The Sultanate of Oman is one of the few "good news" stories to have emerged from the Middle East in recent memory. This book traces the narrative of a little-known and relatively stable Arab country whose history of independence, legacy of interaction with diverse cultures, and enlightened modern leadership have transformed it in less than fifty years from an isolated medieval-style potentate to a stable, dynamic, and largely optimistic country. At the heart of this fascinating story is Oman's sultan, Qaboos bin Sa'id, friend to both East and West, whose unique leadership style has resulted in both domestic and foreign policy achievements during more than four decades in office. Exploring Oman from a historical perspective, Funsch examines how the country's unique blend of tradition and modernization has enabled it to succeed while others in the region have failed. Accounts of the author's own experiences with Oman's transformation add rich layers of depth, texture, and personality to the narrative.

Thisbook is distinctive because it will be a political science oriented introduction to The Federalist Papers. As most of the editions have introductions by historians, and some of them quite good, there is no readily available edition with a political science focus. Such a focus would not ignore the historical dimensions of the founding and that particular era, but would supplement this historical background with a concentration on the key questions political scientists tend to ask when reading and teaching The Federalist Papers. Questions of power, separation, blending, federalism, and structural design and how they impact the practice of government, questions we political scientists ask, will be the central feature of this edition. The primary audience for this edition would be courses in American Political Thought, American Government (most of which include components of the Federalist Papers) plus courses on the Presidency, Congress, The Judiciary, and Federalism.

Presenting different ways to imagine criticism without critique, this collection provides a survey of both the difficult times facing ideological critique and the ways in which literary criticism and aesthetics have been affected by changing attitudes toward critique.

The book reveals how the fantastic is used in modern theatre as a manipulative device to encode the unspeakable and control audience response, challenging conventional readings of all authors who use the fantastic.

Employing a range of approaches to examine how "monster-talk" pervades not only popular culture but also public policy through film and other media, this book is a "one-stop shop" of sorts for students and instructors employing various approaches and media in the study of "teratologies," or discourses of the monstrous.

Drawing on postcolonial and gender studies, as well as affect theory, the book interrogates cosmopolitan philosophies. Through analysis of J.M. Coetzee's later fiction, Hallemeier invites the re-imagining of cosmopolitanism, particularly as it is performed through the reading of literature.

Contemporary cultural studies have marginalized "agency," namely the power of people to shape social life. Here, Stephen Tumino offers a new materialist challenge to these tendencies and articulates an internationalist cultural theory that puts global agency in the forefront of cultural analysis.

Identifying an apprehension about the nature and constitution of urbanism in North American plays, Westgate examines how cities like New York City and Los Angeles became focal points for identity politics and social justice at the end of the twentieth century, and how urban crises inform the dramaturgy of contemporary playwrights.

How has the media since the First Gulf War altered political analysis and how has this alteration has in turn affected socially-critical art? Colleran examines more than forty plays, many written in direct response to the 1991 war in Iraq as well as to the 9/11 attacks and the retaliatory actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A children's classic comes to life in an enchanting dramatization narrated by Alan Bennett.   Enter the world of the great river and meet the marvelous riverbank animals: the poetic Rat, his friend Mole, and the boastful Toad, as they voyage down the river and into the Wild Wood to great adventures!  This
exclusive BBC production features a full cast, authentic sound effects and sweeping music to warm hearts young and old.  

The first extended Lacanian reading of J. L. Austin's ordinary language philosophy, this book examines how it has been received in the continental tradition by Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, Jacques Ranciere and Oswald Ducrot. This is a tradition that neglects Austin's general speech act theory on behalf of his special theory of the performative, whilst bringing a new attention to the literary and the aesthetic. The book charts each of these theoretical interactions with a Lacanian reading of the thinker through a case study. Austin, Derrida and Butler are respectively read with a Hollywood blockbuster, a Shakespearean bestseller and a globally influential May '68 poster - texts preoccupied with the problem of subjectivity in early, high and postmodernity. Hence Austin's constatives (nonperformative statements) are explored with Dead Poets Society; Derridean naming with Romeo and Juliet; and Butlerian aesthetic re-enactment with We Are all German Jews. Finally, Ranciere and Ducrot enable a return to Austin beyond his continental reception. Austin is valorised with a theory as attractive, and as irreducible, to the continental tradition as his own thought, namely Jacques Lacan's theory of the signifier. Drawing together some of the giants of language theory, psychoanalysis and poststructuralist thought, Habjan offers a new materialist reading of the 'ordinary' status of literary language and a vital contribution to current debates within literary studies and contemporary philosophy.

Using the concept of otherness as an entry point into a discussion of poetry, Jonathan Hart's study explores the role of history and theory in relation to literature and culture. Chapters range from trauma in Shakespeare to Bartolome de Las Casas' representation of the Americas to the trench poets to voices from the Holocaust.

Can comics be documentary, and can documentary take the form of, and thus be, comics? Examining comics as documentary, this book challenges the persistent assumption that ties documentary to recording technologies, and instead engages an understanding of the category in terms of narrative, performativity and witnessing. Through a cluster of early twenty-first century comics, Nina Mickwitz argues that these comics share a documentary ambition to visually narrate and represent aspects and events of the real world.

Combining sustained empirical analysis of reading group conversations with four case studies of classic and contemporary novels: Things Fall Apart, White Teeth, Brick Lane and Small Island, this book pursues what can be gained through a comparative approach to reading and readerships.

Through a discussion of diverse art and media such as apocalyptic thrillers, rap, and television, Swirski debunks the American political system, sieving out fact from a sea of bipartisan untruths. Engaging with close analysis and multiple case studies, this book forges a more accurate picture of contemporary American culture and of America itself.

What did it mean, in the rapidly changing world of Victorian England, to 'be a man'? In essays written specially for this volume, nine distinguished scholars from Britain and the USA show how Victorian novelists from the Brontes to Conrad sought to discover what made men, what broke them, and what restored them.

Moving across the boundaries of mainstream and experimental circuits, from the affective pleasures of commercially successful shows such as Calendar Girls and Mamma Mia! to the feminist possibilities of new burlesque and stand-up, this book offers a lucid and accessible account of popular feminisms in contemporary theatre and performance.

A lively discussion of costume dramas to women's films, Shelley Cobb investigates the practice of adaptation in contemporary films made by women. The figure of the woman author comes to the fore as a key site for the representation of women's agency and the authority of the woman filmmaker.

Catholic or Protestant, recusant or godly rebel, early modern women reinvented their spiritual and gendered spaces during the reformations in religion in England during the sixteenth century and beyond. These essays explore the ways in which some Englishwomen struggled to erase, rewrite, or reimagine their religious and gender identities.

Art and literature during the European fin-de-siecle period often manifested themes of degeneration and decay, both of bodies and civilizations, as well as illness, bizarre sexuality, and general morbidity. This collection explores these topics in relation to artists and writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde, August Strindberg, and Aubrey Beardsley.

Hazlitt the Dissenter is unique in providing the first book-length account of Hazlitt's early life as a dissenter. As the first multi-disciplinary account of Hazlitt's early literary career, it provides a new insight into the literary, intellectual, political and religious culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Using each chapter to juxtapose works by one female and one male Spanish writer, Gender and Modernity in Spanish Literature: 1789-1920 explores the concept of Spanish modernity. Issues explored include the changing roles of women, the male hysteric, and the mother and Don Juan figure.

Analyzing the renowned Saint Birgitta of Sweden from the perspectives of power, authority, and gender, this probing study investigates how Birgitta went about establishing her influence during the first ten years of her career as a living saint, in 1340-1349.