Books

Homer’s stories of Troy are part of the foundations of Western culture. What’s less well known is that they also inspired Ottoman-Turkish cultural traditions. Yet even with all the historical and archaeological research into Homer and Troy, most scholars today rely heavily on Western sources, giving Ottoman work in the field short shrift. This book helps right that balance, exploring Ottoman-Turkish involvement and interest in the subject between 1870, when Heinrich Schliemann began his excavations in search of Troy on Ottoman soil, and the battle of Gallipoli in 1915, which gave the Turks their own version of the heroic epic of Troy.

Whether you look at quantity, quality, or readership, we are in an unprecedented era of fan fiction. Thus far, however, the genre has been subject to relatively little rigorous qualitative or quantitative study—a problem that Judith May Fathallah remedies here through close analysis of fanfiction related to Sherlock, Supernatural, and Game of Thrones. Her large-scale study of the sites, receptions, and fan rejections of fanfic demonstrate how it often legitimates itself through traditional notions of authorship even as its explicit discussion and deconstruction of the author figure contests traditional discourses of authority and opens new spaces for writing that challenges the authority of media professionals.

Upon its adoption in December 1936, Soviet leaders hailed the new so-called Stalin Constitution as the most democratic in the world. Scholars have long scoffed at this claim, noting that the mass repression of 1937-1938 that followed rendered it a hollow document. This book focuses on the six-month long popular discussion of the draft Constitution, which preceded its formal adoption in December 1936. Drawing on rich archival sources, this book uses the discussion of the draft 1936 Constitution to examine discourse between the central state leadership and citizens about the new Soviet social contract, which delineated the roles the state and citizens should play in developing socialism.

This book is a philosophical analysis of the ethical treatment of refugees and stateless people, a group of people who, though extremely important politically, have been greatly under theorized philosophically. The limited philosophical discussion of refugees by philosophers focuses narrowly on the question of whether or not we, as members of Western states, have moral obligations to admit refugees into our countries. This book reframes this debate and shows why it is important to think ethically about people who will never be resettled and who live for prolonged periods outside of all political communities. Parekh shows why philosophers ought to be concerned with ethical norms that will help stateless people mitigate the harms of statelessness even while they remain formally excluded from states.

Feminist scholarship is sometimes dismissed as not quite ‘proper’ knowledge – it’s too political or subjective, many argue. But what are the boundaries of ‘proper’ knowledge? Who defines them, and how are they changing? How do feminists negotiate them? And how does this boundary-work affect women’s and gender studies, and its scholars’ and students’ lives? These are the questions tackled by this ground-breaking ethnography of academia inspired by feminist epistemology, Foucault, and science and technology studies. Drawing on data collected over a decade in Portugal and the UK, US and Scandinavia, this title explores different spaces of academic work and sociability, considering both official discourse and ‘corridor talk’. It links epistemic negotiations to the shifting political economy of academic labour, and situates the smallest (but fiercest) departmental negotiations within global relations of unequal academic exchange.

Today’s approaches to the study of the human mind are divided into seemingly opposed camps. On one side we find the neurosciences, with their more or less reductionist research programs, and on the other side we find the cultural and discursive approaches, with their frequent neglect of the material sides of human life. Persons and their Minds seeks to develop an integrative theory of the mind with room for both brain and culture. Brinkmann’s remarkable and thought-provoking work is one of the first books to integrate brain research with phenomenology, social practice studies and actor-network theory, all of which are held together by the concept of the person.

In The Emergence of the Digital Humanities, Steven E. Jones examines this shift in our relationship to digital technology and the ways that it has affected humanities scholarship and the academy more broadly. Based on the premise that the network is now everywhere rather than merely “out there,” Jones links together seemingly disparate cultural events—the essential features of popular social media, the rise of motion-control gaming and mobile platforms, the controversy over the “gamification” of everyday life, the spatial turn, fabrication and 3D printing, and electronic publishing—and argues that cultural responses to changes in technology provide an essential context for understanding the emergence of the digital humanities as a new field of study in this millennium.

In this book Jo Littler argues that meritocracy is the key cultural means of legitimation for contemporary neoliberal culture – and that whilst it promises opportunity, it in fact creates new forms of social division. Against Meritocracy is split into two parts. Part I explores the genealogies of meritocracy within social theory, political discourse and working cultures. It traces the dramatic U-turn in meritocracy’s meaning, from socialist slur to a contemporary ideal of how a society should be organised. Part II uses a series of case studies to analyse the cultural pull of popular ‘parables of progress’, from reality TV to the super-rich and celebrity CEOs, from social media controversies to the rise of the ‘mumpreneur’. Paying special attention to the role of gender, ‘race’ and class, this book provides new conceptualisations of the meaning of meritocracy in contemporary culture and society.

This incisive volume brings together postcolonial studies, visual culture and cultural memory studies to explain how the Netherlands continues to rediscover its history of violence in colonial Indonesia. Dutch commentators have frequently claimed that the colonial past and especially the violence associated with it has been ‘forgotten’ in the Netherlands. Uncovering ‘lost’ photographs and other documents of violence has thereby become a recurring feature aimed at unmasking a hidden truth.

The author argues that, rather than absent, such images have been consistently present in the Dutch public sphere and have been widely available in print, on television and now on the internet. Emerging Memory: Photographs of Colonial Atrocity in Dutch Cultural Remembrance shows that between memory and forgetting there is a haunted zone from which pasts that do not fit the stories nations live by keep on emerging and submerging while retaining their disturbing presence.

The “Weana Tanz” (Viennese dance music) are instrumental plays of music, the character of which developped out of the alpine “landler melodics. They were shaped to a specific genre of urban folk music by the Viennese “Tanzgeigern”. In the history of Viennese music the WEANA TANZ represents an important period. Their discription and interpretation in 8 chapters show the extraordinary position they held in the music life of the 19th century. Manuscripts and prints of the early 19th and 20th century are documents of the historical period of development, its expression in style and melody as well as their musical function for entertainment and social gatherings. As an addition sound recordings are selected from the first productions of records between 1900 and 1930. One chapter is dedicated to remarkable composers and exponents. In their lives and opus we find the seasonable situation of music life in Vienna. A detailed register gives access to the exceptionally abundant content of this volume. After this monography the “WEANA TANZ” as part 1 of the 20th volume of the Encyclopaedia CORPUS MUSICAE POPULARIS AUSTRIACAE follows volume 2 with a collection of 130 “Viennese dances” which can be interpreted in diverse instrumentations.

The drums beat, an old man in a grand robe mutters incantations and three brides on horseback led by their grooms on foot proceed to the Naxi Wedding Courtyard, accompanied, watched and photographed the whole way by tourists, who have bought tickets for the privilege. The traditional wedding ceremonies are performed for the ethnic tourism industry in Lijiang, a World Heritage town in southwest China. This book examines how heritage interacts with social-cultural changes and how individuals perform and negotiate their identities through daily practices that include tourism, on the one hand, and the performance of ethnicity on the other. The wedding performances in Lijiang not only serve as a heritage ‘product’ but show how the heritage and tourism industry helps to shape people’s values, dreams and expectations. This book also explores the rise of ‘romantic consumerism’ in contemporary China. Chinese dissatisfaction with the urban mundane leads to romanticized interests in practices and people deemed to be natural, ethnic, spiritual and aesthetic, and a search for tradition and authenticity. But what, exactly, are tradition and authenticity, and what happens to them when they are turned into performance?

This timely book takes an original transnational approach to the theme of Nazism and neo-Nazism in film, media, and popular culture, with examples drawn from mainland Europe, the UK, North and Latin America, Asia, and beyond. This approach fits with the established dominance of global multimedia formats, and will be useful for students, scholars, and researchers in all forms of film and media. Along with the essential need to examine current trends in Nazism and neo-Nazism in contemporary media globally, what makesthis book even more necessary is that it engages with debates that go to the very heart of our understanding of knowledge: history, memory, meaning, and truth.

Based on transnational France-Asia approaches, this book studies Asian cultures once steeped in French civilisation but free of a colonial mode in order to highlight the transliterary examples of cultural transfer. This book is a pioneering study of the Francophone phenomenon within the context of cultures categorised as non-Francophone. Espousing a transcultural approach, Francophonie and the Orient examines the emergence of French heritage in the Far-East, the various forms of its manifestation, and the modes of its identification.Several thematic signposts guide the diverse pathways of the research. Firstly, the question is posed as to whether colonisation is the ultimate coat of arms for entry into Francophonie? Secondly, the book raises issues relative to Asian Francophone works: the emergence of literatures with French expression from Asian countries historically free of French domination. Finally, the study reconfigures the Asian Francophone heritage with new paradigms (transnational/global studies), which redefine the frontiers of Francophonie in Asia.

How and why do people become involved in European homegrown jihadism? This book addresses this question through an in-depth study of the Dutch Hofstadgroup, infamous for containing the murderer of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was killed in November 2004 in Amsterdam, and for plotting numerous other terrorist attacks. The Hofstadgroup offers a window into the broader phenomenon of homegrown jihadism that arose in Europe in 2004 and is still with us today. Utilizing interviews with former Hofstadgroup participants and the extensive police files on the group, Becoming a European Homegrown Jihadist overcomes the scarcity of high-quality data that has hampered the study of terrorism for decades. The book advances a multicausal and multilevel understanding of involvement in European homegrown jihadism that is critical of the currently prevalent ‘radicalization’-based explanatory frameworks. It stresses that the factors that initiate involvement are separate from those that sustain it, which in turn are again likely to differ from those that bring some individuals to actual acts of terrorism. This is a key resource for scholars of terrorism and all those interested in understanding the pathways that can lead to involvement in European homegrown jihadism.

This book analyses in detail the electoral manifestos and programmes presented by twenty-two parties during the European Parliamentary elections in 2009. The research indicates that radical right-wing parties usually have Europhobic impulses, however, radical left-wing parties are, in theory, favourable to European integration, but dispute the direction currently imposed by the EU authorities.

In 1996, the Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn were inscribed on the World Heritage List. In inscribing Schönbrunn, the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO recognised that “the Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn in Vienna – as a symbol of great heritage and one of the most important corner-stones in the history of Austria – are of outstanding universal value”, according to Mounir Bouchenaki, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. With this honour, the commitment to preserve the complex, which of necessity is connected with the research into it, was not created for the first time, but greater public interest and consciousness were focused on it. Since the dissolution in 1992 of the Schlosshauptmannschaft Schönbrunn, the monument has been administered by the Schloss Schönbrunn Kultur- and Betriebsgesellschaft. This occurred as a result of the Federal Law of 1 October 1992, supported by all parliamentary parties. Its first point is: “Preservation of the fabric of the buildings, protection, improvement and care of the cultural monument of Schönbrunn Palace as a total complex, architectural monument, cultural treasure, historical garden and place of scholarly activity, giving particular consideration to the historical importance of the palace.” Over the course of the past ten years, from 1992 to 2002, the palace building, its adjacent buildings and the structures found in its gardens have been restored at a total cost of one billion schillings (c. 73 million euros). At the initiative of the technical managing director of the Schloss Schönbrunn Kultur- and Betriebsgesellschaft, Dr. Wolfgang Kippes, this work was accompanied by a large number of scientific studies. These include the present work, which arose in the course of two Austrian Science Fund research projects (P-12208-HIS and P-14326-ARS). They were directed by Dr. Artur Rosenauer, Professor of the History of Austrian Art at the University of Vienna. The occasion for the two research projects was provided by completely unexpected finds discovered in 1994 during construction work in the central area of the main building and subsequently exposed by the Archaeology Department of the Austrian Federal Office for the Care of Monuments. They were found to be the remains of buildings that were predecessors of the palace built by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach beginning in 1695-96. The finds were completely unexpected because Schönbrunn research up to that time was unanimous in its opinion that the earlier complex had been much farther to the east and on the (modern) boundary of the district of Meidling. The finds of 1994-95 did not clarify the early architectural history of Schönbrunn before the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683. Rather it created an awareness of how inadequately this period of the history of Schönbrunn, which before 1642 was named Katterburg, had been researched previously. What was lacking, above all, was basic archival research with a critical analysis of the written and pictorial sources. It was clear from the outset that this research into the sources could not be restricted to the buildings themselves but had to also include the history of their ownership and use because of the direct influence these had on the respective history of the buildings. Moreover, it was also necessary to include areas of the districts of Hietzing and Meidling that adjoined Schönbrunn on the west and east, since this was the only means of retracing the former size of the Katterburg property during the various periods. Written documentation traced the origins of the monument of Schönbrunn back to the 12th century, resulting in a 500-year period to be researched. On the one hand the later position of Schönbrunn as a château de plaisance and summer residence of the Austrian sovereigns gives meaning to its past.