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Logomotives

Words That Change the World, 1400–1700
Series: Conversions
Brief Description
Logomotives are words that change worlds—past, present, and future. Bearing a wide range of linguistic, regional and disciplinary expertise, the volume's twenty-five contributors traverse multiple geographies (Asia, Africa, Iberian Peninsula, Europe, and the Americas), work across fifteen languages and span from antiquity to our current moment... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$7699
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Releases 8th September 2026 (Approx. Date) Pre-order  "Logomotives" now to secure your copy from our first shipment

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Animates the conversional potential of language by exploring the catalytic force of words across diverse cultures and linguistic systems.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Logomotives are words that change worlds—past, present, and future. Bearing a wide range of linguistic, regional and disciplinary expertise, the volume's twenty-five contributors traverse multiple geographies (Asia, Africa, Iberian Peninsula, Europe, and the Americas), work across fifteen languages and span from antiquity to our current moment to reveal how words are catalysts of cultural, political and epistemological change.

Harnessing new developments in philologies of race, in queer-, feminist-, trans-, transnational- and postcolonial philologies, as well as translation studies, Logomotives illuminates the world-making capacity of words. Each chapter opens with a methodological statement, pursues a central reading and concludes with a lesson plan for undergraduate or graduate classrooms.

The volume orients critical attention to the relations between what a word means, the ways in which it moves, and the changes that such motion engenders, both within and across the historical cultures under analysis and in present-day scholarship.

Series: Conversions

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  • Logomotives
    Pre-order
    Logomotives
    Logomotives are words that change worlds—past, present, and future. Bearing a wide range of linguistic, regional and disciplinary expertise, the volume's twenty-five contributors traverse multiple geographies (Asia, Africa, Iberian Peninsula, Europe, and the Americas), work across fifteen languages and span from antiquity to our current moment to reveal how words are catalysts of cultural, political and epistemological change. Harnessing new...
    Paperback
    $7699
    Pre-order
    Out 8 Sep 2026

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781399544559

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 31 May 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Edinburgh University Press

Illustration: 16 b&w illustrations

Contributors:

  • Edited by Stephen Spiess
  • Edited by Marjorie Rubright

Audience: Tertiary education

DIMENSIONS

Width: 156.0mm

Height: 234.0mm

Weight: 0g

Pages: 392

About the Author

Marjorie Rubright is Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she directs the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies. She is founder of the Renaissance of the Earth project, an interdisciplinary research collaboration that engages the early modern past with questions about our environmental future with the goal of discovering diverse avenues for creating sustainable and equitable life. She is the author of Doppelgnger Dilemmas: Anglo-Dutch Relations in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (2014), and co-author of "So Long Lives This": A Celebration of Shakespeare's Life and Works, 1616-2016 (2016), winner of the 2017 Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab Award. Her public humanities work includes the curation, most recently, of the 2023-2024 campuswide special exhibit: "Shakespeare Unbound." Stephen Spiess is Assistant Professor of Early Modern Literature at Babson College. His essays on Shakespeare and the interrelations of sex, language, embodiment and knowledge have appeared in Modern Philology, Shakespeare Survey, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment, and Blind Spots of Knowledge in Shakespeare and His World. His book, Shakespeare and the Making of English Whoredom, is forthcoming. A highly decorated teacher, he has received a Dean's Award for Undergraduate Teaching and a Babson Pride Award, for significant contributions to the college's LGBTQ+ community.

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