Search results for ""cornell university press""

A history of the first 150 years of Cornell University Press.

Read more less

This landmark study, first published by Cornell University Press in 1966, shows how Hitler's elite army grew from a praetorian guard of barely 28,000 men at the beginning of the Second World War to a combat-hardened army of more than 500,000 in 1945. George H. Stein examines in detail the structure and organization of the Waffen SS and describes the rigid personnel selection and intensive physical, military, and ideological training that helped to create the tough and dedicated cadre around which the larger force of the later war years was built.

Read more less

Since 1919, New York History has been the foremost scholarly journal on the Empire State's past. Now under the leadership of the Cornell University Press, and working closely with staff from the New York State Museum, New York History's mission is unifying the diverse field of New York State history and meeting the needs of a growing historical community that includes scholars, public historians, museum professionals, local government historians, and all those seeking an in-depth look at the Empire State's history. The journal promotes and interprets the state's history through the publication of historical research and case studies dealing with New York State, as well as its relationship to national and international events. New York History, published twice a year, presents articles dealing with every aspect of New York State history, as well as reviews of books, exhibitions, and media projects with a New York focus.

Read more less

Organizations, institutions, and individuals get stuck in spite of their innovative ideas and ambitious agendas. Never has the timing been better for a book that cuts through the theoretical jargon and delineates the exact political and managerial skills leaders need to move agendas forward. Whether you're a team leader trying to lead change and innovation in a large corporation, an entrepreneur trying to gain support, a politician trying to expand your coalition, or an individual trying to advance your career and build networks, The Agenda Mover will give you the political and managerial leadership skills necessary to achieve results. Based on the premise that leadership competencies and skills can be learned, The Agenda Mover is the inaugural volume of the practitioner-oriented Pragmatic Leadership Series published in association with Cornell University Press. Each volume emphasizes specific skills of execution that leaders at all levels need to master. Visit pragmaticleadershipseries.com to learn more about the series.

Read more less

Since 1919, New York History has been the foremost scholarly journal on the Empire State's past. Now under the leadership of the Cornell University Press, and working closely with staff from the New York State Museum, New York History's mission is unifying the diverse field of New York State history and meeting the needs of a growing historical community that includes scholars, public historians, museum professionals, local government historians, and all those seeking an in-depth look at the Empire State's history. The journal promotes and interprets the state's history through the publication of historical research and case studies dealing with New York State, as well as its relationship to national and international events. New York History, published twice a year, presents articles dealing with every aspect of New York State history, as well as reviews of books, exhibitions, and media projects with a New York focus.

Read more less

Organizations, institutions, and individuals get stuck in spite of their innovative ideas and ambitious agendas. Never has the timing been better for a book that cuts through the theoretical jargon and delineates the exact political and managerial skills leaders need to move agendas forward. Whether you're a team leader trying to lead change and innovation in a large corporation, an entrepreneur trying to gain support, a politician trying to expand your coalition, or an individual trying to advance your career and build networks, The Agenda Mover will give you the political and managerial leadership skills necessary to achieve results. Based on the premise that leadership competencies and skills can be learned, The Agenda Mover is the inaugural volume of the practitioner-oriented Pragmatic Leadership Series published in association with Cornell University Press. Each volume emphasizes specific skills of execution that leaders at all levels need to master. Visit pragmaticleadershipseries.com to learn more about the series.

Read more less

Urban Environmental Education Review explores how environmental education can contribute to urban sustainability. Urban environmental education includes any practices that create learning opportunities to foster individual and community well-being and environmental quality in cities. It fosters novel educational approaches and helps debunk common assumptions that cities are ecologically barren and that city people don't care for, or need, urban nature or a healthy environment. Topics in Urban Environmental Education Review range from the urban context to theoretical underpinnings, educational settings, participants, and educational approaches in urban environmental education. Chapters integrate research and practice to help aspiring and practicing environmental educators, urban planners, and other environmental leaders achieve their goals in terms of education, youth and community development, and environmental quality in cities. The ten-essay series Urban EE Essays, excerpted from Urban Environmental Education Review, may be found here: naaee.org/eepro/resources/urban-ee-essays. These essays explore various perspectives on urban environmental education and may be reprinted/reproduced only with permission from Cornell University Press.

Read more less

This classic work, by the distinguished historian Walter LaFeber, presents his widely influential argument that economic causes were the primary forces propelling America to world power in the nineteenth century. Cornell University Press is proud to issue this thirty-fifth anniversary edition, featuring a new preface by the author."In this Beveridge Award-winning study, Walter LaFeber... probes beneath the apparently quiet surface of late nineteenth-century American diplomacy, undisturbed by major wars and undistinguished by important statements of policy. He finds those who shaped American diplomacy believed expanding foreign markets were the cure for recurring depressions.... In thoroughly documenting economic pressure on American foreign policy of the late nineteenth century, the author has illuminated a shadowy corner of the national experience.... The theory that America was thrust by events into a position of world power it never sought and was unprepared to discharge must now be re-examined. Also brought into question is the thesis that American policymakers have depended for direction on the uncertain compass of utopian idealism."—American Historical Review

Read more less

Inspired by the reading and writing habits of citizens leading up to the French Revolution, The Writing Public is a compelling addition to the long-running debate about the link between the Enlightenment and the political struggle that followed. Elizabeth Andrews Bond scoured France's local newspapers spanning the two decades prior to the Revolution as well as its first three years, shining a light on the letters to the editor. A form of early social media, these letters constituted a lively and ongoing conversation among readers. Bond takes us beyond the glamorous salons of the intelligentsia into the everyday worlds of the craftsmen, clergy, farmers, and women who composed these letters. As a result, we get a fascinating glimpse into who participated in public discourse, what they most wanted to discuss, and how they shaped a climate of opinion. The Writing Public offers a novel examination of how French citizens used the information press to form norms of civic discourse and shape the experience of revolution. The result is a nuanced analysis of knowledge production during the Enlightenment. Thanks to generous funding from The Ohio State University Libraries and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes, available on the Cornell University Press website and other Open Access repositories.

Read more less

Considered the most authoritative single-volume reference work on Islam in the contemporary world, the German-language Der Islam in der Gegenwart, currently in its fifth edition, offers a wealth of authoritative information on the religious, political, social, and cultural life of Islamic nations and of Islamic immigrant communities elsewhere. Now, Cornell University Press is making this invaluable resource accessible to English-language readers. More current than the latest German edition on which it is based, Islam in the World Today covers a comprehensive array of topics in concise essays by some of the world's leading experts on Islam, including: • the history of Islam from the earliest years through the twentieth century, with particular attention to Sunni and Shi'i Islam and Islamic revival movements during the last three centuries; • data on the advance of Islam along with current population statistics; • Muslim ideas on modern economics, on social order, and on attempts to modernize Islamic law (shari'a) and apply it in contemporary Muslim societies; • Islam in diaspora, especially the situation in Europe and America; • secularism, democracy, and human rights; and • women in Islam Twenty-four essays are each devoted to a specific Muslim country or a country with significant Muslim minorities, spanning Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. Additional essays illuminate Islamic culture, exploring local traditions; the languages and dialects of Muslim peoples; and art, architecture, and literature. Detailed bibliographies and indexes ensure the book's usefulness as a reference work.

Read more less

The Devil, Satan, Lucifer, Mephistopheles - throughout history the Prince of Darkness, the Western world's most powerful symbol of evil, has taken many names and shapes. Jeffrey Burton Russell here chronicles the remarkable story of the Devil from antiquity to the present. While recounting how past generations have personified evil, he deepens our understanding of the ways in which people have dealt with the enduring problem of radical evil.After a compelling essay on the nature of evil, Russell uncovers the origins of the concept of the Devil in various early cultures and then traces its evolution in Western thought from the time of the ancient Hebrews through the first centuries of the Christian era. Next he turns to the medieval view of the Devil, focusing on images found in folklore, scholastic thought, art, literature, mysticism, and witchcraft. Finally, he follows the Devil into our own era, where he draws on examples from theology, philosophy, art, literature, and popular culture to describe the great changes in this traditional notion of evil brought about by the intellectual and cultural developments of modern times.Is the Devil an outmoded superstition, as most educated people today believe? Or do the horrors of the twentieth century and the specter of nuclear war make all too clear the continuing need for some vital symbol of radical evil? A single-volume distillation of Russell's epic tetralogy on the nature and personifcation of evil from ancient times to the present (published by Cornell University Press between 1977 and 1986), The Prince of Darkness invites readers to confront these and other critical questions as they explore the past faces of that figure who has been called the second most famous personage in Christianity.

Read more less

"The organizing principle for this anthology is the common Native American heritage of its authors; and yet that thread proves to be the most tenuous of all, as the experience of indigeneity differs radically for each of them. While many experience a centripetal pull toward a cohesive Indian experience, the indications throughout these essays lean toward a richer, more illustrative panorama of difference. What tends to bind them together are not cultural practices or spiritual attitudes per se, but rather circumstances that have no exclusive province in Indian country: that is, first and foremost, poverty, and its attendant symptoms of violence, substance abuse, and both physical and mental illness.... Education plays a critical role in such lives: many of the authors recall adoring school as young people, as it constituted a place of escape and a rare opportunity to thrive.... While many of the writers do return to their tribal communities after graduation, ideas about 'home' become more malleable and complicated."—from the IntroductionI Am Where I Come From presents the autobiographies of thirteen Native American undergraduates and graduates of Dartmouth College, ten of them current and recent students. Twenty years ago, Cornell University Press published First Person, First Peoples: Native American College Graduates Tell Their Life Stories, also about the experiences of Native American students at Dartmouth College. I Am Where I Come From addresses similar themes and experiences, but it is very much a new book for a new generation of college students.Three of the essays from the earlier book are gathered into a section titled "Continuing Education," each followed by a shorter reflection from the author on his or her experience since writing the original essay. All three have changed jobs multiple times, returned to school for advanced degrees, started and increased their families, and, along the way, continuously revised and refined what it means to be Indian.The autobiographies contained in I Am Where I Come From explore issues of native identity, adjustment to the college environment, cultural and familial influences, and academic and career aspirations. The memoirs are notable for their eloquence and bravery.

Read more less

This bilingual book presents a generous selection of work by four distinguished twentieth-century poets who made significant contributions to the development of modern Japanese poetry. A general introduction provides the literary and historical context for their achievement, while each poet's work is prefaced with notes on his/her life and career.

Read more less

The chapters in this ground-breaking volume examine the complex practices of biographical writing in Ming and Qing China. The authors draw on a rich variety of sources to answer some basic questions: Who were the writers of these texts and the subjects of their biographical constructions? What motivated these textual productions and sustained the routes from (re)creations to (re)publications? The informed and fascinating readings illuminate the enduring appeal of representing and represented lives in Chinese history.

Read more less

From the Foreword by David McCann: "... Bishop McKendree's gathering of songs and poems from the Japanese prisoner of war camps of World War II is a remarkable outcome to a brutal experience....The materials were elusive in their circulation among the prisoners, dangerous to those who composed or performed them, and certainly would have been fatal to McKendree, had he been caught with them....These songs and poems will also tell the reader something of what their authors, composers, singers—and scribe—lived through. We can sense, but dimly, certain of the details of the physical environment, the personalities of the prisoners and of the guards, and the events which brought them together. These songs and poems will summon forth, for those who were there, a sense of common purpose and experience, of shared hope and despair, defeat and accomplishment; for other readers—and my earnest wish is to have this book find its way to Japanese readers, too—a sense of honor, compassion and respect."

Read more less

This anthology presents three new translations representing an aspect of modern Asian drama as yet unavailable to readers in English: the community-based theaters of Taiwan, working in Chinese languages beyond Mandarin. Community theater (shequ juchang) contrasts with the more mainstream theater that has emerged in Taiwan from the 1980s onward—a theater dominated by male playwrights, centered in the capital city of Taipei, and, despite its roots as an experimental "Little Theater Movement," increasingly commercial and professionalized. Community theater, conversely, maintains the more fluid line between professional and amateur that initially characterized contemporary Taiwan theater; it exists primarily outside of the capital, in regional cities like Tainan; and the driving forces, artistically and administratively, are women. The content of the plays in this anthology reflects that particular gendering of the community theater. Stories of women dominate in Wang Chi-Mei's One Year, Three Seasons and Peng Ya-Ling's We Are Here. Hsu Rey-Fang's The Phoenix Trees are in Blossom also has significant female roles, both fictional and historical. To connect with the local communities, these playwrights seek stories from within those communities, and then contextualize those stories within the larger historical narratives of Taiwan, itself already a "local" element within the broader Chinese culture. Through these dual foci of gender and locality, stories of the women of Taiwan emerge as meaningful elements of Taiwan's modern history. These plays go beyond the walls of the theater spaces, to educate the local, national, and—through translation—international communities about those significant, but often hidden, stories. Well-researched by the playwrights through texts and interviews, these plays can serve as primary documents for courses in Taiwan history and culture, and comparative women's and gender studies, in addition to literature and drama courses.

Read more less

This volume is a translation of Choi Seung-ja's 1991 anthology titled Portrait of a Suburbanite. Published in the series of "100 Prominent Korean Poets" by Mirae Press, the poems in this volume were selected from four of Choi's previous works titled, Love of This Age (1981), Merry Diary (1984), House of Memory (1989), and the subsequently published My Tomb, Green (1993). Speaking with a fierce sense of equality and independence, Choi Seung-ja's poetry battled ossified forms of language not only on the political but also the personal front. Like her male colleagues, Choi parodied and critiqued the idol of the father, but even further, she insightfully explored irreverent content to reveal the gendered constraints of the lyric form. In particular, Choi exposed the idolatrous power of the lover, the basis of exploitation and injustice at the most intimate level. On top of their political disempowerment as citizens, the private and domestic alienation of women as daughters, lovers, and wives form a deep stratum of repression. When Choi's women personae broke this long silence of compliance nurtured by the traditional lyric and voiced themselves as exploited and traumatized, yet fearless and tenacious human beings, the shock of this transgression shook the nation. In turn it demonstrate how long and how powerfully the gender constrictions had been imposed on Korean women.

Read more less

From the Foreword by David McCann: "... Bishop McKendree's gathering of songs and poems from the Japanese prisoner of war camps of World War II is a remarkable outcome to a brutal experience....The materials were elusive in their circulation among the prisoners, dangerous to those who composed or performed them, and certainly would have been fatal to McKendree, had he been caught with them....These songs and poems will also tell the reader something of what their authors, composers, singers—and scribe—lived through. We can sense, but dimly, certain of the details of the physical environment, the personalities of the prisoners and of the guards, and the events which brought them together. These songs and poems will summon forth, for those who were there, a sense of common purpose and experience, of shared hope and despair, defeat and accomplishment; for other readers—and my earnest wish is to have this book find its way to Japanese readers, too—a sense of honor, compassion and respect."

Read more less

Kokugaku "national study" is an academic field of study that spans a number of disciplines, including philology, poetry, literature, linguistics, history, religion, and philosophy. It began as a movement to recapture a sense of Japanese uniqueness, by focusing on Japanese poetic and linguistic elements found in the earliest surviving texts. As the movement grew, there was an attempt to separate native religious elements from Buddhist elements. This expanded to a vigorous attempt to weed out Confucian (and by extension anything "Chinese") elements from native elements. This began as an investigation into the earliest anthology, Man'yoshu, which some Kokugaku scholars argued preserved a pristine picture of the "true heart" of the ancients. Kokugaku matured under the tutelage of Kamo no Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga, and expanded to include literary, linguistic, and historical analysis. With the death of Norinaga the philosophy of the movement fractured, and under Hirata native religious elements were amplified, with an advance toward nationalism. This anthology contains 26 essays by 13 influential Kokugaku scholars, covering roughly two centuries of thought, from 1690 down to the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The volume is arranged according to four subjects: poetry, literature, scholarship, and religion/Japan (as a state).

Read more less

This bilingual book presents a generous selection of work by four distinguished twentieth-century poets who made significant contributions to the development of modern Japanese poetry. A general introduction provides the literary and historical context for their achievement, while each poet's work is prefaced with notes on his/her life and career.

Read more less

What does freedom sound like in the context of traditional Japanese theater? Where is the space for innovation, and where can this kind of innovation be located in the rigid instrumentation of the Noh drama? In Piercing the Structure of Tradition, Mariko Anno investigates flute performance as a space to explore the relationship between tradition and innovation. This first English-language monograph traces the characteristics of the Noh flute (nohkan), its music, and transmission methods and considers the instrument's potential for development in the modern world. Anno examines the musical structure and nohkan melodic patterns of five traditional Noh plays and assesses the degree to which Issō School nohkan players maintain to this day the continuity of their musical traditions in three contemporary Noh plays influenced by Yeats. Her ethnographic approach draws on interviews with performers and case studies, as well as her personal reflection as a nohkan performer and disciple under the tutelage of Noh masters. She argues that traditions of musical style and usage remain influential in shaping contemporary Noh composition and performance practice, and the existing freedom within fixed patterns can be understood through a firm foundation in Noh tradition.

Read more less

Hoaxes! Jokes! Farces and fun! China's Chaplin introduces the imagination of Xu Zhuodai (1880–1958), a comic dynamo who made Shanghai laugh through the tumultuous decades of the pre-Mao era. Xu was a popular and prolific literary humorist who styled himself variously as Master of the Broken Chamberpot Studio, Dr. Split-Crotch Pants, Dr. Hairy Li, and Old Man Soy Sauce. He was also an entrepreneur who founded gymnastics academies, theater troupes, film companies, magazines, and a home condiments business. While pursuing this varied career, Xu Zhuodai made a name for himself as a "Charlie Chaplin of the East." He wrote and acted in stage comedies and slapstick films, compiled joke books, penned humorous advice columns, dabbled in parodic verse, and wrote innumerable works of comic fiction. China's Chaplin contains a selection of Xu's best stories and stage plays (plus a smattering of jokes) that will answer the questions that keep you up at night. What is a father's duty when he and his son are courting the same prostitute? What ingenious method might save the world from economic crisis after a world war? Who is Shanghai's most outrageous grandmother? What is the best revenge against plagiarists, thieves, landlords, or spouses? And why should you never, never, never pull a hair from a horse's tail?

Read more less

The cache of bamboo texts unearthed in the village of Guodian, Hubei Province, in 1993 is a rare and unique find in the history of Chinese philosophy and literature. This study renders the complex corpus of the Guodian texts into a more easily manageable form, incorporating the past several years of scholarly activity on these texts and providing them with a comprehensive introduction along with a complete and well-annotated translation into English. As the only archaeologically excavated corpus of philosophical manuscripts to emerge from a Warring States–period tomb, the Guodian texts provide us with a wealth of reliable information for gaining new insights into the textual and intellectual history of pre-imperial China. Given the prominence of Confucian works in the corpus, they serve to fill out much of the intellectual historical picture for the doctrines of roughly three generations of Confucian disciples who fell between the times of Confucius (551–479 BC) and Mencius (c. 390–305 BC). The manuscripts also hold great significance for the study of early Chinese paleography and phonology. Volume II offers introductions to and annotated translations of the manuscripts "Cheng zhi," "Zun deyi," "Xing zi ming chu," "Liu de," and "Yucong" 1-4, along with various appendixes. These include collation tables of witnesses to the Guodian "Laozi" passages and a running translation of all the Guodian texts.

Read more less

Of Birds Crying (Naku tori no, 1985), the recipient of the Noma Bungei Prize, is loosely based on the author's own life, recounting six months in the lives of Yurie Mama, a well-established middle-aged novelist married to a scientist. In this deeply psychological novel, a tapestry of extraordinary moments expands and interconnects via interior monologues and dialogues ranging from the humorous and farcical to the somber and meditative. Acutely perceptive social and cross-cultural commentaries fill the narrator's voice and the characters' conversations. Long-forgotten incidents come back to life, triggered by the sight of an ancient tree, the name of a flower, or the crying of a bird, and memories spawn tales within tales. Despite the fact that the characters' motives for their actions defy prediction, these seemingly disparate elements are woven into a coherent whole, a reflection of the interdependency of humanity and nature in its wholeness that is one of the many underlying threads of the story.

Read more less

Kim Seung-Hee's poetry is usually described in Korea as "feminist," "subversive," and "surrealist." Most important is the way her poetic voices differ radically from any other Korean poet's, male or female. Her work has sometimes found a readier acceptance among readers of the English translations than among Koreans reading the originals, who are often puzzled by the seeming lack of conventional poetic themes and female sensitivity. Bilingual volume in English/Korean.

Read more less

This anthology focuses on autobiographical works by Wang Anyi, the most prolific and critically acclaimed woman writer in contemporary China, highlighting a personal and emotional dimension of her writing that is essential to a deeper understanding of her creativity and productivity. The three pieces selected for this volume—"A Woman Writer's Sense of Self," "Utopian Verses," and "Years of Sadness"—explore some of the most fundamental and complex issues concerning Wang's identity as a woman and as a writer in early post-socialist China, the creative and emotional challenges she faced during her sojourn in the United States in the early 1980s, and her memories of adolescent years, a period of obsession, uncertainty, and loneliness during the Cultural Revolution.

Read more less

Should modern Chinese history be approached from the center looking out or from the margins looking in? The contributors to this book have explored a variety of relationships between the center (or centers) and the margins in China under the Qing dynasty, the Republic, and the People's Republic.

Read more less

Max Loehr (1903–1988), the most distinguished historian of Chinese art of his generation, is celebrated above all for a 1953 art historical study of Chinese bronzes that effectively predicted discoveries Chinese archaeologists were about to make. Those discoveries in turn overthrew the theories of Loehr's great rival Bernhard Karlgren (1889–1978), a Swedish sinologue whose apparently scientific use of classification and statistics had long dominated Western studies of the bronzes. Revisiting a controversy that was ended by archaeology before the issues at stake were fully understood, Robert Bagley shows its methodological implications to be profound. Starting with a close reading of the work of Karlgren, he uses an analogy with biological taxonomy to clarify questions of method and to distinguish between science and the appearance of science. Then, turning to Loehr, he provides the rationale for an art history that is concerned above all with constructing a meaningful history of creative events, one that sees the intentionality of designers and patrons as the driving force behind stylistic change. In a concluding chapter he analyzes the concept of style, arguing that many classic confusions in art historical theorizing arise from a failure to recognize that style is not a property of objects. Addressed not just to ancient China specialists or historians of Chinese art, this book uses Loehr's work on bronzes as a case study for exploring central issues of art history. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with the analysis of visual materials.

Read more less

This volume of five noh translations (containing an introduction, translations, short commentaries and a glossary) differs from most others in that none of the plays are of the mugenno type, but are instead genzaino, real-life noh. The plays focus on living characters rather than spirits or ghosts, and on dramatic action rather than poetry, song and dance. In addition the five noh satisfy several of the most important features of Aristotle's definition of good tragedy. That is, they all have plot, which Aristotle says in his Poetics is the imitation of action. The plot centers on characters who are related to each other or are a part of the same household. In each plot, a fatal or harmful event is either enacted or threatened, and there is an unexpected change in the direction of the action. In Shun'ei, a father, visited by his son, is pardoned from a death sentence; in Dampu, a son visits his father, who is then executed, and upon avenging his father's death, unexpectedly escapes the killer's henchmen; in Shichikiochi and Nakamitsu, a son thought to have been killed turns up alive, much to the amazement of his father; and finally, in Nishikido, a brother turns on his own brother and attacks with military force. This volume is intended to provide the reader with a translation of noh plays that either have not been previously translated into English or have not been translated for a long time. The translations are as faithful as possible to the original Japanese so that the reader can gain a close glimpse of the language and action of this particular type of noh. It is a noh filled with action compared to many that have been translated, a noh that appealed to the public at large during the medieval period. Bibliography and scholarly notes are kept to a minimum.

Read more less

In this work, the smoldering hatred of the Korean War period resurfaces decades later in the form of a ruthless quest for justice. The main character, a successful Seoul businessman, has a secret past: unknown to his wife and son, he once led another life under another name as a ruthless communist partisan. After a lifelong search, the son of one of his wartime victims discovers his true identity, then proceeds calmly and deliberately to exact a terrible revenge.

Read more less

A coming-of-age novel set during the Korean War, by Pak Wan-Suh, one of Korea's leading contemporary writers. The award-winning author of more than twenty novels, and numerous short stories and essays, Park often deals with the themes of Korean War tragedies, middle-class values, and women's issues. The novel is rich with scenes of cultural clashes, racial prejudice, and the kinds of misunderstandings that many American soldiers and Koreans experienced during the war years.

Read more less

Although he has been touted as Japan's finest prewar playwright, few of Kishida Kunio's works have been translated into English. This volume brings together for the first time representative plays that span the entire course of Kishida's career, including in this expanded edition, a new translation of his maiden work, Autumn in the Tyrols. The plays collected in this anthology are the ones critics have regarded as Kishida's best and that the dramatist himself preferred. An introductory essay by the editor relates Kishida's work to his personal psychology and his historical environment and discusses the controversy that has surrounded him for his collaboration with military authorities during World War II.

Read more less

Yang Gui-ja is one of Korea's major literary figures of the last generation, with a succession of literary prizes and best-sellers to her credit. Her most representative early work, the 1987 Wonmi-dong saramdeul, is available in English as A Distant and Beautiful Place. In the 1990s her writing took an increasingly personal turn with a series of popular works including Contradictions (Mosun), South Korea's best-selling novel in 1998. Contradictions is a coming-of-age tale that explores the paradoxes and contradictions of the human condition and delves into the meaning of personal happiness. The book opens with a moment of epiphany as the main character An Jin-jin awakens to the realization that her entire energy must be devoted to her own life. She struggles over whom to marry with an awareness of consequences gleaned from seeing the divergence in the lives of twin sisters—her mother and her aunt. A host of binary oppositions is also presented in the lives of the men around her: a wannabe gang boss brother, an Ivy League cousin, an alcoholic schizophrenic father, a steadfast but rigid uncle, and her two suitors. Yang skillfully develops these characters in increasingly complex threads as the novel unfolds in a series of surprises.

Read more less

How can a post-national Japanese Studies be defined? How might the postwar myth of a monoethnic Japan be historicized? Can new forms of nationalism be effectively criticized by evoking a spirit of nationalist democracy? This book contains a series of groundbreaking essays by major Japanese and American scholars seeking to locate "Japan" beyond the geographical and ideological boundaries established post-1945 and under the Cold War. Included are essays on such iconic cultural figures as Maruyama Masao and Takamura Kōtarō; on the impact of colonialism on prewar theories of race, language, and multi-culturalism; on gender and nationalism; on the critique of culturalist notions of the "native speaker" and "mother tongue," and on Asian nationalisms in the era of globalization.

Read more less

This study provides a striking new explanation of how China's Nationalist Party (GMD) defeated its rivals in the revolution of 1922–1929 and helped bring some degree of unification to a country torn by class, regional, and ideological interests. Disarming the Allies of Imperialism argues that inconsistency—more than culture, ideology, or any other factor—gave nationalism its unique edge. Revolutionary leaders manipulated revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries alike to advantage their own positions and seize national power, sometimes seeking to protect foreign lives and property and shield Chinese merchants from agitative disruptions, sometimes voting to do the opposite. Exploiting the symbiotic yet contradictory relationship between state-building, which sought foreign ties and international recognition; and low-level agitators committed to confrontational anti-imperialist objectives, top Guomindang leaders were able to manipulate political circumstances to their own benefit. For example, party leaders stirred up anti-Christian sentiment, pitting popular forces against mission schools, while simultaneously intervening to rescue these same schools from agitative destruction, thus "helping" missionaries to soften their attitudes toward the revolution and eventually embrace the new order. Scholars of modern Chinese history and anyone familiar with the growing literature on nationalism will appreciate this work for its elucidation of a complex historical snarl, while undergraduates and scholars outside the China field will find this a useful and accessible study as well.

Read more less

Dragonflies is an anthology containing twelve selections ranging from short stories to novellas, and spans the century from the May Fourth Movement to the 1990s. The eleven authors represented are Ling Shuhua, Bing Xin, Zhang Ailing, Wei Junyi, Kang Yunwei, Ping Lu, Liao Huiying, Chi Li, Jiang Zidan, Wang Anyi, and Xi Xi. Rather than focusing on revolutionary or heroic role-models, the selected works portray women struggling to deal with the conflicting demands of tradition and modernity in a rapidly changing society. The most recent story in the collection, Wang Anyi's coolly analytical but heartbreaking "Sisters" (1996), illustrates the persistence of traditional social norms, while Jiang Zidan's "Waiting for Dusk" (1990) depicts a woman oppressed by nature itself. The introductory essay by Shu-ning Sciban traces the evolution of fiction by women writers in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong during the twentieth century. Dragonflies will appeal to readers with an interest in modern China, Chinese literature and gender studies.

Read more less

In Little Need of Divine Intervention presents a fundamental revision of the thirteenth-century Mongol Invasions of Japan by revealing that the warriors of medieval Japan were capable of fighting the Mongols to a standstill without the aid of any "divine winds" or kamikaze. Conlan's interpretation of the invasions is supplemented with translations of the picture scrolls commissioned by Takezaki Suenaga, a warrior who fought against the Mongols. In addition, translations of nearly seventy administrative documents are provided, thereby enabling students of Japanese history reconstruct the invasions using contemporary sources. A rare copy of Takezaki Suenaga's Scrolls, reproduced in full, reveals hitherto unknown missing scenes. Furthermore, the scrolls' images can be now read in tandem with its narrative passages, translated in English for the first time. Please note that the entire book was intentionally printed from back to front, so that the reproduced scrolls unfold in Japanese order, from right to left. Thus the book's spine is on the right. This monograph will prove to be of great interest for students and scholars of medieval Japanese history, warrior culture, and the nature of Japan in an East Asian context.

Read more less

The contributors to this collection of seven essays (plus an editor's introduction and a comparative afterword) have framed debates about the construction of commercial culture in China. They all have agreed that during the early twentieth century China's commercial culture was centered in the private sector of Shanghai's economy and especially in the "concession" areas under Western or Japanese rule, but they have differed over the issue of whether foreign influence was decisive in the creation of Shanghai's commercial culture. Between 1900 and 1937, was Shanghai's commercial culture imported from the West or invented locally? And between 1937 and 1945, was the history of this commercial culture cut short by Japanese military invasions and occupations of the city or was it sustained throughout the war? The contributors have proposed various and even conflicting answers to these questions, and their interpretations bear upon wider debates in historical, cultural, and comparative studies.

Read more less

When Food Became Scarce is about the Great Leap Famine of 1958-61. Yixin Chen adopts a grassroots level analysis to explore an existential question concerning hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants: why did some peasants perish while others from the same villages facing the same collective problems of food scarcity survive? Viewing the famine as a persistent ordeal, Chen identifies environment and lineage as two pivotal factors that influenced the rural populace''s destiny. When food quotas under the Maoist communal dining system plummeted below subsistence or came to a halt, most individual villagers in the mountainous regions of southern China turned to their environment for alternative sustenance, ensuring their survival. More remarkably, across the nation, more peasants united in self-preservation strategies, concealing grains to elude excessive state requisitions, orchestrating food and crop riots, and collectively combating desperation. Given that

Read more less

Monstrous Fantasies asks why medieval romances reimagining the crusades ending in a Christian victory circulated in England with such abundance after the 1291 Muslim reconquest of Acre, the last of the Latin crusader states in the Holy Land, and what these texts reveal about the cultural anxieties of late medieval England. Leila K. Norako highlights the impact that the Ottoman victory and subsequent massacre of Christian prisoners at the battle of Nicopolis in 1396 had on intensifying the popularity of what she calls recovery romance. These two episodes inspired a sense of urgency over the fate of the Holy Land and of Latin Christendom itself, resulting in the proliferation of romances in which crusading English kings like Richard I and anachronistic legends like King Arthur not only reconquered Jerusalem but committed genocidal violence against the Muslims. These romances, whichas Norako arguesalso influenced Geoffrey Chaucer''s Canterbury Tales,

Read more less

Nelson Rockefeller''s Dilemma reveals the fascinating and influential political career of the four-time New York State governor and US vice president. Marsha E. Barrett''s portrayal of this multi-faceted political player focuses on the eclipse of moderate Republicanism and the betrayal of deeply held principles for political power. Although never able to win his party''s presidential nomination, Rockefeller''s tenure as governor was notable for typically liberal policies: infrastructure projects, expanding the state''s university system, and investing in local services and the social safety net. As the Civil Rights movement intensified in the early 1960s, Rockefeller envisioned a Republican Party recommitted to its Lincolnian heritage as a defender of Black equality. But the party''s extreme right wing, encouraged by its successful outreach to segregationists before and after the nomination of Barry Goldwater, pushed the party to the right. With his natio

Read more less

In Mission Manifest, Matthew Shannon argues that American evangelicals were central to American-Iranian relations during the decades leading up to the 1979 revolution. These Presbyterian missionaries and other Americans with ideals worked with US government officials, nongovernmental organizations, and their Iranian counterparts as cultural and political brokersthe living sinews of a binational relationship during the Second World War and early Cold War. As US global hegemony peaked between the 1940s and the 1960s, the religious authority of the Presbyterian Mission merged with the material power of the American state to infuse US foreign relations with the messianic ideals of Christian evangelicalism. In Tehran, the missions of American evangelicals became manifest in the realms of religion, development programs, international education, and cultural associations. Americans who lived in Iran also returned to the United States to inform the growth

Read more less

Winner of the George Louis Beer PrizeBlack France, White Europe illuminates the deeply entangled history of European integration and African decolonization. Emily Marker maps the horizons of belonging in postwar France as leaders contemplated the inclusion of France''s old African empire in the new Europe-in-the-making. European integration intensified longstanding structural contradictions of French colonial rule in Africa: Would Black Africans and Black African Muslims be French? If so, would they then also be European? What would that mean for republican France and united Europe more broadly? Marker examines these questions through the lens of youth, amid a surprising array of youth and education initiatives to stimulate imperial renewal and European integration from the ground up. She explores how education reforms and programs promoting solidarity between French and African youth collided with transnational efforts to make young people

Read more less

Fables in Jewish Culture catalogues almost 400 Jewish scrolls and books from the collection of Jon A. Lindseth that contain animal stories with moral connections. Spanning six centuries, the books are in several languages, including Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) and Judeo-Persian. They were printed all over the world and include animal stories from the Hebrew Bible and other religious texts as well as translations of secular stories, such as Aesop's fables in Hebrew. The catalogue is divided into four sections—Biblical works, rabbinic works, medieval works, and postmedieval works—and each entry is illustrated with a page or more from the work, a detailed description of the characteristics and publishing history of the work, and description of the fables contained therein, along with a discussion of their literary and/or cultural-historical significance. This volume includes a foreword by Jon A. Lindseth, describing how he assembled this collection of Jewish books containing fables, as well as essays on the role of fables in Jewish culture, their use in Biblical and rabbinical literature, and their appearance in Jewish and Yiddish literature. Fables in Jewish Culture concludes with a bibliography of fables in Jewish literature and multiple indexes that allow readers to locate works by a number of criteria, including fable, author, title (in English, Hebrew, and Latin), and printer. Contributors: Marion Aptroot, David Daube, Simona Gronemann, Jon A. Lindseth, Raphael Loewe, Lies Meiboom, Emile Schrijver, David Stern, Heide Warncke, Irene Zwiep.

Read more less

Through the lens of James Billington and the institution he led as Librarian of Congress during a key period of US-Russian relations, The Geopolitics of Culture examines culture as a neglected area of US foreign policy. Billington advised presidents and members of Congress and mobilized the resources of the Library of Congress to promote reform in Russia. He believed that rather than preaching to the Russians, the United States should expose the rising generation of Russian leaders to what was best in America and encourage them to rediscover positive elements in pre-Bolshevik Russian culture.The Geopolitics of Culture is the first book to chronicle Billington''s influence on US engagement with Russia as it transitioned from communism to democracy under Gorbachev and Yeltsin and back to authoritarianism under Yeltsin and Putin. Drawing on published and archival sources (including recently released papers) and interviews with current and retir

Read more less

Bounds of Blackness explores the history of Black America''s intellectual and cultural engagement with the modern state of Sudan. Ancient Sudan occupies a central place in the Black American imaginary as an exemplar of Black glory, pride, and civilization, while contemporary Sudan, often categorized as part of Arab Africa rather than Black Africa, is often sidelined and overlooked. In this pathbreaking book, Christopher Tounsel unpacks the vacillating approaches of Black Americans to the Sudanese state and its multiethnic populace through periods defined by colonialism, postcolonial civil wars, genocide in Darfur, and South Sudanese independence. By exploring the work of African American intellectuals, diplomats, organizations, and media outlets, Tounsel shows how this transnational relationship reflects the robust yet capricious terms of racial consciousness in the African Diaspora.

Read more less