Looking at monuments, murals, computer games, recycling campaigns, children's books, and other visual artifacts, The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures reassesses communism's historical and cultural legacy.

Stereotypes often cast communism as a defunct, bankrupt ideology and a relic of the distant past. However, recent political movements like Europe's anti-austerity protests, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street suggest that communism is still very much relevant and may even hold the key to a new, idealized future. In The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures, contributors trace the legacies of communist ideology in visual culture, from buildings and monuments, murals and sculpture, to recycling campaigns and wall newspapers, all of which work to make communism's ideas and values material. Contributors work to resist the widespread demonization of communism, demystifying its ideals and suggesting that it has visually shaped the modern world in undeniable and complex ways. Together, contributors answer curcial questions like: What can be salvaged and reused from past communist experiments? How has communism impacted the cultures of late capitalism? And how have histories of communism left behind visual traces of potential utopias? An interdisciplinary look at the cultural currency of communism today, The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures demonstrates the value of revisiting the practices of the past to form a better vision of the future.

The impact of Communism on the twentieth century was massive, equal to that of the two world wars. Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, historians knew relatively little about the secretive world of communist states and parties. Since then, the opening of state, party, and diplomatic archives of the former Eastern Bloc has released a flood of new documentation. The thirty-five essays in this Handbook, written by an international team of scholars, draw on this new material to offer a global history of communism in the twentieth century. In contrast to many histories that concentrate on the Soviet Union, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism is genuinely global in its coverage, paying particular attention to the Chinese Revolution. It is 'global', too, in the sense that the essays seek to integrate history 'from above' and 'from below', to trace the complex mediations between state and society, and to explore the social and cultural as well as the political and economic realities that shaped the lives of citizens fated to live under communist rule. The essays reflect on the similarities and differences between communist states in order to situate them in their socio-political and cultural contexts and to capture their changing nature over time. Where appropriate, they also reflect on how the fortunes of international communism were shaped by the wider economic, political, and cultural forces of the capitalist world. The Handbook provides an informative introduction for those new to the field and a comprehensive overview of the current state of scholarship for those seeking to deepen their understanding.

Broadly speaking, The Oxford Handbook of Civil Society views the topic of civil society through three prisms: as a part of society (voluntary associations), as a kind of society (marked out by certain social norms), and as a space for citizen action and engagement (the public square or sphere).

Over its lifetime, 'political economy' has had different meanings. This handbook views political economy as a synthesis of the various strands of social science, treating it as the methodology of economics applied to the analysis of political behaviour and institutions.

This volume offers an authoritative and accessible state-of-the-art analysis of the historical institutionalism research tradition in Political Science.

Comic book studies has developed as a solid academic discipline, becoming an increasingly vibrant field in the United States and globally. A growing number of dissertations, monographs, and edited books publish every year on the subject, while world comics represent the fastest-growing sector of publishing. The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies looks at the field systematically, examining the history and evolution of the genre from a global perspective. This includes a discussion of how comic books are built out of shared aesthetic systems such as literature, painting, drawing, photography, and film. The Handbook brings together readable, jargon-free essays written by established and emerging scholars from diverse geographic, institutional, gender, and national backgrounds. In particular, it explores how the term "global comics" has been defined, as well the major movements and trends that will drive the field in the years to come. Each essay will help readers understand comic books as a storytelling form grown within specific communities, and will also show how these forms exist within what can be considered a world system of comics.