You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Romancing Fascism argues that intellectual responsibility can only be safeguarded if criticism is mobilised both as a poetic and as a critically enlightened endeavour. In this analysis of allegory as a function of modernity, what is made clear is the difficulty, if not impossibility, of definitively determining the genealogical antecedents of intellectual trends, particularly those considered pernicious to clear thinking. Thus Kerr-Koch takes a wide-ranging approach to the analysis of allegory as it is treated by three controversial writers whose works flank the 19th and 20th centuries, the middle and late periods of what we call modernity-Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man and Percy Bysshe Shelley. These three writers have been chosen because they have been at some point recuperated for a theory of 'postmodernism', a term that for some theorists represents liberal free play, and for others represents a lack of rigour and a pernicious corruption of thought.
The book considers the persistent tendency to represent the “Middle East” as a region enclosed in less permeable boundaries. This perspective of enclosure haunts Middle Eastern Studies and is part of ongoing cultural debates on cross-border circulation, currently challenged by spectacular outbursts of violence along resurfacing lines of division. This critical study analyses selected works of four contemporary Anglophone migrant writers from the Middle East (namely, Rabih Alameddine, Diana Abu-Jaber, Laila Halaby and Elif Shafak) to demonstrate that, in spite of the forceful lines that remain after religious, ethnic and political disputes, this region does not exist as a rigidly delimited place in the writing of migrants who reclaim it back from beyond its boundaries. Rather than being a permanent location, it is constructed as a place that flows into other places and is constantly reshaped by a variety of personal stories, migrant trajectories, departures and returns.
The poetry of ideas, a long neglected genre, has now found a vigorous and resourceful champion in Christopher Norris. Hitherto best known as philosopher and literary theorist, he has treated that genre to a full-scale modern revival of singular scope and ambition. His poems combine intellectual agility with a verse-music both keen-eared and frequently haunting. This latest collection sees Norris at the top of his bent as lyric poet, poet-philosopher, verse-essayist, political satirist, social commentator, and skilful re-worker of traditional verse-forms to suit contemporary contexts and concerns. It exhibits all the wit and erudition that readers will have come to expect, along with a marked broadening of purview and heightened stylistic virtuosity. These poems engage with topics ranging from the personal (though never private-confessional) to the deeply enquiring (though never abstruse) and the forcefully political (though never excluding issues that transcend the narrowly partisan). Above all they make the case for viewing rhyme, meter, and prosodic structure as intrinsically a part of verse-practice and a source of everything that is most distinctive and valuable in poetry.
The most comprehensive collection of postcolonial writing theory and criticism, this third edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include 125 extracts from key works in the field. Leading, as well as lesser-known figures in the fields of writing, theory and criticism contribute to this inspiring body of work that includes sections on nationalism, hybridity, diaspora and globalisation. As in the first two editions, this new edition of The Postcolonial Studies Reader ranges as widely as possible to reflect the remarkable diversity of work in the discipline and the vibrancy of anti-imperialist and decolonising writing both within and without the metropolitan centres. This volume includes new work in the field over the decade and a half since the second edition was published. Covering more debates, topics and critics than any comparable book in its field The Postcolonial Studies Reader provides the ideal starting point for students and issues a potent challenge to the ways in which we think and write about literature and culture.
Spare Rib remains one of the most iconic symbols of Second Wave Feminism, its influence far out-living the span of its publication (1972-1993). This collection examines various aspects of the magazine - based on the digitised publication by the British Library in 2015 – in order to explore the ways in which it has influenced society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as the lives of individual readers. By analysing several articles from a modern, post-feminist perspective, and using cross-generational interviews of Spare Rib readers and reflective accounts of reading the publication, the significance and endurance of the publication is demonstrated. Written by both academics, experienced researchers and independent scholars alike, the inter-disciplinary nature of the text results in a multi-dimensional reading of Spare Rib suitable for both an academic and general readership interested in cultural and media studies.
Islam, Context, Pluralism and Democracy aspires to clarify the tensions and congruences between the revelational and the rational, the text and the context, the limits and the horizons of contextualization in Islam, as these emanate from the Islamic interpretative tradition. This book examines classical and modern Muslim interpretations with regard to the concepts of diachronic development, pluralism and democracy based on Arabic-Islamic sources and literature. Focusing on the parameters of semantic changes, methods of interpretation and cultural variables, it shows how this interpretative tradition offers a diversity of ideas and approaches that can be utilized in contemporary debates conce...
Largely, though not exclusively, as a legacy of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, Islamic faith has become synonymous in many corners of the media and academia with violence, which many believe to be its primary mode of expression. The absence of a sophisticated recognition of the wide range of Islamic subjectivities within contemporary culture has created a void in which misinterpretations and hostilities thrive. Responding to the growing importance of religion, specifically Islam, as a cultural signifier in the formation of a postcolonial self, this multidisciplinary collection is organized around contested terms such as secularism, Islamopolitics, female identity, and Islamophobia. The overarching goal of the contributors is to facilitate a deeper understanding of the full range of experiences within Islam as well as the figure of the Muslim, thus enabling a new set of questions about religion’s role in shaping postcolonial identity.
A timely reconsideration of the life and times of one of the West's most prominent Muslim converts
Public interest in the religion of Islam and in Muslim communities in recent years has generated an impetus for Western Universities to establish an array of Institutes and programs dedicated to the study of Islam. Despite the growth in number of programs dedicated to this study, very little attention has been paid to the appropriate shape of such programs and the assumptions that ought to underlie such a study. The Teaching and Study of Islam in Western Universities attempts to address two central questions that arise through the teaching of Islam. Firstly, what relation is there between the study of the religion of Islam and the study of those cultures that have been shaped by that religion? Secondly, what is the appropriate public role of a scholar of Islam? After extensive discussion of these questions, the authors then continue to address the wider issues raised for the academic community having to negotiate between competing cultural and philosophical demands. This edited collection provides new perspectives on the study of Islam in Western Institutions and will be an invaluable resource for students of Education and Religion, in particular Islamic Studies.
The year 1932, the tenth anniversary of Mussolini’s March on Rome, was fascism’s Decennale. Commemorating Italian fascism’s seizure of power, the Decennale was celebrated by the regime in a deliberate attempt to radicalize the original movement and develop it into an imperial and racist regime. In Mussolini’s Decennale, Antonio Morena explores a cross-section of Italian culture during the Decennale. Studying literature, speeches, documentaries, films, textbooks, and the 1932 Exhibition, he discusses how the regime, its patrons, and even its critics all appropriated the historical events of 1922 for their political advantage. Positioning the 1932 anniversary celebrations as the crux of the fascist transition from conservatism to totalitarianism, Mussolini’s Decennale broadens our understanding of fascist ideology, cultural politics, and Realpolitik.