Sorghum is a drought-tolerant crop and thus an important food source in semi-arid regions of the world. The area under sorghum production has declined from 18 million ha in 1970 to 6.98 million ha in 2009–10. This decline is more prominent in kharif (rainy) season than in rabi (post-rainy) season. The consumer demands in food production have changed considerably in the last three decades. It is believed that food is not only required to provide necessary nutrients but also to prevent nutrition-related diseases and improve physical and mental well-being of consumers. Sorghum products are being promoted for their positive health benefits by the Directorate of Sorghum Research under the National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP). This promotion aims at rural income augmentation and employment generation through post-harvest processing, value addition, and development of rural agro-industries.

I appreciate the collaborative efforts of the authors in bringing out this valuable publication. It will be an important reference book for planners, policy-makers, plant breeders, socio-economists, and nutritionists alike to devise steps to enhance the production, consumption, utilization, and marketing of sorghum.

a. The Great Depression of 1929

The hopeful era ushered in by Harding and Coolidge in the post-WWI period, proved to be short lived. Coming a long way from Wilsonian idealism, America in the 1920s, gave itself over to crass materialism and to ruthless making and spending of money. When Herbert Clark Hoover became the President in 1929, the nation thrived in affluence, which inspired the new president to comment, ‘we in America are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.’ There was boom in big business and technological goods and factory productions could not keep up with the increasing greed for newer and newer gadgets; stocks and shares skyrocketed. It was the dawn of a new era of plenitude and prosperity. But this euphoria did not last long.

Abstract: In their article “The Contextual Study of Literature and Culture. Globalization, and Digital Humanities” Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvári discuss the situation of the humanities with regard to the discipline of comparative literature and the fields of world literature, cultural studies, and comparative cultural studies. Their postulate is that in order to make the study of literature and culture a socially, politically, and economically relevant activity of scholarship today, humanities scholars ought to turn to contextual and evidence-based work. Further, they argue that comparative cultural studies—an approach that is inter- and multi-disciplinary and employs new media technology—would achieve global presence and social relevance for the humanities with in-depth scholarship.

Introduction

The perspective of comparison in scholarship has been (and continues to be) widely employed in various disciplines. Among several compelling lines of argumentation put forward of recent are, for example, by Marcel Detienne in his Comparing the Incomparable, George M. Fredrickson in his The Comparative Imagination, or as Richard A. Peterson states, “comparison is one of the most powerful tools used in intellectual inquiry, since an observation made repeatedly is given more credence than is a single observation” (257). At the same time, in and about the discipline of comparative literature it remains a recurrent view that it is lacking definition, has no or only a partial framework of theory and/or methodology, and that for these reasons the discipline remains with a history and presence of insecurity (see, e.g., Grabovszki).

Abstract: In their article “Comparative Poetics in Chinese” Xiaolu Wang and Yan Liu describe the development of comparative poetics by sketching major publications and the general institutional situation of the discipline. Wang and Liu suggest that comparative work remains impulsive although dynamic. Like other fields in the humanities, the study of poetics—comparative or other—in Chinese is no longer traditional in terms of a discursive form, but copied from the West. Although the scholarly achievements in the field within the past thirty years are considerable, problems remain including the issue of translation of Western theories and the approaching foreign scholarship with narrow minded nationalism. Wang's and Liu's postulate that the role scholars working in Chinese ought to knowledge from the ways of how the issues and questions studied would cross cultural boundaries.

Poetics (shixue), like most of the frequently used literary terms with a long history, does not necessarily carry a strict definition. In both China and the West, poetics has long been used as a technical term referring to different approaches to composition, interpretation, and the exegesis play in the humanities in general and in comparative poetics in particular. According to Webster's New World Dictionary of American Language, poetics is “the theory or structure of poetry” (1100), whereas in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics it is defined as “theory of literature,” theory of literary discourse,” and “theory of poetry” (930).

American History is the most widely explored area of research with numerous works getting added into the existing database on every particular topic every year. But all these include the work of American scholars and researchers. Though American History has been a constant part of post-graduate history syllabus of all Indian universities, no effective interpretative history, including wide range of topics from the birth of the nation to its emergence as the ‘superpower hegemon’ and its responses from other parts of the world, has been written historian by any Indian.

In this book, the authors have captured the historical sojourn of the American nation from pre-colonial to post-colonial times covering every important aspect that naturally flows from one to the other finally forming a cohesive whole. One interesting feature of this book is that the authors have provided historiography for every relevant theme with the understanding that as American History is such an emerging field, hence it is difficult for all to grab every book on a particular subject, posing the danger of making his/her knowledge incomplete. Hence, this book provides a brief synopsis of almost all major works till the recent times, also making the reader understand the immediate socio-economic and political trends that had shaped a particular research.

I have addressed one of the emerging themes concerning modern Tamil socio-cultural history, namely the reproduction and reception of classical Tamil literature at the intersection of print/publishing history, social change and colonial modernisation. I attempt to provide the summary of chapters and highlight in particular the significant findings, questions that have been raised for future research and the limitations of the present study.

The second and third chapters which formed the first portion of the book focused on the socio-economic and cultural history of the reproduction of classical Tamil literature. It dealt with the long-term historical understanding of how the classics were handed down or transmitted in Tamil literary tradition. The Tamil literary field of the pre-modern period was closely interacting with the other historical forces that necessitated moving away from purely literary history to enquiries on literary cultures in history and socio-economic and cultural history. The unified and narratable history of Tamil literature, especially the history of classics encapsulating the ‘totality’, was made possible by extending the field of enquiry to literary cultures in history and socioeconomic and cultural history. I have dealt with a variety of source materials ranging from the collections of Colin Mackenzie to the early modern commentaries to the medieval Tamil grammar book Nannool. The chapter pointed out that instead of reproducing the self-perception of the editors/publishers of classical Tamil literature during colonial Tamil Nadu as representing the ‘total’ history of the processes leading to the reproduction of classics from manuscript tradition to print forms, it is necessary to read their works critically.

On 1 February 2005, the only challenger to Prachanda's supreme position and power was locked up, under armed Maoist guards, inside a small mud house in an isolated corner of Lawang village. In a poorly-lit and unheated room, the deputy leader of the Maoists, Baburam Bhattarai lay on a small bed, reading. Detained with him was his wife Hisila Yami, who was also a Maoist leader. She appeared much stronger than her intellectual husband, and was frustrated at not being allowed to go outside. Incarcerated because of her husband's actions, she considered herself a sati of the twenty-first century.

Baburam Bhattarai was arrested for writing an article that had been published in the premier national broadsheet Kantipur (Daily) before the party had a chance to debate its content. Bhattarai's article, “Princely Tendency and Democracy”, was a follow-up to another shrewdly analysed article, “Difference between Democracy and Monarchy”, by Devendra Raj Pandey, a civil society activist. Bhattarai had written:

Abstract: In her article “Comparative Cultural Studies and the Study of the Medieval Literature” Roberta Capelli discusses the importance of studying medieval authors and manuscripts using a contextual and comparatist approach. She postulates that the conceptual eclecticism and empirical pragmatism of comparative cultural studies offer scholars useful theoretical and methodological parameters of analysis to understand the palimpsestic nature of medieval texts. While inter-and multidisciplinary training in the traditional fields of medieval studies (textual criticism, history, philosophy, etc.) is necessary to deal with the socio-cultural, textual, visual, etc., complexities of the medieval world, Capelli suggests that medievalists would benefit from employing new media technologies in digital humanities.

Introduction

Today, the fascination with matters medieval—in particular the Gothic—occur in all manners and genres whether literature, cinema, television, and new media including the world wide web and video games, etc., and the resurgence of medieval genres, heroes, themes, myths, and traditions are re-shaping our understanding of the Middle Ages (see, e.g., Charlesworth; Fugelso; Pearsall; Utz and Shippey; Weisl). But also the scholarly approach to the Middle Ages has been undergoing significant changes through the last century including the re-thinking and updating the theoretical and methodological bases of research in light of the new literacies and technologies.

The Middle Ages is the period of European history from the fall of the Roman empire in the West (fifth century) to the fall of the empire in the East with Constantinople in 1453.

Abstract: In her article “Arab Fiction and Migration in the Work of Haqqi and Salih” Ikram Masmoudi proposes that twentieth-century Arab fiction is marked by the theme of the journey in literal and figurative ways. The Saint's Lamp by Yahya Haqqi and Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih depict two different kinds of enigmatic arrivals. Their arrival is the opportunity to adjust and assess their positions and their cultural differences. Although the two arriving protagonists in these novels have different attitudes vis-à-vis the West and their local culture, the structure of arrival in both novels is not straightforward and immediate, but instead reflects a negotiation between two attitudes and a transition from an immediate, physical arrival to an inner, mental arrival. This leads to a new understanding of and an adjustment to a fuller sense of arrival.

In the middle of his life and experience as a writer living and writing in England, the main character and narrator of V. S. Naipaul's autobiographical novel The Enigma of Arrival, an Indian from colonial Trinidad retires to the English countryside to heal and reflect on a series of aspects of his life: his metropolitan encounters, his career, and his early attempts at writing. In the cottage he rents he stumbles upon a few books left there by pervious tenants. Among them was a booklet with reproductions of famous paintings.

On 28 May 2008, a few hours before midnight, and just 20 days after the Election Commission of Nepal announced the results of the historic Constituent Assembly polls, the first meeting of the Assembly declared the abolition of the country's 239-year-old monarchy. It resulted in a magical and rare outburst of collective emotions. Traditional and staunchly monarchical, the Kingdom of Nepal became the youngest republic in the world—without a single bullet being fired. A twenty-first century republic!

All day, Kathmandu was celebration personified. Political party activists staged rallies in different corners of the city, waving flags and chanting republican slogans. Cultural events—traditional dance, songs and recitations—were performed throughout the city. Many young students painted their faces with the slogan Republican Nepal. Some radical activists even burnt effigies of the deposed King—their bête noire.

There was unending public enthusiasm. In the evening, thousands of candles were lit and firecrackers set off across the blue-black sky, adding to the festivities. Many people illuminated their houses, to celebrate the birth of a republic.

The historic declaration of the republic was made in the Birendra International Convention Centre which was named ater the late king and was inaugurated by him 15 years ago. The Centre's Sagarmatha Hall was chosen to host the first official meeting of the new Constituent Assembly, signalling the end of the rule of the Shah dynasty.

The inequality between the players created problems for the managers of the Constituent Assembly election. The Commission was ridiculed by the media and the civil society for failing to take effective action against the violations. The news reports carried disapproving headlines, like Toothless Election Commission, Impotent EC and Feeble Commission. The Commission began to lose what it valued most—its integrity.

Then, a complaint was filed by Dev Shankar Poudel, the UML candidate from the Rammechap-1 constituency, who stated that the Maoists had attacked his group while they were out campaigning. Poudyal said the Maoists had encircled them, and attacked him and his supporters with iron rods, heavy wooden sticks, large rough stones and Khukuris (Nepalese knifes), and stolen Nepalese Rupees 335,800 in cash.

That night, all the news channels showed Poudel lying in a hospital bed with injuries all over his body and a smashed and bloody head. When the Chief saw the images he was white with rage. He felt he had to take action, at any cost, to prevent a repetition of such an assault.

First, he planned to cancel the nomination of the Maoist candidate who was accused of being responsible for the attack on Poudel. The Chief was determined to use his executive prerogative to shorten the normally lengthy process of cancelling a nomination—in order to send a clear message to the perpetrators of violence.

a. From ‘Splendid Isolation’ to ‘Manifest Destiny’

The Monroe Doctrine which had essentially been a doctrine for isolation underwent a gradual transformation, its principle and ideology being re-interpreted and applied to pave the way towards ‘Manifest Destiny’ especially since the fag end of the nineteenth century, though the process already initiated few decades before that. It is worth mentioning here that American Foreign Policy was the indispensable midwife to the birth of the American Republic.

Hemmed in between the two twenty-first century superpowers—China and India—Nepal is home to nearly 26.5 million people of different ethnicity, caste and religious groups. They inhabit an area of around 147,000 sq km, which stretches from low flatlands—an extension of the Gangetic plains of present-day India in the south, to high mountains soaring to nearly 9,000 metres in the north. The Nepalese speak over 100 languages, and have different festivals, attire and food habits. But in contrast to its cultural richness, Nepal is considered poor in economic terms. The United Nations (UN) has designated Nepal as a least developed country; over 60 per cent of its population lives on less than two dollars a day and around 35 per cent is illiterate. Unsurprisingly, Nepal is said to reflect the socio-economic and political features of troubled sub-Saharan Africa.

Nepal emerged as a modern state in the mid-eighteenth century, when a number of small warring principalities were consolidated into a united kingdom. Prithivinarayan Shah, former King of the old House of Gorkha, led the consolidation process, which was achieved by a combination of war and diplomacy. He is also credited with utilising clever political strategies to keep the British colonialists, who were sweeping through South Asia, at bay. Prithivinarayan Shah's astute state building skills institutionalised the sovereignty of the Shah King in Nepal, who wielded supreme authority and power as an absolute ruler.

Abstract: In his article “The Notion of Life in the Work of Agamben” Carlo Salzani analyzes the notion of “nudity” Giorgio Agamben's understanding of Western culture. Beginning with a reading ofthe essay “Nudity,” in which Agamben proposes an archaeological investigation of the theological apparatus of the concept, Salzani analyzes the pivotal trope in Agamben's Homo Sacer project, “bare” or “naked life,” that is, the nudity of life in the grip of sovereign power. Nudity and the nudity of life are construed as a “limit-concept” in a double movement of simultaneous positing and negation or in a positing that grants at the same time the inappropriability of its object. Salzani highlights how much this “liminality” owes to a tradition that borders the aesthetics and ranges from Kant's “sublime” to Heidegger's Ereignis via Benjamin's “expressionless-ness.” In Agamben's thought this risks to resemble a “mystical intuition,” as he argues in his first book, The Man Without Content, about Kant's aesthetic judgment.

Introduction

The work of philosopher Giorgio Agamben has gained a central place in politico-philosophical debates since the publication of his 1995 book Homo Sacer. Agamben elaborates on and defines Western culture with a particular understanding and construction of the meaning of life based on the methodological approach of “archaeology” he borrows from Michel Foucault.

Abstract: In his article “Teaching World Literatures” John D. Pizer argues that “world literature” is a notoriously vague term. It not only lacks disciplinary specificity because it suggests all literature at all times from all places, but also oscillates between signifying a pedagogical domain on the one hand and articulating a heuristic concept indicating how literature circulates in the world on the other. Pizer suggests that contemporary world literature instructors share the goal of teaching their students to comprehend both what is universal in world literature, what is culturally specific, what is familiar, and what is alienating in the texts they read. He outlines a means for achieving this goal by using a meta-theoretical approach of contextual dialectics. Further, Pizer discusses his strategy of teaching otherness by reducing and enhancing student familiarity with syllabus texts by drawing on the Russian Formalist concept of ostranenie.

When a student at university enrolls in an introductory class to almost any subject—be it physics, biology, psychology, history of English literature, etc.—he/she can expect in the initial part of the course to learn how the discipline is defined, what its boundaries are, and what content and techniques are included and/or excluded from its purview.