Anthem Press

Universality and Utopia explores the intersection between philosophical universalism and revolutionary politics in twentieth-century Peruvian indigenista literature. It traces a tradition of thought whose basic tenets originate in the philosophical works of José Carlos Mariátegui and are subsequently elaborated in the literary works of César Vallejo and José MaríaArguedas. My central thesis is that, more than a “regionalist” or “provincialist” literature that describes the social reality and historic oppression of the rural Indian since colonial times, the socialist indigenismo is continuous with the invention of a utopian imaginary for a project of alternative modernity, through which urban intellectuals, artists and activists conceived of a national future beyond that of capitalist modernization. Above all, such a future would traverse the prescient division between the urban mestizo and the Indian, and finally the lingering disparity between the nation’s Western and native heritage. In doing so, indigenista writers did not only adapt the tenets of socialist philosophy and avant-garde aesthetics to describe their unique social realities and thinking of the possibility of an emancipatory political practice; they also interrogated the foundations of European Marxism, expressing various figurations of the emancipatory process to come, and different models for the new revolutionary subjectivity that would aid this transition. 

Rejecting assimilation into Western modernization within the urban milieu (“acculturation”) under liberal capitalism imagined by liberal writers—such as Manuel González Prada and ClorindaMatto de Turner, in the late nineteenth century—I argue that the twentieth-century socialist indigenista tradition anticipated a bilateral process of appropriation and mediation between the rural Indian and mestizo, integrating indigenous as well as Western cultural and economic forms. In the first chapter, I assess Mariátegui’s heterodox “Peruvian socialism,” tracing the articulation of a nascentindigenista aesthetics to an emancipatory politics as part of an “active philosophy” driven by what the author names “creative antagonism.” In the second chapter, I explore how César Vallejo’s “materialist poetics” progressively extend the nationalist destiny and social realist aesthetic avowed by Mariátegui onto an internationalist and geopolitical horizon, as part of an “aesthetics of transmutation” that coincides with a plea for humanity as a whole. In the third chapter, I trace how José MaríaArguedas’ novels attempt to reconcile what he named “the magical and rational conceptions of the world,” extending the ideal of a transcultural mediation between the rural Indian and urban mestizo to conceive of a new collectivist and cooperativist ethics of “labor for-itself,” informed by his anthropological and ethnographic research. In the fourth chapter, I propose a general retrospective of the aims and limitations of the ideals guiding this tradition, considering the development of Peruvian indigenista literature after Arguedas, interrogating the legacy and prospects of emancipatory politics in response to the limits of neoliberal capitalism and the crisis of democracy in Latin America today.

‘Regimes of Happiness’ is a comparative and historical analysis of how human societies have articulated and enacted distinctive notions of human fulfillment, determining divergent moral, ethical and religious traditions and incommensurate and conflicting understanding of the meaning of the ‘good life’.

Presented in two parts, ‘Regimes of Happiness’ provides a historical view of the way in which Western societies, the descendants of the Latin Roman Empire, created languages and institutions that established specific and occasionally antithetical conceptions of a fulfilled human life or 'happiness' in the first part. The second part explores how non-Western societies and non-Christian religions have conceived and established their own ideals of human perfection. ‘Regimes of Happiness’ is a critical reflection on modern notions of happiness which are typically focused on individual feelings of pleasure.

The book explores the era of space collaboration (from 1970 to the present). This period has been largely ignored by historians in favor of a focus on the earlier space race. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, a key program and catalyst for Détente, marked the transition to the new age of space collaboration, which continued through the Soviet Interkosmos missions, the Mir-Shuttle dockings of the early 1990s, and on through the International Space Station. Europeans, Americans, and Russians envisioned space collaboration as a way to reconfigure political and international relations. 

The shift toward collaboration was a result of a new focus on safety, which displaced the earlier emphasis on risk-taking in the first phase of the space race, when military imperatives often overshadowed peaceful goals. Apollo-Soyuz (ignored by Cold War historians) was thus imagined as a test project for a docking mechanism that would allow a manned-capsule stranded in orbit to dock with another capsule and provide an escape hatch back to earth (it was actually inspired, in part, by the 1969 Hollywood film “Marooned” with Gene Hackman). The focus on engineering for safety grew out of the broader concerns about environmental degradation and nuclear war that in turn reflected a growing sense in the 1970s and 1980s of the dangers associated with excessive risk-taking in politics and engineering. Few historians or social scientists have examined the social construction of safety and its use in engineering and politics. 

The book draws on the Russian Academy of Sciences Archives, Nixon and Reagan libraries and National Archives Collections, NASA headquarters library documents, and various memoirs and other published sources in English and Russian.

An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Wildlife Corridors charts some best practices and makes some new theoretical contributions related to the design and creation of wildlife corridors in Anthropocene times. The book not only provides much of the knowledge necessary for a general and credible understanding of connectivity projects, but also makes a unique theoretical contribution to current knowledge about wildlife corridors by arguing that theories about compassion, empathy, and traditional ecological knowledge should inform wildlife corridor projects.

Wildlife corridors, or connectivity projects, are necessary, because when land is set aside or used for human activities, habitats that were once contiguous become fragmented. If species are unable to move between these fragmented areas, they become at risk for inbreeding or extinction. Wildlife corridors attempt to remediate such fragmentation by restoring connectivity and creating expanses of habitat that can provide species with important bridges and points of connection between other habitats. Providing such linkages between habitats reduces these risks and helps maintain genetic diversity and a population’s health.

The book argues for a holistic approach to wildlife corridors that attempts to account for a broad and varied range of stakeholder voices, including those of the vulnerable nonhuman species that underpin the need for corridor projects in the first place. This book should appeal to general audiences and practitioners alike.

The purpose of this volume is not simply to compile yet another wearying chronicle of the horrors that have been committed by our fellow human beings. Most students who register for a course on Genocide assume that it will focus, perhaps exclusively, on the Holocaust—the only case with which they are familiar. Many of them have read Elie Wiesel’s eloquent masterpiece Night in secondary school, and some may have read The Diary of Anne Frank. A few students might even know that a genocide occurred in Rwanda or Darfur. Like most people, however, they equate genocide simply with mass killing, and assume that genocide must by definition entail millions of deaths. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word “genocide”—meaning “to kill a people”— originally defined it “a colonial crime of destroying the national patterns of the oppressed and imposing the national patterns of the oppressors.” This was a process, Lemkin said, that was intended to destroy a people’s culture thatcould sometimes but not necessarily always result in mass murder. Students need to know that after World War II the great powers undermined and co-opted the process of writing the1948 Genocide Convention at the UN. It was written very carefully to remove from the definition of genocide the treatment of Indigenous peoples in the US and Canada; racial lynching and Jim Crowism in the US; the “elimination of backwards people to protect human progress” in pre-apartheid South Africa, New Zealand and Australia; the mass murder of colonial subjects and repression of racial minorities at the hands of European security forces the world over; the mass murder of political opponents in Latin America; the mass murder of “economic” or social groups in the Soviet Union; and the blanket removal of any mention of famine and sexual violence as acts that could constitute genocide. Instead, they simply used the Holocaust as a template and succeeded in distorting what Lemkin originally meant by “genocide”—the murder of a people by destroying their social and cultural connections.

Students should also know that Lemkin’s ideas were most strongly supported at the UN by member states that were former colonies—namely Egypt, India, Pakistan, China and the Philippines—and by women within many of the delegations that were working to prevent the UN from succeeding in outlawing genocide, such as those from the US and the UK. When students learn this history can begin to think critically about what international law is and which systems of power international law serves. However, they also need a textbook that guides them to think critically and imaginatively about genocide and the 1948 UN Convention without reducing genocide and the UN Genocide Convention to a crude and cynical analysis of global power struggles. In other words, they need a book that is honest and that resists the temptation to spin ahistorical morality tales.

Reassesses Henri Lefebvre’s enduring relevance to sociology, examining themes from Marxism to urban life and proposing new directions for Lefebvrian research on rhythm, embodiment and utopian thought

Henri Lefebvre’s work, particularly his theory of the production of space, has been remarkably influential historically within geographical research. While this extensive research has shown the continuing relevance of Lefebvre’s oeuvre for urban geographical research, Lefebvre’s contributions to sociology have been less explored. This is surprising and a missed opportunity, not least because Lefebvre’s writings on the urban, space and everyday life were fundamentally informed by and connected to his sociology. This volume responds to this lacuna in sociological engagements with Lefebvre’s work, bringing together leading scholars on Lefebvre’s sociological work who discuss elements from across his sociological oeuvre. This includes topics for which Lefebvre is well known such as space, rhythm-analysis and Marxism, through to lesser-known topics such as the rural, autogestion, the state and violence and finally to studies which push Lefebvre into new areas such as time, phenomenology and the environment. Therefore, this volume not only achieves a breadth of coverage but also provides fresh insights for those familiar with Lefebvre and new points of interest for those encountering his sociology for the first time. Our volume makes a critical addition to the long list of established and influential Anthem Companions to Sociology by adding a new volume on one of the most influential Marxist sociologists and philosophers of the twentieth century. An engagement with the work of Henri Lefebvre remains indispensable for sociology as this volume shows.

Academic writing is built on choices, and even a single word can change the strength and direction of an argument. This book helps students move beyond formulas, showing how to draft with purpose, revise for clarity, and build credible, well-supported claims. Through real examples, practical exercises, and clear explanations, it guides writers from research planning to sentence-level refinement. Suitable for both classroom use and independent study, it turns the process of writing academic essays into an engaging practice that develops critical thinking and precision, giving students the tools to succeed across disciplines and in real-world communication.

Academic writing is built on choices, and even a single word can change the strength and direction of an argument. This book helps students move beyond formulas, showing how to draft with purpose, revise for clarity, and build credible, well-supported claims. Through real examples, practical exercises, and clear explanations, it guides writers from research planning to sentence-level refinement. Suitable for both classroom use and independent study, it turns the process of writing academic essays into an engaging practice that develops critical thinking and precision, giving students the tools to succeed across disciplines and in real-world communication.

Academic writing is built on choices, and even a single word can change the strength and direction of an argument. This book helps students move beyond formulas, showing how to draft with purpose, revise for clarity, and build credible, well-supported claims. Through real examples, practical exercises, and clear explanations, it guides writers from research planning to sentence-level refinement. Suitable for both classroom use and independent study, it turns the process of writing academic essays into an engaging practice that develops critical thinking and precision, giving students the tools to succeed across disciplines and in real-world communication.

Examines how Denis Martinez’s art, particularly his 1990 exhibition 7 murs revisités, used Indigenous collaboration to challenge nationalist narratives and illuminate the cultural tensions within post-colonial Algeria. 

Grainy video footage, dated back to the 1990s, features Algerian artist Denis Martinez (b. 1941) in conversation with several Kabyle (Amazigh) women. Gesturing toward a carpet, women discussed its geometric motifs with him. Abruptly, the camera cuts to a close-up of one of his canvases, revealing similar painted designs. This scene unfolds during the exhibition of Martinez’s 1989 series 7 murs revisités at a rural Amazigh cultural center in Ait Hichem, a considerable distance from the capital of Algiers. His seven monumental canvases, measuring 200 × 300 cm2, reimagine Kabyle wall paintings as cosmic vessels, marked by bold and colorful patterns and an angst-ridden figure emerging from a portal. The exhibition created a space of conviviality and cultural affirmation despite growing political repression by the Algerian national government. When Martinez painted this series, the Kabyle house had become a potent symbol of resistance against the increasingly repressive policies of the Algerian government, who advocated an Arab-Muslim identity for the nation. Sadly, the works were never acquired by a museum and were later damaged by water after Martinez fled Algeria in 1993, following the outbreak of civil war.
The 1989 series 7 murs revisités by Denis Martinez serves as the central focal point of this book, offering a lens through which to examine how visual expressions of Indigeneity served as symbols of resistance in Algeria. This study of Denis Martinez’s artistic practice centers on his engagement with Amazigh culture, offering insights into how modern artists from post-colonial nations strategically appropriated symbols and motifs linked to Indigeneity. Martinez, an Algerian of Spanish ancestry, was sensitive to the plurality of identities that historically characterized Algeria. After the Algerian revolution (1962), several competing modernisms were emerging in Algeria. Martinez’s deliberately utilized signs and symbols drawn from Amazigh textiles, ceramics, and tattoos with the intention of creating a visual language rooted in universal humanism.
This book undertakes an in-depth analysis of Martinez’s artistic practice, the critical reception to his works, and the contextual backdrop within which they were displayed. As a founding member of the post-colonial collective Aouchem, meaning “Tattoo,” he coined the group’s slogan, “the sign is louder than the bomb,” which was included in the 1967 Aouchem manifesto. This phrase encapsulated their belief in the supremacy of signs and symbols over physical aggression to counter oppression. Martinez worked in an artistic style that conveyed a humanist pan-ethnic ethos. He intertwined swirling patterns derived from Arabic script with geometric motifs inspired by Indigenous Amazigh (Berber) arts. He used muted tones and frequently depicted emaciated human figures, symbolizing the trauma of violence endured during Algeria’s struggle against colonization. He imagined that Indigenous visual representation could confront systematic marginalization, transform power structures, and construct a more equitable future. When Martinez painted his series 7 murs revisités in 1989, it marked a radical change in his visual aesthetic. The study posits that by concentrating on interior wall paintings of the Kabyle house, Martinez fashioned a subversive and strategic localism. In doing so, he used Indigenous art to encapsulate the prevailing tensions of the period and express anxieties surrounding the future trajectory of the Algerian nation.

Offers a comprehensive guide to building resilience in the post-pandemic tourism and hospitality industry, combining theory, practical strategies and case studies to support sustainable recovery and future readiness

The book Resilience and Recovery of Hospitality and Tourism: Challenges, Synthesis and Agendas comprehensively explores the strategies necessary for the tourism and hospitality industry to recover and thrive post-pandemic. It begins with an introduction to the concept of resilience within the industry, followed by an overview of the various practices adopted to navigate recent challenges. The book covers the threats and obstacles to resilience, highlighting the need for effective workforce development planning and the mobilisation of resources through data-driven sustainable models. Leadership issues are examined, emphasising the critical role of strong leadership in fostering resilience. Predictors of resilience are identified, helping the industry to adapt to changing conditions. The development of resilience-based frameworks is discussed, aiming to revive global tourism conditions. The book also underscores the significance of data-driven technologies in building collaborative capacities for resilience. Sustainable practices and their management are crucial for maintaining resilience, as is the role of organisational culture in overcoming challenges. The book concludes with case studies that provide practical insights into managing resilience issues, developing effective strategies and understanding the broader implications for the tourism and hospitality industry.
This book is an essential resource for professionals and academics in the tourism and hospitality industry, including managers, policymakers, researchers and students. It is designed for those who seek to understand and implement resilience strategies in the face of unprecedented challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic. By providing a detailed analysis of the industry’s threats, obstacles and innovative practices, the book offers valuable insights into workforce development, leadership, and the role of data-driven technologies and sustainable practices. With its comprehensive coverage of resilience-based frameworks and real-world case studies, this book is an indispensable guide for anyone committed to fostering a resilient, adaptive, and sustainable tourism and hospitality sector.

Academic writing is built on choices, and even a single word can change the strength and direction of an argument. This book helps students move beyond formulas, showing how to draft with purpose, revise for clarity, and build credible, well-supported claims. Through real examples, practical exercises, and clear explanations, it guides writers from research planning to sentence-level refinement. Suitable for both classroom use and independent study, it turns the process of writing academic essays into an engaging practice that develops critical thinking and precision, giving students the tools to succeed across disciplines and in real-world communication.

Explores the life and journalism of Maria Teresa de Sá Nogueira, highlighting her powerful role as a voice of resistance and testimony across colonial and postcolonial Lusophone Africa and Portugal

The Life and Writings of Maria Teresa de Sá Nogueira offers a compelling historical and literary portrait of one of Mozambique’s most important yet overlooked journalistic voices. Through textual analysis and exclusive interviews with her son, this book traces Maria Teresa de Sá Nogueira’s life and work across the shifting landscapes of colonial and postcolonial Mozambique and Portugal. It situates her journalism not only as a record of lived experience but also as a courageous act of resistance against injustice, inequality, and silence in the Lusophone world. Her voice emerges as both witness and critic, offering readers an intimate yet far-reaching account of an era marked by upheaval and transformation.
More than a biographical study, this book is a nuanced theorization of Lusophone postcolonial identity through the lens of gender, migration, political struggle, and literary activism. The chapters are thematically organized to mirror the trajectory of Maria Teresa’s life, interrogating the societal pressures she faced as a woman journalist, her engagement with colonial power structures, and her unrelenting advocacy for underrepresented voices. Her reportage, translated and carefully curated here, captures the contradictions of empire, the burden of memory, and the precariousness of freedom in times of sociopolitical transition. Through her work, readers encounter the personal as political and the journalistic as deeply literary.
The Life and Writings of Maria Teresa de Sá Nogueira fills a long-standing gap in Lusophone literary and cultural studies. It will resonate with students and scholars of postcolonial studies, journalism, African and Portuguese history, and gender studies, particularly within the context of Mozambique and Lusophone Africa. But it also speaks to a wider audience eager to understand how a single voice—bold, persistent, and principled—can illuminate the entangled legacies of colonialism and the enduring fight for justice. This is a book that invites readers not only to remember but also to reckon with history through the fearless writing of Maria Teresa de Sá Nogueira.

As the first study of its kind, this book offers a new understanding of progressive women’s poetry in Urdu and the legacy of postcolonial politics. It underlines Urdu’s linguistic hybridities, the context of the zenana, reform, and rekhti to illustrate how the modernising impulse under colonial rule impacted women as subjects in textual form. It argues that canonical texts for sharif women from Mirat-ul Arus to Umrao Jan Ada need to be looked at alongside women’s diaries and autobiographies so that we have an overall picture of gendered lives from imaginative fiction, memoirs and biographies.

In the late nineteenth century, ideas of the cosmopolitan and local were in conversation with the secular and sacred across different Indian literatures. Emerging poets from the zenana can be traced back to Zahida Khatun Sherwania from Aligarh and Haya Lakhnavi from Lucknow who had very unique trajectories as sharif women. With the rise of anti-colonial nationalism, the Indian women’s movement gathered force and those who had previously been confined to the private sphere took their place in public as speaking subjects. The influence of the Left, Marxist thought and resistance against colonial rule fired the Progressive Writers Movement in the 1930s. The pioneering writer and activist Rashid Jahan was at the helm of the movement mediating women’s voices through a scientific and rational lens. She was succeeded by Ismat Chughtai, who like her contemporary Saadat Hasan Manto courted controversy by writing openly about sexualities and class. With the onset of partition, as the progressive writers were split across two nations, they carried with them the vision of a secular borderless world. In Pakistan, Urdu became an ideological ground for state formation, and Urdu writers came under state surveillance in the Cold War era. The study picks up the story of progressive women poets in Pakistan to try and understand their response to emerging dominant narratives of nation, community and gender. How did national politics and an ideological Islamisation that was at odds with a secular separation of church and state affect their writing? 

Despite the disintegration of the Progressive Writers Movement and the official closure of the Left in Pakistan, the author argues that an exceptional legacy can be found in the voices of distinctive women poets including Ada Jafri, Zehra Nigah, Sara Shagufta, Parvin Shakir, Fahmida Riaz and Kishwar Naheed. Their poems offer new metaphors and symbols borrowing from feminist thought and a hybrid Islamicate culture. Riaz and Naheed joined forces with the women’s movement in Pakistan in the 1980s and caused some discomfort amongst Urdu literary circles with their writing. Celebrated across both sides of the border, their poetry and politics is less well known than the verse of the progressive poet par excellence Faiz Ahmed Faiz or the hard hitting lyrics of Habib Jalib. The book demonstrates how they manipulate and appropriate a national language as mother tongue speakers to enunciate a middle ground between the sacred and secular. In doing so they offer a new aesthetic that is inspired by activism and influenced by feminist philosophy. 

Williams fought a good fight for a better democracy and the collective equal rights of African Americans. He was not just a revolutionary voice and internationalist leader and voice in the Black Power movement, and should not be forgotten or dismissed because he maintained other reasons for raging his grievance towards the policies and practices of democracy in the United States. Robert F. Williams neither should be reduced to the status of a tool of Cold War politics or to a study about armed self-defense. Rather, in his contesting the government’s refusal to defend the human rights of 22 million African Americans, Williams’ actions and uncompromising stance directly and affirmatively addressed the promise and rights guaranteed US citizenship and the constitutional rights of the members of that society. Williams critically questioned numerous unjust acts and human rights violations, and waged (often a one-family man) war against America’s inability to practice principles of freedom and democracy, when these mistreatments were ignored. Robert F. Williams was an independent thinker, a compassionate and intelligent man. He was a common man, and despite his lofty intelligence, he was an American, claiming his right to his American citizenship. He was acutely aware of the broken promises of the United States. Yet, he nonetheless remained fully invested in assuming all of the rights, privileges, and responsibilities the Constitution guaranteed American citizens of African descent. He was always focused on making sure Americans took full advantage of the tools available in society and/or in government to bring them to bear in their situation. He believed in the redress of government, and the citizen’s right to do that. He believed that the US Constitution should be abided by, and that that was the right of every citizen.  Robert F. Williams collaborated with leaders of two foreign countries in order to communicate his grievances against the United States government and its citizens who remained complicit in practices of racial injustice. His exile in China from 1966 to 1969 led to his being expunged from the memory of Monroe, North Carolina’s trumped up charges of kidnapping. In the South and the Black Diaspora of the Midwest, he was a local civil rights leader, pragmatist, and internationalist in twentieth-century world history.

Investigates Gothic’s place in English literary history from 1814 to 1921, revealing its earlier and deeper integration into the selective tradition than previously recognized, and challenging long-held assumptions in Gothic studies and literary historiography

This book seeks to excavate the changing status of the Gothic within what, after Raymond Williams, we might call the selective tradition, from approximately 1814 to 1921. The beginning of this period marks the publication of John Dunlop’s The History of Fiction, which was the first general history of literature written in Britain for which the Gothic novel would have been within scope, and therefore offers the first litmus test of the Gothic’s status in the selective tradition as it is transmitted in durable, authoritative form. The year 1921, of course, marks the publication of Edith Birkhead’s The Tale of Terror, which figuratively marks the beginning of modern Gothic studies as a field. While scholarship of the Gothic has always attended to contemporary reception within periodicals and review culture, the question of the afterlife of that contemporary reception as it manifested in respectable and authoritative narratives about the literary past has never been explored in this period. The reason for this is what I call the founding myth of Gothic studies, which holds that the Gothic novel was never a critically respected genre and that the critical category of the Gothic novel itself was an artificial concept originating with Birkhead et al. This myth, I argue, turns out to be almost entirely false, and such an exploration, therefore, represents an entirely new avenue of inquiry for Gothic studies. As such, this study touches on many methodological domains in an attempt to survey the field with glasses rather than a microscope, and thus sketch enough of the ground for more detailed and specific investigations to follow.
This is above all a work of literary history, but it is a work of literary history designed to serve the needs of the field of Gothic studies. That said, it is also about more than the Gothic. At heart, this project asks two sets of questions. The first set has directly to do with the Gothic: when did the contemporary critical concept of the Gothic first emerge, how were those developments first reflected in the historical record in both durable and authoritative form, and how was that concept transmitted through the Knowledge System once the concept crystalized? The second set of questions pertains to the historiography of the Gothic, which, as of this writing, has long been considered a settled story, though the findings of this book call that story into significant question. In essence, the second set boils down to “how did we miss so much of the story?” These questions implicate much larger issues related to the history of ideas; book history; information and library sciences; the materials, methods, and practice of literary history; the digital humanities; and even questions of individual positionality and human contingency. Although this project does not engage in computational analysis, the orientation toward knowledge and its dissemination and transmission taken in this study follows to some extent what Ruth Ahnert, Sebastian E. Ahnert, Catherine Nicole Coleman, and Scott B. Weingart have recently called “the network turn,” especially in how I conceive of what I call the Knowledge System, and I would consider myself an analog practitioner of the digital humanities.

This book circumscribes both news media and popular cultural discourse dealing with the U.S. military, including its attendant industries, personnel, and leadership, over the course of a century and a half of American war. This book encompasses an analysis of American introspection, or lack thereof, describing the tone, content, lexicon, and spirit of media coverage of the American military in its engagements from the Spanish American War through to U.S. wars of choice in Iraq and the War on Terror. This work establishes conclusions about the overall way in which American media producers see the U.S. military and, in turn, describes the powerful and dynamic parameters of a discourse on the U.S. military in the public consciousness of the United States as well as international observers during the course of the last 125 years.

This new monograph is, therefore, positioned to provide an innovative and carefully researched view into the linkages between discourse and politics and between culture and policies within the United States looking at various critical moments in the history of the development of the American Empire. Ultimately, this research provides insight into the complex interrelationships between policy, the military, discourse, and culture focusing upon the power centres of discourse creation while connecting previously disjointed lines of historical and media research considering the United States and its imperial and military reach throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century.

Potential benefits of the proposed research project are manifest within its innovative approach to the study of discourse construction, its broad historical vision and its multifaceted methodological approach applying the precepts of history, critical discourse analysis, political science, and media and communication studies. Further benefit from the proposed project includes the pioneering analysis it offers about the U.S. military itself, an institution which is routinely spared time under the critical lense of academic researchers given its primacy of place within the popular, contemporary American imagination. Through this unflinching analysis, this work is both viable and timely given the current geopolitical position of the United States at the apex of global political developments, and possibly, according to some researchers, at the beginning of the end of its military imperium.

W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the leading figures of Pan-African thought and activism in the twentieth century. As a sociologist, Du Bois wrote much about the historical and social circumstances of African Americans while often acknowledging the African historical background driving much of African American, or Negro, culture. In 1946, Du Bois published The World and Africa, which was a culmination of previous attempts at penning a narrative of African history beginning with his 1915 publication The Negro, in which he included the social-historical experience of African Americans within the continuity of African history. This book delivers for the first time a comprehensive Afrocentric investigation and critique of Du Bois’s writings on African history. The book argues that while Du Bois presented at the time a strong critique of the Eurocentric construction of African history, many of Du Bois’s descriptions and arguments about African people and history were likewise flawed with interpretations that projected the cultural subjectivities of Europe. Further, while Du Bois rightfully presents the historical relationship between African Americans and Africa as a justification for Pan-African activism, this book contends that Du Bois’s failure to center African culture instead of race leads to superficial justifications for Pan-African unity. Due to the history of slavery and colonialism, African Americans and other African diasporic people face unique challenges regarding identity. This book posits that the reconstruction of an African cultural-historical matrix would have served Du Bois in better ways than the use of the racial paradigm. Therefore, Adé offers his own African World Antecedent Methodology (AWAM) as a tool for scholars to assist in piecing together the African cultural-historical matrix of diasporic African people. There are three approaches in the AWAM methodology: Kanna (sameness), Fanna (similarity), and Naani (uniqueness), which applied together functions in providing a framework for reconstructing the past lifeways of African people transgenerationally and transcontinentally, as well as reaffirming the cosmological rationale for various aspects of African cultural continuity and cultural unity extant among the African diaspora.

Explores how fitness technology affects mental health, self-image, and social anxiety, revealing its paradoxical effects through insights from sports science, psychology, UX, and gender studies

Beyond the Metrics: The Psychological Impact of Fitness Technology on Self-Image and Social Anxiety offers a compelling, interdisciplinary analysis of digital fitness tools’ effects on mental well-being, identity formation, and physical self-perception. With technology’s pervasive influence on wellness, this book analyzes the meaning of existence and competition under conditions of continuous monitoring.
The authors, drawing upon their diverse expertise, offer valuable perspectives. Dr. Asegul Hulus, a specialist in user experience (UX) and human–computer interaction (HCI), provides insights into self-tracking, gendered interfaces, and platform anxieties. Professional bodybuilder and PhD candidate Esat Hulus offers insights into digital self-surveillance, the pressures of aesthetics, and the emotional toll of performance metrics; his perspective is further contextualized by Dr. Erman Doğan, a sport psychologist and academic, who analyzes motivation, body image, and psychosocial dynamics within competitive sport.
The joint analysis reveals how applications, wearable devices, and social media platforms may contribute to increased self-doubt, the development of body dysmorphia, and amplified social comparison, with a particular focus on young athletes and marginalized groups. This book also offers a vision of fitness technology that prioritizes well-being over ideals of perfection, promoting a more ethical and inclusive approach to design.
This monograph integrates empirical research and cultural critique, making it suitable for scholars, students, coaches, therapists, and designers working within the evolving fields of mental health, digital identity, and embodied performance. This book delves beyond the quantitative data to explore the qualitative aspects relevant to individuals concerned with self-tracking, the influence of social media aesthetics, or technology’s role in personal growth.

Examines six African American writers who use the cultural and historical past to imagine a different present and future

In belonging to an oppressed/colonized racial group in the West, where their voices, humanity, history, culture, reality, and subjectivity are perpetually challenged, distorted, and/or erased, African American writers since the 1960s (and earlier) have struggled to be heard and represented. Yet, despite the racism, terror, trauma, and dehumanization, they, in revisiting, reclaiming, and reassessing their African and African American history and culture, used their decolonized imaginations and agency to reconfigure their history, subjectivity, and reality, and to invoke a fuller sense of the African American in the present.
With the transformative Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, African American writers and historians formulated a challenge to the social, political, psychological, educational, literary, and cultural institutions within American society. A window was open for African American writers to imagine other possibilities, to find truths in alternative paradigms. Therefore, they were thinking in very new, vibrant ways. Some African American writers since the 1960s began to creatively and imaginatively re-invent or exhume from the repressed and/or excluded historical, spiritual, and cultural past, new ways of living and making sense of the world.
This manuscript examines six African American writers—Richard Wright (Native Son), James Baldwin (Another Country), Ishmael Reed (Flight to Canada), Paule Marshall (Praisesong for the Widow), Toni Cade Bambara (The Salt Eaters), and Ntozake Shange (Liliane)—who deconstruct or demystify established models of modern American literature to build the foundation of a different African American literature. Using the usable values from the African and African-derived cultures and spiritual beliefs, in the present, they reconcile modern living with the great usable values of the past. They define African Americans as subjects becoming fulfilled, rather than as reduced stereotypes.

Reimagines political theory through a critical political theology that challenges liberal individualism and proposes a historically grounded, action-oriented vision of political reason and subjectivity informed by eschatological time.

Political theology classically and traditionally was about legitimizing state power by grounding it in a metaphysical order revealed in nature. Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan interrupted this tradition and set political theory on a new, culturally modern course. Hobbes secularized biblical myth to describe how a political order based on a social contract among naturally free and independent individuals works. Hobbes was a natural scientist, and the development of the modern sciences in which Hobbes participated undermined confidence in any natural order based on metaphysical principles. He defined liberty in terms derived from physics as simply the absence of impediments and defended the freedom of individuals to think for themselves. Hobbes also was an early modern biblical critic subjecting biblical texts to historical criticism, and he might be said to have demythologized the Leviathan: his mythological beast turns out to be a big machine. But Hobbes also recognized the usefulness of religion for understanding and encouraging obedience to state power. He stipulated that the Sovereign has the power to establish the religion to be espoused publicly in the worship and opinions of the subjects of the state but at the same time (and in line with his modern principles) allowed for individuals to maintain a private reserve regarding their personal beliefs, thereby opening the door to conflicts that bedevil political life today. The new political theology of Johann Baptist Metz offers a way to work through the tensions and conflicts of contemporary political life. Classical political theology and modern social contract theory are both concerned with establishing and legitimizing order and (at least for modern political theory) security. Metz’s political theology shifts attention to the meaning of political action and the perpetually unfulfilled hope for justice in history. Metz participated in Marxist-Christian dialogue in the 1960s leading him to a “theology of the world” which reads the world as eschatological history (in the manner of Walter Benjamin’s messianic history) rather than as nature and understands historical action as informed by hope in the promise of political justice, a promise defined negatively (in the manner of Theodor Adorno’s critical negativity) as the “eschatological proviso” that all political systems are provisional in light of the unrealized promise of justice. Metz understands reason anamnestically as based on “dangerous memories” (another Benjamin category) of past suffering or anamnestic solidarity with the dead whose suffering precludes closure of meaning. Metz offers an image for this work expressed in terms of the cultural history of the West: he is proposing a return to “Jerusalem” as understood in Tertullian’s distinction “Jerusalem versus Athens.” Christian theology turned to “Athens” and categories derived from Greek philosophy to explain itself. Both Tertullian and Metz called for a return to “Jerusalem” and the categories of (Jewish) biblical thinking. For Tertullian, this was preserving faith from rational criticism; for Metz, “Jerusalem” is still about reason. But Metz also recognizes the threats to this history-integrated reason like the Holocaust. This requires confronting the challenge of Auschwitz as a paradigm of meaningless suffering that cannot be explained; neither can it be denied, and we are left with unanswerable questions that nevertheless must direct our thinking. A new political theology makes possible new ways of thinking through the challenges of modern political culture. A primary case is political subjectivity. Modern political culture begins with liberal individualism: the question becomes why rational individuals live together in organized groups. For Hobbes, our natural freedom and equality result in the war of each against all, making life “nasty, brutish, and short.” Our response is to enter a social contract in which we hand over some of our liberty to a state we create to protect our lives (and property). At base, politics is about survival (biopolitics), about bare life and not the good human life. An alternative is the political subjectivity found in the Israelite prophet Amos whose understanding of repentance locates the meaning of individual lives in their maintenance of the covenant vitality of the people. Individual existence derives from community life without being incorporated into collective identity. Hannah Arendt and Judith Butler offer parallel insights into political subjectivity: Arendt by finding a related political subjectivity in Socrates and by describing freedom as the human capacity to do something new that depends on being witnessed by others to become real, and Butler by describing subjectivity as developing in responsibility to and with others. Rather than conflict and contradiction between the individual and community, politics is where we exist as free subjects. (Other cases also are examined.)

This book examines how contemporary Taiwanese ghost films reimagine trauma, folklore, and identity within a dynamic and globally connected cinematic context.

Beethoven’s Freude theme—or “Ode to Joy”—is perhaps the most iconic melody ever created. This book sets out to show why the Freude theme has acquired this almost mythic status and what its use in the finale of the Ninth Symphony reveals about the mechanics of tonal composition.

Through the Russian Revolution by Albert Rhys-Williams, a Congregationalist pastor turned labor organiser and journalist, offers readers a first-hand account of the exciting and confusing events of the Russian revolution from June 1917 to August 1918. Williams, a lifelong defender of the Soviet system, documented his first adventure in Russia at its most chaotic moments. There he formed a lasting impression of what he thought the Soviet system could offer to the world and dedicated the rest of his life to this cause. His account, while sympathetic, reveals to a modern audience the inner working of the Bolshevik Party, life in Petrograd and the countryside, and an optimistic vision of the revolutionary future. 

Through the Russian Revolution by Albert Rhys-Williams, a Congregationalist pastor turned labor organiser and journalist, offers readers a first-hand account of the exciting and confusing events of the Russian revolution from June 1917 to August 1918. Williams, a lifelong defender of the Soviet system, documented his first adventure in Russia at its most chaotic moments. There he formed a lasting impression of what he thought the Soviet system could offer to the world and dedicated the rest of his life to this cause. His account, while sympathetic, reveals to a modern audience the inner working of the Bolshevik Party, life in Petrograd and the countryside, and an optimistic vision of the revolutionary future. 

Edward Alsworth Ross, one of the founders of the academic field of sociology, spent July–December 1917 traveling across the Russian Empire and talking to the people there. As he states in his brief introduction, “I have taken it as my business to describe impartially the major social changes going on in Russia … in the latter half of 1917, and leave it to others or to time itself to judge them.” Ross follows through on that promise remarkably well, describing Russian peasants, the urban educated class, industrial workers, women, religion, people who had been imprisoned under tsarism, religion, the people of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and the proposals for democracy, among other topics.

Though this unique account focuses more on the people and less on politics than other accounts of the time, Ross includes a fascinating account of a lengthy private interview with Trotsky in December 1917. He ends the book by looking ahead to Russia’s possible future, from a perspective after the Bolsheviks took power but before the Civil War changed everything. Delving into important themes rarely mentioned in other foreigners’ writings about the Russian Revolution, Russia in Upheaval gives a unique sense of the times.

An original political economy analysis that rethinks inflation as a complex, socially constructed phenomenon, challenging orthodox views and highlighting its potential benefits for growth and inequality reduction.

The book’s seven short chapters provide an original critical, political economist’s introduction to the meaning, causes and consequences of inflation. The book begins by arguing that inflation is a metaphor rather than a ‘thing’ and that inflation is a complex social construction, whose social complexity tends to become obscured by the presentation of inflation in terms of any simple number. It identifies inclusions and exclusions, measurement difficulties, and inherent imperfections in inflation indexes. It then provides a historical context to arguments about causes and consequences, emphasising how prices and price changes are influenced by both states and (more or less private) economic forces and that rather than involving a neutral ‘change of counters’, price changes have substantial and differentiated social impacts. It shows that the ‘norm’ of rising prices is a historical novelty and highlights that genuine hyperinflations are extremely rare.
The middle part of the book develops a constructive critique of existing theories. It begins by considering the quantity theory of money, arguing that the four variables of the famous Fisher equation – money, velocity of circulation, prices and transactions – should indeed be seen as variables and that doing so means that monetarist follies do not require their inversion, that inflation cannot be a monetary phenomenon or that states cannot be implicated. It then turns to the relation between unemployment and inflation and develops ideas which link inflation to the dynamics of capitalist innovation, competition and the changing global economy.
The final part of the book considers the consequences of inflation. It contests what it sees as an anti-inflationary consensus, presenting evidence that, up to levels far beyond those contemplated by central bankers, inflation is conducive to faster economic growth and that it also tends to reduce wealth and income inequality. In this context, it argues that the contemporary low-inflation regime should be understood as a profoundly political achievement and asks why this inherently political character of inflation has been so effectively submerged and the acceptance of the low inflation agenda so widely accepted.

Edward Alsworth Ross, one of the founders of the academic field of sociology, spent July–December 1917 traveling across the Russian Empire and talking to the people there. As he states in his brief introduction, “I have taken it as my business to describe impartially the major social changes going on in Russia … in the latter half of 1917, and leave it to others or to time itself to judge them.” Ross follows through on that promise remarkably well, describing Russian peasants, the urban educated class, industrial workers, women, religion, people who had been imprisoned under tsarism, religion, the people of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and the proposals for democracy, among other topics.

Though this unique account focuses more on the people and less on politics than other accounts of the time, Ross includes a fascinating account of a lengthy private interview with Trotsky in December 1917. He ends the book by looking ahead to Russia’s possible future, from a perspective after the Bolsheviks took power but before the Civil War changed everything. Delving into important themes rarely mentioned in other foreigners’ writings about the Russian Revolution, Russia in Upheaval gives a unique sense of the times.

Explores how Ray Petri and the Buffalo collective revolutionized fashion photography in the 1980s by blending subcultural style, radical diversity, and gender politics to create a new cultural template still influential today

Scottish-born, visionary stylist Ray Petri (1948–1989) defined the look and feel of radical 1980s magazines such as The Face, i-D, and Arena. Founder of the maverick Buffalo collective, Petri styled kilts with MA-1 flight jackets and Armani suits with Dr. Martens boots to create genre-defying looks that shook up London’s subcultural scene from grassroots to high fashion. Harnessing the power of street style, sportswear, club culture, new wave, and dandyism, Petri’s vision took the sartorial vocabulary of the perpetually displaced into the mainstream. His radical casting of Black and multiracial models, styling of men in skirts, and women cast as men was a retort to the prevailing aesthetic in contemporary fashion. Moreover, it marked a culturally reflexive, implicitly political approach to the relationship between fashion and identity. Challenging the policing of masculinity and sexuality in particular, Petri’s imagery boldly toyed with the iconography of homoeroticism, employing the language of fashion in the activism for gay liberation against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis. The eclectic Buffalo circle included fellow stylist Mitzi Lorenz; photographers Jamie Morgan, Mark Lebon and Jean-Baptiste Mondino; model-muses Nick and Barry Kamen and a young Naomi Campbell; and musicians such as Neneh Cherry. Shaped by Petri, the Buffalo attitude is intrinsic to style culture today having since inspired legions of photographers, stylists, and designers from Kim Jones to Ibrahim Kamara, Martine Rose, and Grace Wales Bonner. The spirit of Buffalo lives on in the countercultural references, cultural diversity, and post-gender conversation that underlies the most powerful of contemporary fashion imagery. This book traces how Ray Petri and Buffalo created the template for modern fashion photography by advocating not simply for a new aesthetic but for a new cultural order.

The purpose of this book is to explore the major conceptual differences between classical and modern political philosophy and to understand how these differences have yielded competing conceptions of justice. If ancient and modern thinkers used a different set of constructs, definitions, and methods to explain justice, then it is our duty to understand them. It is also our duty to understand why they have such differences.
Modern thinkers, beginning with Thomas Hobbes, developed a thought experiment—the state of nature—that allowed them to redefine well-established political terms (nature, happiness, virtue, equality, freedom) to determine what people were like in the absence of any external authority, that is, a state. The argument was so compelling that their adherents applied this logic to determine what they deemed legitimate forms of government. In doing so, they made classical articulations of justice appear irrelevant.
This shift—a seismic move away from more than 1,500 years of political philosophy, validated the new approach and called into question the approach of classical theorists. As a result, we now inhabit a world that sees little political significance in the work of the ancients. The classical theory of Plato and Aristotle appears too subjective. It seems too ideological and at times mystical. Such a momentous shift in thinking has resulted in a change in the way citizens see themselves in relation to the state and more importantly, toward each other.

Explores how Ray Petri and the Buffalo collective revolutionized fashion photography in the 1980s by blending subcultural style, radical diversity, and gender politics to create a new cultural template still influential today

Scottish-born, visionary stylist Ray Petri (1948–1989) defined the look and feel of radical 1980s magazines such as The Face, i-D, and Arena. Founder of the maverick Buffalo collective, Petri styled kilts with MA-1 flight jackets and Armani suits with Dr. Martens boots to create genre-defying looks that shook up London’s subcultural scene from grassroots to high fashion. Harnessing the power of street style, sportswear, club culture, new wave, and dandyism, Petri’s vision took the sartorial vocabulary of the perpetually displaced into the mainstream. His radical casting of Black and multiracial models, styling of men in skirts, and women cast as men was a retort to the prevailing aesthetic in contemporary fashion. Moreover, it marked a culturally reflexive, implicitly political approach to the relationship between fashion and identity. Challenging the policing of masculinity and sexuality in particular, Petri’s imagery boldly toyed with the iconography of homoeroticism, employing the language of fashion in the activism for gay liberation against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis. The eclectic Buffalo circle included fellow stylist Mitzi Lorenz; photographers Jamie Morgan, Mark Lebon and Jean-Baptiste Mondino; model-muses Nick and Barry Kamen and a young Naomi Campbell; and musicians such as Neneh Cherry. Shaped by Petri, the Buffalo attitude is intrinsic to style culture today having since inspired legions of photographers, stylists, and designers from Kim Jones to Ibrahim Kamara, Martine Rose, and Grace Wales Bonner. The spirit of Buffalo lives on in the countercultural references, cultural diversity, and post-gender conversation that underlies the most powerful of contemporary fashion imagery. This book traces how Ray Petri and Buffalo created the template for modern fashion photography by advocating not simply for a new aesthetic but for a new cultural order.

David R. Francis held the post of the United States ambassador to Russia from April 1916 to November 1918, and represented his country before four Russian governments: the Imperial, Provisional, Soviet, and Northern. He was an eyewitness of the greatest events in the history of Russia: World War I, the February Revolution, the downfall of the empire, the October Revolution, and the Civil War. During the two and half years of his residence in Russia, Francis met prominent figures such as Nicholas II, the last Russian emperor, and Vladimir I. Lenin, the first Soviet leader. Francis s diplomatic experience was unique and had no parallel in the history of Russian-American relations which is why his memoirs are of special interest for historians and the general public alike.

A cultural history of Editorial Gustavo Gili's scientific and technical publishing under Franco, tracing how books were shaped, produced, and received in the complex landscape of authoritarian Spain.

This book is a cultural history of the Gustavo Gili publishing house, one of the most important commercial firms specializing in scientific and technological literature during Franco’s dictatorship. Rather than adopting a narrowly biographical approach—often oscillating between the anecdotal and the hagiographic—this study places the publications themselves at the center of analysis. Seeking to approach the history of scientific publishing from a cultural and sociological perspective, the book examines the forms and uses of these texts, connecting them with the spaces and actors involved in their production, circulation, and reception.
The aim is to shift focus from final products to production processes—from the material characteristics of publications to the various agents in the publishing chain. In this context, a typically overlooked figure—the translator—emerges as a key actor in legitimizing specific versions of foreign scientific texts. By highlighting this role, the book sheds new light on how scientific works were translated, marketed, and distributed in Francoist Spain

Examines episodes of philosophical embarrassment, highlighting how Hume, Wittgenstein, and others grappled with critiques that undermined philosophy’s foundations, leading to redefinitions of its aims and cautionary responses to scientism and self-deception

This book consists of diverse essays held together by the thread of embarrassment that runs through them. Sometimes, embarrassment is front and center as when we discuss its conceptual features; at other times, its presence is oblique, as when we take a closer look at Rousseau’s existential outrage at the very idea of a culture of embarrassment; or when we look at Darwin’s theory and George Eliot’s critique of it. We unearth deeply buried embarrassments in the history of philosophy treating them as useful entry points into the major figures from an unusual if not idiosyncratic angle. All this raises a somewhat different but important line of enquiry, one that is meta-philosophical. Hume and Wittgenstein are our prime examples of philosophers who are aware that they and their subject have undone themselves and thus have been thoroughly embarrassed. What are the upshots, they ask, for philosophers and their subject? Perhaps this issue is the answer to Rousseau’s tantrums: embarrassment is useful. Throughout the book, we have many things to say about its uses and its abuses. One question this raises for us is how to proceed in philosophy with equipment that tends to run off the rails with considerable regularity. Do we proceed with all modesty, alive to these facts about us and ready to be embarrassed the next time our reach exceeds our grasp? Or do we, as the early Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and Quine seem to have done, radically revise key elements of the philosophical project—the pursuit of truth and objectivity in all matters, for example—in an attempt to avoid future embarrassments? If you narrow your subject, and if you are competent in that narrowness, you can avoid embarrassment and achieve your modest goals. Such a course is in keeping with the approach of modern philosophy, since it has taken science as a model of sorts. However, when science exceeds its competence, claiming it can solve any and every problem, it loses its experimental modesty, and we no longer have science but scientism. It should come as no surprise, then, that one of our essays is a set of reflections on Wittgenstein’s cautionary remarks about the embarrassments of scientism and his warnings about the related inclination to self-deception. A definition, Kant remarked, should come toward the end rather than at the beginning of an investigation; hence, in the final essay, we provide a perspicuous overview of embarrassment.

Examines the evolving landscape of data privacy and ethics, arguing that businesses can build trust and drive growth by adopting transparent, consumer-focused data frameworks beyond legal compliance

Data privacy continues to be an important topic for discussion throughout changing technology, business, and legislation landscapes. The U.S. legislation continues to shift state-by-state, resulting in changes that are often difficult for companies to keep up with. This is (one reason) why businesses should adopt their own data framework principles to guide their business strategy. Developing data guidelines or principles is the practice of a business voluntarily going beyond data privacy legislation to create and implement a data collection and usage framework that prioritizes customer relationships through a lens of transparency and control.
The book explores how consumer data are currently collected from everyday interactions, surveys, website usage, purchases, and more, then examines how that information feeds data and business strategies for companies around the world. Data collection is often complex—it requires different kinds of technology and uses different validation methods, all across different pieces of data—and this complexity can lead to issues with accuracy and tracking of when and how consumer data are used. Data are used to drive business strategies by helping companies find their most loyal users, bring in new customers, and increase usage, among other things. An underlying guide for data principles can lead to improved accuracy in data collection, help businesses stay transparent with consumers, generate more trust, and ultimately, increase business performance.
As consumers become more educated and more aware about what data are collected and how they are used by companies, there is a growing need for businesses to develop a relationship with their consumers built on trust and mutual value. There is currently a gap between the amount of data collected, its usage, and how consumers trust and value the companies with which they do business.
Finally, this book discusses how businesses can bridge that gap, between consumer trust and effective business strategy by developing their own set of data guidelines and principles that can improve business growth. These strategies are designed to help drive consumer trust by treating consumers like real people and understanding the relationship between data collection, usage, and consumer trust.

Donald Thompson in Russia is a compilation of letters to his wife Dorothy in Topeka, Kansas, illustrated with photos. First published in 1918, it outlines Thompson’s conspiracy thesis that :German intrigue, working among the unthinking masses, has brought Russia to her present woeful condition.”

Louise Bryant and her husband John Reed were among a relatively small group of Americans who participated in one of the most important events of the twentieth century, the Russian Revolution of 1917. As first-hand observers, they attended meetings of the revolutionaries, were present at teh Winter Palace as it was under attack, and witnesssed  the surrender of the palace guards. Over the next weeks, they saw a new regime emerge and met manu of tis most important figures, including Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, and Kollontai. Bryant returned home in 1918 and immediately began working on the book that would becime Six Red Months in Russia. Unfortunately for Bryant, her sec and her relationship with Reed overshadowed her talent as a writer and the depth of her observations of this historic event. But Bryant deserves better; she had her oen voice and was a skilled observer and journalist in her own right. While Reed's book is certainly a significant work, it contains little personal commentary. Bryant's account, by comparison, is also a documentation of the revolution, but it goes farther than Reed's in many wants, adding interpretation to observation. Bryant communicates what life was like during the days of the revolution - the people, the food, the excitement, the fear. She is also keenly aware of her American audience and speaks directly to them, urging them to pay attention to this world-changing moment in history and not to be fooled by the misinformation about Bolshevism and the new regime. Six Red Months in Russia conveys Bryant's understanding of the revolution, and reminds us of the utter enthusiasm that many Russians, and Americans, felt for socialism and its yet-untainted, utopian ideals. This new edition of Bryant's book is annotated and set in its appropriate historical context to create a more accessible text for modern readers on the anniversary of this truly world-changing event. 

David R. Francis held the post of the United States ambassador to Russia from April 1916 to November 1918, and represented his country before four Russian governments: the Imperial, Provisional, Soviet, and Northern. He was an eyewitness of the greatest events in the history of Russia: World War I, the February Revolution, the downfall of the empire, the October Revolution, and the Civil War. During the two and half years of his residence in Russia, Francis met prominent figures such as Nicholas II, the last Russian emperor, and Vladimir I. Lenin, the first Soviet leader. Francis s diplomatic experience was unique and had no parallel in the history of Russian-American relations which is why his memoirs are of special interest for historians and the general public alike.

Donald Thompson in Russia is a compilation of letters to his wife Dorothy in Topeka, Kansas, illustrated with photos. First published in 1918, it outlines Thompson’s conspiracy thesis that :German intrigue, working among the unthinking masses, has brought Russia to her present woeful condition.”

Louise Bryant and her husband John Reed were among a relatively small group of Americans who participated in one of the most important events of the twentieth century, the Russian Revolution of 1917. As first-hand observers, they attended meetings of the revolutionaries, were present at teh Winter Palace as it was under attack, and witnesssed  the surrender of the palace guards. Over the next weeks, they saw a new regime emerge and met manu of tis most important figures, including Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, and Kollontai. Bryant returned home in 1918 and immediately began working on the book that would becime Six Red Months in Russia. Unfortunately for Bryant, her sec and her relationship with Reed overshadowed her talent as a writer and the depth of her observations of this historic event. But Bryant deserves better; she had her oen voice and was a skilled observer and journalist in her own right. While Reed's book is certainly a significant work, it contains little personal commentary. Bryant's account, by comparison, is also a documentation of the revolution, but it goes farther than Reed's in many wants, adding interpretation to observation. Bryant communicates what life was like during the days of the revolution - the people, the food, the excitement, the fear. She is also keenly aware of her American audience and speaks directly to them, urging them to pay attention to this world-changing moment in history and not to be fooled by the misinformation about Bolshevism and the new regime. Six Red Months in Russia conveys Bryant's understanding of the revolution, and reminds us of the utter enthusiasm that many Russians, and Americans, felt for socialism and its yet-untainted, utopian ideals. This new edition of Bryant's book is annotated and set in its appropriate historical context to create a more accessible text for modern readers on the anniversary of this truly world-changing event. 

Explores innovative planning and design strategies to tackle housing affordability, offering case studies and solutions that enhance livability, community resilience, and opportunity, from urban scale to home design.

New socio-economic and environmental realities have brought about a “perfect storm” of circumstances that are forcing a search for innovative solutions in the built residential environment, including affordable housing design and construction. The need to rethink planning practices and align them with contemporary environmental constraints has taken center stage in recent years. The depletion of non-renewable resources, elevated levels of greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change are a few of the challenges that force designers to reconsider conceptual approaches in favor of ones that promote a better suitability between built and natural environments. Consideration of concepts that lower a place’s carbon footprint by minimizing driving, using renewable energy, and preserving the site’s natural assets is one of the contemporary strategies that architects, planners, and builders are integrating into their philosophy and practice.
Given these emerging challenges, the need to think innovatively about planning affordable communities while learning from notable case studies is at the heart of the proposed book. The intention is to explore principles and to present outstanding international case studies that offer valuable lessons.
The book is also about livability—where design touches life and the big and small things that make people appreciate homes and neighborhoods. Livability has become an increasingly important lens with which to analyze a city, considering population demands, built infrastructure, and ecosystems. Community requirements for goods and services, in relation to what is available to a population is an indication of a place’s livability. To foster livable, affordable communities throughout all the stages of life, the social, environmental, and structural needs of a place should be considered and planned for through innovative designs and policies.
The material assembled can be of help to planners, architects, and builders designing and planning a large community or individual homes. It can be used by for-profit firms or nonprofit organizations planning on initiating ownership or rental accommodations. Although some of the standards described in the book are relevant to the North American market, its basic principles can be used internationally. Similarly, even though many of the designs described here are for mid- to low-rise wood-frame structures, their concepts are applicable to tall, large buildings.

In our book, new voices from the African landscape join the conversation on making peace in spaces often ruined by violence. Academics, mediation professionals and community leaders have come together to share their experiences with mediation. It not only restores or creates relationships but also transforms people’s thoughts about making peace. Some lessons in this book are for sharing lived experiences for public benefit, others are aimed at conceptualising mediations, and some contribute to theory building, but all the contributions inspire peace action.
Overall, peace leaders in Africa manage violent conflict much better than observed from other vantage points outside Africa. Despite long-term poverty, terrorism and internal wars, international contests for Africa’s resources, governance dysfunctions, natural disasters, limited access to technology, and transnational crime, community leaders (some contributing to this book) are coming forward daily to apply their knowledge to mediate peace.
This book will appeal to peace-building students and professionals focusing on socio-economic development in safe and secure conditions. It is also unique in that it intersects and transcends many academic disciplines and is a valuable guidebook for curricula on peace and conflict studies, security studies, law studies, African development studies, public safety management, and public affairs. It demonstrates the interconnections between these dimensions of society. A new shift in the humanities to understand non-Western management approaches makes this book of exceptional value.

Of all the books by American witnesses of the Russian Revolution, John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World was and still is the best known. Even thoughtReed arrived in Russia in September 1917 and left in the spring of 1918, his enthusiastic account focuses on the ten key days of the revolution itself, brining to life the sights, sounds, and key people who were so instrumental in this critical event. Reed, officially a journalist, shed his objectivity and supplorted the Boshevik cause, and this book was the key forum in which he made his cause. In the end, the book has survived, and even thrived, as a primary source on the revolution, even thought Reed died in 1920.

Of all the books by American witnesses of the Russian Revolution, John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World was and still is the best known. Even thoughtReed arrived in Russia in September 1917 and left in the spring of 1918, his enthusiastic account focuses on the ten key days of the revolution itself, brining to life the sights, sounds, and key people who were so instrumental in this critical event. Reed, officially a journalist, shed his objectivity and supplorted the Boshevik cause, and this book was the key forum in which he made his cause. In the end, the book has survived, and even thrived, as a primary source on the revolution, even thought Reed died in 1920.

Chicago native, political activist, and journalist Ernest Poole (1880-1950) provides a distinctive view of the  Bolshevik Revolution in his work, The Village: Russian Impressions. This work is unusual in the library of American accounts of Revolutionary Russia because it addresses the world of the Russian peasants, far away from the revolutionary centers of Petrograd and Moscow. He associated with a Russian priest, a doctor, a teacher, and a mill owner who offered a perspective not normally seen in the history of the Bolshevik Revolution. Poole's own views and those of the people he visited provide a fascinating account of the revolutionary era that helps readers a century later understand the complexity of this fascinating time. 

Chicago native, political activist, and journalist Ernest Poole (1880-1950) provides a distinctive view of the  Bolshevik Revolution in his work, The Village: Russian Impressions. This work is unusual in the library of American accounts of Revolutionary Russia because it addresses the world of the Russian peasants, far away from the revolutionary centers of Petrograd and Moscow. He associated with a Russian priest, a doctor, a teacher, and a mill owner who offered a perspective not normally seen in the history of the Bolshevik Revolution. Poole's own views and those of the people he visited provide a fascinating account of the revolutionary era that helps readers a century later understand the complexity of this fascinating time. 

Explores the enduring role of traditional bone setting in African healthcare, highlighting its cultural depth, ethnobotanical roots, and growing biomedical collisions s with Western orthopedic medical sciences that split and fracture current patient-care systems. 

Traditional bone setting (TBS) has long held a prominent sway in African healthcare, particularly in the more remote and pastoral expanses of Africa. This unique interdisciplinary religious, human rights, and sociological study of medicine manuscript is an examination of not only generationally inherited ethnobotanical, pharmacognosy TBS traditions but also direct observations on how current surgical orthopedic medicine and modern-day social mechanisms clash with traditional healthcare approaches in contemporaneous and inexorable ways. Whether intentionally or not, this entrenched two-tier infrastructure supports, promotes, and maintains a fiscally and socially alienated infrastructure: one that serves the poor general public; and the other that is oriented toward serving the prosperous and powerful urban class. Some argue that these disparate structures are destined to remain grassroots-based adversaries, due to systemic mistrust, irreconcilable intellectual and spiritual beliefs, and possible biochemical appropriations.
These ensuing biomedical collisions between “Western” orthopedic trauma care and traditional bonesetters in Cameroon (Central Africa), Ethiopia (East Africa), Ghana (West Africa), and Zimbabwe (South Africa) were documented over eight years via one-on-one interviews with TBS patients, practicing bonesetters, and in-country practicing orthopedic surgeons; evidence-based ethnobotanical research, and patient service preferences.
In Western biomedical quarters, it will continue to be argued that traditional bonesetters’ lack of anatomical, physiological, and radiological knowledge effects tragic and unnecessary limb- and/or life-threatening complications. However, in stark contrast to Western medicine—which focuses on the empirical and scientific dissection, analysis, diagnosis, and profitable treatment of singular biological organ systems or body parts via medical specialties—holistic traditional medicine distinguishes itself to take into consideration the complete person in the treatment of injuries and illnesses—physically, psychologically, socially, and spiritually.
In traditional medicine, poor health, disease, misfortune, or even unexpected successes are not viewed as chance occurrences but are imbalances believed to arise from the actions of individuals or ancestral spirits. At its core, traditional medicine can be defined as “health practices, approaches, knowledge and beliefs incorporating plant, animal, and/or mineral-based medicines, spiritual therapies, manual techniques and exercises, applied singularly (or in combination) to treat, diagnose, and prevent illnesses or maintain well-being” (Fokunang et al., 2011). So, we can argue that almost every global region has had, at one time or another in its history, a form of traditional medicine. However, despite being consigned to a secondary placement in the health planning of developing countries, traditional medicine practices are gradually undergoing systemic revitalizations and rehabilitations, particularly in the last two decades.

This book is unique in that it synthesizes the cultural heritage of all the Indigenous peoples of North America (Mexico, USA, Canada) and the nature of their interactions over the centuries as well as their relations with Blacks and Anglos. Most literature on this topic segments the Mexican/Spanish from the USA/Canadian English/French works while not fully integrating the pre-Columbian (Aboriginal) or the influences that transpired following colonization and nationhood. We focus on the tribal transformations, cultural adaptations, and inter/intra-group interactions over time leading to the contemporary pan-Indianism of today that provides a universal ethnic identity while protecting unique traditional attributes that have survived to the present. At the same time, we address the foundations of White supremacy and entitlement and the role it plays in contemporary race relations and the long history of White exploitation.
Prior to 1492 and the onslaught of White colonization, pre-Columbian America was inhabited by millions of people estimated in the tens of millions, speaking more than 300 languages with thousands of dialects clustered into major linguistic groups, with complex cultures and their own unique rites, customs, and lifestyles, which, in many instances, were more equalitarian than that of the Europeans at the time. Indeed, the pre-Columbian natives of the Americas represented a diversity of cultures and societies from hunting and gathering tribes to horticultural groups and even sophisticated city-states and pueblos such as those developed by the Aztec, Inca, and Mayan empires of Mexico and Central and South America. Aboriginal trade routes extended from South and Central America to North America with many of the current roads, highways, and waterways reflecting these inter-tribal trade routes long established prior to European contact. Incredibly, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas established these trade routes extending from South and Central America to North America without the advantage of the horse or wheeled contrivances, innovations that came with European contact.

Today as in times past, the figure of the dandy evokes the image of a fashionable male who achieves social influence by distinctive elegance in dress and sophisticated self-presentation. The book explores the history of Dandy as a cultural type across Europe and Russia from the eighteenth century through the present day, analysing different manifestations of dandyism from sparse minimalism to opulent richness. Olga Vainshtein offers a unique view on dandyism as a cultural tradition, based not merely on fashionable attire, but also as a particular lifestyle with specific standards of behaviour, bodily practices and conceptual approaches to dress. The dandy is described as the prototypical hero of the modern cult of celebrities. From clubbing manners, the techniques of virtual aristocratism, urban flâneurs and the correct way to examine people, Vainshtein walks us through the optical duels and the techniques of visual assessment at social gatherings. Readers will learn about strategies of subversive behaviour found in practical jokes, the fine art of noble scandal, dry wit, bare-faced impudence and mocking politeness. Vainshtein outlines the principles of dandyism through an examination of strategies of self-fashioning among famous dandies such as George Brummell, Count D’Orsay, Oscar Wilde and Robert de Montesquiou. Looking at dandyism as a nineteenth-century literary movement, Vainshtein examines representation of dandies in fiction. Along the way, the author offers the English-language reader something entirely new: a history of Russian and Soviet dandyism. Finally, a large section is devoted to the dandies of today, including the discussion of African sapeurs.

Develops a new ethical framework for understanding nonviolence through Dostoevsky’s “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,” bridging literature, philosophy, and activism with insights from thinkers like Gandhi, Žižek, and Judith Butler

In recent years, several high-profile academic outputs related to theory and ethics of nonviolence have emerged. This book adds to theoretical literature on nonviolence through developing a new framework based on concepts drawn from Dostoevsky’s “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” (LGI) which was originally articulated in the novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880). In doing so, this book accounts for a previously undetected ethical dimension of nonviolence. It repositions Dostoevsky as a vital contributor to theory on nonviolence and uncovers a philosophical stance that defines violence not through political revolution, but by spiritual resistance and self-reproach. This book accounts for principal findings that have been identified in empirical scholarship on nonviolence, and while doing so, it engages with classical political theorists and scholars on nonviolence, including Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Gene Sharp along with contemporary works including Žižek, Atack, Christoyannopoulos, and Butler.This book contributes a new framework to assess the ethical motivations behind nonviolence and its empirical efficacy based on concepts drawn from Dostoevsky’s parable. The analysis of LGI offers an innovative explanation of the historical role of nonviolence and presents new implications for interpreting the efficacy of nonviolence in the contemporary world. Scholars have described the Grand Inquisitor as being representative of an evolution toward a totalitarian state, and it has even been acknowledged that the Grand Inquisitor was an inspiration for several key dystopian works that came afterwards such as Zamiatin’s We (1921), Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Yet with great scholarly and literary emphasis having been placed on the authoritarian symbols of this parable, the LGI contains an under-studied component of nonviolence which, to date, is yet to be identified and theorized.

Explores how nationalist projects in the modern Mediterranean absorbed, reshaped or erased shared intercultural identities, offering five historical case studies from Italy, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Libya

The study of modern Mediterranean history, society and international relations has long featured debates over whether and which of the values, norms and perspectives found in the region are site-specific or cross-cultural. In the past few decades, scholars have offered new understandings of the Mediterranean’s nationalist era in the 19th and 20th centuries by exploring the tension between national and transnational identities. Recent advances by far-right and authoritarian forces in a wide array of Mediterranean states prove that this tension remains of present-day significance and urgency.
Transnational Nationalism in the Mediterranean Sea: Origins and Aftermaths provides a timely, innovative and concise contribution to these ongoing debates. As it is indisputable that numerous Mediterranean sub-regions entered the nationalist era expressing intercultural characteristics, many questions remain to be answered about, first, the repurposing of pre-nationalist shared identities for nation-building causes and, second, attempts by nationalist forces to divide and erase those same shared identities. In the face of these questions, Schumacher argues that methodologies predicated on critiquing crude dyads like East versus West, North versus South, and Europe versus non-Europe are outmoded and present very little utility in policy-minded spaces.
Schumacher proposes that a case-studies approach has better potential to provide both new insights for scholars and actionable information for policymakers. He provides five historical case studies, centred on the national experiences of Italy, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Libya. First, he investigates how Italian nation-building was affected by the Italian peninsula’s pre-unification relations with other Mediterranean locales. Second, he explores the nature of Greekness in the Ottoman world after the emergence of an independent Greek state. Third, he offers a view on how the rise of Turkish nationalism affected the Ottoman role in the Mediterranean Sea. Fourth, he looks at how Lebanon’s colonial and post-colonial history reflects the limits of transnational narratives in nation-building and asserting state sovereignty. Fifth, he examines Libyan nationalists’ attempts to reconcile their country’s desert versus maritime and local versus international identities. The book closes by suggesting that the ongoing refugee crisis in the Mediterranean should lead scholars to question the instrumentality of their work.

A unique, post-pandemic-era anthology that blends creative and critical works to redefine nostalgia studies through a culturally expansive and interdisciplinary lens

The edited collection titled Reverberating Past: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Art of Nostalgia is an interdisciplinary anthology that bridges the artistic and academic realms, exploring the concept of nostalgia through both personal and collective lenses. The volume is divided into two parts: the first part features poetry and short stories that capture the emotional resonance of past experiences, while the second one presents scholarly articles that delve into the multifaceted nature of nostalgia across disciplines such as literature, film, history, and psychology.

The book emphasizes how contemporary artifacts, a term used in a metaphorical way, serve as vessels for nostalgic experiences, shaping our understanding of the past and its influence on the present. The preface frames nostalgia as a subtle force that transforms ordinary moments such as scents, light, and the sheen of old photographs into a living archive of identity. The introduction by Barbara Gabriella Renzi and Goutam Majhi takes Marcel Proust’s madeleine as a touchstone for involuntary memory and traces the concept back to Johannes Hofer’s seventeenth century medicalization of homesickness, while Homer’s Odysseus models a far older and existential longing for home. An opening reflection shows nostalgia working as a present tense instrument of perception that binds personal memory to collective history, and the stated purpose situates the book at the crossroads of art and scholarship, where poems, stories, and essays perform nostalgia as both aesthetic practice and emotional condition. A typology of nostalgic artifacts then distinguishes tangible carriers of memory such as recipe cards, albums, and uniforms from intangible ones such as songs, atmospheres, and absences, stressing how both kinds shift meaning across time and move between the individual and the communal.

Part I (Creative Composition) renders nostalgia in poetry and short fiction. Benedetto Ghielmi’s Torn Silences and Tears of Asphalt juxtapose silence and noise, city and forest, exposing modern alienation while still searching for empathy. Lucia Cristiana Cesarano’s Words treats language as the last refuge where love and memory endure. Immacolata Rosso’s paired poems, Stolen Sky and Gray in Ten Shades, trace a cycle from connection to solitude and back toward hope. Guido Oldani’s Once widens the lens to a planetary elegy in which ecological and human decline intertwine.

The short stories deepen this spectrum. Jean Portante’s Scents of Childhood returns to Differdange and Nonna Aquila, using smell as a Proustian bridge until the past no longer translates. Cinzia Pierantonelli’s Ostalgie and My Hidden African Malaise intertwines a father’s colonial nostalgia for Eritrea and Ethiopia with the daughter’s East Berlin experience, crystallized in a chipped cobalt cup. Samoylenko and Shramko’s A Short Random Dialogue about Nostalgia playfully interrogates the very nature of nostalgia. Gabriele Gëzim Kaci’s Uncle Killed the Cockroach stages a family’s deliberate return to ritual, embodying Frijda’s bittersweet emotion and Boym’s distinction between restorative and reflective nostalgia.

Part II (Critical Essay) shifts to analysis across cultures and media. Laureano Corces’s Cuban and Puerto Rican Nostalgias: Where Another Place is Home traces a movement from Romantic patriotic yearning to diasporic self fashioning, with theater as a collective stage of memory. Sony Jalarajan Raj and Adith K. Suresh’s Sculpting in History: Nostalgic Structures in Indian Popular Culture shows how monuments like the Taj Mahal become emotional architectures in cinema, shaping regional and national identity. Rasmus Olsson’s Fashioning the Memories reads clothing phenomenologically as a vessel of lived time. Barbara Gabriella Renzi’s Digital Twins and Nostalgia examines simulated presence and the ethics of virtual remembrance. Goutam Majhi’s Revisiting Indian Festival Culture treats festivals as evolving sites of collective memory. Renzi returns in Roots and Reverie: Italian Women’s Literature Through a Migrant’s Eyes, linking nostalgia, gender, and migration. Debojoy Chanda’s Toward an Ethics of Fiction: Recuperating the Desire for Desire in M. G. Vassanji’s Nostalgia reframes nostalgia through Lacan, Derrida, and Levinas as an ethical mnemonic practice that resists exclusionary myths of origin. Closing the volume, Marketa Lepicovsky’s Going Down Memory Lane and Back Up Again synthesizes the concrete and the abstract, combining songs, photos, and scents with identity, time, and belonging, using psychological theory and computational language tools to show how nostalgia shapes thought, behavior, and well being.

A conceptual frame holds the collection together through two metaphors: nostalgia as mirror, reflecting the self through others’ words, and nostalgia as map, offering guidance across cultural, political, and technological terrains of memory. The closing gesture invites slow, dialogic reading where the reader’s own artifacts, objects, and atmospheres complete the circuit as they resonate with the poems, stories, and essays. Throughout, the volume insists that nostalgia is not escapism but a mode of knowing that links what was to what might be, turning private remnants into shared understanding across Jean Portante, Cinzia Pierantonelli, Samoylenko and Shramko, Gabriele Gëzim Kaci, Benedetto Ghielmi, Lucia Cristiana Cesarano, Immacolata Rosso, Guido Oldani, Laureano Corces, Sony Jalarajan Raj, Adith K. Suresh, Rasmus Olsson, Barbara Gabriella Renzi, Goutam Majhi, Debojoy Chanda, and Marketa Lepicovsky.

The first book to examine the creative life and worlds of Rudolf H. Sauter

War and Peace in the Worlds of Rudolf H. Sauter is a unique project which complements current trends in scholarship and the insatiable public appetite for books about the experience and impact of war. It is the first book to examine the creative life and worlds of Rudolf H. Sauter (1895–1977), the German-born artist, poet, cultural observer and nephew of the famed novelist John Galsworthy. Revealing him to be a creative figure in his own right, it examines his early life as a German immigrant in Britain, his formative years during the run-up to the Great War, his wartime internment as an “enemy alien,” and the postwar development of his intriguing body of artistic and literary work. Placing Sauter and his creative life in the historical contexts they have long deserved, this cultural biography opens a window onto subjects of war, love, memory, travel and existential concerns of modern times.

Our world is a world of pain and suffering—at the individual level of private lives as well as the level of historical and political events. The familiar examples of suffering we need to engage with range from everyday unpleasantness, such as a prolonged illness, to massive horrors epitomized in world wars and genocides, such as, at the extreme, the Holocaust. We know, in most cases, how to explain these evils: medical science tells us how and why illnesses occur, geology explains earthquakes, and history and social psychology explain what happened at the darkest moments of our civilization, and why. However, even when everything has been explained, many of us feel that we still fail to properly understand why unspeakable events like brutal mass murders and war crimes happen. Those with religious convictions may wonder why God, if God exists, allows such things to exist. The theological and philosophical tradition of theodicy is an influential attempt to respond to such questions focusing not so much on explaining suffering but on the normative question of justifying suffering.
This book introduces antitheodicy as a critical ethical response to the problem of evil and suffering. While the mainstream debate on this problem in the philosophy of religion continues to focus on theodicies seeking to justify or excuse God’s allowing that there is apparently meaningless suffering, this introduction not only explains why an antitheodicist alternative is ethically superior to such attempts but also, more importantly, extends the antitheodicist approach from the philosophy of religion to broader ethical engagements with suffering. Sketching some of the historical milestones of antitheodicist thought as well as the most important contemporary versions of antitheodicy, the book argues that antitheodicy is the only decent account of suffering and that theodicies are incompatible with ethical seriousness. Theodicies tend to instrumentalize suffering in the service of some imagined overall good, or a metaphysical scheme failing to recognize the individual perspective of the victim. The significance of this essentially ethical argument against theodicies reaches far beyond the philosophy of religion, as the theodicy versus antitheodicy opposition also has interesting secular varieties. Any explicit or implicit instrumentalization of suffering in the service of real or imagined overall goodness may be claimed to be quasi-theodicist, even if it has nothing to do with religious or theological attempts to justify suffering. Antitheodicist critique is therefore needed across a range of ethical and political problems.

Our world is a world of pain and suffering—at the individual level of private lives as well as the level of historical and political events. The familiar examples of suffering we need to engage with range from everyday unpleasantness, such as a prolonged illness, to massive horrors epitomized in world wars and genocides, such as, at the extreme, the Holocaust. We know, in most cases, how to explain these evils: medical science tells us how and why illnesses occur, geology explains earthquakes, and history and social psychology explain what happened at the darkest moments of our civilization, and why. However, even when everything has been explained, many of us feel that we still fail to properly understand why unspeakable events like brutal mass murders and war crimes happen. Those with religious convictions may wonder why God, if God exists, allows such things to exist. The theological and philosophical tradition of theodicy is an influential attempt to respond to such questions focusing not so much on explaining suffering but on the normative question of justifying suffering.
This book introduces antitheodicy as a critical ethical response to the problem of evil and suffering. While the mainstream debate on this problem in the philosophy of religion continues to focus on theodicies seeking to justify or excuse God’s allowing that there is apparently meaningless suffering, this introduction not only explains why an antitheodicist alternative is ethically superior to such attempts but also, more importantly, extends the antitheodicist approach from the philosophy of religion to broader ethical engagements with suffering. Sketching some of the historical milestones of antitheodicist thought as well as the most important contemporary versions of antitheodicy, the book argues that antitheodicy is the only decent account of suffering and that theodicies are incompatible with ethical seriousness. Theodicies tend to instrumentalize suffering in the service of some imagined overall good, or a metaphysical scheme failing to recognize the individual perspective of the victim. The significance of this essentially ethical argument against theodicies reaches far beyond the philosophy of religion, as the theodicy versus antitheodicy opposition also has interesting secular varieties. Any explicit or implicit instrumentalization of suffering in the service of real or imagined overall goodness may be claimed to be quasi-theodicist, even if it has nothing to do with religious or theological attempts to justify suffering. Antitheodicist critique is therefore needed across a range of ethical and political problems.

Indigenous entrepreneurship involves the use of Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) to establish enterprises whose target is not only profit but also socio-economic development of communities, and that differentiates it from mainstream economic activities. Based on this, it is then possible to bring into the conversation the issue of IKS and entrepreneurship in Africa in terms of how the conceptualization and praxis of Indigenous entrepreneurship can be decolonized to unlock and unleash socio-economic development in Africa. For this reason, it matters that Indigenous entrepreneurship does not continue to be subjected to or governed by mainstream economic principles. It should be remembered that before colonial conquest, Indigenous entrepreneurship flourished and led to authentic and inclusive socio-economic development. It was colonialism and settler Eurocentric institutions that subjected Indigenous entrepreneurship to mainstream economic governance regimes leading to its marginalization and in some cases relative demise. Nonetheless, given on one hand the resilience of Indigenous entrepreneurship in terms of surviving the colonial encounter, onslaught, and institutions that should have suffocated and buried it and on the other its potential to spur inclusive socio-economic development, it is now time to revisit and recover it without subjecting it to or seeing it through mainstream economic lenses and the Eurocentric frame. Consequently, this raises three critical but related questions which the book tackles; first, how is entrepreneurship understood and practiced by Indigenous communities in Africa? Second, why is there a need to decolonize the conceptualization and praxis of entrepreneurship in Africa through the logic of IKS and how can this be done? Third, how and to what extent can IKS be leveraged and/or mobilized and unleashed to contribute to socio-economic development in Africa? Against this backdrop, the main goal of the book project therefore is to decolonize within the prism of IKS how Indigenous entrepreneurship is conceptualized, understood, and implemented in Africa. This task should show the poverty of the current understanding and implementation of entrepreneurship in Africa which is couched within a Eurocentric frame. It is now time to transcend the Eurocentric monologue of entrepreneurship to an understanding of how Indigenous communities in various parts of Africa conceptualize and practice entrepreneurship leading to socio-economic development. It is important to amplify the point that since it is the cornerstone of the contemporary Indigenous economy, Indigenous entrepreneurship is both the answer and the path forward for the development and cultural survival of African communities.

The Mind Economy is a bold and visionary exploration of the human psyche as a structured, dynamic economy. In this groundbreaking work, Professor Oliver Hoffmann proposes that memory is not simply a repository of past events but the foundational currency of our inner world—shaping identity, driving cognition, and fueling our emotional and mental processes.
Rooted in psychological theory, enriched by philosophical reflection, and sharpened through economic reasoning, this book introduces the concept of the “spirit system”—an integrated model that explains how narration, imagination, and memory will function as key exchange processes within the mental economy. Hoffmann reveals how memories are continuously reconstructed, assigned value, and traded in the form of thoughts, beliefs, and self-concepts. These processes define how individuals perceive themselves, relate to others, and make decisions in daily life.
The book also provides an in-depth introduction to “economic cognitive therapy,” a method that uses the principles of inner economization to increase mental efficiency, emotional resilience, and therapeutic effectiveness. Practical exercises and transformative techniques—such as imagination reconstruction and transcendental narration—offer powerful tools for personal development and healing. The inclusion of supportive practices like yoga, meditation, and aesthetic experience adds a deeply holistic dimension.
Rather than relying on mystical or esoteric language, The Mind Economy provides a clear, structured, and intellectually rich approach to understanding the self. It challenges conventional dualisms between inner and outer worlds and proposes that our economic systems may be reflections of internal mental structures, not the other way around.
This book is for readers who seek more than self-help—it is for thinkers, practitioners, and explorers of the human condition who want to understand how we constitute value, identity, and meaning from within. With depth, clarity, and vision, Hoffmann invites us to become better stewards of our inner resources—and to unlock the power of memory as the gateway to transformation.

Presents the very first global treatment of eugenics, pursuing a thematic approach in individual countries.

For a long time, eugenics was closely identified by historians with the mass murder of people who were disabled and of people who were considered part of the “Jewish race” in Nazi Germany. The last three decades have finally seen a growing number of publications that have explored the thriving eugenics movement in the United States and more recently also in Canada. Research about eugenics in the United States, Canada, and Germany has, however, been conducted in isolation from each other. Few scholars such as Stefan Kuehl and Egbert Klautke have looked at the intersections of eugenic research, organization, and practice between the eugenics movements in these three countries.
What is missing is a global history of eugenics, which explores eugenics as a phenomenon that transcended nearly all religions, political orientations, and ideologies. Eugenics emerged at the end of the nineteenth century first in the United Kingdom and spread from here first to the United States and later to continental Europe. It deeply influenced thinking, concepts of health care, and state policies in many countries. Modern-day specialization and fragmentation of the historical profession have proven as ill-equipped to capture a global phenomenon such as eugenics and instead produced national or even regional studies of eugenics in which authors highlight the perceived national and regional specifics of eugenics in a particular setting.

This book presents the very first global treatment of eugenics. It does not claim that eugenics was the same in countries such as the United States, Germany or China, but that developments in each country emerged from intensive contacts between eugenicists in these countries with each other. These eugenicists spoke the same language, followed similar trajectories, and shared a common vision.
This book, furthermore, provides the very first comprehensive history of eugenics by providing chapters on confinement, sterilization, marriage restrictions, and euthanasia. This book is the very first book to provide a comprehensive history of eugenic marriage restrictions. It is also the very first book on the topic of eugenics that includes the topic of euthanasia.

This book chiefly approaches Irish nationalist references to “Iran” as a conceptual lens for probing a broad array of developments in Irish nationalist formulations of Irish history (from ancient times to post-Norman conquests), as well as formulations of Irish identities and modes of “collective” nationalist recollection. Key thematic examples in the book range from the late eighteenth-century antiquarian debates on Irish origins to the “Iran/Erin” interchange in Irish nationalist poetry of the likes of Thomas Moore and James Clarence Mangan in the first half of the nineteenth century, the coverage of the Anglo-Iranian War of 1856–1857 in the Irish nationalist press, studies on Irish folklore by the likes of Lady Jane Wilde in the second half of the century, the emergent Aryanist discourse in some Irish nationalist circles after the mid-nineteenth century, Irish nationalist responses to the Iranian “Great Famine” of 1870–1872, references to Iran in the context of Irish Literary Revival at the turn of the twentieth century, Irish nationalist advocacy of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911, and cross-territorial expressions of solidarity during and after the First World War. The only exception to the general timeline covered in the book is the section on James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), which serves as a means of interrogating the post-1922 shrinking world horizon of nationalist historiography and politics in the Irish Free State.

• In its specifically “Iran”-themed approach, this book highlights both the greater centrality of Iran in Irish nationalist antiquarianism after the late eighteenth century and in subsequent Irish nationalist folklore studies than hitherto acknowledged. At the same time, this book goes beyond explorations of Irish nationalist appropriations of “Iran” (past and contemporary) as reflected in a wide spectrum of debates ranging from antiquarian theories of Irish origins to studies on Irish folklore and mythology, as well as the manifold utilizations of Iran in Irish nationalist literature. Additionally, this book examines sporadic Irish nationalist interest in contemporary developments in Iran after the middle of the nineteenth century, most notably in the form of the protracted and multivalent Irish nationalist advocacy of Iranian sovereignty from 1907 to 1921. In the process, this book also highlights the persistently “worlded" framework of Irish-nationalist self- imaginations.

Examines how artificial intelligence is transforming global influence, offering theoretical insights and practical perspectives on diplomacy, culture, conflict, and governance

Soft Power and Public Diplomacy in the Age of AI brings together leading voices and fresh perspectives to explore how AI is reshaping the landscape of influence in global affairs. Long described as “conjoined twins,” soft power and public diplomacy find new meaning and urgency in a world transformed by digital technologies and generative AI. This timely volume addresses the theoretical gaps that have long challenged public diplomacy scholarship, offering a unique, interdisciplinary lens that connects the superordinate concept of influence with emerging AI capabilities. From bioelectronic measurement of soft power’s impact to AI’s role in narrative warfare and counter-disinformation, the book covers critical terrain for scholars, students, policymakers, and practitioners alike.
The chapters span theory, narratives, culture, governance, and conflict. Readers will find thought-provoking analyses of celebrity influence in elections, generative AI’s role in cultural projection at global events, the network society’s impact on diplomacy, cyber power in conflict zones, and the balancing act between digital diplomacy, transparency, and security.
Featuring contributions from eminent international scholars alongside new voices, the volume pushes the field’s boundaries, offering essential insights for anyone interested in how attraction, persuasion, and power operate in the age of AI. Whether you are a researcher, practitioner, or policymaker, Soft Power and Public Diplomacy in the Age of AI will deepen your understanding of how influence is made, measured, and contested in our rapidly evolving world.

This reprint of Beckett and Broadcasting revives a foundational 1976 dissertation that pioneered the study of Samuel Beckett’s radio and television works, now reassessed as central to his canon, with a new introduction and afterword reflecting fifty years of scholarship.

Beckett and Broadcasting: On Works of Samuel Beckett for and in Radio and Television reprints a doctoral dissertation presented at Åbo Akademi University in Finland in 1976 and published in the Acta Academiae Aboensis series of the university. It has secured a place as a standard reference in the field but has long been out of print.
This study appeared at a stage when Beckett’s main interest in writing for the media had focused on radio. It combines close and extensive textual analysis with contextual sensitivity to the special qualities of the broadcast media. Zilliacus shows a thorough familiarity with the conditions of radio production. A close analysis both of manuscript stages of the media works and of productions and their reception made this a pioneering achievement in the field of Beckett and broadcast media, which was a somewhat slighted part of the œuvre at the time. The groundwork of the study still holds.
Fifty years after the first appearance of the dissertation, titled Beckett and Broadcasting: A Study of the Works of Samuel Beckett for and in Radio and Television, the Nobel laureate’s media work is no longer viewed as a marginal part of an expanding work. It is an integral part of a complete classical canon. Scholars interrogate it not only as a case of Beckett testing new techniques but also as ways of probing means of oral delivery, of obfuscating the origin of voices, of disembodiment. Apart from that, media work for Beckett offered editability, perfectibility, varnishing. In retrospect, the perspective has widened.
Aspects of this kind are covered in a substantial new introduction to this dissertation reprint. It comments on the state of the art in Beckett and radio studies, and it reaps the benefit of hindsight offered by half a century of scholarship. The book includes an afterword by Galina Kiryushina, specialist in Beckett and intermediality.

There is a fundamental mismatch between the global trade rules as they govern international economic behaviour and the political economic factors influencing domestic policy making. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the multilateral trading system is in crisis. Countries are increasingly turning to bilateral and regional (and mega-regional) trade deals to push forward their trade agenda. There is far less consensus around these next-generation trade agreements which reach into every aspect of domestic policy-making. At this time, more than ever, policy-makers, treaty negotiators, and scholars and students of international law need to understand the ways in which this growing regime of international trade and investment impacts regulatory decisions. 

This book demonstrates how seemingly disparate spheres of legal theory and practice (investment incentives, patent protection, land reform, etc.) are all linked together through the lens of international trade and investment, while also offering solutions in the form of new negotiating texts and country examples as a way forward toward a new multilateral trade and investment regime. Furthermore, each chapter identifies the regulatory challenges facing countries.

The Scottish Law Commission (SLC) has proposed that the law pertaining to the formation of voluntary obligations should be significantly reformed. If their recommendations are enacted, it is thought that the resultant legislative changes would be harmful to the coherence of Scots law as an ordered legal system. This is because the enquiry, consultation and report undertaken and produced by the SLC were each limited in their scope to a consideration of ‘contract law’. This fails to appreciate the fact that Scotland, properly speaking, does not have an isolated and sequestered ‘law of contract’ as many other jurisdictions do, but rather a rational, ordered and unitary ‘law of voluntary obligations’. This law of ‘voluntary obligations’ presently remains underpinned by the intellectual schema set out by Viscount Stair in his opus, the Institutions of the Law of Scotland. Stair’s schema suggests that obligations of this kind are created, or may putatively be created, by an ‘act of the will’ which he identifies as ‘engagement’. Bearing this in mind, the book seeks to make the case that piecemeal legislative reform of ‘formation of contract’, as proposed by the SLC, is fundamentally wrongheaded and that to retain intellectual and rational coherence, the law in this area should not be governed by statute, but rather allowed to develop in line within the flexible, unitary and ultimately rational framework which presently governs the law of ‘voluntary obligations’. In doing so, it considers a particular – ostensibly uncontroversial – aspect of the SLC’s law reform proposals: the abolition of the so-called ‘postal acceptance rule’. By reference to Stair’s taxonomy, this book demonstrates that there is in fact no ‘postal exception’ in Scots law; rather, the effect of this so-called exception is in fact nothing more than the quotidian consequence of the general rules relating to the formation of voluntary obligations. This, as is made plain, has significant consequences for the analysis of contracts formed by electronic means such as email and text – but the potential for development of the law in this direction would be irretrievably stymied if statute overrides the common law here. The book, then, is a work of ‘anti-law reform’ which seeks to make the case that juristic development need not always come from ‘on high’ in the form of legislation, but instead can be precipitated by expert commentary from jurists, to aid the development of the law as practised before the courts.

Jews had lived with us for a thousand years. Then they were killed. Why? Had the Shoah always been brewing in these lands, or could it only happen under the conditions of late capitalism rather than in the atmosphere of primitive pogroms, the violent expulsion of Jews from their Anatevkas? An important point of reference for the author’s reflections are the postulates of the representatives of the Frankfurt School – in particular of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment – who were the first to draw attention to the potentially criminal character of instrumental reason, disavowing at the same time the tradition of the siècle des Lumières, the approach which the author is inclined towards. Yet they looked for the causes of the Shoah not where these could be found, either in the “authoritarian personality” or in the difficulties of living, in the so-called “social question.” However, in order to understand what happened to the Jews in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1940s, one must resort to a language completely different from psychological, social, economic, or police discourse. We must resort to the forgotten language – or better said, the language that is being forgotten – of theology, especially political theology. It is there, the author claims, that one can find the right interpretative tools. It does not belong to the realm of superstition but is our last chance to understand what happened to the world yesterday and what is happening to it today. “It was the devil!” writes Alain Besançon, a witness of those times, “He was the one who communicated his inhuman personality to his subjects.” We do not know this for sure – maybe yes, maybe no. We do know, however, that it is good that a theological category – the concept of the devil, Antichrist – is returning to the philosophical and, more broadly, social and political discourse. The devil, Antichrist is not just a metaphor or a creature with a limp in the left leg and charred wings; it is rather the atmosphere we live in, manifesting itself in turning traditional values inside out, in replacing respect with tolerance, charity with dubious philanthropy, love with sex, family with any social organization, religion with science, freedom with safety and so on. Examples abound.

The author proposes to renew the sense of such theological concepts as eternity, salvation, the idea of chosenness, apocalypse, radical hope, and others, only to better understand the condition of today’s world and its increasingly aggressive attitude towards people of strong faith, which may fill us with anxiety and make us think of the recurrence of the Shoah.

There are no more Jews in Poland. They had been murdered by the German Nazis, and those who survived were expelled by the Polish communists after the war. We live in a world “after Jews.” Now we must tell ourselves what it means to us. It is important for them and for us. Important for the world.

Explores how cricket has been portrayed in fiction from the 19th century to the 21st, examining shifts in the treatment of national, post-colonial and global themes.

Following a short introduction, the book is arranged in seven chapters, each dealing with a specific genre and its main themes. The opening chapter considers how the village cricket story laid down the main tropes of cricket and fiction and established a defining relation between cricket, England’s green and pleasant land and national identity, especially in times of war and its aftermath. The second chapter develops the cricket, war and nation theme in the public school cricket novel, especially in the period of the South African (Boer) and First World Wars when cricket and war were frequently dramatised in similar terms. It also discusses the recurring treatment of homosexuality in the public school cricket novel and how the language of cricket was used to write about same-sex attraction. The next chapter breaks new ground in discussing how cricket has featured in murder mysteries. It demonstrates how well suited to each other the sport and the genre are – cricket providing a kind of open-air closed-room setting for a murder narrative – and explores the formal similarities between the shape and structure of a game of cricket and the procedures of the novel.
The following two chapters explore how amenable cricket fiction has proved as a medium for both comedy and tragedy. It discusses the inherent comic potential of cricket for fiction, the mishap and slapstick of a sport in which the box was introduced a century before the helmet. Cricket also has a long association with suicide as many observers of the game have noted. Fictional treatment of this tragic theme has focused on how a sport which is so time-consuming, both in the duration of a game and the extended career of those who play it, has made retirement difficult to manage and sometimes led to suicide.
As the English cricket story declined into insularity and nostalgia, and cricket ceased to be a subject for serious literary fiction, the post-colonial cricket novel emerged. The penultimate chapter considers how contemporary post-colonial novelists have revived and expanded the fictional possibilities of cricket by extending its global range and replenishing its traditional narratives to include previously unspoken issues of migration and race, thereby creating new kinds of stories. The concluding chapter looks at several apocalyptic end-of-the-world cricket stories and develops into a discussion of how cricket is both contributing to and threatened by global heating, raising the question of its sustainability as a sport and as a subject for fiction.

Explores how cricket has been portrayed in fiction from the 19th century to the 21st, examining shifts in the treatment of national, post-colonial and global themes.

Following a short introduction, the book is arranged in seven chapters, each dealing with a specific genre and its main themes. The opening chapter considers how the village cricket story laid down the main tropes of cricket and fiction and established a defining relation between cricket, England’s green and pleasant land and national identity, especially in times of war and its aftermath. The second chapter develops the cricket, war and nation theme in the public school cricket novel, especially in the period of the South African (Boer) and First World Wars when cricket and war were frequently dramatised in similar terms. It also discusses the recurring treatment of homosexuality in the public school cricket novel and how the language of cricket was used to write about same-sex attraction. The next chapter breaks new ground in discussing how cricket has featured in murder mysteries. It demonstrates how well suited to each other the sport and the genre are – cricket providing a kind of open-air closed-room setting for a murder narrative – and explores the formal similarities between the shape and structure of a game of cricket and the procedures of the novel.
The following two chapters explore how amenable cricket fiction has proved as a medium for both comedy and tragedy. It discusses the inherent comic potential of cricket for fiction, the mishap and slapstick of a sport in which the box was introduced a century before the helmet. Cricket also has a long association with suicide as many observers of the game have noted. Fictional treatment of this tragic theme has focused on how a sport which is so time-consuming, both in the duration of a game and the extended career of those who play it, has made retirement difficult to manage and sometimes led to suicide.
As the English cricket story declined into insularity and nostalgia, and cricket ceased to be a subject for serious literary fiction, the post-colonial cricket novel emerged. The penultimate chapter considers how contemporary post-colonial novelists have revived and expanded the fictional possibilities of cricket by extending its global range and replenishing its traditional narratives to include previously unspoken issues of migration and race, thereby creating new kinds of stories. The concluding chapter looks at several apocalyptic end-of-the-world cricket stories and develops into a discussion of how cricket is both contributing to and threatened by global heating, raising the question of its sustainability as a sport and as a subject for fiction.

This study participates in the ongoing scholarly effort to re-appraise the penny dreadful phenomenon as a cornerstone of literary history and of popular culture, both within the nineteenth century and the development of Victorian popular fiction and beyond its specific context. The growing presence of these cheap entertaining Victorian texts in contemporary popular culture – through television series, musicals and literature – signals that it is high time to bestow more systematic and comprehensive attention to these publications. To do so, Penny Dreadfuls: The Circulation Patterns of a Victorian Popular Literature conceptualises the notion of circulation as a tool for analysis.
This book considers different aspects of circulation. The weaponisation of the penny dreadfuls’ successful circulation by its critics highlights tensions in the literary marketplace over the hegemonic discourse of what should and should not be read, which mirror the broader issue of contemporary changes on a social, cultural and political level. In addition, the penny dreadfuls’ consumption patterns and behaviour within the literary marketplace and within society are also marked by their circulation between different historically popular genres: within the network of late-eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century literature and culture, they refuse to remain within clear boundaries and constantly reinvent themselves at the intersection of several trends that constituted the popular, such as oral storytelling, sensationalism and the Gothic. Beyond the nineteenth century, their patterns of circulation develop diachronically, too, in the open-ended circulation of the penny dreadfuls across time through neo-Victorianism and the gradual transformation of the penny dreadfuls into a cultural reference.
Through the lens of the concept of circulation which pervades the penny dreadfuls’ history and content, this book reassesses the impact of the penny dreadfuls on nineteenth-century print culture and entertainment, as well as on contemporary popular culture. This book demonstrates the importance of these publications to better understand broader notions of popular culture and to keep deconstructing such binaries as ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Further than sales numbers, circulation interweaves numerous aspects of popular culture and of this publishing phenomenon. An analysis of these patterns helps decode many aspects of the penny dreadfuls’ life and afterlife, as it reveals how their material aspect is intimately interwoven with their seriality, their cultural significance, the reactions they provoked and their actual content. The resulting picture informs us about the nineteenth century’s social history and culture, about class warfare and political change, and about the evolution of literature over the past two hundred and fifty years.

C.S. Lewis was moaning over lunch to Owen Barfield. Lewis referred to philosophy as a ‘subject’. ‘It wasn’t a subject to Plato’, said Barfield. ‘It was a way’. That is how the ancients saw it: as a search for practical wisdom – wisdom that would enable humans to live as they should. That would be a very unfashionable view today. Philosophy, in the modern academy, is typically just a subject: a subject to be taught and talked about from nine to five, and then left behind when the real business of life starts.

Lawyers, who seek to regulate the whole of human life, in all its complexity and glory and messiness, cannot leave their philosophical presumptions at the office when they come home. If they are practitioners, they are involved in brokering uneasy compromises between individual freedom and societal thriving. One would have hoped that the lawyers and the philosophers would have something to say to one another. Yet often they share no common language or interest. This book is an attempt to get them talking. It is also an indictment of the way that the Academy – in the fields both of philosophy and law – conducts itself. The Academy is often characterised by presumption, intellectual cowardice, conservatism, envy and downright nastiness. No wonder little that is done there spills over into the real world.

The book is a series of essays which, between them, cover many of the most pressing and foundational questions of our day and any day: the state of the Academy, religion and metaphysics, epistemology and the right use of intuitions, universal mind, quantum entanglement and causation, identity, freedom, human value and disability, genetics, animals, aliens, sexual ethics, abortion and other questions of reproductive ethics, the merits and demerits of culture, Brexit, the challenges of technology, research ethics, pandemic ethics, consent to medical treatment, end of life decision-making, environmental ethics, and the business of the law and its relationship to ethics. Behind them all are the most important questions of all: What sort of creatures are we? And how should we live?

Climates of Migration examines through transregional and transhistorical lenses how environmental and migration issues intersect, and how  the disinformation and fear generated by the political instrumentalization of these is shaping contemporary societies as evident in media discourse, propaganda, literature, art, visual culture, policy-making and new technologies.

The prologue and chapter 1 situate the discussion in Climates of Migration in a broader context defined by a resurgence of attention on colonialism and postcolonial legacies, as evident in debates on restitution, reparation, historical accountability and responsibility. Colonial exploration and conquest are thereby connected with the environmental–migration nexus and accordingly chart the coordinates of the book as readers navigate the tentacular planetary reach of European colonial powers. This was of course an era when overseas travel was not even an option for the majority of people, yet one defined by sophisticated propagandist mechanisms that encouraged Europeans to travel through the imagination thanks to the immersive experiences offered at World’s Fairs and Colonial Exhibitions as well as in various board games and other ephemera that promoted the benefits of having colonies, glorified conquest and expansion, while molding young minds and bolstering patriotic fervor. The lessons to be learned were manifold, concerning as they did a recognition of the importance to the economy of—and dependency on—colonies, while implanting a deep familiarity with goods and products. These games capitalized upon the experiential realities of colonial assignments, and the design replicated the defining elements of the colonial enterprise, while also of course mobilizing support. Yet, as we know today, agricultural and extraction practices contributed to anthropogenic global warming, as communities were removed or driven off their lands, displaced and compelled to migrate elsewhere. As such, questions of mobility were therefore central to the production and visualization of Empire, and today, heated debates pertaining to border control and sovereignty can be traced back to this era.
The catalyst for chapter 2 is to be found in French philosopher Bruno Latour’s statement whereby “We can understand nothing about the politics of the last fifty years if we do not put the question of climate change and its denial front and center.” The focus thus shifts to the multiple ways in which climate change has bent the arc of politics in new directions, most notably in the conjunction between the eco-colonial dimension and migration itself given that “What makes the migratory crisis so difficult to conceptualize is that it is the symptom, to more or less excruciating degrees, of an ordeal common to all: the ordeal of finding oneself deprived of land.” Extensive recourse has been made to climate metaphors to amplify anti-immigration rhetoric, collectively delineating the parameters of an invasion narrative that alleges cultural, political and social saturation, submersion and replacement. Recourse to such terminology to describe migration exploits a simple tautology: climate change is a negative development, and therefore, conflating metaphors allows for a seamless twinning with the ills of immigration, grafting a pernicious meaning on the process (migration) and people concerned (migrants). In the associative context of climate change, this logic operates optimally since it coincides with a diagnosis of catastrophic global warming and the long-term projected impact, and has been present in European Union policy-making (“Green Deal” and “New Pact on Migration and Asylum of the EU”) and broader discussions pertaining to climate migrants and climate refugees.
Two strands intersect in chapter 3 and build on the conclusions of the previous chapters, simultaneously reappraising the coexistence of insular and open thinking and complex and simplistic reasoning and shifting the discussion toward an engagement with categories such as empathy and sympathy. This is achieved through a consideration of how cultural productions by artists and writers have enhanced modes of identification and relationality rather than detachment, and offered alternatives to racist and xenophobic media and political discourses. Chapter 4 subsequently provides an in-depth analysis of an emerging corpus of works by African writers for whom transhistorical violence motivates political commitment based on scrutiny and witnessing, documenting, recording and calls for accountability. The works considered have in common an adherence to an “environmental turn” that has culminated in a thematic “greening” of fiction (Cheryll Glotfelty) and a revitalization of writing. Writers have engaged with the longstanding consequences of environmental ecocide on the continent, while ultimately reflecting on the broader context of climate change and environmental derangement that accounts for shifting patterns of population mobility. The concluding chapter establishes a conjunction between new technologies of communication and extraction, more prominently in terms of the interplay between ecology and propaganda, and examines how the later has been used to further an anti-ecological agenda—denouncing warnings concerning global warming as fake news or promoting a lifestyle founded on the exponential use of industrial technologies—and pro-ecology positions centered on an unrelenting effort to prevent the systematic destruction of the environment and aimed at raising awareness and consciousness as well as encouraging behavior modification. The conclusion considers how new digital technologies have taken an age-old apparatus and amplified it, enabling information wars to run alongside physical ones, while discussing how disinformation and misinformation campaigns and algorithms now influence every facet of contemporary life, most prominently in terms of the climate change and migration nexus.

This book looks at contemporary Gothic cinema within a transnational approach. With a focus on the aesthetic and philosophical roots which lie at the heart of the Gothic, the study invokes its literary as well as filmic forebears, by exploring how these styles informed strands of the modern filmic Gothic: the ghost narrative, folk horror, the vampire movie, cosmic horror and finally, the zombie film. In recent years, the concept of transnationalism has ‘trans’-cended its original boundaries, perhaps excessively in the minds of some. Originally defined in the wake of the rise of globalisation in the 1990s, as a way to study cinema beyond national boundaries, where the look and the story of a film reflected the input of more than one nation, or region, or culture. It was considered too confining to study national cinemas in an age of internationalization, witnessing the fusions of cultures, and post-colonialism, exile and diasporas. The concept allows us to appreciate the broader range of forces from a wider international perspective while at the same time also engaging with concepts of nationalism, identity and an acknowledgement of cinema itself. It also facilitated studies to focus on notions of hybridity where terms were not fixed but were constantly shifting and mobile.

The central idea of the book is that after horror/Gothic film was dragged into disrepute by the rise of torture porn and endless North American remakes, a set of international filmmakers are seeking to emphasize the aesthetic, artistic and philosophical potential of the Gothic. Such filmmakers include Guillermo del Toro (Crimson Peak), Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden, Stoker), Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In), Wim Wenders (Only Lovers Left Alive), Ben Wheatley (A Field in England), Jane Campion (Top of the Lake), and Carol Morley (The Falling).

Although written in an accessible manner, the book incorporates theory and engages extensively into research to tap into key developments in Gothic studies – transnationalism, fandom and genre fiction, and transmedia exchanges – bringing these together along with popular culture and associated phenomena.

This monograph is concerned with what it sees as two complementary phenomena: that of contemporary writers of fiction who seem to have turned their backs on the traditional novel in favour of what might be termed a radical realism, alongside a more general movement towards and interest in auto/biography and memoir in the post-truth era. By reviewing the work of four authors whose trajectory to date represents engagement with novelistic as well as auto/biographical forms, it reconsiders differences between ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’, as they pertain to both production and reception, including issues of generic categorization, the prevalence or exclusion of specific textual markers, and readerly expectations in navigating diverse and shifting literary cultures.

The Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Min Kamp (My Struggle) series is considered in English translation in relation to its cross-cultural reception; it is also placed within the context of Knausgaard’s oeuvre as a whole. Some parallels between the work of Knausgaard and that of Rachel Cusk are drawn, though in the case of the latter the focus is not so much on the memoirs but on the Outline trilogy that followed the trilogy of memoirs and the extent to which it represents both a departure from and a continuation of some of the concerns expressed in previous non-fictional works with a specific focus on Aftermath. 

Comparison of Jeanette Winterson’s semi-autobiographical debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, with her memoir entitled Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? allows for close textual reading of scenes initially treated in novelistic form and revisited in the memoir permitting discussion of points of similarity and difference in their treatment in relation to the constraints and affordances of genre, where these apply. Discussion of Xiaolu Guo’s memoir, Once Upon A Time in the East, focusses both on its cross-cultural reception and on the place of the memoir within the Guo corpus.In some ways all four writers are less concerned with traditional aspects of story and more concerned to deploy a range of forms, including narrative, to serve their interest in broader questions of truth, agency and self-understanding. 

The Elite Quality Index (EQx) proposes an analytical framework to interpret—and possibly transform—the state of elite quality in the world’s political economies. It is based on a simple idea. The EQx posits that the business models chosen and run by elites determine economic and human development. That is, elites (the “who”) affect human and economic development outcomes (the “what”), sometimes directly but mostly indirectly through the influence that they exert on the institutions (the “how”) that set the rules of the game. These rules bestow on elites a “license to operate.” Both the “how” and the “what” have been theoretically discussed at great length and are amply measured. However, the EQx focuses on the “who” element, a research gap that urgently needs to be addressed. This is pursued at the national level by considering aggregate national elite systems in terms of the Value Creation and Value Extraction impacts of their primary business models. As a precursor of institutional quality, Elite Quality is deemed to be a significant pointer to long-term economic growth.

The EQx is a political economy index that uses aggregated datasets to measure the overall sustainable value creation of nations in terms of the ability of its elite business models to create value rather than extract it through rent seeking. The EQx is based on a four-level architecture. Below the top-level Index rankings, there are two Sub-Indices: Power and Value. Value Sub-Index I provides direct evidence of Value Creation and Extraction by elite business models, even though the latter might be easier to capture, as the results of rent seeking are more visible. Power Sub-Index II conceptualizes the potential for Value Extraction, as this cannot exist without power. Hence, while power is not Value Extraction per se, it is a necessary condition for rent seeking to take place. In many countries, elites that enjoy a high degree of power invest in operating inclusive Value Creation business models, while in others it is used to leverage value transfers from an array of stakeholders. Both of the EQx’s two Sub-Indices have a political and an economic dimension. This conceptual 2 × 2 framework results in four Index Areas. First, Political Power measures the capture of three kinds of rules: rules of the state, the rules of business regulation, and the rules of human labor. Second, Economic Power measures elite dominance at the firm and industry levels, such as measuring how much positive creative destruction there is in a political economy. Third, Political Value measures Value Extraction in the political dimension; the state’s unearned income, its taking of income, and its giving of income. Fourth, Economic Value measures Value Extraction from the economy’s three markets: products and services, the capital markets, and the labor markets. Each EQx Index Area is then assigned 3 conceptually related Pillars, yielding a total of 12. The purpose of the Pillars is to define and create conceptual lenses through which we can approach, understand, and measure specific phenomena. At the final and fourth level are the Indicators that use datasets to operationalize political economy phenomena associated with elite agency. All individual indicators and the respective weights that they are given then flow back up the framework to provide scores at the Pillar and aggregate EQx level. Descriptions of each of the 149 indicators used (what we measure) as well as the sustainable value creation (vs. rent-seeking) rationale that underpins their inclusion in the EQx (why we measure) are included in the report.

The EQx2025 provides novel insights that will allow policymakers, academics, journalists, business leaders, students, and concerned citizens understand how elites are impacting the political economy of their nations while also allowing them to benchmark countries that perform well (or poorly) in terms of economic growth and human development.

Climates of Migration examines through transregional and transhistorical lenses how environmental and migration issues intersect, and how  the disinformation and fear generated by the political instrumentalization of these is shaping contemporary societies as evident in media discourse, propaganda, literature, art, visual culture, policy-making and new technologies.

The prologue and chapter 1 situate the discussion in Climates of Migration in a broader context defined by a resurgence of attention on colonialism and postcolonial legacies, as evident in debates on restitution, reparation, historical accountability and responsibility. Colonial exploration and conquest are thereby connected with the environmental–migration nexus and accordingly chart the coordinates of the book as readers navigate the tentacular planetary reach of European colonial powers. This was of course an era when overseas travel was not even an option for the majority of people, yet one defined by sophisticated propagandist mechanisms that encouraged Europeans to travel through the imagination thanks to the immersive experiences offered at World’s Fairs and Colonial Exhibitions as well as in various board games and other ephemera that promoted the benefits of having colonies, glorified conquest and expansion, while molding young minds and bolstering patriotic fervor. The lessons to be learned were manifold, concerning as they did a recognition of the importance to the economy of—and dependency on—colonies, while implanting a deep familiarity with goods and products. These games capitalized upon the experiential realities of colonial assignments, and the design replicated the defining elements of the colonial enterprise, while also of course mobilizing support. Yet, as we know today, agricultural and extraction practices contributed to anthropogenic global warming, as communities were removed or driven off their lands, displaced and compelled to migrate elsewhere. As such, questions of mobility were therefore central to the production and visualization of Empire, and today, heated debates pertaining to border control and sovereignty can be traced back to this era.
The catalyst for chapter 2 is to be found in French philosopher Bruno Latour’s statement whereby “We can understand nothing about the politics of the last fifty years if we do not put the question of climate change and its denial front and center.” The focus thus shifts to the multiple ways in which climate change has bent the arc of politics in new directions, most notably in the conjunction between the eco-colonial dimension and migration itself given that “What makes the migratory crisis so difficult to conceptualize is that it is the symptom, to more or less excruciating degrees, of an ordeal common to all: the ordeal of finding oneself deprived of land.” Extensive recourse has been made to climate metaphors to amplify anti-immigration rhetoric, collectively delineating the parameters of an invasion narrative that alleges cultural, political and social saturation, submersion and replacement. Recourse to such terminology to describe migration exploits a simple tautology: climate change is a negative development, and therefore, conflating metaphors allows for a seamless twinning with the ills of immigration, grafting a pernicious meaning on the process (migration) and people concerned (migrants). In the associative context of climate change, this logic operates optimally since it coincides with a diagnosis of catastrophic global warming and the long-term projected impact, and has been present in European Union policy-making (“Green Deal” and “New Pact on Migration and Asylum of the EU”) and broader discussions pertaining to climate migrants and climate refugees.
Two strands intersect in chapter 3 and build on the conclusions of the previous chapters, simultaneously reappraising the coexistence of insular and open thinking and complex and simplistic reasoning and shifting the discussion toward an engagement with categories such as empathy and sympathy. This is achieved through a consideration of how cultural productions by artists and writers have enhanced modes of identification and relationality rather than detachment, and offered alternatives to racist and xenophobic media and political discourses. Chapter 4 subsequently provides an in-depth analysis of an emerging corpus of works by African writers for whom transhistorical violence motivates political commitment based on scrutiny and witnessing, documenting, recording and calls for accountability. The works considered have in common an adherence to an “environmental turn” that has culminated in a thematic “greening” of fiction (Cheryll Glotfelty) and a revitalization of writing. Writers have engaged with the longstanding consequences of environmental ecocide on the continent, while ultimately reflecting on the broader context of climate change and environmental derangement that accounts for shifting patterns of population mobility. The concluding chapter establishes a conjunction between new technologies of communication and extraction, more prominently in terms of the interplay between ecology and propaganda, and examines how the later has been used to further an anti-ecological agenda—denouncing warnings concerning global warming as fake news or promoting a lifestyle founded on the exponential use of industrial technologies—and pro-ecology positions centered on an unrelenting effort to prevent the systematic destruction of the environment and aimed at raising awareness and consciousness as well as encouraging behavior modification. The conclusion considers how new digital technologies have taken an age-old apparatus and amplified it, enabling information wars to run alongside physical ones, while discussing how disinformation and misinformation campaigns and algorithms now influence every facet of contemporary life, most prominently in terms of the climate change and migration nexus.

Highlights the crucial role of Constitutional Amendments in shaping American history, rights, and social justice, presenting their development and impact in an accessible and engaging way.

The debt we owe to the brilliant men who drafted their Constitution is incalculable. Recognizing that, with the passage of time, their document would likely require modifications, the Framers included provisions for amending the Constitution. The twenty-seven amendments that have been ratified to date have played a pivotal role in the continuing effort to perfect our Constitution. This book looks at U.S. history and the American experience through the lens of our Constitutional Amendments. It discusses why each Amendment was adopted, the importance of each Amendment, how the Amendments have been interpreted, and the impact they have had on American society. The Amendments are too important to be treated as afterthoughts, and this book seeks to rectify that by giving them the attention they deserve.
The Amendments have shaped and continue to shape the development of our nation. They guarantee the fundamental rights and liberties that Americans enjoy. They tell America’s story from the abolition of slavery to women’s suffrage, and to granting young men and women who are old enough to fight and even die for their country, the right to vote. The Amendments play a vital role in the quest for gender and racial equity, and the continuing struggle to achieve social justice. The story of the Amendments includes America’s dalliance with abstinence, the fourteen years of prohibition. They detail the changes in presidential elections, succession, and term limits; the direct election of senators; and the imposition of a federal income tax.
The Amendments are the result of the American people’s continuing efforts to perfect our Constitution, first through Acts of Congress, then through ratifications by State Legislatures, and finally by judicial review and interpretation.

Highlights the crucial role of Constitutional Amendments in shaping American history, rights, and social justice, presenting their development and impact in an accessible and engaging way.

The debt we owe to the brilliant men who drafted their Constitution is incalculable. Recognizing that, with the passage of time, their document would likely require modifications, the Framers included provisions for amending the Constitution. The twenty-seven amendments that have been ratified to date have played a pivotal role in the continuing effort to perfect our Constitution. This book looks at U.S. history and the American experience through the lens of our Constitutional Amendments. It discusses why each Amendment was adopted, the importance of each Amendment, how the Amendments have been interpreted, and the impact they have had on American society. The Amendments are too important to be treated as afterthoughts, and this book seeks to rectify that by giving them the attention they deserve.
The Amendments have shaped and continue to shape the development of our nation. They guarantee the fundamental rights and liberties that Americans enjoy. They tell America’s story from the abolition of slavery to women’s suffrage, and to granting young men and women who are old enough to fight and even die for their country, the right to vote. The Amendments play a vital role in the quest for gender and racial equity, and the continuing struggle to achieve social justice. The story of the Amendments includes America’s dalliance with abstinence, the fourteen years of prohibition. They detail the changes in presidential elections, succession, and term limits; the direct election of senators; and the imposition of a federal income tax.
The Amendments are the result of the American people’s continuing efforts to perfect our Constitution, first through Acts of Congress, then through ratifications by State Legislatures, and finally by judicial review and interpretation.

This book introduces a new thrilling field–neurocomputional poetics, the scientific ‘marriage’ between cognitive poetics, data science and neuroscience. Its goal is to uncover the secrets of verbal art reception and to explain how readers come to understand and like literary texts. For centuries verbal art reception was considered too subjective for quantitative scientific studies and still nowadays many scholars in the humanities and neurosciences alike view literary reading as too complex for accurate computational prediction of the neuronal, experiential and behavioural aspects of reader responses to texts. This book sets out for changing this view. 

It offers state-of-the-art computational models and methods allowing to predict which crucial textual features of prose and poetry, such as syntactic and semantic complexity or emotion potential, interact with reader features, such as empathy or openness to experience, in shaping a literary reading act. It contains hands-on practical examples on how to do computational text analyses of books and poems that can answer questions like: 

• Which is Jane Austen’s most beautiful book?
• Which poet created the most fitting poetic metaphors? or
• Which author of plays of the nineteenth century was the most literary?

The book’s first chapter about ‘The Two Boons of an Unnatural Daily Activity’ discusses the neuronal bases and other relevant aspects of immersive and aesthetic processes evoked by reading prose and poetry. In the second chapter, the author introduces a comprehensive model of verbal art reception that can explain what makes texts comprehensible and likeable and how they affect our body and mind. The model makes explicit important differences between the reading of prose and poetry and clarifies which text features make prose more immersive and poetry more aesthetic. The next two chapters discuss state-of-the-art methods for quantitative text, reader and reading act analyses from cognitive poetics, data science, psychology and neuroscience and shows how they can be used to dissect the complex author-text-reader nexus that shapes verbal art reception.

Chapters 5 and 6 then present hands-on practical examples on how to do simple and sophisticated computational text analyses including sentiment and topic analyses, cutting-edge machine learning methods, and multivariate predictive modeling using neural nets. Chapters 7 and 8 of the book then present a representative sample of empirical studies in both computational and neurocognitive poetics the author and his collaborators have carried out during the last decade. The results of these studies provide comprehensive insights into the complex workings of the brain during verbal art reception from the processing of single words and sentences to the aesthetic evaluation of metaphors or entire poems and novels, including a qualitative-quantitative analysis of the reading of Shakespeare sonnets that will change the ways of scientific studies of literature. The book ends with a short chapter about conclusions and future developments.

The model and methods introduced in the book offer game-changing insights for both fundamental and applied science that will affect standard metrics of readability and the way text processing and verbal art reception are viewed in literary studies, education, psychology or the media sciences.

In Defense of Reason After Hegel builds upon and enlists the arguments of Hegel to refute the disempowerment of reason perpetrated by the peddlers of misinformation in public life and by analytic philosophy and postmodernism in the academy. Undermining their assaults on truth, In Defense of Reason After Hegel shows how the fundamental character of nature and of mind allow reason to be autonomous and allow us to enact a reality of freedom in accord with right and freely create works of fine art. The book examines how life and language provide the means for reason to be autonomous and how the autonomy of thought precludes natural evolution or bioengineering from enhancing our capacity for philosophical thinking. It unravels the perplexities of the logic of self-determination and to show how the will can achieve self-determination in the conventions by which agents engender the institutions of freedom. The book then unveils the limitations of the principle of contradiction, which bars the way to an understanding of how anything can be determinate and how thought and action can be free. Thereupon the paradoxes that arise in thinking time are resolved by liberating thought of the formality of the principle of contradiction. The revolutionary character of Hegel’s conception of consciousness is next explored to make intelligible how animals and young children can be conscious and self-conscious, as well as how philosophical thought can overcome the epistemological limitations of the opposition of consciousness. On this basis, the book draws upon Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind to show how language can originate and be an appropriate vehicle of autonomous reason. The book examines the structure of the institutions of freedom that talking animals can enact. It highlights the philosophical underpinnings of the fundamental shortcomings in the American constitution and American society and draws lessons from the author’s recent campaign to shed light on how the philosophy of right can be a guide to social reform. It also examines how the autonomy of fine art can be realized in sculpture, contrary to claims made by Hegel that would tie this individual art to the classical style.

Transnational Coupling in the Age of Nation Making during the 19th and 20th Centuries deals with courtships and marriages that transcended national, cultural and linguistic boundaries. It deals with the formation of transnational families and transnational spaces. And, finally, because the historical concept of transnational marriage provides a unique prism through which to view the interconnectedness of societies at their most intimate cultural intersections, it deals with the longstanding, complex cultural relations between France and the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries.

In an effort to address not only why Franco-American marriages occurred but also how and why the dynamics that produced them changed over time, this work examines and compares two transnational marriage patterns in different historical contexts: the first, when wealthy American heiresses married French aristocrats during the second half of the 19th century—a period marked by relatively free transatlantic circulation and mobility—and the second, when borders were far more solidified—during the world wars when French women entered into matrimonial contracts with American soldiers.

The purpose of this work is twofold. In an effort to provide new categories of analysis that place the human experience into broader, more global perspectives, the first is to show how concepts of transnational marriage and courtship allow the historian to move further beyond the analytical frameworks of national histories by forcing the researcher to reconsider the ways in which one thinks about family formation and the permeability of national borders during these different stages of the national project. The second is to challenge underlying assumptions in existing historiographical explanations that those who crossed national borders to couple or to marry did so for purely socio-economic reasons. Nicole Leopoldie contends that such rationalizations are simply too narrow and that at the intersection of cross-cultural encounter and transnational coupling stood a profoundly emotional experience. Therefore, greater analytical considerations need to include both cultural and emotional motivations that were always in the background.

Because the social practices of courtship and marriage became mechanisms through which borders were crossed and new cultural spaces were created, they represent important elements of transnational entanglements. Therefore, rather than examining marriage motivation from the perspective of one society or another, this work seeks to examine instead the ways in which patterns of transnational marriage emerged out of social spaces of cross-cultural encounter between the two societies. In order to identify, map and analyze the transnational spaces that produced marriage during the 19th and 20th centuries, this work draws on descriptions of social events found in the French and American press, travel literature, personal accounts and guest lists. By examining where and how couples met and courted one another, these sources provide an important glimpse into not only transnational social networks and cultural rituals but also the ways in which marriage participants perceived, experienced and interpreted these spaces. In this spatial examination, emotions are employed as a category of analysis rather than a narrative device in order to show how complex cultural meanings within transnational spaces were experienced on personal levels among transnational-marriage participants. Because a variety of emotions manifested in both encounter and representations of the “other,” Leopoldie proposes that othering be further considered as not simply a cultural process, but an emotional one. By drawing on French and American literary works, travel literature and personal accounts found in unpublished and published memoirs, letters and interviews collected by contemporary journalists and oral historians, she argues that even though marriage participants from each of the two patterns conceived of the national and cultural boundaries that separated them in very different ways, attraction to notions of difference provoked important emotional responses and largely remained the driving force of marriage and coupling processes in both historical contexts. By participating in a transnational marriage, participants bound themselves not only to their spouse but also to the culture of that spouse. Motivations for transnational marriage were, therefore, still strategic but were largely based on preconceived notions of what they believed the other culture to be.

The Critical Situation: Vexed Perspectives in Postmodern Literary Studies comprises a diverse selection of essays that register the situated ness of critical theory and practice amid various intellectual, institutional, and cultural contexts. In recent polemics, postmortems or even celebrations, a number of prominent critics have suggested that “theory” is dead, that the heyday of literary or critical theory is past and its insights passé, and that other less speculative or abstract approaches to literature and literary criticism be embraced. At the same time, however, resistance to these trends in criticism has emphasized the degree to which modern critical theory remains essential for any proper analysis of the present condition. Today’s dynamic world-system, with its ever-shifting components in the age of globalization, presents new challenges to literary and cultural studies for which criticism and theory are ideally suited. That is because a fundamental virtue of critical and theoretical practice lies in its speculative vocation, as theory may offer novel vantages from which to view the past, present and future configurations, while disclosing fresh vistas of the world in which we are situated.

The Critical Situation emphasizes the need for, and the vibrancy of, theory today. The essays in this volume each address situations of critical theory and practice in various ways. Some are more methodological or analytical, others more historical, and still others more speculative, but all contribute to the argument in favor of theory as an essential part of literary studies in the present time. In the United States, the renewed resistance to theory has become somewhat tied to this or that conception of what have been labeled “method wars,” the battlelines of which indicate distinctive factions: those emphasizing historical investigations are then opposed by those insisting on the precedence of form or formalism, while others contest variations of both types of criticism in favor of some sense of unmediated or “surface” reading. These mostly parochial or academic debates have their counterparts in the broader culture, in which powerful forces determine the sense of what is worthy or not, what is real or what is fake or what is suitable for critical study or even attention. The reversal of the situation is, in a sense, built into the nature of the situation itself. At this point, theory enables the recognition that comes with the experience of peripety, an uncertain reversal of fortune which makes possible the suddenly novel perspective. 

The Critical Situation offers examples of situated criticism, which in turn are concerned with the ways in which literary and cultural criticism are and have been situated in relation to a variety of ideological and institutional structures, including those of world literature, American studies, spatial literary studies, cultural critique, globalization and postmodernity. These structures continue to influence the ways that criticism is practiced, and due recognition of their continuing effects seems to me to be crucial to the success of any meaningful critical practice in the twenty-first century.

Using as case studies the three key outcomes during Ukraine’s Euromaidan moment (late 2013–early 2014) – namely, the introduction of GM agriculture; the opening up of the country’s energy industry to TNC-led fracking (shale gas extraction); and, the sudden and violent ‘regime change’ – this book examines the processes by which such foreign policy and international development outcomes came about; it does so by focussing on configurations of multiple influential actors – political, corporate, philanthropic and intellectual actors (e.g., academics, researchers at think tanks) – all of whom are connected by various combinations of social, personal, structural and political ties. More specifically, these outcomes are best explained by focusing on global webs of diverse social relations between elites spanning governments, international institutions, philanthropic foundations, research institutions and think tanks, ‘civil society’ organizations, and multi-national corporations. Some of the actors in this global elite network may be state or corporate actors, but their connections are not based just on ‘national interest’ or structural affiliation, and their primary allegiance is to the global elite network. Elites can exercise forms of power within policy settings, but only a global elite network can influence policy to the extent that all three of these outcomes were produced.
The overall outcomes were broken down into the processes and the events that produced them. These events include conferences, parties, business meetings and mergers, political speeches, policies, and so on. The key players in each of these events are identified and analysed, along with the multiple types of connections that link the various actors. The connections that link the different types of nodes into a cohesive global elite network were generated into maps as a visual aid to help follow the strong analysis of these relations and interactions.
First, this book details the multiple types of relationships, especially social and personal that enabled the outcomes. This is crucial in demonstrating how sensitive information flows along informal ties in a network. For example, social relations allow for the transfer of insider knowledge that is unregulated and has no oversight – information that the rest of the population (the masses) is not privy to. Social relations can allow for collusion, including in ways that may be legal, but unethical and thus potentially damaging in the public domain. This book also deploys a groundbreaking definition of the term ‘gatekeepers’ used throughout the analysis. Gatekeepers link people together; they link think tanks, corporations, politicians and foundations together, and also link nodes in different industries and sectors together (e.g., the development and foreign policy sectors, the philanthropic and corporate sectors, etc.). They bridge multiple industries, sectors, events and processes.
Second, this book focuses on the spaces where these social connections were fostered, revealing the key places for global elites to convene, align diverse agendas, collaborate, and thus produce outcomes and agendas. Such spaces are crucial in enabling structural connections to become social connections. Mutual membership to think tanks and foundations and attending the same conferences/panels at places like Davos or Bilderberg can serve as a space for meetings and allow for the exchange of information and ideas outside of a state capacity context and regulation. Third, this book explains how the official narrative surrounding the unusual outcome differs from the motives and actions of the members of the global elite network. There are discrepancies with expressed intent in narratives and the outcome. Questioning political narratives with a focus on relations helps to explore how political elites can control the mainstream narrative. Identifying the linkages of political actors (social, personal, financial, professional and political) outwards to TNCs, organisations, institutions, councils and other elites reveals the process by which a dominant narrative is re/produced, and thus shows an alternate reality behind political and development narratives. It is important to study these connections to understand how opposition groups are forced to exist within a dualistic narrative so that anything going against the mainstream and accepted narrative is not only wrong but also suppressed and sometimes erased.

The considerably large critical literature on Bollywood cinema is marked by an absence as it has not engaged fully with the ways in which songs lead to the memorial construction of films and how a spectator connects with films through their songs. The studies tended to deflect the emotional dimension of songs, their internal lyrical structure and their intertextual connections in favour of readings that treat songs as subsidiary to other formal elements. Consequently, there was little understanding of songs and their complex relationship with the narrative of the film. To address this absence, this book begins by taking a look at the prior history of Bollywood songs since the arrival of talkies with the film Alam Ara (1931). The chapter takes the reader through the journey of film songs from synchronous singing and music during production to non-diegetic music and the playback singer. In addition, the somewhat disparate filmic milieu of history, emotion and ethics, much of which are drawn from traditional texts, served to affirm the values of a secular India. Melodrama, mediated via Indian theories of sentimentality, became one of the key colonial discourses through which the politico-social order was critiqued and Indianness celebrated.
The book then raises the question, ‘Can one speak about periods?’ After defending periodisation in this instance because it does have heuristic value, the argument is given added support by positing melodrama as the dominant dramatic mode of Indian Hindi (Bollywood) cinema of the Golden Age. The term ‘melodrama’ is used to designate a film genre marked by sentimental songs that appeal to the heightened emotions of the spectator. Because emotionality is central to the concept of melodrama, a consideration of how emotions may be theorised is also given. The Indian classical concept of rasa is examined to provide a theoretical frame that is both historical and indigenous. Sentimental and melodramatic emotion ultimately enhanced cinema’s ethical role in building a post-colonial nation – a nation that was emerging from the trauma of partition as well as the excesses of colonisation. However, by focusing with holistic lens on the period in question – the ‘Golden Age’ – the book finesses the value of periodisation in this instance. Frame analyses of a sample of song sequences from a variety of films are used to demonstrate the roles of various song registers and the way these different registers (as identified in the appendices) work within the narrative. The argument for a connection between songs and narrative in the period is strengthened by an examination of the elements of song picturisation, most notably body movement, mise-en-scènes, lyrics, vocal expression, lighting, shots and music. A close examination of these elements reinforced the links between felt emotion and the melodramatic form in the Golden Age. Furthermore, it is argued that while Indian theories of emotional responses – notably rasa theory – recognised the place of cathartic outpouring in any dramatic presentation, the shape and structure of Bollywood cinema was indebted to the melodramatic imaginary that came to India with British colonisation. The archival material on English novels read in colonial times indicated that novels dealing with the ‘man of feeling’, novels such as Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771) and Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), provided the melodramatic structures within which native structures of feeling (as in the varied rasas) may be given felt presence. That structure and its emotional pulling power dictated cinema and especially the cinema of the Golden Age. There are direct links between Devdas (1935), a seminal film based on a sentimental Bengali novel, and Pyaasa (1957), and these links speak to the presence of English discourses of sentimentality. Such was their pervasive power, indeed their affective intensities and strength, that no film of the ‘Golden Age of Bollywood’ escaped from their enervating and ineluctable presence.
The argument of the book – as indicated above – is followed through with references to many films. The instance of the ‘Islamicate’ film Mughal-e-Azam (1960) is taken up as an example of the power and pervasiveness of the melodramatic temper and the role of songs even when the cinematic genre is that of an epic. A close, paradigmatic reading of this film shows how the evocative power of sentimentality, emotional capital and the genre of melodrama invades an historical narrative and transforms history. To give greater depth to the place of songs, sentimentality and melodrama, the book turns to the two exceptional auteurs of the Golden Age, Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt. Between them, these two auteurs demonstrate a range of filmic articulations of songs in Hindi cinema, and their films illustrate, in an exemplary fashion, the role of songs in carrying the melodramatic and sentimental narrative of a film. The Hindi film auteur, as producer, director and actor, not only imposes his special style on his films but is visible on the screen itself.
This book is primarily concerned with songs from the Golden Age of Hindi cinema – 1951–1963 – a period in Hindi film history when emotion, sentiment and melodrama were regularly combined to create ‘affective intensities’. The registers, moods and, in some cases, ragas of songs have been examined over a broad corpus of examples to identify their effect on the spectator, their role in the narrative of the film and their thematisation associated with specific emotional states. In so doing, the book theorises sentimentality and melodrama in the context of Hindi film songs to more fully identify the nature of sentimentality and to more fully understand the way songs play a role in the melodramatic form.

The international relations field grew around stories of great powers vying for hegemony and ultimately failing. However, France’s Louis XIV stands out among modern aspiring hegemons as the only one to leave his country intact, even larger than he found it. This book argues that Louis XIV’s war-ending strategy explains this outlying case. Like other potential hegemons, Louis fought general wars he failed to win decisively. But Louis would often negotiate peace from a position of strength while other aspiring hegemons generally fought to the finish, thus solidifying uncompromising balancing coalitions. This eagerness to pursue peace from a strong position mollified opposing coalitions and allowed France to extract some gains, however limited. First, the work presents Louis’s strategy of major wartime concessions from a position of strength. Second, it shows how he used this strategy to exit his three general wars. Third, it describes his foreign policy background and beliefs to unpack the origins of this war-ending strategy. Fourth, the book compares France with other hegemonic pretenders to control for possible explanations and shows that Louis’s strategy was unique. Finally, it discusses in turn the research’s implications for the international security field and U.S. decision-makers concerned by the possibility of war with China and Russia. Hence, this book matters to policymakers, international relations theorists, and historians of modern Europe.

This book explores the strategic role of Liberty University, church planting networks, and grassroots mobilization in shaping U.S. policy toward Israel. It examines how Dr. Jerry Falwell, through his leadership at Liberty University and the Moral Majority, built a powerful evangelical coalition that effectively influenced Congress and the White House. By analyzing the intersection of faith, politics, and diplomacy, the book uncovers how Christian Zionism became a central force in conservative American politics, fostering a deep alliance between evangelicals and the Israeli government. Falwell’s relationship with Israeli leaders, particularly Prime Minister Menachem Begin, marked a turning point in evangelical engagement with U.S.-Israel relations.
Drawing on archival research, policy analysis, and historical case studies, this study reveals how church planting initiatives were not just religious efforts but also political mobilization tools. Through Liberty University’s extensive alumni network, pastors and church leaders across the United States incorporated pro-Israel advocacy into their congregations, fostering a committed base that actively lobbied for policies such as the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, foreign aid to Israel, and support for settlement expansion. The book highlights how evangelical activism extended beyond sermons and theological discourse, transforming into a well-organized political force with direct influence on U.S. foreign policy.
By tracing the historical evolution of evangelical political engagement, this book provides critical insights into the mechanisms by which grassroots activism, theological imperatives, and institutional influence shaped American diplomacy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It situates evangelical support for Israel within the broader conservative movement, illustrating how religious convictions translated into political action. As debates over faith-based politics and foreign policy continue to shape America’s global role, this book offers a timely and essential contribution to understanding the enduring impact of Christian Zionism on U.S.-Israel relations.

Northeast Asia, a major region in Asia covering China, Korea (South and North Korea), Japan, Mongolia, and the Southeast corner of Russia, is economically one of the most vibrant areas in the world, with a rich array of economic opportunities. Yet, it is simultaneously one of the world’s most politically and militarily unstable regions, creating a global security risk. This risk was made apparent by North Korea’s nuclear crisis, which was followed by a series of its nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches from 2016 to 2017. Although the worst-case scenario may have been avoided by a summit meeting between the heads of South and North Korea on April 27, 2018, and another summit between the United States and North Korea on June 12, 2018, substantial uncertainty and the risk of a major military conflict remains.

Although less dramatic and visible to the outside world, other political and military tensions among constituent countries in Northeast Asia, with their deep historical origins dating back centuries, are also significant. These tensions have been demonstrated by persistent territorial disputes, lack of reconciliation on the question of war crimes during World War II, increasing disparities in political influence and military power among Northeast Asian countries as a result of China's ascension, and increasing uncertainty in the region due to the potential instability of North Korea. These problems create a risk of destabilizing Northeast Asia with a substantial global impact.

Sustainable Peace in Northeast Asia examines the causes of these complex tensions in Northeast Asia and their underlying political, historic, military, and economic developments. It further discusses their political-economic implications for the world and explores possible solutions to build lasting peace in the region. This book offers a unique approach to these important issues by examining the perspectives of each constituent country in Northeast Asia: China, South and North Korea, Japan, and Mongolia, and their respective roles in the region. Major global powers, such as the United States and Russia, have also closely engaged in the political and economic affairs of the region through a network of alliances, diplomacy, trade, and investment. The book discusses the influence of these external powers, their political and economic objectives in the region, their strategies, and the dynamics that their engagement has brought to the region. Both South Korea and North Korea have sought reunification of the Korean peninsula, which will have a substantial impact on the region. The book examines its justification, feasibility and effects for the region. The book also discusses the role of Mongolia in the context of the power dynamics in Northeast Asia. A relatively small country, in terms of its population, Mongolia has rarely been examined in this context; Sustainable Peace in Northeast Asia makes a fresh assessment on its potential role.

● Who leads the next $100 trillion in GDP growth?
● Are we developing leaders for a more sustainable future?
● What does the next generation of leaders need to know to build a more sustainable future?

Leading a sustainable organization requires more than marketing slogans and good reporting. It requires identifying the value of sustainability for all stakeholders and the development of specific transition and change plans that deliver a different type of organization. Noble aspirations in treaties and policies are a necessary part of the picture, but leaders must create organizations that enable daily actions. Making sustainability happen is a series of leadership choices:
o Creating strategic differentiation to compete on sustainability business opportunities
o Crafting a purpose that inspires employees to give their best
o Building and sharing a knowledge model about why, what, and how to do sustainability
o Ensuring that sustainability efforts are woven into values and ethics
o Deploying a transition plan with clear action steps that move from compliance to alignment
o Making sustainability part of the culture and identity of an organization
o Weaving personal commitment to sustainability into team performance
o Telling the story of sustainable results in all business communication
o Maintaining commitment in the face of inevitable derailment factors
o Future proofing the organization to stay on the sustainability journey with a sense of long-term value creation
● The current generation of leaders has failed to make the progress needed to delay the worst effects of climate change and biodiversity loss, so the challenges become harder. The book offers a chapter-by-chapter blueprint of key actions that can be learned and shared. The goal is to enable business leaders to accelerate action, make better decisions, and ensure that sustainability becomes part of the DNA of any organization.

This book explores the strategic role of Liberty University, church planting networks, and grassroots mobilization in shaping U.S. policy toward Israel. It examines how Dr. Jerry Falwell, through his leadership at Liberty University and the Moral Majority, built a powerful evangelical coalition that effectively influenced Congress and the White House. By analyzing the intersection of faith, politics, and diplomacy, the book uncovers how Christian Zionism became a central force in conservative American politics, fostering a deep alliance between evangelicals and the Israeli government. Falwell’s relationship with Israeli leaders, particularly Prime Minister Menachem Begin, marked a turning point in evangelical engagement with U.S.-Israel relations.
Drawing on archival research, policy analysis, and historical case studies, this study reveals how church planting initiatives were not just religious efforts but also political mobilization tools. Through Liberty University’s extensive alumni network, pastors and church leaders across the United States incorporated pro-Israel advocacy into their congregations, fostering a committed base that actively lobbied for policies such as the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, foreign aid to Israel, and support for settlement expansion. The book highlights how evangelical activism extended beyond sermons and theological discourse, transforming into a well-organized political force with direct influence on U.S. foreign policy.
By tracing the historical evolution of evangelical political engagement, this book provides critical insights into the mechanisms by which grassroots activism, theological imperatives, and institutional influence shaped American diplomacy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It situates evangelical support for Israel within the broader conservative movement, illustrating how religious convictions translated into political action. As debates over faith-based politics and foreign policy continue to shape America’s global role, this book offers a timely and essential contribution to understanding the enduring impact of Christian Zionism on U.S.-Israel relations.

Drawing on archival sources, this book provides an anthropological exploration of the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore, tracing its evolution from the Mayo School of Arts established in 1875. As a counterpart to London’s South Kensington School of Design (now the Royal College of Art), the Mayo School emerged as a crucial site for the dissemination of colonial art education in British India, alongside similar institutions in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras. Named to honor Lord Earl of Mayo, the only Viceroy of India assassinated in office, it was founded by Lockwood Kipling and featured a distinguished roster of educators including Ram Singh, Percy Brown, Lionel Heath, S.N. Gupta, B.C. Sanyal, and A.R. Chughtai. The Mayo School also initiated the Journal of Indian Art and Industry, a seminal publication utilizing cutting-edge chromolithography techniques.

The book employs theoretical analysis to understand how the NCA, functioning as a bureaucratic entity, has shaped the landscape of design education, museums, and artistic practices in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. From its roots in British art education, derived from South Kensington, the institution's trajectory reflects its adaptation through American reforms in the early years of Pakistani independence. This analysis critically examines how frameworks of art history and anthropology have been mobilized to construct and objectify Pakistani art and artists.

Furthermore, the book explores the contributions of colonial anthropologists such as Richard Temple, Denzil Ibbetson, and Baden Powell, who were instrumental in the establishment and administration of the Mayo School. Their work in ethnographic reconstruction provided a cultural framework that influenced the education of artisan castes, situating them within a “primitive” Punjabi context. This colonial subtext profoundly impacted the pedagogical approaches of the Mayo School, which also nurtured the emergence of the Indo-Saracenic architectural style and supported traditional Punjabi painting.

Despite its industrial art orientation, the Mayo School was pivotal in the development of a modern Punjab painting tradition recognized at the British Indian Empire Exhibition of 1924. Under the guidance of Lionel Heath, the school began to embrace modern art, with printmaking, graphic design, and sculpture taking root in the 1930s through the efforts of B.C. Sanyal and M.M. Hussain. The Mayo School’s printing press produced a diverse array of materials, reflecting major Western art movements from Arts and Crafts to Art Deco and Bauhaus.

In the formative years of Pakistan, the Mayo School transitioned into the National College of Arts in 1958, modeled after the Bauhaus with departments in Fine Art, Design, and Architecture. Influential figures such as poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, painter Shakir Ali, art patron Ghulam Mueenuddin, and American sculptor Mark Sponenburgh were pivotal in shaping the NCA as Pakistan’s premier institution for art and design. Through a critical examination of art history and anthropological frameworks, this book elucidates how imperial and nationalist discourses have intersected to shape and redefine artistic and cultural identities within Pakistan.

Drawing on archival sources, this book provides an anthropological exploration of the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore, tracing its evolution from the Mayo School of Arts established in 1875. As a counterpart to London’s South Kensington School of Design (now the Royal College of Art), the Mayo School emerged as a crucial site for the dissemination of colonial art education in British India, alongside similar institutions in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras. Named to honor Lord Earl of Mayo, the only Viceroy of India assassinated in office, it was founded by Lockwood Kipling and featured a distinguished roster of educators including Ram Singh, Percy Brown, Lionel Heath, S.N. Gupta, B.C. Sanyal, and A.R. Chughtai. The Mayo School also initiated the Journal of Indian Art and Industry, a seminal publication utilizing cutting-edge chromolithography techniques.

The book employs theoretical analysis to understand how the NCA, functioning as a bureaucratic entity, has shaped the landscape of design education, museums, and artistic practices in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. From its roots in British art education, derived from South Kensington, the institution's trajectory reflects its adaptation through American reforms in the early years of Pakistani independence. This analysis critically examines how frameworks of art history and anthropology have been mobilized to construct and objectify Pakistani art and artists.

Furthermore, the book explores the contributions of colonial anthropologists such as Richard Temple, Denzil Ibbetson, and Baden Powell, who were instrumental in the establishment and administration of the Mayo School. Their work in ethnographic reconstruction provided a cultural framework that influenced the education of artisan castes, situating them within a “primitive” Punjabi context. This colonial subtext profoundly impacted the pedagogical approaches of the Mayo School, which also nurtured the emergence of the Indo-Saracenic architectural style and supported traditional Punjabi painting.

Despite its industrial art orientation, the Mayo School was pivotal in the development of a modern Punjab painting tradition recognized at the British Indian Empire Exhibition of 1924. Under the guidance of Lionel Heath, the school began to embrace modern art, with printmaking, graphic design, and sculpture taking root in the 1930s through the efforts of B.C. Sanyal and M.M. Hussain. The Mayo School’s printing press produced a diverse array of materials, reflecting major Western art movements from Arts and Crafts to Art Deco and Bauhaus.

In the formative years of Pakistan, the Mayo School transitioned into the National College of Arts in 1958, modeled after the Bauhaus with departments in Fine Art, Design, and Architecture. Influential figures such as poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, painter Shakir Ali, art patron Ghulam Mueenuddin, and American sculptor Mark Sponenburgh were pivotal in shaping the NCA as Pakistan’s premier institution for art and design. Through a critical examination of art history and anthropological frameworks, this book elucidates how imperial and nationalist discourses have intersected to shape and redefine artistic and cultural identities within Pakistan.

Disappearing Cities is a collection of over fifty short stories of invented cities, set in the not too distant future, destroyed by varied climate change impacts and linked natural disasters. The stories bring into question the relation between the natural and unnatural forces of change and expose responses to, and lessons learnt, from different disaster crises situations. Stories also focus on how means to adapt are sought. The projected fictions are created from projected current climate facts; trends; and the author’s experience of population displacement, relocation and design-based climate change responsive action. Central to the book is the recognition that to be able to respond and adapt to the scale of coming changes in the climate requires going beyond existing practical action and embracing a new way of imagining futures. Disappearing Cities aims to stimulate ways of meeting this need.
The book opens with a Prologue that establishes the contextual frame of empirical foundation out of which the fictions are created. It recognises that we all live in a world in which the conditions that will result in huge numbers of cities disappearing are underway. From the human perspective, the process appears to be very slow, whereas in historico-geological time, it is happening exceptionally quickly. The number of the loss of cities is going to be huge, yet the recognition that this will occur is not arriving, In part, this is because of a lack of knowledge, but equally, it reflects a lack of imagination. Transposing what is known about climate change by a significant percentage of the societies of many nations to actual environments in which they live is just not arriving. What appears so solid and established fails to be seen and imagined as a risk and vulnerable. From establishing this opening perspective, the first part of the book presents stories of cities already disappearing as a result of the forces of nature changed by anthropogenically created global warming. Part two discusses the impacts of natural disasters being made unnaturally. For example, by the way industrial societies are damaging and changing natural systems, including the climatic. The final part goes to cities destroyed by completely un-natural means, including war.
Disappearing Cities aims to contribute to meeting the need for a better understanding of, and ability to imagine, the risks to which vast numbers of cities are, and will be, exposed to forces of disappearance. To do this, the narratives are a hybrid of fact and fiction. The work was inspired by Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities and is intended to be a salient contemporary companion to this text. It mirrors its form but differs in style and content. Invisible Cities attained diverse readership, Disappearing Cities aspires to do likewise.

Alessandro Michele’s creative direction at Gucci, starting in 2015, transformed the brand into a maximalist, gender-fluid and intellectual aesthetic that blended vintage-inspired, eclectic designs with philosophical and cultural references

Before Alessandro Michele took the creative helm at Gucci in 2015, the brand was mostly known for its sleek sophistication and sexy hedonism. Despite having worked at the Italian fashion house for over twelve years as the accessories and jewellery designer, Michele was relatively unknown in the fashion industry and the public sphere. All of that was to change when he sent his models down the runway for the 2015 Fall/Winter ready-to-wear collection in an eclectic mix of pussy-bow blouses, chiffon dresses, wallpaper prints and a motley collection of accessories, including fur-lined loafers, berets and granny-style horn-rimmed glasses. Michele’s stylistic design approach created an aesthetic reminiscent of the fashion eccentric who wears flea market finds with high-end designer and heirloom pieces – imperfect, nostalgic and maximalist. The new Gucci woman (and man) were intellectual and sensual misfits who are perfectly at home in the glamourous rag-tag aesthetic of a Wes Anderson film.
With his inaugurate collection, Michele tapped into the zeitgeist that was yearning for a more colourful and playful design, and a disregard of traditional gender divisions: while Gucci has hitherto showcased its men’s and women’s collections separately, as well as favoured traditional masculine and feminine looks respectively, Michele broke with the idea of a gender binary, ushering in gender fluidity and a new fantastical vision of masculinity.
Although his collections were spectacular in their scope (the Fall/Winter 2017 consists of roughly 120 looks), the designs are also a testimony to his ability to scramble signifiers of gender, pop culture, history and time. Referencing and borrowing from philosophical concepts and ideas, such as the infamous Cyborg collection (Gucci Fall/Winter 2019) that envisioned subjectivities beyond the confines of the human body with replica heads or extra eyes on their hands; the Fall/Winter 2016 collection titled ‘Rhizomatic Scores’, referencing Deleuze and Guattari’s influential concept; or the Fall/Winter 2020 menswear collection titled ‘Masculine, Plural’ that referenced Butler’s notion of gender performativity, Michele exemplifies a fashion auteur who knows how to play not only with gender signifiers but also with signifiers of time, culture and species.

Explores the experiences of musicians using Twitch to connect with audiences and achieve financial stability, revealing both the creative opportunities and the pressures of maintaining success in a gamified, attention-driven ecosystem.

Musicians on Twitch: Creativity, Challenges, and the Reality Behind Live Streaming unpacks the untold stories of musicians who have turned to Twitch as a platform to share music, engage with audiences and seek financial stability. While on the surface Twitch appears as a hub for creativity and innovation, this book reveals a more complex reality where opportunities and challenges are in constant tension and where creative freedom is constantly negotiated against the demands of visibility, engagement and monetisation.

Through a multi-method qualitative research design, including interviews with this new breed of ‘musician-streamers’ and extensive observations of their mediated, online lives, this book explores what it takes to succeed, or simply survive, as a musician on Twitch.

The book begins by examining Twitch’s evolution from a gaming-centric site to a space where live music performances have gained traction. Whether driven by creative freedom, financial aspirations or a desire to connect with global audiences, this book examines who these musicians are and what draws them to the platform. Throughout this chapter, key concepts and terms are introduced to provide readers with a clear and accessible framework for understanding and analysing the evolving landscape of online live music.

As the book progresses, its focus turns critical, exposing the challenges that underpin Twitch’s creative ecosystem. From the ‘happy-few-take-all’ dynamic, where only a small elite garners the majority of audience attention, to the gamified, attention-driven environment that creates relentless pressure to remain ‘always on’, many musicians are flirting with their breaking point.

Through these lived experiences, Musicians on Twitch provides a nuanced, unfiltered, at times brutal, exploration of Twitch’s promises and pitfalls for musicians. It is an important read for anyone curious about the intersection of music, technology and creative labour, and what it really means to be a musician today.

Examines Gothic realism in documentary and horror cinema, highlighting how films evoke archival anxiety and unsettling realities, from gothumentaries exploring ineffable subjects to mockumentaries and found-footage films addressing modernity’s overwhelming and mediated nature.

Examines the daily struggles of migrantized divorced mothers in Germany in a framework of everyday violence and its (in)visibilities, focusing on their resistances and vulnerabilities within unequal relations of support

This book approaches the daily struggles of migrantized divorced motherhood through theories, discourses, and (in)visibilities of everyday violence. Building on ethnographically informed everyday violence theories, it offers a framework in which violence becomes everyday violence when it engages with the boundaries of ordinary lives by means of being disruptive, reproduced, absorbed, and expected. Taking neither the visibility nor the invisibility of violence for granted, it discusses how the same discourses of violence can visibly victimize certain daily struggles of migrantized divorced motherhood while obscuring certain others.
Analyzing the individual narratives of divorced mothers living in Germany with immigration biographies from Turkey, the book tackles their struggles with poverty, dequalification, maternal guilt, time constraints, care, everyday racism and sexism, as well as the conceptualizations of violence itself. If there is a certain form of “loneness” implied in the term lone parenting, these narratives reveal how such “loneness” is structurally and discursively constructed within a relationality of the self to resources. With attention to various forms of victimizations, vulnerabilities, and resistances, the book delves into what it means to “stand on one’s own two feet” in the face of paternalistic conditions of intimate and structural support.
Thus, the author makes various strong arguments around the work of tackling everyday violence and the immunities secured against the attribution of violence within power relations. Underlining the ambivalent consequences of our everyday and scholarly discourses on violence, she carefully situates the concept in a context of migrantization and culturalization of gendered experiences. Overall, the research participants offer narratives of not only everyday violence but also everyday protests, which refuse the forced (in)visibilities of their daily struggles and analyze the labor they invest into their relations to resources. And it is the acknowledgment of these protests that is at stake when they narrate their daily struggles, name violence, and reject a passive victimhood.

This book explores the transformative role of open-source technologies and digital commons in fostering a cooperative and sustainable economy. Built upon the research project “Techno-Social Innovation in the Collaborative Economy,” the study investigates innovative, grassroots economic models that leverage digital technologies for community-driven governance and decentralized value creation.
The book presents a multi-case study approach, featuring organizations such as Tzoumakers, Open Food Network, CoopCycle, and Circles UBI. These cases exemplify how platform cooperativism, cosmolocalism, and open cooperativism redefine traditional business structures, emphasizing sustainability, fairness, and democratic ownership. The discussion extends to blockchain-enabled DAOs and their impact on labor, governance, and wealth distribution.
Through theoretical and empirical insights, The Model of Open Cooperativism bridges political economy and digital innovation, providing practical strategies for policymakers, activists, and scholars. It highlights the success and challenges of grassroots-driven initiatives, offering a roadmap for transitioning toward a commons-based, post-capitalist economy.

Disappearing Cities is a collection of over fifty short stories of invented cities, set in the not too distant future, destroyed by varied climate change impacts and linked natural disasters. The stories bring into question the relation between the natural and unnatural forces of change and expose responses to, and lessons learnt, from different disaster crises situations. Stories also focus on how means to adapt are sought. The projected fictions are created from projected current climate facts; trends; and the author’s experience of population displacement, relocation and design-based climate change responsive action. Central to the book is the recognition that to be able to respond and adapt to the scale of coming changes in the climate requires going beyond existing practical action and embracing a new way of imagining futures. Disappearing Cities aims to stimulate ways of meeting this need.
The book opens with a Prologue that establishes the contextual frame of empirical foundation out of which the fictions are created. It recognises that we all live in a world in which the conditions that will result in huge numbers of cities disappearing are underway. From the human perspective, the process appears to be very slow, whereas in historico-geological time, it is happening exceptionally quickly. The number of the loss of cities is going to be huge, yet the recognition that this will occur is not arriving, In part, this is because of a lack of knowledge, but equally, it reflects a lack of imagination. Transposing what is known about climate change by a significant percentage of the societies of many nations to actual environments in which they live is just not arriving. What appears so solid and established fails to be seen and imagined as a risk and vulnerable. From establishing this opening perspective, the first part of the book presents stories of cities already disappearing as a result of the forces of nature changed by anthropogenically created global warming. Part two discusses the impacts of natural disasters being made unnaturally. For example, by the way industrial societies are damaging and changing natural systems, including the climatic. The final part goes to cities destroyed by completely un-natural means, including war.
Disappearing Cities aims to contribute to meeting the need for a better understanding of, and ability to imagine, the risks to which vast numbers of cities are, and will be, exposed to forces of disappearance. To do this, the narratives are a hybrid of fact and fiction. The work was inspired by Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities and is intended to be a salient contemporary companion to this text. It mirrors its form but differs in style and content. Invisible Cities attained diverse readership, Disappearing Cities aspires to do likewise.

The gramophone was thought to be perverse because it allowed people to listen to music on their own. Rock ‘n’ Roll was the devil’s music. Home taping supposedly killed music. Copyright piracy is not a victimless crime. Downloading music is stealing. Spotify doesn’t adequately pay artists. YouTube remuneration creates a value gap for artists. Mp3s make music sound flat. TikTok shortens songs. AI steals ideas.
With each new music distribution technology, the powerful corporate interests of the moment try to make people afraid to use it. In Music Technology Panic Narratives Beyond Piracy: From Taping to Napster to TikTok, Dr. David Arditi examines how the major record labels single-out new technologies as if they will bring an end to recorded music. They use what he calls the “piracy panic narrative”—a narrative in which new technologies threaten the very existence of recorded music. The piracy panic narrative is a rhetorical construct that helps to hide the material reality of the recording industry by positioning major record labels and their recording artists as the victims of widespread crime in the form of piracy.
Now, divorced from piracy, the recording industry continues to use the panic narrative to dissuade fans from specific practices and to lobby the government for particular policies. Each time, they use the narrative to change public sentiment, the law, and policy to strengthen their profits. It works because fans feel a connection with their favorite artists. Fans want their artists to be paid a fair wage. But at every moment what gets ignored is labels are the primary exploiter of musicians. Asking why YouTube underpays artists is the wrong question because streaming platforms pay labels. The question that never gets asked: why don’t labels pay artists a livable wage?

For decades, museums have been recognized as spaces for public debate and civic education, where discourses produced through exhibitions and other activities contribute to the construction and legitimation of particular views of society and the world. The research presented in this book stems from a desire to engage in the ongoing debate aimed at rethinking ethnographic museums and their ways of producing representations of others. It seeks to explore new ways and possible solutions, alongside existing ones, to transform these spaces into inclusive environments for the production of knowledge that is as shared, plural, and decolonized as possible.
The focus is on some artifacts belonging to two Brazilian Indigenous populations, but kept and exhibited in two ethnographic museums in Lisbon and Vienna. Specifically, a Kambeba bamboo board for flattening the head of newborn babies, collected by Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira during the Philosophical Journey of 1783–1792 and kept at the Academy of Sciences in Lisbon, and a set of Munduruku feather works collected by the Austrian naturalist Johann Natterer between 1817 and 1835 and kept at the Völkerkundemuseum in Vienna.
By combining historical and ethnographic approaches, the aim is, on one hand, to show the role of objects in producing a specific stereotypical image of Brazilian natives, and, on the other hand, to discuss the presence of Indigenous objects in European museums to bring out different discourses, histories, and categories that have been silenced by colonial power and through which material culture is perceived and contextualized across time and space.

This book is a pioneering work that examines cultural diversity policies in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru over the past 15 years. The book offers a critical analysis of the rationalities and concepts underpinning these policies, exposing their inherent contradictions and the social forces that have both supported and resisted their implementation. By highlighting the struggles of marginalized groups in their pursuit of social, economic, and political equality, it reveals the deep intersections between culture, identity, and power.
The book situates these discussions within the broader context of Latin America’s colonial legacy and ongoing decolonization efforts. It demonstrates how the region’s nation-states, often founded on myths of cultural homogeneity, have grappled with the complex realities of diverse populations. Through detailed case studies, the book showcases how cultural diversity has become a powerful tool for social empowerment, particularly among racialized groups and other marginalized communities. It also offers insights into the evolution of these policies, tracing the ways in which they have responded to grassroots movements and the global discourse on cultural citizenship.
Furthermore, this work contributes to global debates by positioning Latin America as a key player in rethinking cultural policies that promote diversity, justice, and inclusion. It reflects on the lessons learned from observing these policies, urging readers to consider the broader implications for social cohesion and inclusive development. This work not only provides a thorough analysis of Latin America’s unique contributions to cultural policy but also underscores the urgent need for more dynamic, intercultural approaches to address the challenges of the 21st century.

This textbook is designed to introduce the reader to important and emerging issues in contemporary environmental law, policy, economics, and science. It explains the roles and interactions of Congress, federal agencies, state governments, and the courts in protecting the environment and public health from pollution. Topics include common law; administrative law; the role of environmental impact assessments and endangered species protection; and the principal legislation and court decisions dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, conventional and toxic air pollution, water pollution, the control of toxic chemicals and hazardous waste, pollution prevention and primary accident prevention, and community right-to-know. The text also explores various alternatives to regulation and concludes with a brief treatise on sustainability.
The evolving role of science and economics in legislative, regulatory, and judicial decision making is explored. The text analyzes pollution as an economic problem and a failure of markets, discusses the role of technological innovation and the concept of “dynamic” economic equilibrium, and evaluates economic incentives as an alternative or supplement to regulation. The book also provides an introduction to basic legal skills: how to read and understand judicial opinions, regulations, and statutes; how to discover the current state of the law in a specific area; and how to take action toward resolution of environmental problems. Throughout, the role of national and local politics in shaping and implementing environmental policy is acknowledged and evaluated.

Analyzes the international drug control regime, examining its legal foundations, emerging tensions, and the existing calls for reform in response to evolving challenges like synthetic drugs, cannabis legalization, and new trafficking methods

The international drug control regime, anchored in three international conventions (1961, 1971, and 1988), bans non-medical drug production and use while ensuring access for medical purposes. Despite near-universal ratification and political commitments focusing on demand and supply reduction as well as judicial cooperation, the illegal drug market has expanded significantly. Over the past decade, drug use rose by 20%, problematic use by 45%, and seizures of drugs like cocaine and amphetamines by more than 40%. These trends expose the regime’s inability to fulfil its objectives, alongside escalating challenges like drug-related violence, overdose crises, and human rights abuses.
This book critically examines the international drug control framework, analyzing its legal instruments, historical context, and implementation mechanisms. It explores emerging tensions, such as the limited access to pain medicines, the legalization of non-medical cannabis in some regions, and synthetic drug crises affecting public health and law enforcement. By addressing these issues, the book sheds light on how countries navigate the conflicts between their international obligations and pressing domestic challenges, particularly in adapting to new trafficking modes.
Building on these analyses, the book discusses whether the current regime is fit for purpose or requires reform. It explores potential pathways for change and evaluates the risks and benefits of maintaining the status quo and of reforming. Ultimately, the work aims to inform policymakers, students, and communities about the complexities of drug control laws and the existing paths to modernization to address contemporary challenges effectively.