Listening To The Sirens

Judith Perraino investigates how music has been used throughout history to call into question norms of gender and sexuality. Beginning with an examination of the mythology surrounding the Sirens, she goes on to consider musical creatures, gods, humans and music-addled listeners.

Whether referred to as mermaid, usalka, mami wata, or by some other name, and whether considered an imaginary being or merely a person with extraordinary abilities, the siren is the remarkable creature that has inspired music and its representations from ancient Greece to present-day Africa and Latin America. This book, co-edited by a historical musicologist and an ethnomusicologist, brings together leading scholars and some talented newcomers in classics, music, media studies, literature, and cultural studies to consider the siren and her multifaceted relationships to music across human time and geography.

In this fresh and innovative study, Judith A. Peraino investigates how music has been used throughout history to call into question norms of gender and sexuality. Beginning with a close examination of the mythology surrounding the sirens-whose music seduced Ulysses into a state of mind in which he would gladly sacrifice everything for the illicit pleasures promised in their song-Peraino goes on to consider the musical creatures, musical gods and demigods, musical humans, and music-addled listeners who have been associated with behavior that breaches social conventions. She deftly employs a sop.

A comparative study of what the most influential writers of Ancient Greece and China thought it meant to have knowledge and whether they distinguished knowledge from other forms of wisdom. It surveys selected works of poetry, history and philosophy from the period of roughly the eighth through to the second century BCE, including Homer's "Odyssey", the ancient Chinese "Classic of Poetry", Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War", Sima Qian's "Records of the Historian", Plato's "Symposium", and Laozi's "Dao de Jing and the writings of Zhuangzi". The intention, through such juxtaposition, is to introduce the foundational texts of each tradition which continue to influence the majority of the world's population.

Sirens are sounds that confront us in daily life, from the sounds of police cars and fire engines to, less often, tornado warnings. Ideologies of sirens embody the protective, the seductive and the dangerous elements of siren sounds – from the US Cold War public training exercises in the 1950s and 1960s to the seductive power of the sirens entrenched in popular culture: from Wagner to Dizzee Rascal, from Kafka to Kurt Vonnegut, from Hans Christian Andersen to Walt Disney. This book argues, using a wide array of theorists from Adorno to Bloch and Kittler, that we should understand 'siren sounds' in terms of their myth and materiality, and that sirens represent a sonic confluence of power, gender and destructiveness embedded in core Western ideologies to the present day. Bull poses the question of whether we can rely on sirens, both in their mythic meanings and in their material meanings in contemporary culture.

In this collection of his essays on Homer, some new and some appearing for the first time in English, the distinguished scholar Pietro Pucci examines the linguistic and rhetorical features of the poet's works. Arguing that there can be no purely historical interpretation, given that the parameters of interpretation are themselves historically determined, Pucci focuses instead on two features of Homer's rhetoric: repetition of expression (formulae) and its effects on meaning, and the issue of intertextuality.

Using fascinating examples from a range of disciplines, this textbook provides social science, philosophy and economics students with an engaging introduction to the tools they need to understand and predict strategic interactions. Beginning with an introduction to the most famous games, the book uses clear, jargon-free language and accessible maths as it guides the reader through whole games with full, worked-through examples. End-of-chapter exercises help to consolidate understanding along the way. With an applied approach that draws upon real-life case-studies, this book highlights the insights that game theory can offer each situation. It is an ideal textbook for students approaching game theory from various fields across the social sciences, and for curious general readers who are looking for a thorough introduction to this intriguing subject. Accompanying online resources for this title can be found at bloomsburyonlineresources.com/game-theory. These resources are designed to support teaching and learning when using this textbook and are available at no extra cost.

We have always made monsters: in art, in myth, in religion; out of clay or bronze, pixels or hybrid flesh; from the stuff of human nightmares; by cursing women with bestial traits. This anthology brings together fiction and accessible academic writing in conversation about monsters and their roles in our lives-and ours in theirs.