This book aims to study the Batman narrative, or Bat-narrative, from the point of view of its nodal relationship to modern narrative. To this end, it offers for the first time a new type of methodology adequate to the object, which delves both into materials scarcely studied in this context and well-known materials seen in a new light. This is a multidisciplinary work aimed at both the specialist and the global reader, bringing together comic studies, philosophical criticism, and literary criticism in a debate on the fate of our current global civilization.

This book examines the reading cultures developed by communities of readers and book lovers on BookTube, Bookstagram, and BookTok as an increasingly important influence on contemporary book and literary culture. It explores how the affordances of social media platforms invite readers to participate in social reading communities and engage in creative and curatorial practices that express their identity as readers and book lovers.

The interdisciplinary team of authors argue that by creating new opportunities for readers to engage in social reading practices, bookish social media has elevated the agency and visibility of readers and book consumers within literary culture. It has also reshaped the cultural and economic dynamics of book recommendations by creating a space in which different actors are able to form an identity as mediators of reading culture.

Concise and accessible, this introduction to an increasingly central set of literary practices is essential reading for students and scholars of literature, sociology, media, and cultural studies, as well as teachers and professionals in the book and library industries.

Using a framework of online connection and disconnection, The Paradox of Connection examines how journalists' practices are formed, negotiated, and maintained in dynamic social media environments. The interactions of journalists with the technological, social, and cultural features of online and social media environments have shaped new values and competencies--and the combination of these factors influence online work practices. Merging case studies with analysis, the authors show how the tactics of online connection and disconnection interact with the complex realities of working in today's media environments. The result is an insightful portrait of fast-changing journalistic practices and their implications for both audiences and professional identities and norms.

Mexican American women reached across generations to develop a bridging activism that drew on different methods and ideologies to pursue their goals. Marisela R. Chavez uses a wealth of untapped oral histories to reveal the diverse ways activist Mexican American women in Los Angeles claimed their own voices and space while seeking to leverage power. Chavez tells the stories of the people who honed beliefs and practices before the advent of the Chicano movement and the participants in the movement after its launch in the late 1960s. As she shows, Chicanas across generations challenged societal traditions that at first assumed their place on the sidelines and then assigned them second-class status within political structures built on their work. Fueled by a surging pride in their Mexican heritage and indigenous roots, these activists created spaces for themselves that acknowledged their lives as Mexicans and women.

Vivid and compelling, Chicana Liberation reveals the remarkable range of political beliefs and life experiences behind a new activism and feminism shaped by Mexican American women.

Mexican American and Puerto Rican women have long taken up the challenge to improve the lives of Chicagoans in the city's Latino/a/x communities. Rita D. Hernandez, Leticia Villarreal Sosa, and Elena R. Gutierrez present testimonies by Latina leaders who blazed new trails and shaped Latina Chicago history from the 1960s through today.

Taking a do-it-all attitude, these women advanced agendas, built institutions, forged alliances, and created essential resources that Latino/a/x communities lacked. Time and again, they found themselves the first Latina to hold their post or part of the first Latino/a/x institution of its kind. Just as often, early grassroots efforts to address issues affecting themselves, their families, and their neighborhoods grew into larger endeavors. Their experiences ranged from public schools to healthcare to politics to broadcast media, and each woman's story shows how her work changed countless lives and still reverberates across the entire city.

An eyewitness view of an unknown history, Chicago Latina Trailblazers reveals the vision and passion that fueled a group of women in the vanguard of reform.

Contributors: Ana Castillo, Maria B. Cerda, Carmen Chico, Aracelis Flecha Figueroa, Aida Luz Maisonet Giachello, Mary Gonzales, Ada Nivia Lopez, Emma Lozano, Virginia Martinez, Carmen Mendoza, Elena Mulcahy, Guadalupe Reyes, Luz Maria B. Solis, and Carmen Velasquez

Asian Americans have become the love-hate subject of the American psyche: at times celebrated as the model minority, at other times hated as foreigners. Wen Liu examines contemporary Asian American identity formation while placing it within a historical and ongoing narrative of racial injury. The flexible racial status of Asian Americans oscillates between oppression by the white majority and offers to assimilate into its ranks. Identity emerges from the tensions produced between those two poles. Liu dismisses the idea of Asian Americans as a coherent racial population. Instead, she examines them as a raced, gendered, classed, and sexualized group producing varying physical and imaginary boundaries of nation, geography, and citizenship. Her analysis reveals repeated norms and acts that capture Asian Americanness as part of a racial imagination that buttresses capitalism, white supremacy, neoliberalism, and the US empire.

An innovative challenge to persistent myths, Feeling Asian American ranges from the wartime origins of Asian American psychology to anti-Asian attacks to present Asian Americanness as a complex political assemblage.

Lisa J. McLeod traces the development of Du Bois's conception of whiteness, and the racism inherent to it, as an all-encompassing problem, whether predicated on ignorance, moral failure, or the inability to recognize the humanity in other people. In clear, elegant prose, McLeod investigates Du Bois's complex and nuanced thinking, putting his insights into dialogue with contemporary racial theorists to demonstrate his continuing value to present-day critical thought and activism.

Hospitality practices grounded in religious belief have long exercised a profound influence on Wisconsin's Latino communities. Sergio M. Gonzalez examines the power relations at work behind the types of hospitality--welcoming and otherwise--practiced on newcomers in both Milwaukee and rural areas of the Badger State. Gonzalez's analysis addresses central issues like the foundational role played by religion and sacred spaces in shaping experiences and facilitating collaboration among disparate Latino groups and across ethnic lines; the connections between sacred spaces and the moral justification for social justice movements; and the ways sacred spaces evolved into places for mitigating prejudice and social alienation, providing sanctuary from nativism and repression, and fostering local and transnational community building.

Perceptive and original, Strangers No Longer reframes the history of Latinos in Wisconsin by revealing religion's central role in the settlement experience of immigrants, migrants, and refugees.

A first of its kind history, To Advance the Race is an enlightening look at African American women and their multi-generational commitment to the ideal of education as a collective achievement.

Television has a prime role to play in the formation of discursive domains in the everyday life of South Asian publics. This book explores various television media practices, social processes, mediated political experiences and everyday cultural compositions from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

With the help of country-specific case studies, it captures a broad range of themes which foreground the publics and their real-life experiences of television in the region. The chapters in this book discuss gendered television spaces, women seeking solace from television in pandemic, the taboo in digital TV dramas, television viewership and localizing publics, changing viewership from television to OTT, news and public perception of death, redefining 'the national', theatrical television and post-truth television news, among other key issues.

Rich in ethnographic case studies, this volume will be a useful resource for scholars and researchers of media and communication studies, journalism, digital media, South Asian studies, cultural studies, sociology and social anthropology.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the nationalist ideas and practices of Turkey's Nationalist Action Party (MHP) from its founder, Alparslan Tuerkes, to its current leader, Devlet Bahceli.

Applying both diachronic and synchronic approaches to the multidimensionality of nationalism, the book analyzes how Tuerkes and Bahceli emphasized or de-emphasized ethnic, cultural, and civic components of the party's nationalism in response to the threats they perceived in specific historical contexts. The author draws on party documents, speeches, and interviews to examine how recurring themes in Tuerkes's and Bahceli's nationalist ideas and practices have evolved over half a century, between 1965 and 2015. In this way, the book provides fresh insights into the evolution and complexity of the MHP's nationalism, thereby contributing to the theoretical understanding of nationalism's multidimensionality. This book also highlights the political significance of the MHP in contemporary Turkey, where nationalist and right-wing politics have become increasingly influential in recent years.

Spanning a number of disciplines, including political science, international relations, and Turkish studies, this book will be of interest to a broad range of scholars and students, as well as those seeking insights into the broader implications of nationalism.

This book rethinks procreative responsibility considering the continuous development of Assisted Reproductive Technologies. It presents a person-affecting moral argument, highlighting that the potential availability of future Assisted Reproductive Technologies brings out new procreative obligations.

Traditionally, Assisted Reproductive Technologies are understood as practices aimed at extending the procreative freedom of prospective parents. However, some scholars argue that they also give rise to new moral constraints. This book builds on this viewpoint by presenting a person-affecting perspective on the impact of current and future Assisted Reproductive Technologies on procreative responsibility, with a specific focus on reproductive Genome Editing and ectogenesis. The author shows that this perspective is defensible both from a consequences-based person-affecting perspective and from a person-affecting account that considers morally relevant intuitions and attitudes.

Procreative Responsibility and Assisted Reproductive Technologies will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in bioethics and procreative ethics.

Hindu Nationalism in South India engages with a range of factors that shapes the trajectory of Hindu nationalism in Kerala, the southern state of India.

Until recently, Kerala was considered a socio-political exception which had no room for Hindu nationalism. This book questions such Panglossian prognosis and shows the need to map the ideological and political growth of Hindu nationalism which has been downplayed in the academic discourse as temporary aberrations. The introduction to the book places Kerala in the context of South India. Arguing that Hindutva is a real force which needs to be contended within theoretical and empirical terms, the chapters in this book examine Hindu nationalism in Kerala in relation to themes such as history, caste, culture, post-truth, ideology, gender, politics, and the Indian national space.

Considering the rise of Hindu nationalism in the recent years, this pioneering book will be of interest to a students and academics studying Politics, in particular Nationalism, Asian Politics and Religion and Politics and South Asian Studies.

Beginning in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, a new generation of LGBT students in California began to organize publicly on college and university campuses, inspired by contemporaneous social movements and informed by California's rich history of LGBT community formation and political engagement. Here Are My People documents how a trailblazing group of queer student activists in California made their mark on the history of the modern LGBTQ movement and paved the way for generations of organizers who followed.

Rooted in extensive archival research and original oral histories, Here Are My People explores how this organizing unfolded, comparing different regions, types of campuses, and diverse student populations. Through campus-based organizations and within women's studies programs, and despite various forms of reactionary resistance, student organizers promoted LGBT-themed educational programming and changes to curriculum, provided peer support like counseling and hotlines, and sponsored events showcasing queer creative practices including poetry, theater, and film. Collaborating across various campuses, they formed regional and statewide alliances. And, importantly, LGBT student organizers engaged California's vibrant gay liberation and lesbian feminist political communities, forging new and important relationships in the movement which enhanced both on and off-campus LGBT organizing.

Craft is resurgent. More people are buying craft; more money is being spent on craft products than ever before. This book centres craft as a creative industry, illuminating the experiences of those working in and around craft, particularly people from marginalised groups.

Shining a light on inequalities around craft work, the author examines the lived experiences of women makers of colour in the professional craft sector. Experiences of racism and microaggressions at all stages of their craft career are analysed. The author draws on innovative empirical research carried out in the UK and Australia, two countries where the resurgence in craft is apparent, yet professional craft practice is dominated by the white and relatively privileged. In interrogating hierarchies of expertise and cultural value in craft, the author employs case studies from community crafts and social enterprises.

The result is a book of interest to scholars at the intersections of the creative and cultural industries, the creative economy and inequalities at work.

This fully updated and revised eighth edition examines the behavioral, biological, and social context in which people express gendered behaviors, utilizing the latest research to help students think critically about research findings and stereotypes and provoking them to examine and revise their own preconceptions.

The text's unique pedagogical program helps students understand the portrayal of gender in the media and the application of gender research in the real world. Headlines from the news open each chapter; Gendered Voices present true personal accounts of people's lives; According to the Media boxes highlight gender-related coverage in newspapers, magazines, books, TV, and movies; while According to the Research boxes offer the latest scientifically based research to help students analyze the accuracy and fairness of gender images presented in the media. Additionally, Considering Diversity sections emphasize the cross-cultural perspective of gender.

Key features of the new edition include:

• Expanded discussion of transgender and non-binary identities
• 12 new headline articles including topics ranging from the myth of biological sex to the wars over sex education and the factors involved in the gender pay gap
• Comprehensive digital resources with content for instructors and students

Intended for undergraduate or graduate courses on the psychology of gender, psychology of sex, gender issues, women in society, and women's or men's studies, this book is also applicable to sociology and anthropology courses on diversity.

Women in Eastern European Post-Socialist Countries: Social, Scientific, and Political Lives explores the role of women in Central and Eastern Europe in bringing about social change, and the obstacles they face in fighting for equality in various areas of life such as science, politics, and reproductive rights.

Against a backdrop of increasing re-traditionalisation of post-socialist societies, and the reinvigoration of patriarchal attitudes, the book presents a timely and important collection. Through chapters authored by academics with different specialities across the social sciences, the book addresses the fundamental areas in which women's determination is already initiating changes, namely politics and diplomacy, science, reproductive rights, and customs resulting from religion.

Women in Eastern European Post-Socialist Countries is of interest to scholars of gender studies, political and social sciences, and contemporary central and eastern European history.

Cursed Blessings explores the relationship between sexual nonconformity and religious radical dissent in the early modern Western European world. While many studies have been devoted to the process of the "hereticalization" of nonnormative sexual practices and its use in anti-heretical propaganda, this book is entirely devoted to understanding the meaning of unconventional sexual behaviors from the perspective of the dissenters.

Divided into three parts, the first focuses on the Italian peninsula and explores alternative views on sexuality inspired by Renaissance currents of anti-clericalism, ancient Christian heresies, traditions of apocrypha of the New Testament, and Rabbinic literature. It also examines how embodied and gendered experiences influenced the dissenting views of religious women. The second part explores how reflections on Original Sin led to the questioning of Christian assumptions regarding sex and gender, highlighting the relationship between the criticism of sexual morality and disputes on free will, spirituality, and redemption. The third part examines how most of these threads were entwined into a more coherent philosophical framework in the writings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century erudite libertines.

This book is designed for academic readers, including graduate and undergraduate students. Given its intersectional approach, it will be of interest to researchers, teachers, and students in a wide array of fields, including religious, gender, and sexuality studies, as well as literature. This book also tackles issues that are relevant to present-day debates, such as the problematic relations between sexuality and religion and the ongoing polemics surrounding the complicated interactions between religion and politics.

Sport is increasingly being described as a complex system. This inherent complexity cannot be understood by examining components in isolation; rather, the system as a whole should represent the unit of analysis. Systems thinking is the answer to understanding this complexity and is gaining traction in sport. Systems thinking provides a philosophy and a set of associated methods which can be used to understand and optimise the behaviour of complex systems, such as those inherent within sport.

This book presents, for the first time, a practical guide to applying contemporary systems thinking methods in sport as well as case study applications demonstrating how their outputs can be translated in practice. The methods described in this book can be used for better understanding the systemic influences in a broad range of sport contexts, including performance, injury, team functioning, decision-making, adverse incidents, sports organisation design and redesign, technology implementation, and proactive risk assessments.

Systems Thinking Methods in Sport provides a practical step-by-step guide for sports practitioners and stakeholders, as well as university students and academics in applying state-of-the-art systems thinking methods to sport.

Within this book, the fields of analytical psychology and sociology combine to examine and explore current social theory and the concept that the author has termed 'absolute freedom'.

This work serves as a vital contribution to contemporary social and psychoanalytic research, unveiling the intricacies of psychological and social dynamics in our current epoch. Stefano Carpani explores the intersection of psychology and sociology, providing a fresh perspective beyond conventional boundaries. It conducts a comparative analysis of C. G. Jung's individuation process and Ulrich Beck's individualization theory, presenting the groundbreaking 'I+I' synthesis. This latter concept acts as a linchpin in deciphering self-identity narratives in the 21st century's dynamic landscape, before the author introduces the concept of absolute freedom, contextualizing it within the multifaceted complexities of contemporary second-late-modern existence.

This compelling new book will be of great interest to academics, scholars and students in the fields of analytical psychology, sociology and psychosocial studies.

In-depth and interdisciplinary, Reclaiming Diasporic Identity blends ethnography and history to provide a fresh consideration of Hmong life today.

In this first biography, Erica Naito-Campbell, Bill's granddaughter, shows how his story is also the story of Portland, the city he loved. Naito's life, from the Great Depression and World War II through Portland's rebirth in the 1970s and its profound growth, tracked most of the major events in the city and was the catalyst for many of them. Through hard-earned success in importing and real estate with his brother Sam, Naito came to wield considerable power in the city, and his leadership led to much of what we consider iconic Portland today: the "Portland Oregon" sign near the Burnside Bridge, the annual Christmas tree in Pioneer Courthouse Square, and Harbor Drive's conversion to Waterfront Park.

Naito's name became synonymous with civic leadership, whether it was growing Portland's urban tree canopy, revitalizing its downtown, or preserving historic buildings. But less is known about his difficult childhood-with a father who worked twelve-hour days and a mother whose treatment of him was harsh at best-and the racism he endured during World War II. After the expulsion of Japanese Americans following Pearl Harbor and his military service in Occupied Japan, Naito overcame great emotional turmoil to return to Portland and become one of its greatest change-makers.

Erica Naito-Campbell uses anecdotes, rich details, and previously unknown stories about Bill Naito to bring Portland's history to life-while acknowledging that the cost of his success was a family rife with resentments and envy. Her book reveals the emotional wounds that drove Naito to become one of Portland's most inspiring civic leaders, a pivotal player in the city's journey from a moribund downtown to a national model for livability, urban renewal, and historic preservation.