After an introductory general essay on the life cycle and status of women in Byzantine society, this volume focuses on female religious life, with particular emphasis on the role of convents - as spiritual sanctuary, refuge for women in need, or provider of charitable services. Several essays compare Byzantine nunneries with male monasteries, pointing out the relatively small size and lack of intellectual and artistic activity in convents, and more rigorous rules of enclosure and stability. Such phenomena as double monasteries, the conversion of a monastery to a nunnery, and women's economic and spiritual ties with Mount Athos are also examined. Other articles investigate issues of female sanctity and sanctification, analyzing types of women saints, women during the era of iconoclasm, and the role of the family in promoting the cult of a holy woman. In addition there are studies on healing shrines in Constantinople in the middle Byzantine and Palaiologan periods, and the resurgence of hagiographical writing in the late Byzantine era, particularly the reworking of the vitae of older saints.

The Life of St. Basil the Younger," one of the longest and most important middle Byzantine saints' lives, presents the life of a holy man who lived in Constantinople in the first part of the tenth century. Usually described as a fictional saint, he had the distinction of residing in private homes rather than in a monastery, performing numerous miracles and using the gift of clairvoyance. The vita," purportedly written by one of Basil's disciples, a pious layman named Gregory, includes many details on daily life in Constantinople, with particular attention to slaves, servants, and eunuchs. Two lengthy descriptions of visions provide the most comprehensive source of information for Byzantine views on the afterlife. In one, the soul of an elderly servant Theodora journeys past a series of tollbooths, where demons demand an accounting of her sins in life and collect fines for her transgressions; in the other Gregory describes his vision of the celestial Jerusalem, the enthronement of the Lord at his Second Coming, and the Last Judgment. This volume provides a lengthy introduction and a critical edition of the Greek text facing the annotated English translation, the first in any language.

Eight articles from a 2006 conference are included in this volume which covers issues related to childhood during the Byzantine Empire. Topics covered include law, procreation, death, patterns of breastfeeding, & material culture.

Miracles occupied a unique place in medieval and Byzantine life and thought. This volume makes available three collections of miracle tales never before translated into English. Together, the collections offer an exceptional variety of miracles from the Byzantine era.

First are the fifth-century "Miracles of Saint Thekla." Legendary female companion of the Apostle Paul, Thekla counted among the most revered martyrs of the early church. Her Miracles depict activities, at once extraordinary and ordinary, in a rural healing shrine at a time when Christianity was still supplanting traditional religion. A half millennium later comes another anonymous text, the tenth-century "Miracles of the Spring of the Virgin Mary." This collection describes how the marvelous waters at this shrine outside Constantinople healed emperors, courtiers, and churchmen. Complementing the first two collections are the "Miracles of Saint Gregory Palamas, " fourteenth-century archbishop of Thessalonike. Written by the most gifted hagiographer of his era (Philotheos Kokkinos), this account tells of miraculous healings that Palamas performed, both while alive and once dead. It allows readers to witness the development of a saint s cult in late Byzantium. Saints and their miracles were essential components of faith in medieval and Byzantine culture. These collections deepen our understanding of attitudes toward miracles. Simultaneously, they display a remarkable range of registers in which Greek could be written during the still little-known Byzantine period."

This lively and accessible study of media and discourse combines theoretical reflection with empirical engagement, and brings together insights from a range of disciplines. Within media and cultural studies, the study of media texts is dominated by an exclusive focus on representation. This book adds long overdue attention to social interaction.

The book is divided into two sections. The first outlines key theoretical issues and concepts, including informalisation, genre hybridisation, positioning, dialogism and discourse. The second is a sustained interrogation of social interaction in and around media. Re-examining issues of representation and interaction, it critically assesses work on the para-social and broadcast sociability, then explores distinct sites of interaction: production communities, audience communities and 'interactivity' with audiences.

Key features

The book is rich with fascinating examples involving British and US media, including radio, television, magazines and newspapers and their Internet spin-offs.

It brings together insights from conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, cultural studies and media anthropology.

It is key reading for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates doing media studies, communication and cultural studies and journalism studies.

These ten holy women, whose vitae range from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, represent a wide variety of Byzantine female saints. From nuns disguised as monks to desert harlots, these holy women exemplify some of the divergent paths to sanctification in Byzantium. These vitae are also notable for their details of Byzantine life, providing information on family life and household management, monastic routines, and even a smallpox epidemic.Life of St. Mary/MarinosLife of St. Matrona of Perge Life of St. Mary of Egypt Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos Life of St. Elisabeth the Wonderworker Life of St. Athanasia of Aegina Life of St. Theodora of Thessalonike Life of St. Mary the Younger Life of St. Thoma's of LesbosLife of St. Theodora of Arta

Often simply called the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos was the most famous center of Byzantine monasticism and remains the spiritual heart of the Orthodox Church today. This volume presents the Lives of Euthymios the Younger, Athanasios of Athos, Maximos the Hutburner, Niphon of Athos, and Philotheos. These five holy men lived on Mount Athos at different times from its early years as a monastic locale in the ninth century to the last decades of the Byzantine period in the early fifteenth century. All five were celebrated for asceticism, clairvoyance, and, in most cases, the ability to perform miracles; Euthymios and Athanasios were also famed as founders of monasteries. Holy Men of Mount Athos illuminates both the history and the varieties of monastic practice on Athos, individually by hermits as well as communally in large monasteries. The Lives also demonstrate the diversity of hagiographic composition and provide important glimpses of Byzantine social and political history. All the Lives in this volume are presented for the first time in English translation, together with authoritative editions of their Greek texts.

Women in industrialized societies have a lifelong relationship with consumerism. They are caught up in a 'consumer femininity', since a feminine identity involves, among other things, a particular mode of consumption. This study, presented in full for the first time in this volume, aims to stimulate critical awareness of consumer femininity. It culminates in sample analysis of a type of discourse that contributes to the formation of women as feminine subjects: the teen magazine. The book proposes an approach to doing critical discourse analysis that focuses on the constitution of a language user's subjectivity in the act of reading. Influenced by the early work of Norman Fairclough, it locates points of focus for taking up a critical (and specifically feminist) reading position in discourse analysis. In doing so, it seeks to provide theoretical and analytical grounding for a critical pedagogy that will take into the classroom attention to language and construction of language users' subjectivities.

Dying Innocence would not only appeal to adults, teenagers and poetry lovers alike, but it would encourage teenagers to not only start to write but more importantly to express themselves, in the knowledge that there are books out there that they can relate to, from people of their age and background, who understand how they see the world.The book itself is a poetry book and when I decided to publish the book its sole purpose was to describe events that were and are going on, but that people don't necessarily discuss; letting readers know that there are people out there feeling emotions they feel and going through things that they themselves are going through. Hence, there are some controversial topics mentioned in the book, such as alcoholism of a parent, bullying and adultery. I feel it is these controversial topics which make the book unique. These topics make the poems real and reality is the most powerful poet of all, provoking more emotion than any imaginary scene could. Although some may feel that the writing age is a hindrance, I feel that it is a gift as I speak the truth and my readers know that I have nothing to gain or lose, politically, economically or otherwise and I am not bound by any ties which may influence my written views and expression. The unique perspective the poems are written from will make this book stand out on any shelf and its content will please any reader. Though the title of the book is Dying Innocence ...this is to symbolise the transfer from childhood to adulthood, in which we begin to experience events such as death, but also of love outside our family and for some, a time when they have children of their own. The poems in the book signify the time in a person's life when they realise that the world we live in is not all good, but the first time that they can truly experience the magic it has to offer, having seen its faults. The poetry included in Dying Innocence has the ability to make you laugh and cry, young or old.

A stunning new graphic novel and rallying cry to protect the planet, from the Costa-award-winning authors of Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes

Set against the backdrop of disastrous flooding in the North of England, Rain dramatically chronicles the developing relationship between two young women, one of whom is a committed environmental campaigner. Their wild Brontë moorland is being criminally mismanaged. Birds and animals are being slaughtered. Across the country, crops are being systematically poisoned, even the soil itself. Rain centres on one relatively small example of moorland ownership by an elite group that impacts catastrophically on the unlanded majority living in the valley below. But the campaigners know that ‘a million other valleys need saving’. They need saving not just for the sake of their human inhabitants, but for the insects and plants, birds and mammals and all the other inhabitants large and small that we share this planet with – our non-human fellow earthlings.

Rain is the first contemporary graphic novel from Bryan and Mary Talbot, dealing with the here and now of environmental degradation that threatens us all. The story follows the everyday experiences of ordinary people, while engaging with pollution, climate change, moorland mismanagement and the disruption, misery and loss that these things bring. The characters are fictitious; what's happening around them is shockingly real.

In this unprecedented introduction to Byzantine monasticism, based on the Conway Lectures she delivered at the University of Notre Dame in 2014, Alice-Mary Talbot surveys the various forms of monastic life in the Byzantine Empire between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. It includes chapters on male monastic communities (mostly cenobitic, but some idiorrhythmic in late Byzantium), nuns and nunneries, hermits and holy mountains, and a final chapter on alternative forms of monasticism, including recluses, stylites, wandering monks, holy fools, nuns disguised as monks, and unaffiliated monks and nuns. This original monograph does not attempt to be a history of Byzantine monasticism but rather emphasizes the multiplicity of ways in which Byzantine men and women could devote their lives to service to God, with an emphasis on the tension between the two basic modes of monastic life, cenobitic and eremitic. It stresses the individual character of each Byzantine monastic community in contrast to the monastic orders of the Western medieval world, and yet at the same time demonstrates that there were more connections between certain groups of monasteries than previously realized. The most original sections include an in-depth analysis of the challenges facing hermits in the wilderness, and special attention to enclosed monks (recluses) and urban monks and nuns who lived independently outside of monastic complexes. Throughout, Talbot highlights some of the distinctions between the monastic life of men and women, and makes comparisons of Byzantine monasticism with its Western medieval counterpart.

In this unprecedented introduction to Byzantine monasticism, based on the Conway Lectures she delivered at the University of Notre Dame in 2014, Alice-Mary Talbot surveys the various forms of monastic life in the Byzantine Empire between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. It includes chapters on male monastic communities (mostly cenobitic, but some idiorrhythmic in late Byzantium), nuns and nunneries, hermits and holy mountains, and a final chapter on alternative forms of monasticism, including recluses, stylites, wandering monks, holy fools, nuns disguised as monks, and unaffiliated monks and nuns. This original monograph does not attempt to be a history of Byzantine monasticism but rather emphasizes the multiplicity of ways in which Byzantine men and women could devote their lives to service to God, with an emphasis on the tension between the two basic modes of monastic life, cenobitic and eremitic. It stresses the individual character of each Byzantine monastic community in contrast to the monastic orders of the Western medieval world, and yet at the same time demonstrates that there were more connections between certain groups of monasteries than previously realized. The most original sections include an in-depth analysis of the challenges facing hermits in the wilderness, and special attention to enclosed monks (recluses) and urban monks and nuns who lived independently outside of monastic complexes. Throughout, Talbot highlights some of the distinctions between the monastic life of men and women, and makes comparisons of Byzantine monasticism with its Western medieval counterpart.

Many of women's everyday experiences and pleasures are tied up inextricably with consumption. In consumer-culture research, it tends to be the activities and interests of women which take center stage. This collection provides a wide range of different perspectives on women as consumers, focusing on popular culture, including examinations of popular media and their targeting of female audiences.

Apart from a grounding in feminism the collection does not present a single view, theoretically; methodologically, or politically. Its contributors work across a wide range of disciplines, including cultural and media studies, design history, and sociolinguistics. What they all have in common is the aim of understanding women's experiences and struggles in relation to consumer culture in the 20th century.

Set against the background of violence and state repression in a turbulent period of French history, The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia chronicles the incredible and outrageous life of Louise Michel, the revolutionary feminist dubbed 'The Red Virgin of Montmartre'. A utopian dreamer, notorious anarchist, teacher, orator and poet, she was decades ahead of her time. Always a radical, she fought on the barricades defending the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871 against the reactionary regime that massacred thousands of French citizens after the Commune's defeat. Deported to a penal colony on the other side of the Earth, she took up the cause of the indigenous population against French colonial oppression. Celebrating the utopian urge in nineteenth-century literature and politics and the origins of science fiction, The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia is the third collaboration of best-selling academic and graphic novelist Mary M. Talbot with her husband, the graphic novel pioneer Bryan Talbot. Their first book together, Dotter of her Father's Eyes, won the 2012 Costa Biography Award.

This lively and accessible study of media and discourse combines theoretical reflection with empirical engagement, and brings together insights from a range of disciplines. Within media and cultural studies, the study of media texts is dominated by an exclusive focus on representation. This book adds long overdue attention to social interaction.

The book is divided into two sections. The first outlines key theoretical issues and concepts, including informalisation, genre hybridisation, positioning, dialogism and discourse. The second is a sustained interrogation of social interaction in and around media. Re-examining issues of representation and interaction, it critically assesses work on the para-social and broadcast sociability, then explores distinct sites of interaction: production communities, audience communities and 'interactivity' with audiences.

Key features

The book is rich with fascinating examples involving British and US media, including radio, television, magazines and newspapers and their Internet spin-offs.

It brings together insights from conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, cultural studies and media anthropology.

It is key reading for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates doing media studies, communication and cultural studies and journalism studies.