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The decolonization of Algeria represents a turning point in world history, marking the end of France's colonial empire, the birth of the Algerian republic, and the appearance of the Third World and pan-Arabism. Algeria emerged from colonial domination to negotiate the release of American hostages in Iran during the Carter administration. Radical Islam would later rise from the ashes of Algeria's failed democracy, leading to a civil war and the training of Algerian terrorists in Afghanistan. Moreover, the decolonization of Algeria offered an imperfect model of decolonization to other nations like South Africa that succeeded in abolishing apartheid while retaining its white settler population. Algeria and its war of national liberation therefore constitute an inescapable reference for those looking to understand today's ';war on terror' and ever-expanding islamophobia in Western media circuits. Consequently, it is imperative that students and educators understand the global implications of the Algerian War and how to best approach this conflict in school and at home so as to learn from the consequences of misrepresentation at all levels of the memory transmission chain. These objectives are all the more important today given the West's misunderstanding and mischaracterization of Islam, the Arab Spring, the Muslim-majority world, and, most importantly, the continuing influence of French colonialismespecially in the postcolonial era. Conceived as a case study, The Algerian War in French-Language Comics: Postcolonial Memory, History, and Subjectivity argues that comics provide an alternative to textbook representations of the Algerian War in France because they draw from many of the same source materials yet produce narratives that are significantly different. This book demonstrates that although comics rely on conventional vectors of memory transmission like national education, the family, and mainstream media, they can also create new and productive dialogues using these same vectors in ways unavailable to traditional textbooks. From this perspective, these comics are an effective and alternative way to develop a more inclusive social consciousness.

This manuscript examines Sino-Middle Eastern relations on a bilateral level. It highlights the depth of China's involvement in Central Asia with each country on a five dimensional approach: security cooperation, energy security, trade relations, political relations, and cultural relations. Regarding each of these criteria, Central Asia enjoys a strategic significance to China's national security, vital interests, territorial integrity, sovereignty, regime survival, and economic prosperity. China has been an integral part of the political developments on the Central Asian political scene for over the past two millennia. Their bilateral ties grew steadily since the independence of Central Asian republics in 1992, culminating into strategic partnership two decades later. China and its partners in the region have embarked on the construction of the most ambitious gas pipelines network, joint ventures in oil upstreaming and downstreaming, mammoth highway and railroad projects, trade zones, construction projects, and above all, strategic security coordination in reference to unified and an integrated response to regional security threats. Both sides are also engaged in a process of revival of the Silk Road in terms of its cultural diversity and trade relations. Sino-Central Asian volume of trade reached $50 billion heading steadily toward $100 in the coming five years.

This study challenges existing historiography on China's wartime culture at three levels. First, the Guangxi warlord group played a crucial role in maintaining regional security, providing a liberalized political environment for wartime cultural activities and facilitating wartime nationalistcommunist relations at both local and national levels. Second, wartime culture was more literary than political and it reflected a powerful intellectual vigor that was an indispensable component of China's war efforts. Intellectuals of different social and political backgrounds were their own ';organic' selves feeling no pressure to come to intellectual consensus in literary production. Third, wartime culture was characterized by the active participation of many international groups, political organizations, and foreign individuals. The literary works produced in Guilin between 1938 and 1944 clearly reflected a combination of Chinese national and international anti-fascist and anti-military sentiment. Chinese literary masterpieces were translated into different foreign languages and noted foreign literature and political works were introduced to Chinese audiences through various cultural and political exchange programs in the city.

Language Assistance under the Voting Rights Act provides an interesting and unique approach to the problem of translating minority language ballots and evaluating the causes and effects of differences in the translated ballot language. As a whole, this book demonstrates the strong relationship between accessibility, state policy, and the role this has on participation among minority language voters, particularly in the area of direct democracy. This offers insight into the complex relationship that has evolved into the current state of governance across the United States, as well as how covered jurisdictions interact with federally mandated language assistance. By looking at this relationship from a variety of standpointsincluding historical and policy analysis, interviews, and statistical analysisthis book shows a new perspective of the translation process and the implications for minority voters and their efficacy.

This book analyzes the Gold Coast and the Asante kingdom in the years following the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and prior to the start of colonial rule. The Asante state, one of the largest in the Gold Coast and West Africa after the eighteenth century is the central focus of this work. Studying their transition from a large scale supplier of captives to the transatlantic slave trade to traders in legitimate goods is a critical component that should be analyzed across West Africa. This work highlights the political and economic relationships between the interior Asante state with surrounding African groups and Europeans, chiefly British traders who entered the region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Cinepoiesis, or cinema of poetry, strikes us as a strange combination, a phrase we initially read as an oxymoron. Poetry is often associated with the abstract and the evocative, while cinema suggests the concrete and the visible. Yet, various visual media use strong and often contradictory images, whose symbolic force and visual impact stimulate the public's attention. Abstract and emblematic images surround us, and the poetic nature of these images lies in the way they speak beyond their apparent limits and stimulate connections on a subjective level. A prosaic world like the contemporary one, though, no longer seems to hold a place for poetry. We are inundated by the need to tell and to be told, the need to build our lives through narratives. But it is precisely here, in this contemporary landscape, that the cinema of poetry attempts to establish a space for itself, exchanging the productive and industrial apparatus for the poetic stimulus of a sensory experience. A Grammar of Cinepoiesis is a theoretical and practical guide to the cinema of poetry, to its tools and forms. It examines how the language of a ';cinema of poetry' works both in its theoretical foundations and in its modes of representation, and how it takes shape in the exemplary practice of Italian authors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and the more recent Franco Piavoli and Matteo Garrone.

Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens examines the emerging concern for controlling states of psychological ecstasy in the history of western thought, focusing on ancient Greece (c. 750-146 BCE), particularly the Classical Period (c. 500-336 BCE) and especially the dialogues of the Athenian philosopher Plato (427-347 BCE). Employing a diverse array of materials ranging from literature, philosophy, medicine, botany, pharmacology, religion, magic, and law, Pharmakon fundamentally reframes the conceptual context of how we read and interpret Platos dialogues. Michael A. Rinella demonstrates how the power and truth claims of philosophy, repeatedly likened to a pharmakon, opposes itself to the cultural authority of a host of other occupations in ancient Greek society who derived their powers from, or likened their authority to, some pharmakon. These included Dionysian and Eleusinian religion, physicians and other healers, magicians and other magic workers, poets, sophists, rhetoricians, as well as others. Accessible to the general reader, yet challenging to the specialist, Pharmakon is a comprehensive examination of the place of drugs in ancient thought that will compel the reader to understand Plato in a new way.

Drawing upon the massive redevelopment catalyzed by the government-led urban renewal in Hong Kong in the past two decades, Shu-Mei Huang recharges the story of post-colonial Hong Kong through care, displacement, and how care is displaced in urban governance. Theorizing ';carescapes' as a heuristic device, Huang tracks how care is displaced, undervalued and even exploited in transforming urban landscape.In a rather counter-intuitive way, Urbanizing Carescapes of Hong Kong: Two Systems, One City considers the post-colonial picturing of ';One Country, Two Systems' as insufficient if not misleading in understanding the city of Hong Kong and its changing ties with the world. Huang illustrates the way in which each urban citizen is propelled to be a self-enterprising subject and local urban initiatives are becoming cross-border investments upon global mobility. In an era when putatively both the talents and capital are moving toward Asia, the book illuminates how dynamism of colonialism is sustained rather than disappears within the two systems in one city.

Timor-Leste: The History and Development of Asia's Newest Nation is a study of how a small Asia-Pacific nation has emerged from protracted conflict and successfully navigated a path to durable peace and sustainable development. Despite early setbacks, Timor-Leste has made an amazing turnaround and today finds itself in a new era in which it will certainly continue its advance toward the goal of long-term stability and prosperity, leaving permanently behind the past that was once marked by a descending spiral of destruction.Yet, a number of development challenges lie ahead for Timor-Leste, particularly in strengthening human, institutional, and infrastructural capacities in the short to medium term, and in transforming the national economy from oil-based to more diversified and better balanced in the longer run. Other countries may draw valuable lessons from Timor-Leste's experience, especially those that are emerging from as well as are currently affected by conflict and instability. Such lessons would center on the questions such as management of natural resources, empowerment of the vulnerable, implementation of transparent and accountable governance, advancement of women, and mobilization of civil society and the public in general for democratization and the national development process.

This book is a phenomenological investigation of the interrelations of tradition, memory, place and the body. Drawing upon philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, Janet Donohoe uses the idea of a palimpsest to argue that layers of the past are carried along as traditions, through places and bodies, such that we can speak of memory as being written upon place and place as being written upon memory. In dialogue with theorists such as Jeff Malpas and Ed Casey, Donohoe focuses on analysis of monuments and memorials to investigate how such deliberate places of collective memory can be ideological, or can open us to the past and different traditions. The insights in this book will be of particular value to place theorists and phenomenologists in disciplines such as philosophy, geography, memory studies, public history, and environmental studies.

Blogging: How Our Private Thoughts Went Public examines self-representational writing from its historical roots in personal diaries to its current form in personal blogs. Widely available on the Internet, personal blogs are the latest form of an ever more public writing style of self-reflection. Utilizing Hannah Arendt's philosophy of public, private, and social, this book delves deeper into the question of public versus private and provides an entrance for Arendt's work into today's mediated world. Arendt's understanding of public, private, and social allows us to better understand the need for boundaries and for both public and private spaces in our lives. Interpersonal communication theories, including boundary management theory and parasocial framework theory, help to better understand how people navigate public and private boundaries in communication. These theories provide a philosophical view of our overshared and overmediated world, and, specifically, how it affects our communication styles and practices.

Is there an allure of spoiled places? Spoil islands are overlooked places that combine dirt with paradise, waste-land with ';brave new world,' and wildness with human intervention. Although they are mundane products of dredging, these islands form an uninvestigated archipelago that demonstrates the potential value and contested re-valuation of landscapes of waste. To explore these islands, Spoil Island: Reading the Makeshift Archipelago navigates a course along the U.S. east coast, moving from New York City to Florida. Along the way, a general populace squats, picnics, and reflects on the islands, while other forces are also at work. New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses first deplores then adopts Hoffman and Swinburne Islands, UN Secretary General U Thant meditates on the East River's Belmont Island, businessman John D. MacArthur rejects the purchase of Peanut Island, artist Christo surrounds Miami's spoil islands, Key Westers debate the futures of two spoil islands that mark their sunset view, and artist Robert Smithson augments this archipelago materially and conceptually. Historical and contemporary stories highlight each island's often contradictory ecologies that pair nature with infrastructure, public concerns with private development, rationalized urbanism with artistic impulse, and order with disorder. Spoil islands put you in places you normally wouldn'tand perhaps shouldn'tbe. To examine these marginalized topographies is to understand emergent concerns of twenty-first-century place-making, public space, and natural and artificial infrastructure. Today, spoil islands constitute an unprecedented public commons, where human agency and nature are inextricably linked.Spoil Island will be of interest to anyone working in the areas of architecture, cultural history, cultural geography, environmental studies, or environmental philosophy. Linking the islands with their environmental aesthetics, Charlie Hailey provides a lively and critical topography of places that play a part in current events and local situations with global implications.

Solo: Postmodern Explorations provides a postmodern approach to technoscience and economics. Sassower pulls together postmodern motifs and attitudes with his own experience to provide a unique perspective on political history and economics. Solo raises the question of whether it is possible to be an objective observer and what that means for scholarship, especially when it concerns making assessments of other cultures in the developing world. Sassower questions the usefulness of applying external economic measurements on the economic development of these countries.

A recent upsurge in interest in Der Struwwelpeter, written by Heinrich Hoffman has initiated a new wave of spin-offs, parodies, and retellings of these immensely popular stories. Hoffman's style, which is instructive and moralistic, coupled with the sadistic content of his works lend a unique quality to the stories that we don't see in contemporary children's literature. Struwwelpeter: Humor or Horror? is a critical analysis of the now infamous Struwwelpeter stories. While Hoffman intended his depictions of amputated limbs and burning children to be humorous and to warn children against misbehavior, some find the punishments can be excessively vicious. Looking beyond the history of child rearing practices and children's literature, Barbara Smith Chalou considers the socio-historic context in which the book was written and makes comparisons to contemporary children's fare that is similarly violent, but intended to be humorous.

This book shows that a concept of activity timespace drawn from the work of Martin Heidegger provides new insights into the nature of activity, society, and history. Although the book is a work of theory, it has significant implications for the determination and course, not just of activity, but of sociohistorical change as well. Drawing on empirical examples, the book argues (1) that timespace is a key component of the overall space and time of social life, (2) that interwoven timespaces form an essential infrastructure of important social phenomena such as power, coordinated actions, social organizations, and social systems, and (3) that history encompasses constellations of indeterminate temporalspatial events. The latter conception of history in turn yields a propitious account of how the past exists in the present. In addition, because the concept of activity timespace highlights the teleological character of human action, the book contains an extensive defense of the teleological character of such allegedly ateleological forms of activity as emotional and ceremonial actions. Since, finally, the book's ideas about timespace and activity as an indeterminate event derive from an interpretation of Heidegger, the work furthers understanding of the relevance of his thought for social and historical theory.

Unexceptional: America's Empire in the Persian Gulf, 1941-2007 examines U.S. policy vis-^-vis the Persian Gulf since the Second World War. It asserts that the American experience in this strategic yet volatile region known for its plentiful oil and gas can be best understood as an unexceptional imperial endeavor similar in kind to that of the British, Ottoman, and other empires in previous centuries. Since 1941, the U.S. empire in the Gulf has achieved successes such as Operation Desert Storm and the invasion of Iraq. Setbacks have included the Iranian Revolution and the ongoing occupation of Iraq. Given these and many other events, which this book spotlights, America's Gulf empire has undergone repeated expansion and contraction_a typical imperial pattern. The result has been a cycle of waxing and waning U.S. influence in a critical region of the world. Until its occupation of Iraq, the United States practiced informal empire in the Gulf rather than colonialism. Currently, however, the formal empire established by the United States in Iraq jeopardizes the overall American position in the Gulf, which seemed unassailable in early 2003.

Berkeley: Ideas, Immaterialism, and Objective Presence offers a novel interpretation of the arc of George Berkeley's philosophical thought, from his theory of vision through his immaterialism and finally to his proof of God's existence. Keota Fields unifies these themes to focus on Berkeley's use of the Cartesian doctrine of objective presence, which demands causal explanations of the content of ideas. This is particularly so with respect to Berkeley's arguments for immaterialism. One of those arguments is typically read as a straightforward transitivity argument. After identifying material bodies with sensible objects, and the latter with ideas of sense, Berkeley concludes that putative material bodies are actually identical to collections of ideas of sense. George Pappas has recently defended an alternative reading that grounds Berkeley's immaterialism in his rejection of what Pappas calls category-transcendent abstract ideas: abstract ideas of beings, entia, or existence. Fields uses Pappas's interpretation as a framework for understanding Berkeley's immaterialism in terms of transcendental arguments. Early moderns routinely used the doctrine of objective presence to justify transcendental arguments for the existence of material substance. The claim was that physical qualities are necessary for any causal explanation of the content of sensory ideas; since those qualities are represented to perceivers as ontologically dependent, material substance is the necessary condition for the existence of physical qualities and a fortiori any causal explanation of the content of sensory ideas. On the reading defended here, Berkeley rejects Locke's transcendental argument for the existence of material substratum on the grounds that it turns decisively on the aforementioned category-transcendent abstract ideas, which Berkeley rejects as logically inconsistent. In its place, Berkeley offers his own transcendental argument designed to show that only minds and ideas exist. He uses that argument as a proof of God's existence-and ultimately to argue that the emergence of meaning from a material world simply cannot be explained. A portrait emerges of a thinker deeply engaged with the theories of his time, yet one who is captivated by the question of how meaning arises in the world. Students and scholars of the history of philosophy, particularly early modern history and the British Empiricists, will find this book to be a valuable addition to their collections.

Iraq: The Moral Reckoning applies classic just war theory to the U.S. decision to go to war in 2003. That theory, which evolved over several millennia, is a simple, profound tool for evaluating the rightness and wisdom of starting a war. The Bush administration and its supporters referred directly and indirectly to the theory in making a pro-war case to the world. The theory provides three core moral criteria for a just war: sovereign authority, just cause, and right intention (which includes an aim of peace). It adds three practical criteria: proportionality of ends, last resort, and reasonable chance of success. For a just war, each criterion should be substantially met. Since war is destructive and each country is presumed to have the right to live in peace, the evidence in favor of war must be clearly stronger than evidence against it. For each criterion, Iraq: The Moral Reckoning painstakingly weighs Bush administration statements, or those of its supporters, against evidence available at the time. A wide range of viewpoints and evidence is considered, and contrary arguments are refuted. One full chapter is given to neoconservative arguments on just war theory and its application from prominent war supporters. Each criterion, except sovereign authority, is shown not to have been met. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications of an unjust war for the United States and the world. The intensive weighing of each criterion against the facts and the balanced approach make the book unique. By demonstrating a comprehensive application of the theory to one war, it not only sets a new standard for evaluating the 2003 Iraq war, but also shows how present and future wars can be better evaluated in moral and practical terms, based on knowledge available at the time.

This volume of interviews from the popular online journal Logo, are organized around the critical and interconnected themes of the decline of politics and culture, neo-liberalism and the rise of American imperialism, the crisis in the Middle East and the need to forge alternative visions and effective modes of resistance in contemporary struggle. These interviews offer key insights and galvanizing challenges to critically thinking scholars and citizens engaged in analyzing and struggling against current injustices. Although the interviews were conducted during the presidency of George W. Bush, they are especially relevant now. These critical insights and demands should not be abandoned because of the ease and relief engendered by the election of Barack Obama. Because of the volume's concern with defending democracy against the incursions of empire, the text emphasizes the need to reinvigorate discourse and rebuild the public sphere. The primary method of accomplishing these ends, frank and honest dialogue, is built into the very structure of the text. The insights and challenges offered in the interviews are crucial for active thinkers looking to respond thoughtfully, effectively and conscientiously to the crises that shape our times.

Water: The Looming Crisis in India analyzes the key issues in developing national freshwater policies for the mainland countries of the South Asian sub-continent. Ray suggests that freshwater policy must cover all aspects of physical environment and human life, by noting that food and drought management are parts of freshwater policy and acknowledging that water is a scarce natural resource and has economic value. He calls for the development of basin-wide policies to minimize conflicts within riparian countries, as well as a freshwater policy baseline to minimize internal conflicts on water sharing arrangements. By pointing out the need for full participation of all stakeholders in developing a baseline policy including people displaced by the construction of large dams, Ray suggests a new system in which riparian countries are guaranteed that no water-related project proceeds without a transparently developed environmental impact assessment and evaluation of alternative options.

The Palestinian Muslim village of Artas is cradled in the lap of four mountains in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Although Artas has experienced the violence of Israeli occupation, Spirits of Palestine does not focus exclusively on the villagers' experiences of violence, terrorism, or loss. This ethnography looks instead at the daily lives of Palestinian women and men and how they relate to tragedies and difficulties both large and small. Through stories of possession by the jinn, spirits that appear throughout the Koran, anthropologist Celia Rothenberg takes the reader past the dramatic, violent world of street battles and stone-throwing to more intimate realms of power-in homes and prisons, family and neighborhood relations, and personal experiences of migration and diaspora. Rothenberg shows how remarkably far-reaching jinn stories can be; they provide commentary on the constructed nature of kinship, strong social mores, and those who are both on the margins and at the center of a Palestinian community. Jinn stories remind us that power in all its forms has gaps and inconsistencies. Spirits of Palestine is a truly original ethnography and an essential addition to scholarship on Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East that will be of interest to cultural anthropologists, sociologists, and women's/gender studies scholars.

The book is a study of political development in Bahrain during the first five years after its independence in 1971. It is based on field research done by the author as the first senior Fulbright scholar in that country. The book was banned in Bahrain for 30 years but was allowed to be published in Arabic in that country in 2006. The study focuses on the tribal structure of Bahraini society and the rule of a minority Sunni government by al-Khalifa family over a largely disenfranchised Shia majority. To examine the making of the new state, the book analyzes the nature and characteristics of the Bahraini tribal society, the educational system of modern Bahrain, the nature of the political system, and popular demands for participation in decision making. The book also examines the making of the new constitution, the first ever national election to both the Constitutional Assembly and the National Assembly, and the electoral campaigns and candidates. The book also discusses the restrictions on freedoms of speech and assembly, the denial of women the right to vote, the banning of political parties and the role of clubs as surrogate political gathering places, the exclusion of the Shia majority from the economic and political centers of power, and the absence of government accountability and transparency. The February 20ll popular uprising in Bahrain underscores some of the key challenges discussed in the book, especially the autocratic nature of the regime and the urgency of political reform for domestic stability.

Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice is widely regarded as among the most innovative and illuminating fruits of recent social thought. As evidence mounts that the "e;spatial turn"e; in the social sciences and humanities is no mere theoretical fad, but rather an enduring paradigm of social and cultural research, Bourdieu's status as a profoundly spatial thinker takes on a renewed importance. The Spatial Logic of Social Struggle: A Bourdieuian Topology focuses on Bourdieu's philosophy of space, arguing that space is at once a condition for social knowledge, a methodological instrument, and a physical context for practice. By considering Bourdieu's theory of social space and fields alongside his several accounts of socially potent physical spaces, Nikolaus Fogle develops an understanding of the systematic co-determinations between social and physical space. He traces Bourdieu's ideas about the spatiality of social life through his investigations of Algerian peasant villages and Gothic cathedrals, as well as spaces of class, lifestyle and cultural creation, revealing that social and environmental struggles are only logical insofar as they are topological. He also demonstrates how a Bourdieuian dialectical understanding of social and physical space can be brought to bear on contemporary issues in architecture and urban development.This book will be useful and accessible not only to philosophers, but also to architects, geographers, sociologists, and other scholars in the social sciences and humanities who take an interest in the social theory of space.

Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey reveals the significance of the Odyssey's plot, in particular the many scenes of recognition that make up the hero's homecoming and dramatize the cardinal values of Homeric society, an aristocratic culture organized around recognition in the broader senses of honor, privilege, status, and fame. Odysseus' identity is seen to be rooted in his family relations, geographical origins, control of property, participation in the social institutions of hospitality and marriage, past actions, and ongoing reputation. At the same time, Odysseus' dependence on the acknowledgement of others ensures attention to multiple viewpoints, which makes the Odyssey more than a simple celebration of one man's preeminence and accounts in part for the poem's vigorous afterlife. The theme of disguise, which relies on plausible lies, highlights the nature of belief and the power of falsehood and creates the mixture of realism and fantasy that gives the Odyssey its distinctive texture. The book contains a pioneering analysis of the role of Penelope and the questions of female agency and human limitation raised by the critical debate about when exactly she recognizes that Odysseus has come home.

Reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: A Beginners Guide is written for anyone who faces the challenge of reading Philosophical Investigations. John J. Ross guides the reader slowly through each relevant section of text, explaining and elaborating key ideas, and providing the philosophical and biographical background that illuminates the problems Wittgenstein is addressing. Reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is designed to be used in the examination of the Investigations as a whole or in part; the reader can focus solely on Mathematics or Psychology, if needed. While Ross does address some of the philosophical controversies surrounding Wittgenstein's ideas, the discussions are appropriate for an undergraduate, so the book can be used fruitfully by anyone with that level of education who has an interest in Wittgenstein's seminal work.

Bollywood Weddings examines how middle to upper class second-generation Indian-American Hindus negotiate wedding rituals, including the dating and engagement processes. Many of these couples are (in Ramdya's neologism) 'occasional Hindus' who display their Hindu religious background only on important occasions such as the rite of passage that is marriage. These couples (and their extended families) negotiate two vastly different cultures and sets of values inside a community that has itself largely pre-determined how to mix American and Indian/Hindu elements into this ritual. As a rule, the first generation organizes the wedding, which is largely Hindu, and their children coordinate the American-style reception. Instead of choosing either India or America, or arriving at a compromise in between the two, this community takes a 'both/and' approach, embracing both cultures simultaneously. Ramdya's ethnographic fieldwork includes in-depth interviews of engaged couples, observation at their wedding ceremonies, wedding videography and photography, and material culture such as the clothing her participants wore on their wedding day. She explores pre-wedding day topics such as America's Indian-Hindu marriage market and bridal industry, then goes on to describe pre-wedding and wedding-day customs including the engagement party, kanyadan, and baraat. Bollywood, whose Indian origins grants it authenticity from the Hindu perspective and whose emphasis on romance accommodates American values, emerges as the key mediating third culture around which the community applies the both/and model to wedding rituals. The both/and model uncovered here reinforces the community's identity as ethnic and American even as it confirms that success in America need not be bought at the expense of one's religious background and cultural heritage.

The Star, the Cross, and the Crescent analyzes fiction, films, comics, autobiographical narratives, and essays by Francophone Arab writers whose Christian (Accad, Antaki, Chedid, Maalouf), Jewish (Albou, Cixous, El Maleh, Memmi), Muslim (Bachi, Benaissa, Benguigui, Ben Jelloun, Boudjedra, Boudjellal, Meddeb, Mimouni), and secular (Sebbar) backgrounds are emblematic of the diversity of the Francophone Arab world. It examines how these writers represent the intertwining of religion and politics against the backdrop of the current international political context and the resurgence of religion. Focusing on a series of disputes commonly framed in religious terms (with Islam as the common denominator for all: the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Lebanese and the Algerian civil wars, the affair of the Muslim headscarf in France, and 9/11), this book questions the effectiveness of the Francophone studies model in providing insights into the complexity of the Islamic Revival. The study concludes by unpacking the influence of politics on the translation of these works in the U.S. It brings heightened awareness to the modalities according to which a creative work can serve as a cultural mediator.

The Nine-Eyed Agate seeks to break stereotyped images of Tibet and Tibetans inside the PRC today, and in the diaspora, by presenting an outstanding personality who survived childhood during the Cultural Revolution, then going on to lead a rich and somewhat controversial career within the PRC. As a free-wheeling, restless traveller in samsara (the cycle of existence), Jangbu has explored every corner of the Tibetan plateau with a view to understanding the culture and history of his people, their plight, and the key issues that Tibet faces today. Widely read in world literature through Chinese translation he has traveled around the world, attending international poetry meetings and film festivals, taking part in university conferences and developing his passion for film. This rich diversity is reflected in his poems and prose, the subject matter ranging through eternal themes such as love and betrayal, fantasy and magical realism, mystical flight and biting social satire. His poetry is experimental, presenting a panorama of styles with examples in modern free-verse, classical Indo-Tibetan metrical poetics (though this is rare), and more characteristically, in the dense obscure poetry of the post-Cultural Revolution years in China (1980s onwards), for which Jangbu is particularly well known. His work is often semi-autobiographical, written in a docu-fictional mode, announcing Jangbus growing fascination for the screen.

Tourism today is recognized as the largest and fastest-growing industry in the world, capable of producing positive social and economic transformations especially in developing countries. Yet for UNESCO, it works in conjunction with World Heritage sites for a far more ambitious goal: to produce 'peace in the minds of men' by creating a new, global identity. Anthropologist and former tour operator Michael Di Giovine draws on ethnographic fieldwork, close policy analysis of UNESCO's major documents, and professional experiences in Southeast Asia and Europe to provide a detailed examination of UNESCO's unusual effort to harness the phenomenon of globalization and the existence of cultural diversity for the purpose of creating 'peace in the minds of men' through its World Heritage program. He convincingly argues that UNESCO's designations are not impotent political performances that lead to the commercialization of local monuments for a touristic superstructure, but instead the building blocks of a new world system, an imaginative re-ordering of the world that knows no geopolitical boundaries but exists in the individual 'minds of men.' Di Giovine terms this system the heritage-scape, a real social structure that extends unbridled across the globe, spreading its mantra of 'unity in diversity.' Written for social scientists, heritage and tourism professionals, and the educated traveler, The Heritage-scape is an insightful, detailed, and expansive look at the politics and processes, histories and structures, and rituals and symbolisms of the interrelated phenomena of tourism, historic preservation, and UNESCO's World Heritage Program in Viet Nam, Cambodia, and across the world.

Nietzsche's Zarathustra takes an interdisciplinary approach to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, focusing on the philosophical function of its literary techniques and its fictional mode of presentation. It argues that the fictional format is essential to Nietzsche's philosophical message in his work. Part of that message is Nietzsche's alternative to the Western worldview as developed by Plato's dialogues and the Christian Gospel, which he presents through the teachings of his hero, Zarathustra. Another part of that message is that any doctrine, including those of Zarathustra himself, has an ambivalent nature. Although doctrinal formulations are designed to preserve and communicate philosophical insights, they can become dead formulas, out of touch with the live philosophical discoveries that they aimed to capture. Thus Spoke Zarathustra explores Zarathustra's own vulnerability to this risk, and his way of regaining real connection with living wisdom. The doctrine of eternal recurrence, which is particular prominent in Zarathustra, is a case in point. The doctrine is offered in opposition to the worldview that Nietzsche associates with the Christian doctrine of sin, which in his view promotes a view of this life as devoid of intrinsic value. However, certain ways of adhering to this doctrine themselves rob life of its value. The book also defends the importance of Part IV of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which many scholars have seen as unimportant by comparison with the first three parts. Nietzsche's Zarathustra argues that Part III would not have been a culmination for the work, and that Part IV is essential to Nietzsche's project. Part IV's allusions to Apuleius' The Golden Ass, an ancient Menippean satire, suggest that it should be read as a satire in which Zarathustra falls into and recovers from folly. It is thus the culminating statement of the point that there is always a discrepancy between the living philosophical insight and any attempt to articulate it,