Dickens and the Virtual City


Book Description

This book explores the aesthetic practices used by Dickens to make the space which we have come to know as the Dickensian City. It concentrates on three very precise techniques for the production of social space (counter-mapping, overlaying and troping). The chapters show the scapes and writings which influenced him and the way he transformed them, packaged them and passed them on for future use. The city is shown to be an imagined or virtual world but with a serious aim for a serious game: Dickens sets up a workshop for the simulation of real societies and cities. This urban building with is transferable to other literatures and medial forms. The book offers vital understanding of how writing and image work in particular ways to recreate and re-enchant society and the built environment. It will be of interest to scholars of literature, media, film, urban studies, politics and economics.




Narrating the Prison


Book Description

This book investigates the ways in which Charles Dickenss mature fiction, prison novels of the 20th century, and prison films narrate the prison. Alber addresses the significance of prison metaphors in novels and films, and investigates the ideological underpinnings of prison narratives by addressing the question of whether they generate cultural understandings of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the prison.







Book Review Index - 2009 Cumulation


Book Description

Book Review Index provides quick access to reviews of books, periodicals, books on tape and electronic media representing a wide range of popular, academic and professional interests. The up-to-date coverage, wide scope and inclusion of citations for both newly published and older materials make Book Review Index an exceptionally useful reference tool. More than 600 publications are indexed, including journals and national general interest publications and newspapers. Book Review Index is available in a three-issue subscription covering the current year or as an annual cumulation covering the past year.




How Psychologists Failed


Book Description

Psychologists must change direction, by attending to the needs of disadvantaged minorities and adopting a correct model of science.




Bausteine zu einer Ethik des Strafens


Book Description

Die "Bausteine einer Ethik des Strafens" fussen auf der Annahme, dass die Strafe ein notwendiges und gerechtfertigtes Mittel der Reaktion auf Rechtsverletzungen ist. Die Ethik des Strafens will nicht Abstand nehmen von den zugehorigen Themen der Philosophie und Rechtsphilosophie - Rechtfertigung der Strafe, Strafgerechtigkeit, das heisst: Strafzumessung und Tatproportionalitat -, sondern sie berucksichtigt den Unterschied zwischen den Rechtfertigungstheorien und den Vollzugstheorien der Strafe derart, dass die Begrundungstheorien der Strafe in die allgemeine Ethik uberfuhrt werden konnen. Weil das Dass der Strafe nicht gleichbedeutend mit dem Wie der Strafe ist, fragt sie unter Anleitung der Prinzipien der Gerechtigkeit und Verantwortlichkeit nach den konkreten Moglichkeiten, Menschen ihre Taten im Falle des Rechtsbruches zuzuschreiben und ihnen die personliche Ubernahme der Verantwortung, die ihnen aus ihren Taten erwachst, im doppelten Sinne des Wortes zuzumuten, das heisst: ihnen individuelle Verantwortung abverlangen und zutrauen. In diesem Sinne beschaftigt sich Teil I (Systematische Aspekte) mit dem Zusammenhang von rechtfertigungs- und vollzugstheoretischen Fragen der Strafe und macht in je verschiedener Weise philosophische und rechtswissenschaftliche Kontexte einer Ethik des Strafens auf. Teil II (Aktuelle Folterdebatte) bringt in dem im Titel festgeschriebenen Bewusstsein, dass die Ethik des Strafens ein junges Forschungsfeld ist, am konkreten und bewusst zeitgenossischen Beispiel erste Annaherungen an eine ethische Vollzugstheorie der Strafe, wahrend Teil III (Literarische Perspektiven) und Teil IV (Grenzen des Strafens) danach fragen, wie literarische Texte beziehungsweise offentliche Debatten unsere Vorstellungen eines gerechten Strafvollzuges beeinflussen.




Are Prisons Obsolete?


Book Description

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly,the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women). Few predicted its passing from the American penal landscape. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable. In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration", and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.




Convict Voices


Book Description

In this lively study of the development and transformation of voices of female offenders in nineteenth-century England, Anne Schwan analyzes a range of colorful sources, including crime broadsides, reform literature, prisoners' own writings about imprisonment and courtroom politics, and conventional literary texts, such as Adam Bede and The Moonstone. Not only does Schwan demonstrate strategies for interpreting ambivalent and often contradictory texts, she also provides a carefully historicized approach to the work of feminist recovery. Crossing class lines, genre boundaries, and gender roles in the effort to trace prisoners, authors, and female communities (imagined or real), Schwan brings new insight to what it means to locate feminist (or protofeminist) details, arguments, and politics. In this case, she tracks the emergence of a contested, and often contradictory, feminist consciousness, through the prism of nineteenth-century penal debates. The historical discussion is framed by reflections on contemporary debates about prisoner perspectives to illuminate continuities and differences. Convict Voices offers a sophisticated approach to interpretive questions of gender, genre, and discourse in the representation of female convicts and their voices and viewpoints.