The Matica And Beyond

The Matica and Beyond is a comparative study of the cultural associations established to further national movements in nineteenth-century Europe by publishing literary and scientific texts in the national language.

This book develops our understanding of the global literary field in the long nineteenth century by discussing nine different places outside the established metropoles. It shows how different economic, geographical and political factors combined to give each place its own distinctive literary culture and symbolic capital. Taking a geocritical approach, the book shows how its different case studies can be seen as ‘literary capitals’ in terms of their role within the wider nation, region or empire. The volume is divided into three parts. Part One discusses Kolkata, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires. Part Two considers ‘semi-peripheral’ European cities: Pest-Buda (Budapest), Helsinki and Dublin. Part Three focuses on cities within Italy: Trieste, Florence and Rome. Drawing on a wide range of literary texts and different genres, the book reads the nineteenth-century literary field as a constellation where different connections can be plotted across various points on the map at different times.

This book seeks to reassess and shed new light on pan-nationalisms in general and on Scandinavianism/Nordism in particular, by seeing them as possible futures and as interconnected ideas and practices across and beyond Europe. An actor and practice oriented approach is applied at the expense of more essentialist categorizations of what pan-nationalism is, or is not to underline both the synchronic and diachronic diversity of various pan-national movements. A range of expert international scholars discuss encounters, transfers, similarities and differences among pan-movements in Norden and Europe based on a broad empirical material, focusing on Scandinavianism/Nordism, pan-Slavism, pan-Turanism, pan-Germanism and Greater Netherlandism, and the position of Britishness in Great Britain. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of nationalism, European history, European studies and Scandinavian studies, history, social science, political geography, civil society and literary studies.

The contributions in this volume, written by historians, political scientists and linguists, shed new light on the political development of the nationality question in Europe during the First World War and its aftermath, covering theoretical developments and debates, social mobilization and cultural perspectives.

This book translates recent scholarship into pedagogy for teaching Edith Wharton’s widely celebrated and less-known fiction to students in the twenty-first century. It comprises such themes as American and European cultures, material culture, identity, sexuality, class, gender, law, history, journalism, anarchism, war, addiction, disability, ecology, technology, and social media in historical, cultural, transcultural, international, and regional contexts. It includes Wharton’s works compared to those of other authors, taught online, read in foreign universities, and studied in film adaptations.

Yugoslavia's diverse and interconnected art scenes from the 1960s to the 1980s, linked to the country's experience with socialist self-management. In Yugoslavia from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, state-supported Student Cultural Centers became incubators for new art. This era's conceptual and performance art--known as Yugoslavia's New Art Practice--emerged from a network of diverse and densely interconnected art scenes that nurtured the early work of Marina Abramovi&ć, Sanja Ivekovi&ć, Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), and others. In this book, Marko Ili&ć offers the first comprehensive examination of the New Art Practice, linking it to Yugoslavia's experience with socialist self-management and the political upheavals of the 1980s.

Journalists and policy-makers in the West have often assumed that the religious and ethno-national heterogeneity of the Balkans is the underlying reason for the numerous problems the area has faced throughout the twentieth century. The multiple and turbulent political transitions in the area, the dynamics of the interaction between Christianity and Islam, the contradictory and constantly shifting nationality policies, and the fluctuating identities of the diverse populations continue to be seen as major challenges to the stability of the region. By exploring the development of intricate religious, linguistic, and national dynamics in a variety of case studies throughout the Balkans, this volume demonstrates the existence of alternatives and challenges to nationalism in the area. The authors analyze a variety of national, non-national, and anti-national(ist) encounters in four areas—Bosnia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania—traditionally seen as “hot-beds” of nationalist agitation and tension resulting from their populations' religious or ethno-national diversity. In their entirety, the contributions in this volume chart a more complex picture of the national dynamics. The authors recognize the existence of national tensions both in historical perspective and in contemporary times, but also suggest the possibility of different paths to the nation that did not involve violence but allowed for national accommodation and reconciliation.

As societies around the world are challenged to respond to ever growing environmental crises, it has become increasingly important for activists, policy makers, and environmental practitioners to understand the dynamic relationship between environmental movements and the state. In communist Eastern Europe, environmental activism fueled the rise of democratic movements and the overthrow of totalitarianism. Yet, as this study of environmentalism in Slovakia shows, concern for the environment declined during the post-communist period, an ironic victim of its own earlier success. Through ethnographic interviews and archival materials, Edward Snajdr explains why Slovakia's ecology movement, so strong under socialism, fell apart so rapidly despite the persistence of serious environmental problems in the region. Synthesizing theory in anthropology and political ecology, he suggests that the fate of environmentalism in Slovakia marks the beginning of a global post-ecological age, where nature is culturally maginalized in new ways. In addition to its significance for policy makers, this book will be a valuable resource for anthropologists, sociologists, political ecologists, and scholars of East European and post-Soviet studies.