Despite its importance to literary and cultural texts of resistance, theater has been largely overlooked as a field of analysis in colonial and postcolonial studies. Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance seeks to address that absence, as it uniquely views drama and performance as central to the practice of nationalism and anti-colonial resistance. Nandi Bhatia argues that Indian theater was a significant force in the struggle against oppressive colonial and postcolonial structures, as it sought to undo various schemes of political and cultural power through its engagement with subjects derived from mythology, history, and available colonial models such as Shakespeare. Bhatia's attention to local histories within a postcolonial framework places performance in a global and transcultural context. Drawing connections between art and politics, between performance and everyday experience, Bhatia shows how performance often intervened in political debates and even changed the course of politics. One of the first Western studies of Indian theater to link the aesthetics and the politics of that theater, Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance combines in-depth archival research with close readings of dramatic texts performed at critical moments in history. Each chapter amplifies its themes against the backdrop of specific social conditions as it examines particular dramatic productions, from The Indigo Mirror to adaptations of Shakespeare plays by Indian theater companies, illustrating the role of theater in bringing nationalist, anticolonial, and gendered struggles into the public sphere. Nandi Bhatia is Associate Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario.

Light was central to the visual politics and imaginative geographies of empire, even beyond its role as a symbol of knowledge and progress in post-Enlightenment narratives. This book describes how imperial mappings of geographical space in terms of ‘cities of light’ and ‘hearts of darkness’ coincided with the industrialisation of light (in homes, streets, theatres) and its instrumentalisation through new representative forms (photography, film, magic lanterns, theatrical lighting). Cataloguing the imperial vision in its engagement with colonial India, the book evaluates responses by the celebrated Indian painter Ravi Varma (1848–1906) to reveal the centrality of light in technologies of vision, not merely as an ideological effect but as a material presence that produces spaces and inscribes bodies.

China is more than a socialist market economy led by ever more reform-minded leaders. It is a country whose people seek liberty on a daily basis. Th eir success has been phenomenal, despite the fact that China continues to be governed by a single party. Clear distinctions between the people and the government are emerging, underlining the fact that true liberalization cannot be imposed from above. Although a large percentage of the Chinese people have been part of China's long march to freedom, farmers, entrepreneurs, migrants, Chinese gays, sex pleasure seekers, and black-marketers played a particularly important role in the beginning. Lawyers, scholars, journalists, and rights activists have jumped in more recently to ensure that liberalization continues. Social dissatisfaction with the government is now published in the media, addressed in public forums, and deliberated in courtrooms. Intellectuals devoted to improvement in human rights and continued liberalization are part of the process. This grassroots social revolution has also resulted from the explosion of information available to ordinary people (especially via the Internet) and far-reaching international influences. All have fundamentally altered key elements of the moral and material content of China's party-state regime and society at large. Th is social revolution is moving China towards a more liberal society despite its government. Th e Chinese government reacts, rather than leads, in this transformative process. Th is book is a landmark--a decade in the making.

This foundational new book reminds us of our ancient obligation to bring justice to the world. The essays in this collection explore the spiritual underpinnings of our Jewish commitment to justice, using Jewish text and tradition, as well as contemporary sources and models. Among the topics covered are women's health, LGBTQ rights, healthcare, racial justice, speaking truth to power, and community organizing.

The economist Albert O. Hirschman famously argued that citizens of democracies have only three possible responses to injustice or wrongdoing by their government: we may leave, complain, or comply. But in When All Else Fails, Jason Brennan argues that there is fourth option. When governments violate our rights, we may resist. We may even have a moral duty to do so. For centuries, almost everyone has believed that we must allow the government and its representatives to act without interference, no matter how they behave. We may complain, protest, sue, or vote officials out, but we can't fight back. But Brennan makes the case that we have no duty to allow the state or its agents to commit injustice. We have every right to react with acts of "uncivil disobedience." We may resist arrest for violation of unjust laws. We may disobey orders, sabotage government property, or reveal classified information. We may deceive ignorant, irrational, or malicious voters. We may even use force in self-defense or to defend others. The result is a provocative challenge to long-held beliefs about how citizens may respond when government officials behave unjustly or abuse their power

As long as there have been formal governments, there has been political contention, an interaction between ruler and subjects involving claims and counterclaims, compliance or resistance, cooperation, resignation, condescension, and resentment. Where political studies tend to focus on either those who rule or those who are ruled, the essays in this volume call our attention to the interaction between these forces at the very heart of contentious politics. Written by prominent scholars of political and social history, these essays introduce us to a variety of political actors: peasants and workers, tax resisters and religious visionaries, bandits and revolutionaries. From Brazil to Beijing, from the late Middle Ages to the present, all were or are challenging authority. The authors take a distinctly historical approach to their subject, writing both of specific circumstances and of larger processes. While tracing their origins to the social history and structural sociology approaches of the sixties and seventies, the contributors have also profited from subsequent critiques of these approaches. Taken together, their essays demonstrate that the relationship between mobilization for collective action and identity formation is a perennial problem for protest groups -- a problem that the historical study of contentious politics, with its focus on political interaction, can do much to explain.

This book is envisaged as an intervention in the ongoing explorations in social and cultural history, into questions of what constitutes Indianness for the colonial and the postcolonial subject and the role that Shakespeare plays in this identity formation. Performing Shakespeare in India presents studies of Indian Shakespeare adaptations on stage, on screen, on OTT platforms, in translation, in visual culture and in digital humanities and examines the ways in which these construct Indianness. Shakespeare in India has had multiple local interpretations in different media and equally wide-ranging responses, be it the celebration of Shakespeare as a bishwokobi (world poet) in 19th-century Bengal, be it in the elusive adaptation of Shakespeare in Meitei and Tangkhul tribal art forms in Manipur, or be it in the clamour of a boisterous Bollywood musical. In the response of diasporic theatre professionals, or in Telugu and Kannada translations, whether resisted or accepted with open arms, Shakespeare in India has had multiple local interpretations in different media. All the essays are connected by the common thread of extraordinary negotiations of postcolonial identity formation in language, in politics, in social and cultural practices, or in art forms.