Open Access Titles

A profoundly original historical inquiry, this work offers a critical reflection on the silences of the past and the remembrance of the Holocaust.

During World War II, even though Bulgaria was an ally of the Third Reich, it never deported its Jewish community. Until recently, this image of Bulgaria as a European exception has prevailed—but at a cost. For it ignored the roundup of almost all the Jews living in the Yugoslav and Greek territories under Bulgarian occupation between 1941 and 1944, who were in fact deported to Poland, where they were murdered.

In this new English translation of her work originally published in French, Nadège Ragaru presents a riveting, wide-ranging archival investigation encompassing 80 years and six countries (Bulgaria, Germany, the United States, Israel, North Macedonia and Serbia), in doing so exploring the origins and perpetuation of this heroic narrative of Bulgaria's past. Moving between legal and political spheres, from artistic creations to museum exhibits, from the writing of history to transnational public controversies, she shows how the Holocaust north of the Danube became a "rescue" to the river's south. She traces how individual merits were turned into "national" achievements, while blame for the deportations was planted squarely on Nazi Germany. And she illuminates how discussions on the Holocaust in Bulgaria were held hostage to Cold War dynamics before 1989, only to yield to political and memorial struggles afterwards. Ultimately, she restores Jewish voices to the story of their own wartime suffering.

On publication this book is available as an Open Access eBook under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.

The story of a forgotten health education film, Challenge: Science Against Cancer (1950), and what it tells us about mid-twentieth century North American cancer research, medical filmmaking, and health education campaigns. In 1949 the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Canadian Department of National Health and Welfare (DNHW) commissioned a film, eventually called Challenge. Science Against Cancer, as part of a major effort to recruit young scientists into cancer research. Both organizations feared that poor recruitment would stifle the development of the field at a time when funding for research was growing dramatically. The fear was that there would not be enough new young scientists to meet the demand, and that the shortfall would undermine cancer research and the hopes invested in it. Challenge aimed to persuade young scientists to think of cancer research as a career.

This book is the story of that forgotten film and what it tells us about mid-twentieth century American and Canadian cancer research, educational filmmaking, and health education campaigns. It explores why Canadian and American health agencies turned to film to address the problem of scientist recruitment; how filmmakers turned such recruitment concerns into something they thought would work as a film; and how information officers at the NCI and DNHW sought to shape the impact of Challenge by embedding it in a broader educational and propaganda program. It is, in short, an account of the important, but hitherto undocumented, roles of filmmakers and information officers in the promotion of post-Second World War cancer research.

This book is openly available in digital formats thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Examines the creation, context, and significance of the first and only East German feature film about homosexuality. It took forty years for East Germany's state-run studios, DEFA, to produce a feature film about homosexuality: Coming Out. The film's story seems radically ordinary today: a young teacher, Philipp, is gay but cannot accept the truth about his sexuality. He starts a relationship with a fellow teacher, Tanja, but falls in love with a man he meets, Matthias, whose confidence in his own self-understanding is alluring for him as well as a challenge. Acclaimed director Heiner Carow created a film that shows the difficulties, both internalized and external, that queer people faced in East Germany. In a quirk of history, Coming Out premiered in German theaters on November 9, 1989, the very night on which the Berlin Wall was opened, which meant the film was initially overshadowed, to say the least, by the earthshaking political events. Yet it remains a popular film and is regularly screened around the world, including prominently at queer film festivals. Kyle Frackman's book examines the film in both the late East German context of its creation and the international context of its reception. The book will be published in both paperback and Open Access form.

For over a generation now, many leading performers, critics, and scholars of Mozart's music have taken a rejection of transcendence as axiomatic. Edmund Goehring's Coming to Terms with Our Musical Past offers an alternative vision of Mozart's works and of Western art music generally: such works as Mozart's radiate an idealism that has human sociability both as its source and its object. This fascinating new book-length essay is addressed to any reader interested in the performing arts, visual arts, and literature and their relationship to the broader culture.

An exploration of how writers, artists, and filmmakers expose the costs and contest the assumptions of the Capitalocene era that guides readers through the rapidly developing field of Spanish environmental cultural studies.

From the scars left by Franco's dams and mines to the toxic waste dumped in Equatorial Guinea, from the cruelty of the modern pork industry to the ravages of mass tourism in the Balearic Islands, this book delves into the power relations, material practices and social imaginaries underpinning the global economic system to uncover its unaffordable human and non-human costs. Guiding the reader through the rapidly emerging field of Spanish environmental cultural studies, with chapters on such topics as extractivism, animal studies, food studies, ecofeminism, decoloniality, critical race studies, tourism, and waste studies, an international team of US and European scholars show how Spanish writers, artists, and filmmakers have illuminated and contested the growth-oriented and neo-colonialist assumptions of the current Capitalocene era. Focussed on Spain, the volume also provides models for exploring the socioecological implications of cultural manifestations in other parts of the world.

CONTRIBUTORS: Eugenia Afinoguénova, Samuel Amago, Daniel Ares-López, Kata Beilin, John Beusterien, Miguel Caballero Vázquez, Jorge Catalá, Glen S. Close, Jeffrey K. Coleman, Jamie de Moya-Cotter, Ana Fernández-Cebrián, Ofelia Ferrán, Tatjana Gajic , Pedro García-Caro, Santiago Gorostiza, Germán Labrador Méndez, Maryanne L. Leone, Shanna Lino, Jorge Marí, José Manuel Marrero Henríquez, Maria Antònia Martí Escayol, Christine Martínez, Cristina Martínez Tejero, Micah McKay, Pamela F. Phillips, Mercè Picornell, Luis I. Prádanos, Cécile Stehrenberger, John H. Trevathan, Joaquín Valdivielso, William Viestenz, Maite Zubiaurre

The Introduction is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND. The open access version of this publication was funded by the Humanities Center and the Center for Teaching Excellence, Miami University.

A reflection on the idea of the "composer" in the medieval period, including a study of the individuals and groups active in the creation of medieval music.


The modern concept of the individual composer is central to accounts of Western music, and continues to represent a critical field of research in musicology. However, this approach cannot be straightforwardly transposed to the Middle Ages, as it does not reflect the complex creative realities of medieval composition, and conflicts with the evidence from extant sources and documentation.


This collection, the first full-length study of the subject, questions and revises the concept of the composer for the medieval period through five thematic parts: 'Historiographical Critique', 'Ascriptions, Attributions, Signatures', 'Medieval Constructions of Authority and of the Authorial Persona', 'The Composing Workshop', and 'Composers as Communities'. Spanning a period from the seventh century to the early Renaissance, and taking in different cultural and geographical areas of Western Europe, the essays examine a range of repertoires and fields - plainchant, Latin devotional song, medieval motet, trouvère song, Ars nova, drama, and illuminated Gothic manuscripts - in diverse contexts, from clerical communities, to princely courts and lay workshops. Overall, the new perspectives here shed fresh light on the musical practices and repertoires of the Middle Ages.

Focuses on a much discussed and controversial aspect of conservation: the commodification of nature. Can the successful marketization of what is generally perceived as wilderness help to provide for biodiversity conservation, economic development and social emancipation?

At a time of profound anxiety about the impact of human activity on nature and the catastrophic effects of climate change, the "sixth mass extinction", invasive species and rapidly expanding zoonotic diseases, this volume engages with the practices, discourses, and materialities surrounding the commodification of "the wild". Focusing on the relationship between commodification and wilderness, the contributors pay particular attention to commodification's newer iterations in which human management plays a significant role, such as wildlife-park tourism, trophy-hunting, and trade in herbal medicines, perfumes and luxury exotic food items.

Dominant neoliberal approaches have aimed to address global environmental challenges through the commodification and marketization of nature: by valorizing nature, they claim, biodiversity can be safeguarded and "wild" landscapes protected. This, it is thought, will not only open up a new frontier of sustainable, non-exploitative, participatory capitalist expansion, but invigorate rural livelihoods, reduce poverty, and add important assets to otherwise vulnerable rural economies. This important book challenges this future trajectory. Investigating a broad range of cases across southern and eastern Africa, from the illegal sandalwood trade to legal trade in devil's claw and honeybush, to trophy-hunting and wilderness safaris, the contributors reveal the pitfalls and challenges of commodification, what this means for the continent and beyond.

OPEN ACCESS: This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND

Examines the most successful institution of social discipline in Reformation Europe: the Consistory of Geneva during the time of John Calvin Created by John Calvin, the Consistory of Geneva was a quasi-tribunal entrusted with enforcing Reformed morality. Comprised of pastors and elders, this body met weekly and summoned people for a wide range of "sinful" behavior, such as drunkenness, dancing, blasphemy, or simply quarrels, and was a far more intrusive institution than the Catholic Inquisition. Among the thousands summoned during Calvin's ministry were a pair of women who were allegedly prophets, boys who skipped catechism to practice martial arts, and a good number of people begging for forgiveness for having renounced Protestantism out of fear of death.

This superbly researched book, reflecting author Jeffrey Watt's career-long involvement in the ongoing project of transcribing, editing, and publishing the Consistory records, is the first comprehensive examination of this morals court and provides a window into the reception of the Reformation in the so-called Protestant Rome. Watt examines the role of the Consistory in upholding patriarchy, showing that while Genevan authorities did not have a double standard in prosecuting illicit sexuality, the Consistory exhorted women to obey even violently abusive husbands. He finds also that Calvin and his colleagues vigorously promoted a strong work ethic by censuring people, mostly men, for laziness, and showed a surprising degree of skepticism toward accusations of witchcraft. Finally, Watt demonstrates convincingly that, while the Consistory encountered some resistance, Genevans by and large shared the ideals it promoted and that it enjoyed considerable success in fostering discipline in Genevan society.

Richly detailed and timely study on conservation, development and sustainability in Tanzania.

Provides valuable insights into the successes and failures of the management and governance of wildlife, forestry and coastal resources.

Responding to the urgent need to examine the outcome of interventions in governing natural resources, this book analyses different types of sustainability partnerships - with donors, governments, business, NGOs and other actors, and, crucially, assesses which result in better livelihood and environmental outcomes.

The contributors, from a range of disciplines, compare 'more complex' partnerships to relatively 'simpler', more traditional top-down and centralized management systems and to location where sustainability partnerships are not in place. Within-sector comparisons allow a fine-tuned analysis that is formed of historical, location and resource-specific issues, which can be used as input for resource-specific policy and partnership design. Experiences and lessons can be drawn from comparisons across the three different sectors, which can be applied to natural resource governance more broadly.

Considerations of the effect of trauma on heritage sites.

The essays in this volume address the displacement of natural and cultural heritage caused by disasters, whether they be dramatic natural impacts or terrible events unleashed by humankind, including holocaust and genocide. Disasters can be natural or human-made, rapid or slow, great or small, yet the impact is effectively the same; nature, people and cultural heritage are displaced or lost. Yet while heritage and place are at risk from disasters, in time,sites of suffering are sometimes reframed as sites of memory; through this different lens these "difficult" places become heritage sites that attract tourists. Ranging widely chronologically and geographically, the contributors explore the impact of disasters, trauma and suffering on heritage and sense of place, in both theory and practice.

Contributors: Kai Erikson, Catherine Roberts, Philip R. Stone, Stephen Miles, Susannah Eckersley, Gerard Corsane, Graeme Were, Jo Besley, Tim Padley, Chia-Li Chen, Jonathan Skinner, Diana Walters, Shalini Sharma, Ellie Land, Rob Morley, Ian Convery, John Welshman, Aron Mazel, Andrew Law, Bryony Onciul, Sarah Elliott, Rebecca Whittle,Will Medd, Maggie Mort, Hugh Deeming, Marion Walker, Clare Twigger-Ross, Gordon Walker, Nigel Watson, Richard Johnson, Esther Edwards, James Gardner, Brij Mohan, Josephine Baxter, Takashi Harada, Arthur McIvor, Rupert Ashmore, Peter Lurz, Marc Ancrenaz, Isabelle Lackman, Özgün Emre Can, Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir, Mark Wilson, Pat Caplan, Billy Sinclar, Phil O'Keefe

Chapter 19 is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND. The open access version of this publication was funded by the Bath Spa University.

Insights from English and French writers on one of the most significant armed conflicts of the Middle Ages

Documentary sources for the Hundred Years War are many and varied, yet given the number that exist, comparatively few have been published, and even fewer translated. The contributors to this volume, celebrating the work of Professor Anne Curry, provide a wide selection of these sources, edited and translated, and accompanied with detailed analysis and commentaries, by experts in the field. They include contracts, inventories, letters of grace, depositions and wills, and shed new light across a range of themes, from recruitment, violence, ransoms and peace, to gunpowder, shipping, dress, and stray horses. An introductory essay gives a wider perspective on the sources for the Hundred Years War, taking a comparative view from both sides of the Channel.

The chapter "Soldier and Speaker: Sir Richard Waldegrave’s Interactions with the Court of Chivalry and the Peasants’ Revolt" by Adrian R. Bell, Herbert Eiden and Helen Killick is available below as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY−NC−ND. The Open Access version of this chapter was funded by The Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/S011765/1)

At the end of the Middle Ages, a group of hatmakers from the Low Countries migrated across the North Sea to London. These men brought with them new skills and technologies, unknown to English artisans, becoming the first to manufacture brimmed felt hats in England. However, though their wares were immediately popular with English consumers, from courtiers to ordinary people, they faced an economic environment in London that restricted and sometimes completely disallowed the production and retail of their goods. In the early years of the sixteenth century, the hatmakers' desire to remain independent from regulation and governance by London civic guilds led to their formation of a craft association of their own. The Hatmakers' fraternity of St James operated for about a decade, until in 1511 the royal council mandated their amalgamation with and subordination to the powerful London Haberdashers' Company. In their short period of independence, the Hatmakers' guild wrote bilingual ordinances, in English and Dutch, regulating the craft of hatmaking in London. The small parchment booklet in which they wrote the ordinances, now housed in the London Guildhall Library, contains more than a simple list of craft rules: it reveals how these Dutch craftsmen negotiated their immigrant lives in both the specifics of their artisanal practice and the broader social and linguistic realities of their daily interactions.

SHANNON MCSHEFFREY is Professor of History at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She has written five books and numerous articles and chapters on aspects of English society, culture, and politics between 1400 and 1550.

AD PUTTER is Professor of Medieval English at the University of Bristol, UK, co-director of Bristol's Centre for Medieval Studies, and Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author and editor of numerous books, with particular interests in the works of the Gawain poet, and the literary heritage of Anglo-Dutch relations.