Open Access Books

Harry Watkins was no one special. During a career that spanned four decades, this nineteenth-century actor yearned for fame but merely skirted the edges of it. He performed alongside the brightest stars, wrote scores of plays, and toured the United States and England, but he never became a household name. Inspired by this average performer’s life and labor, An Actor’s Tale offers an alternative history of nineteenth-century theater, focusing on the daily rhythms and routines of theatrical life rather than the celebrated people, plays, and exceptional events that tend to dominate histories of US theater and performance. In the process, Hughes asks uncomfortable questions about the existence, predominance, and erasure of White male mediocrity in US culture, both in the past and present. When historians focus only on performers and plays with artistic “merit,” what communities, perspectives, and cultural trends remain invisible? How did men like Watkins advance themselves professionally, despite their mediocrity? Why did men like Watkins embrace and perpetuate myths like the American Dream, the “self-made man,” and meritocracy, and how have these ideals shaped casting, producing, and celebrity worship in today’s US entertainment industry? Ultimately, Hughes reveals how this actor’s tale illuminates the widespread tendency to ignore, deny, and forgive White male mediocrity in US culture, and how a deeper understanding of people like Watkins can transform our understanding of the past—and our understanding of ourselves.

The full exploitation of sheet metal formability is crucial for process optimization. This applies in particular to the automotive industry, in which the current trend is in the development of lightweight structures. Nevertheless, the standard evaluation methodology shows weaknesses for brittle materials. In the present study, a detailed analysis of the failure mechanisms for different material classes was carried out to improve the failure limit evaluation. The aim was to analyse the validity of the definition of the onset of necking in order to assure the correct prediction of the deformation limits, including those that do not show any localizations. The knowledge gained was used to define a validity window using pattern recognition methodology and to optimize the forming limit evaluation while taking into consideration the peculiarities of the different materials.

Since the beginning of the 2010s, there has been a shortage of teachers in Germany, which is being responded to with various special measures of lateral and lateral entry to accelerate recruitment. The contributions collected in this conference volume provide insights into current research, evaluation and discussion on the development of teacher education and the teaching profession under the conditions of the current demand crisis. The perspective does not only focus on the narrower institutional context of teacher education, but also sheds light on the profile of lateral and lateral entrants, how they deal with the professional challenges and the implications this has for the situation in schools. (DIPF/Orig.)

In the first study of Two Studies on Ming History , Charles O. Hucker presents an account of a military campaign that provides insight into the nature of civil officials' authority, decision-making, and relationship with the Ming court. In the spring and summer of 1556, a Chinese renegade named Hsü Hai led an invading group of Japanese and Chinese soldiers on a plundering foray through the northeastern sector of Chekiang province. Opposing them was a military establishment that for years past had been battered by coastal raiders, now under the control of an ambitious and clever official named Hu Tsung-hsien. The campaign was not one of the most consequential in China's military history, even during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). But it was famous and well reported in its time, and it illustrates some of the unusual ways in which the Chinese of the imperial age coped with the often unusual military problems they faced. In the second part of Two Studies, Hucker presents a translation of K'ai-tu ch'uan-hsin, a popular narrative of a spontaneous demonstration in which literati and commoners alike rose up to defend an austere and incorruptible adherent to Confucian morality who had been doomed to die because of his defiance of the ruthless and heterodox clique that had usurped imperial power. In 1626, Chinese political morality was at one of its lowest ebbs. On the throne at Peking was an incompetent twenty-one-year-old emperor who was much too occupied with puttering at carpentry to pay attention to the government. Into the vacuum stepped Wei Chung-hsien, the favorite of the emperor's governess. Wei used brutal terror to make himself undisputed master of the vast bureaucratic mechanism that administered China. One of Wei's many victims was Chou Shun-ch'ang, a member of the official class who was said to have hated evil as a personal enemy. Chou became critical of Wei, an order was put out for Chou's arrest, and a popular uprising occurred in protest.

Detection and Treatment of Emerging Contaminants in Wastewater addresses the critical and pressing need for effective strategies to detect and treat emerging contaminants, thereby mitigating risks associated with their presence in wastewater. This comprehensive book features contributions from prominent experts in the field of wastewater, providing an up-to-date and in-depth collection of chapters dedicated to tackling this pressing issue. Highlights: · The book serves as an invaluable resource for identifying, assessing, and comprehensively addressing emerging contaminants in wastewater and/or sludges. It delves into the assessment, mitigation, and treatment of various contaminants, including microplastics, antibiotic-resistant genes, pharmaceuticals, personal care products and industrial chemicals. · An exploration of the behavior of microplastics in different wastewater treatment plants and their accumulation in sludge, shedding light on their potential impact on the environment. · An introduction to the key mechanisms for the removal of emerging pollutants from sludge through fungal-mediated processes, offering innovative solutions for effective treatment. · An investigation into the fate and behavior of pharmaceutically-active compounds in wastewater, along with their potential environmental impacts. Additionally, accurate quantification procedures for these compounds are discussed. · The book covers new trends in the development of greener nanomaterials, evaluating their performance for abating emerging contaminants from wastewater. With its comprehensive insights and diverse perspectives, this book is an essential guide for researchers, professionals, and policymakers engaged in wastewater management and environmental protection. The practical solutions and scientific knowledge presented herein will contribute significantly to safeguarding our water resources and ensuring a cleaner and healthier future.

The unification of the arts in the "Gesamtkunstwerk" of courtly opera has repeatedly been the subject of musicological research, but so far, for example, the specific spatial-architectural side of courtly opera has hardly been considered. Music theater means scenic performance and architecture alike. Both formed essential components of lordly representation in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the Old Kingdom, therefore, not only the aristocratic nobility arranged music-theatrical performances, but smaller courts also brought ballets and operas on stage. The interdisciplinary contributions of a conference of the Rudolstädter Arbeitskreis zur Residenzkultur deal with the topic in a European perspective and explain the diverse connections that existed between the music theater and the courtly space in the architectural, political-cultural and social sense.

In der Reihe Slavistische Beiträge werden vor allem slavistische Dissertationen des deutschsprachigen Raums sowie vereinzelt auch amerikanische, englische und russische publiziert. Darüber hinaus stellt die Reihe ein Forum für Sammelbände und Monographien etablierter Wissenschafter/innen dar.

The novelty of this study lies in its techniques for understanding the deliberate narrative contradictions and elusive parody in Goethe's work. Interpretation of the entire "Unterhaltungen", including the Märchen, establishes Goethe's principles of cyclical composition. By pursuing the elaboration of these principles in the "Wanderjahre"—the undependable narrator, multiple perspectives, and parody of popular eighteenth-century figures—the author interprets the cultural and social significance of Goethe's most sophisticated novel.

This book develops a novel account of the connections between justification, understanding, and knowledge. It lays the foundation for a more systematic and interconnected treatment of these central notions in epistemology. The author’s key move is to show first that a specific conception of doxastic justification constitutes our best point of entry into questions pertaining to a subject’s ability to secure understanding of reality. Second, that the traditional order of analysis when it comes to the connection between understanding and knowledge should be reversed: knowledge itself is best conceived of in terms of a specific type of understanding. Rational Understanding will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology and philosophy of science. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

When the cold war was over, a vehement discussion of the new alternatives in security policy started in almost all former Warsaw-Pact States and in the neutral and nonaligned nations, Austria and Hungary among the latter. These nations' entry into the NATO has been the pivotal question. These discussions were the subject of comparative research that was done in Hungary and Austria. The results are presented in the book "NATO, Neutrality and National Identity - the Case of Ausria and Hungary". The book does not focus on the manifold security problems that the concerned nations' joining of NATO would entail but deals with the discourses and debates on neutrality and NATO. The argumentation strategies that were applied in these discourses and debates touch on important motives of national identity and are thus creating identity. Moreover, the NATO discussion is a discussion on security policy and national identity at the same time. The authors' intention was to clarify the dimension relating to identity in the NATO discussion by analyzing the argumentation strategies that were used by the advocates and opponents of NATO membership and the reception of typical arguments in various public opinions. In many cases the argumentation strategies are based on historicizing ways of thinking which claim that there are historical reasons for choosing either of the alternatives (NATO or neutrality). In Hungary, discussions focus on the question whether Hungary is historically an organic part of Europe or whether its own identity will only materialize if the nation adopts a special course between the western and the eastern world. In Austria, the consequences of a potential renunciation of neutrality, one of the most important elements of modern Austrian identity, has been made a subject of passionate discussion. The book analyzes the issues of creating identity by discussion both from a historical-sociological standpoint and from the angle of discourse analysis. The individual chapters deal with comparative studies of the change and upheaval in the national identities in Hungary and Austria. Although these specific analyses are intended to be case studies, they allow generalizations on all of central Europe. The individual corpora (opinion surveys, political speeches, focus groups, talk-shows, newspapers), having been selected so as to ensure comparability, are subjected to a comparative and interdisciplinary analysis and interpretation. Following the introduction - problems are defined from the standpoint of history and political science - the complex discourses from focus group discussions and the outcomes of opinion surveys are presented and analyzed, and newspapers, TV talk-shows and speeches held on days of remembrance are presented applying the methods of discourse analysis. Against this backdrop a comprehensive picture of the identity discourses develops. In the introduction and concluding remarks the two editors draw theoretical and methodical conclusions for interdisciplinary and comparative studies.

Kaltmassivumformverfahren wie das Voll-Vorwärts-Fließpressen werden als ressourcen- und energieeffiziente Fertigungsmethode für metallische Bauteile eingesetzt. Inhomogene plastische Dehnungsverteilungen, die dabei typischerweise auftreten, führen jedoch zum Verbleiben von Eigenspannungen im Werkstoff, welche zu unerwünschten Effekten führen und das Ermüdungsverhalten maßgeblich beeinflussen können. Das in dieser Arbeit verfolgte Ziel ist die Erarbeitung einer Methode zur eigenspannungssensitiven Prozessauslegung. Anhand eines Referenzprozesses wurde die Eigenspannungsentstehung beim Voll-Vorwärts-Fließpressen des rostfreien Stahls X6Cr17 numerisch und experimentell untersucht. Darauf aufbauend wurden Steuer- und Störgrößen zur Eigenspannungseinstellung qualifiziert und deren Auswirkungen quantifiziert. Unter zyklisch-mechanischer Bauteilbelastung wurden verschiedene Relaxationsmuster identifiziert. Hinsichtlich der thermischen Belastung wurde ein Prozessfenster erarbeitet, innerhalb dessen stabile Eigenspannungen vorliegen. Darauf aufbauend wurde ein modellbasierter Zusammenhang zwischen der Temperatur, der Belastungsdauer und der Eigenspannungsstabilität abgeleitet. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass eine Beeinflussung der Betriebsfestigkeit fließgepresster Bauteile durch die Eigenspannungssteuerung bei der Umformung möglich ist. Durch eine Anpassung des Matrizendesigns konnten kostengünstig oberflächennahe Zugeigenspannungen reduziert und die Langzeitfestigkeit erhöht werden.

This volume illuminates human lifeways in the northern Maya lowlands prior to the rise of Chichén Itzá. This period and area have been poorly understood on their own terms, obscured by scholarly focus on the central lowland Maya kingdoms. "Before Kukulkán" is anchored in three decades of interdisciplinary research at the Classic Maya capital of Yaxuná, located at a contentious crossroads of the northern Maya lowlands. Using bioarchaeology, mortuary archaeology, and culturally sensitive mainstream archaeology, the authors create an in-depth regional understanding while also laying out broader ways of learning about the Maya past. Part 1 examines ancient lifeways among the Maya at Yaxuná, while part 2 explores different meanings of dying and cycling at the settlement and beyond: ancestral practices, royal entombment and desecration, and human sacrifice. The authors close with a discussion of the last years of occupation at Yaxuná and the role of Chichén Itzá in the abandonment of this urban center. "Before Kukulkán" provides a cohesive synthesis of the evolving roles and collective identities of locals and foreigners at the settlement and their involvement in the region’s trajectory. Theoretically informed and contextualized discussions offer unique glimpses of everyday life and death in the socially fluid Maya city. These findings, in conjunction with other documented series of skeletal remains from this region, provide a nuanced picture of the social and biocultural dynamics that operated successfully for centuries before the arrival of the Itzá.

This is the first collection to examine the legal dynamics of deinstitutionalisation. It considers the extent to which some contemporary laws, policies and practices affecting people with disabilities are moving towards the promised end point of enhanced social and political participation in the community, while others may instead reinstate, continue or legitimate historical practices associated with this population's institutionalisation. Bringing together 20 contributors from the UK, Canada, Australia, Spain and Indonesia, the book speaks to overarching themes of segregation and inequality, interlocking forms of oppression and rights-based advancements in law, policy and practice. Ultimately this collection brings forth the possibilities, limits and contradictions in the roles of law and policy in processes of institutionalisation and deinstitutionalisation, and directs us towards a more nuanced and sustained scholarly and political engagement with these issues.

Mit Blick auf die berufliche Orientierung Jugendlicher bietet dieses Open-Access-Buch eine systematische, theoriegeleitete und empirische Analyse heterogener Unterstützungsbedarfe und ihrer vielfältigen Ursachen. Die Bedeutung regelmäßiger Bedarfs- und Entwicklungsdiagnostik sowie einer systematischen Verzahnung einzelner Elemente beruflicher Orientierung im schulischen Kontext wird eindrucksvoll anhand heterogener und gleichzeitig diskontinuierlicher Entwicklungsverläufe verdeutlicht. Die Autorin weist zudem auf Konsequenzen für rahmengebende Berufsorientierungsprogramme, die Konzeption berufsorientierender Maßnahmen sowie für die Planung und Umsetzung schulinterner Konzepte hin.

Stalin’s political takeover of the cultural theoretical pattern of Bolshevik novyy byt ‘new public life’ created a powerful myth of the total repression of ‘bourgeois’ philosophy in the early 1930s. However, since the 1920s novyy byt had also produced directives governing the formation of new theories of ideologically correct ‘spiritual kul’turnost’ (culturality, being civilized) on the basis of ‘the best achievements of bourgeois traditions.’ Classical music represented one of these achievements. The chapter sheds light on the idealist philosophical sides of the Soviet conception of kul’turnost. Looking at the musicologist Boris Asafiev (1884-1949) as an intellectual whose theoretical strategies shaped Soviet culture during the Stalin era, the author shows that the Soviet conception of classical music as a symbol of kul’turnost developed from the late ‘Silver Age’ philosophy of ‘internal’ spiritual life. Shaped by the NEP-era Bolshevik discourse of novyy byt and Pan-European cultural and musical theories, the conception emerged during the Stalinist kul’turnost campaigns. Asafiev renewed his theoretical setting (theory of Intonation) of the 1920s to suit Stalinist ideological outlines of what a ‘socialist approach’ to the arts ought to be. However, his theory was one of the evolving ideas that managed to accomplish this in a way that produced interesting scholarly results. His apology of classical music constitute an interesting intellectual history of Russian appreciation of classical music as a proper type of Russian kul’turnost and explains the Soviet understanding of popular music.