This collection of essays examines the vogue for games and game playing as expressed in art and literature in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Focusing on games as a leitmotif of creative expression, these scholarly inquiries are framed as a response to two main questions: how were games used to convey special meanings in art and literature, and how did games speak to greater issues in European society? In chapters dealing with chess, playing cards, board games, dice, gambling, and outdoor and sportive games, essayists show how games were used by artists, writers, game makers and collectors, in the service of love and war, didactic and moralistic instruction, commercial enterprise, politics and diplomacy, and assertions of civic and personal identity. Offering innovative iconographical and literary interpretations, their analyses reveal how games“played, written about, illustrated and collected“functioned as metaphors for a host of broader cultural issues related to gender relations and feminine power, class distinctions and status, ethical and sexual comportment, philosophical and religious ideas, and conditions of the mind.

Not since Edward Wood’s Giants and Dwarfs published in 1868 has the subject been the focus of a scholarly study in English. Treating the topic afresh, this volume offers new insights into the vogue for giants and dwarfs that flourished in late-medieval and early modern Europe. From chapters dealing with the real dwarfs and giants in the royal and princely courts, to the imaginary giants and dwarfs that figured in the crafting of nationalistic and ancestral traditions, to giants and dwarfs used as metaphorical expression, scholars discuss their role in art, literature, and ephemeral display. Some essays examine giants and dwarfs as monsters and marvels and collectibles, while others show artists and writers emphasizing contrasts in scale to inspire awe or for comic effect. As these investigations reveal, not all court dwarfs functioned as jesters, and giant figures might equally be used to represent heroes, anti-heroes, and even a saint.

Fosterage was a central feature of medieval Irish society, yet the widespread practice of sending children to another family to be cared for until they reached adulthood is a surprisingly neglected topic. Where it has been discussed, fosterage is usually conceptualised and treated as a purely legal institution. This work seeks to outline the emotional impact of growing up within another family. What emerges is a complex picture of deeply felt emotional ties binding the foster family together. These emotions are unique to the social practice of fosterage, and we see the language and feelings originating within the foster family being used to describe other relationships such as those in the monastery or between humans and animals. This book argues that the more we understand how people felt in fosterage, the more we understand medieval Ireland.

In mainstream assessments of Confucianism’s modern genealogy there is a Sinocentric bias which is, in part, the result of a general neglect of modern Japanese Confucianism by political and moral philosophers and intellectual historians during the post-war era. This collection of essays joins a small group of other studies bringing modern Japanese Confucianism to international scholarly notice, largely covering the time period between the Bakumatsu era of the mid-19th century and the 21st century. The essays in this volume can be read for the insight they provide into the intellectual and ideological proclivities of reformers, educators and philosophers explicitly reconstructing Confucian thought, or more tacitly influenced by it, during critical phases in Japan’s modernization, imperialist expansionism and post-1945 reconstitution as a liberal democratic polity. They can be read as introductions to the ideas of modern Japanese Confucian thinkers and reformers whose work is little known outside Japan—and sometimes barely remembered inside Japan. They can also be read as a needful corrective to the above-mentioned Sinocentric bias in the 20th century intellectual history of Confucianism. For those Confucian scholars currently exploring how Confucianism is, or can be made compatible with democracy, at least some of the studies in this volume serve as a warning. They enjoin readers to consider how Confucianism was also rendered compatible with the authoritarian ultranationalism and militarism that captured Japan’s political system in the 1930s, and brought war to the Asia-Pacific region.

Federico and Ferrante Gonzaga came of age during a time of intense change in sixteenth-century Italy: The Italian Wars (1494–1559). The first and third-born sons of Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga spent their formative years at the courts of Francis I of France and Charles V of Spain, where, as effectively diplomatic hostages, they learned valuable lessons about the transnational social codes and rituals central to sixteenth-century political life. As adults, they applied these lessons in their political and martial collaborations with Charles V: supporting his dominions in Italy, facilitating his attempted colonisation of northern Africa, and praising his attacks on Muslim pirates in the Italian Mediterranean. This book uses epistolary, literary, and material sources to argue that the boyhood and adult experiences of Federico and Ferrante Gonzaga are illustrative of wider strategies adopted by elite Italians to respond to conflict and crisis in a global age.

My Korea: Forty Years Without a Horsehair Hat is a cultural introduction to Korea, part memoir and part miscellany, which introduces traditional and contemporary culture through a series of essays, stories, anecdotes and poems. The book seeks to tell the reader all that he or she needs to know for a full and rewarding life in Korea or as a visitor passing through. Confucianism, Buddhism, relationships, everyday living, language and literature are comprehensively covered. Newcomers to Korea are provided with insights into daily life. They are told how to deal with people and the intricacies of honorific language, how to handle business dealings, how to be comfortable with social ranking, and how to react when they bump into the cultural wall.

The Life and Work of Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757): The Queen of Pastel is the first extensive biographical narrative in English of Rosalba Carriera. It is also the first scholarly investigation of the external and internal factors that helped to create this female painter's unique career in eighteenth-century Europe. It documents the difficulties, complications, and consequences that arose then -- and can also arise today -- when a woman decides to become an independent artist. This book contributes a new, in-depth analysis of the interplay between society's expectations, generally accepted codices for gendered behaviour, and one single female painter's astute strategies for achieving success, as well as autonomy in her professional life as a famed artist. Some of the questions that the author raises are: How did Carriera manage to build up her career? How did she run her business and organize her own workshop? What kind of artist was Carriera? Finally, what do her self-portraits reveal in terms of self-enactment and possibly autobiographical turning points?

Since smartphones have made their debut, a clear sense of frustration can be felt by parents around the globe. Be it social media, bullying, porn, gaming, tv-series or sexting; parents are overwhelmed or insecure as they struggle to keep up with the yet newest app.Drawing on stories from her past, Allison Ochs reminds us of what it was like to be a teen. She makes you smile while making fun of her teen self. Her answers to today's problems are realistic ways to approach your teens who are dealing with the same emotions we had, however, now with their ever-present digital devices in hand. The simplicity of what she suggests will enlighten you as she gently nudges you to think about how you're dealing with the your teens online world.

Leading historians of the French, Batavian, Helvetic, Cisalpine and Neapolitan revolutions bridge the gap between the historiographies of the so-called 'Sister' Republics. They explore political culture as a set of discourses or political practices. Parliamentary practices, the comparability of 'universal' political concepts, late-eighteenth century Republicanism, the relationship between press and politics, and the interaction between the Sister Republics and France are studied from a comparative, transnational perspective.

Semio-pragmatics, an approach to the study of film and audiovisual media first proposed by Roger Odin in the early 1980s, shifted the focus from textual analysis to the interaction of text and context and to the institutional modes of framing and reading which shape the viewer’s engagement with the film. A response to an impasse in post-1968 film semiotics and psychoanalytical approaches to film spectatorship, semio-pragmatics contributed significantly to the further development of film studies alongside Cultural Studies, neo-formalism, historical reception studies and the phenomenology of film. Spaces of Communication offers a concise introduction to semio-pragmatics and condenses the intellectual trajectory of one of the foundational figures of film studies into a relatively short and accessible volume. It is a book which testifies to the author’s deep and rich intellectual engagement with a vast array of objects ranging from the classics of

-- With support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK and the Deutsches Historisches Institut Moskau --The French Language in Russia provides the fullest examination and discussion to date of the adoption of the French language by the elites of imperial Russia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is interdisciplinary, approaching its subject from the angles of various kinds of history and historical sociolinguistics. Beyond its bearing on some of the grand narratives of Russian thought and literature, this book may afford more general insight into the social, political, cultural, and literary implications and effects of bilingualism in a speech community over a long period. It should also enlarge understanding of francophonie as a pan-European phenomenon. On the broadest plane, it has significance in an age of unprecedented global connectivity, for it invites us to look beyond the experience of a single nation and the social groups and individuals within it in order to discover how languages and the cultures and narratives associated with them have been shared across national boundaries.

Buddhist Revitalization and Chinese Religions in Malaysia tells the story of how a minority community comes to grips with the challenges of modernity, history, globalization, and cultural assertion in an ever-changing Malaysia. It captures the religious connection, transformation, and tension within a complex traditional belief system in a multi-religious society. In particular, the book revolves around a discussion on the religious revitalization of Chinese Buddhism in modern Malaysia. This Buddhist revitalization movement is intertwined with various forces, such as colonialism, religious transnationalism, and global capitalism. Reformist Buddhists have helped to remake Malaysia’s urban-dwelling Chinese community and have provided an exit option in the Malay and Muslim majority nation state. As Malaysia modernizes, there have been increasing efforts by certain segments of the country’s ethnic Chinese Buddhist population to separate Buddhism from popular Chinese religions. Nevertheless, these reformist groups face counterforces from traditional Chinese religionists within the context of the cultural complexity of the Chinese belief system.

Race and biologized conceptions of ethnicity have been potent factors in the making of the Americas. They remain crucial, even if more ambiguously than before. This collection of essays addresses the workings of ethnicity in the Caribbean, a part of the Americas where, from the early days of empire through today’s post-colonial limbo, this phenomenon has arguably remained in the center of public society as well as private life. These analyses of race and nation-building, increasingly significant in today’s world, are widely pertinent to the study of current and international relations.

The ten prominent scholars contributing to this book focus on the significance of ethnicity for social structure and national identity in the Caribbean. Their essays span a period from the initial European colonization right through today’s paradoxical balance sheet of decolonization. They deal with the entire region as well as the significance of the diaspora and the continuing impact of metropolitan linkages. The topics addressed vary from the international repercussions of Haiti’s black revolution through the position of French Caribbean békés and the Barbadian ‘redlegs’ to race in revolutionary Cuba; from Puerto Rican dance etiquette through the Latin American and Caribbean identity essay to the discourse of Dominican nationhood; and from a musée imaginaire in Guyane through Jamaica’s post independence culture to the predicament of Dutch Caribbean decolonization. Taken together, these essays provide a rare and extraordinarily rich comparative perspective to the study of ethnicity as a crucial factor shaping both intimate relations and the public and even international dimension of Caribbean societies.

With the climate crisis and its repercussions becoming more and more tangible, games are increasingly participating in the production, circulation, and interrogation of environmental assumptions, using both explicit and implicitly ways of framing the crisis. Whether they are providing new spaces to imagine and practice alternative forms of living, or reproducing ecomodernist fantasies, games as well as player cultures are increasingly tuned in to the most pressing environmental concerns. This book brings together chapters by a diverse group of established and emerging authors to develop a growing body of scholarship that explores the shape, impact, and cultural context of ecogames. The book comprises four thematic sections, Today’s Challenges: Games for Change, Future Worlds: New Imaginaries, The Nonhuman Turn, and Critical Metagaming Practices. Each section explores different aspects of ecocritical engagement in and through games. As a result, the book’s comprehensive scope covers a variety of angles, methodologies, and case studies, significantly expanding the field of green media studies.

Orphan works, or artworks for which no copyright holder is traceable, pose a growing problem for museums, archives, and other heritage institutions. As they come under more and more pressure to digitize and share their archives, they are often hampered by the uncertain rights status of items in their collections. The Greatest Films Never Seen: The Film Archive and the Copyright Smokescreen uses the prism of copyright to reconsider human agency and the politics of the archive, and asks what the practicalimplications are for educational institutions, the creative industries, and the general public.

Pathways to Contemporary Islam: New Trends in Critical Engagement highlights that the current tensions in Islam and the Muslim world are the result of historical dynamics as opposed to an alleged incompatibility between religious tradition and modernity. The emphasis on pathways indicates that critical engagement and contestation have always been intrinsic to the history of Islam. The aim of the book is to elaborate the contemporary pathways and analyse the trends that contest the Islamic intellectual tradition, the relationship between religion and politics, and the individual and collective practice of religion. The collection of essays analyses the current efforts of critical re-engagement with the Islamic intellectual tradition and underlines the historical diversity of Islamic orthodoxies that led to the establishment of various pathways in the practice and role of religion in Muslim societies.

Johan Huizinga, the Dutch founding father of cultural history, ranks among the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Perhaps best known is Huizinga’s revolutionary insight into the formative role of play in human culture, a theory he espoused in the celebrated Homo Ludens, which was published in 1938. For Huizinga, philology was the mother of all interpretive endeavors, reading and writing were part of a collective ritual that channeled human passion into beautiful forms, and passion remained the fundamental fact of human life. In this clear, engaging study, the renowned Dutch scholar Willem Otterspeer paints an original portrait of Huizinga in the context of interwar Europe—and shares his subject’s own hallmark passion for history.

This book examines how the Netherlands managed to create and maintain one of the world’s most generous and inclusive welfare systems despite having been dominated by Christian-democratic or ŸconservativeŒ, rather than socialist dominated governments, for most of the post-war period. It emphasizes that such systems have strong consequences for the distribution of income and risk among different segments of society and argues that they could consequently only emerge in countries where middle class groups were unable to utilize their key electoral and strong labor market position to mobilize against the adverse consequences of redistribution for them. By illustrating their key role in the coming about of solidaristic welfare reform in the Netherlands, the book also offers a novel view of the roles of Christian-democracy and the labor union movement in the development of modern welfare states. By highlighting how welfare reform contributed to the employment miracle of the 1990s, the book sheds new light on how countries are able to combine high levels of welfare generosity and solidarity with successful macro-economic performance.

Olonkho is the general name for the entire Yakut heroic epic that consists of many long legends – one of the longest being ‘Nurgun Botur the Swift’ consisting of some 36,000 lines of verse, published here. Like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the Finnish Kalevala, the Buryat Geser, and the Kirghiz Manas, the Yakut Olonkho is an epic of a very ancient origin dating back to the period – possibly as early as the eighth or ninth centuries – when the ancestors of the present-day Yakut peoples lived on their former homeland and closely communicated with the Turkic and Mongolian peoples living in the Altay and Sayan regions. As with all Olonkho stories the hero – in this story Nurgun Botur the Swift – and his tribe are heaven-born, hence his people are referred to as ‘Aiyy kin’ (the deity’s relatives). Naturally, too, on account of his vital role (in saving his people from destruction and oblivion by evil, many-legged, fire-breathing, one-armed, one legged Cyclops-type monsters – the Devil’s relatives representing all possible sins), he is depicted not only as strong, but also a handsome, remarkably athletic and incredibly brave and well-built man ‘as swift as an arrow’, but also with an uncontrollable temper when required.

The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism: Walking in Films offers a rich exploration of the cinematic aesthetics that filmmakers devised to reflect the corporeal and affective experience of walking in the city. Drawing from literature in urban studies, film theory, and aesthetic philosophy, it is the first monograph to approach the history of cinema from the perspective of walking. A series of case studies providing nuanced analyses of widely referenced figures, such as the flaneur/flâneuse, vagabond, and nomad, reveal how filmmakers articulated their objection to repressive structures through depictions of walking: a common, everyday act yet transgressive, bold, and indomitable. Through the lens of Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space, Michel de Certeau’s concept of pedestrian acts, and Jacques Rancière’s treatment of the politics of aesthetics, Walking in Films traces how cinema evolved in conversation with the mobile body and the new images, styles, and techniques that emerged with it.