Search results for ""manchester university press""

Making Socialists combines a biographical study of a (nowadays) virtually unknown woman with an original exploration of several major themes in late nineteenth and early twentieth century political and educational history. More than a local politician, Mary Bridges Adams was among the dynamic late nineteenth-century women activists who sought to transform government policy through socialist initiatives, with the ultimate (utopian) aim of creating a social nation. The author has assembled a thorough range of sources, including new materials that will bring fresh insights to this biography and more generally to Labour Party and socialist historiography, well-studied topics. The people Adams knew and the circles in which she travelled are particularly attractive features of this book. Foes thought her an awful woman: friends like George Bernard Shaw remembered the power of her oratory. Placed against the circumstances in which she lived and presented as part of a militant and anti-capitalist tradition within labour history, her life story contributes to new ways of seeing both socialist and feminist politics.

Read more less

Time and relative dissertations in space takes the reader on a rich and varied study of one of the greatest television programmes of all time: Doctor Who. This book is the first study of Doctor Who to explore the Doctor’s adventures in all their manifestations: on television, audio, in print and beyond. Although focusing on the original series (1963-89), the collection recognises that Doctor Who is a cultural phenomenon that has been ‘told’ in many ways through a myriad of texts.Combining essays from academics as well as practitioners who have contributed to the ongoing narrative of Doctor Who, the collection encourages debate with contrasting opinions on the strengths (and weaknesses) of the programme, offering a multi-perspective view of Doctor Who and the reasons for its endurance.

Read more less

In this new anthology, the editors of the widely acclaimed The Political Interests of Gender (1988) make a compelling case for reconstructing feminist theory in critical-realist terms, fostering more robust, multi-dimensional approaches to analyses of the political interests of gender. Leading gender studies’ scholars utilise different research traditions to investigate topics including human rights, women’s movements, gendered labour markets, international monetary policy, equality policy, and queer politics. This unique anthology includes theoretical and empirical work, illustrating how to build bridges between materialist and discursive theoretical frameworks for understanding the politics of gender. It will be a trend-setting text for advanced gender studies political science, and sociology courses, as well as for professionals in these fields.

Read more less

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the development, making and implementation of European Union environmental politics and identifies the central areas and instruments of EU environmental policy. It analyses the factors influencing not only the formulation but also the implementation of environmental measures in the complex multi-level setting of the EU. On this basis, it takes a critical look at the EU’s effectiveness and problem-solving capacity in the environmental field. Designed as a textbook at undergraduate and graduate level, the book employs a clear and insightful analytical perspective based on the theoretical state-of-the-art of EU policy studies. Thus, it provides an overview of the major theoretical approaches available in the field. At the same time, the discussion is illustrated by a broad range of empirical findings with regard to the formulation and implementation of EU environmental policy.This study is an ideal companion for anyone seeking a concise and accessible introduction into EU environmental politics.

Read more less

This is the first full-length, published study of Beethoven’s songs. All the composer’s songs with piano are included, with full German texts and translations, together with comprehensive notes on the poetry and the music. The inclusion of unfinished songs gives a fascinating insight into Beethoven’s compositional methods.An introductory essay considers reasons for the relative neglect of the songs, the significance of Beethoven’s choice of texts, his crucial role in the development of German art-song and specific aspects such as choice of key. Throughout the book, poetic and musical texts are discussed in their historical context, and in the overall context of Beethoven’s life and music.It is anticipated that this book, like its predecessor The Schubert Song Companion, will encourage the performance and study of an important but comparatively neglected aspect of the work of the world’s most celebrated composer.

Read more less

This study focuses on seven women who used the fin-de-siècle’s popular stage as a space to develop their experimental performance practices: acts that won them international fame and critical acclaim. The diverse entertainment careers of Maud Allan (1873-1956), Jane Avril (1868-1943), Loïe Fuller (1868-1926), Sylvia Grey (1866-1958), Yvette Guilbert (1867-1944), Letty Lind (1862-1923) and Cissie (Cecilia) Loftus (1876-1943) encompassed song, dance, impersonation and acting. In accounts, reviews, autobiographical writings, interviews and other cultural products associated with them it is clear that individual female celebrities understood their work as creative, professional and original performance practice. The absence of their creative work from studies of performance history reveals much about hierarchical approaches to cultural environments, gender and physical, non-scripted performances that demands to be interrogated.

Read more less

How do parties adopt and change positions on the European question? How do they balance the demands placed upon them by ideology, voters and participation in coalition government? What are the sources of Euroscepticism, and how widespread is it among the parties and the public? This book addresses these questions by examining the politics of Hungary’s accession to the European Union, from the early 1990s to 2004. The book provides a conceptually grounded yet accessible analysis of the way questions related to EU membership, and European integration in general, are channelled into political life. Starting with a comparative exploration of the impact of European integration on party politics in Western and Eastern Europe, the book goes on to review the Hungarian political parties’ history, ideological profiles, electoral competition and coalition-building in government and opposition, as well as the dynamics of public opinion. It will be of interest to academics concerned with the contestation of European integration in EU member states, and specifically with party politics in Central and Eastern European.

Read more less

This book is the first full-length study of Douglas Coupland, one of the twenty-first century’s most innovative and influential novelists. The study explores the prolific first decade and a half of Coupland’s career, from Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991) to JPod (2006), a period in which he published ten novels and four significant volumes of non-fiction. Emerging in the last decade of the twentieth century - amidst the absurd contradictions of instantaneous global communication and acute poverty - Coupland’s novels, short stories, essays and visual art have intervened in specifically contemporary debates regarding authenticity, artifice and art. This book explores Coupland’s response, in ground-breaking novels such as Microserfs, Girlfriend in a Coma and Miss Wyoming, to some of the most pressing issues of our times. Designed for students, researchers and general readers alike, the study is structured around thematically focused chapters that consider Coupland’s engagement with narrative, consumer culture, space, religion and ideas of the future.

Read more less

Variously described as ‘the average pilgrim’, a ‘wanderer’, and ‘a Buddha preaching in European clothes’, Charlie Marlow is the voice behind Joseph Conrad’s ‘Youth’ (1898), Heart of Darkness (1899), Lord Jim (1900) and Chance (1912). Conrad’s Marlow offers a comprehensive account and critical analysis of one of Conrad’s most celebrated creations, asking both who and what is Marlow: a character or a narrator, a biographer or an autobiographical screen, a messenger or an interpreter, a bearer of truth or a misguided liar?Reading Conrad’s fiction alongside the work of Walter Benjamin, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger, and offering an investigation into the connection between narrative and death, this book argues that Marlow’s essence is located in his liminality – in his constantly shifting position – and that the emergence of meaning in his stories is at all points bound up with the process of his storytelling.

Read more less

Why adopt a poststructural lens for the reading of the military strategy of national missile defence (NMD)? No doubt, when contemplating an attack on US territory by intercontinental ballistic missiles, consulting Michel Foucault and critical international relations theory scholars may not seem the obvious route to take. The answer to this lies in another question: why has there been so much interest and continuous investment in NMD deployment when there is such ambiguity surrounding the status of threat to which it responds, controversy over its technological feasibility and concern about its cost? Posed in this manner, the question cannot be answered on its own terms – the terms given in official accounts of NMD that justify the system’s significance on the basis of strategic feasibility studies and conventional threat predictions guided by worst-case scenarios. Instead, this book argues that the preferences leading to NMD deployment must be understood as satisfying requirements beyond strategic approaches and issues. In turning towards the interpretative modes of inquiry provided by critical social theory and poststructuralism, this book contests the conventional wisdom about NMD and suggests reading the strategy in terms of US identity. Presented as an analysis of discourses on threats to national security, around which the need for NMD deployment is predominantly framed, this book is an effort to let the two fields of critical international relations theory and US foreign policy speak directly to each other. It seeks to do so by showing how the concept of identity can be harnessed to an analysis of a contemporary military-strategic practice.

Read more less

That devil’s trick is the first study of nineteenth-century hypnotism based primarily on the popular – rather than medical – appreciation of the subject. Drawing on the reports of mesmerists, hypnotists, quack doctors and serious physicians printed in popular newspapers from the early years of the nineteenth century to the Victorian fin de siècle, the book provides an insight into how continental mesmerism was first understood in Britain, how a number of distinctively British varieties of mesmerism developed, and how these were continually debated in medical, moral and legal terms. Highly relevant to the study of the many authors – Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Bram Stoker and Conan Doyle among them – whose fiction was informed by the imagery of mesmerism, That devil’s trick will be an essential resource for anybody with an interest in the popular and literary culture of the nineteenth century, including literary scholars, medical historians and the general reader.

Read more less

EU security governance assesses the effectiveness of the EU as a security actor. The book has two distinct features. Firstly, it is the first systematic study of the different economic, political and military instruments employed by the EU in the performance of four different security functions. The book demonstrates that the EU has emerged as an important security actor, not only in the non-traditional areas of security, but increasingly as an entity with force projection capabilities. Secondly, the book represents an important step towards redressing conceptual gaps in the study of security governance, particularly as it pertains to the European Union. The book links the challenges of governing Europe’s security to the changing nature of the state, the evolutionary expansion of the security agenda, and the growing obsolescence of the traditional forms and concepts of security cooperation.

Read more less

It has traditionally been held that Robert Southwell’s poetry offers a curious view of Elizabethan England, one that is from the restricted perspective of a priest-hole. This book dismantles that idea by examining the poetry, word by word, discovering layers of new meanings, hidden emblems, and sharp critiques of Elizabeth’s courtiers, and even of the ageing queen herself.Using both the most recent edition of Southwell’s poetry and manuscript materials, it addresses both poetry and private writings including letters and diary material to give dramatic context to the radicalisation of a generation of Southwell’s countrymen and women, showing how the young Jesuit harnessed both drama and literature to give new poetic poignancy to their experience. Bringing a rigorously forensic approach to Southwell’s ‘lighter’ pieces, Sweeney can now show to what extent Southwell engaged exclusively through them in direct artistic debate with Spenser, Sidney, and Shakespeare, placing the poetry firmly in the English landscape familiar to Southwell’s generation. Those interested in early modern and Elizabethan culture will find much of interest, including new insights into the function of the arts in the private Catholic milieu touched by Southwell in so many ways and places.

Read more less

Videogame, player, text examines the playing and playful subject through a series of analytical essays focused on particular videogames and playing experiences. With essays from a range of internationally renowned game scholars, the major aim of this collection is to show how it is that videogames communicate their meanings and provide their pleasures. Each essay focuses on specific examples of gameplay dynamics to tease out the specificities of videogames as a new form of interaction between text and digital technology for the purposes of entertainment. That modes of engagement with the videogame text are many and varied, and construct the playing subject in different ways, provides the central theme of Videogame,player, text. Online play, clan membership, competitive or co-operative play, player modification of game texts, and the solo play of a single player are each addressed through individual analyses of the gameplay experiences produced by, for example, The Sims, Grand Theft Auto, Prince of Persia, Doom, Quake, World of Warcraft, StreetFighter and Civilisation.

Read more less

James Kelman is Scotland’s most influential contemporary prose artist. This is the first book-length study of his groundbreaking novels, and it analyses and contextualises each in detail. It argues that while Kelman offers a coherent and consistent vision of the world, each novel should be read as a distinct literary response to particular aspects of contemporary working-class language and culture. Richly historicised through diverse contexts such as Scottish socialism, public transport, emigration, ‘Booker Prize’ culture and Glasgow’s controversial ‘City of Culture’ status in 1990, Simon Kovesi offers readings of Kelman’s style, characterisation and linguistic innovations.This study resists the prevalent condemnations of Kelman as a miserable realist, and produces evidence that he is acutely aware of an unorthodox, politicised literary tradition which transgresses definitions of what literature can or should do. Kelman is cautious about the power relationship between the working-class worlds he represents in his fiction, and the latent preconceptions embedded in the language of academic and critical commentary. In response, this study is boldly self-critical, and questions the validity and values of its own methods. Kelman is shown to be deftly humorous, assiduously ethical, philosophically alert and politically necessary.

Read more less

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the 'spatialities of cinema' across the social sciences and humanities, yet to date critical inquiry has tended to explore this issue as a question of the 'city' and the 'urban'. For the first time, leading scholars in geography, film and cultural studies have been drawn together to explore the multiple ways in ideas of cinema and countryside are co-produced: how 'film makes rural' and 'rural makes film'. From the expanse of the American great west to the mountainous landscapes of North Korea, Cinematic Countrysides draws on a range of popular and alternative film genres to demonstrate how film texts come to prefigure expectations of rural social space, and how these representations come to shape, and be shaped by, the material and embodied circumstances of 'lived' rural experience. At the heart of this volume's varied apprehensions of the 'cinematic countryside' is a concern to argue that ideas of rurality in film are central to wider questions of 'modernity' and 'tradition', 'self' and 'other', 'nationhood' and 'globalisation', and crucially, ones that are central to an account of the 'cinematic city'.

Read more less

This book is the first in-depth study of the debates over devolution in the four nations of the UK in the period up to 1939. It explores divergent trends and attitudes towards the principle of devolution at both local and national (UK) levels, explains the limitations of devolution as a political ideal and the inherent contradictions in the debates over devolution which were unresolvable in the period under study.The book also demonstrates the enduring potency of an all-British context and of the influence and power of those who wished to defend the status quo. It investigates the role of national - and Imperial - identities in the debates over devolution, highlighting the continuing value and importance of ‘Britishness’ and British identity as vital factors in moulding popular opinion and support for established systems of governance. In so doing, the book offers fresh perspectives on the development of nationalisms in the ‘Celtic fringe’ during this period and demonstrates the problems and limitations of such identities as ways of mobilizing political opposition.

Read more less

This book examines the two main dimensions of the European Union’s enlargement to eight central and eastern European countries (CEECs) in 2004. Why did the EU agree to enlargement, despite the costs for some incumbents who have veto-power? How can we explain the (uneven) pattern of accommodation of the CEECs’ preferences in concrete policies? Combining in-depth empirical analysis with an original theoretical framework, which draws on insights from constructivism and historical institutionalism, this book focuses on the EU's discursively constructed role-identity vis-à-vis the CEECs. This role-identity forged a group of policy advocates inside the European Commission, who promoted the CEECs' preferences inside the EU, and induced a path-dependence into the enlargement process. The impact of EU identity on concrete policies was less direct. Case studies on trade liberalisation, regulatory alignment, and foreign policy consultations demonstrate that sectoral policy paradigms are a key factor that mediates the influence of the policy advocates on specific policy areas.

Read more less

This book explores the aspirations and tastes of new suburban communities in interwar England for domestic architecture and design that was both modern and nostalgic in a period where homeownership became the norm. It investigates the ways in which new suburban class and gender identities were forged through the architecture, design and decoration of the home, in choices such as ebony elephants placed on mantelpieces and modern Easiwork dressers in kitchens. Ultimately, it argues that a specifically suburban modernism emerged, which looked backwards to the past whilst looking forward to the future. Thus the inter-war ‘ideal’ home was both a retreat from the outside world and a site of change and experimentation. The book also examines how the interwar home is lived in today. It will appeal to academics and students in design, social and cultural history as well as a wider readership curious about interwar homes.

Read more less

‘Georges Franju' is the fullest study to date of this little-known French director, the co-founder of the Cinémathèque française, and the first book on him in English since 1967. Born in 1912, but only enjoying his real debut as a director in 1948 with his notorious documentary about Parisian abattoirs 'Le Sang des bêtes', Franju went on to make thirteen more courts métrages and eight longs métrages, including his horror classic 'Les Yeux sans visage'. Ince takes a new approach to Franju's films, investigating the areas of genre and gender, and grouping the films thematically rather than chronologically. A chapter on Franju's cinematic aesthetics offers a new synthesis of existing writings, combined with the author's responses to the films. A full introduction and conclusion set Franju's directorial career in the context of his lifelong commitment to France's cinema institutions.'Georges Franju' will be essential reading on Franju, and of great interest to researchers, academics and students in film studies

Read more less

Provides a comprehensive introduction to the political system and processes of western Europe. Demonstrates clearly that political decisions are made in the context of specific historical developments, geographical constraints and social demands. Fully updated to take account of the recent French, British and Italian general elections as well as the momentous changes that have taken place in global politics as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the preparations for EU enlargement. Chapters on the European Union and democracy in western Europe have been substantially revised to take account of globalisation and recent political corruption issues.

Read more less

Michael Ondaatje is the first comprehensive and fully up-to-date study of Ondaatje’s entire oeuvre. Starting from Ondaatje’s beginnings as a poet, this volume offers an intensive account of each of his major publications, including The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Coming Through Slaughter, In The Skin of a Lion and The English Patient, drawing attention to the various contexts and intertexts that have informed his work.The book contains a broad overview of Ondaatje’s career for students and readers coming to his work for the first time. It also offers an original reading of his writing which significantly revises conventional accounts of Ondaatje as a postmodern or postcolonial writer.As the fullest account of Ondaatje’s work to date, Spinks’s approach draws on a range of postcolonial theory and, as well as being a landmark in Ondaatje scholarship, makes a distinctive contribution to debates about postcolonial literature and the poetics of postmodernism.

Read more less

"This book is to be recommended as a good, informative, broad-based survey, useful for students of film, media, drama and cultural studies who are looking for an entry into this broad genre and to use this text as a general resource."Christine Etherington-Wright, Studies in Musical Theatre"Mundy is an unabashed aficionado of the British musical film, and his expertise and knowledge in this area are evident in this encyclopedic volume. The book follows an easy-to-read, chronological format and covers all major and many minor British musical films from inception of sound to the present."W.W Dixon, University of Nebraska Lincoln Choice Current Reviews for Academic Libraries March 2008 Vol. 45 No. 07The British musical film is the first book to examine a neglected area of British cinema as it developed from the early so-called ‘silent’ period to the present. Offering a comprehensive survey of musical films across the decades, it also includes detailed critical analysis of individual films and the creative personnel, including directors, stars, lyricists, composers and musical directors, who worked on them. Scholarly but clearly written, the book traces the development of a distinctive genre within British cinema, noting ways in which it differs from the Hollywood musical and setting the films in their historical and cultural context.Adopting a chronological approach, the book starts with the importance of music to the cinema-going experience before the coming of synchronised sound in the late 1920s and then examines the explosion of musical films featuring British musical talent in the 1930s, and the role of musical films during the years of the Second World War. The book examines the transition in musical taste reflected in musical films during the 1950s, and the importance of pop music on-screen in the 1960s. Important innovations in the British musical film of the 1970s and 1980s are analysed, as are examples of contemporary musical films that reflect an increasingly heterogeneous British culture.As well as analysing Oscar-winning musicals such as The Red Shoes and Oliver!, this study also uncovers musical films that have been unjustly neglected for far too long. In asserting the importance of the musical film and its relationship with a vibrant British popular music culture, this study makes a significant contribution to the growing awareness of the rich distinctiveness of British cinema.

Read more less

It is increasingly recognised that EU development cooperation policy has failed to meet its stated aims. In this book, available for the first time in paperback, Arts and Dickson ask the obvious and important question: if the policy doesn’t work, why bother with it?The authors assess why EU development policy has become largely ineffective, citing among the external causal factors the liberalisation of trade, and the growing influence of US and international actors such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund upon EU policy. It also considers contributing factors within the EU such as the enlargement of its membership and the resulting shifts in priorities.It is this analysis of internal and external factors affecting the decline of EU development policy that makes this study both innovative and unique. It brings together an impressive range of contributors from different disciplines resulting in a thorough and intelligent assessment of the debate.This study will appeal to advanced level undergraduates and academics of European politics in general, EU integration, development studies, and International Relations.

Read more less

This book is the first substantial study of Steven Berkoff's career, examining the construction and projection of his notorious public persona through his plays and writings.

Read more less

This is the first collection in English to focus exclusively on the various forms of popular film produced in Spain and to acknowledge the variety, range and depth of Spanish cinema.Contributors from across Hispanic, media and cultural studies explore a range of genres, from the musicals of the 1930s and 1940s to contemporary horror movies, historical epics of the 1940s and 1950s and contemporary representations of the Spanish Civil War. The book includes reappraisals of key popular directors such as Luis Garcia Berlanga and Antonio Mercero as well as critical analyses of celebrated stars like Marisol. It provides innovative consideration of the promotion and reception of horror in the 1960s, recollections of cinema-going in Madrid, and reflections on successful recent works such as 'Abre los Ojos' and 'Solas'.The contributors offer a range of critical and methodological perspectives, opening up new ways of analysing Spanish popular film.

Read more less

Sir Thomas Stukeley, the notorious English courtier, pirate, adventurer and soldier, died at the Battle of Alcazar in Morocco in 1578, while serving in the army of King Sebastian of Portugal. This volume comprises the first modern-spelling, annotated edition of two plays in which he is a major character: George Peele's 'The Battle of Alcazar' (c.1588), and the anonymous 'Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley' (c.1596).In his extensive introduction and commentary, Charles Edelman discusses the plays' authorship, their many textual problems, and what they reveal about Elizabethan performance practices. He also challenges most of the traditional assumptions about them. This edition shows that both works, long held to be unperformable, are instead fascinating and worthwhile representatives of the most exciting age in the history of the theatre.

Read more less

Never has a reconsideration of the place of drugs in our culture been more urgent than it is today. Culture on drugs addresses themes such as the nature of consciousness, language and the body, alienation, selfhood, the image and virtuality and the nature/culture dyad and everyday life. It then explores how these are expressed in the work of key figures such as Freud, Benjamin, Sartre, Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze, arguing that the ideas and concepts by which modernity has attained its measure of self-understanding are themselves, in various ways, the products of encounters with drugs and their effects. In each case the reader is directed to the points at which drugs figure in the formulations of ‘high theory’, and it is revealed how such thinking is never itself a drug-free zone. Consequently, there is no ground on which to distinguish ‘culture’ from ‘drug culture’ in the first place.Culture on drugs offers a novel approach and introduction to cultural theory for newcomers to the subject, simultaneously presenting an original thesis concerning the articulation of modern thought by drugs and drug culture.

Read more less

Angela Carter is best known for her novels, short fiction and journalism, but she also produced a substantial body of writing for media other than the printed page, including five radio plays, two film adaptations, an original television documentary and a number of unrealised scripts for stage and screen. Despite increasing academic interest in Carter's work, these dramatic writings have largely been ignored. In this book, Charlotte Crofts redresses this lack of critical attention by examining Carter's dramatic writings together for the first time (including two unpublished works), giving them a more central position in the Carter canon.Divided into three sections on radio, film and television, the book's interdisciplinary approach is underpinned by reference to exclusive interviews with the directors and producers with whom Carter collaborated, giving a unique insight into processes of adaptation and the technologies of media production. The author demonstrates how, far from being an aberration from her real vocation as a writer of fiction, Carter's writing for radio, film and television is an extension of her self-professed demythologising practice.

Read more less

The Henry VI plays are Shakespeare’s earliest, most theatrically exciting plays and in their day, they were among his most popular works. In a story which stretches over thirty years, Shakespeare dramatises the fall of the House of Lancaster and creates some of his most compelling characters, among them the Queen Margaret and the wildly ambitious Richard, Duke of Gloucester (the future Richard III). Modern productions have become landmark works that have defined institutions such as the Royal Shakespeare Company and the English Shakespeare Company. This book, the first major study of the Henry VI plays in performance, focuses on the cultural context of modern British productions on stage and screen which have explored Shakespeare’s troubling depiction of England in crisis and related those themes to contemporaneous questions of national identity.

Read more less

This fascinating and innovative study explores the lives of people living in early modern Ireland through the books and printed ephemera which they bought, borrowed or stole from others. While the importance of books and printing in influencing the outlook of early modern people is well known, recent years have seen significant changes in our understanding of how writing and print shaped lives, and was in turn shaped by those who appropriated the written word. This book draws on this literature to shed light on the changes that took place in this unusual European society. The author finds that there, almost uniquely in Europe, a set of revolutions took place which transformed the lives of the Irish in unexpected ways, and that the rise of writing and the spread of print were central to an understanding of those changes which have previously only been understood to have been the result of conquest and colonisation. This is a book which will be read not only by those interested in the Irish past but by all those who are concerned with the impact of communications media on social change.

Read more less

Available again in paperback, this study offers a rigorous critical re-reading of fictions of humanity, history, technology and postmodern culture.Taking psychoanalysis into cyberspace, the book develops an innovative theoretical perspective on the relationship between bodies and machines to offer a focused re-examination of notions of desire, metaphor, sexed identity and difference and the process of technological transformation.The book unravels one figure in a detailed, lucid and extensive revision of Lacanian psychoanalysis in association with postmodern theory, feminism and deconstruction. Problematising the easy conjunction of human bodies and inhuman technology, the navel opens into networks of desire, history, culture and machines. Linked to the unconscious, to jokes and dreams, navels appear on the bodies of replicants and in the technological matrix, a strange excess in a future imagined in terms of corporeal ‘meat’ or posthuman machine. Exploring the significance of this omphalic excess, the book closely examines postmodern and cyberpunk texts (by Thomas Pynchon, Graham Swift, Julian Barnes, William Gibson, Rudy Rucker) alongside detailed readings of contemporary cultural critics and theorists.

Read more less

A unique approach to contemporary Latin America, this volume brings together a diverse range of experts to discuss people and issues of core significance in the region.

Read more less

What has been the impact of the EU on UK central government? This book explores the ‘Europeanisation’ of the work of civil servants and ministers and how they engage with the EU. Drawing on fresh empirical evidence, the volume offers the first comprehensive analysis of the spreading impact of European integration across government. The study is placed in the context of political divisions over the EU but outlines the often neglected way in which the EU has transformed the business of government. It charts the process from the Macmillan government’s 1961 application to join the European Communities through to the end of Blair’s premiership. The book examines the character and timing of responses across government, covering the core government departments and also those more recently affected, such as the Ministry of Defence. The authors argue that central government has organized itself efficiently to deal with the demands of EU membership despite the often controversial party political divisions over Europe. However, in placing their findings in comparative context they conclude that the effectiveness of UK governments in the EU has been less striking.

Read more less

Expanded footnotes designed to help readers from all levels of familiarity with Elizabethan drama. Emphasis on the play as a theatre text - informative stage-directions. Stimulating introduction, which makes something of a break from the orthodox style .

Read more less

The Witch of Edmonton has received considerable attention recently both from scholars and critics interested in witchcraft practices and also from the directors in the theatre. The play, based on a sensational witchcraft trial of 1621, presents Mother Sawyer and her local community in the grip of a witch-mania reflecting popular belief and superstition of the time. This edition offers a thorough reconsideration of the text with a complete transcription of the original pamphlet by Henry Goodcole. This edition will be of particular interest not only to students of Renaissance Drama but also of the cultural history of the seventeenth century.. Open University adopted text (for their new Renaissance Drama module).

Read more less

Institutionalism has become one of the dominant strands of theory within contemporary political science. Beginning with the challenge to behavioural and rational choice theory issued by March and Olsen, institutional analysis has developed into an important alternative to more individualistic approaches to theory and analysis. This body of theory has developed in a number of ways, and perhaps the most commonly applied version in political science is historical institutionalism that stresses the importance of path dependency in shaping institutional behaviour. The fundamental question addressed in this book, newly available in paperback, is whether institutionalism is useful for the various sub-disciplines within political science to which it has been applied, and to what extent the assumptions inherent to institutional analysis can be useful for understanding the range of behaviour of individuals and structures in the public sector. The book consists of a set of strong essays by noted international scholars from a range of sub-disciplines within the field of political science, each analysing their area of research from an institutionalist perspective and assessing what contributions this form of theorising has made, and can make, to that research. The result is a balanced and nuanced account of the role of institutions in contemporary political science, and a set of suggestions for the further development of institutional theory.

Read more less

If one had to identify one central, defining text from modern Mexican culture, it would be Octavio Paz´s famous essay, El laberinto de la soledad. This fully annotated edition includes the complete text in Spanish (with the author’s final revisions), and notes and additional material in English. The editor’s introduction contextualizes the essay and discusses central features: autobiographical and textual origins, intellectual sources, reception and canonization, generic ambiguity, structure, and governing symbols. The intellectual sources identified range from Marx, Nietzsche and Freud to the more contemporary ones of the French College of Sociology (Caillois), the Surrealist movement, the ideas of D. H. Lawrence, previous essays from writers in Mexico (such as Samuel Ramos) and Latin America. Several lines of interpretation are examined to show how the work can be read as a psycho-historical essay, an autobiographical construct or a modern literary myth. Transdisciplinary by nature, this literary essay is both an imaginative construction of personal and national identity, and also a critical deconstruction of dominant stereotypes. It seeks to redefine the complex relationships that exist between psychology, myth, history and Mexican culture. This edition also includes excerpts of the author’s opinions on his essay, a time-line of Mexican history, a selected vocabulary, and themes for discussion and debate. Paz’s first full-length prose work remains his most well-known and widely read text, and this edition will appeal to sixth-form and university students, teachers, researchers and general readers with a knowledge of Spanish.

Read more less

Chloe Chard assembles fascinating passages from late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century accounts of travel in Italy, by Northern Europeans, writing in English (or, in some cases, translated into English at the time); it includes writings by Charles Dupaty, Maria Graham, Anna Jameson, Sydney Morgan, Henry Matthews and Hester Lynch Piozzi. The extracts often focus on the labile moods that contribute to the ‘triste plaisir’ of travelling (as Madame de Staël termed it): moods such as restlessness, anxiety, exhaustion, animal exuberance, sexual excitement and piqued curiosity. The introduction considers some of these responses in relation to the preoccupations and rhetorical strategies of travel writing during the Romantic period and introductory commentaries examine the ways in which the passages take up a series of themes, around which the five chapters are ordered: ‘Pleasure’, ‘Rising and sinking in sublime places’, ‘Danger and destabilization’, ‘Art, unease and life’, and ‘Gastronomy, Gusto and the Geography of the Haunted’.

Read more less

The 15 writers featured in this new anthology of French short stories represent the best of the genre, from Merimee to the present day. The selection includes writers as diverse as Balzac, Colette, Duras and Boulanger and is designed to introduce students to both the modern French short story and modern French literature in general. The anthology covers a wide range of texts and reflects the contribution of women writers. Not only is there a substantial introduction covering the history of the short story, thematic trends, developments in narrative technique and the notion of genre, but each story also comes with its own preface and notes. The editor's intentions are to enhance students' appreciation and understanding of individual stories at the same time as introducing a variety of critical ideas and perspectives, many of them reflecting recent developments in literary theory.

Read more less

This richly illustrated books tells the story of the different ways in which women were represented in Italian Renaissance painting. It is clearly arranged into four distinct areas that relate to the function of the art work: marriage furniture, portraiture, the nude and depictions of female saints. Uncovering the many layers of meaning hidden in the iconography of these paintings, the book reintroduces us to the cultural context in which the artists operated, providing interesting new readings of well-known works by Raphael, Leonardo and Titian, among others.

Read more less

Beginning classical social theory introduces students and educated general readers to thirteen key social theorists by way of examining a single, exemplary text by each author, ranging from Comte to Adorno. It answers the need for a book that helps students develop the skill to critically read theory.Rather than learning how to admire the canonical theorists, readers are alerted to the flow of their arguments and the texts’ contradictions and limitations. Having gotten ‘under the skin’ of one key text by each author will provide readers with a solid starting point for further study.The book will be suitable as the principal textbook in social theory modules as much as alongside a more conventional textbook as a recommended additional tool for self-study. It will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as educated lay readers.

Read more less

The Island Book of Records brings the early years of this iconic record label to life.A fifteen-year labour of love, the volumes will fully document the analogue era of Island. Offering a comprehensive archive of album cover design and photography, together with the voices of the musicians, designers, photographers, producers, studio engineers and record company personnel that worked on each project, the volumes show in unique depth the workings of the label, covering every LP.Featuring material from recent interviews and from media interviews of the time, and each including a comprehensive discography of 45s, the books are lavishly illustrated with gig adverts (very many at venues which no longer exist), concert tickets, flyers, international LP variants, labels, LP and 45 adverts and other ephemera.These LP-sized editions are a collector’s dream, offering a truly unparalleled resource for those interested in music history and a perfect gift for any music lover.

Read more less

Public understanding of, and outcry over, the dire state of the climate and environment is greater than ever before. Parties across the political spectrum claim to be climate leaders, and overt denial is on the way out. Yet when it comes to slowing the course of the climate and nature crises, despite a growing number of pledges, policies and summits, little ever seems to change. Nature is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate. We remain on course for a catastrophic 3°C of warming. What's holding us back? In this searing and insightful critique, Adrienne Buller examines the fatal biases that have shaped the response of our governing institutions to climate and environmental breakdown, and asks: are the ‘solutions’ being proposed really solutions? Tracing the intricate connections between financial power, economic injustice and ecological crisis, she exposes the myopic economism and market-centric thinking presently undermining a future where all life can flourish. The book examines what is wrong with mainstream climate and environmental governance, from carbon pricing and offset markets to 'green growth', the commodification of nature and the growing influence of the finance industry on environmental policy. In doing so, it exposes the self-defeating logic of a response to these challenges based on creating new opportunities for profit, and a refusal to grapple with the inequalities and injustices that have created them. Both honest and optimistic, The Value of a Whale asks us – in the face of crisis – what we really value.This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11, Sustainable cities and communities

Read more less

A strong emotional attachment to the memory of empire runs deep in British culture. In recent years, that memory has become a battleground in a long-drawn ideological war, inflecting debates on race, class, gender, culture, the UK’s future and its place in the world. This provocative and passionate book surveys the scene of the imperial memory wars in contemporary Britain, exploring how the myths that structure our views of empire came to be, and how they inform the present. Taking in such diverse subjects as Rory Stewart and inter-war adventure fiction, man’s facial hair and Kipling, the Alt-right and the Red Wall, Imperial Nostalgia asks how our relationship with our national past has gone wrong, and how it might be improved.

Read more less

Who governs Britain? Is Parliament sovereign? Who chooses the Prime Minister? And who enforces the rules?The United Kingdom is in the throes of political and constitutional conflict. Tensions between different Westminster and Holyrood, and between the UK and the European Union, are part of a wider picture of constitutional flux. The United Kingdom is one of only three nations that does not have the principal provisions of the organs of state, nor is how they relate to one another and to the citizen embodied in a single document. Devolution and Brexit have given rise to calls for a codified constitution, but the debate has taken place against a background of confusion and uncertainty as to existing constitutional arrangements. We must first understand what already exists and how our constitution works today. This deeply informed and elegantly written book addresses the problems that have arisen in the context of the greatest political crisis our country has faced in decades.

Read more less

ABBA ABBA is one of Anthony Burgess’s most original works, combining fiction, poetry and translation. A product of his time in Italy in the early 1970s, this delightfully unconventional book is part historical novel, part poetry collection, as well as a meditation on translation and the generating of literature by one of Britain’s most inventive post-war authors. Set in Papal Rome in the winter of 1820-21, Part One recreates the consumptive John Keats’s final months in the Eternal City and imagines his meeting the Roman dialect poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli. Pitting Anglo-Italian cultures and sensibilities against each other, Burgess creates a context for his highly original versions of 71 sonnets by Belli, which feature in Part Two.This new edition includes extra material by Burgess, along with an introduction and notes by Paul Howard, Fellow in Italian Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Read more less

Ranging from early twentieth century modernist appropriations of non-western art through to the ways in which Mexican muralists in the 1930s negotiated European avant-gardist strategies, and then up to contemporary installation and lens-based practices during the current period of globalisation, this book seeks to understand selected moments in the art of the last one hundred years through the prism of postcolonialism.

Read more less