Tolkien’s Transformative Women: Art in Triptych

Annie Brust, Kent State University

January 2024 / ISBN: 978-1-64889-623-1
Availability: In stock
282pp. ¦ $78 £61 €72

J.R. R. Tolkien has been revered as the father of twentieth-century fantasy; however, many initially criticized him for his handling of the textual matter as male-centric magical lands that did not feature prominent female roles or significant female characters. This book will highlight the vast community of powerful female figures that Tolkien created in his fantasy writing, stemming from the distinct and dominant female forces he created in his academic translation and poetry. These fierce women serve as a culmination of the powerful forces of women and female character that originated in Medieval, Norse, and Celtic traditions. They help to create the framework from which Tolkien shaped his female community, not merely as singular figures, as previously featured, but as a dynamic network of figures who shape Tolkien's creative art. For the first time, this discussion looks at the entire community of women, featuring previously excluded figures from his academic works and highlighting translation bias in modern manuscripts of the extant medieval works that influenced these women. It also seeks to create a comprehensive guide and detailed appendices exploring the female characters and influences throughout his writing portfolio. This book seeks to uncover the hidden voices of the past to find their rightful home in the strong female voices of the present, rewriting history to regain a sense of the past.

Bandwagoning in International Relations: China, Russia, and Their Neighbors

Dylan Motin, Kangwon National University, Korea

January 2024 / ISBN: 978-1-64889-833-4
Availability: In stock
186pp. ¦ $57 £45 €53

Whether states balance against or bandwagon with threatening great powers remains an unsolved problem for international relations theory. One school argues that military power compels minor powers to accommodate threats, while another defends that it elicits balancing instead. With the emergence of potential hegemons in both Asia and Europe — namely China and Russia — understanding state alignment is more urgent than ever. This book shows that bandwagoning has been a rare choice in contemporary Asia and Europe. The only states that chose bandwagoning with China or Russia faced both conflicts with third rivals and low levels of U.S. assistance. Going further, I divide bandwagoning between full alignment, survival accommodation, and profit accommodation. Bandwagoners choose among these three options based on the severity of the threat posed by the potential hegemon, the intensity of third conflicts, and the level of U.S. assistance. I test this novel theory against three European (Armenia, Belarus, and Serbia) and four Asian (Cambodia, Myanmar, North Korea, and Pakistan) cases. This study is the first to provide an exhaustive and compelling explanation of bandwagoning fully compatible with neorealism and adds to the balancing-bandwagoning debate. Beyond scholarly implications, this research’s findings offer advice for policymakers concerned with the changing balance of power in Asia and Europe and how to counter China and Russia’s influence.

Psychedelic Modernism: Literature and Film

Raj Chandarlapaty

February 2024 / ISBN: 978-1-64889-823-5
Availability: In stock
268pp. ¦ $78 £62 €72

The primary purpose of 'Psychedelic Modernism: Literature and Film' is to trace the development of ideas and perspectives from the writing and private ambitions of 20th-century modernist writers, including Aldous Huxley. The purpose of the book is to offer a rough chronology during which ideas were first given a literary imagination, then transposed onto discussions of science and psychology, and then theoretically democratized to bring fruit to a relatively de-centered process where images, text, and interviews could re-conceptualize the modern Being from an admixture of modernist, historical, and pop roots that could express a greater moment in the human action. The work includes discussions from scientists such as Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, rock stars such as Jerry Garcia, and unconfirmed mystics such as Carlos Castaneda. The primary focus of this work isn’t literature per se, but the literary imagination as it may correspond to greater, wider, and more impactive goals than the writing of 20th-century fiction. While there is some outreach that favors de-centered models such as the Beat Generation, the author’s primary purpose is to assemble an anthology covering the study and quests for knowledge from as many sides as could power the relative 1960s countercultural movement.

The History of Domestication of Speech

Kazım Tolga Gürel

February 2024 / ISBN: 978-1-64889-818-1
Availability: In stock
142pp. ¦ $55 £44 €52

Throughout history, speech has been forbidden or at least restricted to the laboring classes. Enslaved people laboring in ancient Egypt or working on Latin American plantations were forbidden to speak during work. In the early period of nation-states, the language of many peoples was forbidden because of the sovereignty of the lingua franca. Censorship has taken various forms in the history of all states. Talk amongst the laboring classes could lead to revolt and revolution; for this reason, speech was restricted during the harshest periods of labor. However, speech could be commercialized and reproduced in a society where all individuals were atomized entirely and isolated, in an environment where meaning was almost lost. In short, speech was supervised and controlled for the oppressed until the second half of the 20th century. However, especially in the postmodern period, speech has been supported at every point and subjected to significant inflation as if it were detached from meaningfulness. The pressures previously placed on the speech of workers and marginalized groups have suddenly diminished; speech everywhere has been commercialized and reproduced. This book analyses the causes of this evolution.

Being and Power. A Phenomenological Ontology of Forms of Life

Daniel Rueda Garrido

January 2024 / ISBN: 978-1-64889-817-4
Availability: In stock
146pp. ¦ $55 £44 €51

Why do we act as we do? Why do we assume that the way of being and behaving in our community is right, good, and common sense? Why do we fail to understand those who are, act, and feel differently? These are some of the questions that this book raises and attempts to answer. This ontology is rooted in the phenomenological tradition but with the innovation of taking the "form of life" as the central ontological unit. We are our form of life, but, as a transcendental-immanent reality, this is not directly equivalent to culture or society; it is rather the "political" realisation in the world of an image of the human being shared by a given community. This overcomes the traditional dualities of individual and society, consciousness and body, facticity and freedom, actuality and possibility. The subject is a subject because it identifies with that image, which is equivalent to the intersubjective consciousness of how one should act and be in the world. This gives rise to multiple forms of life. The latter implies a certain power to be who one wants to be. In this way, the book is an invitation to self-examination, for if our form of life is voluntary (i.e., capitalism), it shatters the illusion that one cannot live in any other way, and places us before the anguished but inevitable task of justifying its adoption or resorting to its abandonment. The book offers a dynamic analysis of human existence as the actualisation of a form of life that is, at the same time, the exercise of a certain power over those who seek to live otherwise, especially when that form is institutionalised by a government as the essence of the national or transnational community.