This chapter introduces the six contributions in Part IV, “Computer Science.” The main focus is on topics in algorithmic game theory, algorithmic mechanism design, and computational social choice.

Chapter 5 turns to intermedial comparison between word and image, taking the image-text as an example to examine how ludic strategies of representation create intermedial experiences of risk. In the chapter I compare Xi Xi with contemporary French poet Michèle Métail. Both poets have created a substantial number of image-texts. I first examine how they employ ekphrasis – the verbal representation of images – to explore the tension and complementarity between language and visual media and emphasize the risks of aesthetic experimentation and mediated perception. I then discuss their use of the parergon, understood as the concrete borders of an artwork (the ergon) and, figuratively, as a cognitive framing and recontextualization of literature that questions what the literary work is. Gregory Bateson argued that play is a ‘cognitive frame’ (1972). In this chapter, I argue that the parergon is a ludic method that suggests the transgression of frames and puts the artwork (ergon) at risk. Image-texts show how risk is shaped by medium-specificity and technologies of mediation.

Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola’s fiction blends Yoruba cosmology and modernist aesthetics. This blend renders the critical tendency to juxtapose the Indigenous and the modern, via the spiritual and the material, impossible. Instead, Tutuola’s fiction is an Indigenous response to mid-century West African modernisation and industrialisation under global capitalism. Drawing on Yoruba cosmology, this response offers an immanent critique of colonial modernity’s capitalist world-system by refusing to separate the spiritual and the material, thereby adapting a ‘folk’ logic that capitalism allegedly replaced. This survival of Indigenous cosmology into modernity demonstrates an analogous relationship between Tutuola’s animist realism and the gothic, a form that likewise offers an immanent critique of global capitalism by way of adapting folk logics. This analogous relationship leads this chapter to comparatively read Tutuola’s vision of the uncanny alongside the Freudian uncanny, highlighting the need for world-gothic criticism to situate the gothic alongside non-Western forms that render a shared modernity uncanny.

In this chapter we introduce a proposal from the linguistic theory of relatives, one which minimally underlies all forms of relative clause formation (Kayne 1994 and subsequent work). We adopt a theoretical paradigm which moves from the study of specific relative clause structures to general principles of relativization which underlie all relatives all typological variants. We formulate the leading hypothesis that headless relativization is a developmental primitive in terms of this paradigm. This representation of Universal Grammar (UG) offers a template which relates Determiner Phrases and Complementizer Phrases, which in turn allows the acquisition of relative clause in specific language grammars.

Since the 1930s there have been intense debates about how far democracy can go to protect itself against its enemies. Hans Kelsen’s antagonistic relationship to militant democracy is well established in the literature and is not controversial. First, this chapter anchors Kelsen’s opposition to militant democracy more deeply and systematically in his own theory of democracy. This sheds light on the reasons why his opposition to militant democracy remained consistently immune to the defeat of democracies – as painfully observed in the 1930s – and to the conviction, shared by many of his contemporaries, that such vulnerability legitimises the prevention of anti-democratic parties from abusing the democratic process. Second, the chapter challenges the common view that Kelsen’s rejection of militant democracy would have no contemporary adherents. It discusses similarities and discontinuities between Kelsen and a new generation of thinkers who also express doubts about militant democracy. In doing so, the chapter offers a fresh look at the strengths and weaknesses of Kelsen’s perspective on militant democracy and assesses its influence on the issue in contemporary literature.

Creative engagement with the Arthurian myth has been prolific in the modern period and shows no sign of abating. This chapter provides a panoramic shot, an overview of how and where the Arthurian myth surfaces in texts in English in Great Britain and Ireland from 1920 to the present. Additionally, it provides close-ups, more detailed readings of selected works that capture the critical concerns of modern artists and their audiences, foregrounding especially trauma and the impacts of war and industrialised culture; expressions of the interconnectedness between all living things, often in response to contextual ecopolitical crises; and human interactions, including tragic relationships and empowering female networks. The discussion breaks materials into broad categories that are loosely determined by form – poetry, prose and drama – and moves between foundational works and newer narratives. Where possible, the discussion foregrounds Arthuriana that has previously received little or no attention, especially works by women.

This chapter’s exploration of Derek Walcott’s poetry both describes and practices a critical “stereo vision,” in which Jamesian pragmatism and Walcott’s hybridized, postcolonial poetic practices productively refract one another, helping to “illuminate a new direction for Jamesian theorizing in literary studies.”

In a time of great contest and confusion over the future of democracy as a governing principle, the example of Abraham Lincoln continues to provide encouragement and direction about democracy’s viability in the face of immense challenges. In The Political Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Allen Guelzo brings into one volume Lincoln’s most famous political documents and speeches from his earliest days as a political candidate under the banner of the Whig Party, to his election and service as the first anti-slavery Republican president, from 1861 to 1865, and the nation’s leader in the fiery trial of civil war. While many anthologies of Lincoln’s political documents routinely concentrate on his presidential years or only on his anti-slavery writings, Guelzo concentrates on documents from Lincoln’s earliest political activity as an Illinois state legislator in the 1830s up through his presidency. The result is an accessible resource for students, researchers, and general readers.

In a time of great contest and confusion over the future of democracy as a governing principle, the example of Abraham Lincoln continues to provide encouragement and direction about democracy’s viability in the face of immense challenges. In The Political Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Allen Guelzo brings into one volume Lincoln’s most famous political documents and speeches from his earliest days as a political candidate under the banner of the Whig Party, to his election and service as the first anti-slavery Republican president, from 1861 to 1865, and the nation’s leader in the fiery trial of civil war. While many anthologies of Lincoln’s political documents routinely concentrate on his presidential years or only on his anti-slavery writings, Guelzo concentrates on documents from Lincoln’s earliest political activity as an Illinois state legislator in the 1830s up through his presidency. The result is an accessible resource for students, researchers, and general readers.

The entanglement of genre and gender in the theories and practice of French art song shaped women’s creative engagement with the mélodie. They were active as composers and poets, as well as performers, hostesses, singing teachers, and muse; yet they faced gendered prejudice. Closer examination of songs by Pauline Viardot and Augusta Holmès reveals markedly different strategies by female composers when addressing gender in their settings. Some female poets (such as Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Anna de Noailles, and Renée Vivien) gained visibility in French art song. One poet is particularly notable: Cécile Sauvage whose poetry was set both by her son, Olivier Messiaen, and by his wife, Claire Delbos. Patrons like Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux, Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, and Marie Vasnier proved equally as important to the genre as such professional musicians as Jane Bathori and Claire Croiza. In effect, salon and concert hall overlapped in repertoire and audience.

Sri Lanka is the only Buddhist-majority country in the world without an official state-recognised monastic legal system. This is in spite of the fact that an entire section of the county’s constitution is dedicated to such a venture. How can one explain this? And why does Sri Lanka remain in this impasse? This chapter answers these questions by tracking a significant (and ongoing) series of attempts made by Sri Lanka’s leading intellectuals, educators, politicians, monks and legislators to ‘legalise’ monastic law (S: nītīgata kirīma) by creating some form of statute, tribunal or legal body that could blend monastic and state legal authority. Drawing on an un- and under-studied body of political and legal documents, it explains how a particular approach to legal pluralism – one motivated by a ‘purist’ approach to law – both motivated and sabotaged successive efforts to formally recognise monastic courts and constitutions in state law.

This chapter describes the early contributions of Émile Borel to the theory of games. It also discusses early reactions and controversies.

In a time of great contest and confusion over the future of democracy as a governing principle, the example of Abraham Lincoln continues to provide encouragement and direction about democracy’s viability in the face of immense challenges. In The Political Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Allen Guelzo brings into one volume Lincoln’s most famous political documents and speeches from his earliest days as a political candidate under the banner of the Whig Party, to his election and service as the first anti-slavery Republican president, from 1861 to 1865, and the nation’s leader in the fiery trial of civil war. While many anthologies of Lincoln’s political documents routinely concentrate on his presidential years or only on his anti-slavery writings, Guelzo concentrates on documents from Lincoln’s earliest political activity as an Illinois state legislator in the 1830s up through his presidency. The result is an accessible resource for students, researchers, and general readers.

The chapter retraces how a collective of Moroccan sociologists in Rabat reconceptualized the meaning of social emancipation in the spaces of the city. The 1965 Casablanca riots and subsequent state repression accelerated the demise of a vision of Moroccan class struggle embodied by Mehdi Ben Barka. This chapter explores how these sociologists departed from class analysis and proposed new new theorizations of Moroccan society as illustrated by Paul Pascon’s notion of the “composite society.” This chapter also tells the story of the periodicals that enabled these debates and such epistemological innovations—BESM, Lamalif and al-Asas— gave them cover to think, but also became sites of insulation. This was illustrated by the coverage of the “youth question” and these sociologists’ gradual struggle to explain younger generations’ discontent. By the late 1970s, these sociologists had unwillingly joined the country’s bourgeoisie. The chapter then ends with sociologist Fatema Mernissi as a counterpoint, who consciously trying to disrupt the boundaries and sought to foreground the voices and agency of subaltern women.

In a time of great contest and confusion over the future of democracy as a governing principle, the example of Abraham Lincoln continues to provide encouragement and direction about democracy’s viability in the face of immense challenges. In The Political Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Allen Guelzo brings into one volume Lincoln’s most famous political documents and speeches from his earliest days as a political candidate under the banner of the Whig Party, to his election and service as the first anti-slavery Republican president, from 1861 to 1865, and the nation’s leader in the fiery trial of civil war. While many anthologies of Lincoln’s political documents routinely concentrate on his presidential years or only on his anti-slavery writings, Guelzo concentrates on documents from Lincoln’s earliest political activity as an Illinois state legislator in the 1830s up through his presidency. The result is an accessible resource for students, researchers, and general readers.