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      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2017

        Asia in Western fiction

        by Robin Winks

        Any reader who has ever visited Asia knows that the great bulk of Western-language fiction about Asian cultures turns on stereotypes. This book, a collection of essays, explores the problem of entering Asian societies through Western fiction, since this is the major port of entry for most school children, university students and most adults. In the thirteenth century, serious attempts were made to understand Asian literature for its own sake. Hau Kioou Choaan, a typical Chinese novel, was quite different from the wild and magical pseudo-Oriental tales. European perceptions of the Muslim world are centuries old, originating in medieval Christendom's encounter with Islam in the age of the Crusades. There is explicit and sustained criticism of medieval mores and values in Scott's novels set in the Middle Ages, and this is to be true of much English-language historical fiction of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even mediocre novels take on momentary importance because of the pervasive power of India. The awesome, remote and inaccessible Himalayas inevitably became for Western writers an idealised setting for novels of magic, romance and high adventure, and for travellers' tales that read like fiction. Chinese fictions flourish in many guises. Most contemporary Hong Kong fiction reinforced corrupt mandarins, barbaric punishments and heathens. Of the novels about Japan published after 1945, two may serve to frame a discussion of Japanese behaviour as it could be observed (or imagined) by prisoners of war: Black Fountains and Three Bamboos.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Critical theory and sociological theory

        by Darrow Schecter

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2011

        The Europeanisation of the Western Balkans

        EU justice and home affairs in Croatia and Macedonia

        by Florian Trauner, Emil Kirchner, Thomas Christiansen

        This book deals with the scope and nature of the EU's external influence over South-Eastern Europe in the present enlargement. By elaborating on the Europeanisation of the Western Balkans in a systematic, theory-oriented and comparative way, the book provides rich insight into the dynamics of the current enlargement and offers a comprehensive analysis of the EU's avenues of external leverage in the field of justice and home affairs, a key sector of cooperation in the EU-Western Balkans relations. The book is an important contribution towards a better understanding of how the EU's use of pre-accession conditionality has changed since the Eastern enlargement. It will be of interest to decision-makers, officials and academics concerned with adaptation and transformation processes in South-Eastern Europe and the possibilities and limitations of the EU's influence in the outside world. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2021

        Lukácsian film theory and cinema

        A study of Georg Lukács' writing on film 1913–1971

        by Ian Aitken

        Lukácsian film theory and cinema explores Georg Lukács' writings on film. The Hungarian Marxist critic Georg Lukács is primarily known as a literary theorist, but he also wrote extensively on the cinema. These writings have remained little known in the English-speaking world because the great majority of them have never actually been translated into English - until now. Aitken has gathered together the most important essays and the translations appear here, often for the first time. This book thus makes a decisive contribution to understandings of Lukács within the field of film studies, and, in doing so, also challenges many existing preconceptions concerning his theoretical position. For example, whilst Lukács' literary theory is well known for its repudiation of naturalism, in his writings on film Lukács appears to advance a theory and practice of film that can best be described as naturalist. Lukácsian film theory and cinema is divided into two parts. In part one, Lukács' writings on film are explored, and placed within relevant historical and intellectual contexts, whilst part two consists of the essays themselves. This book will be of considerable interest to scholars and students working within the fields of film studies, literary studies, intellectual history, media and cultural studies. It is also intended to be the final volume in a trilogy of works on cinematic realism, which includes the author's earlier European film theory and cinema (2001), and Realist film theory and cinema (2006).

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        August 2024

        Instead of modernity

        The Western canon and the incorporation of the Hispanic (c. 1850–75)

        by Andrew Ginger

        Instead of modernity goes to the very heart of comparative cultural study: the question of what happens when intimate, dynamic connections are made over place and time, what it is to feel at home amid the lavish diversity of culture. This ambitious interdisciplinary book reconsiders foundational figures of the modern western canon, from Darwin to Cameron, Baudelaire to Whistler. It weaves together brain images from France, preserved insects from the Americas, glass in London, poetry from Argentina, paintings from Spain. Flaubert, Whitman, and Nietzsche find themselves with Hostos from Puerto Rico and Gorriti from Argentina. The book ranges over theoretical fields: trauma and sexuality studies, theories of visuality, the philosophy of sacrifice and intimacy, the thought of Wittgenstein. Instead of modernity is an adventure in the practice of comparative writing: resonances join suggestively over place and time, the textures of words, phrases and images combine to form moods.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2013

        The Jews in western Europe, 1400–1600

        by Translated and Edited by John Edwards

        As European politics, society, economy and religion underwent epoch-making changes between 1400 and 1600, the treatment of Europe's Jews by the non-Jewish majority was, then as in later periods, a symptom of social problems and tensions in the Continent as a whole. Through a broad-ranging collection of documents, John Edwards sets out to present a vivid picture of the Jewish presence in European life during this vital and turbulent period. Subjects covered include the Jews' own economic presence and culture, social relations between Jews and Christians, the policies and actions of Christian authorities in Church and State. He also draws upon original source material to convey ordinary people's prejudices about Jews, including myths about Jewish 'devilishness', money-grabbing, and 'ritual murder' of Christian children. Full introductory and explanatory material makes accessible the historical context of the subject and highlights the insights offered by the documents as well as the pitfalls to be avoided in this area of historical enquiry. This volume aims to provide a coherent working collection of texts for lecturers, teachers and students who wish to understand the experience of Jewish Europeans in this period. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2013

        The Jews in western Europe, 1400–1600

        by John Edwards

        As European politics, society, economy and religion underwent epoch-making changes between 1400 and 1600, the treatment of Europe's Jews by the non-Jewish majority was, then as in later periods, a symptom of social problems and tensions in the Continent as a whole. Through a broad-ranging collection of documents, John Edwards sets out to present a vivid picture of the Jewish presence in European life during this vital and turbulent period. Subjects covered include the Jews' own economic presence and culture, social relations between Jews and Christians, the policies and actions of Christian authorities in Church and State. He also draws upon original source material to convey ordinary people's prejudices about Jews, including myths about Jewish 'devilishness', money-grabbing, and 'ritual murder' of Christian children. Full introductory and explanatory material makes accessible the historical context of the subject and highlights the insights offered by the documents as well as the pitfalls to be avoided in this area of historical enquiry. This volume aims to provide a coherent working collection of texts for lecturers, teachers and students who wish to understand the experience of Jewish Europeans in this period.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2022

        Critical theory and dystopia

        by Patricia McManus, Darrow Schecter

        Critical theory and dystopia offers a uniquely rich study of dystopian fiction, drawing on the insights of critical theory. Asking what ideological work these dark imaginings perform, the book reconstructs the historical emergence, consolidation and transformation of the genre across the twentieth century and into our own, ranging from Yevgeny Zamayatin's We (1924) and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) to Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (1963) and Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games series (2000s and 2010s). In doing so, it reveals the political logics opened up or neutered by the successive moments of this dystopian history.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        August 2023

        Picturing the Western Front

        Photography, practices and experiences in First World War France

        by Beatriz Pichel

        Between 1914 and 1918, military, press and amateur photographers produced thousands of pictures. Either classified in military archives specially created with this purpose in 1915, collected in personal albums or circulated in illustrated magazines, photographs were supposed to tell the story of the war. Picturing the Western Front argues that photographic practices also shaped combatants and civilians' war experiences. Doing photography (taking pictures, posing for them, exhibiting, cataloguing and looking at them) allowed combatants and civilians to make sense of what they were living through. Photography mattered because it enabled combatants and civilians to record events, establish or reinforce bonds with one another, represent bodies, place people and events in imaginative geographies and making things visible, while making others, such as suicide, invisible. Photographic practices became, thus, frames of experience.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2005

        The extreme Right in Western Europe

        Success or failure?

        by Elisabeth Carter

        Parties of the extreme Right have experienced a dramatic rise in electoral support in many countries in Western Europe over the last two and a half decades. This phenomenon has been far from uniform, however, and the considerable attention that the more successful Right-wing extremist parties have received has sometimes obscured the fact that these parties have not recorded high electoral results in all West European democracies. Furthermore, their electoral scores have also varied over time, with the same party recording low electoral scores in one election but securing high electoral scores in another. This book examines the reasons behind the variation in the electoral fortunes of the West European parties of the extreme Right in the period since the late 1970s. It proposes a number of different explanations as to why certain parties of the extreme Right have performed better than others at the polls and it investigates each of these different explanations systematically and in depth. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Realist film theory and cinema

        The nineteenth-century Lukácsian and intuitionist realist traditions

        by Ian Aitken

        'Realist film theory and cinema' embraces studies of cinematic realism and 19th century tradition, the realist film theories of Lukács, Grierson, Bazin and Kracauer, and the relationship of realist film theory to the general field of film theory and philosophy. This is the first book to attempt a rigorous and systematic application of realist film theory to the analysis of particular films. The book suggests new ways forward for a new series of studies in cinematic realism, and for a new form of film theory based on realism. It stresses the importance of the question of realism both in film studies and in contemporary life. Aitken's work will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of film studies, literary studies, media studies, cultural studies and philosophy.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2021

        Critical theory and feeling

        The affective politics of the early Frankfurt School

        by Simon Mussell

        This book offers a unique and timely reading of the early Frankfurt School in response to the recent 'affective turn' within the arts and humanities. Resisting the overly rationalist tendencies of political philosophy, it argues that critical theory actively cultivates a powerful connection between thinking and feeling, and rediscovers a range of often neglected concepts that were of vital importance to the first generation of critical theorists, including melancholia, hope, (un)happiness, objects and mimesis. In doing so, it brings the dynamic work of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch and Siegfried Kracauer into conversation with more recent debates around politics and affect. An important intervention in the fields of affect studies and social and political thought, Critical theory and feeling shows that sensuous experience is at the heart of the Frankfurt School's affective politics.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        February 2006

        Film theory

        An introduction

        by Robert Lapsley

        Film theory: an introduction offers a highly readable account of film theory and is an indispensable resource for students. The discussion ranges from the late 1960s to the present, a period in which a number of conceptual strands, notably politics, semiotics and psychoanalysis were woven together in an ambitious synthesis. In this book, the authors chart the construction of this synthesis and its subsequent fragmentation, and clearly explain the various intellectual currents which have contributed to it. Divided into two parts, the first covers the conceptual background of film theory, dealing with historical materialism, semiotics and psychoanalysis, whilst in the second the authors concentrate on particular topics such as authorship, narrative, realism, the avant-garde and postmodernism. For this new edition, the authors have added a new foreword, a fully updated and expanded bibliography, and a 60-page Retrospect outlining developments within film theory since the book's original publication in 1988. This Retrospect identifies a number of broad readings of Theory, each with a different perspective on the main content of the book. As such, it provides a new and original mapping of the 'post-theory' moment in this complex and often fractured terrain. Accessible and authoritative, this book is essential reading for students of film theory, or indeed anyone seeking a deeper understanding of modern cinema. ;

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Science & Mathematics
        February 2025

        Assemblages of cancer

        Experiences and contexts of breast cancer in the UK, France and Italy

        by Cinzia Greco

        Assemblages of cancer illustrates the tensions in the experiences and context of breast cancer in Western Europe. Breast cancer is presented as a success story in oncology, especially in countries with advanced, universal healthcare systems. At the same time, individual experiences are shaped by uncertainty, local variability of healthcare provisions, and the need for patients to assemble information about the treatments, knowledge on healthcare systems navigation, and different processes of meaning-making to manage the uncertainty and variability characterising individual outcomes. The book explores both how individual bodies and experiences are transformed by different local medical practices, institutions and discourses of breast cancer and how patients need to find their own way in these contexts. Assemblages of cancer is based on ten years of ethnographic work with patients and medical professionals in the UK, France and Italy.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        July 2012

        Lukácsian film theory and cinema

        A study of Georg Lukács' writing on film 1913–1971

        by Ian Aitken

        Lukácsian film theory and cinema explores Georg Lukács' writings on film. The Hungarian Marxist critic Georg Lukács is primarily known as a literary theorist, but he also wrote extensively on the cinema. These writings have remained little known in the English-speaking world because the great majority of them have never actually been translated into English - until now. Aitken has gathered together the most important essays and the translations appear here, often for the first time. This book thus makes a decisive contribution to understandings of Lukács within the field of film studies, and, in doing so, also challenges many existing preconceptions concerning his theoretical position. For example, whilst Lukács' literary theory is well known for its repudiation of naturalism, in his writings on film Lukács appears to advance a theory and practice of film that can best be described as naturalist. Lukácsian film theory and cinema is divided into two parts. In part one, Lukács' writings on film are explored, and placed within relevant historical and intellectual contexts, whilst part two consists of the essays themselves. This book will be of considerable interest to scholars and students working within the fields of film studies, literary studies, intellectual history, media and cultural studies. It is also intended to be the final volume in a trilogy of works on cinematic realism, which includes the author's earlier European film theory and cinema (2001), and Realist film theory and cinema (2006). ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 1996

        Colonial discourse / postcolonial theory

        by Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iverson

        The issues of colonialism and imperialism have recently come to the forefront of thinking in the humanities. Disciplines such as history, literature and anthropology are taking stock of their extensive and usually unacknowledged legacy of Empire. At the same time, contemporary cultural theory has had to respond to post-colonial pressure, with its different registers and agendas. This volume ranges, geographically, from Brazil to India and South Africa, from the Andes to the Caribbean and the USA. This range is matched by a breadth of historical perspectives. Central to the whole volume is a critique of the very idea of the "postcolonial" itself. Contributors include Annie Coombes, Simon During, Peter Hulme, Neil Lazarus, David Lloyd, Anne McClintock, Zita Nunes, Benita Parry, Graham Pechey, Mary Louise Pratt, Renato Rosaldo and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. ;

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