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Item Open Access Genetic Narratology: Analysing Narrative across Versions(Open Book Publishers, 2024-12-17) Van Hulle, DirkGenetic Narratology is the first full-length volume to merge genetic criticism with narratology, offering an innovative approach to understanding literature. By examining the creative process behind literary works through drafts, manuscripts and revisions, this book reveals how narratives are shaped in real time. Through diverse case studies—from Charlotte Brontë to Stephen King—this collection demonstrates how the material processes of writing influence narrative structure, pacing, and even the ‘untold’. By integrating genetic criticism with narratological methods, contributors explore how stories evolve, providing fresh insights into time, space, character, and suspense. Bridging the gap between the production and reception of texts, this volume makes a compelling case for incorporating genetic methods into broader narratological frameworks, enhancing not only our understanding of the genesis of literary works, ultimately enriching the reading experience, but also our awareness of the ways we narrativise this genesis. The book will be of interest to students and researchers alike, offering a new set of tools for analysing narrative across different versions.Item Open Access The Birds That Wouldn’t Sing: Remembering the D-Day Wrens(Open Book Publishers, 2024-12-19) Smith, JustinThis compelling book offers a unique perspective on D-Day and its aftermath through the personal testimonies of the Wrens who worked for Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay during Operation Overlord. Drawing on public and private archives, it reveals the untold stories of the women serving in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), balancing their wartime contributions with the strictures of secrecy and censorship. The narrative is framed by letters from these Wrens, which provide intimate glimpses into both the personal and professional challenges they faced during World War II. The book captures the atmosphere of war as experienced by British auxiliaries. It highlights the Wrens' vital but often overlooked role in the D-Day planning effort and beyond, revealing the surreal coexistence of the ordinary and extraordinary in wartime. Focusing in particular on the wartime archive of one of the Wrens, Joan Prior, the author brings to life the contribution of these women to the war effort, while also offering insights into British, French, and German morale and culture. This thoughtful and moving account adds depth to the broader historical narrative of World War II, making it a valuable addition for both the general reader and the professional historian.Item Open Access Investing in the Structural Transformation: 2024 European Public Investment Outlook(Open Book Publishers, 2024-12-11) Cerniglia, Floriana; Saraceno, FrancescoThe fifth volume in the European Public Investment Outlook series explores how Europe can drive structural transformation through strategic public investment. Reflecting on the lessons from the 2008–2020 polycrisis and recent economic challenges, this timely book examines fiscal policy's role in both stabilization and long-term economic development. Part I, ‘State of the Art’, reviews current public investment and industrial policies in major European economies, including France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. It provides detailed analyses of each country's approach to fostering structural transformation through public investment. Part II, ‘Challenges’, addresses the diverse obstacles and opportunities facing Europe’s industrial policy. It emphasizes a multidimensional strategy to overcome bottlenecks in key sectors and drive transformation. Topics include the role of industrial policy in the green transition, creating a cohesive strategy for Europe, enhancing economic security, trends in European Union defence spending, sustainable mobility, and financing structural investment beyond 2027. This volume is essential reading for researchers, economists, and policymakers focused on understanding and implementing effective public policy in Europe, and will further appeal to anyone interested in EU governance and public investment strategies more broadly.Item Open Access Breaking Images: Iconoclastic Analyses of Mathematics and its Education(Open Book Publishers, 2024-12-11) Greer, Brian; Kollosche, David; Skovsmose, OleMathematics is an activity—something we do—not just something inert that we study. This rich collection begins from that premise to explore the various social influences, institutional forces and lived realities that shape and mould the study and practice of mathematics, and are moulded by it in turn. These twenty-one essays explore questions of mathematics as a topic of philosophy, but also the nature and purpose of mathematics education and the role of mathematics in moulding citizens. It challenges the biases and prejudices inherent within uninformed histories of mathematics, including problems of white supremacy, the denial of cultural difference and the global homogenization of teaching methods. In particular, the book contrasts the effectiveness of mathematics and science in modelling physical phenomena and solving technical problems with its ineffectiveness in modelling social phenomena and solving human problems, and urges us to consider how mathematics might better meet the urgent crises of our age. The book addresses anybody who is interested in reflecting on the role of mathematics in society from different perspectives. It allows mathematicians to ponder about the cultural connections of mathematics and provides new perspectives for philosophical, sociological and cultural studies of mathematics. Because of the book’s emphasis on education in mathematics, it is especially interesting for mathematics teachers and teacher educators to challenge their understanding of the subject.Item Open Access Cycle of Dreams(punctum books, 2024-12-15) Weiskott, EricAn experimental hybrid work, Cycle of Dreams pairs translation and original poetry. The translations, or adaptations, are of William Langland’s strange and wild fourteenth-century dream vision, Piers Plowman, a politically radical English and Latin poem written in the wake of plague and divided into a prologue and twenty passūs or steps. Eric Weiskott transposes the action from London and Worcestershire to New England and Long Island. The translations refashion and modernize Piers Plowman by disarticulating its continuous shape and rearticulating it as a collection of lyrics. The translation appears on the left and original poetry on the right in each page opening, so that the fourteenth and twenty-first centuries speak to one another as in a dream. Like Piers Plowman itself in manuscript culture, Cycle of Dreams attracts paratexts. Images illustrate the absent presence of Langland’s authorship. A series of glosses or marginal notes grounds the poems in critical theory, etymologies, lyric reminiscences, and statistics reflecting the desperation of our economic moment. An “oneirography” or dreamed bibliography names some of the scholarship that supports study of Piers Plowman today and some other sources for Langlandian fever dreams. Langland can address us today, not in the voice of a bygone author whose “context” must be arduously rearticulated in the laboratories of scholarly endeavor, but one whose utopian vision is in its broad outlines no less urgent in 2024 than it was in 1381, when English rebels used Langland’s title figure as a rallying cry for insurrection. Cycle of Dreams unearths “buried dreams / of a future adequate to the present tense.”Item Open Access The Struggle You Can’t See: Experiences of Neurodivergent and Invisibly Disabled Students in Higher Education(Open Book Publishers, 2024-11-04) Lierman, AshThis book offers a comprehensive review of current research on the higher education experiences of neurodivergent undergraduate students and those with invisible disabilities. Grounded in principles of social justice and equity, this work draws from design thinking, the neurodiversity model, and Universal Design for Learning, to explore the context of higher education in relation to neurodivergent and disabled students. The author discusses findings from literature on the experiences of students with ADHD, dyslexia, autism, psychiatric disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, and disabling chronic physical illnesses. The inclusion of students with chronic illnesses is particularly timely, given the rising prevalence of long COVID symptoms and other lasting health impacts among university-aged individuals. Moreover Ash Lierman, who has extensive experience of serving students marginalized students, gives voice to this community, thus providing both a synthesis of existing research, and highlighting the needs and challenges of the students themselves. The Struggle You Can’t See serves as a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners seeking to understand and support this underserved population, offering insights for transformational change in higher education.Item Open Access Diachronic Diversity in Classical Biblical Hebrew(Open Book Publishers, 2024-11-11) Hornkohl, Aaron D.According to the standard periodisation of ancient Hebrew, the division of Biblical Hebrew as reflected in the Masoretic tradition is basically dichotomous: pre-exilic Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH) versus post-Restoration Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH). Within this paradigm, the chronolectal unity of CBH is rarely questioned—this despite the reasonable expectation that the language of a corpus encompassing traditions of various ages and comprising works composed, edited, and transmitted over the course of centuries would show signs of diachronic development. From the perspective of historical evolution, CBH is remarkably homogenous. Within this apparent uniformity, however, there are indeed signs of historical development, sets of alternant features whose respective concentrations seem to divide CBH into two sub-chronolects. The most conspicuous typological division that emerges is between the CBH of the Pentateuch and that of the relevant Prophets and Writings. The present volume investigates a series of features that distinguish the two ostensible CBH sub-chronolects, weighs alternative explanations for distribution patterns that appear to have chronological significance, and considers broader implications for Hebrew diachrony and periodisation and for the composition of the Torah.Item Open Access Knowledge: A Human Interest Story(Open Book Publishers, 2024-11-21) Weatherson, BrianIn this book the author argues for a groundbreaking perspective that knowledge is inherently interest-relative. This means that what one knows is influenced not just by belief, evidence, and truth, but crucially by the purposes those beliefs serve. Drawing from classical Nyāya epistemologies, the book asserts that knowledge rationalizes action: if you know something, it is sensible to act on it—and the best way to square this with an anti-sceptical epistemology is to say that knowledge is interest-relative. While versions of this view have been debated, they haven’t gained wide acceptance. The author addresses common objections with a refined formulation and explores how this perspective elucidates the role of knowledge in inquiry, daily life, and the history of thought. Key distinctions include the impact of “long odds” situations on knowledge, the distinctive role knowledge has a starting point for inquiry, and the importance of using non-ideal models in theorising about knowledge. Building on decades of scholarship, the author offers a cohesive theory that integrates and clarifies previous works, demonstrating that not only knowledge but also belief, rational belief, and evidence are interest-relative. This book is essential for those seeking a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between knowledge and practical interests.Item Open Access Oblation: Essays, Parables, Paradoxes(punctum books, 2024-11-06) Bowker, M.H.Elements of this book, Oblation: Essays, Parables, Paradoxes, defy reason. They do so for good reason. Much of what we do, much of what we think, is oblation: sacrifice, offering, to something or someone. The root of “oblation” is “to draw near” or “to dwell in.” It refers to what is brought unto the altar, literal or proverbial — the profoundest oblation being what binds us together, our very souls, our dearest loves, indistinguishable from ourselves, our Isaacs on our Mount Moriahs. The natures of our oblations characterize our relationships to objects great and small, e.g., Lords and loved ones, groups and masses of signifiers. Oblative transactions promise meaning, yet we are full of uncertainty. What is it that cries out for oblation? How do we hear its voice? Are we, in fact, called, or do we, on the contrary, offer every bit gratuit? Why, as Albert Camus famously remarked, do “the stage sets collapse” as we offer ourselves to life’s routine? In Oblation, M.H. Bowker considers these questions in a series of essays touching upon figures such as Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, Baron van Münchhausen, and Jacques Lacan, unraveling themes of loss, hatred, and the Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Interspersed with brief parables and paradoxes, Bowker's essays push us to wonder who or what we are offering ourselves and others to – and how we get away with this.Item Open Access Digital Humanities in the India Rim: Contemporary Scholarship in Australia and India(Open Book Publishers, 2024-11-06) Gurney, Myra; Cohen, Hart; Jana, UjjwalThis varied collection delves into illuminating examples of Digital Humanities research and practice currently being undertaken by academics in India and Australia, and seeks to understand the shared challenges as well as the points of similarity and difference between them. From the influence of Netflix on International Relations to contemporary digital adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, via detours into erobotics (empathic robots) and the cultural specificity of online dating, these essays convey the distinctive breadth and imagination of research in this field. Digital Humanities is a relatively new discipline in the India Rim, and this novelty has created space for innovative research ideas, as well as the use of traditional methodologies and software in different ways within these unique cultural spaces that could potentially influence how Digital Humanities is conceptualised internationally. For example, drawing on Indian classical logic leads to novel designs and applications of computation. This lively volume offers a fresh look at the Digital Humanities and an important overview of the work taking place in a region other than the Western countries that typically dominate the field. It has much to offer both experienced researchers and those new to the Digital Humanities.Item Open Access Burning Diagrams in Anthropology: An Inverse Museum(punctum books, 2024-11-21) Partridge, TristanBurning Diagrams in Anthropology examines the use of diagrams in anthropology to reimagine how we think about, and challenge, intellectual histories. Highlighting the impossibility of escaping what different disciplines and institutions deem to be “past,” the author combines critical analysis of selected diagrams with an expansive, exploratory reimmersion in their aesthetic, ethical, and political potential. Diagrams persist. Yet while other visual components of scholarly work – especially photography, cartography, and film – have been subject to significant critical scrutiny, diagrams have received far less reflexive attention. Reversing this trend, Partridge presents a collection of 52 diagrams, covering a period of 150 years, to create an “inverse museum” – a space where the collection matters less than reactions to it. While the images are drawn from sociocultural anthropology, they are discussed in dialogue with approaches from philosophy, postcolonial studies, architecture, aesthetics, posthumanism, and critical art theory. Dissecting the notion of The Canon in order to confront academic complicity in hierarchical and racialized relations of inequality, the figurative burning of the title refers to how we might prepare the ground for scholarly work that meets the immediate, collective needs of an Earth in crisis – not least, by refusing adherence to disciplinary normalcy. By refusing this adherence, Partridge reaffirms knowledge creation in general, and anthropology in particular, as deeply ethical, creative, and relational processes.Item Open Access Heavy Processing(punctum books, 2024-11-27) Cowan, T.L.; Rault, JasWhat happens when we take the joke of “lesbian processing” seriously as a research method? Heavy Processing does just this, by tracing the multi-directional genealogies and vast affinities of processing-heavy methods as innovations in information technologies (operating systems, central processing units, network designs). Part methods handbook, manifesto, and survival guide, this book opens up the fields of information studies, data studies, digital media studies, and digital humanities to critical digital methods, information technologies, and infrastructures: trans- feminist and queer (TFQ) cultural protocols and ways of working. Cowan and Rault offer heavy processing as a maximalist research method, consistent with a long and proud lesbian-leaning TFQ tradition of making a mountain out of a molehill. Heavy Processing draws together activist, artistic, and scholarly work that is both about and not about digital materials to critically reorient digital research methods calibrated for accountability, relationship-building, and trust as measures of scholarly rigor. A raging romp of a methods manual, Cowan and Rault offer an alternative to mass digitization in the form of TFQ processing for analog and born digital materials. They write for students, faculty, and researchers, as well as for information, cultural heritage, and tech-sector professionals; for anyone interested in digital media and feminist, queer, and transcultural studies; and for anyone who has ever been studied. Cowan and Rault offer heavy processing as a maximalist research method, consistent with a long and proud lesbian-leaning TFQ tradition of making a mountain out of a molehill. Heavy Processing draws together activist, artistic, and scholarly work that is both about and not about digital materials to critically reorient digital research methods calibrated for accountability, relationship-building, and trust as measures of scholarly rigor. A raging romp of a methods manual, Cowan and Rault offer an alternative to mass digitization in the form of TFQ processing for analog and born digital materials; they write for students, faculty, and researchers, as well as for information, cultural heritage, and tech-sector professionals, for anyone interested in digital media and feminist, queer, and transcultural studies, and for anyone who has ever been studied.Item Open Access No Prices No Games!: Four Economic Models(Open Book Publishers, 2024-11-13) Richter, Michael; Rubinstein, ArielWhile current economic theory focuses on prices and games, this book models economic settings where harmony is established through one of the following societal conventions: • A power relation according to which stronger agents are able to force weaker ones to do things against their will. • A norm that categorizes actions as permissible or forbidden. • A status relation over alternatives which limits each agent's choices. • Systematic biases in agents' preferences. These four conventions are analysed using simple and mathematically straightforward models, without any pretensions regarding direct applied usefulness. While we do not advocate for the adoption of any of these conventions specifically – we do advocate that when modelling an economic situation, alternative equilibrium notions should be considered, rather than automatically reaching for the familiar approaches of prices or games.Item Open Access 100 Chinese Silences(punctum books, 2024-10-05) Yu, TimothyThere are one hundred kinds of Chinese silence: the silence of unknown grandfathers; the silence of borrowed Buddha and rebranded Confucius; the silence of alluring stereotypes and exotic reticence. These poems make those silences heard. Writing back to an “orientalist” tradition that has defined modern American poetry, these 100 Chinese silences unmask the imagined Asias of American literature, revealing the spectral Asian presence that haunts our most eloquent lyrics and self-satisfied wisdom. Rewriting poets from Ezra Pound and Marianne Moore to Gary Snyder and Billy Collins, this book is a sharply critical and wickedly humorous travesty of the modern canon, excavating the Asian (American) bones buried in our poetic language.Item Open Access Insolubles: Critical Edition with English Translation(Open Book Publishers, 2024-10-17) Segrave, Walter; Bartocci, Barbara; Read, StephenParadoxes, such as the Liar (‘What I am saying is false’), fascinated medieval thinkers. What I said can’t be true, for if it were, it would be false. So it must be false—but then it would be true after all. Attempts at a solution to this contradiction led such thinkers to develop their theories of meaning, reference and truth. A popular response, until it was attacked at length by Thomas Bradwardine in the early 1320s, was to dismiss such self-reference as impossible: no term (here, ‘false’) could refer to (or in medieval terms, “supposit for”) a whole, e.g., a proposition, of which it is part. In light of Bradwardine’s criticisms, Walter Segrave, writing around 1330, defended so-called restrictivism (restrictio) by claiming that such paradoxes exhibited a fallacy of accident. The classic example of this fallacy, the first of Aristotle’s fallacies independent of language, is the Hidden Man puzzle: you know Coriscus, Coriscus is the one approaching, but you don’t know the one approaching since, e.g., he is wearing a mask. But Aristotle’s account is unclear and Segrave, building on ideas of Giles of Rome and Walter Burley, shows how the fallacy turns on an equivocation over the supposition of the middle term or one of the extremes in a syllogism. Thereby, Segrave is able to counter Bradwardine’s arguments one by one and defend the restrictivist solution. In this volume, Segrave’s text is edited from the three extant manuscripts, is translated into English, and is preceded by a substantial Introduction.Item Open Access Rāgs Around the Clock: A Handbook for North Indian Classical Music, with Online Recordings in the Khayāl Style(Open Book Publishers, 2024-10-02) Clarke, David; MUSIC_Rajput, VijayRāgs Around the Clock is a rich and vibrant compendium for the discovery and study of North Indian classical music. The theory and practice of rāg are explored through two interlinked resources: a handbook of essays and analyses offering technical, historical, cultural and aesthetic perspectives; and two online albums – Rāg samay cakra and Twilight Rāgs from North India – featuring khayāl singer Vijay Rajput and accompanists. Extracts from the albums are also embedded into the text to enhance learning and understanding. Each rāg is accompanied by a description of its chief characteristics and technical features, a notation of the song (bandiś) on which the performance is based, and a transliteration and translation of the song text. Distinctively, Rāg samay cakra also includes spoken renditions of each of the texts, helping non-Hindavi speakers to achieve the correct pronunciation. Sharing insights from both theory and practice, this collection draws on recent scholarship while also showcasing the vocal idiom – the gāyakī – of Vijay Rajput, a disciple of the late Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. It offers invaluable reading for students and researchers of Indian classical music, world music and ethnomusicology, and a rich repository for teacher and student practitioners of the khayāl vocal style. The combination of an aural and written exploration of rāg will appeal to anyone drawn to this form of music – whether newcomer, student (śiṣyā) or aficionado (rasika).Item Open Access Nouvelles études sur les lieux de spectacle de la première modernité(Open Book Publishers, 2024-10-08) Leichman, Jeffrey M.; Beaucé, PaulineLes théâtres du passé : des théâtres virtuels ? C’est une des questions passionnantes explorée dans ce livre par des chercheurs et chercheuses en littérature, musicologie, histoire, études théâtrales, histoire de l’art, architecture et sciences du numérique. Ces Nouvelles études sur les lieux de spectacle de la première modernité proposent de relever un défi épistémologique autour de la notion de virtuel pour la recherche en histoire du théâtre en engageant différents formats de réflexion : entretiens, articles multimédia, brèves de méthodologie, exposition virtuelle. L’objectif de ce volume est de situer le lieu de spectacle aussi largement que possible au carrefour des imaginaires et de ses usages pratiques. Ancrées dans le concret des archives, les contributions s’inscrivent dans la volonté d’un renouveau interprétatif en partant d’hypothèses rendues possibles par des perspectives contemporaines - nouvelles technologies, revalorisation d’objets autrefois jugés mineurs, intérêt pour les approches contrefactuelles. La diversité des objets de recherche, des méthodes et des résultats rassemblés éclaire non seulement l’histoire matérielle des spectacles de la première modernité, mais illustre aussi la nécessité de croiser les approches scientifiques pour renouveler la compréhension et la transmission des pratiques culturelles du passé.Item Open Access Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State(punctum books, 2024-10-27) Min, Lisa; Billé, Franck; Makley, CharleneWhen it comes to the political, acts of redaction, erasure, and blacking out sit in awkward tension with the myth of transparent governance, borderless access, and frictionless communication. But should there be more than this brute juxtaposition of truth and secrecy? Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State brings together essays, poems, artwork, and memes – a bricolage of media that conveys the experience of living in state-inflected worlds in flux. Critically and poetically engaging with redaction in politically charged contexts (from the United States and Denmark to Russia, China, and North Korea), the volume closely examines and turns loose this disquieting mark of state power, aiming to trouble the liberal imaginaries that configure the political as a left–right spectrum, as populism and nationalism versus global and transnational cosmopolitanism, as east versus west, authoritarianism versus democracy, good versus evil, or the state versus the people – age-old coordinates that no longer make sense. Because we know from the upheavals of the past decade that these relations are being reconfigured in novel, recursive, and unrecognizable ways, the consequences of which are perplexing and ever evolving. This book takes up redaction as a vital form in this new political reality. Contributors both critically engage with statist redaction practices and also explore its alluring and ambivalent forms, as experimental practices that open up new dialogic possibilities in navigating and conveying the stakes of political encounters.Item Open Access Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology(Open Book Publishers, 2024-10-16) de Boer, Bas; Zwier, JochemOur contemporary world is undeniably intertwined with technology, influencing every aspect of human life. This edited volume delves into why modern philosophical approaches to technology closely align with phenomenology and explores the implications of this relationship. Over the past two decades, scholars have emphasized users’ lived experiences and their interactions with technological practices, arguing that technologies gain meaning and shape within specific contexts, actively shaping those contexts in return. This book investigates the phenomenological roots of contemporary philosophy of technology, examining how phenomenology informs analyses of temporality, use, cognition, embodiment, and environmentality. Divided into three sections, the volume begins by exploring the role of phenomenological methods in the philosophy of technology, and further investigates the methodological implications of combining phenomenology with other philosophical schools. The second section examines technology as a phenomenon, debating whether it should be analysed as a whole or through individual artifacts. The final section addresses the practical applications of phenomenological insights in design practices and democratic engagement. By offering a systematic exploration of the connection between phenomenology and technology, this volume provides valuable insights for scholars, students, and researchers in related fields, highlighting the continued relevance of phenomenological perspectives in understanding our technologically mediated world.Item Open Access Meta-Xenakis: New Perspectives on Iannis Xenakis’s Life, Work, and Legacies(Open Book Publishers, 2024-10-09) Kanach, Sharon; Nelson, PeterMeta-Xenakis offers readers a comprehensive collection of insights into the history, works and legacy of Iannis Xenakis, one of the twentieth century’s most significant creative figures. It presents a transcontinental engagement with his life and output, focusing as much on the impact of the questions he posed as on the accomplishments of his body of work. This volume evolved out of the multi-modal, international Meta-Xenakis Consortium’s artistic and scholarly events commemorating his centenary. Informative and comprehensive, contributions span subjects including music composition, creative pedagogy, aesthetics, game theory, architecture, and the social and political contexts in which Xenakis operated. The book is organized in eight sections, centered on different facets of Xenakis’s work and reception. It includes a digital archive of audio and visual media from the events staged throughout 2022, as well as computer software. Bringing into conversation the diverse perspectives and insights of researchers, musicians and artists, this volume serves as a foundational resource for future research on the life and work of Xenakis. It will be of interest to students, scholars, and practitioners across a range of disciplines including music, architecture, cybernetics and computation, and the digital arts.