The Reds and the Blacks : the historical novel in the Soviet Union and postcolonial Africa / M. Keith Booker and Dubravka Juraga -- From laughter "out of sync" to post-synchronized comedy : how the Stalinist film musical caught up with Hollywood and overtook it / Thomas Lahusen -- Miroslav Krleža's Zastave : socialism, Yugoslavia, and the historical novel / Dubravka Juraga -- The matter of art : reinventing Brecht in the society of the spectacle / Michael Sprinker -- Mike Gold or James Joyce? The literature of politics and the politics of literature / M. Keith Booker -- Revising the barricades : scholarship about the U.S. cultural left in the post-Cold War era / Alan M. Wald -- Material grounds : border and place in Raymond Williams's fiction / H. Gustav Klaus -- Jean Devanny and Dorothy Hewett : two Australian industrial fiction writers / Carole Ferrier and Stephen Knight.