Jason Puskar
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804775359
- eISBN:
- 9780804778459
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804775359.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book argues that language and literature actively produced chance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by categorizing injuries and losses as innocent of design. Automobile ...
More
This book argues that language and literature actively produced chance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by categorizing injuries and losses as innocent of design. Automobile collisions and occupational injuries became “car accidents” and “industrial accidents.” During the post-Civil War period of racial, ethnic, and class-based hostility, chance was an abstract enemy against which society might unite. By producing chance, novels by William Dean Howells, Stephen Crane, Anna Katharine Green, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and James Cain documented and helped establish new modes of collective interdependence. Chance here is connected not with the competitive individualism of the Gilded Age, but with important progressive and social democratic reforms, including developments in insurance, which had long employed accident narratives to shape its own “mutual society.” This book reveals the extent to which American collectivity has depended—and continues to depend—on the literary production of chance.Less
This book argues that language and literature actively produced chance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by categorizing injuries and losses as innocent of design. Automobile collisions and occupational injuries became “car accidents” and “industrial accidents.” During the post-Civil War period of racial, ethnic, and class-based hostility, chance was an abstract enemy against which society might unite. By producing chance, novels by William Dean Howells, Stephen Crane, Anna Katharine Green, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and James Cain documented and helped establish new modes of collective interdependence. Chance here is connected not with the competitive individualism of the Gilded Age, but with important progressive and social democratic reforms, including developments in insurance, which had long employed accident narratives to shape its own “mutual society.” This book reveals the extent to which American collectivity has depended—and continues to depend—on the literary production of chance.
Jinqi Ling
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804778015
- eISBN:
- 9780804782043
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804778015.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Over the course of the last two decades, novelist Karen Tei Yamashita has reshaped the Asian American literary imagination in profound ways, and this book offers readers a critically engaged ...
More
Over the course of the last two decades, novelist Karen Tei Yamashita has reshaped the Asian American literary imagination in profound ways, and this book offers readers a critically engaged examination of her literary corpus. Crafted at the intersection of intellectual history, ethnic studies, literary analysis, and critical theory, the study goes beyond textual investigation to intervene in larger debates over postmodern representation, spatial materialism, historical form, and social and academic activism. Arguing that Yamashita's most important contribution is her incorporation of a North–South vector into the East–West conceptual paradigm, the author highlights the novelist's re-prioritization, through such a geographical realignment, of socio-economic concerns for Asian American literary criticism. In assessing Yamashita's works as such, the author designates her novelistic art as a form of new Asian American literary avant-garde that operates from the peripheries of received histories, aesthetics, and disciplines. Seeking not only to demonstrate the importance of Yamashita's transnational art, the book also sets new terms for ongoing dialogues in Asian American literary and cultural criticism. At the same time, it argues for the continuing relevance of Asian American literature as a self-reflexive and self-renewable critical practice.Less
Over the course of the last two decades, novelist Karen Tei Yamashita has reshaped the Asian American literary imagination in profound ways, and this book offers readers a critically engaged examination of her literary corpus. Crafted at the intersection of intellectual history, ethnic studies, literary analysis, and critical theory, the study goes beyond textual investigation to intervene in larger debates over postmodern representation, spatial materialism, historical form, and social and academic activism. Arguing that Yamashita's most important contribution is her incorporation of a North–South vector into the East–West conceptual paradigm, the author highlights the novelist's re-prioritization, through such a geographical realignment, of socio-economic concerns for Asian American literary criticism. In assessing Yamashita's works as such, the author designates her novelistic art as a form of new Asian American literary avant-garde that operates from the peripheries of received histories, aesthetics, and disciplines. Seeking not only to demonstrate the importance of Yamashita's transnational art, the book also sets new terms for ongoing dialogues in Asian American literary and cultural criticism. At the same time, it argues for the continuing relevance of Asian American literature as a self-reflexive and self-renewable critical practice.
Martin H. Redish
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804772150
- eISBN:
- 9780804786348
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804772150.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
The book presents a unique and controversial rethinking of the intersection between modern American democratic theory and free expression. Most free speech scholars view freedom of expression as a ...
More
The book presents a unique and controversial rethinking of the intersection between modern American democratic theory and free expression. Most free speech scholars view freedom of expression as a vehicle for fostering democracy. However, most do so by relying upon communitarian, cooperative or collectivist democratic theories. This book reshapes free speech as an outgrowth of adversary democracy, arguing that individuals should have the opportunity to affect the outcomes of collective decision-making according to their own personal values and interests. Adversary democracy recognizes the inevitability of conflict within a democratic society, as well as the need for regulation of the conflict to prevent the onset of tyranny. In doing so, it embraces pluralism, diversity and individual growth and developmentLess
The book presents a unique and controversial rethinking of the intersection between modern American democratic theory and free expression. Most free speech scholars view freedom of expression as a vehicle for fostering democracy. However, most do so by relying upon communitarian, cooperative or collectivist democratic theories. This book reshapes free speech as an outgrowth of adversary democracy, arguing that individuals should have the opportunity to affect the outcomes of collective decision-making according to their own personal values and interests. Adversary democracy recognizes the inevitability of conflict within a democratic society, as well as the need for regulation of the conflict to prevent the onset of tyranny. In doing so, it embraces pluralism, diversity and individual growth and development
Sandrine Sanos
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804774574
- eISBN:
- 9780804782838
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804774574.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This book examines the writings of a motley collection of interwar far-right intellectuals, showing that they defined Frenchness in racial, gendered, and sexual terms. A broad, ambitious cultural and ...
More
This book examines the writings of a motley collection of interwar far-right intellectuals, showing that they defined Frenchness in racial, gendered, and sexual terms. A broad, ambitious cultural and intellectual history, the book offers a provocative reinterpretation of a topic that has long been the subject of controversy. In works infused with rhetorics of abjection, disgust, and dissolution, such writers as Maulnier, Brasillach, Céline, and Blanchot imagined the nation through figures deemed illegitimate or inferior—Jews, colonial subjects, homosexuals, women. The author argues that these intellectuals offered an “aesthetics of hate,” reinventing a language of far-right nationalism by appealing to the realm of beauty and the sublime for political solutions. By acknowledging the constitutive relationship of anti-Semitism and colonial racism at the heart of these canonical writers' nationalism, this book makes us rethink how aesthetics and politics function, how race is imagined and defined, how gender structured far-right thought, and how we conceive of French intellectualism and fascism.Less
This book examines the writings of a motley collection of interwar far-right intellectuals, showing that they defined Frenchness in racial, gendered, and sexual terms. A broad, ambitious cultural and intellectual history, the book offers a provocative reinterpretation of a topic that has long been the subject of controversy. In works infused with rhetorics of abjection, disgust, and dissolution, such writers as Maulnier, Brasillach, Céline, and Blanchot imagined the nation through figures deemed illegitimate or inferior—Jews, colonial subjects, homosexuals, women. The author argues that these intellectuals offered an “aesthetics of hate,” reinventing a language of far-right nationalism by appealing to the realm of beauty and the sublime for political solutions. By acknowledging the constitutive relationship of anti-Semitism and colonial racism at the heart of these canonical writers' nationalism, this book makes us rethink how aesthetics and politics function, how race is imagined and defined, how gender structured far-right thought, and how we conceive of French intellectualism and fascism.
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Robert A. Yelle, and Mateo Taussig-Rubbo (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804775366
- eISBN:
- 9780804780704
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804775366.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History
Many people today place great hope in law as a vehicle for the transformation of society and accept that law is autonomous, universal, and above all, secular. Yet recent scholarship has called into ...
More
Many people today place great hope in law as a vehicle for the transformation of society and accept that law is autonomous, universal, and above all, secular. Yet recent scholarship has called into question the simplistic narrative of a separation between law and religion and blurred the boundaries between these two categories, enabling new accounts of their relation that do not necessarily either collapse them together or return law to a religious foundation. This book gives special attention to the secularism of law, exploring how law became secular, the phenomenology of the legal secular, and the challenges that lingering religious formations and other aspects of globalization pose for modern law's self-understanding. Bringing together scholars with a variety of perspectives and orientations, it provides a deeper understanding of the interconnections between law and religion and the unexpected histories and anthropologies of legal secularism in a globalizing modernity.Less
Many people today place great hope in law as a vehicle for the transformation of society and accept that law is autonomous, universal, and above all, secular. Yet recent scholarship has called into question the simplistic narrative of a separation between law and religion and blurred the boundaries between these two categories, enabling new accounts of their relation that do not necessarily either collapse them together or return law to a religious foundation. This book gives special attention to the secularism of law, exploring how law became secular, the phenomenology of the legal secular, and the challenges that lingering religious formations and other aspects of globalization pose for modern law's self-understanding. Bringing together scholars with a variety of perspectives and orientations, it provides a deeper understanding of the interconnections between law and religion and the unexpected histories and anthropologies of legal secularism in a globalizing modernity.
Martin Diewald, Anne Goedicke, and Karl Ulrich Mayer (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804752084
- eISBN:
- 9780804779456
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804752084.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the beginning of one of the most interesting natural experiments in recent history. The East German transition from a Communist state to part of the Federal ...
More
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the beginning of one of the most interesting natural experiments in recent history. The East German transition from a Communist state to part of the Federal Republic of Germany abruptly created a new social order as old institutions were abolished and new counterparts imported. This unique situation provides an exceptional opportunity to examine the central tenets of life-course sociology. The empirical chapters of this book draw a comprehensive picture of life-course transformation, demonstrating how the combination of life-course dynamics coupled with an extraordinary pace of system change affect individual lives. How much turbulence was created by the transition and how much stability was preserved? How did the qualifications and resources acquired before 1989 influence the fortunes in the restructured economy? How did the privatization and reorganization of firms impact individuals? Did the transformation experiences differ by age/cohort and gender? How stable were social networks at work and in the family? Were personality characteristics important mediators of post-1989 success or failure, or were they rather changed by them? How specific were the East German life trajectories in comparison with those of Poland and West Germany?Less
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the beginning of one of the most interesting natural experiments in recent history. The East German transition from a Communist state to part of the Federal Republic of Germany abruptly created a new social order as old institutions were abolished and new counterparts imported. This unique situation provides an exceptional opportunity to examine the central tenets of life-course sociology. The empirical chapters of this book draw a comprehensive picture of life-course transformation, demonstrating how the combination of life-course dynamics coupled with an extraordinary pace of system change affect individual lives. How much turbulence was created by the transition and how much stability was preserved? How did the qualifications and resources acquired before 1989 influence the fortunes in the restructured economy? How did the privatization and reorganization of firms impact individuals? Did the transformation experiences differ by age/cohort and gender? How stable were social networks at work and in the family? Were personality characteristics important mediators of post-1989 success or failure, or were they rather changed by them? How specific were the East German life trajectories in comparison with those of Poland and West Germany?
Radmila Gorup (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804784023
- eISBN:
- 9780804787345
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804784023.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
More than twenty years have passed since the disintegration of Yugoslavia, a multiethnic country that did not establish nation-states like most of Europe but opted for a confederation. In the 1990s, ...
More
More than twenty years have passed since the disintegration of Yugoslavia, a multiethnic country that did not establish nation-states like most of Europe but opted for a confederation. In the 1990s, when the European Union was consolidating and expanding, Yugoslavia was fast dissolving. Scholarship treating the disintegration of Yugoslavia has overlooked the cultural dimension of its collapse. This volume fills that gap by bringing together leading writers and scholars to focus specifically on the dynamics of post-Yugoslav cultural transition. The authors touch upon the topic of dissolution of the common state but move beyond it to consider consequences and repercussions in various cultural fields. Together, the contributions show that while the country has ceased to exist as a political project, it lives on in the individual and collective memory, in a variety of cultural practices, and as a potent legacy.Less
More than twenty years have passed since the disintegration of Yugoslavia, a multiethnic country that did not establish nation-states like most of Europe but opted for a confederation. In the 1990s, when the European Union was consolidating and expanding, Yugoslavia was fast dissolving. Scholarship treating the disintegration of Yugoslavia has overlooked the cultural dimension of its collapse. This volume fills that gap by bringing together leading writers and scholars to focus specifically on the dynamics of post-Yugoslav cultural transition. The authors touch upon the topic of dissolution of the common state but move beyond it to consider consequences and repercussions in various cultural fields. Together, the contributions show that while the country has ceased to exist as a political project, it lives on in the individual and collective memory, in a variety of cultural practices, and as a potent legacy.
Ken K. Ito
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804757775
- eISBN:
- 9780804779623
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804757775.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
At the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, Japanese fiction pulsed with an urge to render good and evil in ways that evoked dramatic emotions. This book examines four ...
More
At the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, Japanese fiction pulsed with an urge to render good and evil in ways that evoked dramatic emotions. This book examines four enormously popular novels from this period by interweaving two threads of argument. Using approaches to melodrama developed in Western literary and film criticism, it first shows how these texts used their binary morality to construct a semblance of moral certainty in a moment of social transformation. The book then examines how the novels responded to a particular set of ideologies of the family, which the Japanese state attempted to use as an instrument of social control. The melodramatic novels of the Meiji period generated a plethora of alternative family models that explored the myriad ways in which human beings could connect in a modernizing culture. The fictional families in these works revealed the ties of the family to the nation, delineated traumatic changes in social hierarchy, and showed the effects of new discourses of gender. These powerful portrayals and the social discourses which surround them reveal that melodrama was a central mode of sensibility in Meiji culture.Less
At the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, Japanese fiction pulsed with an urge to render good and evil in ways that evoked dramatic emotions. This book examines four enormously popular novels from this period by interweaving two threads of argument. Using approaches to melodrama developed in Western literary and film criticism, it first shows how these texts used their binary morality to construct a semblance of moral certainty in a moment of social transformation. The book then examines how the novels responded to a particular set of ideologies of the family, which the Japanese state attempted to use as an instrument of social control. The melodramatic novels of the Meiji period generated a plethora of alternative family models that explored the myriad ways in which human beings could connect in a modernizing culture. The fictional families in these works revealed the ties of the family to the nation, delineated traumatic changes in social hierarchy, and showed the effects of new discourses of gender. These powerful portrayals and the social discourses which surround them reveal that melodrama was a central mode of sensibility in Meiji culture.
Steven B. Bowman
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804755849
- eISBN:
- 9780804772495
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804755849.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book tells the story of modern Greek Jewry as it came under the control of the Kingdom of Greece during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, it deals with the vicissitudes of ...
More
This book tells the story of modern Greek Jewry as it came under the control of the Kingdom of Greece during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, it deals with the vicissitudes of those Jews who held Greek citizenship during the interwar and wartime periods. Individual chapters address the participation of Greek and Palestinian Jews in the 1941 fighting with Italy and Germany, the roles of Jews in the Greek Resistance, aid, and rescue attempts, and the problems faced by Jews who returned from the camps and the mountains in the aftermath of the German retreat. The book focuses on the fate of one minority group of Greek citizens during the war and explores various aspects of its relations with the conquerors, the conquered, and concerned bystanders. It contains archival material and interviews with survivors.Less
This book tells the story of modern Greek Jewry as it came under the control of the Kingdom of Greece during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, it deals with the vicissitudes of those Jews who held Greek citizenship during the interwar and wartime periods. Individual chapters address the participation of Greek and Palestinian Jews in the 1941 fighting with Italy and Germany, the roles of Jews in the Greek Resistance, aid, and rescue attempts, and the problems faced by Jews who returned from the camps and the mountains in the aftermath of the German retreat. The book focuses on the fate of one minority group of Greek citizens during the war and explores various aspects of its relations with the conquerors, the conquered, and concerned bystanders. It contains archival material and interviews with survivors.
Karen Pinkus
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804760324
- eISBN:
- 9780804772877
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804760324.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
How can we account, in a rigorous way, for alchemy's ubiquity? We think of alchemy as the transformation of a base material (usually lead) into gold, but “alchemy” is a word in wide circulation in ...
More
How can we account, in a rigorous way, for alchemy's ubiquity? We think of alchemy as the transformation of a base material (usually lead) into gold, but “alchemy” is a word in wide circulation in everyday life, often called upon to fulfill a metaphoric duty as the magical transformation of materials. Almost every culture and time has had some form of alchemy. This book looks at alchemy, not at any one particular instance along the historical timeline, not as a practice or theory, not as a mode of redemption, but as a theoretical problem, linked to real gold and real production in the world. What emerges as the least common denominator or “intensive property” of alchemy is ambivalence, the impossible and paradoxical coexistence of two incompatible elements. The book moves from antiquity, through the golden age of alchemy in the Dutch seventeenth century, to conceptual art, to alternative fuels, stopping to think with writers such as Dante, Goethe, Hoffmann, the Grimm Brothers, George Eliot, and Marx. Eclectic and wide-ranging, it considers alchemy in relation to literary and visual theory in a comprehensive way.Less
How can we account, in a rigorous way, for alchemy's ubiquity? We think of alchemy as the transformation of a base material (usually lead) into gold, but “alchemy” is a word in wide circulation in everyday life, often called upon to fulfill a metaphoric duty as the magical transformation of materials. Almost every culture and time has had some form of alchemy. This book looks at alchemy, not at any one particular instance along the historical timeline, not as a practice or theory, not as a mode of redemption, but as a theoretical problem, linked to real gold and real production in the world. What emerges as the least common denominator or “intensive property” of alchemy is ambivalence, the impossible and paradoxical coexistence of two incompatible elements. The book moves from antiquity, through the golden age of alchemy in the Dutch seventeenth century, to conceptual art, to alternative fuels, stopping to think with writers such as Dante, Goethe, Hoffmann, the Grimm Brothers, George Eliot, and Marx. Eclectic and wide-ranging, it considers alchemy in relation to literary and visual theory in a comprehensive way.
Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781503603684
- eISBN:
- 9781503604391
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503603684.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This book reframes our understanding of single women and religious culture in colonial and nineteenth-century Latin America. Most works on women and early modern religion examine nuns, holy women, or ...
More
This book reframes our understanding of single women and religious culture in colonial and nineteenth-century Latin America. Most works on women and early modern religion examine nuns, holy women, or religious “deviants,” and emphasize rising hostility towards female autonomy as officials moved to enclose unmarried women and intensive female religiosity (e.g. mysticism, asceticism). This study takes a different approach and examines ordinary laywomen, particularly the broad population of non-elite women living outside of both marriage and convent. Much like other Spanish American cities, Guatemala’s colonial capital was a city of women due to labor and migration patterns with many single and widowed women heading households. Alone at the Altar argues that laboring single women forged complex alliances with the Church, which shaped local religion and the spiritual economy, late colonial reform efforts, and post-Independence politics in Guatemala. Through an analysis of approximately 550 wills, as well as a variety of other sources such as hagiographies, religious chronicles, and ecclesiastical records, this study moves beyond anecdotal evidence and exemplary case studies, to consider broader patterns and the ways in which gender, social, and marital status shaped early modern devotional networks. By extending its analysis to 1870, the book also illuminates how the alliances between laboring women and the Catholic Church became politicized in the Independence era and influenced the successful rise of popular conservatism in Guatemala.Less
This book reframes our understanding of single women and religious culture in colonial and nineteenth-century Latin America. Most works on women and early modern religion examine nuns, holy women, or religious “deviants,” and emphasize rising hostility towards female autonomy as officials moved to enclose unmarried women and intensive female religiosity (e.g. mysticism, asceticism). This study takes a different approach and examines ordinary laywomen, particularly the broad population of non-elite women living outside of both marriage and convent. Much like other Spanish American cities, Guatemala’s colonial capital was a city of women due to labor and migration patterns with many single and widowed women heading households. Alone at the Altar argues that laboring single women forged complex alliances with the Church, which shaped local religion and the spiritual economy, late colonial reform efforts, and post-Independence politics in Guatemala. Through an analysis of approximately 550 wills, as well as a variety of other sources such as hagiographies, religious chronicles, and ecclesiastical records, this study moves beyond anecdotal evidence and exemplary case studies, to consider broader patterns and the ways in which gender, social, and marital status shaped early modern devotional networks. By extending its analysis to 1870, the book also illuminates how the alliances between laboring women and the Catholic Church became politicized in the Independence era and influenced the successful rise of popular conservatism in Guatemala.
Heather F. Roller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780804787086
- eISBN:
- 9780804792127
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804787086.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This book reconstructs the world of eighteenth-century Amazonia to argue that indigenous mobility did not undermine settlement or community. In doing so, it revises long-standing views of native ...
More
This book reconstructs the world of eighteenth-century Amazonia to argue that indigenous mobility did not undermine settlement or community. In doing so, it revises long-standing views of native Amazonians as perpetual wanderers, lacking attachment to place and likely to flee at the slightest provocation. Instead, native Amazonians used traditional as well as new, colonial forms of spatial mobility to build enduring communities under the constraints of Portuguese colonialism. Canoeing and trekking through the interior to collect forest products or to contact independent native groups, Indians expanded their social networks, found economic opportunities, and brought new people and resources back to the colonial villages. When they were not participating in these state-sponsored expeditions, many Indians migrated between colonial settlements, seeking to be incorporated as productive members of their chosen communities. Drawing on largely untapped village-level sources, the book shows that mobile people remained attached to their home communities and committed to the preservation of their lands and assets. This argument still matters today, and not just to scholars, as rural communities in the Brazilian Amazon find themselves threatened by powerful outsiders who argue that their mobility invalidates their claims to territory.Less
This book reconstructs the world of eighteenth-century Amazonia to argue that indigenous mobility did not undermine settlement or community. In doing so, it revises long-standing views of native Amazonians as perpetual wanderers, lacking attachment to place and likely to flee at the slightest provocation. Instead, native Amazonians used traditional as well as new, colonial forms of spatial mobility to build enduring communities under the constraints of Portuguese colonialism. Canoeing and trekking through the interior to collect forest products or to contact independent native groups, Indians expanded their social networks, found economic opportunities, and brought new people and resources back to the colonial villages. When they were not participating in these state-sponsored expeditions, many Indians migrated between colonial settlements, seeking to be incorporated as productive members of their chosen communities. Drawing on largely untapped village-level sources, the book shows that mobile people remained attached to their home communities and committed to the preservation of their lands and assets. This argument still matters today, and not just to scholars, as rural communities in the Brazilian Amazon find themselves threatened by powerful outsiders who argue that their mobility invalidates their claims to territory.
Michelle Osterfeld Li
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804759755
- eISBN:
- 9780804771061
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804759755.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book draws from theories of the grotesque to examine many of the strange and extraordinary creatures and phenomena in the premodern Japanese tales called setsuwa. Grotesque representations in ...
More
This book draws from theories of the grotesque to examine many of the strange and extraordinary creatures and phenomena in the premodern Japanese tales called setsuwa. Grotesque representations in general typically direct our attention to unfinished and unrefined things; they are marked by an earthy sense of the body and an interest in the physical, and, because they have many meanings, can both sustain and undermine authority. The book aims to make sense of grotesque representations in setsuwa—animated detached body parts, unusual sexual encounters, demons and shape-shifting or otherwise wondrous animals—and, in a broader sense, to show what this type of critical focus can reveal about the mentality of Japanese people in the ancient, classical, and early medieval periods. It places Japanese tales of this nature, which have received little critical attention in English, within a sophisticated theoretical framework, focusing on them in the context of the historical periods in which they were created and compiled.Less
This book draws from theories of the grotesque to examine many of the strange and extraordinary creatures and phenomena in the premodern Japanese tales called setsuwa. Grotesque representations in general typically direct our attention to unfinished and unrefined things; they are marked by an earthy sense of the body and an interest in the physical, and, because they have many meanings, can both sustain and undermine authority. The book aims to make sense of grotesque representations in setsuwa—animated detached body parts, unusual sexual encounters, demons and shape-shifting or otherwise wondrous animals—and, in a broader sense, to show what this type of critical focus can reveal about the mentality of Japanese people in the ancient, classical, and early medieval periods. It places Japanese tales of this nature, which have received little critical attention in English, within a sophisticated theoretical framework, focusing on them in the context of the historical periods in which they were created and compiled.
Paul Hurh
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780804791144
- eISBN:
- 9780804794510
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804791144.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
American Terror interrogates the origins, contexts, and significance of the distinctive tone of terror within a major strain of early and nineteenth-century American literature. Contrary to critical ...
More
American Terror interrogates the origins, contexts, and significance of the distinctive tone of terror within a major strain of early and nineteenth-century American literature. Contrary to critical tendencies to literary terror as a rejection or contrary reaction to Enlightenment thought, this book draws upon new work in affect theory and the refreshed interest in American intellectual history to argue that American authors sought through it to produce the peculiar affect of scientific objectivity: the feeling of thinking. As what counts as knowledge comes to be aligned with a set of abstract universal rules and processes—the scientific method, propositional logic, geometric models of analysis—literary terror does not reject such progress as unfeeling, but rather sets out to describe it in feeling. Employing close reading in concert with original historical research, this book threads the story of terror’s relation to philosophy through three American writers who not only write terror, but write about terror. It begins with Jonathan Edwards’s theoretical defense of terror as a sensation of truth, develops through Edgar Allan Poe’s refinement of terror’s sensation of truth within an aesthetics of analytical methodology, and culminates in Herman Melville’s dramatization of the consequences exacted by this terrific perspective: a radically unknowable universe that everywhere refuses to relax its demands to be known. Through this critical repositioning of literary terror, American Terror charts how the dark strain of American literature carves a previously unaccounted for affective curve in the route of philosophy from Enlightenment idealism to poststructuralism.Less
American Terror interrogates the origins, contexts, and significance of the distinctive tone of terror within a major strain of early and nineteenth-century American literature. Contrary to critical tendencies to literary terror as a rejection or contrary reaction to Enlightenment thought, this book draws upon new work in affect theory and the refreshed interest in American intellectual history to argue that American authors sought through it to produce the peculiar affect of scientific objectivity: the feeling of thinking. As what counts as knowledge comes to be aligned with a set of abstract universal rules and processes—the scientific method, propositional logic, geometric models of analysis—literary terror does not reject such progress as unfeeling, but rather sets out to describe it in feeling. Employing close reading in concert with original historical research, this book threads the story of terror’s relation to philosophy through three American writers who not only write terror, but write about terror. It begins with Jonathan Edwards’s theoretical defense of terror as a sensation of truth, develops through Edgar Allan Poe’s refinement of terror’s sensation of truth within an aesthetics of analytical methodology, and culminates in Herman Melville’s dramatization of the consequences exacted by this terrific perspective: a radically unknowable universe that everywhere refuses to relax its demands to be known. Through this critical repositioning of literary terror, American Terror charts how the dark strain of American literature carves a previously unaccounted for affective curve in the route of philosophy from Enlightenment idealism to poststructuralism.
Craig Scott
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804781381
- eISBN:
- 9780804785631
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804781381.001.0001
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Organization Studies
Many organizations and their members devote extensive resources to promoting themselves and being known to others. However, not all organizations want or need their identity to be recognized and not ...
More
Many organizations and their members devote extensive resources to promoting themselves and being known to others. However, not all organizations want or need their identity to be recognized and not all organizational members want to have their membership or affiliation known by at least certain audiences. As we consider secret societies, anonymous support programs, hate groups, terrorist cells, covert military units, organized crime, gangs, parts of the underground economy, front organizations, stigmatized businesses, and even certain hidden enterprises tucked away in quiet office parks, we have to question what we think we know about the identity goals of organizations and their members. This book offers a framework for thinking about how a wide range of organizations and their members communicate their identity to relevant audiences. Considering the degree to which organizations strategically make themselves visible, the extent to which members express their identification with the organization, and whether the relevant audience is more mass/public or local, we can describe various “regions” in which these collectives reside-ranging from transparent and shaded to more shadowed and dark. Importantly, organizations operating in these spaces differ in how they and their members communicate identity to others. The perspective offered here helps draw attention to more shaded, shadowed, and dark collectives as important organizations in the contemporary landscape.Less
Many organizations and their members devote extensive resources to promoting themselves and being known to others. However, not all organizations want or need their identity to be recognized and not all organizational members want to have their membership or affiliation known by at least certain audiences. As we consider secret societies, anonymous support programs, hate groups, terrorist cells, covert military units, organized crime, gangs, parts of the underground economy, front organizations, stigmatized businesses, and even certain hidden enterprises tucked away in quiet office parks, we have to question what we think we know about the identity goals of organizations and their members. This book offers a framework for thinking about how a wide range of organizations and their members communicate their identity to relevant audiences. Considering the degree to which organizations strategically make themselves visible, the extent to which members express their identification with the organization, and whether the relevant audience is more mass/public or local, we can describe various “regions” in which these collectives reside-ranging from transparent and shaded to more shadowed and dark. Importantly, organizations operating in these spaces differ in how they and their members communicate identity to others. The perspective offered here helps draw attention to more shaded, shadowed, and dark collectives as important organizations in the contemporary landscape.
Jacques Khalip
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804758406
- eISBN:
- 9780804779685
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804758406.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Romanticism is often synonymous with models of identity and action that privilege individual empowerment and emotional autonomy, models that, in the last two decades, have been the focus of critiques ...
More
Romanticism is often synonymous with models of identity and action that privilege individual empowerment and emotional autonomy, models that, in the last two decades, have been the focus of critiques of Romanticism's purported self-absorption and alienation from politics. While such critiques have proven useful, they often draw attention to the conceptual or material tensions of romantic subjectivity while accepting a conspicuous, autonomous subject as a given, thus failing to appreciate the possibility that Romanticism sustains an alternative model of being, one anonymous and dispossessed, whose authority is irreducible to that of an easily recognizable, psychologized persona. This book goes against the grain of these dominant critical stances by examining anonymity as a model of being that is provocative for writers of the era because it resists the Enlightenment emphasis on transparency and self-disclosure. The author explores how romantic subjectivity, even as it negotiates with others in the social sphere, frequently rejects the demands of self-assertion and fails to prove its authenticity and coherence.Less
Romanticism is often synonymous with models of identity and action that privilege individual empowerment and emotional autonomy, models that, in the last two decades, have been the focus of critiques of Romanticism's purported self-absorption and alienation from politics. While such critiques have proven useful, they often draw attention to the conceptual or material tensions of romantic subjectivity while accepting a conspicuous, autonomous subject as a given, thus failing to appreciate the possibility that Romanticism sustains an alternative model of being, one anonymous and dispossessed, whose authority is irreducible to that of an easily recognizable, psychologized persona. This book goes against the grain of these dominant critical stances by examining anonymity as a model of being that is provocative for writers of the era because it resists the Enlightenment emphasis on transparency and self-disclosure. The author explores how romantic subjectivity, even as it negotiates with others in the social sphere, frequently rejects the demands of self-assertion and fails to prove its authenticity and coherence.
Robert Nemes
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780804795913
- eISBN:
- 9780804799126
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804795913.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book tells the story of eight men and women with deep roots in provincial Hungary. "Hungary" before the First World War meant the eastern half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the second largest ...
More
This book tells the story of eight men and women with deep roots in provincial Hungary. "Hungary" before the First World War meant the eastern half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the second largest state in Europe after Russia. Hungary then was as large as Italy and more populous than Spain. Another Hungary lingers in prewar Hungary's small towns and studies their inhabitants, asking how they earned a living, what they thought about politics, and how they got along with their neighbors, including those who might speak a different language or practice a religion different from their own. This book argues that the history of small towns in Eastern Europe matters. They were not just a dull reflection of the capital city or of western Europe, but interesting and important in their own right. They mattered economically, they mattered culturally, and they mattered politically; their history deserves our attention. Each of the book's eight chapters examines someone born in a small town but eager to act upon a wider stage. They include a garrulous aristocrat, a misunderstood merchant, a tobacco enthusiast, and other figures from the nineteenth-century provinces. One of the central premises of this book is that surprising, interesting, and valuable ideas can sometimes emerge from the most unlikely of places.Less
This book tells the story of eight men and women with deep roots in provincial Hungary. "Hungary" before the First World War meant the eastern half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the second largest state in Europe after Russia. Hungary then was as large as Italy and more populous than Spain. Another Hungary lingers in prewar Hungary's small towns and studies their inhabitants, asking how they earned a living, what they thought about politics, and how they got along with their neighbors, including those who might speak a different language or practice a religion different from their own. This book argues that the history of small towns in Eastern Europe matters. They were not just a dull reflection of the capital city or of western Europe, but interesting and important in their own right. They mattered economically, they mattered culturally, and they mattered politically; their history deserves our attention. Each of the book's eight chapters examines someone born in a small town but eager to act upon a wider stage. They include a garrulous aristocrat, a misunderstood merchant, a tobacco enthusiast, and other figures from the nineteenth-century provinces. One of the central premises of this book is that surprising, interesting, and valuable ideas can sometimes emerge from the most unlikely of places.
Clémence Boulouque
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781503612006
- eISBN:
- 9781503613119
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503612006.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSStanford, CaliforniaSTANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSStanford, California© 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.All rights reserved.No part of this ...
More
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSStanford, CaliforniaSTANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSStanford, California© 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press....Less
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Stanford, California
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Stanford, California
© 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press....
Ira Chernus
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804758079
- eISBN:
- 9780804768467
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804758079.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
For eight years President Dwight Eisenhower claimed to pursue peace and national security. Yet his policies entrenched the United States in a seemingly permanent cold war, a spiraling nuclear arms ...
More
For eight years President Dwight Eisenhower claimed to pursue peace and national security. Yet his policies entrenched the United States in a seemingly permanent cold war, a spiraling nuclear arms race, and a deepening state of national insecurity. This book uncovers the key to this paradox in Eisenhower's unwavering commitment to a consistent way of talking, in private as well as in public, about the cold war rivalry. Contrary to what most historians have concluded, Eisenhower never aimed at any genuine rapprochement with the Soviet Union. The discourse always assumed that the United States would forever face an enemy bent on destroying it, making national insecurity a permanent way of life. The “peace” he sought was only an endless process of managing apocalyptic threats, a permanent state of “apocalypse management,” intended to give the United States unchallenged advantage in every arena of the cold war. The goal and the discourse that supported it were inherently self-defeating. Yet the discourse is Eisenhower's most enduring legacy, for it has shaped the United States' foreign policy ever since, leaving it still a national insecurity state.Less
For eight years President Dwight Eisenhower claimed to pursue peace and national security. Yet his policies entrenched the United States in a seemingly permanent cold war, a spiraling nuclear arms race, and a deepening state of national insecurity. This book uncovers the key to this paradox in Eisenhower's unwavering commitment to a consistent way of talking, in private as well as in public, about the cold war rivalry. Contrary to what most historians have concluded, Eisenhower never aimed at any genuine rapprochement with the Soviet Union. The discourse always assumed that the United States would forever face an enemy bent on destroying it, making national insecurity a permanent way of life. The “peace” he sought was only an endless process of managing apocalyptic threats, a permanent state of “apocalypse management,” intended to give the United States unchallenged advantage in every arena of the cold war. The goal and the discourse that supported it were inherently self-defeating. Yet the discourse is Eisenhower's most enduring legacy, for it has shaped the United States' foreign policy ever since, leaving it still a national insecurity state.
Osama Abi-Mershed
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804769099
- eISBN:
- 9780804774727
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804769099.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
Between 1830 and 1870, French army officers serving in the colonial Offices of Arab Affairs profoundly altered the course of political decision-making in Algeria. Guided by the modernizing ideologies ...
More
Between 1830 and 1870, French army officers serving in the colonial Offices of Arab Affairs profoundly altered the course of political decision-making in Algeria. Guided by the modernizing ideologies of the Saint-Simonian school in their development and implementation of colonial policy, the officers articulated a new doctrine and framework for governing the Muslim and European populations of Algeria. This book shows the evolution of this civilizing mission in Algeria, illustrates how these forty years were decisive in shaping the principal ideological tenets in French colonization of the region, and offers a rethinking of nineteenth-century French colonial history. It reveals not only what the rise of Europe implied for the cultural identities of non-elite Middle Easterners and North Africans, but also what dynamics were involved in the imposition or local adoptions of European cultural norms, and how the colonial encounter impacted the cultural identities of the colonizers themselves.Less
Between 1830 and 1870, French army officers serving in the colonial Offices of Arab Affairs profoundly altered the course of political decision-making in Algeria. Guided by the modernizing ideologies of the Saint-Simonian school in their development and implementation of colonial policy, the officers articulated a new doctrine and framework for governing the Muslim and European populations of Algeria. This book shows the evolution of this civilizing mission in Algeria, illustrates how these forty years were decisive in shaping the principal ideological tenets in French colonization of the region, and offers a rethinking of nineteenth-century French colonial history. It reveals not only what the rise of Europe implied for the cultural identities of non-elite Middle Easterners and North Africans, but also what dynamics were involved in the imposition or local adoptions of European cultural norms, and how the colonial encounter impacted the cultural identities of the colonizers themselves.
The Sultan's Communists
The Dangers of Poetry
Making History in Iran
The Practice of Misuse
Unexpected Alliances
Mediterranean Enlightenment
Poetic Force
Architects of Austerity
Common Knowledge?
