Search results for ""lexington books""

Structured according to key themes, Polish Cinema Today analyzes the remarkable innovations in Polish cinema emerging a decade after the 1989 dissolution of the Soviet bloc, once its film industry had evolved from a socialist state enterprise into a much more accessible system of film production, with growing expertise in distribution and marketing. By the early 2000s, an impressive, diverse cohort of filmmakers broke through the gridlock of a small set of esteemed, aging auteurs as well as the glut of imported Hollywood blockbusters, empowered by the digital revolution and domestic audience appetite for independent work. Polish directors today challenge sacrosanct bromides about national and gender identity, Poland’s historical martyrdom, the status of the influential Catholic Church, and the benevolent family, while investigating the phenomena of migration and sexuality in their full complexity. Each thematic chapter places these recent films within a historical/cultural context nationally and transnationally, and designs its analyses of specific works to engage general audiences of film scholars, students, and cinephiles.

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In Nuclear Power and Human Rights in Japan: The Fallout of Fukushima, Emrah Akyüz advances an environmental human rights approach to environmental protections regarding nuclear power. Using the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster as a case study, Akyüz argues for three main approaches to environmental protection, including the right to environment, the reinterpretation of human rights, and the role of procedural rights.

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China has been experiencing great economic and social changes since the late 1970s when the Reform and Opening-Up policies were accepted. While some Sinologists argue that such changes have made the Chinese structure of authority fragmented and discrepant, and have weakened the directive power of the Central Government, a few others emphasize that despite a certain degree of economic decentralization and segmentation of public power, the Central Government has been seeking ways to hold the nation together. Consequently, while the former argue that due to the centrifugal nature of the political system, policy implementation is bound to deviate from the route specified by the Central Government, the latter hold that national policies are carried out faithfully, with minor deviations only in certain circumstances. This book studies the processes of policy implementation in contemporary mainland China by taking minban/private education at the level of basic education in Shanghai as an example. Based on 65 interviews conducted during 2001 and 2004, three moduses of policy implementation are proposed, and the Model of Structural Fracturation is advanced as the prevailing modus of policy implementation in contemporary China. The model argues that policy metamorphosis during implementation is not something random; in contrast, it is determined by structural factors that no single policy actor can manipulate. The pyramid of Chinese politics is a loose construction, with vertical and horizontal fracturations between different layers. The model highlights the fact that governments at the county/district level are remote from and beyond the control of the Central Government and the provinces. They deserve more attention than they have received. Contrary to Western perspectives which regard the structural fracturation in the Chinese polity as dangerous for national stability and unity, this book takes the fracturation as an important and delicate element of the Chinese mode of governance, and suggests that the very strength of the state lies in its capacity to tolerate local deviation and to embrace it into national institutions.

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This study comprehensively and systematically explores how Theodore Roosevelt understood, massed, and wielded power to pursue his vision for an America that was the world’s most prosperous, just, and influential nation.

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This book surveys a broad panorama of Christian and African traditions to discover and assess the components that will illuminate and motivate a Christian and African ethic of women’s political participation. The author’s primary lens for diagnosing the problems faced by women in Africa is Engelbert Mveng’s concept of “anthropological poverty” that results from slavery and colonialism. It affects women in unique ways and is exacerbated by the religious and cultural histories of women’s oppression. The author advocates an interplay between the sacredness of every individual’s life, a salient principle of Christian ethics, and the collective consciousness of solidarity distinctive to African cultures. This interplay can, in turn, foster a more enlightened approach to African masculinity. Using a “sophialogical” hermeneutic, this in-depth study undertakes a moral imagination through narrative criticism. It argues that the existential reality of African women must be addressed as an essential element in the development of Christian socio-political ethic. The righteous, solidaristic, and resistant anger of women can transform patriarchy and inform Catholic social teaching. The author draws on The Circle of concerned African women theologians, postcolonial theorists, inculturation theology, African males, and Jon Sobrino's liberation theology to present an innovative Christian ethic that will radically affect the lives of African women and inform feminist theology.

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Dignity is seen, commonly, as an ethical obligation owed to human persons. The dimensions of this obligation are subject to wide discussion and defy universal agreement. Dignity is seen, commonly, as an ethical obligation owed to human persons. Dignity as a Human Right? examines dignity within the prism of death, and more particularly, its humane and dignified management. Although there is no domestic or international right to die with dignity, within the right to life should, arguably, be a right to dignity and self-determination especially at its end-stage; for, a powerful interface exists between the right to human dignity and the very right to life, to love and humanity as well as compassion at its conclusion. Legislative efforts--nationally and internationally--have begun to recognize a right to die with dignity when a condition of medical futility exists. There are presently five states and the District of Columbia, together with a judicial interpretation from the Montana Supreme Court, which recognize death assistance for the terminally ill. Internationally, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland are seen as leaders in this recognition. The United Nations has played a significant role in framing end-of-life decision making within the ambit of human rights protection. The UN Charter states unequivocally that the dignity and worth of the human person must be protected and safeguarded. Similarly, among other instruments, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights acknowledges that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

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Nonverbal Communication in Political Debates presents a framework for understanding and analyzing the multiple ways that nonverbal behavior functions in political debates. In addition to addressing the ways in which politicians are presented and present themselves in debate broadcasts, the framework considers a wide array of strategic objectives and unintended consequences of candidates’ nonverbal behaviors. Along the way, the book examines theory and research from both humanistic and social scientific approaches, as well as an immense range of factors that influence how nonverbal behavior is enacted and portrayed. Scholars of communication, political science, psychology, and public relations will find this book particularly useful.

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Reading Colonial Korea through Fiction is a compilation of thirteen original essays which was first serialized in a quarterly issued by the National Institute of Korean Language, Saekukŏsaenghwal (Living our National Language Anew) in a column entitled, “Our Fiction, Our Language” between 2004 to 2007. Although the original intent of the Institute was to elucidate on important features particular to “national fiction” and the superiority of “national language,” instead Kim Chul’s astute essays offers a completely different reading of how national literature and language was constructed. Through a series of culturally nuanced readings, Kim links the formation and origins of Korean language and fiction to modernity and traces its origins to the Japanese colonial period while demonstrating in a very lucid way how colonialism constitutes modernity and how all modernity is perforce colonial, given the imperial crucibles from which modernist claims emerged. For Kim, denying this reality can only lead to violent distortions as he eschews appeals to a preexisting framework, preferring instead to ground his theoretical insights in subtle, innovative readings of texts themselves.

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Emerging Iconographies of Medieval Rome examines the development of Christian iconographies that had not yet established themselves as canonical images, but which were being tried out in various ways in early Christian Rome. This book focuses on four different iconographical forms that appeared in Rome during the eighth and ninth centuries: the Anastasis, the Transfiguration, the Maria Regina, and the Sickness of Hezekiah—all of which were labeled “Byzantine” by major mid-twentieth century scholars. The trend has been to readily accede to the pronouncements of those prominent authors, subjugating these rich images to a grand narrative that privileges the East and turns Rome into an artistic backwater. In this study, Annie Montgomery Labatt reacts against traditional scholarship which presents Rome as merely an adjunct of the East. It studies medieval images with formal and stylistic analyses in combination with use of the writings of the patristics and early medieval thinkers. The experimentation and innovation in the Christian iconographies of Rome in the eighth and ninth centuries provides an affirmation of the artistic vibrancy of Rome in the period before a divided East and West. Labatt revisits and revives a lost and forgotten Rome—not as a peripheral adjunct of the East, but as a center of creativity and artistic innovation.

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Ayn Rand’s philosophy has once again found an important part on the American political stage. With the rise of the Tea Party movement, her political and economic philosophy has infused the American public discourse with a new Libertarian vitality. Ironically, many of her new followers identify themselves as committed Christians, a prospect that Rand herself would have rejected. This book critically reviews Rand’s secular-atheist philosophy of religion, which includes her theory of altruism, collectivism, and statism, and asks the questions: How did Ayn Rand become conservative Christians’ favorite atheist?; Can Christianity, or any other prophetic religion, be reconciled with her philosophy of greed, selfishness, and capitalism?; Can one be both a Christian and a dedicated follower of Ayn Rand?; Can one appropriate her political and economic philosophy while rejecting her radical atheism and anti-religious stance?

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Critical Conditions: Reading Illness and Disability in Francophone African and Caribbean Women’s Writing, represents a novel approach not only to postcolonial Francophone literature but to literary and cultural studies in general. Julie Nack Ngue’s analyses attend not only to the aesthetics of the texts, but to culturally relevant scientific and historical discourses on the body, gender, and race, and to the material conditions that produce and exacerbate illness and disability. Adopting a comparative, interdisciplinary approach, Nack Ngue argues that cultural and literary expressions of illness, suffering, and subjectivity in the postcolonial context are always in dialogue with seemingly external discourses and practices of health. Thus, through sustained analyses of historical, biomedical and sociocultural currents in the context of eight Francophone novels from 1968 to 2003, the book advances a new theory of “critical conditions.” These critical conditions represent the conjunction of bodily, psychic, and textual states that defy conventional definitions of health and well-being. The study focuses on Francophone women writers who offer striking commentaries on the experience of illness and/or disability and its attendant discourses: Haitian writer Marie Chauvet; Guadeloupian-Senegalese writer Myriam Warner-Vieyra; Guadeloupian writer Maryse Condé; Senegalese writers Ken Bugul, Fama Diagne Sène, and Fatou Diome; and Swiss-Gabonese writer Bessora. These women’s writings disclose figures of illness and disability in the postcolonial context that challenge standard paradigms of women’s bodily and psychic health established by Western colonial medicine and racial biology such as those that idealize cure, demand normativity, and assign tragedy to the “unhealthy.”

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Failures of Agency: Irrational Behavior and Self-Understanding begins by exploring classic philosophical questions regarding the phenomenon of weakness of will or akrasia: doing A, even though all things considered, you judge it best to do B. Does this phenomenon really exist and if so, how should it be explained? Author Annemarie Kalis provides an historical overview of some traditional answers to these questions and addresses the main question: how does the phenomenon of 'going against your own judgment' relate to the idea that we are rational beings? She elaborates on the notion of rational agency and shows how different types of behavior express or fail to express our rational agency. This leads to the speculation of what is needed for akratic action to be free action. A novel position is developed, stating that certain widespread philosophical accounts of free action must conclude that 'going against your own judgment' is necessarily unfree. This also requires a reflection on possible implications for moral responsibility. Would it mean that people cannot be held accountable for irrational behavior? Kalis offers insight on whether everyday irrational behavior differs from irrational behavior occurring in the context of psychiatric dysfunction, and develops a view on how we should understand ourselves when we do something other than what we judge best. Written for philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists interested in issues of irrationality and philosophy of action, this is an indispensable book for both professionals and students interested in interdisciplinary endeavors in the science of mind and behavior.

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This work investigates attempts by Bulgarian Communist Party leaders, bureaucrats and subjects to model, disseminate, and appropriate a local version of the "homo-sovieticus," or new soviet man and woman, during the 1960s and 1970s, a period of “socialist humanism.” Defining and living socialist humanism was a complex process questioning, among other things, the place of work and leisure, sex and pleasure, and the relationship between Bulgaria and the outside world. The socialist system, in these and other programs, invested tremendous resources to direct the movements of its population, at least in part, in order to transform it subjectively. Framed by four programs each linked with the values that socialist humanism sought to instill: the brigadier movement (work); the workings of the brother-city relationship between Haskovo and Tashkent in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (international socialism); internal tourism (nation); and the exhibition of art in the Haskovo gallery (aesthetics) The Late Socialist Good Life examines the way in which socialism was lived in a time of transition. Viewed from the center, state-manipulated brigades, excursions, art exhibitions and cultural exchanges demonstrate the ability of the state to oblige all to find their place within systemic requirements-but closer perspectives reveal the contingencies produced by interactions between these systems and their subjects. Tashkent, meant to be a model of Soviet progress and a glimpse into Haskovo's future, proved as often to be understood as a symbol of a degraded (if enticing) oriental past. Brigadiers were more interested in playing soccer or gossiping and fighting than in working. Tourists grumbled at inadequate facilities and drank and smoked rather than gaining an appreciation for the beauty of nature and the largesse of the system that allowed them to tour. Socialist Humanist, Socialist Realist art revealed images of the bourgeois and the private in place of earlier tropes of workers working. Bulgarian socialist humanists' navigation of these programs resolved themselves in many outcomes in the search for the socialist good life: in the field of interactions people created solaces, expressed discontents, and above all, manufactured alterations in systems meant to instill uniformity.

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Editors Joan Grossman and Ruth Rischin pose to their contributors an intriguing question: What happens when the ideas of a thinker like William James, who—despite his originality—was deeply rooted in American traditions, are refracted through a culture that draws on a heritage profoundly different from his own? Including studies of reception and interpretation of James's major works and analyses of the impact of his own philosophy on certain Russian writers and thinkers, William James in Russian Culture reveals striking parallels among and divergences between the intellectual and the spiritual realms.

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In this book, internationally recognized scholars in philosophical hermeneutics discuss various aspects of language and linguisticality. The translations of Hans-Georg Gadamer's two recent essays provoke a preliminary discussion on the philosopher's polemic claim in Truth and Method—"Being that can be understood is language." Topics addressed by the contributors include the relationship of rituals to tradition and the immemorial; the unity of the word; conversation; translation and conceptuality; and the interrelationship between the art of writing and linguisticality. This work is of critical importance to anyone interested in Gadamer's claims regarding the boundaries of language, the transition from the prelinguistic to linguistic realms, and the role of rituals in this transition.

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Why was Switzerland spared a German attack during World War II? Was its existence actually endangered at any time? In "Let's Swallow Switzerland," historian Klaus Urner reveals new data uncovered about the actual threats Switzerland faced during the war. Extensive archival research into the events at the Führer's headquarters discloses that Hitler, in cooperation with Mussolini, initiated a surprise pincer operation against Switzerland during the final phase of the French campaign. On June 24, 1940, Army Corps C received orders to prepare for the "Special Task Switzerland." In early July, the 12th Army, with nine divisions, was deployed near the Western border of Switzerland. Urner proves that German operational plans were not fictitious designs worked out by a bored staff, as has been claimed, but in fact were serious preparatory measures for an attack. The second half of this fascinating exposé provides a discussion of German economic warfare against Switzerland, revealing that Germany's goal was to control every interaction between Switzerland and the Allies—such attempts continued until the total occupation of France on November 11, 1942. Numerous original documents attesting to Hitler's plans, historic photographs, and a detailed bibliography make this book a fundamental work for understanding Switzerland's difficult predicament during World War II.

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This extensively researched text concerning the life and career of Liverpool-born Black jazz musician Gordon Stretton not only contributes to the important debate concerning the transoceanic pathways of jazz during the 20th century, but also suggests to the jazz fan and scholar alike that such pathways, reaching as they also did across the Atlantic from Europe, are actually part of a largely ignored therefore partially-hidden history of 20th century jazz performance, industry and influence. The work also exists to contribute to a more complete picture of the significance of diaspora studies across the spectrum of popular music performance, and to award to those Liverpool musicians who were not contributors to the city’s musical visage post-rock ‘n’ roll, a place in popular music history. Gordon Stretton was a jazz pioneer in several senses: he emerged from a poverty-stricken, racially marginalized upbringing in Liverpool to develop a popular music career emblematic of Black diasporan experience. He was a child dancer and singer in the Lancashire Lads (the troupe which was also part of a young Charlie Chaplin’s development), a well-respected solo touring artist in the UK as ‘The Natural Artistic Coon’, a chorister and musical director with the Jamaican Choral Union and, having encountered syncopated music, a jazz percussionist, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist (not to mention a ground-breaking bandleader). All of these musical experiences took place through time on his own terms as he learnt his craft ‘on the hoof’ via many different encounters with musical genres from Liverpool to London, Paris, Brussels, Rio, and Buenos Aires. Gordon Stretton was truly a transoceanic jazz pioneer.

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This book presents the background that led to Kosovo’s success in separating from Serbia and explains the reasons for its failure to achieve uncontested statehood—both internally and externally. It sheds light to the process of Kosovo’s secession starting from its first unsuccessful attempt to secede in 1991and continuing to the present day. It shows how long and at the same time how lucky its secession was: Kosovo was eventually at the right place and the right time, being geographically located in Europe and having secured the support of the US at the time of its absolute supremacy in the international affairs. However, as this supremacy declined, Kosovo’s progress in international affairs declined too. Ten years after its unilateral declaration of independence, it has yet to achieve UN membership and uncontested statehood, and Kosovo also faces shortcomings in its internal function as a state. This book provides a holistic approach towards Kosovo’s secession from an international relations point of view. It takes into consideration events that happened in different times and different places and shows that secession is not merely an act that takes place in one specific time and place. It is rather a process that spans over time and events at different levels of analysis shape its outcome.

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Professor John Douglas Macready offers a post-foundational account of human dignity by way of a reconstructive reading of Hannah Arendt. He argues that Arendt’s experience of political violence and genocide in the twentieth century, as well as her experience as a stateless person, led her to rethink human dignity as an intersubjective event of political experience. By tracing the contours of Arendt’s thoughts on human dignity, Professor Macready offers convincing evidence that Arendt was engaged in retrieving the political experience that gave rise to the concept of human dignity in order to move beyond the traditional accounts of human dignity that relied principally on the status and stature of human beings. This allowed Arendt to retrofit the concept for a new political landscape and reconceive human dignity in terms of stance—how human beings stand in relationship to one another. Professor Macready elucidates Arendt’s latent political ontology as a resource for developing strictly political account of human dignity hat he calls conditional dignity—the view that human dignity is dependent on political action, namely, the preservation and expression of dignity by the person, and/or the recognition by the political community. He argues that it is precisely this “right” to have a place in the world—the right to belong to a political community and never to be reduced to the status of stateless animality—that indicates the political meaning of human dignity in Arendt’s political philosophy.

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This book explores the ways to teach the literary works of William Clark Falkner and William Faulkner to ESL (English as a Second Language) students in today’s digital environment. William Faulkner’s great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, wrote romantic literary works, and William Faulkner critically uses the motifs of his great-grandfather’s works to establish his literary world. Applying Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogical theory, this book theoretically explains how these two authors imagine the social formations of the American South differently in their literary works. The coined term, social combination—which is defined as the individuals’ mutual effort to have equal relationships for a certain time—is used as a key term to examine how these two authors depict the characters’ personal relationships. William Faulkner employs his characters’ social combination as a resistance against the American South’s romantic illusions that are represented by William Clark Falkner’s literary works. William Faulkner’s historical perspective is beneficial for today’s ESL students, who explore their new egalitarian formations in their digitally expanded world. The last part of this study outlines how an American literary teacher can connect the works of William Clark Falkner and William Faulkner when teaching ESL students by using today’s digital environment. Using three digital platforms—Moodle, WordPress, and Google Drive—a teacher composes egalitarian relationships among class members and inspires students’ autonomous discussion on these two authors’ works. Through these activities, ESL students are expected to comprehend that the literature of the American South is not only the historical development of the foreign region, but the phenomenon that is connected to their own social formations.

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This book explores the ways to teach the literary works of William Clark Falkner and William Faulkner to ESL (English as a Second Language) students in today’s digital environment. William Faulkner’s great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, wrote romantic literary works, and William Faulkner critically uses the motifs of his great-grandfather’s works to establish his literary world. Applying Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogical theory, this book theoretically explains how these two authors imagine the social formations of the American South differently in their literary works. The coined term, social combination—which is defined as the individuals’ mutual effort to have equal relationships for a certain time—is used as a key term to examine how these two authors depict the characters’ personal relationships. William Faulkner employs his characters’ social combination as a resistance against the American South’s romantic illusions that are represented by William Clark Falkner’s literary works. William Faulkner’s historical perspective is beneficial for today’s ESL students, who explore their new egalitarian formations in their digitally expanded world. The last part of this study outlines how an American literary teacher can connect the works of William Clark Falkner and William Faulkner when teaching ESL students by using today’s digital environment. Using three digital platforms—Moodle, WordPress, and Google Drive—a teacher composes egalitarian relationships among class members and inspires students’ autonomous discussion on these two authors’ works. Through these activities, ESL students are expected to comprehend that the literature of the American South is not only the historical development of the foreign region, but the phenomenon that is connected to their own social formations.

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Contemporary Anti-Muslim Politics provides a succinct but potent critique of the policies of Western nations toward Muslims, particularly the aggressive foreign policies of the United States and the exclusionary domestic policies of Europe. These policies have already claimed millions of Muslim lives. For decades, policies that rely on war, exclusion, and ghettoization have triggered conflict escalation. The actions of groups such as the Islamic State and Boko Haram are reactions to this history. Their tactics exacerbate negative stereotyping of Muslims generally and Western military strategies cause many Muslims to pursue survivalist politics that enable and strengthen such groups. Anti-Muslim politics in Western nations takes many forms beyond war and exclusion, including racialization, stereotyping, sacrilegious cultural assaults, mass media scapegoating, and even tolerance, which implies something unpalatable in need of toleration. The gridlock brought by pluralism and constitutionalism, both in Europe and the United States, serves few people well, but it has locked Muslims into an especially abusive status quo.

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Mindful Alignment: Foundations of Educator Flourishing develops a foundation for educators to flourish by promoting self-awareness as a mindful approach to ongoing professional inquiry. It presents three mindful arts—the art of well-being; the art of positive relationships; and the art of living from strengths, passions, and purposes—detailing several practices that, when executed over time, can provide a focus for developing mindful alignment. The authors present an approach to personal, professional learning that encourages educators to slow down, create space to notice, and then nurture their intentions and actions toward fulfilling their purposes and passions, in order to grow a sense of flourishing at work and overcome the challenges presented by teaching in ever increasingly fast-paced, rapidly-changing, accountability-driven professional environments.

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Incarnation has always been an important concept within Christian theology. For centuries theologians have wrestled with how best to conceptualize the vexing problem of what it means that Jesus the Christ is fully God and fully human. In this book, Adam Pryor explores how the incarnation has intersected corresponding issues well beyond the familiar question of how any one person might have two natures. Beginning by identifying four critical themes that have historically shaped the development of this doctrine, Pryor goes on to offer a constructive account of the incarnation. His account seeks out the continued meaning of this doctrine given the increasing complexity that characterizes our understanding of human bodies—bodies that can no longer be understood as the locus of distinct subjects separated from the world of objects with the skin as an impenetrable boundary between the two. Making use of contemporary phenomenologies of the flesh and the erotic, Pryor develops an understanding of the incarnation that seeks to go beyond classical issues presented by two natures christologies. Incarnation, in guises as various as Jesus the Christ, cyborg bodies, and sacramental practices, becomes a way that God is diffused into the world, transforming how we are to be-with one another.

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During the first decade of this millennium Germany’s largest ethnic minority—Turkish Germans—began to enjoy a new cultural prominence in German literature, film, television and theater. While controversies around forced marriage and “honor” killings have driven popular interest in the situation of Turkish-German women, popular culture has played a key role in diversifying portrayals of women and men of Turkish heritage. This book documents the significance of marriage in 21st-century Turkish-German culture, unpacking its implications not only for the cultural portrayals of those of Turkish background, but also for understandings of German identity. It sheds light on the interactions of gender, sexuality and ethnicity in contemporary Germany. This book explores four notions of marriage in popular culture: forced marriage; romantic marriage; intercultural marriage; and gay marriage. Over five chapters, the book shows that in popular culture marriage is conventionally portrayed as little more than a form of oppression for Turkish-German women and gay men. The state of Turkish matrimony is seen as characterized by coercion, lack of choice, familial duty and “honor,” even violence. In German culture, by contrast, marriage stands for individual choice, love and equality. However, within comedy genres such as “chick lit”, “ethno-sitcom” and wedding film, there have been attempts to challenge the monolithic power of these gender stereotypes. This study finds that, in grappling with the legacy of these stereotypes, these genres reveal a yearning within German popular culture for the very kinds of “traditional” gender roles Turkish Germans are imagined to inhabit. The book provides a comprehensive account of the multiple ways in which the diverse portrayals of marriage shape views of Turkish Germans in popular culture, and are also revealing of the role of gender in contemporary Germany. It investigates some key genres—autoethnography, chick lit, ethno-sitcom, wedding film, “gay” Bildungsroman, documentary theater—within which questions of gender and cultural difference are “framed”. In new and innovative close readings of literary, filmic, television and dramatic texts, the work reveals the broad significance of cultural portrayals of Turkish-German intimacy.

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The Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Berlin, inaugurated in 2005, and the Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism within the Memory Park (Parque de la Memoria) in Buenos Aires, partially unveiled in 2007, have been controversial from start to finish. While these sites differ in many respects, Germany and Argentina share a history of dictatorial regimes that murdered civilians on a massive scale. The Nazis implemented the genocide of millions of Jews and other minorities during World War II. In Argentina, the junta-led state repression was responsible for the “disappearance” and subsequent murder of thousands of civilians between 1976 and 1983. Decades later, new governments in Germany and Argentina acknowledged the responsibility of their respective states for these mass murders by memorializing the victims with a national monument in the capital city for the first time. This study of two memorials develops a model and method for analyzing the memorialization of recent tragedies that share several basic characteristics: the state creates a self-indicting national memorial to the victims of state-sponsored mass murder in the absence of their bodies. Analyzed as sites of conflicting performances and as performances themselves, these memorials illuminate the ways in which people engage with them, and how an architecture of absence triggers embodied memory through somatic experience. While death tourism and architourism are a key to their success in attracting visitors, they also pose a threat to their commemorative role. Besides assessing the success and failure of these memorials, Sion explores the ways in which these sites are paradigmatic and offers a model for analyzing a transnational circuit of commemorative practices.

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The post-Soviet period has witnessed Russia's increasing interdependence with other nations in its food trade, as in the economy as a whole. President Putin has repeatedly identified international integration as an economic necessity if Russia is to share in the benefits of globalization. In Russia's Food Policies and Globalization, author Stephen K. Wegren analyzes the primary questions affecting Russia and globalization. How do Russia's domestic and external food policies affect its efforts at international integration? How prepared is Russia for global economic integration, for instance, entrance into the World Trade Organization? What are the structural, economic, and political obstacles that exist in Russia's food policies which in turn hinder closer integration? In short, will Russia integrate or fall behind, and what is the role of food policy in deciding this crucial issue? Through an analysis of Russia's contemporary food policies and strategies, Wegren places Russia's economic development in a new international context. Political scientists, economists, policymakers, and scholars of the Soviet and post-Soviet period, as well as those interested in rural studies, must read this book.

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We and Ouri argues that we-ness should be approached not only from a self-centered or a self-less point of view, in which the we is only either a collection of individuals or an anonymous whole, but should be based on ‘relation.’ This relation is pre-subjective, meaning that the conscious, reflective, subjective self is not the conceptual basis of the relation. The irreducible metaphysical distinction between self and other is always there, but the awareness of it is not prior to this relation, which is an ontological pre-condition of self. The author argues that the distinction and unity of self and other in this relation can be comprehended spatially by applying knot logic. The author analyzes certain linguistic practices in Korean to show one representation of pre-subjective we-ness in language, but not in an ethnographical manner. By doing so, the author criticizes and challenges the Eurocentric tendency of philosophy and seeks to expand the diversity in philosophy.

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This book explores the cultural, aesthetic, and political relevance of music in radio art from its beginnings to present day. Contributors include musicologists, literary studies, and cultural studies scholars and cover radio plays, radio shows, and other programs in North American, English, Spanish, Greek, Italian, and German radio.

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This book outlines and analyzes John Locke’s political thought about the oceans with a focus on law and freedom at sea. The book examines the Two Treatises of Government, in which Locke argues that the seas are collectively owned by all humans and are governed by universal natural laws that prohibit piracy. Locke’s Two Treatises provides a systematic political theory of the seas that contributes to theories of international law and maritime law, but his text does not answer the practical question of how to enforce law effectively at sea. The book also considers how Locke translated his theoretical ideas into practice when he was involved in policymaking as a member of England’s Board of Trade during the 1690s. On the Board, Locke waged a war against pirates by proposing an anti-piracy treaty between Europe’s major maritime states, by successfully advocating a new English piracy law, and by supporting the deployment of the English Navy against pirates. Locke’s war against pirates was consistent with the natural law theory in the Two Treatises, and helped to build English empire on land and at sea. There is also consistency between Locke’s theoretical views about slavery and his work on the Board of Trade. As a Board member, Locke advocated forced migration and forced labor for English convicts, which is consistent with the theory of penal slavery in the Two Treatises and suggests that his theory was intended to justify the enslavement of English convicts. However, there are tensions between Locke’s arguments in the Two Treatises and the policies of forced naval service that he supported on the Board. Locke’s theories of law and freedom at sea shaped his vision of English national identity, and influenced the English government’s policies about slavery and piracy.

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Just as it was not foreordained that the Terror of 1793–1794 should follow the early idealistic years of the French Revolution, neither could it have been imagined that some of those elected deputies who had helped to establish the new republic would become fugitives from their own government. Yet, in May to June 1793, twenty-nine deputies of the moderate Girondin faction were expelled from the National Convention by the radical Jacobin leadership and placed under house arrest. This action followed months of irreconcilable quarrels between the Girondin and Jacobin factions. Some of the proscribed deputies chose to remain in Paris and were subsequently executed in October 1793. Others escaped, fleeing first to Caen in Normandy, where they hoped to ignite a federalist revolt against the government in Paris. When their efforts failed, a small group of the former deputies fled to nearby Brittany and then down the western coast to the Bordeaux area, where they found refuge near St. Emilion. Hiding for several months in the home and attached stone quarry of the deputy Guadet's relatives, four of these fugitives wrote their memoirs before their presence was discovered by one of Robespierre's agents. The memoirs of François Buzot, Jerome Pétion, Charles Barbaroux, and Jean-Baptiste Louvet, in addition to correspondence between them and Jean and Manon Roland, provide the basis for this book. This is the first book to examine the lives of the fugitives during the period of the Terror (1793–94), after which only Louvet remained alive.

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For this edited volume, the editors solicited chapters that investigate the place of nonhuman animals in the purview of rhetorical theory; what it would mean to communicate beyond the human community; how rhetoric reveals our "brute roots." In other words, this book investigates themes that enlighten us about likely or possible implications of the animal turn within rhetorical studies. The present book is unique in its focus on the call for nonanthropocentrism in rhetorical studies. Although there have been many hints in recent years that rhetoric is beginning to consider the implications of the animal turn, as yet no other anthology makes this its explicit starting point and sustained objective. Thus, the various contributions to this book promise to further the ongoing debate about what rhetoric might be after it sheds its long-standing humanistic bias.

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Would you want to be cared for by a robot? Michael C. Brannigan’s Caregiving, Carebots, and Contagion explores caring robots’ lifesaving benefits, particularly during contagion, while probing the threat they pose to interpersonal engagement and genuine human caregiving. As our COVID-19 purgatory lingers on, caring robots will join our nursing and healthcare frontlines. Carebots can perform lifesaving tasks to minimize infection, safeguard vulnerable persons, and relieve caregivers of certain burdens. They also spark profound moral and existential questions: What is caring? How will we relate with each other? What does it mean to be human?Underscoring carebots' hands-on benefits, Brannigan also warns us of perils. They can be a dangerous lure in a culture that settles for substitutes and venerates the screen. Alerting us to the threatening prospect of carebots becoming our surrogate for interpersonal connection, he maintains they are not the culprits. The challenge lies in how we relate to them. While they beneficially complement our caregiving, carebots cannot replace human caring. Caring is a fundamentally human act and lies at the heart of ethics. As humans, we have a binding moral responsibility to care for the Other, and genuine caring demands our embodied, human-to-human presence.

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While garnering the attention of professionals across disciplines, from medicine to public health to psychology, and frequently covered as a topic of public concern in the news media, the elevated occurrence of suicide attempts among LGBTQ persons has earned little attention within the literature of theology and religious studies. This book fills that lacuna by addressing the role that religious, spiritual, and theological narratives play in shaping the souls of queer folk. Taking a narrative approach to qualitative interview material from LGBTQ individuals who survived their suicide attempts, the author argues that theological narratives can operate violently upon the souls of LGBTQ people in ways that make life precarious and, at time, seem unlivable. The book critically addresses the violence of theological narratives upon queer souls, filling a crucial void in scholarship concerning the role of religion—and specifically Christianity—in LGBTQ suicide. Ultimately, the author draws upon the interview material to move readers toward constructive methods of contributing to the resistance and resilience of queer souls in relation to soul violence, asking how we can intervene with practices of care in order to cultivate livability of life for queer people.

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What is an American? Bruce P. Frohnen and Ted V. McAllister argue that we are, in fact, a distinct people with our own common character that transcends race, gender, ethnicity, and class. They find in our current political conflicts a crisis of identity that stems from changes, not just in our political, economic, and technological environment, but in our ability to evaluate—and to value—the personalities that shaped our way of life. The history of the American character is filled with triumph as well as tragedy, and with virtue as well as vice. It is a story of cooperation and conflict among an unruly people, who from earliest days questioned authority even as they worked to establish communities of faith, family, and local freedom under extreme circumstances.

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The Pursuit of the Chinese Dream in America illuminates the hopes, expectations, challenges, and aspirations of this generation of Chinese students as they pursue higher education at American universities. Based on interviews with Chinese students, parents, teachers, and educational agents in Shanghai, this ethnographic study examines the cultural, economic, and social factors that have fostered the increase of Chinese undergraduates on American campuses. Dennis T. Yang describe the pivotal roles that parents, teachers, peers, and educational agents played as students embarked on the college admissions process for American universities, with an emphasis on the prominent influence of parents during the college decision-making process. Yang addresses how his interviewees, particularly the parents and students, interpreted and evaluated the importance of cultural, social, and economic capital in their lives, and how the drive to obtain these forms of capital, to varying degrees, affected the families’ decisions to conceive of and support the study abroad option.

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From Berlin to Bucharest, from Warsaw to Sofia, Soviet tanks crossed national borders across East Central Europe at the end of the Second World War. The arrival of the Red Army marked an important turn in history. Within only a few years, the often unpopular communist parties developed into political organizations with mass followings. They managed to seize power, eliminate political opposition to their rule, and purge the state apparatus of undesirable personnel. In Securing the Communist State, Liesbeth van de Grift provides a new understanding of these organizations using recently disclosed material from the communist archives in Berlin and Bucharest. She reveals how these communist parties gained control over the security apparatus after 1945 in East Central Europe from a transitional justice perspective, focusing on purges and personnel policies. This book shows that the personal break after 1945 was not as radical as is often thought.

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The “Other” Karen in Myanmar looks at the “other” or “quiet” minorities, who are members of ethnic groups associated with well-known armed resistance organizations, but who pursued non-violent approaches to promote their individual and collective interests. This is the first in-depth study to uncover the existence and activities of the “other” Karen and analyze the nature of relationships with their “rebel” counterparts and the state authorities. It also discusses other ethnic armed organizations that have experienced similar situations and assesses their implications for inter-ethnic relations, negotiations with state authorities and political reform. Most previous studies have focused on violent aspects of ethnic relations and on ethnic armed organizations, such as the Karen National Union (KNU) in Burma, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MNLF) in the Philippines, and the LTTE in Sri Lanka. However, even among these minorities which are locked in armed conflicts, the majority of people have shunned armed resistance and sought to remain ‘quietly’ beyond the struggle and pursued non-violent approaches to promote their individual and collective interests in the face of authoritarian, governments. This study, which sheds light on the lives and growing political significance of non-armed, non-insurgent members of ethnic minorities in Burma, draws heavily on opinion surveys and open-ended interviews among Karen diaspora (among individuals who lived a minimum of 20 years in Burma), “quiet Karens” who live inside Burma, KNU officials, personnel, and soldiers, and Karen refugees and IDPs who are currently living in Thai-Burma border areas. These interviews, which covered approximately two hundred respondents, have been conducted since 2002. It is mainly directed toward social scientists, historians, humanitarian workers, policy makers, and practitioners, and non-specialist ordinary audience who are interested in Southeast Asian/Burmese politics and society, comparative politics, identity politics, ethnic conflict, social movements, conflict resolution, and political reform.

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In this insightful, erudite history of presidential campaign music, musicologist Benjamin Schoening and political scientist Eric Kasper explain how politicians use music in American presidential campaigns to convey a range of political messages. From “Follow Washington” to “I Like Ike” to “I Got a Crush on Obama,” they describe the ways that song use by and for presidential candidates has evolved, including the addition of lyrics to familiar songs, the current trend of using existing popular music to connect with voters, and the rapid change of music’s relationship to presidential campaigns due to Internet sites like YouTube, JibJab, and Facebook. Readers are ultimately treated to an entertaining account of American political development through popular music and the complex, two-way relationship between music and presidential campaigns.

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This anthology seeks to introduce women writers in the "global" Francophone world by investigating the place of feminist, postcolonial and cross-cultural theories in interpreting women francophone literature. The book also allows the reader to examine the extent to which women writers reflect or negate the conventional archetypes of Francophone literature, how they reinvent the political, cultural and critical discourse of their time and place, and create their own identity from objectification to subjectivity. The ambition of this anthology is to explore these themes at a time when globalization is redefining the concepts of language, identity, space and history, and transforming the rapport of each individual to the "other". While most research on the subject focus on specific countries or regions, this volume offers a new critical introduction to Francophone women authors from a broad geographical range in North and West Africa, the Near East, the Pacific, North America, the Caribbean Islands and Europe. Significantly, this study assembles a broad and representative collection of texts written by women authors that will generate a fruitful and critical reflection among students and scholars. The selected texts present critical issues that students and readers at large need to explore to further their knowledge of francophone literature and culture.

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Critical Rural Theory is an attempt to bring together the concepts of structure, space, and culture in order to explain the relationship between rural communities and urban society. The overarching theme revolves around the many ways-structural, spatial, and cultural-in which urban systems create and maintain a hegemonic relationship with rural areas and people. Central to this theme is the concept of urbanormativity: the cultural assumption of the dominance and superiority of urban communities and patterns of life. Urbanormativity is an outgrowth of the structural forces in an urban society that favor the interests of cities over those of the countryside, of a generally exploitative relationship between the two. The structure of a society is encoded in the settlement space, which in turn influences one's experience. The experience of social space produces cultural dynamics that are reproduced from generation to generation. These mechanisms are explored through popular culture, physical patterns of urban expansion, and historical patterns of social change.

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Human Communication and the Brain: Building the Foundation for the Field of Neurocommunications, by Donald B. Egolf, provides an introduction to the latest neuroscience research and expands its applications to the study of communication. Egolf explores both methodological and ethical issues that are surfacing as a result of the newest findings, revealing important new questions about the nature of communication and the brain, including: is there a way to communicate directly with the brain? What outside powers should be permitted to access that method of information dissemination? Egolf’s text has implications for a number of communication subsets, including intrapersonal, interpersonal, political, marketing, and deception, and this new research undoubtedly will provoke debate amongst communication and neuroscience scholars for years to come.

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Out of the Crucible offers an informative and inviting study of the novels and short stories of the lives of the zhiqing, the Chinese urban youth who were sent to rural areas during the "rustication" movement in the second phase of the Cultural Revolution. Author Zuoya Cao, a former zhiqing herself, covers the works, authors, themes, characters, and plots of zhiqing literary writing from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. She teases out the significant themes of zhiqing literature: heroism and idealism, suffering and internal transformation, moral dilemmas and the loss of innocence, love and cultural difference, sexual and spiritual oppression, zhiqing/peasant relations, the relationship between man and nature, and the conflict between the desire to leave the countryside and the attachment to it. Through a perceptive analysis of the treatment of these themes, drawing on her extensive knowledge of Chinese literary and social history in addition to her own experiences, Cao reveals the emotional aspects of the rustication movement and the humanistic significance of the zhiqing experience and enriches our understanding of modern Chinese literature and history.

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This book is an examination of neighborhood mobilization and engagement from the perspective of several disciplines: psychology, social work, political science, planning, and education. The essays included in the work examine both internal and external factors related to the ability of neighborhoods to meet the human needs of their residents. They address the constraints put on neighborhood mobilization by the local and international political economy, but they also show how those constraints can, in a number of cases, be overcome by effective action. They treat neighborhood engagement as an educational process through which residents enhance their skills and knowledge as they participate. Taken together, these essays provide a comprehensive and multi-faceted view of the issues facing contemporary urban neighborhoods.

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This book explores the theory and practice of security conflict intervention by examining the experience of the Boko Haram security assault conflict. Through an examination of the realities of conflict it provides pragmatic approaches to strategic security and suggests ways to create practical security research, political controls, military and police mobilization, intelligence management, counterterrorism, and antiterrorism intervention procedures and practices to sustainably resolve conflict. The author argues that every intervention plan must be forged based on the particular security assault conflict dynamics and demands in a nation or region. In all cases, however, the key to securing and guaranteeing public protection and safety is regular inter-agency and multi-disciplinary collaboration. At the micro level, this book is about security strategies for public protection, but at the macro level it is about public domain violence prevention, response, mitigation, recovery, restoration, and protection of the public from the deleterious impacts of emergency events.

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Nuraan Davids and Yusef Waghid teach philosophy of education to students, who are completing a post-graduate certificate in education (PGCE) in order to qualify as teachers. They make the argument that philosophy and education are intertwined as action concepts with the potential to affect teacher education practices. Philosophy and Education as Action: Implications for Teacher Education endeavors to clarify pertinent philosophical concepts in education and look at how these concepts impact teaching, learning, and management as classroom practices. Through the philosophical concepts of epistêmê (knowledge), phronesis (practical reasoning), praxis (productive action), paideia (education), parhessia (free speech), technê (craft or art), dialogos (deliberative engagement), philia (love and friendship), kosmopolitis (cosmopolitanism), and dinamis (potentiality), students can come to speech through a philosophical discourse situated in educational studies.

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