Fire in the Placa: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco
Author: By Dorothy Noyes Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic TitleFire in the Placa is the first full-length study in English of the Patum, a Corpus Christi fire festival unique to Berga, Catalonia, Spain, celebrated annually since the seventeenth century. Participants in the festival are transformed through drink, sleep deprivation, crowding, constant motion, and the smoke and sparks of close-range firecrackers into passionate members of a precarious body politic. Combining richly layered symbolism with intense bodily expression, the Patum has long served as a grassroots equivalent of grand social theory; it moves from a representation of social divisions to a forcible communion among them.The Patum's dancing effigiesgiants, dwarves, Turks and Christian knights, devils and angels, a crowned eagle, and two flaming mule-dragonshave provided local allegories for a long series of political conflicts, but the festival obscures its own messages in smoke and motion to enable a temporary merging of opposites. Activists in the 1970s transition to democracy in Spain took the Patum as a model of how old adversaries might collaborate: it helped to shape the mix of assertiveness in performance and compromise in practice that is typical of contemporary Catalan nationalism. The Patum became a focus of resistance to the Franco regime and drew visitors from all over Catalonia, serving as a rehearsal for the mass protests in Barcelona. Later, it provided the newly autonomous region with a vehicle for integrating immigrants and a vocabulary of belonging, culminating in the Patum-derived devils of the closing ceremonies of the 1992 Olympic games.Today, as mines and factories have closed in Berga, the Patum serves as an arena in which provincial Catalans model their relationship to Barcelona, Europe, and the world, and reflects their ambivalence about the choices open to them. Seeking a third way between tourism and terrorism, provincial towns like Berga show us the future of all local communities under globalization.In collective performances such as the Patum, tensions between cultural and political representation are made visible, and the gap between aspiration and possibility is both bridged and acknowledged. In this exceptionally rich ethnographic study, Dorothy Noyes explores the predicament of provincial communities striving to overcome internal conflict and participate in a wider world.
Author: Monica F. Cohen
In this internet age where intellectual property rights are harder to control, Columbia professor Monica Cohen looks back to the popular novels and plays of the Victorian Age when copyright laws were just being formed and plagiarism was all too common.
Author: Desmond S. King
Why have American policies failed to reduce the racial inequalities still pervasive throughout the nation? Has President Barack Obama defined new political approaches to race that might spur unity and progress? Still a House Divided examines the enduring divisions of American racial politics and how these conflicts have been shaped by distinct political alliances and their competing race policies. Combining deep historical knowledge with a detailed exploration of such issues as housing, employment, criminal justice, multiracial census categories, immigration, voting in majority-minority districts, and school vouchers, Desmond King and Rogers Smith assess the significance of President Obama's election to the White House and the prospects for achieving constructive racial policies for America's future. Offering a fresh perspective on the networks of governing institutions, political groups, and political actors that influence the structure of American racial politics, King and Smith identify three distinct periods of opposing racial policy coalitions in American history. The authors investigate how today's alliances pit color-blind and race-conscious approaches against one another, contributing to political polarization and distorted policymaking. Contending that President Obama has so far inadequately confronted partisan divisions over race, the authors call for all sides to recognize the need for a balance of policy measures if America is to ever cease being a nation divided. Presenting a powerful account of American political alliances and their contending racial agendas, Still a House Divided sheds light on a policy path vital to the country's future.
Author: Ted Patterson with contributions by Dean Smith photographs by Edwin H. Remsberg forewords by Michael Gibbons and Raymond Berry
The second edition of Ted Pattersons illustrated history of football in Baltimore continues the story of the Ravens' successfrom their first Super Bowl victory in 2001 to the emotional parade through downtown Baltimore after winning Super Bowl XLVII. Patterson is joined by Baltimore poet and sports aficionado Dean Smith, whose new chapters capture the energy of Purple Fridays, the larger-than-life personalities of Ray Lewis, Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden, Jamal Lewis, Matt Stover, Ed Reed, and Joe Flacco, and the city's embrace of the Ravens as a reflection of Baltimore itself. Football in Baltimore is a tour of one of the world's premier collections of Baltimore sports memorabiliahighlighting memorable games and players and exploring a pop culture that surrounded and has survived them. Patterson moved to Baltimore in what turned out to be the final decade of the Baltimore Colts and has amassed a remarkable collection of items that both collectors and sports fans will enjoy. Patterson introduces us to the teams and early stars of Johns Hopkins and Morgan State; Army-Navy games in old Municipal Stadium; high-school rivalries like City-Poly, LoyolaCalvert Hall, Gilman-McDonogh, and the great years of Patterson High; the original Colts (colors silver and green); and, at considerable length, the legendary Baltimore Colts of Johnny Unitas, Lenny Moore, Raymond Berry, Alan the Horse Ameche, Artie Donovan, Bert Jones, and Lydell Mitchell. He includes the next chapters in this eventful story: the fight to bring pro football back to the city, the dawn of the Ravens era, and the building of a new football stadium in downtown Baltimore.
This is the first comprehensive study of the remarkably rich tradition of womens writing that flourished in Italy between the fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries Virginia Cox documents this tradition and both explains its character and scope and offers a new hypothesis on the reasons for its emergence and decline Cox combines fresh scholarship with a revisionist argument that overturns existing historical paradigms for the chronology of early modern Italian womens writing and questions the historiographical commonplace that the tradition was brought to an end by the Counter Reformation Using a comparative analysis of womens activities as artists musicians composers and actresses Cox locates womens writing in its broader contexts and considers how gender reflects and reinvents conventional narratives of literary change
Author: Daniel L. Wuebben
The proliferation of electric communication and power networks have drawn wires through American landscapes like vines through untended gardens since 1844. But these wire networks are more than merely the tools and infrastructure required to send electric messages and power between distinct places; the iconic lines themselves send powerful messages. The wiry webs above our heads and the towers rhythmically striding along the horizon symbolize the ambiguous effects of widespread industrialization and the shifting values of electricity and landscape in the American mind. InPower-Lined Daniel L. Wuebben weaves together personal narrative, historical research, cultural analysis, and social science toprovide a sweeping investigation of the varied influenceof overhead wires on the American landscape and the American mind. Wuebben shows that overhead wiresfrom Morses telegraph to our high-voltage gridnot only carry electricity between American places but also create electrified spaces that signify and complicate notions of technology, nature, progress, and, most recently, renewable energy infrastructure. Power-Lined exposes the subtle influences wrought by the wiring of the nation and shows that, even in this age of wireless devices, perceptions of overhead lines may bekey in progressing toward amore sustainable energy future.
Author: Paul M. Churchland
In <I>Matter and Consciousness</I>, Paul Churchland presents a concise and contemporary overview of the philosophical issues surrounding the mind and explains the main theories and philosophical positions that have been proposed to solve them. Making the case for the relevance of theoretical and experimental results in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence for the philosophy of mind, Churchland reviews current developments in the cognitive sciences and offers a clear and accessible account of the connections to philosophy of mind.For this third edition, the text has been updated and revised throughout. The changes range from references to the iPhone's "Siri" to expanded discussions of the work of such contemporary philosophers as David Chalmers, John Searle, and Thomas Nagel. Churchland describes new research in evolution, genetics, and visual neuroscience, among other areas, arguing that the philosophical significance of these new findings lies in the support they tend to give to the reductive and eliminative versions of materialism. <I>Matter and Consciousness</I>, written by the most distinguished theorist and commentator in the field, offers an authoritative summary and sourcebook for issues in philosophy of mind. It is suitable for use as an introductory undergraduate text.
Author: By Vasiliki P. Neofotistos
The Risk of War focuses on practices and performances of everyday life across ethnonational borders during the six-month armed conflict in 2001 between Macedonian government forces and the Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA)a conflict initiated by the NLA with the proclaimed purpose of securing greater rights for the Albanian community in Macedonia and terminated by the internationally brokered Ohrid Framework Agreement. Anthropologist Vasiliki P. Neofotistos provides an ethnographic account of the ways middle- and working-class Albanian and Macedonian noncombatants in Macedonia's capital city, Skopje, went about their daily lives during the conflict, when fear and uncertainty regarding their existence and the viability of the state were intense and widespread.Neofotistos finds that, rather than passively observing the international community's efforts to manage the political crisis, members of the Macedonian and Albanian communities responded with resilience and wit to disruptive and threatening changes in social structure, intensely negotiated relationships of power, and promoted indeterminacy on the level of the everyday as a sense of impending war enfolded the capital. More broadly, The Risk of War helps us better understand how postindependence Macedonia has managed to escape civil bloodshed despite high political volatility, acute ethno-nationalist rivalries, and unrelenting external pressures exerted by neighboring countries.
Author: W. Redfern
Sartre's friend and sometime rival, Paul Nizan was a prototype of the angry young man. Ideologically a Marxist, politically a Communist, professionally a writer, endowedSartre concededwith a sharper mind and greater literary ability than his own, Nizan diagnosed the ills of French society in the 1930's. His writings, vilified by the Party he left in September 1939, are being rediscovered in France. W. D. Redfern gives now the first full-length appraisal in English of his life and work.Nizan as a writer and a critical intelligence is seen in Mr. Redfern's analysis of his radical imagination and its deployment in his novels, polemical essays, journalism, and correspondence. His place among his contemporaries is also assessed, Mr. Redfern thus illuminating the political and literary worlds of the philosophical rebels (Berl, Politzer, Friedmann), the Communists and idealists (Aragon, Malraux, Weil) in Paris during the 1920s and 1930's.Originally published in 1972.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Mark Denny
Have you ever wondered how stealth planes achieve invisibility, how sunken ships are found, or how fishermen track schools of fish in vast expanses of ocean? Radar and sonar echolocationa simple matter of sending, receiving, and processing signals. Weaving history with simple science, Mark Denny deftly reveals the world of radar and sonar to the curious reader, technology buff, and expert alike. He begins with an early history of the Chain Home radar system used during World War II and then provides accessible and engaging explanations of the physics that make signal processing possible. Basic diagrams and formulas show how electromagnetic and sound waves are transmitted, received, and converted into images, allowing you to literally see in the dark. A section on bioacoustic echolocation, with a focus on the superior sonar systems of bats and whales and a discussion of the advanced technology of next-generation airborne signal processors, opens the imagination to fascinating possibilities for the future.