Books published by Manchester University Press

A city burns, and a queen burns for love: Dido, Queen of Carthage re-imagines one of the great legendary stories. The encounter between a wandering hero and an African queen engenders love and loss, eroticism and absurdity, childish simplicity and compelling eloquence. This Revels Plays volume is the first single-text scholarly edition of Dido in English. It is an indispensable resource for scholars, students, and theatre practitioners. Dido's time has come, with accelerating interest, critical and theatrical, in the play. The edition features an accessible text, lightly punctuated for ease in reading and speaking, with spelling more consistently modernised. The introduction gives the first comprehensive account of the play since M.E. Smith's 1977 monograph, locating Dido within its theatrical, pedagogical, literary, political, and cultural contexts. Dido is here considered on its own terms, as a 1580s play intended for children to perform, but also as a play of multiple possibilities that speaks to the present. The edition incorporates new research into authorship (which indicates that Marlowe wrote the play), as well as a detailed analysis of Dido's sources. It includes a survey of criticism and considers the implications of writing for performance; it assesses the evidence for early performances and provides extensive information about modern productions. Dido is a remarkable play. In its own time, it was revolutionary, featuring a dominant female role, experimental blank verse, and a refusal to moralise. And soon thereafter, as Laurie Maguire and Emma Smith propose, Dido became 'the play Shakespeare could not forget'.

This book reinterprets early seventeenth-century texts by situating them within the context of Jacobean writing on Britain and Britishness. Central to its argument are ideas about nationhood, identity and community that were occasioned by the accession of a Scottish king to England's throne, contested during the Anglo-Scottish Union debates. -- .

Situating religion and medicine in Asia illuminates how Asian practices for health, healing and spiritual cultivation were mobilised in their originary times and places. Although many such practices have survived today, they circulate in new forms - within a burgeoning global marketplace, in the imaginaries of national health bureaus, as the focus of major scholarly grant initiatives and as subjects of neurological study. Labels such as 'alternative', 'complementary' and 'wellness'- privilege medical authority and a detachment from religion writ large, implying a distance between 'medicine' and 'religion' that is not reflective of the originary contexts of these practices. This volume makes a critical intervention in the scholarship on medical and religious practices in East, South and Southeast Asia and the Himalayas, inviting a new comparative frame outside the history of science and religion in Europe. It illustrates how practices from divination and demonography to anatomy, massage, plant medicine and homeopathy were situated within the contours of the medicine and religion of their time, in contrast to modern formations of 'medicine' and 'religion'. The book assembles empirical data about the construction of medicine and religion as social categories of practice, and enables comparison across the geographic, temporal and conceptual range, providing readers with a set of methodological approaches for future study.

Let's spend the night together explores how sex and sexuality provided essential elements of British youth culture in the 1950s through to the 1980s. It posits that the underlying sexual charge of rock 'n'roll - and pop music more generally - was integral to the broader challenge embodied in the youth cultures that developed after World War Two. As teenage hormones rushed to move to the music and take advantage of the spaces opening up through consumption, education and employment, so the boundaries of British morality and cultural propriety were tested and often transgressed. Be it the assertive masculinity of the teds or the lustful longings of the teeny-bopper, the gender-bending of glam or the subterranean allure of an underground club/disco, the free love of the 1960s or the punk provocations in the 1970s, sex was forever to the fore and, more often than not, underpinned the moral panics that fitfully followed any cultural shift in youthful style and behaviour. Drawing from scholarship across a range of disciplines, the Subcultures Network explore how sex and sexuality were experienced, presented, conferred, responded to and understood within the context of youth culture, popular music and social change in the period between World War Two and the advent of AIDS. The chapters locate sex, music and youth culture in the context of post-war Britain: that is, in the context of a widening and ever-more prevalent media; amidst the loosening bonds of censorship; in a society that aspired to (and for some time offered) full-employment as it reconfigured and rebuilt after the war; that was shaped by changing patterns of consumption and the emergence of the 'teenager'; that saw conventions challenged by new ideas, new demographics and new behaviours; that existed, as Jeff Nuttall famously argued, under the shadow of the (nuclear) bomb.

'This fascinating collection offers systematic analysis of partition in India and Palestine as processes connected through supranational politics, international law, and transnational networks. Thought provoking, often harrowing and always original, the essays collected here make essential reading for anyone interested in where partitions fit within global decolonisation.' Martin Thomas, University of Exeter 'This is an original book on the momentous years of 1947 and 1948 in the Indian subcontinent and Palestine. By showing how partition failed to resolve the nationality "problems" it was designed to solve, the multi-scalar analyses demonstrate how the seeds were sown for the illiberal majoritarian democracies in these places today.' A. Dirk Moses, City College of New York The breakup of India and Palestine is the first study of political and legal thinking about the partitions of India and Palestine in 1947. It explains how these two formative moments collectively contributed to the disintegration of the European colonial empires, and unleashed political forces whose legacies continue to shape the modern politics of the Middle East and South Asia. With contributions from leading scholars of partition, the volume draws attention to the pathways of peoples, geographic spaces, colonial policies, laws and institutions from the vantage point of those most engaged in the process: political actors, party activists, jurists, diplomats, writers and international representatives from the Middle East, South Asia and beyond. The book investigates some of the underlying causes of partition in both places, such as the hardening of religious fault-lines, majoritarian politics and the failure to construct viable forms of government in deeply divided societies. It analyses why, even 75 years after partition, the two regions have not been able to address some of the pertinent historical, political and social debates of the colonial years. The volume moves the debate about partition away from the imperial centre, by focusing on ground-level arguments about the future of post-colonial India and Palestine and the still unfolding repercussions of those debates.

In the 1980s, Britain actively engaged with China in order to promote globalisation and manage Hong Kong's decolonisation. Influenced by neoliberalism, Margaret Thatcher saw Britain as a global trading nation, which was well placed to serve China's economic reform. With her conviction in free-market capitalism, Thatcher was eager to extend British rule in Hong Kong beyond 1997. During the 1982-84 negotiations, British diplomats aimed to 'educate' China about how capitalist Hong Kong worked. Nevertheless, Deng Xiaoping held an alternative vision of globalisation, one that privileged sovereignty and socialism over market liberalism and democracy. Drawing extensively upon the declassified British archives and Chinese sources, the book recounts how Britain and China negotiated for Hong Kong's future, culminating in the signing of the Joint Declaration on its retrocession in 1997. It explores how Anglo-Chinese relations flourished after the Hong Kong agreement but suffered a setback as a result of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. This original and comprehensive study argues that Thatcher was a pragmatic neoliberal, and the British diplomacy of 'educating' China in global free trade and democracy yielded mixed results. By examining Britain-China-Hong Kong relations from multiple perspectives, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of diplomatic, imperial, and global history.

By the late 1960s cartographic formats and spatial information were a recurring feature in conceptualist artworks. Charting space offers a rich study of conceptualisms' mapping practices that includes more expanded forms of spatial representations. Departing from the perspective that artists were merely recording and communicating information, this book explores the philosophical and political imperatives within their artistic practices. The volume brings together twelve in-depth case studies that address artists' deep engagement with space at a time when concepts of space were garnering new significance in art, theory and culture. It covers a diverse range of subjects, such as London's socio-spatial sphere in the 1970s, geopolitics and decoloniality in Brazil, the global networking strategies of the Psychophysiology Research Institute in Japan, the subjective body in relation to cosmological space from the Great Basin Desert in the United States and notions of identity and race in the urban itinerant practices of transnational artists. The chapters shed light on an evident 'spatial turn' from the postwar period into the contemporary and the influence of larger historical, social and cultural contexts on it. The contributors illustrate how conceptualism's cartographies were critical sites to formulate artists' politics, graph heterogenous spaces and upset prevailing systems. It is a resourceful tool for scholars, students, curators and readers interested in postwar and contemporary art.

Decorators and designers have long experimented with materials, objects and technologies to enhance sensory awareness and wellbeing. But existing histories of interior design rarely feature any discussion of the senses. This volume offers a corrective, exploring how sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste have been mobilized within various forms of interior. Grouped into three thematic clusters, exploring sensory politics, aesthetic entanglements and sensual economies, the chapters in this volume shed light on sensory expressions and experiences of interior design throughout history. They examine domestic and public interiors from the late-sixteenth century to the present day, giving back the body its central role in the understanding and use of interiors. Drawing from fields including design history, design studies and sensory studies, The senses in interior design explores fundamental questions about identities, social structures and politics that reveal the significance of the senses in all aspects of interior design and decoration.

The Toronto New Wave cinema that emerged in Canada in the 1980s spawned the careers of David Cronenberg, Don McKellar, Vincenzo Natali, Patricia Rozema, Sarah Polley, and many other unsung Canadian auteurs who produced films that betray anarchistic philosophies and apocalyptic propensities. This book recognizes the anarchist-apocalyptic vergence that the movies stage and interrogate and develops a new analytical paradigm that is consonant with the Canadian film production exigencies in which the Toronto New Wave was immersed. Chapters include discussion of historical contexts and auteur interviews in concert with sophisticated film analyses to explore David Cronenberg's earliest films and the anarchist-apocalypse effect they engendered, Don McKellar's cohort of collaborators and the anarchist idea of "kissing this world goodbye," the anarchist-apocalyptic critique of cybernetic technology, Vincenzo Natali's anarchist-apocalyptic critique of industrial technologyand class-based incarceration, films and auteurs dedicated to anarchist-queering and anarchist-gendering the apocalypse, zombies and the end of time in the post-millennium neo-TNW films, and beyond. The text's eloquent dance with film studies' admixture of theory, history, and analyses is a ballet of insight and essential reading for anyone interested in the study of film and the exciting anarchist-apocalyptic contributions made to it by the Toronto New Wave and some of its progeny. The idea of a pending social apocalypse is a prescient issue in contemporary cinema theory and this study offers an original approach to issues keyed to anarchist values and apocalyptic revelation in an historically important but under-represented Canadian filmmaking group.

[Not final] Proxy wars systematically dismantle the foundations of the states they target, leaving a legacy of violence, fractured governance, and eroded sovereignty. This book introduces the concept of "state-wrecking" to explain how external interventions--through support for insurgent actors--undermine political legitimacy, intensify violence, disrupt territorial control, and entrench cycles of instability. Using Afghanistan as a case study, the book offers a detailed exploration of how proxy wars devastate fragile states and obstruct state-building and statehood in the target county.The book moves beyond traditional studies of proxy wars that focus on global and regional power competition. Instead, it focuses on the procedural dynamics of proxy wars and highlights the internal consequences of these conflicts for the target state. Through a combination of innovative theoretical insights and comprehensive empirical research, it examines Pakistan's role in supporting the Taliban in the war in Afghanistan, the limitations of U.S.-led counterinsurgency efforts, and the broader implications for Afghanistan's sovereignty and political cohesion. Drawing on interviews, archival evidence, and conflict analysis, the book reveals how proxy wars dismantle state institutions and deepen social and political divisions.By reframing proxy wars as tools of state fragmentation rather than mere instruments of geopolitical strategy, the book sheds light on their long-term impact. It highlights the role of external actors in entrenching violence and governance failures, complicating peacebuilding efforts.Rigorously argued and deeply insightful, this book makes a significant contribution to understanding the intersections of modern warfare, state fragility, and international security. It offers an essential framework for scholars, policymakers, and readers seeking to address the enduring challenges of fragile states and conflict-ridden regions.

The twentieth century witnessed the end of traditional empire.The impact of nationalism brought down many empires to disintegration. Yet, there were variations. Some empires retained their domains longer by changing their cloaks. This book compares how Russia and China survived. They both maneuvered nationalism through communist revolutions. In form, the Bolsheviks transformed the Tsarist domain into a union of multiple nation-states, while the Chinese revolutionaries re-integrated the Qing territories into one nation-state with autonomous units for ethnic minorities. To understand such divergence underneath convergence, this book compares the leading elites of the two revolutions. In comparison with the USSR-founding Bolsheviks, the Chinese communists were ethnically more homogeneous but less international. Their outlook was to establish an enclosed polity rather than a union institutionally open to incorporate new member-states. Through a protracted war the Chinese communists developed skills of reconciling the traditional "China" with revolutionary values. This rendered the Bolshevik way of entirely dissolving "Russia" in "Soviet" unnecessary. Moreover, the Chinese communists were weaker at borderlands vis-a-vis their rivalries. They were thus more cautious, rejecting the Bolshevik strategy of weaponizing "national self-determination". This book highlights the crucial features of the Chinese communist revolution and shows how they affected China's transition to nation-state: geographical isolation buffering external interference, bottom-up mass mobilization in a protracted course, and the longtime position of being the weak side of confrontation. The book will be useful to scholar interested in revolution, empire, nationalism, comparative historical sociology, and the biographies of communist leaders in Russia and China.

A new genre for television? challenges the notion that the dramatised history documentaries aired by British public service broadcasters in the 2000s were mere hybrids or experimental outliers and instead demonstrates that they formed a televisual genre in their own right. Grounded in genre theory, Hardy charts the genre's meteoric rise, creative peak and eventual decline, all the while revealing the institutional dynamics that shaped its development. Offering a fresh and essential distinction between docudramas and drama documentaries, the book contributes to television history with exclusive interviews from key BBC and Channel 4 figures, many of whom have never been publicly interviewed before. Analysing landmark programs, this book illustrates how these New History Drama Documentaries reshaped historical storytelling on screen by way of the new analytical framework of 'sense' and 'sensuousness', and imagines a model for how national histories might be told compellingly through screen in the future.

Matters of ancestry, race and racism endure within Heathenry, a diversly constituted new religious movement drawing inspiration from the pre-Christian religions of northern Europe. Most Heathens, termed 'inclusivist' or 'universalist', welcome all with a spiritual interest in the ancient heathen past, regardless of ethnicity, sexuality or gender. But a 'folkish' Heathen minority, often identifying as Odinist, centre their thinking around ethnocentricity and heterosexist values. Racist Heathenry requires scrutiny as it has been influential in recent terrorist incidents in the UK, Norway, USA and New Zealand. Faith, folk and the far right offers the first detailed examination of extremist Heathenry and occultism in the UK and how anti-racist Heathens act to counter this discourse.Part I explores the spectrum of Heathen practice today and the historical origins of racist Heathenry in nineteenth century Germanic romanticism and twentieth century folkish nationalism. The three main extremist Heathen organisations in the UK, the Odinic Rite, the Odinist Fellowship and Woden's Folk, and their claims to the 'authentic' 'folk-religion' of the 'ancestral' English, are examined. The book extends its discussion to the neo-Nazi occult organization the Order of the Nine Angles (O9A), and the wider racist Heathen cultural scene in Black Metal and Dark Folk music. Part II analyses how anti-racist Heathens are countering racist discourse, including 'Declaration 127' which opposes Heathen hate groups, protests by inclusivist Heathens at far-right rallies, inter-faith forums and an active presence on social media platforms.Faith, folk and the far right makes an important contribution to understanding the intersecting fields of new religious movements, nationalist history and racist politics.

Critical Games is about the games we play (knowingly or not), the ways we play them (for fun, but also to win, and to gain approval from others), and what happens when they get out of hand. With readings of a range of cultural texts, from the Ancient Greeks to contemporary auto-fiction, it pinpoints what is critical in games and game-playing. Games and play are often seen as unserious, even childish. But many of our occupations and interactions are structured like games, with rules and rituals that make sense only once we agree to play them, or that seem incomprehensible if we do not realise we are already playing. This book develops and interrogates theories of play and gaming, from Huizinga to Bourdieu, with a particular focus on the games played by literary critics and literary authors. Drawing on (often self-critical) autobiography, as well as readings in texts across a range of languages, Tim Beasley-Murray plays with academic conventions to highlight what is at stake in them, turning to the Game of Literature, from Kafka to Carrère, to seek models and warnings of the outcomes of taking games too seriously, or not taking them seriously enough.

This ethnographic study examines the hopes, imaginaries, and everyday lives of young male migrants from Western and Central Africa who find themselves 'stuck' in Morocco. The book deepens and humanises understandings of sub-Saharan migration, exploring migrants' conceptualisation of 'the adventure' as an epic quest to carve out a better life and future in the face of violent, transnational politics of migration. The adventure sheds light on the moral, gendered, affective, social and political aspects of migrants' own experiences and representations of their journeys and struggles. Steering away from aesthetics of despair, victimhood and criminality, the book focuses on young men's efforts to face up to bordering practices to retain control over their lives and mobility. The adventure provides a crucial light on migrants' own experiences and understandings of their entrapped mobility in Douar Hajja and Maâdid, two peripheral neighbourhoods of the Moroccan capital Rabat. The book's focus on how migrants articulate and act on their entrapped mobility offers important insights to critically engage with prominent concepts like illegality in policy debates and scholarship. Such focus is crucial to unstitch the Eurocentric focus in analyses of migration articulated around 'crisis'. The adventure is a quest for 'une vie plus supportable' (a more bearable life), a hopeful and risky journey to become the person one aspires to be, to reach a place where one's dignity and rights might be respected.

Saga emotions is an essential exploration of the representation and function of key emotional states in Old Norse-Icelandic saga literature. Ranging widely across the more historically oriented sagas, the thirteen chapters collected here each take as their starting point a particular Old Norse emotion term - such as reiði (anger), gleði (joy), or the peculiarly Old Norse víghugr (killing-mood) - offering a detailed account of the term's usage in the saga corpus. Illuminating textual case studies are also provided to demonstrate the literary function in saga narrative of each emotion term. A key aim of the book is to avoid potentially misleading and anachronistic projections of modern emotional systems and terminology onto the very different emotion repertoire of Old Norse saga writers. Thus, the book's methodological approach maps the native, often overlapping, emotion models of Norse textual culture in fine-grained detail. It charts changes over time that reflect the emergence of new historical and social conditions in medieval Iceland, in particular the far-reaching impact of Christian emotional systems. Written by leading international scholars in saga and emotion studies, Saga emotions adds a much-needed level of emotional granularity to the study of saga literature. Breaking new ground in both saga studies and studies in emotion and their history, this important essay collection pioneers a lexically oriented approach to the textual representation of emotions as complex psychological and physical phenomena and thus provides a secure foundation for future research into the sagas, literature and history of medieval Iceland.

In May 2019, Narendra Modi won the world's largest election. Defying expectations, he led his Bharatiya Janata Party to a resounding victory, with the highest vote share for any party in thirty years, and was re-elected as India's Prime Minister. What accounts for the scale of Modi's win? Why, despite economic hardship and social strife, did Indians vote so overwhelmingly for him and the BJP? This book explains the economic, social and cultural processes that shaped political passions in India during the spring and summer of 2019. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together a stellar team of economists, political scientists, sociologists, historians and geographers to explain Modi's win. Together, the contributors compel us to take seriously the 'structures of feeling' in politics. Love him or hate him, Modi secured for himself a decisive re-election as India's Prime Minister. Passionate politics is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how that happened.

Debating medieval Europe serves as an entry point for studying and teaching medieval history. Where other textbooks simply present foundational knowledge or introduce sources, this collection of essays provides the reader with the frameworks they will need in order to understand the unique historiography of this fascinating period. Digging beneath the accounts provided elsewhere, it exposes the contested foundations of apparently settled narratives, opening a space for discussion and debate, as well as providing essential context for the intimidating array of specialist scholarship. This second volume covers the central and later Middle Ages, c. 1050 - c. 1450. The chapters move from discussion of the 'great institutions' of medieval Europe - the papacy and the empire, both of which traced their inheritance from Roman antiquity - to consider central themes in the study of its different geographical regions across this long period, from France and Iberia through the British Isles and the German-speaking lands to Sicily and the Latin East.