Fuelling Dissension

Threatened Knowledge discusses the practices of knowing, not-knowing, and not wanting to know from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. In times of "fake news", processes of forgetting and practices of non-knowledge have sparked the interest of historical and sociological research. The common ground between all the contributions in this volume is the assumption that knowledge does not simply increase over time and thus supplant phases of not-knowing. Moreover, the contributions show that knowing and not-knowing function in very similar ways, which means they can be analysed along similar methodological lines. Given the implied juxtaposition between emotions and rational thinking, the role of emotions in the process of knowledge production has often been trivialized in more traditional approaches to the subject. Through a broad geographical and chronological approach, spanning from prognostic texts in the Carolingian period to stock market speculation in early-twentieth-century United States, this volume demonstrates the important role of emotions in the history of science. By bringing together cultural historians of knowledge, emotions, finance, and global intellectual history, Threatened Knowledge is a useful tool for all students and scholars of the history of knowledge and science on a global scale.

Fundraising, Flirtation and Fancywork examines the history and development of the charity bazaar movement in Australia. Transported from Britain, the charity bazaar played an integral role in Australian communal, social and philanthropic life from the early days of European settlement. Ranging in size and scale, from simple sales of goods to month long extravaganzas, charity bazaars were such a popular and successful means of raising revenue that they sustained the majority of the nation’s major public and religious institutions. The nineteenth-century charity bazaar was a paradox. On the one hand, it encapsulated responsibility and civic duty through its raison d’etre, which was the provision of support for charitable causes. On the other, it encouraged a loosening of social and gendered restraint as women of the middle and upper classes repositioned themselves in a public space where the acquisition of material goods, gambling and flirting with men was actively encouraged. From their inception, bazaars were the domain of women. They provided middle and upper class women with an opportunity to exercise their organisational, creative and social skills outside the domestic sphere, within a framework of socially acceptable philanthropic endeavour. Women’s dominance and public role in charity bazaars destabilised conventional gender relations. The nucleus of the charity bazaar was the fancywork produced by women for sale on the stalls. Bazaars were an accessible and important repository for the display and sale of women’s creative work and the bazaar movement was instrumental in shaping women’s fancywork. Bazaars were revered and reviled in colonial Australia. Despite the criticisms and the many social and cultural changes that occurred in nineteenth-century Australia, charity bazaars continued to escalate in number, popularity and complexity. They predated and influenced the great international exhibitions and the development of larger shops and emporiums and by the end of the century, had evolved into themed entertainment and shopping spectacles known as grand bazaars. Charity bazaars mirrored and shaped the social customs, mores and fashions of their time and are a rich, largely untapped, interdisciplinary historical source.

This book provides a necessary critical reappraisal of one of the most challenging and subversive of nineteenth-century women writers.

This book examines the evolution of national Arab media and its interplay with political change, particularly in emerging democracies in the context of the Arab uprisings. Investigated from a journalistic perspective, this research addresses the role played by traditional national media in consolidating emerging democracies or in exacerbating their fragility within new political contexts. Also analyzed are the ways journalists report about politics and transformations of these media industries, drawing on the international experiences of media in transitional societies. This study builds on a field investigation led by the author and conducted within the project “Arab Revolutions: Media Revolutions,” covering Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt.

Trollope and the Church of England is the first detailed examination of Trollope's attitude towards his Anglican faith and the Church, and the impact this had on his works. Durey controversially explodes the myth that Trollope's most popular characters just happened to be clerical and were simply a skit on the Church, by revealing the true extent of his lifelong fascination with religion.