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        Biography & True Stories
        November 2024

        Walking in the dark

        James Baldwin, my father and I

        by Douglas Field

        A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwin's death in 1987, his writing - including The Fire Next Time, one of the manifestoes of the Civil Rights Movement, and Giovanni's Room, a pioneering work of gay fiction - has only grown in relevance. Douglas Field was introduced to Baldwin's essays and novels by his father, who witnessed the writer's debate with William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965. In Walking in the dark, he embarks on a journey to unravel his life-long fascination and to understand why Baldwin continues to enthral us decades after his death. Tracing Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digging into archives, Field paints an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence. At the same time, he offers a poignant account of coming to terms with his father's Alzheimer's disease. Interweaving Baldwin's writings on family, illness, memory and place, Walking in the dark is an eloquent testament to the enduring power of great literature to illuminate our paths.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2016

        Working men’s bodies

        by John Field

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2025

        Arctic state identity

        Geography, history, and geopolitical relations

        by Ingrid A. Medby

        This book sets out to answer what it means to hold a formal title as one of the eight 'Arctic states'; is there such a thing as an Arctic state identity, and if so, what does this mean for state personnel? It charts the thoughtful reflections and stories of state personnel from three Arctic states: Norway, Iceland, and Canada, alongside analysis of documents and discourses. This book shows how state identities are narrated as both geographical and temporal - understood through environments, territories, pasts and futures - and that any identity is always relational and contextual. As such, demonstrating that to understand Arctic geopolitics we need to pay attention to the people whose job it is to represent the state on a daily basis. And more broadly, it offers a 'peopled' view of geopolitics, introducing the concept and framework of 'state identity'.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2022

        Class, work and whiteness

        Race and settler colonialism in Southern Rhodesia, 1919–79

        by Nicola Ginsburgh

        This book offers the first comprehensive history of white workers from the end of the First World War to Zimbabwean independence in 1980. It reveals how white worker identity was constituted, examines the white labouring class as an ethnically and nationally heterogeneous formation comprised of both men and women, and emphasises the active participation of white workers in the ongoing and contested production of race. White wage labourers' experiences, both as exploited workers and as part of the privileged white minority, offer insight into how race and class co-produced one another and how boundaries fundamental to settler colonialism were regulated and policed. Based on original research conducted in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the UK, this book offers a unique theoretical synthesis of work on gender, whiteness studies, labour histories, settler colonialism, Marxism, emotions and the New African Economic History.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Acts of supremacy

        by J. Bratton, Richard Cave, Brendan Gregory, Michael Pickering

        Imperialist discourse interacted with regional and class discourses. Imperialism's incorporation of Welsh, Scots and Irish identities, was both necessary to its own success and one of its most powerful functions in terms of the control of British society. Most cultures have a place for the concept of heroism, and for the heroic figure in narrative fiction; stage heroes are part of the drama's definition of self, the exploration and understanding of personal identity. Theatrical and quasi-theatrical presentations, whether in music hall, clubroom, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre or the streets and ceremonial spaces of the capital, contributed to that much-discussed national mood. This book examines the theatre as the locus for nineteenth century discourses of power and the use of stereotype in productions of the Shakespearean history canon. It discusses the development of the working class and naval hero myth of Jack Tar, the portrayal of Ireland and the Irish, and the portrayal of British India on the spectacular exhibition stage. The racial implications of the ubiquitous black-face minstrelsy are focused upon. The ideology cluster which made up the imperial mindset had the capacity to re-arrange and re-interpret history and to influence the portrayal of the tragic or comic potential of personal dilemmas. Though the British may have prided themselves on having preceded America in the abolition of slavery and thus outpacing Brother Jonathan in humanitarian philanthropy, abnegation of hierarchisation and the acceptance of equality of status between black and white ethnic groups was not part of that achievement.

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        The Arts
        September 2020

        Science in performance

        Theatre and the politics of engagement

        by Simon Parry

        This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book is about science in theatre and performance. It explores how theatre and performance engage with emerging scientific themes from artificial intelligence to genetics and climate change. The book covers a wide range of performance forms from Broadway musicals to educational theatre, from Somali drama to grime videos. It features work by pioneering companies including Gob Squad, Headlong Theatre and Theatre of Debate as well as offering fresh analysis of global blockbusters such as Wicked and Urinetown. The book offers detailed description and analysis of theatre and performance practices as well as broader commentary on the politics of theatre as public engagement with science. Science in performance is essential reading for researchers, students and practitioners working between science and the arts within fields such as theatre and performance studies, science communication, interdisciplinary arts and health humanities.

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        The Arts
        July 2024

        Theatre, activism, subjectivity

        Searching for the Left in a fragmented world

        by Bishnupriya Dutt, Silvija Jestrovic

        Through the lens of performance and politics, this collection zooms in on the context-specific dimensions, analogies, and micro-histories of the Left to better understand the larger picture. It proposes a search for the Left not from totalising Leftist ideological positions and partisan politics but from ethical dimensions through smaller-scale Left-leaning struggles; not from the political to the aesthetic, but from the potentiality of art to offer new political imagination and critique; not from the individual subordinated to the collective, but from the dialectics of subjectivity and collectivity. This is not an attempt at a sweeping global overview of Leftist cultures either, but a collection that brings together culture-specific and comparative perspectives. This book searches for fragments of and on the Left, past and present, through which to rethink and patch a fragmented world.

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        African history
        January 2017

        Humanitarian aid, genocide and mass killings

        Médecins Sans Frontières, the Rwandan experience, 1982–97

        by Jean-Hervé Bradol. Series edited by Bertrand Taithe

        Throughout the 1990s, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was forced to face the challenges posed by the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis and a succession of outbreaks of political violence in Rwanda and its neighbouring countries. Humanitarian workers were confronted with the execution of almost one million people, tens of thousands of casualties pouring into health centres, the flight of millions of people who had sought refuge in camps and a series of deadly epidemics. Drawing on various hitherto unpublished private and public archives, this book recounts the experiences of the MSF teams working in the field. It is intended for humanitarian aid practitioners, students, journalists and researchers with an interest in genocide and humanitarian studies and the political sociology of international organisations.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2022

        Reconstructing lives

        by Vanja Kovacic

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2020

        Class, work and whiteness

        by Nicola Ginsburgh, Alan Lester

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        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2022

        Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 98/1

        The Artist of the Future Age: William Blake, Neo-Romanticism, Counterculture and Now

        by Douglas Field

        This special issue of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library is devoted to William Blake. It explores the British and European reception of Blake's work from the late nineteenth century to the present day, with a particular focus on the counterculture. Opening with two articles by the late Michael Horovitz, an important figure in the 'Blake Renaissance' of the 1960s, the issue goes on to investigate the ideological struggle over Blake in the early part of the twentieth century, with particular reference to W. B. Yeats. This is followed by articles on the artistic avant-garde and underground of the 1960s and on Blake's significance for science fiction authors of the 1970s. The issue closes with an article on the contemporary Belgian art collective maelstrÖm reEvolution.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2023

        Leaving the field

        by Robin James Smith, Sara Delamont

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        September 2022

        Identity or Not?

        by Jean-Pierre Wils (ed.)

        Questions of identity trigger controversial and highly emotional discussions in the political and social debate. The positions range from radically emancipatory perspectives to authoritarian and restorative efforts on the far right wing of politics. Liberal democracies are now opening up – slowly – as identity- and gender-sensitive forums. Opposite them are the 'new ethics' of illiberal democracies and totalitarian states that are aimed at ethnic homogeneity and gender uniformity. But that's not to say that there is unity in the liberal settings on the necessary degree of identity politics. Both language and gender politics are deeply controversial. Do we need an 'identity' and, if so, which one or how many? Can the identity debate be extended by means of other concepts?

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