Agriculture
'Just' a Fisherman’s Wife: A Post Structural Feminist Exposé of Australian Commercial Fishing Women’s Contributions and Knowledge, ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Crisis’
Jane Dowling, 978-1-4438-2943-4
This book provides a unique exposé of women in family businesses in the Australian commercial fishing industry and explores their visibility, contributions, barriers and opportunities for participation, and knowledge. Recognising the need to move beyond an exploration of women’s ‘roles,’ this book applies a detailed, well articulated and sophisticated feminist post structural approach which explores women’s identity, power/knowledge and positioning in relation to the current industry climate, in the context of discourses of ‘crisis’ and ‘sustainability.’ This is particularly pertinent with climate change looming as the next industry ‘crisis.’ As such, this book has significant interdisciplinary appeal, and will benefit feminist, gender, natural resource management and fisheries scholars and policy makers. Ultimately, it is hoped that this book will have a substantial impact on industry women in both Australia and elsewhere, and reduce their marginalisation; increase awareness about their contributions; and result in greater opportunities to voice their unique knowledge on social issues with a view to enhancing industry sustainability. ...Read more

Bibliography, Library Science, Information Resources
Burridge’s Multilingual Dictionary of Birds of the World: Volume XXXVI Hungarian (Magyar)
John T. Burridge , 978-1-4438-2944-1
Uniquely, the present work will present in one place the vernacular names of the almost ten thousand birds of the world in about fifty languages. It should thus serve as a valuable reference work and source of information that has been scattered through field guides, scientific journals, coffee-table volumes and across the internet, often buried under all sorts of other data. The compilations draw on official or other generally recognized authority wherever possible, and alternates are given where space permits. While the very fact that such extensive lists may, just by their existence, in future carry some authoritative weight in standardization of bird names, that is not its primary purpose, which is to present in a more useful format the nomenclature that is already in use. ...Read more

Business, Finance and Economics
Social Capital and the Role of LinkedIn to Form, Develop and Maintain Irish Entrepreneurial Business Networks
Ted Vickey, 978-1-4438-2904-5
Online social networking services have eliminated the four walls of brick and mortar found in traditional networking and now provide global access in real time to entrepreneurs regardless of industry. This book presents a qualitative analysis of how Irish entrepreneurs use technology, such as LinkedIn, in the formation, development and maintenance of professional business networks and in so doing manage social capital. The objectives of this book are as follows: · Ascertain the perceived benefits of networking by Irish entrepreneurs; · Explore how Irish entrepreneurs form, maintain and develop their network and · Explore how Irish entrepreneurs use technology to manage social capital. ...Read more

The Management of Intercultural Academic Interaction: Student Exchanges between Japanese and Australian Universities
Hiroyuki Nemoto, 978-1-4438-2906-9
As university student exchanges provide participants with increasing opportunities to involve themselves in different academic cultures, it has become crucial to gain a better understanding of cultural contact between academic systems and to recognise how exchange students with diverse academic backgrounds interact in a host academic context. This book provides insights into this research area by undertaking a one-academic-year ethnographic examination of six Japanese exchange students’ management of intercultural academic interaction at an Australian university, as well as analysing the impact of the structural arrangements of the student exchange program on their participation. In this book, the theory of language management is utilised alongside of the concept of legitimate peripheral participation and a socio-constructionist genre theory to investigate the cognitive and situated nature of the management processes. The theory of language-in-education planning is also applied to examine the policies and practices of student exchanges between Japanese home universities and an Australian host university. Focussing on Japanese exchange students’ responses to various academic tasks as well as on their everyday participation in class, the present study mainly analyses the students’ negotiation of norms, awareness and evaluations of contact situation phenomena, planning and implementation of management strategies, discontinuation of academic management, and the developmental processes of their academic participation. This study also investigates various types of tensions in structuring student exchanges among policies, practices, educational needs and goals of Japanese exchange students, their motivational investments, and accessibility of current exchange systems to the students. Based on the findings, this book provides important theoretical implications for sociolinguistic research and SLA studies by discussing the detailed mechanisms of academic management, and by reconsidering the importance of the integration of sociocultural perspectives into the cognitive processes of intercultural academic interaction. The theoretical inquiries which this study conducts will, furthermore, promote our understanding of linguistic minority exchange students’ management of participation in various academic contexts and suggest the ways home and host universities support these exchange students’ transition between the two different academic cultures. ...Read more

Chinese Studies
Gender Construction and Negotiation in the Chinese EFL Classroom
Huajing Zhao, 978-1-4438-2905-2
This book is developed from an ethnographic case study which investigated Chinese adolescents’ construction of their gender identity and the way it is negotiated in the course of learning English as a foreign language (EFL) from a sociolinguistic, sociocultural and sociopsychological point of view. It documented the unseen connections between the micro-level of the students’ face-to-face verbal interactions and the macro-level of the role of learning EFL that can play in students’ construction and negotiation of their gender identity. The book aims to help both teachers and students to develop a more comprehensive view of English learning as a means to social and educational development. On the whole, the study showed that second language learning pedagogy which integrates CLT can be used as an important tool to open up opportunities for the improvement of gender awareness in cultures where gender and sex are not linguistically differentiated. It demonstrated that the EFL class can be used as a means of opening up a space where adolescents can become aware of gender and play around with this awareness. It can be educationally valuable with regard to making students and teachers think about a number of social and intercultural issues alongside cross-linguistic issues. The fieldwork of the research showed that interventions directed at attracting students’ attention to gender roles and the way they behaved in interactions in English highlight an educational function of the place of EFL in the curriculum which is so far unrecognised in China. ...Read more

Classics
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia: New Approaches
Janette McWilliam, Sonia Puttock, Tom Stevenson and Rashna Taraporewalla, 978-1-4438-2921-2
This book began to take shape following a conference on the Statue of Zeus at Olympia held at the University of Queensland in July 2008. In line with the main themes of the conference, the book has two fundamental aims: the first is to recognise the unsurpassed reputation of the Zeus in antiquity, to move beyond the framework provided by the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and to treat the famous statue in depth, as befits its unique importance in ancient times; the second aim is to employ a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives in the hope of capturing more accurately than before something of that unique importance. The book is aimed at academic specialists in a variety of disciplines (such as art, archaeology, history, literature, and cultural poetics), though it is also intended to be accessible to undergraduates and certainly to research students. The audience will primarily be one interested in classical antiquity, but there are chapters which trace the story and influence of the Zeus through the Byzantine, Renaissance, and early modern periods, and into more recent centuries in both the northern and southern hemispheres. ...Read more

Cultural Studies
Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe
Eckehard Pistrick, Nicola Scaldaferri and Gretel Schwörer, 978-1-4438-2930-4
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. ...Read more

Cherchez la femme: Women and Values in the Francophone World
Erika Fülöp and Adrienne Angelo, 978-1-4438-2933-5
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. ...Read more

From Antiquity to the Postmodern World: Contemporary Jewish Studies in Canada
Daniel Maoz and Andrea Gondos, 978-1-4438-2929-8
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?” ...Read more

Of Mice and Men: Animals in Human Culture
Nandita Batra and Vartan Messier, 978-1-4438-2976-2
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. ...Read more

The Heritage Theatre: Globalisation and Cultural Heritage
Marlite Halbertsma, Alex van Stipriaan and Patricia van Ulzen, 978-1-4438-2926-7
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. ...Read more

The “I” and the “Eye”: The Verbal and the Visual in Post-Renaissance Western Aesthetics
Pragyan Rath, 978-1-4438-2924-3
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. ...Read more

Travelling In and Out of Italy: 19th and 20th-Century Notebooks, Letters and Essays
Emanuele Occhipinti, 978-1-4438-2919-9
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. ...Read more

Education
Diaries of a Forgotten Parent: Divorced Dads on Fathering Through and Beyond Divorce
Wendy A. Paterson, 978-1-4438-2941-0
Diaries of a Forgotten Parent: Divorced Dads on Fathering Through and Beyond Divorce opens an intimate window on the lives of divorced men. Literature on divorce focuses primarily on its effects on women and children, but fair and personal accounts of the lived experiences of custodial and non-custodial fathers are less available. In this highly accessible text, ten American men share intensely personal reflections of guilt, pain, frustration, sacrifice, loneliness and pride. The men do not see themselves as exemplary; rather, their stories are graphically honest, revealing what Paterson calls ordinary men “with all their warts.” The author reviews significant works on the male experience of divorce from psychological, legal, educational and sociological experts, interspersing commentary and research with the men’s own voices. From the initial discussion of why men marry and why they divorce through the men’s painful memories of being pushed out of their children’s lives by angry and resentful mothers, the author illuminates the legal, fiscal, emotional and practical experiences of men struggling to reinvent their fathering while they find themselves reconfigured into deserters, deadbeats and visitors. The societal myth that fathers are less valuable parents than mothers is thoroughly deconstructed in this text. The book will help divorced and divorcing men and those who work with them to fully understand the experiences of fathers who never stopped loving and caring for their children, in spite of the fact that the contributions of fathers are still largely discounted by schools, courts, and worst of all, by their children’s mothers. From this book, readers will understand that there are just too many reasons why fathers must never be forgotten in the lives of their children. ...Read more

Knowledge, Differences and Identity in the Time of Globalization: Institutional Discourse and Practices
James Kusch, 978-1-4438-2936-6
The discourse of globalization that pertains to higher education reform is troubling. The first troubling thing about much of the discourse that concerns globalization is that it most often does not name a human subject. We propose that globalization discourse should be written for and directed towards human beings or students. The second troubling thing about the discourse of globalization is the way that it antagonizes and marginalizes who that missing subject might be. The two relationships form the themes of this book. The nature and logic of discourse about globalization expresses a social rationality that serves as a precondition to constructing relevant meanings. The way that we conceive or obscure the subject produces a condition or position where those whom are the subject of the discourse must indeed await its effects—who is the pertinent policy about? Or, for whom is policy intended? Much policy discourse holds consequences for the way in which outcomes of policies are understood or explained in the social milieu where policies are enacted. The same discourse constructs and deconstructs identities and, as we will see, the language of reform in fact antagonizes and marginalizes students by virtue of a particular vagueness in the discourse and symbols of the discourse. What is at issue in the discourse of globalization is the character and logic of collective identities. How then to relate students to the cluster of features that comprise globalization? ...Read more

Film and Theatre Studies
Agencies of the Frame: Tectonic Strategies in Cinema and Architecture
Michael Tawa, 978-1-4438-2942-7
Agencies of the Frame: Tectonic Strategies in Cinema and Architecture aims to explore parallel approaches to the conceptualisation and composition of place, space, time, materiality and narrative in cinematographic and architectural practices. Beyond drawing useful implications for design, the book investigates a range of themes to mobilise a reconsideration of cinema and architecture as non-representational practices. It suggests that films and buildings can be read and designed as assemblages not directed to the formal expression of meaning, but to the framing of strategic and enabling conditions of emergent sense, realised within the tectonic and material conditions of the cinematic and the architectural as such. Succinct analyses of precedents in film, music, painting and architecture are used to foreground tectonic and compositional characteristics related to spatiality, temporality and narrative that are transferable across disciplines and practices. The thematic framework of the book engages theoretical material by Heidegger, Simondon, Deleuze, Nancy, Agamben and Stiegler. Classical modernist and postmodernist films by Dreyer, Antonioni, Hitchcock, Godard, Paradjanov, Tarkovski, Herzog, Lynch and Heneke are analysed side by side with important traditional, modernist and contemporary buildings, including works by Corbusier, Scarpa, Lewerentz, Zumthor and Markli. Illustrated with drawings and photographs by the author, this book should be of interest to practitioners and students of art, design, cinema and the built environment who wish to expand the creative scope and resonance of their work. ...Read more

La francophonie ou l’éloge de la diversité
Michaël Abecassis, Gudrun Ledegen and Karen Zouaoui, 978-1-4438-2934-2
The first part of this volume, La Francophonie ou l'éloge de la diversité, is devoted to “Francophone cinema, between Bollywood and Hollywood.” What in particular does Francophone cinema have to offer compared with American or Indian cinema? What more does Francophone cinema have to offer? What genres does it prefer? For what audience? The second part deals with the promotion of diversity in Francophone countries, taking into consideration the cultural aspects of Francophonie in the 21st century, the linguistic description of systems in contact, tracing the historical stages which have led to the creation of this locus of cultural diversity, and focusing finally on university cooperation and Franco-British scientific research. This book brings together contributions by outstanding authors who gathered in Oxford in October 2010 at the Maison française, including: Louis-Jean Calvet: Professor at the University of Provence. In collaboration with the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, he works on language policy, particularly the struggle to maintain linguistic diversity. Bernard Cerquiglini: Rector of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie. An eminent linguist and specialist on the French language, Bernard Cerquiglini is known as the “Professor” from TV5 Monde’s Merci Professeur! Philippe Lane is the Cultural Attaché at the French Embassy in London. Gudrun Ledegen: Sociolinguist, Lecturer in Linguistics at the Université de la Réunion. She specialises in contact between French and Creole in La Réunion. The discussion is complemented by contributions by Maryse Bray, Karine Chevalier, Anne-Caroline Fiévet, Hélène Gill, Amélie Hien, Gaëlle Planchenault and Alena Podhorná-Polická. ...Read more

Fine Arts
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia: New Approaches
Janette McWilliam, Sonia Puttock, Tom Stevenson and Rashna Taraporewalla, 978-1-4438-2921-2
This book began to take shape following a conference on the Statue of Zeus at Olympia held at the University of Queensland in July 2008. In line with the main themes of the conference, the book has two fundamental aims: the first is to recognise the unsurpassed reputation of the Zeus in antiquity, to move beyond the framework provided by the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and to treat the famous statue in depth, as befits its unique importance in ancient times; the second aim is to employ a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives in the hope of capturing more accurately than before something of that unique importance. The book is aimed at academic specialists in a variety of disciplines (such as art, archaeology, history, literature, and cultural poetics), though it is also intended to be accessible to undergraduates and certainly to research students. The audience will primarily be one interested in classical antiquity, but there are chapters which trace the story and influence of the Zeus through the Byzantine, Renaissance, and early modern periods, and into more recent centuries in both the northern and southern hemispheres. ...Read more

French Studies
Cherchez la femme: Women and Values in the Francophone World
Erika Fülöp and Adrienne Angelo, 978-1-4438-2933-5
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. ...Read more

La francophonie ou l’éloge de la diversité
Michaël Abecassis, Gudrun Ledegen and Karen Zouaoui, 978-1-4438-2934-2
The first part of this volume, La Francophonie ou l'éloge de la diversité, is devoted to “Francophone cinema, between Bollywood and Hollywood.” What in particular does Francophone cinema have to offer compared with American or Indian cinema? What more does Francophone cinema have to offer? What genres does it prefer? For what audience? The second part deals with the promotion of diversity in Francophone countries, taking into consideration the cultural aspects of Francophonie in the 21st century, the linguistic description of systems in contact, tracing the historical stages which have led to the creation of this locus of cultural diversity, and focusing finally on university cooperation and Franco-British scientific research. This book brings together contributions by outstanding authors who gathered in Oxford in October 2010 at the Maison française, including: Louis-Jean Calvet: Professor at the University of Provence. In collaboration with the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, he works on language policy, particularly the struggle to maintain linguistic diversity. Bernard Cerquiglini: Rector of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie. An eminent linguist and specialist on the French language, Bernard Cerquiglini is known as the “Professor” from TV5 Monde’s Merci Professeur! Philippe Lane is the Cultural Attaché at the French Embassy in London. Gudrun Ledegen: Sociolinguist, Lecturer in Linguistics at the Université de la Réunion. She specialises in contact between French and Creole in La Réunion. The discussion is complemented by contributions by Maryse Bray, Karine Chevalier, Anne-Caroline Fiévet, Hélène Gill, Amélie Hien, Gaëlle Planchenault and Alena Podhorná-Polická. ...Read more

Geography, Anthropology, Recreation
Current Trends in Human Ecology
Priscila Lopes and Alpina Begossi, 978-1-4438-3000-3
An exercise of interdisciplinarity at the crossroads of humans and the environment—this could be one definition of human ecology, as it is demonstrated within this book. Examples of different branches of human ecology are shown as feasible alternatives to understand the interactions of human culture and behaviour with the natural environment from all parts of the world. Current trends, ranging from climate change to ecological knowledge and environmental co-management, are deeply exploited, using a diversified array of empirical case studies. Theoretical aspects are included and examined in every case, including the evolution of culture, values and webs of information within cultures. The central theme approaches and reveals the social, cultural, economic, and ecological processes which link human beings to their environment. From a mixture of practice and theory we emerge with alternatives to mitigate and prevent the accelerating negative changes currently witnessed on our planet, where increasingly fewer people are safe. More importantly, this book provides examples showing how those whose lives are deeply rooted on a direct natural resource dependency are the first to be affected by the global trend of environmental degradation. Small-scale fishers, farmers and herders from the tropics and from cold regions have their livelihood affected by global changes, regional politics and cultural exchanges. Whether and how they will survive, adapt, or embody such changes is not known and this is one more reason to include and involve local groups when searching for sustainable solutions. In a changing world, exploring current threats and impacts of human actions on the environment is a necessity, but bringing about alternatives, some of them already part of traditional human practices, is urgent and can turn to be a promising solution. Anthropology, sociology, and ecology come together in this book, where the unifying goal of theorizing and practising interdisciplinarity in human ecology is shown by, closely tracking examples of current trends and developments. This book is a harvest from the XV International Meeting of the Society for Human Ecology, engaging over 200 people from 27 countries from all continents, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 4-7, 2007, organized by A. Begossi and P. Lopes, with the support of the Fisheries and Food Institute (FIFO) and the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP). This volume ends by indicating several lines of thought and of analyses on current subjects, as follows: sustainability in different cultural contexts and perspectives, methods towards approaching sustainable systems, and current global concerns. Those include agriculture in tropical areas (slash-and-burn practices), climate change, and nature and human behavioural patterns, among others. ...Read more

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds: Essays in Honour of Kirti N. Chaudhuri
Stefan C. A. Halikowski Smith, 978-1-4438-2931-1
The Indian Ocean World was an idea borne out by researchers in economic history and trade in the 1980s in response to the compartmentalization of specific area studies within the wider rubric of Asian civilisations and culture. Professor Kirti N. Chaudhuri’s books Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company (1978), and then Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean (1985), figured amongst the forefront of this new movement in historical thinking, undertaking detailed historical analysis, first of the English East India Company, and then a comparative cultural history of Asian material life and civilisation. Today, historians continue to hold on to the idea of an Indian Ocean world, although studies now follow a number of different threads, from themes like linguistics and creolization, to the seeds of national consciousness. By presenting a number of studies here, gathered into the themes of ‘Intermixing,’ ‘The World of Trade’ and ‘Colonial Paths,’ it is hoped we can render tribute to one of the outstanding historians in this field and reflect the plenitude of current research in this subject area. ...Read more

Seeing in Spanish: From Don Quixote to Daddy Yankee—22 Essays on Hispanic Visual Cultures
Ryan Prout and Tilmann Altenberg, 978-1-4438-2935-9
Seeing in Spanish brings together 22 chapters which share a focus on aspects of visual cultures from the Spanish speaking world. Together these chapters address film, photography, cover art, body art, posters, television, architecture, ekphrasis, biography, murals, graffiti, and digital photo-montage. Between Don Quixote and Daddy Yankee, the essays move from the seventeenth century to the present and traverse Europe, the Americas, and cyberspace. The book is divided into five sections. The first of these, on Spain, includes chapters on the representation of women on LP covers in Spain in the 60s and 70s; portrayals in Spanish cinema of Saint Teresa; Luis Buñuel’s adaptation of Tristana; urban and rural space in recent Spanish documentary film; Catalan television; fine art in Don Quixote; and visions of adoption in three narratives by Spanish writers and filmmakers. The second section, on Mexico and Peru, includes chapters on the fragmentary body in images of Mexico; the art of Abraham Ángel; Jesús Ruiz Durand’s agrarian reform posters; Diego Rivera’s murals; and the role of artistic production in staging the 2006 Oaxaca conflict. The third section, on Cuba, looks at the portrayal of women and of children in recent cinema from the island. It also examines Nancy Morejón’s celebration of the life and art of exiled Cuban artist Ana Mendieta. Section four includes chapters on Chile and Argentina. It addresses street art and graffiti; new forms of publishing; Chilean cinema after Pinochet; and Violeta Parra’s appliqué and collage works. Section five embraces Colombia, Bolivia, and virtual spaces. The contributions to this last section of the book examine childhood in Colombian cinema; the online creativity of pro- and anti-fans of reggaeton; and the photographic diaries of T. Ifor Rees, the UK’s first ambassador to Bolivia. In addition to the geo-political structure which underpins the book’s five sections, the introduction suggests pathways through the contributions focussed on public art and graffiti, women, children, cyberspace and diplomacy, and reconstruction and disintegration. Seeing in Spanish includes 50 illustrations—stills from films, photographs, reproductions of paintings, and screen grabs from the internet—which complement the chapters’ analyses of aspects of Hispanic visual cultures. To aid accessibility, footnotes throughout the book provide English translations of all references from texts in other languages. Taken together, the book’s 22 chapters make a valuable contribution to the existing literature on figures like Don Quixote and Saint Teresa. They also break new ground in approaches to novel areas of scholarship such as sleeve design, artisanal book production, and digital image manipulation. The book will appeal to students and scholars of Spain and Latin America as well as to a general readership with an interest in the visual cultures of the Spanish speaking world. ...Read more

The Heritage Theatre: Globalisation and Cultural Heritage
Marlite Halbertsma, Alex van Stipriaan and Patricia van Ulzen, 978-1-4438-2926-7
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. ...Read more

History
Civil Society and the Trials and Tribulations of Zimbabwe’s Post-colonial Period: Is Citizen Participation Under Threat?
Jephias Mapuva, 978-1-4438-2938-0
The book is a patchwork of both published articles and other pieces of literary works drawn from similar-minded proactive Zimbabweans. The book would be of interest to students of public administration as well as researchers within the fringes of political science and public policy studies. Human Rights and Civil Society as well as youth activists would benefit from the deliberations in the book as the book seeks to divulge the events and developments that have created the current state of affairs in Zimbabwe. Readers from other countries sharing similar history and even geopolitical positions as Zimbabwe can draw interest from the occurrences as they are divulged in the book. ...Read more

Living in Liverpool: A Collection of Sources for Family, Local and Social Historians
Alastair Wilcox, 978-1-4438-2911-3
Liverpool was a city whose seemingly boundless opportunities bred wealth for the ambitious few and an often precarious lifestyle for its toiling masses. But how far can we penetrate that lost world of working class life in Liverpool? Is it possible to recreate that bustling, noisy, active city? Fortunately, Liverpool’s working classes were being watched. Recording (often, it must be said, with horror) their lifestyles, were a mixture of social commentators. Chief amongst these was local journalist, Hugh Shimmin, and a fresh selection of his best writings is reprinted here. But the observations of others, such as the nationally famous George Sims and the locally renowned Dr Duncan, are to be found within this selection as well. The work of less well-known, but equally remarkable, writers and statisticians who recorded the habits, health, housing, wages and religious affiliations of Liverpool is also included in this collection of over forty key sources. The sources have been given an introduction to put them into a context which will enable their use for general interest and educational purposes by social, local and family historians. ...Read more

Presentations of the 2010 Upstate Steampunk Extravaganza and Meetup
Gypsey Elaine Teague, 978-1-4438-2940-3
In November 2010, a small but growing group of Victorian Alternate Historians, often referred to as Steampunk, met for the first conference of its kind. There was music, fashion, merchants, and all the other trappings of the Victorian time period set in a venue of “what if.” What set this conference apart was the academic nature of the presentations. Utilizing the internet and scholarly publications, a call for papers was sent out and the response was impressive. Faculty, graduate students, specialists, and general interest writers wrote, prepared, and presented on a wide array of subject matters. This publication is the culmination of those presentations. Before, during, and after the conference, Steampunk became a much debated and discussed subject on our list servers and emails. While some had no idea what Steampunk was and others had an idea that they thought was correct, there was no “one size fits all” definition to this new genre. It was at that point that a number of us that had been at the conference sat down and tried to describe the phenomenon. This is what we came up with: Steampunk is a juxtaposition of science fiction, fantasy, and Victorian alternate history. Its roots are in the literature and architecture of the late 19th century while having its branches reach into the future. It is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the music of Abney Park, the engineering of Nikola Tesla, and the aviation of helium and hot air. In the 1980s a subculture of science fiction found a foothold in literature and science fiction conventions. These “paths not taken” alternative histories gave the cyberpunk and Goth followers at the conventions a new path to follow. There were the works of H. G. Wells, the undersea submersible of Captain Nemo in Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the Victorian work of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to start with. Add to that the architecture of the Victorian age as a gentrification in many of the inner cities of America and England, and you have a breeding ground for something not quite realized but possibly attainable. ...Read more

The “I” and the “Eye”: The Verbal and the Visual in Post-Renaissance Western Aesthetics
Pragyan Rath, 978-1-4438-2924-3
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. ...Read more

The Medical Response to the Trench Diseases in World War One
Robert L. Atenstaedt, 978-1-4438-2907-6
This book focuses on the trench diseases—trench fever, trench nephritis and trench foot—and examines how doctors responded to them in the context of the Great War. It details the problems that they faced in tackling these conditions, “new” to military warfare. After an introduction to the subject, the second chapter sketches the socio-economic and scientific context within which the response was mounted. The development of bacteriology, sanitation and medical research in the British Army is examined, as is the structure and role of the wartime RAMC, the main body involved in the response to the trench diseases. Divisions between medical practitioners concerning the aetiology of epidemic disease are also described. The third and fourth chapters present a detailed inquiry into how the diseases were defined, and how these definitions were used to counteract them. The effectiveness of the medical response is evaluated in the conclusion, which also examines the impact that the response to the trench diseases had on military-medical progress and medical specialisation. An analysis of the medical response to the trench diseases reveals a conflict between clinicians holding views on disease causation along a spectrum—contagionists, contingent-contagionists and con-figurationists. Faced with their inability to treat the trench diseases effectively, the book argues that the extremely diverse initial interpretation of the trench diseases was replaced by a majority view that all three were a product of the trenches. This enabled an effective response to be mounted, using public health methods, reinforced by discipline, close surveillance, administrative organisation, and cooperation between military and medical branches, as well as within the Army Medical Service. ...Read more

Irish Studies
Social Capital and the Role of LinkedIn to Form, Develop and Maintain Irish Entrepreneurial Business Networks
Ted Vickey, 978-1-4438-2904-5
Online social networking services have eliminated the four walls of brick and mortar found in traditional networking and now provide global access in real time to entrepreneurs regardless of industry. This book presents a qualitative analysis of how Irish entrepreneurs use technology, such as LinkedIn, in the formation, development and maintenance of professional business networks and in so doing manage social capital. The objectives of this book are as follows: · Ascertain the perceived benefits of networking by Irish entrepreneurs; · Explore how Irish entrepreneurs form, maintain and develop their network and · Explore how Irish entrepreneurs use technology to manage social capital. ...Read more

Language and Literature
A Cognitive Approach to Adverbial Subordination in European Portuguese: The Infinitive, the Clitic Pronoun Se and Finite Verb Forms
Rainer Vesterinen, 978-1-4438-2928-1
The study of adverbial clauses in Portuguese is related to the fact that the Portuguese speaker may chose between three different structures, i.e. the adverbial clause may contain the plain infinitive, the inflected infinitive or a finite verb form. In the field of Portuguese Linguistics, the analysis of these structures has traditionally been conducted from a Generative Grammar perspective postulating abstract rules and transformations in order to explain the variation between these structures. As a result, focus has been put on purely structural aspects, while conceptual differences have been highly neglected. The present book challenges this view of linguistic analysis. Instead of proposing a general semantic content for finite and infinitive adverbial clauses in Portuguese—traditionally based on notions like deep structure and surface structure—the hypothesis put forward is that these clauses evoke different meanings and that the use of one adverbial structure or another can be explained by the context in which it occurs and by the conceptual content it designates. From a Cognitive Grammar perspective of linguistic analysis, it is shown that Portuguese adverbial structures illustrate the iconic nature of language and that their conceptual meaning can be explained by notions such as prominence, mental spaces, control and subjectification. ...Read more

A Glasgow Voice: James Kelman’s Literary Language
Christine Amanda Müller, 978-1-4438-2945-8
This book focuses on James Kelman, a leading Scottish author, and his use of language. It examines how Kelman presents a spoken Glasgow working-class voice in his stories while breaking down the traditional distinction made between speech and writing in literature. Three main themes are explored: the use of Glaswegian/Scots language, the inclusion of working-class discourse features, and an expressive preference for spoken over written forms. Kelman’s writing is approached through an examination of his use of punctuation, spelling, vocabulary, grammar, swearing, and body language. Throughout, examples from Kelman’s writing are analysed and statistical comparisons are made between his writing and the Scots Corpus of Texts and Speech. In summary, the reader will find a detailed and systematic analysis of Kelman’s use of language in literature, showing linguistic patterns, identifying key textual strategies and features, and comparing these to the standards that precede him and those that surround his work. ...Read more

Travelling In and Out of Italy: 19th and 20th-Century Notebooks, Letters and Essays
Emanuele Occhipinti, 978-1-4438-2919-9
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. ...Read more

Linguistics
A Cognitive Approach to Adverbial Subordination in European Portuguese: The Infinitive, the Clitic Pronoun Se and Finite Verb Forms
Rainer Vesterinen, 978-1-4438-2928-1
The study of adverbial clauses in Portuguese is related to the fact that the Portuguese speaker may chose between three different structures, i.e. the adverbial clause may contain the plain infinitive, the inflected infinitive or a finite verb form. In the field of Portuguese Linguistics, the analysis of these structures has traditionally been conducted from a Generative Grammar perspective postulating abstract rules and transformations in order to explain the variation between these structures. As a result, focus has been put on purely structural aspects, while conceptual differences have been highly neglected. The present book challenges this view of linguistic analysis. Instead of proposing a general semantic content for finite and infinitive adverbial clauses in Portuguese—traditionally based on notions like deep structure and surface structure—the hypothesis put forward is that these clauses evoke different meanings and that the use of one adverbial structure or another can be explained by the context in which it occurs and by the conceptual content it designates. From a Cognitive Grammar perspective of linguistic analysis, it is shown that Portuguese adverbial structures illustrate the iconic nature of language and that their conceptual meaning can be explained by notions such as prominence, mental spaces, control and subjectification. ...Read more

Auxiliary Functions of Tense, Aspect, Modality and Agreement Markers in Greek Sign Language: Implications on Language Universal Principles
Galini G. Sapountzaki, 978-1-4438-2910-6
None ...Read more

Gender Construction and Negotiation in the Chinese EFL Classroom
Huajing Zhao, 978-1-4438-2905-2
This book is developed from an ethnographic case study which investigated Chinese adolescents’ construction of their gender identity and the way it is negotiated in the course of learning English as a foreign language (EFL) from a sociolinguistic, sociocultural and sociopsychological point of view. It documented the unseen connections between the micro-level of the students’ face-to-face verbal interactions and the macro-level of the role of learning EFL that can play in students’ construction and negotiation of their gender identity. The book aims to help both teachers and students to develop a more comprehensive view of English learning as a means to social and educational development. On the whole, the study showed that second language learning pedagogy which integrates CLT can be used as an important tool to open up opportunities for the improvement of gender awareness in cultures where gender and sex are not linguistically differentiated. It demonstrated that the EFL class can be used as a means of opening up a space where adolescents can become aware of gender and play around with this awareness. It can be educationally valuable with regard to making students and teachers think about a number of social and intercultural issues alongside cross-linguistic issues. The fieldwork of the research showed that interventions directed at attracting students’ attention to gender roles and the way they behaved in interactions in English highlight an educational function of the place of EFL in the curriculum which is so far unrecognised in China. ...Read more

On Meaning: Individuation and Identity—The Definition of a World View
Maria Isabel Aldinhas Ferreira, 978-1-4438-2925-0
Meaning, the complex phenomenon of individuation and the definition of identity are the core theme of this work. Grounded on a theoretical framework that gives particular emphasis to the semiotic process common to all forms of cognition, human cognition is conceived here as specific of organisms that, in the course of their interactions, produce symbolic forms, defining the specific physical, social and cultural environments in which they evolve. Individuation, inherent to that semiotic process, is complex and double-sided. It involves, on one hand, the definition of semantic identities and their acknowledgment as world objects – naming; on the other hand, it comprehends the specific lexical and morphosyntactic strategies different languages have found to designate particular entities – referring. The definition of world objects and its symbolic translation presents variations from language to language. In the second part of the book, we define what we have called a “structure-motivated ontology” to represent how this symbolic translation is accomplished in English and European Portuguese. Plus, we try to show how the nature of this symbolic translation affects structural realisation, namely the individuation of reference and the construal of “one-off referring” expressions. ...Read more

Specialised Languages in the Global Village: A Multi-Perspective Approach
Carmen Pérez-Llantada and Maida Watson, 978-1-4438-2909-0
The status of LSP (Languages for Specialised Purposes) in the contemporary socio-cultural context is an ongoing central issue of scholarly debate. Specialised Languages in the Global Village examines the impact of globalisation on intercultural communication within specialised communities of practice. The contributions to the volume provide linguistically and pedagogically-informed discussion on modes of communication practice in professional and institutional domains, frames of social action and the construction of professional identities. The contributors also address issues of languages and social entrepreneurship, and the acquisition and development of linguistic/cultural competence in foreign languages for specialised purposes. The edition is a valuable resource for researchers in LSP, specialists in the fields of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and scholars in the area of rhetoric and composition. It will also be of interest to professional translators, language editors and language advisors in the fields of specialised academic/professional communication. LSP instructors and foreign language teachers will also find informed guidelines and useful pedagogical proposals for classroom implementation. ...Read more

Literary Classics
Presentations of the 2010 Upstate Steampunk Extravaganza and Meetup
Gypsey Elaine Teague, 978-1-4438-2940-3
In November 2010, a small but growing group of Victorian Alternate Historians, often referred to as Steampunk, met for the first conference of its kind. There was music, fashion, merchants, and all the other trappings of the Victorian time period set in a venue of “what if.” What set this conference apart was the academic nature of the presentations. Utilizing the internet and scholarly publications, a call for papers was sent out and the response was impressive. Faculty, graduate students, specialists, and general interest writers wrote, prepared, and presented on a wide array of subject matters. This publication is the culmination of those presentations. Before, during, and after the conference, Steampunk became a much debated and discussed subject on our list servers and emails. While some had no idea what Steampunk was and others had an idea that they thought was correct, there was no “one size fits all” definition to this new genre. It was at that point that a number of us that had been at the conference sat down and tried to describe the phenomenon. This is what we came up with: Steampunk is a juxtaposition of science fiction, fantasy, and Victorian alternate history. Its roots are in the literature and architecture of the late 19th century while having its branches reach into the future. It is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the music of Abney Park, the engineering of Nikola Tesla, and the aviation of helium and hot air. In the 1980s a subculture of science fiction found a foothold in literature and science fiction conventions. These “paths not taken” alternative histories gave the cyberpunk and Goth followers at the conventions a new path to follow. There were the works of H. G. Wells, the undersea submersible of Captain Nemo in Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the Victorian work of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to start with. Add to that the architecture of the Victorian age as a gentrification in many of the inner cities of America and England, and you have a breeding ground for something not quite realized but possibly attainable. ...Read more

Music
African Musical Aesthetics
John Murungi, 978-1-4438-2927-4
In the West, philosophy is generally confined to the domain of the intellect, and music to the domain of the emotion. This book makes either domain the location for the other. African musical aesthetics constitutes this location, and has its home in it. Moreover, since the separation of the domain of the intellect and the domain of emotion represents a bifurcation of what it is to be a human being, and by making either domain the location of the other, what African musical aesthetics accomplishes is the affirmation of a unified sense of what it is to be a human being. Accordingly, the unity of philosophy and music give rises to a unified sense of being human. It is to such unity that African musical aesthetics takes us. For African musical aesthetics to accomplish this task, this book challenges the conventional Western understanding of philosophy—an understanding that projects Africa as devoid of philosophy. It is this projection that pervaded Africa during the colonial period, and it is the projection that is challenged in African philosophy. From an African philosophical perspective African musical aesthetics turns out to be an emancipatory process that seeks to affirm the humanity of Africans but also a process that seeks to affirm common humanity. Music is not solely a matter of audiology, what is played, or what one dances to. It has its elemental task in calling our attention to what we are as human beings. In so far as it is sensuous, it constitutes us as members of the sensible world, and links us intrinsically to all that is sensuous. It is more than humanism. Music registers us as members of nature. It is nature naturing. ...Read more

Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe
Eckehard Pistrick, Nicola Scaldaferri and Gretel Schwörer, 978-1-4438-2930-4
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. ...Read more

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Actéon
Robert Ignatius Letellier, 978-1-4438-2916-8
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur. Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (the Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty! Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism. Actéon, an opéra-comique in one act with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Salle de la place de la Bourse) on 23 January 1836. The story is set in eighteenth-century Sicily. Prince Aldobrandi has jealously shut up his wife Lucrezia and his sister Adèle in a palace where only women are permitted. Count Léoni, wishing to see Adèle, disguises himself as a blind street-singer to gain the attention of the ladies. Lucrezia is painting a picture of Diana and her nymphs being surprised by Actaeon, and persuades her husband to allow the blind man to pose as a model. Léoni’s deception is revealed when Adèle catches him reading a letter sent to her by the Cherubino-like page Stéfano, who jealously betrays the Count to Aldobrandi. A poignarding is narrowly averted when Léoni admits that he came to see Adèle and not Lucrezia; the chastened Prince then graciously consents to pose as Actaeon. The score of this lever de rideau, originally destined for the Opéra, was written for the agile voice of Laure Cinti-Damoreau. It is overshadowed by the other more popular creations of the composer, but nonetheless contains several remarkable pieces. The overture, with its perky introduction broken by slower cello and oboe sequences is dominated by Mediterranean rhythms: a vigorous bolero encloses a beautiful hushed central movement, the sicilienne, which is dreamily passed from horns to clarinets to oboes. Of real elegance are: the aria “Il est des époux complaisants”; the romance “Jeunes beautés, charmantes desmoiselles” and the syllabic quartet “Le destin comble mes voeux”. Mme Damoreau excited general enthusiasm when she sang the Sicilienne (“Nina, jolie et sage”), an air à vocalise which is a masterpiece of grace and finesse in this small work. The opera is unique among the works of Scribe and Auber for its brevity, for its use of a classical framework (the myth of Diana and Actaeon) to provide an updated contemporary fable that celebrates art and love. All these elements, and the gift of the vocally challenging part for Cinti-Damoreau, come together in the brilliant finale. The original cast was: Jean-Francois Inchindi [Hinnekindt] (Aldobrandi); Laure Cinti-Damoreau (Lucrezia); Louis-Benoît-Alphonse Révial (Léoni); Mlle Camoin (Adèle); and Mme Félicité Pradher (Stéfano). The work was in the repertoire between 1836 and 1852, with a total of 92 performances. It was translated into German, and produced in Brussels, Berlin, Vienna, London and Philadelphia. ...Read more

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: La Circassienne
Robert Ignatius Letellier, 978-1-4438-2923-6
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), once one of the most well-known and well-loved names in French 19th-century opera, came later in life than many famous composers to his art, yet had one of the longest and most successful careers. He studied with Cherubini after abandoning an initial attempt to establish a career in commerce, and experienced his first real triumph at the age of 38 with La Bergère Châteleine (1820). His subsequent association with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), a collaboration that lasted until Scribe’s death, became one of the most famous and successful partnerships in musical history. Works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) cemented Auber’s popularity with the public and drew official recognition and honours. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur. Auber’s grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello), a work of great significance in the history of opera, is set against a background of revolution and uprising – a situation that Auber knew only too well. He lived through four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870), dying at the advanced age of 89 in the desperate conditions of the Commune, of a long-standing illness aggravated by the dangers and privations that attended the Siege of Paris. Auber had always loved his home city, and was not prepared to leave it, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. Ironically, a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of La Muette de Portici, a man so successful in depicting revolutionary fervour that a performance of this opera in Brussels in 1830 had helped to inspire the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber’s charming and graceful overtures were once staples of the light Classical repertoire, known and loved everywhere. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had an overwhelming influence on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. His operas, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire. Contemporary audiences are not attuned to Auber’s elegant and restrained art, accustomed as they are to verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism, but those willing to listen are rewarded by works that retain all their freshness, delicacy and charm. La Circassienne, an opéra-comique in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart), on 2 February 1861. The story is based on the novel Les Amours du chevalier de Faulas (1787–90) by Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray. The locale is the Caucasus and Moscow, around 1840. A group of bored Russian officers, snowed in inside their fort in the Caucasus, plan to put on Dalayrac’s Adolphe et Clara. Alexis, who has just related an anecdote of how he disguised himself in women’s clothes to carry out an errand, is chosen for the female role and dressed à la Circassienne since no other costume is available. The new commandant, General Orsakoff, falls in love with “Prascovia”. The Circassians attack by surprise and carry off “Prascovia” and Orsakoff’s niece and ward, Olga, but the Russians manage to escape. Back in Moscow, the painter Lanskoi tries to dissuade Orsakoff from finding “Prascovia” by announcing that she has entered a convent. The overture captures something of the pert and satirical aspects of the potentially louche plot, reflecting an appropriate tone for the subtle inversions of expectations and values endemic to this storyline. It unfolds the central themes of the opera, nearly all of them taken from the extended act 2 finale – the Harem Scene. In act 2 the chorus of odalisques is delightful: the composer had never written anything more vaporous and ethereal. Indeed, La Circassienne provides a mixture of some fine late harmonic thoughtfulness, and also some routine application, as in the repetitions of rhythmic patterns that can seem a weakness. In act 3 the couplets for the painter Lanskoi (“Il aime trop”) are written with malicious finesse, and were encored. The orchestration is a constant feast for the ear, coupled as it is with a most original and penetrating harmony. This sense of heightened expression is part of the slightly extended or Mannerist tendency discernible in this work. It is nowhere better illustrated than in the vocal writing for the two principal roles. The part of Alexis with its ambiguous transvestism finds a vocal correlative in its very high tessitura, with an almost exaggerated extension in alt. Montaubry excelled in creating the unusual role of Alexis, thanks to his slight physique and head notes. Few tenors could have tackled this as victoriously as he did. The role of Olga is also extremely demanding. The original cast was: Achille-Félix Montaubry (Alexis); Mlle Monrose (Olga); Barielle (Orsakoff); Joseph-Antoine-Charles Couderc (Lanskoi); Eugène-Louis Troy (Aboul Kasim); Charles-Francois Duvernoy (Soltikoff, a Russian captain); Ambroise (Perod, a Russian brigadier); Davoust (Irak, one of his officers); Paul-Pierre Laget (Boudour, a eunuch); and Mlles Prost and Bousquet (Zoloé and Neïla, wives of Aboul Kasim). The work was in the repertoire for the year of 1861 only, achieving a total of 49 performances. Perhaps because of its rather ambiguous subject matter, the opera did not enjoy further productions outside Paris. But for all its risqué implications, this libretto was set with great success by Franz von Suppé for Vienna in 1876, under the title of Fatinitza. ...Read more

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Maçon (Maurer und Schlosser)
Robert Ignatius Letellier, 978-1-4438-2915-1
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), once one of the most well-known and well-loved names in French 19th-century opera, came later in life than many famous composers to his art, yet had one of the longest and most successful careers. He studied with Cherubini after abandoning an initial attempt to establish a career in commerce, and experienced his first real triumph at the age of 38 with La Bergère Châteleine (1820). His subsequent association with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), a collaboration that lasted until Scribe’s death, became one of the most famous and successful partnerships in musical history. Works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) cemented Auber’s popularity with the public and drew official recognition and honours. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur. Auber’s grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello), a work of great significance in the history of opera, is set against a background of revolution and uprising—a situation that Auber knew only too well. He lived through four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870), dying at the advanced age of 89 in the desperate conditions of the Commune, of a long-standing illness aggravated by the dangers and privations that attended the Siege of Paris. Auber had always loved his home city, and was not prepared to leave it, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. Ironically, a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of La Muette de Portici, a man so successful in depicting revolutionary fervour that a performance of this opera in Brussels in 1830 had helped to inspire the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber’s charming and graceful overtures were once staples of the light Classical repertoire, known and loved everywhere. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had an overwhelming influence on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. His operas, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire. Contemporary audiences are not attuned to Auber’s elegant and restrained art, accustomed as they are to verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism, but those willing to listen are rewarded by works that retain all their freshness, delicacy and charm. Le Maçon, an opéra-comique (opéra français) in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Salle Feydeau), on 3 May 1825. It was to become Auber’s first enduring success. The opera is set in Paris, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, around 1820. Roger, a mason, and his friend Baptiste, a locksmith, are abducted and taken blindfolded to a chateau by their kidnappers, the Turkish slaves Usbeck and Rica. They are forced to build a secret prison, but eventually help to liberate Irma, a young Greek girl, and her fiancé Léon, who are being held against their will by the Turks. This opéra français, first performed a few months before La Dame blanche in 1825, represents a Parisian-bourgeois counterpiece to Boieldieu’s Scottish-Romantic opera. Both book and score were equally successful, with varied situations and musically well-delineated characters. The work is related to the venerable tradition of the rescue opera, not only in its story, but also in Auber’s music, especially in the use of a couplet refrain “Du courage” as a dramatic leading melody. The music is characterized by pointed, sharp punctuation that evokes the spirit of the revolutionary tone of the rescue opera, and resonates with the atmosphere of Scribe’s libretto. The opera represents a decisive development in Auber’s style, a turning away from imitation of Rossini, to Boieldieu’s simplicity and thereby to a specifically French tradition. Scribe’s wonderful facility was able to focus on the simplest but most basic of human activities, and derive a poetry from the ordinary. This was better acknowledged in the German title of the opera, Maurer und Schlosser, where the two ordinary heroes share equal billing. Roger, like Boieldieu’s Georges Brown, is a real hero in working clothes, his honest fervour and suffering idealism expressed in the passion of his music. It is the extended ensemble scenes that contain the greatest amount of action—both physical and emotional. The act 2 finale (“Malheureux arrêtez!”) is at the heart of the opera, and a fine example of the effective creative and dramaturgical principles used by librettist and composer. The original cast was: Louis-Antoine-Eléonore Ponchard (Roger); Vizentini (Baptiste); Lafeuillade (Léon de Mérinville); Mme Félicité Pradher (Irma); Darancourt and Henri (Usbeck and Rica); Mme Antoinette-Eugènie Rigaud (Henriette); Mme Marie-Julienne Boulanger (Mme Bertrand, a neighbour of Henriette’s); Mlle Jenny Colon (Zobéide, companion to Irma) and Belnie (a wedding guest). The work remained in the repertoire from 1825 to 1896 and was performed 525 times. By the 1850s it had been translated into German, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Czech and Hungarian. It was performed across Europe, and in New York (1827) and Rio de Janeiro (1846). On German stages this opera, after Fra Diavolo (1830), remained Auber’s most popular work far into the twentieth century, given as late as 1930. In 1826 a Romantic-comic Singspiel adaptation by Johann Gabriel Seidl (set in Italy) was performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna, while London saw the adaptation by James Robinson Planché, The Mason of Buda, for the Adelphi Theatre. ...Read more

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: L’Enfant prodigue
Robert Ignatius Letellier, 978-1-4438-2908-3
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a long and illustrious working partnership that only ended with Scribe’s death. Success followed success; works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) brought Auber public fame and official recognition. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur. Auber seems to have been fated to live in revolutionary times; during his long life no less than four revolutions took place in France (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is perhaps unsurprisingly based on revolution, depicting the 1647 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule. It is a key work in operatic history, and has a revolutionary history itself: it was a performance of this work in Brussels in 1830 that helped spark the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. It was a revolution that hastened Auber’s death at the old age of 89. He died on 12 May 1871 as a result of a long illness aggravated by the privations and dangers of the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. In a twist of fate, a mark had been placed on the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty! Auber’s overtures were once instantly recognizable, favourites of the light Classical repertoire. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had a huge influence, both on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. Musical tastes and fashions have changed, and contemporary audiences are more accustomed to the heavier fare of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), are seldom performed, yet Auber’s elegant, delicate and restrained art remains as appealing to the discerning listener as ever it was. L’Enfant prodigue, an opéra in five acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was first performed at the Académie nationale de musique (Salle de la rue Le Peletier) on 6 December 1850. The story is derived from the famous parable in St Luke’s Gospel (ch. 15). The scene is set in Old Testament times, in Ancient Israel and Egypt. Azaël, the only son of Reuben, a poor Israelite, leaves the paternal home and his betrothed Jephtèle to go and sample the pleasures promised by the great city of Memphis. He ruins himself in gambling and is seduced by the courtesan Nephté and the dancer Lia. Rejected and destitute, he is rescued from the Nile in act 4 by the leader of a caravan, and is reduced to tending a flock of sheep. In the final act the prodigal son comes to his senses, and returns home to throw himself into his loving father’s arms. Scribe produced a libretto without dramatic action, which, however, provided good static situations for the composer. The orchestral details are full of subtle interest and charm. The overture is the longest Auber wrote (466 bars). It is divided into three main sections, focusing attention on the tragic aspects of the story. The music unfolds the programme of the action, rehearsing the scenario in symbolic transmutation. The fleshpots of Egypt are conjured up and then in ecstatic mood the music captures the pathos of the return of the penitent sinner and his welcome back into his family. The theme of prodigality has been transposed into one of restitution. Auber achieves a symbolically effective and sonorous introduction to this operatic recounting of the Biblical parable. The essence of the story is enshrined in Scribe’s dignified paraphrase of the brief Gospel passage “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants” (Luke 15:18–19): “Oui, j’irai vers mon père”. This is the key moment of decision and soul-searching in the opera, and carries the story’s emotional burden and spiritual implication. The work is dominated by the figure of the patriarch Reuben, with his act 1 aria “Toi qui versas la lumière”, and in act 2 the romance (“Il est un enfant d’Israël”), with its recitative of biblical simplicity. The final air of recognition (“Mon fils, c’est toi”) is possibly the most touching piece in the whole work: indeed, it attains a veritable grandeur. A special aspect of the opera is the dance sequence in act 2—No. 10 Scène, containing 5 Airs de ballet, as part of the celebrations of the sacred bull Apis. The music is very light, gracious and delicate, full of buoyancy and chamber-like textures. L’Enfant prodigue was produced only once, with no reprise, a total of 44 performances. The original cast was: Jean-Étienne-Auguste Massol; Gustave-Hippolyte Roger; Mlle Pauline-Eulalie Dameron; Louis-Henri Obin; Fleury; Koenig, Guignot, Ferdinand Prévôt; Molinier; Mme Laborde; Mlle Marie-Adolphine Petit-Brière; and Mlle Adèle Plunkett. The opera was translated into English, Italian and German and produced in Brussels, London, Graz, Vienna, Munich, Florence and New York until 1875. ...Read more

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Serment
Robert Ignatius Letellier, 978-1-4438-2939-7
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a long and illustrious working partnership that only ended with Scribe’s death. Success followed success; works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) brought Auber public fame and official recognition. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur. Auber seems to have been fated to live in revolutionary times; during his long life no less than four revolutions took place in France (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is perhaps unsurprisingly based on revolution, depicting the 1647 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule. It is a key work in operatic history, and has a revolutionary history itself: it was a performance of this work in Brussels in 1830 that helped spark the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. It was a revolution that hastened Auber’s death at the old age of 89. He died on 12 May 1871 as a result of a long illness aggravated by the privations and dangers of the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. In a twist of fate, a mark had been placed on the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty! Auber’s overtures were once instantly recognizable, favourites of the light Classical repertoire. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had a huge influence, both on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. Musical tastes and fashions have changed, and contemporary audiences are more accustomed to the heavier fare of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), are seldom performed, yet Auber’s elegant, delicate and restrained art remains as appealing to the discerning listener as ever it was. Le Serment, an opéra in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe and Edouard Mazères, was first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique (Salle de la rue Le Peletier), on 1 October 1832. The story is set in Toulon, in 1800. The village innkeeper Andiol prefers, as his future son-in-law, an unknown man who is secretly a brigand and leader of a band of counterfeiters (Capitaine Jean), to the young farmer Edmond, who is loved by his daughter Marie. Edmond learns Jean’s secret but is induced to promise that he will not reveal Jean’s true identity. He goes off to be a soldier, returning as a successful officer. Marie is about to marry Jean, but when the truth about Jean’s identity is revealed, they are able to be married at last. The proportions of the Opéra were far too grandiose for the modest subject of Le Serment. The opera was not a great success, but maintained its place in the repertoire without interruption until 1849, although most often given without the last act. The mise en scène was much admired, depicting the interior of an inn, a Gothic chamber, and a busy street where merchants of various races dressed in native costume peddled their wares. The opera enjoyed particular popularity in Germany as Die Falschmünzer. The music is full of ingenious details and the orchestration is refined. The overture became well-known. It establishes three distinct thematic worlds: the pastoral world of Marie and Andiol, the busy world of the counterfeiters, and the military world of Edmond’s patriotic adventures. There are several extended solo numbers, like the opening air for Andiol; some fine choral writing for male voices; and Capitaine Jean’s nautical ballad. The role of the counterfeiters presents another variant on the favoured Romantic topoi of robbers and smugglers; their activities are hidden behind stories of hauntings to keep away the curious. The tenor is given excellent opportunities in Edmond’s arias in act 2 (“En avant conscrit”) and act 3 (“Salut ô mon pays”). The most famous piece in the opera is Marie’s grand air à vocalises for the soprano (“Dès enfance les mêmes chaînes”) in which all the most arduous difficulties of the art of singing are displayed. It was a triumph for Madame Damoreau, and served for a long time as a test piece, and was later introduced into the beginning of act 2 of the Italian version of Fra Diavolo as a more substantial and challenging alternative to Zerline’s aria. The original cast was: Adolphe Nourrit (Edmond); Laure Cinti-Damoreau (Marie); Henri-Bernard Dabadie (Jean); Prosper Derivis and Nicholas-Prosper Levasseur (Andiol); Ferdinand Prévôt (a brigadier of the gendarmerie); and Trévaux (an officer). The opera remained in the repertoire from 1832 to 1849, with the 100th performance taking place on 30 March 1849. There were 102 performances in total. It was translated into English, German, Italian, Hungarian, Czech and Russian, and produced in many European cities. ...Read more

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Marco Spada
Robert Ignatius Letellier, 978-1-4438-2914-4
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur. Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (the Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty! Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism. Marco Spada, an opéra-comique in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 21 December 1852. The opera is set in the Romagna around 1830. The governor of Rome is planning a journey to the Adriatic accompanied by his niece, the Marchesa de Sanpietri, and his aide Pepinelli. They become enmeshed in the intrigues of the Abruzzi bandits headed by Marco Spada. Angela, the daughter of the Baron de Torrida (really Marco Spada), offers them hospitality. Pepinelli declares his love for the Marchesa but is rejected. At a ball Angela meets her long-lost beloved Fédérici, the governor's nephew. The Baron is identified as the bandit chief, but only to Fédérici and Angela. She chooses to remain with her father despite this revelation, and renounces her beloved, who thereupon publicly announces his engagement to the Marchesa. Eventually Marco Spada is fatefully wounded in a successful skirmish with the carabinieri. Pepinelli and the Marchesa, who have been captured, are forced to marry, leaving Fédérici and Angela free to realize their love. The eternal brigand, so much exploited by the librettist, turns up here again. Indeed, the final scene was inspired by Horace Vernet’s famous painting La Confession du bandit. But this time the recurrence of this favoured type was less successful than in Fra Diavolo and La Sirène: public reception was comparatively cool. The overture is one of Auber’s most accomplished. The music has all those features that distinguish the composer’s style, as skilled as it is inspired. Act 1 includes a beautiful serenade for Fédérici, a tender paternal aria for the Baron, and Angéla’s pastoral couplets. Act 2 famously includes Angela’s declaration of love in four languages: Russian, English, Italian, and French. The finale is the highpoint of the opera: the grand and moving theme of the stretta already familiar from the overture. Act 3 contains Angela’s chanson “Fille de la montagne”; and the final scene which is full of noble pathos, presaged in the very opening bars of this work. The original cast was: Charles-Amable Battaille (Marco Spada); Caroline Duprez (Angela); Jean-Jacques Boulo (Fédérici); Léon Carvalho (Prince Osorio); Joseph-Antoine-Charles Couderc (Pepinelli); Mlle Andrea Favel (the Marchesa Sanpietri); Bussine (Fra Borromeo); and Elias Nathan and Lejeune (Geronio and Gianetti, bandits). The relationship between the Baron and Angela, sustained throughout the opera, provided the great bass Charles-Amable Battaille and the bright high soprano Caroline Duprez (daughter of the famous tenor Gilbert Duprez), both rising stars, with the opportunity for an effective working partnership. Marco Spada played for two years only, until 1854, and was not revived. The work was destined for transformation into a ballet five years later. In all, there were a respectable 78 performances. The opera was translated into German, Polish and Swedish, and performed in Brussels, Berlin, Hannover, Dresden, Mannheim, Vienna, Warsaw and Stockholm. ...Read more

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Zanetta
Robert Ignatius Letellier, 978-1-4438-2920-5
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a long and illustrious working partnership that only ended with Scribe’s death. Success followed success; works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) brought Auber public fame and official recognition. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur. Auber seems to have been fated to live in revolutionary times; during his long life no less than four revolutions took place in France (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is perhaps unsurprisingly based on revolution, depicting the 1647 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule. It is a key work in operatic history, and has a revolutionary history itself: it was a performance of this work in Brussels in 1830 that helped spark the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. It was a revolution that hastened Auber’s death at the old age of 89. He died on 12 May 1871 as a result of a long illness aggravated by the privations and dangers of the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. In a twist of fate, a mark had been placed on the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty! Auber’s overtures were once instantly recognizable, favourites of the light Classical repertoire. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had a huge influence, both on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. Musical tastes and fashions have changed, and contemporary audiences are more accustomed to the heavier fare of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), are seldom performed, yet Auber’s elegant, delicate and restrained art remains as appealing to the discerning listener as ever it was. Zanetta, an opéra-comique in three acts with libretto by Eugène Scribe and Jules Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 18 May 1840. It is set in Naples in the early l740s, and is the second of Auber’s three Sicilian operas, along with Actéon and Zerline. The plot concerns the ploys used by King Charles VI to discourage his favourite, the German nobleman Rodolphe’s attentions to his sister Nisida. The latter, in order to allay her brother’s suspicions, conceives a plan in which Rodolphe will openly court the gardener’s daughter Zanetta. The intrigues fail, and Rodolphe ends up with the humble Zanetta while Nisida marries the Elector of Bavaria. The music of this pleasant opera is notable for the amount of vocal display (created for Mme Cinti-Damoreau) and the recurrent use of the waltz rhythm which dominates the finales of the first and third acts (cf Fiorella and Haydée as works with a similar emphasis). The overture is very attractive. Mmes Damoreau and Rossi were applauded for the duet in act 2 (“Contre l’hymen qu’ordonne”). Act 3 contains a cavatina for the Princess (“Pendant toute la nuit”), and the remarkable moment of reflection for Zanetta “Adieu mes fleurs chéries”. All three duets are very expressive. The original cast consisted of: Joseph-Antoine-Charles Couderc (Rodolphe); Laure Cinti-Damoreau (Zanetta); Mme Rossi (Nisida); Ernest Mocker (Charles VI); Honoré Grignon (Baron Mathanasius); Charles-Louis Sainte-Foy and Emon (Dionigi and Ruggieri); and Haussard (a chamberlain). The work was in the repertoire l840–41, with a total of 35 performances. It was translated into German and Danish, and produced in Amsterdam, Prague, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Brussels and London. ...Read more

Philosophy
African Musical Aesthetics
John Murungi, 978-1-4438-2927-4
In the West, philosophy is generally confined to the domain of the intellect, and music to the domain of the emotion. This book makes either domain the location for the other. African musical aesthetics constitutes this location, and has its home in it. Moreover, since the separation of the domain of the intellect and the domain of emotion represents a bifurcation of what it is to be a human being, and by making either domain the location of the other, what African musical aesthetics accomplishes is the affirmation of a unified sense of what it is to be a human being. Accordingly, the unity of philosophy and music give rises to a unified sense of being human. It is to such unity that African musical aesthetics takes us. For African musical aesthetics to accomplish this task, this book challenges the conventional Western understanding of philosophy—an understanding that projects Africa as devoid of philosophy. It is this projection that pervaded Africa during the colonial period, and it is the projection that is challenged in African philosophy. From an African philosophical perspective African musical aesthetics turns out to be an emancipatory process that seeks to affirm the humanity of Africans but also a process that seeks to affirm common humanity. Music is not solely a matter of audiology, what is played, or what one dances to. It has its elemental task in calling our attention to what we are as human beings. In so far as it is sensuous, it constitutes us as members of the sensible world, and links us intrinsically to all that is sensuous. It is more than humanism. Music registers us as members of nature. It is nature naturing. ...Read more

Agencies of the Frame: Tectonic Strategies in Cinema and Architecture
Michael Tawa, 978-1-4438-2942-7
Agencies of the Frame: Tectonic Strategies in Cinema and Architecture aims to explore parallel approaches to the conceptualisation and composition of place, space, time, materiality and narrative in cinematographic and architectural practices. Beyond drawing useful implications for design, the book investigates a range of themes to mobilise a reconsideration of cinema and architecture as non-representational practices. It suggests that films and buildings can be read and designed as assemblages not directed to the formal expression of meaning, but to the framing of strategic and enabling conditions of emergent sense, realised within the tectonic and material conditions of the cinematic and the architectural as such. Succinct analyses of precedents in film, music, painting and architecture are used to foreground tectonic and compositional characteristics related to spatiality, temporality and narrative that are transferable across disciplines and practices. The thematic framework of the book engages theoretical material by Heidegger, Simondon, Deleuze, Nancy, Agamben and Stiegler. Classical modernist and postmodernist films by Dreyer, Antonioni, Hitchcock, Godard, Paradjanov, Tarkovski, Herzog, Lynch and Heneke are analysed side by side with important traditional, modernist and contemporary buildings, including works by Corbusier, Scarpa, Lewerentz, Zumthor and Markli. Illustrated with drawings and photographs by the author, this book should be of interest to practitioners and students of art, design, cinema and the built environment who wish to expand the creative scope and resonance of their work. ...Read more

Edward Scribner Ames’ Unpublished Manuscripts
John N. Gaston and W. Creighton Peden, 978-1-4438-2932-8
Edward Scribner Ames (1870–1958) was a minister in the Christian Church, a.k.a. Disciples of Christ. He served as minister of the Hyde Park Christian Church from 1900 to l940. Having received his undergraduate degree from Drake College, BD and two years towards a doctorate at Yale University, he completed a PhD in philosophy in 1895 with John Dewey as chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Chicago. After teaching at Butler College for three years, he returned to Hyde Park Church and became a part time teacher in philosophy at the University of Chicago. Eventually Ames taught more and more and became chair of the department. At the University of Chicago he also became the founder of Disciples Divinity House, for which he served as Dean until 1945. Ames is significant as a philosopher who adapted Christianity to the philosophy of pragmatism and the world of modern science. Ames’ hundreds of publications are held at the Disciples Divinity House at the University of Chicago, with the works in this volume being his unpublished manuscripts. In these lectures Ames devotes five lectures to explaining Christianity in terms of pragmatism to Disciples ministers. In other lectures he focuses on the philosophy of John Locke and its impact of the development of the Christian Church. Ames also developed a report for the Commission for the Restudy of the Disciples, The Philosophical Background on Disciples. In other ministerial lectures he presented a series of four lectures on The Reasonableness of Christianity. Also included are his alumni lecture at Yale Divinity in 1932 titled Imagery and Meaning in Religious Ideas; the Gates Memorial Lectures at Grinnell College titled This Human Life; a lecture at Northwestern University on The Will to Believe; and four lectures at the Pastors’ Institute in 1938 on When Science Comes to Religion. Ames addressed the Pastors’ Institute again in 1939 in four lectures on the Religious Implications of John Dewey’s Philosophy. ...Read more

Knowledge, Differences and Identity in the Time of Globalization: Institutional Discourse and Practices
James Kusch, 978-1-4438-2936-6
The discourse of globalization that pertains to higher education reform is troubling. The first troubling thing about much of the discourse that concerns globalization is that it most often does not name a human subject. We propose that globalization discourse should be written for and directed towards human beings or students. The second troubling thing about the discourse of globalization is the way that it antagonizes and marginalizes who that missing subject might be. The two relationships form the themes of this book. The nature and logic of discourse about globalization expresses a social rationality that serves as a precondition to constructing relevant meanings. The way that we conceive or obscure the subject produces a condition or position where those whom are the subject of the discourse must indeed await its effects—who is the pertinent policy about? Or, for whom is policy intended? Much policy discourse holds consequences for the way in which outcomes of policies are understood or explained in the social milieu where policies are enacted. The same discourse constructs and deconstructs identities and, as we will see, the language of reform in fact antagonizes and marginalizes students by virtue of a particular vagueness in the discourse and symbols of the discourse. What is at issue in the discourse of globalization is the character and logic of collective identities. How then to relate students to the cluster of features that comprise globalization? ...Read more

On Meaning: Individuation and Identity—The Definition of a World View
Maria Isabel Aldinhas Ferreira, 978-1-4438-2925-0
Meaning, the complex phenomenon of individuation and the definition of identity are the core theme of this work. Grounded on a theoretical framework that gives particular emphasis to the semiotic process common to all forms of cognition, human cognition is conceived here as specific of organisms that, in the course of their interactions, produce symbolic forms, defining the specific physical, social and cultural environments in which they evolve. Individuation, inherent to that semiotic process, is complex and double-sided. It involves, on one hand, the definition of semantic identities and their acknowledgment as world objects – naming; on the other hand, it comprehends the specific lexical and morphosyntactic strategies different languages have found to designate particular entities – referring. The definition of world objects and its symbolic translation presents variations from language to language. In the second part of the book, we define what we have called a “structure-motivated ontology” to represent how this symbolic translation is accomplished in English and European Portuguese. Plus, we try to show how the nature of this symbolic translation affects structural realisation, namely the individuation of reference and the construal of “one-off referring” expressions. ...Read more

Political Science
Civil Society and the Trials and Tribulations of Zimbabwe’s Post-colonial Period: Is Citizen Participation Under Threat?
Jephias Mapuva, 978-1-4438-2938-0
The book is a patchwork of both published articles and other pieces of literary works drawn from similar-minded proactive Zimbabweans. The book would be of interest to students of public administration as well as researchers within the fringes of political science and public policy studies. Human Rights and Civil Society as well as youth activists would benefit from the deliberations in the book as the book seeks to divulge the events and developments that have created the current state of affairs in Zimbabwe. Readers from other countries sharing similar history and even geopolitical positions as Zimbabwe can draw interest from the occurrences as they are divulged in the book. ...Read more

For Arguments’ Sake: Speaker Evaluation in Modern Political Discourse
Douglas Mark Ponton, 978-1-4438-2937-3
The topic of this book is persuasive rhetoric in political discourse. It asks a familiar, though as yet only partially answered question—how is it that human beings can be persuaded to do things through language? Why do we find certain speakers, certain arguments convincing, while we reject others almost without a second thought? Is there any connection between the substance of an argument and its persuasive force; or do we acquiesce to propositions on largely subconscious grounds? Douglas Ponton’s answer to these ambitious questions follows a discourse semantics approach, in the footsteps of Martin and White, who have demonstrated the application of their theories to political rhetoric (e.g. 2005: 171–209). Evaluative language, the author suggests, plays a crucial role in attempts to persuade listeners. The book explores the notion that the persuasive force of evaluative language derives from its use within an argumentative structure (Aristotle’s logos), to explore which Ponton uses the well-known model proposed by Toulmin (1958). In the first part of the book, the author explores issues relating to the methodology used; the second part is taken up by actual analyses carried out on six speeches by modern rhetors celebrated for their oratorical skills: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, Winston Churchill, Tony Benn and William Hague. The author has tried to select speakers, and speeches, of great intrinsic interest as well as historical importance, though his main criterion has been the suitability of the speech for analysis in the terms of the study. ...Read more

Why Europe Will Not Run the 21st Century: Reflections on the Need for a New European Federation
Valerio Volpi, 978-1-4438-2912-0
What future awaits Europe? One of irrelevance, where the emerging powers will crush the Old Continent, or perhaps not? Why Europe Will Not Run the 21st Century focuses on the necessity of radical and dramatic institutional reforms at the EU level, not only to streamline a decision-making process fragmented into a thousand trickles and naturally prone to the influence of powerful interest groups, but also to involve the citizenry, whose convinced support is necessary to the success of the project. The EU is a distant entity whose democraticity is highly disputable. The press ignores it, and citizens know very little about it, as the EU does things they do not really care about or cannot comprehend at all. Citizens’ unawareness and lack of participation and involvement means the impossibility to create a real, close-knit European civil society and public opinion. Why Europe Will Not Run the 21st Century revives the idea that only a federal Europe made up, at least initially, of a limited circle of ‘pioneer states’ and characterised by a common Constitution, central government and real European political parties will manage to work out the constitutional, political, economic and ethnic discrepancies inherent in so large a Union of states, thus overcoming the EU’s inability to face domestic as well as external threats and allowing Europe to halt its apparently inexorable decline. ...Read more

Psychology
Edward Scribner Ames’ Unpublished Manuscripts
John N. Gaston and W. Creighton Peden, 978-1-4438-2932-8
Edward Scribner Ames (1870–1958) was a minister in the Christian Church, a.k.a. Disciples of Christ. He served as minister of the Hyde Park Christian Church from 1900 to l940. Having received his undergraduate degree from Drake College, BD and two years towards a doctorate at Yale University, he completed a PhD in philosophy in 1895 with John Dewey as chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Chicago. After teaching at Butler College for three years, he returned to Hyde Park Church and became a part time teacher in philosophy at the University of Chicago. Eventually Ames taught more and more and became chair of the department. At the University of Chicago he also became the founder of Disciples Divinity House, for which he served as Dean until 1945. Ames is significant as a philosopher who adapted Christianity to the philosophy of pragmatism and the world of modern science. Ames’ hundreds of publications are held at the Disciples Divinity House at the University of Chicago, with the works in this volume being his unpublished manuscripts. In these lectures Ames devotes five lectures to explaining Christianity in terms of pragmatism to Disciples ministers. In other lectures he focuses on the philosophy of John Locke and its impact of the development of the Christian Church. Ames also developed a report for the Commission for the Restudy of the Disciples, The Philosophical Background on Disciples. In other ministerial lectures he presented a series of four lectures on The Reasonableness of Christianity. Also included are his alumni lecture at Yale Divinity in 1932 titled Imagery and Meaning in Religious Ideas; the Gates Memorial Lectures at Grinnell College titled This Human Life; a lecture at Northwestern University on The Will to Believe; and four lectures at the Pastors’ Institute in 1938 on When Science Comes to Religion. Ames addressed the Pastors’ Institute again in 1939 in four lectures on the Religious Implications of John Dewey’s Philosophy. ...Read more

Songs at Twilight: A Narrative Exploration of Living with a Visual Impairment and the Effect this has on Claims to Identity
Susan Dale, 978-1-4438-2917-5
The majority of research and writing about visual impairment is influenced by medical models of understanding, and is usually undertaken by sighted experts about those who are visually impaired. Songs at Twilight takes a different stance and uses a collaborative narrative methodology to enable the author, who is visually impaired, and thirty contributors, who are also visually impaired, to explore their experiences of living with a visual impairment and the effect this has had on their claims to identity. The dynamic research process is shown as a social construction of lived experience where questions of identity are addressed through conversation and narrative. Sighted assumptions about blindness are challenged as the author and contributors discuss aspects of diagnosis and treatment, education, employment, societal attitudes towards blindness, relationships, treatment possibilities, emotional support (including counselling) and emancipatory research practices. ...Read more

Religion
From Antiquity to the Postmodern World: Contemporary Jewish Studies in Canada
Daniel Maoz and Andrea Gondos, 978-1-4438-2929-8
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?” ...Read more

Social Sciences
Diaries of a Forgotten Parent: Divorced Dads on Fathering Through and Beyond Divorce
Wendy A. Paterson, 978-1-4438-2941-0
Diaries of a Forgotten Parent: Divorced Dads on Fathering Through and Beyond Divorce opens an intimate window on the lives of divorced men. Literature on divorce focuses primarily on its effects on women and children, but fair and personal accounts of the lived experiences of custodial and non-custodial fathers are less available. In this highly accessible text, ten American men share intensely personal reflections of guilt, pain, frustration, sacrifice, loneliness and pride. The men do not see themselves as exemplary; rather, their stories are graphically honest, revealing what Paterson calls ordinary men “with all their warts.” The author reviews significant works on the male experience of divorce from psychological, legal, educational and sociological experts, interspersing commentary and research with the men’s own voices. From the initial discussion of why men marry and why they divorce through the men’s painful memories of being pushed out of their children’s lives by angry and resentful mothers, the author illuminates the legal, fiscal, emotional and practical experiences of men struggling to reinvent their fathering while they find themselves reconfigured into deserters, deadbeats and visitors. The societal myth that fathers are less valuable parents than mothers is thoroughly deconstructed in this text. The book will help divorced and divorcing men and those who work with them to fully understand the experiences of fathers who never stopped loving and caring for their children, in spite of the fact that the contributions of fathers are still largely discounted by schools, courts, and worst of all, by their children’s mothers. From this book, readers will understand that there are just too many reasons why fathers must never be forgotten in the lives of their children. ...Read more

'Just' a Fisherman’s Wife: A Post Structural Feminist Exposé of Australian Commercial Fishing Women’s Contributions and Knowledge, ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Crisis’
Jane Dowling, 978-1-4438-2943-4
This book provides a unique exposé of women in family businesses in the Australian commercial fishing industry and explores their visibility, contributions, barriers and opportunities for participation, and knowledge. Recognising the need to move beyond an exploration of women’s ‘roles,’ this book applies a detailed, well articulated and sophisticated feminist post structural approach which explores women’s identity, power/knowledge and positioning in relation to the current industry climate, in the context of discourses of ‘crisis’ and ‘sustainability.’ This is particularly pertinent with climate change looming as the next industry ‘crisis.’ As such, this book has significant interdisciplinary appeal, and will benefit feminist, gender, natural resource management and fisheries scholars and policy makers. Ultimately, it is hoped that this book will have a substantial impact on industry women in both Australia and elsewhere, and reduce their marginalisation; increase awareness about their contributions; and result in greater opportunities to voice their unique knowledge on social issues with a view to enhancing industry sustainability. ...Read more

Motherhood Online
Michelle Moravec, 978-1-4438-2913-7
It may take a village to raise a child, but increasingly that means a virtual village. While the media may focus on the so-called “mommy wars,” and babyrazzi follow every move of celebrity moms, millions of mothers world-wide are creating online communities. These mommy groups provide an alternative context for understanding how women construct modern motherhood together. Motherhood Online explores the mutifaceted lives that moms live online. Ranging from longitudinal studies to focused explorations of identity, and the newest community context, mommy blogs, this book documents the millions of mommies who have found an outlet online. Whether centered on region, religion, race, or something else altogether, these communities of mothers are creating a new space for mom and allowing many women to maintain a grasp, however tenuous, on sanity in this crazy-making world of modern motherhood. ...Read more

Women's Studies
Women and Science, 17th Century to Present: Pioneers, Activists and Protagonists
Donna Spalding Andréolle and Véronique Molinari, 978-1-4438-2918-2
If women’s interest and participation in the advancement of science has a long history, the academic study of their contributions is a far more recent phenomenon, to be placed in the wake of “second wave” feminism in the 1970s and the advent of women’s studies which have, since then, given impetus to research on female figures in specific fields or, more generally speaking, on women’s battles to gain access to knowledge, education and recognition in the scientific world. These studies—while providing a useful insight into the contributions of a few more or less well-known figures—have mostly focused, however, on the obstacles that women have had to overcome in the field of education and employment or in their quest for acknowledgement by their male peers. The aim of this volume is to try and approach the issue from a different and more comprehensive point of view, taking into account not only the position of women in science, but also the link between women and science through the analysis of various kinds of discourse and representation such as the press, poetry, fiction, biographies and autobiographies or professional journals—including that of women themselves. The questions of the presentation or re(-)presentation of science by women are thus at the core of this study, as well as that of the portrayal and self-portrayal of women in the sciences (whether in the educational, or the professional field). A final part examines how women are represented in science fiction which, like science itself, has traditionally been a field dominated by men. ...Read more