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Scotland as Science Fiction
- Edited by Caroline McCracken-Flesher 978-1-61148-374-1 $60.00, Cloth Imprint: Bucknell University Press October 2011 179pp Size: 6 x 9 Category: European Union (Society, Culture, and Religion)
The Book:
Out of the mainstream but ahead of the tide, that is Scottish Science Fiction. Science Fiction emphasizes progress through technology, advanced mental states, or future times. How does Scotland, often considered a land of the past, lead in Science Fiction? Left behind by international politics, Scots have cultivated alternate places and different times as sites of identity, so that Scotland can seem a futuristic fiction itself. This book explores the tensions between science and a particular society that produce an innovative science fiction. Essays consider Scottish thermodynamics, Celtic myth, the rigors of religious conversion, Scotland’s fractured politics yet civil society, its languages of alterity (Scots, Gaelic, allegory, poetry), and the lure of the future. From Peter Pan and Dr. Jekyll to the poetry of Edwin Morgan and the worlds of Muriel Spark, Ken Macleod, or Iain M. Banks, Scotland’s creative complex yields a literature that models the future for Science Fiction. The Author: Caroline McCracken-Flesher is Professor of English at the University of Wyoming. Her recent publications include Possible Scotlands: Walter Scott and the Story of Tomorrow (2005), and the edited Bucknell volume, Culture, Nation, and the New Scottish Parliament (2007). Table of Contents: Acknowledgements; Introduction by Caroline McCracken-Flesher; Scotland’s Fantastic Physics: Energy Transformation in MacDonald, Stevenson, Barrie, and Spark by Cairns Craig; The Other Otherworld: Didactic Fantasy from MacDonald and Lindsay to J. Leslie Mitchell by J. Derrick McClure; Allegory and Cruelty: Gray’s Lanark and Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus by Ian Duncan; Speculative Nationality: “Stands Scotland Where it Did?” in the Culture of Iain M. Banks by John Garrison; Between Enlightenment and the End of History: Ken MacLeod’s Engines of Light by Gavin Miller; The Cosmic (Cosmo)Polis in Naomi Mitchison’s Science Fiction Novels by Carla Sassi; Non-Violence, Gender, and Ecology: Margaret Elphinstone’s The Incomer and A Sparrow’s Flight by Alison Phipps; Past and Future Language: Matthew Fitt and Iain M. Banks by John Corbett; Scottish Poetry as Science Fiction: Geddes, MacDiarmid, and Morgan’s “A Home in Space” by Alan Riach; Brave New Scotland: Science Fiction without Stereotypes in Fitt and Crumey by Lisa Harrison; Alba Newton and Alasdair Gray by Matthew Wickman; Bibliography; Notes on Contributors; Index
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The Late Socialist Good Life in Bulgaria Meaning and Living in a Permanent Present Tense - By Cristofer Scarboro
978-0-7391-4559-3 $70.00, Cloth Imprint: Lexington Books October 2011 280pp Size: 6 x 9 Category: Eastern European Studies (History)
The Book:
This work investigates attempts by Bulgarian Communist Party leaders, bureaucrats and subjects to model, disseminate, and appropriate a local version of the “homo-sovieticus,” or new soviet man and woman, during the 1960s and 1970s. The work is centered in Haskovo, Bulgaria and framed by four sites of investigation, each linked with the values that socialist humanism sought to instill. This book is a study of attempts of Bulgarians in the Haskovski region to navigate the dynamics of their intended transformation from early Bulgarian socialists to socialist humanist Bulgarians. Viewed from the center, state-manipulated brigades, excursions, art exhibitions and cultural exchanges demonstrate the ability of the state to oblige all to find their place within systemic requirements-but closer perspectives reveal the contingencies produced by interactions between these systems and their subjects. Tashkent, meant to be a model of Soviet progress and a glimpse into Haskovo’s future, proved as often to be understood as a symbol of a degraded (if enticing) oriental past. Brigadiers were more interested in playing soccer or gossiping and fighting than in working. Tourists grumbled at inadequate facilities and drank and smoked rather than gaining an appreciation for the beauty of nature and the largesse of the system that allowed them to tour. Socialist Humanist, Socialist Realist art revealed images of the bourgeois and the private in place of earlier tropes of workers working. Bulgarian socialist humanists’ navigation of these programs resolved themselves in many outcomes: in the field of interactions people created solaces, expressed discontents, and manufactured alterations in systems meant to instill uniformity.
The Author:
Cristofer Scarboro, PhD is a professor of history at King’s College, London.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments; Introduction: Creating Socialist Humanism; “Stroim za rodinata”; Haskovo and Tashkent: Brothers in Socialism; Touring, the Sacred and the Socialist Self; Plotting the Seld in the Socialist Humanist Art Gallery; Conclusions: Socialist Humanism: Promises and Perils; Bibliography; Index
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Globalizing de Gaulle
International Perspectives on French Foreign Policies, 1958–1969 - Edited by Christian Nuenlist, Anna Locher, and Garret Martin 978-0-7391-4249-3 $36.95, Paper Imprint: Lexington Books August 2011 326pp Size: 6 x 9 Series: The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series Category: French Studies (International Relations/Foreign)
The Book:
French President Charles de Gaulle has consistently fascinated contemporaries and historians. His vision conceived out of national interest - of uniting Europe under French leadership and overcoming the Cold War still remains relevant and appealing. This book serves to rediscover de Gaulle’s policies worldwide and how they changed the course of the Cold War. Offering truly global perspectives on France’s international visions and moves in the long 1960s, the 13 well-matched essays by leading experts in the field tap into newly available sources drawn from European, Asian, African, Latin American and US archives. Together, the contributions integrate previously neglected regions, actors and topics with more familiar and newly approached phenomena into a global picture of the General’s international policy-making..
The Editors:
Christian Nuenlist is a lecturer in contemporary history at the University of Zurich and a foreign desk editor at the Swiss daily “Aargauer Zeitung.” He is the author of Kennedys rechte Hand (CSS, 1999), and the co-editor of Origins of the European Security System (Routledge, 2008) Anna Locher is a senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich. She co-edited Transforming NATO in the Cold War (Routledge, 2007) and Aspects of NATO History, 1957-75 (CSS, 2006). Garret Martin is a visiting lecturer at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
The Contributors:
Jeffrey James Byrne, Carolyn Davidson, James Ellison, Joaquín Fermandois, Carine Germond, Gadi Heimann, Mark Kramer, Anna Locher, Piers Ludlow, Garret Martin, Guia Migani, Christian Nuenlist, Marie-Pierre Rey, Yuko Torikata, and Qiang Zhai
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Cultures of Violence in the New German Street - By Patricia Anne Simpson
978-1-61147-455-8 $75.00, Cloth Imprint: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press October 2011 268pp Size: 6 X 9 Category: German Studies (Literature)
The Book:
Violence in post-wall Germany, both real and imagined, increasingly determines the formation of new cultural identities. Patricia Simpson’s book focuses on the representation of violence in three youth subcultures often characterized by aggression as they enact a rivalry for supremacy on the new German “street”. The selected literary texts, films, and music exemplify the urgent need for a sustained debate about violence as an aspect of both social reality and the national imaginary. Simpson’s study discloses the relationship between narratives of violence and issues of immigration, ethnic difference, and poverty. Her lucid readings examine the ways in which violence is grounded in the asphalt of Germany’s new street. This interdisciplinary study identifies the motivations, decisions, and consequences of violent acts and the stories that convey them. She draws examples from popular genres and subcultures, including punk, hip hop, and skinhead sounds, styles, and politics. With theoretical sophistication and analytical clarity, the author locates the contested territory of the street within larger European discourses about violence while paying careful attention to the particularities of German history. She reveals new insights into the construction of citizenship, masculinity, and contemporary ethics. In addition, Simpson demonstrates the importance of concepts embedded in the representation of violence, including revised definitions of heroism, community, and evolving ideas of fraternity, family, and home.
The Author:
Patricia Anne Simpson is associate professor of German at Montana State University, Bozeman.
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents; Acknowledgments; List of Illustrations; Preface; Introduction: Cultures of Violence in the New German Street; Chapter 1: Fighting for the Streets; Chapter 2: Chaos Days; Chapter 3: Primal Scenes: Signatures of Violence from the Right; Chapter 4: German Vernaculars; Chapter 5: Street Signs and Cultural Corridors; Chapter 6: Syntax of the Street: New Fraternities and the Concept of Home; Conclusions: Europe and Transnational Violence; Bibliography; Index
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