In this exploration of four plays by Aeschylus, Euripides, Machiavelli and Shakespeare, Mera Flaumenhaft argues that, by revising well-known myths or histories, each playwright reshapes the community for which he writes. Emphasizing the context in which the plays have been read and performed, she examines the moral and political effects of each drama and its production, from the role of classical tragedy in MAINtaining the classical city, to the role of the modern history play in forming and maintaining the nation-state. Flaumenhaft demonstrates how the playwright's presentation of political themes within each drama relates to his view of the broadly political function of theater in his society.

Urban ceremonial in the Middle Ages took various forms and served a number of different ends--private, collegial, political, and religious. Broadly construed, urban ceremonial included public functions of multiple sorts. From private, but public, celebrations of births, marriages, and deaths to the grand entries of rulers into cities, the spectacles were designed to impress events on collective memory. - from the Introduction.

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Homeless assistance has frequently adhered to the “three hots and a cot” model, which prioritizes immediate material needs but may fail to address the political and social exclusion of people experiencing homelessness. In this study, Loehwing reconsiders typical characterizations of homelessness, citizenship, and democratic community through unconventional approaches to homeless advocacy and assistance. While conventional homeless advocacy rhetoric establishes the urgency of homeless suffering, it also implicitly invites housed publics to understand homelessness as a state of abnormality that destines the individuals suffering it to life outside the civic body. In contrast, Loehwing focuses on atypical models of homeless advocacy: the meal-sharing initiatives of Food Not Bombs, the international competition of the Homeless World Cup, and the annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day campaign. She argues that these modes of unconventional homeless advocacy provide rhetorical exemplars of a type of inclusive and empowering civic discourse that is missing from conventional homeless advocacy and may be indispensable for overcoming homeless marginalization and exclusion in contemporary democratic culture. Loehwing’s interrogation of homeless advocacy rhetorics demonstrates how discursive practices shape democratic culture and how they may provide a potential civic remedy to the harms of disenfranchisement, discrimination, and displacement. This book will be welcomed by scholars whose work focuses on the intersections of democratic theory and rhetorical and civic studies, as well as by homelessness advocacy groups.

The second edition of Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World updates Donald G. Kyle’s award-winning introduction to this topic, covering the Ancient Near East up to the late Roman Empire. • Challenges traditional scholarship on sport and spectacle in the Ancient World and debunks claims that there were no sports before the ancient Greeks • Explores the cultural exchange of Greek sport and Roman spectacle and how each culture responded to the other’s entertainment • Features a new chapter on sport and spectacle during the Late Roman Empire, including Christian opposition to pagan games and the Roman response • Covers topics including violence, professionalism in sport, class, gender and eroticism, and the relationship of spectacle to political structures

In 1860, Queen Victoria sent her eighteen-year-old son, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, on a goodwill mission to Canada and the United States. The young heir-apparent (later King Edward VII) had not yet gained his reputation as a fashion setter and rake, but he nevertheless attracted enormous crowds both in Canada, where it was the first royal visit, and in the United States. Civic leaders hosted the visitor in princely style, decorating their towns with triumphal arches and organizing royal entries, public processions, openings, and grand balls. In Royal Spectacle, Ian Radforth recreates these displays of civic pride by making use of the many public and private accounts of them, and he analyses the heated controversies the visit provoked. When communities rushed to honour the prince and put themselves on display, social divisions inadvertently became part of the spectacle seen by the prince and described by visiting journalists. Street theatre reached a climax in Kingston, where the Prince of Wales could not disembark from his steamer because of the defiance of thousands of Orangemen dressed in their brilliant regalia and waiving their banners. Contemporary depictions of the tour provide an opportunity to interpret the cultural values and social differences that shaped Canada during the Confederation decade and the United States on the eve of the Civil War. Topics explored include Orange-Green conflict, First Nations and the politics of public display, contested representations of race and gender, the tourist gaze, and meanings of crown and empire. An original and erudite study, Royal Spectacle contributes greatly to historical research on public spectacle, colonial and national identities, Britishness in the Atlantic world, and the history of the monarchy.

The first overview of contemporary Canadian architecture in almost twenty years.

Scenic spectacles collapse the borders of graphic and visual arts, multimedia technology, spectatorship and architecture. Drawing upon various systems of commercial, institutional and public spectacle that intersect with scenic stages of the national landscape, Tenneriello examines how spectacle is entrenched in the formation of national identity.