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Parasocial Romantic Relationships: Falling in Love with Media Figures explores how, why, and to what effect individuals develop romantic feelings toward people they ';know' from the media. These imaginary, one-sided relationships, dubbed parasocial romantic relationships, are both profound and pervasive, Riva Tukachinsky Forster argues. These relationships can take many forms, including adolescents who develop celebrity crushes on popular music artist, anime enthusiasts who ';marry' their favorite characters, and fanfiction authors who insert themselves into narratives as romantic interests of the protagonist. Through analysis of surveys, in-depth interviews, and historical examples, this book advances our understanding of parasocial romantic relationships on both a sociocultural and a psychological level. The data and theories analyzed offer insights into how individuals can become romantically engaged with people they do not actually know, some of whom may not even exist in reality. Ultimately, Tukachinsky Forster argues that although these relationships exist only in the mind of consumers, they serve important psychological functions across different stages of life and can lead to significant consequences for individuals' nonmediated relationships. Scholars of media studies, communication, psychology, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.

This book interrogates the relations between nostalgias of today and past utopias in the context of the space age of the 20th century and its cinematic representations in the USSR and in post-Soviet Russia. Once an enthusiastic projection, then a promising and uncanny present, and eventually an assemblage of nostalgic signifiers, in the history of world cinema, this space age has been linked primarily to the genre of science fiction. Here, aspects of the space age such as humanity's imminent expansion to space, interplanetary travel, contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, and intergalactic governance and economy were both celebrated and critically interrogated as cosmopolitan ideals and nation-branding strategies. This book presents the contemporary relevance of this genre as heritage and legacy, archive and canon, and a nest of forgotten ideals and warnings, as well as nostalgic anchoring points. The author analyzes over 30 Soviet science fiction films, foregrounding their structures of utopia and their evolution over time, in order to trace both their transnational positionalities, transmedial resonance, and impact on post-Soviet Russian films about the space age. Concepts, crucial to the understanding of space futures of the past, such as utopianism, otherness, liminality, and no(w)stalgia are activated to draw out the fictional tenants of the memory of the Soviet space age, and to establish the limits and potentialities of Soviet (exra)terraformative ambitions.

This book examines the drama of the eleventh century papal reform movement and the contest between papacy and empire through the life and career of Bishop Bonizo of Sutri (ca. 1045-ca. 1094). This author reveals that the populist roots of this ardent reformer's religious vision, including his vision of holy war.

The time period of 1990-2010 marks a significant moment in Spanish literary publishing that emphasized a new focus on Africa and African voices and signaled the beginning of a publishing boom of Hispano-African authors and themes. Africa in the Contemporary Spanish Novel, 1990-2010 analyzes the strategies that Spanish and Hispano-African authors employ when writing about Africa in the contemporary Spanish novel. Focusing on the former Spanish colonial territories of Morocco, Western Sahara, and Equatorial Guinea, Mahan L. Ellison analyzes the post-colonial literary discourse about these regions at the turn of the twenty-first century. He examines the new ways of conceptualizing Africa that depart from an Orientalist framework as advanced by novelists such as Lorenzo Silva, Concha Lopez Sarasa, Ramon Mayrata, and others. Throughout, Ellison also places the novels within their historical context, specifically engaging with the theoretical ideas of Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), to determine to what extent his analysis of Orientalist discourse still holds value for a study of the Spanish novel of thirty years later.

This book provides an overview of key concepts and issues in global politics.

Promoting Border Dialogue During Times of Uncertainty: A Time for Third Spaces is the product of years of investigations and publications focusing on the importance of dialogic processes in the fields of education, cultural work, economics, and politics. Recent, pivotal events reinforce the need for reimagining, reconceptualizing, redesigning, and reconstructing educational and governmental institutions. Hope for the amelioration of racial-, ethnic-, class-, religion- and gender-based conflicts resides in the implementation of effective dialogue. Dialogue must cross borders, internally and externally. Border crossings, not limited to geographic or political, are requisite for understandings of the current local, regional, national, transnational, and global conditions. Recent events make necessary a critical border praxis, which includes the creation of third spaces. Current conditions in the US and worldwide add to the urgency of addressing and responding to existential issues confronting educational institutions, societies, economies, and governments at all levels.

Drawing from the works of George Herbert Mead, Kenneth Burke, and Mikhail Bakhtin, this work argues that everyday interactions are inescapably dramas, conducted through the use of dialogues in order to promote mutual understanding.

As Xi Jinping begins his historic third term in office, many will try to understand Xi as both person and leader. This book examines Xi's life and career with special emphasis on the West's changing perception of Xi and the important relationship between the United States and Xi's China.

This is a comprehensive analysis on Nigeria, its people, and emerging contemporary digital trends through the expanding concept of the virtual community. It uses Farooq Kperogi, a prominent leader in the virtual community, and his writings as a lens to foreground the discussion.

This study examines the debates, history, and theory surrounding Stalinism and the Soviet Union. The author argues that the growing popularity of socialism in the United States calls for a renewed look at the legacy of Stalinism.

This interdisciplinary edited collection examines multiple themes found within the popular Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Chapters on topics such as genre, postmodernism, adaptation, history, fashion, and ideology offer new insights and contextualize the series within contemporary teen television.

This book addresses the mid-rank of the soul theme as it emerges in Plotinus and Augustine in the context of their respective interpretations of universal order. They both use the journey metaphor to describe the soul's progress through the turbulent "sea" of earthly existence.

This biography chronicles the life of Elizabeth Upham Yates who fostered a kind of "American dream" for the single, educated woman in the industrial era. She served as a missionary to China, and then blazed women's suffrage and temperance campaign trails for thirty years as the protege of Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Frances Willard.

This book explores the evolution of how sports journalists have covered the struggle of professional athletes who have experienced mental illness. Combining historical research and narrative analysis, Ronald Bishop interrogates whether sports journalists have finally begun to cover the experience of mental illness with sufficient depth.

Arguing, humanistically, that we live in a "human world" inescapably colored by meaning, this book shows why the pursuit of meaningfulness is not ethically innocent but must be subjected to critique. Pragmatist critique of meaning both embraces critical humanism and rejects theodicies postulating ultimate meaning in suffering.

Napoleon in the Russian Imaginary focuses on the response of Russia's greatest writers-poets, novelists, critics, and historians-to the idea of "Great Man" as an agent of transformational change as it manifests itself in the person and career of Napoleon.

The Wrong Ape for Early Human Origins highlights the pervasive impact of the chimpanzee referential model on paleoanthropological theory. This work suggests the need to re-imagine the last common ancestor of chimps and humans based on a more generalized Miocene ape platform and the reliance of early hominins on epigenesis and creative niche construction.

How did we develop our sense of inner life? This book follows Auerbach's Mimesis, journeying over two millennia through Western literature from Bible and Homer to the present to answer this question. We discover discrete and different trends, yet also three overarching, cross-cultural, and cross-temporal themes that endure through time.

In The Letter in Black Radical Thought, Tendayi Sithole analyzes the letters of Sylvia Wynter, Assata Shakur, George Jackson, Aìme Césaire, and Frantz Fanon. Each letter is taken as an important site where dehumanization is criticized by means of black radical thought which these figures advocate.

This book investigates the role of colonization on diabetes, depression, and food insecurity in Puerto Rico and highlights the role of health activism in combating colonial legacies.

The Protestant Settlers of Israel tells the tale of Protestants settling in the Holy Land and staking their own claim, including a discussion of the present-day whereabouts of some 100,000 Protestant individuals living in the State of Israel, with a steady rate of expansion and growth in some circles.

Robert College of Constantinople is the oldest American school still in existence in its original location outside the borders of the United States. The history of the College includes 160 years of originality, innovations and astonishing development that impacted the history of Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, the Ottoman Empire and the United States of America.

Heaton applies a rise-and-fall structure to the early Christian book known as the Shepherd of Hermas, first proposing a soteriological hermeneutic and evaluating its predominantly positive reception among early church. Heaton propounds an interpretation of the Shepherd of Hermas as a book meant to guide his readers toward salvation.

Abortion in Popular Culture: A Call to Action examines representations of abortion in popular culture, including literature, television and film, and social media. This essay collection emphasizes the importance of diverse, positive, and nuanced portrayals of abortion in challenging misconceptions about who seeks abortions and why.

This book describes the challenges this young nation state of Papua New Guinea faces in the twenty first century as it strives for economic development and an independent voice in regional and international affairs. These challenges also include the geopolitical context in which China is exerting a growing influence.

The Moral Evaluation of Emergency Department Patients is an ethnography of the social process by which healthcare workers ration and rationalize the provision of care. Examining the social categorization of patients, this work documents the interactional production of exclusion at two emergency departments in Romania.

In this book, Harold Hellwig analyzes film noir, outlining the major genres which it includes: the city and the detective; science fiction, the Western; and comedy. Elements of American film noir and its contexts are evaluated within different adaptations in film and television.

This book examines one of the most influential Latin American writers of the last decades. Arango explores Gabriel García Márquez's origins, relevance, and themes to provide a new assessment of his Caribbean background and the deep roots of his work in popular culture.

Sex Work in Russia: A Cultural Perspective analyzes the figure of the female sex worker in Russia's cultural imagination from the early twentieth century to today. This book offers critical insights into the significance of this character and women's lives in Russia.