Green Matters offers a fascinating insight into the regenerative function of literature with regard to environmental concerns. Based on recent developments in ecocriticism, the book demonstrates how the aesthetic dimension of literary texts makes them a vital force in the struggle for sustainable futures. Applying this understanding to individual works from a number of different thematic fields, cultural contexts and literary genres, Green Matters presents novel approaches to the manifold ways in which literature can make a difference. While the first sections of the book highlight the transnational, the focus on Canada in the last section allows a more specific exploration of how themes, genres and literary forms develop their own manifestations within a national context. Through its unifying ecocultural focus and its variegated approaches, the volume is an essential contribution to contemporary environmental humanities.

This agricultural history explores the transformation of the Santa Clara Valley over the past one hundred years from America's largest fruit-producing region into the technology capital of the world. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the region's focus shifted from fruits-such as apricots and prunes-to computers. Both personal and public rhetoric reveals how a sense of place emerges and changes in an evolving agricultural community like the Santa Clara Valley. Through extensive archival research and interviews, Anne Marie Todd explores the concepts of place and placelessness, arguing that place is more than a physical location and that exploring a community's sense of place can help us to map how individuals experience their natural surroundings and their sense of responsibility towards the local environment. Todd extends the concept of sense of place to describe Silicon Valley as a non-place, where weakened or disrupted attachment to place threatens the environment and community. The story of the Santa Clara Valley is an American story of the development of agricultural lands and the transformation of rural regions.

How online affinity networks expand learning and opportunity for young people Boyband One Direction fanfiction writers, gamers who solve math problems together, Harry Potter fans who knit for a cause. Across subcultures and geographies, young fans have found each other and formed community online, learning from one another along the way. From these and other in-depth case studies of online affinity networks, Affinity Online considers how young people have found new opportunities for expanded learning in the digital age. These cases reveal the shared characteristics and unique cultures and practices of different online affinity networks, and how they support "connected learning"-learning that brings together youth interests, social activity, and accomplishment in civic, academic, and career relevant arenas. Although involvement in online communities is an established fixture of growing up in the networked age, participation in these spaces show how young people are actively taking up new media for their own engaged learning and social development. While providing a wealth of positive examples for how the online world provides new opportunities for learning, the book also examines the ways in which these communities still reproduce inequalities based on gender, race, and socioeconomic status. The book concludes with a set of concrete suggestions for how the positive learning opportunities offered by online communities could be made available to more young people, at school and at home. Affinity Online explores how online practices and networks bridge the divide between in-school and out-of-school learning, finding that online affinity networks are creating new spaces of opportunity for realizing the ideals of connected learning.

Systemic and political hostility against the 'left', real and contrived, has been a key, yet under-recognized aspect of the history of the modern world for the past two hundred years. By the 1820s, the new, exploitative and destabilizing character of capitalist industrial production and its accompanying market liberalizations began creating necessities among the working classes and their allies for the new, self-protective politics of 'socialism'. But it is evident that, for the new economic system to sustain itself, such oppositional politics that it necessitated had to be undermined, if not destroyed, by whatever means necessary. Through the imperialism of the later 19th century, and with significant variations, this complex and often highly destructive dialectical syndrome expanded worldwide. Liberals, conservatives, extreme nationalists, fascists, racists, and others have all repeatedly come aggressively and violently into play against 'socialist' oppositions. In this book, Philip Minehan traces the patterns of such hostility and presents numerous crucial examples of it: from Britain, France, Germany and the United States; the British in India; European fascism, the United States and Britain as they operated in China and Indochina; from Kenya, Algeria and Iran; and from Central and South America during the Cold War. In the final chapters, Minehan addresses the post-Cold War, US-led triumphalist wars in the Middle East, the ensuing refugee crises, neo-fascism, and anti-environmentalist politics, to show the ways that the syndrome within which anti-leftist antagonism emerges, in its neoliberal phase since the 1970s, remains as self-destructive and dangerous as ever

The sociology of sport is a relatively new scientific discipline, which has spread rapidly and developed in different directions across the world. It investigates social behavior, social processes, and social structures in sport, as well as the relationship between sport and society. The book Introduction to the Sociology of Sport aims to give its readers a comprehensive overview of this fascinating topic. For this purpose, it shows the interrelations between sport and identity, social class, gender, socialization, social groups, (mass) communication, the economy, and politics. In addition, the book introduces a new, innovative theory that helps readers understand the social specificity and worldwide popularity of sport.

In Asian Political Cartoons, scholar John A. Lent explores the history and contemporary status of political cartooning in Asia, including East Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan, North and South Korea, Mongolia, and Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), and South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). Incorporating hundreds of interviews, as well as textual analysis of cartoons; observation of workplaces, companies, and cartoonists at work; and historical research, Lent offers not only the first such survey in English, but the most complete and detailed in any language. Richly illustrated, this volume brings much-needed attention to the political cartoons of a region that has accelerated faster and more expansively economically, culturally, and in other ways than perhaps any other part of the world. Emphasizing the "freedom to cartoon," the author examines political cartoons that attempt to expose, bring attention to, blame or condemn, satirically mock, and caricaturize problems and their perpetrators. Lent presents readers a pioneering survey of such political cartooning in twenty-two countries and territories, studying aspects of professionalism, cartoonists' work environments, philosophies and influences, the state of newspaper and magazine industries, the state's roles in political cartooning, modern technology, and other issues facing political cartoonists. Asian Political Cartoons encompasses topics such as political and social satire in Asia during ancient times, humor/cartoon magazines established by Western colonists, and propaganda cartoons employed in independence campaigns. The volume also explores stumbling blocks contemporary cartoonists must hurdle, including new or beefed-up restrictions and regulations, a dwindling number of publishing venues, protected vested interests of conglomerate-owned media, and political correctness gone awry. In these pages, cartoonists recount intriguing ways they cope with restrictions-through layered hidden messages, by using other platforms, and finding unique means to use cartooning to make a living.

Tucked into the files of Iowa State University's Cooperative Extension Service is a small, innocuous looking pamphlet with the title Lenders: Working through the Farmer-Lender Crisis. Cooperative Extension Service intended this publication to improve bankers' empathy and communication skills, especially when facing farmers showing "Suicide Warning Signs." After all, they were working with individuals experiencing extreme economic distress, and each banker needed to learn to "be a good listener." What was important, too, was what was left unsaid. Iowa State published this pamphlet in April of 1986. Just four months earlier, farmer Dale Burr of Lone Tree, Iowa, had killed his wife, and then walked into the Hills Bank and Trust company and shot a banker to death in the lobby before taking shots at neighbors, killing one of them, and then killing himself. The unwritten subtext of this little pamphlet was "beware." If bankers failed to adapt to changing circumstances, the next desperate farmer might be shooting.This was Iowa in the 1980s. The state was at the epicenter of a nationwide agricultural collapse unmatched since the Great Depression. In When a Dream Dies, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg examines the lives of ordinary Iowa farmers during this period, as the Midwest experienced the worst of the crisis. While farms failed and banks foreclosed, rural and small-town Iowans watched and suffered, struggling to find effective ways to cope with the crisis. If families and communities were to endure, they would have to think about themselves, their farms, and their futures in new ways. For many Iowan families, this meant restructuring their lives or moving away from agriculture completely. This book helps to explain how this disaster changed children, families, communities, and the development of the nation's heartland in the late twentieth century. Agricultural crises are not just events that affect farms. When a Dream Dies explores the Farm Crisis of the 1980s from the perspective of the two-thirds of the state's agricultural population seriously affected by a farm debt crisis that rapidly spiraled out of their control. Riney-Kehrberg treats the Farm Crisis as a family event while examining the impact of the crisis on mental health and food insecurity and discussing the long-term implications of the crisis for the shape and function of agriculture.

Vacillating between the longue duree and microhistory, between ideological critique and historical sympathy, between the contrary formalisms of close and distant reading, literary historians operate with such disparate senses of what the term "history" means that the field risks compartmentalization and estrangement. The Romantic Historicism to Come engages this uncertainty in order to construct a more robust, more capacious idea of history. Focusing attention on Romantic conceptions of history's connection to the future, The Romantic Historicism to Come examines the complications of not only Romantic historicism, but also our own contemporary critical methods: what would it mean if the causal assumptions that underpin our historical judgments do not themselves develop in a stable, progressive manner? Articulating history's minimum conditions, Jonathan Crimmins develops a theoretical apparatus that accounts for the concurrent influence of the various sociohistorical forces that pressure each moment. He provides a conception of history as open to radical change without severing its connection to causality, better addressing the problem of the future at the heart of questions about the past.

The social connotation of jazz in American popular culture has shifted dramatically since its emergence in the early twentieth century. Once considered youthful and even rebellious, jazz music is now a firmly established American artistic tradition. As jazz in American life has shifted, so too has the kind of venue in which it is performed. In Jazz Places, Kimberly Hannon Teal traces the history of jazz performance from private jazz clubs to public, high-art venues often associated with charitable institutions. As live jazz performance has become more closely tied to nonprofit institutions, the music's heritage has become increasingly important, serving as a means of defining jazz as a social good worthy of charitable support. Though different jazz spaces present jazz and its heritage in various and sometimes conflicting terms, ties between the music and the past play an important role in defining the value of present-day music in a diverse range of jazz venues, from the Village Vanguard in New York to SFJazz on the West Coast to Preservation Hall in New Orleans.

Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes looks at fantasy film, television, and participative culture as evidence of our ongoing need for a mythic vision-for stories larger than ourselves into which we write ourselves and through which we can become the heroes of our own story. Why do we tell and retell the same stories over and over when we know they can't possibly be true? Contrary to popular belief, it's not because pop culture has run out of good ideas. Rather, it is precisely because these stories are so fantastic, some resonating so deeply that we elevate them to the status of religion. Illuminating everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Dungeons and Dragons, and from Drunken Master to Mad Max, Douglas E. Cowan offers a modern manifesto for why and how mythology remains a vital force today.

At least 200,000 people died from hunger or malnutrition-related diseases in Spain during the 1940s. This book provides a political explanation for the famine and brings together a broad range of academics based in Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia to achieve this. Topics include the political causes of the famine, the physical and social consequences, the ways Spaniards tried to survive, the regime's reluctance to accept international relief, the politics of cooking at a time of famine, and the memory of the famine. The volume challenges the silence and misrepresentation that still surround the famine. It reveals the reality of how people perished in Spain because the Francoist authorities instituted a policy of food self-sufficiency (or autarky): a system of price regulation which placed restrictions on transport as well as food sales. The contributors trace the massive decline in food production which followed, the hoarding which took place on an enormous scale and the vast and deeply iniquitous black market that subsequently flourished at a time when salaries plunged to 50% below their levels in 1936: all contributing factors in the large-scale atrocity explored fully here for the first time.

Caribbean Discourse in Inclusive Education is an edited book series that aims to give voice to Caribbean scholars, practitioners, and other professionals working in diverse classrooms. The book series is intended to provide an ongoing forum for Caribbean researchers, practitioners, and academics, including those of the Diaspora, to critically examine issues that influence the education of children within inclusive settings. The book series is visionary, timely, authoritative and presents pioneering work in the area of inclusive education in the Caribbean, as part of the broader South?South dialogue. It is essential reading for students in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, scholars, teachers, researchers and policy makers at the regional and international level. The first book in this series entitled Historical and Contemporary Issues will trace the history and examine the Caribbean's trajectory towards the development of inclusive education in the 21st Century. The main premise of the book is that inclusion remains an ideologically sound goal, which remains elusive in the Caribbean. It will also provide a wider platform to discuss other factors that influence the development of inclusive education such as school climate, culture and ethos, LGBT issues, teacher training and professional development, pedagogy, pupil perspective, curriculum, policy and legislation.

Politics of the Many draws inspiration from Percy Bysshe Shelley's celebrated call to arms: 'Ye are many - they are few!' This idea of the Many, as a general form of emancipatory subjectivity that cannot be erased for the sake of the One, is the philosophical and political assumption shared by contributors to this book. They raise questions of collective agency, and its crisis in contemporary capitalism, via new engagements with Marxist philosophy, psychoanalysis, theories of social reproduction and value-form, and post-colonial critiques, and drawing on activist thought and strategies. This book interrogates both established and emergent formations of the Many (the people, classes, publics, crowds, masses, multitudes), tracing their genealogies, their recent failures and victories, and their potentials to change the world. The book proposes and explores an intense and provoking series of new or reinvented concepts, figures, and theoretical constellations, including dividuality, the centaur, unintentional vanguard, insomnia at work, always-on capitalism, multitude (from its 'voiding' to a '(non)emergence'), crowds, necropolitics, and the link between political subjectivity and value-form. The contributors to Politics of the Many are both acclaimed and emergent thinkers including Carina Brand, Rebecca Carson, Luhuna Carvalho, Lorenzo Chiesa, Jodi Dean, Dario Gentili, Benjamin Halligan, Marc James Leger, Paul Mazzocchi, Alexei Penzin, Stefano Pippa, Gerald Raunig, and Stevphen Shukaitis.