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US-karibische Diasporaliteraturen der 2000er-Jahre konstituieren soziale Räume als Diasporaräume. An den literarischen Raumproduktionen in Werken von Ernesto Quiñónez, Achy Obejas, Edwidge Danticat und Junot Díaz lässt sich erkennen, so eine zentrale These, wie diese Literaturen im Spagat sich selbst, ihre Verfasserinnen und Verfasser sowie ihre ethnischen Gemeinschaften zwischen den USA und der Karibik verorten. Texte wie Bodega Dreams, Days of Awe, The Dew Breaker und The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao positionieren sich über ihre Erzählräume und erzählten Räume, ihre Raumsemantik und ihre Intertextualität im Spannungsfeld von De- und Reterritorialisierung. Sie setzen sich mit der Geschichte ihrer karibischen «Herkunftsländer» (Puerto Rico, Kuba, Haiti, Dominikanische Republik) und ihrer ethnischen Gruppen in den USA auseinander. Sie verhandeln, wie diese Geschichte aus der Perspektive der Postmemoria-Generation aufzuarbeiten ist, wie diese Perspektive das «Ursprungsland» erst als erlebt-erlittenen Raum produziert und in welchem Verhältnis im Heimatland verbliebene und in der Diaspora lebende Subjekte zueinanderstehen. Die Studie erarbeitet entlang der Leitkategorien von De- und Reterritorialisierung und in Verbindung mit Henri Lefebvres phänomenologischem Raumbegriff, Erkenntnissen aus Diaspora-, Intersektionalitäts-, Kolonialitäts- und Erzählforschung einen ausdifferenzierten und vielfach anschlussfähigen theoretischen Zugang zu postkolonialen literarischen Räumen. Durch ihre kulturwissenschaftliche Fundierung in einer plurilingualen Karibikforschung und gleichzeitig romanistische Ausrichtung eröffnet die Monographie neue Perspektiven auf das Phänomen der zeitgenössischen hispanokaribischen und haitianischen ethnischen Literaturen in der USA.

Social Fabric: Art and Activism in Contemporary Brazil brings together the work of ten artists who reflect upon the long-standing histories of oppressive power structures in the territory now known as Brazil. Blurring the line between art and activism and spanning installation, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, and video, these artists contribute to local and global conversations about the state of democracy, racial injustice, and the violence inflicted by the nation-state. This first English-language, book-length study of contemporary Brazilian art in relationship to activism assembles artist-authored texts, interviews, essays, and a conceptual mapping of Brazilian history to illuminate the function of art as a platform for critical engagement with the historical, political, and cultural configurations of a particular place. By refusing to remain neutral, these artists create spaces of vibrant and vital community and self-construction to explore how healing and justice may be possible, especially in the Black, LGBTQIA+, and Indigenous communities to which many of them belong.

Archival research into policing and surveillance of migrant women illuminates pressing contemporary issues. Examining little-known policing archives in France, Senegal, and Cambodia, Jennifer Anne Boittin unearths the stories of hundreds of women labeled “undesirable” by the French colonial police and society in the early twentieth century. These “undesirables” were often women traveling alone, women who were poor or ill, women of color, or women whose intimate lives were deemed unruly. To refute the label and be able to move freely, they spoke out or wrote impassioned letters: some emphasized their “undesirable” qualities to suggest that they needed the care and protection of the state to support their movements, while others used the empire's own laws around Frenchness and mobility to challenge state or societal interference. Tacking between advocacy and supplication, these women summoned intimate details to move beyond, contest, or confound surveillance efforts, bringing to life a practice that Boittin terms “passionate mobility.” In considering how ordinary women pursued autonomy, security, companionship, or simply a better existence in the face of surveillance and control, Undesirable illuminates pressing contemporary issues of migration and violence.

Understanding and implementing the brain's computational paradigm is the one true grand challenge facing computer researchers. Not only are the brain's computational capabilities far beyond those of conventional computers, its energy efficiency is truly remarkable. This book, written from the perspective of a computer designer and targeted at computer researchers, is intended to give both background and lay out a course of action for studying the brain's computational paradigm. It contains a mix of concepts and ideas drawn from computational neuroscience, combined with those of the author. As background, relevant biological features are described in terms of their computational and communication properties. The brain's neocortex is constructed of massively interconnected neurons that compute and communicate via voltage spikes, and a strong argument can be made that precise spike timing is an essential element of the paradigm. Drawing from the biological features, a mathematics-based computational paradigm is constructed. The key feature is spiking neurons that perform communication and processing in space-time, with emphasis on time. In these paradigms, time is used as a freely available resource for both communication and computation. Neuron models are first discussed in general, and one is chosen for detailed development. Using the model, single-neuron computation is first explored. Neuron inputs are encoded as spike patterns, and the neuron is trained to identify input pattern similarities. Individual neurons are building blocks for constructing larger ensembles, referred to as'columns'. These columns are trained in an unsupervised manner and operate collectively to perform the basic cognitive function of pattern clustering. Similar input patterns are mapped to a much smaller set of similar output patterns, thereby dividing the input patterns into identifiable clusters. Larger cognitive systems are formed by combining columns into a hierarchical architecture. These higher level architectures are the subject of ongoing study, and progress to date is described in detail in later chapters. Simulation plays a major role in model development, and the simulation infrastructure developed by the author is described.