The Golem in German Social Theory provides an innovative and bold interpretation of German social theory. Authors Yair and Soyer argue that German scholars have been continually preoccupied with ancient, religiously-based myths that criticize the ideals of the enlightenment, exemplified by the 16th-century narrative of the Golem rising over its master.

Pierre Bourdieu: The Last Musketeer of the French Revolution argues that Bourdieu appointed himself as the representative of the French people and acted as its National Assembly. In that capacity, he set himself to work with the charter of the preamble toThe Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen to remind the members of the social body of their rights and obligations; to monitor the legislative and executive powers and compare them with the Republican purposes of ideal political and social agendas decreed by the revolutionaries of 1789; and, overall, to maintain the tenets of the French constitution. In that sense, like d'Artagnan in Dumas'The Three Musketeers, Bourdieu took it upon himself to be the fighter for true France, namely the keeper of the Republican tradition of the French Revolution. Bourdieu's entire oeuvre was indeed motivated by the failed promise of the French Revolution and by the demise of its most noble ideals. His passionate analyses--of educational stratification, cultural production and consumption, gender relations, the social structure of the economy, and the effects of globalization--were always carried out with the moral benchmark of the revolution in mind. Bourdieu was indeed passionately tied to the values of the French Revolution, notably to liberty and meritocracy, to social equality and to the democratization and universalization of government. But wherever he looked, he saw those values betrayed by the very people who argued for their implementation, and by the governmental bodies which were devised in order to guarantee their effectiveness. Committed to the values of the Declaration, he was constantly frustrated by the betrayals of universalization by the Fifth Republic.

Traces the history of the golem legend and its appropriations in German texts and film as well as in post-Holocaust Jewish-American fiction, comics, graphic novels, and television. First mentioned in the Book of Psalms in the Hebrew Bible, the golem is a character in an astonishing number of post-Holocaust Jewish-American novels and has served as inspiration for such varied figures as Mary Shelley’s monster in her novel Frankenstein, a frightening character in the television series The X-Files, and comic book figures such as Superman and the Hulk. In The Golem Redux: From Prague to Post-Holocaust Fiction, author Elizabeth R. Baer introduces readers to these varied representations of the golem and traces the history of the golem legend across modern pre- and post-Holocaust culture. In five chapters, The Golem Redux examines the different purposes for which the golem has been used in literature and what makes the golem the ultimate text and intertext for modern Jewish writers. Baer begins by introducing several early manifestations of the golem legend, including texts from the third and fourth centuries and from the medieval period; Prague’s golem legend, which is attributed to the Maharal, Rabbi Judah Loew; the history of the Josefov, the Jewish ghetto in Prague, the site of the golem legend; and versions of the legend by Yudl Rosenberg and Chayim Bloch, which informed and influenced modern intertexts. In the chapters that follow, Baer traces the golem first in pre-Holocaust Austrian and German literature and film and later in post-Holocaust American literature and popular culture, arguing that the golem has been deployed very differently in these two contexts. Where prewar German and Austrian contexts used the golem as a signifier of Jewish otherness to underscore growing anti-Semitic cultural feelings, post-Holocaust American texts use the golem to depict the historical tragedy of the Holocaust and to imagine alternatives to it. In this section, Baer explores traditional retellings by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Elie Wiesel, the considerable legacy of the golem in comics, Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and, finally, "Golems to the Rescue" in twentieth- and twenty-first-century works of film and literature, including those by Cynthia Ozick, Thane Rosenbaum, and Daniel Handler. By placing the Holocaust at the center of her discussion, Baer illustrates how the golem works as a self-conscious intertextual character who affirms the value of imagination and story in Jewish tradition. Students and teachers of Jewish literature and cultural history, film studies, and graphic novels will appreciate Baer’s pioneering and thought-provoking volume.

Finalist for the 2020 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in the category of Jews and the Arts: Music, Performance, and Visual presented by the Association for Jewish Studies Possessed Voices tells the intriguing story of a largely unknown collection of audio recordings, which preserve performances of modernist interwar Hebrew plays. Ruthie Abeliovich focuses on four recordings: a 1931 recording of The Eternal Jew (1919/1923), a 1965 recording of The Dybbuk (1922), a 1961 radio play of The Golem (1925), and a 1952 radio play of Yaakov and Rachel (1928). Abeliovich traces the spoken language of modernist Hebrew theater as grounded in multiple modalities of expressive practices, including spoken Hebrew, Jewish liturgical sensibilities supplemented by Yiddish intonation and other vernacular accents, and in relation to prevalent theatrical forms. The book shows how these recorded performances provided Jewish immigrants from Europe with a venue for lamenting the decline of their home communities and for connecting their memories to the present. Analyzing sonic material against the backdrop of its artistic, cultural, and ideological contexts, Abeliovich develops a critical framework for the study of sound as a discipline in its own right in theater scholarship.

صدر عن المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات كتاب الاستعارة في علم اجتماع ماكس فيبر وزيغمونت باومان، وهو من تأليف عبد القادر مرزاق. يبحث الكتاب في ظاهرة الاستعارة قديمًا وحديثًا، وآراء العلماء فيها، والتحديات التي قابلتها أو طرحتها، ومدى التغير الذي طرأ على النظرة إليها من لدن أرسطو حتى العصر الحديث. يقع الكتاب في 448 صفحة، شاملةً ببليوغرافيا وفهرسًا عامًّا.

A Vindication of the Redhead investigates red hair in literature, art, television, and film throughout Eastern and Western cultures. This study examines red hair as a signifier, perpetuated through stereotypes, myths, legends, and literary and visual representations. Brenda Ayres and Sarah E. Maier provide a history of attitudes held by hegemonic populations toward red-haired individuals, groups, and genders from antiquity to the present. Ayres and Maier explore such diverse topics as Judeo-Christian narratives of red hair, redheads in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, red hair and gender identity, famous literary redheads such as Anne of Green Gables and Pippi Longstocking, contemporary and Neo-Victorian representations of redheads from the Black Widow to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and more. This book illuminates the symbolic significance and related ideologies of red hair constructed in mythic, religious, literary, and visual cultural discourse.

Songs of Social Protest is a comprehensive companion guide to music and social protest globally. Bringing together scholars from a range of fields, it explores a wide range of examples of, and contexts for, songs and their performance that have been deployed as part of local, regional and global social protest movements, both in historical and contemporary times. Topics covered include: Aesthetics Authenticity African American Music Anti-capitalism Community & Collective Movements Counter-hegemonic Discourses Critical Pedagogy Folk Music Identity Memory Performance Popular Culture By placing historical approaches alongside cutting-edge ethnography, philosophical excursions alongside socio-political and economic perspectives, and cultural context alongside detailed, musicological, textual, and performance analysis, Songs of Social Protest offers a dynamic resource for scholars and students exploring song and singing as a form of protest.

Far from being the preserve of a few elite thinkers, critique increasingly dominates public life in modernity, leading to a cacophony of accusation and denunciation around all political issues. The technique of unmasking ‘power’ or ‘hegemony’ or ‘ideology’ has now been adopted across the political spectrum, where critical discourses are routinely used to suggest that anything and everything is only a ‘construct’ or even a ‘conspiracy’. This book draws on anthropological theory to provide a different perspective on this phenomenon; critique appears as a liminal predicament combining imitative polemical and schismatic urges with a haunting sense of uncertainty. It thereby addresses a central academic concern, with a special focus on political critique in the public sphere and within social media. Combining historical interrogations of the roots of critique, as well as examining contemporary political discourse in relation to populism, as seen in presidential elections, historical commemorations and welfare reform, The Spectacle of Critique uses anthropology and genealogy to offer a new sociology of critique that problematises critique and diagnoses its crisis, cultivating acritical and imaginative ways of thinking.

In November 2010, a small but growing group of Victorian Alternate Historians, often referred to as Steampunk, met for the first conference of its kind. There was music, fashion, merchants, and all the other trappings of the Victorian time period set in a venue of “what if.” What set this conference apart was the academic nature of the presentations. Utilizing the internet and scholarly publications, a call for papers was sent out and the response was impressive. Faculty, graduate students, specialists, and general interest writers wrote, prepared, and presented on a wide array of subject matters. This publication is the culmination of those presentations. Before, during, and after the conference, Steampunk became a much debated and discussed subject on our list servers and emails. While some had no idea what Steampunk was and others had an idea that they thought was correct, there was no “one size fits all” definition to this new genre. It was at that point that a number of us that had been at the conference sat down and tried to describe the phenomenon. This is what we came up with: Steampunk is a juxtaposition of science fiction, fantasy, and Victorian alternate history. Its roots are in the literature and architecture of the late 19th century while having its branches reach into the future. It is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the music of Abney Park, the engineering of Nikola Tesla, and the aviation of helium and hot air. In the 1980s a subculture of science fiction found a foothold in literature and science fiction conventions. These “paths not taken” alternative histories gave the cyberpunk and Goth followers at the conventions a new path to follow. There were the works of H. G. Wells, the undersea submersible of Captain Nemo in Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the Victorian work of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to start with. Add to that the architecture of the Victorian age as a gentrification in many of the inner cities of America and England, and you have a breeding ground for something not quite realized but possibly attainable.

Terry Pratchett's writing celebrates the possibilities opened up by inventiveness and imagination. It constructs an ethical stance that values informed and self-aware choices, knowledge of the world in which one makes those choices, the importance of play and humor in crafting a compassionate worldview, and acts of continuous self-examination and creation. This collection of essays uses inventiveness and creation as a thematic core to combine normally disparate themes, such as science fiction studies, the effect of collaborative writing and shared authorship, steampunk aesthetics, productive modes of "ownership," intertextuality, neomedievalism and colonialism, adaptations into other media, linguistics and rhetorics, and coming of age as an act of free will.