bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Elegy for the Intellectual
Authors: Halabi Zeina G.
Published: January 2019

Chapter 2 turns to a critical moment in postwar Lebanon in which the novelist Elias Khoury wrote tirelessly against the systematic erasure of collective memory and conceived the intellectual’s word as the remaining hope for salvation in obituaries and interviews in the literary journal al-Mulhaq. While it mobilized the postwar intellectual scene, Khoury’s dominant discourse on collective memory was the object of the emerging novelist Rabee Jaber’s critique. This chapter shows how Jaber reconfigured the suicide of a prominent Lebanese intellectual from a messianic gesture to a deeply personal act, challenging thereby the politicization of the intellectual’s death.
The Peasant and the Mingong: From Empathy to Sympathy to Looking Back
Authors: Schultz Corey Kai Nelson
Published: January 2019

Chapter 2 examines the representation of the figure of the peasant and its contemporary incarnation as migrant workers (mingong). It analyzes the structures of feeling of empathy and hope that concretize around the mingong figure in these films, but also explores the sense of precariousness related to this figure in the more recent films, and how the figure has been made subaltern, wretched, and rootless. It examines two cinematic forms associated with this figure – the point-of-view (POV) shot and the observational shot – positing that the POV evokes empathy while the observational shot creates sympathy. Then, it focuses on the mingong mass that replaces the individual mingong, arguing that the mingong have been commodified and made expendable. It concludes with a cinematic form associated with this group – the mingong gaze, which exists as a reminder, watching and, in its presence, remaining, demanding that the viewer acknowledge the mingong and their current state.
The Intellectual: Power and the Voice
Authors: Schultz Corey Kai Nelson
Published: January 2019

Chapter 4 analyzes the intellectual, as primarily found in the documentaries Useless and Dong. It examines this humanitarian figure and the structures of feeling that are associated with it, which include patriotism, altruism, and a sense of mission, and the desire to save the nation and its people. This chapter is based around the voice – the power of the voice, the class that has it, and its effects. It also examines the “voice” of the camera, which is interpreted as the voice of another intellectual, that of Jia Zhangke, and how it switches from a passive “observatory lens” to an engaged “exploratory lens” when it breaks its orbit around these figures to examine other people and environments. It argues that, in the Reform era, the intellectuals have resumed their traditional role and moral obligation of speaking for the masses and serving society, arguing that this in effect “Others” them, and therefore emphasizes the intellectual’s power in the Reform era in that, although they speak for the masses, they do not share their problems.
The Entrepreneur: From Crook to “New Reform Model”
Authors: Schultz Corey Kai Nelson
Published: January 2019

In chapter 5, the book concludes by analyzing the contradictory representations and structures of feeling associated with the entrepreneur figure. In many of Jia’s films, this figure is a threatening criminal who represents and evokes the anxiety surrounding market reforms in the early Reform era, and produces a structure of feeling that embodies the confusion, economic abuses, and fear of changing to a market economy. However, some of the films also present the figure of the rushang, who is a businessperson imbued with traditional Confucian characteristics, who is depicted as philosophical, friendly, and inspirational, and is tempered by traditional Confucian values, such as filial piety, patriotism, and anti-materialism, making it a figure to be lauded, not feared. These benign entrepreneurs have adapted to the new economy and are thriving because of it, but are also altruistic towards the common people and thus serve as inspirational models. This rushang is not the “New Socialist Human” that was the aspiration for the previous Maoist period, but is rather a “New Reform Human” for the Reform era – the resulting construction from the destruction of the Maoist state.
Approaching the Hellenistic Polis through Modern Political Theory: The Public Sphere, Pluralism and Prosperity
Authors: Gray Benjamin
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses methods and problems in reconstructing an inclusive, dynamic picture of the political thought and debates of the Hellenistic cities (c. 323– 31 BC), drawing on theories and models from modern political and social theory. It shows the benefits of integrating together the widest range of possible evidence, from Hellenistic philosophy to the most everyday inscriptions, in order to reconstruct for the Hellenistic world the kind of complex, wide-ranging picture of political thought advocated by P. Rosanvallon and others in the study of modern political thinking. When studied in this way, the political thinking and rhetoric of Hellenistic philosophers, intellectuals and citizens reveal attempts to reconcile the Greek polis with ideals of cosmopolitanism and social inclusion, without diluting political vitality. As evidence for this political vitality, the paper demonstrates is the fruitful interlocking and mutual counterbalancing within the Hellenistic public sphere of the three types of political discourse studied in turn in Ober’s trilogy on Classical Athens: political lobbying and negotiation, including rival attempts to shape civic values; philosophical and critical reflection about the foundations of politics; and rationalistic consideration of efficiency, especially the devising and advertisement of incentives.
Rethinking Mass and Elite: Decision-Making in the Athenian Law-Courts
Authors: Carugati Federica , Weingast Barry R.
Published: January 2019

This chapter puts pressure on the ‘mass and elite model’ of Athenian litigation introduced by Ober. According to this framework, litigation is a game played by elite litigants and mass audiences; the ‘masses’ constitute a monolithic body with identical preferences; the ‘elites’ are thoroughly aware of, and willingly play by, the rules set by the masses. Moving from a different interpretation of Athenian political sociology, this chapter builds a new model of Athenian litigation that modifies Ober’s in three important respects: first, the jurors’ preferences are not the product of a monolithic and static ‘mass’ ideology; second, litigants (not only elites) can reasonably predict the location of the median juror; and third, litigants’ arguments are the product of a cost‐benefit analysis that depends a) on the relative expected position of their opponent; b) on the expected position of the median juror; and c) on the policy/legal agenda they are pursuing. The model proposed here suggests that repeated interactions in the law‐courts allowed diverse interests to be advanced and negotiated, which helped the Athenians collectively define the boundaries of their social relations while responding to the new challenges that a post‐imperial, highly fragmented Greek ecology posed to Athens’ stability and prosperity.
Ancient and Modern Conceptions of the Rule of Law
Authors: Forsdyke Sara
Published: January 2019

This chapter provides a definition of the contested concept of the rule of law and suggests that it consists of three components: legal supremacy, legal equality and legal certainty. The chapter further argues that the classical Athenian legal system valued all three components of this definition of the rule of law, but also sought to balance the good of legal certainty against a more context specific assessment of equity in particular cases. In making this compromise, the chapter suggests, the Athenians anticipated a tension that continues to exist even in modern legal systems.
Understanding the Politics of Pericles around 450 BCE: The Benefits of an Economic Perspective
Authors: Lyttkens Carl Hampus , Gerding Henrik
Published: January 2019

Perikles is usually seen as a great statesman and clever leader of the Athenians. In the mid fifth century BC, he seems however to have been in serious political trouble and may well have been in danger of losing the political struggle against his opponent Kimon. The fact that his incentives changed considerably at this point in time seems to have escaped attention in the literature. In contrast, we see Pericles’ rational responses to fierce competition as a motivation, which exerted its influence alongside several other motivating factors, for several important policy measures introduced by Perikles at this particular time: the pay to jurors, the new law on citizenship (which has been a puzzle to many historians), and the building projects on the Acropolis and elsewhere. An economic rational-actor approach thus provides a diachronic analytical benefit by focusing on the way incentives change over time and it provides a synchronic benefit by dealing with various decisions in a common framework.
Cash and Crowns: A Network Approach to Greek Athletic Prizes
Authors: Mann Christian
Published: January 2019

It is well known that Olympic victors received “only” an olive wreath – a fact that classified them as “amateurs” in the perspective of the modern Olympic movement. But the reality of ancient sports was far more complex: At many competitions, the victors’ awards were objects of value (amphorae filled with olive oil, weapons and other bronze objects, living animals) or cash. In some cases, victors were not allowed to do with the prize what they wanted to, but were obligated to dedicate it in a sanctuary, to sell it to the polis officials, to deliver it to a king etc. So what was the nature of athletic prizes? They have been analyzed as cult objects or in the context of gift exchange (according to Marcel Mauss). This chapter offers a new approach taking into account network theory and theories about the convertibility of capital: Athletic prizes – wreaths as well as value prizes – are considered as objects with both an economic and symbolic dimension. Their function was to construct and strengthen networks in the Greek world, while the structure of those networks changed according to political developments.
Economic (In)Equality and Democracy: The Political Economy of Poverty in Athens
Authors: Taylor Claire
Published: January 2019

This chapter explores the relationship between participatory democracy and poverty in democratic Athens. Drawing on recent debates within Greek history and the social sciences, it examines the relationship between the economic prosperity of Athens and its democratic system, with particular emphasis on the role of direct democracy in the amelioration of poverty. Social scientists have frequently argued that democracy has a greater chance of success in wealthier polities, an idea which appears to have some application to the ancient world: Athens, for example, was undoubtedly affluent, had experienced long-term economic growth, had high wages and robust democratic institutions. However, much of this literature also betrays an anti-democratic/anti-poor rhetoric surprisingly familiar to historians of Athenian democracy (the poor are authoritarian, they lack intelligence, and are only interested in rule for their own redistributive self-interest etc). It also ignores those who are poor, plays down their participation in politics or fails to account for relative (in)equalities. This chapter, therefore, uses the Athenian experience to explore how participatory democracy can be used as a tool for social flourishing to empower, enrich and improve the capabilities and well-being of the poor.
Exploring Intercommunity Political Activity in Fourth-Century Greece
Authors: Liddel Peter
Published: January 2019

It might seem reasonable to take the view that the study of ancient Greek political behaviour could plausibly focus upon exchanges that went on inside the polis: after all, the word ‘politics’ derives from the Greek politika (‘polis affairs’). However, the concerns of ancient Greek polis-communities were not merely introspective: communities (regardless of size or military clout) were obliged to face the consequences of the decisions and activity of other communities. Human representatives of city-states performed necessary interactions with outsiders: they fought as soldiers, and staked political or ideological claims as ambassadors and politicians. On their return to their home communities, these individuals proclaimed to their audiences the significance of their activity away from home. Furthermore, the overlaps in social and cultural structure of different Greek city-states, as well as the existence of shared modes of decision-making, might lead us to anticipate the value of trans-community forms of political activity. At the heart of this question, therefore, is an overall debate about the degree of ‘unity’ of Greek political institutions and behaviour, a debate explored in this chapter with particular reference to the contested transferability of the decree (psephisma) in Greek inter-state politics of the fourth century.
Muddle Wrestling: Grappling for Conceptual Clarity in Archaic Greek Money
Authors: Alfen Peter van
Published: January 2019

In recent years, the global trends towards currency homogenization and monetary diversification have attracted the attention of sociologists Nigel Dodd, Geoffrey Ingham, and Viviana Zelizer, each of whom has explored at length not just contemporary monetary practices, but also the nature of money and its long history. In the course of their debates over how to define money, to trace its origins, and to outline the theoretical approaches towards the production and consumption of money in various fields of study, including economics, sociology, and politics, they have worked towards achieving greater clarity where previously there has been what Ingham has called “category errors” and Dodd a “conceptual muddle.” Largely overlooked by those who work on ancient monetary problems, their efforts to disentangle money’s abstractions and materiality offers a path out of some of the thorniest pitfalls in discussions of the development of money in the ancient Mediterranean world, particularly in the archaic period. This chapter demonstrates how Ingham’s and Dodd’s clearly defined, hierarchical units of analysis – money idea, money of account, and currency – can be profitably employed to map and isolate problems in approaches to archaic money that hitherto have been plagued by their own conceptual confusions, not least of which is how to define “money” in an archaic context.
Entanglement, Materiality and the Social Organisation of Construction Workers in Classical Athens
Authors: Cline Diane Harris
Published: January 2019

This chapter views the “Periclean Building Program” through the lens of Actor Network Theory, in order to explore the ways in which the construction of these buildings transformed Athenian society and politics in the fifth century BC. It begins by applying some Actor Network Theory concepts to the process that was involved in getting approval for the building program as described by Thucydides and Plutarch in his Life of Pericles. Actor Network Theory blends entanglement (human-material thing interdependence) with network thinking, so it allows us to reframe our views to include social networks when we think about the political debate and social tensions in Athens that arose from Pericles’s proposal to construct the Parthenon and Propylaea on the Athenian Acropolis, the Telesterion at Eleusis, the Odeon at the base of the South slope of the Acropolis, and the long wall to Peiraeus. Social Network Analysis can model the social networks, and the clusters within them, that existed in mid-fifth century Athens. By using Social Network Analysis we can then show how the construction work itself transformed a fractious city into a harmonious one through sustained, collective efforts that engaged large numbers of lower class citizens, all responding to each other’s needs in a chaine operatoire..
Technology and Society in Classical Athens: A Study of the Social Context of Mining and Metallurgy at Laurion
Authors: Liefferinge Kim Van
Published: January 2019

Technology is a ubiquitous aspect of the everyday world. Although hard to ignore in this day and age, Classical scholars have shown little awareness of this observation in their research. Technology has primarily been studied from a restricted angle, most notably a technical or economic one. The former perspective views technology as a purely technical force, concentrating principally on tools and techniques. The latter focuses on innovation, and its capability to increase production outputs and trigger economic growth. Both approaches, however, neglect the complex range of factors that actually contribute to technological change, inevitably leading to misconceptions about the role of technology in the ancient world. This chapter presents a different way of approaching Classical technology. Using the sociological theory of Social Construction of Technological Systems, it argues that technological change always occurs against the backdrop of interdependent environmental, social, economic and political factors. It applies this approach to the case study of the Athenian silver mines in the Laurion. The focus is on the practice of silver production, with special attention to social groups and their interaction in a broader environmental, political and economic context. This framework enables a more contextualized and thorough understanding of technological change in Athenian society.
Overview: Greek History at a Crossroads
Authors: Davies John K.
Published: January 2019

This chapter provides an overview of the themes of the volume and reflects on the approaches employed, their promise and their problems. It also makes suggestions about the way forward in the ongoing dialogue between Greek history and contemporary social science.
Divine Paraphrase: Cormac McCarthy
Authors: Willems Brian
Published: January 2019

In Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road (2006),
which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, a boy and his father struggle to survive in a world decimated by an unspecified catastrophe.This post-apocalyptic world is dark, but relatively so because it is perceivable. The pre-apocalyptic world, as represented by the language of the father, is different. The father’s world is full of objects which are known and useful. The father’s world is a place of light and speech, while the boy’s world consists of darkness and silence. However, rather than reading the post-apocalyptic world as one of loss, its darkness is taken as a sign of potential. While this interpretation goes against the grain of most of the novel, it is supported by the repeated figuration of the boy as God. Graham Harman and Quentin Meillassoux are the main philosophers used to develop this argument.
Conclusion
Authors: Willems Brian
Published: January 2019

A bottomless abyss exists in every inch.

Cixin Liu, Death’s End (2010)

Speculative realism and sf have one main feature in common. Both challenge an anthropocentric view of the world by considering non-human objects worthy of serious thought. This book has developed this connection through a reading of various works that fit into the continuum between sf and fantasy. More specifically, it is an investigation into the role that ambiguity plays in divesting the world of human domination....
The Book of Tribulations: The Syrian Muslim Apocalyptic Tradition'
Authors: Cook David , al-Marwazi Nu'aym b. Hammad
Published: January 2019

“The Book of Tribulations by Nu`aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi (d. 844) is the earliest Muslim apocalyptic work to come down to us. Its contents focus upon the cataclysmic events to happen before the end of the world, the wars against the Byzantines, and the Turks, and the Muslim civil wars. There is extensive material about the Mahdi (messianic figure), the Muslim Antichrist and the return of Jesus, as well as descriptions of Gog and Magog. Much of the material in Nu`aym today is utilized by Salafi-jihadi groups fighting in Syria and Iraq.
The Reinvention of the Ancient Hero
Authors: Augoustakis Antony , Raucci Stacie
Published: January 2019

The movie Troy (2004) opens with a voiceover by the wily warrior Odysseus in which he asks if the names and deeds of Homeric heroes will endure for centuries to come: “Will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we’re gone and wonder who we were?”...
Hercules and the Millennial Generation
Authors: Solomon Jon
Published: January 2019

This chapter provides the foundation of the first section of the book and provides a detailed examination of the history of Hercules on screen. The Hercules corpus is separated into three clusters: European ancients from 1958 to 1965; the 1990s, which included the Hercules TV series and the Disney film; and finally the most recent productions of 2014. The chapter places the most recent productions in a tradition of the onscreen Hercules. It demonstrates the extensive scope of the Hercules corpus and reveals the inherent difficulties in determining what is part of the mythic tradition and what is not.
Hercules: The Mythopoetics of New Heroism
Authors: Blanshard Alastair J. L.
Published: January 2019

This chapter and the next two focus on the most recent manifestations of Hercules on screen. It puts the recent output of Hercules-themed films into dialogue with earlier cinematic and television projects to demonstrate how these most recent versions both embody a tradition and represent a new critical departure. It shows a turn, starting from Disney’s Hercules (1997), in which the hero became a more flexible figure. The new flexibility of the Hercules character is further attributed to audience reception of cinematic texts. The author describes a new type of audience familiar with the “mega-text,” texts with storylines across genres. Audiences familiar with comics, fan fiction, and other artistic genres are capable of thinking about the hero in terms of tradition and adaptation.
Hercules, Putin, and the Heroic Body on Screen in 2014
Authors: Stafford Emma
Published: January 2019

This chapter places the two recent 2014 Hercules films, The Legend of Hercules and Hercules, including the lesser known “mockbuster” Hercules Reborn (2014), in dialogue with the Hercules display of Russian president Vladimir Putin. It focuses particularly on aesthetic elements: the visual presentation of their central figure – his costume, his accoutrements, and the type of action shots that showcase the heroic body – and the settings against which the heroic action occurs. The chapter shows more broadly the importance of examining the place of Hercules and classical mythology in modern political discourse.
Sacrifice and Salvific Heroism in Supernatural (2005–)
Authors: Safran Meredith E.
Published: January 2019

This chapter, approaches the mythological figure of Hercules through an indirect representation of the ancient hero, allowing us to think about issues of adaptation of ancient heroes. Rather than Hercules appearing directly on screen, the audience finds him in the long-running apocalyptic sci-fi series CW’s Supernatural (2005-). Despite an overt Christian narrative context in which the plot brings the audience to expect a Jesus figure, the character of Dean Winchester follows the path of Hercules.
Russell Crowe and Maximal Projections in Noah (2014)
Authors: Cyrino Monica S.
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the biblical patriarch Noah as played by Russell Crowe in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (2014). Starting from the foundation of Richard Dyer’s idea of a “star text” in which actors bring echoes of their old roles to new performances and thereby engage viewers on multiple levels, this chapter frames Crowe’s performance in Noah as what the author terms a “maximal projection.” Crowe brings his role as Maximus Decimus Meridius, the soldier who becomes a gladiator during the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, to his later role as Noah. Through the repetition of things such as physical gestures, bodily movements, interactions with characters, and even sometimes dialogue, Crowe performs what the author terms “star-peats.”
The Changing Faces of Heroism in Atlantis (2013–15)
Authors: Potter Amanda
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the BBC series Atlantis, a fantasy-adventure series set in ancient Greece. In addition to the male heroes Jason, Hercules, and Pythagoras, the series creates female models of heroism in its presentation of the mythological figures Medea, Ariadne, and Medusa. The series shows the complexities of heroism by letting its heroes change and grow over time. Through such a non-static depiction of heroism, viewers are able to relate to the characters in the series, something they have grown accustomed to do with other television stories. The series also shows the effect on heroes in a sustained narrative.
Xena: Warrior, Heroine, Tramp
Authors: Strong Anise K.
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the oldest of the ancient heroes in this section of the book, the mythical warrior woman Xena in the eponymous Xena: Warrior Princess. The show first aired at the end of the twentieth century (1995) and continued through the early twenty- first century (2001). The depiction of Xena is significant not only because of her gender, but also because of the onscreen precedents she set for future characters. The chapter shows that Xena set the trend for women on screen who could be sexually active and polyamorous and not be coded as immoral or deviant. By following a model that more typically applied to male characters of the ancient world, Xena represented a more complicated image of heroism for female characters. Such a representation laid the foundations for
a number of later characters, such as Saxa in STARZ Spartacus (2010–13) and Starbuck in Battlestar Gallactica (2005–9).
Divergent Heroism in Centurion (2010)
Authors: Gardner Hunter H.
Published: January 2019

This chapter offers an analysis of heroic identity in the movie Centurion, focusing on the heroism of the Roman soldiers Virilus and Quintus Dias of the legendary Ninth Legion, traditionally considered to have disappeared in Roman Britain. Through an examination of their differing models of heroism, the film questions the epic tropes of heroic identity. As the chapter shows, Quintus’ character diverges from traditional representations of military virtue. The depiction of Rome’s imperialism allows viewers a commentary on modern imperialist undertakings.
Trouble in the Tehran Multiplex: Xerxes, 300, and 300: Rise of an Empire in Iran
Authors: Llewellyn-Jones Lloyd
Published: January 2019

This chapter studies how audiences in a particular location received the movie 300. The author examines how antiheroic constructions of the Persian King Xerxes in 300 and its sequel Rise of an Empire elicited strong negative reactions in Iran. Hollywood reinvented Xerxes as a force of evil, creating a corrupt representation of an Iranian national hero. The chapter shows how Iranian audiences received this plundered and corrupted version of their ancestral past.
Making Modern (Anti) Heroes, the Ancient Way
Authors: McAuley Alex
Published: January 2019

This chapter makes a connection between the laudatio
funebris, the funeral oration of ancient Rome, and the modern biopic. The author shows how biopics have the ability, like these ancient funeral speeches, to communicate the values of a society. However in this process, they have the capability to create not only heroes, but also antiheroes. The chapter shows how modern biopics use the Roman funeral speech to create new onscreen antiheroes that are of more appeal to audiences than their heroic counterparts. The chapter invites us to make a direct connection to the ancient world, seeing a similarity in the death practices of an ancient society and the way celebrities are currently memorialized in the public eye.
Essay on the Text
Authors: Scott Walter
Published: January 2019

This essay provides a detailed account and timeline of the genesis and composition of Marmion. It traces the poem’s evolution and development from holograph manuscript through to subsequent print editions, with particular focus on authorial changes made to the second and third editions. It provides a stemma of all editions printed within Scott’s lifetime. It outlines the inherently problematic nature of Lockhart’s Magnum edition (1833–34) and demonstrates its unsuitability as a base-text for the present edition. The rationale for using a copy of the third edition of Marmion as base-text is presented, and the editorial activity necessarily undertaken to correct issues such as misreadings of the manuscript and textual deterioration is discussed.
Glossary
Authors: Scott Walter
Published: January 2019

This selective glossary defines single words that occur within the text of the poem which may be unfamiliar to modern readers. It includes Scottish and English dialectal words, archaic and technical terms, and common words that are used in unfamiliar contexts and senses.
Introduction: Courtly Gifts, Imperial Rewards
Authors: England Samuel
Published: January 2019

The book begins by exploring how we conceive of literature in the broader context of medieval history. I argue for the centrality of political crisis in cultural developments throughout the late Middle Ages. From that historical and theoretical framework, I give an overview of medieval imperial culture and the court’s techniques of representing the empire through literature. Competition, as a spectacle and an organizing principle of artistic creation, allowed members of the court to establish and exploit the parameters of culture. Just as importantly, it provided the rituals with which empires affirmed their identity during conflict, whether internal or foreign. The book’s argument opens with the image of political upheaval in the late Middle Ages and the way medieval conflicts have haunted our modern notions of culture, religion, and history.
‘The only truth I really care about.’ Katherine Mansfield at the Gurdjieff Institute: A Biographical Reflection
Authors: Butler Pierce
Published: January 2019

The New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield spent the last three months of her life at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, an esoteric school occupying a magnificent chateau in the woods of Fontainebleau and directed by G. I. Gurdjieff, a mystic of Greek and Armenian heritage who had brought an eclectic teaching compounded of Sufism and Christian esotericism to the West. She was dying of tuberculosis, and she had despaired of a cure. Nevertheless she wished to make use of the time that remained to her in order to acknowledge her personal shortcomings and to settle her accounts with family and friends. She perceived in Gurdjieff’s teaching the possibility of attaining an inner freedom that had eluded her throughout her life. Despite the reservations of her husband and literary friends, Mansfield was able to use the opportunities for insight and transformation created by Gurdjieff to formulate a new ideal for her writing – and to transform her suffering into hope, faith, and love.
The Tree of Knowledge: New Insights on Katherine Mansfield, Oscar Wilde and ‘A Woman’
Authors: Whiteley Giles
Published: January 2019

This article examines in detail a number of unattributed quotations taken from the journals of 1907, signed ‘O.W.’, ‘A Woman’ and ‘A.W.’. I call into question the critical heritage on these signatures, which has taken them to refer to Oscar Wilde and to Mansfield herself, an error traced to the early work of John Middleton Murry. This article instead establishes Mansfield’s hitherto unknown source as the novel The Tree of Knowledge, by an anonymous author, and offers a close reading of the Mansfield’s use of the novel in these pages. The article concludes by speculating as to the author, and as to how Mansfield came to read the text.
Addicted to Mansfield: A Glimpse at the Ruth Elvish Mantz Collection in Texas
Authors: Kimber Gerri
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses the Ruth Elvish Mantz Collection in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Mantz wrote the first biography of Mansfield in 1933, in conjunction with Mansfield’s husband, John Middleton Murry, who was brought in as a co-author by the publishers. The finished biography was not what she originally intended to write. She spent the rest of her life writing numerous unpublished manuscripts reworking the events of Mansfield’s life into book form. All her papers are now in Texas, and offer a fascinating insight into Mansfield’s first biographer.
The Foreign Policy of Tunisia’s Ennahdha: Constancy and Changes
Authors: Salem Maryam Ben
Published: January 2019

How Ennahda’s activists have been seeing the world for several decades? Through the mean of interviews and fieldwork conducted for several years amongst Ennahda’s supporters, sympathizers and activists, this chapter highlights how world politics is perceived and framed. According to which rationale, some of them have been led to see it in terms of enmity when others now identify with a more moderate stance?
A Fighting Shiism Faces the World: The Foreign Policy of Hezbollah
Authors: Daher Aurélie
Published: January 2019

Close to thirty years after Hezbollah’s birth, the study of its foreign policy has in the main constituted a subordinate subject to the study of Western foreign policies, which has been content to view it as subcontracting on behalf of more important regional actors. Hezbollah’s interaction with the world, thus limited to a series of anti- Western and anti-Israeli terrorist initiatives carried out on the orders of the Syrian and/or Iranian regimes, becomes a favored way for getting at the real nature of the organization, so that Hezbollah sees itself summed up as an essentially violent organization whose field of action is by nature extra- national. Indisputably, Hezbollah’s foreign policy reflects a series of elements that reveal the organization’s true identity; however, it is really nothing more than an evolving strategy hinging on other means of action, in the service of an order of priorities that are definitely Lebanese-centered: For Hezbollah, as for quite a few other political actors, its foreign policy is above all a domestic policy. In order to understand the latter’s relationship to the world and its strategic choices in that regard, it is necessary first of all to discard certain received ideas, and then to return to the reasons that brought the party into being and refocus on the principal goals it makes its own.
The Computer-Animated Film
Authors: Holliday Christopher
Published: January 2019

The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre is the first academic work to examine the genre identity of the computer-animated film, a global phenomenon of popular cinema that first emerged in the mid-1990s at the intersection of feature-length animated cinema and Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI). Widely credited for the revival of feature-length animated filmmaking within contemporary Hollywood, computer-animated films are today produced within a variety of national contexts and traditions. Covering thirty years of computer-animated film history, and analysing over 200 different examples, The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre argues that this international body of work constitutes a unique genre of mainstream cinema. It applies, for the very first time, genre theory to the landscape of contemporary digital animation, and identifies how computer-animated films can be distinguished in generic terms. This book therefore asks fundamental questions about the evolution of film genre theory within both animation and new media contexts. Informed by wider technological discourses and the status of animation as an industrial art form, The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre not only theorises computer-animated films through their formal properties, but connects elements of film style to animation practice and the computer-animated film’s unique production contexts.
Introduction
Authors: Holliday Christopher
Published: January 2019

The introduction argues for the significance of the computer-animated film by placing this popular media form within its historical, cultural and critical contexts. It charts the rejuvenation of U.S. animation during the 1990s and the broader market response to Toy Story (1995), as well as identifying the global circulation of computer-animated films by establishing the expansion of the international computer graphics community and rise in CG facilities, divisions and subsidiaries beyond Hollywood. The introduction also unfolds its central argument regarding film genre, expounding the evaluative possibilities made available by genre theory to the close examination of the computer-animated film. The main body of writing surveys the critical contexts that have accounted for the computer-animated film’s scholarly place across a multitude of disciplines. Genre is then innovatively positioned as an enabling tool that brings into relief the terms under which computer-animated films can be held distinct from other forms and styles of animation.
Falling with Style? The Computer-Animated Film and Genre
Authors: Holliday Christopher
Published: January 2019

Chapter One maintains the genre narrative established in the book’s introduction, interrogating in greater depth the shape of contemporary film genre theory, and its relationship to the study of digital animation to understand how computer-animated films might be conceptualised in generic terms. The interrelationship between animation and genre is identified as a complex series of engagements and negotiations, and drawing on animation scholarship and theories of film genre, this chapter engages with the problem of generic classification when placed within the specific context of animation. Informed by Paul Wells’ work on animation’s generic “deep structures”, this chapter argues that it is in the process of ‘doing’ recognisable genres (similar to notions of genre parody) that computer-animated films both create and announce their own internal structures and attributes, which will be pursued across the book as a whole. Chapter One also works through technological considerations (including current software packages) to identify the computer-animated film genre as a significant attribute of textual structures that are underpinned by technological concerns. Questions of genealogy and the computer-animated film’s potential influence (live-action cinema; videogames) are therefore brought together in a discussion of the ‘computer-animated film’ as a viable critical label.
Computer-Animated Films and Anthropomorphic Subjectivity
Authors: Holliday Christopher
Published: January 2019

Chapter Four presents new research into animated anthropomorphism, and argues that computer-animated films more readily exploit the non-human element of its characters rather than recourse to the humanlike to manipulate virtual space through anthropomorphic subjectivity. Drawing from Sergei Eisenstein’s notion of “plasmaticness” (1986) and Gilles Deleuze’s writing on “gaseous perception” (1986), this chapter explores the molecular, sporadic contact that the digital anthropomorph has with the surrounding virtual cartography and the manner in which they constantly reframe and deform the action through a highly inventive cinematic eye. These new qualities of the computer-animated film anthropormorph permits a Luxo world to be defined as aesthetically and stylistically anecdotal. In comparison to other forms of animated worlds, computer-animated films present a virtual reality that is visually channelled through the anthropomorph’s individual activities, movements and viewpoints within, through and across digital space.
Monsters, Synch: A Taxonomy of the Star Voice
Authors: Holliday Christopher
Published: January 2019

This chapter proposes that the ascription of star speech (as a dynamic sound form) to the computer-animated film’s puppet performers contributes to the effect and impact of their many screen performances. This chapter takes the star voice to be a unique instrument of performance that lies at the cornerstone of computer-animated film acting, and begins by implicating the potency of the star voice within wider industrial discourses. These include local dubbing practices, sound technology, and the multiplication of star sound across a range of consumer and multi-media products. The formal and structural importance of the star voice to computer-animated film performance is illustrated through the work of prominent film sound theorist Michel Chion and his work on synchresis, a neologism produced out of the combination of “synchronism” and “synthesis”. By extending Chion’s account, this chapter uses descriptors derived from synchresis to outline three prominent synchretic unions operating at the level of character design. A significant innovation here is the development of a taxonomy of the star voice as it is inscribed formally into computer-animated films—anthropomorphic, autobiographic and acousmatic synchresis—which give new precision to the analysis of star voices in animation.
DreamWorks Animation, Metalepsis and Diegetic Deconstruction
Authors: Holliday Christopher
Published: January 2019

Chapter Nine applies a framework drawn from Gérard Genette’s (1983) notion of “metalepsis” (recently recovered within contemporary animation studies) to explain the behaviour of computer-animated film characters who freely ascend from the fictional world into the surrounding promotional spaces. Although animation has a long tradition of deconstruction and self-reflexive practices, this chapter offers new space to consider how the seamless worlds of computer-animated films can equally be conceptualised according to a deconstructive comedy of metalepsis. This chapter argues that computer-animated film characters are able to abruptly intrude into company logos, corporate signatures, credits sequences and even features of film form. It maps such repeating comic devices onto wider historical developments in studio signification, digitally-assisted logo design and the promotional strategies of contemporary Hollywood cinema. This chapter also affords the specific opportunity to focus on the cycle of feature-length computer-animated films produced by the Dreamworks Animation studio, which exhibit an unprecedented and widely-operational mingling of promotional space with the animated activity of its digital characters.
The Mannerist Game
Authors: Holliday Christopher
Published: January 2019

This chapter argues that mannerism and traditions of mannerist art give greater definition to how computer-animated films playfully dismantle their illusionist activity by making false claims about their relation to live-action cinema. To consider these specific forms of Mannerist humour in the computer-animated film, this chapter plots Mannerism’s cinematic lineage within certain styles and genres (film noir, pop music film, heritage drama, period film and cinéma du look), and notes that despite scholars having employed a vocabulary drawn from European art history to describe the (often digitally-assisted) bravura camerawork of New Hollywood cinema, Mannerism has yet to be employed as a descriptor for digital animation. This chapter therefore re-imagines computer-animated film comedy as strongly Mannerist in its invention, and draws particular attention to their strategies of allusive anti-illusionism. Computer-animated films frequently stage false, illusory discourses of revelation (feigned blooper reels, outtake material, behind-the-scenes ‘actor’ interviews) as a comic flourish that maintains the genre’s illusion. To interrogate the wit of the genre’s Mannerist play, I examine its many trompe-l’œil illusion effects and activities of self-deception.
Satisfying a Spirit of Adventure
Authors: Holliday Christopher
Published: January 2019

The conclusion reflects on the meaningfulness of genre analysis as paving the way for more rigorously formalist approaches to computer-animated films, but also as a way of positioning industry, technology and textuality in relation to each other. The conclusion also argues that the features of the computer-animated film identified in the book engage with discourses of juvenile behaviour to stretch the terms of the adult/child distinction, with many computer-animated films demonstrating a notable fascination with the vicissitudes and values of the childhood experience. The narratives of computer-animated films invite a specific consideration of what it means to be a child within contemporary culture. I challenge directly Judith Halberstam’s notion that certain children’s films appeal to the “disorderly child” and instead look to the fuzzy distinction between adolescents and adults engendered in portmanteau terms pertaining to cultural categories such as “kidult,” “manchild” and “adultescents.” The child/adult distinction is thus not fixed or ‘frozen,’ but flowing, and the conclusion identifies how computer-animated films offer future opportunity to examine how, as a genre, they mobilise questions about the cultural experience and significance of childhood, at the same time as their narratives redefine adulthood.
Susanne Bier’s Boundary-crossing Screen Authorship
Authors: Molloy Missy , Nielsen Mimi , Shriver-Rice Meryl
Published: January 2019

The volume introduction contextualizes Susanne Bier’s work in light of Danish cinema’s unprecedented popularity around the turn of the 21st century; outlines the evolution of her career; relates her work to broader questions in cinema studies related to women’s screen authorship, genre and cinema’s social and cultural influences; and previews the book’s structure and chapter foci.
Negotiating Special Relationships: Susanne Bier’s Comedies
Authors: Agger Gunhild
Published: January 2019

‘Negotiating Special Relationships: Susanne Bier’s Comedies’ highlights the diversity of Bier’s films by analyzing her comedies, which, Gunhild Agger argues, borrow from and innovate characteristics derived from distinct romantic comedy traditions. Agger reads Bier’s The One and Only (Den eneste ene 1999) as a Danish language, screwball comedy best understood as a modern take on a template established by Classical Hollywood films. Meanwhile, Agger connects Love Is All You Need to trends in romantic comedy that are visible in more recent British and American films, most notably Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), which inspired a number of transatlantic co-productions targeting the massive audience it attracted. In outlining key features of these films, Agger highlights that Love Is All You Need is significantly more cross-cultural and transnational than The One and Only and explicitly utilizes formal and narrative devices to cite its American and British predecessors. She also stresses that while the film is mainly in Danish, it includes aspects of English and Italian languages and cultures as part of its appeal to transnational spectators.
Beginning with Jewish Survival: Freud’s Leaving Home
Authors: Turim Maureen
Published: January 2019

“Beginning with Jewish Survival: Freud’s Leaving Home” is a close reading of the complex references to Jewish heritage in Bier’s first feature-length film. Maureen Turim employs a psychological lens to assess the film’s distinct blend of comedy and tragedy, most particularly in its evocations of Freud’s delayed maturation, Rosha’s impending death, and their intense, ambivalent mother-daughter bond. The chapter further situates Freud’s Leaving Home in the context of contemporaneous films by Jewish directors that represent diasporic Jewish families in cultural transition.