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Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

John Kinsella

Niall Lucy (ed.)

John Kinsella is known internationally as the acclaimed author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose, but in tandem with — and often directly through — his creative and critical work, ... More

John Kinsella is known internationally as the acclaimed author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose, but in tandem with — and often directly through — his creative and critical work, Kinsella is also a prominent activist. In this book the vegan anarchist pacifist poet claims that poetry can act as a vital form of resistance to a variety of social and ethical ills, in particular ecological damage and abuse. Kinsella builds on his earlier notion of ‘linguistic disobedience’ evolving out of civil disobedience, and critiques the figurative qualities of his poems in a context of resistance. The book includes explorations of anarchism, veganism, pacifism and ecological poetics. For Kinsella all poetry is political and can be a call to action.Less

Aeschylus' Supplices: Play and Trilogy (second edition)

A. F. Garvie

This book's first appearance (1969) was a full response to the publication (in 1952) of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus which indicated a late production date (in the 460s bc) for Aeschylus' ... More

This book's first appearance (1969) was a full response to the publication (in 1952) of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus which indicated a late production date (in the 460s bc) for Aeschylus' trilogy Supplices, thus upsetting the previous scholarly consensus that it was an early work — indeed the earliest Greek tragedy to survive. There was, the book argued, no longer good reason to suppose that the play belonged to an early stage in its author's development. A final chapter also examines the evidence for reconstruction of the other, lost plays of the trilogy. Few would now argue, as they used to, that Supplices belongs to the 490s but some still have the feeling that it looks like an early play; they attempt to put it back into the 470s. Stylistic and structural evidence, itself often subjective, is not strong enough to place the play in one decade or exclude it from the previous one; but the book remains convinced that, even without the additional testimony of the papyrus, all the internal evidence points to the 460s. While the view that Supplices is very early may now have died, some of the salutary lessons of P.Oxy 2256 fr. 3 have still to be learnt and it is timely for this re-issue to be presented to a new generation of Aeschylean students and scholars.Less

Africa in Europe: Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth Century

Eve Rosenhaft and Robbie Aitken (eds)

The essays in this volume explore the lives and activities of people of African descent – both black and white - in Europe between the 1880s and the beginning of the twenty-first century. They go ... More

The essays in this volume explore the lives and activities of people of African descent – both black and white - in Europe between the 1880s and the beginning of the twenty-first century. They go beyond the still-dominant Anglo-American or transatlantic emphasis of Black Studies, examining the experiences of Africans, Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans in Germany, France, Portugal, Italy and the Soviet Union, as well as in Britain. Their subjects include people moving between European states and state jurisdictions or from the former colony of one state to another place in Europe, African-born colonial settlers returning to the metropolis, migrants conversing across ethnic and cultural boundaries among ‘Africans’, and visitors for whom the face-to-face encounter with European society involves working across the ‘colour line’ and testing the limits of solidarity. The authors focus on the ways in which their subjects have used the skills and resources they brought with them and the ones they found in each place of arrival to construct themselves and their families as subjects of their own lives, and also what new visions of self and community (or politics) have been enabled by the crossing of borders. The volume is multidisciplinary, and the contributors include a novelist and a filmmaker who reflect on their own experiences of these complex histories and the challenges of narrating them.Less

Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism: 1988-2015

Patrick Crowley (ed.)

Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988–2015 offers new insights into contemporary Algeria. Drawing on a range of different approaches to the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary ... More

Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988–2015 offers new insights into contemporary Algeria. Drawing on a range of different approaches to the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary realities, the chapters in this volume serve to open up any discourse that would tie ‘Algeria’ to a fixed meaning or construct it in ways that neglect the weft and warp of everyday cultural production and political action. The configuration of these essays invites us to read contemporary cultural production in Algeria not as determined indices of a specific place and time (1988–2015) but as interrogations and explorations of that period and of the relationship between nation and culture. The intention of this volume is to offer historical moments, multiple contexts, hybrid forms, voices and experiences of the everyday that will prompt nuance in how we move between frames of enquiry. These chapters — written by specialists in Algerian history, politics, music, sport, youth cultures, literature, cultural associations and art — offer the granularity of microhistories, fieldwork interviews and studies of the marginal in order to break up a synthetic overview and offer keener insights into the ways in which the complexity of Algerian nation-building are culturally negotiated, public spaces are reclaimed, and Algeria reimagined through practices that draw upon the country’s past and its transnational present.Less

The Alvarez Generation: Thom Gunn, Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Peter Porter

William Wootten

This book is the biography of a taste in poetry and its consequences. During the 1950s and 1960s, a generation of poets appeared who would eschew the restrained manner of Movement poets such as ... More

This book is the biography of a taste in poetry and its consequences. During the 1950s and 1960s, a generation of poets appeared who would eschew the restrained manner of Movement poets such as Philip Larkin, a generation who would, in the words of the introduction to A. Alvarez's classic anthology The New Poetry, take poetry ‘Beyond the Gentility Principle’. This was the generation of Thom Gunn, Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Peter Porter. This book explores what these five poets shared in common, their connections, critical reception, rivalries, and differences, and locates what was new and valuable in their work. The book presents an important re-evaluation of a time when contemporary poetry and its criticism had a cultural weight it has now lost and when a ‘new seriousness’ was to become closely linked to questions of violence, psychic unbalance and, most controversially of all, suicide.Less

American Creoles: The Francophone Caribbean and the American South

Martin Munro and Celia Britton (eds)

The Francophone Caribbean and the American South are sites born of the plantation, the common matrix for the diverse nations and territories of the circum-Caribbean. This book takes as its premise ... More

The Francophone Caribbean and the American South are sites born of the plantation, the common matrix for the diverse nations and territories of the circum-Caribbean. This book takes as its premise that the basic configuration of the plantation, in terms of its physical layout and the social relations it created, was largely the same in the Caribbean and the American South. Chapters written by leading authorities in the field examine the cultural, social, and historical affinities between the Francophone Caribbean and the American South, including Louisiana, which among the Southern states has had a quite particular attachment to France and the Francophone world. The chapters focus on issues of history, language, politics and culture in various forms, notably literature, music and theatre. The chapters explore in innovative ways the notions of creole culture and creolization, terms rooted in and indicative of contact between European and African people and cultures in the Americas, and which are promoted here as some of the most productive ways for conceiving of the circum-Caribbean as a cultural and historical entity.Less

American Travel and Empire

David Seed

Susan Castillo (ed.)

In this collection, leading scholars in the field examine the interfaces between narratives of travel and of empire. The term ‘American’, used here in the hemispheric sense, and ‘American travel ... More

In this collection, leading scholars in the field examine the interfaces between narratives of travel and of empire. The term ‘American’, used here in the hemispheric sense, and ‘American travel writing’ include both writing about America by visitors and writings by Americans abroad. The contributors are recognized specialists in different periods of American literature and travel writing. The chapters explore the ways in which descriptions of the landscapes and peoples of colonized territories shaped perceptions of these areas; the transmission of images and metaphors between colony and metropole; the othering of non-scribal cultures as ‘primitive’ or ‘wild’; the deployment of representations of encounters between European and other cultures in order to critique or reinforce European or American values and cultural practices; and the tacit assumptions of cultural or economic hegemony underlying U.S. or European travel writing.Less

Anarchy: War and Status in 12th-Century Landscapes of Conflict

Oliver Creighton and Duncan Wright

The turbulent reign of Stephen, King of England (1135–54), has been styled since the late 19th century as 'the Anarchy’, although the extent of political breakdown during the period has since been ... More

The turbulent reign of Stephen, King of England (1135–54), has been styled since the late 19th century as 'the Anarchy’, although the extent of political breakdown during the period has since been vigorously debated. Rebellion and bitter civil war characterised Stephen’s protracted struggle with rival claimant Empress Matilda and her Angevin supporters over ‘nineteen long winters’ when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘Christ and his Saints slept’. Drawing on new research and fieldwork, this innovative volume offers the first ever overview and synthesis of the archaeological and material record for this controversial period. It presents and interrogates many different types of evidence at a variety of scales, ranging from nationwide mapping of historical events through to conflict landscapes of battlefields and sieges. The volume considers archaeological sites such as castles and other fortifications, churches, monasteries, bishops’ palaces and urban and rural settlements, alongside material culture including coins, pottery, seals and arms and armour. This approach not only augments but also challenges historical narratives, questioning the ‘real’ impact of Stephen’s troubled reign on society, settlement, church and the landscape, and opens up new perspectives on the conduct of Anglo-Norman warfare.Less

Andean Truths: Transitional Justice, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production in Post-Shining Path Peru

Anne Lambright

Andean Truths: Transitional Justice, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production in Post-Shining Path Peru studies how literature, drama, film, and the visual arts contest the dominant narrative of national ... More

Andean Truths: Transitional Justice, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production in Post-Shining Path Peru studies how literature, drama, film, and the visual arts contest the dominant narrative of national peace and reconciliation, as constructed by Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Established in 2001, the Commission aimed to ‘investigate and make public the truth’ of the country’s twenty-year civil war, drawing upon homologous predecessors that provided a highly scripted model of truth-gathering and national healing. In this model, a predetermined collective mourning, catharsis, and reconciliation would move the nation forward in a consensually-determined fashion. Andean Truths shows that the Peruvian case proves internationally-endorsed models insufficient for arriving at the ‘truth’ of a national trauma that primarily affected disenfranchised ethnic groups, namely, the Andean Quechua speaking populations that accounted for the overwhelming majority of victims of the violence. Even as scholars recognize the importance of bringing multiple voices to the table in discussing post-Shining Path Peru, the question remains of what a more Andean-oriented transitional justice process might entail. Drawing on theories of decoloniality, intercultural communication and epistemological diversity (following scholars such as Enrique Dussel, Aníbal Quijano and Boaventura de Sousa Santos), this book analyzes cultural products, from the theater of Yuyachkani to the narrative of Oscar Colchado Lucio, the art of Edilberto Jiménez, and other popular artistic responses, that highlight Andean understandings of the conflict and its aftermath. These cultural products challenge dominant understandings of the conflict and question Peru’s ability to overcome its collective trauma without seriously reconsidering prevailing cultural paradigms.Less

Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal

Sherryl Vint

This book uses readings of science fiction texts to explore how animals are central to our perception of humanity. Arguing that the academic field of animal studies and the popular genre of science ... More

This book uses readings of science fiction texts to explore how animals are central to our perception of humanity. Arguing that the academic field of animal studies and the popular genre of science fiction share a number a critical concerns, the author expresses an urgent need to reconsider the human–animal boundary in a world of genetic engineering, factory farming, species extinctions, and increasing evidence of animal intelligence, emotions, and tool use. Mapping the complex terrain of human relations with non-human animals, the book offers an intervention into the contentious ongoing discussions of the post-human.Less

Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean

Jason Herbeck

Construction of identity has constituted a vigorous source of debate in the Caribbean from the early days of colonization to the present, and under the varying guises of independence, ... More

Construction of identity has constituted a vigorous source of debate in the Caribbean from the early days of colonization to the present, and under the varying guises of independence, departmentalization, dictatorship, overseas collectivity and occupation. Given the strictures and structures of colonialism long imposed upon the colonized subject, the (re)makings of identity have proven anything but evident when it comes to determining authentic expressions and perceptions of the postcolonial self. By way of close readings of both constructions in literature and the construction of literature, Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean proposes an original, informative frame of reference for understanding the long and ever-evolving struggle for social, cultural, historical and political autonomy in the region. Taking as its point of focus diverse canonical and lesser-known texts from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Haiti published between 1958 and 2013, this book examines the trope of the house (architecture) and the meta-textual construction of texts (architexture) as a means of conceptualizing and articulating how authentic means of expression are and have been created in French-Caribbean literature over the greater part of the past half-century—whether it be in the context of the years leading up to or following the departmentalization of France’s overseas colonies in the 1940’s, the wrath of Hurricane Hugo in 1989, or the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010.Less

Argentina's Partisan Past: Nationalism and the Politics of History

Michael Goebel

This book is a challenging new study about the production, spread, and use of understandings of national history and identity for political purposes in twentieth-century Argentina. Based on extensive ... More

This book is a challenging new study about the production, spread, and use of understandings of national history and identity for political purposes in twentieth-century Argentina. Based on extensive research of primary and published sources, it analyses how nationalist views about what it meant to be Argentine were built into the country's long-drawn-out crisis of liberal democracy from the 1930s to the 1980s. Eschewing the notion of any straightforward relationship between cultural customs, ideas, and political practices, the study seeks to provide a more nuanced framework for understanding the interplay between popular culture, intellectuals, and the state in the promotion, co-option, and repression of conflicting narratives about the nation's history. Particular attention is given to the conditions for the production and political use of cultural goods, especially the writings of historians. The intimate linkage between history and politics, it is argued, helped Argentina's partisan past of the period following independence to cast its shadow onto the middle decades of the twentieth century. This process is scrutinized within the framework of recent approaches to the study of nationalism, in an attempt to communicate the major scholarly debates of this field with the case of Argentina.Less

Argentine Cinema and National Identity (1966-1976)

Carolina Rocha

Argentine Cinema and National Identity covers the development of Argentine cinema since the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, a period that has been understudied. Marked by tumultuous political events, ... More

Argentine Cinema and National Identity covers the development of Argentine cinema since the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, a period that has been understudied. Marked by tumultuous political events, these decades witnessed debates about Argentina’s modernity and tradition that affected film production and consumption. Two film genres, the historical film and the gauchesque— a genre based on outlaw gauchos was crucial for nation-building in the nineteenth century—generated great local interest and high expectations among film producers and distributors. The notion of national identity guides the analysis of certain emblematic films that were well-received by domestic audiences and engaged with the issue of Argentine identity. This manuscript investigates the way Argentine cinema positioned itself when facing the competition of glossy American films by representing the past and the heroic founding figures so as to bridge the stark divisions between the Argentine left and right in the late 1960s.Less

Armies, Politics and Revolution: Chile, 1808-1826

Juan Luis Ossa Santa Cruz

This book studies the political role of the Chilean military during the years 1808–1826. Beginning with the fall of the Spanish monarchy to Napoleon in 1808 and ending immediately after the last ... More

This book studies the political role of the Chilean military during the years 1808–1826. Beginning with the fall of the Spanish monarchy to Napoleon in 1808 and ending immediately after the last royalist contingents were expelled from the island of Chiloé, it does not seek to give a full picture of the participation of military men on the battlefield but rather to interpret their involvement in local politics. The main categories deployed in this study are 1) armies, 2) politics and 3) revolution, and the three are presented with the purpose of demonstrating that, as Peggy K. Liss has claimed, after 1810 Spanish American public life ‘became militarized; and the military, privileged’. I argue that the Chilean military became privileged because the demise of the Spanish monarchy in 1808 made them protagonists of the decision-making process. In so doing, this book aims to make a contribution to the understanding of Chile’s revolution of independence, as well as to discuss some of the most recent historiographical contributions on the role of the military in the creation of the Chilean republic. Although the focus has been placed on the career and participation of Chilean revolutionary officers, this book also provides an overview of both the role of royalist armies and the influence of international events in Chile.Less

Art and Pluralism: Lawrence Alloway's Cultural Criticism

Nigel Whiteley

Lawrence Alloway (1926–1990) was one of the most influential and widely respected (as well as prolific) art writers of the post-war years. His many books, catalogue essays, and reviews manifest the ... More

Lawrence Alloway (1926–1990) was one of the most influential and widely respected (as well as prolific) art writers of the post-war years. His many books, catalogue essays, and reviews manifest the changing paradigms of art away from the formal values of modernism towards the inclusiveness of the visual culture model in the 1950s, through the diversity and excesses of the 1960s, to the politicisation in the wake of 1968 and the Vietnam War, on to postmodern concerns in the 1970s. Alloway was in the right places at the right times. From his central involvement with the Independent Group and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London in the 1950s, he moved to New York, the new world centre of art, at the beginning of the 1960s. In the early 1970s Alloway became deeply involved with the realist revival and the early feminist movement in art — Sylvia Sleigh, the painter, was his wife — and went on to write extensively about the gallery and art market as a system, examining the critic's role within this system. Positioning himself against the formalism and exclusivism associated with Clement Greenberg, Alloway was wholeheartedly committed to pluralism and diversity in both art and society. For him, art and criticism were always to be understood within a wider set of cultural, social and political concerns, with the emphasis on democracy, social inclusiveness and freedom of expression. This book provides a close critical reading of Alloway's writings.Less

Assia Djebar: Out of Algeria

Jane Hiddleston

Assia Djebar: Out of Algeria is a book about expatriation, and the constant, necessary revisiting that follows. In the book, Hiddleston seeks to conceptualise Djebar’s progressive struggle and ... More

Assia Djebar: Out of Algeria is a book about expatriation, and the constant, necessary revisiting that follows. In the book, Hiddleston seeks to conceptualise Djebar’s progressive struggle and dissatisfaction with the notion of Algerian identity by referring to a number of contemporary theoretical concepts. Hiddleston’s analysis of the Djebar’s gradual and partial ‘expatriation’ is shaped heavily by the writer’s participation in crossroads between French philosophy, multiple Algerian traditions, and Anglo-American postcolonial theory. The study also situates Djebar’s thinking in recent French philosophy, making connections between her understanding of subjectivity and individuation and those produced by contemporary thinkers working in France.Less