Major Concepts in Politics and Political Theory

This series invites book manuscripts and proposals on major concepts in politics and political theory—justice, equality, virtue, rights, citizenship, power, sovereignty, property, liberty, etc.—in prominent traditions, periods, and thinkers. This series invites book manuscripts and proposals on major concepts in politics and political theory—justice, equality, virtue, rights, citizenship, power, sovereignty, property, liberty, etc.—in prominent traditions, periods, and thinkers. This series invites book manuscripts and proposals on major concepts in politics and political theory—justice, equality, virtue, rights, citizenship, power, sovereignty, property, liberty, etc.—in prominent traditions, periods, and thinkers.

26 publications

Studies in Church History

This series in church history offers a place for diverse scholarship that is sometimes too particularly calibrated for any other publishing category. Rather, the richness of the Church History series is in its scope, which variously mixes historical theology and historical hermeneutics, doctrine and practices of piety, religious or spiritual movements, and institutional configurations. Western Europe and the United States continue to provide grounds for exploration and discourse, but this series will also publish books on Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Traditional periodization (Early Christian, Medieval, Reformation and Modern eras) grants maximum representation. The particular focus of the series is the treatment of religious thought as being vital to the historical context and outcome of Christian experience. Fresh interpretations of classic and well-known Christian thinkers (e.g., Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, etc.) using multicultural perspectives, the critical approaches of feminist and men’s studies form the foundation of the series. Meanwhile, new voices from Christian history need illumination and explication by church historians in this series. Authors who are versatile enough to “cross-over” disciplinary boundaries have enormous opportunity in this series to reach an international audience. This series in church history offers a place for diverse scholarship that is sometimes too particularly calibrated for any other publishing category. Rather, the richness of the Church History series is in its scope, which variously mixes historical theology and historical hermeneutics, doctrine and practices of piety, religious or spiritual movements, and institutional configurations. Western Europe and the United States continue to provide grounds for exploration and discourse, but this series will also publish books on Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Traditional periodization (Early Christian, Medieval, Reformation and Modern eras) grants maximum representation. The particular focus of the series is the treatment of religious thought as being vital to the historical context and outcome of Christian experience. Fresh interpretations of classic and well-known Christian thinkers (e.g., Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, etc.) using multicultural perspectives, the critical approaches of feminist and men’s studies form the foundation of the series. Meanwhile, new voices from Christian history need illumination and explication by church historians in this series. Authors who are versatile enough to “cross-over” disciplinary boundaries have enormous opportunity in this series to reach an international audience. This series in church history offers a place for diverse scholarship that is sometimes too particularly calibrated for any other publishing category. Rather, the richness of the Church History series is in its scope, which variously mixes historical theology and historical hermeneutics, doctrine and practices of piety, religious or spiritual movements, and institutional configurations. Western Europe and the United States continue to provide grounds for exploration and discourse, but this series will also publish books on Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Traditional periodization (Early Christian, Medieval, Reformation and Modern eras) grants maximum representation. The particular focus of the series is the treatment of religious thought as being vital to the historical context and outcome of Christian experience. Fresh interpretations of classic and well-known Christian thinkers (e.g., Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, etc.) using multicultural perspectives, the critical approaches of feminist and men’s studies form the foundation of the series. Meanwhile, new voices from Christian history need illumination and explication by church historians in this series. Authors who are versatile enough to “cross-over” disciplinary boundaries have enormous opportunity in this series to reach an international audience.

10 publications

Teaching Contemporary Scholars

This innovative series addresses the pedagogies and thoughts of influential contemporary scholars in diverse fields. Focusing on scholars who have challenged the “normal science,” the dominant frameworks of particular disciplines, Teaching Contemporary Scholars highlights the work of those who have profoundly influenced the direction of academic work. In a era of great change, this series focuses on the bold thinkers who provide not only insight into the nature of the change but where we should be going in light of the new conditions. Not a festschrift, not a re-interpretation of past work, these books allow the reader a deeper, yet accessible conceptual framework in which to negotiate and expand the work of important thinkers.

15 publications

Cultural Identity Studies

This series publishes new research into relationships and interactions between culture and identity, broadly conceived. Studies relating to intercultural or transcultural identities are particularly welcome, as the series is the publishing project of the Intercultural Studies research group at Dalarna University, Sweden. The series embraces research into the roles of linguistic, social, political, psychological, literary, audiovisual, religious and/or cultural aspects in the processes of individual and collective identity formation. Given the nature of the field, interdisciplinary and theoretically diverse approaches are encouraged. Work on the theorizing of cultural aspects of identity formation and case studies of individual writers, thinkers and/or cultural products will be included. The series welcomes intercultural, transcultural and transnational links and comparisons worldwide.

36 publications

A Critical Introduction to Media and Communication Theory

The study of the media has led scholars to apply a humbling array of theories in their efforts to analyze messages, media systems, audiences and media themselves. One of the strengths of media studies has been its flexibility as it incorporates humanist and social scientific ideas in our work. This series is focused on theories, methods, schools of thought, domains of intellectual struggle, and individual thinkers whose importance to the study of the media can be reconfigured, reinvented, and refocused. Each of the specially commissioned books in the series shares a concern for the heritage of thought in the field of communication. These books provide sophisticated discussions of the relevance of particular theorists or theories, with an emphasis on reinventing communication and media studies, whether by incorporating ideas thought by some to be 'outside' the field, or by providing fresh analyses of ideas that have long been considered central to media studies. Though theoretical in focus, the books are at all times concerned with the applicability of theory to empirical research and experience, and are designed to be accessible, yet critical, for students -undergraduates and postgraduates - and scholars.

16 publications

History and Philosophy of Science

ISSN: 2376-6336

This series invites book proposals that include innovative strategies for pursuing history and philosophy of science. Especially welcome are scholarly works using non-analytic philosophical perspectives to successfully bring to bear on our understanding of how scientific practices are related to the humanities and the social sciences. The series also welcomes exploration of the sciences in relation to gender, culture, society, and the intellectual and social contexts that illuminate the places, the structures of origination, and the patterns of development over generations. Approaches may include focused analyses of thinkers from unorthodox perspectives that can shed new light on the history and philosophy of science, such as Montaigne, Bruno, Galileo, Newton, Pascal, Emerson, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Jung, Freud. Proposals aimed at probing the philosophical intersections between the sciences and other societal practices that can be configured as heretic are also encouraged. These might include the emergence of the psychoanalytic movements in the twentieth century, how the fine arts have impinged on the historical processes that gave rise to the sciences over the last few centuries, how in turn the intellectual frameworks inaugurated by the sciences have been imported into the avant-garde movements that paralleled the advent of industrialized societies, and finally how contemporary scientific domains of knowledge reverberate in ’deviant’ social and artistic practices.

9 publications

Higher Ed

What are the purposes of higher education? When undergraduates 'declare their majors,' they agree to enter into a world defined by the parameters of a particular academic discourse, a discipline. But who decides those parameters? How do they come about? What are the discussions and proposed outcomes of disciplined inquiry? What should an undergraduate know to be considered educated in a discipline? How does the disciplinary knowledge base inform its pedagogy? Why are there different disciplines? When has a discipline 'run its course'? Where do new disciplines come from? Where do old ones go? How does a discipline produce its knowledge? What are the meanings and purposes of disciplinary research and teaching? What are the key questions of disciplined inquiry? What questions are taboo within a discipline? What can the disciplines learn from one another? What might they not want to learn and why? Once we begin asking these kinds of questions, positionality becomes a key issue. One reason why there aren't many books on the meaning and purpose of higher education is that once such questions are opened for discussion, one's subjectivity becomes an issue with respect to the presumed objective stances of Western higher education. Academics don't have positions because positions are 'biased,' 'subjective,' 'slanted,' and therefore somehow invalid. So the first thing to do is to provide a sense, however broad and general, of what dinds of positionalities will inform the books and chapters on the above questions. Certainly the questions themselves, and any others we might ask, are already suggesting a particular 'bent,' but as the series takes shape, the authors we engage will no doubt have positions on these questions. From the stance of interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, or transdisciplinary practitioners, will the chapters and books we solicit solidify disciplinary discourses, or liquefy them? Depending on who is asked, interdisciplinary inquiry is either a polite collaboration among scholars firmly situated in their own particular discourses, or it is a blurring of the restrictive parameters that define the very notion of disciplinary discourse. So will the series have a stance on the meaning and purpose of interdisciplinary inquiry and teaching? This can possibly be finessed by attracted thinkers from disciplines that are already multicisciplinary, e.g., the various knids of 'studies' programs (Women's, Islamic, American, Cultural, etc.), or the hybrid disciplines like Ethnomusicology (Musicology, Folklore, Anthropology). But by including people from these fields (areas? disciplines?) in our series, we are already taking a stand on disciplined inquiry. A question on the comprehensive exam for the Columbia University Ethnomusicology Program was to defend Ethnomusicology as a 'field' or a 'discipline.' One's answer determined one's future, at least to the extent that the gatekeepers had a say in such matters. So, in the end, what we are proposing will no doubt involve political struggles.

31 publications

Contemporary Critical Concepts and Pre-Enlightenment Literature

ISSN: 1074-6781

"Writers who worked before the beginning of rationalist universalism's triumphal period which may be ending now-explored issues of consciousness, ideology, and culture that recent criticism and critical theory, using various specialized vocabularies of concepts, have returned to the center of literäry and social criticism. These early modern figures often anticipated some of our clilemmas; How to manipulate an apparently quite mutable world and, at the same time, preserve belief in an immutable "centered" self? How to reconcile rationalist universalism with personal and cultural stability? Rene Descartes's postulate of man as the master and proprietor of an increasingly built world is fundamentally incompatible with his effort to underwrite man as a stable philosophical subject. Man's technical and linguistic mastery devours his "transcendent subjectivity." Students of literature are now using the ideas of what Larry Riggs calls "post-enlightenment thinkers"-Max Horkheimer, Jacques Lacan, Michael Foucault, Rene Girard, and others-to elucidate the implicit and explicit debates about rationalism that are embedded in literary works. This trend is most usefully seen as a renewal of contact with preoccupations that were quite current in medieval, Renaissance, and seventeenth-century European literature. To date, however, innovative criticism has focused an more recent literature. Some post-structuralists-most notably Jacques Lacan-have tried their hand at interpreting early works. Their ideas are interesting, but their knowledge of the periods in question is often weak. Manuscripts on Elizabethan and Restoration theater, French, Italian, and German writers of the medieval and Renaissance periods, and die seventeenth-century French dramatists and moralists are welcome. "

3 publications

Dieux, Hommes et Religions / Gods, Humans and Religions

ISSN: 1377-8323

While most traditional world religions seem to face a fundamental identity and cultural crisis, signs are indicating that there is a universal need for new spiritual demands and revival, new awakenings of religious practices and feelings. What are the facts beyond these movements? Is there a new human religiosity in the making? This series will try to bring together witnesses, thinkers, believers and non-believers, historians, scientists of religion, theologians, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers and general writers, from different cultures and languages, to offer a broader perspective on one of the key issues of our new world civilisation in the making. Tandis que les principales religions traditionnelles du monde semblent confrontées à une crise identitaire et culturelle fondamentale, on voit partout se manifester une renaissance des besoins de spiritualité et de nouvelles pratiques religieuses. Quelles sont les motivations des hommes et des femmes qui soutiennent ces nouvelles tendances ? Assistons-nous à la naissance d’une nouvelle religiosité humaine ? Cette collection a pour but de rassembler les travaux de témoins, penseurs, croyants et incroyants, historiens, spécialistes des religions, théologiens, psychologues, sociologues, philosophes et écrivains, tous issus de différentes cultures et différentes langues, pour offrir une perspective plus large sur l’un des problèmes clés de la civilisation universelle que nous sommes en train de construire.

29 publications

Marguerite Duras

ISSN: 2032-9326

The work of Marguerite Duras has become one of the most popular subjects of academic research, achieving enormous global reach. Her work crosses many genres (novels, theatre, films, journalism, interviews, short texts), and she attracted the interest of important contemporary thinkers such as Lacan, Foucault and Blanchot. As well as having a unique style and the power to fascinate, Duras was politically active and became an important witness of her time. These are the reasons why she is considered to be one of the most significant writers of the 20th century. This series aims to give academics and the large number of Duras fans the chance to explore a wide range of high-quality research generated by her work. This is made possible with the publication of monographs, collections of essays, conference notes and texts from doctoral research. The series encourages cross-disciplinary views and aims to be a major platform for dialogue on the different approaches to research on Marguerite Duras. La recherche scientifique autour de l’œuvre de Marguerite Duras est l’une des plus actives et l’une des plus étendues de par le monde. L’éclatement générique de son œuvre (romans, théâtre, cinéma, journalisme, entretiens, textes brefs), l’intérêt qu’elle a suscité chez les plus grands penseurs contemporains de toutes sortes de disciplines des sciences humaines (Lacan, Foucault, Blanchot, etc.), l’engagement politique et la position de témoin des événements marquants de son époque, l’originalité unique de son style et son pouvoir de fascination contribuent à placer l’écrivain parmi les plus importants de son siècle. La collection «　Marguerite Duras　» a pour objectif de présenter à un public universitaire et aux très nombreux passionnés de l’œuvre de l’écrivain un éventail large des travaux de qualité que génère son œuvre, par la publication de monographies, de volumes collectifs, d’actes de colloques et d’essais issus de thèses de doctorat. Elle encourage les points de vue interdisciplinaires et se veut l’un des lieux majeurs où se rencontrent et dialoguent les différentes facettes de l’étude des textes durassiens. La recherche scientifique autour de l’œuvre de Marguerite Duras est l’une des plus actives et l’une des plus étendues de par le monde. L’éclatement générique de son œuvre (romans, théâtre, cinéma, journalisme, entretiens, textes brefs), l’intérêt qu’elle a suscité chez les plus grands penseurs contemporains de toutes sortes de disciplines des sciences humaines (Lacan, Foucault, Blanchot, etc.), l’engagement politique et la position de témoin des événements marquants de son époque, l’originalité unique de son style et son pouvoir de fascination contribuent à placer l’écrivain parmi les plus importants de son siècle. La collection «　Marguerite Duras　» a pour objectif de présenter à un public universitaire et aux très nombreux passionnés de l’œuvre de l’écrivain un éventail large des travaux de qualité que génère son œuvre, par la publication de monographies, de volumes collectifs, d’actes de colloques et d’essais issus de thèses de doctorat. Elle encourage les points de vue interdisciplinaires et se veut l’un des lieux majeurs où se rencontrent et dialoguent les différentes facettes de l’étude des textes durassiens.

3 publications