This book-aimed at both the general reader and the specialist-offers a transatlantic, transnational, and multidisciplinary cartography of the rapidly expanding intellectual field of Galician Studies. In the twenty-one essays that comprise the volume, leading scholars based in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand engage with this field from the perspectives of queer theory, Atlantic and diasporic thought, political ecology, hydropoetics, theories of space, trauma and memory studies, exile, national/postnational approaches, linguistic ideologies, ethnographic poetry and photography, Galician language in the US academic curriculum, the politics of children's books, film and visual studies, the interrelation of painting and literature, and material culture. Structured around five organizational categories (Frames, Routes, Readings, Teachings, and Visualities), and adopting a pluricentric view of Galicia as an analytical subject of study, the book brings cutting-edge debates in Galician Studies to a broad international readership.

Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Emperors and Pharaohs were so determined to possess them that they dispatched emissaries to the edges of the earth to bring them back.

In Papyrus, celebrated classicist Irene Vallejo traces the dramatic history of the book and the fight for its survival. This is the story of the book's journey from oral tradition to scrolls to codices, and how that transition laid the very foundation of Western culture. And it is a story full of heroic adventures, bloodshed and megalomania - from the battlefields of Alexander the Great and the palaces of Cleopatra to the libraries of war-torn Sarajevo and Oxford.

An international bestseller, Papyrus brings the ancient world to life and celebrates the enduring power of the written word.

This co-edited volume is the first book to incorporate a transdisciplinary approach that examines transnational Mexican cultural productions through a variety of analytical perspectives. The authors propose a multilayered reading of contemporary transnational cultural manifestations in which it is possible to recognize challenges and cultural strategies that transnational Mexican communities conceive in order to claim cultural, political, and social agency. The essays, interviews, and poetry included in this volume elaborate on the creation of new forms of citizenship that reshape the long history of exclusion that has marked the experience of these particular groups not only in the United States but also in what is geopolitically defined as Mexico.

The Thiri Rama - or the Great Rama - was written for court performance and is the only known illustrated version of the Ramayana story in Myanmar. Based on palm-leaf manuscripts and scenes carved on over 300 sandstone plaques at a mid-nineteenth-century Buddhist pagoda west of Mandalay in Myanmar, this book presents an original translation of the Thiri Rama rendered in prose. The volume also includes essays on the history and tradition of the Ramayana in Myanmar as well as the cultural context in which the play was performed. It contains many helpful resources, incorporating a glossary and a list of characters and their corresponding personae in Valmiki's Ramayana. With over 250 fascinating visuals and core text contributions by distinguished Burmese scholars, U Thaw Kaung, Tin Maung Kyi, and U Aung Thwin, this book will greatly interest scholars and researchers of South and Southeast Asian culture, literary forms, epics, art and art history, theatre and performance studies, religion, especially those concerned with Hinduism, as well as folklorists.

Across two decades of intense creativity, David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) crafted a remarkable body of work that ranged from unclassifiable essays, to a book about transfinite mathematics, to vertiginous fictions. Whether through essay volumes ("A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Consider the Lobster"), short story collections ("Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion"), or his novels ("Infinite Jest, The Broom of the System"), the luminous qualities of Wallace's work recalibrated our measures of modern literary achievement. "Conversations with David Foster Wallace" gathers twenty-two interviews and profiles that trace the arc of Wallace's career, shedding light on his omnivorous talent.Jonathan Franzen has argued that, for Wallace, an interview provided a formal enclosure in which the writer "could safely draw on his enormous native store of kindness and wisdom and expertise." Wallace's interviews create a wormhole in which an author's private theorizing about art spill into the public record. Wallace's best interviews are vital extra-literary documents, in which we catch him thinking aloud about his signature concerns--irony's magnetic hold on contemporary language, the pale last days of postmodernism, the delicate exchange that exists between reader and writer. At the same time, his acute focus moves across MFA programs, his negotiations with religious belief, the role of footnotes in his writing, and his multifaceted conception of his work's architecture. "Conversations with David Foster Wallace" includes a previously unpublished interview from 2005, and a version of Larry McCaffery's influential "Review of Contemporary Fiction" interview with Wallace that has been expanded with new material drawn from the original raw transcript.

This collection represents some of the best recent critical writing on Edmund Spenser, a major Renaissance English poet. The essays cover the whole of Spensers work, from early literary experiments such as The Shepeardes Calendar, to his unfinished crowning work,The Fairie Queene. The introduction provides an overview of critical responses to Spenser, setting his work and the debates which it has generated in their perspective contexts: new historicist, post-structural, psychoanalytic and feminist. His study also covers the critical responses of leading British, Irish and American scholars.

This work is full of things better left unsaid: hackneyed phrases, idioms battered into senselessness, infuriating Gallicisms, once-familiar quotations and tags from the ancient classics. It makes a formidable list, amplified as it is with definitions, sources, and indications of the cliches, venerability in every case.

Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and Reception of the Television Series, edited by David P. Pierson, explores the contexts, politics, and style of AMC's original series Breaking Bad. The book's first section locates and addresses the series from several contemporary social contexts, including neo-liberalism, its discourses and policies, the cultural obsession with the economy of time and its manipulation, and the epistemological principles and assumptions of Walter White's criminal alias Heisenberg. Section two investigates how the series characterizes and intersects with current cultural politics, such as male angst and the re-emergence of hegemonic masculinity, the complex portrayal of Latinos, and the depiction of physical and mental impairment and disability. The final section takes a close look at the series' distinctive visual, aural, and narrative stylistics. Under examination are Breaking Bad's unique visual style whereby image dominates sound, the distinct role and use of beginning teaser segments to disorient and enlighten audiences, the representation of geographic space and place, the position of narrative songs to complicate viewer identification, and the integral part that emotions play as a form of dramatic action in the series.

Over the last thirty years, feminist, postcolonial and queer theorists have interrogated the ways in which sexuality is conceptualized and constructed, specifically with the intention of deconstructing essentialist notions of sexuality and identity formation. Yet, while recent theoretical interventions have re-situated sexuality as a historical and social category--allowing us to see how ideas about sexuality are linked to forms of power and other hegemonic categories of identity and subjectivity like class, race, gender and nationality--sexuality remains a contentious subject. In critically examining the plural representations of sexuality in contemporary literature, this book has a distinctly global emphasis, containing essays that interrogate sexuality in the work of not only a number of mainstream American and British writers but also less well-known writers from New Zealand and Canada. All of the chapters owe primary intellectual and theoretical debts to three broad and overlapping domains of critical scholarship and practice: feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial studies. As the first critical collection of essays to consider the representation of sexuality across such a wide variety of contemporary writing, Sexuality and Contemporary Literature analytically foregrounds insights into the historical and current arrangements of sexuality that contemporary literature provides, while also inviting the reader to imagine other possibilities for the future that literary texts open up. Sexuality and Contemporary Literature is an important book for literary and cultural studies collections.

Thinking About Stories is a fun and thought-provoking introduction to philosophical questions about narrative fiction in its many forms, from highbrow literature to pulp fiction to the latest shows on Netflix. Written by philosophers Samuel Lebens and Tatjana von Solodkoff, it engages with fundamental questions about fiction, like: What is it? What does it give us? Does a story need a narrator? And why do sad stories make us cry if we know they aren’t real? The format of the book emulates a lively, verbal exchange: each chapter has only one author while the other appears spontaneously in dialogues in the text along the way, raising questions and voicing criticisms, and inviting responses from their co-author. This unique format allows readers to feel like they are a part of the conversation about the philosophical foundations of some of the fictions in their own lives. Key Features Draws on a wide range of types of narrative fiction, from Harry Potter to Breakfast of Champions to Parks and Recreation. Explores how fiction, despite its detachment from truth, is often best able to teach us important things about the world in which we live. Concludes by asking in the final chapter whether we all might be fictions. Includes bibliographies and suggested reading lists in each chapter

Digital Humanities is rapidly evolving as a significant approach to/method of teaching, learning and research across the humanities. This is a first-stop book for people interested in getting to grips with digital humanities whether as a student or a professor. The book offers a practical guide to the area as well as offering reflection on the main objectives and processes, including: Accessible introductions of the basics of Digital Humanities through to more complex ideas A wide range of topics from feminist Digital Humanities, digital journal publishing, gaming, text encoding, project management and pedagogy Contextualised case studies Resources for starting Digital Humanities such as links, training materials and exercises Doing Digital Humanities looks at the practicalities of how digital research and creation can enhance both learning and research and offers an approachable way into this complex, yet essential topic.

A student-friendly introduction to undertaking a TESOL/Applied Linguistics MA which features practical advice, exercises and answer keys making it ideal for postgraduate students studying in this area. The book is very practical in nature and online support material features recordings of lectures so students can practise their listening skills in real-world scenarios which is essential given the continuing focus on online teaching. Written by a teacher with over 30 years’ experience of teaching EFL students and featuring material that has been trialled with students, this book will meet and support the needs of international students on MAs in TESOL and Applied Linguistics.

"Moving Beyond Boundaries" makes a major contribution to our understanding of under-represented literatures by expanding our knowledge about the issues, experiences, and concerns of black women writing in different communities and in a wide range of geographic contexts. It is unique in the fact that it focuses, not only on African-American women's literature, but on black women's writing from around the world.
Covering writers from Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe, and such well-known authors as Zora Neale Hurston, Nadine Gordimer, and bell hooks, Moving Beyond Boundaries contains both creative and critical writings.
Volume two considers the area of critical writing as critical conversation, allowing writer and critic to speak with each other in the creation of the critical voice.

Crockett Johnson (born David Johnson Leisk, 1906-1975) and Ruth Krauss (1901-1993) were a husband-and-wife team that created such popular children's books as "The Carrot Seed and How to Make an Earthquake." Separately, Johnson created the enduring children's classic "Harold and the Purple Crayon" and the groundbreaking comic strip "Barnaby." Krauss wrote over a dozen children's books illustrated by others, and pioneered the use of spontaneous, loose-tongued kids in children's literature. Together, Johnson and Krauss's style--whimsical writing, clear and minimalist drawing, and a child's point-of-view--is among the most revered and influential in children's literature and cartooning, inspiring the work of Maurice Sendak, Charles M. Schulz, Chris Van Allsburg, and Jon Scieszka.

This critical biography examines their lives and careers, including their separate achievements when not collaborating. Using correspondence, sketches, contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, archived and personal interviews, author Philip Nel draws a compelling portrait of a couple whose output encompassed children's literature, comics, graphic design, and the fine arts. Their mentorship of now-famous illustrator Maurice Sendak ("Where the Wild Things Are") is examined at length, as is the couple's appeal to adult contemporaries such as Duke Ellington and Dorothy Parker. Defiantly leftist in an era of McCarthyism and Cold War paranoia, Johnson and Krauss risked collaborations that often contained subtly rendered liberal themes. Indeed, they were under FBI surveillance for years. Their legacy of considerable success invites readers to dream and to imagine, drawing paths that take them anywhere they want to go.

This edited collection examines the synergistic relationship between gender and urban space in post-millennium Spain. Despite the social progress Spain has made extending equal rights to all citizens, particularly in the wake of the Franco regime and radically liberating Transicion, the fact remains that not all subjects-particularly, women, immigrants, and queers-possess equal autonomy. The book exposes visible shifts in power dynamics within the nation's largest urban capitals-Madrid and Barcelona-and takes a hard look at more peripheral bedroom communities as all of these spaces reflect the discontent of a post-nationalistic, economically unstable Spain. As the contributors problematize notions of public and private space and disrupt gender binaries related with these, they aspire to engender discussion around civic status, the administration of space and the place of all citizens in a global world.

A Companion to Virginia Woolf is a thorough examination of her life, work, and multiple contexts in 33 essays written by leading scholars in the field. * Contains insightful and provocative new scholarship and sketches out new directions for future research * Approaches Woolf s writing from a variety of perspectives and disciplines, including modernism, post-colonialism, queer theory, animal studies, digital humanities, and the law * Explores the multiple trajectories Woolf s work travels around the world, from the Bloomsbury Group, and the Hogarth Press to India and Latin America * Situates Woolf studies at the vanguard of contemporary literature scholarship and the new modernist studies

Born to a tobacco farmer in rural North Carolina, Kaye Gibbons found her literary voice by speaking through the strong southern women who inhabit her novels. While concentrating on the places and people she knows well, Gibbons has managed to speak for people who struggle to find their own place, wherever they are, and her books have reached a worldwide audience. Whether for students assigned to read "Ellen Foster" or for lovers of literature, this companion--the first and only book-length study of its kind--provides insights and interpretations that will help readers enjoy and better appreciate the novels of Kaye Gibbons.

Beginning with a biographical chapter, this companion shows how Gibbons's own life came to shape her fiction. Her place in and contributions to the genre of the southern novel are considered, and readers are taken through each of her six novels, starting with the highly acclaimed "Ellen Foster" (1987) and concluding with "On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon" (1998). For each work, lucid analyses of plot, character development, theme, and style are provided, along with an alternate critical perspective. The select bibliography includes reviews and further information on biographical and critical sources.

Using silent cinema as a critical lens enables us to reassess Katherine Mansfield's entire literary career. Starting from the awareness that innovation in literature is often the outcome of hybridisation, this book discusses not only a single case study, but also the intermedia exchanges in which literary modernism at large is rooted.

Wherever vampires existed in the imaginations of different peoples, they adapted themselves to the customs of the local culture. As a result, vampire lore is extremely diverse. So too, representations of the vampire in creative works have been marked by much originality. In "The Vampyre" (1819), John Polidori introduced Lord Ruthven and established the vampire craze of the 19th century that resulted in a flood of German vampire poetry, French vampire drama, and British vampire fiction. This tradition culminated in Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1897), which fixed the character of the Transylvanian nobleman as the archetypal vampire firmly in the public imagination. Numerous films drew from Stoker's novel to varying degrees, with each emphasizing different elements of his vampire character. And more recent writers have created works in which vampirism is used to explore contemporary social concerns.

The contributors to this volume discuss representations of the vampire in fiction, folklore, film, and popular culture. The first section includes chapters on Stoker and his works, with attention to such figures as Oscar Wilde and Edvard Munch. The second section explores the vampire in film and popular culture from Bela Lugosi to "Blacula." The volume then looks at such modern writers as Anne Rice and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro who have adapted the vampire legend to meet their artistic needs. A final section studies contemporary issues, such as vampirism as a metaphor for AIDS in ""Killing Zoe."