Russia is a land of superlatives: By far the world’s largest country, it extends across the whole of northern Asia and the eastern third of Europe, spanning eleven time zones. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Russia has undergone a radical change from a communist country to a hyper capitalist market of vast wealth and resources. Offering a panoramic view of Russia, and the history of the nation since 1917 as well as the culture, arts, and literature, particular focus is paid to the contemporary nation since the fall of the Berlin Wall, including the rise of the Oligarchs, the presidency of Putin, and the role of Russia in the new world order.

Selected contributions to the Ninth World Shakespeare Congress, which took place in July 2011 in Prague, represent the contemporary state of Shakespeare studies in thirty-eight countries worldwide. Apart from readings of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, more than forty chapters map Renaissance contexts of his art in politics, theater, law, and material culture and discuss numerous cases of the impact of his works in global culture from the Americas to the Far East, including stage productions, book culture, translations, film and television adaptations, festivals, and national heritage.

Teaching Culture in Introductory Foreign Language Textbooks

This book demonstrates how foreign language textbook analysis can inform future materials development to improve foreign language teaching. Through chronological analysis of French textbooks in the United States, this book explores the representations of Canada and Quebec in French beginner textbooks produced from 1960 to 2010. Chapelle couples a large collection of 65 textbooks with a social-semiotic qualitative analysis of the genres, language and images that communicate Quebec's cultural narrative to learners.

Performer Culture & Literature responds to the new needs of the school integrating harmoniously and motivating the study of culture, literature and language (level B2).

Volume 1 - From the Origins to the Eighteenth Century

Volume 2 - The Nineteenth Century in Britain and America

Volume 3 - The Twentieth Century and the Present

Among the most famous of the civilizations produced by the New World was the great Aztec Empire, centered at Tenochtitlan. This culture had captured the imaginations of many throughout the centuries because of its grandeur, power, and quite often, its brutality. The Aztec: The Last Great Civilization of Mesoamerica is a short introduction to Aztec history and culture, encompassing every period from the origin of the Aztec peoples to their eventual conquest by the Spanish in the early 16th century.