Frans Hals (1582/83-1666) is rightfully considered one of the most important seventeenth-century Dutch painters. His portraits are admired for their virtuoso brushwork and their seemingly spontaneous character. This volume, with fourteen contributions by twenty-six specialists on Hals's paintings and his artistic ne...

This volume focuses on a number of research questions, drawn from social movement scholarship: How does nonviolent mobilisation emerge and persist in deeply divided societies? What are the trajectories of participation in violent groups in these societies? What is the relationship between overt mobilisation, clandes...

This book is about cinema and the cultural Cold War in Asia, set against the larger history of the cultural, political, and institutional linkages between the US, Europe, and Asia at the height of the Cold War. From the popularity of CIA-sponsored espionage films in Hong Kong and South Korea to the enduring Cold War...

Information and communication technology (ICT) makes it possible to bring information to everyone who wants to learn. Rapid advances in technology offer strong support for using ICT in teaching. Online education can intensify and improve students' learning process, and enables us to reach more students than by tradi...

In a modern global historical context, scholars have often regarded piracy as an essentially European concept which was inappropriately applied by the expanding European powers to the rest of the world, mainly for the purpose of furthering colonial forms of domination in the economic, political, military, legal and ...

How do new media affect the question of social memory? Social memory is usually described as enacted through ritual, language, art, architecture, and institutions ? Phenomena whose persistence over time and capacity for a shared storage of the past was set in contrast to fleeting individual memory. But the question ...

As far as interaction with screens is concerned, the given technology of particular interactive devices entails an ambiguous status of screens: what is shown on the screen has to do with how one interacts with it, that is, we can almost literally see what we are doing. This study is devoted to a theoretical explorat...

Between 1899 and 1902 the Dutch public was captivated by the war raging in South Africa between the Boer republics and the British Empire. Dutch popular opinion was on the side of the Boers: these descendants of the seventeenth-century Dutch settlers were perceived as kinsmen, the most tangible result of which was a...

Paradoxes of Social Capital critically examines the robustness of social capital theory as an analytical tool in explaining the various 'integration' patterns amongst Moroccans in London. The book also considers how structural factors impact on the ways in which Moroccans, across generations, sustain, access and use...

This book presents an innovative approach to the strategic management perspective in the museum context. Due to the dynamic political, social, and economic challenges, museums increasingly have to apply a business-oriented perspective, yet this issue is analysed in a fragmented way. Thus, drawing from extensive lite...

This volume presents a comparative analysis of three key citiesーHong Kong, Singapore, and Taipeiーduring the Cold War. Strategically positioned within international trade networks, these cities also served as critical nodes for both regional conflicts and cooperation. The comparison primarily focuses on their urban...

Grand, extravagant, magnificent, scandalous, corrupt, political, personal, fractious; these are terms often associated with the medieval and early modern courts. Moreover, the court constituted a forceful nexus in the social world, which was central to the legitimacy and authority of rulership. As such, courts shape...

Film archives have long been dedicated to preserving movies, and they've been nimble in recent years in adapting to the changing formats and technologies through which cinema is now created and presented. This collection makes the case for a further step: the need to see media technologies themselves as objects of c...

Star Wars has reached more than three generations of casual and hardcore fans alike, and as a result many of the producers of franchised Star Wars texts (films, television, comics, novels, games, and more) over the past four decades have been fans-turned-creators. Yet despite its dominant cultural and industrial pos...

Until currently there have been no specific publications, particularly in English, on women in traditional Islamic educational institutions in Indonesia, known as pesantren, which played a significant role in shaping the gender issues in the Indonesian Muslim community. This informative and insightful book contribut...

When the Second World War ended, Europe was in ruins. Yet, politically and socially, the years between 1943 and 1947 were a time of dramatic reconfigurations, which proved to be foundational for the making of today's Europe. This volume hones in on the crucial period from the beginning of the end of Nazi rule in Eur...