States are erecting walls at their borders at a pace unmatched in history, and the wall between the United States and Mexico stands as an icon among these dividing structures. Much has been said about the US-Mexico border wall in the last few decades, yet American walling projects have a much longer history, dating back almost a century. Building Walls, Constructing Identities offers a rich account of this legal history, informed by two episodes of wall-building—the Act of August 19, 1935, and the Secure Fence Act of 2006. These two legislative periods illustrate that today's wall imprints onto the landscape a grammar of racial inequality underpinned by a settler colonial rationality. Marie-Eve Loiselle argues in favor of an account of the law that considers its material translation into space and identifies discursive processes by which the law and the wall come together to communicate legal knowledge about territory and identity.

In the Early Bronze Age, monumental stone and mud-brick structures known as towers appeared in Oman. This book aims to update the long-standing discussions on these towers and to assess their chronological depth of more than a millennium. The book also reassesses their possible functions in the light of recent archaeological research.

The global spread of uniform modes of production and cultural values has been accompanied by a dissemination of stereotypes of "modern" architecture styles almost everywhere around the globe. Paradoxically, the reverse process has also emerged: In some countries, the elites feel the necessity to counterbalance the "loss of identity" and defend their own cultures against the "intruding" forces of globalization. What started as a defensive notion has developed into a more progressive attempt to re-create what has allegedly been lost. This trend is being strongly expressed in discourses about architecture in countries of the South. Who are the actors feeling compelled to "construct" new identities? How are these new identities in architecture created in various parts of the world? And, which are the ingredients borrowed from various historical and ethnic traditions and other sources? These and other questions are discussed in five case studies from different parts of the world, written by renowned scholars from Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, India and Singapore.

A comprehensive, scholarly, engaging look at the meanings behind key architectural designs of ancient Minoan culture. Ever since Sir Arthur Evans first excavated at the site of the Palace at Knossos in the early twentieth century, scholars and visitors have been drawn to the architecture of Bronze Age Crete. Much of the attraction comes from the geographical and historical uniqueness of the island. Equidistant from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Minoan Crete is on the shifting conceptual border between East and West, and chronologically suspended between history and prehistory. In this culturally dynamic context, architecture provided more than physical shelter; it embodied meaning. Architecture was a medium through which Minoans constructed their notions of social, ethnic, and historical identity: the buildings tell us about how the Minoans saw themselves, and how they wanted to be seen by others. Architecture of Minoan Crete is the first comprehensive study of the entire range of Minoan architecture—including houses, palaces, tombs, and cities—from 7000 BC to 1100 BC. John C. McEnroe synthesizes the vast literature on Minoan Crete, with particular emphasis on the important discoveries of the past twenty years, to provide an up-to-date account of Minoan architecture. His accessible writing style, skillful architectural drawings of houses and palaces, site maps, and color photographs make this book inviting for general readers and visitors to Crete, as well as scholars.

Located in the small kingdom of Commagene at the upper Euphrates, the late Hellenistic monument of Nemrud Dağ (c.50 BC) has been undeservedly neglected by scholars. Qualified as a Greco-Persian hybrid instigated by a lunatic king, this fascinating project of bricolage has been written out of history. This volume redresses that imbalance, interpreting Nemrud Dağ as an attempt at canon building by Antiochos I in order to construct a dynastic ideology and social order, and proving the monument's importance for our understanding of a crucial transitional phase from Hellenistic to Roman. Hellenistic Commagene therefore holds a profound significance for a number of discussions, such as the functioning of the Hellenistic koine and the genesis of Roman 'art', Hellenism and Persianism in antiquity, dynastic propaganda and the power of images, Romanisation in the East, the contextualising of the Augustan cultural revolution, and the role of Greek culture in the Roman world.

Architecture, Islam, and Identity in West Africa shows you the relationship between architecture and Islamic identity in West Africa. The book looks broadly across Muslim West Africa and takes an in-depth study of the village of Larabanga, a small Muslim community in Northern Ghana, to help you see how the built environment encodes cultural history through form, material, and space, creating an architectural narrative that outlines the contours of this distinctive Muslim identity. Apotsos explores how modern technology, heritage, and tourism have increasingly affected the contemporary architectural character of this community, revealing the village’s current state of social, cultural, and spiritual flux. More than 60 black and white images illustrate how architectural components within this setting express the distinctive narratives, value systems, and realities that make up the unique composition of this Afro-Islamic community.

D_TEX presents itself as a starting point at a crossroads of ideas and debates around the complex universe of Textile Design in all its forms, manifestations and dimensions. The textile universe, allied to mankind since its beginnings, is increasingly far from being an area of exhausted possibilities, each moment proposing important innovations that need a presentation, discussion and maturation space that is comprehensive and above all inter- and transdisciplinary. Presently, the disciplinary areas where the textile area is present are increasing and important, such as fashion, home textiles, technical clothing and accessories, but also construction and health, among others, and can provide new possibilities and different disciplinary areas and allowing the production of new knowledge. D_TEX proposes to join the thinking of design, with technologies, tradition, techniques, and related areas, in a single space where ideas are combined with the technique and with the projectual and research capacity, thus providing for the creation of concepts, opinions, associations of ideas, links and connections that allow the conception of ideas, products and services. The interdisciplinary nature of design is a reality that fully reaches the textile material in its essence and its practical application, through the synergy and contamination by the different interventions that make up the multidisciplinary teams of research. The generic theme of D_TEX Textile Design Conference 2017, held at Lisbon School of Architecture of the University of Lisbon, Portugal on November 2-4, 2017, is Design the Future, starting from the crossroads of ideas and debates, a new starting point for the exploration of textile materials, their identities and innovations in all their dimensions.

- How did today's international systems emerge, and how are they shaped by war, unequal development and international cooperation? - How do individuals, firms, international organisations, and nation states operate within these systems? - How can students apply theories of global politics using real-world examples? Understanding International Politics offers a comprehensive and accessible guide to the key systems, actors, and issues of international politics. It covers core concepts and questions for political study, and presents a 'toolkit' that enables students to apply theory and historical context in independent research. This introduction frames complex international systems coherently by focusing on political players, and, as a single-authored work, delivers a consistent critical approach throughout. This authoritative and clearly organised textbook offers: - Contemporary examples and case-studies for approaching international relations from the perspective of its actors - 'How to' guides, including methods for constructing an argument, conducting analysis, and preparing a policy brief - Companion digital resources for both students and lecturers, including lecture slides, a testbank, role-play exercises, and discussion materials, adaptable to various class sizes - A thorough grounding in Marxist, feminist and postcolonial perspectives, as well as more traditional viewpoints

This provocative and often controversial volume examines concepts of ethnicity, citizenship and nationhood, to determine what constituted cultural identity in the Roman Empire. The contributors draw together the most recent research and use diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives from archaeology, classical studies and ancient history to challenge our basic assumptions of Romanization and how parts of Europe became incorporated into a Roman culture. Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire breaks new ground, arguing that the idea of a unified and easily defined Roman culture is over-simplistic, and offering alternative theories and models. This well-documented and timely book presents cultural identity throughout the Roman empire as a complex and diverse issue, far removed from the previous notion of a dichotomy between the Roman invaders and the Barbarian conquered.