Author: Helen M. Hickey File Type: pdf For 700 years, Geoffrey Chaucer has spoken to scholars and amateurs alike. How does his work speak to us in the twenty-first century? Within the fluctuating trends of the critical moment, this volume provides a unique vantage point for responding to this question, furnished by the signature intellectual framework of pioneering medieval literature scholar Stephanie Trigg the symptomatic long history. While Triggs scholarship acts as a springboard for the vibrant conversations in this collection, each chapter offers an inspiring extension of her legacy. The outstanding contributors delve into a diverse range of subjects that frequently cross boundaries. Formerly rigid demarcations surrounding medieval literary studies give way to an increasingly fluid interplay between Chaucer within his medieval context medievalism and reception the rigours of scholarly research and the recognition of amateur engagement with the past the significance of the history of emotions and the connection between textuality, subjectivity and the world they inhabit. Each chapter engages with one or more of these themes, providing a distinctive and often startling interpretation of Chaucer that broadens our understanding of the dynamic relationship between the medieval past and its ongoing re-evaluation. The inventive strategies employed in this volume will stimulate exciting and timely insights for researchers and students of Chaucer, medievalism, medieval studies, and history of emotions, especially those interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the relationship between medieval literature, the intervening centuries and contemporary cultural change. **
Author: Pat Hudson
File Type: pdf
This is an introduction to the Industrial Revolution which offers an integrated account of the economic and social aspects of change during the period. Recent revisionist thinking has implied that fundamental change in economic, social and political life at the time of the Industrial Revolution was minimal or non-existent. The author challenges this interpretation, arguing that the process of revision has gone too far emphasizing continuity at the expense of change and neglecting many historically unique features of the economy and society. Elements given short shrift in many current interpretations are reassigned their central roles.
Author: Robert Waterman McChesney
File Type: mobi
American journalism is collapsing as newspapers and magazines fail and scores of reporters are laid off across the country. Conventional wisdom says the Internet is to blame, but veteran journalists and media critics Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols disagree. The crisis of American journalism predates the Great Recession and digital media boom. What we are witnessing now is the end of the commercial news model and the opportune moment for the creation of a new system of independent journalism, one subsidized by the public and capable of safeguarding our democracy.From Publishers WeeklyTwo respected media authorities, McChesney, a radio host of Media Matters, and Nichols, the Nations Washington, D.C., correspondent, spell out the rapid decline of and possible financial solutions for American journalism in their new book. The Old School print journalism empire, the authors write, is crumbling weeklies and daily newspapers closing down thousands of reporters and editors getting the pink slip, and Washington bureaus and other areas of federal government assigned less coverage. Although McChesney and Nichols point out the true culprits in the fall of the national press, such as the Internet, the ownership of the press and TV news shows by profit-hungry large media conglomerates, and hard economic times, they are excessively upbeat when calling for a new era of experimentation in which a hybrid of old and new media emerges. In this powerful book on the shrinking American media, the authors accurately explain its current crisis, but fall somewhat short in solving the many challenges confronting journalism, including major subsidies when the public has little stomach for that. (Jan.) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From BooklistStarred Review American newspapers are dying at an alarming rate, killed off by a failing corporate model that puts profits before journalism and a reliance on advertisers who are flocking to the Internet. Respected journalists McChesney and Nichols offer historical perspectivehow we got into this sorry stateand analysis from journalists, economists, and advocates on how we might be able to get out of it. They cite statistics, chronicling efforts to move newsgathering to the Internet and the success of many bloggers who rely on aggregated news from old media. Their bottom line without some kind of government support, journalism as we know it will not survive. Despite resistance to the idea of government support of media, they point to postal subsidies dating back to the 1700s. They also offer the model of government and philanthropic support of media in Britain (the BBC and the Guardian), as well as the much leaner history of government support for public broadcasting in the U.S. Among their suggestions worker and community cooperative ownership of local media and quasi nonprofit news organizations. The authors argue passionately for radical solutions but also offer an exhilarating vision for the direction of American journalism. --Vanessa Bush
Author: Hans Bertens
File Type: pdf
With a new introduction and fully updated pointers to further reading, thissecond edition of Hans Bertens bestselling book is a must-have guide to the world of literary theory.Exploring a broad range of topics fromMarxist and feminist criticism to post-modernism and new historicism it includes new coverage ofullthe latest developments in post-colonial and cultural theoryllliterature and sexualityllthe latest schools of thought, including eco-criticism and post-humanismllthe future of literary theory and criticism.lul*Literary Theory The Basics* is an essential purchase for anyone who wants to know what literary theory is and where it isgoing.ReviewClear, vigorous and often creatively provocative, Hans Bertenss historical overview of western literary theory is one of the very best introductions currently available. - Michael Worton, University College London, UK
Author: Tim Wu
File Type: epub
Persuasive and brilliantly written, the book is especially timely given the rise of trillion-dollar tech companies.--Publishers Weekly From the man who coined the term net neutrality, author of The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants, comes a warning about the dangers of excessive corporate and industrial concentration for our economic and political future. We live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in which global industries are controlled by just a few giant firms -- big banks, big pharma, and big tech, just to name a few. But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the curse of bigness can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself. History suggests that tolerance of inequality and failing to control excessive corporate power may prompt the rise of populism, nationalism, extremist politicians, and fascist regimes. In short, as Wu warns, we are in grave danger of repeating the signature errors of the twentieth century. In The Curse of Bigness, Columbia professor Tim Wu tells of how figures like Brandeis and Theodore Roosevelt first confronted the democratic threats posed by the great trusts of the Gilded Age--but the lessons of the Progressive Era were forgotten in the last 40 years. He calls for recovering the lost tenets of the trustbusting age as part of a broader revival of American progressive ideas as we confront the fallout of persistent and extreme economic inequality.
Author: Ronald I. McKinnon
File Type: pdf
The world dollar standard is an accident of history that greatly facilitates international trade and exchange-even trade not directly involving the United States. Since 1945, the dollar has been the key currency for clearing international payments among banks including interventions by governments to set exchange rates, the dominant currency for invoicing trade in primary commodities, and the principal currency in official exchange reserves. Although the strong network effects of the dollar standard greatly increases the financial efficiency of multilateral trade, nobody loves it. Erratic U.S. monetary and exchange rate policies have continually made foreigners unhappy. A weak and falling dollar led to the worldwide price inflations of the 1970s and contributed to the disastrous asset bubbles and global credit crisis of the noughties -- including the global credit crunch of 2008-09. Dollar weakness aggravated the postwar worlds three great oil shocks in 1973, 1979, and 2007-08. After 2008, the U.S. Federal Reserve Banks policy of keeping short-term interest rates near zero and out of alignment with emerging markets on the dollar standards periphery, makes the international monetary system vulnerable to carry trades hot money inflows into the periphery that cause a loss of monetary control, commodity bubbles, and worldwide inflation . When these carry-trade bubbles suddenly unwind, they can result in huge swings in exchange rates and credit crunches. The asymmetrical nature of the dollar standard also makes many Americans unhappy because they cannot control their own exchange rate. Under the rules of the dollar standard game as explained in chapters 2 and 3 of this book, foreign governments may opt to set their exchange rates against the dollar while, to prevent conflict, the U.S. government typically does not intervene. Nevertheless, Americans often complain about how foreigners set their dollar exchange rates unfairly. Japan bashing in the late 1970s to the mid-1990s over the alleged under valuation of the yen, and China bashing in the new millennium over the alleged undervaluation of the renminbi, are two cases in point. Thus, while nobody loves the dollar standard, the revealed preference of both governments and private participants in the foreign exchange markets since 1945 is to continue to use it. As the principal monetary mechanism ensuring that international trade remains robustly multilateral rather than narrowly bilateral, it is a remarkable survivor that is too valuable to lose and too difficult to replace. This book provides historical and analytical perspectives on the different phases of the postwar dollar standard in order to better understand its resilience in spite of the great volatility in todays global monetary system. **
Author: Debra J. Lindsay
File Type: pdf
The first book-length treatment of one of John James Audubons background painters. Maria Martin (17961863) was an evangelical Lutheran from Charleston, South Carolina, who became an accomplished painter within months of meeting John James Audubon. Martin met Audubon through her brother-in-law, Reverend John Bachman, who befriended Audubon while passing through Charleston on route to Florida where he expected to find new avian species. Martin was an amateur artist, but by the time Audubon left, she had familiarized herself with his style of drawing. Six months after their initial meeting, her background botanicals were deemed good enough to embellish Audubons exquisite bird paintings. Martins botanicals and insects appeared in volumes two and four of The Birds of America (18301838). She painted snakes for John Edwards Holbrooks North American Herpetology (1842) and assisted in drafting the descriptive taxonomies prepared by John Bachmanwho later became her husband in 1848 following the death of her older sisterfor The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (18461854). Until now, her contributions have been unknown to all but the most astute students of natural history and art history and a close circle of family and friends. Maria Martins World is a heavily illustrated volume examining how Maria Martin learned to paint aesthetically beautiful botanicals with exacting accuracy. Drawing on deep research into archival documents and family-held artifacts, Debra Lindsay brings Maria Martin out from behind the curtain of obscurity and disinformation that has previously shrouded her and places her centrally in her own time and milieu. In the telling of Maria Martins story, Lindsay also uncovers many nuances of the behavior and actions of the two prominent men in her life that readers interested in Audubon and Bachman will find noteworthy. Martin was a gifted artist recognized for having contributed beautiful paintings to a natural history. But beyond the natural world this is a biography of an evangelical Lutheran steeped in the faith of her German ancestors and raised to respect the patriarchal norms of her time. Maria Martin pursued her scientific and artistic interests only when they did not conflict with her religious and familial responsibilities. **
Author: Shuichi Kato
File Type: epub
A new simplified edition translated by Don Sanderson. The original three-volume work, first published in 1979, has been revised specially as a single volume paperback which concentrates on the development of Japanese literature.**
Author: Wenceslao J. Gonzalez
File Type: pdf
Contemporary philosophy of science analyzes psychology as a science with special features, because this discipline includes some specific philosophical problems descriptive and normative, structural and dynamic. Some of these are particularly relevant both theoretically (casual explanation) and practically (the configuration of the psychological subject and its relations with psychiatry). Two central aspects in this book are the role of causality, especially conceived as intervention or manipulation, and the characterization of the psychological subject. This requires a clarification of scientific explanations in terms of causality in psychology, because characterizations of causality are quite different in epistemological and ontological terms. One of the most influential views is James Woodwards approach to causality as intervention, which entails an analysis of its characteristics, new elements and limits. This means taking into account the structural and dynamic aspects included in causal cognition and psychological explanations. Psychology seen as special science also requires us to consider the scientific status of psychology and the psychological subject, which leads to limits of naturalism in psychology. **About the Author Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, University of A Coruna, Ferrol, Spain.
Author: Piotr Filipowicz
File Type: epub
If you are a Java developer or administrator with a technical background and want to install and configure Liferay Portal as an enterprise intranet, this is the book for you. In short, reusable recipes help you realize business goals as working features in Liferay. This book will also give you useful hints on how to easily improve the default functionality of the system and its performance.