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The figure of the «Muslim» woman or girl performs a crucial role in far-reaching socio-political debates in Germany. Indeed, such figures challenge the boundaries of gender equality and secularism and contest notions of tolerance and integration. The (in)visibility of Muslim women¿s bodies and their apparent position in Islam function as ostensible indicators of their oppression and of Islam¿s supposed incompatibility with western values.This book investigates representations of «Muslim» women and girls in German popular culture from 1990 to 2015. The study analyses the discursive function of such figures in German popular culture via three key research questions: what representational practices surround the figure of the Muslim woman or girl in German life writing, young adult literature and film? How do such representations function to produce «non-Muslim» subject positions? What is the function of this figure within narratives of feminism and assertions of gender equality? This study understands itself as an intervention into contemporary racist discourses in Germany and operates within a transdisciplinary framework of intersectional feminism and cultural and German studies. Ultimately, the book aims to make visible and interrogatethe underlying hierarchies and agendas that drive representations of Muslim women and girls.This book was the winner of the of the 2017 Early Career Researcher Prize in German Studies, a collaboration between the Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham and Peter Lang.

This volume explores and challenges the extensive possible meanings and semantic connotations of the stain, including dirt, blood, dye, clue, symptom, shadow, smudge, memory, crack, trace and blindspot. The roles, functions, workings and unworkings of stains are interrogated across a range of disciplinary areas in French and Francophone literature and culture. The collection provides a theoretical framework for the significance of the stain in interpretation across a wide range of disciplines as well as offering close readings of films, photographs, paintings and literary texts in which the figure of the stain appears. In this respect, the following key notions are addressed and reconfigured: presence and absence, obscurity, visibility and legibility, form(lessness) and (non)representation, the (non)human and the animal, language and materiality, experience and knowledge, suffering and healing, remembering and forgetting. In parallel, the collection offers innovative readings of the work of key thinkers, examining how Barthes, Proust, Bataille, Camus and others engage with the topic of stains. This volume presents the stain as a powerful critical tool which complicates and contaminates historical, ethical, aesthetic and methodological boundaries. The essays celebrate the productive potential of the stain as an oblique means of accessing and uncovering significant and unexpected continuities and discontinuities.

The concept for this book materialised as a result of some brilliant research by University of Buckingham MA Archaeology students in 2014-15. Each examined a feature of the Stonehenge landscape from a different space and time perspective and produced work which contained a key focus on a neglected aspect of the multiple history of the area. Their dissertations have been edited into chapters and the broad scope of the collection covers people using, building and reshaping this landscape from the end of the Ice Age to the end of the Romano-British period. In doing so new detail about the richness and variety of ways generations of ordinary people understood the place is revealed.The discovery of the internationally important Mesolithic site at Blick Mead by the University of Buckingham team, with specialist support from Durham and Reading Universities, the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project and the Natural History Museum, provides a rich data set for students interested in the Mesolithic in general and the establishment of the Stonehenge landscape in particular.

In the first half of the twentieth century, artists, intellectuals, writers, thinkers and patrons in Europe and the United States created a large number of artistic communities, circles, groups and movements with the aim of providing alternatives to the increasingly conflictual political and intellectual climate; the works and artistic practices of many of these groups were marked by an ethos of collaboration, based on a collective understanding of artistic production, and on the nurturing and exercise of sociability and conviviality. Collaboration, sociability, friendship and collective artistic efforts represented the utopian aspects of the radical experiments carried out by avant-garde and modernist artists; they were also the counterparts of the period¿s obsession with the notion of genius and the cult of the artist. This book offers studies of under-researched (and often consciously provincial) avant-garde and modernist groups and authors. Their progressive aims are here read as particular forms of utopia based on the ethics and aesthetics of community. The essays in this volume analyse the significance (and failures) of literary coteries as spaces of aesthetic and political freedom. They explore the internationalist and interdisciplinary practices of the Porza Group, the abstrakten hannover and the anthroposophical group Aenigma; the utopian efforts of the artists¿ communities at Dornach (Switzerland) and Farley Farm, in England; the political and aesthetic implications of collaborative practices of cultural mediation, criticism and translation within the Bloomsbury group, the «Young American Critics», and of single individuals in relation to networks and avant-garde coteries, such as Mina Loy, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Djuna Barnes. The volume offers an evaluation of the roots and ethos of sociability in the Enlightenment, as the basis of modernist utopias of community; it also reflects on the problematic notion of individual authorship within artistic groups, as in the case of the early-modernist Finnish author Algot Untola, who created around forty fictitious author-names.

What is Horror? Horror is an inherently sensational and popular phenomenon. Extreme violence, terrifying monsters and jarring music shock, scare and excite us out of our everyday lives. The horror genre gives shape to the particular anxieties of society but also reveals the fundamental nature of what it is to be human. This volume provides an introduction to horror in compact and accessible essays, from classics such as Stanley Kubrick¿s The Shining to contemporary throwbacks like the Duffer Brothers¿ Stranger Things. Beginning with the philosophical and historical background of horror, this book touches upon seminal figures such as Poe, Lovecraft, Quiroga, Jackson, King and Suzuki and engages with the evolution of the genre across old and new media from literature, art and comics to film, gaming and social media. Alongside this is a consideration of established and emerging areas like smart horror (Jordan Peele¿s Get Out), queer horror (Brad Falchuk¿s American Horror Story), eco-horror (Alex Garland¿s Annihilation), horror video games (P.T.) and African American horror (Tananarive Due¿s Ghost Summer: Stories).This volume provides an invaluable resource for experts, students and general readers alike for further understanding the horror genre and the ways it is developing into the future.

In the 120 years since the publication of his final poetry collection, Decorations: In Verse and Prose (1899), Ernest Dowson has become something of a Decadent legend, much anthologized and referenced in almost every study of English Decadent literature, but still is considered a minor figure of the fin de siècle. He is, in fact, an important intermediary between late nineteenth-century Decadence and literary Modernism. This first collection of critical essays devoted solely to Dowson draws him out of the shadows and acknowledges his talent and legacy. The essays in this volume by established and emergent Dowson scholars offer new perspectives on some of the most noteworthy aspects of Dowson's oeuvre, including Catholicism and Paganism, desire and sexuality, space and place, his relationships with Decadent contemporaries including Paul Verlaine and Aubrey Beardsley, and his poetic resonance in twentieth-century literature and music.

A glance at the current state of the profession reveals a varied scenario in which Translation and Interpreting (T&I) constitute two interlingual processes usually performed by the same person in the same communicative situation or in different situations within the same set of relations and contacts. Although both practices call for somewhat different communicative competences, they are often seen as a single entity in the eyes of the public at large. T&I are thus found in relations of overlap, hybridity and contiguity and can be effected variously in professional practices and translation processes and strategies. Yet, when it comes to research, T&I have long been regarded as two separate fields of study. This book aims to address this gap by providing insights into theoretical and methodological approaches that can help integrate both fields into one and the same discipline. Each of the contributions in this volume offers innovative perspectives on T&I by focusing on topics that cover areas as diverse as training methods, identity perception, use of English as lingua franca, T&I strategies, T&I in specific speech communities, and the socio-professional status of translators and interpreters.

Crime fiction has become a key element in Latin American literature. The rise in production of the genre can be explained by an urgency to explore issues of morality in societies which incorporate varying levels of censorship and corruption. Through a focus on the concept of the crime scene itself, this book identifies and interrogates some of the principal developments in contemporary Latin American crime fiction. In ten chapters which cover Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela, and generic diversity which spans police procedurals, narcoliteratura, postmodern detection, and historical portrayals of crimes, the authors investigate how the crime scene ¿ which has always been central to the genre and its subgenres ¿ critiques local and global issues, including social injustice, discrimination, neoliberalism, violence, identity, corruption, and memory.

This volume sets out to investigate queer literature and cinema, exploring in particular the intersection of issues of gender and Lusophone culture. The essays collected here present individual case studies within a queer theoretical framework, examining the ways in which queer identities are constructed and addressed through different types of cultural production. More specifically, they consider Portuguese and Lusophone socio-cultural contexts and the representation of gender in popular culture, as well as the centrality of literature and cinema in the subversion of heteronormative social norms.

The historiography of Irish theatre has largely been dependent on in-depth studies of the play-text as the definitive primary source. This volume explores the processes of engaging with the documented and undocumented record of Irish theatre and broadens the concept of evidential study of performance through the use of increasingly diverse sources. The archive is regarded here as a broad repository of evidence including annotated scripts, photographs, correspondence, administrative documents, recordings and other remnants of the mechanics of producing theatre. It is an invaluable resource for scholars and artists in interrogating Ireland's performance history.This collection brings together key thinkers, scholars and practitioners who engage with the archive of Irish theatre and performance in terms of its creation, management and scholarly as well as artistic interpretation. New technological advances and mass digitization allow for new interventions in this field. The essays gathered here present new critical thought and detailed case studies from archivists, theatre scholars, historians and artists, each working in different ways to uncover and reconstruct the past practice of Irish performance through new means.

This book provides a detailed analysis of the decline of Catholicism and the almost simultaneous surge of new religious movements in Ireland during the second half of the twentieth century. After chronicling the sudden emergence of these new religious movements, some of which were associated with New Age spirituality, and considering the reactions they elicited in the Irish media and from religious and academic observers, the author explores the cultural, socioeconomic and political context in which they flourished. Taking its title from President Mary McAleese¿s response to the Ryan Report on clerical child abuse, the book traces the «systemic betrayal of the great Christian commandment to love one another» back through Irish history and into the heart of Catholic theology. It argues that the theology that transformed the «cult» of early Christianity into a great civilising power was implicated in the development of an authoritarian regime, and that this regime was undermining the faith and fostering interest in alternative spiritualities for decades before the abuse scandals of the 1990s brought the Church to its knees.

La agenda de la rendición de cuentas democrática o accountability social ha avanzado en los últimos años en el análisis de experiencias, pero carecemos de diagnósticos de conjunto que permitan una comprensión articuladade la posición de esas experiencias y sus actores en los contextos políticos nacionales. El objetivo de este libro es realizar un estudio comparativo que caracteriza los regímenes de controles democráticos existentes en cinco países del Sur Global. En cada país es contemplado el conjunto total de las experiencias relevantes de control social sobre las instituciones públicas y sus agentes, diagnosticando los rasgos comunes que las vuelven expresión de un determinado contexto sociopolítico y defi nen sus alcances. Los patrones resultantes constituyen regímenes nacionales de rendición de cuentas, es decir, confi guraciones relativamente estables de control social cuyo diagnóstico enriquece nuestra comprensión del funcionamiento del Estado y de las instituciones políticas en esos países. La perspectiva de abordaje se centra en los «controles democráticos no electorales», que remiten a un universo de dispositivos donde se articulan la acción ciudadana y colectiva orientada al control de autoridades públicas, independientemente del carácter democrático o no del régimen.

In the process of establishing the social and political reality of the German Democratic Republic, writers played a crucial role. The specific feature of GDR literary texts of the 1960s lies in their attempt at imagining and representing the emergence of a community that had previously not existed. A new sense of common belonging was being promoted. This study focuses on the ways in which Werner Bräunig and Erik Neutsch negotiated this tension in their novels by analysing the spatial and topographical dimensions of the texts. If literary texts map power structures by rewriting cartographies, then the analysis of the latter will shed light on the socio-political models that are being advocated. Neutsch's Spur der Steine (1964) and Bräunig's fragment Rummelplatz (2007) were both written in the 1960s but enjoyed a very different reception: while the former became a bestseller, the latter was censored and published posthumously in 2007. Yet they both speak to GDR society of the 1960s, highlighting the evocative power of literature within the East German context - and beyond.

This book brings together essays from scholars working on the first century of French print culture, with a particular focus on the networks formed by authors, editors, translators and printers in the earliest years of print technology. The volume is structured around the themes of collection and translation. The first part of the book examines the gathering of sources, the creation of anthologies and collections and the efforts of collectors to create a legacy. The second part deals with translation and the ways in which editors present a text to a new audience, either in a different language, as part of a different culture or through images that translate the text visually. Together, the essays raise important questions about early modern French culture, revealing how texts are the products both of the networks that create them and of those that distribute, read and interpret them after publication.

El corpus teórico y crítico sobre la poesía en lengua española se ha centrado, principalmente, en consolidar la obra de sus autores más canonizados (Darío, Neruda, Borges, etcétera), dejando a un lado propuestas poéticas de gran relevancia que, de ser tomadas en cuenta, podrían sin duda enriquecer e incluso transformar su propia tradición lírica. En virtud de lo anterior, este volumen tiene como objetivo principal estudiar las aportaciones al ámbito de la poesía realizadas por una promoción de autores (por ejemplo, Eduardo Kac, Andrés Ortiz-Osés y Ulises Carrión) cuya obra no ha sido críticamente valorada lo suficiente pese a su significativa relevancia, ello a fin de que empiecen a reconfigurar el canon poético ya existente y, por tanto, a señalar nuevas rutas para su análisis e interpretación.Si se logra, pues, despertar en el lector o estudioso el interés por explorar éstas y otras formas innovadoras y desconocidas de la poesía hispánica, entonces este libro habrá cumplido su misión.

The Opaque Experience is a thorough investigation of the changes in aesthetics that occurred in Argentina and Brazil during the 1970s and 1980s. It analyses a slow transformation of the status of the literary, which has become increasingly manifest in writing practices against the backdrop of a wider aesthetic transformation that strongly questioned traditional conventions. Through readings of works by Silviano Santiago, Juan José Saer, Clarice Lispector, Néstor Perlongher and Ana Cristina Cesar ¿ among others ¿ in relation to the works of artists such as Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, the book seeks to understand the evolution of the notion of art. Its central argument is that artistic works of the period traverse an experiential drive that transcends artistic form. Special importance is given to historical context: when the frontiers between public and private are demolished by the authoritarian state; when «bare life» becomes the political category par excellence; and when art positions itself in an «expanded field». Exposed to the face of the world, these art forms combine different and destabilizing logics that reveal a vulnerability of the subject, and of experience, that is not in harmony with the notion of autonomous subjects or work. It is not just a matter of a transformation of sensibilities, but rather a transformation of the meaning of art in contemporary society.

Yeats¿s relationships with Otherness and the Orient enabled him to develop his own creative abilities and spiritual understanding in expansive ways. Exotic versions of India, Celtic orientalism, the fervent psychological probings of the nineteenth century (which showed a deep interest in the paranormal), mystical studies aided by such figures as Mohini Chaterjee, Arabist ideas and images, the Japanese Noh, Zen Buddhism, Byzantium, Ved¿ntic philosophy ¿ all helped the poet to examine and express human interactions with existence that were distinctive in their figuration and underpinnings. Facing Otherness with an extraordinary philosophical and spiritual intensity, he was able to uncover (though never fully or finally anatomize) aspects of the depths of his own being. The Orient also provided him with conceptual and intuitive means to broach humankind¿s relation to cosmic order; this resulted in an exploration of the Otherness which underpins existence on quite a remarkable scale, still not fully appreciated by Yeats¿s readers. This book seeks to help foster such appreciation.

This book offers new perspectives on transnational citizenship, memory and strategies of development. Beginning with an exploration of belonging and cultural memory, the book turns to a series of case studies in order to examine the ways in which citizens actively engage with their state of origin through narratives of remembrance. In the Haitian case, community engagement is primarily a grassroots movement in spite of the early creation of a Ministry of Haitians Abroad (MHAVE). The Jamaican case, however, differentiates itself by having a top-down structure promoted by an administration that actively seeks to engage Jamaicans abroad by way of solidarity funds. By treating simultaneously two geopolitical entities, Francophonie and the Commonwealth, this study offers a unique, comparative perspective on a complex web of family networks, spiritual bonds and entrepreneurial cross-border practices at the core of a common Caribbean culture of resilience and self-reliance. The findings on the relationship between memory, citizenship and the State challenge the existing assumption that communities abroad become increasingly assimilated into the new society, whereas, in fact, the idea of a transnational citizenship has become increasingly prevalent. This evolution is enhanced by memory, which acts as a powerful dynamic engine to deconstruct citizenship while connecting beyond borders.

This book analyzes the relationship between Colombian paramilitaries and the State in 1982-2007, which has proven to be complex as the former was not a homogenous force. New empirical evidence shows that there was a set of basic mechanisms, mediated by political institutions and clientelistic Colombian polity, that established a link between them.

Humour, by its very nature controversial, plays an important role in social interaction. With its power to question assumptions, it can be used a weapon of subversion, and its meaning and interpretation are embedded within the culture that generates them in complex ways. The scrutiny of Irish culture through the lens of humour is highly revealing, contributing to an alternative, and sometimes irreverent, reading of events. As John Updike wrote of Raymond Queneaüs witty re-imagining of the Easter Rising, humour can effectively expose «casual ambivalence».This volume investigates the many ways in which writers, playwrights, politicians, historians, filmmakers, artists and activists have used irreverence and humour to look at aspects of Irish culture and explore the contradictions and shortcomings of the society in which they live.

Counter-discourses express new and alternative views of the world, in contrast with more established discourses which embody mainstream values, norms, beliefs and attitudes. The essays in this volume assess the role of counter-discourses as non-violent forms of resistance to the status quo in core domains of Irish social, cultural and political life. These domains encompass the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process; law enforcement, policing and surveillance; parliamentary debate and obstructionism; identity formation, marriage, divorce and the family; and institutional abuse, authoritarianism and the Catholic Church. The discourses are drawn from a diverse range of media including political and parliamentary speeches, ethnographic accounts, social media, short stories, song lyrics, poetry and novels, including those written for young adults. The essays highlight the power and significance of counter-discourses as vehicles of independent thought, capable of both reflecting and driving social and political change.

Surrealism has been criticised for having been too steeped in idealism and poetry to have been an effective force for political and personal emancipation in the early twentieth century. The movement, its detractors claim, was conservative in outlook, denying the sexual and material poles of existence, and preferring sublimation over the direct expression of (and engagement with) base desire. These arguments are carefully re-examined and re-evaluated in this book, which focuses on the movement¿s artistic and political activities of the late 1930s, 1940s and beyond.The book reveals how a more transgressive strand of Surrealist art and thought emerged in France in this period, a strand that is underpinned by an increasing openness to sexual alterity. Surrealist works from this time are considered in terms of their more subversive aspect and shown not only to validate erotic desire but also to challenge the certainties (socio-political, personal) of their audience. Surrealist art and literature are thus presented as actively countering the repressive effects of a socially conservative France, aspiring not only to be at the vanguard of social change but of a change of consciousness in society.

This collection of essays presents a study of migration cultures in the contemporary Mediterranean with a particular focus on Italy as a point of migratory convergence and pressure. It investigates different experiences of, and responses to, sea crossings, borders and checkpoints, cultural proximity and distance, race, ethnicity and memory, along with creative responses to the same. In dialogic and complementary interaction, the essays explore violence centring on race as the major determining factor. The book further submits that the interrogation of racialized categories represents different kinds of critical response and resistance, which involve both political struggle and day-to-day survival and coexistence. Following the praxis of cultural and postcolonial studies, the essays focus on the present but draw indispensable insight from past connections and heritage as well as offering prognoses for the future. The ambitious aim of this collection is to identify some useful lines of thought and action that could help us to think outside intricacy, isolation and defensiveness, which characterize most of the public official reactions to migration today.

The Economics of Poetry takes an innovative approach to the genre of Neo-Latin poetry, encompassing the entire process of poetic production, from composition and physical realization to the formal presentation to the honorand. This process was not predicated upon post-Romantic ideas of inspiration and originality, but rather upon the need to produce literary works in a timely fashion, often (though not exclusively) dependent upon the realities and exigencies of the contemporary political situation. Applying this approach across more than three centuries of literary production, this volume analyses the techniques employed and developed by authors all around the world to reduce the effort of poetic composition, streamline its production and facilitate its presentation when time was a crucial factor in success. To reveal the efficient techniques which authors employed in order to meet their deadlines, each essay focuses on a variety of works by the same writer and examines the full context of their production. The re-use and recycling of previous texts and rhetorical templates ¿ and even the re-dedication of previously presented manuscripts ¿ emerges as a central and essential modus operandi in response to the strict dictates of fast production.