Bøker utgitt av Lexington Books

Imagined Networks in Pre-Modern Italian Literature: Literary Mothers, Literary Sisters presents the untold stories of the literary mothers and sisters in pre-modern Italian literature and the vibrant intellectual networks they forged. The authors argue that these women writers became adoptive references for other authors, often as an alternative to an established canon of textual authority. The proposed concepts of literary motherhood and sisterhood focus on the agency of the writers in choosing a model, rather than adhering to hierarchical structures. The women showcased in this book defied conventions, and are aware of the generative power of their works and regard themselves as literary guiding lights for future authors. They built prolific communities through exchanges, correspondences, debates, oblique conversations, and sometimes subtle allusions that confer authority to each other. The six essays in this book bring to life the figures of Caterina da Siena, Isabella Andreini, Giulia Bigolina, Margherita Costa, Lucrezia Marinella, Arcangela Tarabotti, and the relationship between Gaspara Stampa and Luisa Bergalli, as well as that between Bianca Milesi Mojon and Maria Edgeworth.

This study examines the development of anti-capital punishment sentiment in antebellum American Literature. Drawing on republican criminal reform theories, prominent American authors and social reformers advocated for the abolition of the gallows, justice, and criminal reform for the diverse citizens of the young republic.

In this book, Michael Grabowski uses established theories of ethics to evaluate the benefits and risks of using virtual reality (VR). By examining and imagining use cases of VR and related technologies, Grabowski questions how rules should govern VR to address issues of control, access, privacy, bias, deception, and abuse.

The German philosopher Karl Jaspers was moved by the possibilities of global understanding throughout his life and penetrated it more deeply than any other thinker before him. Anton Hügli argues that Jaspers' petition to not proclaim a new doctrine,-but to continue thinking along the path taken by the great philosophers of the past,-is itself an expression of his unconditional will to communicate. The limits of communication that Jaspers shows us are not accidental psychological and sociological obstacles to understanding, but limits that we humans encounter as humans: we want to communicate what cannot be communicated. Instead of an understanding based on a truth that can be understood by all, there is a struggle between the powers of faith. How we can communicate with one another and work for peace and unity in the world? This ultimate question requires a twofold clarification: on the one hand, of the nature of the objects that have always been considered inexpressible, the human's individual existence and God as the ultimate One, and on the other hand, of the faculty in us that allows us to think things that cannot be thought.

The Politics of Death in Anti-colonial Praxis by Gregory Maxaulane explores the political conditions necessary for revolution and freedom. At the intersection of continental philosophy and Black studies, this book examines the political economy of death within the Black experience in South Africa by theorizing death as a productive and generative process. Maxaulane provides a deeper understanding of the politics of death by focusing on how continental philosophy and Black studies treat the problem of praxis as well as the parallels and convergences between the models of praxis they sustain. This book is a comprehensive exploration of these fields, providing critical engagements with the evolution of ideology and the anti-colonial praxis in South African history. Challenging liberal democratic doctrines that have undermined the claims of Black radical imagination, Maxaulane argues that the political economy of death allows us to break from tradition through a concept of freedom not grounded in transcendentalism.

Political Economy of COVID-19: Understanding the Dynamics of a Global Pandemic, provides a theoretical, conceptual and methodological approach to the understanding of the pandemic through multiple case analyses. It produces and discusses COVID-19 research with interdisciplinary perspectives by addressing how the pandemic distinctly impacted the local and global economy and how numerous stakeholders responded. The book is truly global and interdisciplinary, through chapter contributions and case analysis from practitioners and emerging and established scholars. The ideas raised in this book have the potential to take central elements of post-pandemic political, social and economic thinking to a new line of inquiry and provide more compelling nuances. The book will be essential reading for researchers, students and scholars interested in development studies, political economy, historicity of the pandemic, conspiratorial debates and country specific policy response.

Vox Eurydice: The Ascent of the Female Rescuer in German-Language Opera is a mythological and depth psychological analysis written from a feminist perspective, on the emergence of the theme of rescue stories, and specifically plots where a female heroine saves a male character, which arose in German-language opera during the roughly one hundred years that spanned the lifetimes of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Richard Wagner. Margaret Ann Mendenhall argues that the German-language works of these three musical giants grew out of the rescue story paradigm, as an extension of Italian opera buffa and French opéra comique. This is reflected in Mozart's Singspiele and Beethoven's one completed opera, Fidelio, considered the epitome of the German-language rescue opera. The author then examines Wagner's oeuvre, not only his ten mature masterpieces, but also three earlier operas and his unfinished pieces. The author also posits that the need for the ascent of the female rescuer in German-language opera was unconsciously tied into the desire of the people of the German-speaking territories for a homeland, and how the presence of this archetype subsided soon after a German nation was established in 1871.

History is storytelling. History is the selection of facts, placed in a specific order, to result in a specific conclusion. It's the choice of facts, the prioritization of facts, and the ignoring of facts, that creates the narrative of history -- the narrative of the American story. The American story is the creation of specific historical events and the meanings that have been applied to them. Since America is defined by ideas and not ethnicity, it matters what narratives of America that Americans accept, support, and defend. White Narratives Matter: The Whitewashing of the American Story and How Racial Narratives Explain the Development of Trumpism uses original speeches and writings of politicians and other social leaders, from Thomas Jefferson to Tucker Carlson to explore how the White social conservative worldviewnarrative of American history developed over the past two centuries. White Narratives Matter explores how this process of fact selection, prioritization, and development of White social conservative rhetoric of the American story has defined American politics and policies, which culminated in the rise of Donald Trump and Trumpism within the American political landscape.

In this book, Luigi Manca and Alessandra Manca examine the use of utopian imagery in magazine advertisements from the 1970s through the early 2020s. Positing that these advertisements reflect the public's unbridled desires, rather than reality itself, the authors argue that these idealistic reflections can lead the public to be unable or unwilling to recognize real threats to democracy, social justice, and the environment. They extend this analysis to argue that political moderates have long underestimated the ability of mass media and charismatic, radical politicians to tap into the utopian dreams of millions of disillusioned-and predominantly white-Americans to leverage these dreams in order to further their own political agendas. Ultimately, this cumulative study spanning decades of advertisement history portrays a consumer utopia shaped almost exclusively by unrestrained consumer desire.

This edited volume focuses on slow media, an approach that fosters intentional and thoughtful engagement with media of all forms. Contributors explore our individual and community relations with analog and digital media by critiquing current power structures underpinning contemporary media sensibilities, processes, and technologies. Through these critiques, the authors pose crucial questions surrounding how to slow down and be intentional within the landscape of accelerated media technology innovation and ubiquity. Building on existing media studies theory, the essays in this volume explore case studies of the intersections between analog and digital media, share insights from personal slow media projects, and propose useful methods for ethical and thoughtful media practices for both producers and audiences. Ultimately, this volume prompts readers to contemplate and reconsider the role of media technologies in contemporary life.

Like its predecessor, Eternal Putin?: Confronting Navalny, the Pandemic, Sanctions, and War with Ukraine (Lexington, 2023), Vladimir Putin's Version of 'War and Peace': The Battle for the Russian Home Front, 2022-24 is a chronological and descriptive account of almost all facets of Russian life during a very short period of time; i.e. from the onset of Russia's war on Ukraine in February 2022 to its presidential election in March 2024. Its strength lies in its wealth of detail on Russia's home front. To set the stage, the first chapters cover the course of war primarily focused on the consequences of the war for Russians at home. The ripple effects follow in chapters on Russia's politics, its economy, human and civil rights, and the Kremlin's international relationships. Among the subjects featured in sub-sections are the 'foreign agent' frenzy, pressure against the LGBT community, schools as incubators of young 'patriots', healthcare, the environment, the media, Russia's new diaspora in exile, the Russian Orthodox Church's role, war crimes, and international sport. Putin as vozhd (leader) is the subject of one chapter. Russia's forced and chosen pivot to the East for political and economic allies are also examined. Above all, this book highlights the Russian government's attempts to create a loyal citizenry. Nowhere else is the battle for the home front covered so thoroughly.

In this book, Deborah Geis offers a new approach to the evolving genre of culinary films that center on the acts of eating and cooking through close analyses of ten different films. These films range from the classics, like Big Night (1996) and Babette's Feast (1987) to later box-office hits, like Chef (2014) and to films that deserve a second look, like East Side Sushi (2014), Burnt (2015), and Mid-August Lunch (2008). Throughout these analyses, the book focuses on tropes including the "big dinner" as it connects to intercultural and transcultural communities; the self-destructive perfectionism of the obsessive chef; and the craft of cooking in relation to aging and mortality. Geis invites readers and viewers to experience food-driven narrative films with an appetite for appreciating the visual ingredients and the ways in which they construct pleasure through the act of looking as a vicarious approach to consuming the actual food. Drawing on the work of film theorist Christian Metz, Geis ultimately poses a new paradigm for watching and understanding culinary cinema as a significant - and constantly-evolving - genre that comes with its own conventions and contemporary filmmakers who seek to expand and transform those conventions in surprising ways.

Arguing that January 6th was just the tip of the iceberg, this book reveals the full impact of white Christian nationalism on the United States. Flowers explores how white Christian nationalism has infused its agenda in social, cultural, legislative, and political aspects of life in an effort to move the United States toward becoming an authoritarian theocratic white ethnostate. Part of the larger far-right enterprise, white Christian nationalism is unique in the way in which it pulls a variety of far-right ideologies together. These ideologies include anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, antisemitism, authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, ethnonationalism, male supremacy, racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Understanding the way these ideologies complement each other and are perpetuated is the only route to resist them.

Discussions of waste and electronic discard management often view micro-scale ingenious activities around unregulated recycling centers in the Global South only as a source of pollution. Gathering Electronic Waste in Tanzania: Labor, Value, and Toxicity goes further and explores the complexities of electronic waste management. Samwel Moses Ntapanta examines the materialities of electronics and e-discards, toxicity, and the sociocultural and economic fabrics of e-waste management in Tanzania. He traces the lifecycle of electronic goods beyond their discard in the Global South: from the importation of used goods to cycles of repair, and from the collection of 'scrap' to repurposing materials for manufacturing. Through the concept of gathering, Ntapanta provides insight into the effects of unregulated mechanisms to address the e-waste problem. He argues that understanding this connection between informal workers and the economy at large paves a path for better waste regime models, reduced violence, and environmental justice for workers and marginalized communities.

For women, the conundrum of modernity and tradition is an on-going puzzle of what aspects of modernity to appropriate and what aspects of tradition to retain in their everyday lives. Tracing the emergence of this conundrum in the nationalist debates on colonial modernity, Modernity, Tradition, and Indian Women argues that the everyday lives in contemporary times is animated by both the civilizational meta-narratives and the constitutional meta-narratives that keeps alive this conundrum of modernity and tradition. While societal gender scripts socialize women in families based on cultural ideologies, individuals struggle to expand their zones of freedom by rescripting their personal gender scripts in the direction of modernity. Rescripting a life of more freedom depends upon the changes in dispositions that cultural ideologies have for long instilled in men and women. Drawing evidence from marriage norms and partner choice in diverse contexts, religiosity, clothing and consumption, this book explores the ways in which women selectively appropriate aspects of modernity even while retaining traditions in their lives.

In Pilosity, Prejudice, and Passion in The Tale of Old Bearded Achbor by Yaakov ben El'azar of Toledo, Tovi Bibring argues that behind the restless parody and the sour tone of the tale, lies a fierce discourse of hate toward the Other, incarnated as a black woman, as well as an insistent alarm regarding the threat of assimilation. Following an enticing fully annotated translation of an overwhelming medieval Hebrew composition featuring a pathetic sermon, a hedonist feast, a love liaison, violent shaming, and murder, Bibring artfully explores their significances through a variety of chapters. From highlighting how hair symbolism and color symbolism construe dangerous prejudices, to suggesting that Achbor is a symbolic incarnation of a new Balaam, the author, through close-readings of selected excerpts, draws connections to the broader medieval and classical context. By highlighting possible literary correspondences, she sheds insightful light on this mysterious tale. This book stands as a testament to the richness of medieval European Hebrew culture, making it a must-read for scholars and enthusiasts alike.

The Mathematical Mind of F. M. Dostoevsky: Imaginary Numbers, Non-Euclidean Geometry, and Infinity reconstructs the curriculum and readings that F. M. Dostoevsky encountered during his studies and connects such sources to the mathematical references and themes in his published works. Prior to becoming a man of letters, Dostoevsky studied at the Main Engineering School in St. Petersburg from 1838 to 1843. After he was arrested, submitted to mock execution by firing squad, and sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia for his involvement in the revolutionary Petrashevsky Circle in 1849, most of his books and journals from the period of his education were confiscated, and destroyed by the Third Section of the Russian Secret Police. Although most scholars discount the legacy of his engineering studies, the literary aesthetics of his works communicate an acute awareness of mathematical principles and debates. This book unearths subtexts in works by Dostoevsky, communicating veins of mathematical thought that evolved throughout Classical Antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution.

Television's Second Golden Age: Politics and International Relations in the Era of HBO and Streaming TV examines the foremost series in the Second Golden Age of Television (1999-present), in terms of the political themes, theories, and issues expressed in major television genres. By using The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, House of Cards, Battlestar Galactica, and Game of Thrones. Joel R. Campbell explains the nature of the Second Golden Age. He clarifies how the rise of quality television through premium cable television channels and later streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon have made it possible for television properties with deeper drama, long story arcs, and concentration on political and social issues. Each chapter analyzes a specific television series that aired or streamed since 1999, in terms constructivist political theory.

Racial discrimination in America has deep historical roots that persist to this day, leading to disparities in areas like police shootings, high incarceration rates, and unlawful, tragic deaths Understanding these roots is crucial to addressing the ongoing challenges in achieving racial equality and healing from racial trauma. From Discrimination to Inclusion: A Journey of Transforming and Embracing Diversity by Ruth Chu-Lien Chao examines various forms of racism, including individual, internalized, interpersonal, and institutional racism, to provide a better understanding of the detrimental consequences they have in BIPOC communities. Seeking a way forward, Chao develops strategies to address racism through anti-racism exercises, collaboration among individuals from diverse racial backgrounds, and racial inclusion by promoting empathy, diversity, and equal opportunities. This book also explores the importance of empathy and openness toward racial inclusion and how this can be cultivated through education and policy implementation. By integrating strategies that encourage us to both challenge racism and address the traumatic responses that they evoke, this book advocates for a society where diversity is celebrated, and racism is actively addressed. Promoting racial inclusion is a collective effort that requires ongoing commitment and action at both individual and systemic levels.

New Democratic Initiatives in Authoritarian Twenty-First Century Latin America uses a multidisciplinary approach to understand the coincidence of emerging social movements, seeking more meaningful forms of democratic participation, on the one hand, and the rise of new authoritarian politics that in part rely on chaos and disorder as mechanisms of domination, on the other. This edited collection argues that Latin America has entered a new phase of political and economic volatility in which traditional conceptual divisions between democracy and authoritarianism need to be re-thought. How are democratic movements coping with and reacting to the new right-wing politics of Jair Bolsonaro and Javier Milei, which among other things, attempt to incorporate the popular classes? Does the "second pink tide" offer meaningful avenues for popular empowerment? How are counter hegemonic struggles built? What are the challenges and opportunities faced by women, queer and trans people, cultural workers, people with disabilities and indigenous groups in this conjuncture? These are the key questions addressed in this book.

Through historical and current cultural abjection of the "animal" and the "bad queer," Queer and Animal Provocations: Homonormativity, Animal Exploitation, and Sexual Violence provides insight into the relationship between queer people and animals to show how homonormative aspirations of "good queers" can unwittingly further entrench animal abuse. To uncover this connection, this book travels through notions of queer citizenship, animal justice, colonial constructs of the human, and queer movements for liberation. Jessica Ison explores encounters between the discourse of queer liberation and animal abjection, through the use of advertisements, corporate sponsors, media articles, laws, activist movements, and lobbying efforts, to discover how the struggles for acceptable queer identity are entwined with entrenching animal exploitation. This book disentangles the exploitation of animals from queer liberation, arguing for scholars and activists to take action in future struggles through solidarity and mutual support within the abolition of cages and systems of injustice.

Reimagining Democracy: Communication Activism, Social Justice, and Prefiguration in Participatory Budgeting presents findings from a multi-year, community-based, critical ethnography of two participatory budgeting (PB) processes in Denver, Colorado. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with PB participants, Vincent Russell argues that the PB processes served as sites of prefigurative communication activism, where participants reimagined how government should operate, and activists transformed social and power relations through their in-group deliberations. Participants from oppressed populations emphasized forging relationships and feelings of solidarity among each other as they struggled for liberation, dignity, and social justice. Reimagining Democracy teaches important lessons about the state of democratic culture in the United States and offers alternative pathways for public decision making that hold the promise of restructuring practices, processes, and outcomes to be more socially just. Written in an engaging style with a focus on narratives about social change, this book is an important contribution for scholars, practitioners, and community members passionate about social justice activism.

This book provides close-textual analysis of traditional and mediated, popular memorials that tackle some of the most significant sources of pain in United States. In doing so, Tiara K. Good argues that pain is highly rhetorical and functions to form collectives and instigate change. This book also demonstrates how popular media texts, such as Nia DaCosta's 2021 Candyman and Hulu's original 2021 series Dopesick, hold enormous potential to be effective memorials by virtue of their accessibility and quality of being unbounded by space and place. Tiara K. Good analyzes how each memorial rhetorically operates to demand witness and craft witnesses into people whom can make change. Scholars of rhetoric, public memory, and communication will find this book of particular interest.

In The Contemporary Fantastic: Reimagining Reality in French Fiction, Amanda Vredenburgh identifies a contemporary shift in the use of fantastic modalities in French fiction, no longer dominated by the desire to escape the disappointments of reality nor the reader's hesitation about the reality of the novel's events, but by its innovative confrontation with the real. What could bizarre, uncanny, or supernatural literary representations have to tell us about very urgent, real issues like the environmental crisis, racism, migration, and the formation of egalitarian communities? Through close readings of a selection of novels by Marie Darrieussecq, Marie NDiaye, and Antoine Volodine, Vredenburgh argues that the ability to blur boundaries gives the fantastic both an emancipatory and reparative function in its engagement with contemporary political issues. These authors complicate categories such as human/nonhuman, French/foreign, inclusion/exclusion, and individual/community and shift the focus to the experiential and affective dimensions of these issues, ultimately allowing us to better think and feel with those that are excluded. Vredenburgh concludes that this use of the fantastic has a specific ethical stance, which encourages a community-based approach founded on compassion and inclusion.

The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents: Religion and Police Surveillance in the USSR explores the covert world of secret police surveillance within the Soviet Union, delving into lesser-known grassroots religious life and the collusion of religious communities with the Soviet secret police. These case studies come from Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan, and Russia, spanning from the Central Black-Earth region to the Bashkir and Udmurt regions. This book reconstructs the stories of insider agents, focusing on the entanglements and ambiguities of collaboration and secret police surveillance in the Soviet era. These are the stories of the resilience and creative agency of religious believers in times when their faith in God was considered a legal offense. These issues are addressed through an in-depth analysis of previously untapped archival sources from the Soviet secret police archives and eyewitness testimonies.

Korean Nuclear Diaspora: Redress Movements of Korean Atomic-bomb Victims in Japan comprehensively explores the history of Korean victims of the 1945 atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Following the bombings and Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule, these Korean atomic-bomb victims dispersed across Japan, South Korea, and North Korea, and have often been left without any relief or redress for decades. Focusing on those Korean victims living in Japan, the author thoroughly examines how they have struggled to achieve recognition and support. Based on intensive fieldwork, archival research, and interviews with key figures from the Korean redress movement, this book analyzes how their movements have been significantly affected and constrained by the Cold War, unresolved colonial relations between Korea and Japan, nationalistic tensions between North Korea, South Korea, and Japan, and the national division both in the Korean Peninsula and within the Korean community in Japan. Despite these difficulties, the redress movements of Korean nuclear victims in Japan were sustained by their unique ideal of national "unification" and joint efforts with Korean and Japanese citizens, the history of which can deconstruct the mainstream narratives of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Defending the view that Karl Jaspers' concept of irrationality (Widervernunft) is better able to account for pathological patterns of individual and collective thinking, Karl Jaspers' Theory of Irrationality: From Delusions to Worldviews argues that irrationality is incorrigibility, a blockage of reason as the will to communication. Highlighting the importance of freedom and creativity at the heart of reason (Vernunft), Daniel Adsett analyzes examples of delusional thought through a Jaspersian lens. He shows that irrationality arises when we hold to certain attitudes with an incorrigible conviction and refuse to genuinely consider the possibility that we might need to revise or change our beliefs. In presenting these arguments, Adsett offers a novel contribution to contemporary debates about the character of reason while rehabilitating an often neglected aspect of Jaspers' thought.

Shifting Production to Southeast Asia: Electronics Transnational Corporations Moving to Vietnam since the 2000s explores how a labor-intensive industry has been expanded from the 'World Factory' - China to developing Southeast Asia under the changing dynamics in the global and regional production networks, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tension, by using the case study of the production relocations of the consumer electronics manufacturing industry to Vietnam. David Yuen Tung Chan and Chun Yang explore the changing trade and investment patterns as well as the transformations of the electronics production networks and the changing roles and functions of China, Vietnam and other Asian countries, the relocations of firms and the strategic coupling with Vietnam, as well as the impacts of the post-pandemic dynamics. The shifting electronics production from China to Vietnam, which increased since the mid-2000s, is not a simple expansion led by the conventional lead firms from the 'North' solely to cut costs, but it is a rather complicated and multiscale process that has been simultaneously driven by various tiers of firms and levels of governments from different origins out of various dynamics at different spatial scales.

Edited by Eric M. Bridges, Sheila Smith McKoy, and LaJuan Simpson-Wilkey, The Wisdom of Ifá: An Ancient Paradigm for the 21st Century and Beyond explores Yoruba spirituality and the complex ways in which the acknowledgement of Ifá as a wisdom source can be used to address the needs of humanity in the twenty-first century and beyond. Through rituals and practices that honor nature's rhythms, the contributors explore how Ifá guides us towards sustainable coexistence with our environment, recognizing that our well-being is intricately linked to the health of the planet. The contributors also show how, in the realm of environmental stewardship, Ifá offers a holistic worldview that recognizes the interconnectedness of all life forms. This book offers discussions on environmentalism, gender, and politics that connect across the bounds of time, through the history, mythology, and lived realities of the tradition. As an ancient wisdom tradition that has enriched West African cultures, Ifá offers a roadmap for modern civilization to charter new paths for humanity and the challenges that we face.

African Identity Today in the Writings of John Maxwell Coetzee and Ben Silver Okri is a comparative study of the writings of the South African author John Maxwell Coetzee and the Nigerian author Ben Silver Okri. It charts the thematic and technical presentation of cultural identity in the literary output of both authors, with special reference to their respective trilogies, namely: Coetzee's Scenes from Provincial Life and Okri's The Famished Road. Through examining these texts, the book explores the dilemmas faced by many contemporary authors while discussing issues related to the construction of cultural identity in a postcolonial world. Studying Coetzee's and Okri's texts from a postcolonial perspective reveals how their very different writings share a range of commonalities. Both authors seek to find a middle ground between colonised and colonising cultures as they attempt to deconstruct the stereotypical images of the Other, creating a world purified of racial influences.