From post-truth politics to “no-platforming” on university campuses, the English language has been both a potent weapon and a crucial battlefield for our divided politics. In this important and wide-ranging intervention, Thomas Docherty explores the politics of the English language, its implication in the dynamics of political power and the spaces it offers for dissent and resistance. From the authorised English of the King James Bible to the colonial project of University English Studies,...

WINNER of the Junior Juries Award and Judges Special Award – KPMG Children's Books Ireland Awards 2024WINNER of the UKLA Book Awards 2024SHORTLISTED for The Oscar's Book Prize 2024'A beautiful, gentle, rhyming exploration of grief and mourning.' – Joseph Coelho, Waterstones Children's Laureate 22-24The Hare-Shaped Hole is a beautiful, touching and poignant picture book that gently explores themes of grief and ...

Polly and Neil are back in the second gorgeous children's book from Sunday Times bestselling novelist Jenny Colgan. Perfect for reading aloud and including fun activities based on the story.The boat masts jangled louder and louder. Above their heads, black clouds gathered. Polly shivered, and then the rain started to fall: plop, plop, plop.Polly is waiting for something important to happen. But waiting is hard. It's even harder when it's raining and you ca...

Can a wolf really be a superhero?Luna is a little wolf with a big ambition: she's determined to be a superhero!There's just one problem. All the other animals are terrified of wolves. Whenever Luna swoops in to help, everyone runs away.Luna's about to abandon her superhero dreams . . . but then she tries one final super-daring rescue!A fabulously exciting r...

Complicity argues that all existing modes of cultural critique are regarded as legitimate and productive if and only if they are complicit with the very ideologies and values that the criticism sets out to undermine. Through philosophical, literary and theoretical analysis, Thomas Docherty shows how easy it has been for criticism to become essentially an act of political collaboration with existing governmental power.The book explores the various ways in which, both historically an...

The university is under threat. For forty years this indispensable democratic institution has been systematically betrayed by governments and the political class, who have redirected it from its proper social and cultural functions through a relentless programme of financialisation. Taking his cue from Julien Benda’s classic polemical essay of 1927, Thomas Docherty exposes the forces behind modern university ‘reform’. He demonstrates that the sector has been politicised and now works expli...

"Docherty is not only is a brilliant critic of those forces that would like to transform higher education into an extension of the market-place... he is also a man of great moral and civic courage, who under intense pressure from the punishing neoliberal state has risked a great deal to remind us that higher education is a civic institution crucial to creating the formative cultures necessary for a democracy to survive, if not flourish."- Henry Giroux, McMasters Universi...

Exploring the controversial history of an aesthetic – realism – this book examines the role that realism plays in the negotiation of social, political, and material realities from the mid-19th century to the present day.Examining a broad range of literary texts from French, English, Italian, German, and Russian writers, this book provides new insights into how realism engages with themes including capital, social decorum, the law and its politicisation, modern science as a determin...

What is the value of literature?In this important new work, Thomas Docherty charts a new economic history of literary culture and its institutions in the modern age. From the literary patronage of the early modern period, through the colonial exploitation of the 18th and 19th centuries to the institutionalisation of “literature” in the neoliberal university of the 21st century, Literature and Capital explores the changing ways in which literary culture has both re...

From the author/illustrator team behind The Snatchabook comes a music-filled journey to bedtime."Orange moon,blue baboon.Blue baboonspies bassoon."Under an orange moon, Blue Baboon sets out with her bassoon. But there's suddenly a monsoon. Luckily, a big balloon lead her to the dune, where she and her friends can all play in tune!Perfect for bedtime, this playful, rhyming picture b...

A beautiful companion title to the critically acclaimed The Hare-Shaped Hole, The Bear-Shaped Hole is a profound, heart-warming story that helps children understand and prepare for loss.Gerda and Orlo are best bear friends. When Gerda was there, Orlo always had time for a game or a story, a joke or a rhyme. He was never too busy to listen, to talk, to help, to share, or to go for a walk.But slowly, something starts to change. Orlo reveals ...

Mood is a phenomenon whose study is inherently interdisciplinary. While it has remained resistant to theorisation, it nonetheless has a substantial influence on art, politics and society. Since its practical omnipresence in every-day life renders it one of the most significant aspects of affect studies, it has garnered an increasing amount of critical attention in a number of disciplines across the humanities, sciences and social sciences in the past two decades. Mood: Interdisciplinar...