This book explores the phenomenon of Independence Days. These rituals had complex meanings both in the territories concerned and in Britain as the imperial metropole, where they were extensively reported in the press. The text is concerned with the political management, associated rhetoric and iconography of these seminal celebrations. The focus is therefore very much on political culture in a broad sense, and changing perceptions and presentations over time. Highlights of the book include an overview by David Cannadine relating the topic to ornamentalism, invented tradition and transitions in British culture. Although the book is mainly concerned with the British Empire, Martin Shipway – a leading historian and cultural analyst of French decolonization – contributes an acute summary of how the same ‘moment’ was handled differently in the other great European empires. There are detailed and lively studies by noted specialists of the immediate coming of Independence to India/Pakistan, Malaya, Ghana, Zimbabwe, and Guyana. The book includes a thematic focus on the important role of representatives of the British monarchy in legitimating transfers of sovereignty at their point of climax. This book was published as a special issue of The Round Table.

The Art & Making of Independence Day Resurgence takes readers from the aftermath of the 6 invasion, through the rebuilding of the planet, and the new, terrifying threat about to hit Earth. From sketch to screen, the book delves into the design and creation of the colossal spaceships, aliens, vehicles and fighter planes, weaponry, and the new characters defending the world. This official companion is packed with incredible concept art, costume design, behind-the-scenes photography, and exclusive interviews with cast and crew including Jeff Goldblum and director Roland Emmerich.

Over the past fifty years, Puerto Rican voters have roundly rejected any calls for national independence. Yet the rhetoric and iconography of independence have been defining features of Puerto Rican literature and culture. In the provocative new book Dream Nation, María Acosta Cruz investigates the roots and effects of this profound disconnect between cultural fantasy and political reality. Bringing together texts from Puerto Rican literature, history, and popular culture, Dream Nation shows how imaginings of national independence have served many competing purposes. They have given authority to the island’s literary and artistic establishment but have also been a badge of countercultural cool. These ideas have been fueled both by nostalgia for an imagined past and by yearning for a better future. They have fostered local communities on the island, and still helped define Puerto Rican identity within U.S. Latino culture. In clear, accessible prose, Acosta Cruz takes us on a journey from the 1898 annexation of Puerto Rico to the elections of 2012, stopping at many cultural touchstones along the way, from the canonical literature of the Generación del 30 to the rap music of Tego Calderón. Dream Nation thus serves both as a testament to how stories, symbols, and heroes of independence have inspired the Puerto Rican imagination and as an urgent warning about how this culture has become detached from the everyday concerns of the island’s people. A volume in the American Literature Initiatives series

This book explores the reproduction of colonialism at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and examines international criminal law (ICL) vs the black body through an immersive format of art, music, poetry, and architecture and post-colonial/critical race theory lens. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the book interrogates the operationalisation of the Rome Statute to detail a Eurocentric hegemony at the core of ICL. It explores how colonialism and slavery have come to shape ICL, exposing the perpetuation of the colonial, and warns that it has ominous contemporary and future implications for Africa. As currently envisaged and acted out at the ICC, this law is founded on deceptive and colonial ideas of ‘what is wrong’ in/with the world. The book finds that the contemporary ICL regime is founded on white supremacy that corrupts the law’s interaction with the African. The African is but a unit utilised by the global elite to exploit and extract resources. From time to time, these alliances disintegrate with ICL becoming a retaliatory tool of choice. What is at stake is power, not justice. This power has been hierarchical with Eurocentrism at the top throughout modern history. Colonialism is seen not to have ended but to have regerminated through the foundation of the ‘independent’ African state. The ICC reproduces the colonial by use of European law and, ultimately, the over-representation of the black accused. To conclude, the book provides a liberated African forum that can address conflicts in the content, with a call for the end of the ICC’s involvement in Africa. The demand is made for an African court that utilises non-colonising African norms which are uniquely suited to address local conflicts. Multidisciplinary in nature, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international criminal law, criminal justice, human rights law, African studies, global social justice, sociology, anthropology, postcolonial studies, and philosophy.

The career of Y. G. Srimati - classical singer, musician, dancer and painter - represents a continuum in which each of these skills and experiences merged, influencing and pollinating each other. Born in Mysore in 1926, Srimati was part of the generation much influenced by the rediscovery of a classical Sanskrit legacy devoted to the visual arts. Soon swept up in the nationalist movement for an independent India, she was deeply moved by the time she spent with Gandhi. For the young Srimati, the explicit referencing of the past and of religious subjects came together in an unparalleled way, driven by the explosive atmosphere of an India in the final push to independence. This experience gave form and meaning to her art, and largely defined her style. As John Guy demonstrates in this sumptuous volume, as a painter of the mid- and later 20th century, Y. G. Srimati embodied a traditionalist position, steadfast in her vision of an Indian style, one which resonated with those who knew India best. AUTHOR: John Guy is the Florence and Herbert Irving Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He previously served for 22 years as Senior Curator of Indian Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and has authored many major publications, including Arts of India: 1550-1900 (V&A 1990), Indian Art and Connoisseurship (1995, ed.), Vietnamese Ceramics: A Separate Tradition (1998), Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East (1998), Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India (MMA 2012), Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800 (MMA 2013) and Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia (MMA 2014). 80 illustrations

There is only one argument for Scottish independence: the cultural argument. It was there long before North Sea oil had been discovered, and it will be here long after the oil has run out. How have perceptions of Scottish culture been shaped by its role within Britain? What would be different about culture in an Independent Scotland? Why is culture the key to the independence debate? ALEXANDER MOFFAT and ALAN RIACH take a hard look at the most neglected aspect of the argument for Scotland's distinctive national identity: the arts. Their proposition is that music, painting, architecture and, pre-eminently, literature, are the fuel and fire that makes imagination possible. Neglect them at your peril. For Moffat and Riach, jobs, health and trade are matters of material fact that need to be enlivened by imagination. How can we organise society to help us approach what the arts have to give. Why have we been so poor at representing our arts comprehensively, both within Scotland and internationally? What can be done? How might things be different? The arts are of paramount importance in the modern world. Moffat and Riach take the argument out of the hands of politicians and economists and beyond the petty squabbles of party politics. Praise for Arts of Resistance An inspiration, a revelation and education, as to the extraordinary richness and organic cohesion of twentieth-century Scottish culture, full of intellectual adventure and openness to the wider world... full of passion and intelligence... This is a landmark book. THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

In Latin America, where even today writing has remained a restricted form of expression, the task of generating consent and imposing the emergent nation-state as the exclusive form of the political, was largely conferred to the image. Furthermore, at the moment of its historical demise, the new, 'postmodern' forms of sovereignty appear to rely even more heavily on visual discourses of power. However, a critique of the iconography of the modern state-form has been missing. This volume is the first concerted attempt by cultural, historical and visual scholars to address the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America, in a comparative perspective spanning various regions and historical stages. The case studies are divided into four sections, analysing the formation of a public sphere, the visual politics of avant-garde art, the impact of mass society on political iconography, and the consolidation and crisis of territory as a key icon of the state. Jens Andermann is a Lecturer in Latin American Studies at Birkbeck College, London, and co-editor of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. Among his publications are Mapas de poder: una arqueología literaria del espacio argentino (Rosario, 2000) and articles for major journals in Argentina, Brazil, Europe and the US. William Rowe is Anniversary Professor of Poetics at Birkbeck College, London. His book Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (London, 1991) has been translated into several languages. His most recent works, apart from translations of a wide range of Latin American poetry, are Poets of Contemporary Latin America: History and the Inner Life (Oxford, 2000) and Ensayos vallejianos (Berkeley and Lima, 2006).