Search results for ""syracuse university press""

Discusses the emergence of the modern Middle East over the last two centuries. It examines the Ottoman legacy in the region and the Western imperial impact on the creation of the Arab state system. It then addresses rise and retreat of Arab nationalism, the problems of internal cohesion of the Arab states, issues of religion and state, and the evolution of Islamist politics.

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Volume XIII of the New Netherland Documents series includes the surviving correspondence of New Netherland’s director general Petrus Stuyvesant and council from 1659 to 1660. These records reveal the broad range of issues with which the director general and his administration had to deal, including illegal trade, relations with Native Americans, appointments of ministers and other officials in various places in New Netherland, the discovery of copper and minerals, agriculture, and the critical situation in the city of Amsterdam’s colony of New Amstel on the South River. Stuyvesant and council were expected to follow policies stipulated by the directors of the West India Company in Amsterdam, whose insights and motivations greatly depended on the situation in Europe and the financial situation of the company. This firsthand account shows the often competing visions of the Company directors and that of Stuyvesant and council, giving scholars valuable access to the issues that faced the New World colonies.

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Described by historians as a ""total war,"" World War I was the first conflict that required a comprehensive mobilization of all members of society, regardless of profession, age, or gender. Just as women became heads of households and joined the workforce in unprecedented numbers, children also became actively engaged in the war effort. Adding a new dimension to the historiography of World War I, Maksudyan explores the variegated experiences and involvement of Ottoman children and youth in the war. Rather than simply passive victims, children became essential participants as soldiers, wage earners, farmers, and artisans. They also contributed to the propaganda and mobilization effort as symbolic heroes and orphans of martyrs. Rebelling against their orphanage directors or trade masters, marching and singing proudly with their scouting companies, making long-distance journeys to receive vocational training or simply to find their families, they acquired new identities and discovered new forms of agency. Maksudyan focuses on four different groups of children: thousands of orphans in state orphanages (Darüleytam), apprentice boys who were sent to Germany, children and youth in urban centers who reproduced rivaling nationalist ideologies, and Armenian children who survived the genocide. With each group, the author sheds light on how the war dramatically impacted their lives and, in turn, how these self-empowered children, sometimes described as ""precocious adults,"" actively shaped history.

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Family remains the most powerful social idiom and one of the most powerful social structures throughout the Arab world. To engender love of nation among its citizens, national movements portray the nationas a family. To motivate loyalty, political leaders frame themselves as fathers, mothers, brothers, or sisters to their clients, parties, or the citizenry. To stimulate production, economic actors evoke the sense of duty and mutual commitment of family obligation. To sanctify their edicts, clerics wrap religion in the moralities of family and family in the moralities of religion. Social and political movements, from the most secular to the most religious, pull on the tender strings of family love to recruit and bind their members to each other. To call someone family is to offer them almost the highest possible intimacy, loyalty, rights, reciprocities, and dignity. In recognizing the significance of the concept of family, this state-of- the-art literature review captures the major theories, methods, and case studies carried out on Arab families over the past century. The book offers a country-by-country critical assessment of the available scholarship on Arab families. Sixteen chapters focus on specific countries or groups of countries; seven chapters offer examinationsof the literature on key topical issues. Joseph’s volume provides an indispensable resource to researchers and students, and advances Arab family studies as a critical independent field of scholarship.

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The book examines the turbulent political climate that prevailed in Iran during Mosaddeq’s tenure, the confrontation between Iran and Britain for control over Iran’s oil, the strategic considerations that led U.S. officials to opt for a coup, and the details of the coup itself. Based on exhaustive research by leading academic experts in the field, this is the most authoritative account of the tragic events that led to the overthrow of Mosaddeq. With the recent declassification of CIA documents regarding the 1953 coup that overthrew Mohammad Mossadeq’s government in Iran, there is an opportunity for new in-depth analysis into not only the coup Coup d’État itself but the events that inevitably led up to it.

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In this volume, a group of distinguished scholars reinterpret concepts and canons of Islamic thought in Arab, Persian, South Asian, and Turkish traditions. They demonstrate that there is no unitary "Islamic" position on important issues of statecraft and governance. They recognize that Islam is a discursive site marked by silences, agreements, and animated controversies. Rigorous debates and profound disagreements among Muslim theologians, philosophers, and literati have taken place over such questions as: What is an Islamic state? Was the state ever viewed as an independent political institution in the Islamic tradition of political thought? Is it possible that a religion that places an inordinate emphasis upon the importance of good deeds does not indeed have a vigorous notion of "public interest" or a systematic theory of government? Does Islam provide an edifice, a common idiom, and an ideological mooring for premodern and modern Muslim rulers alike? The nuanced reading of the Islamic traditions provided in this book will help future generations of Muslims contemplate a more humane style of statecraft.

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In Mahmoud Darwish: The Poet’s Art and His Nation, Mattawa pays tribute to one of the most celebrated and well-read poets of our era. With detailed knowledge of Arabic verse and a firm grounding in Palestinian history, Mattawa explores the ways in which Darwish’s aesthetics have played a crucial role in shaping and maintaining Palestinian identity and culture through decades of warfare, attrition, exile, and land confiscation. Mattawa chronicles the evolution of his poetry, from a young poet igniting resistance in occupied land to his decades in exile where his work grew in ambition and scope. In doing so, Mattawa reveals Darwish’s verse to be both rooted to its place of longing and to transcend place, as it reaches for the universal and the human.

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Using the contested theory of “democratic peace” as a foundational framework, the contributors explore the effects of a variety of internal influences on Israeli government practices related to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking: electoral systems; political parties; identity; leadership; and social movements.

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The essays in this volume examine the unforeseen cultural conversions set in motion by Christian missionary activity in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia during the ninetennth and twentieth centuries.

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A biography of Judah L. Magnes, an American Reform rabbi, Jewish community leader, and active pacifist during World War I who helped found and served as first chancellor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He brought American ideals to Palestine, and his unique conception of Zionism shaped Jewish public life in Palestine, influencing both the development of the Hebrew University and Zionist policy toward Arabs.

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The Adirondack region of New York State is, in many respects, America's cauldron of conservation. It was there, more than a century ago, that wanton exploitation of forests first aroused concern about human impact on the environment. It was there that Americans first began to set aside lands proclaimed as 'forever wild'. The establishment of the Adirondack Park created an immense landscape of 6 million acres composed of a mixture of public and private lands in nearly equal proportion. This unprecedented blend of human communities within wild lands makes the Adirondack Park perhaps one of the greatest case studies in conservation and development in U.S. history. Representing a remarkable achievement in environmental scholarship and drawn from decades of research, ""The Great Experiment in Conservation"" captures the wisdom born of the last thirty years of the park's evolution. The editors bring together leading scholars, activists, and practitioners - those who know the Park's origin and the realities of living in a protected area - to narrate this history. Organized into three sections, contributors explore the ecological, cultural, and economic aspects of the region, drawing lessons from successes and failures as they struggle to find the right balance of private interests and public controls. With keen insight and deep passion, the authors reveal the Adirondack Park's rich natural and cultural history in shaping conservation policy, providing vital contributions to the future study of land preservation.

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For more than a century Iran’s social, political, and cultural history has been defined by a struggle toward or away from modernity. In this book Talatoff makes a compelling argument that, despite revolutionary upheaval, the ideals of modernity remain remote due to the absence of a modern notion of sexuality. He illustrates his assertion through the life of Shahrzad, a celebrated stage and screen actress, dancer, journalist, and published poet who eventually became imprisoned and later homeless in the streets of Tehran. Tracing her career along with other pre-revolutionary women artists, Talatoff explores the relationship between gender, sexuality, media, and modernity in Iran.

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Centuries before W. B. Yeats wove Indian, Japanese, and Irish forms together in his poetry and plays, Irish writers found kinships in Asian and West Asian cultures. This book maps the unacknowledged discourse of Irish Orientalism within Ireland's complex colonial heritage.

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Women, Press, and Politics explores the literary and historical significance of women's writing for the most influential body of nationalist journalism during the Irish Revival, the advanced nationalist press. This work studies women's writings in the Irish nationalist tradition, focusing in particular on leading female voices in the cultural and political movements that helped launch the Easter Rising of 1916: Augusta Gregory, Alice Milligan, Maud Gonne, Constance Markievicz, Delia Larkin, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, and Louise Bennett. Karen Steele argues that by examining the innovative work of these writers from the perspective of women's artistry and women's political investments, we can best appreciate the expansive range of their cultural productions and the influence these had on other nationalists, who went on to shape Irish politics and culture in the decades to come.

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Of the many Islamist groups that have emerged within the Muslim world over the last two decades, perhaps none has had so great an impact on Middle Eastern and International affairs as Hizbullah, the Party of God. This group of mainly Lebanese Shi'ite Muslims gained both infamy and fame by its resort to militancy mixed with political pragmatism in the pursuit of its goals. The oscillation between these two extremes has left most scholars and policymakers perplexed. This book serves as a pathway for understanding not only Hizbullah but also for other Islamist groups and their challenges to contemporary politics. A. Nizar Hamzeh examines the Hizbullah of Lebanon through a structural analysis using original and archival sources. Based on a constructed theoretical framework from a number of theories on crisis conditions, leadership, political parties and guerrilla warfare, In the Path of Hizbullah stands alone in its qualitative and quantitative treatment of one of the most complex contemporary Islamist organizations and provides a view of the party's future.

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As Zionism took root in Palestine, European Yiddish was employed within a dominant Hebrew context. A complex relationship between cultural politics and Jewish writing ensued that paved the way for modern Israeli culture. This enlightening volume reveals a previously unrecognized, alternative literature that flourished vigorously without legitimacy. Significant examples discussed include ethnically ambiguous fiction of Zalmen Brokhes, minority-oriented works of Avrom Rivess, and culturally pluralistic poetry by Rikuda Potash. The remote locales of these writers, coupled with the exuberant expressiveness of Yiddish, led to unique perceptions of Zionist endeavors in the Yishuv. Using tare archival material and personal interviews, What Must Be Forgotten unearths dimensions largely neglected in mainstream books on Yiddish and/or Hebrew studies.

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A comprehensive field guide, providing extensive descriptions and more than 450 colour photographs. Each species listing includes the most recent scientific name with existing synonyms; common names; and an overview with field impressions, similar species, and detailed information about habitat, fruiting frequency, and geographic distribution.

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Twenty-six-year-old college graduate, artist, and employee of the Ministry of Art and Culture, Hasti Nourian aspires to be a "new woman"—independent-minded, strong-willed, and in control of her own destiny. A destiny that includes Morad, an idealistic young architect and artist with whom Hasti is deeply in love. Morad is a sharp critic of Iran’s Westernized bourgeois class, the one that Hasti’s mother relishes. After Hasti’s father died, her mother married a wealthy businessman and moved to an exclusive neighborhood of northern Tehran.Socializing with a mixed group of Americans, English-speaking Iranians, and British expats, her mother’s life revolves around gym visits, hairdressers, and party planning. When her mother persuades Hasti to join her at the spa, she introduces her to Salim, an eligible young man from a wealthy family whose British education and proper comportment, as well as his economic status make him an ideal suitor for Hasti in her mother’s eyes. Against her better judgment, Hasti finds herself attracted to Salim and tempted by her mother’s comfortable lifestyle. As the novel unfolds, Hasti is torn between her first love and the radical politics of her university friends, and love for her mother and the freedom economic security can bring. Set in Tehran in the mid-1970s, just a few years before the 1977–79 revolution, Daneshvar’s unforgettable novel depicts the tumultuous social, cultural, and economic changes of the day through the intimate story of a young woman’s struggle to find her identity.

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Upstate New York is the birthplace of many of America’s favorite foods. The chicken wing was born in a bar in Buffalo, the potato chip originated in the kitchen of a glitzy Saratoga Springs hotel, the salt potato got its start along the marshy shores of a Syracuse lake, and Thousand Island dressing was created in a hotel along the St. Lawrence Seaway.In this book, D’Imperio travels across the region to discover the stories and people behind forty iconic foods of Upstate New York. He introduces readers to the black dirt farmers of Orange County who give America its best-tasting onions, to the Catskill’s Candy Cane King, and to “Charlie the Butcher,” purveyor of the best beef on weck in the state. Filled with color photographs, the book includes a map of the various regions around Upstate New York allowing the reader to create their own cultural and historic food tour.

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Improbable Women examines the lives of five women writers, all upper-class British women, who rebelled against the conventions of their own societies and lived, travelled and explored the Middle East.

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George Lockwood spent 30 years working for the Milwaukee Journal where he became the managing editor for features. Written from thie inside perspective of a newspaper editor and with the nostalgic tone of a man who grew up loving comics, Peanuts, Pogo and Hobbes is an engaging blend of the author's personal experiences with cartoonists and his discussion of the importance of comics.

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On the streets of Tehran, Nuri Hushiar knows his blond hair and blue eyes attract attention. While he relishes the attention he cannot avoid the uneasy feeling of being out of place. This sense of being exceptional and estranged is the hallmark of his character and the focus of his struggle in Taghi Modarressi's last stunning novel.Set around the time of the revolution, ""The Virgin of Solitude"" follows the parallel lives of a transplanted Austrian woman, who has made Iran her home, and her grandson, Nuri, who desperately misses his mother but hides his longing behind a veneer of teenage bravado. As the turmoil of the revolution envelops the country, grandmother and grandson witness the dissolution of social, class, and political order, while searching for a sense of belonging.Nasrin Rahimieh's translation captures the tone and mood of the original, rendering both Modarressi's subtle humor and assured prose with effortless precision.

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Besa is a code of honor deeply rooted in Albanian culture and incorporated in the faith of Albanian Muslims. It dictates a moral behavior so absolute that non adherence brings shame and dishonor on oneself and one's family. Simply stated, it demands that one take responsibility for the lives of others in their time of need. In Albania and Kosovo, Muslims sheltered, at grave risk to themselves and their families, not only the Jews of their cities and villages, but thousands of Jews fleeing the Nazis from other European countries.Over a five-year period, photographer Norman H. Gershman sought out, photographed, and collected these powerful and moving stories of heroism in ""Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II"". The book reveals a hidden period in history, slowly emerging after the fall of an isolationist communist regime, and shows the compassionate side of ordinary people in saving Jews. They acted within their true Muslim faith.

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As a master of realism, Jerome Witkin illustrates in his art the moral plight of everyday lives. His most complex and critically acclaimed works-intense, often disturbing scenes of the Holocaust-have earned him a growing international audience. This second edition of Life Lessons incorporates material from the past decade, including ten of his most important and provocative paintings. It brings the viewer in intimate contact with the dense interior landscapes of both people and places. Often regarded as belonging to an artistic pantheon including the work of Lucien Freud, Manet, Ingres, Goya, and Courbet, Witkin's paintings range from moody urban landscapes and penetrating portraits to intimate figure studies and vivid, psychologically charged tableaux, frequently referencing seminal moments in history. Witkin's newer work includes an enormous six-panel exploration of Dachau's 1945 liberation (Entering Darkness, 2001)his culmination of a twenty-year series on the Holocaust, regarded by critics as among the most compelling of paintings made on the subject.

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The Hilldale Club of Darby, Pennsylvania, was the dominant team in black baseball during the 1920s. Their success came about largely through the efforts of Hilldale president and manager Edward Bolden. Bolden's professionalism and reputation for fair play were instrumental in his forming the Eastern Colored (EC) League in 1922. This absorbing story, highlighted with vivid photographs, chronicles the origins and development of black baseball.

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In this powerful story of life, love, and the demands of marriage and motherhood, Fariba Vafi gives readers a portrait of one woman’s struggle to adapt to the complexity of life in modern Iran. The narrator, a housewife and young mother living in a low-income neighborhood in Tehran, dwells upon her husband Amir’s desire to immigrate to Canada. His peripatetic lifestyle underscores her own sense of inertia. When he finally slips away, the young woman is forced to raise the children alone and care for her ailing mother. Vafi’s brilliant minimalist style showcases the narrator’s reticence and passivity. Brief chapters and spare prose provide the ideal architecture for the character’s densely packed unexpressed emotions to unfold on the page. Haunted by the childhood memory of her father’s death in the basement of her house while her mother ignored his entreaties for help, the narrator believes she relinquished her responsibility and failed to challenge her mother. As a single parent and head of household, she must confront her paralyzing guilt and establish her independence.Vafi’s characters are emblematic of many women in Iran, caught between tradition and modernity. Demystifying contemporary Iran by taking readers beyond the stereotypes and into the lives of individuals, Vafi is one of the most important voices in Iranian literature. My Bird heralds her eagerly anticipated introduction to an English-speaking audience.

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Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks transports the reader back in time to the days when steamboats, buckboards, and gas lighting were common. Jane and Mark Barlow deliver tales of one-room schools, of ice harvesting, of women who managed households accessible only by boat, of families struck by deaths from tuberculosis or from drowning, of uncontrollable fires and stories of exuberant amusements such as primitive motorboats. People arrived on the first railroad to stretch through the uninhabited Adirondack wilderness and helped establish a thriving community. Early trappers and hunters of the Adirondacks became guides there, eventually establishing permanent camps and hotels. Prosperous businessmen brought their families and built private summer homes. This is the story of Big Moose Lake brought to life by 259 antique postcards and family photographs and previously unpublished memoirs, oral histories, diary entries, and personal correspondence of the men and women who lived in the area.

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Compelling recollections of a Jewish boy in a prewar Polish village, of his incredible scramble to survive the Holocaust, and of his adventures in America. Told with the inimitable flair of a born storyteller, these stories recall the lost world of small-town Polish Jewry before the Holocaust and the subsequent odyssey of one boy's struggle to stay alive in the face of catastrophe. Brimming with the authenticity and humanity of personal experience, these memoirs are at once persuasive, moving, and universal in appeal. Packed with rarely divulged details of daily life during the Holocaust, the book provides significant insights into human nature and the roles played by chance and purpose in staying alive. It is a route of dizzying change. First, author Salsitz, an orthodox Jew, becomes a slave laborer. Then he becomes an escapee, then a partisan. In the ultimate irony, he passes as a non-Jew, working in Polish security after the war. In America, Salsitz finds that the very traits that saw him through the war enabled him to prosper in his adopted land.

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Expertly translated from the Yiddish by award-winning author and translator Curt Leviant, this edition features the fables printed in both English and Yiddish.

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This is a photographic record of the Onondaga, the Native Indian people of Central New York for 15,000 years. The photographer has previously covered the Navajo and Zuni of the Southwest, the Shinnecock and Montauk Indians on eastern Long Island and the Pueblo people of New Mexico and Arizona.

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This collection of 700 letters traces Martin Buber's transition from mystically inclined man of letters to teacher of his people who preached a renewed sense of community, a binational Palestinian homeland and a humanistic socialism derived from the Gospel's and the Old Testament prophets.

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Throughout his career as a photographer, writer and conservationist, Paul Schaefer has been the Adirondack's leading spokesperson and the driving force behind negotiating New York State's ""forever wild"" laws. In this autobiography, Schaefer recalls life in the mountains.

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Interviews with 30 converts from the 1930s and 1940s are a component of Barry Chevanne's book, a look into the origins and practices of Rastafarianism. From the direct accounts of these early members, he is able to reconstruct pivotal episodes in Rastafarian history to offer a look into a subgroup of Jamaican society whose beliefs took root in the social unrest of the 1930s. The little that most people know about Rastafarianism has come through the Jamaican music, Reggae, which resonates with the contemporary social and political struggle of the poverty-stricken cities of Trenchtown and Kingston. Bob Marley and the Wailers, for instance, with their politically charged lyrics about the ghetto, became emissaries for the Jamaican poor. Here Chevannes traces Rastafarianism back to 1930's prophet Marcus Garvey and his mass coalition against racial oppression and support of a free Africa. Before Garvey, few Jamaicans, the overwhelming majority of whom had been brought to the island from Africa and enslaved by Europeans, held positive attitudes about Africa. The rise of black nationalism, however, provided the movement with its impetus to organise a system of beliefs. Likewise, Chevannes explores the movement's roots in the Jamaican peasantry, which underwent distinct phases of development between 1834 and 1961 as freed slaves became peasants. The peasants established themselves in the recesses of the island and many eventually moved to cities, where the economic and social hardship already inherent in Jamaican society, was even more desolate. Between 1943 and 1960, detrimental social changes transformed Jamaica's rapidly expanding cities. Kingston's population grew by 86 percent, and crime and disease were rampant. It was under this severe social decay that Rastafari became a hospice for the uprooted and derelict masses. As a spiritual philosophy, Rastafarianism is linked to societies of runaway slaves or maroons and derives from both the African Myal religion and the Revivalist Zion churches. Like the revival movement, Rastafarianism embraces the 400-year-old doctrine of repatriation. Rastas believe that they and all Africans who have migrated are but exiles in ""Babylon"" and are destined to be delivered out of captivity by a return to Zion or Africa - the land of their ancestors and the seat of Jah Rastafari himself, Haile Selassie I, the former emperor of Ethiopia. ""Rastafari"" is a work with an historical and ethnographic approach that seeks to correct several misconceptions in existing literature - the true origin of dreadlocks, for instance. It should be of interest to religion scholars, historians, scholars of Black studies, and a general audience interested in the movement and how Rastafarians settled in other countries.

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Treating the everyday as central to the study of regional and international politics, this book reconstructs the last two decades of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, leading up to the 2011 events that sanctioned its fall. It provides a unique and vivid look into the political dynamics that characterized the everyday lives of Libyans, offering a compelling counterargument to those who insist on framing the history of the country as a stateless, authoritarian, and rogue state. Based on the collection of oral histories, what sets the tempo of this journey is an extensive collection of personal anecdotes, moods and emotions, popular jokes and rumors. In weaving the threads that link these quotidian lives to Libya’s interaction with wider international and geopolitical dynamics, the book offers a unique and timely analysis of the 2011 events that witnessed the fall of the regime reaching the current state of violence, war, and hope.

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With an estimated population of 35 million, Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without an independent state of their own. The majority of Kurds live in Turkey, where they constitute 18 percent of the population. Since the foundation of the Turkish republic in 1923, the history of the Kurds in Turkey is marked by state violence against them and decades of conflict between the Turkish military and Kurdish fighters. Although the continuous struggle of the Kurdish people is well-known and the political actors involved in the conflict have received much scholarly attention, little has been written from the vantage point of the Kurds themselves.Alemdaroglu and Göçek’s volume develops a fresh approach by moving away from top-down, Turkish nationalist macro analyses to a micro-analysis of how Kurds and Kurdistan as historical and ethnic categories were constructed from the bottom up and how Kurds experience and resists marginalization, exclusion, and violence. Contributors looks beyond the politics of state actors to examine the role of civil society and the significant role women play in the negotiation of power. Kurds in Dark Times opens an essential window into the lives of Kurds in Turkey, generating meaningful insights not only into the political interactions with the Turkish state and society, but also the informal ways in which they negotiate within society that will be crucial in developing peace and reconciliation.

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The Western Sahara conflict has proven to be one of the most protracted and intractable struggles facing the international community. Pitting local nationalist determination against Moroccan territorial ambitions, the dispute is further complicated by regional tensions with Algeria and the geo-strategic concerns of major global players, including the United States, France, and the territory's former colonial ruler, Spain. For over twenty years, the UN Security Council has failed to find a formula that will delicately balance these interests against Western Sahara's long-denied right to a self-determination referendum as one of the last UN-recognized colonies. In the first book-length treatment of the issue in over two decades, Zunes and Mundy examine the origins, evolution, and resilience of the Western Sahara conflict, deploying a diverse array of sources and firsthand knowledge of the region gained from multiple research visits. Shifting geographical frames - local, regional, and international - provide for a robust analysis of the stakes involved.

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Swedish Scholar Åke Hultkrantz is recognized as one of the foremost authorities on American Indian religions. This collection of fifteen of his essays on the religious attitudes and practices of a variety of North American Indian communities brings together some of his best work over the last twenty-five years.The essays are grouped into four areas: belief and myth, worship and ritual, ecology and religion, and persistence and change. Topics include the importance of myths and rituals; religious beliefs among the Plains Indians and Wind River Shoshoni; the cult of the dead; the Spirit Lodge, the Sun Dance Lodge, and the Ghost Dance; the spread of the peyote cult; feelings toward animals and natural phenomena; and the problem of Christian influence on Northern Algonkian eschatology.To students of American Indians Hultkrantz reveals the integrity of Indian religion as a subject in its own right, not divorced from culture, history, or ecology, but religion as an effective force in Indian life. To students of comparative religion he offers American Indian religious phenomena as a treasure trove of data to be mapped and related to the religions of the world.Christopher Vecsey’s introduction summarizes Hultkrantz’s major ideas and outlines the field work and research methods which distinguish his scholarship.Bibliography included.

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Shahrokh Meskoob was one of Iran's leading intellectuals and a preeminent scholar of Persian literary traditions, language, and cultural identity. In The Ant's Gift, Meskoob applies his insight and considerable analytical skills to the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran completed in 1010 by the poet Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi. Tracing Iran's history from its first mythical king to the fall of the Sasanian dynasty, the Shahnameh includes myths, romance, history, and political theory. Meskoob sheds new light on this seminal work of Persian culture, identifying the story as at once a historical and poetic work. While previous criticism of the Shahnameh has focused on its linguistic importance and its role in Iranian nationalism, Meskoob draws attention to the work's pre-Islamic cultural origins.

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The year 1995, when the Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing, marks a historical milestone in the development of the Chinese feminist movement. In the decades that followed, three distinct trends emerged: first, there was a rise in feminist NGOs in mainland China and a surfacing of LGBTQ movements; second, social and economic developments nurtured new female agency, creating a vibrant, women-oriented cultural milieu in China; third, in response to ethnocentric Western feminism, some Chinese feminist scholars and activists recuperated the legacies of socialist China's state feminism and gender policies in a new millennium. These trends have brought Chinese women unprecedented choices, resources, opportunities, pitfalls, challenges, and even crises. In this timely volume, Zhu and Xiao offer an examination of the ways in which Chinese feminist ideas have developed since the mid-1990s. By juxtaposing the plural ""feminisms"" with ""Chinese characteristics,"" they both underline the importance of integrating Chinese culture, history, and tradition in the discussions of Chinese feminisms, and, stress the difference between the plethora of contemporary Chinese feminisms and the singular state feminism.The twelve chapters in this interdisciplinary collection address the theme of feminisms with Chinese characteristics from different perspectives rendered from lived experiences, historical reflections, theoretical ruminations, and cultural and sociopolitical critiques, painting a panoramic picture of Chinese feminisms in the age of globalization.

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With an off-putting title and a decidedly retrograde premise, the CW dramedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a surprising choice for critical analysis. But, loyal viewers quickly came to appreciate the show's sharp cultural critique through masterful parody, and this strategy has made it a critical darling and earned it several awards throughout its run. In ways not often seen on traditional network television, the show transcends conventional genre boundaries-the Hollywood musical, the romantic comedy, the music video-while resisting stereotypes associated with contemporary life.The essays in this collection underscore the show's ability to distinguish itself within the current television market. Focusing on themes of feminism, gender identity, and mental health, contributors explore the ways in which the show challenged viewer expectations, as well as the role television critics play in identifying a show's "authenticity" or quality.

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Faith holds up a photo of the boarded-up, vacant house: ""It’s the first thing I see. And I just call it ‘the Homeless House’ ‘cause it’s the house that nobody fixes up."" Faith is one of fourteen women living on Syracuse’s Southside, a predominantly African-American and low-income area, who took photographs of their environment and displayed their images to facilitate dialogues about how they viewed their community. A Place We Call Home chronicles this photography project and bears witness not only to the environmental injustice experienced by these women but also to the ways in which they maintain dignity and restore order in a community where they have traditionally had little control. To understand the present plight of these women, one must understand the historical and political context in which certain urban neighbourhoods were formed: Black migration, urban renewal, white flight, capital expansion, and then bust. Ducre demonstrates how such political and economic forces created a landscape of abandoned housing within the Southside community. She spotlights the impact of this blight upon the female residents who survive in this crucible of neglect. A Place We Call Home is the first case study of the intersection of Black feminism and environmental justice, and it is also the first book-length presentation using Photovoice methodology, an innovative research and empowerment strategy that assesses community needs by utilising photographic images taken by individuals. The individuals have historically lacked power and status in formal planning processes. Through a cogent combination of words and images, this book illuminates how these women manage their daily survival in degraded environments, the tools that they deploy to do so, and how they act as agents of change to transform their communities.

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Re-examining psychiatric interventions from a cultural-historical and political-economic perspective, Szasz demonstrates that the main problem that faces mental health policymakers today is adult dependency. Millions of Americans, diagnosed as mentally ill, are drugged and confined by doctors for non-criminal conduct, go legally unpunished for the crimes they commit, and are supported by the state - not because they are sick, but because they are unproductive and unwanted. Obsessed with the twin beliefs that misbehaviour is a medical disorder and that the duty of the state is to protect adults from themselves, we have replaced criminal-punitive sentences with civil-therapeutic programmes. The result is the relentless loss of individual liberty and erosion of personal responsibility - symptoms of the transformation of a Constitutional Republic into a Therapeutic State, unconstrained by the rule of law.

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Twenty percent of Palestinians—1.57 million Israeli citizens and over seven hundred thousand exiles and immigrants around the world—live in Europe and the Americas, participating daily in languages and cultures other than Arabic. The dispersion of Palestinians and the consequent diversity of experiences running through three generations since the Nabka of 1948 have significantly dispelled a sense of cultural homogeneity. This cultural diversification is powerfully reflected in literature as an increasing number of Palestinians are writing in Hebrew, English, Spanish, Italian, and Danish, among other languages.In Being There, Being Here, Ebileeni calls for a renewed definition of Palestinian writing, one that includes Anglophone, Nordic, Latinate, and Hebrew language literary works into the national canon. The relevance of studying Palestinian writings composed in languages other than Arabic is grounded in the tension between the idea of remaining loyal to a more-or-less fixed national narrative and the desire to understand the ongoing lingual and cultural proliferations of the Palestinian story.The concept of "homeland" remains inextricable to Palestinian experiences notwithstanding generation and location, but, it may not necessarily connote to the notion of home for those who were born and raised in the West. Although most of the works discussed here are steeped in the historic injustices committed against Palestinians, Ebileeni’s intention is to unsettle this foundation for the purpose of yielding a richer and fuller understanding of Palestinian literary texts.

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Harriet Tubman's social activism as well as her efforts as a soldier, nurse, and spy have been retold in countless books and films and have justly elevated her to iconic status in American history. Given her fame and contributions, it is surprising how little is known of her later years and her continued efforts for social justice, women's rights, and care for the elderly. Tubman housed and cared for her extended family, parents, brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews, as well as many other African Americans seeking refuge. Ultimately her house just outside of Auburn, New York, would become a focal point of Tubman's expanded efforts to provide care to those who came to her seeking shelter and support, in the form of the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged.In this book, Armstrong reconstructs and interprets Tubman's public and private life in freedom through integrating his archaeological findings with historical research. The material record Tubman left behind sheds vital light on her life and the ways in which she interacted with local and national communities, giving readers a fuller understanding of her impact on the lives of African Americans. Armstrong's research is part of a wider effort to enhance public interpretation and engagement with the Harriet Tubman Home.

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Since the eighteenth century, landscape has played complex psychological and political roles in the narrative of Irishness, entailing questions of memory, family, home, exile, and forgiveness. In Stepping through Origins, Holdridge explores the interplay of these concepts in literature. For Irish writers from Swift to Heaney, the Irish landscape has remained not only a reflection of Irish troubles but, much like aesthetic experience, a space in which the bitterness of family or national life can be understood, if not entirely overcome. Through deft analysis of works by leading Irish writers including Lady Morgan, Yeats, Joyce, Louis MacNeice, and Elizabeth Bowen, Holdridge expands and enriches our understanding of how landscape has served as a palimpsest for both family and country, connecting personal with collective memory, localized places with their regions, and individual with national identity.

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