Like many national cinemas, the French cinema has a rich tradition of film musicals beginning with the advent of sound to the present. This is the first book to chart the development of the French film musical. The French film musical is remarkable for its breadth and variety since the 1930s; although it flirts with the Hollywood musical in the 1930s and again in the 1950s, it has very distinctive forms rooted in the traditions of French chanson. Defining it broadly as films attracting audiences principally because of musical performances, often by well-known singers, Phil Powrie and Marie Cadalanu show how the genre absorbs two very different traditions with the advent of sound: European operetta and French chanson inflected by American jazz (1930-1950). As the genre matures, operetta develops into big-budget spectaculars with popular tenors, and revue films also showcase major singers in this period (1940-1960). Both sub-genres collapse with the advent of rock n roll, leading to a period of experimentation during the New Wave (1960-1990). The contemporary period since 1995 renews the genre, returning nostalgically both to the genre's origins in the 1930s, and to the musicals of Jacques Demy, but also hybridising with other genres, such as the biopic and the documentary.

Samizdat, the production and circulation of texts outside official channels, was an integral part of life in the final decades of the Soviet Union. But as Josephine von Zitzewitz explains, while much is known about the texts themselves, little is available on the complex communities and cultures that existed around them due to their necessarily secretive, and sometimes dissident, nature. By analysing the behaviours of different actors involved in Samizdat - readers, typists, librarians and the editors of periodicals in 1970s Leningrad, The Culture of Samizdat fills this lacuna in Soviet history scholarship. Crucially, as well as providing new insight into Samizdat texts, the book makes use of oral and written testimonies to examine the role of Samizdat activists and employs an interdisciplinary theoretical approach drawing on both the sociology of reading and book history. In doing so, von Zitzewitz uncovers the importance of 'middlemen' for Samizdat culture. Diligently researched and engagingly written, this book will be of great value to scholars of Soviet cultural history and Russian literary studies alike.

Migration is a problem of highest importance today, and likewise is its history. Italian migrants who had to leave the peninsula in the long sixteenth century because of their heterodox Protestant faith is a topic that has its deep roots in Italian Renaissance scholarship since Delio Cantimori: It became a part of a twentieth century form of Italian leyenda negra in liberal historiography. But its international dimension and Central Europe (not only Germany) as destination of that movement has often been neglected. Three different levels of connectivity are addressed: the materiality of communication (travel, printing, the diffusion of books and manuscripts); individual migrants and their biographies and networks; and the cultural transfers, discourses, and ideas migrating in one or in both directions.

The historical development of Russia remains one of the most unique yet ambiguous timelines in the realm of political science and sociology. Understanding the state of culture as a single, dynamic, and interrelated phenomenon is a vital component regarding the memoirs of this prominent nation. Political, Economic, and Social Factors Affecting the Development of Russian Statehood: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a collection of innovative research on the historical aspects of the formation of the political system in Russia and proposes directions for the further development of modern Russian statehood. While highlighting topics including socio-politics, Soviet culture, and capitalization, this book is ideally designed for economists, government officials, policymakers, historians, diplomats, intelligence specialists, political analysts, professors, students, and professionals seeking current research on the history of public administration in Russia.

In an era haunted by its past, modern Europe sought to break with the old; the future and the new became the ideal. In Italy however, where the remains of the past dominated the landscape, ruins were a token both of decadence and of the inspiring legacy of tradition. Sabrina Ferri proposes a counter-narrative to the European story of progress by focusing on the often-marginalized and distinctive case of Italy. For Italians, ruins uncovered the creative potential of the past, transforming it into an inexhaustible source of philosophical speculation and poetic invention whilst simultaneously symbolizing decay, loss and melancholy. Focusing on the representation of ruins by Italian writers, scientists, and artists between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Sabrina Ferri explores the culture of the period and traces Italy's complex relationship with its past. Combining the analysis of major works, from Vico's New science to Leopardi's Canti, with that of archival sources and little-studied materials such as scientific travel journals, letters, and political essays, the author reveals how: the ruin became a figure for Italy's uneasy transition into modernity; the interplay between reflections on the processes of history and speculations on the laws of nature shaped the country's sense of the past and its vision of the future; the convergence of narratives depicting historical and natural change influenced both the creative arts and the emerging sciences of geology, biology, and archaeology; the temporal crisis at the dawn of the nineteenth century called into question traditional models for investigating the past and understanding the present.

Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642 something happened which completely revolutionized Western civilization. Painting, sculpture and architecture would all visibly change in a striking fashion. Likewise, the thought and self-conception of humanity would take on a completely different aspect. Sciences would be born - or emerge in an entirely new guise. In this sweeping 400-year history, Paul Strathern reveals how, and why, these new ideas which formed the Renaissance began, and flourished, in the city of Florence. Just as central and northern Germany gave birth to the Reformation, Britain was a driver of the Industrial Revolution and Silicon Valley shaped the digital age, so too, Strathern argues, did Florence play a similarly unique and transformative role in the Renaissance. While vividly bringing to life the city and a vast cast of characters - including Dante, Botticelli, Machiavelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Galileo - Strathern shows how these great Florentines forever altered Europe and the Western world.