The first book-length study of the oriental tale in England since 1908, Fabulous Orients is an original work of criticism which illustrates the centrality of narratives of and from the eastern ...territories of Turkey, Persia, China, and India in the formation of the novel and constructions of western identity in a culture on the threshold of empire.
Epic Encounters examines how popular culture has shaped the ways Americans define their "interests" in the Middle East. In this innovative book—now brought up-to-date to include 9/11 and the Iraq ...war—Melani McAlister argues that U.S. foreign policy, while grounded in material and military realities, is also developed in a cultural context. American understandings of the region are framed by narratives that draw on religious belief, news media accounts, and popular culture. This remarkable and pathbreaking book skillfully weaves lively and accessible readings of film, media, and music with a rigorous analysis of U.S. foreign policy, race politics, and religious history. The new chapter, titled "9/11 and After: Snapshots on the Road to Empire," considers and brilliantly analyzes five images that have become iconic: (1) New York City firemen raising the American flag out of the rubble of the World Trade Center, (2) the televised image of Osama bin-Laden, (3) Afghani women in burqas, (4) the statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled in Baghdad, and (5) the hooded and wired prisoner in Abu Ghraib. McAlister's singular achievement is to illuminate the contexts of these five images both at the time they were taken and as they relate to current events, an accomplishment all the more remarkable since—to paraphrase her new preface—we are today struggling to look backward at something that is still rushing ahead.
New democracies around the world have adopted constitutional courts to oversee the operation of democratic politics. Where does judicial power come from, how does it develop in the early stages of ...democratic liberalization, and what political conditions support its expansion? This book answers these questions through an examination of three constitutional courts in Asia: Taiwan, Korea, and Mongolia. In a region that has traditionally viewed law as a tool of authoritarian rulers, constitutional courts in these three societies are becoming a real constraint on government. In contrast with conventional culturalist accounts, this book argues that the design and functioning of constitutional review are largely a function of politics and interests. Judicial review - the power of judges to rule an act of a legislature or national leader unconstitutional - is a solution to the problem of uncertainty in constitutional design. By providing 'insurance' to prospective electoral losers, judicial review can facilitate democracy.
Zachary Lockman's book offers a broad survey of the development of Western knowledge about Islam and the Middle East. Beginning with ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of the world, the book goes on ...to discuss European ideas about Islam from its emergence in the seventh century, with particular attention to the age of European imperialism, the era of deepening American involvement in this region, and the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Along the way, Lockman explores how scholars and others in the West have studied and depicted Islam and the Middle East, focusing on the politics and controversies that have shaped Middle East studies in the United States over the past half century, including the debates over Said's influential critique, Orientalism. This book relates many of today's critical issues, including Muslim extremism, terrorism and United States policy in the Middle East, to the broader historical and political contexts.
Letters from the East Barber, Malcolm; Bate, Keith; Barber, Professor Malcolm ...
2013, 20160506, 2010, 2016-05-06, 2016-05-10, 2013-07-28, Volume:
18
eBook
No written source is entirely without literary artifice, but the letters sent from Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine in the high middle ages come closest to recording the real feelings of those who ...lived in and visited the crusader states. They are not, of course, reflective pieces, but they do convey the immediacy of circumstances which were frequently dramatic and often life-threatening.
Those settled in the East faced crises all the time, while crusaders and pilgrims knew they were experiencing defining moments in their lives. There are accounts of all the great events from the triumph of the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 to the disasters of Hattin in 1187 and the loss of Acre in 1291. These had an impact on the lives of all Latin Christians, but at the same time individuals felt impelled to describe both their own personal achievements and disappointments and the wonders and horrors of what they had seen. Moreover, the representatives of the military and monastic orders used letters as a means of maintaining contact with the western houses, providing information about the working of religious orders not found elsewhere.
Some of the letters translated here are famous, others hardly known, but all offer unique insight into the minds of those who took part in the crusading movement.
Charlemagne never traveled farther east than Italy, but by the mid-tenth century a story had begun to circulate about the friendly alliances that the emperor had forged while visiting Jerusalem and ...Constantinople. This story gained wide currency throughout the Middle Ages, appearing frequently in chronicles, histories, imperial decrees, and hagiographies-even in stained-glass windows and vernacular verse and prose. InEmperor of the World, Anne A. Latowsky traces the curious history of this myth, revealing how the memory of the Frankish Emperor was manipulated to shape the institutions of kingship and empire in the High Middle Ages.
The legend incorporates apocalyptic themes such as the succession of world monarchies at the End of Days and the prophecy of the Last Roman Emperor. Charlemagne's apocryphal journey to the East increasingly resembled the eschatological final journey of the Last Emperor, who was expected to end his reign in Jerusalem after reuniting the Roman Empire prior to the Last Judgment. Instead of relinquishing his imperial dignity and handing the rule of a united Christendom over to God as predicted, this Charlemagne returns to the West to commence his reign. Latowsky finds that the writers who incorporated this legend did so to support, or in certain cases to criticize, the imperial pretentions of the regimes under which they wrote. New versions of the myth would resurface at times of transition and during periods marked by strong assertions of Roman-style imperial authority and conflict with the papacy, most notably during the reigns of Henry IV and Frederick Barbarossa. Latowsky removes Charlemagne's encounters with the East from their long-presumed Crusading context and shows how a story that began as a rhetorical commonplace of imperial praise evolved over the centuries as an expression of Christian Roman universalism.
In De Tamerlan à Gengis Khan, Matthieu Chochoy traces the stages in the construction of knowledge about the so-called Tartar Empire through French historical works produced between the 16th and 18th ...centuries. Dans De Tamerlan à Gengis Khan, Matthieu Chochoy retrace les étapes de la construction d'un savoir sur de ce que l'on nommait l'empire tartare à travers les oeuvres historiques françaises produites entre le XVIe et le XVIIIe siècle.
