Search results for ""Liverpool University Press""

This is the first English translation of the Venerable Bede’s commentary on the book of Genesis. Dealing as it does with the biblical account of the creation of the world and of mankind, and of mankind’s fall from grace and exile into the life of time, On Genesis offers essential insights into Bede’s fundamental assumptions as a theologian, historian, and scientific cosmologist. Bede’s role in laying the foundations of the modern world cannot be overemphasised. From his quantitative approach to questions of science to his introduction of the Anno Domini system of dating and his text-critical methods of biblical analysis, he anticipated and influenced modern ways of thinking. Bede regarded the opening chapters of Genesis as the foundation narrative of the world. From it Bede derived the theoretical basis for his scientific treatises and his notion of the English as a chosen people of God, which informs the Ecclesiastical History. This translation and introduction attempts to make Bede’s commentary accessible to anyone with an interest in his work.

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The term ‘idiot’ is a damning put down, whether deployed on the playground or in the board room. People stigmatized as being ‘intellectually disabled’ today must confront variants of the fear and pity with which society has greeted them for centuries. In this ground-breaking new study Patrick McDonagh explores how artistic, scientific and sociological interpretations of idiocy work symbolically and ideologically in society. Drawing upon a broad spectrum of British, French and American resources including literary works (Wordsworth’s ‘The Idiot Boy’, Dickens Barnaby Rudge, Conrad’s The Secret Agent), pedagogical works (Itard’s The Wild Boy of Aveyron, Sequin’s Traitement moral, hygiene et education des idiots, and Howe’s On the courses of Idiocy), medical and scientific papers (Philippe Pinel, Henry Maudsley, William Ireland, John Langdon Downs, Isaac Kerlin, Henry Goddard) and sociological writings (Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, Beames’ The Rookeries of London, Dugdal’s The Jukes), Idiocy: A Cultural History offers a rich study of the history and representation of mental disability.

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It has been variously labelled ‘Language Poetry’, ‘Language Writing’, ‘L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing’ (after the magazine that ran from 1978 to 1981), and ‘language-centred writing’. It has been placed according to its geographical positions, on East or West coasts; its venues in small magazines, independent presses and performance spaces, and its descent from historical precursors, be they the Objectivists, the composers-by-field of the Black Mountain School, the Russian Constructivists or American modernism à la William Carlos Williams and Gertrude Stein. Indeed, one of the few statements that can be made about it with little qualification is that ‘it’ has both fostered and endured a crisis in representation more or less since it first became visible in the 1970s. In Poetry & Language Writing David Arnold grasps the nettle of Language poetry, reassessing its relationship with surrealism and providing a scholarly, intelligent way of understanding the movement. Poets discussed include Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Michael Palmer and Barrett Watten.

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In the late 1990’s, Postcolonial Studies risked imploding as a credible area of academic enquiry. Repeated anthologization and an overemphasis on the English-language literatures led to sustained critiques of the field and to an active search for alternative approaches to the globalized and transnational formations of the post-colonial world. In the early twenty-first century, however, postcolonial began to reveal a new openness to its comparative dimensions. French-language contributors to postcolonial debate (such as Edouard Glissant and Abdelkebir Khatibi) have recently risen to greater prominence in the English-speaking world, and there have also appeared an increasing number of important critical and theoretical texts on postcolonial issues, written by scholars working principally on French-language material. It is to such a context that this book responds. Acknowledging these shifts, this volume provides an essential tool for students and scholars outside French departments seeking a way into the study of Francophone colonial postcolonial debates. At the same time, it supplies scholars in French with a comprehensive overview of essential ideas and key intellectuals in this area.

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This third volume in Mike Ashley’s four-volume study of the science-fiction magazines focuses on the turbulent years of the 1970s, when the United States emerged from the Vietnam War into an economic crisis. It saw the end of the Apollo moon programme and the start of the ecology movement. This proved to be one of the most complicated periods for the science-fiction magazines. Not only were they struggling to survive within the economic climate, they also had to cope with the death of the father of modern science fiction, John W. Campbell, Jr., while facing new and potentially threatening opposition. The market for science fiction diversified as never before, with the growth in new anthologies, the emergence of semi-professional magazines, the explosion of science fiction in college, the start of role-playing gaming magazines, underground and adult comics and, with the success of Star Wars, media magazines. This volume explores how the traditional science-fiction magazines coped with this, from the death of Campbell to the start of the major popular science magazine Omni and the first dreams of the Internet.

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This book presents two systems of censorship and literary promotion, revealing how literature can be molded to support authoritarian regimes. The issue is complex in that at a descriptive level the strategies and methods new states use to control communication through the written word can be judged by how and when formal decrees were issued, and how publishing media, whether in the form of publishing companies or at the individual level, engaged with political overseers. But equally, literature was a means of resistance against an authoritarian regime, not only for writers but for readers as well. From the point of view of historical memory and intellectual history, stories of people without history and the production of their texts through the literary underground can be constructed from subsequent testimony: from books sold in secret, to the writings of women in jail, to books that were written but never published or distributed in any way, and to myriad compelling circumstances resulting from living under fascist authority. A parallel study on two fascist movements provides a unique viewpoint at literary, social and political levels. Comparative analysis of literary censorship/literary reward allows an understanding of the balance between dictatorship, official policy, and what literary acts were deemed acceptable. The regime need to control its population is revealed in the ways that a particular type of literature was encouraged; in the engagement of propoganda promotion; and in the setting up of institutions to gain international acceptance of the regime. The work is an important contribution to the history of twentieth-century authoritarianism and the development fascist ideas.

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With their dramatic descriptions of black masses and cannibalistic feasts, the records generated by the Basque witch-craze of 160914 provide us with arguably the most demonologically-stereotypical accounts of the witches sabbath or akelarre to have emerged from early modern Europe. While the trials have attracted scholarly attention, the most substantial monograph on the subject was written nearly forty years ago and most works have focused on the ways in which interrogators shaped the pattern of prosecutions and the testimonies of defendants. Invoking the Akelarre diverts from this norm by employing more recent historiographical paradigms to analyze the contributions of the accused. Through interdisciplinary analyses of both French- and Spanish-Basque records, it argues that suspects were not passive recipients of elite demonological stereotypes but animated these received templates with their own belief and experience, from the dark exoticism of magical conjuration, liturgical cursing and theatrical misrule to the sharp pragmatism of domestic medical practice and everyday religious observance. In highlighting the range of raw materials available to the suspects, the book helps us to understand how the fiction of the witches sabbath emerged to such prominence in contemporary mentalities, whilst also restoring some agency to the defendants and nuancing the historical thesis that stereotypical content points to interrogatorial opinion and folkloric content to the voices of the accused. In its local context, this study provides an intimate portrait of peasant communities as they flourished in the Basque region in this period and leaves us with the irony that Europes most sensationally-demonological accounts of the witches sabbath may have evolved out of a particularly ardent commitment, on the part of ordinary Basques, to the social and devotional structures of popular Catholicism.

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Fighting the Antichrist analyzes the discourse against Catholicism from the breach from Rome in 1534 until the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. Cultural representations of Catholicism were decisive in creating and moulding the perceptions that many Englishmen had of the new Anglican Church and its alleged enemies. Such perceptions were essential not only in promoting policies against English Catholics, but in shaping English national identity. Anti-Catholic propaganda elaborated a stereotype of the Catholic that converged with other negative cultural types common in the period, such as that of the lazy, lecherous monk, the cruel Spaniard, the seductive and deceitful Jesuit and the Machiavellian schemer (the last three enjoying special popularity in the second half of the Elizabethan period). These stereotypes allowed anti-Catholics to send a clear message to their Protestant countrymen: that Catholicism was a devilish, corrupt foreign power that could undermine the most basic pillars of English society their Church and State. Dr Alvarez-Recio explores a wide number of texts of different genres in order to determine their contribution to the aforementioned cultural image of the Roman Catholic Church in England. Special attention is paid to political and doctrinal plays and pamphlets, given their appeal to different social groups and their role in creating a new public opinion. Other kinds of material that are also considered include chronicles and private letters, fragments of royal proclamations, and descriptions of royal entries and coronations. All these texts offer a wide spectrum of responses to the Catholic question and assist in understanding the role of anti-Catholic discourse in royal iconography. Originally published in Spanish by Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, the volume provides an inter-disciplinary approach, addressing issues such as the formation of public opinion, the influence of imperial discourse, and the overriding role of religion in nationalist issues.

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An epic poem is a performance. The telling of Beowulf carries something of the days of its pre-literary composition, as it evolved as something memorised, half spoken and half sung, over many generations. The single manuscript we have, from about 1000 AD, is the end result of a great chain of poetic adaptation. Of all new versions Seamus Heaneys (1999) has made the most striking impact, in part for his willingness to experiment, to be a new scop or oral poet, to depart at times from the exact text and join the tradition when there was no such thing. The licence such an approach adopts can make for a riveting poem in itself, a work of wonder. But there is a different route to the flame of the original. J.D. Winters rendering of the Beowulf song accepts the text as historical fact, and by a gradual revelation of its deeper music, discovers an illumination from within. The voice is less his and more nearly of the time and world of the poem itself. But this is without recourse to an archaic register. It is the modern language and yet not the modern man speaking. The phrases of the text, like phrases of music with their crescendos and diminuendos, steadily and unhurriedly move towards the culmination of a powerfully fulfilling symphony. It is the expression of a simpler time than ours, and perhaps a more plain-speaking one. Yet its art was at least as sophisticated as the modern worlds. The clarity and concentration of meaning in the brilliantly alliterated half-lines can never be properly reconstructed. But a suggestion of that force and beauty, together with an underlying sense of the inexorable, may always be rediscovered. In the knock and flow of the lines, too, one can sense the poetry of a sea-faring nation. The nation is not England or Sweden or Denmark. It is an intermingled part of Northern Europe using the West Saxon dialect of the language in England to convey a mix of Scandinavian history and Teutonic legend. In this evocative transcreation the reader may come, no doubt as did the early listeners, to a simple truth behind the medley of international borders: the inevitable journey of the universal human.

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This book brings together recent research by a group of specialists in history and sociology to provide a new reading of the late Franco dictatorship, especially in relation to its political culture. The authors focus on the election of local, trade union and national representatives, the work of the first Spanish sociologists, the struggle over administrative reform, the role of the media and the intellectuals, as well as the evolution of the dictatorships political class and its response to the regimes decline. Not only are the politics of the late dictatorship scrutinised, but also the mechanisms that were deployed to control the fast-changing society of the 1960s and 1970s. In examining the late Franco period, the contributors do not believe that it contained the seeds of Spains later democratisation, but maintain that certain sectorial regime initiatives -- electoral and political changes, an evolving discourse and an interest in political processes outside Spain -- made many Spaniards aware of the dictatorships contradictions and limitations, thereby encouraging its subsequent political and social evolution. This transformation is compared with the latter stages of the parallel dictatorship in Portugal. The great majority of Spaniards felt that the embrace of democratic freedoms and integration into the European Community was the only way forward during the Transition. But the shift from dictatorship to democracy from the 1960s onwards in Spain needs to be understood in relation to the multitude of political and social changes that took place -- despite the opposition of Franco and the bunker mentality of the regime. These changes manifested in a complex interaction between internal and external factors, which eventually resulted in the transformation of Spanish society itself.

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In the aftermath of popular uprisings that unleashed the quest for freedom, Arab governments scrambled to limit sectarian divisions, though much of these efforts came to naught. Regrettably, weak governments fell into carefully laid traps, aimed to divide and rule. Protracted wars further destroyed Arab wealth and cohesiveness, and Sunni communities saw their power bases marginalised. On cue, and predicted by some commentators, extremist movements like the so-called Islamic State emerged, targeting Sunnis with extreme violence. In 2014 Nabil Khalife, an established Lebanese thinker, published a widely praised thesis that identified the root causes of renewed sectarian tensions at a time when confrontations polarised awakened Arab societies. Based on an extensive discussion of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah, Khalife advanced the notion that the revolution was not Islamic but an Iranian-Shiah rebellion that ended the Pahlavi military monarchy, and that the post-2011 Sunni-Shiah struggle was planned by leading Western powers, including Russia, to preserve Israel and impose the latters acceptance in the Middle East as a natural element. In this translation of Istihdaf Ahl al-Sunna [Targeting Sunnis], Joseph A. Kechichian analyses the fundamental questions raised by the author to better place the current sectarian collision in a geo-strategic global perspective. Based on the books avowals of how the worlds three monotheistic religions perceive each other and Political Sunnism, Kechichian assesses Henry Kissinger's famous appellation of the Middle World that houses significant and indispensable oil resources, and why that allegedly makes it -- Political Sunnism -- dangerous. In a comprehensive introduction to the translation, he describes various initiatives that led global powers to check the undeniable force of Political Sunnism.

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'You had to decide to let yourself be turned upside down, you had to accept to see the idea you had forged about yourself progressively shatter.' In the summer of 1969, at 19 years old, Didier Mouturat gave up on college, shattering his parents' hopes that he follow a safe and conventional course. Fresh from the wild Parisian student revolt of 1968, with its street battles and slogans, he set out to find a life that would be truly alive, deciding to be a classical actor. When he met Cyrille Dives, however, the universe of masks quietly turned his world upside down. This book describes Mouturat's apprenticeship to a unique theater artist. In the 1970s and early 80s, Dives created a theater of masks, a Western parallel to Japanese Noh. Dives was a true bohemian artist, a sculptor of masks, a painter and theatrical director. Cyrille Dives was also a spiritual master. Mouturat's apprenticeship encompassed everything from walking in a way that brings a mask to life to cultivating a beginner's mind. Slowly and subtly, the theater apprenticeship became an encounter with the deeper truth of his own being. 'I am speaking of an intimate, progressive discovery that we are not masters of our own being -- that it is only the result of a system of reactions that tyrannize us.' Mouturat becomes Dives's right-hand man, helping establish a theater and a school of masks. That work is evident here in enchanting illustrations, as well as words. Yet as translated by the scholar and author Roger Lipsey, Mouturat also offers a pithy chronicle of a search for meaning and inner being.

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For more than three generations, the members of the Godo family controlled Barcelonas top-selling newspaper La Vanguardia, navigating it through the countrys turbulent 20th century. Whether under the corrupt politics of the Bourbon Restoration, the radical transformations of the Second Republic or the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, La Vanguardia remained Barcelonas indisputable journalistic benchmark. Central to this success was the Godo familys extraordinary capacity to meet the changing tastes of a plural audience whilst adjusting to a changing political scenario. In parallel, the ownership of the newspaper allowed family members to expand their interests to other fields, such as politics, business and colonial rule in Cuba and Morocco. The long-standing reputation of the Godo dynasty, however, is in sharp contrast with the lack of studies about their members and the newspaper they founded. This silence is due, in part, to the influence that La Vanguardia still exerts on public life today. Drawing on hitherto unused archival material, this book is the first account about the most renowned publishers and the most important newspaper in Catalonias history. In so doing, it also sheds new light on how the media shaped (and conditioned) Europes birth of mass politics. In fact, while contemporaries often observed that newspapers had a powerful influence over public affairs, historians have not systematically examined the role of press owners as political actors. Likewise, media specialists have seldom considered how the rise of the new mass press affected democratisation and the collapse of liberal institutions. In contrast, Pol Dalmau focuses on the case of a renowned family in Barcelona to uncover the medias critical role in Europes uneven road to modernity. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies

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At once pragmatic and utopian, the Spanish artist, critic and political activist Josep Renau engaged in multiple ways in the volatile cultural conflicts of interwar Europe, which converged on Spain in the Second Republic's battle to modernise both politics and society (1931-1939). Renau used his idiosyncratic artwork and agit-prop, inspired by the Constructivists and the German avant-garde, to critique the timidity of the Republic's first democratising reforms. To envision an alternative, he launched arts organisations and magazines whose goal was to begin the work of redefining Spanish national self-image through cultural innovation. The ideas Renau developed would soon come to shape government policy during the war in Spain (1936-39) when Renau served as the Republic's Director General of Fine Arts. In power, Renau was a tireless cultural innovator, whose initiatives not only helped mobilise tens of thousands of Republicans but also shaped the new collective imaginaries emerging from the conflict. This book offers the first interdisciplinary and contextualised analysis of the relationship between art and politics in Renau's work at the time of Spain's pivotal attempt to pursue democratic forms of modernisation. It traces the connections between Renau's political goals and the specific visual strategies he deployed, providing a comprehensive historical assessment of his attempts to turn protean theory into effective practice. In spite of the Republic's military defeat, Renau's work, and the wartime cultural programme he inspired and impelled, offer fertile material for debates on the dynamic relationship between culture and democracy in ways which remain as relevant and urgent today as they were when Renau took up the challenge.

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The era of the German Occupation of France constituted, surprisingly, a golden age for the arts: literature, theater, popular music and cinema. These works of art seem to be devoid of political impact. The widespread trend of unrealistic and fantastic art during this period is explained by some scholars as the artists escape from the omnipotent eye of German censorship. The purpose of the book is to show that, contrary to the accepted view, some of these films were intimately linked to the political situation. They convey the demonization of characters that, while not specifically presented as Jews nevertheless manifested anti-Semitic stereotypes of the Jew as ugly, rootless, low, hypocritical, immoral, cruel and power hungry. All five movies analysed (Les Inconnus dans la maison, dir. Henri Decoin, 1942; Les Visiteurs du Soir, dir. Marcel Carne, 1942; L'Eternel retour, dir. Jean Delannoy, 1943; Les Enfants du Paradis, dir. Marcel Carne, 1943) present characters not identified as Jews but who exhibit negative Jewish traits, in contrast to the aristocratic characters whom they aspire to emulate. They demonstrate, implicitly, central themes of explicit anti-Semitic propaganda. Yehuda Moraly addresses two current major misconceptions regarding the Cinema of Occupied France: (1) that the accepted view that there were almost no explicitly Jewish characters in the cinema of that time and place is patently incorrect; and (2) that the feature films of Occupied France were not as it is commonly thought free of the propaganda messages that permeated the press, the radio and documentary films. Analysis of these films brings out the contradictory nature of European anti-Semitism. On one hand, the Jew is the anti-Christ, throttling the world with disgusting materialism while on the other hand, he is representative of an ancestral stifling morality, which it is time to abolish.

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The birth of the Second Spanish Republic in April 1931 ushered in a period of possible secularisation to Spain. Liberals welcomed legal changes, while conservatives feared the special 'privileges' they enjoyed would end. The Catholic Church remained a central focus of left-wing antagonism and right-wing allegiances, and conflicts surrounding the future of religion grew severe. While members of the Spanish Catholic hierarchy had clearly supported the right and disdained the left, the actions and opinions of the Vatican and its hierarchy stationed in Spain were much more nuanced. Similarly, when conservative military action plunged Spain into a Civil War in July 1936, the majority of the Spanish Catholic hierarchy openly supported their victory, but the highest levels of the Vatican remained silent. This book explores the unique position and specialised reactions of the Vatican concerning the Second Republic and Civil War. For the Holy See, the conflict in Spain was not an isolated event at the edge of the continent, but part of a larger narrative of ideological and political tension swirling across Europe. Any public statement by the Vatican concerning the Spanish Republic or Civil War could be misconstrued as support for one side or another, and threaten the Church. True, the Vatican often remained silent -- and some have suggested this supports the conclusion that the Church worked for Franco -- but by accessing previously unavailable sources directly from the Vatican, this book can help to clarify the difficult options that awaited the Holy See during this disastrous period. Similarly, this book works to highlight the fact that the Catholic Church was not some monolithic entity, but men like Pope Pius XI and Secretary of State Pacelli had their own understandings of spirituality and politics.

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"THIS WAS DRAWYN BY A KNYGHT PRESONER, SIR THOMAS MALLEORE, THAT GOD SENDE HYM GOOD RECOVER." In 1934, these were the lines which made the Librarian of Winchester College realize that he had discovered a hitherto unknown version of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, a work known to all previous readers only through Caxton's 1485 edition. For it was known that Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel had been imprisoned on numerous occasions between the 1450s and his death in 1471 by Lancastrians and Yorkists. But who was Malory? Why did successive authorities want to lock him up? How did he come to write the Morte d'Arthur? And why has that text been so persistent a presence in English culture? Going in quest of Malory and of the meaning of the Morte the author addresses the text's central preoccupations violence, desire, and the nature of Englishness. Malory is placed in his social context, at a time of unprecedented national and regional unrest. Lustig traces the connections between writers and commentators from Tennyson to T.S. Eliot who have been fascinated by Malory's work. A prime purpose of the volume is to reveal the Morte's extraordinary ability to move its readers intensely, to become part of their lives. Accordingly, the author delves into his own boyhood fascination with the stories of King Arthur, exploring their influence on him both then and now. The Morte d'Arthur was one of the last great literary works of the Middle Ages. But it was also one of the first to articulate a distinctively modern set of concerns particularly with the nature of identity, both personal and national. Knight Prisoner: Thomas Malory Then and Now will send readers back to Malory's work with renewed enjoyment and understanding.

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Eleanor Nesbitt's introduction contextualises the life of Kailash Puri, Punjabi author and agony aunt, providing the story of the book itself and connecting the narrative to the history of the Punjabi diaspora and themes in Sikh Studies. She suggests that representation of the stereotypical South Asian woman as victim needs to give way to a nuanced recognition of agency, multiple voices and a differentiated experience. The narrative presents sixty years of Kailash's life. Her memories of childhood in West Punjab evoke rural customs and religious practices consistent with recent scholarship on 'Punjabi religion' rather than with the currently dominant Sikh discourse of a religion sharply distinguished from Hindu society. Her marriage, as a shy 15-year-old, with no knowledge of English, to a scientist, Gopal Puri, brought ever-widening horizons as husband and wife moved from India to London, and later to West Africa, before returning to the UK in 1966. This life experience, and Gopal's constant encouragement, brought confidence to write and publish numerous stories and articles. Kailash writes of the contrasting experiences of life as an Indian in the UK of the 1940s and the 1960s. She points up differences between her own outlook and the life-world of the post-war community of Sikhs from East Punjab now living in the West. In their distress and dilemmas many people consulted Kailash for assistance, and the descriptive narrative of her responses and advice and increasingly public profile provides insight into Sikhs' experience in their adopted country. In later years, as grandparents and established citizens of Liverpool, Kailash and Gopal revisited their ancestral home, now in Pakistan a reflective and moving experience. An Afterword by Eleanor contextualises the current UK Sikh scene. The book includes a glossary of Punjabi words and suggestions for further reading.

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This book analyses the major economic crisis that began in 2007-8 and continues in 2013. Carles Manera explains that it is not just a financial crisis, caused primarily by the banking sector, as many commentators claim, but a systemic crisis caused in part by overproduction, falls in business profits, environmental problems, and a stubborn insistence by political and monetary authorities on economic policies driven by austerity. Providing examples from the economic history of western nations, which provide economists and social scientists with essential reference for understanding the complexities behind this Great Recession, the author proposes economic solutions to end the crisis that are at odds with policies proposed and acted on by major European governments, led by Germany. Manera thus adopts a heterodox approach -- a "subversive view" -- making this book stand out not only from governmental economic policy-making but taking a stance far from conventional academic literature on economics. Professor Manera is highly critical of the economic policy coming out of Berlin and Brussels, in which ultra-neoliberal orthodoxy is the predominant form of economic action. He is of the firm opinion that this wrong path will only prolong the crisis for the most vulnerable members of society and for the middle classes, which make up the economic consumer power-house of the European economy. A prime objective of the work is foster a committed viewpoint and engagement by all European nation states whereby Germany should lead Europe out of this Great Recession (rather than leading Germany only out) and that the European Central Bank should broaden substantively its objectives and concentrate on policies that support economic growth. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

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Samuel Rogers was arguably the most widely read poet of the early nineteenth century. He was also a prominent figure in the literary and cultural life of London and owned one of the largest private art collections of his day. He was well known to at least three generations of celebrated figures, ranging from John Wilkes and Dr. Burney, through Wordsworth, Scott and Byron, to Tennyson, Dickens and Ruskin. He was also associated with other prominent national figures such as Charles James Fox, Joseph Priestley, Lord Holland, and the Duke of Wellington. Known throughout his life (not always sympathetically) as the Banker Poet', he came from a radical, Dissenting background. He was supportive of the French Revolution and politically active in the 1790s when to be so involved personal danger (he attended the treason trials of Tom Paine and Horne Tooke). Nevertheless he considered his true vocation to be poetry and achieved considerable success and fame when The Pleasures of Memory was published in 1792. Ten years later he retired' to a civilised home in St. James's Place where his breakfast and dinner parties were legendary. His art collection attracted visitors from all over the world, and his poem Italy, composed after an extended tour there in 1815, was widely read. Martin Blocksidge considers the nature of Rogers' poetry and the reputation it acquired, and examines its cultural context; likewise Rogers' connoisseurship of paintings. Rogers was famous, but controversial, provoking some distaste and consequent satirical treatment, most notably from his erstwhile friend, Byron. Biographical and interdisciplinary, this narrative is relevant not only to literary historians but to those interested in the history of Dissenting and radical groups, picturesque travel, art history and the cultural history of London.

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John Brande Trend, the first Professor of Spanish in Cambridge in 1933, arrived at his Chair by a circuitous route through a variety of disciplines, encountering a host of prominent people in pre-war political, cultural and intellectual life. It was this wider experience that made his teaching so unique and makes his story central to the period through which he lived. At Cambridge with the doomed generation who were to perish in the First World War, Trend studied Natural Sciences but fell under the spell of the musicologist Edward Dent, who became his lifelong friend. A brilliant linguist and musician, it was music that took Trend to Spain in 1919 to unearth ancient manuscripts and to write articles for London magazines. He fell in love with a country undergoing a cultural, intellectual and political transformation that culminated in the establishment of the Second Republic in 1931. He became a close friend of Manuel de Falla, whose music he introduced to the British public, as well as of the ill-fated poet, Federico García Lorca, and other luminaries of the optimistic 1920s. After the euphoria of the Republic and the subsequent Civil War, he never returned to Spain but did much to help Spanish exiles and refugees. Academically he extended his interests to Central and South America, one of the first Hispanists to do so. Trend's books on Spanish literature and music were vivid and evocative, as was his style of teaching, inspired by the philosophy of the Spanish educationalist, Francisco Giner de los Ríos. Drawing on Trend's prolific and hitherto unknown correspondence with many celebrated figures, the book depicts his extraordinary personality and achievements, and his first-hand involvement in important events of the period.

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Karel Capek is the most important, most versatile, but also the most neglected Czech writer in the twentieth century. His plays RUR and "From the Life of Insects" created a sensation in London in the 1920s; his word "robot" was introduced into the Oxford English Dictionary while his other plays as well as novels, short stories, essays, and travelogues followed in English translations in quick succession until cultural links were broken off by the war. Because of his liberal, anti-war views Capek's works were blacklisted by the Nazis occupying his homeland, as well as later by the communists. Presenting a study of all genres Capek used, BRB's book pays the debt history owes to Capek. Both as a writer and as a journalist, Capek sought the truth: in the epistemological sense, how we acquire knowledge; in the moral one, how we apply it to our behaviour. Recognizing great differences between individuals, Capek recommends tolerance and mutual trust as the best way towards the improvement of democratic human relations. His philosophical trilogy Hordubal, Meteor and An Ordinary Life -- is the best artistic expression of these ideas; as a journalist, he conveyed them explicitly. Capek's science fiction works show his admiration for the achievements of science and technology; he forecast the use of nuclear power, but strongly warned against its abuse. His readers particularly appreciated his common sense, wit and humour. Karel Capek was a man who taught through laughter.

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In the 1890s Oscar Wilde enjoyed one of the most high-profile reputations in Britain; yet, virtually overnight, he was plunged into disgrace and ruin. What were the reasons for this extraordinary reversal of fortune? Ashley Robins explores Wilde's motivation in prosecuting the Marquess of Queensberry, and elaborates on the precarious legal situation that effectively quashed any prospect of a withdrawal from the lawsuit without dire consequences. He examines the medical and psychiatric aspects of Wilde's two-year imprisonment and reveals -- for the first time and based on the original Home Office records -- the machinations among prison officials and doctors to cover up Wilde's state of health. Wilde's medical history is presented with an expert evaluation of his terminal illness, including a resolution of the syphilis controversy. Robins details Wilde's tangled matrimonial affairs during his imprisonment and goes on to disclose the manoeuvres adopted by friends to secure his early release, citing hitherto unpublished letters to show that bribery of prison personnel was seriously contemplated. The issue of homosexuality is discussed not only in relation to Oscar Wilde but from the broader historical, legal and biological perspective. The author portrays Wilde's character and behaviour through the images he projected onto society, by the strong but mixed public reaction to him, and by the quality of his interpersonal relationships with his wife, family and close friends. Finally, Wilde's personality is assessed using internationally accepted diagnostic criteria; and, in an unusual and innovative experiment, a group of Wildean scholars completed a psychological questionnaire as if they were doing so for Oscar Wilde himself. Drawing on these findings and on his own extensive psychiatric experience, Ashley Robins concludes that Wilde had a disorder of personality that culminated in the final and tragic phase of his life.

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This book spans a century in the history of the Blackfoot First Nations of present-day Montana and Alberta. It maps out specific ways in which Blackfoot culture persisted amid the drastic transformations of colonisation, with its concomitant forced assimilation in both Canada and the United States. It portrays the strategies and tactics adopted by the Blackfoot in order to navigate political, cultural and social change during the hard transition from traditional life-ways to life on reserves and reservations. Cultural continuity is the thread that binds the four case studies presented, encompassing Blackfoot sacred beliefs and ritual; dress practices; the transmission of knowledge; and the relationship between oral stories and contemporary fiction. Blackfoot voices emerge forcefully from the extensive array of primary and secondary sources consulted, resulting in an inclusive history wherein Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholarship enter into dialogue. Blanca Tovias combines historical research with literary criticism, a strategy that is justified by the interrelationship between Blackfoot history and the stories from their oral tradition. Chapters devoted to examining cultural continuity discuss the ways in which oral stories continue to inspire contemporary Native American fiction. This interdisciplinary study is a celebration of Blackfoot culture and knowledge that seeks to revalourise the past by documenting Blackfoot resistance and persistence across a wide spectrum of cultural practice. The volume is essential reading for all scholars working in the fields of Native American studies, colonial and postcolonial history, ethnology and literature.

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Joseph Smith, Jr, founder of the Mormon movement, and George J Adams, one of his least known followers -- two Gentile dreamers of Zion -- were instrumental in encouraging Jews and Christians to support the restoration of Israel. For Joseph Smith, Jewish responsibility for establishing Zion had not been forfeited or terminated. It was continuous: the Jews would return as Jews; they would rebuild Jerusalem as Jews. In his view, neither the denigration of Jews, so often characteristic of Christianity, nor supersession by the Church, was tenable. According to Joseph's perception of the Scriptures, and his own prophetic insights, there are to be two strategic centres -- Zion at historical Jerusalem, and Zion in a New Jerusalem in the heartland of America. He believed that a renewed Israel and a church, restored to its primal purpose, shared a mandate to body forth in society the dream of the Kingdom of God. He called this dream the cause of Zion, which became a major emphasis of the Mormon movement. Adams, separated from the Mormons following the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844, founded his own Church of the Messiah. Most of his congregations were in Maine, where he readied his followers for a mission as the "Children of Ephraim", which he explicated with persuasive skill from the Old Testament. Later he led 156 of his followers to found an agricultural and commercial colony in Jaffa, Israel. This book explains the rejection by Smith and Adams of "normal" Christian replacement theology and sets out the apologetics by which Smith and Adams promoted courage and conviction in all who joined them in encouraging the in-gathering of the Jewish exiles to Jerusalem.

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This research is an instrumental investigation of a theory of rhythmical performance of poetry, originally propounded speculatively in the author's Perception-Oriented Theory of Metre (1977). "Iambic pentameter" means that there is a verse unit consisting of an unstressed and a stressed syllable (in this order), and that the verse line consists of five such units. In the first 165 verse lines of Paradise Lost there are two such lines. The theory takes up one of the central issues in metrical studies: all criteria for metricality hitherto proposed have been violated by the greatest masters of musicality in English poetry. The question arises, how do we recognise two verse lines that are very different in their structures as instances of the same abstract pattern of, eg: iambic pentameter; and how do we distinguish a metrical from an unmetrical line. One great difference between this theory of metre and others concerns the status of deviation. Most theoreticians deploy a battery of tools to make deviant stress patterns conform with metric pattern. Only when all attempts fail do they speak of "tension". When they succeed, they blur the distinction between, for example, Milton's and Pope's metrical styles. Or else, they have formulated different rules of metricality for Shakespeare and Milton. This theory assumes that when the versification patterns and linguistic patterns conflict, they can be accommodated in a pattern of "Rhythmical Performance" -- namely one in which the conflicting patterns are simultaneously perceptible. There are scales of mounting difficulties of mismatches, on which each poet (and each theorist) draws at different points the boundary of what is acceptable. Reuven Tsur's revised and expanded edition (original publication, Peter Lang, 1986) is essential reading for all scholars and students involved in versification and Cognitive Poetics.

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Patience Darton's unpublished letters and papers from 1930s Spain and 1950s China are at the heart of this new biography by Angela Jackson, together with testimony from recorded interviews and a wealth of photographs that illustrate the life of this remarkable woman. 'For us it was Heaven' tells the story of a young, upper middle-class nurse in the 1930s who becomes dramatically caught up in Spain's civil war and the passionate political issues of her times, but whose intimate writings reveal emotions and attitudes that will strike a chord with most self-aware and determined women today. While Patience nursed near the front lines in Spain, she met and fell in love with Robert, a German volunteer in the International Brigades, deeply committed to fighting fascism. Their passionate relationship coloured the rest of her long life, taking her to communist China and then, finally, back to Spain. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

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This book is a history of the struggle for independence after East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in 1975. The occupation, which lasted 24 years, was immediately resisted through guerrilla warfare and clandestine resistance. A continuum of effort between the armed freedom fighters in the mountains, the resilience of urban supporters, and international activism and support eventually brought about liberation in September 1999. Given that the Timor rebels did not have a land border with a friendly state, had no external supplier of weapons and no liberated area in which to recover between guerrilla operations, their successful resistance is unique in the history of guerrilla warfare and independence struggles. Equally uncommon was an unexpected weapon in the struggle -- a remarkable display of strategic non-violent action. This is the first study to integrate all the major factors in East Timor's independence struggle. The multi-dimensional perspectives addressed in this volume include Indonesian, US and Australian diplomacy; Indonesian military operations and activities against the populace; East Timorese resistance at all social levels; human rights abuses; the issue of oil; and international diplomacy resulting from global solidarity activism.

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This book examines the art of the gold box in 18th and 19th century Europe. Distinguished international scholars explore the contributions made by individual workshops in major European centres of production in the context of contemporary patronage and the international market for such boxes. Consideration is given to the design of gold boxes with reference to the V&A's important collection of design drawings. Leading experts explore the ways in which different techniques of gold box decoration -- portrait miniatures, gems, enamels, mosaics and hard-stones -- were developed. Contributors to the volume include experts from Amsterdam, Berlin, Dresden, London, Munich, New York, Paris, Rome, and St Petersburg. Senior museum curators, auction house specialists and independent scholars illustrate and discuss examples from private and public collections in their cities and elsewhere. The result is a unique record of the state of knowledge on the European production of gold boxes and of the history of collecting. This book will appeal to international collectors, scholars, dealers, museum curators and museum visitors, and all those interested in gold and silver fine art.

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This collection of essays provides analysis and commentary on: psychological warfare in the battle against terrorism, PSYOP techniques adopted by different Palestinian groups against Israel and actions that promote the Palestinian cause in the West, Israeli strategies for combating radical Islam, and Jewish perspectives on propaganda in the context of Israel's international image problems. PSYOP -- designed to influence the perceptions and attitudes of individuals, groups and foreign governments -- is still considered confidential by many defence organisations, hence the lack of publications that deal with the topic in a scientific, factual approach. Perspectives of PSYOP is a follow-on volume to the author's Psychological Warfare in the Intifada, adopted in the US Intelligence College as a textbook, and widely reviewed to critical acclaim.

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"Distant Drums" reveals how colonies were central to the defence of the British Empire and the command of the oceans that underpinned it. It blends sweeping overviews of the nature of imperial defence with grass-roots explanations of how individual colonies were mobilised for war, drawing on the author's specialist knowledge of the Indian Ocean and colonies such as Bechuanaland, Ceylon, Mauritius, and Swaziland. This permits the full and dramatic range of action involved in imperial warfare -- from policy-makers and military planners in Whitehall to chiefs recruiting soldiers in African villages -- to be viewed as part of an interconnected whole. After examining the martial reasons for acquiring colonies, the book considers the colonial role in the First World War. It then turns to the Second World War, documenting the recruitment of colonial soldiers, their manifold roles in British military formations, and the impact of war upon colonial home fronts. It reveals the problems associated with the use of colonial troops far from home, and the networks used to achieve the mobilisation of a global empire, such as those formed by colonial governors and regional naval commanders. The book is an important contribution to our understanding of the role of British colonies in twentieth-century warfare. The defence of empire has traditionally been associated with the military endeavours of Britain and the 'white' Dominions, with the Indian Army sometimes in the background. This book champions the crucial role played by the other parts of the British Empire -- the sixty or so colonies spread across the globe -- in delivering victory during the world wars of the twentieth century.

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This book offers a comprehensive analysis of Northern Irish poetry focusing on the colonial, political, and cultural underpinnings that have shaped artistic expression in a variety of ways. In discussing the rich poetry reflecting the conflict of community, Jon Curley examines what aesthetic choices poets make in order to register, resist, or re-imagine life and thought under particularly tumultuous conditions. The focus is on both the better-known contemporary Northern Irish poets as well as their more obscure but no less significant counterparts. Forms of communal identity generated in Northern Ireland are examined by way of an ethical critique that references the conceptual blockages and innovations that help foster new poetic representations of society. Establishing the complexity and potency of poetic experimentation, Poets and Partitions is a timely commentary for all those interested in the intersection of aesthetics and politics. The exploration of communal identity-formations in Northern Irish poetry or poetry in general has been dismissed by some critics as an unhelpful approach to understanding literature. But, as this study demonstrates, it is a vital area of scholarly examination and Jon Curley's in-depth analysis illuminates understanding of how poets confront their communal, social, and sectarian orders.

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Since the 1970s, the Latin American Jewish Diaspora has been recognized as a unique phenomenon in diasporic studies, due to the development of new ways of thinking about internationalism and globalization. Important works of the 1980s and 1990s established the critical role of Jews in Latin America. This collection moves the field forward by providing an interdisciplinary and comparative view of Jewish experiences through history, literature, painting, anthropology, poetry, sociology, and politics.

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This book explores the ways in which dress has been influential in the political agendas and self-representations of politicians in a variety of regimes from democratic to authoritarian. Arguing that dress is part of 'hard core' politics, it shows how dress has been crucial to the constructions of nationhood and national identities in both Asia and the Americas. Since dress has been a marker of identity and status, chapters engage with the gendering of the politics of dress, discussing how women have become bearers and wearers of 'national tradition' and how men and women's dress reflect their political positions in the nation-state. It examines the magical power of cloth, the meanings of batik and design, the holy status of uncut cloth versus cut cloth, and the quaint combination of non-Western with Western attire. This collection of pioneering essays fills a vacuum in the largely Eurocentric field of dress studies, demanding that attention be paid to Asia and the Americas as major sites of vestimentary creativity.

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This book tells the story of how Flaubert's admiration for Cervantes' Don Quijote unfolded, and how profoundly it shaped and influenced Flaubert's ambition and his approach to all his major works, beginning with his breakthrough novel Madame Bovary. It thus fills a major gap in the history of the novel and explores, for the first time, just what Flaubert meant when he said, while writing Bovary: "Je retrouve toutes mes origins dans le livre que je savais par coeur avant de savoir lire, Don Quichotte" (I can trace all my origins back to the book I knew by heart... ). Several cultural and personal factors converged to establish the prominent place of Don Quijote in Flaubert's imagination, and these are dealt with in depth in the book. But it is the profound parallels between the two novels that clearly illustrate how Don Quijote permeates Madame Bovary in both subject and approach. One such parallel is Alonso Quijano and Emma Bovary's desire to imitate fiction, which reflects a kind of literary madness in which the attempt to impose the narrative conventions of romances on life only leads hero and heroine, respectively, to destruction, disappointment, and ultimately death. The borrowings and the transpositions are substantial and endless; and indeed the influence did not stop at Bovary, for Flaubert's later grands romans, including the rewritten Education Sentimentale and Bouvard et Pecuchet, also display the quixotic hallmark. This study situates each author in his respective historical and aesthetic context, and provides key examples from Don Quijote and Madame Bovary, Flaubert's Correspondence, as well as his earlier novels. Flaubert's letters and novels show how the French author penetrated deeply into Cervantes' novelistic approach and how his relationship to Don Quijote directly shaped his success at the crux of his career.

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The Sami people of Northern Europe and Aboriginal Australians are literally a world apart in geographical terms, yet share a common fate as Indigenous minorities. Emerging from centuries of internal colonisation. Their ancient cultures and languages severely eroded by policies of forced assimilation, their traditional lifestyles and Economies damaged, and their political voices marginalised, recent decades have seen their struggles for collective survival rise to political prominence in national and international agendas, with the promise of Indigenous self-determination held out by national governments and the United Nations Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples. Both the Sami and Indigenous Australians have won important new rights during these decades, yet the outcomes are very different. In this volume -- the only collection of essays specifically on the Indigenous peoples of Australia and Northern Europe -- the similarities and differences between the Indigenous experiences in the Nordic countries and Australia are explored by renowned experts in the field including Indigenous authors. Some of the contributions are explicitly comparative and based on research experience in both areas, and two essays on New Zealand and Canada provide external points of reference to the volume's focus on Northern Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia) and Australia. As always in Indigenous Studies, issues of cultural identity and survival are prominent but there is a special emphasis in many of the chapters on issues of socio-economic development and political representation, and a substantial introduction by the editors sketches out a historical-theoretical framework for understanding Indigenous struggles in First World countries that is critical of some currently fashionable approaches.

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This is a groundbreaking English-language examination of the final period of Nazi rule in Germany's eastern provinces at the end of the Second World War. It outlines the wartime role of this region and assesses the impact of Nazi 'popular mobilisation' initiatives during the closing months of the conflict. Major projects such as the preparation of the Ostwall defences and the raising of the Volkssturm (Home Guard) are examined in depth. The book concludes by weighing up the importance of propaganda and coercion to the Nazi regime as it attempted to prolong its existence in the face of crushing military defeats. "The Darkest Hour" incorporates a unique synthesis of archival and printed source material from the English-speaking world, Germany, Poland and Russia. The eastern German Nazi leadership, their crimes and their corruption, are covered collectively to a greater extent in this book than in any English-language account hitherto. As the Third Reich was on the brink of defeat, its leader and lackeys wielded life or death powers and were loathed by the civilian population as much as the advancing Soviets were feared. This extensive account of this important historical period and circumstance is essential reading for all scholars and students of the Third Reich and European military history.

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The Mojahedin Khalq Organisation is an Iranian political party that helped Khomeini's religious sect in Iran bring about the Islamic revolution of 1979, after being at the forefront of opposition to the rule of the Shah. However, as the revolution got underway the Mojahedin were sidelined by the religious clerics and were expelled from the political arena. They responded by attacking the dominant polity through democratic means (such as political demonstrations), and later through armed resistance, to become the most significant opposition power base to the current regime of Iran. Since 1997 the Organisation has dissolved and depleted, and now functions at little more than a rhetoric level. This book provides a detailed history of the Organization and its members, and addresses its complex relationship with western and international powers, most specifically the United States, in their endeavours to harness agreement to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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Offers an original and fertile way to integrate spiritual and scientific views of human evolution. It offers a new and refreshing alternative to the way we think about our origins: random mutation (mechanistic neo-Darwinism), Genesis (God did it all personally), and Intelligent Design (God personally does what we can't otherwise account for). The result is an invigorating perspective on how our best qualities -- our capacity for love, our appreciation of beauty, our altruistic capability, our creativity and intelligence -- have come into being and evolved. How we think about our origin matters: if we think we are machines living among other machines, we will act accordingly. By showing evolution as a creative and intelligent process with its own inherent logic, THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN NATURE resolves the dilemma of how to have, at the same time, both truth and ethics. Instead of starting in an imagined remote and 'uncertain past' and moving to the present, this book starts at the certain and 'immediate present' and works back. That consciousness, creativity, and intelligence exist is certain. The question is: how can these have evolved? Dr Albert Low has made a study of human nature throughout his life. To write this book he draws on his prolonged meditations on creativity and the human condition, his years of providing psychological and spiritual counseling, and a wide-ranging knowledge of Western psychology, philosophy, and science.

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The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1919-1926 tells of the administrative changes of the post-war period and of the senior permanent officials, their personalities and cast of mind, who advised the foreign secretary and carried out his policies. The book goes beyond existing accounts of changes taking place after the Great War, and provides examples of the FO machine in action as seen from King Charles Street, and the uneasy relationship between 10 Downing Street and the Foreign Office.

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This History presents a broad canvas of post-war Czech literary developments within the cultural and political context of the times. Information is provided about the many English-language translations from Czech literature, and the circumstances in which these translations came about. Analysis is by way of quoting from original Czech works, especially poetry, with English translation. 'Profiles of the Most Important Czech Writers since 1945' gives biographical and bibliographical details about the most important post-war Czech writers, and links to secondary literature in English. The volume also includes a bibliographical list of the most important works in English on Czech history, literary history and politics, as well as a list of anthologies of Czech post-war literature in English. Originally published in Czech, this English translation has been entirely re-worked, taking the needs of the English-speaking reader and student into consideration. 'Writers Under Siege' is intended for all readers interested in or studying the literatures and cultures of Central Europe. It is essential reading for students of Czech and Slavonic Studies.

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This book dispels two common myths about the American-Israeli patron-client relationship -- that arms transfers to Israel have been motivated by American domestic politics rather than national interests and that these arms transfers have come without any political strings attached to them. The first part of the book describes and analyses the institutionalisation of the American-Israeli arms pipeline during the Johnson administration, demonstrating conclusively in the process that arms transfers to the Jewish state were based primarily on American national interests. The second part of the book consists of four case studies that clearly reveal that American arms transfers to Israel, whether in wartime or in peacetime, have always come with a diplomatic price tag attached to them. The book is based largely on American government documents from the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, from the Lyndon B Johnson Presidential Library, and from the United States National Archives.

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In the 1990s it was the French theorists such as Derrida, Lacan and Foucault who, with their stress on linguistic play and undecidability, took Victorian Studies by storm; now, it seems, it is the Germans who are coming. In Roger Ebbatson's new book, Marx, Simmel, Benjamin and, above all, Heidegger are unleashed on a range of Victorian texts -- some unsuspecting, some all too suspecting. The results are alarming: Ebbatson begins with Tennyson overshadowed by empire and homosocial tensions and ends with Conan Doyle writing about a bicycle belonging to a character called Heidegger. In between, he makes bone-shaking progress over a Victorian terrain marked out by Thomas Hardy, Richard Jefferies, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Robert Louis Stevenson; along the way, Ebbatson considers shipwrecks, money, nature, the South Seas Mission, and final solutions'. Tennyson, we discover, was afraid of his own shadow, Hopkins's greatest poem was created by erratic compasses, Hardy wrote like Kafka, Stevenson was drawn to murderous missionaries, and Conan Doyle applauded the concentration camp. Ebbatson shows us that what the Germans bring to our understanding of the nineteenth century is a terrible awareness of the darkest moments of the darkest moments of the twentieth century.

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Someone called Jacques Derrida, someone called him on the phone, someone who was dead -- this was August 22nd 1979. A mystery, he thought; but it is a mystery that began more than ten years earlier, in 1968, when Derrida, a philosopher, visits Oxford and there, before the very eyes of the Philosophy Sub-Faculty, he dies, several times. Murder, he thought. And so I shall investigate, and begin with a sign that the philosopher says he left within a book from the thirteenth century, a strange fortune-telling book that he had found in the oldest part of Oxford's Bodleian Library. In the book are a host of cryptic questions, but the philosopher directs us to one in particular, a peculiar question about a boy, and the question is this: Does the boy live? The philosopher will not, though, give the answer; he requires, instead, that we go to Oxford to open the book for ourselves.

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This book reassesses the reign of Said bin Taymur, who was deposed by his son, Qabus bin Said, in a coup in July 1970. Contemporary historiography of the period of Said's rule (1932-1970) views Oman as medieval and isolationist; Qabus' later government is seen as progressive and enlightened, with his ascendancy to the throne often described as the 'rebirth of Oman' from its 'medieval slumber' into a thriving and prosperous Sultanate. This study refutes the prevailing view that Said's four-decade reign should be perceived as a place where time stood still. The author offers a critical look at the economic, political, social and cultural aspects of Oman during the reign of Said bin Taymur. The book mainly focuses on tribe-state relations, emphasizing their dynamic interaction, with particular attention paid to the relationships between the tribal groups. Uzi Rabi's book reinterprets a significant timescale in the modern history of the Arabian Peninsula and pre-oil societies, and will be essential reading for both students and scholars of Middle Eastern history, culture and society.

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This book has been written for teachers, teacher trainers and their students, and others working with children and young people. It provides a valuable resource for those engaged in religious studies and South Asian studies, comprising a rich library of data relevant to current debates in these fields. Drawing on field studies of children of South Asian and other backgrounds in Britain, Nesbitt argues the value to schools of teachers adopting an ethnographic approach in intercultural education. Examples from primary, secondary and higher education demonstrate the urgent need for teachers and others to be better informed of cultural diversity and to understand the interconnections between ethnographic studies, pastoral care, the curriculum, and international events. "Intercultural Education" examines a wide variety of issues, including spirituality, identity formation, the ways in which beliefs' and practices' are represented, stereotyping communities, being a Christian at school, and the role of caste. The book contains Practical Guidelines for teachers, as well as a Glossary, covering pastoral care, racism, liaison with parents, recognising the diversity of language, etc.

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The book examines how an organisation originating in late eighteenth-century Ireland became a significant and controversial element in Liverpool history. Using a wide range of sources including rarely accessed Orange Order records it places the Order within an early nineteenth-century Liverpool context of apocalyptic evangelical Protestantism, a labour market dominated by irregular dock work, a growing influx of immigrant Catholic Irish, marked residential segregation and sporadic civil conflict. It explores how the Order survived official disapproval, dissolution and schism to become deeply rooted within Protestant working-class communities. It analyses the attractions of lodge life, the appeal of ritual, colourful regalia and 12th July processions, the intense social bonding within lodges, the mutual support provided in adversity and measure taken to guard and transmit their world view. The intense royalism and patriotism of the Order and its troubled relationship with the Church of England are examined plus its role in sustaining the working class Tory vote which contributed to a century long Conservative hegemony in city politics. The book concludes with the cultural and socio-economic changes in British society which marginalised the core concerns of the Order, triggering decline in strength, visibility and significance in civic life.

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Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative. Many people will be familiar with the term ‘alternative comedy’ and what it was or what it wasn’t. They will remember its anarchic and confrontational nature. and its rejection of the traditional comedy aesthetic. Yet, few will remember that the scene and the physical spaces, the clubs, were collectively referred to as ‘alternative cabaret’. Ray Campbell’s book represents the first cultural studies investigation of the alternative cabaret scene of the 1980s and early 1990s. Campbell unearths the events before alternative cabaret and charts its rise throughout the 1980s and eventual transformation into the stand-up comedy industry we recognize today. To do this, Campbell makes use of autoethnography, ethnography and archive study to uncover alternative cabaret’s past and interrogate its many claims. The book departs from the position of other works on the period because it firmly situates alternative cabaret within the post-punk countercultural milieu of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Campbell also discusses how political theatre groups like CAST and movements like Rock Against Racism helped to shape the aesthetic and the discourses of the movement.

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