This chapter covers two topics that, to my knowledge, have not yet seen any industrial application. However, they might in the future become useful. The first topic is reduction, which is about verifying that a program satisfies a property by verifying that a coarser-grained version of the program satisfies it. Even if you never use it, understanding the principles behind reduction can help you choose the appropriate grain of atomicity for abstract programs. For that purpose, skimming through Sections 8.1.1–8.1.3 should suffice.

This chapter presents the interview between the author and US theatre director JoAnne Akalaitis. She is the founder of the influential avant-garde theatre company Mabou Mines. In this interview, they talk about two widely praised productions of Jean Genet's work, The Balcony with the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1985-1986, and The Screens at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis in 1989-1990. Genet is the first western playwright to write about Arabs and a revolutionary culture in a way that is not clichéd or necessarily easy to swallow. Genet, like August Strindberg, empowers women in a way that very few playwrights do. He understood the first African rebellions, and the revolutions in the Third World. He's one of the great modern political playwrights: there's no doubt about that.

Chapter 1 chapter presents a revised account of Blake’s relation to two major paradigms in eighteenth-century embryology: preformation and epigenesis. Challenging criticism that aligns Blake with a bio-ontology that privileges open-ended development and plastic self-shaping, this chapter reveals why preformation, which was used to articulate ideas of virtual form and genetic inheritance, might have been appealing for Blake. Tracing the links between Blake and preformationist biologists such as Charles Bonnet via Johann Kaspar Lavater, it shows how Blake’s preformationist influence explains some of the differences between his conception of life to those of major figures in European Romanticism such as Coleridge, Goethe, Herder, Blumenbach, and Kant. Exploring ableist and racist implications of relevant discourses, it discusses how preformationist science supplied Blake with the conceptual means to develop understandings of human difference and selfhood which differed from that of many of his contemporaries.

The task of integrating the refugees and expellees into the Western Occupation Zones of Germany represented one of the most formidable problems facing the Allied and German authorities after the Second World War. The 'newcomers' exerted pressure on German politicians to employ the terminology which reflected the circumstances under which they had arrived in the Western Occupation Zones of Germany. The acute material distress suffered by the newcomers in the early post-war years is illustrated graphically by examining the three main economic indicators, their food situation, housing conditions and employment prospects. The chaotic economic conditions prevailing in post-war Germany increased the severity of the food shortage. The employment prospects of the refugees and expellees up to the Currency Reform varied widely between the different occupational groups. There were generally good opportunities for refugee teachers because many of the original incumbents had been suspended pending the decisions of the denazification tribunals.

The St Louis was a German cruise ship that left Hamburg in May 1939 carrying 900 Jewish refugees on board bound for Cuba. It was forced to return to Europe following not being allowed to disembark at the port of Havana, Cuba. In contrast to the Kindertransport, St Louis present a case where Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were abandoned by the world. This chapter presents the case study of the St Louis and the refusal of Canada and the USA to grant asylum for the Jewish refugees. It also illustrates the complexity of British immigration procedures during the 1930s and the problems that emerged during the selection and exclusion of refugees on board St Louis seeking entry to Britain.

The Introduction frames the book’s research within the local histories and sociopolitical dynamics of the Chinese–Russian border region, which have fostered the creation and popularisation of the ‘Russian brides’ village myth in Northeast China. It explores how Chinese–Russian marriages have come to symbolise an idealised form of transnational union in Chinese media narratives. This chapter also outlines the book’s theoretical and methodological approaches, introducing the concepts of hyperreality and intimate and embodied geopolitics. It provides a roadmap for its central arguments, guiding the reader through its interdisciplinary analysis.

This chapter documents how post-Soviet women navigate the complexities of their children’s citizenship status in China, using the concept of ‘embodied border sites’ where racialised geopolitics intersect with individual values and family norms. It explores how issues of citizenship, identity and race shape the experiences of foreign mothers in determining where their children ‘belong’ nationally. I argue that, faced with their own precarious legal and economic status – and the constant fear of separation from their children, these mothers often leverage their native citizenship or informal dual-citizenship arrangements to protect their parental rights within China’s strict single-citizenship rules. The chapter details how China’s citizenship and immigration laws restrict foreign spouses on ‘family visitor’ visas from fully integrating into the reproductive and familial aspects of marriage, leading to difficult negotiations over their children’s citizenship status. These challenges underscore the inequalities embedded in family life for foreign mothers, who continually negotiate their parental rights and sense of belonging within a restrictive legal landscape.

This chapter offers an audiovisual exploration of a group wedding festival held on the Chinese–Russian border during the late summer festival of qixi jie [七夕节]. The official goal of this event is to strengthen Chinese–Russian relations, transforming a traditional celebration into an occasion for the articulation and celebration of international love and desire. The symbolic significance of the location, timing and aesthetics of the event, alongside the national, racial and gender identities of the participants, reveals key insights into China’s national aspirations. I argue that this state-sponsored group wedding is not simply a reflection of China’s foreign relations, nor is it an incidental event – it serves as a crucial site for observing and interrogating China’s geopolitical imaginaries and national desires. Furthermore, it provides a space for both reinforcing and contesting these aspirations through the performance of international love, gender roles, and an ideal form of marriage.

This chapter shows that postwar Britain saw not a Railway Book Mania but a Book Mania tout court, with railway books a tiny proportion of all tomes published. Early book publishing houses serving the railway enthusiast were founded by men with a private enthusiasm for railways. This remains true for railway magazine editors and journalists. 'Not in Ottley' is the proudest claim any British railway bibliophile can slide among his text's footnotes, for George Ottley's work is a major peak in British railway scholarship's eccentric range. Though no prior enthusiasm drew him to this task, in 1952 he began 'Ottley's Folly', trekking through British railway literature's trackless wastes. Supplemented twice in the forty years since his first huge volume appeared, Ottley remains the railway fancy's bookish arbiter.

By the late 1970s railway modelling alone was judged to be male Britons' premier indoor leisure activity. British railway enthusiasm is a social phenomenon. Many other nations can proffer examples of railway enthusiasm then, but Britain gave the modern steam railway to the world. Though widely disparaged, the British railway enthusiast's life-world remains stubbornly lively and commodious. Beyond the crudely economic, a fascination with railways forms the cultural frame through which huge numbers of twentieth-century British men came to apprehend the world. In 1994 Matthew Engel told The Guardian's readers that 'The British have a unique sentimental attachment to their trains. For Britain's railway fancy remains surprisingly populous. In the mid-1990s informed estimates judged that between three and five million Britons entertained a significant interest in trains and railways: a figure inferior only to fishing and gardening as broad leisure activities.

As notions of idyll have emerged in filmic expression, so too have notions of rural childhood idyll. This chapter looks at films made for children and at filmic realisations of famous literary portrayals of children in the countryside and unashamedly idyllic depictions of rural childhood, which deliberately play upon romantic notions of the rural as an ideal childhood environment. It explores two other aspects of childhood in the cinematic countryside. Firstly, heeding Little's concern about the whole notion of idyll, the chapter considers films which go beyond obvious ideas of idyll in two ways. The first are films which show the other side of idyll, or life behind the 'façade' of idyll, raising issues of poverty, but also oppression through patriarchal power, and other harsher realities of children's lives. The second way is films which explore 'the otherness' of childhood. The chapter offers some thoughts on children, rurality and dwelling.