Lars von Trier's intense, disturbing, and sometimes funny films have led many to condemn him as misogynist or misanthropic. The same films inspire this collection's reflections on how our fears and desires regarding gender, power, race, finitude, family, and fate often thwart - and sometimes feed - our best democratic aspirations. The essays in this volume attend to von Trier's role as provocateur, as well as to his films' techniques, topics, and storytelling. Where others accuse von Trier of being cliched, the editors argue that he intensifies the "cliches of our times" in ways that direct our political energies towards apprehending and repairing a shattered world. The book is certainly for von Trier lovers and haters but, at the same time, political, critical, and feminist theorists entirely unfamiliar with von Trier's films will find this volume's essays of interest. Most of the contributors tarry with von Trier to develop new readings of major thinkers and writers, including Agamben, Bataille, Beauvoir, Benjamin, Deleuze, Euripides, Freud, Kierkegaard, Ranciere, Nietzsche, Winnicott, and many more. Von Trier is both central and irrelevant to much of this work. Writing from the fields of classics, literature, gender studies, philosophy, film and political theory, the authors stage an interdisciplinary intervention in film studies.

Based on real events of the French Resistance during World War II, Edith Thomas's stories explore how ordinary people respond to the extraordinary conditions of political occupation. The stories, first published under the title Contes d'Auxois by an underground press in 1943, were written to oppose Vichy-Nazi propaganda and to offer encouragement to civilians who felt resigned to defeat. Whether lining up to wait for food, tuning in to a forbidden radio broadcast, adapting to living side by side with German soldiers, or preparing for an act of sabotage, the characters in these stories must make choices in highly compromised circumstances on a daily basis. As the characters confront their own suffering and that of others, their actions inspire readers to consider the nature of heroism, the idea that people can share a common humanity with their enemies, and the possibility for individuals to find solidarity in an overwhelming, isolating world.

Based on real events of the French Resistance during World War II, Edith Thomas's stories explore how ordinary people respond to the extraordinary conditions of political occupation. The stories, first published under the title Contes d'Auxois by an underground press in 1943, were written to oppose Vichy-Nazi propaganda and to offer encouragement to civilians who felt resigned to defeat. Whether lining up to wait for food, tuning in to a forbidden radio broadcast, adapting to living side by side with German soldiers, or preparing for an act of sabotage, the characters in these stories must make choices in highly compromised circumstances on a daily basis. As the characters confront their own suffering and that of others, their actions inspire readers to consider the nature of heroism, the idea that people can share a common humanity with their enemies, and the possibility for individuals to find solidarity in an overwhelming, isolating world.