The de casibus tradition derives both its name and its central concerns from a collection of didactic quasi-historical narratives by the fourteenth-century Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio, entitled De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. Boccaccio depicts the fall of prominent figures, from Adam to King Arthur, who have previously enjoyed the benefit of great fortune, in the process demonstrating both the arbitrariness of earthly success and the fortitude which one should demonstrate in the face of inevitable misfortune. This chapter traces the assimilation of this tradition into English writing, via Chaucer, Lydgate and A Mirror for Magistrates, and considers the ways in which de casibus writings explore the tension between fickle fortune and the divine plan, asserting the arbitrariness of earthly life while also implying that people always ultimately get what they deserve. The chapter identifies the tradition’s subversive potential; as it deals in stories about prominent historical leaders and politicians, de casibus literature provides a rich opportunity for writers to pass veiled political comment on the vagaries of their age. The chapter shows how the de casibus tradition facilitates for Marlowe the imagining of a play-world in which the arbitrariness of earthly success and power obfuscates the notion of a divine order.

By the mid-1700s the increased circulation of newspapers, coupled with political strife among Dublin politicians, resulted in journalism becoming sensitised to the demand for political commentary. In 1742 Charles Lucas began a campaign for municipal reform and published a series of pamphlets that exposed the internal machinations of Dublin Corporation. Summoned before the House in October 1749, Lucas was sentenced to imprisonment as an enemy of the state. Although he fled the country the episode left an indelible mark on Irish journalism. In 1807 the Evening Post asked why, since the express delivery from London was paid for out of the public purse, the Correspondent, a Castle newspaper, was the sole beneficiary. Throughout the 1830s Irish journalism continued to flex its autonomy. In May 1838 the country's first representative body for journalists was established.

Chapter 6 explores magnetoencephalography (MEG), a neuroimaging technique that measures magnetic fields generated by neural activity with millisecond temporal precision. Starting with MEG’s development by David Cohen in 1967 and the crucial introduction of SQUID sensors, the chapter examines how MEG differs from EEG while measuring activity from the same neural sources. While EEG predominantly detects signals from gyri parallel to the skull, MEG captures perpendicular signals from sulci with superior spatial resolution as magnetic fields pass unimpeded through tissue. The practical aspects of MEG acquisition are covered, including participant preparation, artifact removal, and the importance of structural MRI for anatomical coregistration. The chapter addresses source localization challenges, such as the inverse problem of determining which neuronal sources created the detected signals, and explores solutions ranging from single dipole models to distributed approaches using anatomical constraints. Clinical applications in epilepsy and presurgical mapping are discussed, as is the complementary nature of combining MEG with other imaging modalities, particularly fMRI, to leverage their respective spatial and temporal strengths for comprehensive brain activity visualization.

Soon after the establishment of British colonial authority, south India underwent institutional changes in the administrative, military, educational and other spheres. In the countryside, the furthest-reaching of these changes was the introduction of the raiyatwari and zamindari land settlements, which granted a particular class of people in rural society exclusive landownership. The period covered in this chapter, 1850–1950, saw the consequences of these early institutional changes unfold and the emergence of new processes in the urban and service economies, including in transport, trade, finance and industry. The chapter discusses these general trends, paying particular attention to the countryside.

The photograph of the Irish journalist Francis McCullagh attached to the safe-conduct pass issued to him by the Francoist forces on 13 December 1936. There were, in fact, two distinct pathways at this time for journalists or would-be journalists from the Catholic middle and lower middle classes in Ireland. McCullagh nationality probably helped him secure a job as assistant to an Irishman named Lillie, who was editor of the Siam Free Press, and also local correspondent of the New York Herald. McCullagh's idealism and his talents were exercised in another dramatic theatre of contemporary events, the Italian invasion of Tripoli. McCullagh was a figure of considerable international stature, and was treated as such on his arrival in the United States. Between 1924 and 1930 he was to contribute articles to this journal on a wide variety of topics, and a narrowing of his journalistic focus dates substantially from this period.

This chapter addresses the history of the German settlements worldwide, starting with the population movements in the Middle Ages and the emergence of the so-called Sprachinseln in Eastern Europe and Upper Italy. It then describes the second wave of emigration starting in the seventeenth century to Eastern Europe and Russia. This movement is characterized as a population movement that was planned and guided from above. After that the parallel emigration overseas, to the Americas, Australia and South Africa, is illustrated in more detail and similarities and differences are discussed. This section also illustrates the extraordinary position of Namibia where German had been a co-official language over decades. In all cases the post-war development, which in most cases led to the dissolution of the German language communities, is specifically focused on. In a second part of this chapter the phenomenon of border minorities which emerged after World War I is addressed. Finally, the individual migration of German speakers between the wars and in the post-war period will be illustrated.

The Irish at the dawn of the twentieth century benefitted from many positive changes over the previous half-century in health care, education and social provision, and were (in general, apart from urban slums) among the healthiest in Europe. The new dynamic trade unionism reached Ireland in the 1890s and formed a combustible force when combined with the non-parliamentary nationalisms and feminism of the early century. These all culminated in the 1916 Rising, which usurped the parliamentary nationalism of the Home Rule Party and rapidly assumed leadership of nationalist Ireland. Unionists continued to oppose national self-determination in all its forms. The state of Northern Ireland was set up by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which also set up a state in the ‘south’. This was superseded by the War for Independence 1919–1921, which culminated in a Treaty with Britain which gave dominion status to the Irish Free State, comprising twenty-six of the thirty-two counties. A civil war followed 1922–1923, between pro- and anti-Treatyites.

Over 100,000 Irishmen from all over the country served in the Great War, and 40,000 died. The war brought great prosperity to farmers and shopkeepers, industrialists and food processors, though rising food prices took their toll of townspeople.

Insane ex-servicemen admitted into a district asylum were officially designated as ‘Service Patients’. They were treated akin to private patients with the Ministry of Pensions providing the necessary finance. This chapter examines the experiences of insane Great War veterans under treatment in the post-war Irish district lunatic asylum. Legislation and public perception of the mentally ill remaining relatively conservative throughout the inter-war period. Like the vast majority of civilian patients, many Service Patients remained in the asylum long term where containment, rather than cure, remained the primary concern of the care provided. Modifications to the Service Patient scheme occurred in Britain in the mid-1920s. Due to public and political pressure, all insane Great War veterans were incorporated into the system regardless of whether their insanity had been judged attributable to their former war service. Crucially, however, this policy was not extended to Ireland due to the comparative lack of societal concern and political lobbying. Ireland’s experience does not reflect the British experience of neuroses. This chapter magnifies how lobbying, public relations and financial interests shaped Ministry policy and its rehabilitation of disabled Great War veterans.

Through a discussion of spatial practice in Irish verbal and literary culture, the Conclusion paints an encompassing picture of the resilience and ubiquity of circling spatial practice in Irish culture. While this practice, literary and cultural, is rooted in the Middle Ages, it is nonetheless still prevalent and globally influential in contemporary literary culture, as evidenced by Seamus Heaney’s poetry. The conclusion emphasizes the circling poetical device of dúnad, but also considers various visual images of circling spatial schemes, including illuminated insular gospels, mazes or labyrinths, plans of Jerusalem holy structures, maps and depictions of the cosmos, as well as schemes of the ogam alphabet. Spatial practice, and circling movements through material and imaginative landscapes, are a driving force in diverse forms of Irish cultural production.

This chapter focuses on issues of justice in sustainability transitions. Although there is an increasing focus in academia, policymaking and practice on the importance making sustainability transitions not only environmentally and economically sustainable, but also just and fair so that costs and benefits are shared equally, this chapter illustrates that social inequities can often be exacerbated rather than alleviated in the context of sustainability transitions. Indeed, people who are vulnerable and marginalised do not often benefit from sustainability transitions: they may have limited opportunities to actively participate as citizens and suffer from negative consequences of climate and energy policies and projects. Such injustices are often the reason for contestations of developments, projects, policies and initiatives that are part of sustainability transitions. This underlines the importance of considering questions of distributional, recognition, procedural, restorative, cosmopolitan, spatial, postcolonial, intergenerational and multispecies justice when designing, developing, and implementing sustainability transition policies and projects across all socio-technical systems.

Class is one of the foremost factors in the formation of cultural identities of contemporary Koreans living as a divided nation. This chapter discusses six films made in North Korea and South Korea between the year 1980 and 1990. The texts from North Korea are O Pyongch'o's The Untrodden Path, Ch'ae P'unggi's The Brigade Commander's Former Superior and Cho Kyongsun's Bellflower. The corresponding South Korean films are Yi Changho's A Nice Windy Day, Pak Chongw on's Kuro Arirang and Pak Kwangsu's Black Republic. These six films commonly concern the life of the working class by portraying various consequences of the social dislocations and cultural confusion of contemporary Koreans. With the emergence of the cinema of social criticism, the government intensified its ideological and political control over the film industry.

Chapter 2 goes on to analyse Bhabha’s appropriation of Fanon to promote postcolonial studies in the 1980s. Before challenging the more general postcolonial use that has been made of Fanon, the discussion takes us through careful readings of Bhabha’s primary influences. The main aim of the chapter is twofold: first, to outline how Bhabha deploys Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory and Derrida’s deconstructive criticism as critical tools to interpret the work of Fanon; and second to problematize the appropriation of Fanon in postcolonial and cultural studies. The chapter seeks to challenge Bhabha’s reading of the ‘dissembling self’ in Black Skin, White Masks as a poststructualist notion and his reading of The Wretched of the Earth’s politics as undialectical and transhistorical, as postmodern based on partial truths.