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      • Trusted Partner
        Art treatments & subjects
        August 2009

        Understanding the politics of heritage

        by Rodney Harrison

        Written by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this authoritative text presents an engaging narrative of the way politics features in heritage conservation and management. New international case studies illustrate how notions of identity, social class and nationhood may be woven into the provision of official heritage, and how heritage may be seen to be less about upholding truth or authenticity and more about delivering political objectives. Aimed primarily at students in heritage studies and professionals in heritage industries, this book is one of three in the Understanding Global Heritage series.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2018

        Race and the Yugoslav region

        Postsocialist, post-conflict, postcolonial?

        by Catherine Baker, Gurminder Bhambra

        This is the first book to situate the territories and collective identities of former Yugoslavia within the politics of race - not just ethnicity - and the history of how ideas of racialised difference have been translated globally. The book connects critical race scholarship, global historical sociologies of 'race in translation' and south-east European cultural critique to show that the Yugoslav region is deeply embedded in global formations of race. In doing this, it considers the everyday geopolitical imagination of popular culture; the history of ethnicity, nationhood and migration; transnational formations of race before and during state socialism, including the Non-Aligned Movement; and post-Yugoslav discourses of security, migration, terrorism and international intervention, including the War on Terror and the present refugee crisis.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2022

        A new naval history

        by Quintin Colville, James Davey, Katherine Parker, Elaine Chalus, Evan Wilson, Barbara Korte, Cicely Robinson, Cindy McCreery, Ellie Miles, Mary A. Conley, Jonathan Rayner, Daniel Spence, Emma Hanna, Ulrike Zimmerman, Max Jones, Jan Rüger

        A New Naval History brings together the most significant and interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary naval history. The last few decades have witnessed a transformation in how this field is researched and understood and this volume captures the state of a field that continues to develop apace. It examines - through the prism of naval affairs - issues of nationhood and imperialism; the legacy of Nelson; the socio-cultural realities of life in ships and naval bases; and the processes of commemoration, journalism and stage-managed pageantry that plotted the interrelationship of ship and shore. This bold and original publication will be essential for undergraduate and postgraduate students of naval and maritime history. Beyond that, though, it marks an important intervention into wider historiographies that will be read by scholars from across the spectrum of social history, cultural studies and the analysis of national identity.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Acts of supremacy

        by Richard Cave, Brendan Gregory, Michael Pickering, J. Bratton

        At the height of the British Empire's fortunes, the stage represented the most influential form of popular entertainment. Acts of supremacy looks at the way in which this medium was utilised to mould popular concepts of empire and nationhood and the authors convey the significance of all levels of entertainment in shaping English identity and perception of other ethnic groups. The authors go beyond the traditional interpretation of politicians' blatant inculcation of patriotic fervour through plays and jingoistic songs. Additionally, they reveal the complex cultural negotiations that gave ordinary people a sense of their part in the imperial structure. Focusing upon minstrel shows, melodramas, comic routines and songs, the book shows that the public were encouraged to identify themselves with and to internalise the qualities required for empire builders and natural leaders. It concludes that the average British man, whatever his class or country, could come to think of himself as a member of a superior race fit to rule the world. Only Irish drama of the period significantly challenged this pattern. Acts of supremacy should be of interest to students of drama and cultural history as well as social and political historians.

      • Trusted Partner
        Film theory & criticism
        December 2014

        Cinematic countrysides

        by Edited by Robert Fish

        Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the 'spatialities of cinema' across the social sciences and humanities, yet to date critical inquiry has tended to explore this issue as a question of the 'city' and the 'urban'. For the first time, leading scholars in geography, film and cultural studies have been drawn together to explore the multiple ways in ideas of cinema and countryside are co-produced: how 'film makes rural' and 'rural makes film'. From the expanse of the American great west to the mountainous landscapes of North Korea, Cinematic countrysides draws on a range of popular and alternative film genres to demonstrate how film texts come to prefigure expectations of rural social space, and how these representations come to shape, and be shaped by, the material and embodied circumstances of 'lived' rural experience. At the heart of this volume's varied apprehensions of the 'cinematic countryside' is a concern to argue that ideas of rurality in film are central to wider questions of 'modernity' and 'tradition', 'self' and 'other', 'nationhood' and 'globalisation', and crucially, ones that are central to an account of the 'cinematic city'.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        February 2019

        Contemporary Korean cinema

        Culture, identity and politics

        by Hyangjin Lee

        The first in-depth, comprehensive study of Korean cinema offering original insight into the relationships between ideology and the art of cinema from East Asian perspectives. Combines issues of contemporary Korean culture and cinematic representation of the society and people in both North and South Korea. Covers the introduction of motion pictures in 1903, Korean cinema during the Japanese colonial period (1910-45) and the development of North and South Korean cinema up to the 1990s. Introduces the works of Korea's major directors, and analyses the Korean film industry in terms of film production, distribution and reception. Based on this historical analysis, the study investigates ideological constructs in seventeen films, eight from North Korea and nine from South Korea.

      • Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2020

        Brotherhood to Nationhood

        George Manuel and the Making of the Modern Indian Movement, 2nd edition

        by Peter McFarlane with Doreen Manuel

        Charged with fresh material and new perspectives, this updated edition of the groundbreaking biography Brotherhood to Nationhood brings George Manuel and his fighting tradition into the present. George Manuel (1920–1989) was the strategist and visionary behind the modern Indigenous movement in Canada. A three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, he laid the groundwork for what would become the Assembly of First Nations and was the founding president of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. Authors Peter McFarlane and Doreen Manuel follow him on a riveting journey from his childhood on a Shuswap reserve through three decades of fierce and dedicated activism. In these pages, an all-new foreword by celebrated Mi’kmaq lawyer and activist Pam Palmater is joined by an afterword from Manuel’s granddaughter, land defender Kanahus Manuel. This edition features new photos and previously untold stories of the pivotal roles that the women of the Manuel family played—and continue to play—in the battle for Indigenous rights.

      • January 2013

        Theatre & Performance in Small Nations

        by Blandford, Steve

        Many commentators have routinely referred to theatre and, to an extent, all forms of live performance as particularly appropriate to the discussion of national identity. Put simply, the act of live performance itself draws attention to the idea that identities are performed and that different versions of identity can compete for our attention or allegiance. This collection of chapters from a wide variety of contexts will of course seek primarily to open up questions regarding the validity of the very category of ‘small nation’ and the role of theatre and performance in such contexts. While it would be a distortion to suggest that all small nations have a ‘history of strong state intervention into cultural practices’, it is nevertheless legitimate to claim that the idea of small nationhood is inevitably bound up with questions of power and that the majority of small nations are, or have been, involved in contested definitions of identity of a particularly intense nature. Frequently, especially in cases where nationhood does not bring with it the full power of the state, cultural practice becomes a crucial site where such contested definitions are played out.

      • March 2024

        What Is History For?

        by Robert Gildea

        “History”, suggests Robert Gildea, “is a battlefield.” Questions of power, rights, identity and nationhood always have an ancient and modern historical dimension and countries still go to war over their interpretation of history. Yet accounts of history are just as prone to fabrication as fake news, so how can we tell good history from bad? How can history be critical, learning from the past and righting wrongs, rather than divisive, such as riding roughshod over the rights of others? In this passionately argued book, Gildea suggests that the more people who really understand what good history entails, the more likely history is to triumph over myth. He sees positive signs in public history, citizen historians and community projects, among other developments. And he debunks claims that ‘you cannot rewrite history’, arguing that good history that’s attuned to its times must be rewritten time and again.

      • Modernity and National Identity in the United States and East Asia, 1895-1919

        by Carol C. Chin (author)

        In the period between the Sino-Japanese War in the mid-1890s and the end of World War I, the United States, China, and Japan found themselves, in different ways, seeking to redefine their national identities. By examining the connections between culture and nationhood—the gendered nature of concepts like modernity, the role of women in the construction and projection of a nation’s identity, and the relationship between national identity and power projection—author Carol C. Chin examines the dual characteristics of nationalism with which these three nations were grappling: the push to embrace a universal standard of modernity and the desire to retain the cultural distinctiveness on which their identity was founded.Chin considers how the United States’, China’s, and Japan’s understandings of modernity shaped, and were shaped by, notions of their place in the world. Drawing on multinational archival and published primary sources, Chin highlights Americans’ ambivalence about their nation’s role in the world, China’s struggle to adapt its worldview to the realities of modern international relations, and the increasingly uneasy relationship between the United States and Japan.Filling a major gap in the literature, Modernity and National Identity in the United States and East Asia, 1895–1919 is a comprehensive, thought-provoking intellectual history of American, Chinese, and Japanese thinking on modernity, national identity, and internationalism during the early twentieth century. Those with an interest in U.S. foreign relations, women’s and gender history, and U.S.-Asian relations will find this an innovative and fascinating title.

      • Cautious Visionary

        Cordell Hull and Trade Reform, 1933–1937

        by Michael Butler (author)

        Cordell Hull's persistence and legislative experience were determining factors at every stage in the development of the Trade Agreements Act of 1934. Rarely has such important legislation owed itself to a single man.The Trade Agreements Act resolved the long-running debate between high and low-tariff proponents, made the United States a truly international economy, and served as the first step in the creation of the political and commercial order founded at Breton Woods. The political struggles surrounding the passage and the implementation of the Act had an important, and largely underestimated, impact on the politics of the first Roosevelt administration. A number of politically influential economic nationalists, most notably Raymond Moley and George N. Peek, were forced out of the administration after losing confrontations with Hull. Yet, while Hull won the political and bureaucratic battles, his opponents had far greater influence on journalists and historians of the period.To the degree that the nation had a coherent diplomacy during the first Roosevelt administration, it was based on Hull's vision of a liberal international economic order. By outlining Hull's crucial role in the passage and implementation of the Trade Agreements Act, Cautious Visionary will restore Hull's reputation as one of the major political and diplomatic figures of the first half of our century.“The story Butler tells is an important one. He is especially good at describing Hull's personal and professional rivalries with other members of the administration and demonstrating how these rivalries affected policy. By spotlighting the role of Hull, this book fills a gap in the literature and makes a real contribution to our understanding of Roosevelt-era foreign policy. Its research is extensive and its coverage is impressive.”—Mary Ann Heiss, author of Empire and Nationhood: The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil, 1950-1954

      • Biography & True Stories
        March 2021

        Mozart in Prague

        by Dr. Daniel E. Freeman

        ISBN-13: 978-1-950743-50-6   Dismissed in Vienna as a compose of excessively complicated music with little popular appeal, Mozart found complete recognition for his talents in Prague, likely as a byproduct of the exceptional musical literacy of the general population. Accounts of the affection lavished on Mozart by the people of Prague can be deeply moving for those acquainted with his bleak struggles for recognition in Vienna. Indeed, he was manhandled like a rock star at the concert in 1787 that featured the first performance of the "Prague" symphony in a way that he never experienced anywhere else. And in contrast to the tawdry ceremonies that accompanied Mozart's burial in Vienna in 1791, his funeral in Prague, attended by thousands of mourners, brought life there to a standstill. It was the residents of Prague, not Vienna, who took responsibility to provide for Mozart's widow and children. Mozart in Prague tells the story of the amazing civic revival that was responsible for Mozart's unique personal and musical relationship with this beautiful city and the colorful characters who helped shape it, including Marie Antoinette and Giacomo Casanova.

      • May 2015

        Encyclopedia of Chinese Civilization Series (English) (10 titles)

        by Editorial Committee

        Encyclopedia of Chinese Civilization Series depicts the essence of China with vivid images and detailed captions. There are a total of 10 books, each with their own theme. Thanks to its vivid, interesting, and popular content,readers can appreciate the charm and warmth of Chinese culture through an easy and pleasant reading experience.

      • Colonialism & imperialism
        January 2017

        Reading Colonies

        Property and Control of the British Far Eas

        by Rohan B. E. PRICE

        By 1945, everywhere one looked in the Far East the British Empire was being openly questioned or was failing outright. Yet in the previous century, the British had been the pre-eminent imperial power from Weihaiwei to North Borneo. Reading Colonies: Property and Control of the British Far East investigates how the British held on for so long. Rent control legislation, and other measures of property law such as land improvement opportunities, are nominated as key tools used to frustrate decolonization in most Eastern colonies. British colonial administrations tried long and hard to inhibit the dialectical discord between their colonial hierarchism and local forms of nationalism with the prompts and plaudits of property policy. In cases where indigenous landlordism masqueraded as patriotism, independence came quickly (Ceylon and Burma). Where public housing established itself as a key post-war plank of social policy, freedom from British rule was a more gradual affair (British Malaya and Hong Kong). This study concludes that British colonial regimes did not offer a share of their industrial modernity to stay at the apex of political power, but readily adjusted old-style landlordism to keep nationalist usurpers at bay.

      • Travel writing

        Passport to Enclavia

        Travels in Search of a European Identity

        by Vitali Vitaliev

        What does it mean to be European? The answer lies in Europe's forgotten enclaves - tiny fragments of one country cut off and completely surrounded by another, stuck between two different cultures, currencies and sometimes even languages. Vitali explores the idiosyncrasies of these enclaves, just as a uniform European identity - the Euro - was being imposed by Brussels. An acclaimed investigative journalist, Vitali was able to uncover the roots of the current EU crisis ten years ago, just when the Euro was being introduced. This makes his book extremely topical and surprisingly up-to-date.

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