The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936-2016

In its totality, the ���Long Second World War������extending from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War to the end of hostilities in 1945���has exerted enormous influence over European culture. Bringing together leading historians, sociologists, and literary and film scholars, this broadly interdisciplinary volume investigates Europeans��� individual and collective memories and the ways in which they have shaped the continent���s cultural heritage. Focusing on the major combatant nations���Spain, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Russia���it offers thoroughly contextualized explorations of novels, memoirs, films, and a host of other cultural forms to illuminate European public memory.

Un episodio en la recepci��n cultural dieciochesca de lo ex��tico: la llegada del elefante a Madrid en 1773

At the end of 1773 an Indian elephant, brought for the royal m��nagerie at Aranjuez, was shown in the streets of Madrid. The resulting public fascination provoked by the intrusion of this exotic animal can be traced through poems (Tom��s de Iriarte), short plays (Ram��n de la Cruz), articles in the periodical press, popular and scientific prints representing the animal, and even in the costumbrista pastels of Lorenzo Tiepolo. The mythic and premodern knowledge of animal nature collides in a debate with the new scientific observation. In the final decades of the 18th century, the image of the captive elephant acquired in Europe a new symbolic meaning linked with the political fight against slavery. All these very different elements converge in Goya's Disparate de bestia.

Prospects for women's legislative representation in postsocialist Europe: the views of female politicians

Research on women���s political representation in post-socialist Europe has highlighted the role of cultural and political factors in obstructing women���s access to legislative power, such as the prevalence of traditional gender stereotypes, electoral systems, and the absence of a feminist movement. Yet the role of women political elites in enhancing or hindering women���s access to political power in the region has so far remained uncharted. This article seeks to fill some of the existing gaps in this literature by examining the views of women politicians with regard to women���s political underrepresentation and their assessments of strategies for redressing this imbalance. Findings from the analysis reveal that although women politicians recognize gender inequalities in representation as a problem requiring intervention, how the problem is perceived, and the preferred measures to deal with it, is largely shaped by the social and cultural context in which these actors are embedded.

Carrying religion into a secularising Europe: Montserratian migrants' experiences of global processes in British methodism

Migrants to Europe often perceive themselves as entering a secular society that threatens their religious identities and practices. Whilst some sociological models present their responses in terms of cultural defence, ethnographic analysis reveals a more complex picture of interaction with local contexts. This essay draws upon ethnographic research to explore a relatively neglected situation in migration studies, namely the interactions between distinct migration cohorts - in this case, from the Caribbean island of Montserrat, as examined through their experiences in London Methodist churches. It employs the ideas of Weber and Bourdieu to view these migrants as 'religious carriers', as collective and individual embodiments of religious dispositions and of those socio-cultural processes through which their religion is reproduced. Whilst the strategies of the cohort migrating after the Second World War were restricted through their marginalised social status and experience of racism, the recent cohort of evacuees fleeing volcanic eruptions has had greater scope for strategies which combat secularisation and fading Methodist identity.

Megalithic Cultures in Britain and their relationship to Western Europe.:Meeting on Megalithic Culture. Comparing Prehistoric ruins of the East and Europe,

H. Kanaseki, Editor. 2003, UNESCO-Cultural Heritage Protection Office: Horen-Cho, Nara.

Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ���s Life

Christ���s life, as related through the Gospel narratives and early Apocrypha, was subject to a riot of literary-devotional adaptation in the medieval period. This collection provides a series of groundbreaking studies centring on the devotional and cultural significance of Christianity���s pivotal story during the Middle Ages.<br/><br/>The collection represents an important milestone in terms of mapping the meditative modes of piety that characterize a number of Christological traditions, including the Meditationes vitae Christi and the numerous versions it spawned in both Latin and the vernacular. A number of chapters in the volume track how and why meditative piety grew in popularity to become a mode of spiritual activity advised not only to recluses and cenobites as in the writings of Aelred of Rievaulx, but also reached out to diverse lay audiences through the pastoral regimens prescribed by devotional authors such as the Carthusian prior Nicholas Love in England and the Parisian theologian and chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Gerson.<br/><br/>Through exploring these texts from a variety of perspectives ��� theoretical, codicological, theological ��� and through tracing their complex lines of dissemination in ideological and material terms, this collection promises to be invaluable to students and scholars of medieval religious and literary culture.