Languages of Exile

Languages of Exile examines the relationship between geographic and linguistic border crossings in twentieth-century literature. Like no period before it, the last century was marked by the experience of expatriation, forcing exiled writers to confront the fact of linguistic difference. Literary writing can be read as the site where that confrontation is played out aesthetically…

Rethinking Learning Networks

In the face of today’s complex policy challenges, various forms of ‘joining-up’ – networking, collaborating, partnering – have become key responses. However, institutions often fail to take advantage of the full benefits that joining-up offers. In this book, the author draws on ethnographic research into learning networks in post compulsory education and training in the…

The Peril and Promise of Medical Technology

Medical technology is one of the most powerful forces in the modern world, with enormous opportunities for good. For many in affluent countries, the expectations of what constitutes the good life have been transformed, as neonatal mortality rates have declined, life expectancy has increased, and one disease after another has been defeated. However, it is…

Book launch: Japan Copes with Calamity

Japan Copes with Calamity, edited by Tom Gill, Brigitte Steger and David H. Slater, will be launched on Wednesday 20 November at 6:30 pm at the Japan Foundation, Russell Square House, 10-12 Russell Square, London WC1 5EH. Please book by emailing event@jpf.org.uk to reserve your place. The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters that afflicted Japan…

Reading Chaucer

This volume contains ten essays, principally on Chaucer, but also on other English writers of the period such as John Gower, Ranulph Higden and Thomas Hoccleve. The Chaucerian focus includes the dream visions and Troilus and Criseyde as well as the Canterbury Tales. Reading Chaucer is divided into three sections, on Borderlands, Interiors and After-Images.…

Sovereign Stories: Aesthetics, Autonomy and Contemporary Native American Writing

Sovereign Stories examines contemporary Native American writers’ engagement with various forms of cultural, political, and artistic sovereignty. The author considers literature’s ability to initiate vital discussions about tribal autonomy in modern America and suggests that innovative literary styles are a compelling articulation of the connection between aesthetic and political concerns. In so doing, he concentrates…

‘The Taking Place of Language’

This book seeks to critically engage with issues arising out of, and hotly debated within, Indian writing in English and its ‘other’: Bhasa writing. The central issue is the representation of nation in literary texts, which has divided these two literary traditions. At the heart of this book is a study of Amitav Ghosh’s The…

Japan Copes with Calamity

This book is the first collection of ethnographies in English on the Japanese communities affected by the giant Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011 and the ensuing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. It brings together studies by experienced researchers of Japan from field sites around the disaster zone. The contributors present…

Playing False

Betrayal has never gone out of fashion. It is a ubiquitous phenomenon – from antiquity to the present, from the realm of politics to the most personal relationships. This book gathers essays by scholars from the fields of philosophy, comparative literature, classics, English literature, German studies and film studies to develop a fresh dialogue on…

Book launch: New Voices, Inherited Lines

New Voices, Inherited Lines: Literary and Cultural Representations of the Irish Family, edited by Yvonne O'Keeffe and Claudia Reese, will be launched at 4pm on Thursday 24th October at the School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication, University of Limerick, as part of a joint event celebrating recent publications by various members of the University…