Products

"A comprehensive and insightful examination of the ways comedy can help shape social justice movements."––Hasan Minhaj, Comedian and Host of the Netflix series Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj

Comedy is a powerful contemporary source of influence and information. In the still-evolving digital era, the opportunity to consume and share comedy has never been as available. And yet, despite its vast cultural imprint, comedy is a little-understood vehicle for serious public engagement in urgent social justice issues – even though humor offers frames of hope and optimism that can encourage participation in social problems. Moreover, in the midst of a merger of entertainment and news in the contemporary information ecology, and a decline in perceptions of trust in government and traditional media institutions, comedy may be a unique force for change in pressing social justice challenges.

Comedians who say something serious about the world while they make us laugh are capable of mobilizing the masses, focusing a critical lens on injustices, and injecting hope and optimism into seemingly hopeless problems. By combining communication and social justice frameworks with contemporary comedy examples, authors Caty Borum Chattoo and Lauren Feldman show us how comedy can help to serve as a vehicle of change.

Through rich case studies, audience research, and interviews with comedians and social justice leaders and strategists, A Comedian and an Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice explains how comedy – both in the entertainment marketplace and as cultural strategy – can engage audiences with issues such as global poverty, climate change, immigration, and sexual assault, and how activists work with comedy to reach and empower publics in the networked, participatory digital media age.

"A comprehensive and insightful examination of the ways comedy can help shape social justice movements."––Hasan Minhaj, Comedian and Host of the Netflix series Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj

Comedy is a powerful contemporary source of influence and information. In the still-evolving digital era, the opportunity to consume and share comedy has never been as available. And yet, despite its vast cultural imprint, comedy is a little-understood vehicle for serious public engagement in urgent social justice issues – even though humor offers frames of hope and optimism that can encourage participation in social problems. Moreover, in the midst of a merger of entertainment and news in the contemporary information ecology, and a decline in perceptions of trust in government and traditional media institutions, comedy may be a unique force for change in pressing social justice challenges.

Comedians who say something serious about the world while they make us laugh are capable of mobilizing the masses, focusing a critical lens on injustices, and injecting hope and optimism into seemingly hopeless problems. By combining communication and social justice frameworks with contemporary comedy examples, authors Caty Borum Chattoo and Lauren Feldman show us how comedy can help to serve as a vehicle of change.

Through rich case studies, audience research, and interviews with comedians and social justice leaders and strategists, A Comedian and an Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice explains how comedy – both in the entertainment marketplace and as cultural strategy – can engage audiences with issues such as global poverty, climate change, immigration, and sexual assault, and how activists work with comedy to reach and empower publics in the networked, participatory digital media age.

"A comprehensive and insightful examination of the ways comedy can help shape social justice movements."––Hasan Minhaj, Comedian and Host of the Netflix series Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj

Comedy is a powerful contemporary source of influence and information. In the still-evolving digital era, the opportunity to consume and share comedy has never been as available. And yet, despite its vast cultural imprint, comedy is a little-understood vehicle for serious public engagement in urgent social justice issues – even though humor offers frames of hope and optimism that can encourage participation in social problems. Moreover, in the midst of a merger of entertainment and news in the contemporary information ecology, and a decline in perceptions of trust in government and traditional media institutions, comedy may be a unique force for change in pressing social justice challenges.

Comedians who say something serious about the world while they make us laugh are capable of mobilizing the masses, focusing a critical lens on injustices, and injecting hope and optimism into seemingly hopeless problems. By combining communication and social justice frameworks with contemporary comedy examples, authors Caty Borum Chattoo and Lauren Feldman show us how comedy can help to serve as a vehicle of change.

Through rich case studies, audience research, and interviews with comedians and social justice leaders and strategists, A Comedian and an Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice explains how comedy – both in the entertainment marketplace and as cultural strategy – can engage audiences with issues such as global poverty, climate change, immigration, and sexual assault, and how activists work with comedy to reach and empower publics in the networked, participatory digital media age.

This work is the first major commentary on Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris to appear in English in more than 65 years. It offers detailed analysis of a fascinating play that scholars so far had considered mainly as a source of information about Athenian cult and viewed as a romantic adventure story with happy end. Apart from including sober assessments of textual, linguistic and metrical problems, the commentary sheds new light on the play’s treatment of myth, its intricate structure, presentation of character, and place in Euripides’ work. In particular it offers fresh insights into the play’s relationship to the literary tradition, especially its treatment of the crimes of the Pelopids, and its presentation of the complex, ambiguous relationship of humans and gods as well as that of Greeks and barbarians. Unlike most other tragedies, Iphigenia in Tauris does not feature any villain and avoids concentrating on past crimes and their corrosive influence on the characters’ present. The Taurians are not portrayed simply as savage and slow barbarians and Iphigenia, the most intelligent character, fails to transcend her limitations. Religion and cult in both myth and contemporary Athens are a mixture of traditional and invented elements and the play as a whole turns out to be an intriguing and unique experiment in Euripides’ career.

Book 4 of Lucan’s epic contrasts Europe with Africa. At the battle of Lerida (Spain), a violent storm causes the local rivers to flood the plain between the two hills where the opposing armies are camped. Asso’s commentary traces Lucan’s reminiscences of early Greek tales of creation, when Chaos held the elements in indistinct confusion. This primordial broth sets the tone for the whole book. After the battle, the scene switches to the Adriatic shore of Illyricum (Albania), and finally to Africa, where the proto-mythical water of the beginning of the book cedes to the dryness of the desert. The narrative unfolds against the background of the War of the Elements. The Spanish deluge is replaced by the desiccated desolation of Africa. The commentary contrasts the representations of Rome with Africa and explores the significance of Africa as a space contaminated by evil, but which remains an integral part of Rome. Along with Lucan’s other geographic and natural-scientific discussions, Africa’s position as a part of the Roman world is painstakingly supported by astronomic and geographic erudition in Lucan’s blending of scientific and mythological discourse. The poet is a visionary who supports his truth claims by means of scientific discourse.

In A Common Justice Uriel I. Simonsohn examines the legislative response of Christian and Jewish religious elites to the problem posed by the appeal of their coreligionists to judicial authorities outside their communities. Focusing on the late seventh to early eleventh centuries in the region between Iraq in the east and present-day Tunisia in the west, Simonsohn explores the multiplicity of judicial systems that coexisted under early Islam to reveal a complex array of social obligations that connected individuals across confessional boundaries. By examining the incentives for appeal to external judicial institutions on the one hand and the response of minority confessional elites on the other, the study fundamentally alters our conception of the social history of the Near East in the early Islamic period.

Contrary to the prevalent scholarly notion of a rigid social setting strictly demarcated along confessional lines, Simonsohn's comparative study of Christian and Jewish legal behavior under early Muslim rule exposes a considerable degree of fluidity across communal boundaries. This seeming disregard for religious affiliations threatened to undermine the position of traditional religious elites; in response, they acted vigorously to reinforce communal boundaries, censuring recourse to external judicial institutions and even threatening transgressors with excommunication.

In A Common Justice Uriel I. Simonsohn examines the legislative response of Christian and Jewish religious elites to the problem posed by the appeal of their coreligionists to judicial authorities outside their communities. Focusing on the late seventh to early eleventh centuries in the region between Iraq in the east and present-day Tunisia in the west, Simonsohn explores the multiplicity of judicial systems that coexisted under early Islam to reveal a complex array of social obligations that connected individuals across confessional boundaries. By examining the incentives for appeal to external judicial institutions on the one hand and the response of minority confessional elites on the other, the study fundamentally alters our conception of the social history of the Near East in the early Islamic period.

Contrary to the prevalent scholarly notion of a rigid social setting strictly demarcated along confessional lines, Simonsohn's comparative study of Christian and Jewish legal behavior under early Muslim rule exposes a considerable degree of fluidity across communal boundaries. This seeming disregard for religious affiliations threatened to undermine the position of traditional religious elites; in response, they acted vigorously to reinforce communal boundaries, censuring recourse to external judicial institutions and even threatening transgressors with excommunication.

Why is our world still understood through binary oppositions—East and West, local and global, common and strange—that ought to have crumbled with the Berlin Wall? What might literary responses to the events that ushered in our era of globalization tell us about the rhetorical and historical underpinnings of these dichotomies?

In A Common Strangeness, Jacob Edmond exemplifies a new, multilingual and multilateral approach to literary and cultural studies. He begins with the entrance of China into multinational capitalism and the appearance of the Parisian flâneur in the writings of a Chinese poet exiled in Auckland, New Zealand. Moving among poetic examples in Russian, Chinese, and English, he then traces a series of encounters shaped by economic and geopolitical events from the Cultural Revolution, perestroika, and the June 4 massacre to the collapse of the Soviet Union, September 11, and the invasion of Iraq. In these encounters, Edmond tracks a shared concern with strangeness through which poets contested old binary oppositions as they reemerged in new, post-Cold War forms.

Why is our world still understood through binary oppositions—East and West, local and global, common and strange—that ought to have crumbled with the Berlin Wall? What might literary responses to the events that ushered in our era of globalization tell us about the rhetorical and historical underpinnings of these dichotomies?

In A Common Strangeness, Jacob Edmond exemplifies a new, multilingual and multilateral approach to literary and cultural studies. He begins with the entrance of China into multinational capitalism and the appearance of the Parisian flâneur in the writings of a Chinese poet exiled in Auckland, New Zealand. Moving among poetic examples in Russian, Chinese, and English, he then traces a series of encounters shaped by economic and geopolitical events from the Cultural Revolution, perestroika, and the June 4 massacre to the collapse of the Soviet Union, September 11, and the invasion of Iraq. In these encounters, Edmond tracks a shared concern with strangeness through which poets contested old binary oppositions as they reemerged in new, post-Cold War forms.

This book uncovers an early collection of sayings, called N, that are ascribed to Jesus and are similar to those found in the Gospel of Thomas and in Q, a document believed to be a common source, with Mark, for Matthew and Luke. In the process, the book sheds light on the literary methods of Mark and Thomas. A literary comparison of the texts of the sayings of Jesus that appear in both Mark and Thomas shows that each adapted an earlier collection for his own purpose. Neither Mark nor Thomas consistently gives the original or earliest form of the shared sayings; hence, Horman states, each used and adapted an earlier source. Close verbal parallels between the versions in Mark and Thomas show that the source was written in Greek. Horman’s conclusion is that this common source is N.
This proposal is new, and has implications for life of Jesus research. Previous research on sayings attributed to Jesus has treated Thomas in one of two ways: either as an independent stream of Jesus sayings written without knowledge of the New Testament Gospels and or as a later piece of pseudo-Scripture that uses the New Testament as source. This book rejects both views.

A Communion of Subjects is the first comparative and interdisciplinary study of the conceptualization of animals in world religions. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including Thomas Berry (cultural history), Wendy Doniger (study of myth), Elizabeth Lawrence (veterinary medicine, ritual studies), Marc Bekoff (cognitive ethology), Marc Hauser (behavioral science), Steven Wise (animals and law), Peter Singer (animals and ethics), and Jane Goodall (primatology) consider how major religious traditions have incorporated animals into their belief systems, myths, rituals, and art. Their findings offer profound insights into humans' relationships with animals and a deeper understanding of the social and ecological web in which we all live.

Contributors examine Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, Confucianism, African religions, traditions from ancient Egypt and early China, and Native American, indigenous Tibetan, and Australian Aboriginal traditions, among others. They explore issues such as animal consciousness, suffering, sacrifice, and stewardship in innovative methodological ways. They also address contemporary challenges relating to law, biotechnology, social justice, and the environment. By grappling with the nature and ideological features of various religious views, the contributors cast religious teachings and practices in a new light. They reveal how we either intentionally or inadvertently marginalize "others," whether they are human or otherwise, reflecting on the ways in which we assign value to living beings.

Though it is an ancient concern, the topic of "Religion and Animals" has yet to be systematically studied by modern scholars. This groundbreaking collection takes the first steps toward a meaningful analysis.

A Communion of Subjects is the first comparative and interdisciplinary study of the conceptualization of animals in world religions. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including Thomas Berry (cultural history), Wendy Doniger (study of myth), Elizabeth Lawrence (veterinary medicine, ritual studies), Marc Bekoff (cognitive ethology), Marc Hauser (behavioral science), Steven Wise (animals and law), Peter Singer (animals and ethics), and Jane Goodall (primatology) consider how major religious traditions have incorporated animals into their belief systems, myths, rituals, and art. Their findings offer profound insights into humans' relationships with animals and a deeper understanding of the social and ecological web in which we all live.

Contributors examine Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, Confucianism, African religions, traditions from ancient Egypt and early China, and Native American, indigenous Tibetan, and Australian Aboriginal traditions, among others. They explore issues such as animal consciousness, suffering, sacrifice, and stewardship in innovative methodological ways. They also address contemporary challenges relating to law, biotechnology, social justice, and the environment. By grappling with the nature and ideological features of various religious views, the contributors cast religious teachings and practices in a new light. They reveal how we either intentionally or inadvertently marginalize "others," whether they are human or otherwise, reflecting on the ways in which we assign value to living beings.

Though it is an ancient concern, the topic of "Religion and Animals" has yet to be systematically studied by modern scholars. This groundbreaking collection takes the first steps toward a meaningful analysis.

'Community, ' 'tradition, ' 'the individual', stand out prominently in today's intellectual landscape. In social and political theory and in religious studies they figure in the ongoing debates between liberals (champions of the individual) and communitarians (champions of the common good). With these debates and their potential conflict in mind, the author has constructed a timely reading of Emile Durkheim that captures the benefits associated with both liberalism and communitarianism. The book explores fundamental issues concerning freedom, rights, authority, public moral education, the relation between the public and the private, and the role of social criticism in democracies. Isolating the merits and liabilities of both liberal and communitarian theories, the author demonstrates that we need not be in the position of having to choose between them.

'Community, ' 'tradition, ' 'the individual', stand out prominently in today's intellectual landscape. In social and political theory and in religious studies they figure in the ongoing debates between liberals (champions of the individual) and communitarians (champions of the common good). With these debates and their potential conflict in mind, the author has constructed a timely reading of Emile Durkheim that captures the benefits associated with both liberalism and communitarianism. The book explores fundamental issues concerning freedom, rights, authority, public moral education, the relation between the public and the private, and the role of social criticism in democracies. Isolating the merits and liabilities of both liberal and communitarian theories, the author demonstrates that we need not be in the position of having to choose between them.

The Columbia University Seminars, founded in 1945, represent a distinctive experiment in academia. Scholars from different disciplines and institutions, as well as practitioners and other experts, meet once a month through the academic year to study and discuss subjects, sometimes beyond their specialties. Through collegial discussion, participants learn from one another. Today, over ninety seminars are ongoing: some have outlived their founders, while others are just beginning.

A Community of Scholars is a seventy-fifth anniversary celebration of the founding of The University Seminars. It brings together essays by seminar chairs and other leading participants that exemplify the diversity and vibrancy of these proceedings. Their topics are wide-ranging—the evolution of the labor movement, urban life, the politics and culture of Brazil, the Enlightenment, the prospects for world peace—but in each, a commitment to intellectual provocation and shared learning is on full display. An informative introduction explains how The Seminars came into being and why they continue to matter. The volume also features biographical sketches of Frank Tannenbaum, the Latin America scholar and criminologist who founded The Seminars, and his wife, the anthropologist Jane Belo, a close friend of Margaret Mead. Belo and Tannenbaum endowed The Seminars and allowed them to flourish. A remarkable testament to an unparalleled intellectual forum, A Community of Scholars allows readers to share in the eclectic spirit of The Seminars.

This is a study of how the Jewish community of Breslau—the third largest and one of the most affluent in Germany—coped with Nazi persecution. Ascher has included the experiences of his immediate family, although the book is based mainly on archival sources, numerous personal reminiscences, as well as publications by the Jewish community in the 1930s. It is the first comprehensive study of a local Jewish community in Germany under Nazi rule.

Until the very end, the Breslau Jews maintained a stance of defiance and sought to persevere as a cohesive group with its own institutions. They categorically denied the Nazi claim that they were not genuine Germans, but at the same time they also refused to abandon their Jewish heritage. They created a new school for the children evicted from public schools, established a variety of new cultural institutions, placed new emphasis on religious observance, maintained the Jewish hospital against all odds, and, perhaps most remarkably, increased the range of welfare services, which were desperately needed as more and more of their number lost their livelihood. In short, the Jews of Breslau refused to abandon either their institutions or the values that they had nurtured for decades. In the end, it was of no avail as the Nazis used their overwhelming power to liquidate the community by force.

‘Anticlassicisms,’ as a plural, react to the many possible forms of ‘classicisms.’ In the sixteenth century, classicist tendencies range from humanist traditions focusing on Horace and the teachings of rhetoric, via Pietro Bembo’s canonization of a ‘second antiquity’ in the works of the fourteenth-century classics, Petrarch and Boccaccio, to the Aristotelianism of the second half of the century. Correspondingly, the various tendencies to destabilize or to subvert or contradict these manifold and historically dynamic ‘classicisms’ need to be distinguished as so many ‘anticlassicisms’. This volume, after discussing the history and possible implications of the label ‘anticlassicism’ in Renaissance studies, differentiates and analyzes these ‘anticlassicisms.’ It distinguishes the various forms of opposition to ‘classicisms’ as to their scope (on a scale between radical poetological dissension to merely sectorial opposition in a given literary genre) and to their alternative models, be they authors (like Dante) or texts. At the same time, the various chapters specify the degree of difference or erosion inherent in anticlassicist tendencies with respect to their ‘classicist’ counterparts, ranging from implicit ‘system disturbances’ to open, intended antagonism (as in Bernesque poetry), with a view to establishing an overall picture of this field of phenomena for the first time.

In A Companion to Antonio Gramsci some of the most important Italian scholars of Antonio Gramsci's thought combine their efforts to present an insightful and original intellectual portrait of one of the 20th century's most influential Marxist thinkers. Thematically organized into five parts, the volume focuses on the Sardinian's most important contributions. The first section offers readers a biographical sketch of Gramsci's life and work, the second presents his theories of history, the third and fourth examine his contributions to political theory, and the last deals with Gramsci's legacy and enduring influence.

Contributors include: Alberto Burgio, Davide Cadeddu, Giuseppe Cospito, Angelo d'Orsi, Michele Filippini, Guido Liguori, Marcello Montanari, Vittorio Morfino, Stefano Petrucciani, Michele Prospero, Leonardo Rapone, Giuseppe Vacca, and Marzio Zanantoni.

This is the first accessible, succinct text to provide definitions and explanations of key terms and concepts relating to the expanding field of crime, harm and victimisation. Written by a wide range of experts, it includes theories, ideas and case studies relating to victims of conventional crime and victims outside the remit of criminal law. It encapsulates the domestic and international nature, extent and measurement of victims of crime and harm, together with responses to victims and victimisation as a result of conventional, corporate and state crimes and harms.

As part of the Companion series, entries are presented in a user-friendly A-Z format with clear links to related entries and further reading, allowing easy navigation for both students and practitioners. Filling a gap in the market, this is a good source and quick reference point for undergraduates studying a variety of courses in criminology, criminal justice, victimology and other related disciplines.

This is the first accessible, succinct text to provide definitions and explanations of key terms and concepts relating to the expanding field of crime, harm and victimisation. Written by a wide range of experts, it includes theories, ideas and case studies relating to victims of conventional crime and victims outside the remit of criminal law. It encapsulates the domestic and international nature, extent and measurement of victims of crime and harm, together with responses to victims and victimisation as a result of conventional, corporate and state crimes and harms.

As part of the Companion series, entries are presented in a user-friendly A-Z format with clear links to related entries and further reading, allowing easy navigation for both students and practitioners. Filling a gap in the market, this is a good source and quick reference point for undergraduates studying a variety of courses in criminology, criminal justice, victimology and other related disciplines.

Within the domains of criminal justice and mental health care, critical debate concerning ‘care’ versus ‘control’ and ‘therapy’ versus ‘security’ is now commonplace. Indeed, the ‘hybridisation’ of these areas is now a familiar theme.

This unique and topical text provides an array of expert analyses from key contributors in the field that explore the interface between criminal justice and mental health. Using concise yet robust definitions of key terms and concepts, it consolidates scholarly analysis of theory, policy and practice. Readers are provided with practical debates, in addition to the theoretical and ideological concerns surrounding the risk assessment, treatment, control and risk management in a cross-disciplinary context.

Included in this book is recommended further reading and an index of legislation, making it an ideal resource for students at undergraduate and postgraduate level, together with researchers and practitioners in the field.

Within the domains of criminal justice and mental health care, critical debate concerning ‘care’ versus ‘control’ and ‘therapy’ versus ‘security’ is now commonplace. Indeed, the ‘hybridisation’ of these areas is now a familiar theme.

This unique and topical text provides an array of expert analyses from key contributors in the field that explore the interface between criminal justice and mental health. Using concise yet robust definitions of key terms and concepts, it consolidates scholarly analysis of theory, policy and practice. Readers are provided with practical debates, in addition to the theoretical and ideological concerns surrounding the risk assessment, treatment, control and risk management in a cross-disciplinary context.

Included in this book is recommended further reading and an index of legislation, making it an ideal resource for students at undergraduate and postgraduate level, together with researchers and practitioners in the field.

This handbook represents the interdisciplinary and international field of “cultural memory studies” for the first time in one volume. Articles by renowned international scholars offer readers a unique overview of the key concepts of cultural memory studies. The handbook not only documents current research in an unprecedented way; it also serves as a forum for bringing together approaches from areas as varied as sociology, political sciences, history, theology, literary studies, media studies, philosophy, psychology, and neurosciences. “Cultural memory studies” – as defined in this handbook – came into being at the beginning of the 20th century, with the works of Maurice Halbwachs on mémoire collective. In the course of the last two decades this area of research has witnessed a veritable boom in various countries and disciplines. As a consequence, the study of the relation of “culture” and “memory” has diversified into a wide range of approaches. This handbook is based on a broad understanding of “cultural memory” as the interplay of present and past in sociocultural contexts. It presents concepts for the study of individual remembering in a social context, group and family memory, national memory, the various media of memory, and finally the host of emerging transnational lieux de mémoire such as 9/11.