bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bombing to Provoke
Authors: Sankaran Jaganath
Published: October 2024

Bombing to Provoke contends that it is not what aerospace weapons physically do but how they emotionally affect and what they prompt decision-makers in target states to do in response that matters for understanding their provocative and coercive effect. The rapid proliferation and growing sophistication of aerospace weapons—rockets, missiles, and drones—have altered the landscape of warfare. The influence of these weapons on the battlefield is felt profoundly, yet the mechanism of provocation and coercion by which these weapons alter the will of the adversary is poorly understood. Bombing to Provoke argues that aerospace weapons provoke by weaponizing fear and triggering a sense of defenselessness among the targeted population. Aerospace weapons induce fear in an adversary by threatening a chemical, biological, or nuclear strike or demonstrating the ability to bombard repeatedly the target’s economic and political core. The emotion of fear modifies the decision-making calculus of leaders by altering their appraisal and action tendencies. These fears amplify the political vulnerabilities of decision-makers in the target state. The fears and political vulnerabilities provoke the target state to divert substantial military resources to redress the threat. Despite the diversion of military resources, in some instances, if the target state is unable to extinguish the threat, it may be coerced to offer political concessions. The book employs five case studies—World War II, the Iran–Iraq War, the 1991 Gulf War, the Second Lebanon War, and the Yemeni War—to rigorously test and refine the theory.
Hitler’s Weapons of Vengeance
Authors: Sankaran Jaganath
Published: October 2024

Hitler’s V-1 and V-2 missile campaigns had a tremendous impact on World War II’s operational and strategic decisions. The aerospace bombardment distracted, delayed, tormented, and provoked the Allied forces. In the months leading up to Operation Overlord—the war plan for landing Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy—British and American leaders constantly feared that the impending German missile bombardment would derail the operation. At the same, British political leaders feared London was the target of Hitler’s vengeance. The fear prevailed despite the limitations of Hitler’s missile arsenal. In an attempt to suppress Hitler’s V-weapons, almost 40% of all Allied reconnaissance missions were diverted to identifying German missile sites. Additionally, between August 1943 and March 1945, Allied forces undertook 68,913 air strike sorties and dropped close to 122,000 tons of bombs on these missile sites.
Missiles and the War of the Cities
Authors: Sankaran Jaganath
Published: October 2024

The fear of chemically armed ballistic missile strikes coerced Iran to concede the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War begrudgingly. Initially, Iran appeared to be winning the war. It had won several battles and seized vital Iraqi territory. Ayatollah Khomeini had gone so far as to issue a premature fatwa declaring the end of the war. The outlook changed drastically for Iran in 1988. A multitude of factors worked against Iran. The crucial tipping point was Iraq’s newfound ability to threaten Tehran with chemically armed ballistic missile strikes. Iraq’s repeated missile strikes on Tehran and threats of escalation to chemical warfare catalyzed fear among its residents and significantly contributed to Khomeini’s decision to end the war.
Saddam’s Scuds
Authors: Sankaran Jaganath
Published: October 2024

In the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles accomplished something that nothing else in Iraq’s armed forces could do. It almost collapsed the US-led Coalition. Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles did not and could not have mattered from a traditional military perspective that solely measures efficacy in terms of bombardment and damage. But its invulnerability to defenses and other countermeasures enabled it to weaponize fear, threaten strikes on Israel, provoke and capitalize on American and Israeli political vulnerabilities. The Scud missiles effectively weaponized fear of impending chemical warfare. As a result, the US-led Coalition was forced to generate approximately 2,500 anti-Scud sorties. In comparison, there were 2,990 sorties against airfields, 1,370 against surface-to-air missile batteries, 1,170 sorties communication assets, and around 970 sorties against Iraqi nuclear-chemical-biological facilities. The Iraqis had made their “pissant weapons” exceedingly effective tools in provoking the American-led Coalition into a massive diversionary campaign.
Young People, Politics, Social Media
Authors: Kligler-Vilenchik Neta , Literat Ioana
Published: October 2024

This chapter sets the stage for understanding the complex landscape of youth political expression in the digital age. It introduces the book’s key argument, that social media platforms can be a valuable space for young people to experiment with their political voice and to hone it through interaction with others, and as a window into some of the crucial political and social concerns on the mind of young people. However, as the chapter argues, seriously considering social media as a space for youth political expression necessitates putting aside dominant normative expectations about the forms that political expression should take. Instead, the aim should be to understand the varied and creative styles of political expression that young people employ, before assessing them vis-à-vis normative models. This chapter also clarifies the book’s core concepts (youth, social media, political expression) while contextualizing youth political expression within broader societal, technological, and academic trajectories.
Analyzing How Different Platforms Shape Political Expression
Authors: Kligler-Vilenchik Neta , Literat Ioana
Published: October 2024

Much current scholarship on social media and politics treats “social media” as if it were a unitary phenomenon when, in fact, differences between platforms crucially shape the dynamics of how politics plays out on them. In this chapter, the authors offer a conceptual framework explaining how different platforms enable—as well as constrain—certain forms of political expression, through the interaction between their norms, affordances, and contents. While the Norms-Affordances-Contents (NAC) framework operates on the meso level of the platform, the chapter also considers the framework in relation to the micro level of individuals and the macro level of societies. In the subsequent chapters of the book, this framework is used to analyze the three empirical case studies that follow. The conceptual framework offered here, however, goes beyond these specific platforms and political topics, making a theoretical contribution to our understanding of the practices and dynamics that shape expression on social media more broadly.
And I’m Always Winning Like I’m Donald Trump”
Authors: Kligler-Vilenchik Neta , Literat Ioana
Published: October 2024

This chapter focuses on the short video platform musical.ly (the precursor to TikTok) and the 2016 US presidential election. To understand youth partisan expression at a tense political moment, this chapter looks at how young people from both sides of the political spectrum engaged with the election by creating and reacting to videos hashtagged either #makeamericagreatagain or #notmypresident. The chapter shows how the contents and norms of political expression can vary among subgroups of users on the same platform, even as users—making opposite political claims—leveraged musical.ly’s expressive and connective affordances in very similar ways. In view of musical.ly’s very young demographic, this chapter also considers more deeply the role of social media in young people’s political socialization, discussing media literacy as a way to support youth in engaging in online political expression constructively.
Introduction
Authors: Karanika Andromache
Published: October 2024

The introduction presents an overview of our understanding of the ancient Greek wedding as a distinct ritual and how it affected the lives of individuals and the polis. It presents the methodology followed in the entire book as it seeks to trace the wedding song tradition, its imagery, and tropes, but furthermore to explore how ancient Greek literature registered wedding performances in different genres, especially epic, lyric, and drama. The theoretical premises lie in the fact that oral literary texts absorb multiple voices and reactions from the performers and audience. It discusses the entextualization process, as distinct oral performances are lifted from their social context and are reintegrated into other narratives. It also gives an overview of the book, as the materials are divided into four chapters with five sections each.
The Shadow of a Wedding
Authors: Karanika Andromache
Published: October 2024

This chapter senses Greek poetics with a focus on epic poetry. Each of the chapter’s five sections examines one sense. “Seeing” explores the theme of viewing a wedding in Iliad 18 (the Shield of Achilles) and the odd encounter between Helen and the elders at the walls of Troy, which retains several wedding performance elements, and concludes with a scene from Praxilla. “Hearing” explores Odyssey 6 and follows Odysseus’s awakening as he hears female voices around him, an episode replete with nuptial elements. “Tasting” examines an until-now neglected detail in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the recognition scene between mother and daughter and Persephone’s digressing catalogue that captures an expression of trauma. “Touching” discusses the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and how crystallized vignettes of wedding performances, such as the praise of the bride, have shaped this hymn, whereas the section on “Smelling” explores Sappho fr. 44, a poem that plays with scent.
Transmitted Light Techniques: Brightfield and Darkfield
Authors: Ruzin Steven E.
Published: October 2024

This chapter describes the basis of transmitted light microscopy. It begins with a description of brightfield imaging and when it is most often used. This includes microscopy of stained histology/tissue sections. Listed are the most commonly used histological dyes and when they are used. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to a description of darkfield (DF) microscopy and its derivatives: Rheinberg, oblique, and selective plane illumination. The first three illumination techniques are dependent on the use of specialized condensers: the annular stop or three types of immersion condensers; all of which are designed to pass light to the sample at an angle greater than the collection angle of the objective. In this way only scattered sample light is visualized. Rheinberg illumination is a colorful modification of DF illumination. Oblique illumination is asymmetric sample illumination. The final technique, selective plane illumination uses a single plane, or sheet of light to illuminate the sample orthogonally allowing only scattered light to be collected by the objective.
Differential Interference Contrast Microscopy, Modulation Contrast Microscopy
Authors: Ruzin Steven E.
Published: October 2024

This chapter expands on phase contrast microscopy and the concept of interferometry. It describes how a modification of the optics can transform the microscope into a shear interferometer, which allows generation of contrast from transparent microscopic samples. The original modification by Smith in the 1950s used two Wollaston prisms to create and then recombine sheared “difference” images to generate high-resolution, high-contrast images of transparent samples. Nomarski then modified the prism to create a more practical version now known as Nomarski differential interference microscopy (DIC). The chapter includes an extensive description of how DIC uses optical path length, polarized light, and interference to create a pseudo 3D image of transparent, isotropic samples. The major problem concerning DIC is its intolerance to birefringent substances, including plastic. This deficiency has been addressed by the invention of the two disparate techniques of PlasDIC (Carl Zeiss, Inc) and Hoffman modulation contrast microscopy. Both of these birefringent-tolerant techniques are discussed toward the end of this chapter.
Restoration Microscopy
Authors: Ruzin Steven E.
Published: October 2024

This chapter discusses the phenomenon of the point spread function (PSF), which is how light propagates through the optics of the microscope. The mathematical description of the PSF, referred to as the optical transfer function (OTF), can be used computationally to reassign pixel intensity values to a most likely pre-diffraction state. Reassignment is accomplished through the use of several algorithms, which are discussed in detail. These are described, along with the role of estimated system noise in the process of deconvolution, or restoration imaging. There are two iterative procedures: Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) and the Iterative Constrained Tikhonov-Miller (ICTM), as well as the non-iterative Wiener deconvolution method. The experimental conditions under which each of these should be used is given. Computer hardware requirements/recommendations and available software are also presented.
Super-Resolution Microscopy
Authors: Ruzin Steven E.
Published: October 2024

This chapter discusses the four main methods of achieving super-resolution, or microscope resolution that is better than what is attainable using diffraction-limited techniques and the Abbe or Rayleigh criteria. In order of discovery and increasing resolution the methods are pixel reassignment imaging, structured illumination microscopy (SIM), stimulated emission depletion microscopy (STED), photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM), and stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM). STED, PALM, and STORM rely on the utilization of photo-switchable fluorophores, which is the RESOLFT concept. The maximum resolution that can be attained when using each technique is discussed. For each super-resolution technique, a generic schematic of the microscope and its specialized components is given. When appropriate, their use in biological imaging is also provided.
A Brief History of the Light Microscope
Authors: Ruzin Steven E.
Published: October 2024

This chapter covers the historical development of microscopy and the light microscope. It starts with an introduction of very early references to magnification and optics dating from 424 bce, and continues with a detailed description of three authors of historically important works: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Jan Swammerdam of Holland, and Robert Hooke of England. Their letters and publications described for the first time all manner of objects and organisms found in the natural world that were previously too small to see. Using a simple magnifying lens Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria and Swammerdam described the anatomy of insects. Hooke’s Micrographia described in words and detailed drawings a great many objects and organisms that previously were unknown. The chapter continues with the major milestones in the historical development of the “double” or compound light microscope, including a discussion of its most likely inventor (Hans Lipperhey of Holland c. 1600). The chapter continues with an abbreviated discussion of the historical development of mechanical and optical improvements of the transmitted light microscope and their inventors. Finally, I have included a very short discussion describing milestones in the invention and development of the fluorescence microscope, starting with its invention by August Köhler and Rohr (1905) through the invention of epifluorescence techniques, the first use of fluorophores and fluorescinated antibodies, to the invention and commercialization of the first laser scanning confocal microscope.
On the Impossibility of Predicting the Behavior of Rational Agents
Authors: Young H. Peyton , Foster Dean
P.
Published: October 2024

A foundational assumption in economics is that people are rational: they choose optimal plans of action given their predictions about future states of the world. In a game this means that each player’s strategy should be optimal given his or her prediction about the opponents’ strategies. This chapter demonstrates that there are games in which it is impossible for perfectly rational players to learn to predict the future behavior of their opponents. The reason is that, in trying to predict the next-period behavior of the opponent, a rational player will take an action this period that the opponent can observe. This observation may cause the opponent to alter his next-period behavior, which can invalidate the first player’s prediction. The resulting feedback loop has the property that, a positive fraction of the time, the predicted probability of an opponent’s action will differ from its actual probability. Thus there are games in which it is impossible in principle for perfectly rational agents to learn to predict the behavior of their perfectly rational opponents based solely on their observed actions.
The Dynamics of Social Innovation
Authors: Young H. Peyton
Published: October 2024

Social norms and institutions are mechanisms that facilitate coordination between individuals. A social innovation is a novel mechanism that increases the welfare of the individuals who adopt it compared with the status quo. This chapter analyses the dynamics of social innovation in terms of a coordination game played on a network. Individuals experiment with a novel strategy that would increase their payoffs provided that it is also adopted by their neighbors. The rate at which a social innovation spreads depends on three factors: the topology of the network and in particular the extent to which agents interact in small local clusters, the payoff gain of the innovation relative to the status quo, and the amount of noise in the best response process. The analysis shows that local clustering greatly enhances the speed with which social innovations spread. It also suggests that the welfare gains from innovation are more likely to occur in large jumps than in a series of small incremental improvements.
Belated Avant-Garde
Authors: Grene Nicholas
Published: October 2024

Through much of the twentieth century Irish theatre was dramaturgically conservative, privileging the playwright and the play text over directors and production values. The 1990s saw the establishment of theatre companies who introduced to Ireland avant-garde styles already current in Europe and the US. So, for example, Sligo-based Blue Raincoat, led by Niall Henry, and Barabbas, founded by Raymond Keane, Veronica Coburn, and Mikel Murfi developed forms of physical theatre based on French training. Annie Ryan with TheCorn Exchange pioneered stylized techniques deriving from commedia del’arte which she had learned in Chicago. Gavin Quinn and Aedin Cosgrove in Pan Pan were influenced by European directors in cultivating a postdramatic theatre that fragmented text. This chapter, drawing on interviews with the directors of the companies, shows the impact of individual productions.
After the Troubles
Authors: Grene Nicholas
Published: October 2024

The Good Friday Agreement (1998) brought an end to (most of) the political violence and instituted a new system of power sharing, but it left many problems unsolved. Owen McCafferty in Scenes from the Big Picture (2003) rendered of the demoralized, crime-ridden city of Belfast as metonym for the society at large. David Ireland’s Everything Between Us (2010) and McCafferty’s Quietly (2015) in very different ways highlighted the state failure to provide any sort of truth and reconciliation process. Stacey Gregg’s Shibboleth (2015) used the Belfast peace walls as symbols of sectarian animus, while The Border Game (2021), by Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney, explored the human costs of the partitioned island. Ireland’s Cypress Avenue (2016) took us inside the head of one deranged Ulster Unionist, expressive of that community’s paranoid beleagurement. Northern Ireland after the Troubles remained a very troubled place.
Strategies of Adaptation
Authors: Grene Nicholas
Published: October 2024

Many poets and playwrights in the later twentieth century adapted Greek tragedies and the plays of Chekhov for the Irish stage. In the later period, Marina Carr has been the most prolific dramatist, initiating a whole series of adaptations with By the Bog of Cats … (1998), a version of Medea set in the Irish Midlands. Hilary Fannin’s Phaedra (2010) was an experimental collaboration with composer Ellen Cranitch, which took off not only from Racine’s play but Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Hippolyte et Aricie. Lucy Caldwell set her Three Sisters (2016) in 1990s Belfast against the background of the Troubles, most provocatively reframing the action from the viewpoint of the character of Natasha, played as a Chinese immigrant. Taking these texts together, we can identify the contemporary perspectives three twenty-first-century Irish playwrights have brought to bear on European theatre of the past.
If not Weber, then what?
Authors: Page Edward C.
Published: October 2024

A range of theories tend to fall short when one looks for an account of bureaucratic development. Common problems include the treatment of bureaucratization as a ‘syndrome’, the concentration on one or other period as decisive in its development, and the overestimation of the role of state reforms in creating bureaucracies. Borrowing from Francis Fukuyama’s broad insights, this chapter develops an account of the development of bureaucracy that stresses the role of routinization, institutional integration, and the instrumentalization of law. The approach helps understand what is distinctive about European bureaucracy and what is less so. It concludes with some observations about the persistence of the Weberian ideal type of bureaucracy in some areas of scholarship.
Peering into the Beyond
Authors: Publicover Laurence
Published: October 2024

This chapter begins by examining the confession of Webster’s Cardinal that, when he looks into the fish ponds in his garden, he thinks he sees ‘a thing armed with a rake’. Critics who consider this strange episode tend to assume that the Cardinal is simply seeing his own reflection; and this assumption, I argue, illustrates how recent criticism on The Duchess of Malfi has focused on its social and political interests rather than its cosmological and eschatological concerns. I read the play as one anxious about the boundaries between this world and the next, and one whose horror, like Macbeth’s, derives from radical uncertainty regarding the shape and operations of the cosmos. The chapter concludes with an extended discussion of the Duchess and her restless imagination, querying critical readings which take her stoical death to indicate the security of her faith.
Cognition, Iconography, and Graphic Communication Systems on Portable Objects in the Near Eastern Neolithic
Authors: Cartolano Mattia
Published: October 2024

Neolithic material culture in the Near East is characterized by a wide variety of forms of figurative and non-figurative representations. Depictions of animal and human figures, as well as geometric and schematic illustrations, are portrayed on monumental architecture, vessels, paintings, slabs, and other small portable objects. This chapter aims to investigate the prehistoric forms of graphic communication through the case of mobiliary representations in Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites of south-west Asia. Ongoing research on prehistoric cognition has led some scholars to argue that the production and deployment of figurative symbols and notation systems contributed to the development of communicative strategies in growing complex societies. However, many contributions have focused on the mnemonic, ritual, and artistic value of symbols, ignoring the possibility that prehistoric signs were created to record messages through conventional modes of writing. Indeed, the standardization of some Neolithic representations as well as the repetitions of symbolic forms suggest the deliberate intent not only to remember and to implement cultural conventions but also to communicate and transmit knowledge to a wider range of diverse and distant groups. In this regard, an analysis and discussion from a corpus of Neolithic decorated portable objects (n = 442) is provided. Drawing from neurobiological studies, experimental semiotics, and ethnographic examples, this contribution argues that the invention of writing systems stems from the development of preceding systems of graphic communication, some of which are already clearly visible for the Neolithic period.
The Failure and Success of the Early Alphabet
Authors: Koller Aaron
Published: October 2024

Despite its inherent attractiveness, the alphabet failed to make much of a difference for the first 750 years of its history. This chapter argues that the early alphabet was in fact not invented to be a full script, to convey information to others, but only to be written. For three reasons the early alphabet could not easily be read: (1) characters are not linear; (2) there are no vowels indicated; (3) and it fails to mark word boundaries. The major conclusion is that the alphabet was the easiest system ever designed for writing phonetically, but, for the same reasons, it was not practical to read. Over the following centuries, the alphabet was modified in important ways, and thus the alphabet was adapted in ways that enabled it to become an efficient tool of communication. This is a familiar pattern of innovation, today called a ‘disruptive innovation’. In the case of the alphabet, the realization of the potential took centuries rather than millennia. Eventually the alphabet was ready for prime time, and, in retrospect, those first tentative steps taken around 2000 bce look like a dramatic turn of events.
The Phaistos Disc
Authors: Baldacci Giorgia
Published: October 2024

The Phaistos Disc is at the same time one of the most celebrated and debated Minoan artefacts. Owing to the disc’s uniqueness, many contrasting views and theories on the artefact have developed. Recent research showed that some debated aspects about the disc can be clarified by looking at the archaeological record of Phaistos, the site where the artefact was found. Recent research on the Protopalatial artefacts of the site has shown that within the material culture of the site there do exist some elements that permit a better contextualization of the disc, thus (1) qualifying the item as an authentic Minoan object, and (2) clarifying its chronological context. In this perspective, the concept of complete exceptionality that has been applied to the Phaistos Disc has to be reviewed, as the disc seems to fit well enough into the cultural context of Phaistos, during the passage from the Protopalatial to the Neopalatial period.
Heraldry in Urban Society
Authors: Meer Marcus
Published: October 2024

This book analyses the perceptions and functions of heraldry in medieval urban societies by drawing on both English- and German-language sources from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. Despite variations that point to socio-political differences between cities (and their citizens) in the relatively centralized monarchy of medieval England and the more independent-minded urban governments found in the less closely connected Holy Roman Empire, urban heraldry emerges as a versatile and ubiquitous means of multimedia visual communication that spanned medieval Europe. These urban heraldic practices defy assumptions about clearly demarcated social practices that belonged to ‘high’/’noble’ as opposed to ‘low’/’urban’ culture. Townspeople’s perceptions of coats of arms paralleled those of the nobility, as they readily interpreted and carefully curated heraldic signs as visual expressions of identity. These perceptions allowed townspeople of all ranks, as well as noble outsiders, to use heraldry and its display—along with its defacement and destruction—in manuscripts, spaces (such as town houses, public monuments, halls, and churches), and performances (like processions and joyous entries) to address perennial problems of urban society in the Middle Ages. The coats of arms of burgesses, guilds, and cities were communicative means of individual and collective representation, social and political legitimization, conducting and resolving conflicts, and the pursuit of elevated status in the urban hierarchy. Likewise, heraldic communication negotiated the all-important relationship between the city and wider, extramural society—from the commercial interests of citizens to their collective ties to the ruler.
Introduction
Authors: Meer Marcus
Published: October 2024

The introduction sets out the subject, sources, approach, and aims of this book, and contextualizes its interest in the perceptions and functions of heraldic communication in the urban societies of late medieval England and Germany with a survey of the place of heraldry in previous scholarship on medieval and urban history. Recently, a ‘new heraldry’ has emerged which rejects the notion of heraldry as a closed-off system, instead adopting methodologies from cultural history and studies in visual culture to analyse heraldry as a versatile and ubiquitous communicative phenomenon susceptible to diachronic change, synchronic contingency, and historical and cultural variation. This perspective informs the book’s analysis of heraldry’s role in urban society, which has until now remained underexplored.
Performances
Authors: Meer Marcus
Published: October 2024

Rituals staged in the urban space, such as solemn processions and festive celebrations, as well as the everyday performances of urban life related to trade, administration, and warfare, abounded in heraldic communication. Displays of municipal and corporate arms communicated the political ambitions of the urban elite, the social relations and political structures that bound the city’s inhabitants, and the responsibilities imposed on individuals and collectives who were deemed to play an important role in creating a well-ordered whole out of the medieval city’s various parts. The place of this communal whole within society at large also became the subject of heraldic communication on the occasion of joyous entries. While urban governments commissioned and staged heraldic displays that supported their rulers’ territorial, dynastic, and political ambitions, these can also be understood as reminders to stay true to ideals of just (and above all urban-friendly) rule.
Lady Audley’s Secret and the Files of Detection
Authors: Jacob Priyanka Anne
Published: October 2024

This chapter asks: what does the logic of the file—the mandate to save everything—do to the informational economy of detection? Examining the paper clues in a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, it demonstrates how this genre balances the investigative drive of the detection plot against the capaciousness of the novel form. Braddon’s text muddles the distinction between clue and litter, keepsake and junk, and between significant and insignificant narrative information. Drawing on media histories of the file and paperwork and highlighting the many paper objects that appear across Victorian literature, this chapter shows how paper teeters between the ephemeral and the abiding, evoking the cultural confusion over what to save and what to discard. It illustrates how these archival anxieties are similarly expressed in government records, professional manuals, and journalism from the period.
A City of Secrets in Little Dorrit
Authors: Jacob Priyanka Anne
Published: October 2024

This chapter illustrates how the dense urban network of Little Dorrit preserves the secrets not only of London but also of the novel itself. While the secret might seem to be an immaterial unit of knowledge, in this novel it acquires material contours. The obstructive architecture of Dickens’s London secures information and prevents the would-be detective Arthur from making discoveries. Governed by the logic of the hoard, the novel gathers secrets in its endless repositories, yet refuses to turn them to account. A blackmail plot raises the possibility of monetizing and exposing secrets, only for the novel to recommit to the hoarding of information through its two reticent women characters. Likewise, the forward momentum of the plot is subsumed into the murky structure of a novel that keep its secrets, burying them into the walls of houses and the geological formation of the city itself.
George Eliot’s Remnants of the Past
Authors: Jacob Priyanka Anne
Published: October 2024

This chapter explores how material remnants register the claims of the past in the writings of George Eliot. It situates Eliot’s interest in traces of the past alongside Victorian archaeology and geology, establishing the idea that history speaks through material remains. Through the breve or paper amulet, Eliot’s novel Romola asserts the power of historical ties. Yet, as her last novel, Daniel Deronda, makes clear, these messages from the past will not always be heeded. Some remnants are reinvented for the present and even the future, while others are left to linger in the background. Staging debates about how to remake architectural ruins in the modern moment and how to live with the ghosts of the dispossessed, Daniel Deronda raises ethical and aesthetic questions about what gets left behind, unredeemed.
Conclusion
Authors: Jacob Priyanka Anne
Published: October 2024

This Conclusion draws parallels between the informationscapes of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, pointing out how our present-day digital information culture also begets clutter and overwhelm, while the fantasy of immaterial, unlimited storage allows us to make promises to a continually deferred future. It then offers a reading of the 2015 dystopian novel Speak by Louisa Hall, showing how that novel uses artificial intelligence to explore the distinction between knowing and holding information. The novel’s closing image of decommissioned robots piled in a hangar reminds us of the familiar problem of discarding media, but it also offers a chilling vision of what storage looks like without a future.
Policing and the police procedural
Authors: Evans Lucy
Published: October 2024

Scholarship in policing studies has drawn attention to a crisis in legitimacy for Caribbean police forces, and has linked this to their origins as colonial constabularies. This chapter explores how contemporary police fiction both reflects on and re-imagines Caribbean policing cultures and practices. It looks at Jacob Ross’s Camaho Quartet, set in a fictional version of Grenada (2016 and 2020), and Paula Lennon’s Raythan Preddy Trilogy, set in present-day Jamaica (2017 and 2018). It compares these to Robert Thorogood’s television series Death in Paradise, which features a British police detective posted to a fictional Caribbean island. The chapter argues that whereas Death in Paradise reinforces the legitimacy of continuing British involvement in policing, Lennon’s and Ross’s fiction emphasizes the need for national sovereignty in Caribbean policing. It considers how Lennon’s and Ross’s police procedural series contribute to the reinvention of a genre historically dominated by white male authors and protagonists.
Conclusion
Authors: Evans Lucy
Published: October 2024

The conclusion makes connections between the texts discussed in each of the chapters, and foregrounds the book’s findings. It reflects on the different ways in which these texts shed light on the colonial histories of Caribbean countries and their relationship to crime and crime control in the present. The conclusion also considers the relevance of this book to ongoing public debate in the region on reparative justice, following the case made by the CARICOM Reparations Commission in 2013. It highlights how the fictional writing analysed in the book works towards the kind of reframing of crime and justice that academics and activists are calling for. Additionally, the conclusion identifies possible future research directions—for example, on other genres of popular fiction that are gaining traction in the Caribbean, and on crime fiction written and set in other countries and regions of the Global South.
Fin-de-siècle Russia and Chinese Aesthetics
Authors: Chu Jinyi
Published: October 2024

This book re-evaluates Russia’s place in global modernism by highlighting the enduring yet understudied impact of China on prerevolutionary Russian literature and art. It moves beyond the idea that Russian literary and artistic representations of China were simply manifestations of Russia’s imperial ideology and Eurasian cultural identity. Instead, this book contends that literature and art actively renegotiated and destabilized the preconceived world order at a time of intensifying geopolitical and cultural transformation, when China shifted from Russia’s rival in Inner Asia to a target in the competition of global imperialist powers. Examining Lev Tolstoy’s translations of the Daoist texts, Aleksei Remizov’s adaptations of Chinese ghost stories, Innokenty Annensky’s encounter with the Tibetan monk in Paris, and many Russian modernist anthologies of Chinese poetry, this book provides a new understanding of modernism’s reception of foreign culture: it is a search for a higher universal in the age of heightened global interconnectedness. The book offers critical insights and tells new stories for scholars of global modernism, Sino-Russian relations, East–West poetics, translation studies, and early-twentieth-century intellectual and cultural history.
Introduction
Authors: Chu Jinyi
Published: October 2024

The introduction elaborates the main arguments and gives the background for the following chapters in four sections. The first section, “Seeking the Universal in the Cultural Other,” engages with the theoretical discourses of modernism, universalism, and imperialism. Then, the second section, “Translation in Modernist Culture,” shows that Russian modernism’s China is a quest for a higher universality via translation. The third section, “Fin-de-siècle Geopolitics: Russia and China,” sketches the metamorphosis of the Russian image of China from their early encounter to late imperial Russia. Finally, the fourth section, “Everyday China in Late Imperial Russia,” situates the modernist oppositions to the mainstream by examining the presence of China in the everyday life of late imperial Russia, including consumer culture, theatrical representations, and the witness accounts of Chinese migrants.
The Universal Truth
Authors: Chu Jinyi
Published: October 2024

This chapter argues that Chinese thinkers were constructed by Russians as ideological allies in the Russian critique of European modernity. The chapter focuses on Lev Tolstoy’s translations of the Chinese Daoist philosopher Laozi’s Dao De Jing from English, French, and German translations into Russian. Tolstoy fashioned Laozi as a cosmopolitan philosophical ancestor, who had been ignored by his Eurocentric-minded contemporaries. The chapter details how Tolstoy encountered Laozi in the midst of his spiritual crisis right after the completion of Anna Karenina in 1877, then examines how Tolstoy invoked Chinese philosophical concepts to intervene in an argument between Émile Zola and Alexandre Dumas. Tolstoy’s understanding of the kinship of Dao, Logos, and God is analyzed against the background of his polemics with the Russian Orthodox Church. Tolstoy’s translations of the Dao De Jing and his project of a more inclusive reading program illustrate the fin-de-siècle Russian search for the philosophical unity of humankind.
Meta-exoticism
Authors: Chu Jinyi
Published: October 2024

This chapter articulates “meta-exoticism”—self-critical use of the exotic that decenters European aesthetics—as a new perspective for reconsidering modernist exoticism. Meta-exoticism consists of three aspects: meta-discourse on exoticism, unique poetics of representing subject–object relations, and use of the exotic as aesthetic subversion. The chapter begins with Voloshin’s and Segalen’s essays on exoticism and China. They both distinguished two exoticisms—a colonial and “touristic” endorsement of the Eurocentric worldview and a modernist urge to destabilize aesthetic norms—in terms of defamiliarization. Second, the chapter turns to Annensky, who reflected on the subject–object relations of exoticism during his encounter with the Russian-born Buryat-Tibetan monk Dorzhiev in the Guimet Museum. Third, the chapter considers how this meta-exoticism in Russian modernist aesthetics applies to visual arts, by focusing on the use of Chinese style by Mashkov, Konchalovsky, Goncharova, and Matvejs. The chapter argues that Russian visual artists used Chinese art to challenge European painterly academic norms.
Russian Cathays
Authors: Chu Jinyi
Published: October 2024

This chapter argues that a literary fashion of translating and inventing Chinese poetry emerged in fin-de-siècle Russia, parallel to that in Britain and the US (Ezra Pound), France (Judith Gautier), and Germany (Klabund). It examines Russian anthologies of Chinese poetry published between 1896 and 1923: the poetic translations of Konstantin Balmont’s Calls of Antiquity (1909), Voldemārs Matvejs’s The Flute of China (1914), and Nikolai Gumilev’s The Porcelain Pavilion (1918). All three Russian translators relied on existing European translations. By reconstructing the history of these anthologies, the chapter shows how these Russian translations were produced in direct dialogue with their Western counterparts. Following Western trends, Russian poets used the translation of Chinese poetry to reinvigorate the Russian poetic language, even as they critiqued Western appropriations of China.
Orthogonal Transformations
Authors: Waleffe Fabian
Published: October 2024

Considers change of cartesian basis in 2 and 3 dimensions. Introduces and investigates orthogonal matrices and Euler angles. Considers rotation and reflection of vectors. Discusses body-fixed and space-fixed rotations.
Surfaces
Authors: Waleffe Fabian
Published: October 2024

Considers the concept and representations of surfaces in 3D space. Discusses coordinate curves and tangent plane, conformal maps. Surface elements and surface integrals. Illustrates with examples in spherical coordinates. Finishes with a discussion and proof of Green’s theorem.
Elementary Complex Functions
Authors: Waleffe Fabian
Published: October 2024

This begins the study of complex functions and complex derivatives. Geometric series, Taylor series and the ratio test are reviewed. The complex exponential and complex trigonometric functions are introduced through power series. Euler’s formula is deduced. The complex logarithm and complex power functions are defined. Roots of complex numbers are studied.
Hypocrisy as Two-Faced
Authors: Shea Margaret
Published: October 2024

This chapter argues that there is a distinctive vice of hypocrisy, which is Janus-faced. The vice of hypocrisy is the self-excepting avoidance of a particular pain, namely, the pain associated with being an object of blame one believes deserved. One can self-exceptingly avoid this pain attitudinally or behaviorally. With “attitudinal” hypocrisy, a person avoids it at the level of her beliefs: she avoids forming the belief that she is blameworthy for some act, while blaming others for their comparable acts. With “behavioral” hypocrisy, by contrast, a person avoids it at the level of her behavior. She shields herself from the blame she believes her acts merit (e.g. by hiding what she has done), while blaming others for their comparable acts. The chapter argues that both forms of hypocrisy are objectionable and explains how they are in tension, such that a given instance of the vice will typically involve only one or the other. Though both attitudinal and behavioral hypocrisy selectively spare the hypocrite the same pain, they require incongruous moral-psychological states: the attitudinal hypocrite avoids blaming herself, while the behavioral hypocrite proceeds on the assumption she is blameworthy.
Worlds Collided
Authors: Kirwin Claire
Published: October 2024

This chapter sketches an account of what is distinctive about reciprocated love between persons. Shared love, it is suggested, involves holding in a productive interplay two components that stand in an uneasy tension with each other. First, love involves a recognition of the distinctive value possessed by the other as the particular subjectivity that she is. This aspect of love is unidirectional, running from lover to beloved, and it is compatible with the love’s being unrequited. Reciprocated love, however, is not merely a matter of this unidirectional state now running in both directions at once, for in addition to this there is also a second structure in play. As well as each taking the other’s personhood as the object of their loving gaze, the lovers also come together as subjects, turning a shared gaze toward the world in partnership. It is the difficulty involved in balancing these two aspects of love that gives rise to love’s characteristic forms of struggle and failure.
Forgiveness and Moral Luck
Authors: Telech Daniel
Published: October 2024

Proceeding from the assumptions that forgiveness is at least sometimes elective and that it changes the normative relations between victims and wrongdoers, this chapter argues that our practice of forgiveness is subject to an overlooked form of moral luck, forgiveness luck. Forgiveness luck is introduced via reflection on ‘differential forgiveness’, where, of two equally culpable and remorseful agents, one is forgiven and the other not, and both justifiably so. In being forgiven—at least if forgiveness is normatively significant—one undergoes a positive alteration in one’s moral status, that is, a positive alteration in one’s permissions, obligations, or interpersonal reasons that is implied by one’s being the target of a positive moral responsibility response. It is also illustrated how responsibility responses other than forgiveness are candidate determinates of one’s moral status. Consequently, this chapter outlines a capacious conception of moral luck according to which moral statuses beyond blameworthiness (and praiseworthiness) are determinable by factors beyond one’s control. The capacious conception avoids rendering the existence of moral luck a trivial matter (as it preserves the distinction between moral luck and morally significant plain luck) and—at least if moral responsibility is understood in terms of accountability—preserves continuity with narrower conceptions of moral luck.
Introduction
Authors: Cross Richard
Published: October 2024

Having first introduced some appropriate terminology to help categorize different Christological positions, this introductory chapter proceeds to give an account of two traditions (not the only two traditions) that are found in the early Church: the homo assumptus (assumed man) Christology defended by Augustine, according to which a human being was made to be the same person as the Word but not the same nature; and the Chalcedonian view that the referents of the terms ‘God’ and ‘man’ in Christological contexts are absolutely identical. The Chalcedonian view is then traced through its refinements in Boethius, Constantinople II, and John of Damascus.
The Augustinian tradition (1)
Authors: Cross Richard
Published: October 2024

This chapter is the first of two devoted to the reception of the homo assumptus Christology in the period, dealing with this Christology from 1050 to Peter Lombard’s report of it in 1158. Having discussed Anselm and other twelfth-century figures, the main portion of the chapter focuses on the Christology of the early Victorine theologian Hugh of St Victor, showing that Hugh does indeed accept a homo assumptus Christology (a point of some controversy in the literature) and likewise maintains that Christ is a composite of body and soul. The chapter discusses the rather eccentric view of Gerhoh of Reicherberg, and then closes with a treatment of Lombard’s summary of the view: the first of three opinions in contemporary Christology that he reports. It is argued that Lombard correctly represents Hugh’s position, albeit in the context of his own philosophical presuppositions, rather different from those of Hugh.