Women were at the forefront of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, with the Arab Spring protests providing an unprecedented opportunity to make their voices heard. But these women also faced an intense backlash from Egypt's patriarchal authorities, with female activists subjected to sexual violence and intimidation by the regime and even fellow protestors. Centered on the testimonies of four women who each played a significant role in the protests, this book provides unique insight into women's experiences during the Egyptian Revolution, and into the methods of resistance these women developed in response to sexual violence. In the process, Hamzeh casts new light on the relationship between gendered and state violence, and argues that women's resistance to this violence is reshaping gender relations in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

This great Central Asian epic, passed down through generations and now brought to life in a new translation, carries the reader into a world of nomads, warriors and horselords 'I am a steel-fanged lion, a dragon ready to pounce, a mighty poplar with golden branches rising up to the sky' The bard Saghimbay Orozbaq uulu composed his oral telling of the great Central Asian Manas epic in the early twentieth century, although it draws on far older sources. This vivid episode from his narrative tells the bravura story of an uncertain new khan, Boqmurun, who holds a great feast to commemorate his predecessor, Koekoetoey. From east and west, warriors and their turbulent retinues come to compete in horse races, jousting and wrestling, and soon insults are hurled and scores settled violently. Yet none can beat the supreme hero, the mighty, truculent Manas. By turns earthy, stirring, bombastic and funny, Saghimbay's work stands as a monument to the oral culture of a nomadic people. Daniel Prior's landmark translation includes a 'How to Read the Epic' section, commentary, maps and illustrations. Composed in oral performance by Saghimbay Orozbaq uulu Translated by Daniel Prior

In Emigre Voices Lewkowicz and Grenville present twelve oral history interviews with men and women who came to Britain as Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria in the late 1930s. Many of the interviewees rose to great prominence in their chosen career, such as the author and illustrator Judith Kerr, the actor Andrew Sachs, the photographer and cameraman Wolf Suschitzky, the violinist Norbert Brainin, and the publisher Elly Miller. The narratives of the interviewees tell of their common struggles as child or young adult refugees who had to forge new lives in a foreign country and they illuminate how each interviewee dealt with the challenges of forced emigration and the Holocaust. The voices of the twelve interviewees provide the reader with a unique and original source, which gives direct access to the lived multifaceted experience of the interviewees and their contributions to British culture.

An innovative and accessible overview of how ancient Scandinavians understood and made use of their mythological stories. Old Norse Mythology provides a unique survey of the mythology of Scandinavia: the gods THorr (Thor) with his hammer, the wily and duplicitous Odinn (Odin), the sly Loki, and other fascinating figures. They create the world, battle their enemies, and die at the end of the world, which arises anew with a new generation of gods. These stories were the mythology of the Vikings, but they were not written down until long after the conversion to Christianity, mostly in Iceland. In addition to a broad overview of Nordic myths, the book presents a case study of one myth, which tells of how THorr (Thor) fished up the World Serpent, analyzing the myth as a sacred text of the Vikings. Old Norse Mythology also explores the debt we owe to medieval intellectuals, who were able to incorporate the old myths into new paradigms that helped the myths to survive when they were no longer part of a religious system. This superb introduction traces the use of the mythology in ideological contexts, from the Viking Age until the twenty-first century, as well as in entertainment.

A primary mode for the creation and dissemination of poetry in Renaissance Italy was the oral practice of singing and improvising verse to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. Singing to the Lyre is the first comprehensive study of this ubiquitous practice, which was cultivated by performers ranging from popes, princes, and many artists, to professionals of both mercantile and humanist background. Common to all was a strong degree of mixed orality based on a synergy between writing and the oral operations of memory, improvisation, and performance. As a cultural practice deeply rooted in language and supported by ancient precedent, cantare ad lyram (singing to the lyre) is also a reflection of Renaissance cultural priorities, including the status of vernacular poetry, the study and practice of rhetoric, the oral foundations of humanist education, and the performative culture of the courts reflected in theatrical presentations and Castiglione's Il cortegiano.

They Taught Us Skills for Life: We are the Engineers! Scotland's labour history has been the subject of many important studies, surveys, articles and books. Some of those published represent the invaluable collection of local groups and amateur historians, while others have been, and are, produced by academics and labour officials. The general expectation, even in Scotland, is that these works should be written in Standard English, regardless of the everyday speech of the workforce. For this publication, however, it seemed more important to transcribe, as recorded, the voices of folk whose vitality of language and expression gives a brighter reflection of their experiences during work and leisure.This book has grown out of an oral history project, 'The End of the Shift', which aims to record the working practices and conditions of skilled workers in Scotland's past industries. Publicity about the project caught the interest of a group of retired engineers, who had all served apprenticeships with a prestigious Kirkcaldy firm, Melville-Brodie Engineering Company.Having lived through times when Scotland seemed blighted by industrial closures, the engineers could identify with 'the end of the shift' as they had experienced the effect of closing down Melville-Brodie Engineering Company. The entire workforce was dispersed, and with it, the skills, expertise and wisdom of generations. Kirkcaldy also lost a company that had been the pride of Scottish engineering.Over the years, as the retired engineers reflected on the radical changes that have taken place since their 'second to none' training, they began to realise the importance of recording knowledge and skills for posterity. They also wanted to remember the firm that trained them, and so they planned a memorial to be erected on the site of Melville-Brodie Engineering works. It was to be designed and made by the men themselves, and in May 2014,the group had the satisfaction of seeing the plaque unveiled by Mrs June Shanks, daughter of the celebrated engineer, Robert Burt Brodie. Standing beside her were the two oldest Melville- Brodie 'boys' (aged 94 and 89), Bob Thomson and Willie Black, and the Secretary of the Melville-Brodie Retired Engineers' Club, Dougie Reid.Councillor for Kirkcaldy East, Kay Carrington, who supported the project, represented Fife Council as she addressed the audience and the media:This is a really exciting project because it shows our past history, how we made a difference, not just in Kirkcaldy, but in the wider world. Melville-Brodie engineers did everything that we're proud of in Scotland. We need to keep the story alive to enable us to take that forward to children and grandchildren in the future.

In the pre-reserve era, Aboriginal bands in the northern plains were relatively small multicultural communities that actively maintained fluid and inclusive membership through traditional kinship practices. These practices were governed by the Law of the People as described in the traditional stories of Wisashkecahk, or Elder Brother, that outlined social interaction, marriage, adoption, and kinship roles and responsibilities. In Elder Brother and the Law of the People, Robert Innes offers a detailed analysis of the role of Elder Brother stories in historical and contemporary kinship practices in Cowessess First Nation, located in southeastern Saskatchewan. He reveals how these tradition-inspired practices act to undermine legal and scholarly definitions of ""Indian"" and counter the perception that First Nations people have internalized such classifications. He presents Cowessess's successful negotiation of the 1996 Treaty Land Agreement and their high inclusion rate of new ""Bill-C31s"" as evidence of the persistence of historical kinship values and their continuing role as the central unifying factor for band membership. Elder Brother and the Law of the People presents an entirely new way of viewing Aboriginal cultural identity on the northern plains.

The Nazi regime and local collaborators killed 800,000 Belorussian Jews, many of them parents or relatives of young Jews who survived the war. Thousands of young girls and boys were thus orphaned and struggled for survival on their own. This book is the first systematic account of young Soviet Jews' lives under conditions of Nazi occupation and genocide. These orphans' experiences and memories are rooted in the 1930s, when Soviet policies promoted and sometimes actually created interethnic solidarity and social equality. This experience of interethnic solidarity provided a powerful framework for the ways in which young Jews survived and, several decades after the war, represented their experience of violence and displacement. Through oral histories with several survivors, video testimonies, and memoirs, Anika Walke reveals the crucial roles of age and gender in the ways young Jews survived and remembered the Nazi genocide, and shows how shared experiences of trauma facilitated community building within and beyond national groups. Pioneers and Partisans uncovers the repeated transformations of identity that Soviet Jewish children and adolescents experienced, from Soviet citizens in the prewar years, to a target of genocidal violence during the war, to a barely accepted national minority in the postwar Soviet Union.

A pioneering work in oral history, this book tells the story of the rise and fall of the industrial revolution and the apogee and crisis of the labor movement through an oral history of Terni, a steel town in Central Italy and the seat of the first large industrial enterprise in Italy. This story is told through a combination of stories, songs, myths and memories from over 200 voices of five generations, woven with a wealth of archival material.