lunes, 28 de noviembre de 2011

See our Seven Academic Books of the Month!

Women from the Golden Legend


Author: Emma Gatland                    ISBN:  9781855662292
Format: HB                                     Extent: 304 pp.
Price: £60                                        Publication: October 2011
Publisher: Tamesis Books (Boydell & Brewer)


Hagiography was one of the most prolific narrative genres in the Middle Ages. Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (c. 1260), the most popular compendium, was translated into every language in Western Europe. In the medieval Iberian peninsula, the number of conserved hagiographic documents dwarfs those belonging to other narrative genres. This book examines one collection of saints' lives, or sanctorals, and the twenty-five female saints witnessed therein. Their lives furnished exemplary models for women inside and outside the Church, tell stories of maidens tortured by pagan sovereigns, prostitutes, mothers who see their sons martyred, and women who dress as men in order to avoid being married off to the nearest suitor. This study challenges an understanding of these women as passive recipients of social and spiritual influence by re-situating female authority within the context of vision, language, and performativity. Included in the study are transcriptions of twenty-two previously unedited lives.

The Spanish Welfare State in the European Context


Authors: Ana Marta Guillén & Margarita León          
ISBN: 978-1-4094-0293-0
Format: HB                                       Extent: 270 pp.
Price: £60                                         Publication: November 2011
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing


Following the death of Franco, Spain underwent a transition to democracy in the mid-1970s. Although a rapid process of modernization occurred, the Spanish welfare state was seen, until fairly recently, as relatively underdeveloped. However, given the progressive Europeanization and expansion of Spanish social policy, questions arise as to whether the Spanish welfare system should still be considered as peripheral to West European welfare states.

This volume is divided into three sections. The first section deals with broad trends in the evolution of the Spanish welfare state. In the second section, attention is turned to governance issues, such as collective bargaining, the interplay among levels of government, the welfare mix and public support for social policies. The third and final part of the book addresses five main challenges facing the Spanish welfare state in the 21st century.

Literature as a Response to Cultural and Political Repression in Franco´s Catalonia


Author:  Jordi Cornell Detrell                    ISBN: 9781855662018
Format: HB                                              Extent: 208 pp.
Price: £60                                                 Publication: October 2011
Publisher: Tamesis Books (Boydell & Brewer)


This book is a thoroughly researched and documented study of Catalan literature under the Franco regime. The author focuses on four important post-Civil War novels: Incerta glória by Joan Sales, El Testament by Xavier Benguerel , Laia by Salvador Espriu , and Tino Costa by Sebastià Juan Arbó. It draws on an impressive range of literary criticism and contemporary critical theory to examine internal differences and struggles within Catalan culture during the period, offering a more nuanced interpretation of the various means of preserving Catalan literature and identity in the face of the Castilian-centric policies of Franco's Spain.

Gender, Nation & Formation of the 20th Century Mexican Literary Canon


Author: Sarah E Bowskill                    ISBN: 9781907975059
Format: HB                                        Extent: 144 pp.
Price: £45                                           Publication: July 2011
Publisher: Legenda (Oxbow Books)


The post-revolutionary Mexican literary canon was formed by cultural and political elites who sought to identify and reward those novels which would best represent the new nation. Reviewers found what they were looking for in Gregorio López y Fuentes's El indio (1935) for example, but not in Consuelo Delgados's Yo también, Adelita (1936). This groundbreaking study provides a fresh perspective on canon formation by uncovering the circumstances and readings which produced a male-dominated Mexican literary canon.  

Jorge Manrique's Coplas por la Muerte de su Padre


Author: Nancy F Merino                    ISBN: 9781855662315
Format: HB                                       Extent: 208 pp.
Price: £55                                          Publication: November 2011
Publisher: Tamesis Books (Boydell & Brewer)


An elegy composed on the death of his father, Jorge Manrique's Coplas has occupied a prominent position in the literature of Spain from its original composition in the fifteenth century to the present day. The author of this book carefully examines its sources, structure, transmission, critical reception and fame
throughout the centuries, including praise from writers as widely separated by time and outlook as Lope de Vega, Longfellow, who translated the work, Luis Cernuda, and Julian Marías. She also looks at the many musical adaptations of the poem up to the present, where it is performed by popular singers such as Paco Ibáñez while continuing to stimulate considerable academic interest.

Democracy, Trade Unions & Political Violence in Spain


Author: Richard Purkiss                                    ISBN: 9781845194611
Format: HB                                                      Extent: 304 pp.
Price: £55                                                         Publication: June 2011
Publisher: Sussex Academic Press

This new study shows that Valencia in the 1920s and 1930s was anything but tranquil. Dr Purkiss fills a significant gap in the historiography of the Spanish left. Drawing on a wide range of previously underused primary sources, he shows that not only was Valencia a hugely important source of anarchist support, but that the local movement was far more radical than has previously been thought. He thus provides a vital insight into the origins of the revolutionary and anti-clerical violence which swept the province in the early months of Civil War, introducing us to the 'expropriators' and 'men of action' whose activities terrified bourgeois Valencia in the 1930s.

Diasporic Generations


Author: Mette Louise Berg                 ISBN: 978-0-85745-245-0
Format: HB                                       Extent: 240 pp.
Price: £40                                          Publication: October 2011
Publisher: Berghahn Books

This book gives voice to diasporic Cubans living in Spain, the former colonial ruler of Spain. By focusing on their lived experiences of displacement, the book brings to light imaginative, narrative re-creations of the nation from afar. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the book argues that the Cuban diaspora in Spain consists of three diasporic generations, generated through distinct migratory experiences. This constitutes an important step forward in understanding the dynamics of memory-making and social differentiation within diasporas, and in appreciating why people within the same diaspora engage in different modes of transnational practices and homeland relations.

lunes, 18 de julio de 2011

Academic Books of last Month

Lope de Vega en la Invención de España


Author: Veronika Ryjik                    ISBN: 9781855662025
Format: HB                                     Extent: 258 pp.
Price: £60                                       Publication: July 2011
Publisher: Tamesis (Boydell & Brewer)

La idea de que Lope de Vega proyecta en sus personajes diferentes modos de ser español en su época ha sido un lugar común en la crítica literaria a lo largo de todo el siglo XX. Sin embargo, pocos investigadores han prestado atención a la correlación entre la imagen de España y de los españoles que construye el dramaturgo en sus comedias y el proceso de la formación de una conciencia nacional en la España de principios del siglo XVII.

Este proyecto explora el papel del teatro lopesco en la construcción del 'yo' colectivo nacional. Se analizan la imagen de España y de los españoles creada por Lope mediante una constante manipulación de la historia patria, así como los posibles efectos de la propagación de esta imagen durante el siglo XVII. Dentro de este marco, se examina la manera en que Lope aborda los temas relacionados con ciertos conceptos claves para la elaboración de los supuestos ideales nacionales, como la monarquía, la religión, la jerarquía social y el imperio. Veronica Ryjik es Assistant Professor of Spanish, Franklin & Marshall College.



Franco's Friends



Author: Peter Day                         ISBN: 9781849540988
Format: HB                                       Extent: 384 pp.
Price: £20                                          Publication: July 2011
Publisher: Biteback Publishing

Published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Falangist uprising in July 2011, Franco’s Friends tells the previously untold tale of MI6’s involvement in the rise of Spanish fascism. It has long been known that a British plane took Franco from the Canaries to Morocco at the start of the coup. What is not known is that the plane was chartered by an MI6 agent, and that British secret services continued working in Spain through to the Second World War, putting together behind-the-scenes deals to  ensure the UK’s interests were maintained. Crucially, MI6 even financed bribes paid to the Spanish generals by the British naval attaché in Madrid to keep Spain neutral, thus reaping the benefits for Britain in 1939-45. Franco’s Friends reveals how Britain made a dubious moral choice that would have repercussions on the outcome of the Second World War.

Reconstructing Spain


Author: Dacia Viejo-Rose                 ISBN: 978-1-84519-435-2
Format: HB                                     Extent: 272 pp.
Price £65                                        Publication: June 2011
Publisher: Sussex Academic Press

This book explores the role of cultural heritage in post-conflict reconstruction, whether as a motor for the prolongation of violence or as a resource for building reconciliation. The research was driven by two main goals: first, to understand the post-conflict reconstruction process in terms of cultural heritage, and second, to identify how this process evolves in the medium term and the impact it has on society. The Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and its subsequent phases of reconstruction provides the primary material for this exploration. In pursuit of the first goal, the book centers on the material practices and rhetorical strategies developed around cultural heritage in post-civil war Spain and the victorious Franco regime–s reconstruction

Conquest All Over Again


Author: Susan Schroeder                    ISBN: 978-1-84519-475-8
Format: PB                                         Extent: 273 pp.
Price: £25                                           Publication: March 2011
Publisher: Sussex Academic Press

The Spaniards typically portrayed the conquest and fall of Mexico Tenochtitlan as Armageddon, while native peoples in colonial Mesoamerica continued to write and paint their histories and lives often without any mention of the foreigners in their midst. Their accounts took the form of annals, chronicles, religious treatises, tribute accounts, theatre pieces, and wills. Thousand of documents were produced, almost all of which served to preserve indigenous ways of doing things. But what provoked record keeping on such a grand scale? At what point did pre-contact sacred writing become utilitarian and quotidian? Were their texts documentaries, a form of boosterism, even ingenious intellectualism, or were they ultimately a literature of ruin? This volume seeks to address key aspects of indigenous perspectives of the conquest and Spanish colonialism by examining what they themselves recorded and why they did so.

Tartessian 2



Author: John T. Koch          ISBN: 9781907029073
Format: PB                          Extent: 198 pp.
Price: £19.95                       Publication: May 2011
Publisher: Celtic Studies Publications

The inscription from Mesas do Castelinho, south Portugal, was discovered in September 2008. With 82 readable signs it is now the longest of the corpus of 95 Tartessian inscriptions. These texts survive from the Early Iron Age in the south-western Iberian Peninsula, the earliest writing from Atlantic Europe. By recombining word roots, prefixes and endings previously attested, the new inscription permits a major breakthrough with the language, confirming word divisions and contributing to the critical mass of evidence. It is now possible to take the case for Tartessian as an Indo-European and specifically Celtic language a step further, to ask what sort of Celtic language Tartessian was and how its syntax and sound system compares with those of Celtiberian, Gaulish, Old Irish and Welsh.



Comparative Archaeologies

 

  Author: Katina T. Lillios       ISBN: 9781935488262
  Format: HB                      Extent: 312 pp.
  Price: £40                        Publication: March 2011
  Publisher: Oxbow Books

Comparative Archaeologies scrutinises current thinking on the dynamics and historical trajectories of complex societies in the American Southwest (AD 900-1500) and the Iberian Peninsula (BC 3000-1500) through a focused comparison of five themes: Histories, Landscapes, Bodies, Gender and Art. Leading archaeologists from North America and Europe - drawing on diverse intellectual traditions - engage in this innovative form of comparative archaeology, which recognises both the historicities of past societies of similar forms and the social embeddedness of archaeological practice and theory.