First published in 1986. Independent Spirits is about the intellectual world of the humbly-born in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain, focussing on plebeian, or working- and lower middle-class spiritualists. This book is an important study which throws light on the idealism and search for knowledge that were so central in plebeian circles and in certain, very important parts of the labour movement during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This title will be of interest to students of history.

First published in 1986. Independent Spirits is about the intellectual world of the humbly-born in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain, focussing on plebeian, or working- and lower middle-class spiritualists. This book is an important study which throws light on the idealism and search for knowledge that were so central in plebeian circles and in certain, very important parts of the labour movement during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This title will be of interest to students of history.

The development of new sexualities and gender identities has become a crucial issue in the field of literary and cultural studies in the first years of the twenty-first century. The roles of gender and sexual identities in the struggle for equality have become a major concern in both fields. The legacy of this process has its origins in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. The Victorian preoccupation about the female body and sexual promiscuity was focused on the regulation of deviant elements in society and the control of venereal disease; homosexuals, lesbians, and prostitutes' identities were considered out of the norm and against the moral values of the time. The relationship between sexuality and gender identity has attracted wide-ranging discussion amongst feminist theorists during the last few decades. The methodologies of cultural studies and, in particular, of post-structuralism and post-colonialism, urges us to read and interpret different cultures and different texts in ways that enhance personal and collective views of identity which are culturally grounded. These readings question the postmodernist concept of identity by looking into more progressive views of identity and difference addressing post-positivist interpretations of key identity markers such as sex, gender, race, and agency. As a consequence, an individual's identity is recognized as culturally constructed and the result of power relations. Identities on the Move: Contemporary Representations of New Sexualities and Gender Identities offers creative insights on pressing issues and engages in productive dialogue. Identities on the Move to addresses the topic of new sexualities and gender identities and their representation in post-colonial and contemporary Anglophone literary, historical, and cultural productions from a trans-national, trans-cultural, and anti-essentialist perspective. The authors include the views and concerns of people of color, of women in the diaspora, in our evermore multiethnic and multicultural societies, and their representation in the media, films, popular culture, subcultures, and the arts.

The development of new sexualities and gender identities has become a crucial issue in the field of literary and cultural studies in the first years of the twenty-first century. The roles of gender and sexual identities in the struggle for equality have become a major concern in both fields. The legacy of this process has its origins in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. The Victorian preoccupation about the female body and sexual promiscuity was focused on the regulation of deviant elements in society and the control of venereal disease; homosexuals, lesbians, and prostitutes' identities were considered out of the norm and against the moral values of the time. The relationship between sexuality and gender identity has attracted wide-ranging discussion amongst feminist theorists during the last few decades. The methodologies of cultural studies and, in particular, of post-structuralism and post-colonialism, urges us to read and interpret different cultures and different texts in ways that enhance personal and collective views of identity which are culturally grounded. These readings question the postmodernist concept of identity by looking into more progressive views of identity and difference addressing post-positivist interpretations of key identity markers such as sex, gender, race, and agency. As a consequence, an individual's identity is recognized as culturally constructed and the result of power relations. Identities on the Move: Contemporary Representations of New Sexualities and Gender Identities offers creative insights on pressing issues and engages in productive dialogue. Identities on the Move to addresses the topic of new sexualities and gender identities and their representation in post-colonial and contemporary Anglophone literary, historical, and cultural productions from a trans-national, trans-cultural, and anti-essentialist perspective. The authors include the views and concerns of people of color, of women in the diaspora, in our evermore multiethnic and multicultural societies, and their representation in the media, films, popular culture, subcultures and the arts.

This is the first detailed survey of democratic ideas on the British Left in the period leading to 1914. Socialists of the late nineteenth century inherited assumptions about the priority of democracy from a long tradition of British Radicalism. However, the advent of the Fabians, who rejected this tradition as primitive, and of an ILP leadership more concerned to enter than reform parliament, meant that the movement was split between 'strong' and 'weak' views of democracy. By the eve of the First World War a consensus was emerging that might have formed the basis for a more realistic and more radical approach to democracy than has actually been pursued by the Labour Party and the Left during the twentieth century. Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement assesses an important debate in the history of socialist ideas and in the formation of the British Labour movement.

This is the first detailed survey of democratic ideas on the British Left in the period leading to 1914. Socialists of the late nineteenth century inherited assumptions about the priority of democracy from a long tradition of British Radicalism. However, the advent of the Fabians, who rejected this tradition as primitive, and of an ILP leadership more concerned to enter than reform parliament, meant that the movement was split between 'strong' and 'weak' views of democracy. By the eve of the First World War a consensus was emerging that might have formed the basis for a more realistic and more radical approach to democracy than has actually been pursued by the Labour Party and the Left during the twentieth century. Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement assesses an important debate in the history of socialist ideas and in the formation of the British Labour movement.

The contributors to this book have explored various aspects of urban imagination, so intimately related to a peculiar social environment. They are historians and geographers, linguists and cultural students. Their methodologies are very different, their sources poles apart. And yet, they address the same object of study, social and spatial segregation and urban eruptions, though severally defined: from epidemics to anarchist scares, urban uprisings to mental maps, or the reverberations of urban memories in song, novels and museums. Case studies consider the towns of Liverpool, London, Hull, New York, Salvador de Bahia, or more generally France and America. The networks created among intellectuals and labourers, anarchists and migrants, or the lack of communication between those who feel oppressed (rioters, strikers, anti-vaccination protesters) and those in control, are a further common denominator.In a way, urban epidemics were the epitome of the repulsive character large cities possessed in the eyes even of their own inhabitants. If they were the receptacle of so many foreigners, and shady political characters, if they were the scenes of social and ethnic conflict, and violence, and promiscuity, and prostitution, and drunkenness, and pauperism, they were of necessity a festering sore which nothing could eradicate.It is strange that something of this fear should linger on today-otherwise, how can one explain the lacunae in the official memory of museums?-despite the cultural efforts produced in the opposite direction, with Ackroyd's love for East-End London, with the revival of a Little Italy in every major American city, with the nostalgic folklorisation of past miseries in Salvador de Bahia and in popular song. What sense of belonging can be generated by an obliteration of the past, what dynamic local culture can spring from an absence, from a hole in collective memory? This book goes some way to filling those gaps.

The human body is always changing its meanings. Historical research on this can draw on a host of specialisms. Historians, lettrists and linguists contribute to this book a coherent little tumult of perspectives: what was thinkable for pagan and Christian Anglo-Saxons, and how far did the two really differ? Why did New English Puritans stop addressing God as if He were their breast-feeding Mother? How did Western colonisers' perspectives on animals and on 'subject races' interact? How did Victorian and Edwardian women's participation in sports grow? How transgressive was the figure of the 'dandy'? What motivated late-Victorian panics over prostitution, and on what terms were victims helped? Why, in an increasingly 'democratic' age, did reactions to Britain's first universal health-measure become a basis for cynicism about the masses?Repeatedly, the rigidity of separation between male and female fluctuated, as did the boundaries themselves. Sometimes, the greater the rigidity, the less the sources may tell us of resistance to them. But sometimes this can be inferred indirectly.Better testimony than this volume to the liveliness and variety of body-studies is hard to imagine.