The Alphorn through the Eyes of the Classical Composer

Frances Jones

‘The Alphorn through the Eyes of the Classical Composer’ is the first and definitive book to be written about the alphorn in English. It has been written with English-speaking readers in mind, as it examines the extensive interest of primarily non-Swiss composers, writers and artists in the alphorn as a symbol of the Alps, the influence and significance of the alphorn in culture, literature and the arts across the globe, and the ways in which the instrument has been specifically utilised by the Swiss as the iconic representation of their country. This book also explores the use of the musical language of the alphorn call, to ascertain why and how such references as those of Berlioz or Beethoven can convey so much meaning. Dr Jones seeks out what it is that a composer brings into the concert hall, the theatre, the opera house, the church, or the drawing room by such a quotation, to what heritage they are referring, and upon what basis there are grounds for an assumption that such a reference will be understood by an audience. The book, which will be of interest to researchers in Swiss cultural studies and ethnomusicology, builds on Dr Jones’s research and PhD thesis. The six chapters deal with a variety of topics, including a basic introduction to the alphorn and an exploration of the promotion of the instrument as the symbol of Switzerland, as well as the reasons behind symbolic references to alphorn motifs by European and British composers in concert repertoire, jazz and film.

Visualizando el Cambio: Humanidades Ambientales / Envisioning Change: Environmental Humanities

Edited by Alejandro Rivero-Vadillo, University of Alcalá, Spain; Instituto Franklin, Spain and Carmen Flys-Junquera, University of Alcalá, Spain; Instituto Franklin, Spain

The 21st century has been described by many environmental scholars as the one in which humanity will need to face its greatest challenge. The diverse ramifications of the climatic crisis are perhaps the most evident proof of this. This dual-lingual multiauthor volume reflects different perspectives of envisioning an eco-social change towards a more sustainable and just society. Musings on the philosophical implications of utopias, ecofeminism, biopolitics, and biomimicry come together with photography and participatory documentaries. "Envisioning Change: Environmental Humanities" opens with an essay from one of Spain’s foremost essayists on environmental philosophy, Jorge Riechmann. Literary analyses run from classic myths to oral traditions, including references to frequently neglected traditions such as Bhutan or Croatia, in addition to Spain and the United Kingdom. Rather than emulate theoretical and overarching studies, as several of the recent books on environmental humanities, this volume has many original features, including the abundant references to myths and chapters on eco-translation. This volume reflects a wide variety of approaches and particularly highlights the search of younger scholars for new approaches to envision a better world. It would hold appeal for scholars, researchers and teachers interested in the environmental humanities from either a philosophical, literary or artistic perspective. Moreover, environmentalists, activists, artists, and local politicians may also be interested in how the humanities can contribute to the wider environmental cause. El siglo XXI ha sido descrito por muchos académicos medioambientales como el siglo en el que la humanidad tendrá que enfrentarse a su mayor reto, y la prueba más evidente quizás sean las ramificaciones de la crisis climática. Esta colección bilingüe refleja perspectivas diferentes de visualizar un cambio eco-social hacia una sociedad más justa y sostenible. Reflexiones sobre las inferencias filosóficas de las utopías, el ecofeminismo, la biopolítica y la biomímesis se juntan con fotografía y documentales participativos. “Visualizando el cambio: Humanidades ambientales” comienza con un texto escrito por uno los ensayistas sobre filosofía ambiental más importantes de España, Jorge Reichmann. Los análisis literarios van desde mitos clásicos a tradiciones orales, incluyendo referencias a tradiciones frecuentemente olvidadas como las de Bután o Croacia. En lugar de imitar estudios teóricos y globales como han hecho libros recientes que versan sobre humanidades ambientales, esta colección tiene varias características originales, que comprenden abundantes referencias a mitos y capítulos sobre eco-traducción. Esta colección refleja una amplia variedad de enfoques; destaca la búsqueda de nuevas perspectivas para visualizar un mundo mejor por jóvenes académicos, y será de interés para académicos, investigadores y profesores interesados en las humanidades ambientales desde puntos de vista filosóficos, literarios o artísticos. Además, ecologistas, activistas, artistas y políticos locales pueden encontrar información sobre cómo las humanidades pueden contribuir a la causa medioambiental.

The Careers of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas as Referenced in Literature

A Study in Film Perception

Henryk Hoffmann

The Careers of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas as Referenced in Literature is a study of the perception of these two Hollywood megastars and their work, as presented in the text and context of references and allusions found in world literature. This book also aims to establish the impact factor of the two actors and their major films, as well as to provide extensive data for further studies of the complex and bilateral relationships between film and literature. The pertinent quotations have been extracted from over 150 works—novels, short stories, plays, poems and some nonfiction biographies and memoirs (excluding those focused on film celebrities)—by more than 120 authors. The main body of the book consists of two parts, each devoted to one actor and each having five identical sections. In the first section, references to the actor’s films are discussed while the second section presents references to the actor himself. The third section shows the complete list of references found to the actor and his films, including references not mentioned in the first two sections—either because of their relative insignificance, the lack of an English translation in case of foreign-language works or repetitiveness and/or abundance in a given work. The fourth section offers the credits of the films referenced, and the fifth section presents the actor’s complete monographic bibliography. The third part of the book, ‘Epilogue: Final Remarks and Conclusions,’ provides an analysis and classification of all the references and allusions presented in the main body, and it elaborates on the friendship of the two actors. College professors and students interested in film studies, particularly film analysis and criticism, film perception and film genres, will find this book of great interest. It will also appeal to people interested in biographical books on movie personalities and movie fans, especially those interested in westerns, film noir and the careers of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas.

Re/Thinking Chickens: The Discourse around Chicken Farming in British Newspapers and Campaigners’ Magazines, 1982 - 2016

Elena Lazutkaite, University of Nottingham

"Re/Thinking Chickens: The Discourse around Chicken Farming in British Newspapers and Campaigners’ Magazines, 1982–2016" has major social relevance as it focuses on one of the most forgotten and yet most exploited farmed animals, chickens, who now have a combined mass exceeding that of all other birds on Earth. Dr Elena Lazutkaitė demonstrates that the planet’s most numerous birds, with a population of 23 billion at any one time, are trivialised in public discourse. This book applies the analytical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis in combination with corpus linguistics tools to present a detailed empirical case study. In total, the study corpus comprises 1754 texts published over the period of 34 years in broadsheets The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, tabloids the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail (including their Sunday editions Sunday Mirror and Mail on Sunday) and magazines produced by animal advocacy groups Compassion In World Farming and Animal Aid. This book will be of particular interest to university students of critical animal studies, human-animal studies, discourse studies, cultural studies, communication studies, sociology, (eco)linguistics, in addition to animal advocacy groups and media practitioners.

The Impacts of Dictatorship on Heritage Management

Minjae Zoh

The relationship between heritage and dictatorship has, arguably, been relatively understudied compared to research on the nation-state. In recognising the importance of understanding how different political systems can have various and particular outcomes on heritage, The Impacts of Dictatorship on Heritage Management has developed the concept of ‘Authorised Dictatorial Discourse’ (ADD) to the ever-growing and evolving field of Heritage Studies. Through the exploration of the various impacts a ‘dictatorship’ can have on the management and uses of heritage sites, this book sets out to examine how a dictator’s interests in certain heritage sites, and particularly territories, can affect how heritage becomes preserved and promoted in both the mid and long terms. Building on Laurajane Smith’s seminal works on Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) in her book Uses of Heritage (Routledge, 2006), this book also seeks to gain a more precise and in-depth understanding of the relationship between ‘heritage and dictatorship’, how authorised discourses on heritage has been exercised, and how territory policies that influenced the preservation and promotion of heritage sites have been executed. In doing so, The Impacts of Dictatorship on Heritage Management aims to provide a better insight into, demonstrate how, and the extent to which the politics of heritage and territory can be interlinked with this type of political system. This book will appeal to those with a keen interest in heritage management, dictatorship and heritage, South Korean heritage and theoretical heritage management. It will be of particular interest to research students and scholars who are part of this interdisciplinary field.

The Recovery Handbook: Understanding Addictions and Evidenced-Based Treatment Practices

Nicholas D. Young, American International College et al.

Addiction is rapidly becoming one of the most significant challenges to mental health today. According to the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH, 2018), 19.7 million Americans, aged 12 and older, battled a substance disorder alone in 2017. Additionally, 8.5 million of those individuals also suffered from a mental health disorder, with millions more suffering from a range of other addictive disorders and associated behaviors that interfere with physical, social and emotional health. These alarming statistics highlight the crucial need for mental health providers to be kept up to date with the latest research on the full range of addiction treatment and recovery. ‘The Recovery Handbook: Understanding Addictions and Evidenced-Based Treatment Practices’ provides a comprehensive examination of the various forms of addiction, its physical and mental complexities, and, unlike other sources on addiction, effective evidence-based interventions that promote a healthy recovery. Particular attention is given to the nature of addiction, including environmental, genetic, and developmental factors; with authors examining the short- and long-term effects of a variety of addictions such as drug, alcohol, gambling, food, sex, shopping, work, and video gaming to name a few. This book will serve as a valuable resource for counselors, psychologists, professors, graduate students in the helping professions, as well as families of addicts, co-workers, and those suffering from addiction themselves.

Stories in Stone: Memorialization, the Creation of History and the Role of Preservation

Emily Williams, Durham University

*Co-Winner of the Historic Preservation Book Prize 2021* In 1866, Alexander Dunlop, a free black living in Williamsburg Virginia, did three unusual things. He had an audience with the President of the United States, testified in front of the Joint Congressional Committee on Reconstruction, and he purchased a tombstone for his wife, Lucy Ann Dunlop. Purchases of this sort were rarities among Virginia’s free black community—and this particular gravestone is made more significant by Dunlop’s choice of words, his political advocacy, and the racialized rhetoric of the period. Carved by a pair of Richmond-based carvers, who like many other Southern monument makers, contributed to celebrating and mythologizing the “Lost Cause” in the wake of the Civil War, Lucy Ann’s tombstone is a powerful statement of Dunlop’s belief in the worth of all men and his hopes for the future. Buried in 1925 by the white members of a church congregation, and again in the 1960s by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the tombstone was excavated in 2003. Analysis, conservation, and long-term interpretation were undertaken by the Foundation in partnership with the community of the First Baptist Church, a historically black church within which Alexander Dunlop was a leader. “Stories in Stone: Memorialization, the Creation of History and the Role of Preservation” examines the story of the tombstone through a blend of object biography and micro-historical approaches and contrasts it with other memory projects, like the remembrance of the Civil War dead. Data from a regional survey of nineteenth-century cemeteries, historical accounts, literary sources, and the visual arts are woven together to explore the agentive relationships between monuments, their commissioners, their creators and their viewers and the ways in which memory is created and contested and how this impacts the history we learn and preserve.

Ireland's Hope: The “peculiar theories” of James Fintan Lalor

James P. Bruce

In 1847 and 1848 a little-known farmer named James Fintan Lalor wrote a series of newspaper articles in which he outlined his vision for Ireland after the Great Famine. Although they have been reprinted and republished many times since, until now there has been no systematic study of the principles and proposals that Lalor expounded. In this book, the author considers Lalor’s brief career as a writer and offers new insights into his treatment of the national and land questions. By elucidating Lalor’s ideas on these questions, exploring possible influences on his thinking, and assessing the impact of his writings on his contemporaries, the author seeks to address what he regards as two deficiencies in the historiography. The first of these is the tendency to assign only a minor, supporting role to Lalor during the brief heyday of Young Ireland. Academic studies typically portray him as little more than a catalyst in the radicalisation of figures like John Mitchel, rather than as a profoundly original thinker in his own right. The second issue is the commonly held perception of Lalor’s proposals on land tenure as foreshadowing the creation of a “peasant proprietary” later in the century. The author argues that Lalor advocated a much more radical plan that would link his two primary objectives: the creation of a sovereign Irish republic, and transfer of control over landholding from a small number of landlords to the entire Irish people. By comparing and contrasting Lalor’s theories with those of earlier figures such as Thomas Paine and James ‘Bronterre’ O’Brien, this ground-breaking book broadens the perspective on Lalor and his writings beyond the context of Irish nationalism. As the author concludes, Lalor’s unique contribution to Irish radical thought merits a more prominent place in nineteenth-century intellectual history than it has hitherto received. This book will be of great value to anyone interested in Irish history since 1800, especially in the areas of the Great Famine, the Young Ireland movement, and the Land War.

The Use of History in Putin's Russia

James C. Pearce, City College Peterborough

History is not just a study of past events, but a product and an idea for the modernisation and consolidation of the nation. ‘The Use of History in Putin’s Russia’ examines how the past is perceived in contemporary Russia and analyses the ways in which the Russian state uses history to create a broad coalition of consensus and forge a new national identity. Central to issues of governance and national identity, the Russian state utilises history for the purpose of state-building and reviving Russia’s national consciousness in the twenty-first century. Assessing how history mediates the complex relationship between state and population, this book analyses the selection process of constructing and recycling a preferred historical narrative to create loyal, patriotic citizens, ultimately aiding its modernisation. Different historical spheres of Russian life are analysed in-depth including areas of culture, politics, education, and anniversaries. The past is not just a state matter, a socio-political issue linked to the modernisation process, containing many paradoxes. This book has wide-ranging appeal, not only for professors and students specialising in Russia and the former Soviet Space in the fields of History and Memory, International Relations, Educational Studies, and Intercultural Communication but also for policymakers and think-tanks.

Positioning and Stance in Political Discourse: The Individual, the Party, and the Party Line

Edited by Lawrence Norman Berlin, Universidad EAFIT, Colombia

Within the political sphere, a political actor is often judged by what he or she says, with their verbal performance often perceived as representative of the individual. Hearers accept that, as individuals, they possess a lifetime of experiences and actions which inform, but may also undermine, their aspirations in gaining political capital. Additionally, as representatives of a political party and its ideology, these actors do not exist in isolation; they are members and, at times, potential candidates of a particular party with its own agenda which may, in turn, cause them to modify their personal speech to align with espoused policies of the party. The various contributions contained in this volume examine the discourse of political actors through the lenses of positionality and stance. Throughout its chapters, clearly defined theoretical perspectives and specified social practices are employed, enabling the authors to elucidate how political actors can situate themselves, their party, and their opponents toward their ostensive public. This book successfully demonstrates how espoused perspectives relate to, or reflect on, the nature of the individual political actor and their truth, the party they represent and its ideology, and the pandering to popular public opinion to gain support and co-operation. This book will hold particular appeal for postgraduate students, researchers, and scholars of discourse studies, pragmatics, political science, as well as other areas in humanities and the social sciences.

Hero and Hero-Worship: Fandom in Modern India

Edited by Rahul Chaturvedi, Banaras Hindu University, India et al.

In the aftermath of liberalization of Indian economy in 1991, the study of star-fan studies has experienced exponential expansion. Hero and Hero-Worship: Fandom in Modern India explores the areas of political, religious, film and cricket star fandoms; analyzing the rise of star formations and their consequent fandoms, star-fan bonds, as well as the physical and virtual space that both stars and fans inhabit. As perhaps one of the first book-length studies on Indian fandom, this volume not only draws on the works of Jenkins and other fandom scholars, but also explores the economic and cultural specificities of Indian fandom. This book will be of particular interest to scholars working in the field, as well as general readers interested in understanding star-fan interactions and intersections.

Reintroducing Philosophy: Thinking as the Gathering of Civilization

According to contemporary, Islamicate and ancient sources

Anthony F. Shaker

That we are now entering a post-Western world is no longer merely a thesis in international studies. But what does the dissolution of “Western” hegemony signify for humanity’s rich learning traditions and the civilizing quest for wisdom? How can this human inheritance assist us today? "Reintroducing Philosophy" seeks a more realistic framework for discourse on these questions than offered by the Western-centric worldview, which continues to be taught in schools almost by rote. It analyzes themes from several world traditions in logic, knowledge and metaphysics connected with the quest for completeness of thinking and practice. Its examination of the relation of knowing and being is based on sources as varied as Leibniz and Frege, Qūnawī and Ṣadrā, ancient Greek and classical Indian and Chinese thought. Shaker brings into the discussion the paradigm (unmūzaj) that Ṣadrā presented as that of man’s being in the world, encapsulating philosophy’s longstanding view of thinking as the gathering of civilization. "Reintroducing Philosophy" is based on a concentrated reading of all these sources, simply because human civilization had already been global and advanced before the present age.

Entangled Bodies: Art, Identity and Intercorporeality

Edited by Tammer El-Sheikh, York University

Organ transplantation is a medical innovation that has offered the potential to enhance and save lives since the first successful procedure in the 1950s. Subsequent developments in scientific knowledge and advances in surgical techniques have allowed for more efficient and refined procurement, minimal surgical complications, and increased success rate. However, procedures such as organ transplantation raise questions about the nature of our relationship with our own bodies; about our embodiment and personal and corporeal identity. This book is comprised of academic essays, personal reflections, and creative writing from researchers and artists involved in an ongoing collaborative art-science project about the experience and culture of heart transplantation. The writings and reflections included discuss embodiment, what it means to inhabit a body and define oneself in relation to it, including struggles with identity formation; set in both clinical and private spaces. The uniqueness of this volume consists in the authors’ aim of connecting the specific experience of heart transplantation to the more widely shared experience of relating to the world and one another through the body’s physical, perceived, and imagined boundaries. Such boundaries and the commonly held beliefs in personal autonomy that are associated with them are a subject of ongoing philosophical and scientific debate. What’s more, the resources of art and culture, including popular culture, literature, historical and contemporary art, are extremely useful in revising our views of what it means for the body’s boundaries to be philosophically ‘leaky.’ Following the discussion initiated by contributor Margrit Shildrick, this book contributes to the field of inquiry of the phenomenon of embodiment and inter-corporeality, the growing body of literature emerging from collaborative art-science research projects, and the wider area of disability studies. This book will be of particular interest to those with personal, scholarly, and creative interests in the experience of transplantation, or illness in general.

Nigeria's Resource Wars

Edited by Egodi Uchendu, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

'Nigeria’s Resource Wars' reflects on the diversity of conflicts over access to, and allocation of, resources in Nigeria. From the devastating effects of crude oil exploration in the Niger Delta to desertification caused by climate change, and illegal gold mining in Zamfara, to mention a few, Nigeria faces new dimensions of resource-related struggles. The ravaging effects of these resource conflicts between crop farmers and Fulani herders in Nigeria’s Middlebelt and states across Southern Nigeria call for urgent scholarly interventions; with the Fulani cattle breeders’ onslaught altering the histories of many Nigerian families through deaths, loss of homes and investments, and permanent physical incapacity. Currently, there is an almost total breakdown of interethnic relations, with political commentators acknowledging that Nigeria has never been so divided as it presently is in its history. The struggles have now degenerated into kidnaps, armed robbery, and incessant targeted and random killings across the country; compounding the already complex problem of insecurity in Nigeria. The chapters in this volume engage with these issues, presenting the different arguments on resource conflicts in Nigeria. They draw insights from similar conflicts in Nigeria’s colonial/post-independence past and events from around the world to proffer possible solutions to resource-related confrontations in Africa. By offering a collection of different intellectual perspectives on resource conflicts in Nigeria, this volume will be an important reference material for understanding the diversity of thought patterns that underpin the struggle and policy approaches towards resolving conflict situations in Africa. This volume will be of considerable interest to scholars of Africa, researchers in the humanities, social sciences, and conflict studies, and policymakers interested in understanding the resource crisis in Africa.

How Law Works: Collected Articles and New Essays

Thomas Hemnes

This book chronicles developments in legal practice, intellectual property, and privacy law from the dawn of the digital age to today’s world of social media and cloud technologies. Part autobiography, part legal history, and part philosophy of law, the volume explores the nature of legal reasoning, property, privacy, and personal identity. Hemnes weaves these large issues into meticulously researched analysis of the legal protection for computer software, the mechanics of software licensing, trademark protection and the use of intellectual property as collateral. Hemnes also considers how and why the promise of the early digital age in the 20th century declined into the rampant factionalism, nationalism, and terrorism of the early 21st century. An indispensable resource for anyone studying the emergence of intellectual property rights as a cornerstone of the modern economy, this book also serves as a foundational reference tool for professors, students, and practitioners of intellectual property. The breadth and value of information contained within its pages, from the very basics of computer software protection to the intricacies of negotiation strategy for indemnification clauses, warrants a place on the library shelves of every practitioner of intellectual property and privacy law and on the reading list of every intellectual property, privacy and jurisprudence course.

The Dynamics of Bride Price in Zimbabwe and the UK Diaspora

Ottis Mubaiwa

The tradition of Bride Price has been at the heart of marriage for many centuries in numerous cultures across the globe. The Dynamics of Bride Price presents new research data from Zimbabwe and the UK highlighting the transnational dimension of the practice, its diversity in different contexts and across generations, and its influence on the structure of gender relationships and inequalities. The transnational element of its investigation into the institution and traditions of African marriage sets this book apart from existing study and offers its readers a nuanced and complex understanding of the perceptions and experiences of Bride Price across diverse contexts. This original contribution will be of great interest to those studying and teaching courses on Gender and Development, as well as researchers and policymakers of cultural practices.

Humor, Psyche, and Society: A Socio-Semiotic Analysis

Arthur Asa Berger, San Francisco State University

It is the age-old saying that “laughter is the best medicine”. Scientific research has substantiated the claim made by this proverb by verifying the positive effects it has on both our mind and body, but what is it about a good joke, comic, or sitcom that makes us laugh? Humor, Psyche and Society is a compilation of Berger’s previously published articles and new chapters on the nature of humour, its importance for our psyches, and its social and political significance. Written in an accessible style, it uses semiotics, psychoanalytic theory, sociological theory, as well as other theories of humour to explore the multifaceted nature of humour, various styles of jokes and sitcoms. Using Berger’s typology of forty-five techniques found in all forms of humour, developed to explain what makes us laugh, this book analyses a variety of humorous texts. Balancing theory, entertaining jokes and other humorous texts, as well as the author’s illustrations, the chapters in this book delve into a diverse range of topics such as humour and the creative process, humour and health, and visual humour; along with an examination of the sitcoms Frasier and Cheers; and finally, the exploration of jokes including Jewish jokes, and jokes on Russia and Communism, and Trump. This book will be of particular interest to university students studying courses in humour, comedy, popular culture, applied semiotics, American politics and culture, and cultural studies. Due to the accessible nature of this book, the general public may find it to be both a fascinating and entertaining read.

Roots and Routes: Poetics at New College of California

Edited by Patrick James Dunagan et al.

'Roots and Routes' gathers essays, talks, interviews, statements, notes, and other prose writings by poets who studied and/or taught at the New College of California’s Masters in Poetics program over the course of its nearly 30-year existence. The collection evokes a much-needed anti-hierarchical, even anarchic, pedagogy in poetry, poetics, and the literary arts, and is part of a general reevaluation of standard higher education models on Creative Writing. As such it will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars interested in America’s recent literary history, as well as to poets outside the academy and the general reader interested in US poetry and poetics.

No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media

Luiz Valério P. Trindade, IPIE – International Panel on the Information Environment, Switzerland

‘No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media’ examines the social phenomenon of construction and dissemination of colonial-like racist discourses fostered against upwardly-mobile black women through disparagement humour on social media platforms, adopting a fresh and innovative perspective. In this book, Luiz Valério P. Trindade explores the idea that disparagement humour might not be as exempt of social impact as the jokers might believe, and that, in fact, this kind of humour reveals the hidden facet of deep-seated colonial ideologies still present in Brazilian society despite being hailed as a unique model of a post-racial society. The author argues that these ideologies establish and naturalise superior social positions and symbolic privileges to whites while undermining and delegitimising black women’s upward social mobility. Social media platforms enable the proponents of these beliefs not only to engage in the practice of online hate speech but also to attract a considerable number of like-minded people, creating a long-lasting echo chamber effect in the cyberspace. This way, they manage to amplify the reach and reverberation of their racist discourses in the online environment in ways not commonly seen in Brazilian offline social contexts. This monograph is of great interest and relevance to students, scholars, and researchers across a variety of disciplines, most notably Critical Race Studies, Media Communication Studies and Critical Humour Studies, and also academics in other areas such as Critical Discourse Analysis, Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Latin American Studies.

Antigone Uninterrupted

Antigone's Biographical Tale of Learning from Tragic Counsel

Wendy Bustamante

This book argues that while current scholarship on Antigone tends to celebrate work that takes Antigone out of her classical roots and puts her into contemporary frameworks, we do not need to place her in a new context and setting to appreciate what her insights offer. We can simply listen to her whole story and learn from what she learns from her father, Oedipus. While other works boldly claim to be progressively moving beyond the scope of tragic themes of mortality, Antigone Uninterrupted demonstrates that reading the Theban Plays in the order of Antigone’s biography (so to speak) expands our understanding of what Antigone could tell us about contemporary issues. This demonstration involves Hegel’s discussion of Antigone in his Phenomenology of Spirit, responses to Hegel on this point, and the author’s assessment that Antigone makes arguments in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus that ought to be illuminated in contemporary scholarship. This book examines the three Theban Plays (Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone) in the order by which Antigone’s story is a continuous development of character and age, a unique approach for reasons the author identifies, but one she argues would be beneficial to future scholarship. Providing illuminating readings of both Sophocles’ tragedies and some key modern interpretations of the plays, this book holds broad appeal for those interested in subjects such as political science, gender theory, queer theory, literary criticism, theology, and sociology, to name a few.