Bøger udgivet af Cambria Press

Since the Vietnam War, the United States has been involved in several major military conflicts. Critics of US military intervention have consistently looked back to the Vietnam War for "lessons." Perhaps the most common and forceful "lesson" is that the military cannot be trusted to fight these wars" ethically." In making this argument, critics consistently point to the My Lai Massacre (March 16, 1968) as evidence that the US military is prone to committing atrocities or that the realities of the conflict make fighting it "ethically" impossible. This book addresses such criticism by offering a detailed analysis of the My Lai Massacre and the way it has come to be understood in the US.First, using a fine-grained analysis of 18,000 pages of perpetrator testimony and 5,000 pages of official documents, this study presents the most detailed reconstruction of the massacre itself available. Using this account, author Marshall Poe shows that standard histories of the massacre once incomplete and misleading. Second, using detailed survey of the American press, governmental records, and academic treatments of My Lai over the period 1968 to the present, Poe analyzes the origins and history of the commonplace that there were "many My Lais." Furthermore, Poe argues that this commonplace came to serve the interests of both liberal and conservative critics of the Vietnam War.The Reality of the My Lai Massacre And the Myth of the Vietnam War is an important resource for those studying American history and military history.

More than eighty years after his death, Liu Na'ou (1905-1940) remains a fascinating figure. Liu was born in Taiwan, but early on he wrote that his future lay in Shanghai and did indeed spend the entirety of his glittering but all-too-brief career in his adopted city, working closely with a small coterie of like-minded friends and associates as an editor, writer, film critic, scenarist, and director. Liu introduced Japanese Shinkankakuha (New Sensationism) to China and made it an important school of modern Chinese urban fiction. Urban Scenes, his slim volume of modernist fiction, in particular, has had an outsized influence on Shanghai's image as a phantasmagoric metropolis in the 1920s and 1930s. This collection is especially valuable since there are no more works from Liu because shortly after producing this he was murdered purportedly for political reasons.Like Japanese New Sensationists, who zeroed in on sensory responses to the new technologies rapidly transforming Tokyo after the Great Earthquake of 1923, Liu was fixated on the sights, sounds, and smells of Shanghai, that other throbbing metropolis of the Far East, and these came through in his writings. Liu's urban romances depict, as he himself put it, the "thrill" and "carnal intoxication" of modern urban life. His stories take place in Shanghai's nightclubs, race tracks, cinemas, and cafes-sites of moral depredation but also of erotic allure and excitement; therein lies the contradictory nature of his urban fiction, which gives us a vivid picture of early twentieth-century Shanghai.This complete translation of Liu's seminal work is available for the first time to researchers, students, and general readers interested in modern Chinese literature and culture. In addition to the eight stories in the original Urban Scenes, this collection includes an introduction by the translators and three additional pieces Liu published separately. The translations are based on the first editions of the Chinese texts. Urban Scenes is a valuable addition to collections in Chinese and Sinophone studies.This book is part of the Cambria Sinophone Translation Series (General Editor: Kyle Shernuk, Georgetown Univerity; Advisor: Christopher Lupke, University of Alberta).

Winner of the Klaus Heyne Award for Research in German Romanticism*Includes 47 imagesIn the nineteenth century, a cluster of German Romantic artists and naturalists including Johann Moritz Rugendas, Carl Alexander Simon, Otto Grashof, Theodor Ohlsen, Eduard Poeppig, and Rudolph Amandus Philippi, embarked on different journeys to Chile, a newly liberated country characterized by untamed landscapes, overwhelming nature, and an important diversity of people. This study is the first scholarly attempt to critically explore the unfolding of German Romanticism in Chile, delving into the motivations and experiences of these six explorers as they ventured across the sea, the Andes, the secluded jungles of southern Chile, and the Atacama Desert to portray the country's people, landscapes, and nature.This book challenges conventional interpretations of German Romanticism as a purely emotional and spiritualized crusade, arguing for a more nuanced understanding that takes into account the complexities of this cultural movement in a foreign setting, offering a critical analysis of its impact on the depiction of Chile within the broader program of Western modernity imposed outside of Europe. The central argument of this book is that the activities and depictions of these artists and naturalists, far from being mere artistic pursuits, expressed a desire for expansion in multiple dimensions-spatial, economic, cultural, and scientific-ultimately driven by a mighty colonial impulse. Thus, in their quest for exploration and artistic inspiration, they projected their anxieties, obsessions, and hegemonic ideas about race, class, Europeanness, indigeneity, territorial appropriation, and nature, reflecting their own cultural and personal agendas.By examining the impact of German Romanticism on the depiction of Chile and the convergence of scientism, Romanticism, and colonialism, this publication seeks to shed new light on the intricate cultural exchanges between Germany and Latin America during a century consumed by ideas of progress, evolution, and the systematic categorization of nature, offering a new perspective on this subject matter.Cultural Exchanges and Colonial Legacies in Latin America: German Romanticism in Chile, 1800-1899 serves as a first introduction to this unfathomed topic, standing as a significant and essential reference for individuals engaged in academic research, students, and general readers intrigued by art history, visual culture, colonialism, Romanticism, and Latin American studies.This book is in the Cambria Latin American Literatures and Cultures Series headed by Román de la Campa, the Edwin B. and Lenore R. Williams Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania.

Stereotypes of Caribbean "nature" as lush and its people as exotic Others abound. For those who call the islands home, the region evokes more somber images that reflect the history of colonization and the environmental devastation that ensues. Close ecocritical readings of literary texts illuminate aspects of an encompassing nature inclusive of all Others within the Caribbean ecosphere.This book thus uses ecocritical lenses to examine Caribbean texts and provides a useful context to understand how Other(ed) natures have been scripted by bringing to light environmental concerns not patent in heteropatriarchal interpretations. It establishes patterns of coexistence and interdependence between the spiritual and palpable material worlds that surround the characters who populate Caribbean literature. Culture, Nature, and the Other in Caribbean Literature: An Ecocritical Approach considers texts from colonial times to the present that reflect on the significance of the region's rich cultures against the brutal slavery system and its impact on the environment. Christopher Columbus's first letter helps establish the effects of colonization on indigenous peoples, the ensuing importation of African slaves, and the changes to the landscape. The Haitian revolution, a turning point in Caribbean history, remains central when studying the effects of continued violence on the ecosystem when juxtaposed to the spiritual world of Other(ed) natures. The expression of female agency and sexuality provides the framework for the study of adaptation and hybridization as crucial reflections on the ecological significance of the Caribbean's multiracial reality.The book considers the Caribbean's rich cultural matter as part of the ecosphere that resonates with the surrounding more-than-human world that should be saved from extinction. Novelists transform ecological issues into pressing matters that extend beyond the environment and include the syncretic cultures of the islands and its peoples. No other book offers this kind of close comparative re-readings of Caribbean texts-from Hispaniola to Haiti to Cuba, and from Martinique to Guadeloupe to Puerto Rico, to the Dominican Republic-through ecocritical lenses to recognize the significance of the survival of the literary matter of Other(ed) natures as readers (re)think their own roles within this inclusive ecosphere. Culture, Nature, and the Other in Caribbean Literature is a valuable resource for academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in ecocritical approaches to Caribbean literature as well as environmental and cultural studies.This book is in the Cambria Latin American Literatures and Cultures Series headed by Román de la Campa, the Edwin B. and Lenore R. Williams Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania.

Buddhism shaped the development of Korea after its introduction in the fourth century. It influenced culture, politics, and intellectual life, and it was seen as a complement to Confucianism and a support for the state. The result was a close alliance between secular rulers and the Buddhist institution. But with the founding of the Choson dynasty (1392-1910), Buddhism came under sustained attack as a threat to Confucian civilization.Using a variety of primary sources, this book examines Choson (1392-1910) Korea's anti-Buddhist movement as well as its failure. It shows how early anti-Buddhist policies that aimed to safeguard Confucian civilization led to conflict and increasingly harsh measures that culminated in the removal of legal recognition for Buddhism in 1566. The efforts to eradicate Buddhism failed in practical terms, but they succeeded in shaping the male elite to see Buddhism as incompatible with Confucian civilization. This idea became fundamental to the dominant ethos of educated men and their view of the Choson dynasty's uniqueness in relation to China, Japan, and earlier Korean states.Most studies of Korean Buddhism have focused on earlier eras and major figures in the formation of Buddhist thought. Sustained research into Choson Buddhism developed late and has emphasized the Buddhist resurgence that occurred over the second half of the dynasty. Little attention has been given to the severity of the anti-Buddhist program, the logic and policies that guided it, and its failure. This book examines the attempts to eradicate Buddhism and Confucian arguments that insisted Buddhist influence threatened the state and well-being of its people. The book shows how the Confucian ascendancy collapsed into dysfunction at the court of King Sukchong (r. 1674-1720), prompting Kim Manjung (1637-1692) to challenge the anti-Buddhist views that predominated among men of his class. Shortly before his death, he wrote a novel Lady Sa's Journey to the South (Sassi namjong-gi). Drawing on the events at court and a collection Qing (1644-1912) Chinese Buddhist writings salvaged after a shipwreck, he argued that Buddhist faith was necessary to support Confucian moral values. No other book offers this kind of analysis of Choson Korea's anti-Buddhist movement and its failure.Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Choson Korea (1392-1910) is a valuable resource for academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in Korean and East Asian Buddhism, history, and literature.This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series, headed by Victor H. Mair (University of Pennsylvania).

This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series, headed by Victor H. Mair (University of Pennsylvania).Includes images.The creativity, diversity, and experimental character of aesthetic and literary responses to the sociopolitical transitions in Southeast and East Asia as well as the aesthetic reverberations provoked by, among other factors, the newest wave of utopian thought in mainland China's political discourse have so far not been tackled systematically. Whereas Douwe Fokkema's pathbreaking overview of ancient to modern utopian concepts and narratives in China and the West provides an invaluable source for students and scholars of the early modern forms of transcultural utopian imagination, it does not include the more recent versions of state futurology-in particular Xi Jinping's China Dream narrative and related ideological revaluations. Nor does it engage with the contemporary literary and transmedia explorations of the imagined alternative Chinese worlds that are currently in the process of coming into being. This study thus delves into the vibrant space of Chinese and Sinophone cultural negotiations between state and grassroots utopianist discourses in order to tease out both the declining and emergent visions for the future as embedded in the analyzed literary narratives and visual representations.Focusing on counternarratives that challenge or undermine the grand nationalist Chinese theme, this book studies the ways Sinophone artists, writers, and other cultural agents reimagine a future (world) society that can be more tolerant of cultural, ecological, ethnic, gender and ideological diversity. It departs from the existing scholarly inquiries into Chinese utopian thought by focusing on its reappearance, in multiple shapes, in contemporary cultural representations (art, performance, literature, film, garden concepts, rural reconstruction projects, etc.) rather than on the philosophical and historical (utopianist) roots of Chinese modernity. Furthermore, this book highlights those reconceptualizations that reflect on flexible blueprints of future community life or, more openly, forms of togetherness, that are suitable for continuous (re)negotiation rather than supporting fixed, top-down enforced models. It demonstrates where, and how, bottom-up engagement for a better future is flourishing in Chinese and Sinophone contexts, and studies in which aesthetically articulated ways the expectations of intellectuals, creative workers, and social activists reach out beyond the currently circulating, state-issued futurologies.Sinophone Utopias will be a valuable resource for scholars of Chinese and Sinophone studies as well as scholars of adjacent disciplines who are engaged in critical cultural studies and are interested in understanding the emerging cultural and political dynamics of utopianism in East Asia. Each chapter offers readily accessible examples of currently circulating utopian articulations, thus providing valuable insights into the key debates and concepts in Sinophone utopian discourse. As such, this book will also be of great value to instructors and students of modern China as well as to a general audience interested in utopian ideas and their manifold cultural articulations in the Sinosphere. This book offers a preliminary roadmap to the establishment of Sinophone utopia studies as a new supplement to the broader field of Sinophone studies, thus catering to a systematic, transcultural approach to contemporary utopian thought.

This book situates contemporary problems of antisemitism, islamophobia, and Jewish-Muslim tensions in the broader context of French history and politics.

This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series headed by Victor H. Mair (University of Pennsylvania). Studies of Chinese culture and literature often neglect the importance of the various vocabulary terms for the self and identity that are used somewhat differently from their equivalents in Western languages. In particular, from the Warring States period up to today, Chinese poems often rely on the concept of a soul that can be separated from the body and needs to be summoned back by invocations. This study examines the role of the soul (hun) and the soul-summoning ritual in Chinese literature from ancient times up to the twentieth century. With five case studies from different dynasties, spanning ancient Chu and the Han, Tang, Song, and Ming-Qing transition periods, Chinese Poetry as Soul Summoning shows Chinese poets were inspired by the belief in a soul that could be transported away from the body. On one hand, this provided a model for literature, as a therapeutic means of summoning back wayward souls; on the other, it inspired the imaginative range and formal structures of literary works, which followed the soul s journey from the individual person throughout the world and into the heavens. In each period, highlighting the role of soul summoning illuminates new dimensions of literary history that have often been neglected. In the Warring States period, the poem Summons of the Soul is the definitive statement of the theme and has much to tell us about early Chinese conceptions of self, world, and communication. In the Han dynasty, the scholar-poets who established many of the norms and canons of Chinese civilization thereafter were themselves highly susceptible to visions of the soul in flight. Major compositions in the Tang and Song dynasty are structured around soul-summoning in a way that is often ignored. Even as late as the seventeenth century, ancient conceptions of the wandering soul, and the use of poetry to lure it back to wholeness, remained fundamental for literary composition in all genres. Ultimately, the book suggests that the religious dimensions of Chinese poetry have not been sufficiently examined. The conception of the separable soul is a distinctive and perennial theme that has considerable explanatory reach in understanding traditional Chinese culture. Chinese Poetry as Soul Summoning will be a valuable addition to students and scholars of Chinese culture, comparative literature, and religious studies.

Few military officers can ascend to the ranks of senior leadership without eventually being assigned to Washington, DC, where newcomers navigating the system inevitably become emmeshed, flabbergasted, and stymied by entrenched bureaucratic processes they had no idea existed. A career in diplomacy or working on the Hill often involves the process-oriented work necessary to keep departments funded and the government functional. In order to succeed, one must understand these rules, especially as they apply to resourcing. Without funding, strategies and policies are merely interesting ideas. Getting an idea or a program resourced requires a thorough understanding of the process. Considering the national security enterprise from the standpoint of strategic resourcing is neither simple nor straightforward. To succeed requires a multidisciplinary approach; a team with substantial background knowledge on such diverse and byzantine topics as the Department of Defense acquisition system, the president s budget submission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency s National Preparedness Frameworks, in addition to a basic understanding of macroeconomics. Further, the development of a cohesive and logical narrative is difficult because the Framers intended checks and balances among the executive and legislative branches effectively preclude the possibility of seamless integration among national security priorities. Anyone aspiring to have a career in national security must understand the process in order to be effective. Graduate school programs in security studies, public policy, and political science offer multiple courses that consider bureaucracy from academic and theoretical perspectives, but these classes generally do not attempt to offer a practitioner s view of surviving and thriving within the Washington bureaucracy. And although individual government departments and agencies such as the Department of Defense s Joint Staff and the Department of State s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) offer courses for personnel newly assigned to Washington, the majority of the learning occurs through on-the-job training. This book fills the gap and provides a much-needed, theoretically grounded, and practical guide. Each chapter in this volume is by a practitioner with decades of experience working on resourcing issues in Washington. Their perspectives are informed by the cultures of the agencies in which they have worked and the positions they have held. Many currently teach in DC-based graduate degree programs in a variety of disciplines, including strategy, economics, and organizational leadership. Resourcing the National Security Enterprise will be a valuable resource for aspiring practitioners who are beginning or seeking careers in the American federal government and to those who wish to learn more about the inner workings of resourcing the national security enterprise.

Modernity, modernization, modernism, and the modern have all been key, interrelated terms in post-traditional China. For all their ubiquity, however, in previous studies of Chinese culture and society there has been insufficient clarity as to what the precise meanings each term has encompassed from the period beginning in 1895, the year of China s catastrophic defeat by Japan. The importance of these terms is underlined by their implication in China s positioning in the world over the course of the past century and a half, as well as the path China will follow in the future. Looking into a set of concepts and practices that have been instrumental in China s road to modernity, namely, the definition of the modern itself, a new notion of literature, linguistic reform, translation, popular culture, and the transformation of the publishing world, Taking China to the World explores the various ways in which activity in the cultural sphere shaped Chinese perceptions of both how its historical course might evolve and how all-compassing change needed to be managed. Most studies of China s modern transformation have implicitly based themselves on the inevitability of a process of cultural, social, and institutional rationalization, more often than not based on Western models, without grappling with the full extent of the struggles to reconcile needed changes with a grand tradition, which, for all the condemnation aimed at it after 1895, still held a powerful appeal for most of those who seriously considered the full extent of the interactions between new and old. That an idea of a monolithic new seemed to take hold of many members of the Chinese elite after the period circa 1920 does not rule out the subtle hold that key portions of the grand tradition have had over modern China. No other book offers this kind of analysis of both the historical origins and contemporary consequences of the agonizing choices made by actors in the cultural sphere who occupied core positions in the life of the Chinese nation. Taking China to the World: The Cultural Production of Modernity is a valuable resource for academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in all subfields of Chinese studies, particularly for those engaged in charting the transformation of Chinese culture and society over the last 150 years and considering what those transformations might hold in store for the future.

Strange Bedfellows, a novel by Liu Zhenyun, China s most renowned writer of satire, and translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Lin, is a farcical tale of sibling devotion, sexual exploitation, and official corruption, all played out more or less in bed. Though a critique of new mercenary values, scam artists, and the common folks vulnerability to scam artists, the novel is also an oblique compliment to the resourcefulness of these folks in a changing China. The strange bedfellows from various parts of China include Niu Xiaoli, a country girl who borrows money from a hometown loan shark to find a new wife for her brother, whose first wife ran off with another man. When the second wife runs off with the money for the arrangement, Xiaoli goes on a search for her, only to end up prey to a high-class madam, who teaches her to become a "e;fake-virgin"e; prostitute. Xiaoli begins a life of fleecing the wealthy and powerful. One of Xiaoli's clients is Li Anbang, the governor of a certain province, who faces arrest and possible execution for bribe-taking. A practitioner of black magic recommends that Li sleeps with a virgin to solve his problems. And thereon the twists and turns continue. Liu s trenchant criticism and fast-paced, humorous narrative is a delight to read. The irony that those exploiting the people end up being exploited themselves will not be lost on readers.

Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China is a major new work by one of Europe's most respected senior scholars of Chinese studies, Paolo Santangelo. In it, he questions the common premise that individualism was lacking in premodern China. It is Santangelo's contention that not only was the concept of the individual important in traditional China, but that it existed in interesting ways that are different from modes of individualism in the West. One of the strengths of this study is the masterful manner in which Professor Santangelo treats key terms of his discussion, terms such as xing ("e;human nature ), xin ("e;heart-mind"e;), ji ("e;self"e;), and uses them to analyze various texts. The study deftly weaves together many ideas from history, philosophy, art, and literature, especially the literary dimensions of late imperial history (both classical and vernacular). Another unusual facet of Santangelo's investigations is his thorough familiarity with the the Western intellectual tradition and his expert incorporation of the ideas of thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and the Romantics This inquiry into the moral philosophy and ethics of the self seen in both its public and private dimensions in late imperial China is an important resource for scholars and students in many subfields of Chinese studies, such as history, intellectual history, art history, history of literature, and history of religion.

Theatrical performance occupied a central place in the emotional and political life of the Qing dynasty imperial household. For over two centuries, the Qing court poured a tremendous amount of human and material resources into institutionalizing the theatrical arts for the purposes of entertainment and edification. The emperors and empresses were ardent patrons and key players in establishing an artistic form that the court theatre called its own. They went to great lengths to cultivate a discerning taste in theatre and oversaw the artistic and managerial aspects of court theatrical activities. In the imperial theatrical spaces within and outside the Forbidden City, which were designed and built with the capacity to produce stunning visual effects, theatrical productions were staged to entertain imperial family members and to impress obeisance-paying guests from near and afar. Much scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding the dynamics between the Qing court theatre and the burgeoning popular theatrical traditions outside the court. However, the insights drawn from recent studies have only begun to be applied to the analysis of dramas commissioned by the Qing court for various ceremonial occasions. Treating Qing dynasty court theatre as a unique site in which to examine important but uncharted realms of Chinese theatrical experience, Staging for the Emperors examines two distinct and interlocking dimensions of the Qing court theatre the vicissitudes of the palace troupe and the multifaceted functions of court-commissioned ceremonial dramas to highlight the diverse array of views held by individual rulers as they used theatrical means to promote their personal and political agendas. Drawing on recently discovered materials from a variety of court administrative bureaus, memoirs, diaries, and play scripts written for court ceremonial occasions, this study places the history of Qing court theatre in the broader context of Qing cultural and political history. It demonstrates that theatre, like other forms of courtly art, served the individual rulers desire to embody virtue, to entertain at leisure, and to project aspirations. Staging for the Emperors would appeal to readers interested in China studies and performance studies. It would also appeal to those outside the field of China studies who are interested in developing a crosscultural perspective on the interplay between state rituals, power, identity formation, and theatrical experiences.

In pre-contemporary China, folk epics performed at village level helped to construct a sense of regional as opposed to national identity. This is the first book-length study in the West on the folk epics of the Han Chinese people, who are the majority population of China. These folk epics provide an unparalleled resource for understanding the importance of "the local" in Chinese culture, especially how rice-growing populations perceived their environment and relational world.In studies of Chinese culture, it is the epics of borderland minority groups that have attracted most scholarly attention. It was formerly held that the Han Chinese people did not transmit songs of epic length. In the 1980s Chinese ethnologists were surprised to discover that amateur singers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang province could sing lengthy narratives over the course of days. Close to forty folk epics have now been identified in the Lower Yangzi Delta.The folk epics were sung by illiterate farmers while working in the rice paddy or boating along the waterways. It was believed that singing promoted crop fertility and that the rice-plant embodied a female rice spirit whose growth and development paralleled that of human sexuality and procreation. Regarded as "vulgar" due to its erotic content, this song tradition was marginalized and little understood. The erotic content is often removed in editions directed at a national readership.Employing perspectives from memory studies, eco-criticism, and the study of oral traditions, this book examines in detail five iconic folk epics. One relates the story of an ancestor who brought knowledge of rice-growing to his community; another tells of a peasant-rebel leader and his fight with imperial authorities; three other examples relate stories of secret love affairs and their tragic outcomes. The author draws on interviews with contemporary song transmitters and ethnologists from the Lake Tai region, as well as a collection of singer transcripts and unedited song material. This study further investigates the role folk epics played in shaping a sense of both "intimacy" and "identity" in delta communities. The work contains extensive translations from the folk epics.This book will appeal to readers interested in Chinese performance and regional culture, comparative world epics, eco-critical studies, and Chinese folk religion. It would be of benefit to readers beyond China Studies with an interest in the interaction between song, ritual, and the natural and constructed environment.This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series, headed by Professor Victor Mair (University of Pennsylvania).

Includes 50 images, with a large number of paintings from Gao Xingjian's private collection.Gao Xingjian won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000 for a body of literary works originally written and published in Chinese and later translated and published in English, French, and Swedish. Gao's plays have been performed in even more languages on the stages of Asia, Europe, United States, Africa, and Australia. He is also recognized as a painter of international significance; in 2015 his six-panel work The Awakening of the Consciousness became the sole permanent display of a designated room in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. His extraordinary creative achievements draw on his innate talents but also on his profound knowledge and understanding of the creative arts of China and the West.Born 1940 in China, Gao Xingjian graduated from the Foreign Languages Institute (now renamed Beijing Foreign Studies University) with a major in French and then lived through the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. He became a celebrity playwright and literary critic during the early 1980s until the Chinese authorities banned his works. In 1987 he traveled to Europe and by early 1988 settled in Paris, where he began to write and to paint. Today most of his major writings have been published in different languages and his plays continue to be staged all over the world. In addition, there have been ninety solo exhibitions of his Chinese ink paintings that have been held in Asia, Europe, and the United States, and some fifty books have been published on his art.In Calling for a New Renaissance, Gao presents his primary concerns of the past decade or so. He indicts the lingering impact of ideology on contemporary literature and art, and for this reason calls for "a new Renaissance," a result of which would be "boundary-crossing creations" such as the three cine-poems that he produced and describes in detail in this book. Of importance in this book, and not documented elsewhere, Gao offers his insights on how, despite receiving his education in the People's Republic of China, he succeeded in educating himself in both Chinese and world literatures because of his love of reading and his disciplined approach to reading. This book also includes fifty images selected by Gao, forty-five of which are his favorite paintings from his private collection.Calling for a New Renaissance is a valuable resource for academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in Gao Xingjian, transcultural studies, transdisciplinary studies, and transmedia studies.See also Gao Xingjian: Aesthetics and Creation by Gao Xingjian and Gao Xingjian and Transmedia Aesthetics edited by Mabel Lee and Liu Jianmei.

Cultural production, including literary work, has been a key element in the Indigenous struggle for decolonization worldwide. In Taiwan, ethnographic novels written in Chinese, such as The Soul of Jade Mountain (Yushan hun) by Bunun writer Husluman Vava (1958-2007), have been an important tool in the process of bringing the situation of Indigenous people to the attention of mainstream audiences. Before his untimely death, Vava was one of the leaders of the Indigenous cultural revival movement in Taiwan. He was among the first Indigenous authors to make use of long fiction, and he did so quite prolifically. For Vava, as is the case for many Indigenous community leaders, the mission was twofold. He wanted to recover and preserve the rich traditions of his ancestors so that younger generations, in their search for their identity and roots in the modern world, could find quality sources created within their own community. Vava also wanted to make those in the mainstream aware of the true nature and depth of Bunun culture. His many short stories and novels fashion a vivid portrait of the Bunun people, their daily life, their values, and their aspirations. Vava created accessible characters in empathetic situations in order to demonstrate the deeply human qualities of traditional Bunun life and to suggest that those qualities maintain their validity in the modern world. Vava's novel The Soul of Jade Mountain won the 2007 Taiwan Literature Award for the best novel, and this is the first English translation of an ethnographic novel by a Taiwan Indigenous writer to be published by a North American publisher, marking an important step in bringing Indigenous Taiwan to international audiences.

Monsters continue to fascinate as well as to plague and haunt imaginations. The psychic landscape is peopled with them; the social fabric is woven of them. This persistent, paradoxical repulsion and fascination with monsters and the monstrous begins, however, with causation. With the birth of each new monster comes a particular anxiety about its ability to self-replicate, generally through perceived unnatural means. The cultural imaginary remains obsessed with the origins and genesis of monsters. From whence do monsters come? How are they created and more importantly what is their reproductive potential? Ironically, the very cultural and unconscious fears and anxieties about unnatural reproduction and monstrous progeny give birth to texts that perpetuate the creation and replication of monsters. The link between the monstrous and fears of reproduction are present from early modern narratives through nineteenth-century fears of degeneration, and into contemporary fascination with apocalyptic zombie films and science fiction narratives about genetic engineering, viral pandemics, and trans-species generation. While the incarnation of the monster manifests through different vehicles across these periods and texts, it is clear that, regardless of its form, anxiety is rooted in concerns over its fecundity its ability to infect, to absorb, to replicate. Much has been written about gender and the monstrous, but sustained engagement with textual manifestations of cultural and unconscious fears and anxieties about unnatural reproduction has been limited. This book expands the current discourse on the monstrous reproductive potential of bodies as well as minds from a more interdisciplinary and transhistorical framework. While scholarly interest in monsters and the monstrous is certainly not new, studies on monstrous reproduction and birth have tended to be either discipline or period specific, and many are now dated. Drawing from diverse interdisciplinary perspectives in film and media studies, literary studies, history, medicine and women s and gender studies, Unnatural Reproductions and Monstrosity builds upon pre-existing work while engaging more directly with monstrous progeny, as well as with unnatural reproduction(s), which threaten to eclipse the future, cast uncertainty on the present, and reimagine the past. Ultimately, then, the primary contribution of this book lies not only with its extensive treatment of reproductive monstrosity and unnatural parturition, but with the breadth and intriguing continuity that only a wide lens can provide. This book does not attempt to provide a complete historical assessment or catalog of the enduring cultural fascination with the reproductive origins and potential of monsters. Rather, it provides diverse interdisciplinary and transhistorical perspectives with single unifying theme of unnatural reproduction(s), which is unique to the collection, remaining central to the concept of monstrosity and its evolving narrative incarnations. This interdisciplinary collection spanning the areas of history, literature, medical humanities, and film and media studies explores the transhistorical textual fascination with reproductive monstrosity and unnatural parturition. The collection s four sections provide perspective on hyperbolic and monstrous representations of reproduction and birth that speak to anxieties and fears about gender and sexuality, codified through unnatural manifestations and their progeny. By focusing not only on the effect of the monstrous, but also on its reproduction in a variety of genres and modes from science to cinema, the essays in this collection offer critical insight into enduring questions about the genesis of monsters and their reproductive potential that have long haunted the world and continue to shape many fears about the future. This book analyzes how fears about unnatural reproduction and monstrous offspring and their frequent connections to the feminine have proliferated and propagated across the very texts which are repetitively created and consumed. Unnatural Reproductions and Monstrosity is an important interdisciplinary book for university library collections and scholars working in women s and gender studies, film and media studies, history, literature, and medical humanities.

This book newly reveals how early modern Italian bromance narratives interrogate alternative roles of close male friendships, the love between men, and the confines of marriage, thus providing the foundation for the contemporary bromance.

In 1981 an American historian of China, Professor Charlotte Furth, travelled to Beijing to teach young Chinese scholars about America. Professor Furth's year-long adventures, captured in this lively memoir, tell of classroom encounters, bureaucratic entanglements, expat frustrations, unlikely friendships, and misunderstandings both comic and grave. Her sponsor, the Fulbright program of academic exchange, had just revived after thirty years of the Cold War, and carried with it American hopes for a new era of cooperation between China and the United States. Her students were shaped by the Communist revolution, schooled in its political disciplines, and torn between thirst to experience the outside world at last and anxiety about what lay ahead in a post-Mao future. Based on Professor Furth's detailed notes and letters home at the time, this book evokes the unique atmosphere of expectation and frustration that characterized the first years of normalization. Furth belongs to a generation of American China experts who hoped for alternatives to the reductive cold war policies that made communism not only an enemy abroad but a weapon against social democracy at home. She encountered young Chinese intellectuals who also wanted to imagine a more just society at home without abandoning their primary loyalties to culture and nation. Their search for common ground can help us understand the impact of the Mao era on society and the path Chinese elites have followed since the 1980s. It also can tell us about ourselves as Americans forced to defend our own society against friendly yet penetrating scrutiny. This book is a valuable account for specialists on Sino-American relations and on the formative years of the generation of Chinese who lead the People's Republic of China today. It is also a fascinating read for anyone who wants to explore the pleasures and perils of Chinese and American struggles to understand one another.

More than two decades ago, Christos Tsiolkas s his first novel Loaded was published and he had achieved a cult following in the short-lived grunge fiction scene of Australian writing. The novel was quickly adapted as the film Head On (1998), directed by Ana Kokkinos, and starring popular young Greek actor, Alex Dimitriades; like the novel, it was well-received by critics, if not by mainstream literary and cinematic culture. For the next few years, Tsiolkas worked on Jump Cuts, an experimental collaborative autobiography, with Sasha Soldatow (1996), as well as a number of theatre productions Who s Afraid of the Working Class? (1999, co-written with Andrew Bovell, Melissa Reeves and Patricia Cornelius, and adapted to film as Blessed, also directed by Kokkinos [2009]), Thug (1998, written with Spiro Economopolous), and Elektra AD (1999) but when The Jesus Man (1999) was published, its violent depiction of depression and suicide received critical attention as offensive and unnecessary. Partly because of the reception of The Jesus Man, and partly because of the density of its subject matter, his next novel, Dead Europe (2005) took six years to write. In the interim, he published a critical study of the film The Devil s Playground (2002), and several more plays and screenplays: Viewing Blue Poles (2000), Saturn s Return (2000), Fever (2002, co-written with Bovell, Reeves and Cornelius), Dead Caucasians (2002), Non Parlo di Salo (2005, written with Economopoulous), and The Hit (2006, written with Netta Yashin). Dead Europe was a triumphant return: it won the Age Book of the Year and the Melbourne Best Writing Award in 2006. But it was the extraordinary critical and commercial success of The Slap (2008) which entirely changed Tsiolkas s personal and professional circumstances. It was the fourth-highest selling book by an Australian author in 2009, won the ALS Gold Medal, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was Book of the Year for both the Australian Booksellers Association and the Australian Book Industry Award. The Slap was also adapted as a popular television series for the ABC in 2011, and for NBC in the United States in 2015. For the first time in his career, Tsiolkas was able to dedicate himself to writing full-time, but the attention paid to the novel also meant that Tsiolkas was now a household name no longer a cult writer, his opinions are now courted and offered in popular and political publications. Barracuda (2013) follows the social realism of The Slap, and sold similarly well, riding on the back of its extraordinary predecessor. Merciless Gods (2014), a collection of short stories, some new, some previously published, is only recently being taken up by popular critics. Tsiolkas s work has become increasingly popular and appealing to readers outside of the academy. Tsiolkas s works adopt a Modernist attitude to the concept of a utopia a negative politics which simultaneously draws attention to the insufficiency of the present, a pastoral nostalgia for the past, and a longing for the impossible future to come. This first in-depth study of his entire corpus provides an understanding of Tsiolkas s position in relation to Modernism, thereby drawing out his points about character, setting and politics, thereby helping us to think about what place his ideas about the individual and the community might have in our reading of contemporary Australia and contemporary world literature.

The Story of the Stone, also known as Dream of the Red Chamber, is unquestionably the most beloved and most celebrated work of prose fiction in Chinese literary history. For two and half centuries, the novel has inspired a ceaseless flow of critical interpretation ranging from the allegorical, autobiographical, and bibliographical to the poststructural, forming a particular field of study called hongxue ( red studies). Building on the novel s rich content and this vast scholarship, and using Julia Kristeva s terms on intertextuality, especially her notions that every human being is nothing more than an intersection of preexistent discourses created by human language and text, and that reality can only be seized as a reconstructed fiction that exists through its relation to previous fiction, this book presents a new understanding of the novel. Eroticism and Other Literary Conventions in Chinese Literature examines how The Story of the Stone dramatizes human experiences by responding to previous literature, particularly those openly denounced by the novel s internal narrator, the mythic stone. While there has been much discussion about human lives and emotions presented in The Story of the Stone, the mainstream humanist scholarship often reads the text as a reflection of historical figures (e.g., the author of The Story of the Stone) or constructed (but real ) persons. This book, however, argues that while the novel is centrally concerned with defining ren (human), it is equally involved in investigating wen (literature). Thus, the core tenet of The Stone lies in the intricate symbiosis between ren and wen, which gives rise to wenren (literati) and renwen (humanities), and even more to the wen that produces wenti (genre), wenhua (culture), and wenming (civilization) an evolution that had concerned the Chinese literati for centuries but was fictionalized for the first time in The Story of the Stone. How does The Story of the Stone utilize language and text to make meanings of the human lives it creates? How does The Story of the Stone exist through its relation to previous fiction? To answer these questions, this book argues that the mythic stone s harsh critiques of historical romance (yeshi), erotic fiction (fengyue bimo), and scholar-and-beauty fiction (caizi jiaren) cannot be taken at face value. Instead, they signify The Stone s anxiety of influence and allude to the nature of intertextuality. In this light, this book argues that the novel s construction of lust shows its indebtedness to erotic literature; its making of romance is created through the use of drama as reading and as performance; in the protagonist s confrontation with and final submission to social expectations, the novel wrestles with the portrayal of young literati in the scholar-and-beauty convention; and finally, following a genealogy of objects featured in literature to animate human lives, the mythic stone is created to question the convention of storytelling, not only in pre-existing fiction but also in the novel s many previous lives in manuscript versions and printed editions. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in The Story of the Stone, and for readers interested in novel, fiction, drama, and other literary genres and subgenres in Chinese literature.