Curation is increasingly recognised as a profession ofhigh standing which requires extensive highereducation. However, the proliferation of communityengagement since the 1980s has placed new pressuresand expectations on curators, thus complicatingtheir role. This is particularly evident in the caseof ethnographic curators working with indigenouscommunities. This chapter explores these issues byconsidering the ways in which working with BlackfootFirst Nations communities have affected the role andwork of curators at three key museums, two in Canadaand one in the UK. Historically museums, and defacto their curators, were often seen as an enemy bymany Indigenous communities as they appeared as aphysical manifestation of colonialism. Thehistorical practice of collecting sacred culturalmaterial, and even the bones and bodies ofIndigenous people, have made museums synonymous withsites of death, both physical and cultural. Yet,nowadays they also present an exceptional resourceand opportunity to revive and reinvigorateprecolonial cultural knowledge and practice throughtheir collections. Consequently, curators often findthemselves in the dubious position of being bothpotential foe and ally. This is complicated furtherwhen curators work cross-culturally and try toembrace both Indigenous and Western ways of working,as this chapter explores. It has been argued thatcurators have moved from the position of ‘expert’ tothat of ‘facilitator’ but this oversimplifies thecomplexities of voice, accountability and power inthe representation of culture. There is a need for amore nuanced understandings of the pressures thatcommunity engagement places on the role ofcuratorship, especially in this current time ofincreasing expectations on engagement and decreasingresources to support museological work.

In this introductory chapter, Sam George and Bill Hughes outline the scope of the collection, beginning with an account of Polidori’s life and the background to the composition of The Vampyre, noting all the problems that have surrounded this story. The legacy of The Vampyre is briefly detailed, from the early stage adaptations and appropriations of his tale to contemporary filmic and novelistic appearances of Polidori himself. Accounts of Polidori have not always treated him well; this collection aims to redeem him. A survey of the critical material on The Vampyre follows, analytically linking it with the chapters in the collection, which are summarised in the conclusion of this Introduction.

Brazil and US are geographically vast with immense national populations that produce a great deal of what is consumed domestically. The story in this chapter is how Itamaraty's iron grip on foreign policy formulation and decision making has been eroded since the completion of the Brazil's democratic transition. The tale explains the function and operation of Itamaraty, Brazil's highly professionalized foreign service. The chapter explores how factors such as the rise of presidential diplomacy and the increasing internationalization of Brazilian business and government have emerged as new pressures in the foreign policy debate across the Cardoso, Lula and Dilma presidencies. Attention is given to how Itamaraty has worked to manage this debate and incorporate these disparate voices in the foreign policy process in a manner that leaves final decision making power within the Palace walls. The chapter concludes by setting out the emerging politics of foreign policy making in Brazil.

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This chapter examines how the supernatural elements in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are constructed from mythical and folkloric sources but reconfigured as contemporary topical allusions. The play thus seems to be a locus for potentially competing influences: borrowing from the past while also writing to the present moment, most likely to excite the interest of his audiences and their yen for gossip or scandal. Shakespeare’s invention of the name ‘Puck’ for the puckle figure of folklore creates opportunities for every member of an audience to see the figure as consonant with their own local knowledge of such a sprite, but also enables the playwright to develop an allusion to George Buck and his competition with John Lyly for the reversion of the Master of Revels. The play thus also positions the censor as its first audience, with the allusion and Puck’s epilogue addressed directly to the Master of Revels at the time, Edmund Tylney, making amends for recent offences by Shakespeare’s company. The forest outside Athens becomes the site for a clash between modes of signification – sources and topicality – anchoring supernatural elements to far more worldly contemporary issues.

If you are standing on the shores of the Ottawa Riverlooking at the Canadian Museum of History, thenational library and archives and other nationalrepositories of Aboriginal heritage, you might welldespair at the comprehensive losses of curatorialexpertise, programmes of research and will to workcollaboratively with Aboriginal people which befellthese institutions under the government of PrimeMinister Stephen Harper. Looking harder, however,neither the shifting political ideologies nor theera of financial constraint that began with theglobal financial crisis of 2008 seems to have thrownprocesses of decolonisation and pluralistrepresentation that began to take root in Canadaduring the 1990s into reverse. Two exhibitionprojects that unfolded during that same periodprovide evidence that the changes in historicalconsciousness of settler–Indigenous relationshipsand the acceptance of cultural pluralism haveprovided a counterweight to the intentions of aright-wing government to restore old historicalnarratives. This chapter discusses them as evidenceof this deep and, seemingly, irreversible shift inCanadian public’s expectations of museumrepresentation. The first involved plans for the newexhibition of Canadian history being developed forthe 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation in2017, specifically a fishing boat named the NishgaGirl which was presented by a West-Coast FirstNation to mark the successful resolution of its landclaim. The second is the Sakahàn exhibition ofglobal indigenous art shown in 2013 at the NationalGallery of Canada and which marked a notabledeparture from its past scope. While utopia has byno means been achieved, neither, surprisingly, wasdystopia realised during the years of conservativereaction.

Sarah Wilson looks beyond the standard formalist readings of the artist Daniel Dezeuze’s work and follows his trajectory into the 1980s, when he participated in an official exchange visit to China; tracing the episode right up to the present, with the installation that Wilson proposed for the first Asian/fifth Guangzhou Triennale.

This chapter demonstrates how the deposition and exile of indigenous monarchs provided a strategy for colonial authorities to establish, consolidate and maintain their domination. It argues that the displacement of those at the pinnacle of native power, often in arbitrary fashion and by duplicitous means, blatantly manifested the strength of colonisers. The dethroning of indigenous sovereigns evidenced the fragility of colonial overlordship. Dethroned European rulers had often lived in cosmopolitan courts and moved about their kingdoms, and outside their lands, in great royal progresses. The chapter focuses on the posthumous life of royal exiles, suggesting that though deposed, dead and buried, they lived on in national memory and commemoration. The 'new imperial history' places emphasis on the lived experiences of those affected by colonialism, the life stories of both the famous and the unknown.

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