This book explores the role of Mediterranean imaginaries in one of the preeminent tropes of Italian history: the formation or 'making of' Italians. While previous scholarship on the construction of Italian identity has often focused too narrowly on the territorial notion of the nation-state, and over-identified Italy with its capital, Rome, this book highlights the importance of the Mediterranean Sea to the development of Italian collective imaginaries. From this perspective, this book re-interprets key historical processes and actors in the history of modern Italy, and thereby challenges mainstream interpretations of Italian collective identity as weak or incomplete. Ultimately, it argues that Mediterranean imaginaries acted as counterweights to the solidification of a 'national' Italian identity, and still constitute alternative but equally viable modes of collective belonging.

The Palgrave Handbook of European Migration in Literature and Culture engages with migration to, within, and from Europe, foregrounding migration through the lenses of historical migratory movement and flows associated with colonialism and postcolonialism. With essays on literature, film, drama, graphic novels, and more, the book addresses migration and media, hostile environments, migration and language, migration and literary experiment, migration as palimpsest, and figurations of the migrant. Each section is introduced by one of the handbook’s contributing editors and interviews with writers and film directors are integrated throughout the volume. The essays collected in the volume move beyond the discourse of the “refugee crisis” to trace the historical roots of the current migration situation through colonialism and decolonization.

According to Michel Serres, a process of 'hominescence' has taken place throughout human history. Hominescence can be described as a type of adolescence; humanity in a state of growing, a state of constant change, on the threshold of something unpredictable. We are destined never to be the same again but what does the future hold? In this innovative and passionately original work of philosophy, Serres describes the future of man as an adolescence, transitioning from childhood to adulthood, or luminescence, when a dark body becomes light. After considering the radical changes that humanity has experienced over the last fifty years, Serres analyzes the new relationship that man has with diverse concepts, like the dead, his own body, agriculture, and new communication networks. He alerts us to the consequences of these changes, particularly on the danger of growing inequalities between rich and poor countries. Should we rejoice in the future, ignore it, or even dread it? Unlike other philosophies that preach doom and gloom, Hominescence calls for us to anticipate the uncertain light of the future.

A media history of the material and infrastructural features of networking practices, a German classic translated for the first time into English. Nets hold, connect, and catch. They ensnare, bind, and entangle. Our social networks owe their name to a conceivably strange and ambivalent object. But how did the net get into the network? And how can it reasonably represent the connectedness of people, things, institutions, signs, infrastructures, and even nature? The Connectivity of Things by Sebastian Giessmann, the first media history that addresses the overwhelming diversity of networks, attempts to answer all these questions and more. Reconstructing the decisive moments in which networking turned into a veritable cultural technique, Giessmann takes readers below the street to the Parisian sewers and to the Suez Canal, into the telephone exchanges of Northeast America, and on to the London Underground. His brilliant history explains why social networks were discovered late, how the rapid rise of mathematical network theory was able to take place, how improbable the invention of the internet was, and even what diagrams and conspiracy theories have to do with it all. A primer on networking as a cultural technique, this translated German classic explains everything one ever could wish to know about networks.

A Thematic Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese is a unique resource for intermediate to advanced students of Chinese. The dictionary presents 9,000 words organized thematically in 300 different subject areas. These themes cover the vocabulary necessary for daily use and for conducting meaningful conversations with native Chinese speakers on a variety of topics, from politics to business, and from hobbies to education. Each vocabulary item is annotated with the most frequent collocations allowing learners to improve their fluency by storing new vocabulary in larger linguistic units. Cultural and linguistic tips enable learners to grasp the vocabulary more effectively and increase their awareness of Chinese culture embedded in the language. Review exercises are provided throughout to ensure learners have ample opportunity to practice the new material. This is a great resource for both independent study and classroom use and will be of interest to students and teachers of Chinese alike. For further understanding of Chinese expressions, students are encouraged to read 500 Common Chinese Proverbs and Colloquial Expressions and 500 Common Chinese Idioms.

This collection examines new psychological evidence for the modal theory and attempts to synthesize this theory with other theories of cognition and religion.

BIM for Structural Engineering and Architecture Building Information Modeling: Framework for Structural Design outlines one of the most promising new developments in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC). Building information modeling (BIM) is an information management and analysis technology that is changing the role of computation in the architectural and engineering industries. The innovative process constructs a database assembling all of the objects needed to build a specific structure. Instead of using a computer to produce a series of drawings that together describe the building, BIM creates a single illustration representing the building as a whole. This book highlights the BIM technology and explains how it is redefining the structural analysis and design of building structures. BIM as a Framework Enabler This book introduces a new framework—the structure and architecture synergy framework (SAS framework)—that helps develop and enhance the understanding of the fundamental principles of architectural analysis using BIM tools. Based upon three main components: the structural melody, structural poetry, and structural analysis, along with the BIM tools as the frame enabler, this new framework allows users to explore structural design as an art while also factoring in the principles of engineering. The framework stresses the influence structure can play in form generation and in defining spatial order and composition. By highlighting the interplay between architecture and structure, the book emphasizes the conceptual behaviors of structural systems and their aesthetic implications and enables readers to thoroughly understand the art and science of whole structural system concepts. Presents the use of BIM technology as part of a design process or framework that can lead to a more comprehensive, intelligent, and integrated building design Places special emphasis on the application of BIM technology for exploring the intimate relationship between structural engineering and architectural design Includes a discussion of current and emerging trends in structural engineering practice and the role of the structural engineer in building design using new BIM technologies Building Information Modeling: Framework for Structural Design provides a thorough understanding of architectural structures and introduces a new framework that revolutionizes the way building structures are designed and constructed.

Nature is the world's foremost designer. With billions of years of experience and boasting the most extensive laboratory available, it conducts research in every branch of engineering and science. Nature's designs and capabilities have always inspired technology, from the use of tongs and tweezers to genetic algorithms and autonomous legged robots.

This work investigates the precise effects on society of the new and much vaunted electronic technologies (ICTs). Are fundamental shifts already taking place in the way in which we behave, organize, and interact as a direct result of their implementation? Providing a comprehensive set of detailed empirical studies of the genesis and use of these new technologies, the book also presents some surprising counterintuitive results.

Writing the perfect complement to their bestseller, Introducing Public Administration, Shafritz and Borick highlight the great drama inherent in public policy -- and the ingenuity of its makers and administrators -- in this new casebook that brings thrilling, true life adventures in public administration to life in an engaging, witty style. Drawing on a unique assortment of literary, historic, and modern examples, Cases in Public Policy and Administration exposes students to public administration in practice by telling the tales of: How Thurgood Marshall led the legal fight for civil rights and made it possible for Barack Obama to become president How the ideas of an academic economist and a famous novelist led to the recession that started in 2008 How Al Gore really deserves just a little bit of credit for inventing the Internet How the decision was made by President Harry Truman to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan in order to end World War II How the current American welfare state was inspired by a German chancellor How a Nazi war criminal inadvertently provided the world with a lesson in bureaucratic ethics How Napoleon Bonaparte encouraged the job of chief of staff to escape from the military and live in contemporary civilian offices How an obscure state department bureaucrat wrote the policy of containment that allowed the United States to win the Cold War with the Soviet Union How Dwight D. Eisenhower was started on the road to the presidency by a mentor he found in the Panamanian rain forest How Florence Nightingale gathered statistics during the Crimean War that helped lead to contemporary program evaluation.