Books published by Manchester University Press

A social history of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic's effects on an Ireland where normal patterns of life were disturbed by war and the growing separatist movement. The influenza seemed to disrupt every aspect of Irish life - culture, economics, politics, medicine and family life. -- .

Through a combination of text, colour photographs and sound recordings, Sonic ethnography explores the role of sound in the performance of local identities in the southern Italian region of Basilicata. The book makes a compelling argument for taking sound seriously as a crucial component of social life and as an ethnographic form of representation. -- .

This book interrogates the depiction of same-sex desire in contemporary literature and film by artists of Muslim heritage. . -- .

The first full-length study to be devoted to Una, the beleaguered but ultimately triumphant heroine of Book One of The Faerie Queene -- .

This book explores the implementation of the UK's FOI law under Tony Blair, showing how the radical policy was weakened by compromises and clandestine agreements before reaching the statute book, though it went on to be controversial and disruptive nonetheless. -- .

This edited collection explores what happens when a city administration tries to bring their vision for a city into being. It provides ethnographic accounts that complicate the dominant narrative of Manchester's renaissance. -- .

Savage Worlds examines frontier encounters between Germans and indigenous peoples in the age of high imperialism. It demonstrates the complexity of the colonial frontier and frontier zone encounters and poses the question of how far Germans were able to overcome their initial belief that, in leaving Europe, they were entering 'savage worlds'. -- .

An examination of British and French deposition and exile of indigenous monarchs in Asia and Africa from 1815 until the 1950s. -- .

This compelling collection examines the 'lived devotion' of men and women in England's Long Reformation. Through cutting-edge research, fourteen chapters explore how English piety was at once segregational and social, fixed in principle yet fluid in practice, and where authors worked out their faith in painstaking and sometimes painful ways. -- .

The absurdity of bureaucracy is a contemporary implementation study that unveil how organisational complexity and inefficacy is fed and sustained by employees well-meant attempts and almost primal instinct to compensate for malfunctioning bureaucratic systems by repairing them, short-cutting them, or surpassing them. -- .

This book underscores the centrality of refugees to the workings of current dynamics of social and cultural membership in the welfare state. The contributions look into the meaning of the welfare state, as represented in legal and discursive practices, and the imagination of those seeking to build new lives in it. -- .

Pasts at play showcases a range of approaches to children's literature and culture, from disciplines including Classics, English Literature, and History. The ten essays integrate visual and material culture into historical practice to analyse how nineteenth-century children interacted playfully with the past to generate moral lessons. -- .

The Atlantic community seems to be in crisis and it is time to critically rethink past narratives and traditional frameworks of transatlantic relations. Exploring the historiography and legacies of the Atlantic World, contributors open up new, transnational, and global perspectives, helping us to better understand the TransAtlantic today. -- .

An engaging study that offers new and provocative re-readings of Spenser's pastoral poems, with a focus on Spenser's acknowledged debt to Virgil and his Eclogues. Reception studies, politics and classical studies are interweaved to provide a greater understanding of both poets. -- .

This is a study of friendship in international politics. It offers the history of friendship, and shows the role of friendship in building various legal and political orders on both equal and unequal terms. Told through an examination of sources ranging from diplomatic letters and bilateral treaties to poems and philosophical treatises. -- .

Drawing upon previously unseen archival material, this book brings to life the story of the Actresses' Franchise League from 1908-1958, building a picture of this diverse, exciting and innovative organisation that opens up and extends previous scholarship of the suffrage movement, and of political and feminist networks in twentieth century theatre. -- .

This book explores how theatre engages with contemporary scientific themes in the twenty-first century. It looks at how and why different forms of performance, from the Broadway musical to experimental and educational theatres, tackles a wide range of scientific themes, including artificial intelligence, genetics and climate change. -- .

For educated poets and readers in the Renaissance, classical literature was as familiar and accessible as the work of their compatriots and contemporaries - often more so. This volume seeks to recapture that sense of intimacy and immediacy, as scholars from both sides of the modern disciplinary divide come together to eavesdrop on the conversations conducted through allusion and intertextual play in works from Petrarch to Milton and beyond. The essays include discussions of Ariosto, Spenser, Du Bellay, Marlowe, the anonymous drama Caesars Revenge, Shakespeare and Marvell, and look forward to the grand retrospect of Shelley''s Adonais. Together, they help us to understand how poets across the ages have thought about their relation to their predecessors, and about their own contributions to what Shelley would call ''that great poem, which all poets...have built up since the beginning of the world''.

Provides a more comprehensive account of internment and assesses previously unexplored aspects of its use. Drawing on archival sources the high politics and intelligence surrounding the introduction of internment are considered and in doing so accepted narratives regarding the measure are challenged.

Why do we hold the political views that we do? We often dwell on the self-interest of opponents, yet seldom reflect on our own. Considering five contemporary worldviews, Thomas Prosser argues that our views tend to satisfy self-interest. Paradoxically, awareness of self-interest makes us more reflective, allowing us to see humanity in adversaries. -- .

When people vote in a democracy, they expect the result of the election to be 'fair.' Is this true in the UK and if not, why not? This book explains how our system of 'first-past-the-post' translates votes into seats and is essential reading at a time of unprecedented electoral uncertainty. -- .

The paperback release of this classic work.

This revised and updated edition explores the dynamic of EU migration and asylum policy, clearly an issue that remains very topical. -- .

Written specifically for A2 level students, this new edition covers all aspects of US politics including the constitution, the legislature, the judiciary, elections, political parties, pressure groups and civil liberties in a clear, accessible and easy to understand style. -- .

Provides a concise, up-to-date and accessible introduction to US government and politics. It offers a survey of core institutions such as the presidency, Congress and the US Supreme Court, assesses the electoral system and considers the part played by organized interests and political parties.

Citizenship, nation, empire investigates the extent to which popular imperialism influenced the teaching of history between 1870 and 1930. It is the first book-length study to trace the substantial impact of educational psychology on the teaching of history, probing its impact on textbooks, literacy primers and teacher-training manuals. Educationists identified 'enlightened patriotism' to be the core objective of historical education. This was neither tub-thumping jingoism, nor state-prescribed national-identity teaching, but rather a carefully crafted curriculum for all children which fused civic as well as imperial ambitions. The book will be of interest to those studying or researching aspects of English domestic imperial culture, especially those concerned with questions of childhood and schooling, citizenship, educational publishing and anglo-British relations. Given that vitriolic debates about the politics of history teaching have endured into the twenty-first century, Citizenship, nation, empire is a timely study of the formative influences that shaped the history curriculum in English schools

As museums across Europe reckon with the post-colonial legacies of their collections, this volume combines approaches from material anthropology, imperial and military history to shed light on the acquisition and appropriation of objects during British colonial warfare. The authors offer a nuanced view of how the amassing of objects was governed and understood within military culture. -- .

This book moves beyond the examination of grave goods to place community at the forefront of cemetery studies. It reveals that early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries were pluralistic, multi-generational places where the physical communication of digging a grave was used to construct family and community stories. -- .

This collection of essays provides the most comprehensive study of the theory and practice of the contribution of international organisations and non-state actors to the formation of customary international law. The book offers new practical and theoretical perspectives on one of the most complex questions about the making of international law. -- .

Taking the Hippocratic paradigm as backbone of the analysis, the book conceptualises a new notion under international law, 'violence against women's health', which allows the reader to reflect on two interrelated dimensions of violence, the horizontal 'inter-personal' and the vertical 'State policies' ones, and on obligations States must abide by. -- .