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Q&A with the author of Performing Worlds at the Baroque Court of Christine of France
Read more: Q&A with the author of Performing Worlds at the Baroque Court of Christine of FranceThis interview explores how Christine of France used Baroque court spectacles to shape political authority, global imagination, and cultures of consumption.
Challenging Cosmopolitanism
The temptation to look longingly to idealised visions of Islamic cosmopolitanism as the antithesis to the militant communal solidarity associated with contemporary groups, such as the Islamic State (IS), can be quite powerful. Many scholars and popular writers have pointed…
Class and Feeling in the Films of Jia Zhangke
In 2008, I saw Jia Zhangke’s film Still Life, and it changed my life. I had never seen a film that had affected me so intensely and knew that, after that moment, I needed to research this director and his films further. What impacted me the most about Jia’s films were their emotional and affective qualities, and how they evoked feelings that lingered long after the films had ended.
British Youth Cultures and the Wider World
Pop music and youth culture are known to be among the great British exports of the late twentieth century. Be it teddy boys/girls or The Beatles, mods or the Sex Pistols, football hooligans or the Spice Girls, the seemingly rapid…
Q&A with Stephen Bowman, Author of The Pilgrims Society and Public Diplomacy, 1895–1945
Tell us a bit about The Pilgrims Society and Public Diplomacy, 1895–1945 My book is about the Pilgrims Society, which is an elite dining club that was founded in London in 1902 and in New York in 1903. Not many…
Warwick Ball on the cultural diversity of Afghanistan
It is a pleasure to see the launch of the first issue of Afghanistan, a journal to showcase the country’s exceptional cultural diversity. It is the first scholarly journal devoted to the country since the demise of Afghan Studies in…
Utopia: A round-table discussion
Sir Thomas More (1477 – 1535) was the first person to write of a ‘utopia’, a word used to describe a perfect imaginary world. The term was first published in 1516, and became the short title of his book about an…
Commercial Agriculture and Law Reform in Nigeria
My article “Promoting Commercial Agriculture in Nigeria Through a Reform of the Legal and Institutional Frameworks” in African Journal of International and Comparative Law examines the efficacy of the extant legal and institutional frameworks in addressing the challenges that have stifled the…
For F’s Sake: Theresa May, Falling Letters and the Philosophy of Signs
At the recent Conservative Party conference in Manchester, Theresa May’s speech turned into the stuff of every presenter’s nightmares, something both ironic and apposite, given that her main theme was the return to the ‘British dream’. I don’t want to…
John M. MacKenzie on ‘Bogeys’ Past and Present
It would seem that elements of the Anglosphere have always required a bogey or a multiplicity of bogeys. Perhaps other spheres do too. It is certainly the case that the notion of coping with the feared evil ‘Other’ has also…