Perplexing Patriarchies: Fatherhood Among Black Opponents and White Defenders of Slavery

Pierre Islam, Yale University

September 2018 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-462-7
Availability: In stock
190pp. ¦ $60 £45 €51

Perplexing Patriarchies examines the rhetorical usage (and lived experience) of fatherhood among three African American abolitionists and three of their white proslavery opponents in the United States during the nineteenth century. Both the prominent abolitionists (Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, and Henry Garnet), as well as the prominent proslavery advocates (Henry Hammond, George Fitzhugh, and Richard Dabney), appealed to the popular image of the father, husband, and head of household in order to attack or justify slavery. How and why could these opposing individuals rely on appeals to the same ideal of fatherhood to come to completely different and opposing conclusions? This book strives to find the answer by first acknowledging that both the abolitionists and the proslavery men shared similar concerns about the contested status of fatherhood in the nineteenth century. However, due to subtle differences in their starting assumptions, and different choices of what parts of a father’s responsibilities to emphasize, the black abolitionists conceived of an ideal father who protected the autonomy of his dependents, while the proslavery men conceived of one whose authority necessitated the subordination of those he protected. Finding that these differences arose from choices in starting assumptions and emphases rather than total disagreement on what the role of the father should be, this work reveals that black abolitionists were not radically critiquing the gender conventions of their day, but innovatively working within those conventions to turn them towards social reform. This discovery opens up a new way for historians to consider how oppressed peoples negotiated the intellectual boundaries of the societies which oppressed them: Not necessarily breaking entirely from those boundaries, nor passively accepting them, but ingeniously synthesizing a worldview from within their confines that still allowed for freedom and personal autonomy.

Common Law and Civil Law Today - Convergence and Divergence

Edited by Marko Novakovic, Institute of International Politics and Economics, Serbia

April 2019 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-507-5
Availability: In stock
502pp. ¦ $66 £49 €56

Authors from 13 countries come together in this edited volume, Common Law and Civil Law Today: Convergence and Divergence, to present different aspects of the relationship and intersections between common and civil law. Approaching the relationship between common and civil law from different perspectives and from different fields of law, this book offers an intriguing insight into the similarities, differences and connections between these two major legal traditions. This volume is divided into 3 parts and consists of 22 articles. The first part discusses the common law/civil law dichotomy in the international legal systems and theory. The second focuses on case-law and arbitration, while the third part analyses elements of common and civil law in various legal systems. By offering such a variety of approaches and voices, this book allows the reader to gain an invaluable insight into the historical, comparative and theoretical contexts of this legal dichotomy. From its carefully selected authors to its comprehensive collection of articles, this edited volume is an essential resource for students, researchers and practitioners working or studying within both legal systems.

Currency Risk Management

Selected Research Papers

Edited by M.S.V. Prasad, GITAM Institute of Management, India and G. V. Satya Sekhar, Gitam University, India

October 2018 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-443-6
Availability: In stock
140pp. ¦ $31 £24 €27

Currency Risk Management (CRM) is vital for any business engaging in international trade. Fluctuations and uncertainty within currency markets mean that businesses must seek to effectively manage and anticipate potential risks when striking international deals. In a rapidly changing and volatile global business environment, CRM is now more than ever of critical importance. However, what risks should businesses hedge – and how? With so many viable strategies for hedging currency exchange risk, it is crucial that businesses either outsource or have a specialized team to ensure effective and efficient management of currency exchange risks. But how does CRM operate in an emerging market? And what are the key factors that influence the chosen CRM strategies? Organized in association with Indian Bank, GITAM’s national conference on CRM sought to highlight the trends, problems, and prospects of CRM in India. Taken from the conference proceedings, this book presents 9 innovative research papers that consider differing CRM practices. From a comparative study of India and China to an assessment of CRM strategies used by commercial Indian banks, this book offers an invaluable insight into CRM from the perspective of an emerging market. As a whole, this book addresses India’s shift to a market-determined exchange rate regime and the inevitable problems caused the by the high volatility of exchange rates. Aimed at students enrolled in commerce and management courses, this collection of research papers will also be of interest to researchers in international finance.

Climate Change and Sub-Saharan Africa: The Vulnerability and Adaptation of Food Supply Chain Actors

Edited by John K. M. Kuwornu, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand

November 2018 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-265-4
Availability: In stock
382pp. ¦ $56 £42 €48

The adverse effects of climate change and climate variability have become some of the biggest environmental and socio-economic challenges for society, and for food supply chain actors, in particular. Serving as a serious inhibitor to the attainment of food security, climate change poses a fundamental threat to the availability, accessibility, stability and utilization of nutritious food and quality drinking water. The threat of this global phenomenon is not only apparent from the difficulties faced by all food supply chain actors, but is also felt acutely by households dependent on semi-subsistence agriculture. As evidenced by numerous studies conducted by the academic community, governmental and non-governmental organisations, climate change and climate variability will have disastrous effects on entire food supply chains across the world. This edited volume looks to address: How vulnerable are food supply chain actors to climate change and climatic variability? What adaptation strategies are they adopting? How is the resilience of food supply chains being supported? Are they being financed and/or supported by international organizations to cope with climate change? And what governmental support are they receiving to help cope with climate change? This book is an essential resource for students, lecturers, researchers, agribusinesses, marketing firms, agricultural institutions, climate change adaptation institutions, policymakers and many others with an interest in agricultural development and the global food industry.

Staying Open: Charles Olson’s Sources and Influences

Edited by Joshua S. Hoeynck, Case Western Reserve University

December 2018 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-430-6
Availability: In stock
322pp. ¦ $64 £48 €54

“Staying Open, Charles Olson’s Sources and Influences” investigates the inter-disciplinary influences on the work of the mid-Century American poet, Charles Olson. This edited collection of essays covers Olson’s diverse non-literary interests, including his engagement with the music of John Cage and Pierre Boulez, his interests in abstract expressionism, and his readings of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. The essays also examine Olson’s pedagogy, which he developed in the experimental environment at Black Mountain College, as well as his six-month archeological journey through the Yucatan Peninsula in 1950 to explore the culture of the Maya. This book will, therefore, be a strong research aid to scholars working in diverse fields – music, archeology, pedagogy, philosophy, art, and psychology – as it outlines methods for close inter-disciplinary work that can uncover the mechanics of Olson’s creative, literary processes. Building on the straightforward scholarship of George Butterick, whose Guide to the Maximus Poems remains indispensable for readers of Olson’s work, the essays in this volume will also guide readers through the thick allusions within The Maximus Poems itself. New interest in the wide-ranging and non-literary nature of Olson’s thought in several recent academic works makes this book both timely and necessary. Physics Envy: American Poetry and Science in the Cold War and After by Peter Middleton as well as Contemporary Olson edited by David Herd have started the process of uncovering the extent to which Olson’s inter-disciplinary interests inflected his poetic compositions. “Staying Open” extends the preliminary investigations of Olson’s non-literary sources in those volumes by bringing together a community of scholars working across disciplines and within a wide variety of humanistic concerns.