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Since the Vietnam War, the United States has been involved in several major military conflicts. Critics of US military intervention have consistently looked back to the Vietnam War for "lessons." Perhaps the most common and forceful "lesson" is that the military cannot be trusted to fight these wars" ethically." In making this argument, critics consistently point to the My Lai Massacre (March 16, 1968) as evidence that the US military is prone to committing atrocities or that the realities of the conflict make fighting it "ethically" impossible. This book addresses such criticism by offering a detailed analysis of the My Lai Massacre and the way it has come to be understood in the US.First, using a fine-grained analysis of 18,000 pages of perpetrator testimony and 5,000 pages of official documents, this study presents the most detailed reconstruction of the massacre itself available. Using this account, author Marshall Poe shows that standard histories of the massacre once incomplete and misleading. Second, using detailed survey of the American press, governmental records, and academic treatments of My Lai over the period 1968 to the present, Poe analyzes the origins and history of the commonplace that there were "many My Lais." Furthermore, Poe argues that this commonplace came to serve the interests of both liberal and conservative critics of the Vietnam War.The Reality of the My Lai Massacre And the Myth of the Vietnam War is an important resource for those studying American history and military history.

Winner of the Klaus Heyne Award for Research in German Romanticism*Includes 47 imagesIn the nineteenth century, a cluster of German Romantic artists and naturalists including Johann Moritz Rugendas, Carl Alexander Simon, Otto Grashof, Theodor Ohlsen, Eduard Poeppig, and Rudolph Amandus Philippi, embarked on different journeys to Chile, a newly liberated country characterized by untamed landscapes, overwhelming nature, and an important diversity of people. This study is the first scholarly attempt to critically explore the unfolding of German Romanticism in Chile, delving into the motivations and experiences of these six explorers as they ventured across the sea, the Andes, the secluded jungles of southern Chile, and the Atacama Desert to portray the country's people, landscapes, and nature.This book challenges conventional interpretations of German Romanticism as a purely emotional and spiritualized crusade, arguing for a more nuanced understanding that takes into account the complexities of this cultural movement in a foreign setting, offering a critical analysis of its impact on the depiction of Chile within the broader program of Western modernity imposed outside of Europe. The central argument of this book is that the activities and depictions of these artists and naturalists, far from being mere artistic pursuits, expressed a desire for expansion in multiple dimensions-spatial, economic, cultural, and scientific-ultimately driven by a mighty colonial impulse. Thus, in their quest for exploration and artistic inspiration, they projected their anxieties, obsessions, and hegemonic ideas about race, class, Europeanness, indigeneity, territorial appropriation, and nature, reflecting their own cultural and personal agendas.By examining the impact of German Romanticism on the depiction of Chile and the convergence of scientism, Romanticism, and colonialism, this publication seeks to shed new light on the intricate cultural exchanges between Germany and Latin America during a century consumed by ideas of progress, evolution, and the systematic categorization of nature, offering a new perspective on this subject matter.Cultural Exchanges and Colonial Legacies in Latin America: German Romanticism in Chile, 1800-1899 serves as a first introduction to this unfathomed topic, standing as a significant and essential reference for individuals engaged in academic research, students, and general readers intrigued by art history, visual culture, colonialism, Romanticism, and Latin American studies.This book is in the Cambria Latin American Literatures and Cultures Series headed by Román de la Campa, the Edwin B. and Lenore R. Williams Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania.

Stereotypes of Caribbean "nature" as lush and its people as exotic Others abound. For those who call the islands home, the region evokes more somber images that reflect the history of colonization and the environmental devastation that ensues. Close ecocritical readings of literary texts illuminate aspects of an encompassing nature inclusive of all Others within the Caribbean ecosphere.This book thus uses ecocritical lenses to examine Caribbean texts and provides a useful context to understand how Other(ed) natures have been scripted by bringing to light environmental concerns not patent in heteropatriarchal interpretations. It establishes patterns of coexistence and interdependence between the spiritual and palpable material worlds that surround the characters who populate Caribbean literature. Culture, Nature, and the Other in Caribbean Literature: An Ecocritical Approach considers texts from colonial times to the present that reflect on the significance of the region's rich cultures against the brutal slavery system and its impact on the environment. Christopher Columbus's first letter helps establish the effects of colonization on indigenous peoples, the ensuing importation of African slaves, and the changes to the landscape. The Haitian revolution, a turning point in Caribbean history, remains central when studying the effects of continued violence on the ecosystem when juxtaposed to the spiritual world of Other(ed) natures. The expression of female agency and sexuality provides the framework for the study of adaptation and hybridization as crucial reflections on the ecological significance of the Caribbean's multiracial reality.The book considers the Caribbean's rich cultural matter as part of the ecosphere that resonates with the surrounding more-than-human world that should be saved from extinction. Novelists transform ecological issues into pressing matters that extend beyond the environment and include the syncretic cultures of the islands and its peoples. No other book offers this kind of close comparative re-readings of Caribbean texts-from Hispaniola to Haiti to Cuba, and from Martinique to Guadeloupe to Puerto Rico, to the Dominican Republic-through ecocritical lenses to recognize the significance of the survival of the literary matter of Other(ed) natures as readers (re)think their own roles within this inclusive ecosphere. Culture, Nature, and the Other in Caribbean Literature is a valuable resource for academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in ecocritical approaches to Caribbean literature as well as environmental and cultural studies.This book is in the Cambria Latin American Literatures and Cultures Series headed by Román de la Campa, the Edwin B. and Lenore R. Williams Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania.

This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series headed by Victor H. Mair (University of Pennsylvania). Studies of Chinese culture and literature often neglect the importance of the various vocabulary terms for the self and identity that are used somewhat differently from their equivalents in Western languages. In particular, from the Warring States period up to today, Chinese poems often rely on the concept of a soul that can be separated from the body and needs to be summoned back by invocations. This study examines the role of the soul (hun) and the soul-summoning ritual in Chinese literature from ancient times up to the twentieth century. With five case studies from different dynasties, spanning ancient Chu and the Han, Tang, Song, and Ming-Qing transition periods, Chinese Poetry as Soul Summoning shows Chinese poets were inspired by the belief in a soul that could be transported away from the body. On one hand, this provided a model for literature, as a therapeutic means of summoning back wayward souls; on the other, it inspired the imaginative range and formal structures of literary works, which followed the soul s journey from the individual person throughout the world and into the heavens. In each period, highlighting the role of soul summoning illuminates new dimensions of literary history that have often been neglected. In the Warring States period, the poem Summons of the Soul is the definitive statement of the theme and has much to tell us about early Chinese conceptions of self, world, and communication. In the Han dynasty, the scholar-poets who established many of the norms and canons of Chinese civilization thereafter were themselves highly susceptible to visions of the soul in flight. Major compositions in the Tang and Song dynasty are structured around soul-summoning in a way that is often ignored. Even as late as the seventeenth century, ancient conceptions of the wandering soul, and the use of poetry to lure it back to wholeness, remained fundamental for literary composition in all genres. Ultimately, the book suggests that the religious dimensions of Chinese poetry have not been sufficiently examined. The conception of the separable soul is a distinctive and perennial theme that has considerable explanatory reach in understanding traditional Chinese culture. Chinese Poetry as Soul Summoning will be a valuable addition to students and scholars of Chinese culture, comparative literature, and religious studies.

Few military officers can ascend to the ranks of senior leadership without eventually being assigned to Washington, DC, where newcomers navigating the system inevitably become emmeshed, flabbergasted, and stymied by entrenched bureaucratic processes they had no idea existed. A career in diplomacy or working on the Hill often involves the process-oriented work necessary to keep departments funded and the government functional. In order to succeed, one must understand these rules, especially as they apply to resourcing. Without funding, strategies and policies are merely interesting ideas. Getting an idea or a program resourced requires a thorough understanding of the process. Considering the national security enterprise from the standpoint of strategic resourcing is neither simple nor straightforward. To succeed requires a multidisciplinary approach; a team with substantial background knowledge on such diverse and byzantine topics as the Department of Defense acquisition system, the president s budget submission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency s National Preparedness Frameworks, in addition to a basic understanding of macroeconomics. Further, the development of a cohesive and logical narrative is difficult because the Framers intended checks and balances among the executive and legislative branches effectively preclude the possibility of seamless integration among national security priorities. Anyone aspiring to have a career in national security must understand the process in order to be effective. Graduate school programs in security studies, public policy, and political science offer multiple courses that consider bureaucracy from academic and theoretical perspectives, but these classes generally do not attempt to offer a practitioner s view of surviving and thriving within the Washington bureaucracy. And although individual government departments and agencies such as the Department of Defense s Joint Staff and the Department of State s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) offer courses for personnel newly assigned to Washington, the majority of the learning occurs through on-the-job training. This book fills the gap and provides a much-needed, theoretically grounded, and practical guide. Each chapter in this volume is by a practitioner with decades of experience working on resourcing issues in Washington. Their perspectives are informed by the cultures of the agencies in which they have worked and the positions they have held. Many currently teach in DC-based graduate degree programs in a variety of disciplines, including strategy, economics, and organizational leadership. Resourcing the National Security Enterprise will be a valuable resource for aspiring practitioners who are beginning or seeking careers in the American federal government and to those who wish to learn more about the inner workings of resourcing the national security enterprise.

Modernity, modernization, modernism, and the modern have all been key, interrelated terms in post-traditional China. For all their ubiquity, however, in previous studies of Chinese culture and society there has been insufficient clarity as to what the precise meanings each term has encompassed from the period beginning in 1895, the year of China s catastrophic defeat by Japan. The importance of these terms is underlined by their implication in China s positioning in the world over the course of the past century and a half, as well as the path China will follow in the future. Looking into a set of concepts and practices that have been instrumental in China s road to modernity, namely, the definition of the modern itself, a new notion of literature, linguistic reform, translation, popular culture, and the transformation of the publishing world, Taking China to the World explores the various ways in which activity in the cultural sphere shaped Chinese perceptions of both how its historical course might evolve and how all-compassing change needed to be managed. Most studies of China s modern transformation have implicitly based themselves on the inevitability of a process of cultural, social, and institutional rationalization, more often than not based on Western models, without grappling with the full extent of the struggles to reconcile needed changes with a grand tradition, which, for all the condemnation aimed at it after 1895, still held a powerful appeal for most of those who seriously considered the full extent of the interactions between new and old. That an idea of a monolithic new seemed to take hold of many members of the Chinese elite after the period circa 1920 does not rule out the subtle hold that key portions of the grand tradition have had over modern China. No other book offers this kind of analysis of both the historical origins and contemporary consequences of the agonizing choices made by actors in the cultural sphere who occupied core positions in the life of the Chinese nation. Taking China to the World: The Cultural Production of Modernity is a valuable resource for academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in all subfields of Chinese studies, particularly for those engaged in charting the transformation of Chinese culture and society over the last 150 years and considering what those transformations might hold in store for the future.

Strange Bedfellows, a novel by Liu Zhenyun, China s most renowned writer of satire, and translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Lin, is a farcical tale of sibling devotion, sexual exploitation, and official corruption, all played out more or less in bed. Though a critique of new mercenary values, scam artists, and the common folks vulnerability to scam artists, the novel is also an oblique compliment to the resourcefulness of these folks in a changing China. The strange bedfellows from various parts of China include Niu Xiaoli, a country girl who borrows money from a hometown loan shark to find a new wife for her brother, whose first wife ran off with another man. When the second wife runs off with the money for the arrangement, Xiaoli goes on a search for her, only to end up prey to a high-class madam, who teaches her to become a "e;fake-virgin"e; prostitute. Xiaoli begins a life of fleecing the wealthy and powerful. One of Xiaoli's clients is Li Anbang, the governor of a certain province, who faces arrest and possible execution for bribe-taking. A practitioner of black magic recommends that Li sleeps with a virgin to solve his problems. And thereon the twists and turns continue. Liu s trenchant criticism and fast-paced, humorous narrative is a delight to read. The irony that those exploiting the people end up being exploited themselves will not be lost on readers.

Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China is a major new work by one of Europe's most respected senior scholars of Chinese studies, Paolo Santangelo. In it, he questions the common premise that individualism was lacking in premodern China. It is Santangelo's contention that not only was the concept of the individual important in traditional China, but that it existed in interesting ways that are different from modes of individualism in the West. One of the strengths of this study is the masterful manner in which Professor Santangelo treats key terms of his discussion, terms such as xing ("e;human nature ), xin ("e;heart-mind"e;), ji ("e;self"e;), and uses them to analyze various texts. The study deftly weaves together many ideas from history, philosophy, art, and literature, especially the literary dimensions of late imperial history (both classical and vernacular). Another unusual facet of Santangelo's investigations is his thorough familiarity with the the Western intellectual tradition and his expert incorporation of the ideas of thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and the Romantics This inquiry into the moral philosophy and ethics of the self seen in both its public and private dimensions in late imperial China is an important resource for scholars and students in many subfields of Chinese studies, such as history, intellectual history, art history, history of literature, and history of religion.

Theatrical performance occupied a central place in the emotional and political life of the Qing dynasty imperial household. For over two centuries, the Qing court poured a tremendous amount of human and material resources into institutionalizing the theatrical arts for the purposes of entertainment and edification. The emperors and empresses were ardent patrons and key players in establishing an artistic form that the court theatre called its own. They went to great lengths to cultivate a discerning taste in theatre and oversaw the artistic and managerial aspects of court theatrical activities. In the imperial theatrical spaces within and outside the Forbidden City, which were designed and built with the capacity to produce stunning visual effects, theatrical productions were staged to entertain imperial family members and to impress obeisance-paying guests from near and afar. Much scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding the dynamics between the Qing court theatre and the burgeoning popular theatrical traditions outside the court. However, the insights drawn from recent studies have only begun to be applied to the analysis of dramas commissioned by the Qing court for various ceremonial occasions. Treating Qing dynasty court theatre as a unique site in which to examine important but uncharted realms of Chinese theatrical experience, Staging for the Emperors examines two distinct and interlocking dimensions of the Qing court theatre the vicissitudes of the palace troupe and the multifaceted functions of court-commissioned ceremonial dramas to highlight the diverse array of views held by individual rulers as they used theatrical means to promote their personal and political agendas. Drawing on recently discovered materials from a variety of court administrative bureaus, memoirs, diaries, and play scripts written for court ceremonial occasions, this study places the history of Qing court theatre in the broader context of Qing cultural and political history. It demonstrates that theatre, like other forms of courtly art, served the individual rulers desire to embody virtue, to entertain at leisure, and to project aspirations. Staging for the Emperors would appeal to readers interested in China studies and performance studies. It would also appeal to those outside the field of China studies who are interested in developing a crosscultural perspective on the interplay between state rituals, power, identity formation, and theatrical experiences.

In pre-contemporary China, folk epics performed at village level helped to construct a sense of regional as opposed to national identity. This is the first book-length study in the West on the folk epics of the Han Chinese people, who are the majority population of China. These folk epics provide an unparalleled resource for understanding the importance of "the local" in Chinese culture, especially how rice-growing populations perceived their environment and relational world.In studies of Chinese culture, it is the epics of borderland minority groups that have attracted most scholarly attention. It was formerly held that the Han Chinese people did not transmit songs of epic length. In the 1980s Chinese ethnologists were surprised to discover that amateur singers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang province could sing lengthy narratives over the course of days. Close to forty folk epics have now been identified in the Lower Yangzi Delta.The folk epics were sung by illiterate farmers while working in the rice paddy or boating along the waterways. It was believed that singing promoted crop fertility and that the rice-plant embodied a female rice spirit whose growth and development paralleled that of human sexuality and procreation. Regarded as "vulgar" due to its erotic content, this song tradition was marginalized and little understood. The erotic content is often removed in editions directed at a national readership.Employing perspectives from memory studies, eco-criticism, and the study of oral traditions, this book examines in detail five iconic folk epics. One relates the story of an ancestor who brought knowledge of rice-growing to his community; another tells of a peasant-rebel leader and his fight with imperial authorities; three other examples relate stories of secret love affairs and their tragic outcomes. The author draws on interviews with contemporary song transmitters and ethnologists from the Lake Tai region, as well as a collection of singer transcripts and unedited song material. This study further investigates the role folk epics played in shaping a sense of both "intimacy" and "identity" in delta communities. The work contains extensive translations from the folk epics.This book will appeal to readers interested in Chinese performance and regional culture, comparative world epics, eco-critical studies, and Chinese folk religion. It would be of benefit to readers beyond China Studies with an interest in the interaction between song, ritual, and the natural and constructed environment.This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series, headed by Professor Victor Mair (University of Pennsylvania).

Includes 50 images, with a large number of paintings from Gao Xingjian's private collection.Gao Xingjian won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000 for a body of literary works originally written and published in Chinese and later translated and published in English, French, and Swedish. Gao's plays have been performed in even more languages on the stages of Asia, Europe, United States, Africa, and Australia. He is also recognized as a painter of international significance; in 2015 his six-panel work The Awakening of the Consciousness became the sole permanent display of a designated room in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. His extraordinary creative achievements draw on his innate talents but also on his profound knowledge and understanding of the creative arts of China and the West.Born 1940 in China, Gao Xingjian graduated from the Foreign Languages Institute (now renamed Beijing Foreign Studies University) with a major in French and then lived through the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. He became a celebrity playwright and literary critic during the early 1980s until the Chinese authorities banned his works. In 1987 he traveled to Europe and by early 1988 settled in Paris, where he began to write and to paint. Today most of his major writings have been published in different languages and his plays continue to be staged all over the world. In addition, there have been ninety solo exhibitions of his Chinese ink paintings that have been held in Asia, Europe, and the United States, and some fifty books have been published on his art.In Calling for a New Renaissance, Gao presents his primary concerns of the past decade or so. He indicts the lingering impact of ideology on contemporary literature and art, and for this reason calls for "a new Renaissance," a result of which would be "boundary-crossing creations" such as the three cine-poems that he produced and describes in detail in this book. Of importance in this book, and not documented elsewhere, Gao offers his insights on how, despite receiving his education in the People's Republic of China, he succeeded in educating himself in both Chinese and world literatures because of his love of reading and his disciplined approach to reading. This book also includes fifty images selected by Gao, forty-five of which are his favorite paintings from his private collection.Calling for a New Renaissance is a valuable resource for academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in Gao Xingjian, transcultural studies, transdisciplinary studies, and transmedia studies.See also Gao Xingjian: Aesthetics and Creation by Gao Xingjian and Gao Xingjian and Transmedia Aesthetics edited by Mabel Lee and Liu Jianmei.

Monsters continue to fascinate as well as to plague and haunt imaginations. The psychic landscape is peopled with them; the social fabric is woven of them. This persistent, paradoxical repulsion and fascination with monsters and the monstrous begins, however, with causation. With the birth of each new monster comes a particular anxiety about its ability to self-replicate, generally through perceived unnatural means. The cultural imaginary remains obsessed with the origins and genesis of monsters. From whence do monsters come? How are they created and more importantly what is their reproductive potential? Ironically, the very cultural and unconscious fears and anxieties about unnatural reproduction and monstrous progeny give birth to texts that perpetuate the creation and replication of monsters. The link between the monstrous and fears of reproduction are present from early modern narratives through nineteenth-century fears of degeneration, and into contemporary fascination with apocalyptic zombie films and science fiction narratives about genetic engineering, viral pandemics, and trans-species generation. While the incarnation of the monster manifests through different vehicles across these periods and texts, it is clear that, regardless of its form, anxiety is rooted in concerns over its fecundity its ability to infect, to absorb, to replicate. Much has been written about gender and the monstrous, but sustained engagement with textual manifestations of cultural and unconscious fears and anxieties about unnatural reproduction has been limited. This book expands the current discourse on the monstrous reproductive potential of bodies as well as minds from a more interdisciplinary and transhistorical framework. While scholarly interest in monsters and the monstrous is certainly not new, studies on monstrous reproduction and birth have tended to be either discipline or period specific, and many are now dated. Drawing from diverse interdisciplinary perspectives in film and media studies, literary studies, history, medicine and women s and gender studies, Unnatural Reproductions and Monstrosity builds upon pre-existing work while engaging more directly with monstrous progeny, as well as with unnatural reproduction(s), which threaten to eclipse the future, cast uncertainty on the present, and reimagine the past. Ultimately, then, the primary contribution of this book lies not only with its extensive treatment of reproductive monstrosity and unnatural parturition, but with the breadth and intriguing continuity that only a wide lens can provide. This book does not attempt to provide a complete historical assessment or catalog of the enduring cultural fascination with the reproductive origins and potential of monsters. Rather, it provides diverse interdisciplinary and transhistorical perspectives with single unifying theme of unnatural reproduction(s), which is unique to the collection, remaining central to the concept of monstrosity and its evolving narrative incarnations. This interdisciplinary collection spanning the areas of history, literature, medical humanities, and film and media studies explores the transhistorical textual fascination with reproductive monstrosity and unnatural parturition. The collection s four sections provide perspective on hyperbolic and monstrous representations of reproduction and birth that speak to anxieties and fears about gender and sexuality, codified through unnatural manifestations and their progeny. By focusing not only on the effect of the monstrous, but also on its reproduction in a variety of genres and modes from science to cinema, the essays in this collection offer critical insight into enduring questions about the genesis of monsters and their reproductive potential that have long haunted the world and continue to shape many fears about the future. This book analyzes how fears about unnatural reproduction and monstrous offspring and their frequent connections to the feminine have proliferated and propagated across the very texts which are repetitively created and consumed. Unnatural Reproductions and Monstrosity is an important interdisciplinary book for university library collections and scholars working in women s and gender studies, film and media studies, history, literature, and medical humanities.

This book newly reveals how early modern Italian bromance narratives interrogate alternative roles of close male friendships, the love between men, and the confines of marriage, thus providing the foundation for the contemporary bromance.

In 1981 an American historian of China, Professor Charlotte Furth, travelled to Beijing to teach young Chinese scholars about America. Professor Furth's year-long adventures, captured in this lively memoir, tell of classroom encounters, bureaucratic entanglements, expat frustrations, unlikely friendships, and misunderstandings both comic and grave. Her sponsor, the Fulbright program of academic exchange, had just revived after thirty years of the Cold War, and carried with it American hopes for a new era of cooperation between China and the United States. Her students were shaped by the Communist revolution, schooled in its political disciplines, and torn between thirst to experience the outside world at last and anxiety about what lay ahead in a post-Mao future. Based on Professor Furth's detailed notes and letters home at the time, this book evokes the unique atmosphere of expectation and frustration that characterized the first years of normalization. Furth belongs to a generation of American China experts who hoped for alternatives to the reductive cold war policies that made communism not only an enemy abroad but a weapon against social democracy at home. She encountered young Chinese intellectuals who also wanted to imagine a more just society at home without abandoning their primary loyalties to culture and nation. Their search for common ground can help us understand the impact of the Mao era on society and the path Chinese elites have followed since the 1980s. It also can tell us about ourselves as Americans forced to defend our own society against friendly yet penetrating scrutiny. This book is a valuable account for specialists on Sino-American relations and on the formative years of the generation of Chinese who lead the People's Republic of China today. It is also a fascinating read for anyone who wants to explore the pleasures and perils of Chinese and American struggles to understand one another.

More than two decades ago, Christos Tsiolkas s his first novel Loaded was published and he had achieved a cult following in the short-lived grunge fiction scene of Australian writing. The novel was quickly adapted as the film Head On (1998), directed by Ana Kokkinos, and starring popular young Greek actor, Alex Dimitriades; like the novel, it was well-received by critics, if not by mainstream literary and cinematic culture. For the next few years, Tsiolkas worked on Jump Cuts, an experimental collaborative autobiography, with Sasha Soldatow (1996), as well as a number of theatre productions Who s Afraid of the Working Class? (1999, co-written with Andrew Bovell, Melissa Reeves and Patricia Cornelius, and adapted to film as Blessed, also directed by Kokkinos [2009]), Thug (1998, written with Spiro Economopolous), and Elektra AD (1999) but when The Jesus Man (1999) was published, its violent depiction of depression and suicide received critical attention as offensive and unnecessary. Partly because of the reception of The Jesus Man, and partly because of the density of its subject matter, his next novel, Dead Europe (2005) took six years to write. In the interim, he published a critical study of the film The Devil s Playground (2002), and several more plays and screenplays: Viewing Blue Poles (2000), Saturn s Return (2000), Fever (2002, co-written with Bovell, Reeves and Cornelius), Dead Caucasians (2002), Non Parlo di Salo (2005, written with Economopoulous), and The Hit (2006, written with Netta Yashin). Dead Europe was a triumphant return: it won the Age Book of the Year and the Melbourne Best Writing Award in 2006. But it was the extraordinary critical and commercial success of The Slap (2008) which entirely changed Tsiolkas s personal and professional circumstances. It was the fourth-highest selling book by an Australian author in 2009, won the ALS Gold Medal, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was Book of the Year for both the Australian Booksellers Association and the Australian Book Industry Award. The Slap was also adapted as a popular television series for the ABC in 2011, and for NBC in the United States in 2015. For the first time in his career, Tsiolkas was able to dedicate himself to writing full-time, but the attention paid to the novel also meant that Tsiolkas was now a household name no longer a cult writer, his opinions are now courted and offered in popular and political publications. Barracuda (2013) follows the social realism of The Slap, and sold similarly well, riding on the back of its extraordinary predecessor. Merciless Gods (2014), a collection of short stories, some new, some previously published, is only recently being taken up by popular critics. Tsiolkas s work has become increasingly popular and appealing to readers outside of the academy. Tsiolkas s works adopt a Modernist attitude to the concept of a utopia a negative politics which simultaneously draws attention to the insufficiency of the present, a pastoral nostalgia for the past, and a longing for the impossible future to come. This first in-depth study of his entire corpus provides an understanding of Tsiolkas s position in relation to Modernism, thereby drawing out his points about character, setting and politics, thereby helping us to think about what place his ideas about the individual and the community might have in our reading of contemporary Australia and contemporary world literature.

The Story of the Stone, also known as Dream of the Red Chamber, is unquestionably the most beloved and most celebrated work of prose fiction in Chinese literary history. For two and half centuries, the novel has inspired a ceaseless flow of critical interpretation ranging from the allegorical, autobiographical, and bibliographical to the poststructural, forming a particular field of study called hongxue ( red studies). Building on the novel s rich content and this vast scholarship, and using Julia Kristeva s terms on intertextuality, especially her notions that every human being is nothing more than an intersection of preexistent discourses created by human language and text, and that reality can only be seized as a reconstructed fiction that exists through its relation to previous fiction, this book presents a new understanding of the novel. Eroticism and Other Literary Conventions in Chinese Literature examines how The Story of the Stone dramatizes human experiences by responding to previous literature, particularly those openly denounced by the novel s internal narrator, the mythic stone. While there has been much discussion about human lives and emotions presented in The Story of the Stone, the mainstream humanist scholarship often reads the text as a reflection of historical figures (e.g., the author of The Story of the Stone) or constructed (but real ) persons. This book, however, argues that while the novel is centrally concerned with defining ren (human), it is equally involved in investigating wen (literature). Thus, the core tenet of The Stone lies in the intricate symbiosis between ren and wen, which gives rise to wenren (literati) and renwen (humanities), and even more to the wen that produces wenti (genre), wenhua (culture), and wenming (civilization) an evolution that had concerned the Chinese literati for centuries but was fictionalized for the first time in The Story of the Stone. How does The Story of the Stone utilize language and text to make meanings of the human lives it creates? How does The Story of the Stone exist through its relation to previous fiction? To answer these questions, this book argues that the mythic stone s harsh critiques of historical romance (yeshi), erotic fiction (fengyue bimo), and scholar-and-beauty fiction (caizi jiaren) cannot be taken at face value. Instead, they signify The Stone s anxiety of influence and allude to the nature of intertextuality. In this light, this book argues that the novel s construction of lust shows its indebtedness to erotic literature; its making of romance is created through the use of drama as reading and as performance; in the protagonist s confrontation with and final submission to social expectations, the novel wrestles with the portrayal of young literati in the scholar-and-beauty convention; and finally, following a genealogy of objects featured in literature to animate human lives, the mythic stone is created to question the convention of storytelling, not only in pre-existing fiction but also in the novel s many previous lives in manuscript versions and printed editions. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in The Story of the Stone, and for readers interested in novel, fiction, drama, and other literary genres and subgenres in Chinese literature.

Zhang Yimou is one of the most famous filmmakers of China, as well as one of the most controversial. Long the object of intense discussion and critique in China, Zhang s approach can express a highly stylized and crafted aesthetics, a documentary, daily-life feel, or a historically rich sense of tragedy and sometimes comedy. The director of some twenty feature films, Zhang also is known for other projects, including work as a cinematographer and actor, and directing the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As a prominent member of the pioneering Fifth Generation of film directors that began working after the Maoist period, Zhang s unique aesthetics garnered global attention. Several of Zhang Yimou s films have won domestic and international awards. Red Sorghum (1987) won the Golden Bear Award, Qiuju Goes to Court (1992) and Not One Less (1999) won the Golden Lion, To Live (1994) won the Grand Prix du Jury, and The Road Home (1999) won the Jury Grand Prix. To Live was banned in China, and Zhang as well as lead actress Gong Li was prevented from making films for two years. The debate that has centered on Zhang s films began right after Red Sorghum came out, and has continued to the present day. Critics branded his work as a self-Orientalizing fantasy that used the trope of a beautiful, vulnerable woman to suggest an inferior position for Chinese culture vis-a-vis the film s Western viewers. In some films notably Red Sorghum and Hero (2002), critics found an endorsement of authoritarian politics. These post-colonial and feminist critiques were countered by those who argued that the films broke through socialist isolation, for the first time finding for Chinese film a global audience. Others argued that the films were more subtle than critics recognized: embedded within them were complex inquiries into power, display, and authority. Despite his stature among Chinese film directors, Zhang Yimou has not yet been the subject of a book-length treatment in English. Film professors who teach his films only have access to a relatively small corpus of articles and book chapters published over some twenty-five years. This book is the first attempt to remedy that situation by laying out not simply a biographical or empirical study, but a polemical argument that counters some of the critical trends in the interpretation of Zhang s films. Taking advantage of the great interest in Zhang s work in China and the long-running debate, Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture uses a wide variety of sources, mainly in Chinese and English, to construct an alternative approach to understanding the films. The study zeroes in on nine feature films and the 2008 Beijing Olympics ceremonies, developing an analysis that both recognizes the formal aesthetic features of the films, while also contextualizing them within the culture debates of contemporary China. Theoretical approaches to the study of film and culture in the West also figure prominently. While finding common themes and structures that bring together several of Zhang s films, the study does not propose a unifying theory of Zhang s work as much as it uncovers connections between the films, showing a sharp, analytical approach at work. In this first critical study of films by Zhang Yimou in English, Wendy Larson plumbs the larger field of debate to suggest thought-provoking ways of thinking about the films and their relationship to Chinese culture. Arguing that the films do not appease Westerners but rather incorporate within themselves an understanding of how culture is changing under globalization, the book interprets the films emphasis on performance under coercion, the duplicity of display, and action under constraint. It investigates themes of gazing and being gazed upon, and behavior under duress, connecting these notions with implications on power, sovereignty, justice, and Chinese modernity. Larson argues that the films do not uncritically promote nationalism as some argue, but rather that they probe the possibilities for and limitations of culture in a globally-situated China. A substantial bibliography that provides references for the overall discussion is included. Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture is an important book for film scholars and for scholars of Chinese culture and history.

Tremendous changes have occurred in the field of education over the past generation as emerging technologies, especially the widespread adoption of the internet, have created new opportunities for teaching and learning. The tools and technologies employed in successful distance education ventures are now increasingly blended with traditional instructional formats, creating what is known as blended learning environments. However, these developments have not always been informed by sound instructional design theory. Despite a growing body of experimental and practical knowledge concerning the best teaching practices for blended learning contexts, there still remains a great need for prescriptive guidance to design blended learning environments. Instructional design theories can fill that gap. What are the best strategies for designing instruction for blended learning formats? Which instructional design theories are best suited to accomplish this task? This book proposes to offer some answers to these questions by identifying instructional design theories (i.e., sets of prescriptive strategies for designing instruction), selecting the most promising theory (Pennsylvania State University s Innovations in Distance Education or IDE), applying that theory to a blended learning environment, and using formative evaluation to improve the theory for future applications. Blended learning will continue to be a promising avenue for teaching and learning for the foreseeable future. Many university instructors are already using some aspect of an online or technology-mediated learning environment to supplement, enhance, or extend the traditional learning environment. It is only appropriate that instructional design strategies are provided to guide the development of these learning environments. This book is an attempt to address that need. This book highlights the positive learning outcomes that the IDE instructional design theory can generate for blended learning environments. For example, based on IDE prescriptions, blending learning environments should employ asynchronous discussions. In a small class, an instructor can reasonably participate in and review all discussions. But this work becomes exponentially more time-consuming with each student added to the roster. Asynchronous discussion technology can help an instructor accommodate larger class sizes without sacrificing attending to the individual in class discussions. Furthermore, learner participation in blended learning environments tends to be more substantial as students put more thought and research into their responses since they are not given at the spur of the moment. The IDE theory is valuable in providing specific strategies for designing sustained and extended learning environments. This finding has implications for humanities-based courses where instruction often touches upon issues that are controversial, complicated, or close to the heart for many students. The formative evaluation of the IDE theory demonstrates that blended learning environments can provide learners a sense of safety for exploring challenging topics. When students feel safe to explore new ideas in a non-threatening manner, they are more likely to learn and to grow. Blended learning environments, if one follows the IDE prescriptions, also provide opportunities for all learners to participate, not just those who might dominate a face-to-face classroom thereby intimidating other learners from fully participating. This book adds to the growing evidence that blended learning promises to be a significant step in the evolutionary process of great teaching and learning. It provides solid, straightforward guidance on building robust blended learning, and will be of interest to those in education, particularly instructors and designers of humanities-based college courses. It will also be of interest to instructional design theorists and practitioners seeking guidance in designing blended-learning environments.

Christina Stead (1902 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterizations. Stead enjoyed an international reputation in the 1930s and beyond, then went out of favor as a communist-affiliated writer, until she was rediscovered by feminist critics. Her standing is considerable, and in Australia she vies with Patrick White for the laurel of finest Australian novelist. In this book, author Michael Ackland argues that the single most important influence on Stead s life, socialism, has been seriously neglected in studies of her life and work. Ackland delves into Stead s political formation prior to her departure for London in 1928, arguing that considerable insights can be added to the known record by reviewing these years within a specifically political context, as well as by interrogating Stead s own accounts of key persons and events. He examines her novels, from Seven Poor Men of Sydney to I m Dying Laughing and The Man Who Loved Children, and focuses on Stead s conception of history, of capitalist finance, and on the significance of the key historical moments that frame her works. In tracing the trajectory of her work, Ackland illuminates how Stead was, as a well-informed Marxist critic underscored, a product of thirties. Steeped in socialist literature and steeled to withstand ideological adversity, Stead emerged at the end of the decade a strongly committed novelist, whose intellectual idealism and convictions could, as coming decades would show, long withstand privation, heartbreaks and the unwelcome lessons of history. This is an important book for collections in Australian literature, comparative literature, world literature, and women's studies.

Thea Astley (1925-2004) was one of the outstanding Australian fiction writers of the 20th century. Four of her novels, including her last, Drylands (1999), won the prestigious Miles Franklin prize, and she was awarded numerous literary and civic honors during her lifetime. The distinctive appeal of her work comes from its unique sense of place, in tropical Queensland and the South Pacific, and from the mordant irony of her gaze on Australian society and her fiercely compassionate portrayal of social outsiders. Place and people reflect one another as Astley deals in climatic extremes both geographical and emotional: living on the edge of the cyclone , her people face the threat of personal annihilation with the frail weapons of irony, satire or anarchic humor. Despite the deeply Australian objects of her satire, Astley s innovative fictions have attracted critical attention beyond national boundaries, and her later work, especially, struck a chord with readers in North America. Astley felt strong affinities with a number of American writers, especially practitioners of shorter fiction like Hemingway, McCullers and Carver. Her work suggests comparison with that of William Faulkner, for the way it always inhabits the same imagined location. Place, and the parish of people who inhabit a particular place, are Astley s persistent subjects. Her landscapes, whether the luxuriant coast or the dry inland, become metaphors of the human failings that preoccupy her; and, as she deepened her interest in the history of these locations, Astley imbued her landscapes with a necessary political dimension. Astley s fiction challenged the realist tradition that had dominated Australian writing in the first half of the twentieth century. In the postwar literary world where she began to publish she was readily accorded a place among the Australian mid-century modernists like Randolph Stow and Patrick White, who was an admired early mentor. She was the only woman novelist of her generation to have won early success and published consistently throughout the 1960s and 1970s, when the literary world was heavily male dominated. As a fiction writer she had few female contemporaries until the 1980s, when second wave feminism began to have a significant impact. Astley s choice of focal characters, and the objects of her satire, changed to reflect that impact. Always a writer who avoided solemnity and undercut her characters claims to heroism of any kind, she reveled in the new-found capacity to mock male pretension and assert female rebellion. This study of Astley s fiction explores her representation of place and power relations, and the innovative work of historicizing place. It also examines how her works reveal her fascination with outsiders, misfits, and failures, as well as her skepticism about heroes. The book also examines how Astley's works delve into decolonization and bring a multilayered postcolonial perspective on colonial race relations. The book takes the reader all the way to the latter part of Astley's writing career, which amply demonstrates her capacity to bring together a critical exploration of patriarchal power relations and a postcolonial perspective on race relations, as well as her satire on the worship of unbridled development which dominated Australian economic and social life during this period.

South Africa held its first democratic elections in 1994, after about 350 years of minority governments. Nelson Mandela became the first President of a democratic or post-apartheid South Africa. The successive administrations since 1994 have pursued many programs, policies, legislative instruments and other initiatives to correct the imbalances that the apartheid system created. In particular, the focus, since 1994, has been on social and economic inclusion. Inclusive development is important for any democratic government emerging out of the past that was undemocratic and discriminatory. Redress becomes a hallmark of all that a democratic government pursues. The early years of a democratic or post-apartheid South Africa focused on national reconciliation. The second President, Thabo Mbeki, focused more on the economy a project he started when he was the first Deputy President in the Mandela administration. The third President of the democratic South Africa, Jacob Zuma, has continued with the project towards an inclusive society. In about twenty years since the dawn of democracy in South Africa the debates about the performance of the society under the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) has gained momentum. The ANC came up with many discussion documents aimed at informing policy and or ideological orientation of the state. In its national Congresses and General Councils meetings as well as in Makgotla, the ANC discusses and develops policies and frameworks which are to influence the work of the government. The analysis of the policies pursued since 1994, especially as far as inclusive development is concerned, is critical and it is the main preoccupation of this book. In addition, the book also examines the effects and implications of the policies implemented since 1994, in the context of whether South Africa is becoming or not becoming a society that was envisaged by the liberation project; an inclusive and prosperous nation. South Africa is a complex society in many respects. Many of intractable dilemmas confronting South Africa are a result of the legacy of apartheid. Apartheid created a skewed distribution of resources and opportunities. It is therefore not surprising that many challenges that the successive democratic administrations have had to deal with are structural; the structure of the economy make it more challenging to reduce poverty and inequality as well as to create jobs for the majority of South Africans. The book analyses the ramifications of the apartheid system examining the totality of apartheid colonialism in relation to the post-apartheid development experience within the context of the global distribution of power. The fundamental challenge that constrains South Africa s ability to further achieve inclusive growth and development relates to policy. Therefore, economic policy has to address the challenges of unemployment and poverty, as well as reducing inequality. Social policy has to be robust. Labor market policies should be ameliorated. More importantly, social and economic policies have to work together for socioeconomic development. To achieve this, South Africa needs a new consensus on the ideal framework or approach to its socioeconomic development. Over and above policy and or policy reforms, implementation should be improved. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, South Africa needs to reconfigure state-capital relations. Lastly, it should be more meaningful and relevant in the context of democratic South Africa to see a nation as a community that acknowledges and respects its repulsive political and economic history of deprivation through systematic restitution, reconciliation, and restructuring measures, and, more importantly, equitable sharing of resources. This is an important book for collections in African studies and international politics.

In recent years, Japanese manga, anime, music, cinema, television dramas, and computer games have gained many international fans. Recognizing the global appeal of Japanese popular culture, since the early 2000s the Japanese government has promoted popular culture exports and developed a national branding strategy using the slogan Cool Japan. In 2004, the large numbers of Japanese people who visited South Korea after watching the Korean television drama Winter Sonata caught the Japanese government s attention. In 2005, the government recognized in official documents for the first time that Japanese popular culture had another potential: to increase international visitor numbers to Japan and energize the domestic tourism industry. The term used in Japan to describe this form of tourism induced by popular culture is kontentsu tsurizumu, contents tourism. Contents tourism is defined as travel behavior motivated fully or partially by narratives, characters, locations, and other creative elements of popular culture forms, including film, television dramas, manga, anime, novels, and computer games. This book presents a comprehensive theoretical and historical overview of the phenomenon of contents tourism in Japan. Government, mass media, and scholarly interest in contents tourism is relatively new, and in its modern guise contents tourism behavior is closely associated with digital technology, the Internet, and social media. However, travel inspired by contents actually has a long history going back centuries. This book traces the development of contents tourism from its roots in religious pilgrimage and the earliest forms of poetry-inspired travel through to the most recent developments in anime location hunting and augmented reality gaming. In English-language scholarship, study of pop culture tourism has often focused on particular works or media formats. These approaches remain valid in many cases, but the theories and methods of film-induced tourism or literature tourism were never easily adapted into the Japanese setting. The rich history of derivative works, parodies, and multiuse of the same contents in a media mix enriched by the highly popular formats of anime and manga led Japanese scholars to seek a different approach to analyzing the links between popular culture and tourism. Scholars and those working in creative industries settled on the concept of contents, and focused on asking how and why particular creative elements resonated with fans and how fans interests in a narrative world whether fantasy, fictional, or even largely non-fictional could inspire travel to actual places, which came to be referred to as sacred sites by fans. In the twenty-first century, with culture industries worldwide now distributing and marketing their creative contents via multiple media platforms, the concept of contents and its links to tourism are of ever-increasing relevance to countries other than Japan. This book presents a vast range of works, artists and contents that have generated sacred sites across the length and breadth of Japan. Some sets of contents trigger tourism over only a short time period, while others have been inducing tourism for decades or even centuries. The comprehensive mapping of the phenomenon, both temporally and spatially, allows all past and present examples of contents tourism to be seen within a clear context. Furthermore, the book presents a detailed theoretical framework of how relationships are formed between and among the three main players of contents tourism: fans, contents businesses and local authorities. By doing so, it illuminates why some forms of contents tourism are simply localized flashes in the pan, while others go on to become embedded within the travel culture of the nation. Contents Tourism in Japan is a groundbreaking book in an important and rapidly emerging area of scholarly, media, political and business interest. It will be of interest primarily to scholars and practitioners with a specialization in tourism and media, but also to those studying contemporary popular culture in Japan and East Asia.

Chinese avant-garde fiction undoubtedly represents a summit in contemporary Chinese literature. Given the remarkable achievement of the genre and its revolutionary and profound impact on Chinese literature, it has attracted much attention from the English-speaking academic world. The existent scholarship on this subject, however, has some gaps which need to be filled. There are few book-length studies which provide a concentrated and in-depth analysis of Chinese avant-garde fiction as a literary genre; most studies tend to treat Chinese avant-garde fiction as a component of some grand cultural trends in the contemporary Chinese intellectual world. Such a sweeping historical approach overlooks the aesthetic and epistemological values of the fiction, preventing the researchers from investigating the thematic complexity and diversity and the artistic originality and appeal of the fiction. This book examines the works of three leading writers Su Tong, Yu Hua, and Ge Fei and their significant contributions to the genre; this is the first in-depth, comparative study on these writers. This book examines how Su Tong, Yu Hua, and Ge Fei manipulate dark moods and what Karl Jaspers termed limit-situations such as death and suffering, along with other motifs, to pursue both historicity and transcendent truth in their fiction. Setting the fiction against the backdrop of long history of Chinese culture and the development of modern Chinese literature, the book also explores the changing intellectual and literary landscape and the changing paradigms of literature in modern China. This study illuminates the patterns of history presented in the fiction of the three Chinese avant-garde writers as well as their respective views of history. The book also investigates another prominent theme in Chinese avant-garde fiction: the philosophical meditation on the human condition, human nature, and other metaphysical issues. This study also grapples with the mechanisms and devices adopted by these avant-garde writers to defamiliarize the Chineseness of their fiction. In so doing, the book attempts to answer the questions of why and how the reprise of traditional Chinese conventions and themes can be regarded as avant-garde in the Chinese context. The book also sheds light on each writer's aesthetics and the aesthetics of Chinese avant-garde fiction as a genre. Unlike most previous research on Chinese avant-garde fiction, the study focuses on the Chineseness of the fiction or its intertextuality with Chinese conventions and texts. This unique study will be a welcome addition to scholars of Chinese literature and cultural studies.

This study examines the earlier writings of celebrated Australian writer David Malouf, who was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award, and the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. This book investigates his earlier writings to uncover what the terms poetic , poetic imagination and inner and outer ways imply for his development as a writer. Making use of some of his correspondence, diaries, and drafts of work-in-progress, Yvonne Smith takes into fuller account the way his works relate to each other and to the circumstances in which they were written. By investigating what poetic imagination might mean across the first decades when he was finding his way into a writer s vocation, this sturdy reaps fresh insights into the nature of David Malouf's creativity its tensions, struggles and moments of breakthrough, as well as its potential limitations. Finding what he could not do (or did not want to do) shapes strongly what he wants to achieve by the mid 1980s when his published works are becoming better known. Such considerations are touched on in earlier studies, yet have been sidelined by more recent criticism informed by postcolonial perspectives, debates about myths of origins and other Australian nation-based agendas. That Malouf has played a part, not only as a writer but as a public intellectual, in what Brigid Rooney terms his consistent cultivation of nation adds to this trajectory in his literary career. However, there has been less attention to Malouf s development as a writer its transnational dimensions, for instance, as he finds his vocation through hybrid family cultures and living for many years between Australia and Europe. It is helpful that discussion is increasingly balanced by broader views of what Australian literature might encompass, of global connections in worlds within national narratives, together with consideration of notions of world literature and a fluid transnation that exceeds boundaries of the state.