Every scientific fact was born as an opinion about the unknown - a hypothesis. Opinion gradually becomes fact as evidence piles up to support a theory. But what if there are two theories, each of which has produced a myriad of things that correspond perfectly to the phenomena but can't be combined into one? One theory replaced the mystery of gravity with a precise model of space and time. The other theory replaced the mystery of matter with a description of quantum particles. As we understand our universe, we keep each in its own domain: space and time for very large things, particles for the very small ones. However, 13.8 billion years ago, those two incompatible domains belonged to a single realm. Who in the current or future generations of physicists will crack this seemingly impossible puzzle? This, contends the author, is not just a big question, but the biggest question in physics in our century. Combining Ickes's first-hand knowledge with a robust argument and intellectual playfulness, this fascinating book succeeds in making a notoriously difficult subject accessible to all readers interested in a better grasp of our universe.Watch the Book Trailer

Over the past decade, digital technologies have profoundly reshaped the Chinese cultural landscape. With a focus on the creative agency of new media and online communities, this volume examines this development through the notion of the Sinocybersphere - the networked spaces across the globe that not only operate on the Chinese script, but also imaginatively negotiate the meanings of Chinese culture in the digital age. Instead of asking what makes the internet or new media “Chinese,” the chapters situate contemporary entanglements of cultural and digital practices within specific historical, social, and discursive contexts. Covering topics as diverse as live-streaming, AI poetry, online literature, poetry memes, cyberpunk fiction, virtual art exhibitions, cooking videos, censorship, and viral translations, the collection as a whole not only engages with a wide range of Chinese new media phenomena, but also demonstrates their relevance to our understanding of contemporary digital culture.

Translation was a critical mode of discourse for early modern writers. Gifting Translation in Early Modern England: Women Writers and the Politics of Authorship examines the intersection of translation and the culture of gift-giving in early modern England, arguing that this intersection allowed women to subvert dominant modes of discourse through acts of linguistic and inter-semiotic translation and conventions of gifting. The book considers four early modern translators: Mary Bassett, Jane Lumley, Jane Seager, and Esther Inglis. These women negotiate the rhetorics of translation and gift-culture in order to articulate political and religious affiliations and beliefs in their carefully crafted manuscript gift-books. This book offers a critical lens through which to read early modern translations in relation to the materiality of early modern gift culture.

Archival Film Curatorship is the first book-length study that investigates film archives at the intersection of institutional histories, early and silent film historiography, and archival curatorship. It examines three institutions at the forefront of experimentation with film exhibition and curatorship. The Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY, and the National Fairground and Circus Archive in Sheffield, UK serve as exemplary sites of historical mediation between early and silent cinema and the digital age. A range of elements, from preservation protocols to technologies of display and from museum architectures to curatorial discourses in blogs, catalogs, and interviews, shape what the author innovatively theorizes as the archive’s hermeneutic dispositif. Archival Film Curatorship offers film and preservation scholars a unique take on the shifting definitions, histories, and uses of the medium of film by those tasked with preserving and presenting it to new digital-age audiences.

The Battle of Rencesvals is the one of the most dramatic historical event of the entire eighth century, not only in Vasconia but in Western Europe. This monograph examines the battle as more than a single military encounter, but instead as part of a complex military and political conquest that began after the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and culminated with the creation of the Kingdom of Pamplona in 824. The battle had major (and largely underappreciated) consequences for the internal structure of the Carolingian Empire. It also enjoyed a remarkable legacy as the topic of one of the oldest European epic poems, La Chanson de Roland. The events that took place in the Pyrenean pass of Rencesvals (Errozabal) on 15 August 778 defined the development of the Carolingian world, and lie at the heart of the early medieval contribution to the later medieval period.

It is 1942. Shanghai after Pearl Harbor. Newly-arrived Eiko Kishimoto, a twenty-year-old, London-educated Japanese housewife, settles into a privileged existence in the French Concession as a member of the community of the Occupying Power. Initially, her days are filled with high society lunches and dinners, race course and night club visits and open-air summer concerts, amidst an ebullient and remarkably cosmopolitan society that makes up Shanghai. But all is by no means what it seems. As war progresses, and Japan tightens its control within China, tensions mount, relationships unravel, and allegiances are questioned. It is not long before Eiko awakens to the meaning and implications of occupation for both her international friends and for Japanese civilians. Even her settled domestic life, with a growing family and close proximity to her beloved older sister, is threatened as Japan’s war efforts become more desperate and degenerate. Partly biographical – the author taking inspiration from her mother’s own war experiences in China – My Shanghai, 1942-1946 provides a fascinating insight into the Asia Pacific War as never told before, that is through the eyes of a young Japanese woman caught between her Christian values and loyalty to her country.

This collection of essays offers a comparative perspective on religious materiality across the early modern world. Setting out from the premise that artefacts can provide material evidence of the nature of early modern religious practices and beliefs, the volume tests and challenges conventional narratives of change based on textual sources. Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World brings together scholars of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic and Buddhist practices from a range of fields, including history, art history, museum curatorship and social anthropology. The result is an unprecedented account of the wealth and diversity of devotional objects and environments, with a strong emphasis on cultural encounters, connections and exchanges.