In Babel S Shadow

"In Babel's Shadow is an ambitious, sophisticated book that addresses crucial, timely issues in the study of life-writing, translation, translingualism, literary theory, and linguistics. Its range is extensive and its erudition and intellectual calisthenies dazzling."---Steven G. Kellman, author of The Translingual Imagination --

"In Babel's Shadow is an ambitious, sophisticated book that addresses crucial, timely issues in the study of life-writing, translation, translingualism, literary theory, and linguistics. Its range is extensive and its erudition and intellectual calisthenies dazzling."---Steven G. Kellman, author of The Translingual Imagination --

In contrast to fields like anthropology, the history of linguistics has received remarkably little attention outside of its own discipline despite the undeniable impact language study has had on the modern period. In Babel's Shadow situates German language scholarship in relation to European nationalism, nineteenth-century notions of race and ethnicity, the methodologies of humanistic inquiry, and debates over the interpretation of scripture. Author Tuska Benes investigates how the German nation came to be defined as a linguistic community and argues that the "linguistic turn" in today's social sciences and humanities can be traced to the late eighteenth century, emerging within a German tradition of using language to critique the production of knowledge. In this volume, Benes suggests that nineteenth-century philologists interpreted language as evidence of ethnic descent and created influential myths of cultural origin around the perceived starting points of their mother tongue. She argues that the origin paradigm so prevalent in German linguistic thought reinforced the historical and ethnic focus of German nationhood, with important implications for German theologians, cultural critics, philosophers, and racial theorists. In Babel's Shadow also contextualizes the importance of linguistics to modern cultural studies by arguing that the cultural significance attributed to language in twentieth-century French philosophy dates to the late eighteenth century and has clear precedents in theology. Benes links the German tradition of reflecting on the autonomous powers of language to the work of the fathers of structuralist and poststructuralist thought, Ferdinand de Saussure and Friedrich Nietzsche. In Babel's Shadow makes clear that comparative philology helped make language an important model and informing metaphor for other modes of thinking in the modern human sciences. Cultural and intellectual historians, scholars of German language and literature, and linguists will enjoy this illuminating volume.

This is a major and innovative contribution to our understanding of the historical unfolding of Islamic law. Scrutinizing its historical contexts, Salaymeh proposes that Islamic law is a continuous intermingling of innovation and tradition. The book's interdisciplinary approach provides accessible explanations and translations of complex materials and ideas.

How do nations reinvent themselves after cataclysmic events? Who gets to decide what happened yesterday, then to propagate the tale, and what are the consequences of their choices? These are some of the questions author and historian Erna Paris carried with her through the United States, with its long-buried memory of slavery; to South Africa, to sit in on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's attempts to heal the divisions of apartheid; to Japan, France and Germany and the unresolved pain of Hiroshima and the Holocaust; and to the former Yugoslavia where she exposes the cynical shaping of historical memory, and the way the world community responded to the lethal outcome of that half-imagined history. Combining gripping storytelling with insight and sharp observation, Paris takes us to the places of reckoning—be they courtrooms or concentration camps—and finds hope in the way ordinary people grapple with the defining events of their lives. Evocatively written, her journey illuminates a crucial subject that straddles the 20th and 21st centuries.

This collection of children's literature includes some of the works of Hong Kong children's writer Zheng Zilin, including short stories and fairy tales, written between 2011 and 2019. Some of the works have won the Hong Kong Youth Literature Award and some have been shortlisted for the Taiwan Mudi Award.