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The study of the mapping class group Mod(S) is a classical topic that is experiencing a renaissance. It lies at the juncture of geometry, topology, and group theory. This book explains as many important theorems, examples, and techniques as possible, quickly and directly, while at the same time giving full details and keeping the text nearly self-contained. The book is suitable for graduate students. A Primer on Mapping Class Groups begins by explaining the main group-theoretical properties of Mod(S), from finite generation by Dehn twists and low-dimensional homology to the Dehn-Nielsen-Baer theorem. Along the way, central objects and tools are introduced, such as the Birman exact sequence, the complex of curves, the braid group, the symplectic representation, and the Torelli group. The book then introduces Teichmüller space and its geometry, and uses the action of Mod(S) on it to prove the Nielsen-Thurston classification of surface homeomorphisms. Topics include the topology of the moduli space of Riemann surfaces, the connection with surface bundles, pseudo-Anosov theory, and Thurston's approach to the classification.
Geometric group theory is the study of the interplay between groups and the spaces they act on, and has its roots in the works of Henri Poincaré, Felix Klein, J.H.C. Whitehead, and Max Dehn. Office Hours with a Geometric Group Theorist brings together leading experts who provide one-on-one instruction on key topics in this exciting and relatively new field of mathematics. It's like having office hours with your most trusted math professors. An essential primer for undergraduates making the leap to graduate work, the book begins with free groups—actions of free groups on trees, algorithmic questions about free groups, the ping-pong lemma, and automorphisms of free groups. It goes on to cov...
This volume contains the proceedings of the 2017 Georgia International Topology Conference, held from May 22–June 2, 2017, at the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia. The papers contained in this volume cover topics ranging from symplectic topology to classical knot theory to topology of 3- and 4-dimensional manifolds to geometric group theory. Several papers focus on open problems, while other papers present new and insightful proofs of classical results. Taken as a whole, this volume captures the spirit of the conference, both in terms of public lectures and informal conversations, and presents a sampling of some of the great new ideas generated in topology over the preceding eight years.
This compilation of essays, edited by a Palestinian writer and an Israeli journalist, constitutes a challenge to critically rethink the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Between the Lines presents a groundbreaking study that brings together insights from across the lines of conflict to put the latest chapter of Israeli apartheid and Palestinian resistance into context. Contributors include: Marwan Bargouti, Dr. Azmi Bishara, Dr. Sami Shalom Chetrit, Dr. Saleh Abdel Jawwad, Husam Khader, Eileen Kuttab, Dr. Yitzhak Laor, Dr. Adi Ophir, Dr. Ilan Pappe, Linda Tabar, Graham Usher and Dr. Jamal Zahalqa.
Since the nation’s founding, Israel has existed in a state of near perpetual warfare. Despite this, Hebrew novels that deal with the experience of contemporary conflict are surprisingly rare. In War Lives, Nitza Ben-Dov argues that Israeli writers employ the freedoms granted by fiction to challenge the heroic myth of war. She suggests that these writers do so not only by turning inwards, towards the home front and the psyches of individuals marked by post-trauma, but also by unsettling the relationship between historical fact and fiction, between purported reliability and representation. Through close readings of a range of novels by authors such as S. Y. Agnon, Yehuda Amichai, and Amos Oz, Ben-Dov foregrounds war as a coordinate from which Israeli novels are driven and to which they return in equal measure. While each chapter focuses on a different theme—from mourning to battleground camaraderie to vengeance—Ben-Dov’s literary analyses demonstrate how these canonical works afford an in-depth view of the symbiosis between civilian and military life, the comorbidity of life living under the constant threat of war.
Menachem Begin, father of Israel's right wing and sixth prime minister of the nation, was known for his unflinchingly hawkish ideology. And yet, in 1979 he signed a groundbreaking peace treaty with Egypt for which he and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat received the Nobel Prize for Peace. Such a contradiction was typical in Begin's life: no other Israeli played as many different, sometimes conflicting, roles as Begin, and no other figure inspired such sharply opposing responses. Begin was belittled and beloved, revered and despised, and his career was punctuated by exhilarating highs on the one hand, despair and ostracism on the other./divDIV DIVThis riveting biography is the first to provide ...
Israel has made a unique contribution to the nuclear age. It has created a special "bargain" with the bomb. Israel is the only nuclear-armed state that does not acknowledge its possession of the bomb, even though its existence is a common knowledge throughout the world. It only says that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. The bomb is Israel's collective ineffable the nation's last great taboo. This bargain has a name: in Hebrew, it is called amimut, or opacity. By adhering to the bargain, which was born in a secret deal between Richard Nixon and Golda Meir, Israel has created a code of nuclear conduct that encompasses both governmental policy and societ...
For more than forty years Yitzhak Rabin played a critical role in shaping Israeli national security policy and military doctrine. He began as a soldier in the Palmach, the elite underground unit of the Jewish community in Palestine, served in the 1948 War of Independence, and ultimately became chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force (IDF), defense minister in several governments, ambassador to the United States, and, twice, prime minister. As chief of staff, Rabin led the IDF to its triumph in the 1967 Six Day War. He was assassinated in 1995 as prime minister as he left a peace rally. Drawing on unpublished materials and interviews with important sources, including Rabin himself, Efraim ...
This book proposes a socio-pragmatic exploration of the discursive practices used to construe and dynamically negotiate positions in news interviews. It starts with a discursive interpretation of 'positioning', 'role' and 'challenge', puts forward the relevance of a distinction between social and interactional roles, demonstrates how challenges bring to the fore the relevant roles and role-components of the participants, and shows that in news interviews speakers constantly position and re-position themselves and each other through discourse.The discussion draws on an empirical fine-grained analysis of a 24-hour corpus of news interviews on Israeli television and a corpus of media references...