Search results for ""manchester university press""

This book presents a radical new interpretation of Britain’s Chief Rabbis from Nathan Adler to Immanuel Jakobovits. It examines the theologies of the Chief Rabbis and seeks to reveal and explain their impact on the religious life of Anglo-Jewry.Elton overturns the argument that there was a significant shift to the right in the Chief Rabbinate during the period studied, and thereby sets out a new interpretation of the most important event in Anglo-Jewish religious history in the twentieth century, the Jacobs affair. This fascinating study develops a new and improved typology of the Jewish response to modernity, and is therefore a contribution to the neglected area of Anglo-Jewish religious history, and the history of modern Judaism as a whole.It will be of interest to the student of Anglo-Jewry, of Judaism in the modern period, of the effects of modernity on religion, and general reader alike.

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When, why and how did Spain fall from its pre-eminent position as a leading world power in the seventeenth century? These fundamental questions have exercised the minds of distinguished historians such as Prescott, Merriman, Hamilton, Braudel, Vilar, Vicens Vives, Elliott and Kamen and produced a prolific amount of writing. But while the subject of Spain’s decline has been subject to rigorous historical research, the debate between scholars underpinning it has not thus far been analyzed from a historiographical perspective. What are the methodologies and schools of inquiry that have shaped the discourse? How have historians’ perceptions been influenced by time and circumstance? Why has the ‘Two Spains’ phenomenon endured as a historical paradigm against which to measure its fortunes? These are some of the issues this book will address in its appraisal of the historians of Spain’s decline and their discourse.

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This fascinating book about Belfast in the middle of the nineteenth century looks at how and why Ireland’s most prosperous and industrialized town began to tear itself apart. This study provides a vivid example of how a society can come apart at the seams – and how it can stay that way for generations. Through a series of steadily escalating riots, working-class Protestants and Catholics forged a tradition of violence that profoundly shaped their own identities and that of the city itself, setting the stage for the bitter conflicts of the next century. Fighting like the Devil for the Sake of God describes that foundational moment, offering a new analysis of Belfast’s violence that is rooted in the social lives of those who constructed this bitter rivalry and those who were forced to endure it.This book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of Irish and Modern History.

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This unique collection of essays provides a multi-faceted analysis of the Cyprus conflict. It sees the conflict both at a historical and at an analytical crossroads, and brings together leading scholars from various disciplines to provide fresh perspectives on the long-standing issues surrounding Cyprus.The four parts of the book deal first with domestic determinants of the conflict and its resolution, then with external influences, before comparing Cyprus to other conflict cases and finally including approaches beyond political science. The application of different methodological and theoretical approaches, from rational choice to gender studies, to a single case allows for their comparison and make this a must-read not only for those interested in Cyprus, but for all students of conflict resolution.

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Lukácsian film theory and cinema explores Georg Lukács’ writings on film. The Hungarian Marxist critic Georg Lukács is primarily known as a literary theorist, but he also wrote extensively on the cinema. These writings have remained little known in the English-speaking world because the great majority of them have never actually been translated into English – until now. Aitken has gathered together the most important essays and the translations appear here, often for the first time.This book thus makes a decisive contribution to understandings of Lukács within the field of film studies, and, in doing so, also challenges many existing preconceptions concerning his theoretical position. For example, whilst Lukács’ literary theory is well known for its repudiation of naturalism, in his writings on film Lukács appears to advance a theory and practice of film that can best be described as naturalist.Lukácsian film theory and cinema is divided into two parts. In part one, Lukács’ writings on film are explored, and placed within relevant historical and intellectual contexts, whilst part two consists of the essays themselves.This book will be of considerable interest to scholars and students working within the fields of film studies, literary studies, intellectual history, media and cultural studies. It is also intended to be the final volume in a trilogy of works on cinematic realism, which includes the author’s earlier European film theory and cinema (2001), and Realist film theory and cinema (2006).

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This book is a study of twenty stage productions, adaptations and screen versions of Shakespeare’s final Roman play. It makes available for the first time sustained discussions of major productions of the play in four languages and five countries, and explores how Shakespeare’s most political drama has been shaped to circumstances radically different from its original early modern staging. The book offers in-depth analyses of Coriolanus productions covering the post-war era to the twenty-first century, combining close readings of documents and historical contextualisation to productions by the BBC, the Berliner Ensemble, The Katona József Theatre in communist Hungary, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Britain’s National Theatre, The New York Shakespeare Festival, Robert Lepage, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and Ralph Fiennes’ major motion picture. This volume will be of interest to a wide range of readers, including specialists, graduate students and undergraduates studying both Coriolanus and the history of Shakespearean performance.

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This is the history of one of the largest nursing organizations in the world and one of the largest professional associations of women. The Royal College of Nursing began as a small professional association in 1916. Its work included nurses’ education, professional policy and labour relations. It considers the history of nursing from political, social and economic points of view and sheds light on both gender relations and the position of women in the work place in Britain since 1916. The themes include the struggle to achieve professional status for nurses, the radicalization of nurses from the 1960s, the effect of immigration on nursing as a work force, gender relations within the profession and between nurses, their employers and other health professionals.This book will appeal to anyone interested in nursing studies, gender history and labour history.

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Music, Words and Voice: A Reader is a new and exciting interdisciplinary resource which integrates the worlds of music and literature. It is the first primary and secondary source collection of its kind to focus on the relationships between words and music, and between musical and verbal forms. Featured alongside key writings on music, speech and their relationship are previously unpublished articles and interview transcripts, and a new translation of an extract from Wagner’s theoretical works. Designed for undergraduate students, the book uniquely:- examines a historically and geographically diverse selection of genres from a variety of academic perspectives - explores issues of language, musical form, performance, song, narrative, sound and action, and identity- enables readers to connect with different histories, cultures and technologies via the linkages between musical and literary texts. This anthology is an important contribution to the growing field of music and literature studies, and an engaging read for anyone interested in a culturally rich musical and literary inheritance.

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Living in sin is the first book-length study of cohabitation in nineteenth-century England, based on research into the lives of hundreds of couples. ‘Common-law’ marriages did not have any legal basis, so the Victorian courts had to wrestle with unions that resembled marriage in every way, yet did not meet its most basic requirements. The majority of those who lived in irregular unions did so because they could not marry legally. Others, though, chose not to marry, from indifference, from class differences, or because they dissented from marriage for philosophical reasons. This book looks at each motivation in turn, highlighting class, gender and generational differences, as well as the reactions of wider kin and community. Frost shows how these couples slowly widened the definition of legal marriage, preparing the way for the more substantial changes of the twentieth century, making this a valuable resource for all those interested in Gender and Social History.

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This book examines the contribution of different Christian traditions to the waves of democratisation that have swept various parts of the world in recent decades. It offers a historical overview of Christianity’s engagement with the development of democracy, before focusing in detail on the period since the 1970s. Successive chapters deal with: the Roman Catholic conversion to democracy and the contribution of that church to democratisation; the Eastern Orthodox ‘hesitation’ about democracy; the alleged threat to American democracy posed by the politicisation of conservative Protestantism; and the likely impact on democratic development of the global expansion of Pentecostalism. The author draws out several common themes from the analysis of these case studies, the most important of which is the ‘liberal-democracy paradox’. This ensures that there will always be tensions between faiths that proclaim some notion of absolute truth and political orders that are rooted in the idea of compromise, negotiation and bargaining. Written in an accessible style, this book will appeal to students of politics, sociology and religion, and prove useful on a range of advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

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Chantal Akerman is widely acclaimed as one of the most original and important directors working in Europe today. A towering figure in women’s and feminist film-making, she has produced a diverse and intensely personal body of work ranging from minimalist portraits of the everyday to exuberant romantic comedies, and from documentaries and musicals to installation art. This book traces the director’s career at the crossroads between experimental and mainstream cinema, contextualising her work within the American avant-garde of the 1970s, European anti-naturalism, feminism and the post-modern aesthetics. While offering an in-depth analysis of her multi-faceted film style, it also stresses the social and ethical dimension of her work, especially as regards her representation of marginal groups and her exploration of exilic and diasporic identities. Particular attention is given to the inscription of the Holocaust and of Jewish memory in her films.

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Since the end of the Cold War there have been many competing ideas about how to explain contemporary conflicts, and about how the West should respond to them. This study examines how the media interpret conflicts and international interventions, testing the sometimes contradictory claims that have been made about recent coverage of war. Framing post-Cold War conflicts takes a comparative approach, examining UK press coverage across six different crises. Through detailed analysis of news content, it seeks to identify the dominant themes in explaining the post-Cold War international order, and to discover how far the patterns established prior to 11 September 2001 have subsequently changed. Based on extensive original research, the book includes case studies of two ‘humanitarian military interventions’ (in Somalia and Kosovo), two instances where Western governments were condemned for not intervening enough (Bosnia and Rwanda), and the post-9/11 interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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The study of food in literature complicates established critical positions. Both a libidinal pleasure and the ultimate commodity, food in fiction can represent sex as well as money and brings the body and the marketplace together in ways that are sometimes obvious and sometimes unsettling. Spilling the Beans explores these relations in the context of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century women’s fiction, where concerns about bodily, economic and intellectual productivity and consumption power decades of novels, conduct books and popular medicine.The introduction suggests ways in which attention to food in these texts might complicate recent developments in literary theory and criticism, while the body of the book is devoted to close readings of novels and children’s stories by Frances Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth and Susan Ferrier. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of eighteenth and nineteenth century literature, women’s studies and material culture.

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This book provides a critical investigation of what has been termed the ‘global justice movement’. Through a detailed study of a grassroots peasants’ network in Asia (People’s Global Action), an international trade union network (the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mining and General Workers) and the Social Forum process, it analyses some of the global justice movement’s component parts, operational networks and their respective dynamics, strategies and practices. The authors argue that the emergence of new globally-connected forms of collective action against neoliberal globalisation are indicative of a range of place-specific forms of political agency that coalesce across geographic space at particular times, in specific places, and in a variety of ways. Rather than being indicative of a coherent ‘movement’, the authors argue that such forms of political agency contain many political and geographical fissures and fault-lines, and are best conceived of as ‘global justice networks’: overlapping, interacting, competing, and differentially-placed and resourced networks that articulate demands for social, economic and environmental justice. Such networks, and the social movements that comprise them, characterise emergent forms of trans-national political agency. The authors argue that the role of key geographical concepts of space, place and scale are crucial to an understanding of the operational dynamics of such networks. Such an analysis challenges key current assumptions in the literature about the emergence of a global civil society.This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16, Peace, justice and strong institutions

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William Shakespeare’s plays are riddled with passages, scenes and sudden plot twists which baffle and confound the most devoted playgoer and the most attentive commentator. Why, for example, didn’t Hamlet succeed to the throne of Denmark at the instant of his father’s death? (It’s not because the Danish throne was elective.) Why does Chorus in Romeo and Juliet promise his audience ‘two houres trafficke of our stage’ when the play obviously runs almost three hours? How is it that Old Hamlet sent his son to school in (Protestant) Wittenberg but his Ghost was sent to (Catholic) Purgatory? and is there cause-and-effect here? How can Lancelot Gobbo be correct (and he is) when he claims Black Monday (the day after Easter) and Ash Wednesday (the 41st day before Easter) once fell on the same day? And what is a ‘dram of eale’? This engaging and lucid book solves these tantalizing riddles and many others.

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We live in an age of democracy. Very few people challenge the virtues of ‘government by the people’, yet politicians and commentators are fond of decrying the ‘crisis of democracy’. How do these views square up?This book provides the answer by surveying the philosophical history of democracy and its critics and by analysing empirical data about citizen participation in Britain and other developed democracies. In addition to analysis of major political thinkers like Plato, Machiavelli and J.S. Mill, the book analyses how modern technology has influenced democracy.Among the issues discussed in the book are why people vote and what determines their decisions, what prompts citizen involvement in riots and demonstrations, whether spin doctors and designer politics pose a threat to democracy and the influence of mass media on our political behaviour.More than merely providing an overview, the book also presents original analyses of timely issues such as referendums and the consequences of postal voting.An essential book for students of politics, history and media studies, this study puts the debate about democracy into perspective and offers a solid grounding for future discussions.

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Anglo-Jewry since 1066: Place, locality and memory is a study of the history and memory of Anglo-Jewry from medieval times to the present and is the first to explore the construction of identities, both Jewish and non-Jewish, in relation to the concept of place. The introductory chapters provide a theoretical overview focusing on the nature of local studies then moves into a chronological frame, starting with medieval Winchester, moving to early modern Portsmouth and then chapters covering the evolution of Anglo-Jewry from emancipation to the twentieth century. Emphasis is placed on the impact on identities resulting from the complex relationship between migration (including transmigration) and settlement of minority groups. Drawing upon a wide range of approaches, including history, cultural and literary studies, geography, Jewish and ethnic and racial studies, Kushner uses extensive sources including novels, poems, art, travel literature, autobiographical writing, official documentation, newspapers and census data. This book will appeal to scholars interested in Jewish studies and British history

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This new edition examines some of the philosophical and theoretical issues underlying the ‘democratic project’ which increasingly dominates the fields of comparative development and international relations. The first concern presented here is normative and epistemological: as democracy becomes more widely accepted as the political currency of legitimacy, the more broadly it is defined. But as agreement decreases regarding the definition of democracy, the less we are able to evaluate how it is working, or indeed whether it is working at all. The second issue is causal: what are the claims being made regarding how best to secure a democratic system in developing states? To what extent do our beliefs and expectations of how political relations ought to be governed distort our understanding of how democratic societies do in fact emerge; and, conversely, to what extent does our understanding of how democracy manifests itself temper our conception of what it ought to be?The volume will be of interest to those in international development studies, as well as political theorists with an interest in applied ethics.

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To what extent did Europeanisation contribute to Ireland’s transformation from ‘poor relation’ to ‘peer idol’? This book examines how Europeanisation affected Irish policy-making and implementation and how Ireland maximised the policy opportunities arising from membership of the EU while preserving embedded patterns of political behaviour. It focuses on the complex interplay of European, domestic and global factors as the explanation for the changing character of the ‘Celtic Tiger’. The authors demonstrate that, although Europeanisation spurred significant institutional and policy change, domestic forces filtered those consequences while global factors induced further adaptation. By identifying and assessing the adaptational pressures in a range of policy areas the book establishes that, in tandem with the European dimension, domestic features and global developments were key determinants of change and harbingers of new patterns of governance.

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Devolution to Scotland and Wales represented the most fundamental reform of the British state for almost a century. Ten years on, how successful has the reform been? Drawing on the views of citizens, elected representatives and interest groups in Scotland and Wales, this book provides an answer.The book is based on a wide ranging programme of research, involving dedicated surveys and interviews across Scotland, Wales and England. The results provide important new evidence on how devolution has been seen to have performed. What are its perceived achievements? What are its shortcomings? Is the new devolution ‘settlement’ stable, or is there a demand for further reform? By bringing together perspectives from the public, members of the devolved legislatures and representatives of civil society, the book establishes a unique picture of where devolution in Britain stands today.The book is accessibly written, and contains a wide range of useful primary data. It is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying devolution in Britain, as well as for general readers with an interest in constitutional reform and territorial politics.

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Representations of British motoring provides important new insights into the established discourses of British motoring. Based on the patterns of representation that have mediated between the trade, owners and society, particularly the myths and realities generated by the advertising campaigns and motoring journals, it identifies the landmarks of change and innovation. It is not about great images as such, although some are, but particular attention has been directed towards the creative intervention of the artist-illustrators. Part One emphasises the critical significance of the emerging concerns and aspirations of the first decade of motoring, while the two subsequent parts provide a clear understanding of how the continuity of the public debate has shaped the concepts of modern and popular motoring. The new models, motorists and motoring landscape are the central themes through which it has been possible to track the preoccupation with questions regarding speed and safety, the idea of being British, the aesthetics of the car and motoring, and the family, women and the car. As such it is a design history that redefines and extends the parameters of the history of motoring, providing an overview of the place of the motor-car and motoring in British society that is relevant to undergraduate and postgraduate studies and the motoring enthusiast.

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George Chapman is known today as a translator of Homer and as the author of dark tragedies such as Bussy D'Ambois. An Humorous Day's Mirth, written in 1597, was one of the most popular plays of the Elizabethan era. Not only was Chapman's play the Rose Theatre's greatest box-office success of that year, but it also presented an entirely new type of comedy, one that has profoundly influenced comic writing up to the present day. This play is the English theatre's first 'comedy of humours', in which the attitudes, behaviour, and social pretensions of contemporary men and women are satirised. Charles Edelman's is the first fully annotated, modern spelling edition of this long-neglected play. In his extensive introduction and commentary, Edelman discusses the intellectual, philosophical and theatrical background to Chapman's comedy, and shows that An Humorous Day's Mirth would delight the readers and audiences of today as much as it did those in 1597.

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Exploring history 1400–1900: An anthology of primary sources reaches out to the reader across an expanse of 500 years. It offers a broad sweep of history in the light of three key themes: consumers and producers; beliefs and ideologies; and state-formation. Spanning continents and genres, the selection of documents illuminates the links between concurrent events in diverse places and illustrates the legacies of important social, religious and political trends. Previously unpublished accounts and newly translated material reveal new perspectives on both familiar and less well-known events. In capturing this spectrum of human activity and endeavour the book uniquely provides insights into the daily concerns and critical debates of the day, and the opportunity to engage with primary sources as tools for the knowledge creation and critical evaluation. It will be an essential companion to a wide range of courses in historical study and an engaging read for anyone interested in researching, reviewing or relating more closely to a rich historical past.

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James VI of Scotland and I of England participated in the burgeoning literary culture of the Renaissance, not only as a monarch and patron, but as an author in his own right, publishing extensively in a number of different genres over four decades. As the first monograph devoted to James as an author, this book offers a fresh perspective on his reigns in Scotland and England, and also on the inter-relationship of authorship and authority, literature and politics in the Renaissance.Beginning with the poetry he wrote in Scotland in the 1580s, it moves through a wide range of his writings, including scriptural exegeses, political, social and theological treatises and printed speeches, concluding with his manuscript poetry of the early 1620s. The book combines extensive primary research into the preparation, material form and circulation of these varied writings, with theoretically informed consideration of the relationship between authors, texts and readers. The discussion thus explores James’s responses to, and interventions in, a range of literary, political and religious debates, and reveals the development of his aims and concerns as an author.

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This volume examines the underlying foundations on which the European Union's counter-terrorism and police co-operation policies have been built since the inception of the Treaty on European Union, questioning both the effectiveness and legitimacy of the EU's efforts in these two critically important security areas. Given the importance of such developments to the wider credibility of the EU as a security actor, this volume adopts a more structured analysis of key stages of the implementation process. These include the establishment of objectives, both at the wider level of internal security co-operation and in terms of both counter-terrorism and policing, particularly in relation to the European Police Office, the nature of information exchange and the 'value added' by legislative and operational developments at the European level. It also offers a more accurate appraisal of the official characterisation of the terrorist threat within the EU as a 'matter of common concern'. In doing so, not only does it raise important questions about the utility of the European level for organising internal security co-operation, but it also provides a more comprehensive assessment of the EU's activities throughout the lifetime of the Third Pillar, placing in a wider and more realistic context the EU's reaction to the events of 11 September 2001 and the greater prominence of Islamist terrorism.

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Europe and Civil Society provides an in-depth examination of how public interest groups and social movements seek to influence the European policy-making process. The book is based on a comparison of the role of networks of activists and their allies – broadly defined as Movement Advocacy Coalitions – in influencing decision-making at the European Union level in three specific areas of policy-making: environmentalism, anti-racism and ethno-nationalist regionalism. It draws on systematic documentary analysis and an extensive series of interviews with activists and institutional actors to examine the role of public interest organisations in these three areas. This focus reflects topical societal concerns and facilitates new insights into the study of European policy-making, political sociology, and social movement research.

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During the last two decades, numerous studies have been devoted to the Victorian fascination with King Arthur, however . the figure of King Alfred has received almost no attention. For much of the nineteenth century, Alfred was as important as Arthur in the British popular imagination. A pervasive cult of the king developed which included the erection of at least four public statues, the completion of more than twenty-five paintings, and the publication of over a hundred texts, by authors ranging from Wordsworth to minor women writers. By 1852, J.A. Froude could describe Alfred’s life as ‘the favourite story in English nurseries’; in 1901, a national holiday marked the thousandth anniversary of his death, organised by a committee including Edward Burne Jones, Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hughes. England’s darling sets out to answer the questions that must arise in the face of such nineteenth-century enthusiasm for a long-dead king. It addresses a genuine gap in the literature on Victorian medievalism in particular and cultural history in general and argues that knowledge of the cult of Alfred is crucial to understanding the Victorian cultural map. The book examines the ways in which Alfred was rewritten by nineteenth-century authors and artists, and asks how beliefs about the Saxon king’s reign and achievements related to nineteenth-century ideals about leadership, law, religion, commerce, education and the Empire. The book concludes by addressing the most interesting enigma in Alfred’s reception history: why is the king no longer ‘England’s darling’?A fascinating study that will be enjoyed by scholars of history, cultural history, literature and art history.

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Realism is an essential concept in literary studies, yet for a variety of reasons it has not received the attention and clarity it deserves, often being dismissed as ‘too slippery’ to be of use. This accessible study remedies that failing for students and scholars of English Literature and Literary Theory alike, plainly setting out what realism is, the issues surrounding it, and its role in other major literary modes such as modernism and postmodernism. Beginning Realism gives detailed coverage of the nineteenth-century realist novel through its focus on novels by Gaskell, Eliot, Trollope, Dickens, Mrs Oliphant, Thackeray and Zola. As well as discussing ‘the novel’, the book also includes chapters on the use of realism in drama and poetry and a chapter on ‘the language of realism’, another aspect often overlooked in analysis of the concept.

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Mockumentary is now an established part of the spectrum of television styles, with both deep roots in television history and a key part of innovations in the sitcom genre since the 1990s. Tracing the development of mockumentary series within the broader history of traditions of satire, drama and nonfiction programming, the author uses detailed discussions of popular and innovative television series from Britain, the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.This is the first detailed study of the rich vein of mockumentary television programmes, covering series such as The Larry Sanders Show, The Daily Show, and the British and American versions of The Office to discuss how producers have experimented with mockumentary as a distinctive approach to storytelling.

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This book provides for the first time modern-spelling, fully annotated editions of three important Elizabeth and Jacobean 'usury plays' - The Three Ladies of London, Englishmen for My Money, The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl. The edition includes an extensive scholarly introduction to the attitudes toward money-lending in early modern England, and to the authors, texts and historical contexts of this drama.The plays included in this edition also represent examples of 'city plays' and 'alien plays', thus making them widely relevant to scholars and teachers in many areas of early modern studies. They are also gaining new appreciation in their own right.As befits a volume in the RPCL series, the edition is academically advanced to cater for specialised scholars. However, the introduction, editing and annotation remain accessible for undergraduates and theatregoers.

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Germany, pacifism and peace enforcement is about the transformation of Germany’s security and defence policy in the time between the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 war against Iraq. The book traces and explains the reaction of Europe’s biggest and potentially most powerful country to the ethnic wars of the 1990s, the emergence of large-scale terrorism, and the new US emphasis on pre-emptive strikes. Based on an analysis of Germany’s strategic culture it portrays Germany as a security actor and indicates the conditions and limits of the new German willingness to participate in international military crisis management that developed over the 1990s. It debates the implications of Germany’s transformation for Germany’s partners and neighbours and explains why Germany said 'yes' to the war in Afghanistan, but 'no' to the Iraq War.

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This book provides the first detailed analysis of the work of four important contemporary directors whose work falls between the reductive labels of 'auteur cinema' and 'popular cinema'. Their work is contextualised within this timely investigation into the shifting relationship between the privileged status of the auteur and questions of genre, gender and cinematic production in France today. This important contribution to understanding the shifting landscapes of contemporary French film identifies an essential intermediacy in the films of these directors, which works to undo a series of dominant oppositions, generic template and contestation, public collectivity and personal intimacy, to offer a new perspective on the location of the political in contemporary French cinema. The four chapters provide detailed critical analysis of films by Dominique Cabrera, Laetitia Masson, Noémie Lvovsky and Marion Vernoux, and present common thread including the possible construction of social intimacy, the political demystification of romance narratives and the role of nostalgia, to argue that their work uses popular genres in order to challenge dominant cultural representation that resonates beyond the immediate parameters of contemporary French cinema. This book will be of interest to researchers working in French and European cinema, to students of Film Studies and French and Francophone Studies, and to film enthusiasts.

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Terry Gilliam presents a sustained examination of one of cinema's most challenging and lauded auteurs, proposing fresh ways of seeing Gilliam that go beyond reductive readings of him as a gifted but manic fantasist. Analysing Gilliam's work over nearly four decades, from the brilliant anarchy of his Monty Python animations through the nightmarish masterpiece Brazil to the provocative Gothic horror of Tideland, it critically examines the variety and richness of Gilliam's sometimes troubled but always provocative output. The book situates Gilliam within the competing cultural contexts of the British, European and American film industries, examining his regular struggles against aesthetic and commercial pressures. He emerges as a passionate, immensely creative director, whose work encompasses a dizzying array of material: anarchic satire, childhood and adult fantasy, dystopia, romantic comedy, surrealism, road movie, fairy tale and the Gothic. The book charts how Gilliam interweaves these genres and forms to create magical interfaces between reality and the illuminating, frightening but liberating worlds of the imagination. Scrutinising the neglected importance of literature and adaptation in Gilliam's career, this study also observes him through the lenses of auteurism, genre, performance, design and national culture, explaining how someone born in Minnesota and raised in California came to be one of British television and film's most compelling figures.

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Parties of the extreme right have experienced a dramatic rise in electoral support in many countries in Western Europe over the last two and a half decades. This phenomenon has been far from uniform, however, and the considerable attention that the more successful right-wing extremist parties have received has sometimes obscured the fact that parties of the extreme right have not recorded high electoral results in all West European democracies. Furthermore, the electoral scores of these parties have also varied over time, with the same party recording low electoral scores in one election but securing high electoral scores in another. This book, available in paperback for the first time, examines the reasons behind the variation in the electoral fortunes of the West European parties of the extreme right in the period since the late 1970s. It proposes a number of different explanations as to why certain parties have performed better than others at the polls and it investigates each of these different explanations systematically and in depth. As well as offering a comprehensive analysis of the reasons behind the uneven electoral success of the West European parties of the extreme right, this book provides up-to-date information on all right-wing extremist parties that have contested elections at national level across Western Europe since the late 1970s. In addition to examining the parties’ ideology and organisation, it discusses their relationship with the parties of the mainstream, and it investigates the impact that electoral institutions have on their ability to attract votes. This book is aimed at both scholars and students interested in the extreme right, in party politics and in comparative politics more generally.

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This book focuses on the housebuilding boom of the interwar years, when Britain became a nation of homeowners. It investigates the ways in which ordinary people expressed new class and gender identities through the design, architecture and decoration of interwar homes then and now. It argues that these ‘ideal’ homes combine nostalgia for the past and longing for the future resulting in a new specifically suburban modernism.

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This fascinating collection looks at the career and films of Luc Besson, one of the most acclaimed figures in international cinema. Contributions have been assembled from all over the world, and their different approaches reflect this geographical diversity. Films covered range from Besson’s first feature, La Dernier Combat, to the international blockbusters The Fifth Element and Joan of Arc. The essays range from looking at costume design to musical scores, and the final chapter offers a transcript of a previously unpublished interview with the man himself.He is the only French director to have crossed over successfully during the 1990s into the blockbuster spectacular we associate with Hollywood cinema and yet this is only the second book in English on this major international director. The films of Luc Besson will make fascinating reading for anyone interested in the career and films of the ‘master of spectacle’.

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Although formally equal, relations between citizens are actually characterised by many and varied forms of inequality. Do contemporary theories of equality provide an adequate response to the inequalities that afflict contemporary societies? And what is the connection between theories of equality and the contemporary politics of citizenship? Accessible and comprehensive, Rethinking equality provides a clear, critical and very up-to-date account of the most important contemporary egalitarian theories. Unusually, it also relates these theories to contemporary political practice, assessing them in relation to the impact of neoliberalism on contemporary welfare states, and the shift from ‘social’ to ‘active’ forms of citizenship. As well as representing a significant intervention within academic debates on equality and citizenship, this book represents essential reading for students of contemporary political theory.

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This book offers a comprehensive account of the methods and practice of learning modern languages, particularly Italian, in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century England. It is the first study to suggest that there is a fundamental connection between these language-learning habits and the techniques for both reading and imitating Italian materials employed by a range of poets and dramatists, such as Daniel, Drummond, Marston and Shakespeare, in the same period. The widespread use of bilingual parallel-text instruction manuals from the 1570s onwards, most notably those of the Italian teacher John Florio, highlights the importance of translation in the language-learning process. This study emphasises the impact of language-learning translation on contemporary habits of literary imitation, in its detailed analyses of Daniel's sonnet sequence 'Delia' and his pastoral tragicomedies, and Shakespeare's use of Italian materials in 'Measure for Measure' and 'Othello'.

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A clearly written, comprehensive critical introduction to one of the most original contemporary British writers, providing an overview of all of Sinclair’s major works and an analysis of his vision of modern London. This book places Sinclair in a range of contexts, including: the late 1960s counter-culture and the ‘British Poetry Revival’; London’s underground histories; the rise and fall of Thatcherism, and Sinclair’s writing about Britain under New Labour; Sinclair’s connection to other writers and artists, such as J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock and Marc Atkins.This book makes a significant contribution to the growing scholarship surrounding Sinclair’s work, offering the first critical text that covers in detail all of Sinclair’s work: his poetry, fiction, non-fiction (including his book on John Clare, Edge of the Orison), and his film work.

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'Popular television drama: critical perspectives' is a collection of essays examining landmark programmes of the last forty years, from 'Doctor Who' to 'The Office', and from 'The Demon Headmaster' to 'Queer As Folk'. Contributions from prominent academics focus on the full range of popular genres, from sitcoms to science fiction, gothic horror and children's drama, and challenge received wisdom by reconsidering how British television drama can be analysed.Each section is preceded by an introduction in which the editors discuss how the essays address existing problems in the field and also suggest new directions for study. The book is split into three sections, addressing the enduring appeal of popular genres, the notion of 'quality' in television drama, and analysing a range of programmes past and present.Popular television drama: critical perspectives will be of interest to students and researchers in many academic disciplines that study television drama. Its breadth and focus on popular programmes will also appeal to those interested in the shows themselves.

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The British television director Alan Clarke is primarily associated with the visceral social realism of such works as his banned borstal play 'Scum', and his study of football hooliganism, 'The Firm'. This book uncovers the full range of his work from the mythic fantasy of Penda’s Fen, to the radical short film on terrorism, 'Elephant'. Dave Rolinson uses original research to examine the development of Clarke’s career from the theatre and the ‘studio system’ of provocative television play strands of the 1960s and 1970s, to the increasingly personal work of the 1980s, which established him as one of Britain’s greatest auteur directors.'Alan Clarke' examines techniques of television direction, and proposes new methodologies as it questions the critical neglect of directors in what is traditionally seen as a writer’s medium. It raises crucial issues in television studies, including aesthetics, authorship, censorship, the convergence of film and television, drama-documentary form, narrative and realism.

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Geoffrey Hill has said that some great poetry 'recognises that words fail us'. These essays explore Hill's struggle over fifty years with the recalcitrance of language. This book seeks to show how all his work is marked by the quest for the right pitch of utterance whether it is sorrowing, angry, satiric or erotic. It shows how Hill's words are never lightly 'acceptable' but an ethical act, how he seeks out words he can stand by - words that are 'getting it right'.This book is the most comprehensive and up-to-date critical work on Geoffrey Hill so far, covering all his work up to ‘Scenes from Comus’ (2005), as well as some poems yet to appear in book form. It aims to contribute something to the understanding of his poetry among those who have followed it for many years and students and other readers encountering this major poet for the first time.

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This fascinating work challenges many of the accepted facts about the concentration camps run by the British during the South African War. The author demonstrates that much of what we have traditionally understood about these camps originates the testimony which was solicited, selected and published by key women activists within Boer proto-nationalist circles. Using detailed archival evidence, she shows that much of the history of the camps results from a deliberate imposition of ‘post/memory’ - a process by which what was ‘remembered’ was shaped and reshaped to support the development of a racialised nationalist framework. Many of the camps’ occupants died from successive epidemics of measles, typhoid, enteritis and pneumonia rather than deliberate ill-treatment, yet the book shows how mourning for those who died was overridden by state commemorative activities concerned with promoting pan-Boer nationalist aspirations. The innovative and groundbreaking approach of the author invites the reader to step into and explore with her the commemorative sites passed by nationalist land acts, which still powerfully mark the South African landscape.

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From bottle gardens, the bachelor pad and Batman to designer gnomes and monogamy spray, this book uses a diverse range of objects to explore the changing significance of kitsch. With its unique approach to its subject, Kitsch! Cultural politics and taste promises to advance debates in cultural studies and sociology around taste, while providing an invaluable introduction for students and interested readers.Kitsch! examines how the idea of kitsch is mobilised – progressively, as bad taste, as camp and as cool – to inform notions of identity and sensibility. Where most studies proceed from the kitsch object, this book takes the moment of aesthetic judgement as its starting point and attempts to identify the ideological work performed by the category itself. The book poses the strongest challenge to those who argue that taste is democratised in contemporary culture, offering ample evidence that judgements of taste have shifted ground rather than relaxed.

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This new edition considers the unifying legal attributes that span vastly differing inter-governmental organisations, from the UN to the EU. A law of international organisations has become established in certain areas, such as legal personality, powers, membership, finance, and decision-making. In other, newer, areas – accountability, responsibility and democracy – politics is still much rawer, and has not yet been fully converted into legal concepts and principles. As with the first edition, there are plenty of examples of organisations given in the text. Individual organisations dealing with issues such as security, health, civil aviation, finance and trade are scrutinised by way of example, to illustrate how different they can be, but also to show how it is possible to debate a set of legal principles that transcend each institution. This new edition of an established text will appeal to students and academics as well as individuals seeking a legal and political insight into international organisations.

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This book explores the uncanny afterlife of modernist ideals in the second half of the twentieth century. Rejecting the familiar notion that modernism dissolved during the 1930s, it argues that the fusion of rationalism and mysticism which characterises modernist poetics was sustained long after its politics had been discredited by the events of World War Two. The book’s central concern is why the aesthetic mysticism that Walter Benjamin called the faith of those ‘who made common cause with Fascism’ continued to be a guiding principle for literary elites and countercultural movements alike. New light is shed on the relationship between occultism and the Pound tradition, especially in terms of Pound’s influence on post-1945 Anglo-American poetry, and a critical theory of ‘late modernism’ is offered which shows how belated notions of cultural redemption have survived in contemporary poetry.This wide-ranging contextual study focuses on the poetry of Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, Paul Celan, and J H Prynne, and explores the development of modernist culture through its theories of phenomenology, psychoanalysis, science, ethnography, and ancient history.

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In the changed political landscape of Northern Ireland, where all major political parties with a nationalist agenda are now reconciled to the use of peaceful and constitutional means to achieve their objectives, this book presents a timely analysis of the constitutional nationalist tradition in Northern Ireland in the period leading up to the outbreak of the Troubles. The first book on constitutional nationalism to appear in over a decade, this new and incisive work based on extensive primary sources and existing secondary literature, maps the history of the campaigns of nationalist parties and organisations to redress the grievances of Northern Ireland’s Catholics and bring partition to an end. It offers a critical reappraisal of these campaigns and it assesses the outcomes and consequences of the political strategies pursued by an array of nationalist parties and groups.

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This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the work of Robert Bresson, one of the most respected and acclaimed directors in the history of cinema.. The first monograph on his work to appear in English for many years dealing not only with his thirteen feature-length films but also his little-seen early short Affaires publiques and his short treatise Notes on cinematography.. The films are considered in chronological order, using a perspective that draws variously on spectator theory, Catholic mysticism, gender theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis.. The major critical responses to his work, from the adulatory to the dismissive, are summarized and analyzed.. The work includes a full filmography and a critical bibliography.

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