Greek drama has been subject to ongoing textual and historical interpretation, but surprisingly little scholarship has examined the people who composed the theater audiences in Athens. Typically, scholars have presupposed an audience of Athenian male citizens viewing dramas created exclusively for themselves—a model that reduces theater to little more than a medium for propaganda. Women's theater attendance remains controversial, and little attention has been paid to the social class and ethnicity of the spectators. Whose theater was it?

Producing the first book-length work on the subject, David Kawalko Roselli draws on archaeological and epigraphic evidence, economic and social history, performance studies, and ancient stories about the theater to offer a wide-ranging study that addresses the contested authority of audiences and their historical constitution. Space, money, the rise of the theater industry, and broader social forces emerge as key factors in this analysis. In repopulating audiences with foreigners, slaves, women, and the poor, this book challenges the basis of orthodox interpretations of Greek drama and places the politically and socially marginal at the heart of the theater. Featuring an analysis of the audiences of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander, Theater of the People brings to life perhaps the most powerful influence on the most prominent dramatic poets of their day.

This book offers a new interpretation of the transformation of French economic policymaking and state-society relations over the past twenty-five years. In so doing, it challenges widely held views about the preconditions for state leadership and for a vibrant civil society.

France has long been characterized as a statist or dirigiste political economy, with state "strength" predicated on autonomy from a weak and divided civil society. Jonah Levy shows that this disdain for societal and local institutions has come back to haunt French officials--what he terms "Tocqueville's revenge." The absence of societal partners undermined the operation of dirigiste policymaking in the 1970s and early 1980s and has made it difficult to forge alternative forms of economic coordination in the post-dirigiste period.

Levy argues that just as the French state has been weakened by an absence of societal and local partners, French civil society has been weakened by the absence of a supportive state. In the 1980s, French authorities invited societal and local institutions to relay state intervention, but did little to cultivate their economic capacities. Taking the dirigiste state out of the French economy did not suffice to bring civil society back in, however. The broader lesson is that revitalizing civil society requires an active, empowering state, as opposed to an absent or indifferent state.

A pathway to community, growth, and change 

This collection of inclusive essays explores the role of debate in understanding and critiquing injustice and inequality. Edited by Shawn F. Briscoe, these essays closely examine multiple approaches to debate, considering their respective merits and controversies. This detailed compilation analyzes how debate methodologies are useful in everyday life and whether certain approaches have any value at all.  

Briscoe provides an in-depth look into the varying styles of debate and contributes to a greater understanding of argument theory by discussing three stylistic approaches: audience-centered, technical/progressive, and nontraditional/performative. The book demonstrates that all three approaches offer students opportunity to engage in a socioemotional learning space, a discipline that prepares students for undergraduate and graduate work, a study that prepares participants for future careers, and a field that investigates current controversies and how to tackle them. Briscoe offers compelling narratives from BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and women authors that explore the personal impact of debate on social equality within this academic discipline, our educational system, and society. 

The diversity in gender and race of the contributing authors allows for a multitude of perspectives on the complex styles, benefits, and issues discussed in Transcending the Game. Briscoe peels back the mystery that shrouds the benefits of academic, competitive debate from outsiders and insiders alike. A myriad of personal narratives tell stories about the role of debate in their lives; challenge the unproductive discourse in debate, education, and society; and offer diverse insight into why we debate.