Bøger udgivet af Lexington Books

Universally regarded as Plato's student in antiquity, it is the eloquent and patriotic orator Demosthenes--not the pro-Macedonian Aristotle who tutored Alexander the Great--who returned to the dangerous Cave of political life, and thus makes it possible to recover the Old Academy. In Plato and Demosthenes: Recovering the Old Academy, William H. F. Altman explores how Demosthenes--along with Phocion, Lycurgus, and Hyperides--add external and historical evidence for the hypothesis that Plato's brilliant and challenging dialogues constituted the Academy's original curriculum. Altman rejects the facile view that the eloquent Plato, a master speech-writer as well as the proponent of the transcendent and post-eudaemonist Idea of the Good, was rhetoric's enemy. He shows how Demosthenes acquired the discipline necessary to become a great orator, first by shouting at the sea and then by summoning the Athenians to self-sacrifice in defense of their waning freedom. Demosthenes thus proved Socrates' criticism of democracy and the democratic man wrong, just as Plato the Teacher had intended that his best students would, and as he continues to challenge us to do today.

Unearthing the Unknown Whitehead argues that it is Alfred North Whitehead's recently published Harvard lectures, and not his books, that contain the truest record of the development of his philosophy, including the false starts and dead ends that the published works obscure. This development could previously only be inferred as taking place in the gaps between books. It thus calls for a complete reconsideration of Whitehead's philosophical corpus. Joseph Petek critically evaluates the accuracy and reliability of the student accounts of Whitehead's recently published Harvard lectures and then examines these notes, along with a number of previously unknown essays, in order to trace previously unknown aspects of Whitehead's philosophy and the development of his thought. Additionally, neglected early letters between Whitehead and Bertrand Russell appear to reveal a precise point at which he began transitioning from his long career in mathematics to a new career in philosophy. Two previously undiscovered essays';Religious Psychology of the Western Peoples' and ';Freedom and Order'display Whitehead's concern for a creeping hyper-nationalism that is intensely relevant in today's political climate, along with terminological experiments that stretch our conceptions of Whitehead's philosophy in new directions.

God and Psychology: How the Early Religious Development of Famous Psychologists Influenced their Work tells the stories of how the early religious background of several famous psychologists influenced their lives and work. These are fascinating stories often overlooked in the biography of these thinkers. Drawing from autobiographical and biographical materials this book demonstrates how the impact of these early exposures to religion linger in the writings and actions of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, B.F. Skinner, and Carl Rogers in both explicit and indirect ways. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in the intersection of psychology and religion and offers a new lens for thinking about this intersection by highlighting the impact of such intersections in some of the founding figures of psychology.

This book examines the origins of genocide and mass murder in the everyday conflicts of ordinary people, exacerbated by special interests. We examine cases harming people simply because they are considered unworthy and undeserving--for instance, if they are dehumanized. We confine our attention to genocide, mass murder, large-scale killing motivated by hate or desire for gain, and fascism as an ideology since it usually advocates and leads to such killing. The book draws on social psychology, especially recent work on the psychology of prejudice. Much new information on the psychology of fear, hate, intolerance, and violence has appeared in recent years. The world has also learned more on the funding of dehumanization by giant corporations via "dark money," and on the psychology of genocidal leaders. This allows us to construct a much more detailed back story of why people erupt into mass killing of minorities and vulnerable populations. We thus go on to deal with the whole "problem of evil" (or at least apparently irrational killing) in general, broadening the perspective to include politics, economics, and society at large. We draw on psychology, sociology, economics, political science, public health, anthropology, and biology in a uniquely cross-disciplinary work.

This book examines the cultural heritage of Inner Eurasia (Central Asia) through the arts, from prehistoric times to the ancient and medieval golden ages. The manuscript features extensive analysis of multiple Inner Eurasian cultural groups, their artistic traditions, and the development thereof throughout the region's history.

Scientific evidence for the origin of speech is abundant, but evidence for the origin of language as separate from speech as a naming system remains speculative. What evidence can be utilized that will furnish relevant insights on the origin or language? This book attempts to provide an answer by suggesting that the first riddles of humanity, along with the first myths, reveal that language may have emerged as a mode of reflection via metaphora mode that involves blending speech forms together to produce complex, abstract cognition.

The Secret in Medieval Literature: Alternative Worlds in the Middle Ages explores the many strange phenomena, both in the Middle Ages and today, that do not find any good rational explanations. Those do not pertain to magic or to religion in the traditional sense of the word; they are secrets of an epistemological kind and tend to defy human rationality, without being marginal or irrelevant. At first sight, we might believe that we face elements from fairy tales, but the medieval cases discussed here go far beyond such a simplistic approach to the mysterious dimension of secrets. In fact, as this book argues, medieval poets commonly engaged with alternative forces and described their workings within the human context (both in the Latin West and in the East), without being able to come to terms with them critically. Those mysteries appear both in heroic epics and courtly romances, among other genres, and they figure more frequently than we might have assumed. On the one hand, we could conceive of those secrets as the product of literary liberties and imagination; on the other, those secrets prove to be rather serious agents intervening in the lives of the fictional protagonists. By the same token, our modern world is not all rationality and material conditions either. The study of secrets in the Middle Ages thus opens the pathway toward a new epistemology both for the people in the pre-modern age and us today.

Valeria Z. Nollan's biography of perhaps the finest pianist of the twentieth century plunges readers into Rachmaninoff's complex inner world. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Cross Rhythms of the Soul is the first biography of Rachmaninoff in English that presents him in the fullness of his Russian identity. As someone whose own life in Russian emigration ran in parallel ways to Rachmaninoff's own--and whose meetings with the composer's grandson in Switzerland informed her work--Nollan brings important cultural insights into her observations of the activities of this generation of creative artists. She also traces the intricacies of Rachmaninoff's relations with the women closest to him--whose imprints are palpable in his compositions--and introduces a mystery woman whose existence challenges our established narrative of his life.

Using a variety of methodologies from multi-disciplinary backgrounds, this volume is the first to present an in-depth analysis of the life and times of Laskarina Bouboulina, the legendary heroine of the Greek Revolution and one of the most important figures in modern Greek history, the Mediterranean, and indeed, the world. At the age of fifty and mother to ten children, Bouboulina commanded a fleet of ships from the island of Spetses and became the first female admiral in world naval history. But her success on the battlefield is only part of the story - by considering her three-century impact on feminism, cultural production, and as a touchstone of diasporic Greek identity, the contributors to this volume also expand our understanding of her far-reaching and under-recognized contributions.

Slowing economic growth and debt fatigue continue to hamper fiscal policy in the United States. The question is whether there is an alternative path to the one projected in CBO long term forecasts, and if so, how citizens can choose this alternative path. The experiences of Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland reveal that an alternative path of sustainable debt is possible, and that citizens in a democratic society are capable of choosing that path. This book explores the potential impact of Swiss-style fiscal rules on the U.S. budget and the economy over the next three decades. The dynamic simulation analysis reveals that with these fiscal rules in place, it is possible for the U.S. to stabilize and reduce debt to sustainable levels over the forecast period. The government must preserve policy credibility by demonstrating a commitment to meet the challenges of economic shocks. The recent economic crises have provided a learning experience, and the rules-based macroeconomic framework required for this new era may differ significantly from that of the past. With new fiscal rules in place, the U.S. can restore long term economic growth. However, empirical analysis reveals how difficult this challenge will be, and why the U.S. is likely to continue to experience debt fatigue.

Climate Change Education: Reimagining the Future with Alternative Forms of Storytelling offers innovative approaches to teaching about climate change through storytelling forms that appeal to today's students--climate fiction and protest poetry, fiction and documentary films, video games and social media. The stories are used as exemplars, from exploring space debris to urban design planning to fast fashion, and they provide entry points for investigating particular aspects of climate science, including the local and global impacts of a warming planet. Each chapter provides analyses and strategies for fostering climate (and space) literacy through knowledge, empathy, and agency. Contributors from around the world encourage educators to answer students' calls for comprehensive K-12 climate education by aligning pedagogy with real-world challenges in order to prepare students who understand the myriad injustices of the climate crisis and feel empowered to confront them. They share their own stories and urge educators to join the growing, hopeful movement for action, classroom by classroom.

Rabindrinath Tagore (18611941) and Amartya Sen (1933) defend a distinctive form of foreign policy internationalism in their writings. Instead of increasing the economic and military power of democratic states relative to their authoritarian competitors, Tagore and Sen focus on the need to diminish the capacity for violence in all states, regardless of regime type. In Sen's view, a program of nuclear disarmament, a coordinated reduction in global military spending, and a coordinated reduction in the global arms trade should be woven into international law. This book argues that the distance between Tagore and Sen's foreign policy recommendations and the policies pursued by the leading states in the international system is better understood when it is viewed in terms of the early Indian classical period. In particular, the idea that violent actions lead to violent responsesand are therefore both immoral and imprudentis prominently expressed in the early Buddhist Discourses and the Ashokan inscriptions as well as the writings of Tagore and Sen. The ethical standard of the obligations of power articulated by Tagore and Sen provides a better foundation for thinking about human security than the social contract tradition.

This volume explores and engages with the key thinkers and ideas of the Austrian School of economics to better understand how individuals coordinate their separate interests in a peaceful and productive manner by unintentionally forming not only market prices but also rules, customs, cultural norms and other institutional arrangements that allow specialization and trade. Together, these dynamics generate a market order by ameliorating the potential for social conflict, and, in turn, facilitate the conditions for social cooperation and specialization under the division of labor. The diversity in topics and approaches will make the volume of interest to readers in a variety of fields, including anthropology, economics, entrepreneurship, history, philosophy, political science, and public policy.

Legacies of Departed African Women Writers: Matrix of Creativity and Power proffers varied perspectives of the invaluable contributions of ten deceased African writers from all across Africa who have cleared the path to a vibrant African feminist arena. The dynamics of change gleaned from both their textual and contextual concerns unarguably set the pace for contemporary African women writers who have striven to follow in the footsteps of their literary mothers as well as their oral foremothers. This book, edited by Helen Chukwuma and Chioma Carol Opara, shows the collective testament of ample creativity and power generated by these departed heroes: Flora Nwapa, Mariama Ba, Grace Ogot, Zulu Sofola, Bessie Head, Buchi Emecheta, Nawal El Saadawi, Assia Djebar, Yvonne Vera, and Nadine Gordimer. These chapters revolve around the positive impact of the celebrated writers on creative writing, theoretical formulations, and socio-cultural change. The contributors argue that these corpuses of works have illuminated creativity rooted in power, vision, and freedom.

Violence, Trauma, and Memory: Responses to War in the Late Medieval and Early Modern World brings together eight essays that examine medieval and early modern violence and warfare in France, the Hispanic World, and the Dutch Republic through the lens of trauma studies and memory studies. By focusing on warfare, these essays by historians, literary specialists, and historians of visual culture demonstrate how individuals and groups living with the ';ungraspable' outcomes of wartime violence grappled with processing and remembering (both culturally and politically) the trauma of war.

What is an American? Bruce P. Frohnen and Ted V. McAllister argue that we are, in fact, a distinct people with our own common character that transcends race, gender, ethnicity, and class. They find in our current political conflicts a crisis of identity that stems from changes, not just in our political, economic, and technological environment, but in our ability to evaluate--and to value--the personalities that shaped our way of life. The history of the American character is filled with triumph as well as tragedy, and with virtue as well as vice. It is a story of cooperation and conflict among an unruly people, who from earliest days questioned authority even as they worked to establish communities of faith, family, and local freedom under extreme circumstances.

Environmental Narratives in the Huainanzi and the Anthropocene analyzes the contemporary discourse of the Anthropocene using the Huainanzi 淮南子, an eastern Eurasian text from the second century BCE. Written to preserve and strengthen the Han Empire (202 BCE-220 CE), the Huainanzi describes a mode of rulership premised on periodizing the present as the end of history that domesticates humans and non-humans. Matthew James Hamm provides a contextualized reading of the Huainanzi's argument and uses it as a theoretical lens to read Anthropocene scholarship in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Hamm argues that--irrespective of the name or historical narrative used to describe it--the idea of the Anthropocene as a new epoch not only lacks empirical evidence, but also empowers the existing periodization of modernity to provide ideological support for environmentally destructive neoliberal structures rooted in Western European imperial orders. By doing so, the Anthropocene framework actively inhibits the transformative social change needed to address global environmental crises such as climate change and mass extinction. Consequently, this book rejects periodization as a conceptual framework for addressing those issues and advocates for greater scholarly engagement with environmental theories outside the European and Anglo-American traditions, such as the Huainanzi.

In Opera as Art: Philosophical Sketches, Paul Thom argues for opera as an art, standing alongside other artforms that employ visual and sonic media to embody the great themes of human life. Thom contends that in great operatic art, the narrative and expressive content collaborate with the works aesthetic qualities towards achieving this aim. This argument can be extended to modern operatic productions. At their best, these stagings are works of art in themselves, whether they give faithful renditions of the operas they stage and whether their aims go beyond interpretation to commentary and critique. This book is a philosophical introduction to the key practices that comprise the world of opera: the making of the work; its interpretation by directors, critics, and spectators; and the making of an operatic production. Opera has always existed in a context of philosophical ideas, and this book is written for opera-lovers who would like to learn something about that philosophical context.

Wolf Warrior Diplomacy and China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs: From Policy to Podium traces the evolution of Chinese foreign policy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping, examining the domestic and international role that aggression plays in the diplomacy of the Chinese Communist Party. Yaoyao Dai and Lu Wei Rose Luqiu demonstrate that China's diplomacy has constantly evolved with the changing domestic environment and global power balance and that, at the behest of Xi Jinping, "Wolf Warrior" diplomats in China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs have embraced a more confident and proactive role in foreign policy. Combining advanced computational methods with analysis of press conferences, public speeches, and government statements, this book offers a comprehensive evaluation of continuity and change in the diplomatic language of the Chinese Communist Party and media reactions to Chinese diplomacy in the Global South. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of communication, rhetoric, political science, and international relations.

English Education in Southeast Asian Contexts: Policy, Practice, and Identity provides an account of English education, English language teaching, and language policy in Southeast Asian countries. Both local and international researchers offer conceptual and empirical work that spans a wide range of topics, geographical contexts, and educational levels, providing a unique perspective on English education and policies in Southeast Asia. The issues addressed in this volume include the relationships among English, nation building, and national identities, English teaching and learning (including challenges in grade-level schools and in higher education), teacher preparation, and professional development.

The Emerging Role of Geomedia in the Environmental Humanities, edited by Mark Terry and Michael Hewson, provides the latest scholarship on the various methods and approaches being used by environmental humanists to incorporate geomedia into their research and analyses. Chapters in the book examine such applications as geographic information systems, global positioning systems, geo-doc filmmaking, and related geo-locative systems all being used as new technologies of research and analysis in investigations in the environmental humanities. The contributors also explore how these new methodologies impact the production of knowledge in this field of study as well as promote the impact of First Nation people perspectives.

Little research or curriculum design has been done for the purpose of improving juvenile postsecondary correctional education and limiting recidivism rates of students in the juvenile justice system. Using short fictive narratives and poetry by currently and formerly incarcerated juveniles, Critical Pedagogical Narratives of Long-Term Incarcerated Juveniles: Humanizing the Dehumanized provides an in-depth look at influences that affect their trajectory on the School to Prison Pipeline, and how their experiences interrelate with their educational experience. Gregory Barraza takes a critical look at the absence of one of the most important elements to juvenile justice education often gets overlooked: humanization of the dehumanized. So often, students on the school to prison pipeline and in juvenile justice education fall into the most marginalized sector of education. They are frequently overlooked regarding mental health services and academic services. This book shows that our justice impacted juveniles have a voice and have needs that go overlooked. The students' voice gives insight on the students' life experience and how that experience led them to correctional education. Once we know their "voice" we can give them the necessary educational path that deters from recidivism and a "doing life one day at a time."

As long as there has been formal curriculum, there has been disappointing curriculum. In an increasingly authoritarian world, problematic curricula are on the march, leaving teachers in a bind. Faced with these problematic curricula, some teachers will submit and do as they are told. Other teachers will oppose the problematic curricula, and, in some cases, face the consequences. Instead, the author argues for reworking problematic curricula. Turning to the nearest bookshelf, the author engages with his own troubling inheritance, a problematic curriculum. As a gift from a beloved family member, that text proved too dear to discard and too problematic to accept unchanged. Drawing on examples of assemblage art, the author reworks the problematic curriculum through cutting, juxtaposing with other materials, and re-contextualizing in a different setting. Navigating in the wake of reactionary movements, the author concludes by encouraging the teacher to find forms of subsistence while continuing to work toward a larger vision of social justice.

Social Media Ethics and COVID-19: Well-Being, Truth, Misinformation and Authenticity explores ways that some of the best and worst moments of the pandemic resulted from the interconnection of social media and ethics. The ethical challenges social media poses for corporate providers, government officials, and users existed well before the outbreak of COVID-19: What responsibility do corporate providers bear for inaccurate information posted by users? What responsibility do users bear? In this "post-truth" and polarized world, who defines "accurate information"? During the height of the COVID-19 crisis, public health agencies, emergency management agencies, and traditional news media used social media to disseminate or to track information, while users found communities for shared values or experiences. At the same time, users posted and amplified inaccurate or misleading scientific and health information, engaged in hate, and escalated conspiracy theories that have proven detrimental to the public health response to COVID-19. Edited by Pamela A. Zeiser and Berrin A. Beasley, this collection brings together work from leading scholars in communication, English, philosophy, and political science to examine the ethical use of social media during COVID-19, offering both a multidisciplinary understanding of the subject and tools for managing the challenges found at the intersection of social media, ethics, and COVID-19.

A Jewish Heart: A Struggle for Status and Identity in Asia is at once the saga of a modest charitable grant in 1903, an unimagined windfall ninety years later, and a history of Progressive Judaism in Asia. Enriched with profiles of key players, the author rootsthe narratives in the entrepreneurial and philanthropic activities of two legendary Baghdadi families, the Sassoons and the Kadoories, beginning in mid-nineteenth century Bombay, Shanghai, and Hong Kong and unfolding against the backdrop of worldwide waves of Jewish arrivals. The story gains currency when challenges are raised over community funding, facilities, preserving or replacing the aging synagogue, and accommodating Reform Judaism. Robert L. Green provides a thorough and previously undocumented account of the decade-long religious, legal, and public relations battles that follow, engaging the attention of international media and top rabbinical and legal authorities in Hong Kong, Israel, Australia, United States, and United Kingdom. The author focuses on questionable legal gymnastics as trustees, facing China's impending takeover of Hong Kong, undertake efforts to protect the funds from unknown perils. Concurrently, he chronicles the establishment of a vibrant Reform congregation, braided with Jewish lore, and the struggles of visionaries hoping to make Hong Kong an oasis of Jewish worship, learning, and recreation in Asia.

There is a paucity of material regarding how choral music specifically was performed in the 1800s. The Historically Informed Performance (HIP) movement has made remarkable advancements in choral music of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical periods, with modest forays into the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and other early nineteenth-century composers; however, there are no sources with a comprehensive examination of how choral music was performed. Using more than one-hundred musical examples, illustrations, tables, and photographs and relying on influential, contemporaneous sources, David Friddle details the performance practices of the time, including expressive devices such as articulation, ornamentation, phrasing, tempo, and vibrato, along with an in-depth discussion of period pronunciation, instruments, and orchestral/choral placement. Sing Romantic Music Romantically: Nineteenth-Century Choral Performance Practices fills a gap in choral scholarship and moves forward our knowledge of how choral music sounded and was performed in the nineteenth century. The depth of research and abundance of source material makes this work a must-have for choral professionals everywhere.

Choral Treatises and Singing Societies in the Romantic Age charts the interrelated beginning and development of choral methods and community choruses beginning in the early nineteenth century. Using more than one-hundred musical examples, illustrations, tables, and photographs to document this phenomenon, author David Friddle writes persuasively about this unusual tandem expansion. Beginning in 1781, with the establishment of the first secular singing group in Germany, Friddle shows how as more and more choral ensembles were founded throughout Germany, then Europe, Scandinavia, and North America, the need for singing treatises quickly became apparent. Music pedagogues Hans Georg Ngeli, Michael Traugott Pfeiffer, and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi invented the genre that became modern choral methods; initially these books were combinations of music fundamental primers, with frequent inclusion of choral works intended for performance. Eventually authors branched out into choral conducting textbooks, detailed instructions on how to found such a community-based organization, and eventually classroom music instruction. The author argues that one of the greatest legacies of this movement was the introduction of vocal music education into public schools, which led to greater musical literacy as well as the proliferation of volunteer choirs. All modern choral professionals can find the roots their career during this century.

Ecopoetics of Reenchantment: Liminal Realism and Poetic Echoes of the Earth tackles the reenchantment process at work in a part of contemporary ecoliterature that is marked by the resurfacing of the song of the earth topos and of Gaia images. Focusing on the postmodernist braiding of various indigenous and ecofeminist ontologies, close readings of the animistic and totemic dimensions of the stories at hand lead to the theorizing of liminal realism--a mode that shares much with magical realism but that is approached through an ecopoetic lens, specifically working an interspecies kind of magic, situating readers in-between human and other-than-human worlds. This book promotes a worldview based on relationships of reciprocity and symbiosis. It restores our capacity for wonder together with our sensitive intelligence. Liminal realism adopts a stance in-between scientific, mythical, and poetic worldviews as it calls attention to the soundscapes, odorscapes, feelscapes, and landscapes of the world. This monograph offers an original transdisciplinary and cross-Atlantic take on ecopoetics as it straddles the two academic worlds and sparks a conversation between artworks, theories, and studies emerging from the English-speaking world as well as from Francophone contexts.Entangling the materiality of language back within the flesh of the world, this book and the texts under study provide insight into the fundamentally sympoietic dimension of ecopoiesis.

The Post-Truth Condition: Philosophical Reflections, edited by Tarun Jose Kattumana and Simon Truwant, demonstrates that the absence of a unitary understanding of the phenomenon of post-truth stems from the complex nature of the "post-truth condition" itself. By approaching post-truth as a broad and multi-layered societal issue, the contributors offer an original contribution to the existing scholarship in three ways. First, they show that post-truth can only be adequately understood if it is viewed not only as a political matter, but also as a pervasive cultural phenomenon. Secondly, the contributors concur that a profound understanding of the post-truth condition can only be gained if it is studied through a conceptual, empirical, and historical lens. Lastly, they maintain that a productive understanding of the post-truth condition also demands a nuanced and openminded take on both its negative, reactionary characteristics and its positive, liberating potential. Throughout this volume, philosophy of history, epistemology, philosophy of science, political philosophy, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and philosophy of art join forces to clarify the pervasive character, dangers, and opportunities of our post-truth condition.