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This book examines the figure of the virgin, a symbol central to many aspects of society and sexuality in nineteenth-century England, and its effects on the Victorian literary imagination. Studying the virgin as a social, sexual, and literary phenomenon, the volume contributes to current critical accounts of the relations among the body and language, gender, and discourse. These essays explore the ways in which virginity is not a natural ideal but a complex cultural and literary sign. The authors rethink the virginal as a textual counter-example to the idealization of "natural sexuality."
Each summer between 1790 and 1860, hundreds and eventually thousands of southern men and women left the diseases and boredom of their plantation homes and journeyed to the healthful and entertaining Virginia Springs. While some came in search of a cure, most traveled over the mountains to enjoy the fashionable society and participate in an array of social activities. At the springs, visitors, as well as their slaves, interacted with one another and engaged in behavior quite different from the picture presented by most historians. In the leisurely and pleasure-filled environment of the springs, plantation society's hierarchies became at once more relaxed and more contested; its rituals and ru...
This book argues that there is an important connection between ethical resistance to British imperialism and the ethical discovery of gay rights. It examines the roots of liberal resistance in Britain and resistance to patriarchy in the USA, showing the importance of fighting the demands of patriarchal manhood and womanhood to countering imperialism. Advocates of feminism and gay rights are key because they resist the gender binary's role in rationalizing sexism and homophobia. The connection between the rise of gay rights and the fall of empire illuminates questions of the meaning of democracy and universal human rights as shared human values that have appeared since World War II. The book casts doubt on the thesis that arguments for gay rights must be extrinsic to democracy and reflect Western values. To the contrary, gay rights arise from within liberal democracy, and its critics polemically use such opposition to cover and rationalize their own failures of democracy.
David A. J. Richards’s Resisting Injustice and The Feminist Ethics of Care in The Age of Obama: "Suddenly,...All The Truth Was Coming Out" builds on his and Carol Gilligan’s The Deepening Darkness to examine the roots of the resistance movements of the 1960s, the political psychology behind contemporary conservatism, and President Obama’s present-day appeal as well as the reasons for the reactionary politics against him. Richards begins by laying out the basics of the ethics of care and proposing an alternative basis for ethics: relationality, which is based in convergent findings in infant research, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology. He critically analyzes patriarchal politics...
The obituary pages of our quality newspapers have been described as 'oases of calm in a world gone mad', 'a lovely part of the paper to linger in', and 'writing that matters'. Entertaining, inspiring and informative, they serve as a legitimate instrument of history, and have enjoyed an extraordinary revival in popularity over the past twenty years. Life After Death investigates-and celebrates-the development of the obituary form in the British, American, and Australian press. Author Nigel Starck tracks down the earliest exercise in obituary publication (in 1622), then traces the evolution of the form over four centuries, from times when the obituary was the reserve of royalty and privilege t...
How Romans used the world of the house to interpret and interrogate the role of the emperor. The Julio-Claudian dynasty, beginning with the rise of Augustus in the late first century BCE and ending with the death of Nero in 68 CE, was the first ruling family of the Roman Empire. Elite Romans had always used domestic space to assert and promote their authority, but what was different about the emperor's house? In The Ruler's House, Harriet Fertik considers how the emperor's household and the space he called home shaped Roman conceptions of power and one-man rule. While previous studies of power and privacy in Julio-Claudian Rome have emphasized the emperor's intrusions into the private lives ...
Draws on scholarship from leading figures in the field and spans Australian literary history from colonial origins, indigenous and migrant literatures, as well as representations of Asia and the Pacific and the role of literary culture in modern Australian society.
For the first time, readings of Moroccan travel writing in Arabic are juxtaposed with French and British writing about Morocco in a critical exploration of nineteenth-century concepts of modernity. Ahmed Idrissi Alami investigates the complex dynamics concerning colonial expansion, military conflict, and societal values. Mutual Othering sets out to rethink generally accepted concepts of European modernity by critically examining its production and contestation within a subaltern context in which the native other—in this case, religious scholars or imams accompanying political missions to Paris and London—presents aspects of European culture to elite members of the Moroccan imperial court...
A Modest Apostle studies women's leadership in the early church. Susan Hylen argues that complex cultural norms for women's behavior encouraged both the modesty and leadership of women, as exemplified by Thecla.