Pilgrimage in the Age of Globalisation
This collection of studies explores sacred and secular pilgrimage in the age of globalisation. It shows how pilgrimage unifies physical and metaphysical mobility into a holistic project of self-realisation and inner transformation through motion.
From Utah Beach to Okinawa, they braved live bombs and enemy rockets. Nine from Aberdeen is the first history of the US Army’s Bomb Disposal Branch in WWII, the courageous forerunners of today’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) specialists.
Jovial Bigotry
The late 19th-century debate over manners and morals in France, Britain, and the US was truly about gender and sexuality. Commentators used stereotypes of women to discuss their roles, but this analysis reveals a common outlook: an agreement on patriarchy.
Rethinking Mimesis
Literary mimesis, an age-old and contested concept, has been brought back to the forefront of scholarly interest. This volume explores how literature produces its reality effects, challenging our understanding of representation through textual analyses.
Birth and Death in British Culture
Why look at birth and death together? These 13 interdisciplinary articles prove that looking at the two in tandem throws their distinct patterns and shared socio-political issues into sharp relief, probing their medialisation and commodification.
Byron’s dubious status as an icon disguises that he is one of the greatest English poets. This book ignores his iconography and concentrates on his poems. Written by leading authorities, it puts his real achievement as a creative writer back into focus.
Name and Naming
This book analyses names and the act of naming from an intercultural, synchronic, and diachronic perspective. Its originality lies in a multi-disciplinary approach, merging onomastics with sociolinguistics, history, literature, pragmatics, and more.
Literature and Politics
George Orwell argued writers want to change the world. This collection of new work by scholars explores political literature over the last century, from The Communist Manifesto to Oryx and Crake, showing its continuing ability to inform, enrage and engage.
The Belligerent Prelate
This book is an examination of the pivotal alliance between Taoiseach Eamon de Valera and Archbishop Daniel Mannix. It explores how their bond aided Ireland’s push for independence and why Mannix, once revered, became an isolated figure after 1925.
The Future of Post-Human Migration
The “melting pot” and “salad bowl” are opposing noble lies. This book offers a new theory—the cyclical progression of migration—to change how we think about Sameness, Otherness, and identity, with enormous implications for the human future.
Pope Gregory’s Letter-Bearers
The first-ever study of Pope Gregory’s letter-bearers. From 590-604, in an age of invasions and peril, a surprising number of men and women—clerics, farmers, widows—made dangerous journeys to carry his 850+ surviving letters across the world.
This study traces the picaresque from its Spanish roots to contemporary novels, arguing it has never left the British literary scene. Postcolonial authors also favour this genre for their own stories of displaced characters and modern-day rogues.
Challenging Change
Challenging Change: Literary and Linguistic Responses is a collection of articles examining change as the need to redefine theories, histories, and language. Authors from around the world respond to this challenge from the perspectives of literary studies and linguistics.
Hume’s Labyrinth
Hume’s Labyrinth explores his famous “bundle theory of the self” and his own critical reservations about it. It argues the theory was not a failed account, but a pragmatic tool intended to help further philosophical investigations into the mind.
Transgressing Women
Transgressing Women focuses on the ‘other’ female characters of the noir world, beyond the femme fatale. The book traces these transgressive figures in contemporary novels and films, analyzing their dramatic evolution through feminist and postmodernist theory.
Future Prospects for Music Education
Inspired by Lucy Green’s groundbreaking work, this anthology offers a critical examination of informal learning pedagogy in music education. An international community of scholars explores future prospects for music education with informal learning as its focal point.
Martyrdom and Ecstasy
This interdisciplinary study explores shahadat (sacrifice and martyrdom), a key concept in Persian culture. The author discusses its origin, evolution, and modern interpretation, showing how it has shaped Iranian identity and social and political attitudes.
Mining the Meaning
This innovative study provides a critical introduction to cultural representations of the 1984–5 miners’ strike. Analysing writings, music, and film from strikers and artists, it explores the battle to ‘author’ the conflict and challenges our understanding of this period.
Running with the Fairies
In the first scholarly account of the Fairy Faith in over a hundred years, a PhD anthropologist interviews educated people in Ireland who have had direct spiritual experiences with fairies, recognizing the reality of nature spirit beings in a Western context.
Outsourcing and Service Work in the New Economy
This book examines outsourcing’s impact on workers in the new economy. Through a study of Mexico City’s call centres, it identifies managerial practices that harm employment conditions, revealing how ‘old economy’ tactics persist in the 21st century.