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Subject Area: Cultural History

Argentinean Cultural Production During the Neoliberal Years (1989-2001)
 Hortiguera, Hugo
2007 0-7734-5348-2 248 pages
This groundbreaking collection of essays examines Argentine cultural production during the 1989-2001 period, which coincided with the implementation of neoliberalism under President Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999) and his successor, Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001), thereby providing an overview of the way Argentine writers, filmmakers, musicians and media reacted to this centrality of the market forces. This collection will be of interest to scholars of Latin American Cultural Studies, Hispanic Studies, Film Studies as well as those of Comparative Literature.

El Cid and King Arthur as Hegemonic Myths in the Christianization of the Iberian Peninsula and Britain
 Yanes-Fernandez, Inti
2023 1-4955-1088-3 624 pages
"The argument of the book demonstrates not only how Iberian and British authors adapt these two key historical figures as paradigmatic Christian heroes of historical importance. It also argues that both legends draw on tales and images of earlier iconic figures from the Greco-Roman tradition, the military saints of Byzantium." -Jennifer Goodman Wollock (Foreword)

Porgy, a Play about the Gullah Culture: A Neglected Masterpiece in the History of the American Theater
 Phillips, George Harwood
2023 1-4955-1120-0 220 pages
"To declare that Porgy, a play that has received only limited attention from critics and scholars, is one of the great works of American musical theater may seem hyperbolic. The following chapters, however, will present evidence supporting that contention. The book begins with an overview of the history of the people who came to reside in what became known as South Carolina. Emphasis is given to the Gullah, an African-American community that emerged during slavery. The early life of Dubose Heyward, the author of the novella upon which the play is based, is examined in some detail because his knowledge of the Gullah people was crucial to the development of the characters in the play. A synopsis of the play follows, then a chapter on Rouben Mamoulian, the play's director. ...Chapters on the play's critical reception and its legacy conclude this study." -George Harwood Phillips ("Preface")

Six Essays on Edward Martyn (1859-1923), Irish Cultural Revivalist
 Nolan, Jerry
2004 0-7734-6492-1 246 pages
The many roles which Edward Martyn filled in order to realize his dreams of reform in the Irish Revival are comprehensively explored in this collection of essays. Martyn’s roles included host, patron, novelist, playwright, satirist, aesthete, collector of books and pictures, benefactor, journalist, and theatre director. His many activities, often forgotten or misunderstood, are documented here and set forth, for the first time, in the wider context of the multifaceted movement of Irish cultural nationalism which involved Martyn in developing relationships with fellow revivalists such as George Moore, Lady Gregory, Arthur Griffiths, D. P. Moran, Standish James O’Grady, and W. B. Yeats. This distilled analysis of the origins, development and failure of many of Martyn’s reforms extends to a probing of the roots of Ireland’s failure to achieve cultural independence during the 1920s and 30s when the very type of provincialism which Martyn so vehemently opposed became the conventional wisdom of the newly independent Irish Free State.

Slavery and the French Revolutionists 1788-1805
 Keller, Frances Richardson
1988 0-88946-637-8 220 pages
The first translation and publication of a 1925 doctoral dissertation written for the University of Paris by a 67-year-old Black American expatriate woman who had been born a slave. Her study of the French revolutionists' view of slavery is crucial to understanding the growth of human rights.

Sudan’s Civil War - Slavery, Race and Formational Identities
 Idris, Amir
2001 0-7734-7619-9 176 pages
The civil war in the Sudan has been generally misunderstood in the Sudanese and Western academic worlds as war between an Arab Muslim North and an African Christian South. This work examines how ‘African’ and ‘Arab’, as competing racial identities, have been produced in the Sudan, and interprets the roles of various actors with different interests in creating these identities.

The Cultural Salons of Educated Women that Shaped the Politics of Germany over 200 Years (1730-1914): A Study of Their Diaries, Letters, Memoirs, Poetry, and Philosophy
 Lass, Egon H.E.
2023 1-4955-1073-5 604 pages
"Everything in this book is historically true, based on diaries, letters, memoirs, and an occasional biography. All of the original sources were in German. The story unfolds in a slow progression, beginning in the second half of the 18th century, proceeding through the 19th, and finishing in the early years of the 20th century, arranged by date of birth for each figure. The development of the story reveals a pleasant surprise--the interconnectedness of it all, how these contemporaries knew each other, or of each other, influenced each other, admired each other, and in some cases activey visited each other and were close friends for life. All of the women were highly intelligent and literate, meaning that they were either of the privileged nobility or of families that were wealthy enough to allow their daughters a decent education. But even at the beginning of the 20th century there was still a reluctance among men to credit women for their intellectual achievements, as seen in the case of Therese von Bayern, and when they did, it was a source of shame and embarrassment for the woman, because contrary to all indications, she doubted her own legitimacy as a scholar." - Egon Lass (from the author's Introduction)

 Dorsinville, Max
2004 0-7734-6576-6 212 pages
This study is a contribution to literary and cultural history. It argues that, as mirrored acts of representation, the visual and verbal yield a common language based on the image defined by Ezra Pound as ‘an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.’ The study refers to other modernist writers such as Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, and Ernest Hemingway, the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson, and the theories on perception of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and John Berger. It applies these perspectives to the works of diverse writers who chose Cuba for a subject, finding a rich field for discussion of issues of representation, language and perception. In the concept of the gaze, it argues for the significance of a link between modernist theory and Cuban life represented in a range of works by Cristina Garcia, Edmundo Desnoes, Pico Iyer, Derek Walcott, and others, where nothing is what it seems.