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Monthly Archives January 2014

In the Beginning, There Were ‘Visions of the End’

When WWII drew to a close in the late 1940s, the fighting may have stopped, but the tension was just building. This sustained Cold War friction lasted longer than four decades, the whole time of which, the main players had ideas of how it would look when it ended. The editors and contributors of Visions […]

A Class Issue: Language and Education in India

In the past three decades within India, a knowledge of the English language has become more important for economic advantage. All the while, Hindi is essential to those who wish to pursue class mobility. These “mediums” form a divide within the country’s educational system, which come to the forefront in Chaise LaDousa’s Hindi is our […]

Unfree, but not Exploited in Eurasia

Is “unfree labor” good for business? Is it good for the unfree? Author Alessandro Stanziani aims to answer questions of labor, rights and freedoms in a comparison of Russian labor and business practices with those in Asia, Europe, and the Indian subcontinent. He covers this topic extensively in his new book, Bondage: Labor and Rights […]

A Note on the Influence of ‘Rhetoric and Culture’

 Astonishment and Evocation: The Spell of Culture in Art and Anthropology, edited by Ivo Strecker and Markus Verne, was published earlier this year as the newest volume within the Studies of Rhetoric and Culture series. The volume and series have gained attention within the academic community, one such supporter being Michał Mokrzan, a future collaborator within […]

Souvenir of the Right: Reexamining Twentieth-Century French Politics

The French Right Between the Wars: Political and Intellectual Movements from Conservatism to Fascism, to be published this month, re-opens the history books on  France between World Wars I and II. In this collection of essays, scholars take a look at the polarized political scene, especially the right, within the country. Below, in an interview […]

Hot Off the Presses – New Journal Releases for December

Focaal Volume 67, Winter 2013 This issue features a theme section titled Divine kinship and politics edited by Alice Forbess and Lucia Michelutti. French Politics, Culture & Society Volume 31, Issue 3 This special issue is titled Algerian Legacies in Metropolitan France. It features articles that explore the topic of North-African migrants in France. Journal […]

How the ‘Legacies of Two World Wars’ Compare to Current Conflict

In an excerpt from the Introduction, the editors explain the point of origin for The Legacies of Two World Wars: European Societies in the Twentieth Century. In the volume, published last month in paperback, contributors follow the European zeitgeist as the continent was plunged first into one war, then a second. Editors Lothar Kettenacker and […]

Author Becomes Subject: Droysen as Topic of Historical Volume

Scholarship has come full circle for Johann Gustav Droysen — a historian lauded for his much-cited volume on Alexander the Great — as the author-historian is now the subject of study. Author Arthur Alfaix Assis delves into the historical theories of Droysen in What is History For? Johann Gustav Droysen and the Functions of Historiography, to […]

‘Screening Nature’ Turns the Cinematic Gaze to Mother Earth

Flora, fauna and film are the foci of Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human, published in November 2013. The collection, edited by Anat Pick and Guinevere Narraway, hopes to open the film-viewers’ gaze to the often-overlooked nonhuman living subjects in film. The following is an interview with Pick and Narraway on the mission of Screening […]

Policy-Tracing Up, Down, Sideways

In an excerpt from the Introduction of A Policy Travelogue: Tracing Welfare Reform in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Canada, published in September, Catherine Kingfisher explains just how she came to be interested in the subject of welfare policy, and its existence as a living, working idea.   ____________________________________ My interest in tracing policy began in the […]