Most importantly, the book shows how literature constitutes an alternative public sphere for Black people. In a society largely controlled by white supremacist actors and institutions, Black authors have conjured fiction into a space where hard questions can be asked and answered and where the work of combatting collective, racist suppression can occur without replicating oppressive hierarchies…
In contemporary society, digital images have become increasingly mobile. They are networked, shared on social media, and circulated across small and portable screens. Accordingly, the discourses of spreadability and circulation have come to supersede the focus on production, indexicality, and manipulability, which had dominated early conceptions of digital photography and film. However, the mob…
A millennium and a half after the end of the period of its unquestioned dominance, Rome remains a significant presence in western culture. This book explores what the empire meant to its subjects. The idea of Rome has long outlived the physical empire that gave it form, and now holds sway over vastly more people and a far greater geographical area than the Romans ever ruled. It continues to sha…
The office of governor general (tsung-tu) was the highest provincial post throughout the Ch’ing dynasty. As such, it was a vital link in the control of a vast empire by a very small and alien ruling elite. This is primarily a biographical and statistical analysis of the incumbents of that office. By analyzing the biographical data of those who held the position of governor-general, much may b…
La haine possède une histoire : ses expressions, ses modalités, ses logiques, ses objets et ses effets ne sont ni identiques ni immuables. Cet essai replace cette passion funeste dans son époque et cerne ses raisons évoquées par les contemporains. Si la haine est à sa manière une forme de rationalité permettant de se mouvoir dans l’univers social, elle est une « figure du pensable »…
Several of the most known and discussed concepts of the digital age predated the digitalization itself and have been previously used in the “analogue times”. Other concepts were coined for the digital society but have transformed and are continuously transforming over time. This edited book selects some of these concepts and starts a time travel through their history, heritage, reinvention,…
This open access book charts how South Africa’s gold mines have systematically suppressed evidence of hazardous work practices and the risks associated with mining. For most of the twentieth century, South Africa was the world’s largest producer of gold. Although the country enjoyed a reputation for leading the world in occupational health legislation, the mining companies developed a syste…
Henry De la Beche (1796–1855) was a geologist who published widely on various aspects of this science and was elected to the Royal Society in 1823. He was involved with the Ordnance Survey maps of Britain, and became president of the Geological Society in 1847. De la Beche was also instrumental in the 1851 opening of two influential institutions: the Museum of Practical Geology and the School…
James MacQueen (1778–1870) was a British geographer and also one of the most outspoken critics of the methods of the British anti-slavery campaign in the 1820s and 1830s. Although he never visited Africa, he became an acknowledged expert on the continent, through reading all available accounts, ancient and modern, as well as interviewing slave merchants while managing a sugar plantation in th…
James MacQueen (1778–1870) was a British geographer fascinated by the problem of the River Niger. He set out to try to establish (on the basis of accounts by explorers, traders and missionaries), that one and the same river flowed continuously through Africa and into the Atlantic Ocean, thus challenging long-established beliefs that African rivers either disappeared into the sand or terminate…