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Bringing together innovative and internationally renowned experts, this volume provides concise presentations of the main concepts and cutting-edge research fields in the study of culture (rather than the infinite multitude of possible themes). More specifically, the volume outlines different models for the study of culture, explores avenues for interdisciplinary exchange, assesses key concepts and traces their travels across various disciplinary, historical and national contexts. To trace the travelling of concepts means to map both their transfer from one discipline, approach or culture of research to another, and also to identify the transformations which emerge through these processes of...
Taking as its point of departure Nelson Goodman’s theory of symbol systems as delineated in his seminal book “Ways of Worldmaking”, this volume gauges the possibilities and perspectives offered by the worldmaking approach as a model for the study of culture. Its main objectives are to explore the usefulness and scope of the approach for the study of culture and to supplement Goodman’s philosophy of worldmaking with a number of complementary disciplinary perspectives, literary and cultural approaches, and new questions and applications. It focuses on three key issues or concepts which illuminate ways of worldmaking and their interdisciplinary relevance and ramifications, viz. (1) theoretical approaches to ways of worldmaking, (2) the impact of media on ways of worldmaking, and (3) narratives as ways of worldmaking. The volume serves to demonstrate how specific media and narratives affect the worlds that are created, and shows how these worlds are established as socially relevant. It also illustrates the extent to which ways of worldmaking are imbued with cultural values, and thus inevitably implicated in power relations.
Configuring Masculinity in Theory and Literary Practice combines a critical survey of the most important concepts in Masculinity Studies with a historical overview of how masculinity has been constructed within British Literature and a special focus on developments in the 20th and 21st centuries.
At times of crisis and revolution such as ours, diagnoses of crucial junctures and ruptures – ‘turning points’ – in the continuous flow of history are more prevalent than ever. Analysing literary, cinematic and other narratives, the volume seeks to understand the meanings conveyed by different concepts of turning points, the alternative concepts to which they are opposed when used to explain historical change, and those contexts in which they are unmasked as false and over-simplifying constructions. Literature and film in particular stress the importance of turning points as a sensemaking device (as part of a character’s or a community’s cultural memory), while at the same time unfolding the constructive and hence relative character of turning points. Offering complex reflections on the notion of turning points, literary and filmic narratives are thus of particular interest to the present volume.
The only Arabic voice to have witnessed the Ottoman conquest of Cairo, Ibn Iyās, is an eminent historical source for the late Mamluk period. This book is the first to take stock of the author's complete works, approaching him through an examination of his narrative voice and writing strategies. Tracing Ibn Iyās's working process by compilation analysis, it shows how the author adapted his representations of Egyptian history to his writing projects and audience. Ibn Iyās's ways of worldmaking are shaped deeply by beliefs, biases and intellectual trends as well as the impact of the social and historical context the author wrote in. Knowing these conditioning factors allows to understand his presentation of history as an individual voice of his time.
This timely and informative volume centres how global Black feminist narratives of care are important to our contemporary theorizing and highlights the transgressive potential of a critical transnational Black feminist pedagogical praxis. This text not only details how such praxis can be revolutionary for the academy but also provides poignant examples of the student scholarship that can be produced when such pedagogy is applied. Drawing on narratives from Black women around the globe, the book features chapters on pedagogy, mentorship, art, migration, relationships, and how Black women make sense of navigating social and institutional barriers. Readers of the text will benefit from an interdisciplinary, global approach to Black feminisms that centres the narratives and experiences of these women. Readers will also gain knowledge about the historical and contemporary scholarship produced by Black women across the globe. This book is an invaluable resource for scholars and researchers, including graduate students in Caribbean feminisms, Black feminisms, transnational feminism, sociology, political science, the performing arts, cultural studies, and Caribbean studies.
Writing the Brain analyzes the intersections, overlaps, and cross pollutions between early brain science and literature between 1800 and 1880 in England and the United States. Many of the foundational insights of modern neuroscience were made during this period, but they have rarely received extended scholarly attention in literary studies. Author Stefan Schöberlein changes that by reading literary genres and neuroscientific discoveries in tandem, often with particular attention to technological similes and metaphors. It revisits canonical works (Whitman, Dickens, Poe) and presents newly discovered periodical texts, often coupled with historical illustrations. The resulting study sketches out a new, transatlantic field of inquiry as well as a new corpus of texts for readers and scholars of the nineteenth century.
The notions of culture and civilization are at the heart of European self-image. This book focuses on how space and spatiality contributed to defining the concepts of culture and civilization and, conversely, what kind of spatial ramifications "culture" and "civilization" entailed. These questions have vital importance to the understanding of this formative period of modern Europe. The chapters of this volume concentrate on the following themes: What were the sites of culture, civilization and Bildung and how were these sites employed in defining these concepts? What kind of borders did this process of definition and its inherent spatial imagination produce? What were the connecting routes b...
Physics and Literature is a unique collaboration between physicists, literary scholars, and philosophers, the first collection of essays to examine together how science and literature, beneath their practical differences, share core dimensions – forms of questioning, thinking, discovering and communicating insights.This book advances an in-depth exploration of relations between physics and literature from both perspectives. It turns around the tendency to discuss relations between literature and science in one-sided and polarizing ways. The collection is the result of the inaugural conference of ELINAS, the Erlangen Center for Literature and Natural Science, an initiative dedicated to buil...
Over the course of the twentieth century, Shia Ismaili Muslim communities were repeatedly displaced. How, in the aftermath of these displacements, did they remake their communities? Shenila Khoja-Moolji highlights women's critical role in this rebuilding process and breaks new ground by writing women into modern Ismaili history. Rebuilding Community tells the story of how Ismaili Muslim women who fled East Pakistan and East Africa in the 1970s recreated religious community (jamat) in North America. Drawing on oral histories, fieldwork, and memory texts, Khoja-Moolji illuminates the placemaking activities through which Ismaili women reproduce bonds of spiritual kinship: from cooking for congr...