Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gray Cavender ◽  
Nancy C. Jurik
Keyword(s):  
Police Work ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Metropolitan Police ◽  
History Of ◽  
Police Procedural ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Strong Woman

This introductory chapter begins with a background on the television series Prime Suspect, which chronicles the life and career of Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren), a detective chief inspector and later a detective superintendent for the London Metropolitan Police. Beyond its worldwide popularity, Prime Suspect is a pathbreaking series because it centers a strong woman lead in a gritty portrayal within what had been an otherwise overwhelmingly male-dominated police procedural subgenre. The series has shaped also the police procedural subgenre by setting higher standards for conveying a sense of social realism in the coverage of police work and, more specifically, what media analysts call “forensic realism.” The remainder of the chapter presents a brief history of the crime genre and women's place as well as a brief history of how television has portrayed women more generally. It concludes with an overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Introduction: Reimagining a New Spartacus

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony Augoustakis ◽  
Monica S. Cyrino
Keyword(s):  
Political Movements ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Cable Network ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter discusses the highly successful television series Spartacus, which aired on the premium cable network STARZ from 2010 to 2013. The story of Spartacus, the historical Thracian gladiator who led a slave uprising against the Roman Republican army from 73 to 71 BC, has inspired numerous receptions over the centuries in a variety of different media, while the figure of the rebel slave leader has often served as an icon of resistance against oppression in modern political movements and popular ideologies. Here, the chapter looks into the production history of the STARZ series and how the series itself treads familiar ground at the same time as it explores new territory.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Television Film ◽  
Popular Image

The introductory chapter discusses the popular image of the ‘Romantic mad poet’ in television, film, theatre, fiction, the history of literary criticism, and the intellectual history of the twentieth century and its countercultures, including anti-psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Existing literary-historical work on related topics is assessed, before the introduction goes on to suggest why some problems or difficulties in writing about this subject might be productive for further cultural history. The introduction also considers at length the legacy of Michel Foucault’s Folie et Déraison (1961), and the continued viability of Foucauldian methods and concepts for examining literary-cultural representations of madness after the half-century of critiques and controversies following that book’s publication. Methodological discussion both draws on and critiques the models of historical sociology used by George Becker and Sander L. Gilman to discuss genius, madness, deviance, and stereotype in the nineteenth century. A note on terminology concludes the introduction.

Working-Class Fictions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Industrial Community ◽  
Working People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Exciting Wave

This chapter explores why working-class fictions flourished in the period from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s and the distinctive contributions that they made to the post-war British and Irish novel. These writers of working-class fiction were celebrated for their bold, socially realistic, and often candid depictions of the lives and desires of ordinary working people. Their works were seen to herald a new and exciting wave of gritty social realism. The narrative focus on the individual signalled a shift in the history of working-class writing away from the plot staples of strikes and the industrial community, striking a chord with a post-war reading public keen to see ordinary lives represented in books in a complex and realistic manner. The cultural significance of such novels was enhanced as they were adapted in quick succession for a mass cinema audience by a group of radical film-makers.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
John B. Nann ◽  
Morris L. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
The U.S

This introductory chapter provides an overview of legal history research. An attorney might conduct legal history research if the law at question in a legal dispute is very old: the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights are well over two hundred years old. Historical research also comes into play when the question at issue is what the law was at a certain time in the past. Ultimately, law plays an important part in the political and social history of the United States. As such, researchers interested in almost every aspect of American life will have occasion to use legal materials. The chapter then describes the U.S. legal system and legal authority, and offers six points to consider in approaching a historical legal research project.

scholarly journals Staging Henry Fielding: The Author-Narrator in Tom Jones On Screen

Authorship ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eli Løfaldli
Keyword(s):  
Henry Fielding ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Adaptation Theory ◽  
Tom Jones ◽  
History Of

As recent adaptation theory has shown, classic-novel adaptation typically sets issues connected to authorship and literal and figurative ownership into play. This key feature of such adaptations is also central to the screen versions of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749). In much of Fielding’s fiction, the narrator, typically understood as an embodiment of Fielding himself, is a particularly prominent presence. The author-narrator in Tom Jones is no exception: not only is his presence strongly felt throughout the novel, but through a variety of means, ‘The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling’ is also distinctly marked as being under his control and ownership. The two adaptations of Fielding’s novel, a 1963 film and a 1997 television series, both retain the figure of the author-narrator, but differ greatly in their handling of this device and its consequent thematic ramifications. Although the 1963 film de-emphasises Henry Fielding’s status as proprietor of the story, the author-narrator as represented in the film’s voiceover commentary is a figure of authority and authorial control. In contrast, the 1997 adaptation emphasises Fielding’s ownership of the narrative and even includes the author-narrator as a character in the series, but this ownership is undermined by the irreverent treatment to which he is consistently subjected. The representations of Henry Fielding in the form of the author-narrator in both adaptations are not only indicative of shifting conceptions of authorship, but also of the important interplay between authorship, ownership and adaptation more generally.

Introduction

Manhunts ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grégoire Chamayou ◽  
Steven Rendall
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book focuses on manhunts—the concrete historical phenomena in which human beings were tracked down, captured, or killed in accord with the forms of the hunt. These were regular and sometimes large-scale practices whose forms were first theorized in ancient Greece, long before their enormous expansion in the modern period in conjunction with the development of transatlantic capitalism. The main problem has to do with the fact that the hunter and the hunted do not belong to different species. Since the distinction between the predator and his prey is not inscribed in nature, the hunting relationship is always susceptible to a reversal of positions. Prey sometimes band together to become hunters in their turn. The history of a power is also the history of the struggles to overthrow it.

The Decentering of Democracies

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Rosanvallon
Keyword(s):  
Great Majority ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Majority Principle ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Democratic Elections

This introductory chapter considers the definitions of legitimacy in the context of democratic politics. Expressions such as the “great majority” or “vast majority” established the law of numbers, in contrast to the minority rule characteristic of despotic and aristocratic regimes. At first, it was the difference in the origins of power and the foundation of political obligation that was crucial. Later, the majority principle came to be recognized in a more narrowly procedural sense. The chapter traces this evolution within the history of democratic elections, positing a decentering of democracy as newer forms of political investment emerge, making democratic politics into something more than merely electing representatives.

The Debate about Guilds

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Sheilagh Ogilvie
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Human Capital Investment ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter provides a brief history of guilds and an overview of the debate surrounding them. The effects of guilds on economy and society have always attracted controversy. Contemporaries held strong views about them, with guild members and their political allies extolling their virtues, while customers, employees, and competitors lamented their misdeeds. Modern scholars are also deeply divided on guilds. Some claim that guilds were so widespread and long-lived that they must have generated economic benefits. Other scholars take a darker view. Guilds, they hold, were in a position to extract benefits for their own members by acting as cartels, exploiting consumers; rationing access to human capital investment; stifling innovation; bribing governments for favours; harming outsiders such as women, Jews, and the poor; and redistributing resources to their members at the expense of the wider economy.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Michael Koortbojian
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Feature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This introductory chapter briefly discusses the baffling history of the pomerium. The pomerium, as a fundamental feature of Rome's political topography, was especially confounding for Roman antiquarians seeking to study the origins of Rome and its institutions. Its religious role lived on, cultivated by the priesthoods—the augurs and the pontiffs—charged with its related rituals. But the realities that accompanied Rome's growth from the Romulean foundation to the caput mundi rendered much of the surviving lore that surrounded the city's mythic past incommensurate with early imperial life in the urbs. The sheer scale of the city thus challenged one's belief in so many of the stories about its formation and its growth.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document