The period from the departure of the Romans through to the coming of the Vikings saw the gradual conversion of the peoples of the British Isles to Christianity and (with the exception of Ireland) the redrawing of the ethnic and political map of the islands. The chapters in this volume analyse in turn the different nationalities and kingdoms that existed in the British Isles during this period, the process of their conversion to Christianity, the development of art and of a written culture and the interaction between this written culture and the societies of the day. Moving away from the pattern of histories constructed on the basis of later nation states, this volume takes Britain and Ireland as a whole, so as to understand them better as they were at the time and avoid anachronistic divisions from a later era. It is an approach that allows the volume to give greater weight to the important religious, intellectual and artistic developments and interactions of the period, which normally crossed national boundaries at this time.

Few historical events have resonated as much in modern British culture as the Second World War. It has left a rich legacy in a range of media that continue to attract a wide audience: film, TV and radio, photography and the visual arts, journalism and propaganda, architecture, museums, music and literature. The enduring presence of the war in the public world is echoed in its ongoing centrality in many personal and family memories, with stories of the Second World War being recounted through the generations. This collection brings together recent historical work on the cultural memory of the war, examining its presence in family stories, in popular and material culture and in acts of commemoration in Britain between 1945 and the present.

Sexual confessions on television talk shows. Gender and medical discourse in colonial India. River Phoenix in "My Own Private Idaho," White women in a German colony. Henry James' thwarted love. What do these seemingly diverse subjects have in common?

All address, in different ways, social and cultural attempts to contain eroticism by delineating the perimeters of genders. They scrutinize the political investments in the construction of gender in such disparate locations as contemporary Hollywood, Renaissance England, colonial India and Africa, and in modern and contemporary homosexual discourse communities and in Freud's sessions with Dora.

But whether the gendering of the subject follows the dictates of conservative politics or the radical agenda of a marginalized interest, the essays reveal the erotic overflow--the flood--that cannot be contained within any one gender identity. In examining how the erotic escapes containment, this work discloses problems inherent in the intersections of gender and desire.>[ go to the Genders website ]

Many new social and economic organizations are emerging in different parts of Asia Pacific which have skillfully adapted western capitalism to suit their own specific requirements. They have also put to effective use their own social and cultural values to get the best economic results. Japan used its heritage of associated living to overcome adversarial labour and management relations; Singapore made use of Confucial emphasis on social discipline and respect for merit to build a meritocratic society; Indonesia used its genius for eclecticism to build its own brand of social pragmatism, and then used it for economic growth; Thailand used the concept of merit in Theravada Buddhism to accelerate economic growth; and Malaysia used its own growing pragmatism to balance conflicting ethnic demands. The book examines the variety of address their respective core development issues and simultaneously register an explosive economic growth.

At the cutting edge of political theory, this first volume in the "Taking on the Political Series" reflects the conceptual foundations of the series, opening up space to the political by engaging in and redefining polemics. In recognition of the collapse of the traditional belief in strong foundations for the political domain and the ungrounding of politics generally, the authors introduce and map the concept of afoundationalism while tackling such themes as social structure, ethical argumentation and political organization. Provocative and engaging, this book will change ways of thinking about and approaching political theory both in teaching and research.

This book offers a theoretical intervention into the normative ideals of public space that are deeply rooted in Western urbanism. It disrupts the binaries of presence/absence, inclusion/exclusion by presenting a series of case studies that vividly convey the complexity and vicissitude of grassroots spatial practices. It engages powerfully with the question of what constitutes the "urban public" in our everyday cities. Moreover, it provides a fresh perspective on the proliferating scholarship on Chinese urbanism in the reform era by seriously considering the ways in which ordinary urban inhabitants respond to and negotiate the impacts of rapid social change and the reshuffling of the systems of values and ideologies. The urban public, therefore, is analyzed as an important field in which identities and cultural differences are formed and performed. This book is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in theories of urban public space in general or urban transformation of post-reform China in particular.

Using the cheap desktop publishing techniques of 'zine culture, and supplementing them with an extensive presence on the World Wide Web, the Bad Subjects Production Team has produced one of the only successful political 'zines in the US, as well as one of the first--and longest-running--on-line publications in the world.

Bad Subjects offers a critique of the post-1960s left in the United States, and attempts to reclaim a utopian vision for a political movement which has become fragmented and cynical about the possibility of social transformation. Indeed, Bad Subjects itself is simultaneously a valuable resource and an inspiration, a record of what politically-engaged cultural criticism can achieve, and an example of a progressive political community making use of new technologies.

Offering a way out of vulgar multiculturalism--based on separatism and the idea of "authenticity"--into a critical identity politics founded on coalitions, hybridity, and class consciousness, Bad Subjectsspeaks to readers both in and outside of the academy. Taking their cue from the feminist slogan, "the personal is political," and from Marxist injunctions to study "everyday life," Bad Subjects covers everything from popular culture and high technology to economic restructuring and political organizing, from Raymond Williams to The Dead Kennedys.

In the terrain of cultural criticism, Bad Subjects is an off-road vehicle roaring away from the beaten path.

Ned Rorem, composer and writer, is both a gifted memoirist and one of our most acerbic cultural commentators. This anthology of his musings on music, people, and life surveys the full range of his literary achievement and reflects the evolution of his sensibilities. The first part of the book is devoted to writing of an autobiographical nature, including ruminations on being alone and on becoming a composer. The second part focuses on music and individuals from Bartok and Ravel to Edith Piaf and the Beatles. The final part consists of portraits and memorials of such figures as Martha Graham, Paul Bowles, Marc Blitzstein, Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg, and Truman Capote. The book also includes a lengthy conversation on the art of the diary.

This book builds on the notion that social pathology differs from society to society and that the sense of character that develops in each society is specific to different perceptions of interpersonal obligations and responsibilities in that society. The book deals with the cultural and psychological effects of social change relevant to the study of modernity and postmodernity. It deals with particular social issues such as war and conflict, juvenile delinquency, problems of social ecology and religious revivalism, all reflecting the stresses of modern life and social change within very concrete, particular environments. Braun and his contributors show how individual character and civil society evolve together to create culturally specific trajectories of social change.

This book reconsiders audiovisual culture through a focus on human perception, with recourse to ideas derived from recent neuroscience. It proceeds from the assumption that rather than simply working on a straightforward cognitive level audiovisual culture also functions more fundamentally on a physiological level, directly exploiting precise aspects of human perception. Vision and hearing are unified in a merged signal in the brain through being processed in the same areas. This is illustrated by the startling 'McGurk Effect', whereby the perception of spoken sound is changed by its accompanying image, and counterpart effects which demonstrate that what we see is affected by different sounds accompanying sounds. This blending of sound and images into a whole has become a universal aspect of culture, not only evident in films and television but also in video games and short Internet clips. Indeed, this aesthetic formation has become the dominant of this period. The McGurk Universe attends to how audiovisual culture engages with and mediates between physiological and psychological levels.

Helene Cixous: live theory provides a clear and informative introduction to one of the most important and influential European writers working today. The book opens with an overview of the key features of Cixous' theory of "ecriture feminine" (feminine writing). The various manifestations of "ecriture feminine" are then explored in chapters on Cixous' fictional and theatrical writing, her philosophical essays, and her intensely personal approach to literary criticism. The book concludes with a new, lively and wide-ranging interview with Helene Cixous in which she discusses her influences and inspirations, and her thoughts on the nature of writing and the need for an ethical relationship with the world. Also offering a survey of the many English translations of Cixous' work, this book is an indispensable introduction to Cixous' work for students of literature, philosophy, cultural and gender studies.

World's fairs contributed mightily to defining a relationship between religion and the wider world of human culture. Even at the base level of popular culture found on the midways of the earliest international expositions--where Victorian ladies gawked at displays of non-Western, "primitive" life--the concept of religion as an independent field of study began to take hold in public consciousness. The World's Parliament of Religions at the Chicago exposition of 1893 did as much as any other single event to introduce the idea that religion could be viewed as simply one concern among many within the rapidly diversifying modern lifestyle.

A chronicle of the emergence and development of religion as a field of intellectual inquiry, Exhibiting Religion: Colonialism and Spectacle at International Expositions, 1851-1893 is an extensive survey of world's fairs from the inaugural Great Exhibition in London to the Chicago Columbian Exposition and World's Parliament of Religions. As the first broad gatherings of people from across the world, these events were pivotal as forums in which the central elements of a field of religion came into contact with one another.

John Burris argues that comparative religion was the focal point for early attempts at comparative culture and that both were defined more by the intercultural politics and material exchanges of colonialism than by the spirit of objective intellectual inquiry. Equally a work of American and British religious history and a cultural history of the emerging field of religion, this book offers definitive theoretical insights into the discipline of religious studies in its early formation.

Fans used to be seen as an overly obsessed fraction of the audience. In the last few decades, shifts in media technology and production have instead made fandom a central mode of consumption. A range of ideas has emerged to explore different facets of this growing phenomenon. With a foreword by Matt Hills, " Understanding Fandom" introduces the whole field of fan research by looking at the history of debate, key paradigms and methodological issues. The book discusses insights from scholars working with fans of different texts, genres and media forms, including television and popular music. Mark Duffett shows that fan research is an emergent interdisciplinary field with its own key thinkers: a tradition that is distinct from both textual analysis and reception studies. Drawing on a range of debates from media studies, cultural studies and psychology, Duffett argues that fandom is a particular kind of engagement with the power relations of media culture.

A study of the American cultural wars taking place in controversial museum exhibitions Museums have become ground zero in America's culture wars. Whereas fierce public debates once centered on provocative work by upstart artists, the scrutiny has now expanded to mainstream cultural institutions and the ideas they present. In Displays of Power, Steven Dubin, whose Arresting Images was deemed "masterly" by the New York Times, examines the most controversial exhibitions of the 1990s. These include shows about ethnicity, slavery, Freud, the Old West, and the dropping of the atomic bomb by the Enola Gay. This new edition also includes a preface by the author detailing the recent Sensation! controversy at the Brooklyn Museum. Displays of Power draws directly upon interviews with many key combatants: museum administrators, community activists, curators, and scholars. It authoritatively analyzes these episodes of America struggling to redefine itself in the late 20th century.

This collection of Cuban legends, compiled by the ronowned essayist and literary critic Salvador Bueno, brings readers the best of a time-honored tradition of storytelling in Cuba. These tales, passed on from generation to generation throughout the island, are here retold by a diverse group of prominent Cuban literary figures. Their stories embrace a broad spectrum of Cuban history from the remote past to the modern era. The book features stories of the Taino and Siboney, the island's original inhabitants, accompanied by narratives about Afro-Cuban religious and cultural traditions, and finally tales that are typically ""Cuban"" because they illustrate both the cohesion of the various strands - Hispanic, African, and indigenous - that define Cuban nationality and the patriotism and love of freedom exemplified in the celebrated struggles against Spanish colonialism. Cuban Legends brings to life the stories of unforgettable people and words that have survived the passage of time. They are both witty and wise, and capture the essential spirit of Cuban culture.

Dathorne's approach is basically literary and historical, but he has also developed his argument around politics, popular culture, language, and even landscape architecture. He looks at Europe as a mental construct of philosophies and politics that both the English and European Americans identified with Greece and Rome. Dathorne shows how much of what we think of as European heritage is actually of African and/or Islamic background. He shows the founders of the U.S. to be idealistic Athenian-type elites, unlikely to allow humanity to govern as a citizenship. The book discusses the literary history of the ex-colony of America with its own special lens, showing how again and again the makers of the American myth failed to come to terms with the multicultural realities.

The notion of evil- does it exist? what forms does it take? -has always fascinated humankind. The evil underlying such atrocities as the Holocaust, Communist China's Tibetan abattoir, and the murderous ethnic cleansing undertaken by the Serbs and Croats seems beyond explanations or analysis. In this powerfully original work, Oppenheimer analyzes the phenomenon of evil in a mental behavior that emerges in particular conditions. Oppenheimer argues that evil contains specific, predictable ingredients. By understanding its nature, we can diagnose its specific manifestations in mass murder, genocide, and serial killings. Utilizing a variety of cinematic and literary genres in developing its evidence, the book considers such familiar films as "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Brazil," and draws upon such literary works as Richard III, Oedipus the King and the Picture of Dorian Gray. Evil and the Demonic takes a bold first step, providing a framework in which to place the horrors of human existence.

Since becoming an independent country after its split from Czechoslovakia in January 1993, Slovakia's development from communism to political and economic democracy, underway when it was part of post-Communist Czechoslovakia, has been difficult and halting. Goldman starts with an analysis of the influence of a strong ethnic-based nationalism on Slovak relations with Czechs from 1918 through the Second World War and the years of Communist rule through to the breakaway from Czechoslovakia and the creation of an independent state. Goldman then examines the political, economic, socio-cultural problems and international difficulties the new Slovak state experienced as it tried to develop a democratic political system, move toward a free market economy, achieve societal unity and cohesion, and protect its interests abroad. In showing how a strong Slovak nationalism rooted in recent history has had an impact on policymaking in almost every sphere of national life, Goldman examines the roots and causes of Prime Minister Meciar's authoritarian leadership, the halting and uncertain transformation of the Slovak economy to a free market, the difficulties of governing the country's minorities, and the development of new relationships with areas of strategic as well as economic importance to Slovakia's well being as an independent state. This comprehensive and up-to-date analysis will be of great importance to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with Eastern European Studies.

Among the most significant features of Sims and Dennehy's book are a focus beyond valuing and managing cultural diversity, and a demonstration of the interdependency that exists between a number of important individual differences (i.e., alienation, receptivity, style, power). They discuss some personal yet theoretical insights on answers and questions that are important in increasing our recognition, understanding, and appreciation of diversity and differences in general. In eleven original essays contributors examine a wide assortment of behaviors, issues, and individual differences while offering their reflections on answers and future questions that are key to leveraging diversity and difference in organizations.

Recent literature has emphasized the projected changes in organizational demographics and the fact that globalization also is changing the face of organizational landscapes. Taken together these trends are serving to increase the need to understand and appreciate cultural diversity in virtually all organizations. Many books already exist that attempt to address this topic. Each one attempts to provide a guide to dealing with a variety of racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds. The intent of Sims and Dennehy's book is to go beyond offering ideas or to serve simply as a guide to improve the management of diversity. Thus, a major goal of this book is to have its readers reflect on their personal diversity and difference experiences and to create a forum for answers and questions on the value of diversity and differences for all. The main thread that ties everything together in this book is the strategy of creating value through repeated emphasis on our need to look beyond valuing and managing diversity to the interdependency of a variety of individual variables that shape our lives.

The book begins by offering a bridge-building model as a tool that colleges and universities can use to decrease the alienation experienced by minority students on predominantly white campuses and to increase the social consciousness of all institutional constituents. The next chapter suggests that diversity is essential to learning, and good conversation is a powerful way to learn from diversity. The book then introduces a model that seeks to place the issue of diversity management as one part of an overall development change process. The notion that the success of some organizations in enhancing diversity is dependent upon the vision and strength of management is emphasized in the next chapter, which, by taking a different perspective, presents the argument that current corporate infrastructures do not promote diversity. Unless a company builds new internal support systems that encourage diversity of thought and action, employees hired to make the company more diverse will merely be homogenized into the prevailing culture. In the following chapter the role of training in U.S. organizations is discussed as a major component in increasing the recognition, understanding, and appreciation of diversity and difference. The concept of difference-based approach to advocacy and its relation to issues of gender are introduced as cornerstones of creating work environments that are supportive of employees' needs to balance work and family. The next chapter provides data for analysis of the expatriate's learning experience and applies the learning from expatriate experiences to those issues faced by minorities in a domestic setting. A need to create new intellectual diversity that focuses on foreign language skills applicable to the needs of economic, scientific, and technological markets is emphasized in the next chapter. Next, a comparison is made of the decision-making processes and practices of Japanese and American managers at a Japanese company in the United States. The author's pioneering findings can be generalized to understand decision-making in different cultures and organizations. The role of diversity educator is then discussed and the author persuasively argues that active learner participation, self-disclosure, and a trusting supportive environment are prerequisites to understanding and appreciating diversity. The book concludes with a review of the important points discussed by the contributors to this book, offers questions in need of answers, and identifies future issues on diversity and differences.

The book is based on a series of unique oral histories and interviews with actors who love the stage first and foremost. Editor Joan Jeffri focuses on the experience of actors in their training and career development, and on their relationships to society, culture, and institutions. Although names like Alan Alda are recognizable from other media, these actors all grew up being nourished by the stage. Their stories show that theatre is everywhere in this country--not only on Broadway, but also in churches, in schools, in regions, and in towns. These interviews and a thorough introduction provide a history of the American theatre for almost a century--the Yiddish theatre, the WPA, the start of regional theatre, off- and off-off-Broadway, and the Great White Way--through the voices of those who lived it.

What factors lay behind the rehabilitation of central city districts across the world? Set against the contexts of international transformations in a post-industrial postmodern society, this book examines the creation and self-creation of a new middle class of professional and managerial workers associated with the process of gentrification. These are amongst the privileged members in the growing polarisation of urban society. The book examines their impact on central housing markets, retailing and leisure spaces in the inner city. Taking as its focus six large canadian cities, the author identifies a distinctive cultural new class of urbane social and cultural professionals inspired in part by the critical youth movements of the 1960s for whom old inner city neighbourhoods served as oppositional sites to assail the boureois suburbs. The study looks at their close links with reform movements, neighbourhood activism and a welfare state that often provided their employment, in a progressive aesthetisation of central city spaces since the 1980s. The New Middle Class and the Remaking of the Central City offers the first detailed and comparitive study of gentrification which locates the phenomenon in broader historical and theoretical contexts.