As the first book to introduce and analyze cultural studies in contemporary China, this volume is an important resource for Western scholars wishing to understand the rise and development of cultural studies in China. Organized according to subject, it includes extensive material examining the relationships between culture and politics, as well as culture and institutions in contemporary China. Further, it discusses the development of cultural debates.

A beautiful, thoughtful guide to finding your perfect next read, no matter what life’s throwing at you, from the founder of Aphra a.k.a. ‘your inclusive AF feminist book club’.

Through turbulent times, stories keep us afloat. Books, particularly, console and guide us, feed our souls, and open our eyes to worlds, possibilities and experiences we may never have considered before. Many of us have been self-medicating with books for years without identifying the practice as ‘bibliotherapy’.

This carefully curated collection will help you to identify the right reads for the right time. Whether you are in the throes of first love or the depths of heartbreak, embarking on a new beginning or questioning which path to take, use this guide to lose yourself in literature and find yourself anew, and discover the books that will always matter to you.

Includes celebrated classics, as well as overlooked modern masterpieces, with a focus on underrepresented voices. Recommended reads, include:
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Letter to my Daughter by Maya Angelou
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
Be Not Afraid of Love by Mimi Zhu

Against a backdrop of contemporary social and sexual concerns, and potent fears surrounding the moral and physical 'degeneration' of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century society, "'The Cruel Madness of Love'" explores a critical period in the developing relationship between syphilis and insanity. General paralysis of the insane (GPI), the most commonly diagnosed of the neurosyphilitic disorders, has been devastating both in terms of its severity and incidence. Using the rich laboratory and asylum records of lowland Scotland as a case study, Gayle Davis examines the evolution of GPI as a disease category from a variety of perspectives: social, medical, and pathological. Through exploring case notes and the impact of new diagnostic techniques and therapies, such as the Wassermann Test and Malarial Therapy, the reader gains a unique insight into both patients and practitioners. Significant insights are gained into the socio-sexual background and medical experience of patients, as well as the clinical ideas and judgmental behaviour of the practitioners confronting this disease. "'The Cruel Madness of Love'" will be of interest to anyone wishing to explore the historical relationship between sexuality, morality and disease. Gayle Davis is a Wellcome Trust University Award Holder at the University of Edinburgh. She has published on various aspects of the social history of medicine and sexuality in twentieth-century Britain, and is undertaking a Wellcome-funded research project on the history of infertility in Scotland. She is reviews editor for History of Psychiatry.

The Catholic literary revival in America refers both to the impact of the modern resurgence in European Catholic thought and letters upon the American Church between 1920 and 1960, and to efforts by American Catholic educational and literary leaders to induce a similar flowering of Catholic life and culture in their own country. Arnold Sparr examines those areas of Catholic thought and culture that most concerned educated American Catholics, critics, and cultural leaders between 1920 and 1960: the renaissance in Catholic literary, theological, philosophical, and social thought; its application to modern economic, social, and intellectual problems; and the growth and development of the twentieth century Catholic novel. He contends that the movement had both intellectual and organizational aspects. It represented not only an awakening of American Catholics to their modern intellectual and cultural heritage, but a movement by a self-conscious American Catholic cultural community to realize its own share of modern Catholic thinkers, writers, and poets. Sparr maintains that American Catholic intellectual and cultural life between 1920 and 1960 was driven by three forces: to promote the intellectual standing of American Catholicism, to defend the Catholic faith and its adherents from detractors, and to redeem what was seen as a drifting and fragmented secular culture. He divides the book into three sections, each corresponding to separate phases of the American Catholic literary revival. "Organization and Development, 1920-1935" treats the socio-cultural antecedents of the revival and the self-conscious attempts of the revival's early Jesuit leaders to build a Catholic intellectual presencein America. Part two, "Transformation, 1935-1955," addresses the shift in Catholic revivalist thought from the confrontational literary-philosophical postures of the 1920s and early 1930s to more positive understandings of Catholic faith and practice. Finally, "Dissolution, the 1950s and After" chronicles the eclipse of the revival, resulting from a reactivation of the Catholic intellectualism issues, increasing concerns about professionalism within Catholic academia, and liberal Catholic association of the revival with so-called "ghetto culture." Parts one and two conclude with chapters on the American Catholic novel; the search for the Great American Catholic novel, an important element of the revival, provides an organization framework through which to summarize and assess major trends in the larger cultural movement. This new work will interest scholars and students of American Catholicism, the Catholic church in the 20th century, and cultural and religious historians.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

How Africa’s most notorious tyrant made his oppressive regime seem both necessary and patriotic

Idi Amin ruled Uganda between 1971 and 1979, inflicting tremendous violence on the people of the country. How did Amin’s regime survive for eight calamitous years? Drawing on recently uncovered archival material, Derek Peterson reconstructs the political logic of the era, focusing on the ordinary people―civil servants, curators and artists, businesspeople, patriots―who invested their energy and resources in making the government work.

Peterson reveals how Amin (1928–2003) led ordinary people to see themselves as front-line soldiers in a global war against imperialism and colonial oppression. They worked tirelessly to ensure that government institutions kept functioning, even as resources dried up and political violence became pervasive. In this case study of how principled, talented, and patriotic people sacrificed themselves in service to a dictator, Peterson provides lessons for our own time.

As deep and profound as the sea itself" Philip Hoare

1741. The crew of Vitus Bering's ill-starred Great Northern Expedition are shipwrecked off a remote, uncharted island. With no hope of rescue, they give in to despair. Until they discover the flesh of a huge marine mammal that feeds in herds on the kelp in the bay.

1859. The Russian colony of Alaska is on the brink of collapse. Governor Hampus Furuhjelm takes solace in the quest for a unique artefact: a complete skeleton of what is now known as Steller's Sea Cow, rumoured to have disappeared a hundred years before.

Even extinct, the sea cow will continue to shape lives and destinies, from the woman charged with sketching its likeness from its bones, to the expert egg restorer who will refurbish those same bones a century later.

A tribute to an iconic lost creature, and an adventure through three centuries of scientific exploration, Beasts of the Sea charts the unseen consequences of grand human ambitions and the urge to resurrect what we, in our ignorance, have destroyed.

This book investigates the ways in which Charles Dickens's mature fiction, prison novels of the twentieth century, and prison films narrate the prison. To begin with, this study illustrates how fictional narratives occasionally depart from the realities of prison life, and interprets these narrations of the prison against the foil of historical analyses of the experience of imprisonment in Britain and America. Second, this book addresses the significance of prison metaphors in novels and films, and uses them as starting points for new interpretations of the narratives of its corpus. Finally, this study investigates the ideological underpinnings of prison narratives by addressing the question of whether they generate cultural understandings of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the prison. While Dickens's mature fiction primarily represents the prison experience in terms of the unjust suffering of many sympathetic inmates, prison narratives of the twentieth century tend to focus on one newcomer who is sent to prison because he committed a trivial crime and then suffers under a brutal system. And while the fate of this unique character is represented as being terrible and unjust, the attitude towards the mass of ordinary prisoners is complicit with the common view that 'real' criminals have to be imprisoned. Such prison narratives invite us to sympathize with the quasi-innocent prisoner-hero but do not allow us to empathize with the 'deviant' rest of the prison population and thus implicitly sanction the existence of prisons. These delimitations are linked to wider cultural demarcations: the newcomer is typically a member of the white, male, and heterosexual middle class, and has to go through a process of symbolic 'feminization' in prison that threatens his masculinity (violent and sadistic guards, 'homosexual' rapes and time in the 'hole' normally play an important role). The ill-treatment of this prisoner-hero is then usually countered by means of his escape so that the manliness of our hero and, by extension, the phallic power of the white middle class are restored. Such narratives do not address the actual situation in British and American prisons. Rather, they primarily present us with stories about the unjust victimization of 'innocent' members of the white and heterosexual middle class, and they additionally code coloured and homosexual inmates as 'real' criminals who belong where they are. Furthermore, Dickens's mature fiction focuses on 'negative' metaphors of imprisonment that describe the prison as a tomb, a cage, or in terms of hell. By means of these metaphors, which highlight the inmates' agony, Dickens condemns the prison system as such. Twentieth-century narratives, on the other hand, only critique discipline-based institutions but argue in favour of rehabilitative penal styles. More specifically, they describe the former by using 'negative' metaphors and the latter through positive ones that invite us to see the prison as a womb, a matrix of spiritual rebirth, a catalyst of intense friendship or as an 'academy'. Prison narratives of the twentieth century suggest that society primarily needs such reformative prisons for coloured and homosexual inmates.

The author accounts for South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy from a rhetorical perspective. Based on an exhaustive analysis of hundreds of public statements made by South Africa's leaders from 1985 to the present, Moriarty shows how key constructions of the political scene paved the way for negotiations, elections, and national reconciliation. These rhetorical changes moved South Africa out of the realm of violent conflict and into one of rhetorical conflict, a democratic space in which the country could resolve its problems at the negotiating table and in the ballot box.

This bundle consists of the following books: Modern Mandarin Chinese: The Routledge Course Textbook Level 2, 2nd edition (9781138101135) Modern Mandarin Chinese: The Routledge Course Workbook Level 2, 2nd edition (9781138101166) Modern Mandarin Chinese is a two-year undergraduate course for students with no prior background in Chinese study. Designed to build a strong foundation in both the spoken and written language, it develops all the basic skills such as pronunciation, character writing, word use, and structures, while placing a strong emphasis on the development of communicative skills. The complete course consists of the following books: Modern Mandarin Chinese: The Routledge Course Textbook Level 1 Modern Mandarin Chinese: The Routledge Course Workbook Level 1 Modern Mandarin Chinese: The Routledge Course Textbook Level 2 Modern Mandarin Chinese: The Routledge Course Workbook Level 2 Each level of the course consists of a textbook and workbook in simplified Chinese. A free companion website provides all the audio for the course with a broad range of interactive exercises and additional resources for students' self-study, along with a comprehensive instructor's guide with teaching tips, assessment and homework material, and a full answer key. Retaining its focus on communicative skills and the long-term retention of characters, the text is now presented in simplified characters and pinyin from the outset with a gradual and phased removal of pinyin as specific characters are introduced and learnt. This unique approach allows students to benefit from the support of pinyin in the initial stages as they begin speaking while ensuring they are guided and supported towards reading only in characters.

This book showcases recent work about reading and books in sociology and the humanities across the globe. From different standpoints and within the broad perspectives within the cultural sociology of reading, the eighteen chapters examine a range of reading practices, genres, types of texts, and reading spaces. They cover the Anglophone area of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia; the transnational, multilingual space constituted by the readership of the Colombian novel One Hundred Years of Solitude; nineteenth-century Chile; twentieth-century Czech Republic; twentieth century Swahili readings in East Africa; contemporary Iran; and China during the cultural revolution and the post-Mao period. The chapters contribute to current debates about the valuation of literature and the role of cultural intermediaries; the iconic properties of textual objects and of the practice of reading itself; how reading supports personal, social and political reflection; bookstores as spaces for sociability and the interplay of high and commercial cultures; the political uses of reading for nation-building and propaganda, and the dangers and gratifications of reading under repression. In line with the cultural sociology of reading's focus on meaning, materiality and emotion, this book explores the existential, ethical and political consequences of reading in specific locations and historical moments.

This book is a collection of my various writings over the past sixty years (1950 - 2010). The book features a number of essays ranging in topics from various pleas for action/outrage concerning inaction, to the philosophical, to the humorous. The second section of the book is a collection of my poems. Section three consists of two short stories. Section four is a collection of "Eight Word Wisdoms." These are bits of wisdom expressed in eight word sayings, which I have found to be thought-provoking or profound in their implications. The book is designed to be of interest especially to the scientific-minded skeptic/atheist, or freethinker, as well as those seeking to lead a more active or purposeful, and thereby more meaningful life.

Originally published over 100 years ago, Roughing It was Mark Twain's second major work after the success of his 1869 travel book, Innocents Abroad. This time Twain travels through the wild west of America. With relentless good humor, Twain tells of his misfortunes during the quest to strike it rich by prospecting in the silver mines. Wonderfully entertaining, Twain successfully finds humor in spite of his mishaps while also giving the reader insight into that time and place of American history. Marvelously illustrated with numerous pictures.