Analysing the depiction of African Italian mixed-race subjects from the historical epics of the Italian silent "golden" era to the contemporary period, Equivocal Subjects engages the history of Italian nationalism and colonialism through theories of subject formation, ideologies of race, and postcolonial theory. Greene's approach also provides a novel interpretation of recent developments surrounding Italy's status as a major passage for immigrants seeking to enter the European Union. This book provides an original theoretical approach to the Italian cinema that speaks to the nation's current political and social climate.
Machiavelli is popularly known as a teacher of tyrants, a key proponent of the unscrupulous “Machiavellian” politics laid down in his landmark political treatise The Prince. Others cite the Discourses on Livy to argue that Machiavelli is actually a passionate advocate of republican politics who saw the need for occasional harsh measures to maintain political order. Which best characterizes the teachings of the prolific Italian philosopher? With Machiavelli’s Politics, Catherine H. Zuckert turns this question on its head with a major reinterpretation of Machiavelli’s prose works that reveals a surprisingly cohesive view of politics. Starting with Machiavelli’s two major political works, Zuckert persuasively shows that the moral revolution Machiavelli sets out in The Prince lays the foundation for the new form of democratic republic he proposes in the Discourses. Distrusting ambitious politicians to serve the public interest of their own accord, Machiavelli sought to persuade them in The Prince that the best way to achieve their own ambitions was to secure the desires and ambitions of their subjects and fellow citizens. In the Discourses, he then describes the types of laws and institutions that would balance the conflict between the two in a way that would secure the liberty of most, if not all. In the second half of her book, Zuckert places selected later works—La Mandragola, The Art of War, The Life of Castruccio Castracani, Clizia, and Florentine Histories—under scrutiny, showing how Machiavelli further developed certain aspects of his thought in these works. In The Art of War, for example, he explains more concretely how and to what extent the principles of organization he advanced in The Prince and the Discourses ought to be applied in modern circumstances. Because human beings act primarily on passions, Machiavelli attempts to show readers what those passions are and how they can be guided to have productive rather than destructive results. A stunning and ambitious analysis, Machiavelli’s Politics brilliantly shows how many conflicting perspectives do inform Machiavelli’s teachings, but that one needs to consider all of his works in order to understand how they cohere into a unified political view. This is a magisterial work that cannot be ignored if a comprehensive understanding of the philosopher is to be obtained.
Boethius, the Roman philosopher, was executed for treason and pilloried by modern scholars for misinterpreting Aristotle to the West. This book examines his semantics and logic, attempting to clear his name and lend him new credence.
Future Texts: Subversive Performance and Feminist Bodies sketches several possibilities for future texts, those that imagine new pathways through the forms used to express contemporary questions of race, gender, and identity. Future Texts: Subversive Performance and Feminist Bodies’ area of investigation is situated within popular culture, not as a place of critique or celebration, but rather as a contested site that crosses an array of media forms, from music video, to games, to global journalism. While there is an established tradition in feminist writing founded on experimental expression that disrupts patriarchal culture, it has too often failed to consider issues of race and class. This is evident in the dilemma faced by black feminists who, alienated from dominant feminism’s failure to consider their experience, have been forced to choose whether they were black or women first. To push back against such identity splintering, Future Texts: Subversive Performance and Feminist Bodies begins with the politics and aesthetics of Afrofuturism, which sets the stage for the dialogue around contemporary feminism that runs through the collection. With a paradigm of remix as linguistic play and reconfiguration, the chapters confront the question of narrative codes and conventions. These new formats are crucial to rewriting the relationship between hegemonic and resistant texts.
Evidence-Based Imaging is a user-friendly guide to the evidence-based science and merit defining the appropriate use of medical imaging in both adult and pediatric patients. Chapters are divided into major areas of medical imaging and cover the most prevalent diseases in developed countries, including the four major causes of mortality and morbidity: injury, coronary artery disease, cancer, and cerebrovascular disease. This book gives the reader a clinically-relevant overview of evidence-based imaging, with topics including epidemiology, patient selection, imaging strategies, test performance, cost-effectiveness, radiation safety and applicability. Each chapter is framed around important and provocative clinical questions relevant to the daily physician’s practice. Key points and summarized answers are highlighted so the busy clinician can quickly understand the most important evidence-based imaging data. A wealth of illustrations and summary tables reinforces the key evidence. This revised, softcover edition adds ten new chapters to the material from the original, hardcover edition, covering radiation risk in medical imaging, the economic and regulatory impact of evidence-based imaging in the new healthcare reform environment in the United States, and new topics on common disorders. By offering a clear understanding of the science behind the evidence, Evidence-Based Imaging fills a void for radiologists, family practitioners, pediatricians, surgeons, residents, and others with an interest in medical imaging and a desire to implement an evidence-based approach to optimize quality in patient care.
