This book offers a new perspective on the making of Afro-Brazilian, African-American and African studies through the interrelated trajectory of E. Franklin Frazier, Lorenzo Dow Turner, Frances and Melville Herskovits in Brazil. The book compares the style, network and agenda of these different and yet somehow converging scholars, and relates them to the Brazilian intellectual context, especially Bahia, which showed in those days much less density and organization than the US equivalent. It is therefore a double comparison: between four Americans and between Americans and scholars based in Brazil.

In February 2001, Foot and Mouth Disease arrived in Cumbria. At its peak Cumbria was the worst affected county in Britain with a staggering 41 per cent of all cases. For the local community, the environmental and social consequences were to prove devastating. As a local resident, leading UK photographer John Darwell found himself surrounded by the effects of the disease. Over the next twelve months, he committed himself to recording what was taking place. Despite government reports to the contrary, the Cumbrian countryside became largely a 'no-go area', whilst on the farms thousands of animals were destroyed, their bodies burnt on the now notorious pyres. The ultimate clean-up of the infected farms led to extraordinary lengths being taken to eradicate the virus. "Dark Days" represents, perhaps, the most complete record of this time and provides a powerful and emotive insight into one of the most dramatic and destructive periods in British farming history. It is published in association with Littoral Arts.

The 1960s saw the emergence in the Netherlands of a generation of avant-garde musicians (including figures such as Louis Andriessen, Willem Breuker, Reinbert de Leeuw and Misha Mengelberg) who were to gain international standing and influence as composers, performers and teachers, and who had a defining impact upon Dutch musical life. Fundamental to their activities in the sixties was a pronounced commitment to social and political engagement. The lively culture of activism and dissent on the streets of Amsterdam prompted an array of vigorous responses from these musicians, including collaborations with countercultural and protest groups, campaigns and direct action against established musical institutions, new grassroots performing associations, political concerts, polemicising within musical works, and the advocacy of new, more 'democratic' relationships with both performers and audiences. These activities laid the basis for the unique new music scene that emerged in the Netherlands in the 1970s and which has been influential upon performers and composers worldwide. This book is the first sustained scholarly examination of this subject. It presents the Dutch experience as an exemplary case study in the complex and conflictual encounter of the musical avant-garde with the decade's currents of social change. The narrative is structured around a number of the decade's defining topoi: modernisation and 'the new'; anarchy; participation; politics; self-management; and popular music. Dutch avant-garde musicians engaged actively with each of these themes, but in so doing they found themselves faced with distinct and sometimes intractable challenges, caused by the chafing of their political and aesthetic commitments. In charting a broad chronological progress from the commencement of work on Peter Schat's Labyrint in 1961 to the premiere of Louis Andriessen's Volkslied in 1971, this book traces the successive attempts of Dutch avant-garde musicians to reconcile the era's evolving social agendas with their own adventurous musical practice.

Genealogy and Social Status in the Enlightenment is at the crossroads of the history of science and the social history of cultural practices, and suggests the need for a new approach on the significance of genealogies in the Age of Enlightenment. While their importance has been fully recognised and extensively studied in early modern Britain and in the Victorian period, the long eighteenth century has been too often presented as a black hole regarding genealogy. Enlightened values and urban sociability have been presented as inimical to the praise of ancestry and birth. In contrast, however, various studies on the continental or in the American colonies, have shed light on the many uses of genealogies, even beyond the landed elite. Whether it be in the publishing industry, in the urban corporations, in the scientific discourses, genealogy was used, not only as a resilient social practice, but also as a form of reasoning, a language and a tool to include newcomers, organise scientific and historical knowledge or to express various emotions. This volume aims to reconsider the flexibility of genealogical practices and their perpetual reconfiguration to meet renewed expectations in the period. Far from slowly vanishing under the blows of rationalism that would have delegitimized an ancient world based on various forms of hereditary determinism, the different contributions to this collective work demonstrate that genealogy is a pervasive tool to make sense of a fast-changing society.

This book explores the impact of brutalist aesthetics on contemporary capitalism, emphasizing the blurring of natural and artificial realms and advocates Afro-diasporic thought as a solution for societal transformation.

Eminent social and critical theorist Achille Mbembe invokes the architectural aesthetic of brutalism in his latest book to describe society’s current moment, caught up in the pathos of demolition and production on a planetary scale. Just as brutalist architecture creates an affect of overwhelming weight and destruction, Mbembe contends that contemporary capitalism crushes and dominates all spheres of existence. In our digital, technologically focused era, capitalism has produced a becoming-artificial of humanity and the becoming-human of machines. This blurring of the natural and artificial presents a planetary existential threat in which contemporary society’s goal is to precipitate the mutation of the human species into a condition that is at once plastic and synthetic.

Mbembe argues that Afro-diasporic thought presents the only solution for breaking the totalizing logic of contemporary capitalism: repairing that which is broken, developing a new planetary consciousness, and reforming a community of humans in solidarity with all living things.

The History of Britain and Ireland: Prehistory to Today is a balanced and integrated political, social, cultural, and religious history of the British Isles. Kenneth Campbell explores the constantly evolving dialogue and relationship between the past and the present. Written in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall demonstrations, The History of Britain and Ireland examines the history of Britain and Ireland at a time when it asks difficult questions of its past and looks to the future. Campbell places Black history at the forefront of his analysis and offers a voice to marginalised communities, to craft a complete and comprehensive history of Britain and Ireland from Prehistory to Today. This book is unique in that it integrates the histories of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, to provide a balanced view of British history. Building on the successful foundations laid by the first edition, the book has been updated to include: · COVID-19 and earlier diseases in history · LGBT History · A fresh appraisal of Winston Churchill · Brexit and the subsequent negotiations · 45 illustrations Richly illustrated and focusing on the major turning points in British history, this book helps students engage with British history and think critically about the topic.

Inside Christian churches, natural light has long been harnessed to underscore theological, symbolic, and ideological statements. In this volume, twenty-four international scholars with various specialties explore how the study of sunlight can reveal essential aspects of the design, decoration, and function of medieval sacred spaces. Themes covered include the interaction between patrons, advisors, architects, and artists, as well as local negotiations among competing traditions that yielded new visual and spatial constructs for which natural light served as a defining and unifying factor. The study of natural light in medieval churches reveals cultural relations, knowledge transfer patterns, processes of translation and adaptation, as well as experiential aspects of sacred spaces in the Middle Ages. Contributors are: Anna Adashinskaya, Jelena Bogdanovic, Debanjana Chatterjee, Ljiljana Cavic, Aleksandar Cucakovic, Dusan Danilovic, Magdalena Dragovic, Natalia Figueiras Pimentel, Leslie Forehand, Jacob Gasper, Vera Henkelmann, Gabriel-Dinu Herea, Vladimir Ivanovici, Charles Kerton, Jorge Lopez Quiroga, Anastasija Martinenko, Andrea Mattiello, Ruben G. Mendoza, Dimitris Minasidis, Maria Paschali, Marko Pejic, Iakovos Potamianos, Maria Shevelkina, Alice Isabella Sullivan, Travis Yeager, and Olga Yunak.

Art and the Nation State is a wide-ranging study of the reception and critical debate on modernist art from the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the end of the modernist era in the 1970s. Drawing on art works, media coverage, reviews, writings and the private papers of key Irish and international artists, critics and commentators including Samuel Beckett, Thomas MacGreevy, Clement Greenberg, James Johnson Sweeney, Herbert Read and Brian O'Doherty, the study explores the significant contribution of Irish modernist art to post-independence cultural debate and diverging notions of national Irish identity. Through an analysis of major controversies, the book examines how the reputations of major Irish artists was moulded by the prevailing demands of national identity, modernization and the dynamics of the international art world. Debate about the relevance of the work of leading international modernists such as the Irish-American sculptor, Andrew O'Connor, the French expressionist painter, Georges Rouault, the British sculptor Henry Moore and the Irish born, but ostensibly British, artist Francis Bacon to Irish cultural life is also analysed, as is the equally problematic positioning of Northern Irish artists.

Leonard Moore has been teaching Black history for twenty-five years, mostly to white people. Drawing on decades of experience in the classroom and on college campuses throughout the South, as well as on his own personal history, Moore illustrates how an understanding of Black history is necessary for everyone. With Teaching Black History to White People, which is "part memoir, part Black history, part pedagogy, and part how-to guide," Moore delivers an accessible and engaging primer on the Black experience in America. He poses provocative questions, such as "Why is the teaching of Black history so controversial?" and "What came first: slavery or racism?" These questions don't have easy answers, and Moore insists that embracing discomfort is necessary for engaging in open and honest conversations about race. Moore includes a syllabus and other tools for actionable steps that white people can take to move beyond performative justice and toward racial reparations, healing, and reconciliation.

Digitizing Enlightenment explores how a set of inter-related digital projects are transforming our vision of the Enlightenment. The featured projects are some of the best known, well-funded and longest established research initiatives in the emerging area of 'digital humanities', a field that has, particularly since 2010, been attracting a rising tide of interest from professional academics, the media, funding councils, and the general public worldwide. Advocates and practitioners of the digital humanities argue that computational methods can fundamentally transform our ability to answer some of the 'big questions' that drive humanities research, allowing us to see patterns and relationships that were hitherto hard to discern, and to pinpoint, visualise, and analyse relevant data in efficient and powerful new ways. In the book's opening section, leading scholars outline their own projects' institutional and intellectual histories, the techniques and methodologies they specifically developed, the sometimes-painful lessons learned in the process, future trajectories for their research, and how their findings are revising previous understandings. A second section features chapters from early career scholars working at the intersection of digital methods and Enlightenment studies, an intellectual space largely forged by the projects featured in part one. Highlighting current and future research methods and directions for digital eighteenth-century studies, the book offers a monument to the current state of digital work, an overview of current findings, and a vision statement for future research. Featuring contributions from Keith Michael Baker, Elizabeth Andrews Bond, Robert M. Bond, Simon Burrows, Catherine Nicole Coleman, Melanie Conroy, Charles Cooney, Nicholas Cronk, Dan Edelstein, Chloe Summers Edmondson, the late Richard Frautschi, Clovis Gladstone, Howard Hotson, Angus Martin, Katherine McDonough, Alicia C. Montoya, Robert Morrissey, Laure Philip, Jeffrey S. Ravel, Glenn Roe, and Sean Takats.

In Necropolitics Achille Mbembe, a leader in the new wave of francophone critical theory, theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world, a world plagued by ever-increasing inequality, militarization, enmity, and terror as well as by a resurgence of racist, fascist, and nationalist forces determined to exclude and kill. He outlines how democracy has begun to embrace its dark side---what he calls its "nocturnal body"---which is based on the desires, fears, affects, relations, and violence that drove colonialism. This shift has hollowed out democracy, thereby eroding the very values, rights, and freedoms liberal democracy routinely celebrates. As a result, war has become the sacrament of our times in a conception of sovereignty that operates by annihilating all those considered enemies of the state. Despite his dire diagnosis, Mbembe draws on post-Foucauldian debates on biopolitics, war, and race as well as Fanon's notion of care as a shared vulnerability to explore how new conceptions of the human that transcend humanism might come to pass. These new conceptions would allow us to encounter the Other not as a thing to exclude but as a person with whom to build a more just world.

In A Short History of South Africa, Gail Nattrass, historian and educator, presents the reader with a brief, general account of South Africa’s history, from the very beginning to the present day, from the first evidence of hominid existence, early settlement pre-and post-European arrival and the warfare through the 18th and 19th centuries that lead to the eventual establishment of modern South Africa.

This readable and thorough account, illustrated with maps and photographs, is a culmination of a lifetime of researching and teaching the broad spectrum of South African history, collecting stories, taking students on tours around the country, and working with distinguished historians.

Nattrass’s passion for her subject shines through, whether she is elucidating the reader on early humans in the cradle of humankind, or the tumultuous twentieth-century processes that shaped the democracy that is South Africa today. A must for all those interested in South Africa, within the country and abroad.

Die afgelope halfeeu het meer as 15 000 uitgawes van Beeld verskyn met derduisende stories in woord en beeld. Regdeur hierdie 50 jaar is ’n mantra in die redaksie: “Slaan die groot storie hard.” In Beeld 50 vertel dié geliefde koerant se joernaliste hoe hulle juis dit gedoen het deur die dekades en wat hulle steeds bybly van daardie ervaring. Die boek neem die leser op ’n reis deur van die grootste nuusgebeure sedert 1974 en weerspieël die geskakeerde leefwêreld van die Afrikaanse gemeenskap in die noorde van die land.

Beeld is die Suid-Afrikaanse dagblad wat al die meeste as die mooiste aangewys is, daarvan getuig die foto’s, voorblaaie, spotprente en grafika op dié blaaie. Tog is dit nie ’n beste-voetjie-voorsit-soort boek nie, want dis in die eerste plek joernaliste wie se stemme jy hier hoor. Op die ou end is die belangrikste element die leser.

Soos Pieter du Toit in 2014 as nuusredakteur gesê het: “Ons lojaliteit lê by die briefskrywer wat ons kapittel oor ’n onbesonne hoofberig, die intekenaar wat kla oor sy nat koerant op die grasperk en die leser wat dankie sê vir die nuwe Saterdag-Beeld.”

Prostitute, apostle, evangelist-the conversion of Mary Magdalene from sinner to saint is one of the Christian tradition's most compelling stories, and one of the most controversial. The identity of the woman-or, more likely, women-represented by this iconic figure has been the subject of dispute since the Church's earliest days. Much less appreciated is the critical role the Magdalene played in remaking modern Christianity. In a vivid recreation of the Catholic and Protestant cultures that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, The Magdalene in the Reformation reveals that the Magdalene inspired a devoted following among those eager to find new ways to relate to God and the Church. In popular piety, liturgy, and preaching, as well as in education and the arts, the Magdalene tradition provided both Catholics and Protestants with the flexibility to address the growing need for reform. Margaret Arnold shows that as the medieval separation between clergy and laity weakened, the Magdalene represented a new kind of discipleship for men and women and offered alternative paths for practicing a Christian life. Where many have seen two separate religious groups with conflicting preoccupations, Arnold sees Christians who were often engaged in a common dialogue about vocation, framed by the life of Mary Magdalene. Arnold disproves the idea that Protestants removed saints from their theology and teaching under reform. Rather, devotion to Mary Magdalene laid the foundation within Protestantism for the public ministry of women.