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Exclusive Revolutionaries
Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848-1914
Pieter M. Judson
University of Michigan Press, 1996
Exclusive Revolutionaries traces the development of German liberal and later nationalist political culture in imperial Austria from the revolutions of 1848 to the outbreak of World War I. Drawing on archival research from several regions of the former Habsburg Monarchy, Pieter M. Judson provides a clear, chronological political narrative that demonstrates the continuing influence of liberal ideas and values well after the defeat of liberal political parties.

In the mid-1800s, Judson argues, German liberal activists built an effective political movement whose ideology was rooted in its members' social experience in voluntary associations. The liberals were committed to the creation of a market economy based on personal property rights, to a society based on the values of individual self-improvement and personal respectability, and to a fundamental distinction between active and passive citizenship. They were determined to achieve a harmonious community of free peoples, in which personal enlightenment would bring an end to the divisive influence of localism, ethnicity, religion, and feudal social hierarchy.

Yet after 1880, as newer, more radical mass political movements threatened their political fortunes, the liberals forged a German nationalist politics based increasingly on ethnic identity. Their emphasis on national identity became a way for former liberals to hold together an increasingly diverse coalition of German speakers who had little in common outside of their shared language. Only "Germanness" bridged the dangerous gulf between social classes. This nationalism helped the liberals to compete for power in the multinational, multicultural Austrian Empire down to 1914, but it left a legacy of nationalist extremism and tolerance of anti-Semitism that continues to influence political cultures in the former lands of the Habsburg Monarchy today.
 
Exclusive Revolutionaries will interest social and cultural historians of nineteenth-century Europe, and of Germany and Central Europe in particular.
 
Pieter M. Judson is Professor of History, Swarthmore College.  He is the recipient of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
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front cover of Hamlet's Castle
Hamlet's Castle
The Study of Literature as a Social Experience
By Gordon Mills
University of Texas Press, 1976

Hamlet's Castle is both a theoretical and a practical examination of the interactions that take place in a literary classroom. The book traces the source of literature's power to the relationship between its illusional quality and its abstract meaning and relates these elements to the process by which a group, typically an academic class, forms a judgment about a literary work. In focusing on the importance of the exchange of ideas by readers, Gordon Mills reveals a new way of looking at literature as well as a different concept of the social function of the literary classroom and the possible application of this model to other human activities.

The three fundamental elements that constitute Mills's schema are the relationship between a reader and the illusional quality of literature, the relationship between a reader and the meaning of a text, and the concept of social experience within the environment of a text. The roles of illusion and meaning in a text are explored in detail and are associated with areas outside literature, including science and jurisprudence. There is an examination of the way in which decisions are forced by peers upon one another during discussion of a literary work-an exchange of opinion which is commonly a source of pleasure and insight, sought for its own sake. In the course of his study, Mills shows that the act of apprehending a literary structure resembles that of apprehending a social structure. From this relationship, he derives the social function of the literary classroom.

In combining a theoretical analysis with the practical objective of determining what value can be found in the study of literature by groups of people, Mills has produced a critical study of great significance. Hamlet's Castle will change concepts about the purpose of teaching literature, affect the way in which literature is taught, and become involved in the continuing discussion of the relationship of literary studies to other disciplines.

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front cover of The Social Experience of Childhood in Ancient Mesoamerica
The Social Experience of Childhood in Ancient Mesoamerica
Traci Ardren
University Press of Colorado, 2015
The first book to focus on children in ancient Mesoamerica, this vital reference offers a key methodological guide for archaeologists studying children and their roles not only in Mesoamerica, but also in ancient societies worldwide.

Contributors examine material evidence, historical records, and iconography, productively criticizing the claim that children are invisible in the archaeological record and elucidating an ancient childhood comprising multiple and complex identities. They explore the methodological and theoretical difficulties created when investigating childhood - a category defined by each culture - in the archaeological record.

Sure to appeal widely to New World and Old World archaeologists and anthropologists, The Social Experience of Childhood in Ancient Mesoamerica will open up new avenues of research into the lives of this previously overlooked yet remarkably large population.

Contributors include Traci Ardren, Ximena Chávez Balderas, Billie Follensbee, Byron Hamann, Scott R. Hutson, Rosemary A. Joyce, Stacie M. King, Jeanne Lopiparo, Patricia McAnany, Geoffrey G. McCafferty, Sharisse D. McCafferty, Juan Alberto Román Berrelleza, Rebecca Storey, Rissa M. Trachman, Fred Valdez Jr.

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