Artificial intelligence (AI) is presented as a portal to more liberative realities, but its broad implications for society and certain groups in particular require more critical examination. This chapter takes a specifically Black theological perspective to consider the scepticism within Black communities around narrow applications of AI as well as the more speculative ideas about these technologies, for example general AI. Black theology’s perpetual push towards Black liberation, combined with womanism’s invitation to participate in processes that reconstitute Black quality of life, have perfectly situated Black theological thought for discourse around artificial intelligence. Moreover, there are four particular categories where Black theologians and religious scholars have already broken ground and might be helpful to religious discourse concerning Blackness and AI. Those areas are: white supremacy, surveillance and policing, consciousness and God. This chapter encounters several scholars and perspectives within the field of Black theology and points to potential avenues for future theological areas of concern and exploration.

A look at Spartan commemoration in the Peloponnesian War, focusing on Brasidas and the rhetoric of liberation. Brasidas was a new kind of Spartan that put freedom in the forefront, which led to Brasidas receiving more lavish commemoration but also drew Sparta into more wars.

A study of Agesilaus and his Penhellenism and mission to "free the Greeks" of Asia. Agesilaus wanted to be commemorated as a liberator well outside of Sparta, which was a major contributor to Sparta’s decline as increased wars weakened Sparta irreparably.

Critical consciousness, or the process of coming to understand and combat oppression, is an integral aspect of adolescents’ sociopolitical development and is necessary for collective liberation. Although adolescents interface with oppression daily, little is known about how they engage in critical consciousness or how this process manifests across different situations and contexts. In this chapter, we propose a conceptual model and research agenda aimed at capturing this complexity. Specifically, we argue that daily diary studies would be well positioned to examine the finer-grained temporal nature of critical consciousness and intraindividual variability. We provide an overview of how daily diaries might be applied to the study of critical consciousness. Additionally, we discuss implications for research, practice, and policy.

This chapter completes the story of Giorgio Amendola (and his wife Germaine) and his communist brothers: the independent Antonio (who died young in 1953) and the orthodox Pietro. After an account of Giorgio as a fighting partisan, or an organiser of fighting partisans, we move on to his history in the renamed Italian Communist Party after 1945. We examine his role in the establishment of the Italian Republic in 1946–7 and the concentration Togliatti then expected from him on the South. The PCI’s slow detachment from Stalinism is also reviewed. Until his death, Giorgio could never bring himself to prefer American civilisation to Soviet. Nonetheless, he actively favoured the PCI policy of a national ‘Italian road to socialism’. The automatic succession of Luigi Longo to party leadership in 1964 dashed Giorgio’s hopes in that regard. By the 1970s, he had become a (massive) party elder, with time to write his deeply humane memoirs. He died on 5 June 1980, Germaine following him to the grave within hours; she had become a well-regarded painter and the two were always thought to be engaged in their deeply romantic love story. They were given public and family burial in the Campo Verano.

This chapter analyses the shape of liberation interpretation, emphasizing an alignment between the factors that constitute a liberationist hermeneutic of contemporary reception and the factors that constitute a liberationist hermeneutic of biblical text production.

This chapter introduces key concepts in postcolonial studies and discusses recent developments of postcolonial criticism within biblical studies, such as empire studies, liberation hermeneutics, and cultural studies, including materialist, race/ethnicity, feminist, and queer approaches to empire and colonialism.

“Days of Friendship, Hope, and Waiting,” focuses on the period from 6 to 10 June 1944, when the paratroopers and villagers bonded over their mutual desire for liberation and victory. Under the direction of Major Johnston and Captain Brummitt, the paratroopers built a strong perimeter defense around Graignes and carried out aggressive patrolling in the surrounding area. Captain Abraham Sophian, the battalion surgeon, set up a medical aid station. The villagers, especially the leading women of the village, provided the support services the men needed to prepare for battle. At rest, the paratroopers exchanged stories and songs with the people of Graignes.

Textual accounts of the three knowledges by means of which the Buddha attained enlightenment are brief. The first two, recollection of former existences and of the passing away and arising of beings, prepared the way for the third, destruction of the “taints” (āsavas), mastery of which achieved liberation. The focus of this chapter is on what attainment of these three knowledges entails and on how a meditator could transition from the highly concentrated state of the fourth jhāna to recollection of former existences. A little-known text suggests that concentration must be relaxed just enough to allow the arising of a “reviewing-sign”, a process explained by means of appropriate similes. The discussion concludes that, like a charioteer at a crossroads, the appearance of this image confronts the meditator with a choice: whether to enter one of the Buddhist heavens; develop supernatural powers; or seek liberation through pereforming the meditative practices required to attain the three knowledges.

Chapter 2 begins thematically with survivors’ perceptions of freedom, exploring how survivors perceive slavery as a physical reality and freedom as a relative concept, drawing out themes of resistance, death, and education as freedom. It is argued that the simple binary conception of “free” and “not free” is an artificial one. Contrary to the belief that slavery is a constant, and that freedom is both an immediate and joyful escape from enslavement, micro freedoms occur and are assumed during slavery. Conversely, slavery continues in the mind of the free, leaving individuals in a permanent state of survival and undermining the realisation of meaningful, and what Frederick Douglass called “full,” freedom.

Watch Night began when enslaved and free African Americans kept vigil, to sing and pray, on December 31, 1862, as they awaited news in the morning of the Emancipation Proclamation. Their optimism gave way to the nominal freedoms and rights of citizenship that African American families and communities experienced in the wake of emancipation and during Reconstruction. African American writers of these decades introduce descriptions of African landscapes, customs, values, and histories as metaphors for the uncertain status and tentative futures their people confronted after the Civil War and during Reconstruction. They associate the African continent with a variety of meanings: the brutal history of slavery; the erasure or dismissal of influential cultures and intellects; a persistent legacy of resistance to oppression and rebellion against bondage; the fugitive status of African Americans in their own country and as exiles abroad; and the precarity of racial progress even as Black schools, churches, and other self-sufficient institutions are established by formerly enslaved Black southern communities.

Chapter 7 concludes by reiterating the invisible ontologies that haunt current assessments of black skin. The fluid construction of black skin in ancient Greek literature and art aims to confront limiting treatment of race in the modern academy. A final glimpse at the poetry of Langston Hughes (1931) and Gwendolyn Brooks (1980) offers a suggestive model for revamping the ancient Greek archive in the twenty-first century.

Chapter 5 presents the story of how Iran finally turned the tide, of how the revolution progressed to the point that it could help instead of hinder the war effort. What the IRGC authors term “the epic of Khorramshahr”—Iran’s retaking of that city after months of Iraqi occupation—marked the culmination of the reversal. For the Guards, the liberation of Khorramshahr represents a case in which faith could be used effectively against firepower. Though the Iraqi forces retained their advantage in firepower, the Iranians’ faithful determination gave them the ultimate edge in their fight to retake the city. The liberation of Khorramshahr signified a turning point both in the war and for the Revolutionary Guards. The campaign marked the IRGC’s most substantial participation in the war to that point and initiated its transformation into the powerful and professional military that experience has allowed it to become.

This chapter provides a historical background of the enduring devastation of the post-World War II agricultural sector in Ukraine that encouraged local authorities to pursue various policies to organise their economies in opposition to laws and practice of their superior central authorities. This chapter provides the proper context to understand the case studies analysed in the following chapters.