Contemporary Spanish fictional representations of ethno-religious convivencia in Medieval Iberia: César Vidal’s medievalizing novels

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
Medieval Iberia ◽  
Fictional Representations

Afghanistan Meets the Amazon: Reading The Kite Runner in America

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Aubry
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Novel ◽  
United States Military ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Global War On Terrorism ◽  
Customer Reviews ◽  
Global War ◽  
Fictional Representations

This essay considers the American reception of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner in the context of the Bush administration's global war on terrorism by examining the customer reviews of the novel posted on Amazon. As many of the responses indicate, identification serves as a paradoxical means of negotiating with fictional representations of foreignness. The intense and painful empathy inspired by The Kite Runner serves a valorizing function for American readers, strengthening their sense of their own humanity—an effect that resists strict political categorization. Hosseini's ambivalent conception of what it means to be human, I argue, supports a diversity of competing attitudes toward the United States' military intervention in the Middle East and central Asia, while simultaneously catering to fantasies of escape from ideological and cultural divisions altogether.

Representing Transnational Law: Drone Warfare and Transnational Legal Text

2021 ◽  
pp. 1068-1090
Author(s):  
Jothie Rajah
Keyword(s):  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Targeted Killing ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
Transnational Law ◽  
Drone Strikes ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Drone Warfare ◽  
British State ◽  
Fictional Representations

What can entertainment media tell us about a contemporary concept of law that is being transnationalized, and why should scholars pay attention to ostensibly fictional representations of law in transnational contexts? In this chapter, I consider representations of transnational law through an analysis of Gavin Hood’s 2016 film on drone warfare, Eye in the Sky (Eye). Eye is driven by a compelling narrative tension: a child is likely to be harmed if a missile is launched at a room occupied by terrorists loading suicide vests with explosives. But if this child is not risked (sacrificed?) and the terrorists conduct their suicide mission, a minimum of eighty civilian deaths is the probable result. With lives at stake, we watch a transnational alliance of American and British state actors debate law, the rules governing drone strikes, and accountability to publics, as the decision is made to conduct the targeted killing. Dramatizing questions of law in relation to the secretive workings of drone warfare, Eye offers a valuable representation of how a very specific account of law as security is being transnationalized.

scholarly journals Whose Golden Age? Some Thoughts on Jewish-Christian Relations in Medieval Iberia

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Ray
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Spanish History ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Interfaith Relations ◽  
Medieval Iberia

The medieval period in Spanish history has alternately been cast as a Golden Age of interfaith harmony and an example of the ultimate incompatibility of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities.  In this essay, I suggest that a better way to understand interfaith relations in medieval Iberia is to think about these religious communities in less monolithic terms.   With regard to Jewish-Christian relations in particular, factors such as wealth, social standing, and intellectual interests were as important as religious identity in shaping the complex bonds between Christians and Jews. 

scholarly journals Of dragons and dinosaurs: How children’s toys and games create ideas of the past, of history and of fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Kühberger
Keyword(s):  
Historical Fiction ◽  
History Education ◽  
Historical Thinking ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Culture ◽  
Fictional Representations

This article outlines a trend in popular historical culture which has seen the increasing replacement of a concept of history that rests on some form of evidence base by visions of fictional pasts, or – to put it more precisely – by an ambiguous blend of the past and fictional pasts. Drawing on ethnographic research focused on the contents of Austrian children’s rooms, this paper explores traceable manifestations of history and historical fiction, particularly toy dragons and dinosaurs, in their properties as objects and as focuses of their owners’ interpretations as ascertained in interviews. The research finds little clear demarcation in the minds of the children interviewed (all between 8 and 12 years old) between imaginings and cognitive attempts to reconstruct the past. The article examines the influence of these factual–fictional representations on historical thinking from a history education perspective.

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