Sandra Gilgan's Utopia in the Revival of Confucian Education examines the classics-reading movement in contemporary China as not only driven by attraction to certain elements of tradition, but even more by caesuras in the past that caused people to detach from their cultural roots. The author argues that activism in the classics-reading movement arises from an entanglement of past, present, and future. Social and political upheaval in the near past of the twentieth century caused people to disconnect from their traditional culture and ways of living, resulting in the present need to reconnect with perceived "original" culture and tradition from the more distant past. Through peoples' imaginaries of a better future that are informed by past traditions, new ways of the past find entrance into life and education in study halls and academies. This new study draws on multi-sited ethnographic field research in ten Chinese cities, with the broadest database currently available. It combines theoretical elements from anthropology, history, sociology and sinology in a grounded theory approach. As an interdisciplinary study, the book is of interest for academics in Asian and Chinese studies, heritage and memory studies, religious studies, educational sciences, history, and cultural anthropology, as well as social and political sciences.

The Dynamics of Intertextuality in Plutarch explores the numerous aspects and functions of intertextual links both within the Plutarchan corpus itself (intratextuality) and in relation with other authors, works, genres or discourses of Ancient Greek literature (interdiscursivity, intergenericity) as well as non-textual sources (intermateriality). Thirty-six chapters by leading specialists set Plutarch within the framework of modern theories on intertextuality and its various practical applications in Plutarch's Moralia and Parallel Lives. Specific intertextual devices such as quotations, references, allusions, pastiches and other types of intertextual play are highlighted and examined in view of their significance for Plutarch's literary strategies, argumentative goals, educational program, and self-presentation.

Situated within contemporary posthumanism, this volume offers theoretical and practical approaches to materiality in Greek tragedy. Established and emerging scholars explore how works of the three major Greek tragedians problematize objects and affect, providing fresh readings of some of the masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The so-called new materialisms have complemented the study of objects as signifiers or symbols with an interest in their agency and vitality, their sensuous force and psychosomatic impact-and conversely their resistance and irreducible aloofness. At the same time, emotion has been recast as material "affect," an intense flow of energies between bodies, animate and inanimate. Powerfully contributing to the current critical debate on materiality, the essays collected here destabilize established interpretations, suggesting alternative approaches and pointing toward a newly robust sense of the physicality of Greek tragedy.