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Scottish emigrants carried a rich associational culture with them to the new worlds in which they settled, often ‘clubbing together’ along lines of ethnicity shortly after first foot fall. Yet while a crucial element of community life post-migration, no one has yet problematized Scottish associations, such as St Andrew’s societies or Burns clubs, as a series of transnational connections that were deeply rooted in the civic life of their respective communities. This book provides the first global study to capture the wider relevance of the Scots’ associational culture, arguing that associations and formal sociability are a key to explaining how migrants negotiated their ethnicity in the diaspora and connected to social structures in diverse settlements. Moving beyond the traditional nineteenth-century settler dominions, the book offers a unique comparative focus, bringing together the near Scottish diaspora in England and Ireland with that in North America, Africa, and Australasia to assess the evolution of Scottish ethnic associations, as well as their diverse roles as sites of memory and expressions of civility. The book promotes understanding not only of Scottish ethnicity overseas, but also of how different types of ethnic associational activism made diaspora tangible.

Drawing on multi-disciplinary debates surrounding the cultural production of place, space and memory in the post-industrial city, this book explores the role of moving images in representations and perceptions of everyday urban landscapes. The arguments it puts forward are based on a case study of Liverpool in the north west of England and draw from a spatial database of over 1700 archive films of the city from 1897 to the present day. The study combines critical spatial analysis, archival research and qualitative methods to navigate a city's cinematic geographies as mapped across a broad spectrum of film genres, including amateur film, travelogues, newsreels, promotional films, documentaries and features. As the second most filmed city in the UK, and formerly second city of Empire, Liverpool boasts a rich industrial, architectural and maritime heritage that has positioned the city – which was European Capital of Culture in 2008 – at the forefront of current debates on regeneration, visuality and cultural memory. The tension between the city as spectacle and the city as archive, and the contradictions that underpin the growing ‘cinematization’ of postmodern urban space are at the core of the arguments developed throughout the book. Examining the contention that, as spatial practices, the production and consumption of urban cinematic geographies are tied to shifting cultures and geographies of mobility, the book maps the critical interplay between material and immaterial spaces of the city and re-evaluates the significance – and ‘place’ – of location in contemporary film practice and urban cultural theory.

Recent history, notably the diplomatic fracas surrounding the Iraq war in 2003 and continued cultural nationalism on the part of French elites faced with the English language and American mass culture, has tended to put forth notions of ‘France’ and ‘America’ as antithetical. This book seeks to break these paradigms, and to speak of entwined cultures and histories, promoting diasporic notions of Frenchness. The book is an attempt to intervene in these debates and paradigms in the French and American public spheres, and in university disciplines, particularly in French studies, but it also has relevance for American studies, comparative literature, film and cultural studies, history, Iberian and Latin-American Studies, and postcolonial studies. After a theoretical introduction, it explores the cultural history of seven different French Atlantic spaces, all the time attentive to the material determinants of their existence in the Atlantic world. Two are in metropolitan France, one is a French North Atlantic territory, one is in Quebec, one in the United States/northern Caribbean, one in the southern Caribbean/South America, and one in Latin America.

This book provides an exhaustive reading of the significant yet understudied intellectual review Lignes, from 1987 to 2017, to demonstrate how it has managed to preserve and develop the legacy of French radical thought often referred to as ‘French Theory’ or ‘la pensée 68’. Whilst many studies on intellectual reviews from the 1930s to the 1980s exist, this book crucially illuminates the shifting intellectual and political culture of France since the 1980s, filling a major gap in contemporary debates on the continued relevance of French intellectuals. This book provides a strong counter-narrative to the received account that, after the anti-totalitarian ‘liberal moment’ of the late 1970s, Marxism and structuralism were completely banished from the French intellectual sphere. It provides the historical context behind the rise of such internationally renowned thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière Jean-Luc Nancy, whilst placing them within an intellectual genealogy stretching back to Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot in the 1930s. The book also introduces the reader to lesser known but nonetheless significant thinkers, including Lignes editor Michel Surya, Dionys Mascolo, Daniel Bensaïd, Fethi Benslama, Anselm Jappe and Robert Kurz. Through the review’s pages, a novel cultural history of France emerges as intellectuals respond to pressing contemporary issues, such as the fall of Communism, the European migrant crisis and rising nationalist tensions, the globalisation of financial capitalism and the 2008 economic crisis, scandals surrounding paedophilia and the return of religious thought to France, as well as debates on literature and the political value of art.

Imperial Emotions: Cultural Responses to Myths of Empire in Fin-de-Siècle Spain reconsiders debates about historical memory from the perspective of the theory of emotions. Its main claim is that the demise of the Spanish empire in 1898 spurred a number of contradictory emotional responses, ranging from mourning and melancholia to indignation, pride, and shame. It shows how intellectuals sought to reimagine a post-Empire Spain by drawing on myth and employing a predominantly emotional register, a contention that departs from current scholarly depictions of the fin-de-siècle crisis in Spain that largely leave the role of both emotions and imperial myths in that crisis unexplored. By focusing on the neglected emotional dimension of memory practices, Imperial Emotions opens up new ways of interpreting some of the most canonical essays in twentieth-century Iberian literature: Miguel de Unamuno’s En torno al casticismo, Ángel Ganivet’s Idearium español, Ramiro de Maeztu’s Hacia otra España, and Enric Prat de la Riba’s La nacionalitat catalana. It also examines the profound implications the emotional attachment to imperial myths has had for the collective memory of the conquest and colonization of the Americas, a collective memory that today has acquired a transnational character due to the conflicting emotional investments in the Spanish empire that are performed throughout the Americas and Spain.

The Football Association of England has become a multi-billion pound industry. But how did English football become not only the defining sport of the nation but also one of the most successful sports in the world? This book tells the story of the early days of professional football in England, revealing the distant origins of today's game. Making use of archival materials from football clubs, unions and associations, the book presents a compelling picture of football teams and players in the early days of the twentieth century, tracing the development of the system of professional teams from the hundreds of town, club and school teams that dotted the countryside. The top tier of those teams comprised the Football League that, by the 1920s, was synonymous with the very idea of professional football in the minds of fans and sportswriters alike. The book illuminates the role played by the Football League and by successful clubs such as Arsenal and Aston Villa as the rules, standards and structure of the modern game were being codified. The book also considers the careers and influences of early players, including such well-known names as Billy Meredith, Dixie Dean and Alex James. As the popularity of the game grew and sports media proliferated, players found themselves becoming national stars, their portraits on cigarette cards bought by fans throughout England.

Despite its famous image as a divided city – of wealthy high-rises and the surrounding, poverty-stricken favelas – Rio de Janeiro’s culture has been shaped by porous boundaries and multi-ethnic encounters. This book offers a groundbreaking perspective on Rio de Janeiro that focuses on the Cidade Nova (New City), one of the most compelling spaces in the history of modern cities. Once known as both a ‘Little Africa’ and as a ‘Jewish Neighborhood,’ the New City was an important reference for prominent writers, artists, pioneering social scientists and foreign visitors. It played a crucial role in foundational narratives of Brazil as ‘the country of carnival’ and as a ‘racial democracy.’ Going back to the neighborhood’s creation by royal decree in 1811, this study sheds light on how initially marginalized practices –like samba music– became emblematic of national identity. A critical crossroads of Rio, the New City was largely razed for the construction of a monumental avenue during World War II. Popular musicians protested, but ‘progress’ in the automobile age had a price. Drawing on a broad range of historical, theoretical and literary sources, Porous City rethinks Rio de Janeiro’s role in the making of Brazil, as well as its significance to key global debates about modernity, urban planning and cultural practices.

Post-Migratory Cultures in Postcolonial France offers a critical assessment of the ways in which French writers, filmmakers, musicians and other artists descended from immigrants from former colonial territories bring their specificity to bear on the bounds and applicability of French republicanism, “Frenchness” and national identity, and contemporary cultural production in France.

In 1700 few Irishwomen were literate. Most lived in a rural environment, rarely encountered a book or a play or ventured much beyond their own domestic space. By 1960 literacy was universal, all Irishwomen attended primary school, had access to a variety of books, magazines, newspapers and other forms of popular media and the wider world was now part of their every-day life. This study seeks to examine the cultural encounters and exchanges inherent in this transformation. It analyses reading and popular and consumer culture as sites of negotiation of gender roles. This is not an exhaustive treatment of the theme but focusses on three key points of cultural encounter: the Enlightenment, emigration and modernism. The writings and intellectual discourse generated by the Enlightenment was one of the most influential forces shaping western society. It set the agenda for scientific, political and social thought for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The migration of peoples to north America was another key historical marker in the development of the modern world. Emigration altered and shaped American society as well as the lives of those who remained behind. By the twentieth century, aesthetic modernism suspicious of enlightenment rationalism and determined to produce new cultural forms developed in a complex relationship with the forces of industrialisation, urbanisation and social change. This study analyses the impact of these three key forces in Western culture on changing roles and perceptions of Irish women from 1700 to 1960.

Revisioning French Culture brings together a striking group of leading intellectuals and scholars to explore new avenues of research in French and Francophone Studies. Covering the medieval period through the twenty-first century, this volume presents investigations into a vast array of subjects. Revisioning French Culture grapples with topics vital to the contemporary cultural landscape, including universalism, globalization, the idea of Francophonie, and religious and secular identity. This essay collection furthermore transcends and illuminates the contemporary by exploring matters that have long resonated in the humanities and letters, such as death, war, trauma, power and politics, notions of the truth, conceptions of the self, and modes of reading and writing. With contributions by a number of figures known across the humanities and the social sciences, Revisioning French Culture explores the foundations of the French and Francophone world, providing cultural, political, and historical context for the crisis facing democracy and liberalism around the world today.

Over the past 25 years, Rwanda has undergone remarkable shifts and transitions: culturally, economically, and educationally the country has gone from strength to strength. While much scholarship has understandably been retrospective, seeking to understand, document and commemorate the Genocide against the Tutsi, this volume gathers diverse perspectives on the changing social and cultural fabric of Rwanda since 1994. Rwandan Since 1994 considers the context of these changes, particularly in relation to the ongoing importance of remembering and in wider developments in the Great Lakes and East Africa regions. Equally it explores what stories of change are emerging from Rwanda: creative writing and testimonies, as well as national, regional, and international political narratives. The contributors interrogate which frameworks and narratives might be most useful for understanding different kinds of change, what new directions are emerging, and how Rwanda's trajectory is ongoingly shaped by other global factors. The international set of contributors includes creative writers, practitioners, activists, and scholars from African studies, history, anthropology, education, international relations, modern languages, law and politics. As well as delving into the shifting dynamics of religion and gender in Rwanda today, the book brings to light the experiences of lesser-discussed groups of people such as the Twa and the children of perpetrators.