . . . What emerges from the volume is an impressively diverse and historicised understanding of women’s challenges to the accepted views of gender, value and behaviour that have confronted them.”
—Margaret Atack, Professor of French, University of Leeds, UK
“The book’s strength lies in the way that each of these tightly focused, lucidly argued case studies of women and values opens out onto broader questions . . . whilst providing a wealth of valuable critical work on . . . contemporary French women writers, postcolonial feminism, and significant women writers and fictional figures. . . . From a set of essays so wide-ranging in both theme and period, the editors have performed the valuable task of constructing a coherent, consistently illuminating totality.”
—Diana Holmes, Professor of French, University of Leeds, UK
“This polyphonic book describes with acute care the various values women embrace in the third wave of feminism in France and in the francophone world. . . . [It] fosters a multifaceted approach to today’s complex state of francophone women’s reconfiguration of the political spaces . . . from which they speak. A welcome set of essays, at once provocative and bearing witness to loss, recovery and women’s new values.”
—Florence Martin, Professor of French and Francophone Literature and Film, Goucher College, USA
“This comprehensive volume delivers that rarest of combinations, a study equally impressive in both breadth and depth as it explores complexly imbricated constructs of women, value, and the francophone. Both readable and searching, accessible and probing, Cherchez la femme—as its title implies—converts clichés about ‘women,’ ‘values’ and ‘the francophone world,’ even as it obliges us to renounce them, into exhilarating discoveries.”
—Margaret E. Gray, Associate Professor of French, Indiana University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Daniel Maoz and Andrea Gondos,From Antiquity to the Postmodern World: Contemporary Jewish Studies in Canada,Hardback,978-1-4438-2929-8,44.99,"Characteristic histories and literatures of the Jewish people are brought together in this volume and arranged in the form of a cultural mosaic, a distinctly Canadian approach to life. The articles and scholarly contributions contained herein investigate Jewish life and thought, not merely in the Canadian and contemporary context but also in other geographical localities and historical epochs that were formative in the shaping of Jewish history. The wealth of knowledge represented within these pages engages traditional ancient Jewish sources (Talmud and Tanakh, Mishnah and Midrash); topics in Jewish mysticism (Lurianic Kabbala, popularization of kabbalistic literature, the Tosher Rebbe); historical and contemporary themes that address aspects and environ of everyday life (kitchen, classroom, theologian’s desk, synagogue, Holocaust survival, women’s and peace studies).
Jewish life and identity, better described than defined, come alive in the reading of this book. Both general readers and specialists will find value in this collection of studies. For the former, it offers a glimpse into the complicated network of themes and perspectives in which contemporary Jews engage. Rich bibliographies of cogent resources avail themselves to the latter. They will nevertheless commonly conclude that, however diverse the terrain, Jewish Studies in Canada—with research ongoing and range ever-expanding—offers vibrant and real response to key questions raised in past generations: “Who is a Jew?” and “What is Judaism?”
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Nandita Batra and Vartan Messier,Of Mice and Men: Animals in Human Culture,Paperback,978-1-4438-2976-2,24.99,"Of Mice and Men: Animals in Human Culture is a book-length collection of essays that examines human views of non-human animals. The essays are written by scholars from Australia, East Asia, Europe and the Americas, who represent a wide range of disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Addressing topics such as animal rights, ecology, anthropocentrism, feminism, animal domestication, dietary restrictions, and cultural imperialism, the book considers local and global issues as well as ancient and contemporary discourses, and it will appeal to readers with both general and specialized interests in the role played by animals in human cultures.
","“One of the most remarkable features of our times is the realization through a rediscovery of animality that the human exception has effectively come to an end. In the last few decades, extensive research in the natural and social sciences has addressed this topic, but cultural approaches have been few and far between. In an area of inquiry that will most likely grow in the coming years, Of Mice and Men: Animals in Human Culture opens a fascinating pathway to the study of the representation of animality in film, literature, the visual arts, and popular culture. Thanks to its wealth of analyses and the diversity of its perspectives, the volume edited by Nandita Batra and Vartan Messier is already a seminal work in the field.”
—Marcel Hénaff, Professor of Philosophy and Anthropology, University of California at San Diego; Author of The Price of Truth: Gift, Money, and Philosophy
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,"Marlite Halbertsma, Alex van Stipriaan and Patricia van Ulzen",The Heritage Theatre: Globalisation and Cultural Heritage,Hardback,978-1-4438-2926-7,39.99,"The Heritage Theatre is a book about cultural heritage and globalisation. Cultural heritage is the stage on which the global community, smaller communities and individuals play out their similarities and differences, their identities and singularities. Cultural heritage forms an implicit cultural code governing the relationship between parts and the whole, individuals and communities, communities and outsiders, as well as the relationship between communities and the world as a whole. Cultural heritage, by way of its producers, its products and its audience, presents an image of the world and its inner coherence.
The subjects in this book range from places as distant from each other as Dar-es-Salaam, Jakarta, Amsterdam, Le Creusot, Trinidad, Brazzaville, Bremerhaven, New York and Prague, and deal with themes such as wayang, Kylie Minogue, airports and heritage, modernist architecture in Africa and the impact of DNA research on the concept of roots.
The volume is based on papers presented at a conference organised by the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication of Erasmus University Rotterdam. The authors have backgrounds in cultural studies, art history, anthropology, museum studies, sociology, tourist studies and history.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Pragyan Rath,The “I” and the “Eye”: The Verbal and the Visual in Post-Renaissance Western Aesthetics,Hardback,978-1-4438-2924-3,44.99,"The paradigmatic moment of the opposition between the verbal and the visual arts may be seen in Lessing’s treatise on the Laocoön sculptural group, written in 1766; a moment that is identified within a historical framework of modern aesthetics that begins with Lessing, goes through Pater, and then culminates in Greenberg. The author delineates the opposition as a history of diffusions, displacements and idealist reparations of class division.
","“In The ‘I’ and the ‘Eye,’ Pragyan Rath provides a perceptive analysis of the shifting dialectics of the verbal and visual arts ignited by Lessing’s Laocoön. Rath’s linking of word/image theories to political economy is fine-tuned, and it illuminates the under acknowledged role of intermedial aesthetics in the shaping of cultural attitudes, such as the privileging of mental over manual labor. This is a well-conceived and well executed scholarly work, which will be welcomed by intermedial scholars and cultural historians alike.”
—Kathleen Lundeen, Professor of English, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA
“Clearly argued and well grounded, this ambitious study is particularly impressive both for its scope and for its ability to coordinate what might otherwise have been seen as “purely” aesthetic issues with the social and political circumstances that they reflect, and that give them their cultural force. Its focus is on the question of identity [relating to] the intersection of visual and verbal representation, but this question is pursued along historical and philosophical lines that disclose the deeper issues at stake.”
—Ernest B. Gilman, Professor of English, NYU Department of English, USA
“Pragyan Rath’s erudite critical examination of the dialogue that exists in the arts, history, and society between poetry and painting, the verbal and the visual, and between labors of the mind and the body is a tour de force of cultural knowledge. The author brings forth into contemporary aesthetics and cultural studies the discourse developed in Lessing’s Laocoön: An Essay on the limits of Painting and Poetry (1776). Lessing’s argument favoring the superiority of poetry over painting is subjected to critical examination and brought into the aesthetic debates of the Twentieth Century as initiated in the writings of the art critic Clement Greenberg and others. Taking the thesis a step further, the author’s analysis extends the discourse on this topic to contemporary Marxist cultural theory as in the writings of Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton. This comprehensive study is a valuable contribution to contemporary aesthetics and critical theory.”
—Curtis L. Carter, Professor of Aesthetics, Marquette University, USA
“Dr Pragyan Rath’s work, The ‘I’ and the ‘Eye,’ which is a revised version of her doctoral dissertation done at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, is a historical exploration of the relationship between the verbal and visual art since the Enlightenment in Europe represented in its philosophical and aesthetic tension in Lessing’s work Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766), which inaugurated a long-drawn debate in the West between the social implications of this relationship based upon the hierarchization of aesthetic categories. By using Lessing’s valorization of the verbal over the visual as a take-off point Dr Rath has explored the intricate trajectory of this distinction to understand the nature of social ideologies that determined such dichotomies. She returns to the question of art as ‘Ut Pictura Poeisis’ celebrated in Horace to suggest the philosophical genesis of that tension. Through her readings of Walter Pater and Clement Greenberg, as representatives of the 19th and 20th centuries of art criticism respectively, she weaves her historical peregrination with critical references to Kant, Adorno, Benjamin, Peter Burger, W. J. T. Mitchell and many others. She tries to understand Lessing’s valorization of the verbal over the visual arts in terms of the 18th century’s privileging of the mind over senses. Through her thorough examination of the various art movements and criticism she tries to understand the reasons for the difficulty in maintaining such a distinction in the face of the ‘loss of cultural hierarchisation of a class in . . . mass commoditization.
“This is an excellent work and deserves publication as a book. I strongly recommend it for publication. You are welcome to use any portion of my comments for endorsement of the book.”
—Prafulla C. Kar, Director, Centre for Contemporary Theory, Baroda, Formerly Professor of English, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India
“This scholarly study examines the relative valuations made of poetry and painting from the late eighteenth century to the present. It combines aesthetic and social analysis which revolutionises our understanding of both. Pragyan Rath has done what few have achieved: re-written the history of art. A splendid work.”
—Prof. Gary Day, Department of English and Creative Writing, De Montfort University Leicester
“This is an ambitious project that explores some of the most difficult and enduring questions in modern aesthetics and political theory. Rath takes us on a journey that is very much alive to the special signature of an historical context and the way that context informs and cross-references all modes of production, including intellectual and art practices. With Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laocoön as her departure point, we learn how word and image, poetry and painting, the verbal and the visual have been compared and evaluated over several centuries, their differences hierarchised and explained as the ‘natural’ limitations of the art genres themselves. Rath contests these seemingly innocent classifications by illuminating the political prejudice that informs them. Not only is there a valorisation of intellectual work over physical work in these arguments, but an insistence that these categories should not be confused.
“Rath follows the shifting genealogy of this way of thinking into the modern avant-garde movement and discovers a sustained attempt to dehistoricise value judgements so that they appear as universal truths. However the irony here, and it is a difficult one to grasp, is that these arguments tend to endure because they morph over time. Rath’s persistence in explaining how continuity can be maintained through apparent discontinuity is cleverly managed, and the implications of her insights have broad analytical application. In sum, this is an erudite and provocative argument about the cross-fertilisation of historical, economic, political and philosophical forces in all forms of cultural production, especially those that pretend to creative isolation.”
—Vicki Kirby, Associate Professor, Sociology and Anthropology School of Social Sciences and International Studies, The University of New South Wales, Sydney
“I have read this fine manuscript and consider it an original and very smart contribution to studies in aesthetics and the intersection of the verbal and visual arts. I am deeply impressed with the depth of research and the acuity of insight that Professor Rath brings to this discussion. This will be an influential study that will surely be referenced by generations of future scholars. I expect that The ‘I’ and the ‘Eye’ will find a home in many research libraries and scholarly collections across the globe. I am happy to recommend it with great enthusiasm.”
—Donald E. Hall, Jackson Distinguished Professor of English, Chair of the Department of English, West Virginia University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Emanuele Occhipinti,"Travelling In and Out of Italy: 19th and 20th-Century Notebooks, Letters and Essays",Hardback,978-1-4438-2919-9,34.99,"Travel has often been taken as a metaphor for human life, and the concept of travel and the traveller has varied across centuries, cultural traditions, and social groups. Following a diachronic overview of travel writing, this study considers some of the most important Italian writers of the late nineteenth and twentieth-centuries, such as D’Annunzio, Pirandello, Svevo, with particular focus on their note-books, letters, travel diaries, and reportage. An analysis of this material indicates that these authors collect their miscellaneous notes, in some cases, as private and personal documents, and in other instances to possibly develop future articles, essays or novels. It goes on to focus on the journey par excellence, the trip to America, regarded as an Eden. In many of their works, writers such as Ojetti, Giacosa, Cecchi, Piovene express their ambivalence towards a place often idealized as a land of freedom and opportunity, yet also acknowledged as a land where oppression and violence are all too real. The study attempts to demonstrate how all the traveller-writers discussed “translate” their sense of discovery in their books, and the extent to which that sense affects the conception of each of the texts.
","“Professor Occhipinti’s engaging in-depth analysis of nineteenth- and twentieth-century travel writing in Italy sheds invaluable light on a resoundingly successful phenomenon, destined to constitute a literary genre in its own right. The book effectively explores thought-provoking themes such as: the links of travel-literature with journalism, the epistolary and the narrative genre; the socio-geographical, political and cultural implications linked to travel; as well as the fascinating theme of the journey viewed as a metaphor of the human self, and thus as an experience in self-cognition and self-analysis.”
—Prof. Maria Cristina Cignatta, English Language Lecturer, University of Parma, Italy
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Rebecca DeWald and Dorette Sobolewski,"Bonds and Borders: Identity, Imagination and Transformation in Literature",Hardback,978-1-4438-2953-3,34.99,"The essays in this collection exemplify the relevance of bonds and borders in literature and contribute each in their own individual ways to the discourse between literary studies and Border studies. The scope of contributions ranges from revisiting older works from colonial times to discovering current narratives in post-9/11 literature; from the search for a national identity in Welsh poetry to self-transformation and the trans-cultural journeys of individuals in the literature of migration; and from the cosmopolitanism of Black Britain to gendered readings of Arab-American war narratives. Although not conceived and/or constructed as a whole, this collection gains particularly through disunity: topics cross over where one would least expect them to; borders are trespassed in order to give rise to new ideas and points of study. These essays by young researchers from a variety of disciplines and geographical backgrounds effectively work as a unit to dissect, subvert, challenge, or perhaps validate pre-conceived understandings of identity in an international society. They present a polydialectic approach to Literature and the supposedly borderless society of the Western world and its profound impact on individual identity.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Janelle A. Schwartz and Nhora Lucía Serrano,"Curious Collectors, Collected Curiosities: An Interdisciplinary Study ",Paperback,978-1-4438-2958-8,19.99,"Curious Collectors, Collected Curiosities: An Interdisciplinary Study asks its readers to enter into an investigation of the nature of collecting as an aesthetic exercise. Spanning the sixteenth century through today, this book gathers together the work of current scholars to re-envision the task of collectors and their collections in broad strokes. Each chapter appropriates the idea of a cabinet of curiosity in order to expand its boundaries of meaning and to complicate our understanding of the acts of display and observation. These chapters also demonstrate that collecting is a universal trope which nevertheless depends on time and place for its particular expressions. Whether the collection is made up of literary texts and criticism, visual art, including mechanical reproductions, taxidermy and photography, historical travelogues, museum exhibitions, blockbuster films, or airline in-flight briefing cards, it conveys an urgent relevance to our consumer age, in which information is abundant and attention is a commodity.
","“These erudite and evocative essays effectively dislodge the Cabinet of Curiosities from its assigned place in the prehistory of the modern museum. In today’s heterotopic, globalizing contexts, where mobility and juxtaposition are the norm, an old form takes on new life.”
—James Clifford, author of Routes: Travel and Translation in the late 20th Century
“Curious Collectors, Collected Curiosities is an ambitious study that surprises and delights as it turns from Leonardo da Vinci to taxidermy to modern air travel. The collection constructs an architecture of curiosity by inhabiting the very form it is scrutinizing. It is a compelling catalogue of the productive energies and weird slippages that occur at the junctures of order and wonder.”
—Tina May Hall, author of The Physics of Imaginary Objects (Pitt Drue Heinz Lit Prize)
“Itself a veritable cabinet of curiosities, this volume takes the reader on an immensely gratifying tour of the world, from The Arabian Nights to taxidermic displays, from Renaissance museums to Eadweard Muybridge’s innovative images of animal motion.”
—Christoph Irmscher, Indiana University Bloomington
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Jennifer Jackson,Giacomo Meyerbeer: Reputation without Cause? A Composer and his Critics,Hardback,978-1-4438-2968-7,44.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864) was the most successful composer of grand operas in nineteenth-century Paris, whose music continued to be frequently performed worldwide into the following century. Today, recent scholars acknowledge his stature but his operas have become stage rarities. There is normally a gap on shelves in libraries and bookshops between Mendelssohn and Mozart (Messaien and Monteverdi for the better resourced). There is no biography or broad evaluation of Meyerbeer in print in English. This study of the vicissitudes of Meyerbeer’s reputation complements introductions to his works and the volumes of academic essays in English and other European languages. While reputation forming has recently offered several interesting studies, it is rare for a composer to be the subject.
This volume will be of interest primarily to opera enthusiasts, and to libraries and musicologists worldwide.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Mike Benbough-Jackson and Sam Davies,Merseyside: Culture and Place,Hardback,978-1-4438-2964-9,44.99,"Merseyside: Culture and Place demonstrates how Liverpool and Merseyside have a rich, fascinating and sometimes controversial cultural history. The result of a conference held to mark Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008, this interdisciplinary volume contains chapters by scholars working in a variety of fields, including Geography, Art, English, Marketing and History. There are many facets to Merseyside’s cultural history, and the contributors to this publication bring their own perspective to bear on various features of the area’s rich heritage. Taking in examples from the early modern era to the present day, Merseyside: Culture and Place draws attention to often overlooked cultural forms, such as sketches of the Mersey by J. M. W. Turner and the fan culture exhibited on Liverpool FC’s Kop. Each chapter in the book is based on original research and the contributors set their findings in a local, national and, in some cases, an international context. Both academics and general readers will find much of interest in a book that reflects Merseyside’s distinctive and multi-faceted character.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Nelia Hyndman-Rizk,"My Mother’s Table: At Home in the Maronite Diaspora, A Study of Emigration from Hadchit, North Lebanon to Australia and America",Hardback,978-1-4438-2948-9,44.99,"In the era of globalisation, studies of migration focus on mobility, deterritorialised identities and diasporic forms of belonging across nation state boundaries. Indeed, uprootedness from the soil of home and place has resulted in a general condition of ‘homelessness’ in late modernity, referred to as the diasporic condition. This study explores the construction of home amongst immigrants from Hadchit and their descendants in Australia and America and shows how their strategies of home-building depend upon the capacity to imagine themselves as being united by kinship, a shared village of origins and as part of the broader communal Maronite identity (Mwarne), which now transcends nation state boundaries. Patrilineage (bayt), village (day’aa) and sect (ta’eefa) have historically defined Lebanese sectarian identities and now, as this study shows, are deployed as a strategy of home-building and community construction in diaspora. However, capitalist social relations of production in Australia and America have transformed bayt, day’aa and ta’eefa amongst the second, third and fourth generations through the gendered renegotiation of the marriage contract from relations of descent to relations of consent. Thus, the Hadchitis now face a crisis of (re)production and attribute this, in the case of Australia, to the state being hukum niswen, ruled by women, an inversion of the gendered order of power in Lebanon. Through pilgrimages to the ancestral village, however, émigrés seek a spiritual resolution to the contradictions of migration through the restoration of their connection to place, but find they cannot seamlessly belong in Hadchit. Meanwhile, multicultural crisis and a milieu of anti-Lebanese racism limit their claims to national belonging in Australia and America. This study finds, therefore, that the contradictions of the migration process are unresolvable through physical mobility, because the feeling of ‘home’ is a metaphysical state of being, which transcends place and is defined by its affective, social and spiritual dimensions. The elusive quality that defines home and provides a sense of unconditional belonging is, in fact, socially constructed by women, through their daily practices of care within the home and the most important woman for the construction of homeliness is the matriarch, sit el bayt—the power of the house. Thus, the place where the immigrant can be at home is metaphorically at their ‘mother’s table.’
","“This book is an interesting, sound and compelling study and the first in examining a migrant community (i.e. the Hadchiti community in Australia and America) by using an anthropological perspective, in a time framework which no one else has done before. The novelty in her study is in the critical and creative application of the current literature on migrant identity, racism and the second generation, and essential concepts such as liminality, belonging and homeliness, to the case study of Hadchiti emigration. Most particularly, her analysis of the Hadchiti identity and its relation with the contested gender structure of the migrant family is very powerful and revealing. Her argument about the articulation of the identity of the first generation with the gender structure of the family and how the hyphenated character of the second generation’s identity is made contingent upon the sense of homeliness generated by their mum’s cooking is quite innovative. In the end, this study gives more substance to the concept of a ‘deterritorialised identity’ found in the literature on migration. In fact Hyndman-Rizk succeeds in showing that the identity of Hadchitis is not only de-territorialised, but also acquires its meaning from this de-territorialisation and associated liminality. I recommend this book as an important contribution to the study of Lebanese emigration and the relationship between home and mobility.”
—Dr Paul Tabar, Associate Professor of Sociology, Institute for Migration Studies, Lebanese American University
“I strongly recommend this study of a global Lebanese village as providing an excellent social history of contemporary Lebanese migration, the social and cultural re-articulation of Hadchiti identity in a new world re-imagined as a global diaspora centred on Hadchit. It provides a rich ethnography based on a phenomenological approach which links everyday practices to large scale processes of identity formation, belonging and community as a transnational phenomenon.”
—Michael Humphrey, Professor of Sociology, University of Sydney, Sydney
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Jakub Isański and Piotr Luczys,Selling One’s Favourite Piano to Emigrate: Mobility Patterns in Central Europe at the Beginning of the 21st Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-2969-4,39.99,"International migration is a common phenomenon of the contemporary world; however, not all the aspects of migration are adequately investigated. In this book, migration is described by academics from various European countries who see it not only as an economic, but mainly as a social process. Thirteen texts, written by authors from seven countries, consider migration from various perspectives regarding its social consequences for migrants, their families and entire societies. Although the majority of the texts pertain to the Polish context (connected with Poles as migrants, but not necessarily Poland as a country), in general, the book can be qualified as an illustration of current migration from the less developed parts of the unified Europe, which impacts on the economies and societies of the European continent. A few years ago, one had to sell their favourite belonging, a piano, to collect money for the journey. These days it is much more accessible, but not less complex, and various examples from this book offer a unique insight into the variety of human flows in the contemporary world.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Pär Segerdahl,Undisciplined Animals: Invitations to Animal Studies,Hardback,978-1-4438-2951-9,34.99,"Animal studies is not a discipline of its own, but emerged simultaneously within many disciplines, such as sociology, geography, biology, art history, education research, philosophy, anthropology, film studies, political science, and gender research. Animal studies stands for a transformed way of doing scholarly work, always through the lens of the human/animal relationship. If anything keeps the field together, it is the productive “incoherence” that it creates wherever it challenges human-centred modes of work.
What does it mean to do animal studies? Due to the essential “undisciplinarity” of the field, a traditional textbook approach could not answer the question. Undisciplined Animals is a series of confessions: “this is how I and my basic outlook changed through the efforts of unruly animals, neither of us happily adapting to human-centred perspectives.” The hope is that readers will recognize the same productive tensions in their own work; that the book will help them use these tensions and not hide them as breaches of disciplinary rules.
Undisciplined Animals is a collection of invitations to animal studies, addressed to emerging scholars in a variety of fields who want to see how animal studies can vitalize work in their disciplines. The chapters are intersected by short interludes that describe an experience, a notion, or a thought that secretly drives the author’s work. These interludes reveal animal studies to transgress not only disciplinary borders, but also borders between the academic and the personal.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Şebnem Toplu ,Fiction Unbound: Bernardine Evaristo,Hardback,978-1-4438-3153-6,29.99,"This book covers all Bernardine Evaristo’s major works: Lara (1997) and Lara (2009), The Emperor’s Babe, Soul Tourists, Blonde Roots and Hello Mum. Each chapter focuses on a particular novel, combining a close analysis of the author’s technique with a penetrating understanding of the basic themes which underlie all of Evaristo’s work. This monograph exposes that Evaristo is not simply interested in “multicultural” issues; to label them as such is to overlook her achievement as a novelist. It shows instead how Evaristo combines apparently disparate elements – for example, historical research with late-twentieth century allusions in a narrative such as The Emperor’s Babe – to show how African-Caribbeans have been coming to Britain for thousands of years. Yet Evaristo is not just interested in the African-Caribbean experience; this book shows how she tries to question those basic concepts – for example “Englishness” or “patriotism” – which lie at the heart of mainstream white culture in contemporary Britain. It argues that Evaristo is interested in alternative constructions – not only of nationalism, but of other basic issues such as race, gender and class. Her books give the chance for hitherto marginalized characters – slaves, women, or victims of a patriarchal world – to tell their stories and postulate alternative views of the world they live in.
Above all, this monograph shows how Evaristo refuses to be pigeon-holed; she is not simply “a black British writer,” but someone who focuses on the interconnectedness of society. This book calls for readers to adopt a more enlightened approach, not only to issues of culture and identity, but to the work of Evaristo as a whole.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,"María P. Tajes, Emily Knudson-Vilaseca and Maureen Tobin Stanley",Hybridity in Spanish Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-3006-5,34.99,"Hybridity in Spanish Culture is an anthology that explores hybridity in select works from the dawn of Imperial Spain to the twenty-first century. The phenomenon of hybridity has been pervasive throughout Spanish history. The hybrid literary and visual texts studied in this volume—ranging from aljamiado writings and the legacy from the convivencia to contemporary immigration narratives—blur or erase purportedly fixed boundaries: between history and fiction, story and History, nationality and transnationalism, subjectivity and objectivity, as well as between genres, cultures, languages and eras.
Hybridity constitutes the state of simultaneously belonging to categories that had previously been considered exclusive. It renders the concept of pure as a construct, a chosen perception, a psychic imposition on experience. Implicit within hybridity is a fusion of two or more separate factors, entities or concepts, but the essential aspect of this fusion is that the hybrid text becomes an original. Hence, hybridity nods to the past, but points to the future.
Hybridity in Spanish Culture, written both in Spanish and English, as a “metahybrid,” is a collection about hybridity that is a hybrid itself. In hopes of blurring borders, dissipating taxonomies, and dehierarchizing binary oppositions, the European and US authors and editors contribute to cultural studies scholarship and underscore the omnipresence and ubiquity of interstitial conditions as they relate to national or cultural identity, linguistic crossings, inter-genre blendings and the conception of home and belonging.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Evrim Doğan Adanur,IDEA: Studies in English,Hardback,978-1-4438-2993-9,54.99,"This collection brings together a variety of essays by prominent academicians from around the world to project on the current trends in the vast area of English Studies. Dealing with issues ranging from Shakespeare to translation, postcolonial studies to comparative literature, the essays present a diversity of perspectives from theoretical, gendered, cultural and linguistic standpoints. The essays are selected from the papers presented at the fifth IDEA Conference at Atılım University.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Biljana Đorić-Francuski,Image_Identity_Reality,Hardback,978-1-4438-2977-9,34.99,"This book is a result of the international conference English Language and Literature Studies: Image, Identity, Reality (ELLSIIR), held at the English Department of the Belgrade Faculty of Philology to mark its 80th Anniversary.
The conference covered a wide range of topics from extremely diverse fields, namely: theoretical linguistics, applied language studies, literature and cultural studies. This book comprises papers covering all of these areas, divided into three sections according to the shared topic: Image, Identity and Reality.
Owing to its interdisciplinarity, its argumentative and theoretically founded wealth of knowledge, and the outstandingly interesting topics, the book will be very useful for academic study, and a valuable resource in understanding the range of subjects covered in its three chapters, not only to experts interested in scholarly research, but also to the general public, as a reliable and trustworthy source of information.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Ann Dashwood and Jeong-Bae Son,"Language, Culture and Social Connectedness",Hardback,978-1-4438-2992-2,34.99,"Diverse interest in language, pedagogy, identity and community has found expression through online interaction, networking and connectedness in the discourses captured in this book, Language, Culture and Social Connectedness. Issues surrounding language use in spoken, written and multimedia forms and in sociocultural responses, indigenous knowledges and ethnic perspectives are currently expanding, with consequential transnational implications for pedagogy in higher education. Language education is no longer oriented towards grammar, memorization and learning by rote, but rather using language and cultural knowledge as a means to communicate and connect to others around the globe. Geographical and physical boundaries are being transcended by technology as students learn to reach out to the world around them.
This book explores the intricate relationships between language, culture and social connectedness in our diverse local and transnational communities. In a period of challenge in our history, there are tensions that connect and others that tend to disconnect endeavours across the social landscape. ‘Connectedness’ includes relationships both formal and informal and the benefits those relationships bring to the individual as well as to society. ‘Social connectedness’ describes the level of engagement and trust an individual has with others in their community and the roles they take on, their friendships and participation in different activities. People who feel socially connected also contribute towards building communities and society. They help to create social capital as networks that promote effective social functions.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Alejandro Cortazar and Rafael Orozco,"Lenguaje, arte y revoluciones ayer y hoy: New Approaches to Hispanic Linguistic, Literary, and Cultural Studies",Hardback,978-1-4438-2984-7,44.99,"This book depicts new paradigms in Hispanic linguistic, literary and cultural studies. Part I: Literary and Cultural Studies includes eight essays focusing on a new trend of cultural representation attempting to find new meaning(s). They explore a series of reflections on some of those moments – from the period that begins with the cry for independence in 1810 and that spans beyond 2010 – textually translated as new approaches of analysis on the “recollections of things to come.” The contexts examined evince critical occurrences related to periods of change toward democracy and social justice that eventually lead to “revolutionary” or “emancipating” ends, by way of artistic, textual manifestations. Part II: Linguistic and Cultural Studies contains nine articles representative of the most current, ground breaking research on Hispanic linguistics. It focuses on important linguistic and cultural issues pertaining, geographically, to various corners of the Hispanic world, spanning from central Florida and New York City, to Bolivia, and on to the Prince Islands in Turkey. The issues explored include the sociolinguistic and cultural identity of Puerto Ricans in the United States, the pragmatics of humor in Mexican film, the effects of language evolution on modern Spanish, and the acquisition of Spanish by English speakers.
","“This rich collection of articles, covering an impressive span of historical and geographical contexts, explores the construction and contestation of cultural, national and linguistic identities. By bringing together scholars of literary studies, cultural studies, linguistics and pedagogy, the editors showcase the interdisciplinary nature of Hispanic Studies and promote a necessary dialogue across methodological boundaries and research specializations.”
– Amy Robinson, Bowling Green State University
“A refreshing 21st-century collection of groundbreaking explorations into the (r)evolution of the Spanish language, literature, and culture in the New World and beyond.”
– Armin Schwegler, University of California, Irvine
“Lenguaje, arte y revoluciones is an interdisciplinary survey of contemporary approaches to Hispanic studies in language, literature, and culture. The ‘revolutions’ of the title are sometimes literal (cf. Padilla’s chapter on the Mexican American novel of the Mexican Revolution), sometimes social (cf. Lamboy’s study of the “new wave” of Puerto Rican migration to the US, with major changes in the geographic distribution and social profile of Puerto Ricans on the mainland), and sometimes linguistic (cf. Sessarego’s analysis of the restructuring that gave rise to Yungueño Spanish). Overall, this volume provides a delightful and thought-provoking encounter with cutting-edge work on the concepts, content, and conversations of the Hispanic world.”
– Gregory R. Guy, New York University
“This volume sheds light on some of the core dynamics of the revolutionary processes [that] impacted national literatures and national languages, paramount arenas where the desires and anxieties regarding the protracted process of nation-state building played out. It is a collective meditation on the present of those two cultural artifacts (literature and language), and what it means for Latin America as it faces the challenges and uncertainties of the twenty-first century. This is an outstanding collection that does justice to its ambitious goal.”
– Juan Pablo Davobe, The University of Colorado at Boulder
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,"Cecilia Alvstad, Stefan Helgesson and David Watson","Literature, Geography, Translation: Studies in World Writing",Hardback,978-1-4438-3010-2,39.99,"The present volume connects three academic fields that share central concerns but remain surprisingly isolated from each other: world literature studies, postcolonial studies, and translation studies. It approaches translation not as a vague metaphor but as a distinct and socially embedded practice that connects literatures. In similar vein, it interrogates the smoothness of many versions of “global” theory by insisting on the specificity of place and the resistance to translatibility among languages, oeuvres and genres.
The topics covered in the chapters include the formation of world literature as a progamme of study, the French concept of littérature-monde, the rise of English in nineteenth-century Sweden, the translation of Arabic literature in Europe, and the transnationalism of the avant-garde. Through such case studies, and by drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Édouard Glissant, Pierre Bourdieu and David Damrosch, among others, the international group of contributors add substantially to the theoretical and methodological consolidation of world literature as a field of research.
","“This important volume puts translation on the map – literally and figuratively – showing how concerns with place, movement and transfer have become central to our understanding of literature today.”
– Sherry Simon, Concordia University, Canada
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Bambang Sugiharto and Roy Voragen,Overlapping Territories: Asian Voices on Culture and Civilization,Hardback,978-1-4438-2999-1,34.99,"The post-Cold War situation has given way to a new and unprecedented constellation of global interrelations. The power constellation today is not only multi-polar, but rather, ‘chaotic’: its configuration keeps shifting and it is determined not simply by new emerging super powers, but also by any seemingly small events in non-linear modes of interaction. The interdependency between communities somehow makes significant changes unpredictable.
Such an interdependent, yet chaotic, world order, in turn, raises new philosophical questions. Identity, culture and civilization cannot be understood anymore simply in terms of traditional categories. These categories are called into question through mutual interrogation and mutual enlargement of horizons, and this inevitably entails hybridization and pluralization.
The Asian voices included in this book speak of recognition of and respect for the ‘otherness’, the other outside as well as inside. The writers mostly see globalization as well as their own cultural positions through dialogical imagination in which a Western philosophical framework is deployed to find out their Asian positions, and the reverse, the Asian reality is used to problematize the Western framework. Thereby this book attempts to shed light on the question of how we are to understand culture and civilization.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Dario Llinares,The Astronaut: Cultural Mythology and Idealised Masculinity,Hardback,978-1-4438-3002-7,39.99,"The Astronaut: Cultural Mythology and Idealised Masculinity interrogates the historical and cultural dynamics of one of the most revered icons of the 20th century. Analysing a diverse range of cultural representations the book postulates the construction of an intertextual mythology through which the astronaut becomes an embodiment of American ideological values and heroic manhood. The discursive processes at work in the range of media texts examined serve to embed the astronaut into the cultural imaginary as a largely coherent and uncontested exemplar of idealised masculinity. Using a range of interdisciplinary analytical tools the book examines how the social construction of this masculine ideal iterates and naturalises gender hegemony. The book situates the astronaut within the context of a modern/postmodern theoretical framework linking shifts in gender perspectives to the contradictory narratives and characterisations that inform the mediation of the astronaut. In so doing, the book argues for a re-evaluation of the, often oversimplified, use of the term hegemonic masculinity as an anchoring point for the critique of masculinity. The strength of this work is its interdisciplinary diversity and its interconnection of a range of themes including gender, representation, history, ideology, the postmodern and the media. Drawing upon contemporary theoretical debates while redeploying seminal theoretical texts the book offers new cultural interrogations of a highly familiar historical subject.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Sabine Krajewski,"The Next Buddha may be a Community: Practising Intercultural Competence at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia",Hardback,978-1-4438-3011-9,34.99,"The whole world is talking about globalisation and there are so many versions of it that one might as well not talk about it at all. The word has permeated all areas of the public sphere and can have negative or positive connotations, depending on the context of relevant discourse. In education, globalisation is associated with mobility of staff and students, with internationalization of degrees, course content, research, and with global career opportunities for university graduates. High numbers of international students are perceived as an asset to universities around the world, in economical, political, and cultural terms. One of the advantages for all students, domestic and international, is the opportunity to meet people from across the globe and to exchange views and learning styles as well as establishing links for future professional work. Universities advertise that graduates will leave their Alma Mater as well rounded, interculturally competent people who are ready to be employed in international contexts.
This book sets out to explore what internationalization in education really looks like. In the case study of an Australian university, the author investigates the opinions of staff and students in terms of what intercultural competence actually means, how it can be achieved and enhanced and if it should be measured. This study provides an insight into practical approaches towards internationalization and points out where more support is needed to successfully implement and foster cultural intelligence in educational settings. The case study is embedded in discussions about multiculturalism in Australia and elsewhere, the importance of foreign languages as part of intercultural competence and the notion of friendship.
This book will appeal to academics and researchers who are interested in cultural intelligence/intercultural competence and how it can be supported in educational settings, as well as to everyone who is working in fields where people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds come together – which is just about everywhere in the world.
","“Ultimately, these frameworks and definitions from the various studies that have been conducted to date on intercultural competence, including this Macquarie study, can be used to guide higher education efforts in helping students not only get along better with those from different cultures, but to work together to address pressing global challenges that confront humankind in the 21st century.”
– Darla K. Deardorff, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
“Sabine Krajewski and [her] colleagues at Macquarie University set out to explore what the term ‘intercultural competence’ actually means in an Australian context. The Macquarie model of intercultural competence explicates our space for further discussion and development within our intercultural world.”
– Hartmut Schröder, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Nick Heffernan and David A. Wragg,"Culture, Environment and Ecopolitics",Hardback,978-1-4438-3201-4,39.99,"Culture, Environment and Ecopolitics brings together a series of new reflections on historical and current ecological and environmental predicaments. By way of critical interventions in environmental thought, and through engagements with literary, visual, architectural, philosophical, and more general cultural studies scholarship, this collection of essays by an international panel of writers breaks new interpretative ground. While techno-science has in some quarters been elevated to a master discourse of humanity’s salvation, charged with providing a magical ‘fix’ for planetary ecological dilemmas, the focus of our volume is on the importance of cultural reflection for bringing matters of local and global import to light. Moving from the abstractions of eco-critical utopianisms to the concrete identity of the land in the poetry of John Clare, from British Petroleum’s attempts to re-brand climate change to examples of eco-architecture, and much more besides, these essays exemplify ways in which eco-political thought and practice might now be theorized. The collection is framed by a substantial editors’ introduction which offers but one contextualization of the ideas and critical trajectories that follow. Culture, Environment and Ecopolitics will allow readers to discover original intersections and argumentative cross-references across contested terrains in a world increasingly troubled by ecological crises.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Carla Pascoe,"Spaces Imagined, Places Remembered: Childhood in 1950s Australia",Hardback,978-1-4438-3176-5,44.99,"With the end of World War II, Australians turned to rebuilding their nation, placing the perceived educational and social needs of children at the forefront of their efforts. Urban planners aimed to protect children from the potential degradation of urban environments through refashioning slums and laying out spacious streets in suburbia. Concomitant with a renewed public emphasis on the domestic life of the family, architects and home magazines promoted the benefits of modernism, which encouraged a stark functionalism and new social relationships within the home. School authorities and architects sought to create educational environments that would foster learning and instil discipline in pupils.
Whilst these were the spatial discourses most dominant in 1950s Australia, closer examination of two Melbourne localities reveals that such ideals were often compromised in practice. Australia was suffering a housing crisis, with building hampered by material and labour shortages that persisted until the mid-1950s. A fertility boom and the influx of migration caused a demographic leap that left urban planners scrambling to provide infrastructure for the rapidly expanding city. Thousands of new homes and scores of new schools were urgently needed. Given these circumstances, many of the neighbourhoods, houses and schools of the 1950s failed to live up to the aspirational ideals of planning and architectural discourses.
The childhood memories of people who grew up in Melbourne during the 1950s reveal a markedly different perspective to the expert spatial notions of this era. In their recollections of the landscapes and buildings of childhood, interviewees recalled emotional resonances, sensory experiences and social interactions associated with particular places. Urban planners and architects viewed physical environments as abstract spaces. But for post-war children, these environments were places imbued with complex personal meanings.
","“In my opinion it is an excellent book and makes clear and important contributions to the history of childhood, architecture, cultural geography, and urban studies. Through the lenses of neighbourhood, home and school, Pascoe argues that the intentions of design experts (architects, planners, psychologists, education bureaucrats) differed substantially from the ways real children understood and remember places of childhood. Whereas experts saw the neighbourhood, home and school as tools for the rationalization and modernization of family life, providing for example adult-controlled parks, multi-purpose family rooms and classrooms emphasizing the hierarchy of the teacher, they showed little concern for or knowledge of children’s real interests in wild, untouched places; spots removed from adult supervision; and spaces of intense student-teacher interaction. Although the focus of the book is on Melbourne, Australia, the lessons drawn by Pascoe in terms of method and conclusion are applicable to these fields in many other countries, including the UK, USA, Canada, and presumably New Zealand. As Pascoe recognizes, the postwar experience, baby boom, immigration, and the primacy of the suburb are universal issues in the 1950s Anglophone world. In conclusion, Spaces Imagined, Places Remembered: Childhood in 1950s Australia is beautifully and clearly written.”
– Annmarie Adams
“Dr Pascoe’s book on memories of Australian childhoods draws on path-breaking research into oral history and children’s play. Engaging with the disciplines of social and cultural history, architecture and urban planning, Dr Pascoe’s research will not only contribute to how we understand the past, but to debates about children’s play and urban design in the present.”
– Kate Darian-Smith
“I know of no other Australian work that has explored the complex relationships between children and their spatial environments with such forensic care and sensitivity. Using the full panoply of historical sources, including oral history, the writer brings new perspectives to an ‘old’ story. At a time when there is growing interest in – not to say concern about – urbanisation on the one hand, and children’s restricted opportunities for play and experiment on the other, this book provides a solid foundation for understanding how we reached this point. It is not a romance about the past – it is full of ‘hard’ evidence, but it doesn’t neglect the role of the emotions in human affairs as seemingly mundane as housing. Such a nuanced approach is a rare pleasure.”
– June Factor
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Metin Kozak and Nazmi Kozak,Sustainability of Tourism: Cultural and Environmental Perspectives,Hardback,978-1-4438-3206-9,44.99,"The subject of sustainability has become central to the discussion of how to succeed in the stable development of the tourism industry, due to the uncontrollable nature of supply and demand over the past few decades. Thus, this book examines policies and practices associated with the introduction of various methods in order to maintain sustainable tourism development. The list of policies and practices is based on a selection of the most recent topics, providing many real-world examples and cases in relation to culture and nature-based environmental issues, representing both individual businesses and tourist destinations with an international focus, namely Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Portugal, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, and the USA. Structured with 15 chapters altogether, the principles and guidelines discussed apply equally to different product levels in tourism such as museums, cities, regions, and countries. This volume is intended as a supplementary textbook for further reading. The editors believe that the book will gain attention from colleagues worldwide because of relevant educational courses on sustainable tourism, environmental tourism and cultural heritage management.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Catherine O’Leary and Alberto Lázaro,Censorship across Borders: The Reception of English Literature in Twentieth-Century Europe,Hardback,978-1-4438-3218-2,39.99,"This volume brings together twelve essays which explore European censorship of English literature in the last century. Taking into consideration the various social, political and historical contexts in which literary controls were imposed and the extent to which they were determined by national and international concerns, these essays comment on political and moral censorship, self-censorship, and the role of the translator as censor. Besides systematic state control, other hidden and insidious forms of censorship are also surveyed in the essays. This study considers why certain works and authors, many of them now regarded as canonical, were targeted in various states and often under opposing ideologies, such as those dominated by conservative Catholic morality and those governed by communism or socialism.
The essays contain previously unpublished material, cover a wide range of authors – including Beckett, Eliot, Joyce and Orwell – and analyse diverse censorship systems operating across Europe, thus serving as a useful comparative resource. Despite the variety of structures of suppression, the study shows that certain common practices can be discerned across national borders and that general conclusions can be drawn about the complex and ambiguous nature of the state’s relationship with culture and about the immediate and long-term impact of censorship, not only on the author and publisher but on society as a whole. Finally, the essays are also significant for what they tell us about the survival of literature, despite the best efforts of the censors.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Barrie Axford and Richard Huggins,Cultures and / of Globalization,Hardback,978-1-4438-3217-5,39.99,"This book explores the ways in which study of culture as the realm of meaning and identity can inform current debates about globalization and thus afford greater understanding of emergent globalities. By drawing on a range of disciplinary and sub-disciplinary expertise from across the social sciences and also promoting areas of cross-disciplinary research, the book contributes to the development of theory on globalization and also provides some significant illustrations of (cultural) globalization in practice through attention to novel empirical sites and issues. These include eminently cultural realms such as music, film and architecture and those that are invested with a strong cultural component, such as migration and education. Contributions emphasise the soft features of globalization and globality and most look to marry theoretical abstraction with everyday aspects of global processes, focusing on those routine and sometimes conscious connections and accommodations that make up daily life in a globalized world. In doing so, the book itself can be seen as a contribution to critical and multidimensional studies of globalization and as engaging in a form of global practice.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Marius Rotar and Adriana Teodorescu,Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe,Hardback,978-1-4438-3208-3,44.99,"This book features a selection of the most representative papers presented during the international conference Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe (ABDD). It invites you on a fascinating journey across the last three centuries of Europe, with death as your guide. The past and present realities of the complex phenomena of death and dying in Romania, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Serbia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Italy are dealt with, by authors from varying backgrounds: historians, sociologists, priests, humanists, anthropologists, and doctors. This is yet more proof that death as a topic cannot be confined to one science, the deciphering of its meanings and of the shifts it effects requiring a joint, interdisciplinary effort.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,"Krystyna Kujawińska Courtney, Maria Łukowska and Evan Williams",European Culture in Diversity,Hardback,978-1-4438-3295-3,39.99,"This collection of articles devoted to Europe was born from the urgent need to present the specificity of European culture, both its unity and diversity, and at the same time create a stimulating dialogue about European culture and its complexities. European culture, considered as all inherited beliefs and values behind social action, has been treated in the past as a complex phenomenon of superior value, as the result of a common past among European nations, the permeation of various cultural elements between cultures, and their absorption in different contexts. In the past the process of shaping European identity was often fierce and dramatic, influenced by the events taking place within, but also outside European borders. Now, it has undergone various transformations as a result of new political, economic and cultural challenges. For this reason, the authors and editors of this volume place emphasis on diachronic perspectives: their approaches often consider local European issues against a global background.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Kenneth R. Morefield ,Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema: Volume II,Hardback,978-1-4438-3273-1,39.99,"Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema, Volume II continues the work presented in the first volume of this title, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2008. It provides informed yet accessible articles that will give readers an introduction to masters of world cinema whose works explore the themes of human spirituality and religious faith.
Volume II contains essays dealing with canonical directors notably absent from the first entry of the series (such as Godard and Kurosawa) while also including examinations of contemporary auteurs who are still actively working (for example, Andersson, and von Trier). While retaining a truly international emphasis—it includes essays about directors from the United States, Canada, Iran, Sweden, India, Denmark, Italy, Mexico, Australia, and Japan—Volume II also acts as an important contribution to canon formation, illustrating the complexity and variety in the films of those who are truly the masters of world cinema.
Built solidly around close, formal readings of selective films, the essays in Volume II also demonstrate familiarity with film history and bring insight from such varied disciplines as New Testament Studies, Clinical Psychology, Art History, and Medieval History. It also seeks to broaden the understanding of ‘faith’ and ‘spirituality,’ examining how the meaning of such terms changes as the cultures that produce the art that defines them continues to evolve.
","""Volume two of Kenneth Morefiled's Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema extends and amplifies the recent religious turn in humanities study, illuminating the diversity of religious consciousness across the world and how it is reflected in contemporary film. It is an invaluable volume both for its engagement with world cinema and as a supplemental text for teaching film.""
- James Rovira, Associate Professor of English, Tiffin University. Author, Blake and Kierkegaard: Creation and Anxiety
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández and Antonia Navarro-Tejero,India in the World,Hardback,978-1-4438-3289-2,44.99,"This volume uniquely gathers scholarly articles dealing with very dissimilar and kaleidoscopic perspectives on India. It provides an informative overview of the country, which has wide-ranging influences reaching far from India itself, since it has criss-crossed connections with many countries around the world. If read as a collection, this volume is witness to an interlocking network of ideas, attitudes and ideologies that emerge from the contemporary social and political world. The book, thus, highlights a variety of issues and the chapters promise to treat them with adequate justice.
These features mean that this book can be approached by any person interested in India, given that it offers a diverse range of interesting topics related to the country. The reader glancing through the book will find themes spanning from the analysis of postcolonial literature written in English by Indian women, to sociological reflections on several diasporic situations, and from crossed influences between Indian culture and that of other countries, to the latest discussion topics in ancient Indian history, to mention a few.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Terri Doughty and Dawn Thompson,Knowing Their Place? Identity and Space in Children’s Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-3214-4,39.99,"Traditionally in the West, children were expected to “know their place,” but what does this comprise in a contemporary, globalized world? Does it mean to continue to accept subordination to those larger and more powerful? Does it mean to espouse unthinkingly a notion of national identity? Or is it about gaining an awareness of the ways in which identity is derived from a sense of place? Where individuals are situated matters as much if not more than it ever has. In children’s literature, the physical places and psychological spaces inhabited by children and young adults are also key elements in the developing identity formation of characters and, through engagement, of readers too. The contributors to this collection map a broad range of historical and present-day workings of this process: exploring indigeneity and place, tracing the intertwining of place and identity in diasporic literature, analyzing the relationship of the child to the natural world, and studying the role of fantastic spaces in children’s construction of the self. They address fresh topics and texts, ranging from the indigenization of the Gothic by Canadian mixed-blood Anishinabe writer Drew Hayden Taylor to the lesser-known children’s books of George Mackay Brown, to eco-feminist analysis of contemporary verse novels. The essays on more canonical texts, such as Peter Pan and the Harry Potter series, provide new angles from which to revision them. Readers of this collection will gain understanding of the complex interactions of place, space, and identity in children’s literature.
Essays in this book will appeal to those interested in Children’s Literature, Aboriginal Studies, Environmentalism and literature, and Fantasy literature.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Ewa Borkowska and Tomasz Burzyński,"The Surplus of Culture: Sense, Common-sense, Non-sense",Hardback,978-1-4438-3213-7,39.99,"This multifaceted volume presents the elusive surplus of culture in the spotlight of theory and academic practice. Despite its overtly economic implications, the concept alludes to the added value of sense, common sense and nonsense which is represented as languages of irony, irrationality and absurdity potentially subverting traditional and mainstream “regimes” of culture. Consequently, the “moment of surplus” is inherent in critical interpretation in which supposedly well-entrenched notions suddenly reveal their implicitly shattering and subversive nature.
The surplus of culture dwells at the risky intersection of untamed interpretation and tradition. It is the space of the “third” in which literary canons are re-visited, language reveals its hidden political agendas, the Orient reclaims its own cognitive perspective and established structures of cognition are questioned in the tragic-comic gesture of insight. The volume is a must for scholars and researchers in the fields of cultural studies, literature and arts as well as literary theory.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Jon Stratton,"Uncertain Lives: Culture, Race and Neoliberalism in Australia",Hardback,978-1-4438-3301-1,39.99,"Uncertain Lives is the first book to examine the impact of neoliberal policies on everyday life in Australia. Going beyond the discussions of multiculturalism that dominated the 1980s and 1990s, Uncertain Lives examines the persistence of race and racism in the Australian experience. While the governments of John Howard followed the rhetoric of neoliberalism in suggesting that market forces dominated social relations, in reality the racism that had been founded in the White Australia policy became again increasingly acceptable, and accepted, in a society no longer subject to the values of multiculturalism.
Uncertain Lives tracks this racism from its pervasiveness in everyday life to the ways race influenced decisions about who would, and would not, be allowed into Australia. From discussions of asylum seekers to migrants to the ways that thinking about the border itself has been transformed, Uncertain Lives charts the recent history of the Australian experience. Uncertain Lives ranges over events such as the Cronulla Riots of 2005 and the 2006 Beaconsfield mine rescue and uses a variety of recent films to highlight the impact of race in a society where liberal and social democratic values have been replaced by neoliberal ideology.
","“For thirty years, Jon Stratton has been the sharpest, most acute observer of cultural phenomena around. This latest collection of his investigations into the racial contours of Australian neoliberalism is further testimony to the extraordinary contribution he has made to cultural studies around the globe.”
– Toby Miller, University of California, Riverside, USA; author of The Well-Tempered Self (1993), Technologies Of Truth (1998), Cultural Citizenship (2007) and Makeover Nation (2008)
“In a context of global crises – political, economic and social – Stratton’s book stages a series of compelling interventions that clarify the origins of these crises and their impact on the lives of both citizens and socially designated ‘others.’ At once analytical and impassioned, this is a landmark book offering a rigorous and inspired account of the destructive ways in which neoliberalism has critically transformed Australian society and culture.”
– Joseph Pugliese, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; author of Biometerics (2010); editor of Transmediterranean (2010)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Sabrina Brancato,Afroeurope@n Configurations: Readings and Projects,Hardback,978-1-4438-3337-0,39.99,"This volume brings together contributions from various disciplines in the humanities exploring a variety of cultural, social and political configurations produced by the African presence in Europe, and attempting to consolidate a comparative framework for the study of contemporary black literatures and identities across different national and linguistic contexts. From the circumstances of black students in Russia to the recovery of a forgotten African identity in the Canary Islands, from the specificities of Portuguese postcoloniality to the representations of Africans in Iceland, the essays collected here provide a wide spectrum of research on African Diasporas in Eastern, Western, Southern and Northern Europe offering insights into previously little explored areas.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Antonio José Miralles Pérez,Restless Travellers: Quests for Identity across European and American Time and Space,Hardback,978-1-4438-3306-6,39.99,"The first part of this book deals with Britain’s imperial age, its militants and its critics. The selection of works generates a large field of debate explored using traditional or innovative approaches. The 19th century is presented as a time for writers (J. E. Aylmer, E. Marryat Norris, G. A. Henty, Conan Doyle) who tell stories of Europeans venturing forth into “uncivilised” regions of the world where they meet other races. But writers of a different outlook are also considered. Before the twilight of Empire, women were born in England (Virginia Woolf) and in Ireland (Elizabeth Bowen) who would use the ductile means of literature to narrate journeys into the female self, instead of masculine tales set in distant lands. The imperial experience is a subject of concern and reflection with special interest when authored by natives of (former) colonies, such as Michael Ondaatje’s Hindu/Sirk hero in The English Patient and the Nigerian girls in some of Patience Agbabi’s poems. The idea of travelling into or out of the culture to which one apparently belongs, and the contradictory feelings such an experience causes, pervades the writer’s mind and the ensuing narrative.
The second part can be regarded as a North American miscellany, mostly devoted to the African culture, although also dealing with European heritage. In order to recognise Asian and South American influences as well, authors such as Fred Wah, Ariel Dorfman and Julia Alvarez have been included. Black literature is represented by two 19th century writers, Mary Ann Shadd and Martin R. Delany, who remind us of the fight against slavery and segregation and the path to equality. Various 20th century writers (Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, Harryatte Mullen, August Wilson) address the African-Americans’ quest for identity, presented by some as a journey southwards, away from the place of birth or an unsatisfactory life and in search of self-knowledge in the land of their forefathers. These journeys provide materials for different genres and tones, enabling readers to examine the aspirations and fears of a community whose contribution to the history and literature of America has stimulated continuous study.
The two parts of the book are connected by the underlying discussion of essential conflicts that have occupied “travellers” traversing imperial spaces or experiencing foreign lands as well as “travellers” who, instead of exotic adventures or romantic sojourns, want to settle in a “new” country, be accepted by a nation their ancestors did not know, or exercise rights they were denied on their native soil.
","“Antonio José Miralles Pérez, PhD, has followed a constant research on English chivalrous literature and its repercussions and influence on 19th century British society, concentrating specifically on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s masterpieces regarding the topic. The selected contributions of the volume Restless Travellers: Quests for Identity across European and American Time and Space show Dr Miralles’s coherence and concerns, and in many of the characters the reader will find reflections of Doyle’s heroes and travellers, who traversed a fantastic and real world that lingers on. The volume shows that in the 20th century the old challenges of the quest of identity revived both in the writers and their fictional creations.”
– José María Gutiérrez Arranz, PhD
“It is important to note that Restless Travellers: Quests for Identity across European and American Time and Space is not about a particular historical moment, nor does it promote the works of any particular writer. Instead, this work affirms the power of the written word to lift the human spirit, to teach lessons of endurance, to counter the forces of cultural erasure, and to keep alive that insatiable existentialist quest to know thine own self and from whence thou has come.”
– Sandra Shannon, Howard University, Washington, DC
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Tanya Nitins,Selling James Bond: Product Placement in the James Bond Films,Hardback,978-1-4438-3305-9,34.99,"The character of James Bond for many people is intrinsically linked in their minds with particular brands – Aston Martin, Bollinger, Omega, Smirnoff vodka, and so on. This direct association between character and brand highlights the intrinsic role of product placement in the film industry, and in the James Bond films in particular. Selling James Bond: Product Placement in the James Bond Films provides a comprehensive overview of the history of product placement in the James Bond series – charting the progression of the practice and drawing direct correlations to significant cultural and historical events that impacted upon the number and types of products incorporated into the series. While primarily a financial arrangement, it is also important that the practice of product placement be examined and understood in relation to these cultural contexts, an area of research so far largely ignored by academic study.
Through extensive content analysis of the official James Bond film series, as well as utilising directors’ commentary and industry reports, this book illustrates the strong impact specific cultural and historical events have had on the practice of product placement in the series. In doing so, it provides an exciting and in-depth “behind the scenes” look at the James Bond film series, and its complicated and sometimes contentious history of product placement. In the process, it charts the gradual emergence of product placement from the more traditional background shot to becoming so embedded in the actual film narrative that they have become simply yet another method for filmmakers to produce cultural meaning.
","“I am very happy to have my name associated with this book – I hope there will be a halo effect. Nitins’ work is a beautifully written exemplar of how to examine entertainment. In her discussion of brands, celebrities, gadgets and spectacle she explores with precision and originality the ways in which business informs culture and culture informs business.”
– Alan McKee, editor of Entertainment Industries (Routledge, 2012) and Beautiful Things in Popular Culture (Blackwell, 2007)
“We all know the signature line, ‘Bond, James Bond,’ and the changing machismo which Bond defines. Many words have been written exploring the lives and times of James Bond. But until this time, no serious work has examined the significance of product placement in the franchise. Nitins’ work is a new and different examination of the Bond Brand and the scramble by other brands to be associated with and to define the Bond Brand. It is a significant and unique contribution to the Bond story and a good read besides.”
– Associate Professor Errol Vieth, author of Screening Science: Contexts, Texts and Science in Fifties Science Fiction Film (2001)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Gert Reifarth and Philip Morrissey,Aesopic Voices: Re-framing Truth through Concealed Ways of Presentation in the 20th and 21st Centuries,Hardback,978-1-4438-3443-8,49.99,"What do critical thinkers do when political, social or religious circumstances are hostile to truth and open discussion? One possibility is to seek refuge in the realm of the Aesopic and veil opinions about the ruling authorities in symbolic and coded terms, retreating to fairy tales and fables, and employing myths and elements of folklore. Such Aesopic voices create an alternative discursive form of protest and subversion.
This collection attempts to break new academic ground. While Aesop has now been a ‘household name’ (and as such mostly been related to children’s stories) for at least a century and a half, academic recognition of Aesopic art and writing has been relatively sparse. Our book intends to fuel systematic analysis and appreciation of such examples of Aesopic creation.
The contributions offer thought-provoking insights which span the five continents of the globe and more than a century. The book brings together historians, literary scholars, film theorists, scholars from Australian Indigenous studies, cultural theorists and arts practitioners.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,"Teodora Popescu, Rodica Pioariu and Crina Herţeg",Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the English Language: Theory and Practice,Hardback,978-1-4438-3389-9,34.99,"Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the English Language: Theory and Practice provides an overview of a less tackled field of research, namely the main issues at stake when teaching English Language and Culture in Romania. The approach is an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural one, as the authors investigate problems, offering and probing solutions from a cross-curricular perspective. The book is a collection of 10 contributions by teachers and researchers from Romania which draw on theoretical and applied methodological explorations into the challenges posed by teaching/learning English in a globalised context. Organised into three main chapters, the volume addresses the multifacetedness of language education as a cross-discipline. The complexity and universality of the research enquiries and practical insights make the topics addressed valid across the contemporary globalising educational context. Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the English Language: Theory and Practice will be a useful tool to specialists and practitioners from ESP and CLIL domains alike, as well as graduate and postgraduate students in foreign language teaching.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Nisheet Gosai,Perspectives on the Educational Experiences of African/Caribbean Boys,Hardback,978-1-4438-3377-6,39.99,"This study critically explores contemporary African/Caribbean boys’ (15–16 years old) educational experiences in the UK. It focuses on their lives from both within and outside the school. Various research methods are employed in order to gain a comprehensive picture that includes the accounts of African/Caribbean boys, parents, teachers and youth workers. The study explores both the boys’ positive and negative experiences of school life. At one level, the boys’ narratives suggest ‘a nothing but the same old story’ of racial exclusion and subordination within urban secondary schools. At another level, we hear of the importance of education in their lives. Of particular significance is the evidence of how black supplementary schools and youth organisations are providing an educational space that positively supports them in their transition into adulthood.
The study makes recommendations for educationalists and policy makers based on the findings. This includes the need to understand the boys’ experiences of racial exclusion and the complexities around the intersection of race, gender and class for a younger generation at the start of the twenty-first century. In comparing mainstream and supplementary educational spaces, the boys identify the need to build an inclusive mainstream curriculum that represents the historical past and cultural present of their lives. Importantly, the study vividly highlights contrasting teacher-pupil interactions between these two educational spaces, suggesting what the former can learn from the latter.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Lynne Kendrick and David Roesner,Theatre Noise: The Sound of Performance,Hardback,978-1-4438-3440-7,39.99,"This book is a timely contribution to the emerging field of the aurality of theatre and looks in particular at the interrogation and problematisation of theatre sound(s). Both approaches are represented in the idea of ‘noise’ which we understand both as a concrete sonic entity and a metaphor or theoretical (sometimes even ideological) thrust.
Theatre provides a unique habitat for noise. It is a place where friction can be thematised, explored playfully, even indulged in: friction between signal and receiver, between sound and meaning, between eye and ear, between silence and utterance, between hearing and listening. In an aesthetic world dominated by aesthetic redundancy and ‘aerodynamic’ signs, theatre noise recalls the aesthetic and political power of the grain of performance.
‘Theatre noise’ is a new term which captures a contemporary, agitatory acoustic aesthetic. It expresses the innate theatricality of sound design and performance, articulates the reach of auditory spaces, the art of vocality, the complexity of acts of audience, the political in produced noises. Indeed, one of the key contentions of this book is that noise, in most cases, is to be understood as a plural, as a composite of different noises, as layers or waves of noises. Facing a plethora of possible noises in performance and theatre we sought to collocate a wide range of notions of and approaches to ‘noise’ in this book – by no means an exhaustive list of possible readings and understandings, but a starting point from which scholarship, like sound, could travel in many directions.
","“Reading Theatre Noise is like holding a conch shell to the ear. Sounds familiar but long-ignored become magnified and theatrical. More than an inventory of noise, this book allows a sense of ‘aurality’ to reconceive theatre space and performance space. Theatre’s many noises become dramaturgical encounters. Through sounds, the contributors recognise performance spaces within our bodies, amongst the audience, between acts of utterance and acts of listening, and in the phenomenological potential of what is often considered the ‘nuisance’ of noise. The anticipated protagonists are all present (John Cage, Roland Barthes, Samuel Beckett, Heiner Goebbels), but the contributors to this volume also introduce a contemporary collection of voices, exploring the theatre noise of the human and the machine, the actorly and the audient, the deaf and the blind, the immersive and the site-specific (Graeae, Shunt, Punchdrunk, the Wooster Group, Denis Marleau). This edited collection provides an important platform for an increasingly prominent field, and offers a resonant sounding-board for subsequent explorations of theatre noise.”
– Dr Dominic Symonds, Department of Drama Creative Arts, Film and Media, University of Portsmouth
“‘Are we currently discovering sound?’ asks Patrice Pavis in the Preface to this book. And reading the essays in the book is indeed to make a voyage of discovery into aspects of theatrical experience and practice hitherto unaccountably muffled from our attention. The whole book offers rich proof of the rewards of the ‘acoustic turn’ in contemporary theory.”
– Prof. Nicholas Till, Professor of Opera and Music Theatre (Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre), School of Media, Film and Music, University of Sussex
“In a field saturated with theories concerned with the dominant realm of the visual and the relentless trafficking and circulation of images, Theatre Noise: The Sound of Performance offers an original and illuminating series of interventions written by theatre directors, performers, musicians, sound designers and academics from approaches that are historically, philosophically and experientially situated. The project of the book is to stake a claim for the productive ways in which performance might be entering a new era, one in which the dramaturgies of sound and noise and a “phenomenology of listening” as Patrice Pavis puts it in his preface, begin to articulate unexplored territories within the expanded disciplines of theatre and performance.
An excellent and thorough introductory essay by editors, Kendrick and Roesner, focuses the reader’s consideration towards the ways in which an analysis of theatre noise can challenge our understanding of the production of the theatre event, its ontology and its effects, political and otherwise. The collection gathers together essays that together offer a rich consideration of auditory dramaturgies - from the significance of audiowalks as intersubjective “embodied acts of landscaping” (Lorimer in Myers “Vocal Landscaping, Chapter VII) where new modes of mobile and kinaesthetic experience shift the production of meaning and create a new percipient, to Katharina Rost’s close analysis of auditory captivation and the potent value of intrusive sound in Luk Percival’s Andromache, in which she argues for the value of a specific vocabulary that begins to chart the phenomenology of theatre noise; to John Collins’ (artistic director of Elevator Repair Service) astute analysis of his own history and practice as “performing” sound designer with the Wooster Group through which he retraces his discovery of the potential to construct an “aurally modulated reality” in theatre performance through the particular abilities sound has to create logic and meaning. Offering a significant intervention into the political, aesthetic and social implications of this unusually “silent” area of study, Theatre Noise will surely lead the way in encouraging further dialogue between sound studies and performance studies, and across the realms of the acoustic, the visual, the physical and the dramaturgical.”
– Sara Jane Bailes, Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, Head of Drama Studies, University of Sussex
“This is a significant and foundational volume. In a series of wide-ranging chapters, it successfully establishes the notion of ‘theatre noise’: suggesting new and original ways of conceiving of and theorising theatre, and opening the way for further research in the field.
In identifying and proposing aurality as a full and active complement to visuality in theatre, it challenges us to reassess the role of sound in the making, reception – and potential disruption – of contemporary performance, and to rethink approaches to both the conception and analysis of its dramaturgy.
It makes a considered case for the further appreciation of acoustic design as an independent phenomenon and of the role of strategies of sonic production, organisation and control in the creation of theatrical meaning. There is a sustained appreciation here of the polyphonic and contrapuntal tensions between the things seen and those heard in theatre: of the dramatic potential of the separations, collisions and interferences of meaning between the aural and visual, between aurally immersive and visually spectacular. As the editors state: ‘Sound, silence, aurality, vocality, musicality and noise agitate ideas of ocular-centric theatre.’
The case for sound itself creating the space of theatre itself is well made, setting the pervasive though differentiated atmosphere in set-aside places. But whilst the auditorium is conventionally regarded as hushed, a site of attentive listening, it too is a place of noise: of potential disturbance, interruption and response. The listener is not passive and the full consideration is given to his or her dynamic role here.
The editors helpfully orientate the reader in unfamiliar territory by identifying over-arching themes – silence, embodiment, materiality, vocality, musicalisation, space, immersion, interaction, listening – but the real strength of the book is the sheer diversity of approach to something that we had barely attended. It is extremely readable and should be of interest to advanced undergraduate, post-graduate and academic audiences.
Theatre Noise: The Sound of Performance is a most welcome and timely contribution to the field of performance and theatre studies, supplying valuable optics with which to consider shifts in practices no longer susceptible to the conventions of textual and character analysis; and to describing the joint complexities of theatre-making and theatre-going.”
– Mike Pearson, Professor of Performance Studies Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Aberystwyth University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Gene H. Bell-Villada and Nina Sichel with Faith Eidse and Elaine Neil Orr,"Writing Out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids",Hardback,978-1-4438-3360-8,49.99,"Crossing borders and boundaries, countries and cultures, they are the children of the military, diplomatic corps, international business, education and missions communities. They are called Third Culture Kids or Global Nomads, and the many benefits of their lifestyle – expanded worldview, multiplicity of languages, tolerance for difference – are often mitigated by recurring losses – of relationships, of stability, of permanent roots. They are part of an accelerating demographic that is only recently coming into visibility.
In this groundbreaking collection, writers from around the world address issues of language acquisition and identity formation, childhood mobility and adaptation, memory and grief, and the artist’s struggle to articulate the experience of growing up global. And, woven like a thread through the entire collection, runs the individual’s search for belonging and a place called “home.”
This book provides a major leap in understanding what it’s like to grow up among worlds. It is invaluable reading for the new global age.
","“This terrific and substantial volume is a vital step in clarifying the experiences, gifts, and struggles of those who grew up around the world, or with those who grew up elsewhere. I can’t wait to teach with it.”
– Wendy Laura Belcher, PhD, Professor of Literature, Princeton University
“Well-grounded in classical perspectives and new visions of what it means to live in an intercultural world, the book offers a wonderful array of memoir, research, interviews, theory and even poetry. There’s something for everyone here!”
– Anne P. Copeland, PhD, Director, The Interchange Institute
“The selections here, varied as they are, share the quiet, profound, and rich experiences of people writing on the most innocent years, transcendent of cultural boundaries. Reading this book is a travel across the globe with an impressive group of worldly citizens.”
– Morten Ender, PhD, Professor of Sociology, United States Military Academy at West Point
“I recommend this book to all parents who are creating TCKs; to teachers and professors of TCKs; for general reading and understanding of the making of a citizen of the world; and, finally, to TCKs themselves, who will see that their experiences are shared with many others.”
– Linda A. Garvelink, President, Foreign Service Youth Foundation
“This book is an essential contribution to the discussion of migration and the art of finding a home between borders. In vivid prose, the authors reveal the value of cultural negotiation and the complexity of identities formed on the margins.”
– Neela Vaswani, PhD, Author of You Have Given Me a Country
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Avigail Abarbanel,Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists,Hardback,978-1-4438-3449-0,44.99,"There is an expectation in Jewish communities around the world that all Jews embrace Zionism and offer unquestioning support for Israel, ‘right or wrong’. Jewish identity and Zionism are commonly and deliberately blurred. Jews who criticise Israel or question Zionism are often excluded, vilified and threatened. If they express sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people, they risk being branded as traitors and accused of ‘supporting the enemies of Israel’.
Beyond Tribal Loyalties is a unique collection of twenty-five personal stories of Jewish peace activists from Australia, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States. There is an age difference of more than fifty years between the oldest and the youngest contributor. The stories focus on the complex and intensely personal journey that Jewish activists go through to free themselves from the hold of Zionist ideology and its requirement to support all Israeli policies. Like many Jews, most of the contributors were once unquestioning supporters of Israel and Zionism. Something happened in the life of each of these extraordinary people that caused them to question and re-evaluate their understanding of the conflict and their relationship with Israel and the Palestinian people. In many cases this journey involved a reassessment of personal values, belief systems and identity. Beyond Tribal Loyalties seeks to discover what makes it possible for Jewish peace activists to follow through with this transformative journey and their activist work, despite fanatical and sometimes violent opposition.
This is an inspiring book for anyone who is interested in the experience of being a peace activist. It offers a fresh and unusual angle on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and is a unique contribution in a field where political analysis is common, but where the personal angle is often lacking.
Find Beyond Tribal Loyalties on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Beyond-Tribal-Loyalties-Personal-Stories-of-Jewish-Peace-Activists/116150431829716?sk=wall
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Heather M. Morgan and Ruth Morris,Moving Forward: Tradition and Transformation,Hardback,978-1-4438-3462-9,34.99,"This book has been compiled following the quality and reception of papers presented at the Moving Forward Postgraduate Conference, held at the University of Aberdeen, 21–22 July 2009. The volume comprises editorial and seven substantive papers on the themes of ‘tradition and transformation’, carefully chosen by the editorial team from in excess of fifty full written papers. These represent and tender a wide range of scholarly approaches to and within the arts and social sciences; the remit of Moving Forward. Each paper has been catered to a non-specialist audience in order to make the collection more widely accessible. Although ‘tradition and transformation’ seems loose terminology in many respects, it struck the editors that the dichotomy between past and future, the desire to respect history but also to effect change, and the presence of the present, were three issues that resounded throughout the conference contributions, but were those specifically captured within the selected papers. From each of six disciplinary areas, ranging across the arts and social sciences, delegates use the freedom of their positions as early-career researchers to boldly explore relations between these concepts without fear of censure, but with enthusiasm and energy for academic knowledge development and contribution. Indeed, through the papers chosen for inclusion here, distinct in their disciplinary origins, approaches and foci, we emphasise the many similarities that exist among the arts and social sciences subjects.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Kamille Gentles-Peart and Maurice L. Hall,"Re-Constructing Place and Space: Media, Culture, Discourse and the Constitution of Caribbean Diasporas",Hardback,978-1-4438-3453-7,34.99,"Cultural traditions transmitted within the primary and secondary migratory communities of the Caribbean are continually subject to loss, gain and reinterpretation. Communication practices play a role in these processes as they help to sustain and challenge the diasporic subjectivities of the Caribbean. Re-Constructing Place and Space: Media, Culture, Discourse and the Constitution of Caribbean Diasporas seeks to explore the influence of embodied, discursive and mediated communicative forms on the construction and maintenance of Caribbean diasporic communities.
The volume emerged from the 2009 New Media and the Global Diaspora Symposium: Exploring Media in Caribbean Diasporas held at Roger Williams University in the United States. The event sought to encourage interdisciplinary academic discourse on Caribbean migratory populations, foregrounding the role of communicative practices in sustaining their traditions. In keeping with the spirit of the symposium, this volume applies a transdisciplinary lens to understanding the diversity and complexity of Caribbean peoples’ production of and engagement with communication practices.
The objectives for the book are two-fold. The general objective is to contribute to discourse on diasporic identity and performativity. The more specific aim of the book is to present a more complex picture of peoples from the Caribbean region and their diasporic communities.
—From the Introduction
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Lam Peng Er and Victor Teo,Southeast Asia between China and Japan,Hardback,978-1-4438-3508-4,44.99,"Triangular relations which frame China and Japan as two sides of an isosceles triangle usually focus on the United States as the significant third side. This edited book examines another relatively underexplored set of triangular relations—those between China, Japan and Southeast Asia. The region, comprised of eleven small and medium-size states, is often considered inconsequential in the tempestuous world of international politics where political clout, economic prowess, military strength and soft power matter most. Often seen as easily dominated by extra-regional great powers, this volume reconsiders the region’s relationship with China and Japan, their two Asian neighbours to the northeast which also happen to be the world’s second and third largest economies. While China and Japan do compete for turf in Southeast Asia, states in the region do not perceive themselves as strategic pawns of these two great Asian powers but instead as proactively engaging China and Japan in the region. The country-specific case studies of this book collectively support the thesis that the Southeast Asian states actively seek to manoeuvre between China and Japan for their own advantage and at the same time grapple with developments in Northeast Asia through regional integration efforts. Through the establishment of benchmark norms and values, Southeast Asia attempts to socialise China and Japan and other external powers to the ASEAN way. Indeed, Southeast Asia as a region is now the driver of East Asian multilateralism and regionalism, and the East Asian reality is that Southeast Asia is a major political, economic and cultural player in its own right vis-à-vis the great powers.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Roberta Facchinetti,A Cultural Journey through the English Lexicon,Hardback,978-1-4438-3509-1,39.99,"This book is a metaphorical journey through the English lexicon, viewed as a vehicle and a mirror of cultural identity.
From the translatability of phrases and metaphors to genre-specific terms, from English as a Lingua Franca to English language teaching, the studies collected here testify to the fact that in English – and overall in language – word contextualization or lack of contextualization impinges on linguistic utterances and leads to differing interpretations of the textual message.
The book may be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students who are concerned with the study of the English lexicon, bearing in mind that this lexicon provides the bricks of any language, and language, in turn, needs the cornerstone of Culture to stand firmly and thrive.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Nataša Bakić-Mirić,An Integrated Approach to Intercultural Communication,Hardback,978-1-4438-3524-4,39.99,"This book explores communication, culture, and intercultural communication. The emphasis is on promoting understanding of and appreciation for the rich and varied perspectives encountered in intercultural communication opportunities. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book focuses on the need to develop self-understanding as a first step to intercultural understanding, and highlights the need for the intercultural state of mind to match our multicultural world, the difficulties inherent in the quest of such an objective, the excitement of challenges on the way and the rewards of the success that are sputtering with new energy and yet waiting to be discovered.
Furthermore, the book represents an initial step in the process of building competencies which may facilitate effective communication in all types of cross-cultural settings. It gives a unique outlook of how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavor to communicate across cultures.
The book grows out of the philosophy that developing better interpersonal, intercultural communication skills will profoundly benefit the seven billion people who share this planet and who increasingly interact with each other by producing some guidelines with which people can successfully cope with the realities of cultural diversity, the challenges of living in a multicultural world, the need to transcend the unpredictability of intercultural interactions, the accompanying fears that such interactions often encompass, and the feeling of joy and comfort in the discovery of cultural diversity.
","“An Integrated Approach to Intercultural Communication takes the study of intercultural communication to the next level, bringing together different theoretical and practical approaches to intercultural communication in an era in which this phenomenon has become a landmark of human communication, making the reader contemplate once again over many intriguing issues surrounding intercultural communication. In addition, the information used by the author spans a broad spectrum of sources including: anthropology, psychology, sociolinguistics, business, Confucianism, and neuroscience.
The diversity and freshness of the ideas in the book stem from the unique blend of the most important aspects of intercultural communication to provide the reader with an understanding of the depth and breadth of intercultural communication theory and practice in a unique and interesting way. It serves as basis for the journey towards greater intercultural communication competence and understanding of how intercultural communication principles work that is crucial to the development of mutual understanding in the global world.
Thus, the book is a valuable asset for students, interdisciplinary researchers, business people, health care providers, tourists, sojourners, expatriates and their better understanding of the key concepts relevant to understanding intercultural communication.
The book is also an overview of trends and basic problems in intercultural communication that people have been encountering since the concept was introduced in the 1970s. It takes up a number of topics in the field, among them verbal, auditory, nonverbal, business and health care, and proposes some preliminary solutions to such problems, and, most significantly, it touches on both general and specific issues in theory and practice.
Finally, this book imparts knowledge that each intercultural experience is a step in a lifelong commitment to competence in intercultural communication because intercultural communication is, in many ways, an art rather than a science that teaches how to make the world a better place where people from all cultures can live and work together by creating a unique intercultural synergy.”
– Professor Maria Sifianou, Faculty of English Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
““An Integrated Approach to Intercultural Communication” investigates multi-faceted domain of intercultural communication with its multicultural focus and interdisciplinary scope – featuring verbal, auditory, nonverbal, health care and business intercultural communication. The book does not only survey past and contemporary theoretical and research grounds but also anticipates future developments by investigating multi-faceted domain of intercultural communication.
The book is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 introduces basic information about communication, culture, cultural patterns, behaviors that impede intercultural communication such as ethnocentrism, stereotypes, prejudice, bigotry, discrimination, racism, including a very brief introduction to cultural intelligence, multiple intelligences theory, emotional intelligence. Book corpus, Chapter 2 discusses the overall characteristics of intercultural communication, intercultural process thinking, intercultural competence, intercultural communication skills, culture shock, acculturation, intercultural communication barriers, intercultural effectiveness and intercultural training. Chapters 3-6 present and discuss some of the most prominent fields of intercultural communication, namely verbal and auditory, nonverbal, health care, and business. The last part of the book titled Globe-trotting, deals with crucial information of cultural dos across the globe, and the strategies of how to avoid cultural faux pas.
Overtly, this book is an invaluable resource for all scholars, students, sojourners, expatriates, and globe-trotters exploring the broad and vast field of intercultural communication. In this important contribution to contemporary thinking about intercultural communication, Bakić-Mirić brings together discourse from widely divergent theoretical fields to explore the arena of intercultural communication.
This splendid book draws the work of such groundbreaking scholars in the field such as Larry Samovar and Richard Porter and sets these alongside emerging voices to produce something new and persuasive. This is a stimulating book indeed, providing insightful research and reflection on intercultural communication. An unexpected bonus for readers is certainly Appendix A with examples of intercultural practice activities, as well as exercises (intercultural situations) and self-evaluation questions, alongside Appendix B with an extensive review of cultural dos and don’ts around the globe.
Ultimately, a desirable and intended effect of this book is also the development of an interculturally open and tolerant mind, which will eventually lead to a better understanding of the different and varied manifestations of language, culture and communication in human society.”
- Professor Spyronikolas Hoidas, Faculty of English Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,DJ Dycus,Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: Honing the Hybridity of the Graphic Novel,Hardback,978-1-4438-3527-5,39.99,"Without a doubt Chris Ware is one of the preeminent creators of comics today. He is a brilliant figure in a generation of extraordinarily talented people. Granted, there are a lot of innovators in the field right now, but no one else in the last seventy years has explored the capabilities of the genre to the same extent as has Ware. His genius, in part, comes from his interest in and understanding of the past accomplishments of figures such as George Herriman and Winsor McCay. One might even say that much of his work is somewhat archaeological in nature: he is interested in a reclamation of the past. Rather than merely excavating the achievements of past masters for the sake of history, however, Ware is also fortifying, expanding, and enriching comics so that it might flourish in the present.
This work begins with a broad examination of the nature of comics. First by briefly discussing the cognitive operations involved in processing this hybrid medium, then by surveying the generic branches of comics, and then by offering an historic examination of its contemporary development, which goes back as far as the sixteenth century. Next is an analysis of comics in relation to literature, film, and the visual arts. Comics utilizes elements from all of these, but it also offers a unique narrative experience.
This book primarily focuses upon Ware’s magnum opus to date, Jimmy Corrigan. It contextualizes his work within developments in comics over the last fifty years, as well as comparing him to other prominent figures such as Will Eisner, Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Lynda Barry, and Frank Miller.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Edward Dutton,Culture Shock and Multiculturalism: Reclaiming a Useful Model from the Religious Realm,Hardback,978-1-4438-3526-8,39.99,"It used to be widely accepted amongst anthropologists that when they conducted fieldwork with foreign cultures they experienced something called ‘culture shock.’ This book will argue that ‘culture shock’ is a useful model for understanding an important part of human experience. However, in its most widely-known form, the stage model, ‘culture shock’ has been heavily influenced by the same anti-science, latter-day religiosity that has become so influential more broadly: Multiculturalism.
This book will examine culture shock through the model of ‘religion.’ It will show how the most well-known model of culture shock – so popular amongst business consultants, expatriates, international students and travelers – has become a means of promoting and sustaining this replacement religion which includes everything from dogmatism and fervour to conversion experience. By so doing, it will aim both to better understand culture shock and to show how it can still be useful, if divorced from its implicitly religious dimensions, to broadly scientific scholars. It will also suggest how anthropology itself might be stripped of its ideological infiltration and returned to the realm of science.
","“Dr Dutton has a deep knowledge of his field. Methodically, he is extremely thorough and aware of all possible pitfalls, always seeking a theoretical perspective from which he can analyze. In Culture Shock and Multiculturalism, his perspective, examining culture shock through the prism of religion, is surprising and he actualizes a clear scholarly problem. The book examines questions which are extremely important to all those conducting scientific work. For example, what happens to scholars who produce science outside the fashionable in-group that dominates contemporary anthropological scholarship? This book will provoke a crucial debate about the influence of postmodern scholarship in anthropology as well as providing a highly original analysis of an à la mode concept.”
– Prof. Ulrika Wolf-Knuts, Åbo Akademi, Finland
“In Culture Shock and Multiculturalism, Edward Dutton develops a thoroughly plausible and mutually consistent and interlocking set of explanations and analyses to account for the ‘shocks’ and dislocations engendered by Multiculturalism. He makes a compelling case for the efficaciousness of stereotypes in human survival and even has the temerity to point out that the view that all cultures are equal and its supporting ideological infrastructure are somewhat vulnerable to scientific, empirical investigation. Truly shocking!”
– Dr Frank Ellis, Author of Political Correctness and the Theoretical Struggle
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Lynn Zubernis and Katherine Larsen,"Fandom At The Crossroads: Celebration, Shame and Fan/Producer Relationships",Hardback,978-1-4438-3530-5,39.99,"Fandom At The Crossroads: Celebration, Shame and Fan/Producer Relationships is an in-depth exploration of the reciprocal relationship between a groundbreaking cult television show and its equally groundbreaking fandom. For the past six years the authors have inhabited the close-knit fan communities of the television show Supernatural, engaging in criticism and celebration, reading and writing fanfiction, and attending fan conventions. Their close relationships within the community allow an intimate behind-the-scenes examination of fan psychology, passion, motivation, and shame.
The authors also speak directly to the creative side in order to understand what fuels the passionate reciprocal relationship Supernatural has with its fans, and to interrogate the reality of fans’ fears and shame. As they go behind the scenes and onto the sets to talk with Supernatural’s showrunners, writers, and actors, the authors struggle to negotiate a hybrid identity as “aca-fans”. Fangirls one moment, “legitimate” researchers the next, the boundaries often blur. Their repeated breaking of the fan/creative side boundary is mirrored in Supernatural’s reputation for fourth wall breaking, which has attracted journalistic coverage everywhere from Entertainment Weekly to the New York Times. Written with humor and irreverence, Stalking Fandom combines an innovative theorizing of fandom and popular culture, which will be useful in a variety of courses, with a behind-the-scenes story that anyone who’s ever been a fan or wondered why others are fans will find fascinating.
","“Fandom At The Crossroads raises vital questions for contemporary fan studies. Pondering whether fan practices can be therapeutic, asking how boundaries between fans and producers are policed (from both sides), and considering fan conflicts, this is a rich and timely study of Supernatural fandom which also opens up wider issues surrounding convergence culture right now. Drawing on detailed, wide-ranging interviews with showrunners and the show’s cast, Fandom At The Crossroads also boasts a degree of access that’s incredibly rare in work of this kind. By combining their fan and scholarly identities, Larsen and Zubernis challenge all of us to see the subject anew.”
– Matt Hills, Cardiff University; Author of Fan Cultures and Triumph of a Time Lord
“Larsen and Zubernis have produced what will no doubt be a valuable addition to the growing scholarship on fan studies. Their passion as Supernatural fans shines through and they should be congratulated for researching and writing an influential book that asks the reader to not only consider their own relationship to a particular fandom but demands that they take notice and take seriously the diverse interests and emotional attachments millions have with their objects of affection.”
– Lincoln Geraghty, University of Portsmouth; Editor of the Directory of World Cinema: American Hollywood
“‘The fans’ are an incredibly important force in the entertainment industry: Powerful executives, directors and writers fear them, countless web sites cater to them and their support (or wrath) can make or break a project. But who are the fans? What do they want? How do they view their complex relationships with the stories and storytellers they obsess over? Fortunately, Lynn Zubernis and Katherine Larsen are here to take us on a fascinating journey into the belly of the beast – an appropriate metaphor, given their profound and passionate knowledge of the complex and challenging spooky serial Supernatural. But you don’t have to be a fan of the Winchester Brothers to enjoy this witty, thoughtful and intelligent guide to the nature of fandom and the endless varieties of the fan experience. As Dean Winchester would say, ‘They get it.’”
– Maureen Ryan, Television Critic, AOL/Huffington Post
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Jodie Matthews and Daniel Travers,Islands and Britishness: A Global Perspective,Hardback,978-1-4438-3516-9,39.99,"Islands and archipelagos hold great imaginative power, and they have long been a subject of study for cartographers and geographers, for anthropologists and historians of colonisation. But what does it mean to be an islander? Can one feel both British and Manx, for example? What are British tourists looking for when they go to former island colonies? How do past relationships with Britain affect islands today? This collection takes a variety of perspectives to provide answers to such questions, examining war, empire, tourism, immigration, language, literature, and everyday life on and in islands, and the question of travel to and from them. Britishness is highlighted as a global island phenomenon, providing an insight into the history, culture and politics of identities from Jersey to Jamaica.
Islands and Britishness not only brings together various contemporary strands in Island Studies, but uniquely focuses on the relationship – historical, cultural and economic – between particular islands and Britain, and, crucially, how this relationship frames national identity both on the island and in Britain itself.
The collection examines interactions between Britishness and indigenous or earlier invasive/settler cultures, as well as the internal differences within the concept of ‘Britishness’ (Britain/Scotland/Shetland, for instance). It considers the relationship played out on the island between Britishness and the other nationalities with which the islands share an affinity, and questions received wisdoms about national identity on the islands by considering intersecting discourses such as class and gender. The collection offers a global perspective on the divisions within a notion of Britishness and the identities against which Britishness has been constructed.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,"Simo Häyrynen, Risto Turunen and Jopi Nyman","Locality, Memory, Reconstruction: The Cultural Challenges and Possibilities of Former Single-Industry Communities",Hardback,978-1-4438-3511-4,39.99,"This interdisciplinary volume explores the role of culture in single-industry communities facing the loss of their major industry. In a series of innovative case studies extending from New Zealand and Slovenia to the contemporary Nordic and Baltic States, the contributors address a wide range of topical issues. These include the role of the community’s past as a marker of its newly reconstructed identity and the importance of local traditions, landscapes, and place-related memories in post-industrial communities formerly dependent on one single employer or industry. The empirical case studies emphasise the role of cultural memory and local identity as communal strategies of survival and perseverance in such places and provide fresh perspectives into this turn to culture.
The four parts of the book address such topics as the symbolic governance of change, tradition as capital, narratives as collective memories, and post-Soviet transition in comparative perspective. The team of international contributors hails from Australia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, and Slovenia and represents the fields of sociology, cultural policy, cultural history, landscape studies, and geography.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,"Smatie Yemenedzi-Malathouni, Tatiani G. Rapatzikou and Eleftheria Arapoglou",Re-inventing/Re-presenting Identities in a Global World,Hardback,978-1-4438-3569-5,39.99,"Re-inventing/Re-presenting Identities in a Global World is a collection of twelve selected essays which address the concepts of cultural identity formation and enactment, immigration, diaspora and repatriation, and gender politics within a globalized context. With the peripheral having now become the center of contemporary culture, this volume examines cultural and literary diversities that have emerged from the reciprocal traffic of ideas and influences between cultures, politics, aesthetics and disciplines, with an emphasis on cultural identity as a site of crisis and fragmentation.
Written in an accessible way, this volume addresses several audiences, from postgraduate researchers and scholars in the fields of Anglo-American and cross-cultural studies, women’s studies, minority and ethnic literature studies, to scholars, students and specialists of American, cross-Atlantic and even global studies. Because of the numerous theoretical concerns which underpin this work and its interdisciplinary approach, the publication is also aimed at researchers and scholars in the fields of trans-atlantic studies and cultural geography, as well as the general reader who is interested in globality and cultural identity.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Maria Emília Fonseca,Touching Art: The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting the Tree of Life,Paperback,978-1-4438-3522-0,24.99,"This study focusses on the exhibition of the Tree of Life, a sculpture made in Mozambique of decommissioned, dismantled weapons, created to celebrate peace and commissioned by the British Museum, chosen to be the symbol of the “Africa 2005” season of cultural events and exhibited in its Great Court between February and October 2005. This artwork was first exhibited in Maputo before being dispatched to Britain and it is presently on display at the Sainsbury African Galleries of the British Museum, in London.
This dissertation moves along two converging routes: the articulation of the meaning(s) produced within the exhibition and the role of exhibitionary institutions in the creation of social knowledge. A central topic of discussion is the different practices and sites of exhibition of the Tree of Life sculpture in Britain and in Mozambique, in an endeavour to illustrate/establish the differences which determine and/or condition the specific approaches used in the two distinct cultural contexts within which it was exhibited.
The discussion evolves towards exploring how a new discourse on the exhibition of contemporary African art questions and challenges both curatorial practices and cultural concepts of collecting, displaying and interpreting art objects and negotiating meaning.
","“The Tree of Life is an important symbol in many cultures and has different ways of being perceived and represented according to time. Until recently, there were no cultural approaches to the symbol and the present work deals with various ways of decoding the representation not only in its specific African environment but also in the context of a museum – the British Museum. The selected perspectives include also ways of theorizing the interdisciplinary dimensions of the work as well as the various ways of displaying it. This book will appeal to anyone interested and doing research in Cultural Studies and Museum Studies, as well as in Contemporary African Art.”
—Professor Teresa Malafaia, Academic Coordinator: Culture Studies, Media and Culture Studies, Alameda da Universidade
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,"Sandra Cardarelli, Emily Jane Anderson and John Richards","Art and Identity: Visual Culture, Politics and Religion in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance",Hardback,978-1-4438-3628-9,44.99,"This book provides a fully contextualised overview on aspects of visual culture, and how this was the product of patronage, politics, and religion in some European countries between the 13th and 17th centuries. The research that is showcased here offers new perspectives on the conception, production and reception of artworks as a means of projecting core values, ideals, and traditions of individuals, groups, and communities. This volume features contributions from established scholars and new researchers in the field, and examines how art contributed to the construction of identities by means of new archival research and a thorough interdisciplinary approach. The authors suggest that the use of conventions in style and iconography allowed the local and wider community to take part in rituals and devotional practices where these works were widely recognized symbols. However, alongside established traditions, new, ad-hoc developments in style and iconography were devised to suit individual requirements, and these are fully discussed in relevant case-studies. This book also contributes to a new understanding of the interaction between artists, patrons, and viewers in Medieval and Renaissance times.
","“Art and Identity offers a thought-provoking study of ways in which art contributed to the construction of a variety of identities in Europe between the mid thirteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Drawing on recent and innovative research by both established and early career scholars, it provides an illuminating demonstration of the complexity inherent in the process of defining the many different and overlapping identities within medieval and renaissance society and reveals the multiple uses to which art was put in order to convey, embody and affirm these. In so doing, it exemplifies the value of an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, paying proper attention to the relevance of the specific political, social and religious contexts in which, and for which, particular works of art were made. A further strength of this collection is that it encompasses a variety of artistic media and addresses works of art produced not only in Italy – long recognised as a major centre of art production – but also in other parts of northern and central Europe. The essays in Art and Identity can be warmly recommended to historians, art historians, and the general reader with an interest in the art, social practices and rituals of medieval and renaissance society.”
– Diana Norman, Professor Emeritus of Art History, The Open University, UK
“This very well-organised collection brings together some exciting new work on questions of artistic and cultural identity between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. The essay contributions, based on an excellent postgraduate conference held at the University of Aberdeen in the summer of 2008, build a varied and rich picture of the role of visual art in the formation of cultural identity in a period of great change and diversity. The organisation of the essays into three sections dealing successively with questions of political and family identity, individual and communal patronage and finally specific issues of iconography and style, gives the collection a broad thematic unity, even as individual contributions [throw] new light on a wide range of specific topics and images. Another kind of unity is provided by the contextual methodology employed by all the contributors, which insistently places the visual image at the heart of the cultural process of identity formation. The volume will form a welcome addition to the burgeoning art historical literature examining the central and formative role of art in the formation of cultural identity in what was a key period in European history.”
– Dr Tom Nichols, Senior Lecturer in the History of Art, University of Aberdeen
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Andrew B. Morris,"Catholic Education: Universal Principles, Locally Applied",Hardback,978-1-4438-3634-0,39.99,"This collection of essays is concerned with the Catholic Church’s understanding of the nature of human flourishing and the processes of education that flow from it.
Each essay seeks, in its own way, to explore, illustrate and provide insights into the application of Catholic education policy and practice in differing socio/legislative circumstances.
The book is divided into three main sections. The first explores Catholic teaching on education, its ethical basis and the Christo-centred nature of Catholic school leadership. The second considers some of the structural characteristics of Catholic educational systems in England, the United States of America and Jordan. The third section illustrates, in a series of case studies, how the universal precepts underpinning Catholic education are implemented in a variety of national and international contexts.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Cécile Coquet-Mokoko and Trevor Harris,"Crafting Identities, Remapping Nationalities: The English-Speaking World in the Age of Globalization",Hardback,978-1-4438-3578-7,34.99,"In the different versions of multiculturalism that have re-shaped English-speaking societies and political systems, identities appear more plastic than in societies which have constructed their national narratives on more stubborn denials of their colonial and patriarchal pasts; yet, the myth of purity (or authenticity) and separatist temptations remain very real parameters of identity politics. In such contexts, crafting an identity for oneself implies expectations of consistency, linked not only to the individual need to prove oneself and disprove stereotypes and statistics, but also to the broader political goal of dis-alienating or, as it were, de-Othering oneself and one’s community. The contributors to this book explore the different ways – from the most institutional to the most intimate – in which people articulate the politics of memory and the creation of national narratives, or communal and personal identities.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,"Will Jackson, Bob Jeffery, Mattia Marino and Tom Sykes","Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Contemporary and Historical Human Challenges",Hardback,978-1-4438-3612-8,39.99,"Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Contemporary and Historical Human Challenges brings together a range of original contributions that seek to critically interrogate the concept of ‘crisis’, a seemingly omnipresent and defining metonym of our times. Both international and interdisciplinary in perspective, the leading doctoral scholars and early-career researchers represented in this volume unsettle hegemonic notions of crisis (and possible remedies) by exploring both a very wide range of extant crises (in and of politics, economics, communities, technologies, urban policy, literary representation, media studies, language learning, nationalisms and national identity, and the legitimation of the state), as well as the roots of our contemporary understandings of crisis and the politics of ‘crisis representation’. The book is broadly divided into two sections, ‘Politics and Society’ and ‘Arts, Media and Humanities’.
Originating in the University of Salford Arts, Media and Social Sciences Postgraduate Research Conference of 2010, Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety provides both an accessible and wide-ranging general introduction to various applications of the concept of crisis, as well providing a more specialist resource for students exploring crisis in one of the many disciplinary fields represented in this collection. Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety will be of particular interest to students with interdisciplinary interests that encompass cultural studies, literary theory, media studies, politics, sociology and urban studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Aleksandr Dyukov and Olesya Orlenko,"Divided Eastern Europe: Borders and Population Transfer, 1938-1947",Hardback,978-1-4438-3582-4,39.99,"In 1938, on the eve of what would mark the beginning of the Second World War during the international crisis, Eastern Europe was divided – in every sense of the word. New governments, which were generally regarded as national states, rose from the ashes of the old pre-modern Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. However, civic nations were not formed within them; the titular ethnic groups were far from being the only representing populations in these states. The new states in Eastern Europe were the offspring of wars and revolutions. Their borders were initially determined by the rights of the powerful. New borders divided entire peoples, having created the very foundation for inter-state conflicts as well as the desire to revise the established order in the region. One of the consequences of the Second World War was the revision of Eastern European borders. Still today, historians have yet to agree upon a single assessment of the eastern European events in the 1930s and 1940s.
Researchers from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Moldavia, Israel, Germany and the USA have all contributed articles featured in this collection. The book is focused on national border changes in Eastern Europe during the period from 1938 to 1947: population transfer as a result of foreign and domestic political considerations, interethnic relationships and ethnic purges of paramilitary units; the concept of self- perception of people living on frontiers forced to change their national and civil status; and the problems of modern East European borders.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Reghina Dascăl,Episodes from a History of Undoing: The Heritage of Female Subversiveness,Hardback,978-1-4438-3611-1,39.99,"Episodes from a History of Undoing: The Heritage of Female Subversiveness (paraphrasing Rada Khumar’s seminal study of the development of the feminist movements in India: The History of Doing) is a volume purporting to illustrate women’s resistance to patriarchal colonization through societal norms and hegemonic discourses. Whether mythical amazons, mediaeval authors or regular cannonesses, Renaissance monarchs, activists and academics, philosophers or politicians, such women have become trail-blazers in their fields, attempting to forge new epistemes through strategies of undoing, refashioning, rewriting or revising political and cultural concepts, practices and institutions.
The volume comprises 11 essays authored by academics from Brazil, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Turkey and the USA, and addresses a wide readership of academics, students, historians, NGO activists, etc. The volume is prefaced by Professor Margaret R. Higonnet from Connecticut University.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Matt Mollgaard,Radio and Society: New Thinking for an Old Medium,Hardback,978-1-4438-3607-4,39.99,"Radio is the original mass electronic medium and it continues to be critical for audiences wanting news, information, music and entertainment. For over a century enthusiasts, scholars, practitioners, governments, businesses and listeners have developed and influenced radio, making it a fascinating medium to explore today. There is still no mass medium as ubiquitous as radio and the Internet has extended its geographical and temporal reach even further. Radio remains a key media form and technology, not only surviving the challenges of the screen and digital ages, but developing despite and because of them.
This book is a collection of contemporary research by radio scholars from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It explores different aspects of this both simple and complex medium, from early radio histories to the contemporary developments of radio on the Internet. Chapters engage with critical debates about the role of government, business and communities in how radio is used in our societies. Some chapters provide important new insights into making radio, and radio as a cultural force. Other chapters explore developments in research methodologies that enable deeper insights into contemporary radio and its audiences. This book provides a range of platforms for engaging with radio and radio research as a rich, vibrant and fruitful way to further our understandings of the media and ultimately, ourselves.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,"Junichi Toyota, Pernilla Hallonsten and Marina Shchepetunina",Sense of Emptiness: An Interdisciplinary Approach,Hardback,978-1-4438-3583-1,39.99,"Human perception is often believed to function holistically, especially in the tradition of Gestalt psychology, involving a focused item and its surrounding. This holistic approach can allow us to explain something that is not directly experienced in our perception, meaning that the absence as well as the presence of something can have a significant impact on how we perceive the world. The way we perceive the presence is more or less the same cross-culturally, but the prominence of the absence, or what is termed emptiness in this volume, varies considerably from one culture to another. The aim of this volume is to identify what emptiness is like and how different cultures incorporate this concept from various perspectives. It turns out that emptiness plays a key role in identifying socio-cultural diversity in a broader sense, including arts and languages.
This volume consists of contributions from different fields covering a wide range of topics such as history, literary studies, mythology, film studies, architecture, linguistics, social-anthropology, ethnology and cognitive science. Due to the range covered in this volume, studies presented here are highly interdisciplinary, but all chapters deal with the sense of emptiness, which suggest that the underlying idea of the significance of emptiness is pervasive. Yet, this topic has not previously been systematically compared across different disciplines. It is hoped that this volume will offer a first overview of the pervasiveness and integration of disciplines concerning the sense of emptiness.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Toni Johnson-Woods and Amit Sarwal,Sold by the Millions: Australia’s Bestsellers,Hardback,978-1-4438-3584-8,39.99,"Australian genre fiction writers have successfully exploited the Australian landscape and peoples and as a result their books are today “sold by the millions” across boundaries. They have created stories that are imaginative, visionary, and diverse. They appeal to local and international readerships and, most importantly, are thoroughly entertaining, thus making them a strong presence in the popular fiction bazaar.
Sold by the Millions: Australia’s Bestsellers is the first collection to concentrate on Australia’s best-selling material that forms the armchair reading of many Australians. Leading experts of popular fiction provide introspective pieces on Romance, Horror, Crime, Science Fiction, Western, Comics, Travel, Sports and Children’s writing so that a wholesome picture emerges of the wide range of reading and research options available for scholars.
","“Sold by the Millions is a timely and significant contribution to Australian book history and cultural studies. Diverse as well as entertaining, these essays on popular genre publishing entice the reader into the underworld cornucopia that is Australian pulp fiction.”
– Dr Craig Munro, Co-editor of Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia 1946–2005
“This is the story of those Australians who, quite literally, sold out. True to the objects of their study, the authors thrill with tales of staggering sales achieved by Australian writers you’ve never heard of and delight with impossible literary thirsts, such as Scandinavia’s for Australian cowboy stories. And in more strictly scholarly terms this volume represents a timely re-evaluation of the place of popular fiction both in the canon and academia.”
– Dr Alistair Rolls, University of Newcastle
“Australian popular fiction has a broad impact on Australian and international readerships, but has thus far been undertheorized in the academy. This much-needed collection takes Australian popular fiction as its focus, covering a range of topics and genres. A more complete picture of Australian literature is emerging, and it is a very exciting picture indeed.”
– Dr Kim Wilkins, University of Queensland
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Vanessa K. Valdés,The Future is Now: A New Look at African Diaspora Studies,Hardback,978-1-4438-3638-8,39.99,"The Future is Now: A New Look at African Diaspora Studies is an exciting collection of essays representative of new voices in this ever-expanding field. Writing in English, Spanish, French, and Haitian Creole, the volume’s contributors look at the fields of art, literature, film, and music. From the Hispanophone, Francophone, and Anglophone Caribbean to the United States and Europe, the scholars here interrogate themes of memory, power, gender, identity, race, and religion. In so doing, they uncover forgotten episodes of history previously lost to hegemonic tellings of the past. Here, readers will find studies on Haitian documentary, Puerto Rican art, Trinidadian calypso, Colombian poetry, the African-American novel, and African photography and collage. The Future Is Now serves as a celebration of the contributions made by peoples of African descent, providing a glimpse at the breadth of cultural offerings to be found throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas and Europe.
","“The merit of The Future is Now: A New Look at African Diaspora Studies is that it takes scholars out of the traditional academic straightjacket, by focusing on more than one discipline, more than one geographic location, and more than one linguistic group. The volume takes a welcome holistic approach to the African diasporic experience.”
– Flore Zéphir, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Missouri; Acting Director, Afro-Romance Institute for Languages and Literatures of the African Diaspora
“[The Future is Now] will make a valuable contribution to the dialogue on the current thinking and on the future direction of African Diaspora Studies. Regarding the essays themselves, they are thought-provoking, well-researched, and quite appropriate for demonstrating how one pays ‘homage to one’s ancestors’ . . .”
– James J. Davis, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of World Languages and Cultures, Howard University
“Dealing with the African Diaspora in the Americas, the essays here are significant in that they expand this important subject beyond its all too common focus on the culture of the United States alone and discuss it in the context of Latin America as well. In an age of unprecedented electronic communication between the peoples of the Americas, the implementation of this kind of hemispheric perspective is both refreshing and productive.”
– Earl E. Fitz, PhD, Professor of Spanish, Portuguese, and Comparative Literature, Vanderbilt University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Ofra Amihay and Lauren Walsh,The Future of Text and Image: Collected Essays on Literary and Visual Conjunctures,Hardback,978-1-4438-3640-1,44.99,"The question of the relation between the visual and the textual in literature is at the heart of an increasing number of scholarly projects, and in turn, the investigation of evolving visual-verbal dynamics is becoming an independent discipline. This volume explores these profound literary shifts through the work of twelve talented, and in some cases, emerging scholars who study text and image relations in diverse forms and contexts.
The inter-medial conjunctures investigated in this book play with and against the traditional roles of the visual and the verbal. The Future of Text and Image presents explorations of the incorporation of visual elements into works of literature, of visual writing modes, and of the textuality and literariness of images. It focuses on the special potential literature offers for the combination of these two functions. Alongside examinations of major forms and genres such as memoirs, novels, and poetry, this volume expands the discussion of text and image relations into more marginal forms, for instance, collage books, the PostSecret collections of anonymous postcards, and digital poetry. In other words, while exploring the destiny of text and image as an independent discipline, this volume simultaneously looks at the very literal future of text and image forms in an ever-changing technological reality. The essays in this book will help to define the emergent practices and politics of this growing field of study, and at the same time, reflect the tremendous significance of the visual in today’s image culture.
","“The imagetext … is a principle of thought, feeling, and meaning as fundamental to human beings as distinctions (and the accompanying indistinctions) of gender and sexuality. … Of course, some will say that we have transcended all these binary oppositions in the digital age, when images have all been absorbed into the flow of information. They forget that the dense, sensuous world of the analog doesn’t disappear in the field of ones and zeros: it re-surfaces in the eye and ear ravished by new forms of music and spectacle, and in the hand itself, where digits are literalized in the keyboard interface and game controller. Hardly surprising then, that the imagetext can play such a productive role in the range of essays included in this volume, embracing poetry and photography, painting and typography, blogs and comics.”
– W. J. T. Mitchell, University of Chicago
“The lexicon collectively developed here does more than mark a moment of frustration with writing as medium. By stitching terms together to account for image/text conjunctures, it gestures to a pedagogy and a politics as well: a pedagogy toward dealing with the difficulties and discomforts created by new forms and a politics that might emerge from the practice of looking and reading relationally, connectively, contrapuntally. And from doing so with an eye to the future.”
– Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Precious McKenzie,The Right Sort of Woman: Victorian Travel Writers and the Fitness of an Empire,Hardback,978-1-4438-3637-1,34.99,"The rhetoric surrounding Empire, freedom, and adventure are nowhere more striking than in nineteenth-century British women’s travel writing. The Right Sort of Woman charts the progression of British feminism in relationship to exploration of the Empire. Precious McKenzie introduces us to the lesser known writings of Florence Douglas Dixie, Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond, and Isabel Savory, and also revisits the more widely read travel texts of Isabella Bird Bishop and Mary Kingsley. Their travel writings explore the hotly debated Victorian ideologies of femininity, equality, and fitness.
McKenzie contends that British women travel writers found opportunities for freedom when traveling abroad. Women travelers could participate in what were traditionally men’s sports – hunting, riding, canoeing, shooting, mountaineering – when far away from strict Victorian social codes of behavior. Because of their athletic pursuits while abroad, British women travelers found their health improved as did their self-reliance and self-confidence. McKenzie considers how sports shaped the British feminist movement and then became integral to the revolutionary image of the New Woman at the fin de siècle.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Avigail Abarbanel,Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists,Paperback,978-1-4438-3796-5,29.99,"There is an expectation in Jewish communities around the world that all Jews embrace Zionism and offer unquestioning support for Israel, ‘right or wrong’. Jewish identity and Zionism are commonly and deliberately blurred. Jews who criticise Israel or question Zionism are often excluded, vilified and threatened. If they express sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people, they risk being branded as traitors and accused of ‘supporting the enemies of Israel’.
Beyond Tribal Loyalties is a unique collection of twenty-five personal stories of Jewish peace activists from Australia, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States. There is an age difference of more than fifty years between the oldest and the youngest contributor. The stories focus on the complex and intensely personal journey that Jewish activists go through to free themselves from the hold of Zionist ideology and its requirement to support all Israeli policies. Like many Jews, most of the contributors were once unquestioning supporters of Israel and Zionism. Something happened in the life of each of these extraordinary people that caused them to question and re-evaluate their understanding of the conflict and their relationship with Israel and the Palestinian people. In many cases this journey involved a reassessment of personal values, belief systems and identity. Beyond Tribal Loyalties seeks to discover what makes it possible for Jewish peace activists to follow through with this transformative journey and their activist work, despite fanatical and sometimes violent opposition.
This is an inspiring book for anyone who is interested in the experience of being a peace activist. It offers a fresh and unusual angle on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and is a unique contribution in a field where political analysis is common, but where the personal angle is often lacking.
Find Beyond Tribal Loyalties on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Beyond-Tribal-Loyalties-Personal-Stories-of-Jewish-Peace-Activists/116150431829716?sk=wall
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Roberta Facchinetti,English Dictionaries as Cultural Mines,Hardback,978-1-4438-3647-0,39.99,"Dictionaries are mines whose word-gems encapsulate centuries of language history and cultural traditions; they are store-houses of meanings and uses, ‘lamp genies’ to be set free at the very moment readers set their eyes on their entries.
This book is an attempt to free such lamp genies, by discussing the role of dictionaries in the identification and expression of cultural aspects in language, with special reference to English. As such, its eleven chapters have been arranged to focus on general, genre-specific, monolingual and bilingual lexicography, both from a diachronic and a synchronic perspective.
The book will be of use to lexicographers and lexicologists, as well as to corpus linguists, historical and contemporary English scholars, students of English, and anybody interested in the juice of culture(s) that can be fruitfully extracted from dictionary entries.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis,"How Far Can We Go? Pain, Excess and the Obscene",Hardback,978-1-4438-3643-2,34.99,"The public does not desire horror, yet enjoys it in art and suffers it in life. When we deal with the monstrous marriage of the abject and the sublime, the consequent thrill of enjoyment is never appeased, always problematic, often unresolved and finally borders on physiological if not pathological narcissism. The public is well acquainted with this ‘rhetoric of effects’; rhetoric of extreme effects, which transforms the spectator into voyeur or victim, into an apathetic torturer, whenever cruelty is shown without respite. A look of horror greets the enjoyment of extremes and enjoyment to the extreme as well; the Eighteenth Century teaches us that lesson. The century of good taste elaborates a sense of the limits, since representing horror means choosing not so much to domesticate it as to render it more enjoyable. It is a game of limits that are not limits anymore, as we can allude to an infinity that often shows the features of the sublime.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Yael Almog and Erik Born,Neighbors and Neighborhoods: Living Together in the German-Speaking World,Hardback,978-1-4438-3733-0,34.99,"Neighbors and Neighborhoods: Living Together in the German-Speaking World is a bilingual collection of nine essays on culture, film, language, literature, and theory. The essays in this collection address questions of community and cohesion in the modern German-speaking world, a complex sociolinguistic community that is no longer defined by territorial boundaries but that remains, in many respects, a neighborhood. How can neighborliness be possible for this world in an age of mass migration and increasing globalization? Given the fluidity of modern identity, what could make communities uniform, harmonious, or even cohesive, if they can be created and dissolved in an instant? To what extent do modern technology and mass communication facilitate and/or inhibit the ability to inhabit multiple cultures and multiple worlds?
Examining the specific constitution of the modern German-speaking world, this volume contributes to recent scholarship in critical theory on the figure of the neighbor and the biblical injunction to love one’s neighbor as oneself. The essays in this volume, proceeding in a roughly chronological order, expose how images of neighbors and neighborhoods have developed in the German-speaking world over the course of the twentieth century. The examination of these developments should enrich both the study of multiculturalism and (trans-)nationalism in German Studies and that of subjectivity and political theology in critical theory. Offering a wide range of approaches to one critical topic, the essays in this volume should be useful to students and scholars in the fields of German Studies, cultural studies, language & literature, and film & media, especially those with an interest in secularism and globalization.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Ignacio López-Calvo,Peripheral Transmodernities: South-to-South Intercultural Dialogues between the Luso-Hispanic World and “the Orient”,Hardback,978-1-4438-3714-9,44.99,"This volume is a collection of essays dealing with the critical dialogue between the cultural production of the Hispanic/Latino world and that of the so-called Orient or the Orient itself, including the Asian and Arab worlds. As we see in these essays, the Europeans’ cultural others (peripheral nations and former colonies) have established an intercultural and intercontinental dialogue among themselves, without feeling the need to resort to the center-metropolis’ mediation. These South-to-South dialogues tend not to be as asymmetric as the old dialogue between the (former) metropolis (the hegemonic, Eurocentric center) and the colonies.
These essays about Hispanic and Latino cultural production (most of them dealing with literature, but some covering urban art, music, and film) provide vivid examples of de-colonizing impetus and cultural resistance. In some of them, we can find peripheral subjectivities’ perception of other peripheral, racialized, and (post)colonial subjects and their cultures.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,David Henderson,"Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society",Hardback,978-1-4438-3731-6,44.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Carolina Rodríguez-López and José M. Faraldo,Reconsidering a Lost Intellectual Project: Exiles’ Reflections on Cultural Differences,Hardback,978-1-4438-3649-4,34.99,"This book explores an aspect of the complex cultural history of 20th-century exile: the influences of transnational experiences on the views of emigrants and exiles concerning their own academic, scientific and intellectual cultures. These essays focus on the reflections of people who left their countries during the period of 1933–1945. Many of them reconsidered their own past in the old country and compared it with their actual experiences in the adopted homeland. The individual cases presented here share a similar theoretical framework. The book is divided into two sections: the first one focuses on the German and Spanish lost project, and the second one deals with the East European projects – focused on Polish and Rumanian examples above all.
From the perspective of transnational history, Merel Leeman analyzes the cases of two special exiles: George Mosse and Peter Gay. Spaniards’ American projects is the main topic of Carolina Rodríguez-López’s analysis of Spanish scholars in the US. Natacha Bolufer focuses on associations and newspapers like Liberación which paid special attention to Spanish leftists suffering from Franco’s political measures. José M. Faraldo looks at the cases of refugees from Eastern European countries – mainly from Romania and Poland – who escaped to Spain after the fall of the axis in 1945. Mihaela Albu describes the diversity and plurality of Romanian exiles in the Western world, in diverse countries of Europe and also in the US.
This book aims to encourage the dialogue and comparison among diverse exiles.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Dana Percec,Romance: The History of a Genre,Hardback,978-1-4438-3734-7,39.99,"Romance: The History of a Genre is a collection of essays devoted to the highly popular and no less controversial genre of romance. A genre often disregarded for its stereotypical language, shallow characters, and predictable plots, dismissed as “women’s” fiction, accused of conventionalism, romance is a genre which, after ups and downs in its millennial history, is now holding a leading position on the international bookselling market. This achievement has also been possible with the endorsement of contemporary media and modern technology, cinema, television, the Internet, etc. Much has been written in both traditional and more recent literary theory about the origins and evolution of the early forms of romance, from the classical Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and into the Renaissance and early modernity in Western Europe. A corpus, which is becoming more and more substantial today, is already available about the gendered status of contemporary romance, both in terms of the writing ethos and in terms of reader response, with theories coming from the combined areas of feminism, social sciences, and psychoanalysis. The aim of the present volume is that of noting the fluid character of the genre, with the great number of subcategories, mixed and hybrid, bringing evidence to the polymorphous nature of contemporary popular culture.
This book proposes, in four parts and twelve chapters, a fascinating and multifaceted journey into the history, substance and geography of romance. From its origins to the latest developments, from its subgenres to its features, from print to film, from television to Facebook, romance comes in various shapes and colours, which the reader can fully explore. The journey in the world of romance takes the reader from familiar corners to less familiar ones: from North America, Great Britain, Romania, or Turkey, to India or South Africa. The numerous approaches to romance generate diverse data, varied analytical frameworks and interesting, fresh and solidly grounded findings.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Donna West,Signs of Hope: Deafhearing Family Life,Hardback,978-1-4438-3654-8,39.99,"Signs of Hope tells the story of a narrative inquiry with three deafhearing families. For many of us, deafness represents loss and silence. For others, being deaf is a genetic quirk; an opportunity for learning, spiritual adventure and reward. For yet others, it is the most natural thing in the world; a connection to a genealogical layer of signing ancestors and the continuation of a culture. Amid the noise of mainstream, medical and educational discourses of deafness, here are family voices demanding to be heard – whether spoken or signed – that challenge audiological and surgical intervention, that call for scrutiny and critique of ‘inclusive’ deaf-related pedagogical practices, that rail against marginalisation of members of minority cultures. Over four years, Donna West has recorded the stories of three families who wish to counter and resist what they see as damaging misconceptions and discriminatory constructions of deafness and deafhearing family life. Here, spaces are created that respect and acknowledge human beings – adults, children, deaf, hearing – as storytellers. The poetic and performative narratives at the heart of this book reveal not only the ways in which hurtful definitions of, and discrimination towards, deaf people and signing deafhearing families is destabilised, but also the ways in which celebration of deaf culture and sign language are affirming and vital for healthy family life.
","“This is a joyful book which takes the reader on an unexpected ride through seemingly familiar territory (families with deaf children) but which is totally transformed by Donna West’s creative approach. Her ever-reflexive eye entices us to examine the assumptions we bring to the text and makes space for us to think in different ways about the experiences we find recorded there. The book blends critical thought and poetry, history and contemporary life, identity and performance with infinite subtlety and radical scholarship. Anyone with an interest in ‘deaf lives’ will be refreshed by this book.”
– Alys Young, Professor of Social Work Education and Research, University of Manchester
“This is a beautifully written, powerful and extraordinary book which will appeal to a wide range of readers within the Deaf community and beyond. It should be read by families, professionals, practitioners, academics and policy makers and those working in organisations concerned with deafness. It should also be read by researchers who are interested in feminist and narrative inquiry – because this book is an exemplar of those approaches.
Donna West has created a text based upon her own experience of working in the field of Deaf Studies over many years; her in-depth exploration of the history of deafness; theories; practices; and methodologies, all woven together with intimate, moving stories that vividly bring alive the experience of individuals and families who live with deafness.”
– Kim Etherington, Emeritus Professor, University of Bristol
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,"Aparajita De, Amrita Ghosh and Ujjwal Jana",Subaltern Vision: A Study in Postcolonial Indian English Text,Hardback,978-1-4438-3665-4,34.99,"“Ever since the Gramscian notion of the subaltern became the lynch-pin of the counter-hegemonic project developed by the Subaltern Studies group in the early 1980s, attempts to give voice to India’s unrepresented or under-represented classes have played a crucial role in commentary on the nation’s history and cultures. The subaltern project has explored possibilities for recuperating and articulating occluded discourses, interrogated the approaches of elite historiography and proposed alternative epistemologies. In the early twenty-first century, subaltern concerns have been prominent in cultural debates around the globe and they remain equally central to analyses of the gap between elite and marginalized classes within India itself.
The present volume offers a stimulating collection of essays primarily devoted to literary representations of subaltern issues by Indian novelists writing in English and with a particular focus on gender, nation and language. It brings together essays on two writers who have been frequently associated with subaltern concerns, Amitav Ghosh and Mahasweta Devi, and discussions of other internationally acclaimed writers, such as Kiran Desai, Rohinton Mistry and Khushwant Singh, whose work also deals with disparities in Indian society and the problematics of representing this. Subaltern Vision has a valuable contextualizing Preface by Debjani Ganguly. The editor, Aparajita De’s Introduction, both illuminates the evolution to subaltern studies and introduces the individual essays. The volume is a significant intervention in the field and it is essential reading for anyone interested in the ways in which literature has responded to the challenges posed by the widening gap between India’s haves and have nots.”
– John Thieme, Professor, University of East Anglia
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Jonathan White and I-Chun Wang,"The City and the Ocean: Journeys, Memory, Imagination",Hardback,978-1-4438-3719-4,39.99,"Throughout history cities have been locations of human encounter. Equally they have been contexts for the trade of goods and services, for the evolution of various forms of urban space, and for the production, development, and enrichment of culture and technology. Many cities grew up along shorelines, which themselves constitute some of the globe’s most important cultural boundaries. For above all else, it is water that has separated but also connected different communities, races, religions and nations, down through recorded time. With the rapid advance in technologies of communication, encounters between cultures have multiplied at a rate that no individual can follow or control. The present book constitutes a space of “memory” in its own right, one of its chief raisons d'être being that a group of diverse scholars herein maps certain key encounters between peoples, past as well as present, and the urgent issues generated in consequence. No one person could have traced such diversity and made sense of it, whereas a scholarly grouping of persons reporting on phenomena from around the world, such as is provided here, offers its readers a vision of global change and development.
With the twentieth and twenty-first centuries a new set of mega-cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America has emerged to challenge the primacy of European and North American metropolitan centres. This expanded landscape is here interpreted with special attention, as already mentioned, to cities located at coastlines, hence (generally speaking) more exposed to globalizing trends. Migrants, exiles and refugees, ethnic and racial minorities, as well as alternative or countercultural groupings continue to complicate the ways in which cities articulate their now pluralized identities, in terms of (and by means of) literature, history, architecture, social events, and other forms of artistic and cultural production. The international scholars whose work is assembled in these pages are well placed to engage with the intersecting themes and issues of the volume. Contributors have mapped different examples from Homeric narrative, through Renaissance drama and its representation of crossways of culture such as Rhodes and Malta, to an earlier time in the development of a New World city such as Boston: others look at the twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ complexity of great world cities and of oceanic migration or trade between them. Shanghai, Singapore, London, Detroit, Shantou, Macau, and Saigon are some that are dealt with in detail. Emphasis falls on both the historical reality of those contexts as well as how they have been culturally represented.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Matko Městrović,Towards a New Orientation,Hardback,978-1-4438-3661-6,34.99,"In a collection of nine inter-linked essays, Meštrović provides critical insights into the defining questions of our age. Mixing theoretical, empirical and normative insights, utilising inter-disciplinary or, more accurately, post-disciplinary modes of reasoning, Meštrović traces the current imbalance between market globalisation and globalised modes of sociability as a consequence of central contradictions within the current capitalist mode of production, not only between capital and labour but between capital and society and, indeed, capital and culture. The struggle to find a new narrative freed from the false binary between science and values, in the service of a sustainable future, found in the demands of movements for global justice and solidarity, may lead to the production of a new commons, for social interactions outside of, and beyond, the restrictions of the market. In a condition of capitalist crisis, in which biopolitical production is both required by, and interpreted through, the narrow confines of ‘autistic’ economic thought, Meštrović searches for new forms of subjectivity, in which a new multitude may form as a movement towards freedom in which the composition of singularities leads towards the increasing autonomy of each participating equally in the web of communication and cooperation.
","“The book Towards a New Orientation by Matko Meštrović is the latest in the significant opus of this author permanently preoccupied with critical thinking about the main economic, social and cultural characteristics of the contemporary world. In the field of social theory literature, Meštrović is an author of encyclopaedic range. According to his cognitive interests, he is actually a polyhistor. In that spirit, his theoretical options could most appropriately be termed as methodically transversal while universal in scope.
Meštrović seeks a new orientation in thinking about the global processes of the world of today and of the future. He principally problematizes traditional geopolitics, both as a political-diplomatic intention and as a theoretical-strategic discipline. He points to the thesis that geopolitical inclinations, considered in a traditional way, have been exhausted and that new global horizons of political approach towards world events are in action. Considering the normative side of globalisation processes, he wonders who is actually tailoring the norms of globalization and what their interest-specific logic is, compared to the true globally-universal logic.
To that end Meštrović presents his views on the historical dimension of the globalising reality. He advocates the opinion that this historical dimension should by no means be depicted as an idyllic picture, despite the seductive tones of the ideology of globalism which conceals the actual, far-from-idyllic history of this time. By all indications, his choice is world citizenship, as a newly emerging entity of the globalised world. Nonetheless, his advocacy, no matter how eloquent, does not suffer from naïve optimism, or from the often utopian connotations related to the term. On the contrary, Meštrović’s book also deals with the troublesome relationship between what is denoted by the word “economics”, on the one hand, and world-view mindsets, on the other. It is impossible, as Max Weber had already known, to separate the sphere of economic actions from the sphere of ideas and idea-based world views. Thus, according to Meštrović also, the outcome of globalisation processes will depend not only on mere economic “narration”, but also on world-view receptions and adaptations of, and amendments to, that “narration”.
Because of its characteristics and implicit insistence on the multi-dimensionalism of the topic of globalisation, this work is of interest to a very wide circle of recipients, from experts and scholars who deal with these topics themselves, through those engaged in the study of humanities and social sciences, to a readership that proactively considers the world it lives in.”
—Rade Kalanj, PhD, Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
“[Matko Meštrović’s] work has helped feed my thinking as an economist . . . His book is both remarkable proof of the effectiveness of the method of analysis developed in previous cross-disciplinary work and a major contribution to the original and complete understanding of the meaning and challenges of the current crisis of capitalism.”
—Carlo Vercellone
“In a condition of capitalist crisis, in which biopolitical production is both required by, and interpreted through, the narrow confines of ‘autistic’ economic thought, Meštrović searches for new forms of subjectivity, in which a new multitude may form as a movement towards freedom in which the composition of singularities leads towards the increasing autonomy of each participating equally in the web of communication and cooperation.”
—Paul Stubbs
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Magdalena Cieślak and Agnieszka Rasmus,"Against and Beyond: Subversion and Transgression in Mass Media, Popular Culture and Performance",Hardback,978-1-4438-3773-6,34.99,"Against and Beyond: Subversion and Transgression in Mass Media, Popular Culture and Performance is a collection of fourteen essays by scholars representing a number of disciplines discussing transgression and subversion in film, television, music, theatre and digital media. Moving across major political and cultural movements of the 20th century, the book addresses a global need for transgression and subversion in our times. Applying theories of Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, Foucault, Adorno and Horkheimer, Deleuze and Guattari, and Butler, the volume is an important contribution to understanding the mechanisms and functions of subversion and transgression in contemporary media and popular culture and provides essential reading for all those seeking to go against and beyond.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Simon McMahon,Developments in the Theory and Practice of Citizenship,Hardback,978-1-4438-3745-3,34.99,"The institution of citizenship has traditionally been understood as equal membership of a political community. Developments in the Theory and Practice of Citizenship comes at a time when this is undergoing a period of intense scrutiny. Academics have questioned the extent to which we can refer to unified, homogeneous national citizenries in a world characterised by globalisation, international migration, socio-cultural pluralism and regional devolution, whilst on the other hand in political practice we find the declared Death of Multiculturalism, policy-makers urging for active, responsible citizens, and members of social movements calling for a more equitative, equal and participatory democracy. Citizenship is being reassessed and redefined both from above and from below in politics and society.
The contributions to this volume engage in analysis of the processes which are bringing about an evolution of our understanding of citizenship and the individual’s relationship to the state, the polity and globalisation. Through empirical case studies, they highlight how in practice the terms of membership of a citizenry are negotiated in society through laws, political discourse, cultural associations, participatory processes, rituals and ceremonies. In doing so, these contributions offer an illustration of the diversity of venues and processes of citizenship and illustrate the benefits of an understanding of citizenship as a social practice. The book thus provides an opportunity to pose theoretical, practical and moral questions relating to these issues, as well as offering avenues for further research in the future.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,"Recep Efe, Munir Ozturk and Shahina Ghazanfar",Environment and Ecology in the Mediterranean Region,Hardback,978-1-4438-3757-6,49.99,"The Mediterranean Basin with its mountainous shores, high biodiversity and spectacular scenery is located at the intersection of Africa and Eurasia. Through the 8000 years of human development in this area, there have been tremendous changes in its history and biogeography. Approximately 300 million people live here today. Although the evergreen maquis, vineyards, olive plantations and natural woodlands cover the lands all over the basin, it is facing severe destruction of habitats due to deforestation, intensive grazing, fires, and in particular, a severe coastal degradation due to infrastructure development, which is changing the landscape. Both the historical heritage and geography of the land is facing a great threat due to urbanisation and fragmentation. Time has come for its inhabitants to weigh their impact on its ecogeography in order to save the biodiversity as well as the history of the basin. This book synthesises the knowledge from different disciplines so as to increase awareness among the humans in the basin.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Oliviu Felecan,Name and Naming: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives,Hardback,978-1-4438-3752-1,49.99,"Name and Naming: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives aims to analyse names and the act of naming from an intercultural perspective, both synchronically and diachronically.
The volume is divided into four main parts (Theory of Names, Anthroponomastics, Toponomastics, Names in Society), which are, in turn, organised into thematic chapters and subchapters.
The book sets to offer a bird’s-eye view of names and naming, a synthesis that is made possible, on the one hand, by the blending of synchronic and diachronic viewpoints in the investigation of language facts and, on the other, by the fruitful conjunction of modern and classic theories. The originality and the novelty of the subject lies in the multi-disciplinary approach, in which the field of onomastics merges with that of sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, pragmatics, history, literature, stylistics, religion etc. The thematic diversity also derives from the meeting, within the pages of this book, of specialists (35 linguists and literati) from 11 countries on 3 continents.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Catriona Elder and Keith Moore,"New Voices, New Visions: Challenging Australian Identities and Legacies",Hardback,978-1-4438-3756-9,39.99,"New Visions brings together a collection of papers that engage with the ideas of nation, identity and place. The title New Visions harks back to earlier scholarship that endeavoured to explore these issues. It therefore makes links between old and new stories of Australian identity, tracing the continuities, shifts and changes in how Australia is imagined. The collection is deliberately interdisciplinary, gathering work by historians, literary and film scholars, communication and cultural theorists, political scientists and sociologists. This mixed perspectives enables the reader to trace ideas, concepts and theories across a range of disciplines and understand the distinctive ways in which different disciplines engage with ideas of nation, space and Australian identity.
The book is written in an engaging and accessible manner making it an excellent text for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of Australian Studies. It will be especially useful for the growing number of students living outside Australia who engage with Australian literature and culture. The book provides a range of topics that introduces students to key issues and concepts. It also situates these ideas in historical context.
New Visions engages with key contemporary issues in everyday Australian
life: environment and climate change, immigration, consumerism, travel and cities. It explores these various topics by considering case studies, both contemporary and historical. For example the issue of attitudes to Asia are analysed through art; the topic of national symbols through the case of the crocodile; approaches to immigration via a popular reality television programme.
The contributor's to this book comprise some of the foremost Australian scholars as well as emerging scholars. This combination ensures a depth of knowledge but also a vibrancy. The editors are experienced scholars whose knowledge of the field is broad and they have brought a coherence to the material ensuring a strong narrative for the reader.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Marzena Sokołowska-Paryż,"Reimagining the War Memorial, Reinterpreting the Great War: The Formats of British Commemorative Fiction",Hardback,978-1-4438-3764-4,39.99,"Reimagining the War Memorial, Reinterpreting the Great War: The Formats of British Commemorative Fiction is an in-depth analysis of the role of British war memorials in literature and film, in the wider context of the commemorative trend in contemporary culture. The Sheffield City Battalion Memorial, the Menin Gate Memorial, the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, the Royal Artillery Memorial, and the Shot at Dawn Memorial are the focus of the discussion, which aims to show how the meanings assigned to specific war memorials create ideologically diverse interpretations of the British experience of the Great War, ranging from the futility myth to the imperial sublime. The epistemological ambivalence of the war memorial lies at the heart of the analysis of the selected novels, films and plays, for the condemnation of a military conflict as a historical evil does not necessarily exclude the possibility of honouring the men who fought in it.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Bal Gopal Shrestha,"The Sacred Town of Sankhu: The Anthropology of Newar Ritual, Religion and Society in Nepal",Hardback,978-1-4438-3770-5,64.99,"This book presents a detailed view of Newar society and culture, and its socio-economic, socio-religious and ritual aspects, concentrating on the Newar town of Sankhu in the Valley of Nepal. The foundation of the town of Sankhu is attributed to the goddess Vajrayoginī, venerated by both Buddhists and Hindus in Nepal and beyond. Myths, history, and topographical details of the town and the sanctuary of the goddess Vajrayoginī and her cult are discussed on the basis of published sources, unpublished chronicles, and inscriptions.
The book deals with the relation between Hinduism and Buddhism, with the interrelations between the Newar castes (jāt), caste-bound associations (sī guthi), and above all with the numerous socio-religious associations (guthi) that uphold ritual life of the Newars. All major and minor Newar feasts, festivals, dances, fasts and processions of gods and goddesses are discussed.
","“The whole history and culture of the town of Sankhu are covered with encyclopedic thoroughness, detail, and local knowledge. The book will be an indispensable reference for all those who study the Newars and who are interested in the social organization, culture, and history of the Kathmandu Valley.”
– Prof Dr David N. Gellner, University of Oxford, UK
“The book is a perceptive ethnography of Sankhu focused on its social structure, religion and culture, lately in the throes of change. Dr Shrestha has done extensive fieldwork to collect data, which are supplemented by a close and critical assessment of available textual material relating to the local myths, legends and historical traditions. This book is exemplary ethnography of the social, cultural and religious practices of the Newars written by an insider who is a promising scholar well-versed in the social sciences.”
– Dr Kamal P. Malla, Professor of English, Emeritus, Tribhuvan University, Nepal
“We have this unique, rich, marvelously complete and balanced book . . . This book is the first complete systematic description of the religious year of any town in Nepal, and it may well serve as an example for more similar studies.”
– Dr D. H. A. Kolff, Professor of South Asian History, Emeritus, University of Leiden, The Netherlands
“It is a very valuable book, full of very interesting ethnographic data, based on a long fieldwork in this Newar town located in the Valley of Kathmandu, Nepal. This piece of work is in my opinion one of the best theses submitted by a Nepalese student in anthropology in Europe these last decades.”
– Prof Dr Gérard Toffin, Director of Research, CNRS, France
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,"Anette Pankratz, Claus-Ulrich Viol and Ariane de Waal","Birth and Death in British Culture: Liminality, Power, and Performance",Hardback,978-1-4438-3888-7,39.99,"Why discuss birth and death when they lie outside discourse, confronting us with experiences that cannot be put into words? And why look at them together when they are so much unlike each other, one the moment of fresh beginnings, joys, and the relative certainties of existence, the other the moment of life’s end, grief, and the relative uncertainties of non-existence? Because it turns out that both events, while virtually unrepresentable, have spawned a host of representations, narratives, rites, attempts at making sense of themselves and of making sense of life, the period of human existence they frame. And because they may have more similarities than appears at first sight. The 13 interdisciplinary articles collected in this volume prove that looking at the two phenomena in tandem throws into sharp relief the distinct patterns and functions of each, while also highlighting some of the fundamental historical developments, cultural functions, and socio-political issues shared by both. The contributions take stock of the discourses of birth and death prevalent in British (and Western) culture, probing into the way the two phenomena have been subjected to strategies of medialisation, commodification, and bio-politics.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Jennifer Erica Sweda,Exploring Travel and Tourism: Essays on Journeys and Destinations,Hardback,978-1-4438-3794-1,39.99,"Exploring Travel and Tourism: Essays on Journeys and Destinations offers a broad treatment of topics in global travel/tourism studies through articles presented at Travel and Tourism panels at Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association conferences between 2008 and 2010. Through archival research, close readings and case studies, the authors examine the significance of travel and the tourist experience over the last two hundred years, from Borneo to Cuba to Niagara Falls, and places in between. The contributions seek to unpack the meanings of nationality, postcolonialism, place, gender, class and the Self/Other dyad as they bump up against the framework of travel studies. Taken together, the articles speak to central issues in current scholarly debates about travel, tourism and culture from various historical, geographical and disciplinary perspectives. The contributions are grouped thematically into three sections. Part I, “The Personal Travel Narrative: Constructing the Self through Encounters with the Other,” offers close readings of travelogues, both published and unpublished. Part II, “Constructing a National Identity through Tourism,” details the ways that nations and states market/present themselves to tourists. Part III, “The Meaning of Journey; The Meaning of Destination,” investigates places, both real and created, and the ways people travel to get to them.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Katherine Larsen and Lynn Zubernis,Fan Culture: Theory/Practice,Hardback,978-1-4438-3783-5,39.99,"Fan Culture: Theory/Practice brings together the most current scholarship on fan studies, in a way that makes it accessible and usable for both students and teachers. The essays in this collection explore the relative influence of academic and fan perspectives in the current group of scholar-fans and the ethical dilemmas that sometimes emerge from this interplay of identities, the impact of the increasingly reciprocal relationship between textual producers and consumers, and gender differences in fannish meaning-making and interaction. Fan Studies addresses these current issues through some of the most popular fannish texts, including Doctor Who, Torchwood, Star Wars, Star Trek, Supernatural, Smallville and Twilight.
Fan Culture: Theory/Practice is thus designed to challenge some accepted notions, while asking relevant questions about pedagogy. How do we understand the state of the field, and teach fan studies both effectively and responsibly? The essays contained in this volume explore the dominant themes in the field, and seek to situate fan studies as a discipline with a pedagogy of its own.
","“The collection engages with key debates in fan studies from a range of perspectives: from self-criticism to the ethics and benefits of studying and teaching fan practices; from the formation of sexuality in fandom to the negotiation between cultural studies and legal accounts of fan activities; from gendered assumptions to racial silences. The result is a rich and useful contribution to the literature.”
– Rebecca Tushnet, Georgetown University Law School
“Fan Studies: Theory/Practice is the first book to consider the evolution of fandom and fan studies in the context of the ever more intimate creative, commercial, educational, and social relationships brought about by Web 2.0 and the rise of social media. Fans anticipated * and maybe even invented * modes of cultural engagement that have now gone mainstream, and today many of us negotiate multiple identities as artists, producers, consumers, teachers, students, critics, and advocates as well as fans. Katherine Larsen and Lynn Zubernis have
brought together a diverse group of scholars to consider the advantages and challenges of performing these complex and overlapping roles, particularly in the classroom. Fan Studies: Theory/Practice is a fascinating and compelling book featuring major new essays by Matt
Hills, Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson, and Paul Booth, among others. To study fandom today is to think about our world as a mashup of creative, commercial,academic, and social practices. Larsen and Zubernis have given us a guidebook to that world.”
– Francesca Coppa, Organization for Transformative Works
“In this time of rapid transformation for the texts, technologies, and audiences of popular media, Larsen and Zubernis's collection incisively maps the altered playing field of fandom and fan studies. Particularly illuminating in their focus on pedagogy, gender, and ""acafan"" identities, these essays – by a star gallery of respected and emerging voices – make for a fun, accessible, and unusually self-aware anthology. I'll definitely be using it the next time I teach my fan culture course.”
– Bob Rehak, Swarthmore College
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Gabrielle Malcolm and Kelli Marshall,Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-3787-3,39.99,"The first decade of the new century has certainly been a busy one for diversity in Shakespearean performance and interpretation, yielding, for example, global, virtual, digital, interactive, televisual, and cinematic Shakespeares. In Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century, Gabrielle Malcolm and Kelli Marshall assess this active world of Shakespeare adaptation and commercialization as they consider both novel and traditional forms: from experimental presentations (in-person and online) and literal rewritings of the plays/playwright to televised and filmic Shakespeares.
More specifically, contributors in Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century examine the BBC's ShakespeaRE-Told series, Canada's television program Slings and Arrows, the Mumbai-based film Maqbool, and graphic novels in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series as well as the future of adaptation, performance, digitization, and translation via such projects as National Theatre Live, the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Archive of Digital Performance, and the British Library’s online presentation of the complete Folios. Other authors consider the place of Shakespeare in the classroom, in the Kenneth Branagh canon, in Jewish revenge films (Quentin Tarantino's included), in comic books, in Young Adult literature, and in episodes of the BBC's popular sci-fi television program Dr. Who. Ultimately, this collection sheds light, at least partially, on where critics think Shakespeare is now and where he and his works might be going in the near future and long-term. One conclusion is certain: however far we progress into the new century Shakespeare will be there.
More specifically, contributors in Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century examine the BBC's ShakespeaRE-Told series, Canada's television program Slings and Arrows, the Mumbai-based film Maqbool, and graphic novels in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series as well as the future of adaptation, performance, digitization, and translation via such projects as National Theatre Live, the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Archive of Digital Performance, and the British Library’s online presentation of the complete Folios. Other authors consider the place of Shakespeare in the classroom, in the Kenneth Branagh canon, in Jewish revenge films (Quentin Tarantino's included), in comic books, in Young Adult literature, and in episodes of the BBC's popular sci-fi television program Dr. Who. Ultimately, this collection sheds light, at least partially, on where critics think Shakespeare is now and where he and his works might be going in the near future and long-term. One conclusion is certain: however far we progress into the new century Shakespeare will be there.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Sylwia Surdykowska,Martyrdom and Ecstasy: Emotion Training in Iranian Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-3885-6,39.99,"The book is concerned with one of the most important issues in Persian culture, that is to say a broadly conceived idea of sacrifice and martyrdom. At present, it is contained in the concept of shahadat, which arouses much controversy in the Western world today. In successive chapters, the author discusses the origin and evolution of this concept in Persian culture, the process of shaping attitudes conducive to the attainment of readiness for shahadat and the role of this concept in propaganda, as well as presenting its modern-day interpretation.
The basic research material was provided by political and religious publications of contemporary Iranian authors, including Ali Shari‘ati, Morteza Motahhari, Ruhollah Khomeini and Abdolkarim Soroush, who have exerted a significant influence on the formation of the Iranian consciousness. The book is an interdisciplinary publication. The author refers to philology, literary studies, cultural anthropology, social psychology, and, interestingly, to the psychology of emotions in order to explicate the traditional Persian system of upbringing and shaping the readiness for martyrdom and sacrifice. The book shows the idea of shahadat as part of the Persian cultural paradigm, which, due to religious and literary tradition, has influenced the shaping of Iranian identity over the centuries and, as a result, it has affected social and political attitudes of the Iranian people.
The book is mainly directed to Iranologists. Nevertheless, it will also be of interest to anthropologists, psychologists of culture, sociologists and philosophers due to its interdisciplinary character.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Katy Shaw,Mining the Meaning: Cultural Representations of the 1984-5 UK Miners’ Strike,Hardback,978-1-4438-3785-9,39.99,"This innovative study provides an exciting, challenging and accessible critical introduction to cultural representations of 1984–5 and analyses the ways in which these representations articulate an essential dialogic exchange of issues central to both the coal dispute and the development of literary and cultural studies over the past twenty five years. Focusing closely on the politics of form, the study interrogates the significance of the mode, means and function of strikers’ writings, as well as alternative representations of the conflict offered by established writers, musicians, artists and film-makers in the wake of the coal dispute.
These representations are worthy of study due to the critical interventions they offer, their evidence of the cultural pressures and forces of not only the strike period, but the post-strike years of industrial and labour change and their remarkable contribution to existing social, political and literary histories. Engaging with these works, many of which have never been subject to previous academic analysis, the study enables twenty-first-century readers to re-conceptualise paradigms of received wisdom concerning 1984–5.
The significance of the competing representations offered by these very different cultural modes as they engage in a wider battle to ‘author’ the conflict is central to this study. Through a detailed analysis of these representations, as well as the socio-cultural contexts of their production and dissemination, this book explores a range of attempts to capture the sensibilities of late twentieth century society and contributes to an ongoing debate regarding cultural representations of this period in British history. Influenced by critical theory, the text is the first secondary resource concerning cultural representations of the 1984–5 UK miners’ strike available to the reading public the world over.
","“For many years now, Dr Katy Shaw has been both the most knowledgeable and most accessible critic concerned with the literature of the 1984–85 miners’ strike, both the words and writings of the miners and their families themselves and the words and writings about them. Dr Shaw’s latest book is an astute and timely reminder of the continued relevance of the strike and its literature to Britain today.”
– David Peace, author of GB84
“Katy Shaw’s important, informative and provocative study is a powerful reminder that the great miners’ strike was the definitive industrial, political and social conflict of post-war Britain. Through a skilful comparison of previously unknown ‘front line’ poems with mainstream literary, theatrical and televisual representations of the strike, Shaw exposes contemporary culture’s failure to engage with the collective solidarity at the heart of embattled mining communities, an intellectual and creative flaw that reflects the collapse of socialist values in British politics and culture.”
– Prof Ian Haywood, University of Roehampton
“The historical significance of the 1984–5 UK miners’ strike has long been recognised. In this scholarly yet engaged study, Katy Shaw uncovers the rich cultural life and afterlife engendered by the miners’ heroic struggle.”
– Dr Mike Sanders, University of Manchester
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Christina Staudt and Marcelline Block ,Unequal Before Death,Hardback,978-1-4438-3792-7,39.99,"Death has been deemed the “great equalizer,” but each journey towards our shared, ultimate fate is unique. The length of our lives, the quality of our last days, how our deaths are perceived by others, and the handling of our remains are governed by nature and many socio-cultural factors. Unequal Before Death is an edited collection that addresses inequalities surrounding death from the perspectives of scholars in a wide range of humanistic and social science disciplines, including art history, anthropology, Film and media studies, political science, popular culture, psychology, religion, sociology, and statistics. The majority of the chapters of this interdisciplinary anthology are revised versions of papers presented at the second Austin H. Kutscher Memorial Conference, entitled “Unequal Before Death,” organized by the Columbia University Seminar on Death in March 2010 and attended by leading experts in academia, healthcare and the not-for-profit sector. The purpose of this volume is to bring attention to the many inequalities affecting the end of life experience and to encourage collaborative research and action that can improve the experience for the dying and those around them. This volume does not question the truism of death as the ultimate equalizer but rather, seeks to explore the many ways in which the final journey is not equal.
","""Death is anything but the great equalizer. Unequal Before Death is a critically important collection that illuminates how the politics of life are inextricable from the politics of death. From the AIDS epidemic to martyrdom in Palestine, from the death of soldiers to the death of celebrities, this book unpacks the complex relationships between death, illness, grieving, embodiment, power, culture, and nation. In the face of such inequalities, we readers cannot go gentle, but must rage, rage for the birth of justice even at the dying of the light.""
- Sayantani DasGupta, MD MPH, co-chair, Columbia University Seminar in Narrative, Health and Social Justice
""This book brings a dozen excellent minds to bear on the intersection of two of our universals, inequality and death. It advocates neither of them, but puts social, medical, and many other kinds of expertise together to reflect on what they mean. Those who make policy, study it, or have to deal with it need to master the lore and the thinking it offers us.""
- Robert L. Belknap, PhD, Columbia University, Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages; Director Emeritus of University Seminars
""French founder of modern semiology Roland Barthes stated that the title of a work marks what follows as a product worthy of purchase. That concept is vital to this anthology. The snappy title Unequal Before Death introduces, through lucent prose, a splendid topos and field of knowledge that deserve to be consumed. Read this book as a tool-kit for comprehending, surviving, and perhaps even counter-mastering the lies, lures, deceptions, and miscreant acts of the Lords of Inequality.""
-Marshall Blonsky, PhD, New School University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Ciara Ní Bhroin and Patricia Kennon,What Do We Tell the Children? Critical Essays on Children’s Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-3788-0,39.99,"This peer- reviewed collection of critical essays on children’s literature addresses contemporary debates regarding what constitutes “suitable” texts for young audiences. The volume examines what adult writers “tell” their child readers with particular focus on the following areas: the representation of sexuality, gender and the body; the treatment of death and trauma; concepts of race, prejudice and national identity; and the use of children’s literature as a tool for socializing, acculturating, politicizing and educating children. The focus of the collection is on Irish and international fiction addressed at readers from mid-childhood to young adulthood. One section of the book examines what child readers were told in the past while the final section examines young readers’ capacity for self-invention through the participatory culture of the twenty-first century. Topics explored include the controversial issue of teenage prostitution and the commodification of the male body in contemporary young adult fiction, the allure of celebrity and the impact of today’s surveillance culture on young people, the representation of the Holocaust for young readers and representations of Muslim characters and culture in a post-9/11 mediascape. Subject matter ranges from the contemporary realistic fiction of Melvin Burgess to Joy Kogawa’s historical narrative, Obasan and its subsequent adaptations for children, to print material produced by Inghinidhe na hÉreann aimed at politicizing young Irish readers in the early twentieth century.
Contributors are all respected academics in their field and include international experts such as Professor Kimberley Reynolds, Professor Kerry Mallan, Professor Norma Clarke and Professor Kay Sambell.
Contributors: Jane Suzanne Carroll, Norma Clarke, Shehrazade Emmambokus, Michele Gill, Marnie Hay, Eimear Hegarty, Nora Maguire, Kerry Mallan, Anne Markey, Kimberley Reynolds, Beth Rodgers, Kay Sambell.
This is the fifth publication of the Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature (ISSCL).
It follows the Society’s publication of Studies in Children’s Literature 1500-2000 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), Treasure Islands: studies in children’s literature (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006), Divided Worlds: studies in children literature (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007) and Young Irelands: studies in children’s literature (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Scott H. Boyd and Mary Ann Walter,Cultural Difference and Social Solidarity: Critical Cases,Hardback,978-1-4438-3910-5,34.99,"The essays collected together in this book engage the paradox of cultural difference and social solidarity within contemporary contexts. Several of the essays focus on individuals negotiating with perceptions of their personal, social, and political identity. Other essays frame the political perceptions of the individuals and the cultural communities those perceptions construct. In this collection are essays concerning immigrants and the negotiation of sacred, political, and cultural spaces from the UAE, UK, Germany, and Australia as well as analyses of internal cultural differences and solidarity in Québec, Canada and Turkey. Selections include an analysis of language accommodation asymmetry in the Gulf States; ethnopluralism and right wing extremism in Germany; the search of renewed Alevi identity in Australia; and the difference between post-war and post-EU ascension Polish immigrants in the UK. In addition, two essays concern challenges and analysis of Canadian and Québécois multiculturalism. Finally, three essays focus on Turkey through an analysis of perceptions of the dead in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict; transformation of urban identities in the Turkish city of Mersin; and how plurality is incorporated into symbolic representations of religious difference in Antakya, Turkey. Each essay in this book describes processes of differences and solidarities within specific contexts, challenging implicitly or explicitly the paradoxical entanglement of the two. Through this collection the editors intend to begin to demonstrate the possibility of a broader acceptance of solidarities through difference.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Amy Bright,“Curious if True”: The Fantastic in Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-3971-6,39.99,"he fantastic has occupied the literary imagination of readers and scholars across historical, theoretical and cultural contexts. Representations of the fantastic in literature rely on formal and generic types, tropes, and archetypes to mediate between depictions of “fantasy” and “reality.” Present in myth and folklore, the gothic and neo-gothic, and contemporary and mainstream fantasy, the fantastic reach stretches into many conceptions of literature over time. “Curious, if True”: The Fantastic in Literature” presents recent articles by graduate students on the fantastic to make connections across category, genre, and historical period. These essays explore the complexity and the breath of fantasy and science fiction through groupings of text, close reading, and theoretical orientation. Fantasy is used as an organizing topic, a genre that has always allowed for a broad interpretation of its meaning. From magic realism, to high fantasy, and the interpretations of realistic novels under a fantastic lens, this collection furthers the reach of fantasy in the study of English Literature. Northrup Frye writes, “the world of literature is a world where there is no reality except that of the human imagination” (470). This volume expands our vision of imagination as readers and scholars of English Literature. The authors value tradition in their reading and their writing but are not afraid to reach across genre borders to show their understanding of “the fantastical in literature.” The ideas presented span years and literary periods, texts and genres, and show the undeniably value of interdisciplinary study to expand perspectives in the field of English
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,"Eliza J. Nash, Nevin C. Brown and Lavinia Bracci",Intercultural Horizons 2011,Hardback,978-1-4438-3964-8,39.99,"This volume features a collection of papers from the first annual Intercultural Horizons conference held in May 2011 in Siena, Italy. The 2011 conference was entitled “Best Practices in Intercultural Competence Development” and featured speakers and participants from over 15 countries, including leaders in the field such as Janet Bennett of the Intercultural Communication Institute, Alvino Fantini of the School for International Training, Andrew Furco of the University of Minnesota, and Carol Ma of the Center for Service-Learning at Lingnan University (Hong Kong).
The authors of these papers provide perspectives on intercultural communication and related issues from viewpoints as varied as the traditional researcher, the teacher in fields as diverse as second-language acquisition, music and the culinary arts, and the administrator of a specific program or at the senior level of a college or university. Together they form a representative sample of the themes discussed during the 2011 conference. The editors consider this first meeting to be the dawn, so to speak, of Intercultural Horizons, which aspires to become a respected venue for scholars and practitioners to exchange ideas, techniques and pedagogies on intercultural communication in years to come.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Andrew Graciano,"Joseph Wright, Esq. Painter and Gentleman",Hardback,978-1-4438-3914-3,34.99,"Andrew Graciano's thorough study is a re-evaluation of Joseph Wright's career and social status that demonstrates how his later landscapes, portraits and historical pictures are connected to a broader historical context, including contemporary science, industry and economics. In doing so, Graciano reinforces the idea that Wright was an intellectual painter, very much engaged with current ideas in these realms, as well as a gentleman of means beyond his artistic income, which gave him a social standing that has often been ignored by previous scholars
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Kate Darian-Smith and Sue Turnbull,"Remembering Television: Histories, Technologies, Memories",Hardback,978-1-4438-3970-9,39.99,"This path-breaking book extends our knowledge of the social and cultural impacts of television, asking new questions about the ways television’s technologies and programming have been experienced, understood and remembered. Television has served as a companion to the historical events that have unfolded in our everyday lives both on and off the screen, and its presence is intricately bound up in our memories of the past and actions in the present. As this volume demonstrates, the influence of television over individual and family behaviours, national identity and ideas of global citizenship is complex and wide-ranging.
Drawing upon recent developments in memory studies, history, media and cultural studies, and with particular reference to Australia, leading scholars explore the histories of television, and how its programs and personalities have been celebrated, recalled with nostalgia or simply forgotten. Topics covered include the pre-figuring of television; memories of the struggle for transmission in remote locations; the transnational experience of television for immigrant communities; the evocation of television programs through spin-off products; televised war reportage and censorship; and the value of ‘unofficial’ television archives such as You Tube. As a whole, these essays offer a striking and original examination of the connections between history, memory and television in today’s world.
","“Our memories of television are crucial components of our sense of personal history, and one of the ways we experience our national histories. In this rich and exciting collection, some of our leading scholars examine the relationships between television, histories, and memory.”
—Professor Graeme Turner, Director, Centre for Critical Cultural Research, University of Queensland
“This book is an important contribution to our understanding of television history. It is about much more than the history of television as an institution or a set of programmes, or the representation of history on television, or even people’s memories of the role of television in their lives. It is about the interweaving of all these, and more. And that is precisely its great value, because it makes us rethink what counts as a ‘history of television’. Its case studies may be Australian, but this book has much to say to television scholars everywhere – and indeed scholars of cultural memory more widely.”
—Professor Martin Barker, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of East Anglia
“Remembering Television is an exciting foray into media history, popular culture and memory studies. In lively and accessible essays, leading scholars consider places, pleasures, wars, technologies, the digital, the national and the global. While the focus is on Australia and New Zealand, the work presented here deserves to be read internationally by academics, students, librarians, archivists and industry. Just as television compels audiences, so too does this unique book.”
—Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley, Director, Centre for Media History, Macquarie University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Patricia Midgley,"The Churches and the Working Classes: Leeds, 1870-1920",Hardback,978-1-4438-3982-2,44.99,"Contrary to our perception of the centrality of the churches in English life in the nineteenth century, the disappointing results of the 1851 Religious Census led religious leaders to seek a variety of ways to increase religious allegiance as the century progressed. The apparent apathy and lack of interest in formal religion on the part of the working classes was particularly galling, and the various denominations tried hard to attract them through evangelical missions as well as social and charitable ventures which sometimes competed with religious concerns, to the latter’s detriment. This book traces the motivations, concerns and efforts of the churches, particularly in the period between 1870 and 1920, and the ambivalent responses of ordinary people. The Education Act of 1870 led to the churches losing their hold on the education of the young, a consequence foreseen by many church leaders, but unable to be prevented. By 1920 it was apparent that the churches’ optimism regarding an increased role with a war-weary population would not be fulfilled. The focus is on the city of Leeds, representative of the industrialised urban areas with burgeoning populations which proved to be such a challenge to the churches, at the same time stimulating them to ever-greater efforts.
","“The churches of Victorian England were deeply conscious of their failure to reach the working classes in London and the towns of industrial England. This important study of Leeds in the second half of the nineteenth century and later provides the first detailed analysis for over fifty years of the efforts made in a large northern town to remedy this defect. Dr Midgley assesses sympathetically the successes and failures of the different styles of mission attempted by the various churches, through education and youth work, leisure and evangelism, setting their efforts in the context of the rapidly expanding and changing city. Though the churches did not ultimately succeed, they did create a religious culture which extended beyond the lives of regular church-goers and which survived to shape the outlook and values of many ordinary people throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The insights developed in this study enhance our understanding of English society in the generation ending with the First World War and will appeal to students whose interests range far beyond Leeds and the concerns of merely institutional religion.”
—Edward Royle, Emeritus Professor of History, University of York
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Norman Saadi Nikro,"The Fragmenting Force of Memory: Self, Literary Style, and Civil War in Lebanon",Hardback,978-1-4438-3908-2,39.99,"This study is about earlier, largely experimental forms of cultural production that situate and work through personal experiences of the civil war in Lebanon. It addresses selected works of literature, autobiography and memoir of Jean Said Makdisi, Rashid al-Daif, Elias Khoury, Mai Ghoussoub, and the civil war trilogy of documentary films by Mohamed Soueid. From a phenomenological, hermeneutical perspective the book is concerned with how they give accounts of themselves as remnants, leftovers, undigested remains of the civil war and related trajectories of ideological attachment to symbolic mandates. Constrained to reposition their sense of self from an agent of history to a casualty of history, their acutely personal works of cultural production initiate an unraveling of both self and circumstance through the fragmenting force of memory.
Drawing on a broad range of phenomenological critical theory (within the research fields of postcolonial, memory, psychoanalytic, gender and literary studies) attuned to subjectivity as a field of social production and exchange, I explore how my writers and filmmaker employ a non-presentist, anachronic or paratactic register of memory to excavate both a historical understanding of self and related modalities of being. I discuss how the symptomatic style of their work embodies, creatively and critically situates, a refusal to package and normalize any idealized account of the war, related assemblages of temporal succession, or else a presentation of self as discrete and omniscient.
.
","""Saadi Nikro’s timely study is an interdisciplinary and theoretically complex exploration of postwar Lebanese cultural production in both Arabic and English. Focusing on the works of one documentary filmmaker and four writers, he interprets their reflections on the effects of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, including its undermining of their formerly leftist beliefs. At the same time, Nikro argues that their critical uses of memories as events have become forces to combat state-sponsored amnesia of the mayhem. This is an erudite foray into a new and still developing area of academic research and, therefore, a welcome addition.""
Syrine Hout, Associate Professor of English, American University of Beirut
'Rarely has someone as theoretically well-read as Saadi Nikro subjected Arab literature to such an intimate analysis. The result is an intellectually stimulating interrogation of both form and content that brings out the decentered and decentring relation between identity, memory and temporality that lies at the heart of the creative practices of the Arab authors and film makers analysed. This work is of interest not only to those working in Arab literary studies, but to all who want to deepen their understanding of Arab cultural forms as a whole.'
—Ghassan Hage is Future Generation Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Sandra Ladick Collins,Weapons Upon Her Body: The Female Heroic in the Hebrew Bible,Hardback,978-1-4438-3980-8,39.99,"The biblical stories of Lot’s daughters, Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba share much in common—singular women who are left to rely upon their own wits to achieve some measure of victory over the men around them. Scholarly interpretation of these women often reduces them to mere stock characters who inform civic notions about Israel, the perennial underdog who, like these women, achieves against great odds. Or, they reflect the trickery and moral ambiguity inherent in their line as ancestresses of the House of David.
However, when read for their gender information (and not for what they can tell readers about Israel), one finds women who employ strategies of deception and trickery, motivated by individual self-interest, in order to successfully maneuver within the system to their benefit. Such initiative can be seen as valorous: they save themselves through their own pluck and ingenuity. Thus, a close consideration of these stories finds that heroic biblical women carry their essential weapons upon and within themselves in their drive, their resolve and their cleverness.
Using methods from biblical study as well as folklore, this study identifies biblical women motivated by self-interest coupled with deception and an incidence of the “bedtrick,” an instance of sexual trickery that challenges the text’s power and gender dynamics. This identification puts Lot’s daughters, Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba in league with female heroes from folk tale and legend. By contrasting and comparing common motifs and actions with traits established by other non-biblical female heroic narratives, strong heroic themes are located in all four narratives. This offers a dynamic argument for identifying the female biblical heroic. This work concludes that this new identification of heroic women in the Bible profoundly affects further interpretation of the Bible.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,"María Alonso Alonso, Jeannette Bello Mota, Alba de Béjar Muíños and Laura Torrado Mariñas ",Weaving New Perspectives Together: Some Reflections on Literary Studies,Hardback,978-1-4438-3911-2,39.99,"The present volume seeks to offer a novel and interdisciplinary overview on the question of literary interpretation and the numerous perspectives current in the field today. Written by early-career researchers and enriched with the important contributions of three senior lecturers, the articles contained in this compilation are devised to work as a multi-faceted whole that may at the same time give inspiration to students and constitute a guide to more experienced scholars.
Acting as an integrating entity that agglutinates works from scholars across Europe, we consider this book to be a clear example of the dynamism of present-day literary studies and of the numerous ways in which literature can speak to people. Following Margaret Atwood’s statement about the fact that “The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose”, this volume may be said to possess the potential to provide as many answers as it poses new questions which will stimulate future research in the field.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-08-01,K. M. Ziyauddin,Sociology of Health in a Dalit Community: Axes of Exclusion of Hadis,Hardback,978-1-4438-4003-3,39.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-08-01,Cristina Sandru,Worlds Apart? A Postcolonial Reading of post-1945 East-Central European Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-3999-0,49.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing