Exploited Empowered Ephemeral

Childhood in neo-Victorian fiction for both child and adult readers is an extremely multifaceted and fascinating field. This book argues that neo-Victorian fiction projects multiple, competing visions of childhood and suggests that they can be analysed by means of a typology, the 'childhood scale', which provides different categories along the lines of power relations, and literary possible-worlds theory. The usefulness of both is exemplified by detailed discussions of Philippa Pearce's "Tom's Midnight Garden" (1958), Eva Ibbotson's "Journey to the River Sea" (2001), Sarah Waters' "Fingersmith" (2002) and Dianne Setterfield's "The Thirteenth Tale" (2006).

Few individuals made such an impact on nineteenth-century French politics as Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881). Political organiser, leader, propagandist and prisoner, Blanqui was arguably the foremost proponent of popular power to emerge after the French Revolution. Practical engagement in all the major uprisings that spanned the course of his life – 1830, 1848, 1870-71 – was accompanied by theoretical reflections on a broad range of issues, from free will and fatalism to public education and individual development. Since his death, however, Blanqui has not been simply overlooked or neglected; his name has widely become synonymous with theoretical misconception and practical misadventure. Auguste Blanqui and the Politics of Popular Empowerment offers a major re-evaluation of one the most controversial figures in the history of revolutionary politics. The book draws extensively on Blanqui's manuscripts and published works, as well as writings only recently translated into English for the first time. Through a detailed reconstruction and critical analysis of Blanqui's political thought, it challenges the prevailing image of an unthinking insurrectionist and rediscovers a forceful and compelling theory of collective political action and radical social change. It suggests that some of Blanqui's fundamental assumptions – from the insistence on the primacy of subjective determination to the rejection of historical necessity – are still relevant to politics today.

This ground-breaking collection of writings explores how progressive third parties in the U.S. can become more electorally successful and politically influential. It is the only recently published book that focuses exclusively on how such parties may advance. Their rise may be essential to countering the powerful, growing sway of wealth within the two major American parties, and to creating a more just, democratic United States. Contributors include key participants in and observers of the U.S. left third party movement. Nearly all have previously authored books or articles on progressive politics. Many have led effective left third party efforts, and some have held elected office on behalf of a progressive third party. Together the writers reflect on a wide range of relevant parties—including the Green Party, the Vermont Progressive Party, the Labor Party, the Working Families Party, Socialist Alternative, and potential new parties on the American left. The authors highlight a variety of strategies and conditions that may facilitate electoral breakthroughs by such parties and their candidates. Overall, the collection suggests that U.S. progressive third parties may make more headway if they thoughtfully combine their idealism and sense of urgency with a flexible, pragmatic approach to gaining power.

Often perceived as unbridgeable, the boundaries that divide humanity from itself--whether national, gender, racial, political, or imperial--are rearticulated through friendship. Elora Halim Chowdhury and Liz Philipose edit a collection of essays that express the different ways women forge hospitality in deference to or defiance of the structures meant to keep them apart. Emerging out of postcolonial theory, the works discuss instances when the authors have negotiated friendship's complicated, conflicted, and contradictory terrain; offer fresh perspectives on feminists' invested, reluctant, and selective uses of the nation; reflect on how the arts contribute to conversations about feminism, dissent, resistance, and solidarity; and unpack the details of transnational dissident friendships. Contributors: Lori E. Amy, Azza Basarudin, Himika Bhattacharya, Kabita Chakma, Elora Halim Chowdhury, Laurie R. Cohen, Esha Niyogi De, Eglantina Gjermeni, Glen Hill, Alka Kurian, Meredith Madden, Angie Mejia, Chandra T. Mohanty, A. Wendy Nastasi, Nicole Nguyen, Liz Philipose, Anya Stanger, Shreerekha Subramanian, and Yuanfang Dai.

Childhood is changing in ways that we are still unpacking, affected by digitalization, globalization and climate change, as well as shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In many OECD education systems, child empowerment is increasingly an explicit aim of policies and practices. But it is often poorly defined, which risks turning it into a mere slogan. With the advancement of children’s rights, children are increasingly being included as stakeholders in decision-making processes. This report gives examples of how children in OECD countries can and do participate in making decisions about issues that affect them. The report examines children's emotional well-being and physical activity, and the role of schools as a physical space to create and support relationships. It also underlines the untapped potential of media education when it comes to seizing opportunities in childhood. Empowering all children to make the most of digital opportunities starts with further narrowing the gap in terms of access to digital tools and the Internet, where inequalities are persistent and pervasive. So, what does child empowerment mean today? Empowered children have the opportunity and ability to act on issues important and relevant to them, can learn by making mistakes, and are key contributors to democracy.

This multidisciplinary collection of essays explores the functions, meanings and use of images and objects in various late Medieval and Early Modern social practices, which were linked by their ritual character. The book approaches ‘ritual’ as an action which is discussed under the general umbrella term “performative practice”, and is characterised by a synthesis between the repetitive and the extraordinary that carries an intense symbolic meaning and is emotionally charged. Images, spaces and rituals were closely interconnected in both the religious and the secular spheres, and played a relevant role in the symbolic communication of the time. The essays in this volume are devoted to a complex study of these phenomena in Northern and Central Europe, including regions which, due to linguistic or cultural barriers, have thus far received comparatively little attention in Anglo-American scholarship, including Scandinavia, Poland and the Baltic states.

Shards of Ephemera is a wry morality tale concerning the playful parting gambit of Tammy A., a gold-digging, thoroughly American adventuress whose life is about to be surprisingly changed when she bewitches a dissolute scion solely to gain entrée to his mysterious moneybags father, who is now reclusive in his estate on the most fabled and golden of coasts. Tammy is an enchanting backwoods girl with grand ambitions to escape her past, and one abundantly endowed with, among numerous other attributes, the precocious aplomb to accomplish just that, to leave her origins far behind without a trace. So while her presumptive peers were dreaming still about puerile romances and prom nights, she was already frolicking among the wealthy and glamorous at the world's most glittering playgrounds. Tammy is the consummate femme fatale, and anyone whom she chose to bewitch was doomed to an afterlife of ruin, ignominy, and remorse. Her success was dazzling, legendary, her landscape littered with corpses, stuff immortalized in lyrics, sonnets, and ballads, even a few underground graphic novels. It's said that the persona of , of recent notorious celluloid celebrity, was inspired by her exploits. There is no telling what Tammy might have further achieved in the hardboiled, demimonde world of hers and how many more lurid tabloid scandals provoked, but the truth was that by the ripe old age of twenty-four and after having already amassed riches beyond her wildest fantasies, not only did a vague languor start settling in, which was distressing enough, but to her rising chagrin and just as potentially calamitous to her walk of life, most of the nuggets of gold she unwittingly, paradoxically mined of late were from a hitherto unsuspected or blithely repressed tender quarry within her own heart. Yep, it was too woefully true, especially for the motley horde of paparazzi, troubadours, harlequins, hangers-on, and others scrambling in her wake, whose livelihoods depended on her and the buzz she created: the ruthless edge and cutthroat zeal, the ineffable force of nature that vaulted her foremost in the scintillating pageant were dissipating, imperceptibly but inexorably. Tammy was canny enough to know that once she started feeling anything but pitilessness toward her intended prey and purpose, she herself was doomed. And so she quietly retreats from her perilous world of intrigue and seduction. But while sojourning in a certain place on her increasingly restive quest to escape ennui, serendipitously, in the elegant bar of a palatial hotel Tammy's curiosity is piqued by a drunken loner babbling aloud, an apparent habitué of the establishment by the manner with which he is obsequiously coddled by the staff. After discreetly inquiring, she learns that this woebegone oaf is the disgraced, outcast scion of one of the country's grandest fortunes, an empire built, literally, on peddling rags. This debauched pariah, whose name is Eberley, resides in a penthouse suite many stories above the bar all arranged by his curmudgeonly father to keep him, it is openly whispered, as far away as possible. Voilà, here are both temptation and opportunity impossible to resist, one final dare, a last hurrah! Although in his lethargic, laconic, oafishly oblivious and absurd kind of way the outcast proves to be obdurately resistant to easy seduction, which Tammy discovers much to her vexation, after much ado she succeeds in gaining entrée to the reclusive magnifico his father and emperor of empire who is, as she gradually corroborated from many sources during her arduous interlude spent in prodding the oaf his son, a treasury unto himself, as impervious to the vicissitudes of fortune as an oil-rich, rags-to-riches nation-state. But what ironically ensues is unlike anything Tammy anticipated or ever dreamed experiencing. The ailing empire-builder is a self-made maverick of the old school boorish and gruff, one who always wickedly delights in fl