Bøger af Alan G. Smith

Thomas Hardy and the Folk Horror Tradition takes the uncanny and unsettling fiction of Thomas Hardy as fundamental in examining the lineage of 'Hardyan Folk Horror'. Hardy's novels and his short fiction often delve into a world of folklore and what was, for Hardy the recent past. Hardy's Wessex plays out tensions between the rational and irrational, the pagan and the Christian, the past and the 'enlightened' future. Examining these tensions in Hardy's life and his work provides a foundation for exploring the themes that develop in the latter half of the 20th century and again in the 21st century into a definable genre, folk horror. This study analyses the subduing function of heritage drama via analysis of adaptations of Hardy's work to this financially lucrative film market. This is a market in which the inclusion of the weird and the eerie does not fit with the construction of a past and their function in creating a nostalgia of a safe and idyllic picture of England's rural past. However, there are some lesser-known adaptations from the 1970s that sit alongside the unholy trinity of folk horror: the adaptation for television of the Wessex Tales. From a consideration of the epistemological fissure that characterize Hardy's world, the book draws parallels between then and now and the manifestation of writing on conceptual borders. Through this comparative analysis, Thomas Hardy and the Folk Horror Tradition posits that we currently exist on a moment of fracture, when tradition sits as a seductive threat.

When do legislators tend to cast votes in cooperation with their parties and when do they go their own way? When and why do nations contend with each other, and when are they more likely to cooperate? Thematically arranged around the interplay of contention and cooperation, A Comparative Introduction to Political Science encourages students to explore causal factors and consequences related to political phenomena in order to become knowledgeable and resourceful citizens of their nations and the world. Emphasizing real-world politics, the author includes two country studies at the end of each chapter to expose the student to the richness of particular national experiences. In addition, the book employs careful topic sequencing, and practical definitions of terms, occasionally enhancing standard terminology by adding concepts that address the real-world spectrum between opposing extremes.

He further argues that respect for human rights involves a duty on the part of advantaged nations to address the Third World predicament with practical measures fully consistent with human rights, and for each of these three country cases, Smith recommends direct locally specific minimalist aid.