Books published by EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS

[headline]Advances our understanding of the literary legacy of contemporary ecological crises to investigate the interfaces of humanity and nature At this critical juncture in which the biodiversity of planet Earth appears to be shrinking fast and furiously, Louis Kirk McAuley invites us to consider the ways in which particular unruly natures, including animals, plants and minerals, actively intervene in literature to decentre the human. Drawing upon invasion biology, McAuley offers transformative ecocritical interpretations of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and American literature and highlights the heterarchical nature of empire building. This includes analyses of texts composed by (or about) persons residing at, or just outside, the edges of the British and American Empires, including St Kitts and Nevis, Haiti, Cuba, Hawaii and Samoa, which were built around the global transfer of animals and plants. Offering biotic readings of this literature, McAuley highlights the human place in nature and provides practical literary examples of the ways oceans facilitate the confusion of time and place. [bio]Louis Kirk McAuley has been Associate Professor in the Department of English at Washington State University, USA, since 2014. He has published numerous articles and book chapters and is the author of Print Technology in Scotland and America, 1740-1800 (2013).

A selection of letters by the pacifist and noted art critic Clive Bell, expertly annotated by his biographer Clive Bell was a pivotal member of the Bloomsbury Group. His marriage to Vanessa Bell and his, at times tempestuous, relations with his sister-in-law Virginia Woolf form important strands in the cultural history of modernism. A tireless champion of modernist art, a committed pacifist and conscientious objector, Bell produced a huge body of correspondence with many of the leading artistic and political figures of his time. His lively, witty, highly opinionated letters are a window into the turbulence of the early twentieth century, populated by friends and acquaintances including T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, as well as his Bloomsbury set, Desmond MacCarthy, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell. Arranged in eight categories - Bloomsbury Circles; Virginia; War; Arts and Letters; To the Editor; Francophile; Travels; Love, Gossip, Home - this selection emphasises Bell's enormously varied life and interests. Bell was born in the reign of Queen Victoria and lived long enough to have been able to hear the Beatles on the radio. His letters demonstrate an appetite for art, for love and for peace that never flagged. [bio]Mark Hussey is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Pace University in New York. His most recent book is Clive Bell and the Making of Modernism, A Biography (2021). He is also the General Editor of the Harcourt annotated edition of Virginia Woolf. www.markhusseybooks.com

Despite the enormous cultural impact of Nosferatu (1922) on modern entertainment, the history of vampires in silent film is largely unknown. Vampires in Silent Cinema covers the subject from 1896-1931, reclaiming a large array of forgotten films from countries ranging from the United States and France to Hungary and Russia. Drawing on thousands of primary sources, Rhodes explores vampirism in all of its manifestations, from the supernatural undead to the natural vamp. Gary D. Rhodes is Professor of Media, Oklahoma Baptist University. He is the author of Emerald Illusions: The Irish in Early American Cinema (2012), The Perils of Moviegoing in America (2012) and The Birth of the American Horror Film (2018). He is a founding editor of Horror Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Rhodes is also the writer-director of the documentary films Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula (1997) and Banned in Oklahoma (2004).

[headline]Contends that the twentieth century novel's approach to character fundamentally shifted in response to contemporaneous theories of psychic connection Criticism of the novel routinely starts with the assumption that characters must think, develop and strive for self-fulfilment as individuals. This book challenges the paradigm that individualism is innate to the novel as a medium. It describes how major writers throughout the twentieth century - many convinced by the supposed findings of parapsychology - rejected the idea of the discrete character. Treating the self as porous, they offered novels structured around the development of communities and ideas rather than individuals. By focusing on D. H. Lawrence, Olaf Stapledon, Aldous Huxley and Doris Lessing, Mark Taylor demonstrates the need to broaden our approach to character when addressing the novel of the twentieth century and beyond. [bio]Mark Taylor is a specialist in twentieth century British literature and most recently worked as Assistant Professor in English Literature at HSE University, Moscow. His work has been published in Modern Fiction Studies, Mosaic and Science Fiction Studies.

[headline]Develops a new theory of literary imagination for the Anthropocene by analysing descriptions of the environment from above Readers encounter the environment through literature in ways not available to everyday perception. This is especially clear when a text integrates the grand vistas of what is known as the bird's-eye view. In this welcome contribution to the contemporary theoretical discussion about storied environments and non-human perceptions, David Rodriguez presents an original interpretation of the aesthetics of the view from above. Focusing on fiction by twentieth-century American writers including Willa Cather, Paul Bowles and Don DeLillo, Rodriguez skilfully combines ecocriticism, narrative theory and phenomenological approaches to literature to develop the term 'form of environment'. This theory of literary fiction foregrounds the environment not as setting or historical context, but as an equal agent with the human figures and scales that are normally the focus of literary analysis. [bio]David Rodriguez is Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Hofstra University in New York. His previous publications include Narrating Nonhuman Spaces: Form, Story, and Experience Beyond Anthropocentrism (co-edited with Marco Caracciolo and Marlene Marcussen, 2021).

Recent film theory has reframed genre as a discursive gesture, and pressures the idea of a national cinema by bringing to light local, regional, and transnational practices. In French Westerns: On the Frontier of Film Genre and National Cinema, Timothy Scheie explores the volatile arena where the acts of imagination to which 'French' and 'Western' owe their coherence fail repeatedly, productively, and at times spectacularly. Each chapter illuminates this unstable conjunction with a close reading of representative films that position the Western genre alongside French referents: landscapes, regional traditions, post-war modernization, language, stars and the events of May 1968. The films span the history of cinema, and include vehicles for stars like Fernandel, Johnny Hallyday and Brigitte Bardot, as well as the work of directors Christian-Jaque, Louis Malle and Jean-Luc Godard. Scheie traces how the encounter of the Western genre and French cinema persists into the twenty-first century as both a discordant provocation and a generator of possibilities. Timothy Scheie in an Associate Professor of French at University of Rochester.

Only second to the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide is the most audio-visually recreated genocide with approximately 200 films and documentaries produced in 39 countries between 1994 and 2021. Historical Media Memories of the Rwandan Genocide studies the construction, development, and recreation of the transnational historical media memory of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. This comprehensive work traces the international media image and the creation of historical memories of the Rwandan genocide, starting with the day-to-day television news reporting in 1994, and continues with analyzing how the genocide has been used and reproduced in films and documentaries on a global scale as well in Rwanda, which has created its own images of the genocide in film and television production to support a new national identity. Tommy Gustafsson is Professor of Film Studies at Linnaeus University, Sweden. His books include The Politics of Nordsploitation (with Pietari Kääpä, 2021), Masculinity in the Golden Age of Swedish Cinema (2014), and the anthologies Nordic Genre Films (EUP, 2015) and Transnational Ecocinema (2013), both co-edited with Pietari Kääpä.

This Reader presents 36 essays written by the eminent Film and Scottish Studies scholar, Colin McArthur between 1966 and the present. Including 20 works now out of print, it identifies the central strands of scholarly interest and political engagement that have driven and defined the career of one of British film and Scottish cultural studies' founding figures and most influential voices. Presented chronologically, the essays make McArthur's achievements - his leading role in legitimising the study of mid-twentieth-century Hollywood cinema and popular American film genres; his leadership in establishing Scotland's cinematic representation as an important object of study within British film studies and modern Scottish cultural studies; and his imaginative interrogation of Scotland's distinctive role as a visual and material cultural signifier within a diverse range of post-18th-century international popular cultures - available to new generations of scholars. The volume also helps its reader to understand the historical emergence and evolution of Anglophone film studies and Scottish cultural studies during the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. Colin McArthur is former Head of the Distribution Division at the British Film Institute and former Visiting Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University and Queen Margaret University. He has written extensively on Hollywood cinema, British television and Scottish culture. His most recent book is Along the Great Divide (2020). Jonathan Murray is Senior Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of The New Scottish Cinema (2015) and Discomfort and Joy (2011), a Contributing Writer for Cineaste magazine and co-Principal Editor of Journal of British Cinema and Television.

Deploys recent philosophical scholarship on feminist epistemology as an interpretive lens

[headline]Rethinks the relationship between architecture, literature and (in)visibility in the nineteenth-century city Ben Moore presents a new approach to reading urban modernity in nineteenth-century literature, by bringing together hidden, mobile and transparent features of city space as part of a single system he calls 'invisible architecture'. Resisting narratives of the nineteenth-century as progressing from concealment to transparency, he instead argues for a dynamic interaction between these tendencies. Across two parts, this book addresses a range of apparently disparate buildings and spaces. Part I offers new readings of three writers and their cities: Elizabeth Gaskell and Manchester, Charles Dickens and London, and Émile Zola and Paris, focusing on the cellar-dwelling, the railway and river, and the department store respectively. Part II takes a broader view by analysing three spatial forms that have not usually been considered features of nineteenth-century modernity: the Gothic cathedral, the arabesque and white walls. Through these readings, the book extends our understanding of the uneven modernity of this period. [bio]Ben Moore is Assistant Professor in English Literature at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He is the author of Human Tissue in the Realist Novel, 1850-1895 (2023) and Co-Editor of the Gaskell Journal. His work has appeared in journals including Victorian Literature and Culture, Modernism/modernity, Modern Language Review and the Journal of Victorian Culture, as well as in various handbooks and edited collections.

Explores Derick Thomson's far-reaching influence on the 20th-century revival of Scottish Gaelic Derick Thomson and the Gaelic Revival focuses in expert detail on the 'other' great 20th-century Scottish Gaelic poet and intellectual. Derick Thomson's poetry ranks with Sorley MacLean's as among the best in the Gaelic language, and he contributed to the preservation and development of the language as an editor, journalist, scholar and activist. As well as founding and steering the most important modern Gaelic magazine, Gairm, he instigated a number of ventures aimed at promoting Gaelic and had major impact on Gaelic studies as an academic subject. His vision of the Gaelic revival is characterised by high aesthetic standards, organisational and economic shrewdness, openness to second-language users, support for Scottish political independence and a broad European outlook. The very first book-length study devoted to Thomson, this monograph explores his career within the context of the Gaelic revival in Scotland and other minoritised-language movements in Europe and examines his thoughts on the current and future state of the language as articulated in essays, articles, poems and short fiction. Key features and benefits  Based on previously untranslated sources  Introduces the scholar and activist who was the driving force behind influential initiatives aimed at promoting Gaelic  Offers a fresh European perspective on the subject, from an author with a command of Gaelic who is herself not Scottish  Incorporates a multifaceted approach that brings together Derick Thomson's cultural and political activism, poetry and scholarship  Examines Thomson's engagement with other countries, especially Ireland and Wales, and with other figures, including Alexander MacDonald (Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair), James Macpherson and Ruaraidh Erskine of Mar  Written with regard to international audiences and relevant for both Gaelic speakers and readers without a command of Gaelic  Enables the incorporation of modern Gaelic writing into comparative literature in Europe Petra Johana Poncarová is based at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She translates from Gaelic into Czech and her award-winning Czech edition of Tormod Caimbeul's Deireadh an Fhoghair is the first complete translation of the iconic novel into any language.

Uncovers alternative ways of seeing the environment from the Romantic period.

A study of the coexistence of Muslims and Christians in Lebanon through an investigation of Lebanese law.

Reassesses Scottish textual practice in the context of the natural and post-natural landscapes

Offers the first study of toxic masculinity in the context of ancient Greece and Rome