This chapter looks at the governance of information in the last two decades of the twentieth century, when the ambition of the New World Information and Communication Order was superseded by the sweeping wave of liberalization. Free trade became a prominent frame with which to conceptualize information and build institution for its governance. This chapter discusses institutional and conceptual changes during this period. Institutionally, privatization of telecommunication – especially in dominant countries like the United States – affected the organizational structure of international telecommunication organizations. Particularly, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization underwent considerable reforms to ensure an international institutional environment for the privatization of telecommunication. Conceptually, telecommunication was no longer perceived as a public utility; it had become an issue of trade in services, eventually brought to the world trade regime. As a result, the World Trade Organization, with which the ITU formed a complementary relationship, became a primary forum for the regulation of telecommunication.

This volume’s first set of essays draws together the antecedent of death, the process of dying, and the care, labor, and rituals that constitute deathwork. What can we know of death through understanding the events and experiences preceding and producing it – as transformation or transcendence; as “good” or “bad,” aberration or rupture; a process embedded within a web of relations and imbued with meaning particular to the society or community in which it occurs? How should we theorize about death’s work and those who undertake it? What is the relationship between the “hurt and wounded” and the “soothing hand” that seeks to pacify, and, later, once the body is drained of life, to tend in word and deed?

This book has examined the lives of non-Muslims in Iranian society during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In towns and cities, religious communities often lived in distinct quarters or maintained separate villages on the margins of urban life. Within these spaces, they enjoyed limited autonomy – practicing rituals, constructing temples, and later establishing schools. Beyond these confines, however, they were readily identifiable by clothing, language, and accent, and their interactions with Muslims were constrained by local power structures. Restrictions affected where they could live and work, even as they were paradoxically entrusted with sensitive professions such as banking, moneylending, and goldsmithing. This tension – between trust and suspicion, purity and impurity – shaped broader social attitudes and reinforced their classification as outsiders.

Chapter 5 examines the renegotiation of kinship and gender relations within Tunisia’s post-revolutionary public sphere. Activists across gender and ideological lines confront the persistence of patriarchal discourses that shaped both the 2011 revolution and the subsequent democratic transition up to 2016. Legitimising hierarchy in both private and public spheres. In response, activists work to dismantle traditional filiation and its gendered consequences, seeking new forms of alliance and intimacy. This process challenges dominant conceptions of the Tunisian public and reflects broader efforts to rethink social relations in democratic spaces. Drawing on the anthropology of revolution and democracy which considers both experiences as profoundly social’, the chapter engages with North African scholarship on the intersection of kinship and politics, applying it’s insights to the evolving dynamics of Tunisia’s (post)revolutionary democracy.

This chapter examines 1940s African American poetry, nonfiction, and drama that share tropes of being outside time to explore attitudes on visual and historical representation, national sovereignty, and civil rights. Contextualizing this work between 1920s New Negro literature and 1960s Black Arts Movement literature, it charts changing African American perspectives on the uses of history, the symbolism of apocalypse, and the ever-elusive promises of democracy. The 1940s texts are Melvin Tolson’s Rendezvous with America, Robert Hayden’s “Middle Passage,” Langston Hughes’ The Sun Do Move and “Jim Crow’s Last Stand,” Richard Wright’s 12 Million Black Voices, and Roi Ottley’s New World A–Coming. These authors expand global 1940s conversations about colonialism, democracy, and sovereignty to include domestic civil rights in the US, seeking capacious literary and visual means to capture an interconnectedness with Western European artifacts, contrasting both 1920s and 1960s African American texts, which tend more toward spotlighting African American achievement.

Consumed by thoughts of a blue flower, Heinrich leaves his cold homeland and travels south until he meets Mathilde, who opens his eyes to the world’s mysteries. Then a tragic event reveals the secret power of poetry …

Heinrich von Ofterdingen, left unfinished at the time of the author’s death, is a masterpiece of philosophical fiction and a classic of German literature. This highly detailed and original interpretation is the most comprehensive and systematic study of the novel ever written. Developing fresh insights into the philosophical ideas of the novel while also attending to its symbolic, literary, and creative qualities, Owen Ware explores how Novalis probes the core problem of modern life – fragmentation, and our sense of alienation from the world. Ultimately, he shows us, this novel is a timeless expression of the Romantics’ idea that only the imagination, guided by love, can bring us back to our spiritual home.

This chapter examines the transformations of the settlement of Morgantina in the sixth and early fifth centuries BCE though Appadurai’s concepts of “locality” and “colonization.” The use of local and imported vessels, particularly within the Four-Room Building’s dining assemblage, alongside inscribed names and other words in Greek and the Sikel language, highlights the overlapping networks with which the people of Morgantina engaged over time. By focusing on ritual and dining assemblages that showcase the adoption and adaptation of imported forms like Lakonian kraters and the endurance of local carinated cups, the dynamic production of locality at Morgantina is situated in broader Mediterranean networks.

Effective lesson design underpins meaningful and inclusive learning. This chapter builds on principles of clear objectives and active learning, offering practical strategies to design lessons that are engaging, relevant, and responsive to diverse learners. You will explore how to align learning goals with success criteria, apply Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to ensure accessibility, promote higher-order thinking, and connect learning to real-world contexts. The chapter also considers the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI), guiding you to use it ethically while safeguarding critical thinking and teacher agency. Through examples, reflection, and adaptable strategies, you will learn to design lessons that spark curiosity, promote inclusion, and equip learners with future-ready skills.

Chapter 4 examines the motivations and consequences of religious conversion. It specifically focuses on socioeconomic reasons rather than spiritual motivations. Although most conversions involved embracing Islam, conversions to other faiths also occurred. Using social identity theories by Tajfel and Turner, the chapter argues that conversion is not just a transition between communities but the creation of an ambiguous social space – belonging to both, to neither, or parts of both. Converts often kept ties to their original communities while trying to gain acceptance in their new ones, developing fluid identities to navigate different social worlds. In response, each religious community would reward converts and punish those who left. Rewards included access to resources, inheritance rights, or marriage prospects, while punishments involved public shaming, annulment of marriages, or exclusion from burial rites. The chapter employs Foucault’s concepts of discipline and punishment to analyze these reactions.

This chapter examines the transatlantic career of Italo Montemezzi and particularly his opera L’amore dei tre re. Montemezzi’s work enjoyed a modest success in Italy but sensational acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera in 1914, where it was hailed as the finest Italian opera since the death of Verdi. On one level, the orchestral sophistication and overt symbolism of Montemezzi’s work appeared to blur familiar stylistic distinctions between Italian and German opera. But the breakneck pace of L’amore dei tre re also accorded with wider rhetoric of New York urbanism in the 1910s, at a time when musical modernism seemingly lagged behind the visual and literary arts. In the wake of the war, operatic criticism within Italy became newly militarised as Italian opera thrived across transatlantic stages, with efforts made to coordinate seasons between La Scala, Rome and the Colón. Montemezzi’s follow-up, La nave, failed to satisfy the ambitions placed upon it, even if L’amore was successfully presented at the Met for several decades. But La nave arguably marked the climax of efforts to frame Italian opera’s transatlantic reach as political power against waning geopolitical influence.

This chapter first presents an ideal type of a hybrid regime. This account sees a hybrid regime as a regime that presents itself as a functioning democracy, but in which the incumbent has disproportionate control over the rules of the game. The chapter then identifies points of tension between a hybrid regime’s constitution and the constitution of a good state. It shows that three constitutional features tend to be found in a hybrid regime: rivaling constitutional ideologies of democracy and guardianship; a trifurcated dual state legal order; and two levels of constitutional battle. Along the way, the chapter suggests how these features might impact a constitutional court in a hybrid regime.