• Law and Business
• Politics and International Relations
• Sociology
• Religious Studies
• Art, Literature and Music
• Geography and Architecture
• History

View all our African Studies books online or download our 2013 catalogue from: www.ashgate.com/africanstudies

Will you be at ECAS2013? If so, you can pick up a copy of our 2013 catalogue and take a look at some of our most recent books on the Iberian Book Services stand.

More information about ECAS 2013 – the 5th European Conference on African Studies: African dynamics in a multipolar world

This has not been accompanied by a similar growth in the expertise required to develop and use such systems for evaluating human performance. Whether for research or practitioner purposes, many of the challenges in assessing operator performance, both using simulation and in natural environments, are common.

What performance measures should be used?

What technology can support the collection of these measures across the different designs?

How can other methods and performance measures be integrated to complement objective data?

How should behaviours be coded and the performance standards measured and defined?

How can these approaches be used to support product development and training?

How can performance within these complex systems be validated?

This series addresses a shortfall in knowledge and expertise by providing a unique and dedicated forum for researchers and experienced users of simulation and field-based assessment methods to share practical experiences and knowledge in sufficient depth to facilitate delivery of practical guidance.

Series Editors: Michael Lenné, Monash University Accident Research Centre, Melbourne, Australia and Mark Young, School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University, London, UK.

We are actively commissioning new books for this series. If you have a proposal that you feel is appropriate, please contact the Publisher, Guy Loft.

Margaret P. Hannay, Ashgate author of Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth (2010), Ashgate Critical Essays on Women Writers in England, 1550-1700 (2009) and Domestic Politics and Family Absence (2005), was pleasantly surprised when during a discussion of Sidney works at the International Congress on Medieval Studies earlier this month, she was presented with the Jean Robertson Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Sidney Society.  To the rest of us familiar with Hannay’s body of work and her various professional accomplishments, like colleagues, Michael Brennan and Mary Ellen Lamb, we knew it was only a matter of time.

Brennan says, “Margaret Patterson Hannay has long been a leading figure in the study of women writers of the English Renaissance and especially of the Sidney family of Penshurst, Kent. Her wide-ranging scholarship is always coupled with an elegant and incisive delivery of her findings…Her many and authoritative publications will be long valued by other scholars and they stand as an impressive and lasting tribute to her deep knowledge and love of the literature of the English Renaissance.”

“Many” publications is an understatement. Hannay has written and published fifteen books—five of which we are proud to say have been with Ashgate. In addition to those, Hannay has written well-over fifty essays and co-edited nine collections of Sidney letters and, according to Lamb, these contributions to the field “are long-lasting and will be cited by scholars for years to come.”

However, the International Sidney Society, Brennan, and Lamb are not the first or only parties over the years to have taken notice of Hannay’s scholarly works.  Hannay has received countless honors, dating back as early as 1986 when she received a National Endowment for the Humanities.  Prior to this most recent achievement, she received the Book of the Year Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (SSEMW) in 2010 for her book, Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth. Elaine V. Beilin of Framingham State College described Hannay’s book as:

“a deeply impressive work of scholarship, notable for its remarkable scope and meticulous detail. The book brims with valuable information and astute observations about Wroth’s literary career, marriage, children and social life, and corrects the record on a number of key points with new archival evidence. “

Also in 2010 the SSEMW awarded her the Josephine A. Roberts Edition award for The Correspondence of Dorothy Percy Sidney, Countess of Leicester (2010), also an Ashgate book which she edited with Noel J. Kinnamon and Michael G. Brennan.

There is no doubt then of the deservingness of each of these individual awards over the years. Consequently, they serve as overwhelming proof that Hannay has, in fact, achieved a lifetime of accomplishments, making this latest recognition all the sweeter. It is with our greatest pleasure that we congratulate her on her Lifetime Achievement Award.

Margaret Hannay has been a faculty member at Siena since 1980. Her specialty is the literature of early modern England and she currently teaches Elizabethan Literature, English Renaissance Literature, and Shakespeare, as well as the Honors course Great Books for first year students. She has served as chair of the core curriculum committee, of the committee to establish the Honors program, and of the English department.

For more information on Hannay’s publications with Ashgate, please click on the following links:

Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth – Currently offered at a discounted price!

Ashgate Critical Essays on Women Writers in England, 1550-1700

The Correspondence of Dorothy Percy Sidney, Countess of Leicester

Domestic Politics and Family Absence

The recent death of the eminent palaeographer, Professor M.B. Parkes, saddened the many who had the good fortune to know him as an inspirational teacher, colleague, and friend.  As such, he was the subject of many fond anecdotes as seen in a short series of reminiscences which served as the introduction to the Festschrift published on the occasion of his retirement, Of the Making of Books:  Medieval Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers;  essays presented to M.B. Parkes (ed. P.R. Robinson and R. Zim), Scolar Press, 1997.

Intellectually generous and hospitable, Parkes remained in retirement ever willing to help both students and established scholars in their researches with his sage advice and accumulated knowledge of all aspects of medieval book production. Parkes’ own works had an immediate and profound impact, and no doubt a long-lasting influence, on the subject with a wide audience as required reading for any serious student of the history of the  medieval book.

His first book, English Cursive Book Hands 1250-1500, the second edition of which was published in 1979 by Scolar, reprinted Ashgate 2008, has not been superseded as an essential guide to the development of the handwriting of the later Middle Ages.  He became an Ashgate author when Scolar Press became an Ashgate imprint in 1986.

His Pause and Effect:  an introduction to the history of punctuation in the West, 1992,  is the fundamental book-length study of this important topic, while his last work, Their Hands Before Our Eyes:  a closer look at scribes, 2008, based on his Lyell Lectures in the University of Oxford, 1998-9, reflects a lifetime of meticulous scholarship on all aspects of book culture.

One collection of significant articles by him was published as Scribes, Scripts and Readers in 1991, and under the Variorum imprint, Ashgate has recently published a second, Pages from the Past:  Medieval Writing Skills and Manuscript Books  (ed. P.R. Robinson and R. Zim), 2012, being the 1000^th title in the Variorum Collected Studies series.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Kierkegaard’s birth Ashgate is offering all titles in the Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources series at 20% discount until the end of 2013.

The Kierkegaard Research Series is edited by Jon Stewart of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre Foundation, and is a multi volume series dedicated to a systematic coverage of all aspects of Kierkegaard Studies.

Interdisciplinary in nature, the series combines articles on philosophy, theology, literature, psychology and history written by the leading international Kierkegaard scholars arranged into thematically organised volumes. Each volume contains a detailed introduction, written by the editors, which traces the history of the given theme in Kierkegaard studies and an extensive index making it easy to find where the specific themes, works and persons are treated.

The series is divided into three main parts: ‘Kierkegaard’s Sources’ includes articles which perform source-work research in order to discover and document the numerous sources of Kierkegaard’s thought; ‘Kierkegaard’s Reception’ includes articles treating the countless aspects of the reception of Kierkegaard’s thought and writings in the different research traditions; the third section is for reference works including an extensive bibliography of works on Kierkegaard and a volume containing a list of the books Kierkegaard owned as they appear in the auction catalogue of his library.

To date Ashgate has published over 30 titles in this series, which is the most important, significant and comprehensive publishing treatment in English of the work and impact of Søren Kierkegaard.

The success of the Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources series was emphasised recently in the Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter

‘The editing is of the highest academic standards. The bibliographies are also an important contribution to Kierkegaard research in their own right. It is a very helpful feature that they include page references to the works in Kierkegaard’s own library that discuss the writer at hand. For instance, if you want to know what other views on Shakespeare Kierkegaard would have known about through his own book collection, you can find the references here. The bibliographies also include excellent references to secondary literature. The general editor Jon Stewart together with his co-editors must be thanked for orchestrating such a vast undertaking. Their work is nothing less than a largesse to the future of Kierkegaard scholarship.’

In 2013 Ashgate publishes five new titles in Volume 12 of the series which focus on the theme of Kierkegaard’s Influence on Literature, Criticism and Art.

For more information on this series please visit our website where you can also find details of our special offer.

Ashgate is delighted to announce the launch of a new series – Film Philosophy at the Margins.

Edited by Patricia MacCormack (author of Cinesexuality and Posthuman Ethics), this series picks up on the burgeoning field of ‘film philosophy’ – the shift from film analysis and explication to bringing together film with philosophy – and coalesces it with films, genres and spectator theory.

The film philosophy which underpins this series is primarily Continental philosophy, rather than the more dominant field of cognitive film philosophy, utilizing increasingly attractive philosophers for film theory such as Deleuze, Guattari, Ranciere, Foucault, Irigaray and Kristeva.

This series will establish a refined and sophisticated methodology for re-invigorating issues of alterity both in the films chosen and the means by which Continental philosophers of difference can paradigmatically alter ways of address and representation that lifts this kind of theory beyond analysis and criticism to help rethink the terrain of film theory itself.

This is an interdisciplinary series, with each publication appealing not only film scholars and non-academics interested in film, but a variety of disciplines which connect with the larger philosophical questions being addressed.

The first book in the series will be Ruth McPhee’s Female Sexuality in Contemporary Western Cinema due out in 2014.

Both Patricia and I are actively looking for new proposals for the series, so if you’d like further information, please email me at cjarvis@ashgatepublishing.com. I will also be attending the Film Philosophy conference taking place in Amsterdam in July if you’re attending and would like to arrange a face-to-face meeting.

In an era of budget cuts how do museum leaders develop effective strategies to deliver and demonstrate true public value?

Carol Scott’s Museums and Public Value unpacks the concept of public value and examines its implications for museums. The book is essential reading for senior professionals, as well as museum and heritage studies students.

Aligned to public value is the role of museums in enhancing well-being and improving health through social intervention. Museums, Health and Well-Being by Helen Chatterjee and Guy Noble ‘is a tonic to invigorate the future of museums as well as healthcare.‘ (Lois H. Silverman, Museum Studies Specialist and Author, The Social Work of Museums.)

Russell Staiff’s Re-imagining Heritage Interpretation, offers a lively challenge to traditional approaches to heritage interpretation. ‘The book will fascinate the entire heritage management field.’ (Helaine Silverman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)

Francesca Monti and Suzanne Keene’s Museums and Silent Objects is a ‘thought-provoking volume which offers illuminating insights into what makes effective object-based displays.’ (Stuart Frost, British Museum, UK)

These new books and more can be found in Ashgate’s new Museum Studies, Heritage and Cultural Management 2013 catalogue available to download now, it includes new books on:

• Museum Studies and Practice
• Digital Cultural Heritage
• Collecting and Museum History
• Art Business and Markets
• Cultural Leadership and Management
• Heritage Studies

To keep up to date with new titles in this area, and benefit from exclusive offers, please sign up to receive a monthly email update at www.ashgate.com/updates

Adam Davidson’s article highlights the “T-shirt phase” phenomenon:

Nearly every rich country has gone through a “T-shirt phase” — an economic period in which there are a significant number of poor farmers who, rather than toil on unproductive land, accept harsh work conditions and low wages in textile and apparel factories. Britain started its T-shirt phase in the late 18th century; the United States had two — New England in the 19th century, then the South in the 20th. During the last 80 or so years, many Asian countries — first Japan, then Korea, Taiwan and China — progressed from the T-shirt phase into broader economic development. Cambodia, Vietnam, parts of India and Sri Lanka are passing through this now. But Bangladesh, where an eight-story apparel factory tragically collapsed last month, killing hundreds of workers and devastating the country, is in the midst of a particularly confusing T-shirt phase. The question is whether it will emerge into a more developed economy, like its many predecessors, or remain stuck, like Haiti.

You can read the full article on the New York Times’ website

The Ashgate Research Companion to the History of Textile Workers offers a comprehensive and systematic global and comparative history of textile workers over the course of 350 years.

Whilst offering a unique reference source for anyone interested in the history of a particular country’s textile industry, the true strength of this volume lies in its capacity of international comparison. By providing global comparative studies of key textile industries and workers, both geographically and thematically, this book provides a comprehensive and contemporary analysis of a major element of the world’s economy. This allows historians to challenge many of the received ideas about globalization, for instance, highlighting how global competition for lower production costs is by no means a uniquely modern issue, and has been a feature of textile production for much of the last 350 years.

The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650–2000 is edited by Lex Heerma van Voss, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences,  Els Hiemstra-Kuperus and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

In the photos here they can be seen ‘greening-up’ Burlington bikepath, which is a recreational path for biking and running that goes along Lake Champlain.

The London School of Economics (LSE) Review of Books was launched in April 2012 in a move to reduce the time delay in getting social science books reviewed, with free access for all being of note. The key feature of the LSE Review of Books is the publishing of daily reviews of academic books across the social sciences. Patrick Dunleavy, the General Editor of the LSE Review of Books, is clear that this ‘real time review’ of books provides numerous benefits to publishers, authors, and universities in facilitating the ability to engage with a wider audience, not only within academia but in all areas of civil society.  Patrick’s ultimate aim is for publishers to provide a digital version of the text in advance of publication in order for the review to be published on the same day as the book.

Following on from the success of the initiative the LSE Review of Books Awards event was held on Thursday 16^th May in the Shaw Library situated in the Old Building at the LSE.  The Awards were a thank you to the many reviewers who have written for the Review of Books, and also provided an arena for the many people present to talk about books and publishing and to enjoy the delicious lunch provided by the University.  There were around fifty people in attendance including publishers, academics, and reviewers and, after a short speech by criminal law expert Professor Nicola Lacey from the University of Oxford, the Awards Ceremony was underway.

Each award was sponsored by a publisher and included Princeton University Press, Palgrave MacMillan, Routledge, and Polity Press.  The Ashgate Prize for Most-Read Review in Architecture and Urban Studies was won by Ben Campkin for his review of ‘City, Street and Citizen’ by Suzanne Hall published by Routledge.  Speaking to Suzanne, she was immensely pleased to have a review of her book published so quickly in an accessible and free format.  As we are very aware reviews of academic books are often sited within journals which, in most cases, require payment and may be published many months after publication.  The future for academic publishing in this digital age is certainly a challenge but it may just be that real time reviews support academic publishers to exchange knowledge and scholarship for the twenty first century.