To study changing notions of authorship, and of the relation between author and audience in the Renaissance, the author focuses on the interface between text itself, audience, and the preface. He shows that in the preface complex questions about an individual's relations to the public sphere were (indeed, still are) worked out. Instead of disparaging the individuality of the author however, he argues that the shift between systems of authorization in the Renaissance enabled the preface - indeed, authorship itself - to emerge as a mode of self-authorization.

Understanding the current civil war in the Congo requires an examination of how the Congo's identity has been imagined over time. Imagining the Congo historicizes and contextualizes the constructions of the Congo's identity in order to analyze the political implications of that identity, looking in detail at four historical periods in which the identity of the Congo was contested, with numerous forces attempting to produce and attach meanings to its territory and people. Dunn looks specifically at how what he calls 'imaginings' of the Congo have allowed the current state of affairs there to...