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Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history
The period between the Roman take-over of Egypt (30 BCE) and the
failure of the Jewish diaspora revolt (115-117 CE) witnessed the
continual devaluation in the status of the Jews in Egypt, and
culminated in the destruction of its Jewish community. This volume
collects and presents all papyri, ostraca, amulets and inscriptions
from this early Roman period connected to Jews and Judaism,
published since 1957. It is a follow-up of the 1960 volume 2 of the
Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum. It includes over 80 documents in
Greek, Demotic, and Hebrew, both documentary and literary. The
expansion of the scope of documents, to include languages other
than Greek and genres beyond the documentary, allows for a better
understanding of the life of the Jews in Egypt. The documents
published in this volume shed new light on aspects discussed
previously: The Demotic papyri better explain the Jewish settlement
in Edfu, new papyri reveal more about Jewish tax, about the Acta
papyri, and about the developments of the Jewish revolt. The
magical papyri help explain cultural developments in the Jewish
community of Egypt. This volume is thus a major contribution to the
study of the decline of the greatest diaspora Jewish community in
antiquity.
The influence of the ulema, the official Sunni Muslim religious
scholars of the Ottoman Empire, is commonly understood to have
waned in the empire's last century. Drawing upon Ottoman state
archives and the institutional archives of the ulema, this study
challenges this narrative, showing that the ulema underwent a
process of professionalisation as part of the wider Tanzimat
reforms and thereby continued to play an important role in Ottoman
society. First outlining transformations in the office of the
Sheikh ul-islam, the leading Ottoman Sunni Muslim cleric, the book
goes on to use the archives to present a detailed portrait of the
lives of individual ulema, charting their education and
professional and social lives. It also includes a glossary of
Turkish-Arabic vocabulary for increased clarity. Contrary to
beliefs about their decline, the book shows they played a central
role in the empire's efforts to centralise the state by acting as
intermediaries between the government and social groups,
particularly on the empire's peripheries.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open
Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.
It is funded by Manchester University. This book examines the
business of charity - including fundraising, marketing, branding,
financial accountability and the nexus of benevolence, politics and
capitalism - in Britain from the development of the British Red
Cross in 1870 to 1912. Whilst most studies focus on the
distribution of charity, Sarah Roddy, Julie-Marie Strange and
Bertrand Taithe look at the roots of the modern third sector,
exploring how charities appropriated features more readily
associated with commercial enterprises in order to compete and
obtain money, manage and account for that money and monetize
compassion. Drawing on a wide range of archival research from
Charity Organization Societies, Wood Street Mission, Salvation
Army, League of Help and Jewish Soup Kitchen, among many others,
The Charity Market and Humanitarianism in Britain, 1870-1912 sheds
new light on the history of philanthropy in the Victorian and
Edwardian periods.
Samizdat, the production and circulation of texts outside official
channels, was an integral part of life in the final decades of the
Soviet Union. But as Josephine von Zitzewitz explains, while much
is known about the texts themselves, little is available on the
complex communities and cultures that existed around them due to
their necessarily secretive, and sometimes dissident, nature. By
analysing the behaviours of different actors involved in Samizdat -
readers, typists, librarians and the editors of periodicals in
1970s Leningrad, The Culture of Samizdat fills this lacuna in
Soviet history scholarship. Crucially, as well as providing new
insight into Samizdat texts, the book makes use of oral and written
testimonies to examine the role of Samizdat activists and employs
an interdisciplinary theoretical approach drawing on both the
sociology of reading and book history. In doing so, von Zitzewitz
uncovers the importance of 'middlemen' for Samizdat culture.
Diligently researched and engagingly written, this book will be of
great value to scholars of Soviet cultural history and Russian
literary studies alike.
An inside look at Black LGBTQ college students and their
experiences Black and Queer on Campus offers an inside look at what
life is like for LGBTQ college students on campuses across the
United States. Michael P. Jeffries shows that Black and queer
college students often struggle to find safe spaces and a sense of
belonging when they arrive on campus at both predominantly white
institutions and historically black colleges and universities. Many
report that in predominantly white queer social spaces, they feel
unwelcome and pressured to temper their criticisms of racism
amongst their white peers. Conversely, in predominantly straight
Black social spaces, they feel ignored or pressured to minimize
their queer identity in order to be accepted. This fraught dynamic
has an impact on Black LGBTQ students in higher education, as they
experience different forms of marginalization at the intersection
of their race, gender, and sexuality. Drawing on interviews with
students from over a dozen colleges, Jeffries provides a new,
much-needed perspective on the specific challenges Black LGBTQ
students face and the ways they overcome them. We learn through
these intimate portraits that despite the gains of the LGBTQ rights
movement, many of the most harmful stereotypes and threats to black
queer safety continue to haunt this generation of students. We also
learn how students build queer identities. The traditional
narrative of "coming out" does not fit most of these students,
rather, Jeffries describes a more gradual transition to queer
acceptance and pride. Black and Queer on Campus sheds light on the
oft-hidden lives of Black LGBTQ students, and how educational
institutions can better serve them. It also highlights the quiet
beauty and joy of Black queer social life, and the bonds of
friendship that sustain the students and fuel their imagination.
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