Wiley-Blackwell Manifestos – serie

Uses of Literature bridges the gap between literary theory and common-sense beliefs about why we read literature. Explores the diverse motives and mysteries of why we readOffers four different ways of thinking about why we read literature - for recognition, enchantment, knowledge, and shockArgues for a new “phenomenology” in literary studies that incorporates the historical and social dimensions of readingIncludes examples of literature from a wide range of national literary traditions

The Global Future of English Studiespresents a succinct, carefully documented assessment of the current state and future trajectory of English studies around the world.Compiles data on student enrollments, faculty hiring, and financing in English studies around the world including China, home to more English majors than the U.S. and U.K. combinedRejects prevailing narratives of contraction and decline that dominate histories of the disciplineStresses English studies' expansion within a rapidly expanding global academic apparatus, and the new challenges and opportunities such sudden and dispersive growth presentsEssential reading for anyone interested in studying or teaching English in higher education

After the Fall A common refrain heard since the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001 is that “everything has changed.” After the Fall presents a timely and provocative examination of the impact and implications of 9/11 and the war on terror on American culture and literature. Author Richard Gray – widely regarded as the leading European scholar in American literature – reveals the widespread belief among novelists, dramatists, and poets – as well as the American public at large – that in the post-9/11 world they are all somehow living “after the fall.” He carefully considers how many writers, faced with what they see as the end of their world, have retreated into the seductive pieties of home, hearth, and family; and how their works are informed by the equally seductive myth of American exceptionalism. As a counterbalance, Gray also discusses in depth the many writings that “get it right” – transnational and genuinely crossbred works that resist the oppositional and simplistic “us and them” / “Christian and Muslim” language that has dominated mainstream commentary. These imaginative works, Gray believes, choose instead to respond to the heterogeneous character of the United States, as well as its necessary positioning in a transnational context. After the Fall offers illuminating insights into the relationships of such issues as nationalism, trauma, culture, and literature during a time of profound crisis.

This engaging argument for the future of Jewish theology, written by a renowned Jewish scholar, provides a rounded introduction to the faith, its history, and its place in the modern world. Explores foundational Jewish structures and concepts through the discussion and interpretation of Jewish textsArgues that we must acknowledge holiness as a ritual and ethical reality in order to heal the rift between different forms of Jewish practice and theologyCovers historical context as well as the relations between Judaism, Israel and the wider world todaySpeaks to both Jews and non-Jews and demonstrates through textual readings how Jews, Christians, and Muslims can understand and share their theological riches

This engaging argument for the future of Jewish theology, written by a renowned Jewish scholar, provides a rounded introduction to the faith, its history, and its place in the modern world. Explores foundational Jewish structures and concepts through the discussion and interpretation of Jewish textsArgues that we must acknowledge holiness as a ritual and ethical reality in order to heal the rift between different forms of Jewish practice and theologyCovers historical context as well as the relations between Judaism, Israel and the wider world todaySpeaks to both Jews and non-Jews and demonstrates through textual readings how Jews, Christians, and Muslims can understand and share their theological riches

Terry Eagleton's book, in this vital new series from Blackwell, focuses on discriminating different meanings of culture, as a way of introducing to the general reader the contemporary debates around it.

Written by a renowned scholar of critical race theory, The Threat of Race explores how the concept of race has been historically produced and how it continues to be articulated, if often denied, in today’s world. A major new study of race and racism by a renowned scholar of critical race theoryExplores how the concept of race has been historically produced and how it continues to be articulated - if often denied - in today’s worldArgues that it is the neoliberal society that fuels new forms of racismSurveys race dynamics throughout various regions of the world - from Western and Northern Europe, South Africa and Latin America, and from Israel and Palestine to the United States

This revisionist narrative of poetic change in the twentieth century challenges the accepted notions of what poetry is and can be in the new century and makes the case for the seminal place of poetry in contemporary culture.

Valentine Cunningham's controversial manifesto asks what will and should happen to reading in the post-theory era.

Through reference to plays, poetry, novels, films and painting, this manifesto traces the genealogy of 'true religion' in the western world and makes six controversial claims about the past, present and future of religion. Traces a transformation in the way religion is understood and performed in the western world.Makes several major claims about the past, present and future of true religion.Uses cultural metaphors as ways into understanding religion.Refers to plays, poetry, novels, paintings and films, including Romeo and Juliet, Moby Dick, The Exorcist and Stigmata.Suggests that the end of wars between nations could result in a return of wars of faith.Part of the prestigious Blackwell Manifestos series.

Through reference to plays, poetry, novels, films and painting, this manifesto traces the genealogy of 'true religion' in the western world and makes six controversial claims about the past, present and future of religion. Traces a transformation in the way religion is understood and performed in the western world.Makes several major claims about the past, present and future of true religion.Uses cultural metaphors as ways into understanding religion.Refers to plays, poetry, novels, paintings and films, including Romeo and Juliet, Moby Dick, The Exorcist and Stigmata.Suggests that the end of wars between nations could result in a return of wars of faith.Part of the prestigious Blackwell Manifestos series.

Christianity is the world's largest religious grouping. It has undergone massive change in the twentieth century, and seems poised to undergo major transformations in the next. In this important and timely book, one of Christianity's most prolific and respected writers examines these changes, and their implications for the future.

In this controversial manifesto, Jean-Michel Rabaté addresses current anxieties about the future of literary and cultural theory and proposes that it still has a crucial role to play.

This important Manifesto argues that we still need a concept of society in order to make sense of the forces which structure our lives. Written by leading social theorist William OuthwaiteAsks if the notion of society is relevant in the twenty-first centuryGoes to the heart of contemporary social and political debateExamines critiques of the concept of society from neoliberals, postmodernists, and globalization theorists

This important Manifesto argues that we still need a concept of society in order to make sense of the forces which structure our lives. Written by leading social theorist William OuthwaiteAsks if the notion of society is relevant in the twenty-first centuryGoes to the heart of contemporary social and political debateExamines critiques of the concept of society from neoliberals, postmodernists, and globalization theorists

John Storey, a leading figure in the field of Cultural Studies, offers an illuminating and vibrant account of the development of popular culture. Addressing issues such as globalization, intellectualism, and consumerism, Inventing Popular Culture presents an engaging assessment of one of the most debated concepts of recent times. Provides a lively and accessible history of the concept of popular culture by one of the leading experts in the field. Traces the invention and reinvention of the concept of popular culture from the eighteenth-century “discovery” of folk culture to contemporary accounts of the cultural impact of globalization. Examines the relationship between the concept of popular culture and key issues in cultural analyses such as hegemony, postmodernism, identity, questions of value, consumerism, and everyday life.

In Phenomenal Shakespeare, leading Shakespeare scholar Bruce R. Smith presents an original account for the ways in which Shakespeare’s poems and plays continue to resonate with audiences, readers and scholars because of their engagement with the whole body, not just the reading mind.  An original examination of Shakespeare’s appeal written by leading Shakespeare scholar Bruce R. SmithContains insightful examinations of a single Shakespeare sonnet, Venus and Adonis, and King Lear to model the possibilities of historical phenomenology as a better strategy for critical reading than approaches based on language alonePushes beyond traditional treatments of ShakespeareAn ideal handbook of contemporary approaches to Shakespeare and a celebration of Shakespeare's staying power on stage, on film, and on the page

With a lively and engaging style, Myths for the Masses provides a critical, interdisciplinary, and historically informed statement about communication in contemporary life. Written by Hanno Hardt, one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject. Offers a comprehensive appraisal of mass communication. Provides a critical perspective on media and communication in society. Contains critical insights into the state of mass communication, democracy, and the construction of the self in society.

AFTER GLOBALIZATION “Relentlessly, remorselessly, endlessly, we are told there is no alternative to globalization, whether our lecturers are bourgeois economists, progressive journalists, or imaginative litterateurs. Eric Cazdyn and Imre Szeman dare to go beyond the standard thinking of the day and query the very heart of mobile capital and its impact on daily life. Their alternative vision breathes new life into our sense of evolution and inevitability.”Toby Miller, author of Globalization and Sport and Global Hollywood“Cazdyn and Szeman begin with the idea that the current economic crisis has historicized globalization, turning it from a process that looked as inevitable as, say, global warming still does, into an episode in the history of capitalism: hence the possibility not just of more globalization but of an “after globalization.” And hence also, they argue, the renewed possibility of an “after capitalism.” In powerful critiques of what they describe as the common sense of capital today they sketch out the terms in which changes more radical than substituting generous and honest leaders for the greedy and dishonest ones we’ve currently got might begin to be imagined.”Walter Benn Michaels, University of Illinois at ChicagoIn lively and unflinching prose, Eric Cazdyn and Imre Szeman argue that contemporary thought about the world is disabled by a fatal flaw: the inability to think “an after” to globalization. After establishing seven theses (on education, morality, nation, future, history, capitalism, and common sense) that challenge the false promises that sustain this time limit, After Globalization examines four popular thinkers (Richard Florida, Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman, and Naomi Klein) and considers how their work is dulled by these promises. Cazdyn and Szeman then speak to students from around the globe who are both unconvinced and uninterested in these promises and who understand the world very differently than the way it is popularly represented.After Globalization argues that a true capacity to think an after to globalization is the very beginning of politics today.

NEW ENGLAND BEYOND CRITICISM “Elisa New’s book is a remarkable achievement. It is very rare that a critic manages to ask what seem exactly the right questions, then to answer them in a lively, brilliant, evocative, and supremely intelligent prose.” Charles F. Altieri, University of California “Elisa New is a refreshing voice among critics and historians of literature. She has a keen sense of the nature of New England and its deep spiritual resources, reaching back to the Puritans, moving through the great nineteenth-century expressions of interior landscapes and visions. This is a book I welcome and celebrate.” Jay Parini, Middlebury College Literary criticism of the past thirty years has undercut what the canonizers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw as the fundamental role of early New England in the development of American literary culture. And yet, a determination in literary circles to topple perceived Ivy League elitism and Protestant cultural creationism overlooks the continuing value, beauty, and even practical utility of a canon still cherished by lay readers around the world. This Manifesto raises questions about how academic specialization and the academic study of New England have affected enthusiasm for reading. Using a range of interpretive practices, including those most often deployed by contemporary academic critics, Elisa New cuts across firmly established subfields, mixing literary exegesis with autobiographical reflection, close reading with cultural history, archival and antiquarian inquiry with experiments in style, and lays bare editorial orthodoxies, raising to question the whole hierarchy of values now governing the study of American and other literatures. Taking New England as a test case for a wider, more accessible set of critical practices, New England Beyond Criticism demands that the domain of literary study be opened further to the tastes of the general reader.

After Kenneth W. Warren's What Was African American Literature?, Margo N. Crawford delivers What is African American Literature?The idea of African American literature may be much more than literature written by authors who identify as "Black". What is African American Literature? focuses on feeling as form in order to show that African American literature is an archive of feelings, a tradition of the tension between uncontainable black affect and rigid historical structure. Margo N. Crawford argues that textual production of affect (such as blush, vibration, shiver, twitch, and wink) reveals that African American literature keeps reimagining a black collective nervous system.Crawford foregrounds the "idea" of African American literature and uncovers the "black feeling world" co-created by writers and readers. Rejecting the notion that there are no formal lines separating African American literature and a broader American literary tradition, Crawford contends that the distinguishing feature of African American literature is a "moodscape" that is as stable as electricity. Presenting a fresh perspective on the affective atmosphere of African American literature, this compelling text frames central questions around the "idea" of African American literature, shows the limits of historicism in explaining the mood of African American literature and addresses textual production in the creation of the African American literary tradition.Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Manifestos series, What is African American Literature? is a significant addition to scholarship in the field. Professors and students of American literature, African American literature, and Black Studies will find this book an invaluable source of fresh perspectives and new insights on America's black literary tradition.

The Idea of Latin America is a geo-political manifesto which insists on the need to leave behind an idea which belonged to the nation-building mentality of nineteenth-century Europe. Charts the history of the concept of Latin America from its emergence in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century through various permutations to the present day.Asks what is at stake in the survival of an idea which subdivides the Americas.Reinstates the indigenous peoples and migrations excluded by the image of a homogenous Latin America with defined borders.Insists on the pressing need to leave behind an idea which belonged to the nation-building mentality of nineteenth-century Europe.

The Idea of Latin America is a geo-political manifesto which insists on the need to leave behind an idea which belonged to the nation-building mentality of nineteenth-century Europe. Charts the history of the concept of Latin America from its emergence in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century through various permutations to the present day.Asks what is at stake in the survival of an idea which subdivides the Americas.Reinstates the indigenous peoples and migrations excluded by the image of a homogenous Latin America with defined borders.Insists on the pressing need to leave behind an idea which belonged to the nation-building mentality of nineteenth-century Europe.

The Idea of English Ethnicity “Robert Young has written a compelling and thorough textual history of English ethnicity and its discursive relation to the history of racial theory. Comprehensive, carefully considered, and clearly written, this book sets the standard against which any future study of Englishness will be assessed. The bar has been lifted a couple of notches higher.”David Theo Goldberg, University of California “What is Englishness?, Robert J. C. Young asks, and in The Idea of English Ethnicityhe offers an impressively well-researched and eminently readable answer.”Werner Sollors, Harvard University

The Idea of English Ethnicity “Robert Young has written a compelling and thorough textual history of English ethnicity and its discursive relation to the history of racial theory. Comprehensive, carefully considered, and clearly written, this book sets the standard against which any future study of Englishness will be assessed. The bar has been lifted a couple of notches higher.”David Theo Goldberg, University of California “What is Englishness?, Robert J. C. Young asks, and in The Idea of English Ethnicityhe offers an impressively well-researched and eminently readable answer.”Werner Sollors, Harvard University

What Cinema Is! offers an engaging answer to Andre Bazin's famous question, exploring his 'idea of cinema' with a sweeping look back at the near century of Cinema's phenomenal ascendancy. Written by one of the foremost film scholars of our timeEstablishes cinema's distinction from the current enthusiasm over audio-visual entertainment, without relegating cinema to a single, older modeExamines cinema's institutions and its social force through the qualities of key filmsTraces the history of an idea that has made cinema supremely alive to (and in) our times

In the face of the growing threat from collisions of faith world-wide, this manifesto is a call to embrace religious pluralism. Martin E. Marty is a renowned commentator on religious matters, the author of over 50 books, winner of the National Book Award, and the recipient of 74 honorary doctorates Demonstrates that citizens, religions and identities can survive in radically pluralist settings Accessibly written, it tackles people’s fears of religious pluralism Argues that those involved in collisions of faith need to risk hospitality towards one another, as opposed to the conventional plea for tolerance Pays particular attention to the conflicts that affect or occur within those nations whose politics can be called republican, open, democratic, liberal, or free – particularly the UK, the US, and Western Europe.

In this manifesto, distinguished critic Wayne Booth claims that communication in every corner of life can be improved if we study rhetoric closely. Written by Wayne Booth, author of the seminal book, The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961). Explores the consequences of bad rhetoric in education, in politics, and in the media. Investigates the possibility of reducing harmful conflict by practising a rhetoric that depends on deep listening by both sides.

In this book, Professor Christopher Coker presents an original and controversial thesis about the future of war. Argues that the biotechnology revolution has given war a new lease of life.Draws on thinkers from Hegel and Nietzsche to the postmodernists.Refers to modern fiction and films.Part of the prestigious Blackwell Manifestos series.