Bücher veröffentlicht von Peter Lang International Academic Publishers

How can businesses and business leaders contribute to solutions of the big ethical, social, and ecological challenges of today? It uses diverse, often multidimensional frames of reference and illustrates them with real-life cases to show positive solutions.

Scotland's islands are diverse, resourceful and singularly iconic in national and global imaginations of places 'apart' yet readily reached. This collection of essays offers a fascinating commentary on Scotland's island communities that celebrates their histories, cultures and economies in general terms.

A unique experiment at the frontlines of the Cold War, the German Democratic Republic collapsed more than thirty years ago. But it did not simply vanish. Far from being a footnote in history, the state and its legacies continue to inform identities, politics, and culture today. Studies of surveillance and government control, individual agency and equal opportunity, informal networks, strategic alliances, and strategies subverting limitations on freedom of expression prompt us to rethink our conceptualizations of the GDR.Introducing the work of a new generation of researchers, this collection applies such approaches to a wide range of examples from film, theatre, music, literature, radio, and law. The chapters explore and transgress temporal, national, and disciplinary boundaries. From these investigations emerges a pervasive pattern of informal, border-transcending spheres, subversive identity discourses, and effective agency. Drawing variously on concepts such as Eigen-Sinn, informal society, and alternative public spheres, the papers presented here highlight the relevance of GDR Studies looking forwards. More than a volume about just the past, The GDR Tomorrow holds implications for the future.

«ÜberLebenswege leistet einen wichtigen wissenschaftlich fundierten, sehr gut lesbaren Beitrag zur Geschichte der Deutschen Heimerziehung. Eindrücklich und lebensnah wird verdeutlicht, wie normativ staatliche Interventionen geprägt waren und leider noch immer sind. Eine wertvolle Lektüre auch um in den Themenfeldern Rassismus und Sexismus kritische Fragen an die Gegenwart zu stellen.»(Prof. Dr. Thomas Gabriel, Leiter Institut für Kindheit, Jugend und Familie, ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften)«An important contribution that will fill a considerable gap in the existing scholarship on Black Germans in postwar West Germany. ÜberLebenswege is the first book that is exclusively based on extensive interviews and Malanda is to be commended for a narrative that emphasizes the subjective experiences and interpretations of those she interviewed.»(Dr. Silke Hackenesch, Akademische Rätin, Universität zu Köln)Schwarze Deutsche, die in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren in Heimen aufwuchsen, sind in der deutschen Erinnerungskultur bislang unsichtbar. Ausgehend von dieser Leerstelle stehen in ÜberLebenswege die biografischen Erzählungen Schwarzer Deutscher im Mittelpunkt, die in den Jahren 1946 und 1949 geboren wurden und in bundesdeutschen Fürsorgeeinrichtungen aufgewachsen sind. Als nichteheliche Nachkomm*innen weißer deutscher Zivilistinnen und Schwarzer US-amerikanischer Besatzungssoldaten erlebten sie im postnationalsozialistischen Deutschland innerhalb und außerhalb von Heimen soziale Stigmatisierung und Rassismus. Vor diesem Hintergrund mussten die Frauen und Männer von frühester Kindheit an Überlebensstrategien entwickeln, um im Heim und in der Gesellschaft bestehen zu können.Das Buch verfolgt einen intersektionalen Ansatz, bei dem die Kategorien race, Klasse und Geschlecht und ihre Verwobenheit sowie eine postkoloniale Perspektive berücksichtigt werden. Damit trägt ÜberLebenswege dazu bei, eine bisherige Lücke in der Forschung zur Geschichte Schwarzer Deutscher in der frühen Bundesrepublik sichtbar zu machen und durch neue Erkenntnisse zu füllen.

«A fascinating, well-paced, beautifully written memoir.»(Professor Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, Author and Director, MA in Creative Writing, University of Limerick, Ireland)«A wonderfully honest, often witty, personal account from someone who experienced discrimination -and challenged it - at every level of academia. So much of what has changed for women in recent decades is chronicled through Pat's life, research and actions. A tour de force.»(Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, plant ecologist and feminist activist)«This book evokes the lived experience of a woman who, out of her time, marshalled the brains, the courage and--I have to say it--the sheer bloody-minded and tireless determination to confront others with one question: 'why?'. Asking the question came at no small personal cost, but--slowly and surely--it started to prise open some of the seemingly impenetrable male-centric power edifices that exist across academia; openings which now give so many others hope. Don't be afraid of reading this book about the lifetime of someone who asked why, it may just inspire you to do the same.»(Paul Walton, Professor of Chemistry, University of York, UK and international gender equality advocate)This book, written by an insider, explores experiences over a 46-year career in five academic organisations in Ireland and the UK: moving from contract research assistant to full professor and line manager (Dean). Highlighting success and failure, strength and fragility, it challenges ideas about what it is to be a 'proper' woman. It describes the subtle and relentless processes of devaluation, marginalisation and disempowerment that are often 'normalised.' Written in a clear accessible style, with flashes of humour, it asks whose interests are served by taken-for-granted ideas about what it is to be a woman - ideas which deny the reality of many women's day-to-day experiences. Who wants us to think that all women find identity and satisfaction in housework and child care? Who wants us to think that universities are meritocratic institutions? The book will inspire and entertain all those who have struggled in any male-dominated organisation and wondered if they were the problem.

This book outlines the principal features of the Payment by Results policy, first introduced in England in 1862. It draws attention to some of the positive aspects of the system but it also considers the more salient features of a system that preyed heavily on both pupils and teachers. Inspectors were used as agents of its implementation, resulting in a divergence of views between them and the teachers. Very few regretted its demise in 1900 when it was replaced by the Revised Programme, a much more child-centred curriculum. It was a system of schooling rather than of education, and it served very few admirably.

«In this remarkable study, Katrina Heil brilliantly highlights how Buero's plays serve as a medium for the Spanish audience to process traumatic memory and come to terms with the past. The book successfully offers a fresh perspective on Buero's theater, acknowledging his pivotal role as a precursor of historical memory activism during Franco's dictatorship, while also shedding light on his enduring influence on contemporary dramatists of the twenty-first century.»(Yenisei Montes de Oca, Associate Professor of Spanish, James Madison University)This book explores Antonio Buero Vallejo's use of the theater for historical memory activism and the role this function had in his formation as a tragedian. Buero's early tragedies counter the assumption that Spaniards have only recently taken up the issue of recuperating historical memory in order to process the collective trauma of the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship. Buero's theory of tragedy, which combines an Unamunian existentialist conception of the tragic with an Aristotelian understanding of tragic catharsis, demands personal and historical authenticity while simultaneously allowing for the healing of trauma. While Buero's influence is rarely acknowledged in this regard, the legacy of Buerian tragedy as an ideal form of memoria histórica activism is seen in contemporary Civil War tragedies, which are appearing with increased frequency on the Spanish stage alongside the growth of the historical memory movement in Spanish culture and politics.

This book presents a close reading of four texts by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, guided by Gilles Deleuze's concept of metamorphosis, «becoming-animal». In his critique of anthropocentrism and Western reason, Le Clézio dismantles the opposition between mind and matter, language and life, developing Henri Bergson's notion of the living, «le vivant». A philosophical and ecological role is accorded poetic, sensorial expression, which is the means of communication between the multiple forms of life. For instance, the protagonist may become a bird: in their flight they form intercultural relations calling to mind the texts of Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau. Importantly, Le Clézio never divorces the poetic from the socio-political. The text Bitna, sous le ciel de Séoul, for example, unfolds against the background of the war between North and South Korea. Through the figure of the war-traumatised homeless Algerian, Béchir, The Story of Dodo emerges as one of the most powerful critics of nationalism and capitalism ever written.

'With its meticulous documentation, this multifaceted volume brings a range of individual lives and networks to the fore, outlining their inestimable contributions to British culture. It is an inspiring and timely intervention into the fields of exile and childhood studies, demonstrating just how inextricably the two are linked.' (Professor Kiera Vaclavik, Director of the Centre for Childhood Cultures, Queen Mary, University of London) The essays that make up this book cover a diverse range of subjects, all broadly on the theme of child refugees from Nazism in Britain. The book's three sections - on displacement, children in art, and children in education and play - indicate the various topics considered in the study. The authors come from different academic fields - including German and Austrian exile studies, art history, language and literature, and education - so each chapter offers a depth of research as well as adding to the breadth of the overarching theme. Thus far, there has been no study dedicated to examining both the experience of these refugee children and those who worked with them, and yet they and their own children live on, marked in different ways by their experience and making their own mark in British art and literature too.

This book reflects on a journey as a shamanic healer and a psychotherapist, and how the integration of psychotherapy and traditional healing methods emerged. It explores an initial training in cognitive behavioural psychotherapy, to gestalt therapy, to body therapy, to energy healing and shamanism, to develop a unified theory. It explores the process by means of a dialogue between a psychotherapist, a shamanic healer, an academic and an integrative therapist. This is placed in a dialogue within the therapist herself. Later chapters give examples of the unified theory in practice, including both individual and in group settings. Opening and closing chapters contextualise the work in the context of developments on the internet in the areas of wellbeing and therapeutic practices drawing on different cultures.

'This timely and important book provides a critical look at borders and belonging. It illuminates the tensions and contradictions that often exist within the logic of legal and political mechanisms that define regional and national boundaries and the reality of the lives lived within these constructions. The resulting essays are instructive, thought-provoking and sometimes very moving explorations of the making and meaning of historical and contemporary borderlands.' (Roisín Higgins, Professor of History, National University of Ireland Maynooth) 'This volume is a masterful combination of analyses of feelings of belonging and identities following from changing state and cultural borders in the past and present and their challenges for living together. Its chapters analyse the intersections of people, territory, institutions and law from theoretical perspectives as well as through reflexive individual experience of social identity formation from below, often with a focus on their contestation in (re-)territorialized sub-state regions.' (Josef Marko, Professor of Comparative Public Law and Political Sciences, University of Graz) Both the Brexit process and the Covid pandemic have challenged the idealistic concept that borders in Europe and elsewhere were becoming ever more permeable. The idea that the world was becoming a global village has been seriously eroded. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has once again highlighted how power politics draws borders and shapes belongings. This has necessitated analyses of the nature of human-made borders and boundaries and the consequences for individuals and collectives who experience inclusion or exclusion on their feelings of belonging and their identities. Similarly, governmental policies within states have created majorities and minorities and have caused grave implications for those groups at the receiving end of legislation and state actions. This multidisciplinary volume comprises essays from researchers and academics, located in Europe and beyond, who investigate the effects of border creation, social and legal inclusivity and exclusion on individuals and collective identities in the past and today. Combining 'from above' and 'from below' perspectives, the volume explores macro-political processes affecting borders and senses of belonging as well as their intersections at the microlevel, including private views and individual responses to such types of processes.

This edited volume provides an opportunity to take a fresh look at the printed material often regarded as disposable by its contemporaries and, until recently, as unworthy of serious academic research. From the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, this volume not only demonstrates the wide variety of ephemeral publications which have survived to the present day, but also shows how they can be used to interpret history and printing history and culture in particular. Some of the forms of printed ephemera discussed will be familiar to scholars such as chapbooks and commercially-printed posters whilst others, such as papal indulgences and bellman's sheets are more unusual. The collection discusses the production, distribution and consumption of ephemera, including how it can be used demonstrate changes to print culture over time. This volume aims to demonstrate that printed ephemera, in its many and varied forms, is worthy of serious academic study.

This book addresses specialized translation, focusing on the forms of translation with the potential to make specialized languages more comprehensible and accessible, namely intralingual and intersemiotic translation. The book offers strategies to assist both readers and translators in approaching specialized languages not only from a professional or academic perspective but also from a practical one, encouraging and promoting a new approach to facilitating their understanding of specialized languages. In so doing, it demonstrates how the exploitation of graphic texts (whether static or animated) represents an invaluable instrument on both a pedagogical and social level. Graphic communication is shown to assist in the drafting of various types of specialized documents to make them more accessible to the general public, thus proposing that graphic art might represent a more unbiased approach to specialized languages and, as a result, contribute to a more egalitarian distribution of knowledge.

In the increasingly globalised consumer culture of the twenty-first century, consumer goods have long become more than mere commodities: they are markers of identity and tools of narration. Advertising, branding and other processes of consumer culture are ubiquitous and charge objects with meaning, impacting the way we perceive them and those who wear, use, showcase or discard them. This close link between consumer culture and the narration of identities - ranging from an individual to a national level - affects the construction of «national brands», as can be seen through contemporary writing.With a focus on post-2000 Austrian literature, this book unveils how a skilful reading of consumer objects - both branded and non-branded - can enrich literary analysis. Introducing the concept of consumer literacy and applying it to Wolf Haas' Das Wetter vor 15 Jahren, Thomas Glavinic's Die Arbeit der Nacht, Arno Geiger's Es geht uns gut and Raphaela Edelbauer's Das flüssige Land, the study showcases the narrative power of consumer goods and the impact of Austrian literature and its writers on the idyllic national brand that stands in stark contrast to a troubled past.

«Marjan Shokouhi's new book attests to the ways in which Irish ecocritical scholarship has developed into more than a simple 'subfield' of Irish Studies. Shokouhi takes readers on a fascinating journey through the work of three iconic Irish poets in the modern period - Yeats, Kavanagh and MacNeice - from the burgeoning perspective of Irish ecological criticism, exhibiting the complexities of the Irish Literary Revival in addressing questions of place and identity and opening new avenues of research in relation to new voices and marginal identities.»(Pilar Villar-Argáiz, University of Granada, Spain)«From wild ancient forests to the Lagan riverside, From Landscapes to Cityscapes offers a new take on the sense of place in modern Irish poetry. Using Heidegger's concept of dwelling, it examines the verse of Yeats, Kavanagh and MacNeice from an ecocritical perspective in a worthy contribution to the field.»(Audrey Robitaillié, Lecturer in Anglophone Literature and Irish Studies, Institut Catholique de Toulouse)The study of place and place attachments has been a staple subject of enquiry in the field of Irish Studies, which ever since the emergence of an Irish ecocritical scholarship in the early 2000s has acquired a new depth. Recent publications have integrated an environmental dimension that connects literary analyses to wider cultural and global concerns such as deforestation, urban sprawl, immigration, climate change and so on. Building on the existing scholarship, the present study offers readings from modern Irish verse in the light of Ireland's natural and cultural landscapes. Simply put, From Landscapes to Cityscapes should be viewed as a minor ecocritical exercise in Irish Studies, hoping to inspire new perspectives that arise out of an environmental scrutiny of the age-old questions of place and identity in Irish literature.The textual analysis focuses on the works of three major Irish poets of the modern period: William Butler Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh and Louis MacNeice. Contesting the often politicized and historicist boundaries set for defining Irishness and arguing for a recognition of new voices and marginal identities, this book considers a range of land/cityscapes in terms of their significance to the development of a more comprehensive view of both culture and environment in Ireland.

«Schuchalter's comprehensive study of the enigmatic author Charles Sealsfield is a welcome contribution to German-American studies. He convincingly explains the development of Sealsfield's political philosophy: After having fled Europe, the former Catholic priest discovered liberalism and saw its promises fulfilled in the New World before getting disgruntled with actual developments in the USA since the late 1830s.»(Wynfrid Kriegleder, Professor of Modern German Literature, University of Vienna)This work explores the literary phenomenon of Charles Sealsfield, known throughout much of his career as «the Great Unknown» and for a brief time as «Seatsfield, the Greatest American Author.» Sealsfield, a runaway Moravian monk, living in permanent disguise, reinvented himself as an American author and the self-proclaimed founder of a new novel form. Despite publishing works both in English and in German, he has been relegated to a marginalized, if not forgotten, place in the American canon and a constricted place in the German canon. This study examines his fiction and travel books, as well as his correspondence, and strives for a reassessment of his achievement in both canons.

«Pohlmann's study of Müller's media presence is one of the few English-language books on this important postwar dramatist in the past two decades. Embedded in a discussion of avant-garde aesthetics and 'branding' in capitalist market contexts, its nuanced focus examines Müller's strategies for navigating the East-West divide prior to and after Germany's unification in 1990.»(Marc Silberman, Professor Emeritus of German, University of Wisconsin-Madison)«The Creation of an Avant-Garde Brand is an impressive scholarly achievement that enlarges our understanding of postwar German culture in general and Heiner Müller in particular. Pohlmann convincingly demonstrates that Müller's status as a leading figure of the avant-garde needs to be understood in light of his dynamic engagement with mass culture. Highly recommended.»(Matthew W. Smith, Professor of German Studies and Theater & Performance Studies, Stanford University)Branding became a crucial technique over the course of the twentieth century. It changed the way we perceive politics and goods, but also works of art and authors. This development has called into question the traditional idea of authenticity as well as the intention to resist capitalist marketing practices.This book examines the extent to which an author like Heiner Müller adopted branding strategies to present himself in the public sphere, investigating the impact that this had on his public persona. By focusing on Müller, this study analyzes the self-presentation and promotion of an adversarial author who drew on the ideals of the avant-garde and the artistic critique of capitalism. Yet Müller also inserted himself into the mainstream public sphere and the media, arenas that are highly influenced by the laws of the market. Thus, the author asks whether Müller's use of marketing methods and media environments undermined his outsider credibility and the integrity of his work, or, alternatively, how he may have been able to develop strategies to engage with marketing principles and the media in ways that allowed him to remain subversive nonetheless, perhaps working within the system and against it at the same time.

Intra-individual variation is an emerging research field in linguistics with a rapidly growing number of studies. In historical sociolinguistics, this trend has been slow, as it is still largely dominated by the macroscopic approaches of earlier sociolinguistics. Microscopic studies focusing on intra-individual variation in writing, i.e. intra-writer variation, however, are able to reveal how writers functionalize social or text-type variation for reasons such as audience design or persona creation. They may also provide insights into how ongoing changes were perceived by speakers and writers. In general, micro-approaches are able to uncover a wide array of possible factors influencing variation, which may not always carry sociolinguistic functions.This volume comprises twenty-two research articles on a wide range of languages and periods, all closely connected by their focus on intra-writer variation in historical texts and by their use of empirical and corpus-based approaches. The studies demonstrate that the challenges that historical material have for research on intra-individual variation can certainly be met and that the insights gleaned from analysing variation in individual writers are considerable.

«Shifting back and forth across centuries, and covering a vast terrain of genres and forms, an expert ensemble of scholars in this rich collection looks incisively at the intricate dynamics of Russian cultural change. Such breadth of scope and multifaceted approach are most illuminating and should help the readers to navigate the complex universe of Russian cultural history.» (Inessa Medzhibovskaya, Professor of Literary and Liberal Studies, Eugene Lang College and The New School for Social Research)Russian culture has often been referred to as a culture of discontinuity and abrupt rifts, and the country's past was frequently revised and rewritten, so much so that it is hardly possible to speak of Russian culture as a homogeneous, unified whole. Every turn of Russian history was accompanied by a great cultural upheaval and facilitated fierce cultural debates. The destiny of Russia in the context of its geopolitical position and its cultural role on both domestic and international fronts have been fundamental to these debates. At the same time, such discussions always went deeper, and invariably acquired an existential dimension, probing into the human condition, into the «cursed questions of existence».This volume brings together diverse contributions from an international team of scholars, asking what has sustained Russian cultural development across the centuries and how Russian culture has evolved to this day. It treats the topic from a contemporary frame of reference, covering a broad range of Russian life, literature and arts, and sets the debates in historical perspective. In doing so, it links the particular with the general, exposing some unexpected connections and thus sheds some new light on Russian cultural trajectory.

«Politic Words is an invigorating mix of the personal, the political and the poetic. Gerry Dawe flings his net wide. From Eavan Boland¿s ¿secret history¿ of women to war memoirist Christabel Bielenberg¿s luminous prose; from the vaulting ambition of Éilís Dillon¿s historical fiction to hunger striker¿s Bobby Sands¿ favourite poet, the now unsung Ethna Carbery, he takes us on a bracing journey from the Troubles to Brexit. Drawing on contemporaneous criticism, Dawe revitalizes 35 years of cultural history into urgent news from the literary front.»(Mary Morrissy, Novelist and former associate director of the writing programme, University College Cork)Politic Words reflects five decades of writing about and discussing Irish literature, both inside the university classroom and in various literary and academic forums. Part one concentrates upon Irish women writers, their influence and example including Edna Longley, Eavan Boland and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin alongside the achievements of younger contemporaries such as Lucy Caldwell and Leontia Flynn. Part two develops some of the historical settings and themes of part one while exploring the social and political legacies of traumatic Irish historical events such as the Great Famine, and its representation in the fiction of William Carleton and reimagined by later interpreters including Benedict Kiely. The collection concludes with a series of readings of Irish culture and politics in terms of the legacy of the Troubles, the impact on Ireland of Brexit and renewed calls for Irish reunification. Politic Words is the final part of a trilogy of studies by Gerald Dawe published by Peter Lang in their Reimagining Ireland series.

Temporal and spiritual journeys were a shared characteristic of life for mendicant friars and the laity in medieval and early modern times. This book reflects the objective approach of trained historians in its skilled deployment of source documents. Throughout these pages, we meet with wandering friars and the lay faithful, some for the first time. The contributors are international scholars. Each enquires into a specific area of study from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. In particular, this reveals that travel in its various forms represented an intrinsic link between the four great mendicant orders: Augustinians, Carmelites, Dominicans and Franciscans. Until recently, mendicant historiography was written by and for members of each respective order.The contents are grouped thematically into three sections. The first considers the significance of travel in mendicant writings about the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe. The opening chapter examines the Old Testament traditions of the Carmelites, followed by two essays on fifteenth-century Italian Franciscans. These emphasise how travel was essential for Observant renewal to succeed. The second section of the book concentrates on early modern Spain. Travel was not limited to the outward journey. The humanist poetry of the Augustinian friar, Luis de León, attended to the inner journey of the soul during this life. The next chapter draws attention to interrelations between laity and clergy. This provides insights into the soul¿s journey into death according to the behaviour of the lay faithful. In the third section, we find the fact-finding journeys of Bartolomé de las Casas on land and sea, in defence of native peoples in the New World. The volume closes with a study of a Dominican friar who followed his own path rather than the accepted routine of travel for friars. By exploring a wide range of experiences over five centuries, this book shows that travel contributed to religious development in many parts of the world.

This volume is the first of its kind to focus entirely on food in the context of pilgrimage and faith-based tourism. It presents key studies that are relevant to academics, pilgrimage stakeholders, faith-based tourism stakeholders, planning and policy makers, tourist guides, students and interested readers alike. The knowledge and rich contents should find its way into practical applications and educational materials in the field.The value of this edited collection lies in the approach of the contributors, who have explored food as a complement to spiritual experience in the context of pilgrimage and faith-based tourism. They demonstrate how giving, receiving and sharing promotes respect and understanding. At the same time, food can be used as an active peace-building tool, promoting inclusion, bridging cultures and bringing harmony to the table and beyond.

Recent years have seen educationalists turning to Emmanuel Levinas when considering the relationship between ethics and education. While it is true that Levinas never speaks of ethics in relation to the practice of classroom education, nonetheless, for Levinas, ethics is a teaching, and learning can only take place in the presence of the Other. This book considers how, within the constraints of the Irish primary school education system, teachers can develop a Levinasian approach to teaching, that affords both them and the children they teach multiple opportunities throughout the school day to take up their ethical responsibility for each other as Other. Beginning from a Levinasian understanding of learning and teaching as constituting primordially relational and ethical events, and weaving the philosophies of Levinas, and the educationalists he inspires, into the approaches of philosophy with children, restorative practice, and PAX, this book suggests a unique approach to ethics in Irish primary school classrooms. The focus of this book, then, is on both the philosophical underpinnings that anchor teaching as a Levinasian, and a consideration of what practical approaches could be employed by the Levinasian teacher.

How can musical meaning be conveyed without words? Starting with the landscape in which instrumental music developed traits parallel to language, this book explores a performance framework that connects qualities derived from rhetorical and dramatic elements and the model of the singing voice in Classical and Romantic solo piano music. These traditions were shared by composers, performers and pedagogues but have gradually fallen into obscurity. Rhetoric provides a guide for logical organization and persuasion, dramatic plot and character influence form and musical content, while singing offers a natural model for expression and inflection. Historical and aesthetic information along with literary and musical aspects are presented here to inform current performance practice.Composers consciously employed rhetorical figures and expected performers to recognize and apply them in performance. Thinking of music in terms of plot and character cultivates habits of purposeful direction and clear definition of individual thematic material. Literary comparisons inspire the imagination and can be useful in addressing more complex aesthetic issues, such as organic quality in art, the concept of unity in diversity, memory, evolution and incompleteness. The desire to achieve vocal expressivity at the keyboard is a unifying factor that transcends the differences between varying types of pianos across time. These concepts have practical application to modern performance training, and a wider pianistic pedagogical context is explored in the final chapter, advocating for an integrated and meaningful approach to performance.

«Kilpeläinen's engaging journey through Baldwin's postcategorical utopian thought shows how this writer's under-appreciated later works foresee today's heated ideological and philosophical debates. From political unconscious to Afrofuturism, this book maps Baldwin's Black queer wisdom: Labels and essentialized identities easily 'become instruments of power,' dividing and alienating societies, cultures, and individuals.»(Magdalena J. Zaborowska, Professor of American Studies and Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan)«This study is an important and timely analysis of Baldwin's later novels. Kilpeläinen's writing is sophisticated and eloquent, and his critical framework is startlingly clear and illuminating. Seizing on Baldwin's 'incessant urgency,' he advances an authoritative, convincing argument that will add enduringly to our collective appreciation of America's prophetic witness.»(D. Quentin Miller, Professor of English, Suffolk University, Boston)This book examines the dialectic of ideology and utopia in three novels by James Baldwin. Taking Fredric Jameson's seminal theory of the political unconscious as its point of departure, Dr Pekka Kilpeläinen conceptualizes Baldwin's writing in terms of the impulse of postcategorical utopia, where the ideological categorizations based on race and sexuality, in particular, are challenged by the utopian impulse to imagine alternative futures. The readings of three of Baldwin's novels probe into the questions of ideological and utopian spatialities, transgressive interracial and same-sex relationships, and critiques of both Western modernity and its black counterculture. Baldwin's denouncement of the oppressive effects of identity categories penetrates his entire oeuvre, from his early, critically acclaimed work to his later, often ignored novels. Seen through the lens of postcategorical utopia, the urgency of Baldwin's vision gains a new sense of immediacy and relevance.

«In Reflections on the Veracruz son jarocho, guitarist-ethnomusicologist Randall Kohl brings something special to the surging feast of scholarship treating Mexico's renowned regional music, the son jarocho. Part history and part cultural analysis, and both qualitative and quantitative in approach, the book explores music as music, music as business, and music as a dynamic expression of Mexican social history. Professor Kohl of the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa interweaves original research with a half century of scholarship to chart key vectors in the evolution of a music, a culture, and a region.»(Daniel Sheehy, PhD, Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Museums and Culture; Interim Director, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings; Director & Curator Emeritus, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)«While most of the recent English-language scholarship on son jarocho has focused on its use as a platform for activism and identity formation in the US, Randall Kohl's Reflections on the Veracruz son jarocho takes a refreshing look at the genre's practice in its home state of Veracruz. This work offers an excellent introduction to the genre for the unfamiliar, including son jarocho's history, revival, style traits, subgenres, and recent fusions with other idioms. This is a wide-ranging and accessible book, and an important contribution to our growing understanding of this rich regional tradition.»(Gregory Reish, Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University)«Randall Kohl's deep understanding of son jarocho shines through in this book. Built on years of ethnographic immersion in the musical community of Xalapa and its environs, this book expertly traverses the textual, performative and cultural terrain of this important musical vernacular of Mexico. This first book in English on the son jarocho will be an invaluable resource for both scholars and general readers with an interest in the genre.»(Anandam Kavoori, Professor, Department of Entertainment and Media Studies, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA)Once associated principally with the Veracruz countryside, the son jarocho music and dance tradition is now establishing itself as a twenty-first-century urban practice caught in a struggle between firmly established customs and newly adaptive strategies. This book presents an overview of the music's history and musical characteristics along with specific looks at its texts, iconography, past and present academic trends and other details. It also examines the recently closed local centro de cultura, La Casa de Nadie, as a focal point for son jarocho activity in the city of Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico.

Stalin¿s Ghosts examines the impact of the Gothic-fantastic on Russian literature in the period 1920-1940. It shows how early Soviet-era authors, from well-known names including Fedor Gladkov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Andrei Platonov and Evgenii Zamiatin, to niche figures such as Sigizmund Krzhizhanovskii and Aleksandr Beliaev, exploited traditional archetypes of this genre: the haunted castle, the deformed body, vampires, villains, madness and unnatural death. Complementing recent studies of Soviet culture by Eric Naiman and Lilya Kaganovsky, this book argues that Gothic-fantastic tropes functioned variously as a response to the traumas produced by revolution and civil war, as a vehicle for propaganda, and as a subtle mode of unwriting the cultural monolith of Socialist Realism.

«A brilliant, touching and thought-provoking book. Moving Along merges academic research with personal narrative and beautifully rendered drawings to create a one-of-a-kind book that contributes fresh and compelling perspectives. This life-affirming graphic novel is essential reading for anyone interested in Parkinson's and the power of art and community to sustain and nurture the human spirit.»(David Leventhal, Program Director and Founding Teacher, Dance for PD®, Mark Morris Dance Group, Brooklyn, NY USA)«This is a wonderfully accessible book that has been co-created by people living with Parkinson's, researchers and artists. In the true-to-life stories, the anxieties and challenges of living with Parkinson's are explored in evocative cartoons. Yet , as well as talking about the challenges, the book has the joy of dancing at its heart. Dance has proved to be an exceptionally good catalyst for living well with Parkinson's and this graphic novel illustrates individual journeys through Parkinson's and into dance. For anyone curious about dancing who now lives with Parkinson's, or knows someone who does, this book is for you. For anyone interested in graphic medicine, dance for wellbeing, or arts in healthcare, this book is an important addition to the literature. »(Professor Sara Houston, author of Dancing with Parkinson's)Meet Hugo, Karen, Alma, Helene, Anne-Marie, Poul, Lone, and Eskild, who go to Parkinson's dance class together. They are characters in this graphic novel, which is based on many stories about Parkinson's. The stories come from participants in Parkinson's dance who have talked about how dance involves bodily, aesthetic experiences, including the feeling of bubbles in their bodies and flying together. Dancing brings joy, energy, and community, and thereby strengthens the will to live, all important when a chronic illness turns your world upside down.This book, a co-produced research-based graphic novel, is designed for use in the fields of arts and health, medical humanities, graphic medicine, and narrative medicine. It is also written for people with Parkinson's, or other chronic diseases, and their families. The book invites dialogue about the existential dimensions of chronic illness, especially Parkinson's, and long-term caregiving.

«Deeply versed in recent theoretical discussions of the lyric form in general and the elegy in particular, Adele Bardazzi also brings to bear queer thinking on temporarily and philosophical treatments of mourning to shift the understanding of Montale's verse, contesting the division between an early lyrical phase and a later ironic phase. A rich combination of sensitive readings and critical reflection.»(Jonathan Culler, Cornell University, Author of Theory of the Lyric)«In a series of carefully wrought readings of poems in which Montale writes of his lost loves, death, mourning, and his own quite particular vision of the afterlife, Adele Bardazzi both challenges traditional interpretations of Montalian poetic beloveds and offers her own convincing overview of the eschatological dimension of one of the twentieth century's most essential bodies of verse. A surprisingly fresh take on a much-studied poet, this fine book gives new life to the realm of death in which Montale's poetry of mourning is so tenaciously rooted.»(Rebecca West, William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of Italian, University of Chicago) «Adele Bardazzi's book offers an original perspective on Montale's work. The poetics of mourning allows on the one hand to read the text in the light of the theory of the lyric and, on the other hand, to highlight the importance of some figures in Montale's poetry, through an evocative comparison with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and that of Persephone.» (Niccolò Scaffai, Associate Professor of Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature, University of Siena) This book is as much about the living as it is about the dead. It investigates how the dead dwell in the world of the living and how that continuing relationship has inspired particular forms of poetic writing. It analyses how poetry assumes the key responsibility of voicing grief and thus creates a unique space in which the dead's presence is sustained, in a constant state of potential transformation and renewal.This monograph explores this topic with reference to one of the most important poets of the twentieth century, Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), and his principal collections, from Ossi di seppia (Cuttlefish Bones) (1925) to Quaderno di Quattro anni (Notebook of Four Years) (1977). These primary texts are enhanced by a critical framework that brings three different areas of enquiry into dialogue: scholarship on mourning, theories of the lyric, and feminist approaches. Questions explored include the following: How does mourning become a crucial creative and ethical force in literature? What kind of poetry draws on, and may even require, the presence of an absent female lyric addressee? How does this affect the nature of poetic discourses on mourning and lyric poetry more broadly? This book offers the first comprehensive study of Montale's poetics of mourning accessible to both scholars in Italian Studies and scholars interested, more broadly, in modern poetry, discourses of mourning, and lyric theory.

This book explores the life and ministry of healthcare chaplaincy within the Irish context. At the heart of the text is the «person» of the chaplain ¿ it is their narrative that remains front and centre here at all times. This in turn, provides us with a unique opportunity to explore key questions around their call to ministry, their understanding of chaplaincy as well as how they posit their faith within such a context (if at all). It also leads us as readers into a conversation with them around how the chaplains try to make sense of human suffering, how they can face into the reality of the human condition each and every day and how they manage to help others to face into, hold and make sense of their own pain, suffering and loss. Here we also converse in a meaningful way with the theological tradition around suffering in order to see what it has to offer the pastoral practitioners dealing at the coal face as well the cultural context within which ministry unfolds. This book is raw, real and cutting edge with much to ponder on for those with more than a passing interest in chaplaincy, suffering or human narrative.