Books published by Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Why is it important to take a critical approach to your work? And what are the consequences if your critical voice is suppressed? These are the questions that lie at the heart of Disenfranchisement, which focuses on the deteriorating possibilities for a group of kindergarten staff members to utter criticism and influence their work places. The central point of the book is that the inability to criticise is closely related to a more general process of disenfranchisement that is corroding the lives of staff both professionally and privately. Through interviews with kindergarten workers, the book reveals how these processes have resulted in a widespread sense of powerlessness and paralysis. This book is for anyone who seeks a conceptualisation of the feeling that it has become more worthwhile to keep silent than to speak your mind - a widespread impression in a time when several groups in the public sector, including nurses, teachers, kindergarten workers and police officers, report increased political control and a lack of tolerance of critical voices in a neoliberal era. The book focuses on the informal norms that determine our ability to criticise, rather than on the formal, statutory rights of freedom of speech, press and assembly.

This book was the winner of the 2011 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in German Studies. The post-war landscape of Europe is unthinkable without the voices of the Austrian writers Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) and Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989). Their work, coming after the devastation wrought by the Second World War and the Holocaust, is rooted in a specifically Austrian context of repression of this traumatic historical legacy. In post-war Austria, discourse on the recent past may have been dominated by silence, but the legacy of this past was all too apparent in the country's ruined and speedily reconstructed cityscapes. This book investigates Bachmann's and Bernhard's treatment of two fundamental aspects of the Austrian historical legacy: the trauma of the war and the desire to return to an ideal homeland, known as 'Haus Osterreich'. Following a methodology based on Freud and Benjamin, this comparative study demonstrates that the confrontation with Austria's troubled history occurs through the protagonists' ambivalent encounter with the landscape or cityscape that they inhabit, travel or return to. The book demonstrates the centrality of topography on both thematic and structural levels in the authors' prose works, as a mode of confronting the past and making sense of the present.

This book addresses the function of fiction in the creation of an historical myth and the uses of myth over time. The subject of the case study is the popular image of August the Strong (1670-1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, a figure who has frequently been portrayed as possessing extraordinary sexual prowess and ruling over a magnificent, but frivolous, court in Dresden. The author locates the origins of this myth in the art and literature of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century and traces its development up to the twenty-first century in German historiography, fiction, art and media. The study identifies the long-lasting effects of the cultural dominance of Prussia on Saxon historiography in the nineteenth century and the privileged status of particular historical sources over others. It thus sheds light on the challenges facing historians since the early twentieth century when they rely on popular media in recounting and interpreting history. Conversely, it reveals how writers of popular historical fiction employ the methodologies of the historian to bring historical knowledge and self-identity together for the reader.

In this volume, researchers in sociolinguistics, language politics, diaspora and identity studies explore contacts between languages and cultures in the post-Soviet world. The book presents a range of perspectives on the effects of migration among groups and individuals for whom Russian is a language with instrumental and/or symbolic prominence.

From Brigitte Bardot in her bikini at the Cannes Film Festival, to Francois Ozon's intimate portrayals of grief and loss, some of the most iconic and challenging moments in French cinema are associated with the beach. Cinema at the Shore argues that the Parisian cityscape is not the only significant definition of space in French cinema and instead explores the industrial, aesthetic and thematic relations of French cinema to the beach. Examining a range of films from the 1950s to the present day - including popular comedies by Jacques Tati and Patrice Leconte, the lively and ruminative documentaries of Agnes Varda, the classicism of Eric Rohmer, and the provocations of Catherine Breillat - this book showcases the dynamism and importance of the beach as a site for the reconfiguration of French cinematic identity itself. The beach offers a unique crystallization of our attitudes towards nature, culture, the body, space and time. In its constant mobility, its close, yet distinctive, relationship with nature, and its paradoxical centrality in the French cultural imaginary as a site of relaxation and holidays, the beachscape, re-framed and re-imaged by the camera, offers new ways of conceiving of the spatial politics of French cinema.

Drawing on the cross-disciplinary nature of Irish studies, contributors provide multifaceted perspectives from which to examine the issue of victimhood in Ireland, this volume explores in detail how a traumatic past, whether repressed or proclaimed, can continue to impact on the present, both at a personal and societal level.

Drawing on the theoretical work of Graham Huggan and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, this study discusses the political significance of this neglect by focusing on the asymmetrical positions occupied by two widely acclaimed Lusophone women writers, Paulina Chiziane of Mozambique and Lidia Jorge of Portugal.

This book is a journey into the thought and poetry of Giacomo Leopardi. It sheds new light on his compound of poetic imagination and philosophical complexity using different disciplines and approaches (film studies, psychoanalysis, queer theory), showing the relevance of his thought today in the post-human era.

This volume offers stimulating reading about 'rethinking education' in the light of new multimedia tools and platforms and the emergence of social media. It calls for twenty-first-century learners to develop digital, entrepreneurial, collaborative and group work competencies, along with creative and critical thinking.

This monograph is the first book to examine places and spaces in French war fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These places and spaces are presented as literary isotopias, or fictional worlds and analysed in a selective corpus of thirty-three novelists and forty-two examples of war fiction. The book identifies and classifies the various types of isotopia that appear in fiction in the form of scenes, images or literary microcosms. The author establishes four isotopic modes - possession, dispossession or loss, alienation, and repossession - by which means the isotopias are expressed. The spaces considered include territorial demands, gains, possessions, losses and national spaces, as well as internal mental spaces. The corpus of novels selected for this project covers a wide variety of examples of fictional worlds: the spiritual, the marginal, the regional, the ideological, the psychological, the erotic, the ecological and the political. The methods of analysis identify these worlds, demonstrate both how they function in relation to the characters in the novels and how they affect the reader, and provide further illumination on the intentions, achievements and ideologies of the characters and of the novelists concerned. One of the findings of the study is that the greater the stress of war and conflict the more authors and characters tend to seek refuge in their imaginary (isotopic) worlds.

With increasingly globalised markets, changing consumer preferences and the steady development of technologies influencing food trade flows, safety and quality concerns have triggered the development of new forms of global (food) governance. Since its creation in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has succeeded in providing a multilateral legal framework for the development of regulatory practices through its multiple agreements. Similarly, the continuing importance of regional and bilateral trade agreements, such as in the European Union and in Switzerland, has enhanced WTO's accomplishments through a comprehensive and dynamic set of international rules and standards for trade. However, the changing trends in the production and distribution of food products have questioned the effectiveness of the regulatory status quo. This book addresses the legal aspects of the current global architecture for food governance, particularly with regard to the role of international standards. In doing so, this work attempts at mapping the implications of domestic food measures in international trade law.

As new, artificial dyes were created in the second half of the nineteenth century, a longing for faded, ancient hues emerged in artistic circles. This collection focuses on the complex reception of the colours of the past in the works of major Victorian writers and artists, exploring the multiple facets of their chromatic nostalgia.

About 9,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany settled in Australia between 1933 and 1945, a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands who fled. Although initially greeted with a mixed reception as enemy aliens some of these refugees remained and made a significant impact on multicultural Australia. This book traces the difficult journey of the orchestral performers, virtuoso soloists, singers, conductors and composers who sought refuge on a distant continent. A few were famous artists who toured Australia and stayed, most notably the piano virtuoso Jascha Spivakovsky and the members of the Weintraubs Syncopators, one of the most successful jazz bands of the Weimar Republic. Drawing on extensive primary sources - including correspondence, travel documents and interviews with the refugees themselves or their descendants - the author depicts in vivid detail the lives of nearly a hundred displaced musicians. Available for the first time in English, this volume brings to light a wealth of Jewish, exilic and musical history that was hitherto unknown.

Invisibility Studies explores current changes in the relationship between what we consider visible and what invisible in different areas of contemporary culture. Contributions trace the cultural significance of these developments, such as transparency and privacy in urban architecture and the invasion of surveillance into everyday life.

Runner-up for the BAFTSS 2016 Best Book Award Why are fictional US presidents everywhere on screen? How do these constructs relate to our understanding of the presidency as an institution and the United States as a nation?This book sheds new light on fictional representations of the leader of the United States by analysing key films and television series from the early 1990s to the present day. Combining textual analysis with close attention to political and historical contexts, it addresses the ways in which representations of the president have responded to a period of profound change in American politics and society, encompassing the end of the Cold War, 9/11 and the collapse of the economy. Exploring the complex relationship between the political context and the generic, iconographic and narrative parameters upon which mainstream cinema and television are based, this book challenges the tendency to equate content with context. Instead, contemporary representations of the president are examined as critiques of, or reinforcements to, dominant conceptions of political leadership. The reasons behind the proliferation of images of the president during this period are explored, from the archetype in American genre cinema (Air Force One, Independence Day and Deep Impact) to the idealised fantasy figure in network television (The West Wing, 24 and Commander in Chief). This book offers unique insights into the roles mainstream cinema and television continue to play in the reinforcement of mythological conceptions of the American presidency.

The division between North and South in Europe represents a geographical as well as a cultural boundary that has influenced the way many European nations think about their history and identity. This divide is particularly prominent in the cultural dialogue between Germany and Italy and has played an important role in the construction of German identity. This study explores German representations of Italy in the early nineteenth century by examining the Italian travel writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine. It analyses Goethe's Italienische Reise and Heine's Italian Reisebilder and focuses on the negotiation of cultural identity through representations of the North-South divide. The book compares Goethe's complex attitudes towards Germany during this period with Heine's wrestling with his place in German culture, as seen through their depictions of Italy. Goethe pointed to the classical heritage of Greek antiquity as the source not only of Italian, but also of German, cultural traditions and therefore as an essential element of German identity. Heine called into question Goethe's experience of Italy and instead used his travels to reveal the instability of German identity and the changing nature of the European community. By investigating the travel narratives of Goethe and Heine, this study reveals the influences of historical and political change on perspectives on the South in Germany.

Freedom, one of the most potent ideals of the post-Enlightenment era, came to remarkable prominence in ecclesiology through the emergence of liberation theologies in the twentieth century. At the same time, Joseph Ratzinger - a German university professor - was appointed a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His interaction with the pioneers of the liberationist movement led him to engage directly with the Christian understanding of freedom and its significance. As a result, his interest in freedom as a theological question expanded from the 1970s onwards. This book explores whether the basis for a liberation ecclesiology can be attributed to Ratzinger in his own right. While the volume's focus is ecclesiological, the author also gathers together many strands of Ratzinger's core theological insights in an attempt to establish how he approaches an issue that is both provocative and highly topical. Ratzinger is a controversial and engaging figure, and this book is essential reading for those who wish to understand how he deals with a theological topic of ongoing concern to society in general and the Catholic Church in particular.

This volume examines aspects of spiritual guidance as developed on Mount Athos and upon communities of monks and nuns, spiritual fathers and confessors and lay men and women, in other parts of Greece and in the world. Most of the papers were originally delivered at a conference convened by the Friends of Mount Athos, Cambridge, in 2013.

This book, based on extensive research among teachers in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, explores a new approach to teaching virtues, values and ethics. Drawing on both education studies and philosophy, the author uses inductive methods of analysis and synthesis to construct a renewed theory of education founded on teaching thinking skills.

This volume traces the development of the German Lied across the first part of the twentieth century, as new directions in songwriting and social and economic changes threatened the future of the genre. Works by Pfitzner, Hindemith, Eisler, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern are considered in this groundbreaking study.

Can linguistic pragmatics be developed without the need to formulate rules, criteria or maxims? The author argues that rules as they have been conceived of within pragmatics, particularly speech act theory, are limiting and out of step with the linguistic science of recent decades. Using a hermeneutic approach to pragmatics, this book seeks to bring pragmatics closer to the cognitive paradigm that has transformed the other branches of the linguistic and communication sciences, with the help of developments in certain neighbouring disciplines such as philosophy, sociology and narratology. The elements that are opened up to pragmatics in this approach include some new conceptions of intentionality, intertextuality, communicative action and literary authorship, as well as the subjectivity of interpretation, which by its very nature ceaselessly transforms all forms of communication in its historical spiral.

This book investigates the philosophy of education implicit in the semiotics of Charles Peirce. It is commonly accepted that the acts of learning and teaching imply affection of some sort, and Charles Peirce's evolutionary semiotics thoroughly explains learning as an act of love. According to Peirce, we evolved to learn and to love; learning from other people has proved to be one of the best ways to carry out our infinite pursuit of truth, since love is the very characteristic of truth. As such, the teacher and the student practise love in their relation with one another. Grounded within an edusemiotics framework and also exploring the iconic turn in semiotics and recent developments in biosemiotics, this is the first book-length study of Peirce's contribution to the philosophy of education.

This book is also available as a set, together with Volume I. Please visit www.peterlang.com/?431876. Patterns of Patronage in Renaissance Rome is the first full-length study of the life and works of Francesco Sperulo of Camerino (1463-1531). In a remarkable career during which the poet progressed from serving as a soldier of fortune in the service of Cesare Borgia to an Italian bishopric, Sperulo produced a significant body of Latin poetry, here presented in a critical edition for the first time. An impressive array of contemporary figures including Leonardo da Vinci, Isabella d'Este, Raphael and Baldassare Castiglione appear in his verse. By placing his work within the larger historical, literary, political and social context, this study, published in two volumes, sheds light on the role played by neo-Latin poetry at the papal court and documents the impact of classical culture in Rome during the period usually referred to as the High Renaissance Volume II presents a complete critical edition of all Sperulo's surviving Latin works in poetry and prose, with translation and commentary. This remarkable A uvre documents Cesare Borgia's conquest of Faenza, suggests to Raphael a programme for the fresco decoration of the Villa Madama, records conversations on love with Isabella d'Este, describes the newly-discovered antiquities and reports a sensational murder. Two orations, delivered on the eve of the Sack of Rome, celebrate a treaty between Spain and France and a Polish victory in the Crimean steppes.

This book explores the concept of reconciliation from a theological point of view, presenting a new model of the theology of reconciliation within the context of Northern Ireland. Through the use of narrative research, it aims to give a voice to those peacebuilders who are using reconciliation as a common theme within the Northern Irish context.