Fifty years after Camus's untimely death, his work still has a tremendous impact on literature. From a twenty-first century vantage point, his work offer us coexisting ideas and principles by which we can read and understand the other and ourselves. Yet Camus seems to guide us without directing us strictly; his fictions do not offer clear-cut solutions or doctrines to follow. This complexity is what demands that the oeuvre be read, and reread. The wide-ranging articles in this volume shed light, concentrate on the original aspects of Camus' writings and explore how and why they are still relevant for us today.

Some authors strongly criticized attempts to rebuild a German literary culture in the aftermath of World War II, while others actively committed themselves to "dealing with the German past." There are writers in Austria and Switzerland that find other contradictions of contemporary life troubling, while some find them funny or even worth celebrating. German postwar literature has, in the minds of some observers, developed a kind of split personality. In view of the traumatic monstrosities of the previous century that development may seem logical to some. The Historical Dictionary of Postwar German Literature is devoted to modern literature produced in the German language, whether from Germany, Austria, Switzerland or writers using German in other countries. This volume covers an extensive period of time, beginning in 1945 at what was called "zero hour" for German literature and proceeds into the 21st century, concluding in 2008. This is done through a list of acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on writers, such as Nobel Prize-winners Heinrich Boll, Gunter Grass, Elias Canetti, Elfriede Jelinek, and W. G. Sebald. There are also entries on individual works, genres, movements, literary styles, and forms."

Migrant Revolutions: Haitian Literature, Globalization, and U.S. Imperialism interprets Haitian literature in a transnational context of anti-colonial and anti-globalization politics. Positing a materialist and historicized account of Haitian literary modernity, it traces the themes of slavery, labor migration, diaspora, and revolution in works by Jacques Roumain, Marie Chauvet, Edwidge Danticat, and others. Author Valerie Kaussen argues that the sociocultural effects of U.S. imperialism have renewed and expanded the relevance of the universal political ideals that informed Haiti's eighteenth-century slave revolt and war of decolonization. Finally, Migrant Revolutions defines Haitian literary modernity as located at the forefront of the struggles against transnational empire and global colonialism."

Biculturalism and Spanish in Contact: Sociolinguistic Case Studies provides an original and modern analysis of the development of Spanish and its contact with other languages using a sociolinguistic framework from both synchronic and diachronic angles. Split into three sections , (i) Border speech communities , (ii) Outcomes and perceptions in situations of language and dialect contact and (iii) Contact and alternation: social boundaries of language switching, this collection offers new perspectives in the field of language contact and change. Each chapter presents an original study detailing the social factors that have shaped contact varieties of Spanish, providing principal arguments and theories about language use, contact, and change, as well as guided topics for discussion. With its wide scope, this book is a landmark in language interaction processes and studies, and will be a valuable reference for educators, scholars, language professionals and students with an interest in the vitality of the Spanish language in contact with other languages.

An affecting and hope-filled posthumous collection of essays and stories from the talented young Yale graduate whose title essay captured the world's attention in 2012 and turned her into an icon for her generation.
Marina Keegan's star was on the rise when she graduated "magna cum laude" from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at "The New Yorker." Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash.
As her family, friends, and classmates, deep in grief, joined to create a memorial service for Marina, her deeply moving last essay for "The Yale Daily News," "The Opposite of Loneliness," went viral, receiving more than 1.4 million hits.
Even though she was just twenty-two when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. Her short story "Cold Pastoral" was published by NewYorker.com just months after her death.
"The Opposite of Loneliness "is an assemblage of Marina's essays and stories, which, like "The Last Lecture," articulate the universal struggle that all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be, and how we can harness our talents to impact the world.

"On the whole, the volume reads like a cohesive book ... and maintains a high standard of scholarship throughout. Investigators of Russian literary demonism in the future will surely want to consult this excellent work." . The Russian Review

..". this collection displays a degree of mutual collaboration, as well as a consistently high quality, that surpasses that of most collections of essays ... it has much to praise and little to fault." . Slavic Review

"It will become a valuable reference for undergraduates and postgraduates in the Slavic and Comparative Literature fields." . Australian and East European Studies

"The scholarly excellence of individual contributions and the high standard that marks the constituent articles without exception ... this volume is well thought out in conception and every effort appears to have been made by the editor to give it methodological cohesion. No doubt will it become a valuable reference for undergraduates and postgraduates in Slavic and Comparative Literature fields." . Australian Slavonic and East European Studies

Merezhkovsky's bold claim that "all Russian literature is, to a certain degree, a struggle with the temptation of demonism" is undoubtedly justified. And yet, despite its evident centrality to Russian culture, the unique and fascinating phenomenon of Russian literary demonism has so far received little critical attention. This substantial collection fills the gap. A comprehensive analytical introduction by the editor is follwed by a series of fourteen essays, written by eminent scholars in their fields. The first part explores the main shaping contexts of literary demonism: the Russian Orthodox and folk tradition, the demonization of historical figures, and views of art as intrinsically demonic. The second part traces the development of a literary tradition of demonism in the works of authors ranging from Pushkin and Lermontov, Gogol and Dostoevsky, through to the poets and prose writers of modernism (including Blok, Akhmatova, Bely, Sologub, Rozanov, Zamiatin), and through to the end of the 20th century.

Pamela Davidson is Professor of Russian Literature at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College, London.

The present volume offers a dozen studies of manuscripts of the Tibetan Bon and Naxi Dongba traditions across time and space. While some of the contributions focus on particular features of manuscripts from either tradition, others explicitly bridge the two by considering common codicological and material aspects of selected examples or common themes in the content of the texts. This is the first primarily object-based study to deal with the cultural history and technology of books from the two traditions. It discusses collections of Bon and Naxi manuscripts, the concepts and history of both traditions, the science and technology of book studies as it relates to these collections, the relationship between text and image, writing materials, and the historical and archaeological context of the manuscripts' places of origin. The authors are specialists in different fields including philology, anthropology, art history, codicology and archaeometry. The contributions shed light on trade routes, materials and technologies as well as on reading practices and ritual usage of Bon and Naxi manuscripts.

This book explores the nature of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), a set of abilities required to promote sojourner engagement with diversity during study abroad and other educational exchange experiences. A highly original contribution to the intercultural communication literature, this book bases its multinational perspective of ICC on an extensive literary search in six languages and spanning 50 years to identify ICC's multiple components, to develop a comprehensive assessment tool, and to assess its development and impact on exchange participants in multiple countries.

The Intellectual and the People in Egyptian Literature and Culture uses the notion of am?ra - the Egyptian concept of collective and connective agency - to explore the relationship between the Egyptian intellectual and 'the people' in contemporary Egyptian literature and culture.

What do narratives by British suffragettes of being forcibly fed have in common with the representation of indigenous women in Canadian police archives? How are literary representations of domestic violence related to the use of silence as a strategy of resistance in African American women's writing? How are modernist fictions of gay male desire connected with ambiguous sexual performances in rock music or with images of Vietnam veterans in American horror movies? What does a narrative of women's participation in Bengali national resistance movements share with an ethnographic study of prostitution in Papua New Guinea?

These are the some of the specific questions raised by the essays in this volume, which examines a wide variety of historical and cultural locations where differently sexed, gendered, and racialized bodies have been constructed. More generally, this volume addresses theoretical debates over whether embodiment is best understood through representations or performances. Are bodies written or enacted? The different answers to these questions have important consequences for how we understand the inscription of bodies with systems of power and the possibilities that exist for resisting those systems.

go to the Genders website ]

This book contributes significantly to book, image and media studies from an interdisciplinary, comparative point of view. Its broad perspective spans medieval manuscripts to e-readers. Inventive methodology offers numerous insights into visual, manuscript and print culture: material objects relate to meaning and reading processes; images and texts are examined in varied associations; the symbolic, representational and cultural agency of books and prints is brought forward. An introduction substantiates methods and approaches, ten chapters follow along media lines: from manuscripts to prints, printed books, and e-readers. Eleven contributors from six countries challenge the idea of a unified field, revealing the role of books and prints in transformation and circulation between varying cultural trends, 'high' and 'low'. Mostly Europe-based, the collection offers book and print professionals, academics and graduates, models for future research, imaginatively combining material culture with archival data, cultural and reading theories with historical patterns.

Bert Williams-a Black man forced to perform in blackface who challenged the stereotypes of minstrelsy. Eva Tanguay-an entertainer with the signature song "I Don't Care" who flouted the rules of propriety to redefine womanhood for the modern age. Julian Eltinge-a female impersonator who entranced and unnerved audiences by embodying the feminine ideal Tanguay rejected. At the turn of the twentieth century, they became three of the most provocative and popular performers in vaudeville, the form in which American mass entertainment first took shape. A Revolution in Three Acts explores how these vaudeville stars defied the standards of their time to change how their audiences thought about what it meant to be American, to be Black, to be a woman or a man. The writer David Hajdu and the artist John Carey collaborate in this work of graphic nonfiction, crafting powerful portrayals of Williams, Tanguay, and Eltinge to show how they transformed American culture. Hand-drawn images give vivid visual form to the lives and work of the book's subjects and their world. This book is at once a deft telling of three intricately entwined stories, a lush evocation of a performance milieu with unabashed entertainment value, and an eye-opening account of a key moment in American cultural history with striking parallels to present-day questions of race, gender, and sexual identity.

This book examines the paradox of China and the United States' literary and visual relationships, morphing between a happy duet and a contentious duel in fiction, film, poetry, comics, and opera from both sides of the Pacific. In the 21st century where tension between the two superpowers escalates, a gaping lacuna lies in the cultural sphere of Sino-Anglo comparative cultures. By focusing on a "Sinophone-Anglophone" relationship rather than a "China-US" one, Sheng-mei Ma eschews realpolitik, focusing on the two languages and the cross-cultural spheres where, contrary to Kipling's twain, East and West forever meet, like a repetition compulsion bordering on neurosis over the self and its cultural other. Indeed, the coupling of the two-duet-cum-duel-is so predictable that each seems attracted to and repulsed by its dark half, semblable, (in)compatible for their shared larger-than-life-ness.

This collection pulls together a wide range of perspectives to explore the possibilities and the boundaries of the paradigm of English studies in India. It examines national identity and the legacy of colonialism through a study of comparative and multi ethnic literature, education, English language studies and the role ICT now plays in all of these fields. Contributors look at how the issue of identity can be addressed and understood through food studies, linking food, culture and identity. The volume also considers the timely and very relevant question of gender in Indian society, of the role of the woman, the family and the community in patriarchal contemporary Indian society. Through the lens of literature, culture, gender, politics, this exciting volume pulls together the threads which constitute modern Indian identity.

Introducing Linguistics brings together the work of scholars working at the cutting-edge of the field of linguistics, creating an accessible and wide-ranging introductory level textbook for newcomers to this area of study. The textbook: * Provides broad coverage of the field, comprising five key areas: language structures, mind and society, applications, methods, and issues; * Presents the latest research in an accessible way; * Incorporates examples from a wide variety of languages - from isiZulu to Washo - throughout; * Treats sign language in numerous chapters as yet another language, rather than a 'special case' confined to its own chapter; * Includes recommended readings and resource materials, and is supplemented by a companion website. This textbook goes beyond description and theory, giving weight to application and methodology. It is authored by a team of leading scholars from the world-renowned Lancaster University department, who have drawn on both their research and extensive classroom experience. Aimed at undergraduate students of linguistics, Introducing Linguistics is the ideal textbook to introduce students to the field of linguistics.

This is the first edition ever of the Queen's correspondence in Italian. These letters cast a new light on her talents as a linguist and provide interesting details as to her political agenda, and on the cultural milieu of her court. This book provides a fresh analysis of the surviving evidence concerning Elizabeth's learning and use of Italian, and of the activity of the members of her 'Foreign Office.' All of the documents transcribed here are accompanied by a short introduction focusing on their content and context, a brief description of their transmission history, and an English translation.

This book investigates the agency and influence of medieval queens in late fourteenth-century England, focusing on the patronage and intercessory activities of the queens Philippa of Hainault and Anne of Bohemia, as well as the princess Joan of Kent. It examines the ways in which royal women were able to participate in traditional queenly customs such as intercession, and whether it was motherhood that gave power to a queen. This study focuses particularly on types of patronage, and also considers the importance of coronation, especially for Joan of Kent, who was neither a queen consort nor a dowager, yet still fulfilled some queenly duties. Crucially, the author highlights the transactional nature of the queen's role at court, as she accumulated wealth from land, rights and traditions, which in turn funded patronage activities.

The first book-length study on the subject in any language, Tolstoy and the Religious Culture of His Time treats Tolstoy's experience as a massive philosophical and religious project rather than a crisis-laden tragedy. Inessa Medzhibovskaya explains the evolution of Tolstoy's religious outlook based on his ongoing dialogue with the tradition of conversion in Europe and Russia, as well as on the demands of his own heart, mind, and spirit. The author contextualizes Tolstoy's conversion, comparing his pattern of religious conversion with that of other notable religious converts-Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Luther, Pascal, Rousseau-as well with that of Tolstoy's countrymen-Pushkin, Gogol, Chaadaev, Stankevich, Belinsky, Herzen, and Dostoevsky. Stressing the importance of the religious culture of his time for Tolstoy, this study investigates the nineteenth century debates that inspired and repelled Tolstoy as he weighed arguments for or against faith in his dialogues with the culture of his time, covering widely differing fields and disciplines of experimental knowledge. The author considers German Romantic philosophy, the natural sciences, pragmatist religious solutions, theories of social progress and evolution, and the historical school of Christianity. Medzhibovskaya stresses the fact that influential intellectual currents were as important to Tolstoy as believers and nonbelievers were from and beyond his immediate environment. The author argues that, in this sense, Tolstoy's conversion emerges as deeply intertextual, and this surprising discovery should not diminish our trust in Tolstoy's sincerity during his religious evolution, which occurred both spontaneously as well as deliberately. The polyphony of discreet spiritual moments that Tolstoy created by fusing in his narratives of conversion religious and artistic realms is arguably his greatest contribution to spiritual autobiography.

This multidisciplinary collection of essays provides a critical and comprehensive understanding of how knowledge has been made, moved and used, by whom and for what purpose. To explain how new knowledge emerges, this volume offers a two-fold conceptual move: challenging both the premise of insurmountable differences between confined, autarkic cultures and the linear, nation-centered approach to the spread of immutable stocks of knowledge. Rather, the conceptual focus of the book is on the circulation, amalgamation and reconfiguration of locally shaped bodies of knowledge on a broader, global scale. The authors emphasize that the histories of interaction have been made less transparent through the study of cultural representations thus distorting the view of how knowledge is actually produced. Leading scholars from a range of fields, including history, philosophy, social anthropology and comparative culture research, have contributed chapters which cover the period from the early modern age to the present day and investigate settings in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Their particular focus is on areas that have largely been neglected until now. In this work, readers from many disciplines will find new approaches to writing the global history of knowledge-making, especially historians, scholars of the history and philosophy of science, and those in culture studies.

Contesting the idea that the study of Anglophone literature and literary studies is simply a foreign import in Asia, this collection addresses the genealogies of textual critique and institutionalized forms of teaching of English language and literature in Asia through the 19th and 20th centuries, along with an examination of how its present options and possible future directions relate to these historical contexts. It argues that the establishment of Anglophone literature in Asia did not simply "happen": there were extra-literary and -academic forces at work, inserting and domesticating in Asian universities both the English language and Anglo-American literature, and their attendant cultural and political values. Offering new perspectives for ongoing conversations surrounding the globalization of Anglophone literature in literary and cultural studies, the book also considers the practicalities of teaching both the language and its canon of classic texts, and that the historical formation and shape of English studies in Asia offers lessons that relate not only to the discipline but also may be applied to the humanities as a whole.

This book situates Joyce's critical writings within the context of an emerging discourse on the psychology of rhythm, suggesting that A Portrait of the Artist dramatizes the experience of rhythm as the subject matter of the modernist novel. Including comparative analyses of the lyrical prose of Virginia Woolf and the 'cadences' of the Imagists, Martin outlines a new concept of the 'modern period' that describes the interaction between poetry and prose in the literature of the early twentieth century.