Historians have studied the evolution of working-class leisure activities in Britain and debated whether or not they were enduring and resistant to change, pluralistic rather than homogenous, and the extent to which they were subject to continuing attempts at social control. These issues also relate to modern greyhound racing and raise several interlinked questions about the origins and rapid growth of the sport, the social class of its bettors, its cultural development, attempts made to subject it to social control, and the reasons for its decline from late 1940s. The main argument of this chapter is that modern greyhound racing it was essentially a niche working-class activity which was often presented as not being a rational recreation, even criminal, by the forces of anti-gambling, and ultimately fell victim to such discrimination. It did not impoverish the working classes and was, indeed, ‘a bit of a flutter’.

In this chapter Marilina Cesario addresses the subject of weather forecasting in the Middle Ages as revealed in the meteorological prognostics that survive abundantly from throughout the period but particularly from the eleventh century onwards. The chapter focuses in particular on one fifteenth-century medical manuscript from Germany containing an anthology of seven Latin weather texts. Cesario edits and translates the texts for the first time and offers detailed discussion of them. She finds that these treatises contribute to their manuscript’s overarching interest in natural philosophy and that they were mostly given theoretical rather than practical usage, having their place in a context of academic learning (eruditio). One item stands out from the others, however, a puzzling salt prognostication found uniquely here. This text relies not, it is argued, on erudite knowledge but on knowledge acquired empirically and appears to have been designed for practical use.

The social inequalities and dictatorial regimes of Latin America also fostered diverse and powerful Maoist movements. Ana Longoni focuses on several case studies to analyse the impact of Maoism in Argentina, Colombia and Peru. In the case of the artist Juan Carlos Castagnino, who is often considered to be the official painter of the Argentinian Communist Party, she emphasises how his relationship with China informed both his politics and his practice. She also compares the Argentinian artist Diana Dowek and the Colombian Clemencia Lucena in relation to the theories developed by the Argentinian writer Ricardo Piglia, who was close to Maoist positions in the 1970s. The subsequent case studies presented concern the Colombian art group Taller 4 Rojo, which developed a wide range of pedagogical projects, and the ‘Black Folder’ created by the Peruvian collective Taller NN, whose subversion of the image of Mao was considered to be unacceptable by Maoists and anti-Maoists alike in the violent context of Peru.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores particular moments of the female werewolf narrative to reveal a variety of cultural assumptions, narrative tropes and putative archetypes of femaleness and femininity. It explains folkloric records of the island of Saaremaa, Estonia, a territory in which, unusually, there are more folktales of female werewolves than male. The book examines twenty-first-century young adult paranormal romance texts, considering the ways in which such texts associate lycanthropy with contemporary idealisations and constructions of the post-adolescent female. It also explores presentations of body-centred violence in film, drawing parallels between female werewolves and other violent females in horror cinema. The book examines cinematic representations of the femme animale with an exploration of how this conceptualisation of the feminine might inform a reading of Ginger Snaps.

The museum is an inventive, globally and locallytranslated form, no longer anchored to its modernorigins in Europe. Contemporary curatorial work, inthese excessive times of decolonisation andglobalisation, by engaging with discrepanttemporalities – not resisting, or homogenising,their inescapable friction – has the potential toopen up common-sense, ‘given’ histories. It does sounder serious constraints – a push and pull ofmaterial forces and ideological legacies it cannotevade. This chapter explores the ‘times’ of thecurator, in terms of both these times we live in, inwhich curatorial theory and practice seem to beever-present, and a sense of the curator’s task asenmeshed in multiple, overlapping, sometimesconflicting times. It is concerned primarily withthe later, the discrepant temporalities, or perhapsthat should be ‘histories’, or even ‘futures’, thatare integral to the task of the curator today. Incontrast to the history of museum curating,curatorial work in recent years has been transformedby the re-emergence of indigenous cultures in formersettler colonies which suggest the decentring of theWest. Drawing on research in the USA, Canada and thePacific Islands, and analysing several diverse casestudies and examples, the chapter explores examplesof ‘indigenous curating’, that is to say, workingwith things and relations in transforming times. Indoing so, it contributes to a world-wide debate,which this book is part of, about museums and thefuture of curatorship.

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In the final chapter in the book Donald Scragg focuses on the very practical issue of the size and the layout of Old English manuscripts from the eighth century to the first half of the twelfth, in order to explore the role of books in the transmission of thought, knowledge and practical experiences of the age. The chapter considers how the dimensions of surviving books can give clues ‘about their intended use, about how they were created and about what that may tell us about the role of the written vernacular in the society of early England’.

The third chapter addresses Garrel’s narrative period (1979–1988), which begins with the confessional film L’Enfant secret. It explores the relationship between Garrel’s autobiographical approaches and Surrealism, especially the writings of André Breton, with whom the director expresses a strong affinity. A second aspect assesses Garrel’s role as historian. Two films from this period – Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights (1985) and Les Ministères de l’art (1989) – directly invoke the lives and works of other film-makers of Garrel’s generation. The chapter considers how Garrel integrates the personal histories of directors such as Jean Eustache, Chantal Akerman and Jacques Doillon with a broader history of a loose cinematic school that evolved in the aftermath of the New Wave.

This chapter places the address in the context of other ‘subcriptional genres’: petitions and oaths of loyalty. It acknowledges the common features of these genres, especially the similarities between petitions and addresses. However, it argues that unique features of addresses: their initiation by the political centre, their public nature and their connection to national political events made them a particularly mnemonic genre. This in turn encouraged an awareness of changes in public opinion over time.