Cultural and media studies Books
Berghahn Books Animals, Plants and Afterimages: The Art and
Book Synopsis The sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction is one of the most pervasive issues of our time. Animals, Plants and Afterimages brings together leading scholars in the humanities and life sciences to explore how extinct species are represented in art and visual culture, with a special emphasis on museums. Engaging with celebrated cases of vanished species such as the quagga and the thylacine as well as less well-known examples of animals and plants, these essays explore how representations of recent and ancient extinctions help advance scientific understanding and speak to contemporary ecological and environmental concerns.Trade Review “Animals, Plants and Afterimages draws together an impressive range of essays that describe, contemplate, explore, and challenge the relationships between extinction and representation, engaging with a series of perceptual, conceptual, material, and illusory afterimages of animals and plants with whom we can no longer co-exist but who still matter to us.” • Rick De Vos, Curtin University “The editors’ approach to extinctions through museum exhibitions, technologies and works of art is highly illuminating. Next time, when I visit a natural history museum, I will see the exhibition and the dead animals and plants in a different light.” • Markku Oksanen, University of Eastern FinlandTable of Contents Acknowledgements List of illustrations, Figures and Tables Introduction: Representing Extinction: Art, Science and Afterimages Valérie Bienvenue and Nicholas Chare Part I: Dialogues about Extinction Chapter 1. The Dinosaur as Cultural Symbol and Totem: W.J.T. Mitchell in Conversation W.J.T. Mitchell Chapter 2. Visualizing Extinction: Harriet Ritvo in Conversation Harriet Ritvo Chapter 3. ‘Putting Nature Back Together Again’: Stuart Pimm in Conversation Stuart Pimm Part II: Indigenous Peoples and Extinction Chapter 4. The Beothuk, the Great Auk and the Newfoundland Wolf: Animal and Human Genocide in Canada’s Easternmost Province Nicholas Chare Chapter 5. Cultural Memory of Recent Extinctions: A Chinese Perspective Samuel T. Turvey Chapter 6. Grief, Extinction, and Bilhaa (Abalone) hagwil hayetsk (Charles R. Menzies) Part III: Representing Avian and Insect Extinctions Chapter 7. Sparrows with teeth and claws? Reconstructing the Cretaceous Enantiornithes (Aves: Ornithothoraces) Jingmai O’Connor Chapter 8. Rare Birds and Rare Books The Species as Work of Art Gordon M. Sayre Chapter 9. The Virtual Realities of Species Revivalism: Restoring the Kaua‘i ‘Ō‘ō Bird in Jakob Kudsk Steensen's Re-Animated Sarah Bezan Chapter 10. Insects, Spiders, Snails and Empathy: Representing Invertebrate Extinctions in Natural History Museums Pedro Cardoso Part IV: Representing Extinct Plants and Fungi Chapter 11. Reconstructing Lycopsids Lost to the Deep Past Jeffrey P. Benca Chapter 12. Ellis Rowan, Extinction and the Politics of Flower Painting Jeanette Hoorn Chapter 13. Towards Extinction: Mapping the Vulnerable, Threatened and Critically Endangered Plant in ‘Moments of Friction’ Dawn Sanders Chapter 14. Sweetness, Power, Yeasts, and Entomo-terroir Robert R. Dunn, Monica C. Sanchez and Matthew Morse Booker Part V: Representing Extinct Mammals Chapter 15. Animal Extinction, Film and the Death Drive Barbara Creed Chapter 16. Tasmanian Tiger: Precious Little Remains David Maynard Chapter 17. From the General to the Particular: Piecing together the Life and Afterlife of A544, Louis XVI’s Quagga Valérie Bienvenue Part VI: Exhibiting Extinction Chapter 18. Three Variations on the Theme of Extinction: Looking Anew at the Art and Science of Mark Dion Anne-Sophie Miclo Chapter 19. The Exhibition of Extinct Species: A Critique Norman MacLeod Chapter 20. Exhibiting Extinction: Thylacines in Museum Display Kathryn Medlock Afterword: After Extinction Valérie Bienvenue and Nicholas Chare Contributors Index
£109.25
Berghahn Books Critique of Identity Thinking
Book Synopsis Recent world-wide political developments have persuaded many people that we are again living in what Hannah Arendt called “dark times.” Jackson’s response to this age of uncertainty is to remind us how much experience falls outside the concepts and categories we habitually deploy in rendering life manageable and intelligible. Drawing on such critical thinkers as Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Karl Jaspers, whose work was profoundly influenced by the catastrophes that overwhelmed the world in the middle of the last century, Jackson explores the transformative and redemptive power of marginalized voices in the contemporary conversation of humankind.Trade Review “Through trenchant analysis and interplay of such thinkers as Hannah Arendt, Zora Neale Hurston, and Theodor Adorno, he exposes how these survivors of trauma unpack the complexity of identity formation, the act of identifying, and the tendency to use categories to control complicated human standpoints…This book could be useful for courses in anthropology, philosophy, contemporary literature, and sociology. – Recommended.” • Choice “…a brilliant, masterful, and urgent book.” • Reading Religion “It is Jackson’s unmatched ability to pay attention to the details of human life using seemingly mundane interactions as the basis for developing a philosophy of human existence that makes his work so compelling to read and think with. Throughout the book, Jackson shows that he is not just a master of existential dialectical thinking, but also of existential dialectical writing…As a growing number of anthropologists are attempting to make sense of the breakdown in trust and understanding that increasingly characterizes socio-political spaces across the world, Critique of Identity Thinking offers crucial theoretical and epistemological guidance in troubled times.” • Zeitschrift für Ethnologie “Critique of Identity Thinking contains a wisdom, which comes from a lifetime of reading, writing, and doing ethnography, and it is a reminder of the redemptive power of not distinguishing so clearly between biography and ethnography as well as between science and art.” • Conflict & Society “The author is a master weaver. The tapestry he offers draws together many threads. Its colors are dusky and subdued. It is a dark work, the inspiration and provocation of which is the darkness of the times in which we presently live… a masterpiece.” • James Faubion, Rice UniversityTable of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. Mistaken Identities: The Task of Thinking in Dark Times Chapter 2. Radical Empiricism and the Little Things of Life Chapter 3. The Witch as a Category and as a Person Chapter 4. The New Materialisms Chapter 5. Words and Deeds Chapter 6. Critique of Cultural Fundamentalism Chapter 7. Existential Scarcity and Ethical Sensibility Chapter 8. Identification and Description: An Essay on Metaphor Chapter 9. Islam and Identity among the Kuranko Chapter 10. In Defense of Existential Anthropology Notes Index
£26.55
Berghahn Books Spanish Laughter: Humor and Its Sense in Modern
Book Synopsis Presenting a cultural and interdisciplinary study of humor in Spain from the eighteenth century to the present day, this book examines how humour entered public life, how it attained a legitimacy to communicate ‘serious’ ideas in the Enlightenment and how this set the seed for the key position that humor occupies in society today. Through a range of case studies that run from Goya’s paintings, humor, and gender representations in radio programmes during the first Franco regime, developmentalist cinema of the sixties and seventies, to the transformation of female humor in social media, the book traces the core role that the comical has played in the public sphere. The contributors to this volume represent a wide range of disciplines including gender studies, humour studies and Hispanic studies and offer international perspectives on Spanish laughter.Trade Review “This volume is a fresh and significant contribution not only to the overall field of Hispanic Studies, but to numerous other disciplines such as humor studies, gender studies, journalism and studies in the Enlightenment. The editor and authors have presented an interdisciplinary mosaic that represents more than two centuries of humorous testimony.” • Leticia Villamediana González, University of WarwickTable of Contents List of Illustrations Introduction Antonio Calvo Maturana Chapter 1. When Spaniards defied gravity: humor, seriousness and identity in Eighteenth Century Spain Antonio Calvo Maturana Chapter 2. Disciplinary humour in the public sphere: the rhetorics of gender satire in José Clavijo y Fajardo’s El pensador Sally-Ann Kitts Chapter 3. “La vieja y la niña: Women’s humour in the comedies of María Rosa Gálvez” Elizabeth Franklin Lewis Chapter 4. When Women are on Top. Humour, Politics and Pornography in Goya's Swings Javier Moscoso Chapter 5. Goya´s Caprichos and Critical Humour Manuel Álvarez Junco Chapter 6. Satire and anti-liberal public opinion in Cadiz during the Cortes (1811-1813) Gonzalo Butrón Prida Chapter 7. Humour, translation, and gender in 18th and 19th century Spain and Mexico Catherine Jaffe Chapter 8. Humour in Larra´s political analysis on Absolutism (1828-1833) José María Ferri Coll Chapter 9. ‘Long Live the Joke’: Political Satire and Humour through the Valencian Newspaper El Mole (1837) Alejandro Llinares Planells Chapter 10. Monochatus non est pietas. Anticlerical humour and political violence, c. 1750-1840 Gregorio Alonso Chapter 11. Laughter, Gender and the politics of celebrity in fin-de-siècle Spain: on Emilia Pardo Bazán Isabel Burdiel Chapter 12. El Gran Bvfón, an illustrated magazine: Humour and caricature in Spain at the beginning of the 20th century Miguel Ángel Gamonal Torres Chapter 13. Artistic Parody, Political criticism and Spanish Humour (ca. 1900) Carlos Reyero Chapter 14. The “Moor”, the “Russian”, and other invaders. Satirical representations of national otherness in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) Xosé M. Núñez Seixas Chapter 15. Smile for the Homeland. Humour and gender representations in radio programs during the first Franco regime (1939-1959) Sergio Blanco Fajardo Chapter 16. The developmentalist cinema of the sixties and the seventies. Archetypes of gender, social change and the “paleto” and “destape” phenomena Dolores Ramos Palomo Chapter 17. From classic to transgressive humour: The transformation of female humour in social media Natalia Meléndez Malavé Conclusions
£103.50
Berghahn Books Pepsi and the Pill: Motherhood, Politics and Film
Book Synopsis The 1960s was a decade of massive political and cultural change in Western Europe, as seismic shifts took place in in attitudes towards sexuality, gender, and motherhood in everyday life. Through case studies of British and French films, Pepsi and the Pill offers a fresh vision of a pivotal moment in European culture, exploring the many ways in which political activity and celebrated film movements mutually shaped each other in their views on gender, sexuality, and domesticity. As the specter of popular nationalism once again looms across Europe, this book offers a timely account of the legacy of crucial debates over issues including reproductive rights, migration, and reproductive nationalism at the intersection of political discourse, protest, and film.Trade Review “This is a beautifully written and meticulous work of research. Melissa Oliver-Powell excavates and gives voice to the repressed feminine of two determinedly priapic cinematic histories (British and French new waves); by offering compassionate and assiduous attention to the figure of the mother, Pepsi and The Pill renders apparent the political and social narratives that underpin and inform our conceptions of motherhood – as social construction and institution – in vehemently patriarchal societies and cultures.” • Anna Backman Rogers, University Gothenburg, SwedenTable of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Generation Pepsi Part I: ‘Conception’ Chapter 1. Maternal Products and the British Kitchen Sink Chapter 2. The Mass-Reproduction of Mothering: Une Femme Mariée and Le Bonheur Part II: ‘Gestation’ Chapter 3. The ‘Permissive’ Myth: Conservatism, Change, and Contraception in Swinging London Chapter 4. Scene and Unscene: Reimagining Abortion in La Génération Pepsi Part III: ‘Delivery’ Chapter 5. Whose Lineage is it Anyway? Migration and Racist Futurities Chapter 6. Queer Communities and Queer Failures in British Film Conclusion: Reproducing the Future Bibliography Filmography
£89.10
Berghahn Books Amnesia Remembered: Reverse Engineering a Digital
Book Synopsis Our modern culture is increasingly expressed in the form of digital artifacts, yet archaeology is in its infancy when it comes to researching and understanding them. The study and reverse engineering of digital artifacts is no longer the exclusive domain of computer scientists. Presented by way of analogy to the process of archaeological fieldwork familiar to readers, the 1986 Electronic Arts game Amnesia is used as a vehicle to explain the procedure and thought process required to reverse engineer a digital artifact. As a go-to reference to learn how to begin studying the digital, Amnesia is shown to be a multi-layered artifact with a complex backstory; through it, topics in data compression, copy protection, memory management, and programming languages are covered.Trade Review “Highly recommended. All readers” • Choice "This is a fascinating exploration of a single digital artefact. It reminds the reader that digital ‘things’ are still physical – and from those physical fluctuations representing ones and zeros the book walks the reader through the process of reconstructing what the code actually was, what it did, why it did it, and why it matters.” • Shawn Graham, Carleton UniversityTable of Contents List of Figures List of Tables Preface Part I:Pre-Excavation Introduction Chapter 1. Reconnaissance Chapter 2. Evaluation Chapter 3. Strategy and Research Questions Part II: Excavation Chapter 4. Fragments Chapter 5. Publisher Logo Chapter 6. Text Encoding Chapter 7. Interpreter Chapter 8. Text Encoding, Revisited Chapter 9. Parser Chapter 10. Finding Locations Chapter 11. Copy Protection Part III: Post-Excavation Chapter 12. Analysis Conclusion Index
£104.50
Peter Lang International Academic Publishers Art, Identity and Cosmopolitanism: William
Book Synopsis«Samuel Shaw’s engaging new book on William Rothenstein takes a figure who has frequently made a fleeting appearance in texts on twentieth-century British art and puts him centre stage. Informed by rigorous research in archives and private collections in Europe and the United States, Shaw’s discussion of Rothenstein’s work as an artist, campaigner, educator and organiser will be of interest to anyone seeking out more complex cultural histories of this period. Shaw’s narrative is an impressive balance of detailed discussion about an individual’s career and a larger argument about the tensions between the nationalism and cosmopolitanism that shaped the early twentieth-century art world.» (Sarah Victoria Turner, Director of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art) «In this superbly well-researched book, Samuel Shaw argues convincingly that a commitment to British identity, including the experience of British Jews, is in no way at odds with a cosmopolitan openness to artistic activity across the whole of Europe, Asia and beyond. This will be the standard work on Rothenstein in his time for years to come and required reading for anyone interested in the international artworld of the period.» (Elizabeth Prettejohn, Professor of History of Art, University of York) The artist, writer and teacher William Rothenstein (1872–1945) was a significant figure in the British art world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was a conspicuously cosmopolitan character: born to a German-Jewish family in the north of England, he attended art school in Paris, wrote the first English monograph on the Spanish artist Goya, and became a prominent collector and supporter of Indian art. However, Rothenstein’s cosmopolitanism was a complex affair. His relationship with his English, European and Jewish identities was ever-changing, responding to wider shifts on the political and cultural stage. This book traces those changes through the artist’s writings and through his art, analysing a range of paintings, drawings and prints created from the 1890s into the 1930s. This book – the first in-depth study of Rothenstein’s art – draws on extensive archival material to situate his practice within broader debates regarding transnational exchange and the development of modern art in Britain.Table of ContentsContents: Yorkshire, 1872–1935 – Continental Europe, 1889–1914 – London, 1895–1910 – Asia, 1890–1930.
£58.50
Peter Lang International Academic Publishers The Cultural Politics of In/Difference: Irish
Book SynopsisFrom the perspective of Irish Studies, this book seeks to interrogate the discourses and processes that produce and reproduce «Ireland’s cultural politics of in/difference», and its effects both in the material experience of Othered subjects and in their representation in cultural and literary forms. At the same time, it also examines strategies of dissent or resistance and possible alternatives that are being articulated both in the socio-political and the cultural arena, contributing to our communal thinking and imaginative creation of more effective forms of building community based on solid equity and social justice grounds.Table of ContentsContents: – Introduction – Systemic Crime and Social Disaffection in Benjamin Black’s Quirke Series: A Struggle for Difference – Erin’s Sons and Decent Daughters: The Biopolitics of Rural Masculinities in Patrick Kavanagh’s Tarry Flynn (1948) – Anne Griffin’s When All Is Said (2019): A Different Haunting Ageing Masculinity in Irish Fiction – The Guts (2013): The Quintessence of Roddy Doyle’s Art of Fiction – ‘Girls just wanna have fun’: Female Adolescence and Joyful Insurrection in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s The Dancers Dancing (1999) and Lisa McGee’s Derry Girls (2018– ) – Girls and Women in Rosaleen McDonagh’s Mainstream: Celebrating Difference – Bridging Differences or Burning Bridges: Transforming the Chorus in Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy – Death- worlds and Necropolitics of Abjection in Emma Donoghue’s ‘Counting the Days’ – From Virtual to Aborted Citizens: Childbirth and Citizenship in the Republic of Ireland – ‘New energies’ on ‘the threshold of an old art’: Democratic Sparkles in Contemporary Irish Poetry – The Violent Othering of Women and Animals in Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s and Luz Pichel’s Poetry – ‘Cork is very much male – and so is working class’: An Interview with Lisa McInerney.
£36.00
Peter Lang International Academic Publishers Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches,
Book Synopsis«Rethinking Black German Studies certainly pushes the envelope in Afro-German Studies. Its contributors travel the paths less traveled in the vast field of Afro-European studies, thus boldly enriching it by presenting salient, new, provocative, and topical material.» (Marilyn Sephocle (Monatshefte 113.1, Spring 2021) Black German Studies is an interdisciplinary field that has experienced significant growth over the past three decades, integrating subjects such as gender studies, diaspora studies, history, and media and performance studies. The field’s contextual roots as well as historical backdrop, nevertheless, span centuries. This volume assesses where the field is now by exploring the nuances of how the past – colonial, Weimar, National Socialist, post- 1945, and post-Wende – informs the present and future of Black German Studies; how present generations of Black Germans look to those of the past for direction and empowerment; how discourses shift due to the diversification of power structures and the questioning of identity-based categories; and how Black Germans affirm their agency and cultural identity through cultural productions that engender both counter-discourses and counter-narratives. Examining Black German Studies as a critical, hermeneutic field of inquiry, the contributions are organized around three thematically conceptualized sections: German and Austrian literature and history; pedagogy and theory; and art and performance. Presenting critical works in the fields of performance studies, communication and rhetoric, and musicology, the volume complicates traditional historical narratives, interrogates interdisciplinary methods, and introduces theoretical approaches that help to advance the field.Table of ContentsContents: German and Austrian Literature and History – Silke Hackenesch: «Hergestellt unter ausschließlicher Verwendung von Kakaobohnen deutscher Kolonien»: On Representations of Chocolate Consumption as a Colonial Endeavor – Nancy P. Nenno: Here to Stay: Black Austrian Studies – Meghan O’Dea: Lucia Engombe’s and Stefanie-Lahya Aukongo’s Autobiographical Accounts of Solidaritätspolitik and Life in the GDR as Namibian Children – Theory and Praxis – Kimberly Alecia Singletary: Everyday Matters: Haunting and the Black Diasporic Experience – Kevina King: Black, People of Color and Migrant Lives Should Matter: Racial Profiling, Police Brutality and Whiteness in Germany – Art and Performance – Kira Thurman: «Africa in European Evening Attire»: Defining African American Spirituals and Western Art Music in Central Europe, 1870s–1930s – Vanessa D. Plumly: Re-Fashioning Postwar German Masculinity Through Hip-Hop: The Man(l)y BlackWhite Identities of Samy Deluxe – Jamele Watkins: Performing Oppression and Empowerment in real life: Deutschland.
£19.00
Emerald Publishing Limited Interdisciplinary Essays on Monsters and the
Book SynopsisMonsters show us our deepest fears and anxieties, our discomfort with difference, and our simultaneous repulsion with and fascination for the other. Understanding that the concept of the monster can be a political tool used to dehumanize opponents and a psychological tool that can help us reconsider our beliefs, Interdisciplinary Essays on Monsters and the Monstrous analyses and explores the enduring influence and imagery of monsters and the monstrous on human societies. Introducing the innovative practice of “imagining monsters” as a way to rethink the key organizing principles in our society that we have traditionally taken for granted, the authors explore not only what monsters are but, most importantly, what monsters reveal about us. This cutting-edge collection of chapters challenges us to contradict worldviews, such as the binary of gender, that have organized our thinking for millennia. Showcasing discussions loaded with ontological, ideological, socio-political, and aesthetic implications, the monstrous is rendered uncannily familiar as our own public and domestic socio-political and psycho-emotional realities are subjected to scrutiny. Launching a critical question: when faced with an existential threat, what can we do? The authors show us how the study of monsters and monstrosity is perfectly positioned to answer. Tackling this question from a unique interdisciplinary scope, the research presented in the chapters are interesting reading for a variety of researchers interested in monsters and the monstrous from across sub-disciplines.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Monsters and the Monstrous; M. Susanne Schotanus Imagining Monsters Chapter 1. Malign by Design: Imaginatively Visualising Lovecraft and the Aesthetic of Monstrosity; Gerard Gibson Chapter 2. Racial Terror and the Struggle for Freedom in the HBO series Lovecraft Country; Elena Apostolaki Chapter 3. Media Makes the Monster: Battered and Abused to Monstrous Killer; Melissa Blackie Chapter 4. Talking Monsters; Gerard Gibson, Elena Apostolaki, and Melissa Blackie Gendered Monsters Chapter 5. Femicide on the Frontier: Analysing Motives behind the Femicide Crisis in Ciudad Juàrez; Chloë Isabel Olivo Chapter 6. Dragula and the Expansive Queerness of the Drag Supermonster; Russ Martin Chapter 7. X-Men: The Normative System Disguised as Mutant; Francesca Lopez Chapter 8. The Making of Monstrosity: Exploring the Monster Figure Through the Lens of Gender; Chloë Isabel Olivo, Russ Martin, and Francesca Lopez Domestic Monsters Chapter 9. Mothers, Monsters, & Media: Examining the Parallel Between Motherhood and the Monster; Megan Johnson Chapter 10. Extra-diegesis, Domesticity, and the Uncanny in the Transnational Films of Guillermo del Toro; Woodrow Hood Concluding Thoughts on Monsters and the Monstrous; Woodrow Hood and M. Susanne Schotanus
£70.29
Emerald Publishing Limited Cultures of Authenticity
Book SynopsisThis volume contains an Open Access Chapter. Authenticity has become a buzzword for our times. Much of the travel industry is built around the provision of ‘authentic’ experiences, global brands fight to be seen as ‘authentic’ and social media platforms are awash with arguments about the authenticity of this post or that vlogger. But what do we mean by authenticity? And why have these debates grown so dramatically in the last two decades? This collection explores the complex and at times controversial idea of authenticity. Addressing the concept from an interdisciplinary perspective and offering a diverse range of topical cases, the authors bring together the latest empirical and conceptual scholarship addressing authenticity and its centrality to debates about contemporary culture, media and society. In this way, the authors are able to pinpoint the growing significance of the concept of authenticity, the various ways in which different disciplines approach the topic, and possible ways of advancing the field across disciplines. With sections covering travel and tourism, branding and marketing, popular culture, social media and political communication this exciting and innovative collection will make fascinating and crucial reading for scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities, and helps to define what these different disciplines mean by authenticity.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction: Cultures of Authenticity; Thomas Thurnell-Read, Michael Skey, and Marie Heřmanová Part I: Tourism, Heritage and Place Chapter 2. Authenticity in Tourism Studies; Jillian M. Rickly Chapter 3. Negotiating the Spirit of Place: Towards a Performative Authenticity of Historic Buildings; Jonathan Djabarouti Chapter 4. Authenticity Issues in Nüshu Cultural Heritage in China: Authentication, Discourse, and Identity-Making; Xihuan Hu Chapter 5. Permanent Souvenirs: Traditional Tattoos and the Search for Authenticity in the Northern Philippines; Sam Pack and Justin Sun Part II: Branding, Consumption and Commodities Chapter 6. Authenticity in Material Culture, Consumption and Branding; Valerie Gannon and Andrea Prothero Chapter 7. Past and Present in Branding Authenticity: The taste of history; Iben Bredahl Jessen Chapter 8. One Brand, Multiple Authenticities: The Case of the World’s First Pay-Per-Minute Café; Alexandra Kviat OPEN ACCESS Chapter 9. Authentic Sports Branding in the Digital Age; Sian Rees Chapter 10. Authenticity, Distinction and Value in the Narratives of Chinese Consumers of Vintage Costume Jewellery; Jingrui Hu and Thomas Thurnell-Read Part III: Popular Culture Chapter 11. Introduction: Gender and Authenticity in Contemporary Popular Culture & Advertising; By Jilly Boyce Kay Chapter 12. Authenticity after Cock Rock: Emo and the Problem of Femininity; Judith Fathallah Chapter 13. ‘The Best a Man Can Be?’: Finding a Place for the ‘Real’ Man in Grooming Advertisements; Kai Prins Chapter 14. Keeping it Real? Dynamics of authenticity and branding in RuPaul’s Drag Race; Mads Møller Tommerup Andersen Part IV: Social Media Chapter 15. What I Talk About When I Talk About Authenticity: An Auto-Bibliographic Inquiry; Crystal Abidin Chapter 16. The Authenticity Gap: How Influencers Commodify Authenticity on Instagram; Lucy Frowijn, Frank Harbers, and Marcel Broersma Chapter 17. ‘I’m Always Telling You My Honest Opinion’: Influencers and Gendered Authenticity Strategies on Instagram; Marie Heřmanová Chapter 18. Liquid Figures, Solid Structures: The pursuit of an Authentic ‘Consumer Steward’ Identity in Online Communities; Yan Han Wang, Hélène de Burgh-Woodman, and Keri Spooner Part V: Politics and Political Communication Chapter 19. Authenticity in Politics and Political Communication Research: Analytic Concept and Political Issue; James Stanyer Chapter 20. Strategic Political Authenticity. How Populists Construct an Authentic Self; Christina Holtz-Bacha Chapter 21. Right Wing Co-option of the Perceived Authenticity of Citizen Journalism; Jessica Roberts Chapter 22. Post-authentic Engagement with Alternative Political Commentary on YouTube and Twitch; Daniel Jurg, Dieuwertje Luitse, Saskia Pouwels, Marc Tuters, and Ivan Kisjes Chapter 23. Exploring ‘the Authentic’ in Taiwanese Politics: An Intergenerational Analysis; Ssu-Han Yu and Miaoju Jian
£70.29
Liverpool University Press France in Flux: Space, Territory and Contemporary
Book SynopsisThe look and feel of metropolitan France has been a notable preoccupation of French literary and visual culture since the 1980s. Numerous writers, filmmakers and photographers have been drawn to articulate France’s contrasting spatial qualities, from infrastructural installations such as roads, rail lines and ports, to peri-urban residential developments and isolated rural enclaves. In doing so, they explore how the country’s acute sense of national identity has been both asserted and challenged in topographic terms. This wide-ranging collection of essays explores how the contemporary concern with space in France has taken shape across a range of media, from recent cinema, documentary filmmaking and photographic projects through to television drama and contemporary fiction, and examines what it reveals about the state of the nation in a post-colonial and post-industrial age. The impact of global flows of capital, trade and migration can be mapped through attention to the specificities of place and topography. Investigation of liminal locations, from seaboard cities and abandoned industrial sites to refugee camps and peasant smallholdings, interrogates the assertion of a national territory (and, by extension, a national identity) through the figure of the hexagon, and highlights the fluidities, instabilities and lines of flight which render it increasingly unsettled.Trade Review'An invaluable contribution to French cultural studies [...] France in Flux provides an enlightening multi-faceted vision of issues affecting our understanding of contemporary French space and identity.' Carrie Tarr, Kingston University'With the increasing pace of globalization and the rising specter of climate change, this timely volume addresses a viewpoint that, in my opinion, will greatly benefit courses on contemporary France, literature, or cinema. [...] By examining how the French react to the rapid social, demographic, and changes via photography, film, literature, readers can better understand this France in flux.'Kory Olson, H-France'One realizes that opening our eyes to the importance of these apparently trivial, depressing, or monotonous spaces is precisely the point of this creatively-focused and thoughtfully-organized collection of essays. [...] I found in this apparently impoverished terrain a greatly enriched view of contemporary France. [...] The book as a whole delivers, richly, on the same vision. [...] This book is an essential read for anyone with a foundation in French studies. It will also be valuable to geographers, historians of photography and film, and scholars of literature and environment.'Suzanne Black, Studies in 20th & 21st Century LiteratureTable of ContentsIntroductionAri J. Blatt and Edward WelchChapter 1: Angels of History: Looking Back at Spatial Planning in the Mission photographique de la DATAREdward Welch, University of AberdeenChapter 2: Disuse and Affect: Post-Industrial Landscapes of France’s Labour LostDerek Schilling, Johns Hopkins UniversityChapter 3: Depth of Field: Farmland and Farm Life in Contemporary French DocumentaryAlison J. Murray Levine, University of VirginiaChapter 4: Sylvain George’s Minor Mode, or Cinema at the Margins of its Fragile CommunityAnna-Louise Milne, University of London Institute in ParisChapter 5: Girlhood Luminosities and Topographical Politics: 17 Filles (Delphine and Muriel Coulin, 2011) and Bande de filles (Céline Sciamma, 2014)Fiona Handyside, University of ExeterChapter 6: Les Revenants, Tignes, and the Return of Postwar ModernizationCatherine E. Clark, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brian R. Jacobson, University of TorontoChapter 7: French Edgeland Poetics: Topography and Ecology in Jean Rolin’s Les ÉvénementsJoshua Armstrong, University of Wisconsin - MadisonChapter 8: Picturing a Nation of Local Places in the Observatoire photographique du paysage and France(s) territoire liquideAri J. Blatt, University of Virginia
£27.49
Liverpool University Press Humour in Contemporary France: Controversy,
Book SynopsisThis timely study sheds new light on debates about humour and identity in France, and is the first book about humour and identity in France to be published in either English or French that analyses both debates about Charlie Hebdo and standup comedy. It examines humour, freedom of expression, and social cohesion in France during a crucial time in France’s recent history punctuated by the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015. It evaluates the state of French society and attitudes to humour in France in the aftermath of the events of January 2015. This book argues that debates surrounding Charlie Hebdo, although significant, only provide part of the picture when it comes to understanding humour and multiculturalism in France. This monograph fills significant gaps in French and international media coverage and academic writing, which has generally failed to adequately examine the broader picture that emerges when one examines career trajectories of notable contemporary French comedians. By addressing this failing, this book provides a more complete picture of humour, identity, and Republican values in France. By focusing primarily on contemporary comedians in France, this book explores competing uses of French Republican discourse in debates about humour, offensiveness, and freedom of expression. Ultimately, it argues that studying humour and identity in France often reveals a sense of national unease within the Republic at a time of considerable turmoil.Trade ReviewReviews'This is a well-researched, accessible and timely book. It deals with very important issues in an informed and illuminating way.'John Marks, University of Nottingham‘Ervine’s monograph is one of the most fascinating and thought-provoking monographs I have recently read… making us think and reconsider our own assumptions as humour analysts and problematizing concepts and arguments we take for granted concerning, among many other things, the “innocuous”, “inconsequential”, “playful”, or “subversive” character of humour and its “primarily” entertaining function in the public sphere.’ Villy Tsakona, European Journal of Humour ResearchTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Humour: a serious issue in contemporary FranceChapter One: Charlie Hebdo: from controversy to consensus?Chapter Two: Dieudonné: from anti-racist activism to allegations of anti-SemitismChapter Three: Jamel Comedy Club: stand-up comedy à la française?Chapter Four: Islam and humour: more than just a debate about cartoonsConclusionsBibiliographyIndex
£24.99
Emerald Publishing Limited Social Media Influencing in The City of Likes:
Book SynopsisDubai’s audacious architecture and photographic locations attract social media ‘influencers’ from around the world. How has Dubai, once a small fishing village on the edge of a desert, morphed into a hyper-modern backdrop for this global phenomenon? How can we understand these interactions as our relationships with digital technologies undergo radical change? This timely research-based study reveals how micro-celebrities and Dubai’s visible economies influence the evolution of the Emirate. Taking a cutting edge post-digital approach, underpinned by cultural studies and social media theory, Social Media Influencing in The City of Likes presents a series of unique case studies and demonstrates how Dubai is considered not only an illusion of unlimited indulgence but also a city dependent on the emerging infrastructure of visible economies, visual attractions, and ‘Instagrammable’ locations. Evaluating the cases of multiple influencers, from local to transnational content creators, Hurley reveals how residents, non-citizens and migrant workers surviving as influencers in the city of ‘likes.’ Providing a much-needed de-Westernising perspectives of Dubai’s social media influencing industry within the broader context of global platform capitalism, Social Media Influencing in The City of Likes offers an important contribution to the field of social media through illustrating visible economies in a city circuited by social media influencing.Table of ContentsPart One Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Influencer-Genealogy Part Two Chapter 3. Postdigital Visualities Chapter 4. Postdigital Cityscape Part Three Chapter 5. Picture Dubai Chapter 6. Mediatizing-self Chapter 7. Heuristics of Influence Chapter 8. Orientalist Influence Chapter 9. Mobile Migrant Labour Chapter 10. Conclusion
£42.75
The History Press Ltd Cleopatra and the Undoing of Hollywood: How One
Book SynopsisThere had been stars before. There had been films prior to Cleopatra. But in all the cynical, greedy, magical, histrionic history of the movies, there had never been a combination like that of Elizabeth Taylor and Cleopatra.Other films may have taken more money, won more awards or attracted better reviews, but none have come close to the legend that is Cleopatra.What began in 1958 as a remake of the 1917 Theda Bara film, which starred Joan Collins and was projected to cost $2 million, would open five years later, having cost nearly twenty times as much. The budget had skyrocketed enormously as the production went through extravagant sets in two different countries, two directors and six leading men – and this was on top of Elizabeth Taylor’s $1 million fee.But it was the off-screen romance between the two on-screen leads that really cemented Cleopatra’s place in cinema history. Within weeks of Richard Burton’s arrival in Italy, he and Taylor embarked on a tumultuous and passionate love affair that kept the Cuban Missile Crisis off the front pages and was denounced by the Vatican. Cleopatra and the Undoing of Hollywood is a story of lust, excess and hubris – and how one film nearly brought Hollywood to its knees.
£17.00
University of Exeter Press Eating Disorders in Public Discourse: Exploring
Book SynopsisEating disorders remain little understood by the public, and sensationalist stories in the media have done little to dispel simplistic and reductionist perspectives. This edited volume uses a range of language-centred approaches to provide much needed critical in-depth analysis and interdisciplinary synthesis. The book brings together researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds – including communication and information studies, journalism, linguistics, mental health, nursing, psychology and public health – in a collective endeavour to explore the complex relationship between eating disorders, public discourse and lived experiences. Topics tackled include the use of stigmatising narrative frames, stereotypes and metaphors; identity construction in online spaces; the ways in which individuals affected by eating disorders interpret media representations; and how parents write about their experiences of caring for children with eating disorders. The volume synthesises evidence from a range of data types, including UK and international newspapers, social media, online communities, blogs and forums, apps and in-depth interviews, and reflects a variety of cultural perspectives, including those held in the United States, the UK, Spain and Turkey. It will be of interest to academics, practitioners, students, mental health advocates, and anyone interested in how we make sense of eating disorders.Table of ContentsContributors Introduction Laura A. Cariola Part I Traditional Media and Public Discourse Chapter 1. Eating Disorder Metaphors in the American and Spanish Press Carolina Figueras Bates Chapter 2. Animal Metaphors in Women’s Magazines: Their Potential Link with Eating Disorders Irene López-Rodríguez Chapter 3. Challenging the Stigma of a ‘Woman’s Illness’ and ‘Feminine Problem’: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of News Stories About Eating Disorders and Men Scott Parrott, Kimberly Bissell, Nicholas Eckhart and Bumsoo Park Chapter 4. Representations of Anorexia Nervosa in National Media: A Frame Analysis of the UK Press Matt Bowen and Rhian Waller Chapter 5. Representations of Eating Disorders in Turkish News Media Hayriye Gulec Chapter 6. Experiencing Newspaper Representations of Eating Disorders: An Interpretative Phenomenological Study Laura A. Cariola and Billy Lee Chapter 7. Narrative Experiences of Social Media and the Internet from Men with Eating Disorders Gareth Lyons, Sue McAndrew and Tony Warne Part II Participatory Media and User-Generated Discourse Chapter 8. Online Negative Enabling Support Group (ONESG) Theory: Understanding Online Extreme Community Communication Promoting Negative Health Behaviours Stephen M. Haas, Nancy A. Jennings and Pamara F. Chang Chapter 9. Eating Disorder Discourse in a Diet and Fitness App Community: Understanding User Needs Through Exploratory Mixed Methods Elizabeth V. Eikey, Oliver Golden, Zhuoxi Chen and Qiuer Chen Chapter 10. Using Qualitative and Mixed-Methods Approaches to Investigate Online Communication About Eating Disorders: A Reflective Account Dawn Branley-Bell Chapter 11. ‘I’ll Never Be Skinny Enough’: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of Pro-Anorexia Discourse Allyn Lueders Chapter 12. Lived Experiences of Parents Raising Children with Eating Disorders: A Thematic Analysis Emma O’Rourke and Laura A. Cariola Chapter 13. ‘Anorexia is Seen as a GOOD Thing When You’re Fat!’: Constructing ‘Eating Disorders’ in Fat Acceptance Blogs Wendy Solomons, Kate Davenport and Joanne McDowell Discussion Index
£67.50
Emerald Publishing Limited Haunting Prison: Exploring the Prison as an
Book SynopsisThrough a study of ten commercially published prison autobiographies, Haunting Prison: Exploring the Prison as an Abject and Uncanny Institution unveils how prison is narrativized and socially represented as an abject and uncanny institution, shedding new light on what prison is and does in Western carceral imaginations. Unveiling the layers of editing that position prison autobiographies between fact and fiction, Tea Fredriksson delves into how true crime’s claims to factuality coexist with the genre’s inescapable horror iconography. In a thematic analysis of how autobiographical prison stories make prison ‘come alive’ on the page as a site of abject horror and eerie unsettlement, Haunting Prison: Exploring the Prison as an Abject and Uncanny Institution explores how prison functions as a storied institution, both as a physical site of subterranean horrors and in terms of the many-layered stories told about prison and the bodies within it. Showcasing how prison expresses and distills the normative social anxieties of the global North-West and linking othering processes and unsettling likenesses as common narrational themes, Fredriksson reveals how prison is both an abject other to and a haunting, uncanny double of the outside world. A refreshing take on the study of true crime data, Haunting Prison: Exploring the Prison as an Abject and Uncanny Institution is appealing reading for scholars interested in qualitative research methods for studying crime, punishment and victimhood in popular culture.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Prison Imag(inari)es Chapter 2. Prison as an Abject (M)other Chapter 3. Subjective Abjection Chapter 4. The Haunting Prison Chapter 5. A Prison Chronotope Chapter 6. Prisons of Stone and Story
£71.25
Emerald Publishing Limited Digital Feudalism: Creators, Credit, Consumption,
Book SynopsisOver the past two decades, corporations and venture capitalists have adjusted business models to change the digital world. As a result, the global economy has undergone a massive shift, changing the way we work, consume and pay for things. Under this new ‘digital feudalism’, we find precarious employment via digital platforms, we buy goods and services in perpetuity through subscriptions, and we pay for it all with debt. Digital Feudalism explores this new moment in capitalism, and how reliant global economies have become on these processes of consumption, work, and debt.Trade ReviewStuart Hall famously argued that the cultural studies must maintain a “couplet” where culture and society, are articulated together in analysis and in theory. If Hall’s statements are a measure of best critical practices in cultural studies then Digital Feudalism measures up! Arditi’s development of sharp and inaugural contributions from Marxist, or critical-sociological, approaches into critique and analysis do more merely alert us to new cultural forms but, in Arditi’s hands, they allow us to view the totality of lived relations differently. Arditi illustrates how the features of our tech-laden and tech-mediated world though increasingly patterned on an ersatz hyper-modernism are, in fact, grotesque new relations of deference and servitude more closely associated with feudalism. Through an analysis of cases that exhibit the structures and practices associated with digital feudalism—subscription services, gig work, Amazon, influencers, the metaverse, and crowdfunding to name a few—Arditi reframes the strike-waves and the composition of movements to come with a warranted note of pessimism regarding capital’s "savage" capacities for adaptation. Stitching together the best of critical social theory and cultural studies, Arditi offers readers a clear and crucial lens on our current conjuncture. The prognosis? Digital Feudalism specifies that the center no longer holds. Rather, we face a less-comfortable, rougher, and far-less reasonable, democratic unfreedom beyond which there is no clear horizon line for better or for worse. -- Robert F. Carley, Associate Professor of International Affairs, Texas A&M University, College StationIn Digital Feudalism, Arditi draws a straight line from Netflix to the emerging Metaverse, warning us all that the only winners in a process of endless consumption and accelerated obsolescence are the big corporations who are taking more and more value from everyone else as part of an extractive economy. The book is compelling, highly readable for a range of audiences, and deeply unnerving, framed by Squid Game as a metaphor for the new digital era, with just one exception: everyone loses. -- Tama LeaverArditi’s Digital Feudalism offers an excellent overview of the pressing developments—the negative affordances—resulting from US-based digital technologies and the ideology that informs and nourishes it. It is a book well worth reading and acting upon. -- Marcus Breen, Communication Department, Boston College, USATable of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction: A Squid Game Reality Chapter 2. Buy More, Own Less: Subscriptions and Unending Consumption Chapter 3. Working on your own: Precarious labor in the gig economy Chapter 4. Debt Peonage and Primitive Accumulation Chapter 5. Amazon and Baron Bezos Chapter 6. Unboxed: Content Creators and influencers Chapter 7. Metaverse: enclosing new spaces Chapter 8. From Patron to Patreon: Crowdfunding Information Chapter 9. Conclusion: Fed-up While Locked Down
£17.09
Berghahn Books Velvet Retro: Postsocialist Nostalgia and the
Book Synopsis Scholars of state socialism have frequently invoked “nostalgia” to identify an uncritical longing for the utopian ambitions and lived experience of the former Eastern Bloc. However, this concept seems insufficient to describe memory cultures in the Czech Republic and other contexts in which a “retro” fascination with the past has proven compatible with a steadfast critique of the state socialist era. This innovative study locates a distinctively retro aesthetic in Czech literature, film, and other cultural forms, enriching our understanding of not only the nation’s memory culture, but also the ways in which popular culture can structure collective memory.Trade Review “…a tightly argued and well written book.” • Slavic Review “Velvet Retro insightfully contextualizes, and complicates our understanding of, post-socialist nostalgia in Czech popular culture, and offers a prescription for similar work across the former Soviet bloc… Representations of the communist past in film, literature, and consumer culture both reflected and inflected memory politics, as well as individuals’ efforts to situate themselves in both past and present. Pehe shows us that nostalgia isn’t always what we think it is. Nor was the communist past. Our rose-colored glasses shift shades, and meanings, as time passes.” • Journal of Modern History “Veronika Pehe’s Velvet Retro is a highly sophisticated contribution to the understanding of how post-communist Czech Republic relates to the last period of the communist era. Usefully, the author reminds us that our understanding of our past is always influenced by the present. She also rightly warns us that our constructions of the past are always subjective, and this is why a pluralist view of history is necessary.” • Studies in Eastern European Cinema “Pehe’s velvet retro argument is a compelling new take on memory politics in postsocialist Eastern Europe, and the book is very much a work of cultural studies…a well-argued book that scholars of postsocialism will find of great interest.” • Journal of Contemporary History “[The volume] constitutes a highly valuable contribution to the literature on the memory of the socialist past and the elements of nostalgia and retro in this memory. It also offers a new, more reflective, analytical reading of nostalgia by introducing an analytical understanding of ‘retro’ and the ‘remains of socialism’.” • H-Soz-Kult “Velvet Retro draws surprising and illuminating connections between various aspects of postsocialist culture and politics. It innovatively combines the history of popular culture, film and literary studies, memory studies, and comparative nationalism to establish a novel connection between retro aesthetics and postsocialist political culture.” • Pavel Kolář, University of Konstanz “A wide-ranging record of the cultural causes célèbres in the Czech Republic since the fall of Communism, this book studies what they show about how Czech artistic and media elites and the general public have chosen to commemorate the Communist period. It usefully resonates with the perceived disconnect—currently widespread internationally—between a metropolitan elite and the masses.” • Rajendra Chitnis, University College, OxfordTable of Contents Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction: Returning to the Past Chapter 1. Painting the Past Black and White: Czech Anticommunism after 1989 Chapter 2. The Past as Comedy: Representing Socialism in the 1990s Chapter 3. The Late 1990s: Contesting the Past through Popular Culture Chapter 4. Petty Heroism: Nostalgia for Resistance Chapter 5. The Politics and Aesthetics of Retro Chapter 6. Changing Memory Landscapes in the 2000s Conclusion: Socialism Remembered Bibliography Index
£22.75
Berghahn Books Perspectives in Motion: Engaging the Visual in
Book Synopsis Focusing on visual approaches to performance in global cultural contexts, Perspectives in Motion explores the work of Adrienne L. Kaeppler, a pioneering researcher who has made a number of interdisciplinary contributions over five decades to dance and performance studies. Through a diverse range of case studies from Oceania, Asia, and Europe, and interdisciplinary approaches, this edited collection offers new critical and ethnographic frameworks for understanding and experiencing practices of music and dance across the globe.Table of Contents List of illustrations Foreword Nanasipauʻu Tukuʻaho Acknowledgements Introduction: Engaging the Visual in Dance and Music Brian Diettrich and Kendra Stepputat Part I: Gaining Insights through Dance Visualizations Chapter 1. Kinetic Songscapes: Intersensorial Listening to Hula Kuʻi Songs Kati Szego Chapter 2. Using Motion Capture to Access Culturally Embedded and Embodied Movement Knowledge: A Case Study in Tango Argentino Kendra Stepputat Chapter 3. Transcription and Description: Tasks for Dance Research Egil Bakka Chapter 4. Moving into Someone Else’s Research Project: Issues in Collaborative Research Judy Van Zile Part II: Reconsidering Movement Structures Chapter 5. The Dancer's Voice: The Dancing Body as Sound Made Visible Jane Freeman Moulin Chapter 6. From Tonga to Malaysia: Utlilising Adrienne Kaeppler’s Analysis of Dance Structure to Understand Igal of the Sama-Bajau in East Malaysia Mohd Anis Md Nor Chapter 7. Courting as Structured Movement in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea Don Niles Part III: Music and Dance as Agency in Power Struggles Chapter 8. Disturbing Bodies: Danced Resistance and Imperial Corporeality in Colonial Micronesia Brian Diettrich Chapter 9. Greek Politicians' Dancing: Theatrical Representations of Political Power Irene Loutzaki Chapter 10. Lalåi: Somatic Decolonisation and Worldview-Making through Chant on the Pacific Island of Guåhan Ojeya Cruz Banks Part IV: Significance of the Tangible Chapter 11. Intangible Dancing as Tangible Museum Exhibits Elsie Ivancich Dunin Chapter 12. Creativity and Ceremony in the Repatriation of King Ng:tja’ Kirsty Gillespie Chapter 13. The Weave Within: Being, Seeing and Sensing in Barasili – Solomon Islands Irene Karongo Hundleby Part V: Perspectives from Adrienne L. Kaeppler Interview with Adrienne L. Kaeppler: A Conversation with the Kupuna Ricardo D. Trimillos and Adrienne L. Kaeppler Publications by Adrienne L. Kaeppler Jess Marinaccio (compiler) Index
£26.55
Berghahn Books Microhistories of Memory: Remediating the
Book Synopsis The West German novel, radio play, and television series Through the Night (Am grünen Strand der Spree, 1955–1960), which depicts the mass shootings of Jews in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II, has gradually regained popularity in recent years. Originally circulated in postwar West Germany, the Holocaust representations embedded in this multi-medium work have shaped cultural memories up until today. Using numerous archival sources, Microhistories of Memory presents three comprehensive case studies to explore production, reception, and circulation of cultural memories, demonstrating the power of informal communication and providing behind-the-scenes insight into postwar memory culture in West Germany.Table of Contents List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Prologue: Orsha 1941 Introduction: Why Three Stories about Through the Night? Chapter 1. First Story: Actors and Networks Chapter 2. Second Story: Authenticity and Affects Chapter 3. Third Story: Media and Technologies Conclusion: Dead Ends in Memory Culture Bibliography Filmography Index
£96.30
Amber Books Ltd Chernobyl
Book SynopsisOn 26 April 1986, the unthinkable happened near the Ukrainian town of Pripyat: two massive steam explosions ruptured No. 4 Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, immediately killing 30 people and setting off the worst nuclear accident in history. The explosions were followed by an open-air reactor core fire that released huge amounts of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere for the next nine days, spreading across the Soviet Union, parts of Europe, and especially neighbouring Belarus, where around 70% of the waste landed. The following clean-up operation involved more than half a million personnel at a cost of $68 billion, and a further 4,000 people were estimated to have died from disaster-related illnesses in the following 20 years. Some 350,000 people were evacuated as a result of the accident (including 95 villages in Belarus), and much of the area returned to the wild, with the nearby city of Pripyat now a ghost town. Chernobyl provides a photographic exploration of the catastrophe and its aftermath in 180 authentic photos. See the twisted wreckage of No. 4 Reactor, the cause of the nuclear disaster; marvel at historic photos of the clean-up operation, with helicopters spraying decontamination liquid and liquidators manually clearing radioactive debris; see the huge cooling pond used to cool the reactors, and which today is home to abundant wildlife, despite the radiation; explore the ghost town of Pripyat, with its decaying apartment blocks, empty basketball courts, abandoned amusement park, wrecked schools, and deserted streets.Table of ContentsContents: Chapter 1: Before the Disaster The Chernobyl Power Complex, lying about 130km (80 miles) north of Kiev, Ukraine, and about 20km (14 miles) south of the border with Belarus, consisted of four nuclear reactors. Units 1 and 2 were constructed between 1970 and 1977, while units 3 and 4 of the same design were completed in 1983. Two more reactors were planned, but in the aftermath of the disaster construction was cancelled. Within a 30km (20-mile) radius of the power plant, including the city of Pripyat and town of Chernobyl, the total population was approximately 140,000 at the time of the accident. Chapter 2: Catastrophe at Chernobyl A series of operator actions, including the disabling of automatic shutdown mechanisms, preceded the attempted test early on 26 April. By the time that the operator moved to shut down the reactor, the reactor was in an extremely unstable condition. The interaction of very hot fuel with the cooling water led to fuel fragmentation along with rapid steam production and an increase in pressure. The overpressure caused the 1000 t cover plate of the reactor to become partially detached, rupturing the fuel channels. Intense steam generation then spread throughout the whole core, causing a steam explosion. The clean up operation involved first the use of robots then army reservists to physically clear the debris and clean the remaining reactors. In some areas, workers could not stay any longer than 40 seconds before the radiation they received reached the maximum authorized dose a human being should receive in his entire life. Chapter 3: Pripyat – Urban Wasteland First built in the 1970s, Pripyat was a thriving town of 50,000 designed to serve the needs of the nuclear power plant, with local sports facilities, an amusement park, a fire station, police station, hospitals, and five schools with places for more than 6000 students. Today, the town stands deserted, with many of the public buildings, apartment blocks and businesses decaying and returned to nature. In 1986, the city of Slavutych was constructed to replace Pripyat, just 60km (40 miles) to the east, and provides homes for more than 20,000 people. Chapter 4: Belarus Counts the Cost The Polesie Reserve, established in 1988, now covers an area of more than 800 square miles and is divided into three regions: Brahin, Khoiniki, and Naroulia. Before the disaster, this largely agrarian region was home to more than 22,000 people spread across 95 villages, including numerous settlements of Old Believers, a schismatic Orthodox Christian sect. Now it’s home to moose, deer, lynx, and bison, as well as 48 of Belarus’s 189 species of endangered plants. Chapter 5: Chernobyl Today Reactor No. 4 was enclosed in a large concrete shelter, which was erected quickly (by October 1986) to allow continuing operation of the other reactors at the plant. The New Safe Confinement (NSC) structure was completed in 2017, having been built adjacent and then moved into place on rails. It is an arch 110 metres high, 165 metres long and spanning 260 metres, covering both unit 4 and the hastily-built 1986 structure. The cooling pond at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Pripyat, Ukraine) has abundant wildlife, despite the radiation present in the area. There are some accounts of wels catfish (Silurus glanis) growing up to 350 pounds and having a lifespan of up to 50 years. Index
£16.99
Amber Books Ltd The Cold War
Book Synopsis“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia” – Winston Churchill, 5 March 1946 Following the Allies’ victory in World War II, the European continent was soon divided into two broad zones of influence, with Eastern Europe coming under communist Soviet control, and the west under the oversight of the liberal democracies led by the United States. What developed over the next 40 years was a military and ideological stand-off that defined Europe and much of the world until 1989. In countries such as Germany, the Cold War divided families between the two zones of control. The two opponents competed for global dominance, building up ever greater arsenals of nuclear weapons, funding and fighting costly proxy wars in Southeast Asia, Africa and Central America, deploying espionage and trade embargoes, and even seeking technological advantage in space exploration, which became known as the “Space Race”. The Cold War provides a pictorial examination of this crucial era in 20th century history, offering the reader an instant understanding of the key events and figures in this 40-year period through 150 dramatic photographs.Table of ContentsContents: Introduction For the decades between 1946 and 1991, the Soviet Union and its allies in the Eastern Europe – the so-called ‘Soviet bloc’, united under the banner of the Warsaw Pact – and the United States of America and its allies in Western Europe, united under the banner of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – were involved in a massive geo- political and military stand-off, known as the Cold War. 1940s • Best of Enemies. Yalta Conference, Feb. 1945. Decided post-war reorganization of Europe. • Thinking the Unthinkable. Britain’s plans for ‘Operation Unthinkable’, June 1945. Didn’t happen, but intriguing straw in wind/indication of the way western strategists were thinking. NB Britain’s assumption of continued leadership role (despite recognition that plan couldn’t succeed without US help). All this about to change ... • Big Boy. Bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Aug. 1945 doesn’t just end WWII secures superpower status for USA • A War of Rhetoric. Stalin/Churchill speeches – incompatibility capitalism and communism (Feb. 1946)/’Iron Curtain’ (Mar. 1946) • Gifts to the Greeks. Civil war in newly-liberated Greece. Communists backed by USSR; monarchists by Britain. Civil War breaks out (May 1946). US support for Greek anti-communists (and, by implication, other comparable groups) firmed up in ‘Truman Doctrine’, March 1947. • Au Revoir, Indochine. First Indochina War, 1946–54. Against French, of course – though they had discreet support from USA, while Viet Minh openly assisted by Soviets. Final defeat for French at Dien Bien Phu, March–May 1954. (Maybe just mention Algeria here? Not sure it merits own entry in this context ...) Ho Chi Minh’s communists in control in North; succession of US-backed dictatorships in Republic of Vietnam. • ‘People’ Power. Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, Feb. 1948. Quick sketch of situation in other Iron Curtain countries. • Buying Allegiance? Marshall Plan inaugurated, Apr. 1948. (NB aid offered to Soviet Bloc as well but refused. Underlined East–West divide.) • Blockade! Berlin Blockade and Air Lift, Jun. 1948–May 1949. Dramatically highlighted Europe’s new divisions. • Colonial Concerns. Malayan Emergency, Jun. 1948–60. (Paradigmatic for succession of liberation struggles in former European colonies now vacated by Japan.) • The Yugoslav Exception. Tito’s split with Stalin, 1948–9. Leadership of Non- Aligned Movement, from 1955. • A Dismal Prophecy. Having already ruffled Soviet feathers with his satirical allegory Animal Farm (1945), Eng. writer George Orwell summed up the dismal achievements of the totalitarian in Nineteen Eighty-Four, published Jun. 1949. • Parity Restored. Soviet nuclear bomb tested, August 1949. • ‘Bamboo Curtain’. Establishment of PRC, Oct (and of west-orientated RoC, Taiwan, Dec.) 1949 1950s • ‘I have here in my hand ...’ Joe McCarthy speech, 9 Feb. 1950. Start of witchhunt. HUAC hearings; Hollywood Blacklist, etc. • The Red Rosenbergs. Julius and Ethel arrested as Soviet spies, July 1950. Convicted and executed 1953. (Despite strenuous campaign to save their posthumous reputations, and suggestions that the charges against them had been antisemitic in origin, discoveries in Soviet archives later confirmed their status as Russian agents. • A Friend in Francisco. A reluctant Pres. Truman prevailed on to mend fences with Franco’s dictatorship as bulwark against Communism. Marshall aid, hitherto withheld, made available to Spain from late 1950. • Cambridge Reds. Defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. Cambridge 5. Kim Philby to follow Jan. 1963. • ‘The Forgotten War’. Korea, Jun. 1950–Jul. 1953 • An Escalating Arms Race. British A-Bomb detonated, 3 October, 1952; US H-Bomb first detonated, 1 Nov, 1952 • ‘Dissolve the People ...’ Workers’ Uprising in E. Berlin, 1953. Violent suppression famously satirized by leftist playwright/poet Bertolt Brecht. • Playing Dominos. US interventions Iran, Guatemala, both March 1954. Eisenhower introduces idea of ‘domino theory’ in speech that April. • ‘His Intolerance, His Brutality and His Abuse of Power’. Stalin’s rule denounced by Khrushchev at 20th Congress Sov. Comm. Party, 25 Feb. 1956. • Repression Resumed. Soviet interventions Posnan, Poland, Jun., Hungary, Oct. 1956 • Stand-Off in Suez. Row over Nasser’s Egypt buying arms from the Soviet bloc prompts West to withdraw aid from Aswan Dam project. Nasser retaliates by nationalizing Suez Canal. Attempt by Britain, France and Israel to topple him. Suez Crisis, Oct. 1956 • The Frontier Above. Sputnik 1957; prompted Kennedy’s ‘New Frontier’ speech Jul. 1960. • Look Before You Leap. China inaugurates ‘Great Leap Forward’ Jan. 1958. Will end in catastrophic famine. • What the Doctor Ordered. Poet and novelist Boris Pasternak (author of Doctor Zhivago, 1957) wins Nobel Prize for Literature, 1958. Soviets furious. • ‘Socialism or Death!’ Cuban Revolution (broke out 1953) prevails, Jan. 1959. (Explicitly aligned with USSR from Dec. 1960.) • Law or Brigandage? Khrushchev’s shoe-banging address at UN, Sept. 1959. Angry at intrusions by US spy-planes. Main content of speech largely about USSR’s support for winding up of colonialism. • Road of Resistance. NVA begin opening up ‘Ho Chi Minh Trail’ to south, where Viet Cong are campaigning against Ngo Dinh Diem’s US-backed government. (Much of it ran through Laos, drawing that country into conflict later.) 1959. 1960s • The Man Who Fell to Earth. U2/Gary Powers, May 1960 • Red Flag Rift. Sino-Soviet Split. Jun. 1960. • Castro Comes to Harlem. Cuban leader arrives in NY to address UN; meets Malcolm X, Allen Ginsberg and other US figures as well as leading ‘Third World’ statesmen. Sept. 1960. • ‘No Longer Your Monkeys’. Life and death of Patrice Lumumba. Quote is from 1960. Republic of Congo (now DRC) independent from June 1960; Lumumba its PM but for just a few weeks before being overthrown by US-(and France- and Belgium-)backed Mobutu. Killed 17 Jan. 1961. • Counterrevolutionary Carve-Up. Bay of Pigs, Apr. 1961 • Dancing for Democracy. Rudolf Nureyev defects, Jun. 1961 • The Concrete Curtain. Berlin Wall built, Aug. 1961 • Superpower Poker. Cuban Missile Crisis 1963 • The False Flag of Freedom. Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Aug. 1964. • The Atomic Orient. China tests A-Bombs, Oct. 1964 • Confusion in the Caribbean. US Marines sent to Dominican Republic, Apr. 1965. Some years of instability after Trujillo’s death, 1961. Overthrow of military dictatorship spooked Johnson Administration after Cuba. Glance at situation Nicaragua, Haiti, etc. • Thunderstorm. US presence in Vietnam, established by JFK, 1961, beefed up with launch of Operation Rolling Thunder against NVA and Viet Cong positions in Vietnam and Laos (Feb. 1965) and dispatch of additional 60,000 US troops (more from allies) Apr. 1965 • Big News from Bangkok. Anti-communist ASEAN alliance launched, Aug. 1967. • ‘Shoot, Coward ...’ Che Guevara killed, La Higuera, Bolivia, 9 Oct. 1967 • ‘Never Forget History’. Quote’s from Indonesian leader Sukarno, now deposed at second attempt by Suharto (sworn in as Pres., Mar. 1968). Wave of anti- Communist repression ensues. • Spring Turns Sour. Prague Spring. Uprising crushed August, 1968. 1970s • The Storm Spreads. Tet Offensive of early 1968 had underlined ineffectiveness of what should have been irresistible US assault in Vietnam and Laos up to that point. Mounting US frustration reflected in extension of conflict to Cambodia, Apr. 1970. • Egypt Swings West. Nasser having died in 1970, Sadat’s ‘Corrective Revolution’ de-Nasserized the govt in Egypt. Soviet advisers expelled, May 1971. • Meeting Mao. Pres. Nixon’s visit to PRC, Feb. 1972. • Bobby Beats Boris. Fischer–Spassky, Reykjavik, Sept. 1972. • Saving Face. Loss of US momentum in Vietnam – and increasing ‘Vietnamization’ of the conflict, from 1970 (maybe even 1969 – despite ‘Storm Spreads’ entry above) led, slowly but inevitably, to ceasefire with North, Jan. 1973. • A Chilean Tragedy. Pinochet’s US-backed Coup in Chile, Sept. 1973. Death of Allende. • Aleksandr in Exile. Novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsy, Nobel Prizewinner 1970, stripped of Soviet citizenship, 1974. • The Scientist and the State. Physicist and peace activist Andrei Sakharov, Nobel Peace Prize, 1975. Not allowed to go to Stockholm to collect it. • Red Ruin. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge come to power in Cambodia, ushering in era of ‘Killing Fields’. • Fall of Saigon. Republic of Vietnam left fighting increasingly futile rearguard action. State finally collapsed and capital taken, Apr. 1975. • Democracy and Death. East Timor’s declaration of independence (Nov. 1975) sparks long and bloody programme of repression by Suharto’s Indonesia. • African Agony. Soviet- (and Cuban-)backed MPLA take power in Angola, Feb. 1976. Lengthy civil war with UNITA (till 2002) ensues. Parallel conflict in Mozambique, where FRELIMO govt beset by RENAMO insurgency, 1977–92. • A Thorn in the Flesh. CIA’s persistent (and sometimes bizarre) attempts to assassinate Castro over the years revealed by Church Committee, 1975–6. • A Post-Mao Mellowing? Death of Mao, 1976. Economic reforms in China announced by Deng Xiaoping, Dec. 1978 • Of Socialists and Sonsofbitches. Sandinistas come to power in Nicaragua, Jul. 1979 • Afghan Outrage. Soviet-supported government in Afghanistan tottering. Russian intervention, Dec. 1979 1980s • Time Out. Moscow Olympics. Boycotted by 66 countries, following US example, in aftermath of Afghanistan invasion. Jul./Aug. 1980. (Will lead to retaliatory boycott of LA, 1984.) • Faith, Hope and Solidarity. Poles inspired by visit of Pope JPII (1979). Gdansk shipyard protests, Poland: birth of Solidarity, Aug. 1980. Lech Walesa becomes international hero. (But Gen. Jaruzelski will introduce martial law, Dec. 1981.) • ‘Star Wars’. Couple of weeks after his ‘Evil Empire’ speech, Pres. Reagan’s SDI announced, Mar. 1983 • Rematch in Moscow. Shades of Fischer–Spassky (1972) in Karpov v Kasparov Chess Match, 1984–5 • A New Broom. Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet Premier (Mar. 1985). Policies of Perestroika and Glasnost. Moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. • Out of Afghanistan. After accession of Mohammad Najibullah’s National Reconciliation govt the previous year, Sov. withdrawal from Afghanistan begins, May 1988. • Drawing the Curtain. Gorbachev announces USSR will no longer intervene militarily in Eastern Europe, Dec. 1988. Consequences in e.g. Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania in months that follow. (See also Berlin Wall bit below ...) • Beijing Bloodshed. Massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Jun. 1989 • Breaking Down the Wall. Fall of Berlin Wall, Nov. 1990 1990s • Under New Management. Boris Yeltsin elected Pres. Russia, May 1990. (Though NB, Gorbachev’s USSR still exists, at least in theory, as overarching state.) • Breaking Free. Referendums in Baltic states and Georgia lead to their independence, early months of 1991; other Caucasian and Central Asian states follow in course of the year. • Red Reaction. Unsuccessful (but scary while it lasts) ‘August Coup’ in Russia, Aug. 1991. • A Post-Communist Christmas. Gorbachev resigns; Soviet Union essentially wound up; Yeltsin calls George H.W. Bush, who announces end of the Cold War. Time for a ‘New World Order’ ... • The End of History? Fukuyama’s study. Glance at other potential problems, from gangsterism in states of former Soviet Union to Islamic radicalism elsewhere.
£16.99
Amber Books Ltd Afghanistan
Book Synopsis“The United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy. We will rally the world. We will be patient. We’ll be focused, and we will be steadfast in our determination.” – President George W. Bush, September 12, 2001 On September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists hijacked four airliners, crashing them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon and near the White House, killing nearly 3,000 people. Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network quickly claimed responsibility for the outrage. The aftermath still reverberates around the world today, with President Bush declaring a “War on Terror” against al-Qaeda and its allies. By October, the US military was carrying out air strikes against al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, and US ground forces were deployed against bin Laden’s protectors, the incumbent Taliban regime. By June 2002 the Taliban had been ousted and a US-friendly government established in the capital, Kabul. But the campaign didn’t end there, as American and allied NATO forces became bogged down for the next two decades. Afghanistan provides a photographic exploration of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, from the first deployment of US special forces in October 2001 to the final withdrawal of US forces in August 2021. In between, the book offers a compact overview of the operations fought by the US and NATO forces against the Taliban/al- Qaeda insurgency, including the bombing of the Tora Bora cave complex, Operation Anaconda, President Obama’s deployment surge, the Navy SEAL’s assassination of Osama bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan, the development of a local Afghan army, police force and government, the eventual withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of the Afghan administration amidst renewed Taliban pressure. Afghanistan offers a concise pictorial history of the war that came to define US policy in Central Asia and the Middle East in the 21st century.Table of ContentsContents:Prologue: Afghanistan longer history – British invasions, Soviet invasion 1980s.Introduction: 9/11 Terror Attack Al-Qaeda operatives hijack four commercial airliners, crashing them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. A fourth plane crashes in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Close to three thousand people die in the attacks.1: The Response: Operation Enduring Freedom President Bush signs into law a joint resolution authorizing the use of force against those responsible for attacking the United States on September 11. The U.S. military, with British support, begins a bombing campaign against Taliban forces, officially launching Operation Enduring Freedom. Taliban regime unravels rapidly after its loss at Mazar-e- Sharif on November 9, 2001, to forces loyal to Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek military leader. After tracking al-Qaeda leader bin Laden to the well-equipped Tora Bora cave complex southeast of Kabul, Afghan militias engage in a fierce two-week battle (December 3 to 17) with al-Qaeda militants. It results in a few hundred deaths and the eventual escape of bin Laden, who is thought to have left for Pakistan on horseback. March 2002: Operation Anaconda, the first major ground assault and the largest operation since Tora Bora, is launched against an estimated eight hundred al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the Shah-i-Kot Valley south of the city of Gardez (Paktia Province). Battle of Takur Ghar – The battle saw three helicopter landings by the U.S. on the mountain top, each greeted by direct assault from al-Qaeda forces.2: Reconstructing Afghanistan March 2002: Chairman of the Interim Administration of Afghanistan Karzai is picked is picked to head the country’s transitional government. May 2003: During a briefing with reporters in Kabul, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declares an end to “major combat.” August 2003: NATO assumes control of international security forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan, expanding NATO/ISAF’s role across the country. It is NATO’s first operational commitment outside of Europe. 2004: In historic national balloting, President Karzai becomes the first democratically elected head of Afghanistan. 2005.3: Lingering Insurgency 2006: Violence increases across the country during the summer months, with intense fighting erupting in the south in July. The number of suicide attacks quintuples from 27 in 2005 to 139 in 2006, while remotely detonated bombings more than double, to 1,677. With violence against nongovernmental aid workers increasing, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates criticizes NATO countries in late 2007 for not sending more soldiers. 2009: U.S. Marines launch a major offensive in southern Afghanistan, representing a major test for the U.S. military’s new counterinsurgency strategy. President Obama announces a major escalation of the U.S. mission. In a nationally televised speech, the president commits an additional thirty thousand forces to the fight, on top of the sixty- eight thousand in place. 2010.4: Bin Laden Found Al-Qaeda leader bin Laden, responsible for the 9/11 attacks, is killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan. The death of the United States’ primary target for a war that started ten years ago fuels the long-simmering debate about continuing the Afghanistan war. President Obama outlines a plan to withdraw 33,000 troops by the summer of 2012.5: A Bloody Resurgence 2011: Amid a resilient insurgency, U.S. goals in Afghanistan remain uncertain and terrorist safe havens in Pakistan continue to undermine U.S. efforts. 2013: Afghan forces take the lead in security responsibility nationwide as NATO hands over control of the remaining ninety-five districts. The U.S.-led coalition’s focus shifts to military training and special operations-driven counterterrorism. 2017: The United States drops its most powerful non-nuclear bomb on suspected self-proclaimed Islamic State militants at a cave complex in eastern Nangarhar Province. 2018: The Taliban carry out a series of bold terror attacks in Kabul that kill more than 115 people amid a broader upsurge in violence. The attacks come as the Trump administration implements its Afghanistan plan, deploying troops across rural Afghanistan to advise Afghan brigades and launching air strikes against opium labs to try to decimate the Taliban’s finances. 2018.6: Peace Talks and Withdrawal U.S. envoy Khalilzad and the Taliban’s Baradar sign an agreement that paves the way for a significant drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and includes guarantees from the Taliban that the country will not be used for terrorist activities. President Biden announces that the United States will not meet the deadline set under the U.S.-Taliban agreement to withdraw all troops by May 1 and instead releases a plan for a full withdrawal by September 11, 2021. Facing little resistance, Taliban fighters overrun the capital, Kabul, in August 2021, and take over the presidential palace hours after President Ghani leaves the country.
£16.99
Atlantic Books Twenty-First-Century Tolkien: What Middle-Earth
Book Synopsis'Fascinating.... Wonderfully exhilarating.' Mail on SundayFinalist for The Tolkien Society Best Book AwardAn engaging, original and radical reassessment of J.R.R. Tolkien, revealing how his visionary creation of Middle-Earth is more relevant now than ever before.What is it about Middle-Earth and its inhabitants that has captured the imagination of millions of people around the world? And why does Tolkien's visionary creation continue to fascinate and inspire us eighty-five years on from its first appearance?Beginning with Tolkien's earliest influences and drawing on key moments from his life, Twenty-First-Century Tolkien is an engaging and radical reinterpretation of the beloved author's work. Not only does it trace the genesis of the original books, it also explores the later adaptations and reworkings that cemented his reputation as a cultural phenomenon, including Peter Jackson's blockbuster films of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and the highly anticipated TV series The Rings of Power.Delving deep into topics such as friendship, failure, the environment, diversity, and Tolkien's place in a post-Covid age, Nick Groom takes us on an unexpected journey through Tolkien's world, revealing how it is more relevant now than ever before.Trade ReviewFascinating... Wonderfully exhilarating... In a rousing finale, Groom suggests that Tolkien is exactly the writer we need at this particularly perilous moment, as we emerge, Hobbit-like, from our holes and try to imagine a new kind of life in this post-pandemic age. * Mail on Sunday *Each chapter displays a mastery of both the works in question - whether books or adaptations - and of the vast corpus of Tolkien scholarship. Narratives of literary production or of Hollywood bureaucratic processes rarely come as absorbing as Groom's... Illuminating... Groom's explorations of Tolkien's sources... are always provocative and often ingenious. * Literary Review *This fascinating book explores The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings from their genesis through all the different major adaptations of the Tolkien 'legendarium.' It starts off neatly summarizing Tolkien's life and influences - such as his friendship with W.H. Auden and C.S. Lewis. * Wall Street Journal *Provides a fresh study of the impact Tolkien has on contemporary readers' and viewers' understanding of good, evil, war, and conflict. * Library Journal *A loving ode to J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series. An adventure worth taking. * Publishers Weekly *A modern journey through Tolkien's work, which has engendered a rich field of cultural activity. A thought-provoking examination. With the authority of extensive research, Groom unpacks the reasons for the appeal of Tolkien to a new generation. * Kirkus Reviews *An excellent, perceptive and superbly crafted analysis of the way our ever-changing world has responded to Tolkien. A stunning achievement. -- Brian Sibley, award-winning author of The Fall of NúmenorTable of Contents1: Myriad Middle-Earths 2: Uncertainty 3: The Ambiguity of Evil 4: The Hesitancy of Good 5: Lucid Moments 6: Just War 7: Conclusion: Weird Things
£19.00
Emerald Publishing Limited Navigating Tattooed Women’s Bodies: Intersections
Book SynopsisAlthough tattoos have become increasingly available to us, there are still spaces where they are not accepted, and even 'othered'. Looking at the UK, where media discourses are often unfavourable towards tattooed women discussing their own bodies, this book explores how we understand tattooed women’s bodies in the UK – through the lens of gender and class. Unpacking themes which focus on how femininity is embodied, and how unwritten rules are broken or followed, Charlotte Dann demonstrates how meaning is key to our understanding of female body art. Drawing our attention to how traditional constructions of femininity are conformed to and resisted against, Dann positions media discourses of trends, regret, and transformation alongside tattooed women’s own thoughts of their tattoos. The chapters uncover how tattoos relate to the embodiment, or resistance, of femininity where the body plays a complex role – in care, in the community, and in families. Delving into the societal norms about what women should and shouldn’t do with their bodies, and looking specifically at motherhood, employment, and consumption, Dann demonstrates how meaning-making is critical to how women’s tattooed bodies are understood, and how personal narratives take centre stage in the justification for tattoos. Providing a fuller understanding of the nuances particular to tattooed women, this book equips readers to reconstruct how we theorize femininity and the body.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Tattooed bodies in the media Chapter 3. Reading the tattooed feminine body Chapter 4. Following (and breaking) the rules Chapter 5. Meaning is key Chapter 6. Embodying femininity Chapter 7. Conclusions
£65.54
Anthem Press Bonfires of the American Dream in American
Book SynopsisHow could American social solidarity have so collapsed that we cannot even cooperate in fighting a pandemic? One problem lies in how our values mutate and intersect in an era of runaway high-end inequality and evaporating upward mobility. Under such conditions, the American Dream’s seeming to suggest, falsely, that those who succeed economically are “winners,” while the rest of us are “losers,” puts it in dire conflict with our traditions of democracy and egalitarianism. In Bonfires of the American Dream, through close cultural studies of classic novels and films – Atlas Shrugged, The Great Gatsby, It’s a Wonderful Life, and The Wolf of Wall Street – Daniel Shaviro helps to provide a better understanding of what went wrong culturally in America.Trade Review“This is a wonderful book, a page-turner about popular American thinking about the American Dream. Shaviro shows how much of our cultural experience consists of economic fantasies, and how much in turn those fantasies shape our culture and our politics. Brilliant, accurate, surprising, and unfailingly interesting.” — William Flesch, Professor of English, Brandeis University, USA.“These readings of film and literature are subtle, convincing, and fascinating. Further, since they are written in short sentences, in plain yet lively prose, with carefully explicit conclusions, they are wholly accessible to the lay reader. Their theme is of exceptional interest to us all, in our anxious perception that American democratic values may be on course for disintegration.” — Professor Chris Fitter, Department of English and Communication, Rutgers University, USA.“A selective but fascinating tour of American popular culture (Atlas Shrugged, The Great Gatsby, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Wolf of Wall Street) that illuminates destructive discrepancies between American ideals and practices and bitter divisions between rival ideals since the founding. One wonders how America has survived—and if it should.” — Professor Steven Johnston, Political Science Department, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA.Table of ContentsCHAPTER 1 Introduction; CHAPTER 2 Winners and Losers in Russell Conwell’s Acres of Diamonds Lecture and the John Galt Speech in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged; CHAPTER 3 Pessimism for Optimists and Voyeurism for Pessimists in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby; CHAPTER 4 Bailey Versus Belfort: Comparing It’s a Wonderful Life and The Wolf of Wall Street; CHAPTER 5 Conclusion; Bibliography; Index 125
£28.49
Anthem Press Black Africa and the US Art World in the Early
Book SynopsisThis book will explore several critical connections between Black African objects and white Western aesthetics and artwork in the United States from the late 1800s until 1939. Drawing from primary source materials and various scholarship in the field (philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, museum studied, art history, cultural studies), the book provides an analysis of the threads of white supremacy which run through early scholarship and understandings of Black African object within the United States and how scholars use the objects to reinforce narratives of “primitive” Black Africa and civilized, advanced white Europe and the United States.Trade ReviewThis book is an interesting and innovative study of how connections between Black African objects and white Western aesthetics and artwork supported and (re)produced the ideology of white supremacy in the United States between the late 1800s and the beginning of World War II. It shows how social and political issues that are acute up to now manifested themselves in specific ways in the art world in that turbulent era. Importantly, Mullins’ book also convinces that Africa has always been an important point of reference for American cultural, intellectual and sociopolitical life. —Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Institute for African Studies.P. A. Mullins presents a strong case for researchers, scholars, and lay art historians to study and unravel the politics of the art world in national museums with displays about Africa. The scholarship is original and contributes to knowledge in terms of exposing not-so-obvious denials and revisionist US history.—Ronald J. Stephens, Professor of African American Studies at Purdue University.Table of Contents1.The Enlightenment and White Supremacy; 2.Objects, Sensation, Truth; 3.Black African Aesthetics; 4.Appropriating Black Africa; 5.Black African Art?; 6.Collecting Black Africa, Exhibiting White Supremacy; 7.Ancestral Contact: Victorian Phantasmagoria, Artists, and Black Africa; 8.Diasporic Nostalgia: The Harlem Renaissance and Black African Objects; 9.Blackness after the Renaissance; 10.Twenty-First-Century Colonialism
£72.00
Channel View Publications Ltd Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in
Book SynopsisThis book examines the complexities and dynamics in the relationship between intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and tourism, taking as a focus the ICH at the World Cultural Heritage site in Lijiang, China. It explores the tensions between the protection of authenticity of ICH and the use of ICH in tourism commodification, and considers the perspectives of governmental officials, experts, local ICH practitioners and community members. The volume aims to redefine the concepts of authenticity, integrity and continuity from the perspective of the ICH practitioners and to provide theoretical guidelines for developing a sustainable ICH tourism using a people-based approach. It will be a helpful resource for students, researchers and practitioners in heritage studies, tourism, anthropology, cultural management and Chinese studies.Trade ReviewThis fascinating study explores a minority population seeking to retain its identity, values and culture while performing their 'otherness' for millions of visitors annually and in a situation of unbalanced relations of power. Su’s insightful analysis of tensions between national and international ICH discourses and policies and the locals’ 'practitioner ICH making' will prompt readers to consider heritage tourism discordances elsewhere. * Helaine Silverman, University of Illinois, USA *Based on empirical work from Yunnan Province, China, this singular volume delivers thoughtful insights into authenticity, cultural sustainability, commoditization, management challenges and opportunities, and many other profound concepts in ways other scholars heretofore have been unable to do. This book must have a place on the desks and reading lists of everyone interested in intangible heritage and tourism. * Dallen J. Timothy, Arizona State University, USA *This book makes an exciting contribution to the study of intangible cultural heritage in China. The scale of domestic tourism growth in the country has been extraordinary, and Su's analysis really gets to the heart of how world heritage designation can profoundly transform the lives, livelihoods and the cultural fabric of a place, in this case Lijiang. To understand these complex relations, the book productively engages with, and thus nicely contributes to, the literatures on critical tourism and critical heritage studies. * Tim Winter, National University of Singapore, Singapore *This book makes a significant contribution to the literature on critical tourism and heritage studies, enriching our understanding of these complex fields. It should find a prominent place on the desks and reading lists of individuals intrigued by intangible heritage and tourism. Specifically, it offers substantial value to students, academics, and practitioners across a range of disciplines. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in heritage studies, tourism, anthropology, cultural management, and Chinese studies, both at the local and global levels. * Xiaoxiao Fu, University of Central Florida, USA, Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2024 *This book provides a focused examination of China’s Lijiang ICH tourism, appealing to readers who may lack prior knowledge of Chinese culture or history but are intrigued by China’s ethnic ICH tourism. In general, this work has a commendable inclination towards good research taste and broad international horizons in its scholarly pursuits. This book is strongly recommended for postgraduates in the field of tourism and heritage studies, as well as scholars examining ICH tourism matters. * Yawen Xu, Nanchang University, China, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2024 *Table of ContentsFigures, Tables, Photos Abbreviations Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Critical Theorisation of ICH Chapter 3. ICH Protection and ICH Tourism in China Chapter 4. ICH and Tourism in Lijiang Chapter 5. Typical ICH Tourism Programmes in Lijiang Chapter 6. Value and Authenticity Chapter 7. Commodification and Integrity Chapter 8. Continuity and Transmission Chapter 9. The Sustainable Development of ICH Tourism References Index
£98.96
Wits University Press Entanglement: Literary and cultural reflections
Book SynopsisThis original book is a much needed and far reaching exploration of post-apartheid South African life worlds. ""Entanglement"" aims to capture the contradictory mixture of innovation and inertia, of loss, violence and xenophobia as well as experimentation and desegregation, which characterises the present. The author explores the concept of entanglement in relation to readings of literature, new media forms and painting. In the process, she moves away from a persistent apartheid optic, drawing on ideas of sameness and difference, and their limits, in order to elicit ways of living and imagining that are just starting to take shape and for which we might not yet have a name. In the background of her investigations lies a preoccupation with a future-oriented politics, one that builds on largely unexplored terrains of mutuality while being attentive to a historical experience of confrontation and injury. This book works with the idea of entanglement - a rubric within which we can begin to meet the challenge of the 'after apartheid'. Entanglement offers a means by which to draw into our analyses those sites in which what was once thought of as separate come together or find points of intersection in unexpected ways. It is an idea which signals largely unexplored terrains of mutuality, wrought from a common, though often coercive and confrontational, experience. It points away from a time of resistance towards a more ambivalent moment, in which the time of potential, both latent and actively surfacing in South Africa, exists in complex tandem with new kinds of closure and opposition.Trade Review"... a finger-on-the-pulse report from the cultural frontline of contemporary South Africa. Elegantly and lucidly written, it offers a penetrating and unique analysis of the complex and paradoxical forms of culture emerging in South Africa now. -Isabel Hofmeyr, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg"
£22.50
Wits University Press African-Language Literatures: Perspectives on
Book SynopsisAfrican-language writing is in crisis. The conditions under which African writing developed in the past (only remotely similar to those of Western models), resulted in an inability of Eurocentric literary models to explore the hermeneutic world of African language poetics inherited from the oral and the modern worlds. Existing modes of criticism in the study of this literary tradition are often unsuited for a nuanced understanding of the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects at play in the composition, production and reading of these literatures.In African-Language Literatures, Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi charts new directions in the study of African-language literatures generally, and isiZulu fiction in particular. She proposes that African popular arts and culture models be considered as a solution to the debates and challenges informing discourses about expressive forms in African languages. Mhlambi shows how this approach brings into relationship the oral and written forms, the local and the international, and elitist and popular genres, and she places the resultant emerging, eclectic culture into its socio-historical context. She then uses this theoretical approach to explore – in a wide range of cultural products – what matters or what is of interest to the people, irrespective of social hierarchies and predispositions.It is the author’s contention that, contrary to common perception, the African-language literary tradition displays diversity, complexity and fluidity, and that this should be seen as an invitation to look at systems of meaning which do not hide their connections with the facts of power and material life.
£22.50
Wits University Press Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa
Book SynopsisThis book explores the power of print and the politics of the book in South Africa from a range of disciplinary perspectives - historical, bibliographic, literary-critical, sociological, and cultural studies. The essays collected here, by leading international scholars, address a range of topics as varied as: the role of print cultures in contests over the nature of the colonial public sphere in the nineteenth century; orthography; iimbongi, orature and the canon; book-collecting and libraries; print and transnationalism; Indian Ocean cosmopolitanisms; books in war; how the fates of South African texts, locally and globally, have been affected by their material instantiations; photocomics and other ephemera; censorship, during and after apartheid; books about art and books as art; local academic publishing; and the challenge of 'book history' for literary and cultural criticism in contemporary South Africa.Trade ReviewPrint, text and book cultures in South Africa is a field-defining contribution to the country's literary scholarship. Andrew van der Vlies's introductory essay maps the conceptual terrain in a systematic and engaging way, illustrating its relevance to South Africa's literary and cultural history. The essays that follow demonstrate the archival richness and liveliness of the field, while opening doors to future research. Beyond South Africa, the book will be exemplary in showing how book histories develop under postcolonial conditions. - David Attwell, author of J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing (1993) and Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History (2005), and co-editor of The Cambridge History of South African Literature (2012)Table of ContentsPrint cultures and colonial public spheres; local/global: south african writing and global imaginaries; three ways of looking at coetzee; questions of the archive and the uses of books; orature, image, text; ideological exigencies and the fates of books; new directions.
£29.75
Wits University Press Fight for Democracy: The ANC and the media in
Book SynopsisFight for Democracy is a penetrating and critical scrutiny of the ANC’s treatment of the print media since the inception of democracy in 1994. In this book, Glenda Daniels does not hide behind a veil of detachment, but instead makes a passionate argument for the view that newspapers and journalists play a significant role in the deepening of democratic principles.Daniels’ study goes to the heart of current debates and asks why the ANC, given its stated commitment to the democratic objectives of the Constitution, is so ambivalent about the freedom of the media. What would be the consequences of a revised media policy on democracy in South Africa, and at what cost to freedom of expression?Daniels examines the pattern of paranoia that has crept into public discourse about the media and the ANC, and the conflictual relationship between the two. She argues that the ANC’s understanding of democracy, transformation and development entails (amongst other things) the rallying of the nation behind its leadership as the premier liberation movement and democratically elected representative of the majority while morally coercing black journalists and professionals into loyalty. Daniels challenges the dominant ANC view that journalists are against transformation and that they take instruction from the owners of the media houses; in short that they are ‘enemies of the people’.Fight for Democracy is a timely publication in the context of the impending clampdown on media freedom and the twin threats of the Protection of State Information Bill (Secrecy Bill) and the Media Appeals Tribunal, both of which signify closures in South Africa’s democracy.Written in a polemical style, this is a work of activism that will be essential reading for the informed public as well as those working in Journalism and Media Studies. It should interest all democrats, members of political organisations as well as academics and Right2Know activists, locally and internationally.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The ANC and the media post-apartheid; The relationship between the media and democracy; Media's challenges: legislation and commercial imperatives; Race, identity and 'The Media'; Freedom of expression: the case of Zapiro; Social fantasy: the ANC's gaze and the media appeals tribunal; The Sunday Times: Mondli versus the former Minister of Health, Manto; What is 'Developmental Journalism'?; Concluding reflections: Where is democracy headed?
£22.50
Zone Books The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of
Book Synopsis
£17.09
Zone Books Civic Storytelling – The Rise of Short Forms and
Book Synopsis
£21.25
Springer Nature Switzerland AG Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society
Record contracts have been the goal of aspiring musicians, but are they still important in the era of SoundCloud? Musicians in the United States still seem to think so, flocking to auditions for The Voice and Idol brands or paying to perform at record label showcases in the hopes of landing a deal. The belief that signing a record contract will almost infallibly lead to some measure of success— the “ideology of getting signed,” as Arditi defines it—is alive and well. Though streaming, social media, and viral content have turned the recording industry upside down in one sense, the record contract and its mythos still persist. Getting Signed provides a critical analysis of musicians’ contract aspirations as a cultural phenomenon that reproduces modes of power and economic exploitation, no matter how radical the route to contract. Working at the intersection of Marxist sociology, cultural sociology, critical theory, and media studies, Arditi unfolds how the ideology of getting signed penetrated an industry, created a mythos of guaranteed success, and persists in an era when power is being redefined in the light of digital technologies.
£22.49
Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Preparing Modern Languages Students for
Book SynopsisThis book informs and encourages aspiring lecturers and teaching staff in Modern Languages who prepare students for using their language skills in and out of the classroom. Drawing on pedagogical, psychological and language-specific concepts of learning, the book illustrates how such concepts can enhance students’ experience of transitioning from school to university to residence abroad, and beyond. A key feature of the study is an investigation of students’ fragility as they transition from school to university and, only two years later, from their home institution to their placements abroad. Interventions intended to «teach» transition are shown to be unsuccessful, as the learning through such interventions tends to remain superficial. First-year students are shown to benefit from trust-building between students and teachers and early networking among their peers to build self-confidence. In contrast, prior to studying abroad students benefit more from intercultural awareness training, including linguistic, cultural, social, academic and/or emotional aspects. The book serves as a useful basis for discussion in Modern Languages departments about curriculum change and university policy with regard to resourcing the Humanities.Table of ContentsCONTENTS: Ruth Whittle with Sandra Salin: Introduction – Ruth Whittle: Profile of a Modern Languages Student: A Story of Transitions – Ruth Whittle: Where is Potential Lost and Why? Modelling «Difference» – Sandra Salin: Assessing How Students Cope with Change, Challenges and Difference through Year Abroad e-Portfolio Blogs – Ruth Whittle: Case Studies on Change Management from Induction to Graduation and Beyond – Sandra Salin: The Better French Living Project: Preparing Students for «Difference» in France – Ruth Whittle: Conclusions and Outlook.
£54.63
Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Unheimliche Heimatraeume: Repraesentationen von
Book SynopsisDas Unheimliche (oder auch das Verdrängte, nach Freud) fördert eine tiefere Einsicht in die uns umgebende Realität und somit eine Reflexion, die der herrschenden Akzeleration des Alltags, der Oberflächlichkeit, dem Narzissmus und Hedonismus unserer Gesellschaft entgegenwirkt. Das Unheimliche bietet eine Chance, um Denk- und Handlungsmuster, die unser Selbst und unsere Realität gestalten (Heimat) zu überdenken und darauf zu reagieren. Ziel dieses Bandes ist die Erweiterung des Heimatkonzeptes um das Unheimliche mit dem Anspruch, Heimat zu einem nützlichen Rahmen für die Gestaltung offener Lebens- und Kommunikationsformen zu instrumentalisieren und dem Missbrauch des Begriffs als Grundpfeiler identitärer Denkströmungen gegenzusteuern.Table of ContentsAktualität des Heimatbegriffs – Entwicklung vom traditionellen Heimatkonzept des Vertrauten hin zu einem heutigen unheimlichen, und parallele Behandlung in der Literatur – Aktualität bzw. Entwicklung des Begriffs des Unheimlichen – Funktion der Emotionen zur Homogenisierung der Unterschiede und zur Verstärkung gesellschaftlicher Asymmetrien
£68.44
Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Gothic Metamorphoses across the Centuries:
Book SynopsisThis collection of essays brings together an international team of scholars with the aim to shed new light on various interconnected aspects of the Gothic through the lens of converging critical and methodological approaches. With its wide-ranging interdisciplinary perspective, the book explores the domains of literary, pictorial, filmic, televisual and popular cultural texts in English from the eighteenth century to the present day. Within these pages, the Gothic is discussed as a dynamic form that exceeds the concept of literary genre, proving able to renovate and adapt through constant processes of hybridisation. Investigating the hypothesis that the Gothic returns in times of cultural crisis, this study maps out transgressive and experimental modes conducive to alternative experiences of the intricacies of the human (and post-human) condition.Table of ContentsGothic fictions – Genre and mode – Cross pollination – Cultural studies – Film and television studies
£67.50
Verlag Vittorio Klostermann Technik Und Medien Bei Den Brudern Junger:
Book Synopsis
£48.45
Dietrich Reimer Pendant Plus: Praktiken Der Bildkombinatorik
Book Synopsis
£58.90
Peter Lang AG Approaching Transnational America in Performance
Book SynopsisThe volume is uniquely located at the interdisciplinary crossroads of Performance Studies and transnational American Studies. As both a method and an object of study, performance deepens our understanding of transnational phenomena and America’s position in the world. The thirteen original contributions make use of the field’s vast potential and critically explore a wide array of cultural, political, social, and aesthetic performances on and off the stage. They scrutinize transnational trajectories and address issues central to the American Studies agenda such as representation, power, (ethnic and gender) identities, social mobility, and national imaginaries. As an American Studies endeavor, the volume highlights the cultural, political, and (inter)disciplinary implications of performance.Table of ContentsPerformance – Cultural encounter – Transnational contact zone – Interdisciplinarity – Transnational American Studies – Performance Studies – Social behavior – Theater – Dance – Musical – Pop culture – Food – Film – Sports – Health – TV series – Scenarios – Preemption – YouTube
£65.11
Peter Lang AG Truth and the Will to Illusion
Book SynopsisIt is often repeated that we live today in a ‹post-truth› world. But this problem has a long history. Greek philosophers investigated the origins of truth (and the will to truth) in hope to separate truth from illusion. But already Machiavelli equated the concept of truth with the notion of what seems to be true. And today? Perhaps, we are paying the price of naivety. In this book, the author approaches the idea of deliberative democracy with reservation, attempting to expose the vain hopes rooted in the Enlightenment tradition, which placed the desire for truth at the fore, and relegated the desire for illusion to the shadows. The book encourages reflection on the appeal of deception in a world which has become the media’s ‹grazing ground›; a world which rejects metaphysics in favour of pragmatic theories, thereby transforming politics into a sphere where truth is replaced with ‹narrative›.Table of ContentsWho needs truth? – Illumination and the public sphere – Illumination and the public sphere – Nietzsche – Ruined hopes – Pragmatism – In search of rules governing the new way of thinking – The new way of thinking – Animal laborans and the appeal of delusion – William James – John Dewey – Richard Rorty
£43.47
Peter Lang AG Metaphors Used on Polish and American Internet
Book SynopsisThis study analyzes the use of conceptual metaphors on Polish and American internet forums for mothers. In order to achieve these objectives, the author compiled a corpus consisting of ten thousand posts from Polish internet forums and ten thousand posts from American ones. The topics of threads were various, ranging from giving advice on breastfeeding to sex during pregnancy. The study contributes to a better understanding of online discussions – this issue has not been frequently investigated, especially from a comparative perspective.Table of ContentsConceptual Metaphor Theory – Metonymy – Metaphtonymy – The internet as a medium stimulating communication – Features of language used in online communication – A comparative analysis of metaphors used on Polish and American internet forums – Overview of cognitive linguistics and various theories of metaphors
£43.47
Peter Lang AG Research on Cultural Studies
Book SynopsisThis book is a collection of papers written by researchers, lawyers, administrators, analysts and graduate students working and doing research in the field of law, communication and arts. The topics include women rights in Turkey, witness statement as evidence in Turkish law, legal regulations about organ or tissue trafficking, the new social movements in Turkey, humorous discourse on social media or the traditional country fairs in Turkey.Table of ContentsHandbook of Research on Cultural Studies, International Association of Social Science Research, cultural studies, law, communication, arts.
£55.80
Peter Lang AG Research on Humanities and Social Sciences:
Book SynopsisThis book presents a collection of papers written by researchers, teachers, administrators, analysts and graduate students working and doing research in the field of social sciences. The scientific studies include a wide range of topics from the analysis of social science textbooks to the teacher image in newspapers, the relationship between self-efficacy and cognitive level and the role of organizational silence on the loneliness of academics in work life.Table of ContentsResearch on Humanities and Social Sciences – International Association of Social Science Research – Social Studies – Communication – Cinema – Arts
£55.80
Peter Lang AG Storytelling in all Aspects
Book SynopsisThe main objective of this book is to highlight the most effective use of storytelling in several areas related to communication and the media. Thus, gender studies, political communication, digital media, advertising, crisis communication and PR activities as well as corporate social responsibility have been surveyed with regard to storytelling. The topics covered are: the use of storytelling techniques in advertisements from a gender perspective, storytelling in global advertising, storytelling in corporate social responsibility campaigns through social media, storytelling in Public Relations, storytelling in crisis communication, ‘storytelling’ in the construction of political power: Image creation for political leaders in Turkey.
£37.12
Peter Lang AG Verga innovatore / Innovative Verga: L’opera
Book SynopsisQuesta antologia internazionale focalizza l’opera letteraria di Giovanni Verga puntando sul suo potenziale «caleidoscopico» e transculturale. Le innovazioni del grande Verista siciliano, il respiro europeo del suo pensiero, le numerose sinergie estetiche e la sensibilità della sua denuncia sociale rivelano un autore pronto a dialogare attraverso la sua arte con i più squisiti scrittori della «letteratura mondo». This international collection focuses on the literary work of Giovanni Verga pinpointing its «kaleidoscopic» and transcultural potential. The innovations of the leading Sicilian «verista», the European drive of his thought, the many aesthetic synergies and the sensitivity of his social denunciation show an author ready to interact through his art with top writers in World Literature. Award: Premio Antonello da Messina 2022 Antonello da Messina Award 2022 (University of Messina, November 2022) Table of ContentsSaluto / Greeting – Introduzione / Introduction – 1. Rileggere Verga / Re-reading Verga – 2. Verga transmediale / Transmedial Verga – 3. Verga intertestuale e transculturale / Intertextual and Transcultural Verga – 4. Appendice letteraria / Literary Appendix – Gli autori / About the Authors – Index nominum
£61.65
Peter Lang AG Football in Turkey
Book SynopsisThe book presents a collection of papers on a wide range of football issues. Football is a complex and dynamic phenomenon that needs to be examined in various social and historical contexts. It is influenced by social, economic, political and cultural factors while it also affects social life. As a miniature model of social life, football can almost be regarded as a magical game in the sense that it includes several indicators which provide us with the opportunity to collect information about the events taking place. The methods of analyzing and solving problems experienced on football fields and in social life should broaden the perspective, focusing on all actors of football.Table of ContentsFootball – Turkish Football – Football Economy – Football Industry – Media – Football Media – Football Violence – Sports – Media Power
£37.12
