"Dr Stephens' book is a thoughtful examination of the foundations and complexities of the special relationship' between the US and Israel from 1948 to the present. As a work of contemporary importance, it should take the reader beyond simplistic notions of relations between Washington, Tel Aviv, and the rest of the world. As a work of academic scholarship, it should remain an essential study for years to come." William Lucas, Professor of American Studies, University of Birmingham. "The special relationship between the United States and Israel has been the subject of much study and analysis over the decades of its existence. Explaining the phenomenon has enticed numerous scholars and observers to examine and often to complain about the relationship. This work is a useful contribution that facilitates our understanding of this phenomenon and suggests a number of new ways to think about the interaction of these two states." Professor Bernard Reich, George Washington University, Washington, DC. "One of the many strengths of this absorbing book is that the religious upbringing of Presidents is explored. Lyndon Johnson, raised on Bible stories, believed in the right of the Jews to their own homeland and considered Islam incompatible with American political culture. Richard Nixon also underwent a religious immersion and saw Jews as congenial outsiders, appointing several to key posts in his administration. Ronald Reagan quoted the bible and, despite differences, the special relationship blossomed during his tenure of the White House. Written with aplomb, US Policy towards Israel is engaging and replete with measured judgements. Wisely it does not claim that political culture provides a one-size-fits-all explanation for the special US-Israeli relationship, but it does succeed in demonstrating that underlying historical, cultural and religious affinities brought the bonding to fruition and ensure its continuance. In short, it is an outstanding debut from an astute author who will go far, and it comes highly recommended." Journal of American Studies

From the late eighteenth century to the present day, public exhibitions featuring displays of human anatomy have proven popular with a wide range of audiences, successfully marketed as educational facilities for medical professionals as well as improving entertainments for the general public. Partly a product of the public sanitation and health reform movements that began in the eighteenth century, partly a form of popular spectacle, early public anatomical exhibitions drew on two apparently distinct cultural developments: firstly, the professionalisation of medicine from the mid 1700s and the increasingly central role of practical anatomy within it; secondly, the rise of a culture of public spectacles such as world fairs, public museums, circuses and side shows, and the use of new visual technologies these spaces pioneered. Such spectacles often drew on medical discourses as a way of lending legitimacy to their displays of human bodies, while their popularity also helped make the then-contentious practice of anatomy publicly acceptable.
This book examines the cultural work performed by such exhibitions and their role in (re)producing new ways of seeing and knowing the body over the modern era. While public anatomical exhibitions might seem to occupy a marginal position in the history of popular culture and that of medicine, their distinctive intermixing of the medical and the spectacular has made them an influential and intensely productive cultural space, an important site of emergence for new ideas about bodily health and care. This book traces the influential role of such exhibitions in popularising a distinctly modern idea of the body as something requiring constant work and careful self-cultivation-an idea which continues to play a central role in the contemporary fascination with practices and possibilities of self-improvement. Through a series of representative case studies-including eighteenth-century exhibitions of anatomical Venuses, nineteenth-century anatomical museums "for men only" that served as quack clinics for sexual disorders, traditional and contemporary freak shows, and the recent public display of real human remains in Body Worlds and other such exhibitions-Anatomy as Spectacle traces how these exhibitions taught their spectators to see their bodies as something requiring constant self-monitoring and management, constructing an embodied modern subject who is always responsible, productive, temperate, and focused on self-improvement.

All 11 episodes from the first season of the US drama series following two Boston brothers, gangster Michael (Jason Isaacs) and politician Tommy Caffee (Jason Clarke), as they pursue their very different versions of the American dream from opposite sides of the law. Episodes are: 'Mark 8:36', 'Genesis 27:29', 'Matthew 13:57', 'Matthew 5:6', 'Matthew 12:25', 'Samyutta 11:10', 'Genesis 27:39', 'Job 31:5-6', 'Ecclesiastes 7:2', 'Vivekchaudamani: 51' and 'Matthew 22:10'.

What is ‘life’ and how do we define its boundaries? Is life immeasurable or are there levels of ‘liveliness’? How should we relate to entities that are not technically alive at all? As the world becomes increasingly technologized, questions about what counts as ‘life’ and ‘living’ have become a key field of inquiry in contemporary philosophical and arts discourse. As Mel Chen acknowledges in Animacies (2012), the "continued rethinking of life and death’s proper boundaries" has increasingly been recognized as a priority in twenty-first-century North American, European and Australasian critical theory. Indeed, the contributors of this volume go as far as to argue that the question of life has become the central problematic of recent feminist biopolitics, alongside discussions of scientific ethics and technological/organic power relationships. This volume explores points of intersection and divergence between critical conceptions of time and technology, drawing on a range of perspectives and approaches to examine our mediated and material embodied entanglements with key questions about life and death. It is a significant new contribution to the study of corporeality in gender studies and feminism, and will be of interest to academics, researchers and advanced students of philosophy, gender studies, literary theory, and politics. It was originally published as a special issue of Australian Feminist Studies.

What is 'life' and how do we define its boundaries? Is life immeasurable or are there levels of 'liveliness'? How should we relate to entities that are not technically alive at all? As the world becomes increasingly technologized, questions about what counts as 'life' and 'living' have become a key field of inquiry in contemporary philosophical and arts discourse. As Mel Chen acknowledges in Animacies (2012), the "continued rethinking of life and death's proper boundaries" has increasingly been recognized as a priority in twenty-first-century North American, European and Australasian critical theory. Indeed, the contributors of this volume go as far as to argue that the question of life has become the central problematic of recent feminist biopolitics, alongside discussions of scientific ethics and technological/organic power relationships. This volume explores points of intersection and divergence between critical conceptions of time and technology, drawing on a range of perspectives and approaches to examine our mediated and material embodied entanglements with key questions about life and death. It is a significant new contribution to the study of corporeality in gender studies and feminism, and will be of interest to academics, researchers and advanced students of philosophy, gender studies, literary theory, and politics. It was originally published as a special issue of Australian Feminist Studies.

The rationale for Washington's enduring commitment to Israel has long been a puzzle. During the Cold War it was argued that democratic Israel was a natural ally amidst a world of semi-authoritarian and often pro-Soviet states. But the Cold War is over and the American commitment to Israel, a small state that is largely oil-free and of little tangible economic benefit, remains. An alternative view is that the US commitment is underwritten by the Jewish lobby which exercises a disproportionate influence on American policy. Even when combined with the influence of Protestant fundamentalists who, for largely religious reasons, increasingly support Israel, it is still questionable whether interest group politics could determine American foreign policy to such an extent. Despite transitions between Republican and Democratic presidents, bureaucratic support for Israel remains relatively constant indicating that support for Israel is not a product of partisan politics but a given, firmly ingra

The concept of normal is so familiar that it can be hard to imagine contemporary life without it. Yet the term entered everyday speech only in the mid-twentieth century. Before that, it was solely a scientific term used primarily in medicine to refer to a general state of health and the orderly function of organs. But beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, normal broke out of scientific usage, becoming less precise and coming to mean a balanced condition to be maintained and an ideal to be achieved. In Normality, Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens offer an intellectual and cultural history of what it means to be normal. They explore the history of how communities settle on any one definition of the norm, along the way analyzing a fascinating series of case studies in fields as remote as anatomy, statistics, criminal anthropology, sociology, and eugenics. Cryle and Stephens argue that since the idea of normality is so central to contemporary disability, gender, race, and sexuality studies, scholars in these fields must first have a better understanding of the context for normality. This pioneering book moves beyond binaries to explore for the first time what it does and doesn't mean to be normal.