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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Ephemeral vistas

        by Paul Greenhalgh

        The international exhibitions held around the world between 1851 and 1939 were spectacular gestures, which briefly held the attention of the world before disappearing into an abrupt oblivion, of the victims of their planned temporality. Known in Britain as Great Exhibitions, in France as Expositions Universelles and in America as World's Fairs, the genre became a self-perpetuating phenomenon, the extraordinary cultural spawn of industry and empire. Thoroughly in the spirit of the first industrial age, the exhibitions illustrated the relation between money and power, and revelled in the belief that the uncontrolled expression of that power was the quintessence of freedom. Philanthropy found its place on exhibition sites functioning as a conscience to the age although even here morality was inextricably linked to economic efficiency and expansion. Imperial achievement was celebrated to the full at international exhibitions. Nevertheless, most World's Fairs maintained an imperial element and out of this blossomed a vibrant racism. Between 1889 and 1914, the exhibitions became a human showcase, when people from all over the world were brought to sites in order to be seen by others for their gratification and education. In essence, the English national profile fabricated in the closing decades of the nineteenth century was derived from the pre-industrial world. The Fine Arts were an important ingredient in any international exhibition of calibre. This book incorporates comparative work on European and American empire-building, with the chronological focus primarily on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when these cultural exchanges were most powerfully at work.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2024

        The construction of public opinion in a digital age

        by Catherine Happer

        This book presents a new conceptual model for understanding the role of the media in the construction of public knowledge, belief and opinion in the context of a radically changed communications infrastructure. Drawing on a series of empirical studies conducted over nearly a decade, Happer deploys evidence of a 'disconnect' between neoliberal media and the public which is rooted in a disaffection with a mainstream political culture which has failed to deliver the societal outcomes promised. As people are pushed towards alternative digital sources, new communities of opinion are produced in ways which polarise publics and ultimately limit the potential for social change. Offering an innovative and urgently needed new sociological analysis, this book is required reading for an inter-disciplinary field of media, journalism, and politics/IR which has largely abandoned questions of media power and public opinion management, as well as policymakers, science communicators and journalists. Key points of the book: 1) public opinion formation and why people may come to different positions through the development of a new model 2) the societal outcomes produced when a widespread disconnect between journalism and public opinion emerges 3) the atomisation of opinion and its relations to newly constructed opinion communities (with consideration of the role of class) 4) the turn to digitally available alternatives which enable new, less visible power agents to exert control.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2025

        The Jewish pedlar

        An untold criminal history

        by Tony Kushner

        An imaginative investigation into a historical crime that sheds new light on Jewish history. In 1734 a pedlar turned smuggler named Jacob Harris slit the throats of three people in a pub in Sussex. This triple-murder, for which he was hanged and gibbeted, remains the most violent crime ever committed by a British Jew. Yet today it is all but forgotten. In The Jewish pedlar, Tony Kushner goes in search of the enigmatic Harris. Digging into a remarkable range of sources, from law records and newspaper reports to ballads and folktales, he follows the traces of Harris's legend across three hundred years of British history. In doing so, he reconstructs the world of Jewish pedlars and criminals across many continents. The lives these figures eked out at the margins of society paint a picture of persistent antisemitism - but also of remarkable integration. Intellectually bold and deeply humane, The Jewish pedlar takes a new, grassroots approach to the history of Jews in the modern world, shedding light on everyday lives from the Enlightenment to the Holocaust and beyond.

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      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        September 2021

        Building reputations

        Architecture and the artisan, 1750–1830

        by Conor Lucey

        Taking a cue from revisionist scholarship on early modern vernacular architectures and their relationship to the classical canon, this book rehabilitates the reputations of a representative if misunderstood building typology - the eighteenth-century brick terraced house - and the artisan communities of bricklayers, carpenters and plasterers responsible for its design and construction. Opening with a cultural history of the building tradesman in terms of his reception within contemporary architectural discourse, chapters consider the design, decoration and marketing of the town house in the principal cities of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British Atlantic world. The book is essential reading for students and scholars of the history of architectural design and interior decoration specifically, and of eighteenth-century society and culture generally.

      • Trusted Partner
        May 1992

        Beschreibung einer Form

        Versuch über Kafka

        by Martin Walser, Walter Höllerer

        Der Versuch über Kafka Beschreibung einer Form ist Martin Walsers Dissertation, sie erschien erstmals 1961 und ist eine bemerkenswerte Einführung in das Werk Franz Kafkas, das eine so tiefe und nicht nachlassende Wirkung ausübt.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2010

        An age of wonders

        Prodigies, politics and providence in England 1657–1727

        by William Burns, Kim Latham

        Monstrous births, rains of blood, apparitions of battles in the sky - people in early modern England found all of these events to carry important religious and political meanings. In An age of wonders, available in paperback for the first time, William E. Burns explores the process by which these events became religiously and politically insignificant in the Restoration period. The story involves the establishment of early modern science, the shift from 'enthusiastic' to reasonable religion, and the fierce political combat between the Whigs and the Tories. This historical study is based on close readings of a variety of primary sources, both print and manuscript. Burns claims that prodigies lost their religious meaning and became subjects of scientific enquiry as a result of political struggles, first by the supporters of the restored monarchy and the Church of England against Protestant dissenters, and then by the Whig defenders of the Revolution of 1688 against the Tories and the Jacobites. By integrating religious and political history with the history of science, An age of wonders will be of great use to those working in the field of early modern history. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 2023

        Pasts at play

        Childhood encounters with history in British culture, 1750–1914

        by Rachel Bryant Davies, Barbara Gribling

        This collection brings together scholars from disciplines including Children's Literature, Classics, and History to develop fresh approaches to children's culture and the uses of the past. It charts the significance of historical episodes and characters during the long nineteenth-century (1750-1914), a critical period in children's culture. Boys and girls across social classes often experienced different pasts simultaneously, for purposes of amusement and instruction. The book highlights an active and shifting market in history for children, and reveals how children were actively involved in consuming and repackaging the past: from playing with historically themed toys and games to performing in plays and pageants. Each chapter reconstructs encounters across different media, uncovering the cultural work done by particular pasts and exposing the key role of playfulness in the British historical imagination.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2025

        The nineteenth-century present

        Literature, print culture and historicity

        by Koenraad Claes, Elizabeth Ludlow

        The Nineteenth-Century Present explores the multiple ways in which history was understood, structured, and reassessed in literary, theological, and political contexts across the nineteenth century. While the scope of the book is wide, ranging from the representations of geological time and ancient history to the writing of the recent past, and covering the work of writers from Walter Scott to G.K. Chesterton, each chapter reveals how present concerns intrude on and shape every view of history. Ultimately, the collection emphasises that issues raised regarding historicity in recent methodological debates were already concerns in the nineteenth century.

      • Trusted Partner
        2020

        History of the German Language

        A textbook for German studies; Part 1: Introduction, prehistory and history; Part 2: Old High German, Middle High German and Early New High German

        by Wilhelm Schmidt, Edited by Dr. Elisabeth Berner and Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dr. h.c. Norbert Richard Wolf

        The 12th revised and updated version of the History of the German language – long regarded as an indispensable standard work for German Studies, has just been published. From now on, this comprehensive textbook on the history of the language is divided into two volumes. In addition to introducing questions about historical linguistics, the first volume provides a detailed account of the prehistory and history of German right up to the present day. Based on extensive source analyses, the focus is on aspects of culture and social history; only the chapters on the Indo-Germanic and Germanic language include key information about structural history. The second part contains concise, but readily understandable accounts of Old, Middle and Early New High German in terms of phonology, graphemics, morphology and syntax. Not only are synchronous descriptions given of the particular language period, but also the development of German language construction at all structural levels is explained. The association of grammatical synchrony and structural diachrony is a particular characteristic of this second part of Schmidt’s work on the history of language.

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        Does Movement Really Make Us Smart?

        by Petra Jansen, Stefanie Richter

        Media reports often praise movement as a cure-all. But apart from its undisputed positive effect on health, does movement really make us smarter? Consider a national football team, for example – are these excessively sports-driven players automatically the smartest people? Should we simply replace all school subjects with sports? The authors provide a detailed summary of the latest scientific findings on the influence of movement on cognitive ability. They describe the effects of movement, on old age, embodiment, emotion, school as well as other factors that influence cognition. Target Group: teachers, lecturers, psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, psychotherapists, movement therapists.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        April 2025

        Speculative endeavors

        Cultures of knowledge and capital in the long nineteenth century

        by Selina Foltinek, Karin Hoepker, Katrin Horn

        Speculative endeavours contributes to an emerging field of scholarship that focuses on alternative forms of knowledge production and speculation in nineteenth century US-American society. It sheds light on unofficial knowledges such as insider information, rumour, gossip, slander, emphasising how knowledges excluded by institutional discourses and authorities form a core part of the developing market economy. Ranging from the Early Republic to the Gilded Age, contributions analyse entanglements of financial, cultural, and social capital. They focus on social actors who differ from the newly minted ideal of the (free, white, male) entrepreneurial individual. The speculative endeavours discussed include illicit communications located in slave quarters and domestic spaces, communal interventions into a commercialised print market, debates on immigrant fiduciary and legal competency, and disciplinary techniques of pecuniary pedagogy. Taken together they offer unprecedented interdisciplinary insights into an emerging age of capital.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2025

        The Catholicism of literature in the age of the Book of Common Prayer

        Poetry, plays, works, 1558-1689

        by Thomas Rist

        Offering a complete reading of English Literature throughout 1558-1689, this book demonstrates the continuity of Roman Catholicism in English Literature from the accession of Elizabeth I to the deposing of James II. Rist shows that poetry and plays promoted Roman Catholic ideas in a Biblicist age which established the Church of England through the Book of Common Prayer. From the very idea of literary works to chapters on the Eucharist, Purgatory, Christian worship and the Virgin Mary, Rist joins together major and minor authors of the era to present English Literature afresh. Important literary figures include William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Queen Henrietta Maria, John Donne, John Dryden, Robert Herrick, Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2025

        Reassembling the social interior

        Historical spaces from contemporary viewpoints

        by Helen McCormack, Jennifer Gray, Anne Nellis Richter

        At the intersection of heritage, design history and contemporary art, this book offers new perspectives on the way historical interiors are encountered by, and viewed and presented for, present-day audiences. Many studies have highlighted the historical significance and meanings embedded in the landscape, architecture, decoration and objects to be found within houses and homes. But what about the social meanings of these spaces? Central to this book is the idea that in reflecting, remaking and reimagining historical interiors, the contributions of artists, designers and craftspeople should be foregrounded in constructing ideas of authenticity, transparency, and materiality in the making process. The chapters present a range of case studies that reflect upon on how historical interiors are remade and reimagined by looking in and out; at how a reassembling of spaces ought to avoid 'a shrinking definition of the social itself' (Latour, 2005). Surveying a range of interior 'types' from a number of historical periods, the book includes contributions from practitioners, scholars and makers. From digital reconstructions of a seventeenth-century Belgian constcamer to the interior and exterior worlds of specific historical figures, including Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Beatrix Potter, the book considers how these spaces have powerful significance for contemporary audiences, particularly in ways that are relatable to shared experiences of work, leisure, family, community, power and politics. This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of interiors and collections, museology, archaeology, architectural history, art, and design history, as well as curators and caretakers of historical sites, spaces and objects.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2019

        Reformation without end

        by Jason Peacey, Robert Ingram

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 1998

        The railway age

        by Michael Robbins

        Covers the history and development of the railways and the transforming effect which they had on the world. A lively and readable account, peppered with fascinating facts. Written by an authoritative and important figure in the world of railways. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Contemporary Spanish cinema

        by Barry Jordan, Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas

        Contemporary focus, right up to date with material from 1980s and 90s. Wide-ranging analyses of major directors, themes, genres and issues, including historical film, genre cinema, women in film and autonomies.

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