Ostracod crustaceans, common microfossils in marine and freshwater sedimentary records, supply evidence of past climatic conditions via indicator species, transfer function and mutual climatic range approaches as well as the trace element and stable isotope geochemistry of their shells. As methods of using ostracods as Quaternary palaeoclimate proxies have developed, so too has a critical awareness of their complexities, potential and limitations. This book combines up-to-date reviews (covering previous work and summarising the state of the art) with presentations of new, cutting-edge science (data and interpretations as well as methodological developments) to form a major reference work that will constitute a durable bench-mark in the science of Ostracoda and Quaternary climate change.
In-depth and focused treatment of palaeoclimate applicationsProvides durable benchmark and guide for all future work on ostracodsPresents new, cutting-edge science
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Merely Players? marks a groundbreaking departure in Shakespeare studies by giving direct voice to the Shakespearean performer. It draws on three centuries worth of actors' written reflections on playing Shakespeare and brings together the dual worlds of performance and academia, providing a unique resource for the student and theatre-lover alike.

For nearly three centuries, actors have set down in print their reflections on the experience of performing Shakespeare's plays, resulting in a vast, heterogeneous and - remarkably - almost entirely unexamined body of material. Merely Players? brings together the diverse voices of actors writing about their experiences of playing Shakespeare, exploring the ways in which they discuss their embodiment with the performance and their own particular negotiations with the authority and tradition of the Shakespeare name. It should be useful for scholars of Shakespeare, drama and theatre studies, practitioners and theatre-lovers alike.

This volume of essays looks at Renaissance texts through the lens of modern theories of mimesis, and also investigates traces of Early Modern equivalents within those same works. With the assimilation of critical theory into literary studies during the late 1960s and the 1970s, many scholars challenged the idea that mimesis was an unproblematic 'representation of reality'. Instead, they found a much more complex mimetic art in operation on the early modern stage. While the work of these earlier scholars is seminal, this volume argues that it is time to re-figure the question of mimesis. Contributors examine a wide variety of Shakespearian and non-Shakespearian texts to come to an increased historical understanding of the way mimesis operated 400 years ago, but, more importantly, how they can be seen to be operating differently today.

Into Thy Hands is a play about faith, sex, and the translation of the Bible. Set four hundred years ago, it is centred around John Donne and his parallel roles as the first English translator of Galileo, accomplice in the translation of the Song of Solomon, and as the most popular songwriter of the English Court. Set in 1610-11 at the high watermark of the English Renaissance, the play charts the beginning of an English project that would come to dominate the next three centuries. John Donne stood at the nexus of these developments. At various times politician, soldier, poet, musician, lawyer, courtier, theologian and cleric, and as a man born into one of the most distinguished English Catholic families only to die as one of its most renowned Protestants, he lived lives as most shades of English identity.He was also intimately involved with three great English innovations that came to dominate the subsequent life of the country: the Anglican church, epitomised by the King James Bible (1611); the scientific enlightenment, prompted by the work of Francis Bacon and the appearance of Galileo's work in English (also 1611); and the great artistic flourishing in theatre, poetry and music. This play is about the collision of those worlds.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina narrowly missed New Orleans. The resulting storms breached rotting levees and emptied neighbouring lake Pontchartrain into the city. Marooned by floodwater that swamped over 80% of their homes, the inhabitants had to wait a week without food or clean water before their own government came to their aid. Katrina uses survivor testimonies and the rich cultural tradition of New Orleans to tell the story of the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. Shedding light on some of the more extraordinary and under-reported aspects of the tragedy, the play portrays an odyssey through a drowned space and a series of encounters with individuals displaced and abandoned within their own city. The plot follows from the death of Virgil, a decadent old New Orleanian, who has been killed by Hurricane Katrina. Trapped by the rising floodwater his partner Beatrice determines to take his body to safety at City Hall. During her journey she encounters a number of other survivors and hears their tales. A Jericho House production, Katrina premiered at the Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, on 1 September 2009.