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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2024Romanticizing masculinity in Baathist Syria
Gender, identity and ideology
by Rahaf Aldoughli
This book provides a novel analysis of the conceptual sources and ideological contours of the Assad regime. The book documents the Baathists' fascination with Romanticised and 'muscular' ideas of the nation that emerged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European social philosophy, and traces the implementation and impacts of these ideologies in the Syrian context. Emphasising the emergence of new forms of public gendered identity in Syria as a unifying feature of nationalism bound closely with the stability of the regime, the book shows how Romantic, muscular nationalism first rose to hegemony and then was shattered by its inherent violence, contradictions and inequalities. The final chapter closes by considering how a new vision of pluralism and civic belonging is today challenging the Romanticised Baathist ideal in contention for Syria's future.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2022Reconstructing lives
Victims of war in the Middle East and Médecins Sans Frontières
by Vanja Kovacic, Bertrand Taithe
This book attempts to establish a more holistic approach to the rehabilitation of war-injured civilians, one that adjusts to the patients' long-term needs. Kovacic not only offers an insight into the daily realities of patients during and after rehabilitation, but seeks to develop a new way to perceive, respect and involve them in health care. Based on comprehensive interviews with patients and MSF staff, as well as extended field observations, Reconstructing lives follows Syrian and Iraqi war-injured civilians in their journey to recovery. From their improvised medical treatment in their home countries, to the MSF-run hospital in Amman Jordan, to their return home, Kovacic explores how individuals attempt to pick up the pieces of their previous lives, add new elements from their treatment and travel experiences, and finally establish a new reconstructed reality. The book explores how the interaction between MSF staff and their patients contributes to the immense task of healing that awaits victims of war. The reader visits the intimate medical and domestic spaces that usually remain closed to the outside observer, spaces rich with human contact, perceptions, emotions, conflicts and reconciliations.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2018Syria and the chemical weapons taboo
Exploiting the forbidden
by Michelle Bentley
This book analyses the Syria crisis and the role of chemical weapons in relation to US foreign policy. The Syrian government's use of such weapons and their subsequent elimination has dominated the US response to the conflict, where these are viewed as particularly horrific arms - a repulsion known as the chemical taboo. On the surface, this would seem to be an appropriate reaction: these are nasty weapons and eradicating them would ostensibly comprise a 'good' move. But this book reveals two new aspects of the taboo that challenge this prevailing view. First, actors use the taboo strategically to advance their own self-interested policy objectives. Second, that applying the taboo to Syria has actually exacerbated the crisis. As such, this book not only provides a timely analysis of Syria, but also a major and original rethink of the chemical taboo, as well as international norms more widely.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017The French empire between the wars
Imperialism, politics and society
by Martin Thomas
By considering the distinctiveness of the inter-war years as a discrete period of colonial change, this book addresses several larger issues, such as tracing the origins of decolonization in the rise of colonial nationalism, and a re-assessment of the impact of inter-war colonial rebellions in Africa, Syria and Indochina. The book also connects French theories of colonial governance to the lived experience of colonial rule in a period scarred by war and economic dislocation.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2022Exiting war
The British Empire and the 1918–20 moment
by Romain Fathi, Margaret Hutchison, Andrekos Varnava, Michael Walsh, Alan Lester
Exiting war explores a particular 1918-20 'moment' in the British Empire's history, between the First World War's armistices of 1918, and the peace treaties of 1919 and 1920. That moment, we argue, was a challenging and transformative time for the Empire. While British authorities successfully answered some of the post-war tests they faced, such as demobilisation, repatriation, and fighting the widespread effects of the Spanish flu, the racial, social, political and economic hallmarks of their imperialism set the scene for a wide range of expressions of loyalties and disloyalties, and anticolonial movements. The book documents and conceptualises this 1918-20 'moment' and its characteristics as a crucial three-year period of transformation for and within the Empire, examining these years for the significant shifts in the imperial relationship that occurred and as laying the foundation for later change in the imperial system.
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The ArtsSeptember 2024The renewal of post-war Manchester
Planning, architecture and the state
by Richard Brook
A compelling account of the project to transform post-war Manchester, revealing the clash between utopian vision and compromised reality. Urban renewal in Britain was thrilling in its vision, yet partial and incomplete in its implementation. For the first time, this deep study of a renewal city reveals the complex networks of actors behind physical change and stagnation in post-war Britain. Using the nested scales of region, city and case-study sites, the book explores the relationships between Whitehall legislation, its interpretation by local government planning officers and the on-the-ground impact through urban architectural projects. Each chapter highlights the connections between policy goals, global narratives and the design and construction of cities. The Cold War, decolonialisation, rising consumerism and the oil crisis all feature in a richly illustrated account of architecture and planning in post-war Manchester.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2024Coup in Damascus
Husni al-Za'im and the birth of Syrian military rule
by Carl Rihan
Coup in Damascus is a history of Syria's first military regime. It plots the the fall of Syria's democracy and the rise of its military rulers, particularly Husni al-Zaim, whose brief rule in 1949 represented a profoundly transformative moment for the Syrian nation. It is a history of the thoughts, intentions and motives of political actors underpinning the events that have marked Syria's history after the first Arab-Israeli war, and focuses mainly on the interaction between local, regional and international actors. Unlike most histories of the modern Middle East that tackle broad intervals and that focus on the sequences of events, this history seeks to reconstruct the thought processes behind the events, and anchor them within the epoch's existing political and socioeconomic conditions. It draws on several methodological influences, particularly R.G. Collingwood's 'history as re-enactment of the past'.
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May 2022In the Shadow of War
Diary notes from Ukraine
by Christoph Brumme
"What can you learn in war? Do you become numb, do you get used to it at some point? Does war make you "hard", uncaring, above pain? No. These are just clichés. Every day brings new horrors. At best, one learns for some time to suppress strong feelings, because to give in to them would weaken one's life instinct." In a very stirring and shocking, but sometimes humorous language, Christoph Brumme tells of the situation in Ukraine, the everyday life of his family and friends, of fears, longings and political assessments. The diary entries of the war and the resistance of the Ukrainians, starting from the first signs of the impending war in mid-January 2022 until the printing of this book, 1st May 2022, impressively bear witness to the brutality of these events.
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Humanities & Social SciencesSeptember 2023Civil war London
Mobilizing for parliament, 1641–5
by Jordan S. Downs
This book looks at London's provision of financial and military support for parliament's war against King Charles I. It explores for the first time a series of episodic, circumstantial and unique mobilisations that spanned from late 1641 to early 1645 and which ultimately led to the establishment of the New Model Army. Based on research from two-dozen archives, Civil war London charts the successes and failures of efforts to move London's vast resources and in the process poses a number of challenges to longstanding notions about the capital's 'parliamentarian' makeup. It reveals interactions between London's Corporation, parochial communities and livery companies, between preachers and parishioners and between agitators, propagandists and common people. Within these tangled webs of political engagement reside the untold stories of the movement of money and men, but also of parliament's eventual success in the English Civil War.
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The ArtsJanuary 2019The war that won't die
The Spanish Civil War in cinema
by David Archibald
The war that won't die charts the changing nature of cinematic depictions of the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, a significant number of artists, filmmakers and writers - from George Orwell and Pablo Picasso to Joris Ivens and Joan Miró - rallied to support the country's democratically-elected Republican government. The arts have played an important role in shaping popular understandings of the Spanish Civil War and this book examines the specific role cinema has played in this process. The book's focus is on fictional feature films produced within Spain and beyond its borders between the 1940s and the early years of the twenty-first century - including Hollywood blockbusters, East European films, the work of the avant garde in Paris and films produced under Franco's censorial dictatorship. The book will appeal to scholars and students of Film, Media and Hispanic Studies, but also to historians and, indeed, anyone interested in why the Spanish Civil War remains such a contested political topic.
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The ArtsJune 2021The war that won't die
The Spanish Civil War in cinema
by David Archibald
The war that won't die charts the changing nature of cinematic depictions of the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, a significant number of artists, filmmakers and writers - from George Orwell and Pablo Picasso to Joris Ivens and Joan Miró - rallied to support the country's democratically-elected Republican government. The arts have played an important role in shaping popular understandings of the Spanish Civil War and this book examines the specific role cinema has played in this process. The book's focus is on fictional feature films produced within Spain and beyond its borders between the 1940s and the early years of the twenty-first century - including Hollywood blockbusters, East European films, the work of the avant garde in Paris and films produced under Franco's censorial dictatorship. The book will appeal to scholars and students of Film, Media and Hispanic Studies, but also to historians and, indeed, anyone interested in why the Spanish Civil War remains such a contested political topic.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017Popular imperialism and the military, 1850-1950
by John M. MacKenzie
Colonial war played a vital part in transforming the reputation of the military and placing it on a standing equal to that of the navy. The book is concerned with the interactive culture of colonial warfare, with the representation of the military in popular media at home, and how these images affected attitudes towards war itself and wider intellectual and institutional forces. It sets out to relate the changing image of the military to these fundamental facts. For the dominant people they were an atavistic form of war, shorn of guilt by Social Darwinian and racial ideas, and rendered less dangerous by the increasing technological gap between Europe and the world. Attempts to justify and understand war were naturally important to dominant people, for the extension of imperial power was seldom a peaceful process. The entertainment value of war in the British imperial experience does seem to have taken new and more intensive forms from roughly the middle of the nineteenth century. Themes such as the delusive seduction of martial music, the sketch of the music hall song, powerful mythic texts of popular imperialism, and heroic myths of empire are discussed extensively. The first important British war correspondent was William Howard Russell (1820-1907) of The Times, in the Crimea. The 1870s saw a dramatic change in the representation of the officer in British battle painting. Up to that point it was the officer's courage, tactical wisdom and social prestige that were put on display.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2024Heritage and healing in Syria and Iraq
by Zena Kamash
This book explores what to do with heritage that has been destroyed in conflict. It charts a path through the colonial histories and traumatic wars of Syria and Iraq to examine the projects and responses currently on offer and assess their flaws and limitations, including issues of digital colonialism, technological solutionism, geopolitical manoeuvring, media bias and community exclusion. Drawing on current research into the psychology and neuroscience of trauma and trauma recovery, and taking inspiration from artists and creative thinkers who challenge the status quo, this book envisages gentler, creative and ethically-driven ways to respond to heritage damaged in conflict that recentre people and their hopes, dreams and needs at the heart of these debates.
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Teaching, Language & ReferenceDecember 2020Living politics after war
by Johanna Söderström, Emmanuel Pierre Guittet
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2022Exiting war
by Romain Fathi, Margaret Hutchison, Andrekos Varnava, Michael Walsh
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Humanities & Social SciencesSeptember 2021Nostalgia and the post-war Labour Party
by Richard Jobson
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2025‘Ten Pound Poms’
A life history of British postwar emigration to Australia
by A. James Hammerton, Alistair Thomson, Becca Parkinson
A riveting history of the 'Ten Pound Poms', a wave of British citizens who migrated to Australia and New Zealand after the Second World War. Between the 1940s and 1970s, more than a million Britons migrated to Australia. They were the famous 'Ten Pound Poms' and this is their story. The authors draw on a vast trove of letters, diaries and personal photographs, as well as hundreds of interviews with former migrants, to offer original insights into key historical themes. They explore people's motivations for emigrating, gender relations and family dynamics, the clashing experience of the 'very familiar and awfully strange', homesickness and the personal and national identities of both settlers and returnees. Filled with fascinating testimonies that shed light on migrant life histories, 'Ten Pound Poms' will engage readers interested in British and Australian migration history and intrigued about the power of migrant memories for individuals, families and nations.
