Books published by Verlag Peter Lang

This volume gets beyond simple descriptions of the values and processes involved in community media and is deliberately seeking argument and structured debate around the issues of this vibrant sector of the media. The contributors examine the dilemmas that have emerged within this sector and provide an incisive overview. The chapters use case studies and data research to illustrate the major debates facing community media, along with a sideways look at the dilemmas that community media practitioners and their audiences must engage with. This collection provides an international perspective and covers the traditional formats as well as newer media technologies. It also gives some intriguing examples of community media, which get beyond simple good practices.

Shows a world of violence and tension, a world where people find it hard to be at ease, so that life becomes a process of disease. This book foregrounds Houellebecq's scrutiny of our various attempts to confront and transcend the fundamental reality of the human condition, in particular the horror of death.

Following the period of glasnost and perestroika, Russian Orthodox Church rose from ashes of Soviet Union and its ideology, and started to reassert its rightful place and authority within and beyond its canonical territory. This book investigates historical contexts which led to a concept of authority being formulated in Russian Orthodox Church.

Brings together memoirs, interviews, and archival research to construct an account of the world of poetry in Leningrad, in which famous figures began writing. This title describes the institutions, official events, and informal activities that were attended by young poets, including the pre-eminent poet of this generation, Iosif Brodsky.

The globalisation of culture and the shifting nature of national identities have propelled the stakes of memory and identity to the forefront of current intellectual debates. In recent years, the works of the Algerian francophone author Assia Djebar have reflected a growing preoccupation with the role of memory in forging a sense of individual as well as collective identity. This study traces the interrelated motifs of memory and identity in Djebar¿s novels, arguing the centrality of these themes to her literary project. An interdisciplinary theoretical framework positions Djebar¿s corpus in the wider context of philosophical and psychoanalytical debates on memory and identity. Djebar reveals that much more is at stake in discussions of the interrelationship between memory and identity than concerns of a mere cultural nature. In postcolonial Algeria, repressed memories of Algeriäs colonial past are revealed as instrumental to the genealogy of the current Algerian conflict; in this context, Djebar¿s poetics of memory become a ¿devoir de mémoire¿, an appeal for a revised Algerian historiography in which the individual takes pride of place.

This book analyses graphic novels which document social crises. It demonstrates that artists¿ documentary use of this medium is a form of social realism, inextricably bound up with politics and ideology. Theoretical and visual approaches are employed throughout, introducing the principal themes of the graphic novels under scrutiny: political realism, visual documentary, traumatic childhood, ethnic discrimination, state oppression, and military occupation. The key works examined are Keiji Nakazawäs Barefoot Gen, Joe Sacco¿s Palestine, Marjane Satrapi¿s Persepolis, W.G. Sebald¿s Emigrants and Art Spiegelman¿s Maus. Innovative techniques, radical methods of depiction, sequence and text organisation are analysed throughout to explain how the authors use visual realism to represent these social crises. The book is well illustrated as a visual support for its exploration of this emerging and vital documentary medium.

Why is it that Italian children's fantasy has remained such a well-kept secret? How 'international' is the term 'fantasy', and to what extent has its development been influenced by local as well as global factors? This book charts the history and evolution of Italian children's fantasy, from its first appearance in the 1870s to the present day.

This book is the first ever full-length study of the reception of British cinema in post-war France, challenging François Truffaut¿s infamous dismissal of British cinema as ¿a contradiction in terms¿, a comment which has been, and still is, widely reproduced, yet has until now remained critically unexplored. A historical account, the book gathers together well-known episodes (such as Cahiers du cinéma in the 1950s) and critics (André Bazin, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard), along with original new material, and thus throws new light on a topic which, given the influential nature of French film criticism and cinephilia, continues to be at the core of film culture.

Constitutes collection of essays arises from the 2005 Cambridge French Graduate Conference on the theme of threat.

This book demonstrates a number of approaches made by biblical scholars to find a theology of the Christian Scripture. It then considers attempts to bridge the gap between exegesis and dogmatics by appeal to the discipline of ¿fundamental theology¿ and the doctrine of Revelation. It finds that, for all the interesting questions raised, one is forced back to the Bible from where one must form the themes and concepts which have been developed by theologians through the ages, and which with help from biblical historical critics can be made to refresh theology and serve the Church. This is done by examining the role of ¿faith¿ in the two testaments and by considering how the Bible¿s understanding of that which receives revelation is itself useful for the total enterprise of theology.

No century in modern European history has built monuments with more enthusiasm than the 19th. Of the hundreds of monuments erected, those which sprang from a nation-wide initiative and addressed themselves to a nation, rather than part of a nation, we may call national monuments. Nelson¿s Column in London or the Arc de Triomphe in Paris are obvious examples. In Germany the 19th century witnessed a veritable flood of monuments, many of which rank as national monuments. These reflected and contributed to a developing sense of national identity and the search for national unity; they also document an unsuccessful effort to create a «genuinely German» style. They constitute a historical record, quite apart from aesthetic appeal or ideological message. As this historical record is examined, German national monuments of the 19th century are described and interpreted against the background of the nationalism which gave birth to them.

Lydia Ginzburg (1902-1990) acted as a chronicler of the Soviet intelligentsia, and a philosopher-cum-ethnographer of the Leningrad Blockade. This collection of essays sheds new light on Ginzburg's contributions to Russian literature and literary studies, life-writing, subjectivity, ethics, the history of the novel and trauma studies.

Is the utopian project dead? Is it possible to imagine a utopian society or a utopian world in the aftermath of the collapse of ideologies? This book contains eighteen essays which are the result of the 7th International Conference of Utopian Studies held in Spain in 2006, either debating the subject, or suggesting alternative readings to some of the theoretical ideas raised within utopian studies. This volume focuses on the importance of narratives in utopian literature. They define the world we live in and the world we wish to live in. Through narratives of confession, and indeed through silence itself, the unconscious emerges and desire is articulated. The articles in this volume question and challenge the power of the word, the stability of meaning, and the relationship between thought and action in the construction of utopia and dystopia. They also point to the various literary frameworks of utopian and dystopian narratives, thus connecting stories from the past, present and future of both real and imaginary and communities.

Is the utopian project dead? Is it possible to imagine a utopian society or a utopian world in the aftermath of the collapse of ideologies? This book contains fifteen essays which are the result of the 7th International Conference of Utopian Studies held in Spain in 2006, either debating the subject, or suggesting alternative readings to some of the theoretical ideas raised within utopian studies. The title of the volume suggests that the idea or dream of utopia is indeed very important, but that the framework and boundaries of the concept are fast changing. The contributors to this first volume of essays write from different countries and represent different standpoints. Their discussions focus on the analysis of films, political theories, utopian projects of the past and present, and an insight into the dialectics of global movements.

This book explores European and Argentinean writers' complex relationships with food and wine. It includes examinations of Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Honore de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Italo Svevo, Marcel Schwob, James Joyce, Robert Louis Stevenson, Domingo F. Sarmiento, Lucio V. Mansilla, Roberto J. Payro and Ezequiel Martinez Estrada.

How is meaning created by a poem? Through the invisible ideas and thoughts conveyed by the text or through the physical presence of book, paper and print? In Bodies of Poems the author argues that the material properties of poetic texts are meaningful in their own right but often ignored and made invisible in poetry criticism. Through a number of examples ranging from the introduction of print technology in the fifteenth century to late twentieth-century poets such as Adrienne Rich and Seamus Heaney, this study examines the ways in which poems are products of the contemporary state of print technology, legal and social definitions of authors and texts, and culturally and historically determined assumptions about the self and the body. Although indebted to recent innovative work in textual criticism, this book is a pioneering attempt to place the study of poetic texts as material artefacts in a sustained historical narrative.

The author links Chaucer¿s writings with the medieval optical tradition in its various forms (scholastic texts, encyclopedias, exempla, vernacular poetry) both in general cultural terms and through the discussion of specific examples. He shows how the science of optics, or perspectiva, provides an account of spatial perception, including visual error, and demonstrates how these aspects of optical theory impact on Chaucer¿s poetry. He provides detailed and sustained analysis of the spatial content of narratives across the range of Chaucer¿s works, relating them to optical ideas and making use of Lefebvre¿s theory of the production of space. The texts discussed include the Book of the Duchess, House of Fame, Knight¿s Tale, Miller¿s Tale, Reeve¿s Tale, Merchant¿s Tale, Squire¿s Tale and Troilus and Criseyde.

South Tyrol is a small, mountainous area located in the central Alps. This book provides a fresh analysis of this dynamic and turbulent period of South Tyrolean and European history. It also provides insights into the political and cultural evolution of the understanding of the region and the definition of its role within the European framework.

Häd Bouazza is a highly in¿uential and celebrated author in the Netherlands today. In the context of contemporary Dutch literature, Bouazzäs Moroccan background still marks a divergence from the born-and-bred Dutch norm. Authors with a bi- or multicultural background are still often cast in the role of ¿exotic outsider¿. Bouazza both challenges and uses this position to the full. His writing demonstrates that the perceived us-them or self-other positions are questionable ideological constructs. He undermines the concept of a uni¿ed culture and the wholeness of the self. He explores and exploits stereotypical beliefs held on both sides of the East¿West divide. The result is a magical realist setting that both puzzles and enchants. This book offers a reading of Bouazzäs literary prose that responds to the interpretative opportunities offered by an author who skilfully and creatively explores his peculiar freedom in his Homeless Entertainment.

This book examines the authority and power of a «sermonic text» through its ¿ctive qualities. The author argues that a sermonic text functions in the manner of a work of ¿ction and creates an event and space that forces a decision upon the reader. The text creates a place where the Kingdom of God is about to happen and is happening. Consequently, the reader is forced to make a decision. Will he or she «go and do likewise», or reject the Kingdom of God? In this way, a sermonic text acts like a work of ¿ction and invites a reader into its space and event. If the reader of the sermonic text chooses temporally to enter the event of the text, the reader has the potential to participate in its dynamics and is forced to make a decision either to believe or not believe. Like a work of ¿ction, it does not require those external guarantees of authority that are found in the community of faith: its doctrines, creeds and ecclesiology. Rather, the authority of the sermonic text is intrinsic as in a work of fiction and stands on its own. The discussion is interdisciplinary, drawing upon literary theory, cultural theory and theology.