There should no longer be any doubt: drones are here to stay. In civil society, they are used for rescue, surveillance, transport and leisure. And on the battlefield, their promises of remote protection and surgical precision have radically changed the way wars are fought. But what impact are drones having on our identity, and how are they affecting the communities around us? This book addresses these questions by investigating the representation of civilian and military drones in visual arts, literature, and architecture. What emerges, the contributors argue, is a compelling new aesthetic: 'drone imaginary', a prism of cultural and critical knowledge, through which the complex interplay between drone technology and human communities is explored, and from which its historical, cultural and political dimensions can be assessed. The contributors offer diverse approaches to this interdisciplinary field of aesthetic drone imaginaries. With essays on the aesthetic configurations of drone swarming, historical perspectives on early unmanned aviation, as well as current debates on how drone technology alters the human body and creates new political imaginaries, this book provides new insights to the rapidly evolving field of drone studies. Working across art history, literature, photography, feminism, postcolonialism and cultural studies, Drone imaginaries offers a unique insight into how drones are changing our societies. -- .

This book presents an extensive literary survey of the influence of ancient Chinese cultural classics around the globe, highlighting a mammoth research project involving over forty countries or regions and more than twenty languages. As the book reveals, ancient Chinese culture was introduced to East Asian countries or regions very early on; furthermore, after the late Ming Dynasty, Chinese "knowhow" and ideas increasingly made inroads into the West. In particular, the translation of and research on Chinese classics around the world have enabled Chinese culture to take root and blossom on an unprecedented scale. In addition to offering a valuable resource for readers interested in culture, the social sciences, and philosophy, the book blazes new trails for the study of ancient Chinese culture.

In The Phenomenology of Religious Belief, the renowned philosopher Michael J. Shapiro investigates how art - and in particular literature and film - can impact upon both traditional interpretations and critical studies of religious beliefs and experiences. In doing so, he examines the work of prolific and award-winning writers such as Toni Morrison, Philip K. Dick and Robert Coover. By placing their work in conjunction with critical analyses of media by the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Pier Paolo Pasolini and combining it with the work of groundbreaking thinkers such as George Canguilhem, Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek, Shapiro takes a truly interdisciplinary approach to the question of how life should be lived. His assessment of phenomenological subjectivity also leads him to question the nature of political theology and extend the criticism of Pauline theology.

This book is the first Western-language monograph on the study of the Qingshui River manuscripts. By examining over 3,000 contracts and other manuscripts, this book offers constructive insights into the long-standing question of how and why a society in late imperial China could maintain a well-functioning social system with few laws but many contracts, i.e., Hobbesian "words without sword." Three interrelated questions, what contracts were, how and why they worked, are explained successively. Thus, this book presents a non-stereotypical "contract society" in southwest China, arguing that the social order which provides predictability and regularity for economic prosperity could be formed and maintained through contracts even under the condition of relatively weak influence of governmental and legal authorities. This book benefits readers who are interested in law, society, and history. While presenting the socio-legal landscape of a frontier area in late imperial China for historians, this book provides a novel and empirical interpretation of the supposedly well-known contract device for legal researchers, thereby proposing materials for an integrated theoretical explanatory framework of contracts in general. By employing the innovative theory of blockchain in its key argumentation, the book offers a creative interpretation of historical and social phenomena.

The imagination is a distinctive cognitive feature of the human brain which enables us to navigate both the real world and fictional story worlds. Drawing from literary and cognitive science approaches, this book investigates contemporary British author Ian McEwan's differentiated portrayal of the imagination as a cognitive process, a result derived from that process or a vital social strategy that individuals use to daydream, mind-read, (self)deceive or manipulate. The book shows that McEwan's novels reveal the complex positive and negative potential of the imagination and engage, tease and push to its tentative limits our mind-reading capacity on a range of narrative levels.

Propositions are routinely invoked by philosophers, linguists, logicians, and other theorists engaged in the study of meaning, communication, and the mind. To investigate the nature of propositions is to investigate the very nature of our connection to each other, and to the world around us. As one of the only volumes of its kind, The Routledge Handbook of Propositions provides a comprehensive overview of the philosophy of propositions, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Comprising 33 original chapters by an international team of scholars, the volume addresses both traditional and emerging questions concerning the nature of propositions, and our capacity to engage with them in thought and in communication. The chapters are clearly organized into the following three sections: I. Foundational Issues in the Theory of Propositions II. Historical Theories of Propositions III. Contemporary Theories of Propositions Essential reading for philosophers of language and mind, and for those working in neighboring areas, The Routledge Handbook of Propositions is suitable for upper-level undergraduate study, as well as graduate and professional research.

This collection explores the links between multimodality and multilingualism, charting the interplay between languages, channels, and forms of communication in multilingual written texts from historical manuscripts through to the new media of today and the non-verbal associations they evoke. The volume argues that features of written texts such as graphics, layout, boundary marking, and typography are inseparable from verbal content. Taken together, the chapters adopt a systematic historical perspective to investigate this interplay over time and highlight the ways in which the two disciplines might further inform one another in the future as new technologies emerge. The first half of the volume considers texts where semiotic resources are the sites of modes, where multiple linguistic codes interact on the page and generate extralinguistic associations through visual features and spatial organization. The second half of the book looks at texts where this interface occurs not in the text but rather in the cultural practices involved in social materiality and text transmission. Enhancing our understandings of multimodal resources in both historical and contemporary communication, this book will be of interest to scholars in multimodality, multilingualism, historical communication, discourse analysis, and cultural studies.

This monograph explores and investigates narratives of physical, psychological, and emotional dislocation that take place within the Arab world, approaching them as manifestations of the Arabic word ghurba, or estrangement, as a feeling and state of being. Distancing itself from the centrality of the "West" in postcolonial and Arabic literary studies, the book explores experiences of migration, displacement and cosmopolitanism that do not directly ensue from the encounter with Europe or the European other. Covering texts from the Levant, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula and beyond from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, the book grounds narratives of dislocation in the political, social and cultural structures that affect the everyday lived experiences of individuals and communities. An analysis of Arabic, Turkish and English texts - encompassing fiction, memoirs and translations - highlights less visible narratives of ghurba, specifically amongst ethnic minorities and religious communities. Ultimately, the chapters contribute to a picture of the Arab world as a place of ghurba where mobile and immobile subjects, foreigners and local inhabitants alike, encounter alienation. Bringing together a diverse range of academic perspectives, the book will be of interest to students and scholars in postcolonial and comparative literary studies, history, and Arabic and Middle East studies.

* A clear and comprehensive overview of Italian linguistics, covers all the core subtopics including an extra section on the history of the language. * Written in English making it accessible to students studying Italian or Romance linguistics but not proficient in the language. * No previous knowledge of linguistics required, technical terms are explained with the support of numerous illustrative examples and a glossary of terms.

This textbook is a comprehensive resource for teaching multicultural children's literature. Providing foundational information on how and why to integrate diverse children's literature into the classroom, this book presents a necessary historical perspective on cultural groups in the United States and context for how to teach children's literature in a way that reflects and sustains students' rich cultural backgrounds. The historical insights and context on diverse cultural groups at the heart of the book allow readers to deepen their understanding of why teaching about cultural diversity is necessary for effective and inclusive education. Part I offers foundational information on how to teach children's literature in a diverse society, and Part II overviews pedagogy, resources, and guidance for teaching specific culturally and linguistically marginalized groups. Each chapter contains book recommendations, discussion questions, and additional resources for teachers. With authentic strategies and crucial background knowledge embedded in each chapter, this text is essential reading for pre-service and in-service teachers and is ideal for courses in literature instruction, multicultural education, and English methods.

This book imagines the ocean as central to understanding the world and its connections in history, literature and the social sciences. Introducing the central conceptual category of ocean as method, it analyzes the histories of movement and traversing across connected spaces of water and land sedimented in literary texts, folklore, local histories, autobiographies, music and performance. It explores the constant flow of people, material and ideologies across the waters and how they make their presence felt in a cosmopolitan thinking of the connections of the world. Going beyond violent histories of slavery and indenture that generate global connections, it tracks the movements of sailors, boatmen, religious teachers, merchants, and adventurers. The essays in this volume summon up this miscegenated history in which land and water are ever linked. A significant rethinking of world history, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, especially connected history and maritime history, literature, and Global South studies.

An examination of Le Guin's career, from her obscure beginnings in the science fiction magazines to her rapid rise to the top in the 1970's.

For the first time in English the world community of scholars is systematically assembling and presenting the results of recent research in the vast literature of Soren Kierkegaard. Based on the definitive English edition of Kierkegaard's works by Princeton University Press, this series of commentaries addresses all the published texts of the influential Danish philosopher and theologian.

This monograph explores transatlantic literary culture by tracing the proliferation of 'new media,' such as the anthology, the literary history and the magazine, in the period between 1750 and 1850. The fast-paced media landscape out of which these publishing genres developed produced the need of a 'memory of literature' and a concomitant rhetoric of remembering strikingly similar to what today is called a cultural memory debate. Thus, rather than depicting the emergence of an American national literature, The Rise of New Media(1750-1850) combines impulses from media history, the history of print, the sociology of literature and canon theory to uncover nascent forms and genres of literary self-reflectivity and early stirrings of a canon debate in the Atlantic World.

Avoid jargon and expressions e.g. unique, ground-breaking, stellar, accessible, cutting edge Include information which isn't obvious from the book description above Mention if a book is especially topical or is likely to appeal in particular geographical areas Remember that artwork and contributors could be important selling points

Bringing together trust research, rhetoric, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, this book formulates an analytical program for conceptualizing and defining trustworthiness as an empirical research object in social interaction. Revisiting Trustworthiness in Social Interaction examines trustworthiness as a relational and dynamic concept. It reviews sociological and rhetorical approaches to the study of trustworthiness and respecifies it as an interactional phenomenon displayed, tested and negotiated by participants in social interaction. It identifies four participant orientations of trustworthiness that may be foregrounded in peoples' dynamic identity projects, and it defines the phenomena 'character-bound displays' and 'sequential negotiation of character', both indicative of participants' orientation to trustworthiness. In this way, the book turns the theoretical concept of trustworthiness into an empirical object of interaction analysis, pointing to a vast number of interactional indicators, which allow interaction analysts to explore if and how interactants orient to trustworthiness in an encounter. Exemplary cases from both mundane and institutional encounters are analyzed using ethnomethodological multimodal conversation analysis showing how trustworthiness is done, challenges, achived, negotiated and lost in interaction. The intended audiences are scholars of conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, rhetoric and the social sciences, especially communication, organizational and leadership studies, and their students.

This collection charts the evolution of grammatical variation in Englishes from Late Middle English to the present, using corpus linguistic tools to address divergence and convergence in local and global perspectives. The book considers both diachronic and synchronic perspectives in grammatical variation across varieties of English across the UK, North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The volume reflects on the questions of whether patterns of variation diverge or converge and to what extent catalysts for change are shared in time and space. Chapters look at different factors in grammatical variation at both the macro and micro level, investigating specific linguistic and grammatical features but also at wider phenomena in contact linguistics, social patterns, social networks, and media-based corpora. Chapters progress from the local to the global, all with an eye towards using the latest methodological approaches from corpus linguistics to shed light on the affordances of data-informed methods to study grammatical change and the possibilities for future research. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and World Englishes.

A highly relevant topic, given current discussions around fake news, fake facts, and misinformation in the media and public sphere This book offers a valuable contribution to how public discourse is impacted by personal bias, beliefs, and convictions Addresses the role and impact of conviction in the public sphere, education, and in political and cultural discourse It discusses where our convictions come from and whether we are aware of them, why they compel us to certain actions, and whether we can change our convictions when presented with opposing evidence that prove our personal convictions "wrong" It brings together scholars from multiple fields, such as philosophy, psychology, comparative literature, media studies, applied linguistics, intercultural communication, and education It will be of particular interest to scholars in communication and journalism studies, media studies, philosophy, and psychology It will contribute substantially to the study of conviction as an aspect of the self we all carry within us and are called upon to examine

Through a close-reading of a corpus of novels featuring young protagonists in their path toward adulthood, the book shows how Bildungsroman impacted the formation of the Egyptian narrative. On a larger scale, the book helps the reader to understand the key role played by the coming of age novel in the definition and perception of modern Arab subjectivity. Exploring the role of Bildungsroman in shaping the canonical Egyptian novel, the book discusses the case of Zaynab by Muhammad Husayn Haykal (1913) as an example of early Arab Bildungsnarrative. It focuses on Latifa Zayyat's masterpiece The Open Door and the novels of the 90es Generation, offering a gender-based analysis of the Egyptian Bildungsroman. It provides insightful readings about the function of the novel in women's re-negotiation of social boundaries. The study shows how the stories of youth present universal themes such as the thwarted quest for love, the struggle for personal fulfilment, the desire to achieve a cultural modernity often felt as "other than self". The book is a journey in the Twentieth Century Egyptian Novel, seen through the lens of the transnational form of Bildungsroman. It is a key resource to students and academics interested in Arabic literature, comparative literature and cultural studies.

This handbook provides a wide-ranging, authoritative, and cutting-edge overview of language and persuasion. Featuring a range of international contributors, the handbook outlines the basic materials of linguistic persuasion - sound, words, syntax, and discourse - and the rhetorical basics that they enable, such as appeals, argument schemes, arrangement strategies, and accommodation devices. After a comprehensive introduction that brings together the elements of linguistics and the vectors of rhetoric, the handbook is divided into six parts. Part I covers the basic rhetorical appeals to character, the emotions, argument schemes, and types of issues that constitute persuasion. Part II covers the enduring effects of persuasive language, from humor to polarization, while a special group of chapters in Part III examines figures of speech and their rhetorical uses. In Part IV, contributors focus on different fields and genres of argument as entry points for research into conventions of arguing. Part V examines the evolutionary and developmental roots of persuasive language, and Part VI highlights new computational methods of language analysis. This handbook is essential reading for those researching and studying persuasive language in the fields of linguistics, rhetoric, argumentation, communication, discourse studies, political science, psychology, digital studies, mass media, and journalism.

This timely collection explores the role of digital technology in language education and assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic. It recognises the unique pressures which the COVID-19 pandemic placed on assessment in language education, and examines the forced shift in assessment strategies to go online, the existing shortfalls, as well as unique affordances of technology-assisted L2 assessment. By showcasing international examples of successful digital and computer-assisted proficiency and skills testing, the volume addresses theoretical and practical concerns relating to test validity, reliability, ethics, and student experience in a range of testing contexts. Particular attention is given to identifying lessons and implications for future research and practice, and the challenges of implementing unplanned computer-assisted language assessment during a crisis. Insightfully unpacking the 'lessons learned' from COVID and its impact on the acceleration of the shift towards online course and assessment delivery, it offers important guidelines for navigating assessment in different instructional settings in times of crisis. It will appeal to scholars, researchers, educators, and faculty with interests in educational measurement, digital education and technology, and language assessment and testing.

The Handbook of Modern and Contemporary Japanese Women Writers offers a comprehensive overview of women writers in Japan, from the late 19th century to the early 21st. Featuring 24 newly written contributions from scholars in the field--representing expertise from North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia--the Handbook introduces and analyzes works by modern and contemporary women writers that coalesce loosely around common themes, tropes, and genres. Putting writers from different generations in conversation with one another reveals the diverse ways they have responded to similar subjects. Whereas women writers may have shared concerns--the pressure to conform to gendered expectation, the tension between family responsibility and individual interests, the quest for self-affirmation--each writer invents her own approach. As readers will see, we have writers who turn to memoir and autobiography, while others prefer to imagine fabulous fictional worlds. Some engage with the literary classics--whether Japanese, Chinese, or European--and invest their works with rich intertextual allusions. Other writers grapple with colonialism, militarism, nationalism, and industrialization. This Handbook builds a foundation which invites readers to launch their own investigations into women's writing in Japan.

Bringing together the latest research from world-leading academics, this edited volume is an authoritative resource on the psycholinguistic study of language production, exploring longstanding concepts as well as contemporary and emerging theories. Hartsuiker and Strijkers affirm that although language production may seem like a mundane everyday activity, it is in fact a remarkable human accomplishment. This comprehensive text presents an up-to-date overview of the key topics in the field, providing important theoretical and empirical challenges to the traditional and accepted modal view of language production. Each chapter explores in detail a different aspect of language production, covering traditional methods including written and signed production alongside emerging research on joint action production. Emphasising the neurobiological underpinnings of language, chapter authors showcase research that moves from a monologue-only approach to one that that considers production in more ecologically valid circumstances. Written in an accessible and compelling style, Language Production is essential reading for students and researchers of language production and psycholinguistics, as well as anyone that wishes to learn more about the fascinating topic of how humans produce language.

Bringing together the latest research from world-leading academics, this edited volume is an authoritative resource on the psycholinguistic study of language production, exploring longstanding concepts as well as contemporary and emerging theories. Hartsuiker and Strijkers affirm that although language production may seem like a mundane everyday activity, it is in fact a remarkable human accomplishment. This comprehensive text presents an up-to-date overview of the key topics in the field, providing important theoretical and empirical challenges to the traditional and accepted modal view of language production. Each chapter explores in detail a different aspect of language production, covering traditional methods including written and signed production alongside emerging research on joint action production. Emphasising the neurobiological underpinnings of language, chapter authors showcase research that moves from a monologue-only approach to one that that considers production in more ecologically valid circumstances. Written in an accessible and compelling style, Language Production is essential reading for students and researchers of language production and psycholinguistics, as well as anyone that wishes to learn more about the fascinating topic of how humans produce language.

The Father of Jewish Mysticism offers an incisive look at the early life and writings of Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), the father of modern Jewish mysticism and a major 20th-century Jewish intellectual. Daniel Weidner offers the first full-length study, published in English, of Scholem's thought. Scholem, a historian ofthe Kabbalah and sharp critic of Jewish assimilation, played a major role in the study and popularization of Jewish mysticism. Through his work on the Kabbalah, Scholem turned the closed world of mystical texts into a force for Jewish identity. Skillfully drawing on Scholem's early diaries and writings, The Father of Jewish Mysticism introduces a young, soon-to-be legendary intellectual in search of himself and Judaism.