This chapter reviews the 2-category of small multicategories, including three important special cases. These are pointed multicategories, left M1-modules, and permutative categories with multilinear functors. These variants are related by various free, forgetful, and endomorphism functors that will be used throughout the rest of this work.

This chapter presents the current state of research in multimodal Construction Grammar with a focus on co-speech gestures. We trace the origins of the idea that constructions may have to be (re-)conceptualized as multimodal form–meaning pairs, deriving from the inherently multimodal nature of language use and the usage-based model, which attributes to language use a primordial role in language acquisition. The issue of whether constructions are actually multimodal is contested. We present two current positions in the field. The first one argues that a construction should only count as multimodal if gestures are mandatory parts of that construction. Other, more meaning-centered, approaches rely less on obligatoriness and frequency of gestural (co-)occurrences and either depart from a recurrent gesture to explore the verbal constructions it combines with or focus on a given meaning, for example, negation, and explore its multimodal conceptualization in discourse. The chapter concludes with a plea for more case studies and for the need to develop large-scale annotated corpora and apply statistical methods beyond measuring mere frequency of co-occurrence.

Chapter 3 shifts to the period in which the constitutional debates following the revolution of 1688 gave way to a long period of greater political stability. The Tories were ousted with the coming of the Hanoverian dynasty in 1714, after which the Whigs settled into power under the leadership of Robert Walpole. The chapter first shows how the Whig oligarchy was opposed by a new generation of ‘commonwealthmen’, notably Trenchard and Gordon, and by a more conservative opposition led by Bolingbroke, who appropriated many ‘commonwealth’ themes. Next the chapter surveys the success of the Whigs in countering these opponents and cementing themselves in power. After their triumph over the Jacobite rebellion in 1745 the Whigs presided over an outpouring of patriotic sentiment. They were congratulated for repudiating arbitrary power, granting the people a voice in making the laws and guaranteeing their basic rights, and thereby ensuring that Britian was genuinely a free state.

One of the key challenges of regulating internet platforms is international cooperation. This chapter offers some insights into platform responsibility reforms by relying on forty years of experience in regulating cross-border financial institutions. Internet platforms and cross-border banks have much in common from a regulatory perspective. They both operate in an interconnected global market that lacks a supranational regulatory framework. And they also tend to generate cross-border spillovers that are difficult to control. Harmful content and systemic risks – the two key regulatory challenges for platforms and banks, respectively – can be conceptualized as negative externalities.

One of the main lessons learned in regulating cross-border banks is that, under certain conditions, international regulatory cooperation is possible. We have witnessed that in the successful design and implementation of the Basel Accord – the global banking standard that regulates banks’ solvency and liquidity risks. In this chapter, I will analyze the conditions under which cooperation can ensue and what the history of the Basel Accord can teach to platform responsibility reforms. In the last part, I will discuss what can be done when cooperation is more challenging.

The seventh chapter explores the developing aesthetic value now attached to Rome’s ruins, tracing for instance the way in which they move up scale from illustrations in books or in the background staffage of Renaissance painting to become the foregrounded subject matter in the paintings of the Baroque era and especially the eighteenth century. Engraved views, vedute and photographs provided tourists with inexpensive and portable souvenirs. The ruins have by now acquired full aesthetic validation as the principal subject matter of paintings by Claude or in the engravings of Piranesi. Thanks to the aesthetic appreciation of the ruins, images of them become common features of interior decoration.

The emergence of a ruin-aesthetic comes after Petrarch, and is initially owed to architects like Brunelleschi and to painters like Raphael. Architects wanted to build in the Roman manner, all’antica, and painters introduced Roman ruins into the background of their pictures. Such was the commitment to the study and imitation of the Roman style that the need to conserve the ruins was recognised and advocated. Hitherto it had never occurred to anyone anywhere to urge that a ruined structure should be preserved for its historical value. But a further value was now attached to the ruins of Rome, namely the aesthetic: the ruins were looked upon as attractive in themselves. The ruins also became the object of study and analysis by a new breed of scholar, the antiquarian and topographer, such as Flavio Biondo, who also wanted to ensure their preservation for future ages to admire. This is a new feature of ruin-mindedness: whatever is deemed beautiful must be preserved for later generations to study and admire and imitate. Since those later generations will include foreign visitors, tourism comes to be recognised as a sound economic reason for conserving the handsome material remains of ancient Rome.

In an aside to his audience after narrating the revolt of the Theruingi and the slaughter of the Roman army under Lupicinus in AD 376, the ’lonely’ historian Ammianus Marcellinus asks the indulgence of his readers on a particularly difficult matter ... The rather poignant parenthesis is consistent with the view that Ammianus presents elsewhere in his history of a public at Rome concerned only with the trivial biographies of emperors and caring more for the details of the private lives of the imperial household than with the grand sweep of res gestae. The last antique historian is indeed a great one, and he may even have been as isolated as is sometimes suggested.

Drawing on primary sources and moving beyond traditional diplomatic history, this chapter approaches the Belgrade Conference of non-aligned states in an original way, informed by methods of cultural history of diplomacy. A black and white photograph showing presidents Sukarno of Indonesia and Tito of Yugoslavia, hosts of the 1955 Bandung and 1961 Belgrade Conference (events that defined the non-alignment), respectively, serves as a departure point for analysis. Essentially, the chapter asks, What can the image, created by a Yugoslav news agency photographer on the eve of the conference, tell us beyond ‘obvious’? The photograph shows the two statesmen in an open-roofed car in front of the Yugoslav parliament building, the conference venue; the motorcade is secured by uniformed guards on motorcycles, and is observed by citizens, standing still in the background. It allows us to imagine the conference as a piece of diplomatic theatre, with actors, stage, audience, and security. And it urges us to zoom out further to explore the context in which the event captured by the photographic lens took place.

Appreciating that films can influence audiences’ political imaginations and expectations, this chapter looks at first lady characters in feature length presidential movies released during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama were all politically active, setting new standards as presidential advisors, campaign fundraisers, and policy advocates. Presidential movies partially reflected this change, though historic gender constraints on women characters endured. These movies set an affirming wife-husband relationship as a prerequisite for first ladies to exercise political influence. Still, the films presented those relationships as alliances between politically knowledgeable and engaged individuals. That depiction was not extended to first ladies’ interactions with other decision-makers, which were rare and seldom successful. As a result, while presidential movies present their audiences with politically knowledgeable first ladies, these films do not yet encourage ticket holders to recognize these women as actually exercising political influence.