LITMIR.BIZ

Between 1500 and 1700, London grew from a minor national capital to the largest city in Europe. The defining period of growth was the period from 1550 to 1650, the midpoint of which coincided with the end of Elizabeth I's reign and the height of Shakespeare's theatrical career. In Material London, ca. 1600 , Lena Cowen Orlin and a distinguished group of social, intellectual, urban, architectural, and agrarian historians, archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and literary critics explore the ideas, structures, and practices that distinguished London before the Great Fire, basing their investigations on the material traces in artifacts, playtexts, documents, graphic arts, and archaeological remains. In order to evoke «material London, ca. 1600,» each scholar examines a different aspect of one of the great world cities at a critical moment in Western history. Several chapters give broad panoramic and authoritative views: what architectural forms characterized the built city around 1600; how the public theatre established its claim on the city; how London's citizens incorporated the new commercialism of their culture into their moral views. Other essays offer sharply focused studies: how Irish mantles were adopted as elite fashions in the hybrid culture of the court; how the city authorities clashed with the church hierarchy over the building of a small bookshop; how London figured in Ben Jonson's exploration of the role of the poet. Although all the authors situate the material world of early modern London—its objects, products, literatures, built environment, and economic practices—in its broader political and cultural contexts, provocative debates and exchanges remain both within and between the essays as to what constitutes «material London, ca. 1600.»

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Tourism—one of the world's largest industries—has long been appreciated for its economic benefits, but in this volume tourism receives a unique systematic scrutiny as a medium for cultural exchange. Modern developments in technology and industry, together with masterful advertising, have created temporarily leisured people with the desire and the means to travel. They often in turn effect profound cultural change in the places they visit, and the contributors to this work all attend to the impact these «guests» have on their «hosts.» In contrast to the dramatic economic transformations, the social repercussions of tourism are subtle and often recognized only by the indigenous peoples themselves and by the anthropologists who have studied them before and after the introduction of tourism. The case studies in Hosts and Guests examine the five types of tourism—historical, cultural, ethnic, environmental, and recreational—and their impact on diverse societies over a broad geographical range

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The legislative attack on public sector unionism that gave rise to the uproar in Wisconsin and other union strongholds in 2011 was not just a reaction to the contemporary economic difficulties faced by the government. Rather, it was the result of a longstanding political and ideological hostility to the very idea of trade unionism put forward by a conservative movement whose roots go as far back as the Haymarket Riot of 1886. The controversy in Madison and other state capitals reveals that labor's status and power has always been at the core of American conservatism, today as well as a century ago. The Right and Labor in America explores the multifaceted history and range of conservative hostility toward unionism, opening the door to a fascinating set of individuals, movements, and institutions that help explain why, in much of the popular imagination, union leaders are always «bosses» and trade union organizers are nothing short of «thugs.» The contributors to this volume explore conservative thought about unions, in particular the ideological impulses, rhetorical strategies, and political efforts that conservatives have deployed to challenge unions as a force in U.S. economic and political life over the century. Among the many contemporary books on American parties, personalities, and elections that try to explain why political disputes are so divisive, this collection of original and innovative essays is essential reading.

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The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw both the consolidation of American print culture and the establishment of an African American literary tradition, yet the two are too rarely considered in tandem. In this landmark volume, a stellar group of established and emerging scholars ranges over periods, locations, and media to explore African Americans' diverse contributions to early American print culture, both on the page and off. The book's chapters consider domestic novels and gallows narratives, Francophone poetry and engravings of Liberia, transatlantic lyrics and San Francisco newspapers. Together, they consider how close attention to the archive can expand the study of African American literature well beyond matters of authorship to include issues of editing, illustration, circulation, and reading—and how this expansion can enrich and transform the study of print culture more generally.

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When countries discover that they possess large deposits of oil and natural gas, the news is usually welcome. Yet, paradoxically, if they rely on their wealth of natural resources, they often set down a path of poor economic performance and governance challenges. Only a few resource-rich countries have managed to develop their economies fully and provide a better and sustainable standard of living for large segments of their populations. This phenomenon, known as the resource curse, is a core challenge for energy-exporting states. Beyond the Resource Curse focuses on this relationship between natural wealth and economic security, discussing the particular pitfalls and consistent perils facing oil- and gas-exporting states. The contributors to this volume look beyond the standard fields of research related to the resource curse. They also shed new light on the specific developmental problems of resource-rich exporting states around the globe, including Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cambodia, East Timor, Iran, Norway, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Policy makers and academics think of energy security solely in terms of the interests of energy importers. Beyond the Resource Curse shows that the constant volatility in energy markets creates energy security challenges for exporters as well.

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During the thirteenth century, the widespread conviction that the Christian lands in Syria and Palestine were of utmost importance to Christendom, and that their loss was a sure sign of God's displeasure with Christian society, pervaded nearly all levels of thought. Yet this same society faced other crises: religious dissent and unorthodox beliefs were proliferating in western Europe, and the powers exercised, or claimed, by the kings of Europe were growing rapidly. The sources presented here illustrate the rising criticism of the changing Crusade idea. They reflect a sharpened awareness among Europeans of themselves as a community of Christians and the slow beginnings of the secular culture and political organization of Europe.

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The New Chronology of Iron Age Gordion argues that the history and archaeology of the site of Gordion, in central Turkey, have been misunderstood since the beginning of its excavation in the 1950s. The first excavation director, Rodney Young, found evidence for substantial destruction during the first decade of fieldwork; this was interpreted as proof that Gordion had been destroyed ca. 700 B.C. by the Kimmerians, a group of invaders from the Caucusus/Black Sea region, as attested in several ancient literary sources. During the last decade, however, renewed research on the archaeological evidence, within, above, and below the destruction level indicated that the catastrophe that destroyed much of Gordion occurred 100 years earlier, in 800 B.C., and was the result of a fire that quickly got out of control rather than a foreign invasion. This discovery requires a reassessment of Anatolian history during the entire first millennium B.C. and has serious implications for our understanding of the surrounding regions, such as Assyria, Syria, Greece, and Urartu, among others. The New Chronology of Iron Age Gordion is the product of a multidisciplinary research program, with dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating working hand in hand with textual and artifact analysis, each of which is treated in a separate chapter in this volume. All of these categories of evidence point to the same conclusion and demonstrate that we need to look at Gordion, and much of the ancient Near East, in a completely new way. University Museum Monograph, 133

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Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Typically residing in areas of concentrated urban poverty, too many young black men are trapped in a horrific cycle that includes active discrimination, unemployment, violence, crime, prison, and early death. This toxic mixture has given rise to wider stereotypes that limit the social capital of all young black males. Edited and with an introductory chapter by sociologist Elijah Anderson, the essays in Against the Wall describe how the young black man has come to be identified publicly with crime and violence. In reaction to his sense of rejection, he may place an exaggerated emphasis on the integrity of his self-expression in clothing and demeanor by adopting the fashions of the «street.» To those deeply invested in and associated with the dominant culture, his attitude is perceived as profoundly oppositional. His presence in public gathering places becomes disturbing to others, and the stereotype of the dangerous young black male is perpetuated and strengthened. To understand the origin of the problem and the prospects of the black inner-city male, it is essential to distinguish his experience from that of his pre-Civil Rights Movement forebears. In the 1950s, as militant black people increasingly emerged to challenge the system, the figure of the black male became more ambiguous and fearsome. And while this activism did have the positive effect of creating opportunities for the black middle class who fled from the ghettos, those who remained faced an increasingly desperate climate. Featuring a foreword by Cornel West and sixteen original essays by contributors including William Julius Wilson, Gerald D. Jaynes, Douglas S. Massey, and Peter Edelman, Against the Wall illustrates how social distance increases as alienation and marginalization within the black male underclass persist, thereby deepening the country's racial divide.

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In the Western world, the modern view of childhood as a space protected from broader adult society first became a dominant social vision during the nineteenth century. Many of the West's sharpest portrayals of children in literature and the arts emerged at that time in both Europe and the United States and continue to organize our perceptions and sensibilities to this day. But that childhood is now being recreated. Many social and political developments since the end of the World War II have fundamentally altered the lives children lead and are now beginning to transform conceptions of childhood. Reinventing Childhood After World War II brings together seven prominent historians of modern childhood to identify precisely what has changed in children's lives and why. Topics range from youth culture to children's rights; from changing definitions of age to nontraditional families; from parenting styles to how American experiences compare with those of the rest of the Western world. Taken together, the essays argue that children's experiences have changed in such dramatic and important ways since 1945 that parents, other adults, and girls and boys themselves have had to reinvent almost every aspect of childhood. Reinventing Childhood After World War II presents a striking interpretation of the nature and status of childhood that will be essential to students and scholars of childhood, as well as policy makers, educators, parents, and all those concerned with the lives of children in the world today.

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In the United States today many people are as likely to identify themselves by their ethnicity or region as by their nationality. In this country with its diversity and inequalities, can there be a shared public culture? Is there an unbridgeable gap between cultural variety and civic unity, or can public forms of expression provide an opportunity for Americans to come together as a people? In Public Culture: Diversity, Democracy, and Community in the United States , an interdisciplinary group of scholars addresses these questions while considering the state of American public culture over the past one hundred years. From medicine shows to the Internet, from the Los Angeles Plaza to the Las Vegas Strip, from the commemoration of the Oklahoma City bombing to television programming after 9/11, public sights and scenes provide ways to negotiate new forms of belonging in a diverse, postmodern community. By analyzing these cultural phenomena, the essays in this volume reveal how mass media, consumerism, increased privatization of space, and growing political polarization have transformed public culture and the very notion of the American public. Focusing on four central themes—public action, public image, public space, and public identity—and approaching shared culture from a range of disciplines—including mass communication, history, sociology, urban studies, ethnic studies, and cultural studies— Public Culture offers refreshing perspectives on a subject of perennial significance.

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