The chapter collects the information obtained in the earlier chapters about network summary statistics under some of the best-studied models. The statistics considered are the degree distribution, the numbers of vertices of given degree, counts of subgraphs, the structure of neighbourhoods, the numbers of vertices of different types in the giant component and shortest path lengths.

Chapter 6 explores how those who do not live according to the way of faith take on the devil’s characteristics to the extent that they are known by him and claimed as his own. As scholarly work on Gregory of Nyssa’s vision of the spiritual life has proliferated, commentators have focused on virtue, participation, and how human beings become like God. In contrast, Chapter Six argues that Gregory’s vision of the spiritual life is concerned not only with how human beings can become divine, but also with how they can become diabolic. Here we come to a central problem with the devil. According to Gregory of Nyssa’s teaching in On the Beatitudes and On the Lord’s Prayer, just as children of the ‘Heavenly Father’ become like God, children of the ‘Subterranean Father’ become like the devil.

In Ngugi wa Thiong’os works, Agĩkũyũ cultural history is almost always perceived through its tensions and contestations with the British colonial enterprise. This is unsurprising because Ngugi is a product of these two cultures. In his early works, it is the powerful image of the mother that calls our attention to Ngugi’s rootedness in the Gĩkũyũ cultural foundation. Still, it is his mother, Wanjiku – herself a victim of dislocation that came with the chaos and violence of colonial occupation – who becomes the conduit to Ngugi’s new identity as a Western-educated colonial subject. Wanjiku is to Ngugi what Nyokabi, in Weep Not, Child, is to Njoroge: an adjuvant of assurance and hope during moments of crisis. One of these crises is a demand by modernity for Ngugi to shun the past in which his mother and all she represents reside. The past, however, resists complete erasure because its marginalisation enables the rise of a new and modern order. In wrestling with this crisis, Ngugi’s life of writing has been characterised by an unceasing search for a form that can create new cultural mythos. In this chapter, I argue that Ngugi’s unending search is now manifested in his new translation project.

This chapter asks whether we can detect signs of aesthetic or ideological design in the reviving of plays for courtly audiences. It takes as its case study the 1621–2 Christmas season at court, which is unusual in that a complete list of the plays performed has survived, with dates. The Master of the Revels, whose job it was to select plays from the commercial theatre for court performance, might have been especially cautious during this season, because it occurred at a time when King James was asserting his power over a rebellious House of Commons and restricting outspoken preachers and pamphleteers from criticizing his policies. This case study suggests that we may be justified in seeing careful design in the choice of revivals in the early modern English court.

By the summer of 1794, the store of examples, precepts and precedents that was available from the past had partly permeated the present. The concept of a droit de commune that was used to underpin the fall of the Bastille and the establishment of the National Guard went on to be used to assert the political entitlements of the network of communes in Paris and provincial France and justify the rival claims of Paris over the provinces or the provinces over Paris at the height of the conflict between Jacobins and Girondins in 1793. The idea of a Hebrew republic that once stood either for a combination of divine sovereignty and civil magistracy or for absolute monarchy and its Monarchomach alternatives was later invoked not only to justify the civil constitution of the clergy as a closer approximation to the original church but also to question the compatibility between the monarchy and a republic and, echoing Tom Paine, to highlight the old, but now new, salience of democracy to the modern age.

In African Literature in the World, Simon Gikandi asks: Why do debates on language continue to inform and haunt African writing? What happened when writing replaced orality as the primary form of creative expression? When, how, and why did the novel come to occupy such a dominant role in African literary history?

This is a comprehensive study of the histories and theories of African literature in the twentieth century and shows how African writers adopted and transformed the English language and its traditions to account for African identities and experiences. Concerned with writing and reading as forms of mediation, Gikandi provides examples of how imaginative works shaped the public sphere in Africa in relation to decolonization and the politics of language. He explores how the emergence of a modern tradition of African writing has generated new forms of criticism in relation to the form of the novel, modernity, and modernism.

In Africa, heads of government and civil society representatives have linked climate resilience to the urgent need to address the continent's debt crisis. The African Leaders Nairobi Declaration on Climate Change has called for a restructuring and relief from the debt as being essential to achieving climate goals, along with access to health and education (African Union 2023). A 2023 statement clarifies that Africa is bearing the social and economic brunt of global warming despite not being responsible for it. Dealing with the catastrophic effects of climate change on lives, livelihoods, and economies through loans is further exacerbating the ‘great financial divide’ between wealthy nations and African countries. This is neither sustainable nor just.

These negotiations reflect historical processes of social exclusion, economic dominance, and political control that have marginalized not just specific communities but also entire geographies. The climate discourse is not spared from this and remains vulnerable to reproducing inequities. The most recent reflection of this is Papua New Guinea's decision to withdraw from the 29th Climate Conference of Parties (COP29) calling it a ‘total waste of time’ (Bush 2024), as there remains inaction on the part of big emitters to reform the economic models to reduce emissions and rich nations to ensure _nancing.

Climate Justice seeks that the climate discourse reject exclusion and recognize marginalization of people and places. In doing so, it creates a complex process of embedding questions of power, hierarchy, fairness, and relief as necessary to understand climate change.

This chapter examines ways that different communities of ancient Greece accepted and integrated the goddess Peithō despite her ambiguous influence over social relations, economics, and politics. Borrowing principles from social psychology, the chapter reframes cult ritual and dramatic performance as means by which different poleis effectively enacted reactance reduction strategies for their citizenry. Collective practices like these reduced anxiety, shifted cognitions, and expanded tolerance for peithō’s enduring presence. The chapter identifies the foundation myths and worship rituals at Sicyon and Athens, along with performances of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, as social mechanisms that raised awareness of peithō’s threat while simultaneously foregrounding her unitive potential within the community. The chapter includes a survey of textual and material evidence for these cults and a close analysis of peithō’s double-binding effects on characters in the Oresteia, one of the most famous political dramas of the Athenian democracy.

We discuss classical results on phase transitions in Erdős–Rényi random graphs and related recent results on random planar graphs and random graphs embeddable on other orientable surfaces of constant genus. The main focus is on how imposing the planarity constraint (or more generally, the genus constraint) a_ects the global and local structure of random graphs, such as their component structure, local limits, and maximum degree.

This chapter examines Paul Cullen’s interest in history, moral theology, and the politcal, theological, and social climate of Papal Rome under Gregory XVI.

After revisiting the main arguments and evidence presented in the book, the epilogue offers avenues for future research and returns to the collective mechanisms that fostered tolerance for peithō’s ambiguity and coerciveness in ancient Greece. To demonstrate the potential applicability of this study to other contexts, the epilogue surveys texts from fields outside Classics that express similar concerns about the paradoxes of persuasion in society today. It concludes by contrasting the psychosocial preparedness of ancient Greek communities with the experiences of modern-day jurors subjected to prolonged coercive persuasion during a trial.

This chapter sets the scene for later analyses, providing a historical overview of African RIOs. I trace the evolution of African RIOs, and discuss how leaders developed RIO policies in response to domestic and transnational threats against their political stability, as well as changing international norms.

This chapter traces the collapse of the alliance between Irish Catholicism and the British Liberal party due to William Gladstone’s attempt to reform Irish higher education against the wishes of much of his own party and Paul Cullen. The result wa a parliamentary defeat, Gladstone’s (temporary) resignation, and the end of a previously fruitful political relationship.

Chapter 7 closes the study by focusing on a single source: Gregory of Nyssa’s homilies On the Song of Songs. Through them, he weaves his most comprehensive and sustained account of the history, ontology, and activity of the devil and his army of demons. Only Christ is victorious over this army of hostile powers in the proper sense. Christians participate in Christ’s victory by journeying with Gregory through On the Song of Songs. The way of victory begins with baptism and continues with prayer, pure thoughts, and self-knowing. Like those sources examined in the previous chapters, the homilies undertake a journey toward victory, bringing to the fore the eschatological nature of spiritual warfare. This chapter, along with the previous ones, demonstrates that in addition to his other accolades, Gregory of Nyssa was an erudite homilist and skilled teacher on spiritual warfare.