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This innovative interdisciplinary study compares the uses of painting in literary texts and films. In developing a framework of four types of ekphrasis, the author argues for the expansion of the concept of ekphrasis by demonstrating its applicability as interpretive tool to films about the visual arts and artists. Analyzing selected works of art by Goya, Rembrandt, and Vermeer and their ekphrastic treatment in various texts and films, this book examines how the medium of ekphrasis affects the representation of the visual arts in order to show what the differences imply about issues such as gender roles and the function of art for the construction of a personal or social identity. Because of its highly cross-disciplinary nature, this book is of interest not only to scholars of literature and aesthetics, but also for scholars of film studies. By providing an innovative approach to discussing non-documentary films about artists, the author shows that ekphrasis is a useful tool for exploring both aesthetic concerns and ideological issues in film. This study also addresses art historians as it deals with the reception of major artists in European literature and film throughout the 20th century.
Editor:
This fourth English volume of The China Economy Yearbook provides an in-depth analysis of China’s economy coping with a World-wide recession and preparing for the future. Written by leading economic researchers from China’s leading economic research institutions, the articles in the yearbook examine key aspects of China’s economic performance, including macroeconomic adjustment, inflation control, the financial system, public finance, foreign trade, agriculture, industry, and real estate. They provide a detailed description of China’s economy during the year and valuable insights into the reasons for China’s successes and failures in addressing emerging challenges facing the Chinese economy.
Cyberpunk at the Intersection of the Postmodern and Science Fiction
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Virtual Geographies is the first detailed study to offer a working definition of cyberpunk within the postmodern force field. Cyberpunk emerges as a new generic cluster within science fiction, one that has spawned many offspring in such domains as film, music, and feminism. Its central features are its adherence to a version of virtual space and a deconstructivist, punk attitude towards (high) culture, modernity, the human body and technology, from computers to prosthetics. The main proponents of cyberpunk are analyzed in depth along with the virtual landscapes they have created - William Gibson’s Cyberspace, Pat Cadigan’s Mindscapes and Neal Stephenson’s Metaverse. Virtual reality is examined closely in all its aspects, from the characteristic narrative constructions employed to the esthetic implications of the ‘virtual sublime’ and its postmodern potential as a discursive mode. With its interdisciplinary approach Virtual Geographies opens up fresh perspectives for scholars interested in the interaction between popular culture and mainstream literature. At the same time, the science fiction fan will be taken beyond the conventional boundaries of the genre into such revitalizing domains as postmodern architecture and literature, and into cutting-edge aspects of science and social thought.
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In a seemingly offhand, often overlooked comment, Karl Marx deemed ‘human corporeal organisation’ the ‘first fact of human history’. Following Marx’s corporeal turn and pursuing the radical implications of his corporeal insight, this book undertakes a reconstruction of the corporeal foundations of historical materialism. Part I exposes the corporeal roots of Marx’s materialist conception of history and historical-materialist Wissenschaft. Part II attempts a historical-materialist mapping of human corporeal organisation. Suggesting how to approach human histories up from their corporeal foundations, Part III elaborates historical-materialism as ‘corporeal semiotics’. Part IV, a case study of Marx’s critique of capitalist socio-economic and cultural forms, reveals the corporeal foundations of that critique and the corporeal depth of his vision of human freedom and dignity.
An Examination of Its Cultural Relation and Heteroglossia
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This book attempts to investigate two strands in a single work: ‘apocalyptic Paul’ and ‘intertextuality’. First, what does ‘apocalyptic Paul’ mean? Is it synonymous to eschatology as a theological notion, or the end-time mystery? Many seminal works have delved into the intriguing yet unorganized notion of the ‘apocalyptic’. Instead of attempting to provide a universal definition of the ‘apocalyptic’, the author presents his understanding of the phenomenon, particularly in the cultural realm. The author contends that ‘apocalyptic’ is neither all about the end-time event nor merely a literary genre, but an interpretive lens to understand the world and social phenomena—one that is shaped and developed through culture and society. Accordingly, the term ‘apocalyptic Paul’ implies how Paul views and understands the world, history, and supernatural phenomena through interaction with his cultural texts and context. Second, the author also suggests that ‘intertextuality’ is not only about comparative literature study. Rather, intertextuality refers to cultural semiotics: a sign system to deliver the meaning of text. Based on this notion of intertextuality, the author interprets how Paul envisages multiple phenomena (heavenly ascent, resurrection, afterlife, the origins of sin, and two ages) within his cultural context.
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For decades postwar Austrian literature has been measured against and moulded into a series of generic categories and grand cultural narratives, from nostalgic ‘restoration’ literature of the 1950s through the socially critical ‘anti-Heimat’ novel to recent literary reckonings with Austria’s Nazi past. Peering through the lens of film adaptation, this book rattles the generic shackles imposed by literary history and provides an entirely new critical perspective on Austrian literature. Its original methodological approach challenges the primacy of written sources in existing scholarship and uses the distortions generated by the shift in medium as a productive starting point for literary analysis. Five case studies approach canonical texts in post-war Austrian literature by Gerhard Fritsch, Franz Innerhofer, Gerhard Roth, Elfriede Jelinek, and Robert Schindel, through close readings of their cinematic adaptations, concentrating on key areas of narratological concern: plot, narrative perspective, authorship, and post-modern ontologies. Setting the texts within the historical, cultural and political discourses that define the ‘Alpine Republic’, this study investigates fundamental aspects of Austrian national identity, such as its Habsburg and National Socialist legacies.
Between Disruption and Encounter
Global Catholicism: Between Disruption and Encounter opens the Studies in Global Catholicism series with an examination of a worldwide religious institution that up to now has been more globally extensive than truly globalized. It explores the world historical and theological meaning of de-Europeanization with church data by world region. Readers get an in-depth look at the institutional and theological capacity and limits of the cosmopolitan reality of today’s Catholic Church. Its integrated perspective, grounded in cultural and political history together with an ecclesiology of post-Vatican II Catholicism, offers a new way to approach today’s emerging post-colonial, inter-cultural Global Catholicism as centuries-old trajectories are disrupted and pressing new realities demand original responses.
Medieval Archaeology in the Soviet Republic of Moldova: Between State Propaganda and Scholarly Endeavor
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In The Slavic Dossier, Iurie Stamati’s objective is to understand the reasons for the emergence of two different discourses on the place of the Slavs on the territory of Moldova and their role in the genesis of Moldovans and their culture during the medieval period in the Soviet archaeology. His analysis goes beyond the utilitarian perception of Soviet archeology. To achieve this, Stamati not only questions the political contexts in which these discourses emerged, but also looks at the history of the Moldovan archaeological field, personal profiles of archaeologists, their theoretical and ideological attachment, relationships and interactions with each other inside and outside the archaeological field.
African Studies at the Crossroads
This book emerges at a time when critical race studies, postcolonial thought, and decolonial theory are under enormous pressure as part of a global conservative backlash. However, this is also an exciting moment, where new horizons of knowledge appear and new epistemic practices (e.g. symmetry, collaboration, undisciplining) gain traction. Through our critical engagements with structural, relational, and personal aspects of knowing and unknowing we work towards a greater multiplicity of knowledges and practices. Calling into question the asymmetrical global economy of knowledge and its uneven division of intellectual labour, our interdisciplinary volume explores what a decolonial horizon could entail for African Studies at the crossroads.

Contributors are Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Eric A. Anchimbe, Edwin Asa Adjei, Susan Arndt, Muyiwa Falaiye, Katharina Greven, Christine Hanke, Amanda Hlengwa, Catherine Kiprop, Elísio Macamo, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Cassandra Mark-Thiesen, Lena Naumann, Thando Njovane, Samuel Ntewusu, Anthony Okeregbe, Zandisiwe Radebe, Elelwani Ramugondo, Eleanor Schaumann
In Moral Pressure for Responsible Globalization, Sherrie M. Steiner offers an account of religious diplomacy with the G8, G7 and G20 to evoke new possibilities in an effort to influence globalization to become more equitable and sustainable. Commonly portrayed as ‘out of control’, globalization is considered here as a political process that can be redirected to avoid the tragedy of the global commons.
The secularization tradition of religion depicts faith-based public engagement as dangerous. Making use of historical materials from faith-based G-plus System shadow summits (2005-2017), Steiner provides ample information to arrive at an interpretation that significantly differs from traditional accounts. Using broader scope conditions, Steiner considers how human induced environmental changes contribute to religious resurgence under conditions of weakening nation states.