bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Adding to the Picture: New Perspectives on David Dabydeen’s ‘Turner’
Authors: Plasa Carl
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines David Dabydeen’s ‘Turner’ (1994), an ekphrastic response to J. M. W. Turner’s Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon Coming On (1840), more commonly known as The Slave Ship. The chapter begins with an outline of the historical incident memorialised in the painting that inspires Dabydeen’s text—the atrocity aboard the Zong in 1781. The chapter proceeds to situate the text in dialogue with John Ruskin’s ‘Of Water, as Painted by Turner’ in Modern Painters I (1843) but, in a departure from other critics, places the emphasis not on the set-piece ekphrastic rendition of The Slave Ship with which ‘Of Water’ closes but earlier parts of that chapter’s art-critical reflection, analysing how they obliquely inform Dabydeen’s poetic vision.
While these elements of Ruskin’s account of Turner have been sidelined in critical readings of ‘Turner,’ two other intertexts have been much more significantly neglected: Macbeth (1606) and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). ‘Turner’’s engagement with Morrison’s novel is particularly noteworthy because it enables the poem to sidestep the Anglo-Caribbean lines of influence which most critics see in it, moving it into a new relationship with the African American literary tradition instead.
Irish Ecogothic
Authors: Flannery Eóin
Published: May 2024

Following a review of the field of ecogothic criticism, the chapter’s readings of literary texts are divided into sections. The first section focuses on the Great Irish Famine, analysing James Clarence Mangan’s poem, ‘Siberia’, together with Eugene McCabe’s short fictions in Tales from the Poorhouse. Though separated by over a century, these texts articulate the horrors of famine conditions, gesturing to the agency of non-human nature. Section two addresses Irish folklore, drawing on WB Yeats’s poem, ‘The Stolen Child’, and highlights the centrality of non-human presences in the Irish landscape as signifiers of cultural difference, as well as agents of threat and violence. Section three broaches the Irish ‘big house’ tradition, offering some ecogothic readings of Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September and JG Farrell’s Troubles. Finally, section four looks at the relevance of the ecogothic as an analytical resource in dealing with (post-)Celtic Tiger literature, namely, Claire Kilroy’s The Devil I Know. Kilroy’s narrative foregrounds the environmental degradation that was a feature of the Irish ‘boom’ period, and demonstrates how financial indebtedness now haunts the transvalued Irish landscape.
Gothic Fiction in the Irish Language
Authors: Fennell Jack
Published: May 2024

This chapter provides a broad overview of twentieth-century gothic writing as Gaeilge in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
In the first half of the twentieth century, gothic storytelling occurred in the specific contexts of language revival and nation-building – contexts which infuse the material with political significance. Translation and adaptation were charged issues, and the translation of works such as Dracula or Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (translated into Irish by An Gúm), were liable to provoke angry responses from purist cultural nationalists. Original Irish-language gothic material – often written under pseudonyms – largely reflected the political tenor of the time in which it was written, demonstrating the country’s self-conscious attempts to straddle the division between tradition and modernity, while dealing with anxieties of infiltration and re-conquest.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, Irish-language gothic stories proliferated in children’s literature and schoolbooks as well as newspapers, chapbooks and short story collections, gradually outgrowing political orthodoxy. The overview presented in this chapter will culminate with an examination of short films and television programmes in Irish with a gothic sensibility, such as An Fiach Dubh (2003), Rógairí (2005), Na Cloigne (2010), Dorchadas (2014) and An Gadhar Dubh (2017).
Introduction
Authors: Dönmez-Colin Gönül
Published: May 2024

This chapter presents Ceylan through his films, starting with his directorial debut Koza/Cocoon (1995), first feature Kasaba/The Small Town (1997), second, Mayıs Sıkıntısı/Clouds of May (1999), third, Uzak/Distant (2002), fourth, İklimler/Climates (2006), as a tetralogy defined by the author as ‘A Portrait of the Provincial Artist as an Urban Intellectual’; Üç Maymun/Three Monkeys (2008) shifting the focus from the individual to the nuclear family, Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da/Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) widening the screen to cinemascope while widening its scope to encompass the country and its historical and socio-political landscape, Kış Uykusu/Winter Sleep returning to the microcosm while reviving the ‘Provincial Artist as an Urban Intellectual’ motif and finally, Ahlat Ağacı/The Wild Pear Tree reverting to Ceylan’s father-son occupation through anti-heroes.
Reflecting on each film, the chapter highlights their interconnectedness-common themes (solitude, nostalgia, lack of communication, father-son, ‘distant’ gaze of the urban intellectual); existential sadness and traumas of liminality in characters from traditional societies; transitory spaces; motifs of claustrophobia, absence, innocence and its loss, dishonesty (and dishonesty as the essence of cinema) and influences-Tarkovsky, Kiarostami, Ozu and Chekhov. Ceylan’s special style of turning to the local and familiar to reach the global (hence building a global audience) is the running thread through the chapter.
Vanishing Image of History: Uzak/Distant (2002)
Authors: Mutman Mahmut
Published: May 2024

This chapter approaches Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Uzak/Distant (2002) as the climax of his trilogy, following Kasaba/The Small Town (1997) and Mayıs Sıkıntısı/Clouds of May (1999). The use of his friends and family members in these early works is often explained in terms of an inevitable budget-friendly choice. Ceylan turns the budgetary limits into an astonishing cinematographic search for origins and memory. Family has been his constant search starting with his experimental short, Cocoon (1995). However, conventional as it might appear to be, this is an affective family of bodies, faces and voices, and of relations rather than an origin for the main character. The narrative is traversed by two kinds of difference, which together foreclose any possibility of a pure or commanding origin in a kind of impossible exchange with each other: a spatial difference between the country and the city on the one hand, and a social difference between the middle class and the working class, on the other. The chapter explores Ceylan’s filmic image as tracking and tracing spatial/class difference in a critical engagement with Giorgio Agamben’s concept of gesture and Walter Benjamin’s concept of dialectical image and argues that the country cousin Yusuf comes to embody the vanishing image of history.
‘Gleams of Truth’: Transparency, Eloquence and the Language of Revolution
Authors: Kirkley Laura
Published: May 2024

Wollstonecraft’s proximity to the Revolution attunes her to the pragmatic demands of the moment, not least the need to secure emotional as well as rational investment in the ideal of universal rights. Focussing on An Historical and Moral View of the Origins and Progress of the French Revolution, this chapter demonstrates that Wollstonecraft draws on British and French linguistic theory to argue for a transparent language of politics and a principled form of eloquence to convince and inspire the citizenry. She critiques the mystifying rhetoric of the ruling elite but, as in her pedagogical works, she is alert to the need for strong and persuasive leadership in the absence of rational principles of (self-)government. To this end, she attempts, with dubious success, to distinguish aristocratic sophistry from what she calls the ‘commanding’ eloquence of Revolutionary patriots. Although she distrusts her own pleasure in the disarming powers of eloquence, she also records Mirabeau’s famous Assembly speeches with admiration, perceiving in his charismatic extemporising the happy equilibrium of sentiment and principle that defines her cosmopolitan patriot and establishes the sentimental community crucial to a stable democratic republic.
Which Lessons to Learn from an Era of Surprise? Key Findings and Implications from the Dual Comparison
Authors: Meyer Christoph O. , Guttmann Aviva , Ikani Nikki
Published: May 2024

The final chapter answers the research-guiding questions based on previous chapters and pushes the overall argument further. It proceeds in three sections: the first is case study centred and asks which aspect made each of them particularly challenging to track, explain and forecast. It highlights as a common feature the unexpected and rapid interplay of three factors: (1) the growth in public resentment against corrupt and authoritarian governments, (2) the impact of new communication technologies and media platforms and (3) the willingness and capacity of revisionist state and non-state actors to embrace bold strategies to challenge Western powers and liberal norms. The second section compares the performance of the three polities and explores distinct and common strengths and weaknesses. The third section identifies lessons that are yet to be learned such as diversifying expert input and strengthening its local grounding, to design and improve specialised warning capacities, and the creation of more rigorous, independent and sustainable learning mechanisms. This chapter concludes by discussing the implications for the literature in areas such as professional and cultural biases in analysis, the differences between the US and European intelligence policy-nexus, politicisation and attribution of blame, and processes and preconditions for learning.
Monuments in Virginia Woolf and Hope Mirrlees
Authors: Van Dijck Cedric
Published: May 2024

In modernist writing, this chapter argues, mourning the loss of the war dead was presented as a tangible process. Through embodied encounters with memorial objects such as gravestones, statues and commemorative volumes, memories of the fallen were evoked. My first case study is Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, which portrays its protagonist as a statue in a gesture anticipating his death on the battlefield. If solid stones come to occupy the place of ephemeral lives, then it is the women in the novel, left behind, who engage with them most viscerally. These gendered moments of contact with statues and graves – we also find them in Hope Mirrlees’s Paris: A Poem – trigger ‘fresh shock[s]’ of memory as well as more critical notions of the glorification of sacrifice. In a second step, the chapter asks how the war informed a way of thinking of books themselves in such tangible terms, as solid objects made not from stone but from paper. This material existence of the book was put to good use in the memorial culture that developed in the war’s wake: commemorative books, like statues and gravestones, became tools for memory, standing in the place of the war dead and picked up from the shelf in order to remember.
Coda: At the Museum
Authors: Van Dijck Cedric
Published: May 2024

The coda to the book briefly explores the establishment of war museums in the wake of the First World War, and their relevance to modernism.
Julio at the Crossroads: Sex and Transfiguration in the Court of Sicilia
Authors: Altman Joel B.
Published: May 2024

This chapter suggests that ephrasis expresses the speaker’s point of view, regardless of the actuality he or she is confronting--for example, Leontes’ imagined fantasy that his wife has been unfaithful to him with his friend, Polixenes. What has infected his mind is not only his youthful identification with Polixenes—“If I have had sex with my wife, then he has had sex with my wife”—but Giulio Romano’s notorious pornographic drawings, I modi, which he seems to have been privately perusing. The connection between Romano and Shakespeare intensifies when Hermione, long thought dead, appears as a statue attributed to Romano. Here Shakespeare reveals the historical connection between Romano’s sexual proclivities as illustrator and his spiritual sensibilities as painter who had completed Raphael’s Transfiguration of Christ after Raphael’s death. For the Gentlemen of Leontes’ court describe the reunion of Leontes and Polixenes as though the staring bystanders were actually viewing the wonder of the Transfiguration.
What Did Hermione’s Statue Look Like? The Four Ladies of Mantua and the Science of True Opinion
Authors: Altman Joel B.
Published: May 2024

At this point, the book turns to an historical inquiry concerning the provenance of Hermione’s “statue”, putting Giulio Romano in context and showing how Shakespeare bodged him into his play as the creator of the piece. In discussing further work of Romano, the book connects the artist’s four famous caryatids (women supporting the entablature of a funerary monument) in Mantua that are believed to have been conceived by him, to the scenic facts of Hermione’s statue. Did Shakespeare know about the caryatids and their connection to Giulio Romano, so that he could attribute the statue in the play to Giulio, the only historical artist mentioned in the canon? To answer these questions, the chapter reviews records of English visitors to northern Italy in the early 17th century and, finding no persuasive documentation, turns to thematic connections in his other plays, where the contingencies of life, death, and fidelity are critical issues.
Why Steve McQueen Matters
Authors: Austin Thomas
Published: May 2024

This introduction discusses the purpose and structure of the book. It also outlines McQueen’s career and his ongoing formal and thematic interests pursued across varied media formats. These include (i) an exploration of the power of haptic imagery and how it can contribute to an immersive experience for viewers (which often serves a critical engagement with race and racialisation) and (ii) his abiding self-reflexivity about image-making per se.
The Constitution of ‘Arabic’: Structural Beginnings and a Chain of Literary Events
Authors: Nashef Ismail
Published: May 2024

The second chapter paints the portrait of “Arabic” in the period from 1948 to the late 1960s. In this first period in the public life of “Arabic,” three journals served as the main platforms for literary criticism, a genre that demanded a certain type of reading and writing in literary Arabic and called for a certain type of national collectivity among the Palestinians in Israel. During that period, literary criticism was divided into three main positions.
One was the position of the state, articulated in the literacy of Orientalist experts. It was mainly represented by the Al-Yawm daily, but since the genre of literary criticism was then in the process of development by these experts, an “educational” move took place among them over the pages of The New Orient.
The second position was represented by Al-Jadid, the organ of the Israeli Communist Party. The discussion focuses on articles by Emile Touma, one of the major Palestinian intellectuals active before and after the Nakba.
The third position was led by the periodical Al-Mujtama’, whose founder and chief editor was Michel Haddad.
These three positions dialogued with one another during the first two decades after 1948, creating the continuum of “Arabic”.
The Mediation Position in ‘Arabic’: The Mimetic Mask
Authors: Nashef Ismail
Published: May 2024

The third chapter focuses on the period when literary criticism in Arabic for the Palestinian readership in Israel underwent academization. It argues that these processes recreated the mediatory position within “Arabic,” reshaping its internal dynamics and its relation to other state institutions. The historical carriers of these processes were the Palestinian academics educated in the Arabic education system and then in Israeli academia, some of whom were subsequently employed in permanent positions within it. A major figure in the academization of Arabic literary criticism during this period–starting in the late 1960s–is Mahmoud Ghanayem. The chapter examines his corpus of literary criticism that deals with Palestinian literature in Israel, designed to reach the Palestinian readership through publications in literary journals that were part of the material and institutional infrastructure of “Arabic.” Ghanayem studied in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at Tel Aviv University, and completed his MA and doctoral theses under the supervision of Sasson Somekh. A comparison of the bodies of knowledge of these two scholars indicates that Ghanayem represents a colonized mirror image of the colonizer intellectual, particularly with regard to the modernization of literary Arabic.
The Procedure Liberated: ‘Arabic’ in the Hands of Palestinian Experts
Authors: Nashef Ismail
Published: May 2024

The fourth chapter focuses on the turning point of the early 1990s. In “Arabic,” two parallel processes emerged, both of which were characterized by the unprecedented claim to monopolize Arabic and its products in the State of Israel. The change began on the material-institutional level of “Arabic,” with a significant increase in the number of civil society organizations promoting projects designed to enhance the status of literary Arabic in Israel. At the same time, the academization processes of the previous period led a group of Palestinian intellectuals to call, as early as 1989, for the establishment of an academy for the Arabic language. This process matured in 2007. This led to the formation of a new range of positions in “Arabic”. The dynamics that developed among these different positions in the “Arabic” of our time relies on discursive formations of professional expertise that seek to monopolize literary Arabic and its products, rather than a particular or a series of communicative events, as in the previous periods. Some of the positions, such as the academic, claim that monopoly through the compulsive mode, while others attempt to break free of the compulsiveness and claim to own a Palestinian national excessiveness.
Forms of Modernist Fiction
Authors: Attridge Derek
Published: May 2024

One hundred years after the publication of Joyce’s Ulysses, the example of his challenge to the fictional norms of his time is still inspirational for many writers. This book offers a fresh examination of the formal innovations of Joyce’s work and brings together studies of a number of later writers who – without imitating their forebear – follow in his footsteps in their reinvigoration of the novel form. These studies constitute a defence and illustration of a mode of reading and criticism, building on Derek Attridge’s earlier publications, that emphasizes the singularity of the work, the importance of form, and the experience of the reader. Among the topics discussed are the reassessment of the relation between form and content by Joyce and later writers; the challenge presented to the translator by linguistic innovation in fiction; the experience of writing that does not proceed in a linear fashion; the role of affect in the reader’s response to modernist inventiveness; and the responsibility of the author to fictional characters. The novelists discussed are based in a variety of countries, including Ireland, the Netherlands, South Africa, Scotland, New Zealand, Australia, and England. Forms of Modernist Fiction joins other recent studies in advocating a close attention to the formal properties of the literary work in an investigation of the way it operates in the world, and in recognizing the continuing importance in contemporary literature of the modernist spirit of innovation.
Nonlexical Onomatopoeia: Hearing the Noises of Ulysses
Authors: Attridge Derek
Published: May 2024

This chapter starts with an analysis of Molly Bloom’s perception of sounds in the ‘Penelope’ episode of Ulysses, noting the inadequacy of language as a mode of direct sonic imitation. A distinction is drawn between lexical and nonlexical onomatopoeia, the former being the choice of words so as to suggest a link between speech sounds and non-speech sounds, the latter being the use of letters to suggest sounds without the formation of words. Eight factors that complicate the imitative function of nonlexical onomatopoeia are described, and examples of strings of letters in Ulysses that function in this way are discussed. Consideration is given to the possibility that this feature of Ulysses reflects the new sounds of the early twentieth century.
Afrikaans Modernism and the Anglophone Reader: Etienne van Heerden’s 30 nagte in Amsterdam
Authors: Attridge Derek
Published: May 2024

This chapter focuses on writing in Afrikaans, beginning with a description of the language and a survey of writers who have used it in inventive ways. Writers who use Afrikaans depend on translation to reach a global audience. The relation between translation and singularity is considered in the light of Jacques Derrida’s comments on translation. A passage from Etienne van Heerden’s novel 30 nagte in Amsterdam that employs a modernist style and its translation by Michiel Heyns is analysed to demonstrate some of the challenges faced by the translator. The novel’s untranslatability is not separate from its translatability and retranslatability.
Joycean Innovation Today: Tom McCarthy’s Fiction
Authors: Attridge Derek
Published: May 2024

The questions addressed in this chapter are: What are the peculiar pleasures and rewards of reading Tom McCarthy’s five novels? Are the critical instruments associated with close reading and its attention to form useful in describing and explaining those responses? Each of the novels is treated in the chapter, focusing on passages that relate to the question of death, to show that although conventional modes of emotional appeal are absent, McCarthy’s writing does have a powerful affective dimension. Its debt to modernism, and the pleasure produced for the reader, lie in its revelation of the discursive construction of venerated ideas and principles and its rejection of the notion of the individual as organic and continuous.
Iranian Fears and National Interest
Authors: Ahmed Zahid Shahab , Akbar Ali
Published: May 2024

This chapter explores dynamics of Iran’s relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan with a particular focus on Tehran’s key concerns and national interests. In the case of Afghanistan, there are three main concerns for Tehran: the illicit trade of opium from Afghanistan to Iran, the presence of a large numbers of Afghan refugees in Iran, and the water sharing dispute over the Helmand River. This chapter also examines how Tehran views the establishment of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which whom Iran had conflictual relations in the past during 1996-2001. In the case of Pakistan, Iran has been concerned about the rise of sectarian and jihadist Sunni Baluch militant groups that have taken refuge in Pakistan. As examined in this chapter, our research participants have identified several key sources of tensions in terms of Iran’s relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some Afghan participants were too critical of Tehran’s attitude towards the Afghan refugees living in Iran and considered the water dispute as a key pending dispute between Afghanistan and Iran. Some Pakistani interviewees mentioned the Saudi factor and border/security issues between Iran and Pakistan as sources of mistrust and tension.
Cultural and Ideological Influences
Authors: Ahmed Zahid Shahab , Akbar Ali
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines the influence of Iran’s ideological and cultural aspects in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It presents an analysis of the resources and instruments Iran uses to leverage ideological and cultural connections to promote its goodwill in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and how such measures have been received in both states. As this chapter argues, Iran has certain advantages like demographics in the form of a sizable Shi’a population in both countries and the deep imprint of the Persian colonial legacy due to which it can employ a variety of instruments including Persian heritage and the promotion of Shi’a ideology to create a positive image in both countries. Iran enjoys a much deeper influence in Afghanistan than in Pakistan because Tehran has been able to invest in infrastructure to achieve its national interests. In contrast, Iran’s influence in Pakistan is not that multifaceted and is largely limited to Shi’as. In terms of how its ideological and cultural influence is received in both these states, interviewees largely reflected on Iran’s influence over Shi’a populations in both countries for its political gains. This chapter also discusses the impacts of Iran’s influence in Afghanistan immediately following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021.
An Exodus from Turkey
Authors: Öztürk Ahmet Erdi , Baser Bahar
Published: May 2024

Turkey’s authoritarian turn under the reign of Erdoğan, and the crackdown on freedom of speech and assembly, has caused many Turkish citizens – either voluntarily or involuntarily – to flee the country. Featuring interviews with former politicians, artists, journalists, academics and activists, this book gives a voice to those in exile. By presenting their own stories in their own words, we learn how individuals cope with the realities of separation from their homeland, how they have managed to build new lives abroad and the prospect of return to Turkey. Both heart-breaking and informative, this book provides a snapshot of a new layer of intellectual diaspora in the making.
Introduction
Authors: Öztürk Ahmet Erdi , Baser Bahar
Published: May 2024

This chapter Explores the political reality on the ground in Turkey; the political, social and economic impacts of authoritarianism; the meaning of exile; transnational repression mechanisms put in play by Turkey; and potential scenarios for reconciliation and normalisation in Turkey.
The Right to Opacity in Practice
Authors: Davis Benjamin P.
Published: May 2024

This chapter develops Édouard Glissant’s “right to opacity” as it has played out in practice. It focuses on the protests and prayer camps in service of cultural rights at Standing Rock. This chapter examines how Indigenous nations make demands on the state. While the cultural practices of Indigenous nations might remain illegible or opaque to state actors, some nations choose to engage the state in legible terms, such as rights claim. This chapter examines this paradox of claiming what Glissant called “the right to opacity.”
Interface Realism
Authors: Jones Nick
Published: May 2024

This chapter explores the representational realism of the graphic user interface (GUI), a realism which brings it into close dialogue with other representational media. It suggests that the GUI can be usefully read through film theorist André Bazin’s influential model of the ‘myth of total cinema.’ But, as the GUI borrows codes of representational realism from cinema and other visual media, so too these other media increasingly emulate the aesthetic traits of the GUI. Television, cinema, and videogames present visual data across ever-denser layers and arrangements of virtual space. This process of gooification is shown to be at work in Gravity (2013). However, the chapter also notes limits to gooiness, doing this through consideration of display technologies like stereoscopic 3D and high frame rates (which are not universally adopted across the digital screen ecology). The chapter ends by proposing that an exploration of this territory reveals the contingent and disputed nature of realism and interactivity across diverse media forms.
Theopolitical Figures
Authors: Herrero Montserrat
Published: May 2024

This book is intended to be a contribution to the theological turn in political philosophy. It reinscribes contemporary political concepts and experiences in the ‘theological locus’ from which they supposedly come and at the same time looks for alternative semantic derivations for the political theory and practice. The discursive trajectory of the book has engaged with the discussions of different continental philosophers, theologians and historians of the twentieth century. Moreover, the book explores the extent to which theological discourse has been, and continues to be, relevant in shaping the meanings, symbols and realities of certain instituted political practices. This relevance has historically manifested itself in the hybridisation of theological and political concepts, images, gestures, and rituals. Combining theological and political concepts, the book shows that some divine traces are embedded in institutionalised political practices. It argues that these theopolitical figures – scripture, prophecy, oath, charisma and hospitality – should be read negatively as other names of God, in the sense of a negative theology, in the post-secular world. By analysing the symbolic meaning of these figures, Theopolitical Figures sheds new light on crucial questions for contemporary societies, such as the unconditional character of justice, the unfeasibility of historical expectation, the stability of the word, the idea of power as a gift, and openness to otherness as an ethical-political imperative.
Charisma or the Power as Gift
Authors: Herrero Montserrat
Published: May 2024

This chapter inscribes the meaning of charisma in its theological locus by reflecting on its trajectories of meaning between Paul’s theology and Weberian political economy. It questions the reflection on legitimate power that is often framed in the democracy/autocracy, political theology/economic theology, governmental paradigm/sovereign paradigm debates. Charismatic power then means an interpretation of power as gift and consequently as sacrifice, forgiveness and glory. In this itinerary, the chapter dialogues with Mauss, Derrida, Marion, Patocka, Jankélévitch among others who have seriously considered the centrality of the gift in the foundation of the political community far from any economic exchange and simulacrum. The chapter ends with an example of the pathos of glory in which both divine and political power participate: the historical case of the acclamations.
The History of Veterinary Education in Edinburgh
Authors: Macdonald Alastair A. , Warwick Colin M.
Published: May 2024

The history of veterinary education in Edinburgh has been traced from 1696 to 2022. William Dick established his veterinary school in 1823. The development of his veterinary interest, formal training and family life are presented. About 14,000 students from at least 139 countries have studied towards obtaining undergraduate veterinary degrees and/or postgraduate qualifications (diplomas, masters, doctorates) from William Dick’s ‘Veterinary College’ (the Dick Vet), Gamgee’s ‘Edinburgh New Veterinary College’, Williams’s ‘New Veterinary College’, The University of Edinburgh, the ‘Polish Veterinary Faculty’ and - within the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies - the ‘Centre for Tropical Veterinary Medicine’. Extending over 335 pages and containing 219 illustrations, the book describes the external political and social environment surrounding these studies. The progressive changes in course duration, content, staffing, and physical facilities are described. It stresses the importance of comparative medicine in early veterinary education, the international nature of the student intake, the delayed timing of the admission of women and the recent student efforts to cope with Covid. The student populations, graduations, dress codes, extra-curricular activities and traditions give insights into the lives of veterinary students over two centuries. The academic and clinical leadership of the individual veterinary teaching and research institutes is described. Some indication is given of administrative, teaching and support staff. The geographical location of veterinary education in Edinburgh is highlighted. Insights are also given to the various physical teaching facilities provided.
The Dick Vet at Summerhall (1911–47)
Authors: Macdonald Alastair A. , Warwick Colin M.
Published: May 2024

Bradley became Principal. Under his strong academic leadership, modern teaching facilities, research encouragement and expanding international links became the norm. A new Dick Vet College was designed for the Summerhall site to accommodate 150 students. Although not finished in 1916, classes were transferred from Clyde Street. War delayed completion until 1925. A coat of arms was awarded, and a silver College Mace donated. Student numbers increased, many holding university degrees. In 1934 the College was ‘affiliated’ to the university. College extension was agreed. Following Bradley’s death Sir Arthur Olver was appointed Principal. During the war dental and medical students were also taught. Veterinary students formed the College Home Guard Unit. In 1943 the first five women were admitted. At war’s end, ex-service men and women were given preference.
The Constitution of the Strategic Subject
Authors: Bove Laurent , Filion-Donato Émilie
Published: May 2024

This chapter articulates the constitution of subjectivity in Spinoza’s philosophy. It opens with a consideration of how objects are experienced in a non-neutral way. Instead, desire constructs the objective world, by virtue of the conjoint action of habit, the joy principle, and memory (see Ch.1). Together, these subjective powers engender a strategy of love, a strategy of the conatus, which seeks to identify and recognize an external cause for our pleasurable affects. Pleasure and power thereby create the objectivity of the subject’s world. Bove argues that, for Spinoza, imagination produces the objective world, representing external objects in terms of how they affect us. To be a subject, therefore, is to hallucinate. In particular, the human subject is a subject in love, and, in this state, reason is pressed into the service of obtaining beloved objects. The subject, on this account, is fundamentally a practical subject, driven by love, pleasure, and what it takes to be useful.
Ethical Subjectivity and the Absolute Affirmation of Singular Existence: An Ethics of Resistance
Authors: Bove Laurent , Filion-Donato Émilie
Published: May 2024

This pivotal chapter articulates a Spinozist ethics of resistance. An ethics of resistance emerges in the transition from a subjectivity entrenched in the imaginary logic of love (Ch. 2) to a properly ethical subjectivity. To arrive at this picture, the chapter outlines how the search for truth participates in the autonomy of the subject. The subject that produces true ideas, it is argued, partakes in the productivity of reality, in reality’s affirmation. This being the case, one’s pursuit of truth is a way both to develop one’s autonomy and transform the strategy of the subject in love into the strategy of an ethical subject. Bove represents this strategic transformation as the result of a logical observation: reality is averse to any negation of its own affirmation. Hence, the ethical subject does not strive to persevere in order to gain something (as the subject in love does), but simply in order to maintain their affirmative existence, which can only be achieved through resistance. Ethical subjectivity is ultimately described as the very process through which reality affirms itself, and thereby constitutes a form of love and trust in reality.
Politics beyond the screen
Authors: Archibald David
Published: May 2024

Chapter 6 explores how Loach uses the platform afforded by his films’ success to intervene in contemporary political discourse. This begins with an analysis of The Angels’ Share premiere and press conference at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. The chapter then turns to examine subsequent controversies involving Loach and his films on the international film festival circuit, and political interventions closer to home, noting how accompanying extra-textual discourse arising from this activity might influence both press responses and frames for film analysis.
Social Stratification in Late Byzantium
Authors: Malatras Christos
Published: May 2024

This book provides an analysis of the system of social stratification in Late Byzantium (mid-13th to mid-15th c.). This includes the ideological infrastructure governing social relations, and the major valued resources (wealth, honours-offices, ancestry, occupation, education, lifestyle) the possession of which defined the status of a person. It delves into cases of social mobility, in an attempt to identify the strategies employed to achieve ascent, such as social assimilation.The major model of social stratification was created by the degree of the possession of the most important resources of Byzantine society: wealth, offices and titles, and ancestry. Society was divided into an elite with different internal groupings, the urban middle social layers and the independent peasants and the simple soldiers in the countryside, and the dependent social class in cities and countryside. The book explores also the different social communities and networks. Outside the nuclear family, the most important association was created around an elite household through patron-client and wider kinship relations. Finally, it explores the degree of inequality in the distribution of the political and economic power. It includes two case studies, further exploring some crucial arguments. The first is an analysis of the social structure and relations in a provincial milieu, Serres, and the second focuses on Constantinople, an urban milieu, in the last century of the empire, when some major changes occurred. Eventually, the deficiencies inherent in Byzantine society are recognised as one of the main factors behind the collapse of the empire.
Late Byzantine Provincial Society: The Example of Serres
Authors: Malatras Christos
Published: May 2024

The chapter is a case study and focuses on the analysis of a Late Byzantine provincial society, the area around Serres in eastern Macedonia. The different social strata active in the area and their control and exploitation of the sources of economic power and their status in local society are identified. Serres provides the most illustrative example regarding the progressive estrangement of the lesser elite from the Byzantine state and the higher aristocracy, the state’s chief advocate. The higher aristocracy controlled much of the region’s economic sources and the most important offices, while the local elite had considerably lesser access to these resources but progressively became more tied together. The situation changed markedly once the region was brought for several years under the Serbian dominion.
Late Palaiologan Urban Society: Constantinople at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century
Authors: Malatras Christos
Published: May 2024

The second case study moves the analysis to an urban milieu. It focuses around 1400 but revolves around the evolution of the urban society throughout the last century of the existence of the empire.The economic crisis, the loss of the landed wealth, the reduction of the territory, and the political troubles negatively affected the size of the wealth of the higher aristocracy, but not equally their attitude and the structures of the society as a whole. However, the turn into the urban economy facilitated the social ascent of some merchant families, which, anyhow, did not differ in their orientation and attitudes with the rest of the elite. The military character of the elite was largely lost, while due to the reduction of the administrative machine, the civil elite was confined largely to the administration of the Church. The middle classes continued to exist and often prosper despite the vicissitudes of the state.
Conclusion: The Order and the Structures of the Social System
Authors: Malatras Christos
Published: May 2024

The chapter sums up the basic arguments: a) inequality was ubiquitous across the different strata of the population, while social stratification was principally based on the degree of the possession of political power and wealth. b) society was divided into the lower classes, deprived of political power and of access to the sources of wealth; into the middle classes, independent regarding their economic position, but mostly deprived of political power; and into an elite, further divided according to their social power into higher and lesser, and according to function, into civil and military.c) the preservation of the social order was vital, while social peace was maintained through the exhibition of deference by the socially inferior, and through the re-distribution of part of the superior’s surplus social and economic capital through ‘benevolence’.d) social ascent was mostly a controlled mechanism accomplished through the institution of patronage and accompanied by social assimilation on part of the inferior.e) the state remained relatively strong for most of the period, controlling the distribution of political power and much of the sources of wealth. However, it mostly privileged the higher elite, causing dissatisfaction among the lesser provincial elite.
Military Transformation: Drivers and Sequences
Authors: Coticchia Fabrizio , Dian Matteo , Niccolò Moro Francesco
Published: May 2024

Chapter 3 introduces the theoretical framework of the book, First, it outlines the explanandum of the research, the process of military transformation. The book considers mainly military doctrine and budget and force structures as primary elements of military transformation. Secondly, the chapter introduces the main drivers of change.
The chapter shows how specific configurations of factors, and their timing, can lead to military transformation. It highlights how timing and sequences matter in order to explain how in different contexts external and internal factors interact in bringing about change, and which mechanisms can set a country’s armed forces sustainably on a new trajectory. To do so, it looks at the impact of external factors, such as the international system and alliance structure, at the weight of cultural and institutional factors, and at the influence of operational experience on organisational change.
Italy: The Intervention– Transformation Loop
Authors: Coticchia Fabrizio , Dian Matteo , Niccolò Moro Francesco
Published: May 2024

Chapter 5 traces the evolution of Italian defence in the post-Cold War. Italy was the country that adapted most quickly to the post-bipolar environment, offering a significant contribution to the US-led coalition during the First Gulf War. Since then, Italy’s armed forces have embraced a military doctrine largely characterised by stabilisation and peacekeeping missions. In the aftermath of 9/11, the Italian armed forces sought to further adapt their defence model to cater to new threats by developing an effective and efficient military instrument based on a ‘holistic approach’ geared to performing a wide spectrum of multi-dimensional operations. ’Power projection’, which was confirmed in Italy’s Libro Bianco 2015 and remained at the centre of Italian doctrine through the 2010s, focused primarily on the Mediterranean as a key strategic region for Italy. The chapter traces the parallel evolution of doctrine and force structure, highlighting how the latter – while profoundly changed – did not always keep pace with the former, leaving unresolved certain questions regarding the ability of the Italian armed forces to effectively face multiple crisis scenarios.
Conclusions
Authors: Coticchia Fabrizio , Dian Matteo , Niccolò Moro Francesco
Published: May 2024

The Conclusion wraps up the narratives of the previous chapters, highlighting similarities and differences in the trajectories undertaken by the three countries. The section reveals the main findings of the empirical analysis, which has illustrated how Germany, Japan and Italy addressed dissimilar critical junctures which were then followed by different patterns of institutionalisation, with diverse self-reinforcing feedbacks. Along with the ‘legacies in action’, the interaction between international and domestic factors profoundly shaped – in distinctive ways – the evolution of doctrines and force structure in each country. The chapter then stresses how future research could develop this and related topics. Lastly, the Conclusion sums up with a brief synthesis of how three decades of transformation affect the prospects for action and further reform in the current, and fast-evolving, global security environment.
The Dark Side of Beauty: Cosmetics, Artifice and Danger
Authors: Smith Michelle
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines the ways in which beauty was connected with danger in the Victorian period in three diverse kinds of print: the beauty manual, the periodical press and the novel. While magazine advertising increasingly featured beauty products, the harmfulness of dangerous cosmetics to health and the potential damage to natural features from cosmetic usage were routinely emphasised in non- fiction, leaving the woman reader torn between competing ideals. Fictional depictions of cosmeticians extrapolated the dangers associated with cosmetics to harm and crimes that far exceeded deceptive products and treatments, as in L. T. Meade’s The Sorceress of the Strand (1902). More frequently, however, Victorian fiction depicted natural beauty itself as a danger for young women, with its sexual implications being sufficient to lead to a tragic downfall and death in numerous novels, including Mrs Henry Wood’s East Lynne (1862) and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). These novels are representative of the enduring and pervasive association of beauty with sexuality and thereby the potential of a girl or woman’s downfall.
Visibility, Proximity, Duration
Authors: Kenny Oliver
Published: May 2024

This chapter explains the heuristic for identifying transgressive art films in terms of film form, exploring how visibility, proximity and duration are used in these films, especially in the most controversial sequences of sex, violence and sexual violence. The corpus for this analysis is the seven core films that both provoked unusual and significant consternation and scandal on their release, and have been included almost universally in critical and scholarly discussions about controversial images of sex and violence, most notably in explorations of extreme cinema. The films in question are Sombre, Romance, Baise-moi, Irreversible, Anatomy of Hell, Twentynine Palms and Trouble Every Day. These heuristic elements play a role in the broader cultural stakes of the film, and are not simply evocative of an audiovisual style. This chapter does not simply identify a pattern, but a pattern that matters for our broader understanding of transgressive art films as a socio-cultural phenomenon. This chapter will show how the theoretical reflections on marginal transgressions in Chapter 1 apply to visibility, proximity and duration, and these conclusions will then form key parts of the close analysis that follows.
Trauma
Authors: Kenny Oliver
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines the overlooked conservative sexual and gender politics of two films about rape. Focusing on the narrative framing of trauma and victimhood in The Brown Bunny and Free Will, it argues that transgressive art films often present contradictory ideas about rape, with these two films being exemplary of this problem. They are both attentive to the deep trauma that can arise from the experience of rape, and use visibility, proximity and duration to communicate this affectively to viewers. In these films, however, the trauma is ultimately presented as that of an onlooker and a rapist, respectively, with the victim’s perspective and trauma being elided. Considering issues of the gaze, identification and narrative framing in light of the films’ main themes of trauma and grief, it argues that, similar to Battle in Heaven and A New Life, these films are deeply divisive, provocative and troubling in ways that can be read as both progressive and retrograde. Through close analysis of film form, narrative and audience responses, this chapter demonstrates how the films set up a particularly fraught conflict of value registers that is heightened by their political ambiguity and internal incoherences.