Clearly Inspired

For five thousand years, artisans have worked in glass to create forms that serve and delight. But only recently have artists turned their hands and minds to this traditionally utilitarian and decorative material. Clearly Inspired: Contemporary Glass and Its Origins contrasts the work of contemporary glass artists with examples of earlier glass that have inspired them to rediscover or reinvent forgotten techniques. Transforming an ancient craft into a contemporary art, they honor the past while making visual statements that are very much of our time.

This book analyses the founding years of consumer law and consumer policy in Europe. It combines two dimensions: the making of national consumer law and the making of European consumer law, and how both are intertwined. The chapters on Germany, Italy, the Nordic countries and the United Kingdom serve to explain the economic and the political background which led to different legal and policy approaches in the then old Member States from the 1960s onwards. The chapter on Poland adds a different layer, the one of a former socialist country with its own consumer law and how joining the EU affected consumer law at the national level. The making of European consumer law started in the 1970s rather cautiously, but gradually the European Commission took an ever stronger position in promoting not only European consumer law but also in supporting the building of the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), the umbrella organisation of the national consumer bodies. The book unites the early protagonists who were involved in the making of consumer law in Europe: Guido Alpa, Ludwig Krämer, Ewa Letowska, Hans-W Micklitz, Klaus Tonner, Iain Ramsay, and Thomas Wilhelmsson, supported by the younger generation Aneta Wiewiórowska Domagalska, Mateusz Grochowski, and Koen Docter, who reconstructs the history of BEUC. Niklas Olsen and Thomas Roethe analyse the construction of this policy field from a historical and sociological perspective. This book offers a unique opportunity to understand a legal and political field, that of consumer law and policy, which plays a fundamental role in our contemporary societies.

"A well-researched and pertinent discussion of one of American liberalism's most important exponents". -- Choice. "A concise, intelligent, and highly readable study. What is fresh and extremely valuable is the flesh that Stettner puts on the bones of the old generalization about Croly and liberalism. This is a worthy addition to the literature on this important and influential American thinker". -- American Historical Review.

This interdisciplinary book explores human rights in the Americas from multiple perspectives and fields. Taking 1492 as a point of departure, the text explores Eurocentric historiographies of human rights and offer a more complete understanding of the genealogy of the human rights discourse and its many manifestations in the Americas. The essays use a variety of approaches to reveal the larger contexts from which they emerge, providing a cross-sectional view of subjects, countries, methodologies and foci explicitly dedicated toward understanding historical factors and circumstances that have shaped human rights nationally and internationally within the Americas. The chapters explore diverse cultural, philosophical, political and literary expressions where human rights discourses circulate across the continent taking into consideration issues such as race, class, gender, genealogy and nationality. While acknowledging the ongoing centrality of the nation, the volume promotes a shift in the study of the Americas as a dynamic transnational space of conflict, domination, resistance, negotiation, complicity, accommodation, dialogue, and solidarity where individuals, nations, peoples, institutions, and intellectual and political movements share struggles, experiences, and imaginaries. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of InterAmerican studies and those from all disciplines interested in Human Rights.

Questions of space, place and identity have become increasingly prominent throughout the arts and humanities in recent times. This study begins by investigating the reasons for this growth in interest and analyses the underlying assumptions on which interdisciplinary discussions about space are often based. After tracing back the history of contact between Geography and Literary Studies from both disciplinary perspectives, it goes on to discuss recent academic work in the field and seeks to forge a new conceptual framework through which contemporary discussions of space and literature can operate.The book then moves on to a thorough application of the interdisciplinary model that it has established. Having argued that the experience of contemporary space has rendered questions of home and belonging particularly pressing, it undertakes detailed analysis of how these phenomena are articulated in a selection of recent French life writing texts. The close, text-led readings reveal that whilst not often highlighted for their relevance to the analysis of space, these works do in fact narrate the impact of some of the most significant cultural experiences of the twentieth century, including the Holocaust and the AIDS crisis, upon geo-cultural senses of identity. Home is shown to be a deeply problematic, yet strongly desired, element of the contemporary world. The book concludes by addressing the underlying thesis that contemporary life writing might provide just the ‘postmodern maps’ that could help not only literary scholars, but also geographers, better understand the world today.Key names and concepts: Serge Doubrovsky - Hervé Guibert - Fredric Jameson - Philippe Lejeune - Régine Robin; Autofiction - Cultural Geography - Interdisciplinarity - Place and Identity - Postmodernism - Space - Postmodern Space - Literary Studies - Twentieth-Century Life Writing.

American slaves drew on memories of African musical traditions to construct instruments from carved-out gourds covered with animal skin. Providing a sense of rootedness, solidarity, and consolation, banjo picking became an essential part of black plantation life, and its unmistakable sound remains versatile and enduring today, Laurent Dubois shows.

In this classic text, James W. Carey maintains that communication is not merely the transmission of information; reminding the reader of the link between the words "communication" and "community," he broadens his definition to include the drawing-together of a people that is culture. In this context, Carey questions the American tradition of focusing only on mass communication's function as a means of social and political control, and makes a case for examining the content of a communication—the meaning of symbols, not only the motives that originate them or the purposes they serve. He seeks to recast the goal of communication studies, replacing the search for deterministic laws of behavior with a simpler, yet far more challenging mission: "to enlarge the human conversation by comprehending what others are saying." This new edition includes a new critical foreword by G. Stuart Adam that explains Carey's fundamental role in transforming the study of mass communication to include a cultural perspective and connects his classic essays with contemporary media issues and trends. This edition also adds a new, complete bibliography of all of Carey's writings.

Outside Japan, the term ’manga’ usually refers to comics originally published in Japan. Yet nowadays many publications labelled ’manga’ are not translations of Japanese works but rather have been wholly conceived and created elsewhere. These comics, although often derided and dismissed as ’fake manga’, represent an important but understudied global cultural phenomenon which, controversially, may even point to a future of ’Japanese’ comics without Japan. This book takes seriously the political economy and cultural production of this so-called ’global manga’ produced throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia and explores the conditions under which it arises and flourishes; what counts as ’manga’ and who gets to decide; the implications of global manga for contemporary economies of cultural and creative labour; the ways in which it is shaped by or mixes with local cultural forms and contexts; and, ultimately, what it means for manga to be ’authentically’ Japanese in the first place. Presenting new empirical research on the production of global manga culture from scholars across the humanities and social sciences, as well as first person pieces and historical overviews written by global manga artists and industry insiders, Global Manga will appeal to scholars of cultural and media studies, Japanese studies, and popular and visual culture.