The times when abstaining from cakes and ale was seen as a sign of critical virtue are over. Phenomenal Shakespeare is at your back lawn with a picnic-basket jammed with intersubjectivity, embodiment, immediacy, representation. If you feel like passing, read this book.

"A much-needed contribution to and critique of debates in the newly emerging field of transparency studies from the perspective of American literary studies. In the twenty-first century, transparency has become an ambiguous buzzword both in the public and the private realms (e.g. Wikileaks and the Snowden affair; social media). This volume takes its cue from the emerging field of transparency studies, recent scholarly work in sociology, political theory, and cultural studies that identifies a hegemonic rhetoric of transparency in public and political life. While scholars in this new field routinely gesture toward literature as the realm where secrecy may be productive, they rarely engage with literature directly, and literary studies itself remains notably absent from their debates. This collection of essays seeks to redress that state of affairs by focusing on literary texts written in an American cultural tradition steeped in the interplay between transparency and exposure, fear and secrecy, security and surveillance, and information and disinformation. The essays draw on authors ranging from Whitman, James, and Ellison to Pynchon, Morrison, and Eggers to argue that American literature complicates theoretical assumptions about transparency made in other disciplines. They question the field's strong theoretical emphasis on present-day technopolitical practices and discourses as the location of hegemonic discourse on transparency, and instead historicize such phenomena and extend them to discursive spheres that have so far been neglected (such as issues of sexuality and race). Edited by Paula Martâin-Salvâan and Sascha Pèohlmann. Contributors: Tomasz Basiuk, Jesâus Blanco Hidalga, Cristina Chevere÷san, Julia Faisst, Michel Feith, Juliâan Jimâenez Heffernan, Tiina Kèakelèa, Juan L. Pâerez-de-Luque, Umberto Rossi, Jelena éSesniâc, Toon Staes, Julia Straub, Alice Sundman"--

The times when abstaining from cakes and ale was seen as a sign of critical virtue are over. Phenomenal Shakespeare is at your back lawn with a picnic-basket jammed with intersubjectivity, embodiment, immediacy, representation. If you feel like passing, read this book.

Text, translation and Interpretation of selected Upanishads, Hindu philosophical classics.

This handbook is the first to provide a systematic investigation of the various roles of producers in commercial and not-for-profit musical theatre. Featuring fifty-one essays written by international specialists in the field, it offers new insights into the world of musical theatre, its creation and its promotion. Key areas of investigation include the lives and works of producers whose work is part of a US and worldwide musical theatre legacy, as well as the largely critically-neglected role of the musical theatre producer in the making, marketing, and performance of musicals. Also explored are the shifting roles of producers in musical theatre and their popular portrayals, offering a reader-friendly collection for fans, scholars, students, and practitioners of musical theatre alike.

Opera for the People is an in-depth examination of a forgotten chapter in American social and cultural history: the love affair that middle-class Americans had with continental opera (translated into English) in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. Author Katherine Preston reveals how-contrary to the existing historiography on the American musical culture of this period-English-language opera not only flourished in the United States during this time, but found its success significantly bolstered by the support of women impresarios, prima-donnas, managers, and philanthropists who provided financial backing to opera companies. This rich and compelling study details the lives and professional activities of several important players in American postbellum opera, including manager Effie Ober, philanthropist Jeannette Thurber, and performers/artistic directors Caroline Richings, Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, Clara Louise Kellogg, and "the people's prima donna" Emma Abbott. Drawing from an impressive range of primary sources, including contemporaneous music and theater periodicals, playbills, memoirs, librettos, scores, and reviews and commentary on the performances in digitized newspapers, Preston tells the story of how these and other women influenced the activities of some of the more than one hundred opera companies touring the United States during the second half of the 19th century, performing opera in English for a diverse range of audiences. Countering a pervasive and misguided historical understanding of opera reception in the United States-unduly influenced by modern attitudes about the genre as elite, exclusive, expensive, and of interest only to a niche market-Opera for the People demonstrates the important (and hitherto unsuspected) place of opera in the rich cornucopia of late-century American musical theatre, which would eventually lead to the emergence of American musical comedy.