This chapter addresses the question of what the agency of non-animate objects might imply for the study. It begins by discussing early archaeological applications of the ideas of Giddens and Bourdieu. It then moves on to discuss anthropological ideas about the agency of non-humans, in particular Ingold’s dwelling perspective and the idea of the taskscape. It suggests that the agency of inanimate objects has been conceptualised in two different ways. Gell’s ‘secondary agency’ is compared with Latour’s ‘actor-network theory’. These approaches are situated more broadly within developing Post-humanist interpretations of object agency. Understandings of time and temporality are also discussed within the same framework. The chapter follows Gell in using the distinction between A and B-series time to construct an account of time experience based on the material world. B-series time is held to be a map of temporally ordered events. Material narratives of time and object biographies are shown to be central to this process; of particular importance is the way that changes to objects and places index the passage of time.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book takes the reader on a rewarding journey from Thomas Kyd's Proserpine to William Shakespeare's Prospero. It focuses on the relationship between The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet - two plays which testify simultaneously to the paradigmatic consolidation and the dissolution of the genre. The book explores the way in which 'the text' of The Spanish Tragedy has been (re)constructed by editors over the course of the four centuries since its first staging, with particular emphasis on twentieth-century editions and the Routledge Anthology. It engages with issues of identity and new ideas regarding the play's complex relations with its political and cultural context of emergence and early circulation. The book also explores some of the challenges adaptors face when turning it into a screenplay.

This chapter arises from the work Hilary Hinds and the author undertook in preparing the text of The Spanish Tragedy for their jointly edited book, The Routledge Anthology of Renaissance Drama. It argues that The Routledge Anthology of Renaissance Drama was a publishing venture based on economic hardship. The Spanish Tragedy requires the reader to disengage from the familiar narrative codes of the modern world at a number of different levels. Back in the early twentieth century, it would seem that the preference presaged the resurgence of interest in the work of Thomas Kyd, exemplified by the very successful conference held at the University of Warwick, the emergence of the present volume and new individual editions of The Spanish Tragedy. Some of the respondents drew attention to a clear paradox concerned with the relationship of Kyd to William Shakespeare's work in general and Hamlet in particular.

Chapter 6 considers how the Liberal Democrats were exploited in legislative terms within the coalition. The chapter provides an overview of the coalition in terms of legislative cohesion. Having identifying the high rate of dissent, and the issues that provoked dissent, the chapter will explore how despite this it made little impact upon the credibility of Cameron as Prime Minister – i.e. perceptions differed for him as a coalition Prime Minister experiencing rebellion. The chapter will also provide an overview of the consequences for the Liberal Democrats of binding themselves legislatively to the Conservatives. The chapter will highlight the issue of austerity being in the national interest and not ideologically driven and tuition fees, as examples of how the distinctiveness of the Liberal Democrats was undermined by being in coalition. Having evaluated the conundrum of providing unity to the government versus maintaining their own distinctiveness for electoral reasons, the chapter considers the limited evidence of the Liberal Democrats being seen to have influence within the coalition. The chapter identifies how this amounted to a success for Cameron as evidenced from the gains made by the Conservatives, at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, at the 2015 General Election.

This volume argues that curatorship may be ‘recalled’and remade through collaborative relationships withcommunities leading to experiments in curatorialtheory and practice. What can museums of ethnographyin the Americas and Europe learn from the experienceof nations where distinctive forms of Indigenousmuseology are emerging and reshaping the conventionsof curatorial practice? In addressing this question,this chapter draws on research by the authors,including interviews with Māori curators, museumprofessionals, academics and community leadersthroughout Aotearoa New Zealand, exploringconnections with the wider Pacific and the world. Indoing so, it focuses on the ‘figure of thekaitiaki’, the Māori ‘guardian’, as a particularlocal development of the ‘figure of the curator’. Itconcludes that museums across the world can learnfrom Pacific experiments and become active agents inshaping cultural revival and future potentialitieson a global scale.

Danish scholarly engagement with the Middle East began in earnest in the second half of the eighteenth century. This was due to Denmark’s political engagement with the piracy states of the Maghreb, but by 1830 this engagement had come to an end. Despite a strong romantic attachment to the Middle East in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, scholarship was concentrated on the study of the classical languages and literatures and few (Danish) scholars ever lived in the region. In the decades following the Second World War, the Middle East as a political entity was largely neglected. Middle East Studies were finally introduced at the University of Odense in 1981, and the two major universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus followed suit by modernising their Oriental departments in the 1990s and 2000s, respectively. Amongst other factors, jihadi terrorism, the cartoon crisis and the thorny issue of immigration have had an immense effect on scholarship and teaching methods. In the public debate, scholars are often criticised for ignoring religion and culture as factors of influence on Middle Eastern society and politics. This chapter argues that, while the new engagement has led to renewed interest and investment in Middle East Studies, some of the old deficiencies have not been overcome. In particular, few scholars pay attention to local Middle Eastern debates.

Teaching the Middle East in Europe cannot ignore its politicised nature: where we typically acknowledge the power–knowledge nexus in research, all too often similar dynamics in teaching are left unexplored. In this chapter I give a personal account of how my teaching ‘the Middle East’ in Europe has developed in a direct and inevitable interaction with the political context: local events have shaped the Dutch political – and by extension academic –context so much that they influence almost every aspect of ‘doing the Middle East’ in the Netherlands today. On the one hand, I show how, in this politicised context, public naming and shaming of perceived ‘left’ or ‘anti-Semitic’ university professors, as well as fierce accusations of bias, via lawfare or otherwise, can lead to self-censorship and a sense of isolation in teaching, especially for early career scholars. On the other hand, I show how students in a classroom environment have changed as well and argue that, in our teaching, we need to apply that critical, ethical and ongoing reflexivity that we normally reserve for our research activities and create the in-depth learning experience that does not deny but embraces the political contestation that is academic knowledge and the transfer thereof.

This chapter explores the issue of the relation between metropole and colony, as well as of the loyalty of imperial subjects, by exploring the phenomenon of compensation, paid by the government in London to those who had incurred losses in relation to the empire. It is, therefore, a study of imperialism in practice, and of the risks associated with imperial expansion, in terms of the response from the centre to failure at the periphery. This is undertaken in order to analyse the assumptions and principles that structured the making, maintenance and loss of empire, themes that require much greater attention than they have received hitherto.

This chapter uses Mass Observation (MO) survey material to assess initial responses to the outbreak of war in the summer of 1950. It first explores the utility of MO surveys and diaries to the social history of the war, before analysing responses in detail, alongside early television and newspaper reports. It concludes that the first few months of the Korean War were a worrying time for many Britons, as anxieties gathered around several areas: aerial attack, nuclear warfare and the mobilisation of male citizens.

Thomas Kyd wrote The Spanish Tragedy some time in the late 1500s, in an Elizabethan London that was busy reinventing English culture. The legitimate and regionally oriented Plantagenets had been defeated by Henry VII, who quickly moved to establish a centralised, grandiose, imperial state, which his descendants, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, expanded and consolidated. The Spanish Tragedy is the tragedy of a naive and hardworking man at the table of the rich, who is robbed of everything he loves - including justice. In The Spanish Tragedy, the biggest technical problem in the adaptation is pruning away all the extraneous bits and, perhaps, leaving in some of the play's Additions, if they go to pointing out the theme the adaptor has determined has the most relevance for the audience. The Spanish Tragedy is the story of Hieronimo, a hard worker at the table of the King.