Black Panther: Wakandan “Civitas” and Panthering Futurity

Edited by Jorge Serrano, University of Delaware

This interdisciplinary academic study is for readers interested in film, media, and the comic book genre. Superhero theories are abundant, especially considering their use as a tool for coping with adversity, and some note that it is an integral part of American society, young formative minds, in particular. It is not just about learning morals but also seeing how an ideal society should function and look. There are works that review superheroes and theories about comic book series adaptions in film and text, but the writers in this compendium engage not only with the film and the intersectionality of women, Asian culture, Du Bois, and even Greek Ajax and others for comparison but also comparative analysis of works that capture African and African diasporic representation throughout various historical time periods. The anthology presents discourse that engages a variety of assessments that involve questions of positive and pejorative representation. Educators will find this a useful tool for undergraduate students as well as general audiences interested in this popular film/comic series.

Dynamics of Interregional Exchange in East Asian Buddhist Art, 5th–13th Century

Edited by Dorothy C. Wong, University of Virginia, USA

This volume examines the various patterns of trans-regional exchanges in Buddhist art within East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan) in the medieval period, from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries. A traditional approach to the study of East Asian Buddhist art revolves around the notion of an artistic relay: India was regarded as the source of inspiration for China, and China in turn influenced artistic production in the Korean peninsula and Japan. While this narrative holds some truth, it has the implicit baggage of assuming that art in the host country is only derivative and obscures a deep understanding of the complexity of transnational exchanges. The essays in this volume aim to go beyond the conventional query of tracing origins and mapping exchanges in order to investigate the agency of the “receivers” with contextual case studies that can expand our understanding of artistic dialogues across cultures. The volume is divided into three sections. In Section I, “Transmission and Local Interpretations,” the three chapters by Jinchao Zhao, Li-kuei Chien, and Hong Wu all address topics of transnational transmission of Buddhist imagery, their figural styles, and subsequent alterations or adaptations based on local preferences and interpretations. Buddhism had important impacts on East Asian countries in the political dimension, especially when the religion and certain Buddhist sutras and deities were believed to have state-protecting properties. The chapters by Dorothy C. Wong, Imann Lai, and Clara Ma in Section II, “Buddhism and the State,” attend to the political aspect of Buddhism in visual representation. Section III, “Iconography and Traditions,” includes chapters by Sakiko Takahashi, Suijun Ra, and Tamami Hamada that closely study the cross-border transmission of and subtle variations in iconography and style of specific Buddhist deities, notably deities of esoteric strands that include the Thousand-Armed Avalokiteśvara (Bodhisattva of Compassion).

Architectural Documentation: Built Environment, Modernization, and Turkish Nationalism

Serra Akboy-Ilk, Collin College

Against the backdrop of building a new country, this study explores and evaluates the documentation culture in early republican Turkey. Having fought the Turkish War of Independence (1919–22) against the Allied Powers, the revolutionaries led by legendary leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) came to engage with the idea of the West and its cultural origin. With the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the constitution abolished the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire including the dynastic cultural, economic, educational, and governmental institutions. In the redemption of the nation within the modern history of civilizations, cultural Westernization and technical modernization became the model for the newly found nation-state. While the new country became the subject of reformation, historic architecture was called upon to grant the aura of a glorious past to the Turks. Through the materialization of ‘Türk Tarih Tezi’ (the Turkish History Thesis), the founding leaders focused on the origin of Turks and the everlasting spirit of the Turkish state. In this pursuit, architectural heritage signified the formative power to represent the past. Supported by state-agencies, scholars, with supreme patriotic zeal and diligence, travelled across the remotest corners of the country to document and study the historic architecture of the nation. To date, the complicated question of a national identity embodied in the built environment has dominated the contemporary scholarship on early republican historiography. Akboy-İlk’s study, however, distinguishes itself with its focus on architectural documentation, which became an agent of history-writing in the early years of the nation state. Curated by the ideologies of the state, the formal documentation findings extensively informed the republican plot of the modern progress of Turks. For scholars interested in a closer reading of the crossing boundaries between architectural heritage and nation-building in the case of the modernization of Turkey, this book is revealing and provocative in bringing forward architectural documentation, a remarkably overlooked subject in studies of the area.

A Girl Can Do: Recognizing and Representing Girlhood

Edited by Tiffany R. Isselhardt, Girl Museum

How do scholars research and interpret marginalized populations, especially those that are seldom recognized as marginalized or whose sources are believed to be rare? Combining intersectional feminism and public history methodologies, ‘A Girl Can Do: Recognizing and Representing Girlhood’ reflects on how girlhood is found, researched, and interpreted in museums, archives, and historic sites. Defining “girl” as “self-identifying females under the age of 21,” ‘A Girl Can Do’ lays the groundwork for understanding girlhood, its constructs, and its marginalization while providing faculty, students, and working professionals with ten case studies on researching and working with girlhood. Contributors include archaeologists, archivists, curators, educators, and historians who demonstrate how adding a girl studies lens fosters greater inclusivity and diversity in our work. Whether studying spatial techniques of marginalization in colonial Peru, the daybooks as records of girlhood in late-nineteenth century Sweden, or collaborating with self-identifying fangirls to produce a pop-up exhibition, the contributors demonstrate the variety of sources and methods that can be used to interpret this oft-overlooked population. Throughout, ‘A Girl Can Do’ petitions for collaborative and creative thinking in how we can reframe and reinterpret our sources – both traditional and overlooked – to shed new light on how girls have contributed to, and provide frames of reference for, human history and culture.

A Girl Can Do: Recognizing and Representing Girlhood

Edited by Tiffany R. Isselhardt, Girl Museum

How do scholars research and interpret marginalized populations, especially those that are seldom recognized as marginalized or whose sources are believed to be rare? Combining intersectional feminism and public history methodologies, ‘A Girl Can Do: Recognizing and Representing Girlhood’ reflects on how girlhood is found, researched, and interpreted in museums, archives, and historic sites. Defining “girl” as “self-identifying females under the age of 21,” ‘A Girl Can Do’ lays the groundwork for understanding girlhood, its constructs, and its marginalization while providing faculty, students, and working professionals with ten case studies on researching and working with girlhood. Contributors include archaeologists, archivists, curators, educators, and historians who demonstrate how adding a girl studies lens fosters greater inclusivity and diversity in our work. Whether studying spatial techniques of marginalization in colonial Peru, the daybooks as records of girlhood in late-nineteenth century Sweden, or collaborating with self-identifying fangirls to produce a pop-up exhibition, the contributors demonstrate the variety of sources and methods that can be used to interpret this oft-overlooked population. Throughout, ‘A Girl Can Do’ petitions for collaborative and creative thinking in how we can reframe and reinterpret our sources – both traditional and overlooked – to shed new light on how girls have contributed to, and provide frames of reference for, human history and culture.

Ephemeral Coast: Visualizing Coastal Climate Change

Edited by Celina Jeffery, University of Ottawa

'Ephemeral Coast: Visualizing Coastal Climate Change' considers the ways that art can offer a means through which to discover, analyze, re-imagine and re-frame emotive discourses about the ecological and cultural transformations of the coastline. This edited anthology takes ephemerality as its central conceptual and methodological framework and presents a series of essays that create interconnections between environmental and social considerations of the coast, a succession of embodied creative practices, and shifting regional geographic identities. The book presents a series of specific case studies of artistic practices and strategies that seek to capture the rewriting of cartographic maps that are being reshaped by rising seas, coastal flooding and catastrophic weather. The essays in this edited volume engender creative strategies for understanding new and uncertain coastal ecologies and the loss, expulsion or destruction of their associated cultures, habitats, species and ecosystems. The anthology also looks at the historical, mnemonic and contemporary transitional conditions of ‘conflicted’ coastal spaces in which empire, modernity and globalization press on coastal erosion and incursions, proliferate it with trivial plastics, pollution and disposable attitudes, and bring vulnerable communities into uncertain futures.

Ephemeral Coast: Visualizing Coastal Climate Change

Edited by Celina Jeffery, University of Ottawa

'Ephemeral Coast: Visualizing Coastal Climate Change' considers the ways that art can offer a means through which to discover, analyze, re-imagine and re-frame emotive discourses about the ecological and cultural transformations of the coastline. This edited anthology takes ephemerality as its central conceptual and methodological framework and presents a series of essays that create interconnections between environmental and social considerations of the coast, a succession of embodied creative practices, and shifting regional geographic identities. The book presents a series of specific case studies of artistic practices and strategies that seek to capture the rewriting of cartographic maps that are being reshaped by rising seas, coastal flooding and catastrophic weather. The essays in this edited volume engender creative strategies for understanding new and uncertain coastal ecologies and the loss, expulsion or destruction of their associated cultures, habitats, species and ecosystems. The anthology also looks at the historical, mnemonic and contemporary transitional conditions of ‘conflicted’ coastal spaces in which empire, modernity and globalization press on coastal erosion and incursions, proliferate it with trivial plastics, pollution and disposable attitudes, and bring vulnerable communities into uncertain futures.

The Prisons Memory Archive: A Case Study in Filmed Memory of Conflict

Edited by Jolene Mairs Dyer, Ulster University et al.

The Prisons Memory Archive (PMA) explores ways that narratives of a conflicted past are filmed at the site of the experiences and later negotiated in a contested present in the North of Ireland. Given the state’s failed attempts at establishing an official process for addressing the legacy of the conflict that lasted between 1968 and 1998, there are a number of community and academic initiatives that have taken up this task. The Prisons Memory Archive is one such project, whose aim is to research the possibilities of engaging with the story of the ‘other’ in a society that is emerging from decades of political violence. The PMA filmed back inside the prisons with those who passed through Armagh Gaol (2006) and the Maze and Long Kesh Prison (2007), which were both touchstone and tinderbox during the 30 years of violent conflict. We applied protocols of co-ownership, where participants become co-authors of their own story, with the right to withdraw up to the point of exhibition; inclusivity to ensure a multi-narrative archive with prison staff, prisoners, visitors, teachers, chaplains, etc.; and life-story telling, where leading questions are eschewed in order to return more agency to the participants. Currently, the full archive, made up of 160 walk-and-talk recordings totaling 300 hours of filmed material, is available at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, where it is preserved and made accessible to the public, and a website has been designed for educational use of the archive. This collection offers critical reflections on the processes of recording, archiving and utilising the archive in its several manifestations, e.g. feature films, website, and full archive at the Public Records Office. The perspectives offer a range of reflections, including filming, editing, archiving, web design, education, and museum practice.

Lionello Perera: An Italian Banker and Patron in New York

Diego Mantoan, University of Palermo, Italy

The book presents the long-lost biography of Lionello Perera, principal banker, patron, and philanthropist of the Italian American community in New York at the inception of the twentieth century. Born and raised in Venice, Lionello Perera took over his uncle’s financial activity in Wall Street and developed the family business into a stronghold of the Italian American community. His remarkable career led him to become the Vice President of Bank of America in 1928 as an associate of California born Amadeo P. Giannini, while he also was instrumental to the political success of New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Recognised as a true founding father of the Italian American community of the East Coast, he supported welfare societies and public hospitals to foster the integration of Italian immigrants. A close friend of star conductor Arturo Toscanini, Lionello Perera and his wife Carolyn Allen Perera turned into influential music patrons for Italian and Jewish musicians. Their unique Art Deco house in the Upper East Side became an epicentre of the New York music world, showcasing the banker’s refined art collection that matched the taste of J. Pierpont Morgan and Samuel H. Kress. The book relies on unprecedented archival material rendering justice to the relevance Lionello Perera holds as a contributor to the political, social, and cultural integration of Italians in the USA. It offers an innovative perspective that considers the tight interrelation of Italian Americans of the East Coast with ongoing events in their country of origin. Lionello Perera’s life highlights the silent contribution of Italian Americans to change the US banking system and help the integration of Italian immigrants in their new country. Hence, the main audience are students and scholars interested in the history of immigration, banking history, Italian American culture as well as music studies and art history.

Lionello Perera: An Italian Banker and Patron in New York

Diego Mantoan, University of Palermo, Italy

The book presents the long-lost biography of Lionello Perera, principal banker, patron, and philanthropist of the Italian American community in New York at the inception of the twentieth century. Born and raised in Venice, Lionello Perera took over his uncle’s financial activity in Wall Street and developed the family business into a stronghold of the Italian American community. His remarkable career led him to become the Vice President of Bank of America in 1928 as an associate of California born Amadeo P. Giannini, while he also was instrumental to the political success of New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Recognised as a true founding father of the Italian American community of the East Coast, he supported welfare societies and public hospitals to foster the integration of Italian immigrants. A close friend of star conductor Arturo Toscanini, Lionello Perera and his wife Carolyn Allen Perera turned into influential music patrons for Italian and Jewish musicians. Their unique Art Deco house in the Upper East Side became an epicentre of the New York music world, showcasing the banker’s refined art collection that matched the taste of J. Pierpont Morgan and Samuel H. Kress. The book relies on unprecedented archival material rendering justice to the relevance Lionello Perera holds as a contributor to the political, social, and cultural integration of Italians in the USA. It offers an innovative perspective that considers the tight interrelation of Italian Americans of the East Coast with ongoing events in their country of origin. Lionello Perera’s life highlights the silent contribution of Italian Americans to change the US banking system and help the integration of Italian immigrants in their new country. Hence, the main audience are students and scholars interested in the history of immigration, banking history, Italian American culture as well as music studies and art history.

Issues in Kartvelian Studies

Edited by Tamar Makharoblidze, Ilia State University, Georgia

Georgia is a part of the Caucasus region, located at the intersection of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north and east by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres (26,911 sq mi), and its approximate population is about 3.716 million. Georgia is a motherland of Iberian or Kartvelian languages: Georgian, Svan, Megrelian and Laz, a language family native to the South Caucasus. This diverse collection is devoted to a wide range of linguistic works, such as descriptive studies of the Kartvelian languages and Georgian sign language, along with some theoretical contributions, dialectology, lexicography, psycholinguistics and computational linguistics, as well as history, ethnography, religion and educational issues. These articles are not only the best studies of Kartvelology but also clearly show its contribution to world science.

Novels, Rhetoric, and Criticism: A Brief History of Belles Lettres and British Literary Culture, 1680 – 1900

Jack M. Downs, Washington State University Health Sciences Spokane

Developing a history of the English novel requires the inclusion of a vast range of cultural, economic, religious, social, and aesthetic influences. But the role of eighteenth-century English rhetorical theory in the emergence of the novel – and the critical discourse surrounding that emergence – has often been neglected or overlooked. The influence of rhetorical theory in the development of the English novel is undeniable, however, and changes to rhetorical theory in Britain during the eighteenth century led to the development of a critical aesthetic discourse about the novel in Victorian England. This study argues that eighteenth-century 'belles lettres' rhetorical theory played a key role in developing a horizon of expectation concerning the nature and purpose of the novel that extended well into the nineteenth century. There is a connection between the emergence of the English novel, eighteenth-century rhetorical theory, and Victorian novel criticism that has been neglected; this study attempts to recover and articulate that connection.

Post45 Vs. The World: Literary Perspectives on the Global Contemporary

Edited by William G. Welty, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Much of the work done on the Post45 literary field carries an implicitly Americanist perspective. Even the name of the field suggests a certain literary history, with certain assumptions and blind spots about national spaces, identities, and histories. But what would Post45 look like when considered from outside of the United States? How do the current contours of the field exclude certain voices, either in the United States or elsewhere in the world? And how would such new perspectives shift the beginning and possible endpoint of that literary period? What new narratives of the contemporary emerge if we begin telling the story in a different year or from a different national or global perspective? This collection attempts to re-frame the discussions in Post45 by engaging with non-American writers, texts, and perspectives. Additionally, productive conversations emerge by attempting to think of canonical American writers like Mark Twain and Ishmael Reed from other national and global perspectives. The authors consider both the ways texts themselves as well as their reception histories approach and challenge our understandings of the contemporary. Ultimately, the collection interrogates prevailing narratives of history, culture, identity, and space within the Post45 field. In so doing, it re-considers the historical periodization of the field, which currently covers approximately 75 years of literary history. The resulting essays thus work towards a new intertwined narrative about what defines the contemporary and how national and global literatures fit into that moment of world history.

The Theatre of Twenty-First Century Spain / El teatro de España del siglo XXI

Identities, Anxieties, and Social Immediacies / Identidades, ansiedades e urgencias sociales

Edited by Helen Freear-Papio, College of the Holy Cross and Candyce Crew Leonard, Wake Forest University

Identifying, naming, and belonging lend a sense of rational order, a feeling of rootedness within specific societies and eras, yet that order may collapse and threaten to undermine the predictability that ensures stability. As Spain enters only its fifth decade as a fully democratic nation, the country’s identity is unfocused and disorganized as it continues to reckon with its traumatic past. The nine research essays presented in this volume, all on plays authored in the twenty-first century, aim to address the myriad of complex social immediacies that impact Spain in the twenty-first century. Such topics include: non-heteronormative gender identity; “fake news” and how facts are interpreted, withheld, or distorted; female self-agency and authorship; violence against women; and the ongoing need for justice for family histories that have been erased and repressed by Spain’s inability to resolve its recent past. Identificar, nombrar y pertenecer brinda un sentido de orden racional, un sentimiento de arraigo dentro de sociedades y épocas específicas, pero ese orden puede colapsar y amenazar con socavar la previsibilidad que asegura la estabilidad. A medida que España entra en su quinta década como una nación totalmente democrática, la identidad del país está desenfocada y desorganizada mientras continúa teniendo en cuenta su pasado traumático. Los nueve ensayos de investigación presentados en este volumen, todos sobre obras de teatro de autor del siglo XXI, pretenden abordar la miríada de complejas inmediateces sociales que impactan en la España del siglo XXI. Dichos temas incluyen: identidad de género no heteronormativa; “noticias falsas” y cómo se interpretan, ocultan o distorsionan los hechos; auto-agencia y autoría femenina; la violencia contra las mujeres; y la continua necesidad de justicia por las historias familiares que han sido borradas y reprimidas por la incapacidad de España para resolver su pasado reciente.

Getting Bergson Straight: The Contributions of Intuition to the Sciences

Pete A. Y. Gunter, University of North Texas

This study concerns the ideas of one particular philosopher, Henri Bergson, whose views of time, intuition, and creativity have had a significant impact on art, literature, and the humanities, both in his time and in our own. Although it is generally recognized that Bergson’s ideas have significantly impacted the arts and the humanities, it has not been recognized how they have also had a creative influence on the sciences as well. Nor has it been realized that this was one of his most basic contentions. Bergson’s conception of intuition—his fundamental insight into reality—was not limited to fugitive insights into human existence. By realizing previously unsuspected possibilities for research and discovery, his endeavors were also meant to make possible new advances in the sciences. If it enabled his cousin by marriage, Marcel Proust, to explore human memory in depth, it also inspired psychologists like Daniel Schachter to use Bergson’s ideas to make real contributions to contemporary memory science. If his notion of creative evolution brought many thinkers to a belief in human creative freedom, it brought others (notably Alexis Carrel and Pierre Lecomte de Noüy) to a scientific study of biological time. Among his successful speculations was the theory of the Big Bang cosmology. 'Getting Bergson Straight' shows many points at which Bergson’s ideas anticipated future developments in the sciences. This was seen clearly by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis de Broglie who viewed Bergson’s physics as presaging quantum physics. Thus, the text is well situated for arts, humanities, social science, and natural science classrooms studying creative thinking and/or intellectual history.

The Man who Killed Apartheid: The Life of Dimitri Tsafendas

New Updated Edition

Harris Dousemetzis, University of Durham and Gerry Loughran

On 6 September 1966, inside the House of Assembly in Cape Town, Dimitri Tsafendas fatally stabbed Hendrik Verwoerd, South Africa’s Prime Minister and so-called “architect of apartheid.” Tsafendas was immediately arrested, and before the authorities had even questioned him, they declared him a madman without any political motive for the killing. In the Cape Supreme Court, Tsafendas was found unfit to stand trial on the grounds that he suffered from schizophrenia and that he had no political motive for killing Verwoerd. Tsafendas spent the next 28 years in prison, making him the longest-serving prisoner in South African history. For most of his incarceration, he was subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment by the prison authorities. This new updated edition contains all the developments regarding the Tsafendas case after the publication of the book's first edition.

The Enlightened Mind: Education in the Long Eighteenth Century

Edited by Amanda Strasik, Eastern Kentucky University

The rise of Enlightenment philosophical and scientific thought during the long eighteenth century in Europe and North America (c. 1688-1815) sparked artistic and political revolutions, reframed social, gender, and race relations, reshaped attitudes toward children and animals, and reconceptualized womanhood, marriage, and family life. The meaning of “education” at this time was wide-ranging and access to it was divided along lines of gender, class, and race. Learning happened in diverse environments under the tutelage of various teachers, ranging from bourgeois mothers at home, to Spanish clergy, to nature itself. The contributors to this cross-disciplinary volume weave together methods in art history, gender studies, and literary analysis to reexamine “education” in different contexts during the Enlightenment era. They explore the implications of redesigned curricula, educational categorizations and spaces, pedagogical aids and games, the role of religion, and new prospects for visual artists, parents, children, and society at large. Collectively, the authors demonstrate how new learning opportunities transformed familial structures and the socio-political conditions of urban centers in France, Britain, the United States, and Spain. Expanded approaches to education also established new artistic practices and redefined women’s roles in the arts. This volume offers groundbreaking perspectives on education that will appeal to beginning and seasoned humanities scholars alike.

The end of the Western Civilization? The Intellectual Journey of Humanity to Adulthood

Hippokratis Kiaris, University of South Carolina

Civilizations can be perceived as living human beings that are born, mature, age, and ultimately die and disappear, passing their legacy to the future generations. These transitions may be projected to the different stages of cognitive development of children. The Western Civilization, which embodies our current state of cultural advancement from the Classic Greek to the modern period, can be paralleled by the gradual transitions of human beings toward adulthood. From this perspective, the ancient Greek era resembles the toddler years of humanity at which the first “why”-type questions are being asked. The theocratic period that followed until the Renaissance can be seen as our childhood, when people lived their lives under the tight boundaries set by religious authorities. The period spanning from the Enlightenment until almost the end of the 20th century can be considered as our teenage years when people rediscover their past, are liberated from superstition, and set the path forward based on reason by a manner at which the distinction between plausible and feasible is vague. Within this scheme, postmodernism also finds its place in our teenhood. The last few decades, from this perspective, signify our entrance to adulthood at which major questions are considered answered, or at least settled, and the only path forward perceived as feasible is the one that is followed already, a state that is bringing us closer to our intellectual aging and its inevitable death. Some signs of aging-related pathologies are already manifested in today’s technology-intensive society. By identifying our intellectual age and by appreciating our health status, we may be able to proactively delay or even avert our intellectual aging and death.

Escenas Diversas: Drama, Humor y Música

Edited by Pablo Alejandro Suárez Marrero, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (México)

A través de un recorrido sobre prácticas musicales gestadas en diversas localidades iberoamericanas, desde finales del siglo XIX hasta la actualidad, 'Escenas Diversas: Drama, Humor y Música' hace de la diversidad de las escenas musicales, una de sus mayores fortalezas. En esta obra, el concepto de “escena” se convierte en un ámbito discursivo oportuno para construir aproximaciones dinámicas y flexibles sobre el quehacer musical, ya sea del pasado histórico o del accionar reciente. Este volumen constituye un compendio de estudios de caso acontecidos en ciudades de España, Argentina, México, Cuba, Venezuela y Colombia, con el objetivo de contribuir a los debates actuales sobre escenas musicales desde su propia diversidad, asociada a elementos discursivos propios del drama social y el humor inteligente. Desde su individualidad, en cada capítulo se busca conciliar una mirada histórica a escenas pasadas y su pervivencia en documentos musicales de diversa índole. Además, se aborda la creciente virtualización y desterritorialización física de las escenas musicales de alcance glocal, a raíz de la actual situación pandémica. De gran interés para todo aquel atraído por los estudios culturales, la música y los estudios latinoamericanos, 'Escenas Diversas' contribuye a la creación de nuevas y múltiples instancias comunicativas para la socialización de conocimientos especializados sobre nuestras escenas musicales.

The Man who Killed Apartheid: The Life of Dimitri Tsafendas

New Updated Edition

Harris Dousemetzis, University of Durham and Gerry Loughran

On 6 September 1966, inside the House of Assembly in Cape Town, Dimitri Tsafendas fatally stabbed Hendrik Verwoerd, South Africa’s Prime Minister and so-called “architect of apartheid.” Tsafendas was immediately arrested, and before the authorities had even questioned him, they declared him a madman without any political motive for the killing. In the Cape Supreme Court, Tsafendas was found unfit to stand trial on the grounds that he suffered from schizophrenia and that he had no political motive for killing Verwoerd. Tsafendas spent the next 28 years in prison, making him the longest-serving prisoner in South African history. For most of his incarceration, he was subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment by the prison authorities. This new updated edition contains all the developments regarding the Tsafendas case after the publication of the book's first edition.