Chapter 1 traces the emergence of the social wife in late Qing diplomacy, showing how concubines became the earliest Chinese women to assume this role. By focusing on chahui, an important form of Western social gathering typically hosted by officials’ wives, it demonstrates how Qing diplomats observed the significant role of the social wife in the West. It begins with the first well-known case of an official, Guo Songtao, bringing his concubine abroad and attending public functions with her during their stay in London (1877–1879). Ambassador Guo was criticized by conservative factions at the Qing court and later recalled as punishment, partially for breaching Confucian gender propriety. It then examines how other diplomats, such as Guo’s successor, Zeng Jize, and his family adjusted to the expectation of a social wife’s presence in diplomatic functions in Europe. Finally, it shows how chahui and its gender-related etiquette were adapted to suit the cultural contexts of late Qing China to entertain Western dignitaries, enabling Chinese officials’ wives to attend without violating the Confucian norm of gender separation.

This chapter looks at the use of representations of the rural to explore how the cinematic countryside functions in war films. War films in British and US cinema are riddled with rural representations, used as scenic devices for narrative and plot purposes and as metaphors for broader arguments and anxieties about national identity and the morality of armed conflict. The chapter discusses three types of representation; the rural as hostile territory; the rural as a legitimate space for national defence; and the rural as a space in which anxieties about armed conflict can be played out. It concludes with the observation that the connection between warfare and the rural is being destabilised, in the age of 'postmodern' war and the Revolution in Military Affairs. The symbolism of landscape is overwhelming in Southern Comfort, an allegorical film which transposes the American military experience in Vietnam to the Louisiana swamps.

The contributing editors assess the future of technology and the law of the sea in light of the distribution of power and authority among flag states, port states and coastal states.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that the structural instability and the accelerated pace of life driven by the conditions for 'flexible accumulation' makes meaningful existence and fulfilment in work ever more difficult. It considers the importation of market values to the public sector and their import for the attitudes and behaviours of its middle-class professional employees. The book considers Ian McEwan's novel Saturday to show how story is used to make sense of experience and how coherent identity is constructed by the suppression of contradiction. It looks at the nature of the autobiographic text, drawing on the form's history and contemporary manifestation in migrant travelogues to understand its particular appeal at this time of structural instability and biographical uncertainty.

The programmes such as The Colbert Report and The Daily Show offer up an alternative and arguably more honest version of the news in the guise of satire. Numerous studies demonstrate that many Americans actually get their 'news' from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report; they trust it more than the 'real' news. This is especially true of younger viewers who are very postmodern in their approach to news, news commentary and infotainment. The Colbert Report exemplifies a postmodern pastiche that rejects Jean Baudrillard's thinking about the exhaustion of communication, instead injecting meaning in meta-humour. The opening of The Colbert Report is an almost hallucinogenic display of exaggerated patriotism, underscored by a compelling rock and roll main theme, written by and performed by Rick Nielsen and his band, the classic rock act Cheap Trick.

In the spring of 1964, the first British lesbian magazine, Arena Three, was produced and circulated to a small number of subscribers. Amongst the most heated debates enacted in Arena Three throughout its eight years were those which touched upon issues identified in sexological and other medical and scientific writings on lesbianism. Alison Oram has argued that Minorities Research Group (MRG) sought to exploit medico-scientific interest in lesbianism, believing that collaborating in research would offer an opportunity to push MRG's own agenda. A proposal to establish a social club, suggested in the first issue of Arena Three, enabled many readers to crystallise their early notions of lesbian identity and to define the boundaries of their community. In addition to the fundamental conflict that existed between the material and discursive communities of MRG and Arena Three, the organisation of social meetings, particularly in London, exacerbated existing financial and administrative tensions.

We have seen how to use TLA to write abstract programs and show that they satisfy simple safety and liveness properties. In this chapter, we pause in our development to consider two problems. The first is determining if an abstract program written in TLA expresses what we want it to. We consider an approach to this problem that is different from what we have been doing—determining what the program might do, rather than what it must or must not do. The second problem is describing and reasoning about the real-time behavior of systems. I hope that seeing how this problem is addressed with TLA helps you appreciate the power of thinking of an abstract program as a predicate on behaviors rather than a generator of behaviors.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the origins of the refugee problem and shows that the flight and expulsion of the refugees and expellees from their homelands from the autumn of 1944 onwards was a direct consequence of National Socialist policies. It demonstrates that the task of integrating the refugees and expellees was one of the most urgent facing the Allied Occupying authorities and German State Governments after the Second World War. The book analyses the relations between the refugee and native populations in the Western Occupation Zones of Germany in the period 1945-1950. It focuses on the attitude of the political parties towards the refugees and expellees in the early post-war years and also analyses the newcomers' voting behaviour up to 1950. The book examines the issue of political radicalisation.

We have seen how to write the safety property of an abstract program in TLA. We now see how to write its liveness property. This chapter precisely defines safety and liveness properties, and shows why and how the liveness property of an abstract program is written as a particular kind of liveness property called a fairness property. In principle, any property that can be described mathematically can be expressed in TLA by such an abstract program. The chapter also shows how to use TLA to prove that a program satisfies a liveness property.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book concentrates upon performance in conjunction with the concept of genre. It begins with an examination of contemporary film noir, which specifically builds upon de Cordova's account of 'dissimulation' as performed within the genre. The book focuses on an expansive account of shifts in performance styles associated with the British television horror play. It notes that television docudrama seems to invite a knowing audience to draw upon their knowledge of other television genres as well as anterior knowledge of reported events. The book examines the ways in which comedic performance strategies are utilised by the 'left-leaning' presenters of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. It is concerned with a certain mixing of truth and falsehood in performance and the overt blurring of generic boundaries in British comedy series.

This chapter outlines the theoretical framework in which this study is located, emphasising the process's ideological continuum, and the existence, nature and function of different spaces within a constantly changing context, as well as considering the dominant patterns of interpretation in analyses of Cuban literature and culture since 1959. It also looks at the idea of a different notion of value, suggesting an essential framework for understanding the whole question. The chapter ends by setting out the conceptual tools and methods that have been developed here in order to understand literary culture in the Revolution.