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There are more than 15 million people over age 65 currently living in the Arab world, yet little attention has been paid to the cultural significance of growing old. The book recognizes the widespread silence by countering the critical corpus that reads the modern Arabic novel as a political discourse with an emphasis on youth achievement. By offering close readings of 16 fictional works from different parts of the Arab world such as novels by Alia Mamdouh, Sahar Khalifah, Iman Kachachi, Rashid al-Daif and Alaa al-Aswany, the study utilizes biological and cultural theories of ageing- particularly from the perspective of gender and feminism- that shed light on the representation of ageing in the Arabic novel. The study makes use of feminist theories of ageing and gerontology that focus on sexism and ageism, including works by Simone de Beauvoir and Margaret Marganroth Gullette to present aging as a relational formation between men and women, and their idiosyncratic experiences of the process of ageing, revealing that there is no prototype of oldness in the Arabic novel and that older men and women manifest a multiplicity of identities, concerns and experiences. The study challenges the ungendered image generally attributed to older persons and examines how they navigate old age and subvert it. As they grow older men and women manifest a multiplicity of identities, concerns, and experiences revealing that the ageing process is an ongoing inherently unstable project.

Michalangelo Antonioni’s 1960s films are widely recognized as both exemplars of cinema and key texts in ushering in cinema’s ‘modern’ incarnation. Reconnecting Antonioni’s aesthetically audacious films of the 1960s to the ferment of their historical time, Antonioni and the Aesthetics of Impurity addresses these works’ crucial, yet overlooked, affinity with the new ‘impure’ art practices that emerged in the period. At the same time, the book also offers a novel reading of the films’ dialogue with postwar pictorial abstraction. Revealing an Antonioni who embraced both mixed and mass media and reflected on them via his cinema, the book, through both an intermedial and a transnational focus, replaces auteuristic accounts of the director’s work with a new understanding of its critical significance in late-twentienth century cinema and visual culture.

The idea of the museum as a space committed to dialogue and inclusive representation which is paramount to museology in the Global North has had trouble finding ground in the Middle East and North Africa where museums remain—and have mostly been depicted as—the carriers of homogenous national identities, at the expense of cultural and social difference. Research recently undertaken by anthropologists, museum specialists and historians reveal that this monolithic museographic conception of culture is in the process of being challenged. Whilst some public museums in the region have engaged in the reconsideration of the narratives underpinning their collections, the past two decades have also seen a boom in private museum initiatives led by social and cultural minority groups whose experiences have until now been marginalised within, or absent from, state-led exhibitionary practices. This volume discusses the contradictions and opportunities museums have created for minority groups across the Mediterranean basin, from the early twentieth century to the contemporary period. It explores whether museums can provide a suitable canvas for minorities to express their voice, what kind of narratives is articulated, and whether these can challenge cultural and social stereotypes and deploy new kinds of identities.

This book examines why Beckett’s writing is so queer, so disabled and disabling. Why did Beckett write so soften about mental illness, disability, perversion? Why did he take such an interest in ‘abnormals’ and ‘degenerates’? How did he reconceive ‘the human’ in the wake of Hitler and Stalin? Drawing on Beckett’s voluminous archive, as well as his primary texts, the authors use psychoanalysis, queer theory, disability theory and biopolitics to push Beckett studies beyond the normal.

Mapping the -- not always chronological -- trajectory from representationalist-naturalist theatre (Strindberg, Sartre) to the theatre of the historical avant-garde (Brecht, Artaud), this book puts milestones of modernist theatre in conversation with new materialist, posthumanist philosophy and affect theory. Arguing that existing modernization theories have been unnecessarily one-sided, Biopolitics, Materiality and Meaning in Modern European Drama offers a rewriting of modernity that cuts across binary methodologies – nature and culture, mind and matter, epistemology and ontology, critique and affirmative writing, dramatic and postdramatic theatre. Going beyond the exclusive focus on questions of identity, representation and meaning on the one hand or materiality on the other hand, the book captures the complex material-discursive forces that have shaped modernity and modern theatre. In powerfully prescient readings of modern anxiety, contagion and performance, the volume specifically reworks the biopolitical, immunitarian exclusions that mark Western epistemology leading up to and beyond modernity’s totalitarian crisis point. The book reveals the performativity of theatre in its double sense -- as theatrical production and as the intra-activity of an open and dynamic system of relations between multiple human and more-than-human actants, energies, and affects. In modern theatre, public and private, human and more-than-human, materiality and meaning co-productively collapse in a common life.

The Birth of Nomos delves into the history of the fundamental ancient Greek word nomos (and its family and other related words) to extensively examine the varied co-existent uses of the terms from the archaic to the early classical period, before and beyond its later meaning of 'law' or 'law-making'. The Birth of Nomos draws on the literary evidence in the works of the poets, philosophers and tragedians including Homer, Hesiod, Alcman, Pindar, Archilochos, Theognis, Heraclitus, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In doing so it critically reflects on how nomos and its complex genealogy have been used by contemporary philosophers, including Agamben, Foucault, Heidegger, Schmitt, Nancy, Deleuze and Axelos.

The collection of essays intends to show that everything about Byron’s poetic work baffles the scholarly desire for neat categorisations. Various attempts at re-mapping Romanticism have given ample evidence of the fact that, as one of the ‘big six’ in the Romantic canon, Byron outgrows Romanticism and epitomises the fallacious character of a period that has always been compared to a dangerous quicksand. In his self-incurred marginality, Byron subjects the entire genre of poetry to a severe process of deconstruction: his œuvre ranges from verse tale to “epic narratives”, versified romances and poems which subvert the rigorous metrical and formal requirements and turn poetic forms into leaky vessels of incoherent quotations, intertextual reference and Molly Bloomian soliloquies.Taking to his role as a cultural fence-sitter, scoffer and outsider who watches his literary ambience from the stern perspective of a Neo-Classicist, Byron unveils and lays bare the repressed strata of human savagery which Romantic poetry normally glosses over and ignores.Doing the exact opposite of what Novalis and others circumscribed as the ‘poeticisation’ of prosaic 19^th-century reality, Byron subscribes to the idea that man is irretrievably a bête humaine, much more akin to the liver-devouring vulture than to Prometheus. It is this premise of ontological marginality that is eventually reflected in all aspects of Byron’s textual, generic, thematic and topographical marginality.

This book reinterprets the history of Chile, the CIA and the Cold War. It blends national, regional, and world-historical trends from Chile -- from the appearance of its labor movement in the late nineteenth century to the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in the late twentieth -- into both the inter-American and transatlantic communities. It argues that Chileans made their own history as highly engaged internationalists while reassessing American and other foreign-directed intelligence operations in Chile and southern South America while recontextualizing and reassessing United States, particularly CIA, influence.

Christianity has had a long, varied history in South and Central Asia. Today, it faces challenges old and new in a rapidly changing and diverse population. Socio-religious crosswinds involving Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam, along with Communism and Radical Fundamentalism have left lasting impacts upon the region’s societies today. Christianity faces immense struggles, including navigating ingrained social stratification, culturally-accepted discrimination, as well as state-sponsored persecution. Despite the challenges, the gospel of kingdom moves forward through a resilient minority, an opportunistic diaspora, and the rise of indigenous theologies that provide a fresh witness of Christ in revolutionary ways. The future of Christianity in the region is expected to yield new insights into the global impact of the message of Christ.

Perhaps because they are so immediately absorbing, narrative films can also be profoundly confusing and disorienting. This fascinating book neither proposes fool-proof methods for avoiding confusion, nor does it suggest that disorientation is always a virtue. Instead, it argues that the best way to come to terms with our confusion is to look closely at exactly what is confusing us, and why. At the heart of the book are original close readings of four important recent films: David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (2006), Leos Carax's Holy Motors (2012), Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth (2006) and Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au langage (2014). Clearly written but critically and theoretically bold, The Cinema of Disorientation: Inviting Confusions explores both how we get (or fail to get) our bearings with respect to a film, and what we might discover by (and while) doing so.

This edited volume addresses the ways in which the city has been explored in works of literature by classical and modern ‘Arab’ authors from different theosophical and ideological backgrounds. Crucial to its organizing theoretical paradigm is its rejection of the stark rupture that most often separates the pre-modern and modern Arabic literary traditions. Instead, we view the entirety of the tradition as an evolving continuum, making our collection relevant to scholars of both classical and modern Arabic literature.

Classical Caledonia explores eighteenth-century attitudes towards Scotland’s ancient history and heritage, looking in particular at how Roman Scotland was interpreted at this time. It discusses the research of early modern antiquarians and historians both north and south of the border and looks at how Scotland’s ancient past was often misinterpreted and manipulated in attempts to create a new national identity for a country undergoing rapid and dramatic change. The book uncovers the political, patriotic and intellectual influences which fuelled the heated eighteenth-century debates surrounding the success or failure of the Roman conquests of Scotland, a place sometimes referred to in ancient sources as ‘Caledonia’, and the disagreements regarding the impact of Roman invasion on the evolution of the modern nation. Analysing the period’s historiography, antiquarianism, political propaganda and literature, Classical Caledonia investigates the widespread interest in Scotland’s Roman past during the eighteenth century and reveals the influence of folklore, myth and tradition on the accounts of Scotland’s ancient tribes and their supposed resistance to conquest by the Roman Empire. It also examines the fading interest in the subject of Roman Scotland in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as the Scottish Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism and associated notions of the nation’s origins overtook the desire to establish a classical heritage in the region north of Hadrian’s Wall.

Belief, Bias and Intelligence outlines an approach for reducing the risk of cognitive biases impacting intelligence analysis that draws from experimental research in the social sciences. It critiques the reliance of Western intelligence agencies on the use of a method for intelligence analysis developed by the CIA in the 1990’s, the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH). The book shows that the theoretical basis of the ACH method is significantly flawed, and that there is no empirical basis for the use of ACH in mitigating cognitive biases. It puts ACH to the test in an experimental setting against two key cognitive biases with unique empirical research facilitated by UK’s Professional Heads of Intelligence Analysis unit at the Cabinet Office, includes meta-analysis into which analytical factors increase and reduce the risk of cognitive bias and recommends an alternative approach to risk mitigation for intelligence communities. Finally, it proposes alternative models for explaining the underlying causes of cognitive biases, challenging current leading theories in the social sciences.

Recent social and political developments, including the presidential elections in the United States, antidemocratic state policies in Hungary and Poland, and the political climate in the rest of Europe have brought questions relating to the position and composition of ‘the people’ in constitutional democracies to the forefront. This book confronts these questions head on as leading scholars across the fields of law, legal theory, political theory and history explore the contemporary problems facing constitutional democracies. With a strong focus on constitutional law, this book examines the legal as well as the political power of ‘the people’ in constitutional democracies. Bringing together an international range of contributors from the USA, Latin America, the UK and continental Europe, it explores the complex relationship between constitutional democracy and ‘the people’ from the angles of constitutional law, legal theory, political theory, and history. Contributors explore this relationship through the lens of radical democracy, engaging with the work of key figures such as Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, Claude Lefort, and Jacques Rancière.

As the British expanded their empire from near colonies such as Ireland to those in remote corners of the world, such as Barbados, Ceylon and Australia, they left a trail of physical remains in every parish where settlement occurred. Between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, gravestones and elaborate epitaphs documented identity and attachment to both colony and metropole. This collection by leading migration historians and archaeologists seeks to explore what this evidence tells the twenty-first century reader about the attachment remote British and Irish migrants had to ‘home’ in life and death. As well as making public statements about imperial allegiance, the bereaved carved in stone the reunification of disparate families in death. Such mourning left an important seam of material culture that has hitherto received scant comparative analysis by scholars. Focusing on nodal areas of British and Irish trade around the world, each chapter reveals the social, religious, political and personal milieu of remote migrants in all continents where the British and Irish lived, worked and ultimately died.

This collection brings together 14 essays by international specialists in medieval and Renaissance culture and provides a general and a period-specific introduction to distributed cognition and the cognitive humanities. The essays revitalise our reading of medieval and Renaissance works in the fields of literature, philosophy, art, music, law, science, medicine and material culture, by bringing to bear recent insights in cognitive science and philosophy of mind on the ways in which cognition is distributed across brain, body and world. This volume explores how medieval and Renaissance practices and ideas make evident earlier expressions of distributed cognition. As many of the texts and practices have influenced later Western European societies and cultures, this book reveals vital stages in the historical development of our attempts to comprehend and optimise the distributed nature of cognition.

This book brings together 11 essays by international specialists in Victorian culture and modernism. The volume opens with a general introduction to distributed cognition that also sets out its relevance to the humanities, followed by a period-specific introduction. The essays revitalise our reading of Victorian and modernist works in the fields of literature, art, philosophy, material culture and the history of science and technology by bringing to bear recent insights in cognitive science and philosophy of mind on the ways in which cognition is distributed across brain, body and world.

Documentary cinema has always drawn from real life. However, an increasing number of contemporary filmmakers go further still, drawing onscreen images of reality through a range of animated filmmaking techniques and aesthetics. This book is the first of its kind, exploring the field of animated documentary film from a diverse range of scholarly and practice-based perspectives. The book’s chapters explore and propose answers to a range of questions that preoccupy twenty-first-century film artists and audiences alike: What are the historical roots of animated documentary? What kinds of reasons inspire practitioners to employ animation within documentary contexts? How do animated documentary images reflect and influence our understanding and experience of multiple forms of reality – public and private, psychological and political? From early cinema to present-day scientific research, military uses, digital art and gaming, this book casts new light on the capacity of the moving image to act as a record of the world around us, challenging many orthodox definitions of both animated and documentary cinema.

This is a study of Enlightenment in Edinburgh like no other. Using data and models provided by urban innovation and Smart City theory, it pinpoints the distinctive features that made Enlightenment in the Scottish capital possible. In a journey packed with evidence and incident, Murray Pittock explores various civic networks – such as the newspaper and printing businesses, the political power of the gentry and patronage networks, as well as the pub and coffee-house life – as drivers of cultural change. His analysis reveals that the attributes of civic development, which lead to innovation and dynamism, were at the heart of what made Edinburgh a smart city of 1700.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is remembered primarily as a novelist, but he wrote nearly two hundred short stories for popular magazines such as the widely-read Saturday Evening Post. These stories are vividly infused with the new popular culture of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, from jazz and blues music to motion pictures and performing arts. This book demonstrates how popular culture had a deep impact on Fitzgerald’s work, not just in terms of evoking period detail, but by confirming Fitzgerald as an experimental writer whose popular short stories reflect the serious modernist concerns occupying writers such as Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, Dorothy Parker, and Langston Hughes. This book explores how popular culture impacted on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary aesthetics on both thematic and formal levels, to a greater extent than previously recognised. Encompassing spheres of both American studies and cultural studies, this book offers a revisionist perspective on Fitzgerald’s short fiction of the interwar period, which is often overlooked in favour of the novels, especially The Great Gatsby. By exploring Fitzgerald’s fascination with leisure, specifically the intertwined cultural spheres of dance, music, theatre, and film, this book argues that he innovatively imported practices borrowed from other popular cultural media into his short stories, deploying disruptive techniques of ambiguity and parody that sit in tension with reader expectations of his lyrical style and the commercial publication contexts of his stories.