This chapter discusses the phenomenon of Hebrew-Yiddish self-translation, and offers it as a central practice in the formation of modern Jewish literature. Self-translation, that is the writing and rewriting of the same work time and again in different languages by the same author, was crucial to the very ability to write modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature. In the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, self-translation was the practice that allowed Hebrew and Yiddish to grow as robust literary languages. To exemplify this, the chapter discusses a case study; in a close reading of a self-translated work, a novella by Zalman Shneour (1886–1959), this chapter offers a demonstration not only of the history and national settings of self-translation, but also of the unique poetics of self-translation. The novella, A Death (1905–1923), is a prime example of self-translation practices and poetics, a poetics that privileges openness, counterfactuals, instability and indecisiveness. In the ongoing and prolonged writing and rewriting of this novella, I offer that Shneour works as both practitioner and philosopher of self-translation, thematizing in the work of art its modes of composition.

Chapter 1 considers how Emerson uses the essay form to present his ideas as experiments or trials, to preserve a sense of spontaneity or casualness (“I gossip for my hour concerning the eternal politics”) and to dramatize what he calls the “contrary tendencies” in his philosophy (“I accept the clangor and jangle of contrary tendencies”). While it is important to trace Emerson’s main positions, one misses the living nature of his philosophy unless one also takes account of the motions and patterns within his essays, and the ways he dramatizes instability, spontaneity, and inconsistency. Emerson’s description of a poem in “The Poet” applies equally to his own essays: each is a living thing, like “a plant or an animal,” each has “an architecture of its own.” The discussion focuses on the moods of “History” and “Experience,” guided by Theodor Adorno’s idea of the essay as a carpet, or an arena for thought.

In this chapter, I discuss textual uses of fictive discourse: How should we think of the utterances that convey fictions? MacDonald (1954) and Searle (1975) argue that they are mere pretense – the simulation of acts like assertions or questions. They don’t constitute sui generis, dedicated representational practices of a specific kind, fictionalizing, on a par with assertions or questions. This was the standard view in analytic philosophy from Frege until the 1990s, and was casually endorsed by Austin, Kripke, van Inwagen, and many others. Walton (1990) and others made decisive objections to this view, predicated on its lack of explanatory power, which will be developed here. Walton himself also rejects views of the kind that MacDonald and Searle question, which take fictionalizing to be a sui generis speech act. Currie (1990) articulated one such account in a Gricean psychologistic framework, while García-Carpintero (2013a), Abell (2020), and others have argued for social, Austinian accounts. I earlier classified speech acts of fictionalizing as directives; while other authors classify them as declarations, like ejecting players, naming ships, or sentencing offenders. I’ll question the declaration view, but I’ll argue for another alternative to the directive account, which treats fictionalizings as a variety of constative act.

The chapter outlines the primary methods used in empirical paleoclimatology, beginning with an overview of key paleoclimate proxies (stable oxygen and carbon isotopes, atmospheric composition, ice-rafted debris, aeolian dust and pollen) and the past environmental conditions they help reconstruct. The applicability and potential limitations of different proxies are discussed. It then describes the main paleoclimate archives, such as marine sediments and ice cores, speleothems, tree rings and others, in relation to paleoclimate proxies. The main dating techniques used in Quaternary paleoclimatology, such as the radiocarbon method, paleomagnetism and orbital tuning, are briefly examined. Several important paleoclimatological stacked records are presented, such as the Lisiecki-Raymo benthic stack. Finally, the main applications of paleoclimate proxies for reconstructing paleoenvironments and understanding past climate change and data-model comparison are reviewed.

This chapter applies the volume’s interactive and holistic approach to the development and analysis of the regulation of remote work. The discussion underscores how employment contracts themselves combine locational elements, of direct significance for remote work, with specifications of the temporal extension of the work contract and its full time or part time nature. Moreover, as the chapter shows, the combinatory constellation of employment situations that results is itself then subject to regulation in ways that the regulatory institutions often frame interactively, using concepts rooted in one type of employment condition to deal with another condition – for example combining features of the contract’s time commitment with its locational definition. The chapter also discusses the importance of the subsidiarity principle for channeling the multilevel and interactive component of remote work’s regulation. These points are then used to address issues of fundamental rights for workers and more specifically, of labor rights under new and evolving employment conditions.

This chapter surveys recordings of the Schumanns’ music released since their bicentenaries (Clara’s in 2019, Robert’s in 2010) vis-à-vis trends in their reception history. The albums discussed represent a cross-section of styles and approaches, with several performers being long-standing champions of Clara’s music. Their strategies range from reappraising the relationship between Clara’s and Robert’s creativity, to reviving the ethos of nineteenth-century practices, namely mixed-genre programmes, and reimagining their music through improvisations, transcriptions, and contemporary commissions. Collectively, they recapture something of the Schumanns’ own context while offering varied ways of programming their music in the twenty-first century.

Cyber disinformation is a global, very sophisticated phenomenon, capable of producing negative consequences on democratic values and institutions. This chapter argues that individual behavior of users plays a key role in the control of the phenomenon and aims to identify factors that impact on users’ behavioral intentions and cyber hygiene behavior. This chapter integrates the Extended Theory of Planned Behavior and a Structural Equation Model, realized through Partial Least Square – –Structural Equation Modeling, applied to the cyber disinformation phenomenon. The research data were collected using a questionnaire administered in Poland and Romania and analyzed using the Structural Equation Model. The model’s parameters were processed using the SmartPLS software. The reliability of the variables was assessed using Cronbach’s Alpha and Composite Reliability. The research revealed the applicability of the Theory of Planned Behavior model and found that Moral Norms and Perceived Behavioral Control have an impact on Behavioral Intention and Cyber Hygiene Behavior. The findings of this chapter can provide stakeholders with important insights that can lead to improved responses to the phenomenon.

In September 1522, Martin Luther published his German translation of the New Testament. Each of the four Gospels opened with a woodcut initial depicting its apostle seated with a codex. Each apostle was identified by his symbol; otherwise, Matthew, Mark (lion), and Luke (ox) might have been taken for humanists in their studies, small cramped spaces with narrow windows. Lucas Cranach depicted Matthew (Figure 28), Mark, and Luke each holding a stylus, seated at a desk writing in the codex; Matthew and Mark are writing at the bottom of the right-hand page of a codex. John (Figure 29) was significantly different: seated not at a desk, not in a study, but outdoors in a landscape framed by a medieval town and mountains. He, too, held a stylus, but on a page already lined past his hand, a specific place in what was so visibly a complete text. Alone among the four, John was depicted in apostolic robes.

This chapter explores gender and sexuality in the earliest Italian lyrics, via the themes of love and religion, positioned through modern creative critics such as Anne Carson and the medieval Italian theologian Thomas Aquinas. Howie shows how reading these poems can become a mutually constitutive interpretative exercise, thereby liberating new meanings. The chapter reads a number of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century poems by authors including Lapo Gianni, Dante Alighieri, Guido Guinizzelli, the so-called Compiuta Donzella, Antonio Pucci, Iacopone da Todi, and the anonymous authors of a Jewish-Italian elegy and Christian nativity poem, exploring how religious and poetic erotic discourse interact with each other. Through examples of the nursing baby Jesus and St Francis’s stigmata, Howie invites us as readers to participate in these accounts of embodied desire. Howie thus explores the materiality of secular, sacred and supernatural bodies, both within the medieval and within contemporary frames of reference.

This chapter explores how multinational corporate groups use jurisdictional arbitrage not only to minimize taxation but also to evade liability. Drawing on the concept of CCMCEs, it outlines how corporate planners exploit legal fragmentation to construct liability-resistant structures through techniques such as the Texas two-step, fuse entities, and passive investor emulation. These structures shield parent companies from exposure to tort, regulatory, or criminal liability by disaggregating ownership and control, manipulating corporate registration across jurisdictions, and creating specialized entities designed to absorb legal shocks. The chapter distinguishes between reactive liability strategies, such as dissolving subsidiaries post-litigation, and anticipatory approaches that embed risk insulation directly into the corporate form. Using case studies of Cape Industries, Johnson & Johnson, and the Trump Organization, and data from the CORPLINK project, it illustrates how fuse-like arrangements are deployed to shift liability risk down corporate chains while maintaining control. It argues that liability arbitrage, like tax arbitrage, relies on regulatory gaps between jurisdictions and is often mistaken for mere tax avoidance. Ultimately, such practices erode legal accountability and contribute to a structural ‘race to the bottom’ in corporate regulation.

This chapter returns to the import of marriage as an institution at the interface between intimate, personal lives and wider political transformation. It highlights the experiences of those who have remained unmarried beyond the usual marrying age and draws on discussions of ethical imagination from earlier in the book to explore some submerged connections between non-marriage and social activism. The multiple temporalities in which reflecting on marriage occurs (here by those who remain unmarried) reveal how such judgements constitute imaginative and political work. Involvement in gender-related activism is a possible trajectory for those concerned about women’s or LGBTQ rights. The potential fractures between conservative Islam and the more liberal attitudes of urban, middle-class, youthful Malaysians constitute a zone of contention – but also, for some, a suggestive field for imaginative reflection about their own situation, about the marriage of their parents or those of siblings or friends. In these fissures, transformative standpoints and visions may carry the seeds of wider political change.

The Quaternary period, which began 2.58 million years ago and continues to the present day, is distinctive for its significant climate variability. Understanding the mechanisms of climate change during this period and the relationship between carbon dioxide levels and temperature is hugely important in improving our ability to develop models to predict future climate change. This book discusses the main methods of empirical climatology and the models used to address different aspects of Quaternary climate dynamics, offering a multidisciplinary view of past and future climate changes. It examines the proposed mechanisms of Quaternary climate variability, including glacial cycles and abrupt climate changes, and their relationship to the intrinsic instability of ocean circulation and ice sheets. Including a final chapter on the Anthropocene, it provides a comprehensive overview of Quaternary and modern climate dynamics for graduate students and researchers working in paleoclimatology and climate change science.