The slave experience was a defining one in American history, and not surprisingly, has been a significant and powerful trope in African American literature. In Re-Forming the Past, A. Timothy Spaulding examines contemporary revisions of slave narratives that use elements of the fantastic to redefine the historical and literary constructions of American slavery. In their rejection of mimetic representation and traditional historiography, postmodern slave narratives such as Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada, Octavia Butler's Kindred, Toni Morrison's Beloved, Charles Johnson's Ox Herding Tale and Middle Passage, Jewelle Gomez's The Gilda Stories, and Samuel Delaney's Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand set out to counter the usual slave narrative's reliance on realism and objectivity by creating alternative histories based on subjective, fantastic, and non-realistic representations of slavery. As these texts critique traditional conceptions of history, identity, and aesthetic form, they simultaneously re-invest these concepts with a political agency that harkens back to the original project of the 19th-century slave narratives. In their rejection of mimetic representation and traditional historiography, Spaulding contextualizes postmodern slave narrative. By addressing both literary and popular African American texts, Re-Forming the Past expands discussions of both the African American literary tradition and postmodern culture.

Parliamentary government's continuity is rooted in enduring principles such as citizen representation and accountability to the legislature. But parliamentary systems have evolved in response to changes in the societies they govern and in citizens' views about democratic practices. In this title, the authors demonstrate how, in their respective countries, parliamentary governments have combined stability with the capacity to adapt to such changes. They provide analyses of reforms to parliamentary institutions and governance in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The authors address issues of representation - the move to a proportional electoral system in New Zealand, the unsuccessful attempt to establish a domestic head of state in Australia, and the reform of the British House of Lords - and demonstrate that citizens increasingly want legislative institutions to more closely reflect the societies they serve. To discuss responsiveness, the governance of indigenous communities and their place within the broader society in Canada and New Zealand are examined.

Docudramas, films and movies-of-the-week based on true stories, offer their audiences performance as persuasion. As docudramas re-create actual people and events, these works perform their material. The premises of docudramas’ persuasive arguments operate within the basic settings that stage performances of noteworthy events, the events of war, and the lives of noteworthy individuals. In performing the past, docudramas offer us a performance of memory. Through docudramatic performance, the memories of others become ours. The performance of memory roots docudramatic representation in actuality, and indicates the responsibility to serve the past that helps make docudrama a distinctive mode of representation. The spirit of obligation to the past also frames the ethical considerations docudrama raises, as performance in docudrama shapes public memory. Docudrama Performs the Past examines the spectrum of arguments docudramas offer as their re-creations reason from the arenas of events such as the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93, wars ranging from World War II to Iraq, and the lives of actors, athletes, and politicians. The case studies developed in each chapter show how docudrama’s re-creation of “true stories,” its performance of memory, warrants the claims it forwards about how to remember the past. The aggregate of examining works made since the late 1990s allows us to see how, as recurring contexts, the arenas of docudramatic argument ground action and identity in the settings that frame performance, structure the moral value of the contestation that ensues, and shape the public memory of the past that docudramas perform.

The reform of fiscal relations between different levels of geovernment is crucial to the success of China's current structural transformation to a socialist market economy. The reform will profoundly affect macroeconomic stability, growth prospects , and the effectiveness of providing public services and interregional equity. In order to review international experience and to clearly identify the policy options for China in the short to medium term, a conference was held in Shanghai in October 1993. The papers in this volume, edited by Ehtisham Ahmad, Gao Qiang, and Vito Tanzi, include those presented at the conference and a few that supplement it.

This volume of The Handbook of Research in Middle Level Education is a significant contribution to the literature on middle level schools because it is written specifically with policymakers in mind. Middle level scholars have illuminated the most important issues concerning the education of young adolescents of which policymakers must be knowledgeable. It is only by having informed policymakers that middle level schools can truly thrive and provide the kind of education that every young adolescent deserves. The future of our country depends on it.

This collection of essays on the reform of public procurement law and policy honours the contribution of Sue Arrowsmith as the leading scholar in the field. The book is divided into 3 main parts – on the UK, the EU, and the world – and focuses on central reform themes that have characterised the evolution of public procurement law and policy in the past decades. These include sustainability, complex contracts, review and remedies, electronic procurement, and defence procurement, as well as topics such as debarment, the overall development of EU procurement reform, the very nature of procurement law, or the regulation of UK procurement law after Brexit. The book also covers the dynamic reform process of the EU Procurement Directives and case law, the UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement, the WTO Government Procurement Agreement, and national systems including the US, China, Africa, and the UK. The chapters are written by experts in specific topics of procurement reform from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe with backgrounds in academia, legal practice, and international organisations. The reader is provided with a diverse set of insights into the objectives, approaches, priorities, and future direction of public procurement reform.

Stories told within institutions play a powerful role, helping to define not only the institution itself, but also its individual members. How do institutions use stories? How do those stories both preserve the past and shape the future? To what extent does narrative construct both collective and individual identity? Charlotte Linde's unique and far-reaching study addresses these questions by looking at the interplay of narratives, memory, and identity in a large insurance company. Her detailed ethnography looks at the role of stories within the institution and how they are employed by its members in both private and group settings. Analyzing the re-telling of certain key stories, she shows how the formation of "core" stories and their multiple re-tellings and modifications provide a means of formulating and promoting a cohesive group identity - which in turn shapes the stories and identities of the individuals within the collective. Linde also looks at silences, and how stories not told also convey their version of the past. Working the Past shows how stories that might otherwise be seen as part of mundane daily life are in fact utterly essential to the formation and maintenance of individual and group identity. Her original research will appeal to those interested in narrative studies, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and institutional memory.

Focusing on Fritz Machlup, Connell presents the story of the Bellagio Group and its contribution to modern finance. Initiated by Machlup the Bellagio Group was made up of thirty-two non-government academic economists. During the years between 1964 and 1977 the Group met eighteen times and made a series of recommendations for policymakers.