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Cambria Press color catalog featuring noteworthy academic titles and outstanding book reviews.

"This book offers new insights into the representation of madness in British literature between two landmark dates for the social, philosophical and medical history of mental deviance: 1744 and 1845. In 1744, the Vagrancy Act first mentions 'lunatics' as a specific category, which is itself a social 'symptom' of an emerging need for isolation and confinement of the insane. A more sophisticated and attentive care of the 'fool' is testified only by the 1845 Lunatic Asylums Act, which established specific processes safeguarding against the wrongful detention of patients in public and private facilities. In stressing for the first time the momentous change the notion of madness underwent between these years, this book provides a fresh and absolutely unique perspective on some of the major works connected with mental disorder. The chronological boundaries also provide the collection with a definite and unifying frame, which comprises social, cultural, legal and medical aspects of madness as an historical phenomenon. It is within this frame that the eight essays composing the body of the book discuss how madness is recounted, or even experienced, by authors such as Christopher Smart and William Cowper, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Thomas Perceval, Samuel Richardson, Charlotte Lennox, Eliza Haywood, and Alfred Tennyson."--

In recent years, Sinophone studies has introduced to a broader audience multiple ways of examining Chineseness beyond the traditional China-centered view. Whereas a Sinophone product, whether fiction or film, reflects on the close relationship between language and place, a localist agenda from the margins of China and Chineseness is brought to the fore. It is important to consider that Sinophone literature both embodies an attachment to cultural China and encompasses vital issues of ethnicity and politics with respect to local contexts. To be more precise, Sinophone literature points to constantly evolving changes and adaptations into a profound combination of Chineseness and local identities. Surprisingly, there is no scholarly monograph focusing on the literary production in Sinophone Taiwan so far, even though Taiwan is defined by Shu-mei Shih as a major site of Sinophone literature as a result of its serial and layered colonial condition. What does then Sinophone Taiwan mean? According to Shu-mei Shih, The Sinophone Taiwan, for instance, is only an aspect of Taiwan s multilingual community where aboriginal languages are also spoken, and postmartial law Taiwan cultural discourse is very much about articulating symbolic farewells to China. In other words, Sinophone Taiwan is loaded with an ambivalent attitude towards the Chinese state as well as concept of cultural China while drawing on exclusively localized experiences. This first scholarly monograph focusing on the literary and cultural geography of Taiwan through a Sinophone lens is therefore a step toward filling the gap. While reexamining the cultural and political complexities of Sinophone Taiwan, this book also recognizes the narrative of the strange as a widely adopted artistic form in highlighting Sinophone practices and experiences separated from the China-centric ideology. The study argues that the narratives of the strange in Sinophone Taiwan cross the boundaries between the living and the dead as well as the past and the present, in response to a pastiche of phantasm, Chinese diaspora, gender discourse, and transnational politics. With detailed analysis, this book brings into focus the notion of zhiguai historiography in an attempt to shed light on the Sinophone narratives of the strange and to demonstrate how the topic can help illuminate the social and political implications of literary texts beyond contemporary China. By analyzing the literary tropes of strangeness, this research deals with the critical issues of the cultural exchange between China, Taiwan, and Sinophone Malaysia. The book explores the idea of the strange narrative as a fluid, border-crossing phenomenon that is impossible to ignore in Chinese ethnic writing. In this light, the narrative of the strange refers to the storytelling wedded to the motifs of ghost haunting and/or the figurative manifestation of anomalies. In recounting diverse cultural spectacles of the strange, this book builds on such topics as the ghostly Chineseness, lingering aboriginal spirits, and eccentric identities with respect to ethnic and sexual complexities. Therefore, narratives of the strange are examined from three interrelated perspectives in this book. First, spectral and monstrous appearances can be associated either with a nostalgic attachment to the past or with an emotional resistance against historical traumas. Second, the scope of the strange can be expanded to bring into play the figuration of the ghostly/monstrous together with the magical representation of uncanniness, wonder, and fantasy. Third, strange figures can be posited as the invisible, marginalized subjects like sexual and ethnic minorities within a dominant social framework. Intriguingly, the equation can also be inverted by creative writers to make strange figures voiced and visible in a political light. Collectively, the scope of the strange includes the hauntology, the ghostly, the monstrous, the uncanny, the magical, and the fantastic. Supernatural Sinophone Taiwan and Beyond will be of interest to scholars and students in Asian studies, particularly Sinophone studies as well as Chinese literature and culture.

South Africa held its first democratic elections in 1994, after about 350 years of minority governments. Nelson Mandela became the first President of a democratic or post-apartheid South Africa. The successive administrations since 1994 have pursued many programs, policies, legislative instruments and other initiatives to correct the imbalances that the apartheid system created. In particular, the focus, since 1994, has been on social and economic inclusion. Inclusive development is important for any democratic government emerging out of the past that was undemocratic and discriminatory. Redress becomes a hallmark of all that a democratic government pursues. The early years of a democratic or post-apartheid South Africa focused on national reconciliation. The second President, Thabo Mbeki, focused more on the economy a project he started when he was the first Deputy President in the Mandela administration. The third President of the democratic South Africa, Jacob Zuma, has continued with the project towards an inclusive society. In about twenty years since the dawn of democracy in South Africa the debates about the performance of the society under the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) has gained momentum. The ANC came up with many discussion documents aimed at informing policy and or ideological orientation of the state. In its national Congresses and General Councils meetings as well as in Makgotla, the ANC discusses and develops policies and frameworks which are to influence the work of the government. The analysis of the policies pursued since 1994, especially as far as inclusive development is concerned, is critical and it is the main preoccupation of this book. In addition, the book also examines the effects and implications of the policies implemented since 1994, in the context of whether South Africa is becoming or not becoming a society that was envisaged by the liberation project; an inclusive and prosperous nation. South Africa is a complex society in many respects. Many of intractable dilemmas confronting South Africa are a result of the legacy of apartheid. Apartheid created a skewed distribution of resources and opportunities. It is therefore not surprising that many challenges that the successive democratic administrations have had to deal with are structural; the structure of the economy make it more challenging to reduce poverty and inequality as well as to create jobs for the majority of South Africans. The book analyses the ramifications of the apartheid system examining the totality of apartheid colonialism in relation to the post-apartheid development experience within the context of the global distribution of power. The fundamental challenge that constrains South Africa s ability to further achieve inclusive growth and development relates to policy. Therefore, economic policy has to address the challenges of unemployment and poverty, as well as reducing inequality. Social policy has to be robust. Labor market policies should be ameliorated. More importantly, social and economic policies have to work together for socioeconomic development. To achieve this, South Africa needs a new consensus on the ideal framework or approach to its socioeconomic development. Over and above policy and or policy reforms, implementation should be improved. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, South Africa needs to reconfigure state-capital relations. Lastly, it should be more meaningful and relevant in the context of democratic South Africa to see a nation as a community that acknowledges and respects its repulsive political and economic history of deprivation through systematic restitution, reconciliation, and restructuring measures, and, more importantly, equitable sharing of resources. This is an important book for collections in African studies and international politics.

Chinese avant-garde fiction undoubtedly represents a summit in contemporary Chinese literature. Given the remarkable achievement of the genre and its revolutionary and profound impact on Chinese literature, it has attracted much attention from the English-speaking academic world. The existent scholarship on this subject, however, has some gaps which need to be filled. There are few book-length studies which provide a concentrated and in-depth analysis of Chinese avant-garde fiction as a literary genre; most studies tend to treat Chinese avant-garde fiction as a component of some grand cultural trends in the contemporary Chinese intellectual world. Such a sweeping historical approach overlooks the aesthetic and epistemological values of the fiction, preventing the researchers from investigating the thematic complexity and diversity and the artistic originality and appeal of the fiction. This book examines the works of three leading writers Su Tong, Yu Hua, and Ge Fei and their significant contributions to the genre; this is the first in-depth, comparative study on these writers. This book examines how Su Tong, Yu Hua, and Ge Fei manipulate dark moods and what Karl Jaspers termed limit-situations such as death and suffering, along with other motifs, to pursue both historicity and transcendent truth in their fiction. Setting the fiction against the backdrop of long history of Chinese culture and the development of modern Chinese literature, the book also explores the changing intellectual and literary landscape and the changing paradigms of literature in modern China. This study illuminates the patterns of history presented in the fiction of the three Chinese avant-garde writers as well as their respective views of history. The book also investigates another prominent theme in Chinese avant-garde fiction: the philosophical meditation on the human condition, human nature, and other metaphysical issues. This study also grapples with the mechanisms and devices adopted by these avant-garde writers to defamiliarize the Chineseness of their fiction. In so doing, the book attempts to answer the questions of why and how the reprise of traditional Chinese conventions and themes can be regarded as avant-garde in the Chinese context. The book also sheds light on each writer's aesthetics and the aesthetics of Chinese avant-garde fiction as a genre. Unlike most previous research on Chinese avant-garde fiction, the study focuses on the Chineseness of the fiction or its intertextuality with Chinese conventions and texts. This unique study will be a welcome addition to scholars of Chinese literature and cultural studies.

This is the first detailed study of federalism in Kenya during the 1940s and 1950s that provides important grounding and background for the understanding of the later emergence of majimbo in the independence era (1961-1963) and later.

More than two decades ago, Christos Tsiolkas s his first novel Loaded was published and he had achieved a cult following in the short-lived grunge fiction scene of Australian writing. The novel was quickly adapted as the film Head On (1998), directed by Ana Kokkinos, and starring popular young Greek actor, Alex Dimitriades; like the novel, it was well-received by critics, if not by mainstream literary and cinematic culture. For the next few years, Tsiolkas worked on Jump Cuts, an experimental collaborative autobiography, with Sasha Soldatow (1996), as well as a number of theatre productions Who s Afraid of the Working Class? (1999, co-written with Andrew Bovell, Melissa Reeves and Patricia Cornelius, and adapted to film as Blessed, also directed by Kokkinos [2009]), Thug (1998, written with Spiro Economopolous), and Elektra AD (1999) but when The Jesus Man (1999) was published, its violent depiction of depression and suicide received critical attention as offensive and unnecessary. Partly because of the reception of The Jesus Man, and partly because of the density of its subject matter, his next novel, Dead Europe (2005) took six years to write. In the interim, he published a critical study of the film The Devil s Playground (2002), and several more plays and screenplays: Viewing Blue Poles (2000), Saturn s Return (2000), Fever (2002, co-written with Bovell, Reeves and Cornelius), Dead Caucasians (2002), Non Parlo di Salo (2005, written with Economopoulous), and The Hit (2006, written with Netta Yashin). Dead Europe was a triumphant return: it won the Age Book of the Year and the Melbourne Best Writing Award in 2006. But it was the extraordinary critical and commercial success of The Slap (2008) which entirely changed Tsiolkas s personal and professional circumstances. It was the fourth-highest selling book by an Australian author in 2009, won the ALS Gold Medal, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was Book of the Year for both the Australian Booksellers Association and the Australian Book Industry Award. The Slap was also adapted as a popular television series for the ABC in 2011, and for NBC in the United States in 2015. For the first time in his career, Tsiolkas was able to dedicate himself to writing full-time, but the attention paid to the novel also meant that Tsiolkas was now a household name no longer a cult writer, his opinions are now courted and offered in popular and political publications. Barracuda (2013) follows the social realism of The Slap, and sold similarly well, riding on the back of its extraordinary predecessor. Merciless Gods (2014), a collection of short stories, some new, some previously published, is only recently being taken up by popular critics. Tsiolkas s work has become increasingly popular and appealing to readers outside of the academy. Tsiolkas s works adopt a Modernist attitude to the concept of a utopia a negative politics which simultaneously draws attention to the insufficiency of the present, a pastoral nostalgia for the past, and a longing for the impossible future to come. This first in-depth study of his entire corpus provides an understanding of Tsiolkas s position in relation to Modernism, thereby drawing out his points about character, setting and politics, thereby helping us to think about what place his ideas about the individual and the community might have in our reading of contemporary Australia and contemporary world literature.

This study examines the earlier writings of celebrated Australian writer David Malouf, who was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award, and the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. This book investigates his earlier writings to uncover what the terms poetic , poetic imagination and inner and outer ways imply for his development as a writer. Making use of some of his correspondence, diaries, and drafts of work-in-progress, Yvonne Smith takes into fuller account the way his works relate to each other and to the circumstances in which they were written. By investigating what poetic imagination might mean across the first decades when he was finding his way into a writer s vocation, this sturdy reaps fresh insights into the nature of David Malouf's creativity its tensions, struggles and moments of breakthrough, as well as its potential limitations. Finding what he could not do (or did not want to do) shapes strongly what he wants to achieve by the mid 1980s when his published works are becoming better known. Such considerations are touched on in earlier studies, yet have been sidelined by more recent criticism informed by postcolonial perspectives, debates about myths of origins and other Australian nation-based agendas. That Malouf has played a part, not only as a writer but as a public intellectual, in what Brigid Rooney terms his consistent cultivation of nation adds to this trajectory in his literary career. However, there has been less attention to Malouf s development as a writer its transnational dimensions, for instance, as he finds his vocation through hybrid family cultures and living for many years between Australia and Europe. It is helpful that discussion is increasingly balanced by broader views of what Australian literature might encompass, of global connections in worlds within national narratives, together with consideration of notions of world literature and a fluid transnation that exceeds boundaries of the state.

Christina Stead (1902 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterizations. Stead enjoyed an international reputation in the 1930s and beyond, then went out of favor as a communist-affiliated writer, until she was rediscovered by feminist critics. Her standing is considerable, and in Australia she vies with Patrick White for the laurel of finest Australian novelist. In this book, author Michael Ackland argues that the single most important influence on Stead s life, socialism, has been seriously neglected in studies of her life and work. Ackland delves into Stead s political formation prior to her departure for London in 1928, arguing that considerable insights can be added to the known record by reviewing these years within a specifically political context, as well as by interrogating Stead s own accounts of key persons and events. He examines her novels, from Seven Poor Men of Sydney to I m Dying Laughing and The Man Who Loved Children, and focuses on Stead s conception of history, of capitalist finance, and on the significance of the key historical moments that frame her works. In tracing the trajectory of her work, Ackland illuminates how Stead was, as a well-informed Marxist critic underscored, a product of thirties. Steeped in socialist literature and steeled to withstand ideological adversity, Stead emerged at the end of the decade a strongly committed novelist, whose intellectual idealism and convictions could, as coming decades would show, long withstand privation, heartbreaks and the unwelcome lessons of history. This is an important book for collections in Australian literature, comparative literature, world literature, and women's studies.

This first book-length study on the relationship of the plays by Terrence McNally, one of America's celebrated major dramatists and award-winning playwright about gay life in New York City, to the history of gay theatre during McNally's career, which has spanned more than half a century. The book written by theatre expert John Clum examines McNally's work from the political movements of the 1960s and the history of gay men in New York during the early years of gay liberation, the age of AIDS, and the new reality of gay marriage and families. "This is an original contribution to the field. No scholar has contextualized McNally quite this way. The book impresses with its analytical rigorous yet readable style." -Matthew Roudané, Regents Professor of American Drama, Georgia State University "This is a thorough study of Terrence McNally. The context of gay theatre, gay New York, and gay history is masterfully incorporated, making this book valuable at multiple levels-literary to biographical to historical." -William W. Demastes, Alumni Professor of English, Louisiana State University

This book takes original and unique approaches to explore a body of Portuguese-language cultural production from four different continents. It examines important aspect of the different Lusophone communities and situates Portuguese-language cultural production within a globalized and postcolonial context.

" Documenting gay Cuban-American activist Pedro Zamora's appearances onscreen, in person, and in print, Pedro Zamora, Sexuality and AIDS Education reflects on the power of mediated autobiography and testifies to the ongoing importance of working together to combat HIV/AIDS and injustice. Informed by the assessments of 1980s and 1990s AIDs activism offered by Alex Juhasz, José Esteban Muñoz, Simon Watney, Roger Hallas, Randy Shilts, Paul Monette, Marlon Riggs, and others, Pullen's study details how the good-looking Zamora became a skilled educator who excelled at reaching out to youth, especially queer youth, and people of color. Diagnosed as HIV-positive at the age of 17, Zamora learned how to be charismatically convincing, conjoining vulnerability, transparency, sincerity, warmth, and strength. His articulately 'out' role on MTV's 1994 reality show, The Real World: San Francisco, was a highlight; sadly, he died that same year, aged only 22. Kudos to Pullen for so eloquently marshaling Pedro Zamora's life, work, and love, for the present, toward the future." -Chris Holmlund, Arts and Sciences Excellence Professor of Cinema Studies, Women's Studies and French, University of Tennessee; and author of Impossible Bodies "Christopher Pullen gives Pedro Zamora's extraordinary life compelling form in this illuminating account. He urges to rethink our notions of self and identity. Our lives depend on them, and this book makes clear how very true that is." -Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary More information on the book can be found at http: //www.cambriapress.com/books/9781604979237.cfm. This book is in the Cambria Global Performing Arts Series headed by John M. Clum (Duke University).

This book develops new theory for superior strategy in complex warfare. The approach is comprehensive and practical, and it is applied to three contemporary security crises involving the United States, China, the Koreas, and Japan. Beginning with existing theories on strategy and culture, a new interpretation of "combined effects strategy" is introduced based on research and years of experience. Drawing from security theory and military doctrine, combined effects strategy is presented as a comprehensive process that subsumes the prevailing paradigm of combined arms. The entire book is written using the language of combined effects theory developed in the first chapter. Extensive use of symbols, text boxes, and charts orients the reader on combined effects in the three cases that follow. Unlike previous works, this study considers security culture as a way to understand warfare conceived and waged broadly: patterns of confrontation and cooperation, threat perception and assessment, and strategic effectiveness. Also for the first time, contemporary crises detail the interaction of strategies operating as lines of effect which when combined, create powerful synergies. A summary analysis of each case develops implications for future strategy. The concluding chapter is unique in its discussion of the influence of security culture on operational concepts, when lines of effect combine, and how security culture informs combined effects strategy, particularly for the United States. This is an important book for students, faculty, policy makers and practitioners with interests in strategy, global and US national security, defense policy, Asian regional security, Asian studies, military culture, military effectiveness, the future of warfare, and foreign policy. This book is in the Rapid Communications in Conflict and Security (RCCS) Series (General Editor: Geoffrey R.H. Burn).

Security Forces in African States: Cases and Assessment is an important, much-needed resource that helps redefine how African governments can improve the governance and capacity of their security institutions. The book is intended for students, scholars, and practitioners-both Western and African.

The Cambria Press Essential Books in Literature is a catalog compiled for the MLA 2017 Annual Convention. The catalog highlights forthcoming titles as well as books with outstanding reviews.

Plato (ca. 427 ca. 347 BCE), the preeminent Greek philosopher, has been extensively studied. A major field of Plato s comprehensive work is his political philosophy, which is multifaceted and multidimensional. The discourse on gender issues forms an integral part of it. In this context, one is surprised to notice that Plato s elaborations have been interpreted in quite contrasting ways. In some feminist discussions of classical philosophy, Plato s intellectual enterprise is evaluated as reflecting Greek male chauvinism. Such identification carries all manner of stereotyping, and this is neither enlightening nor helpful for an overall understanding of Plato s teachings and his world of ideas. In the scholarly literature, one can make the surprising discovery that Plato s contribution to the understanding of gender roles in society slips the attention of authors who specialize in this topic. Plato was neither feminist in the modern sense nor a sexist. Plato was not a liberal thinker, and he did not take the initiative to make a case for women s liberties. And yet, he elaborates amply on issues of what is subsumed under women s liberation in our time: What else would we call a philosopher who, under the conditions of Greek society in the classical age, advocated for the participation of women in sports competitions and approved of the access of women to public offices, even to political leadership? In this study, priority lies in reconstructing Plato s ideas on women s roles viewed against the zeitgeist of gender issues in Greek society of classical antiquity. The analysis shows that Plato s speculations about gender and gender issues in an ideal society were nothing short of revolutionary. What has been produced up to the present regarding Plato's positions on the agenda of gender are disparate studies whose scope falls short of the whole range of angles from which Plato himself approached the issues, and the study of gender issues in Plato has remained unsystematic so far. In this book Plato on Women, Harald Haarmann provides the first systematic analysis of Plato's positions on gender and the role of women in an ideal society. The intention is to achieve a balance in the investigation of Plato's dialogues and to fill gaps by highlighting those texts that have remained understudied, Plato's last dialogue Nomoi ("e;Laws"e;) in particular. This text, the longest of Plato's dialogues, is now considered, together with the Politeia ("e;Republic"e;), to range among the most important sources of Plato's political theory. The introduction of the Laws, which make up about one fifth of Plato's work, into the comparative study of Plato's philosophical enterprise does not only contribute to an enrichment of the whole text corpus but also provides the possibility to broaden the perspective on particular topics, women's roles in society, for one. The ways in which Plato elaborates on women's roles illustrates that, in light of his concept of true justice, gender issues become detached from the contemporary clich of "e;natural law"e; by which women's status in society was allegedly determined. In this book, a new approach to Plato's philosophical endeavor is presented, one which calls upon an internal reconstruction of historical realities and of cultural conditions during Plato's lifetime, and of its zeitgeist, at the same time avoiding judgmental stereotyping and the forceful projection of modern biased positions into antiquity. Here, Plato's mature reflections on gender equality in an ideal society are contrasted with the real mirror image of women's role in Greek society of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. The present reconstruction is intended as a contribution, on the one hand, to identify the cultural embedding of Plato's enterprise and, on the other hand, to specify the typical markers of Platonic philosophy. Readers may discover a "e;new"e; Plato. Plato on Women is a major contribution to political philosophy and gender studies as well as an important book for collections of Plato's works and scholarly literature focusing on this philosopher.

"This is an authoritative book on a critical aspect of Malcolm X's courageous political work and thought. Connecting the struggle of Africans and African Americans for liberation to the geopolitics of the Cold War in Africa, this impressive book documents Malcolm X's passionate commitment to Pan-Africanism and black internationalism during the turbulent age of decolonization. To bring this important story to life, the authors' masterfully integrate the scholarship on the US Black freedom struggle and Africa's anticolonial nationalism. Impressive in depth and breadth, the book is lucid and analytical-a powerful testament to Malcolm X's legacy to African and African American liberation." -Olufemi Vaughan, Geoffrey Canada Professor of Africana Studies & History, Bowdoin College In the current context of the Black Lives Matter movement, this book which examines the seminal contributions of Malcolm X and his explorations of his African roots could not be timelier. The book details the significant impact of Malcolm X's legacy on Africana thought in the context of the US Black freedom movement and anticolonial nationalism in Africa in the age of decolonization. Through Malcolm X's spirited commitment to Black internationalism during these turbulent moments in world history, this book integrates the story of the US Black freedom movement with the struggle for self-determination in Africa. See www.cambriapress.com/books/9781604979244.cfm for more information. This book is in the Cambria African Studies Series (General Editor: Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin; and Associate Editor: Moses Ochonu, Vanderbilt University).

Hou Hsiao-hsien is one of the most beloved auteur film directors active today. His films are among the most important to have been produced worldwide in the past thirty years. His work has garnered more than a dozen awards, including prizes at The Venice Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, and the Cannes Film Festival. Critics lavish praise on Hou s films, which have won over a dozen major awards worldwide. His breakout film A Time to Live, A Time to Die earned the Fipresci Award at Berlin in 1986 as well as the Special Jury Prize at Torino. Hou won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1989 for A City of Sadness, the first bold public expression of the 1947 February 28th Massacre in Taiwan. His uniquely crafted biopic The Puppetmasterreceived the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1993. He has garnered various additional honors at film festivals in Nantes, Locarno, Rotterdam, Singapore, and elsewhere. Hou s oeuvre has attracted the attention of a wide range of critics, scholars, and film aficionados. His work is technically pioneering, particularly for its signature approach to realism. His subtle interrogation of the aesthetics of Hollywood places him in a category with such greats as Satayajit Ray, Kitano Takeshi, Wong Kar-wai, Abbas Kiarostami, and Werner Herzog. His ability to capture and visualize such elusive phenomena as feelings of malaise, ambivalence and aimlessness in a world in which teleology is the only tolerable cultural logic, his elevation of the insignificant minutiae of daily life to objects of aesthetic sublime, his interrogation of cultural cohesion through the use of multiple languages and symbolic valences compels the serious student of cinema to study his work carefully. Christopher Lupke s book is a comprehensive treatment of Hou Hsiao-hsien s entire oeuvre, including The Assassin. Lupke was able to visit the set of The Assassin and includes rare photos of Hou on his film set. In addition to a detailed filmography and a substantial bibliography, the book also several interviews of Hou Hsiao-hsien that Lupke has translated into English. This book is a must read for all interested in global cinema today. It also provides important information for those interested in the society and politics of postwar Taiwan and Sinophone culture in general. It will appeal to readers concerned with issues such as the representation of ethnicity, gender, political repression, and the tensions between cities and the countryside. Anyone who wishes to understand radical innovation in contemporary world cinema must come to terms with the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien. Read excerpts from the book Author Interview with Christopher Lupke

The goal of The BRC Academy Journal of Education is to publish new theoretical models and metrics in business education. Theoretical and empirical studies are encouraged especially when they illustrate innovative perspectives in educational paradigms. Hence, the primary focus is superior scholarship by highly qualified scholarly academics. The journal is independently owned and published by the Cambria Institute (www.cambriainstitute.com). The Cambria Institute is a division of Cambria Press, a leading publisher of academic research. Submissions undergo double-blind peer review. Accepted articles are indexed through CrossRef, Google Scholar, and other sources and assigned DOIs.

The Business Research Consortium (BRC) of Western New York was founded in 2006. The BRC hosts an annual conference and publishes the proceedings of this conference.This volume represents proceedings of the 2014 annual conference. The BRC also hosts a working papers series to encourage collaboration in research across member colleges and schools of business. For more information on the BRC, please visit its website at http://www.businessresearchconsortium.org

The goal of The BRC Academy Journal of Business is to publish new theoretical models, empirical methods, and findings in business. The focus is on excellent scholarship by qualified scholarly academics. The journal is independently owned and published by the Cambria Institute (www.cambriainstitute.com). The Cambria Institute is a division of Cambria Press, a leading publisher of academic research. Submissions undergo double-blind peer review. Accepted articles are indexed through CrossRef, Google Scholar, and other sources and assigned DOIs.

Includes 159 color images. Baodingshan consists of a monastic complex and two rock-carved areas, Little Buddha Bend and Great Buddha Bend, located in Dazu in western China and dates from the Southern Song period. The complex is fundamentally different from earlier Buddhist rock-carved sites in China in its construction and layout. Foregoing traditional niche-based iconography for large, deeply cut reliefs reaching dimensions as great as eight meters high by twenty meters wide, within Baodingshan's Great Buddha Bend, the carved works flow from one tableau into another. The site contains both texts and images related to the main schools of Buddhist thought. This book presents an integrated analysis of all of the components of Great Buddha Bend within the greater Baodingshan site, something that was lacking in earlier studies. Written to provide guidance to the site for a wide spectrum of readers-specialists and non-specialists alike-it provides a clear explanation of the major iconographic features of the imagery as well as translations of the numerous accompanying carved Buddhist texts. It also presents the basic tenets of Pure Land, Chan [Zen], Huayan and Esoteric Buddhism in order to explain the features of these sects as seen represented in visual as well as textual form at the site. Lastly, with its focus on ritual use and audience reception from the 12th to the 21st century, this study provides a new model for the discussion and evaluation of other religious sites as entities that organically evolve over time. This study also includes new translations of both the inscribed Buddhist texts and secular inscriptions carved at the site dating from the twelfth through the twenty-first centuries-inscriptions left by educated elite, soldiers, and government officials, highlighting regional issues related to continuity and change made visible at Baodingshan.

"This book provides a wide-ranging display of the ways in which 'cosmopolitanism' has meaning in China, c. 1600-c. 1900 and how these possibilities were reduced subsequently. Significantly, the volume shows the meanings of cosmopolitanism for different kinds of people in Qing China, including Manchus, Muslims, Koreans (in relation to the Qing, if not in the Qing). It further explicates the multiple framings within which different modalities of cosmopolitanism were achieved, including Buddhist and Confucian. It also shows cosmopolitanism not merely as a feature of thought, but suggests implications of such approaches in matters of governance. Creating multiple challenges to conventional views of early modern and modern China, this important book offers opportunities to craft a more sensible and persuasive understanding of how China's early modern regional world became part of a late twentieth-century Inner Asian and East Asian world region." -R. BIN WONG, Distinguished Professor of History, UCLA; and Director, UCLA Asia Institute "By exploring the historical links between Confucian cosmology, imperial ideology, political identities and interests, Cosmopolitanism in China changes the terms of understanding cosmopolitanism. It throws into relief the special character of cosmopolitanisms in Europe, South Asia and other parts of the world and thus begins the task of building a true cosmopolitanism for the planet." -PRASENJIT DUARA, Oscar Tang Professor of East Asian Studies, Duke University For more information, see http: //www.cambriapress.com/books/9781604979008.cfm This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series, headed by Victor Mair (University of Pennsylvania).

Thea Astley (1925-2004) was one of the outstanding Australian fiction writers of the 20th century. Four of her novels, including her last, Drylands (1999), won the prestigious Miles Franklin prize, and she was awarded numerous literary and civic honors during her lifetime. The distinctive appeal of her work comes from its unique sense of place, in tropical Queensland and the South Pacific, and from the mordant irony of her gaze on Australian society and her fiercely compassionate portrayal of social outsiders. Place and people reflect one another as Astley deals in climatic extremes both geographical and emotional: living on the edge of the cyclone , her people face the threat of personal annihilation with the frail weapons of irony, satire or anarchic humor. Despite the deeply Australian objects of her satire, Astley s innovative fictions have attracted critical attention beyond national boundaries, and her later work, especially, struck a chord with readers in North America. Astley felt strong affinities with a number of American writers, especially practitioners of shorter fiction like Hemingway, McCullers and Carver. Her work suggests comparison with that of William Faulkner, for the way it always inhabits the same imagined location. Place, and the parish of people who inhabit a particular place, are Astley s persistent subjects. Her landscapes, whether the luxuriant coast or the dry inland, become metaphors of the human failings that preoccupy her; and, as she deepened her interest in the history of these locations, Astley imbued her landscapes with a necessary political dimension. Astley s fiction challenged the realist tradition that had dominated Australian writing in the first half of the twentieth century. In the postwar literary world where she began to publish she was readily accorded a place among the Australian mid-century modernists like Randolph Stow and Patrick White, who was an admired early mentor. She was the only woman novelist of her generation to have won early success and published consistently throughout the 1960s and 1970s, when the literary world was heavily male dominated. As a fiction writer she had few female contemporaries until the 1980s, when second wave feminism began to have a significant impact. Astley s choice of focal characters, and the objects of her satire, changed to reflect that impact. Always a writer who avoided solemnity and undercut her characters claims to heroism of any kind, she reveled in the new-found capacity to mock male pretension and assert female rebellion. This study of Astley s fiction explores her representation of place and power relations, and the innovative work of historicizing place. It also examines how her works reveal her fascination with outsiders, misfits, and failures, as well as her skepticism about heroes. The book also examines how Astley's works delve into decolonization and bring a multilayered postcolonial perspective on colonial race relations. The book takes the reader all the way to the latter part of Astley's writing career, which amply demonstrates her capacity to bring together a critical exploration of patriarchal power relations and a postcolonial perspective on race relations, as well as her satire on the worship of unbridled development which dominated Australian economic and social life during this period.

-This translation is based on the 1953 Albert Bonniers Feorlag edition edited by Johannes Edfelt- -- Translators' preface.

Tradition and modernity as they relate to African and diasporic cultures do not exist within a vacuum. They reflect the constantly changing relations and factors that define daily life in Africa and beyond. For example, one cannot consider Congolese fabric in the mid-twentieth century without thinking about the immense impact of the Second World War on ideas about French colonialism and trade relations within the French empire. African cultures are immensely significant in the larger histories and microhistories of Africa and the African diaspora because they often reflect the important nuances of race, class, and gender and how these factors intersect with politics and society on local, regional, national, and global levels. This book thus examines the important connections between African cultures and social and political movements in the African diaspora--from Brazil to the United States.

When Gao Xingjian was proclaimed Nobel Laureate of Literature in 2000, it drew attention to his significant body of literary works that included a collection of short stories, titled Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather (1989), two autobiographical novels titled Soul Mountain (1990) and One Man s Bible (1999), as well as seventeen plays, three of which when performed in Beijing in the early 1980s, had turned him into an instant celebrity, not just in China, but internationally. His plays Absolute Signal (1982), Bus Stop (1983), and Wild Man (1986) were well known in the English- speaking world soon after their publication in Chinese. However, when his next play, The Other Shore (1986), was banned after a few rehearsals, he relocated to Paris in 1987. His play Escape (1990) about the 4 June 1989 military crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square, resulted in a virtual ban on his writings, which could no longer be published, sold, or performed in the People s Republic of China. This meant that both the author and his works had been airbrushed out of existence, and that Gao Xingjian research would find it impossible to take root in China. Gifted with extraordinary artistic sensibilities and boundless curiosity, Gao was born in Republican China in 1940 into a cosmopolitan family environment and established precocious reading habits from an early age. His formal education began after the establishment of the People s Republic of China in 1949, and he subsequently enrolled in a five-year French course at the Foreign Languages Institute in Beijing (1957 1962), where he read widely on modern and contemporary French authors, European writings in French translation, and also in premodern Chinese writings. Such writings were all banned beyond the walls of the Institute library, and Gao s prolific reading would inform what he began to write in secret for his personal enjoyment, because what he wrote clearly failed to conform with the national guidelines for cultural production. Mao Zedong s experiment in social engineering during the Cultural Revolution (1966 1976) meant the negation of the individual and the extolling of mass ideology. Gao survived by writing in secret to remind himself that he had a conscious thinking self. Years later he distinguished himself in China and the rest of the world for his innovative fiction, plays, theatre, and Chinese ink paintings. Since Gao Xingjian s Nobel win in 2000 he has demonstrated his profound erudition across cultures in his creative explorations in literature and the visual arts. His intense intellectual curiosity can seldom be matched by his contemporaries, and his creative achievements in literature, the dramatic arts, painting, and film have been extraordinary, and have been reflected in his aesthetic treatises on art and literature. English-language publications have been in the forefront of Gao Xingjian research since the 1980s, and this book fills a Gao Xingjian research hiatus simply because it is hard to keep abreast of his stridently innovative creations. This volume brings readers up to date on Gao Xingjian, who is probably in this age of uncertainties, one of the foremost aesthetes in literature and the visual arts. Gao Xingjian and Transmedia Aesthetics demonstrates the extensive reach of Gao Xingjian s transcultural, transdisciplinary and transmedia explorations. Showcased here is the panoramic aesthetics of a polymath who has successfully personified modern-time renaissance by projecting the struggles of the individual s inner landscape into vivid images on stage, film, black-and-white paintings, and in the multilayered narrative expressions of fiction and poetry, even dance and music, to evoke a sense of sincerity and authenticity that penetrates a viewer/reader s heart. The volume is divided into four parts: philosophical inquiry; transdiscipline, transgenre, transculture; cine-poems with paintings, dance and music; and identifying and defining the self. The chapters probe different aspects of Gao Xingjian s work, bearing testimony to their diverse specializations. This book will appeal to Chinese literature scholars, undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers with an interest in the broad subjects of contemporary Chinese literature, high arts, avant-garde culture, women s and gender studies, Sinophone film and transmedia culture, comparative literature, and cultural studies.

Wen Yuan-ning (1900 1984) was both an insider and an outsider on the politics of celebrity in modern China. Born into a Hakka family in the Dutch East Indies, he studied law at Cambridge University before moving to China to embark on a remarkably varied career. He taught English literature at China s top universities, including Peking and Tsinghua, contributed to leading English-language periodicals such as The China Critic and T ien Hsia Monthly, served in China s legislature in Nanking, worked as a wartime propagandist in Hong Kong, and eventually was appointed as China s ambassador to Greece. During the heady days of Anglophone publishing in 1930s China, Wen Yuan-ning edited for The China Critic a series of Unedited Biographies (later Intimate Portraits ) of famous contemporary Chinese personages. Wen and his collaborators some of whom wrote anonymously offered readers mischievous and idiosyncratic accounts of the careers and personalities of the people in the news. These celebrity sketches proved both controversial and popular, with several of them immediately being translated into Chinese. A selection of seventeen of Wen s own contributions to The China Critic series was published to acclaim in 1935 as the book Imperfect Understanding. Yet Wen and his contributions to Chinese literary culture disappeared from the historical record after the founding of the People s Republic, likely because Wen wrote in English and had close ties to the Chinese Nationalist Party. What did it mean to be a celebrity in 1930s China? Who were Republican China s preeminent intellectuals, writers, artists, politicians, diplomats, and businesspeople, and how were they represented in the popular press? This anthology brings together fifty rediscovered essays, written in English in 1934, which offer fascinating, close-up profiles of a constellation of celebrities. From the warlord Han Fuju to the Peking Opera star Mei Lanfang to the intellectual leader Hu Shi to the novelist Lao She to ambassador Wellington Koo to the Singaporean Chinese entrepreneur Lim Boon Keng to the deposed Qing Emperor Puyi, the series presents a panorama of Chinese elites. Imperfect Understanding constitutes a significant archival discovery, a unique artifact of the pre-war heyday of Anglophone literary culture in China. Imperfect Understanding: Intimate Portraits of Chinese Celebrities is both an entertaining work of literature, by turns comedic and touching, and an important historical document. Its sketches represent influential Chinese historical figures, warts and all, in the eyes of contemporary observers seeking to provide readers an alternative to the autobiographical puffery of popular books like Who s Who in China. Christopher Rea s introduction offers new research on the forgotten literary figure Wen Yuan-ning and argues that one of the essays published under his name was written anonymously by a young man who went on to become one of modern China s literary giants: Qian Zhongshu. This edition of Imperfect Understanding also includes multiple reviews of Wen s book, brief biographies of the subjects of the Critic series, and a bibliography of further writings by and on Wen Yuan-ning.