Bücher veröffentlicht von Bloomsbury Academic

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.In 1971, the first lunar rover arrived on the moon. The design became an icon of American ingenuity and the adventurous spirit many equated with the space race. The lunar roving vehicles (LRVs) would be the first and last manned rovers to date, but they provided a vision of humanity's space-faring future: astronauts roaming the moon like space cowboys. Fifty years later, that vision feels like a nostalgic fantasy, but the LRV's legacy would pave the way for Mars rovers like Sojourner, Curiosity and Perseverance, who afforded humanity an intimate portrait of our most tantalizingly (potentially) colonizable neighbor. Other rovers have made accessible the world's deepest caves and most remote tundra, extending our exploratory range without risking lives. Still others have been utilized for search and rescue missions or in clean up operations after disasters such as Chernobyl. For all these achievements, rovers embody not just our potential, but our limits. Examining rovers as they wander our terrestrial and celestial boundaries, we might better comprehend our place, and fate, in this universe. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

"First published in India in 2020 by Vintage Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House India." --Title page verso.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Barcodes are about as ordinary as an object can be. Billions of them are scanned each day and they impact everything from how we shop to how we travel to how the global economy is managed. But few people likely give them more than a second thought. In a way, the barcode's ordinariness is the ultimate symbol of its success.However, behind the mundanity of the barcode lies an important history. Barcodes bridged the gap between physical objects and digital databases and paved the way for the contemporary Internet of Things, the idea to connect all devices to the web. They were highly controversial at points, protested by consumer groups and labor unions, and used as a symbol of dystopian capitalism and surveillance in science fiction and art installations. This book tells the story of the barcode's complicated history and examines how an object so crucial to so many parts of our lives became more ignored and more ordinary as it spread throughout the world.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

On a glorious summer's afternoon, young Alice happens upon a smartly dressed rabbit looking at his watch and muttering 'I'm too late!' This being an unexpected occurrence, she follows him down a nearby rabbit hole and falls in Wonderland.Lewis Carroll's timeless children's stories Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There are magically brought to life in this new adaptation by Adrian Mitchell, specially commissioned for a Christmas production by the RSC. The amazing Lobster Quadrille, the Queen of Hearts' infamous croquet match and the Mad Hatter's Tea Party are just a few of the remarkable events and characters in this enchanting play.

In the wide realm of Shakespeare worship, the house in Stratford-upon-Avon where William Shakespeare was born in 1564 - known colloquially as the 'Birthplace' - remains the chief shrine. It's not as romantic as Anne Hathaway's thatched cottage, it's not where he wrote any of his plays, and there's nothing inside the house that once belonged to Shakespeare himself. So why, for centuries, have people kept turning up on the doorstep? Richard Schoch answers that question by examining the history of the Birthplace and by exploring how its changing fortunes over four centuries perfectly mirror the changing attitudes toward Shakespeare himself.Based on original research in the archives of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, and featuring two black and white illustrated plate sections which draw on the wide array of material available at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum, this book traces the history of Shakespeare's birthplace over four centuries. Beginning in the 1560s, when Shakespeare was born there, it ends in the 1890s, when the house was rescued from private purchase and turned into the Shakespeare monument that it remains today.

To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory.This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.Now in its eagerly awaited third edition, this bestselling book includes a co-written introduction features contributions from indigenous scholars on the book's continued relevance to current research. It also features a chapter with twenty-five indigenous projects and a collection of poetry.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Schools and Religion provides the first truly global scan of contemporary issues and debates around the world regarding the relationship(s) between the state, schools and religion. Organized around specific contested issues - from whether or not mindfulness should be practised in schools, to appropriate and inappropriate religious attire in schools, to long-term battles about evolution, sexuality, and race, to public funding - Fraser-Pearce and Fraser carefully curate chapters by leading experts exploring these matters and others in a diverse range of national settings. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Schools and Religion offers a refreshingly new international perspective.

Earning critical acclaim and commercial success upon its 1998 release, Rushmore-the sophomore film of American auteur Wes Anderson-quickly gained the status of a cult classic. A melancholic coming-of-age story wrapped in comedy drama, Rushmore focuses on the efforts of Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman)-a brazen and precocious fifteen-year-old-to find his way. Restless, energetic, struggling, and overcompensating for his insecurities, Max pursues a dizzying range of possible futures, leading him into the orbit of local steel magnate Herman Blume (Bill Murray), elementary school teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), and a host of cooperative schoolmates who help him to stage lavish film-derivative plays. Kristi McKim's compelling study of the film argues that despite the film's titular call for haste and excess (rush/more), it challenges a drive toward perfectionism and celebrates the quiet connections that defy such passion and speed. After establishing Rushmore's history and reception, McKim closely reads Rushmore's energetic musical montages relative to slower moments that introduce tenderness and ambiguity, in a form subtler than Max's desire-built drive or genre-based plays. Her analysis offers an urgent corrective to what might be perceived as an endearing portrait of privilege that perpetuates a status quo power. Drawing out Rushmore's subtleties that soften, temper, ease, expand, and equalize the film's zeal, she reads the film with a generosity learned from the film itself.

Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath of war that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a key text in America's understanding of itself. This is a film that remains relevant to our own anxieties and yearnings, to all the contradictions of ordinary life, while also enacting for us the quintessence of the classic Hollywood aesthetic. Nostalgia, humour, and a tough resilience weave themselves through this movie, intertwining it with the fraught cultural moment of the end of World War II that saw its birth. It offers a still compelling merging of fantasy and realism that was utterly unique when it was first released, and has rarely been matched since. Michael Newton's study of the film investigates the source of its extraordinary power and its long-lasting impact. He begins by introducing the key figures in the movie's production - notably director Frank Capra and star James Stewart - and traces the making of the film, and then provides a brief synopsis of the film, considering its aesthetic processes and procedures, touching on all those things that make it such an astonishing film. Newton's careful analysis explores all those aspects of the film that are fundamental to our understanding of it, particularly the way in which the film brings tragedy and comedy together. Finally, Newton tells the story of the film's reception and afterlife, accounting for its initial relative failure and its subsequent immense popularity.

This revised Student Edition includes an introduction by Bess Rowen, Assistant Professor at Villanova University, US, which looks in particular at the play's treatment of rape, vulnerable people, mental institutions (especially in connection to Williams's own family), sexuality and sexual desire.A Streetcar Named Desire shows a turbulent confrontation between traditional values in the American South - an old-world graciousness and beauty running decoratively to seed - set against the rough-edged, aggressive materialism of the new world. Through the vividly characterised figures of Southern belle Blanche Dubois, seeking refuge from physical ugliness in decayed gentility, and her brutal brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams dramatises his sense of the South's past as still active and often destructive in modern America.METHUEN DRAMA STUDENT EDITIONS are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. A well as the complete text of the play itself, this volume contains:· A chronology of the play and the playwright's life and work· An introductory discussion of the social, political, cultural and economic context in which the play was originally conceived and created· A succinct overview of the creation processes followed and subsequent performance history of the piece· An analysis of, and commentary on, some of the major themes and specific issues addressed by the text· A bibliography of suggested primary and secondary materials for further study

In the Shadow of Great Powers is the second volume of Christoph Baumer's History of the Caucasus. It covers the period from the Seljuk domination of the Southern Caucasus around 1050 CE to the present day. After the Kingdom of Georgia's golden age of independent power and cultural blossoming in the 12th and early 13th centuries, the Caucasus was overrun by the Mongols and soon disintegrated into innumerable smaller kingdoms, principalities and khanates. At the same time, an Armenian kingdom in exile maintained a precarious independence in Cilicia, today's southern Turkey, by applying a three-way diplomatic policy balanced between the Mongol Il-Khanate, the Crusader states and, to a lesser degree, the Mameluke Empire. Then followed four centuries during which the highly fragmented polities of the North and South Caucasus became political pawns of the regional great powers, above all the Ottomans, Iran and Russia. In the wake of World War I the South Caucasus enjoyed a short-lived independence whereas its northern neighbours were engulfed by the Russian civil wars. But by 1921 the Soviet Union had re-established Russian dominance over the whole region and, from a Western perspective, the region 'disappeared' behind the Iron Curtain. Nevertheless, the Caucasian nations kept their pronounced identities even under Soviet rule, giving rise at the dissolution of the Soviet Union to a number of internecine conflicts. Whereas the Russian Federation managed to maintain its supremacy over the North Caucasus - albeit at the cost of bloody wars and insurrections - Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia succeeded in more or less gaining control over their destiny. Of these three republics, only Azerbaijan secured a wide-ranging independence thanks to its fossil fuel resources. Following Russian interference, Georgia lost control over two of its provinces while Armenia remains dependent on Russian support in the face of its notoriously antagonistic relations with neighbouring Azerbaijan and Turkey over the unresolved issue of Karabakh. In the Shadow of Great Powers includes some 200 full-colour images and maps which further bring the turbulent history of this region to light.

Stigma is a corrosive social force by which individuals and communities throughout history have been systematically dehumanised, scapegoated and oppressed. From the literal stigmatizing (tattooing) of criminals in ancient Greece, to modern day discrimination against Muslims, refugees and the 'undeserving poor', stigma has long been a means of securing the interests of powerful elites.In this radical reconceptualisation Tyler precisely and passionately outlines the political function of stigma as an instrument of state coercion. Through an original social and economic reframing of the history of stigma, Tyler reveals stigma as a political practice, illuminating previously forgotten histories of resistance against stigmatization, boldly arguing that these histories provide invaluable insights for understanding the rise of authoritarian forms of government today.

Stalinism, that particularly brutal phase of communism, came to an end in most of Eastern Europe with the death of Josef Stalin in 1953 or at least with the Khrushchev reforms that began in the Soviet Union in 1956. However, in one country - Albania - Stalinism survived virtually unscathed until 1990. The regime that the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha led from the time of the communist takeover in 1944 until his death in 1985, and that continued unabated under his successor Ramiz Alia until 1990, was incomparably severe. Such was the reign of terror that no audible voice of opposition or dissent ever arose in the Balkan state, a European country that became as isolated from the rest of the world as North Korea is today. When the Albanian communist system finally imploded, it left behind a weary population, frightened and confused after decades of purges and political terror. It also left behind a country with a weak and fragile economy, a country where extreme poverty was the norm. In the decades since Hoxha's death, Albania has made substantial progress in political and economic terms, yet the spectre of Hoxha still lingers over the country.Despite this, many people - inside and outside Albania - know little about the man who ruled the country with an iron fist for so many decades. This book provides the first biography of Enver Hoxha available in English, from his birth in GjirokastEr in southern Albania, then still under Ottoman rule, to his death in 1985 at the age of 76. Using archival documents and first-hand interviews, Albanian journalist Blendi Fevziu pieces together the life of this tyrannical ruler, in a biography which will be essential reading for anyone interested in Balkan history and communist studies.

Told through the eyes of witnesses to the fall of Kabul, Walkley award-winning journalist Andrew Quilty's debut book offers a remarkable record of this historic moment. As night fell on 15 August 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. After a 20-year conflict with the United States, its Western allies and a proxy Afghan government, the Islamic militant group once aligned with al Qaeda was about to bury yet another foreign foe in the graveyard of empires. And for the US, world superpower, this was yet another foreign disaster. As cities and towns fell to the Taliban in rapid succession, Western troops and embassy staff scrambled to flee a country of which its government had lost control. August in Kabul is the story of how America's longest mission came to an abrupt and humiliating end, told through the eyes of Afghans whose lives have been turned upside down: a young woman who harbours dreams of a university education; a presidential staffer who works desperately to hold things together as the government collapses around him; a prisoner in the notorious Bagram Prison who suddenly finds himself free when prison guards abandon their post. Andrew Quilty was one of only a handful of Western journalists who stayed in Kabul as the city fell. This is his first-hand account of those dramatic final days.

A surreal and darkly humorous vision, David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) has been recognised as a cult classic since its breakout success as a midnight movie in the late 1970s.Claire Henry's study of the film takes us into its netherworld, providing a detailed account of its production history, its exhibition and reception, and its elusive meanings. Using original archival research, she traces how Lynch took his nightmare of Philadelphia to the City of Dreams, infusing his LA-shot film with the industrial cityscapes and sounds of the Callowhill district. Henry then engages with Eraserhead's irresistible inscrutability and advances a fresh interpretation, reframing auteurism to centre Lynch's creative processes as a visual artist and Transcendental Meditation practitioner. Finally, she outlines how Lynch's 'dream of dark and troubling things' became a model midnight movie and later grew in reputation and influence across broader film culture. From the opening chapter on Eraserhead's famous 'baby' to the final chapter on the film's tentacular influence, Henry's compelling and authoritative account offers illuminating new perspectives on the making and meaning of the film and its legacy. Through an in-depth analysis of the film's rich mise en scène, cinematography, sound and its embeddedness in visual art and screen culture, Henry not only affirms the film's significance as Lynch's first feature, but also advances a wider case for appreciating its status as a film classic.

Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) brings two Americans together in Tokyo, each experiencing a personal crisis. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a recent graduate in philosophy, faces an uncertain professional future, while Bob Harris (Bill Murray), an established celebrity, questions his choices at midlife. Both are distant - emotionally and spatially - from their spouses. They are lost until they develop an intimate connection. In the film's poignant, famously ambiguous closing scene, they find each other, only to separate. In this close look at the multi-award-winning film, Suzanne Ferriss mirrors Lost in Translation's structuring device of travel: her analysis takes the form of a trip, from planning to departure. She details the complexities of filming (a 27-day shoot with no permits in Tokyo), explores Coppola's allusions to fine art, subtle colour palette and use of music over words, and examines the characters' experiences of the Park Hyatt Tokyo and excursions outside, together and alone. She also re-evaluates the film in relation to Coppola's other features, as the product of an established director with a distinctive cinematic signature: 'Coppolism'. Fundamentally, Ferriss argues that Lost in Translation is not only a cinema classic, but classic Coppola too.

The Gutenberg Parenthesis traces the epoch of print from its fateful beginnings to our digital present - and draws out lessons for the age to come. The age of print is a grand exception in history. For five centuries it fostered what some call print culture - a worldview shaped by the completeness, permanence, and authority of the printed word. As a technology, print at its birth was as disruptive as the digital migration of today. Now, as the internet ushers us past print culture, journalist Jeff Jarvis offers important lessons from the era we leave behind. To understand our transition out of the Gutenberg Age, Jarvis first examines the transition into it. Tracking Western industrialized print to its origins, he explores its invention, spread, and evolution, as well as the bureaucracy and censorship that followed. He also reveals how print gave rise to the idea of the mass - mass media, mass market, mass culture, mass politics, and so on - that came to dominate the public sphere. What can we glean from the captivating, profound, and challenging history of our devotion to print? Could it be that we are returning to a time before mass media, to a society built on conversation, and that we are relearning how to hold that conversation with ourselves? Brimming with broader implications for today's debates over communication, authorship, and ownership, Jarvis' exploration of print on a grand scale is also a complex, compelling history of technology and power.