Received During the 2023-2024
Academic School Year:
Immeasurable Outcomes by Gayle GreeneWhat is the purpose of education? The answer might be found in a Shakespeare class at a small liberal arts college. In this engaging account of teaching a Shakespeare class at a small liberal arts college, Gayle Greene illustrates what is so vital and urgent about the humanities. Follow along with Greene as she introduces us to her students and showcases their strengths, needs, and vulnerabilities, so we can experience the magic of her classroom. In Immeasurable Outcomes, Greene's class builds a complex human ecosystem that pushes students to think more deeply and discover their own interests and potential, all while recognizing the inherent dignity in other people's views and values. Grounding her analyses in half a century of teaching, Greene pushes back against the demand for measurable student learning outcomes and the standardization imposed on K-12 schools in the name of reform. Instead, she draws her conclusions about education directly from the students themselves. Alumni testimonials describe the transformative power of a liberal arts education, recounting how their experience of community and engagement has provided them the tools to navigate the uncertainties of a rapidly changing world while also inspiring the social awareness our democracy depends on. Immeasurable Outcomes rejects claims that the liberal arts are impractical, exposing the political agendas of technocrats and ideologues who would transform higher education into vocational training and programs focused only on profitability. Greene reminds us that the liberal arts have been the basis for the most successful educational system in the world and provides a powerful demonstration that education at a human scale that is relationship-rich and humanities-based should be the model for education in the future.
Call Number: LC1023 .G738 2023
ISBN: 9781421444604
Publication Date: 2023-01-17
George Orwell's Perverse Humanity by Glenn BurgessThis is the first book to focus primarily on George Orwell's ideas about free speech and related matters - freedom of the press, the writer's freedom of expression, honesty and truthfulness - and, in particular, the ways in which they are linked to his political vision of socialism. Orwell is today claimed by the Left and Right, by neo-conservatives and neo-socialists. How is that possible? Part of the answer, as Glenn Burgess reveals, is that Orwell was an odd sort of socialist. The development of Orwell's socialism was, from the start, conditioned by his individualist and liberal commitments. The hopes he attached to socialism were for a fairer, more equal world that would permit human freedom and individuality to flourish, completing, not destroying, the work of liberalism. Freedom of thought was a central part of this, and its defence and use were essential parts of the struggle to ensure that socialism developed in a liberal, humane form that did not follow the totalitarian path of Soviet communism. Written in celebration of Orwell's dictum, 'We hold that the most perverse human being is more interesting than the most orthodox gramophone record,' George Orwell's Perverse Humanity is a portrait of Orwell that captures these themes and provides a new understanding of him as a political thinker and activist. Based on archival research and new materials that affirm his work as an activist for freedom, it also uncovers a socialist ideology that has been obscured in just the way that the author feared it would be - associated in many people's minds with totalitarian unfreedom.
Call Number: PR6029.R8 Z595 2023
ISBN: 9781501394652
Publication Date: 2023-05-04
Bold Conscience by Joshua R. HeldHow the conscience in early modern England emerged as a fulcrum for public action Bold Conscience chronicles the shifting conception of conscience in early modern England, as it evolved from a faculty of restraint--what Shakespeare labels "coward conscience"--to one of bold and forthright self-assertion. The concept of conscience played an important role in post-Reformation England, from clerical leaders to laymen, not least because of its central place in determining loyalties during the English Civil War and the regicide of King Charles I. Yet the most complex and lasting perspectives on conscience emerged from deliberately literary voices--William Shakespeare, John Donne, and John Milton. Joshua Held argues that literary texts by these authors transform the idea of conscience as a private, shameful state to one of boldness fit for navigating both royal power and common dissent in the public realm. Held tracks the increasing political power of conscience from Shakespeare's Hamlet and Henry VIII to Donne's court sermons and Milton's Areopagitica, showing finally that in Paradise Lost, Milton roots boldness in the inner paradise of a pure, common conscience. Applying a fine-grain analysis to literary England from about 1601 to 1667, this study also looks back to the 1520s, to Luther's theological foundations of the concept, and forward to 1689, to Locke's transformation of the idea alongside the term "consciousness." Ultimately, Held's study shows how conscience emerges at once as a bulwark against absolute sovereignty and as a stronghold of personal certainty.
Call Number: PR438.C657 H45 2023
ISBN: 9780817361112
Publication Date: 2023-06-13
Climate Change and Original Sin by Katherine CoxPrior to the Enlightenment era, how was the human-climate relationship conceived? Focusing on the most recent epoch in which belief in an animate environment still widely prevailed, Climate Change and Original Sin argues that an ecologically inflected moral system assumed that humanity bore responsibility for climate corruption and volatility. The environmental problem initiated by original sin is not only that humans alienated themselves from nature but also that satanic powers invaded the world and corrupted its elements--particularly the air. Milton shared with contemporaries the widespread view that storms and earthquakes represented the work of fearsome spiritual agents licensed to inflict misery on humans as penalty for sin. Katherine Cox's work discerns in Paradise Lost an ecological fall distinct from, yet concurrent with, the human fall. In examining Milton's evolving representations of the climate, this book also traces the gradual development of ideas about the atmosphere during the seventeenth century--a change in the intellectual climate driven by experimental activity and heralding an ecologically devastating shift in Western attitudes toward the air.
Call Number: PR3592.S3 C69 2023
ISBN: 9780813949741
Publication Date: 2023-06-28
An Anthology of Contemporary Bengali Plays by Bratya Basu by Bratya Basu; Nandita Banerjee Dhawan (Editor); Sam Kolodezh (Editor); Mainak Bandyopadhyay (Translator); Arnab Banerjee (Translator)This anthology of six selected plays, written between 2000 and 2020 by Bratya Basu, winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award 2021, is the first collection of Bengali plays that blends avant-garde, pop and traditional cultures with contemporary dramatic themes. The six plays, freshly translated into English, each bring a uniquely Bengali and Indian perspective to the intermingling of past and present, global and local, and magical and real in a postmodern pastiche about India today. The collection is divided into three thematic sections: 1) 'Poignant Challenges, Soulful Remorse' examines power in Indian politics, religion, and family. 2) '(In)visible Boundaries, (Un)democratic Choices' explores the relationship among democracy, nation building, and the role of women in intergenerational political struggle. 3) 'Intimately Political, Politically Intimate' navigates queer identity, mental health and the fabulation of modern Bengali life in a 21st-century India straddling the progressive politics that removed section 377 and Hindu nationalisms that stoke new conservatisms.
Call Number: PK1730.13.A765 A2 2023
ISBN: 9781350289420
Publication Date: 2023-07-13
Dickens and Travel by Lucinda HawksleyFrom childhood, Charles Dickens was fascinated by tales from other countries and other cultures, and he longed to see the world. In Dickens and Travel, Lucinda Hawksley looks at the journeys made by the author - who is also her great great great grandfather.Although Dickens is usually perceived as a London author, in the 1840s he whisked his family away to live in Italy for year, and spent several months in Switzerland. Some years later he took up residence in Paris and Boulogne (where he lived in secret with his lover). In addition to traveling widely in Europe, he also toured America twice, performed onstage in Canada and, before his untimely death, was planning a tour of Australia.Dickens and Travel enters into the world of the Victorian traveler and looks at how Charles Dickens's journeys influenced his writing and enriched his life.
Call Number: PR4592.T73 H39 2022
ISBN: 9781526735638
Publication Date: 2022-07-20
The Origins of Russian Literary Theory by Jessica MerrillRussian Formalism is widely considered the foundation of modern literary theory. This book reevaluates the movement in light of the current commitment to rethink the concept of literary form in cultural-historical terms. Jessica Merrill provides a novel reconstruction of the intellectual historical context that enabled the emergence of Formalism in the 1910s. Formalists adopted a mode of thought Merrill calls the philological paradigm, a framework for thinking about language, literature, and folklore that lumped them together as verbal tradition. For those who thought in these terms, verbal tradition was understood to be inseparable from cultural history. Merrill situates early literary theories within this paradigm to reveal abandoned paths in the history of the discipline--ideas that were discounted by the structuralist and post-structuralist accounts that would emerge after World War II. The Origins of Russian Literary Theory reconstructs lost Formalist theories of authorship, of the psychology of narrative structure, and of the social spread of poetic innovations. According to these theories, literary form is always a product of human psychology and cultural history. By recontextualizing Russian Formalism within this philological paradigm, the book highlights the aspects of Formalism's legacy that speak to the priorities of twenty-first-century literary studies.
Dracula As Absolute Other by Simon BaconDark, dangerous and transgressive, Bram Stoker's Dracula is often read as Victorian society's absolute Other--an outsider who troubles and distracts those around him, one who represents the fears and anxieties of the age. This book is a study of Dracula's role of absolute Other as it appears on screen, and an investigation of popular culture's continued fascination with vampires. Drawing on vampire films spanning from the early 20th century to 2017, the author examines how different generations construct Otherness and how this is reflected in vampire media.
Call Number: PN1995.9.D64 B33 2019
ISBN: 9781476675381
Publication Date: 2019-07-12
The Ontology of Death by Aaron AquilinaThrough examination of the death penalty in literature, Aaron Aquilina contests Heidegger's concept of 'being-towards-death' and proposes a new understanding of the political and philosophical subject. Dickens, Nabokov, Hugo, Sophocles and many others explore capital punishment in their works, from Antigone to Invitation to a Beheading. Using these varied case studies, Aquilina demonstrates how they all highlight two aspects of the experience. First, they uncover a particular state of being, or more precisely non-being, that comes with a death sentence, and, second, they reveal how this state exists beyond death row, as sovereignty and alterity are by no means confined to a prison cell. In contrast to Heidegger's being-towards-death, which individualizes the subject - only I can die my own death, supposedly - this book argues that, when condemned to death, the self and death collide, putting under erasure the category of subjectivity itself. Be it death row or not, when the supposed futurity of death is brought into the here and now, we encounter what Aquilina calls 'relational death'. Living on with death severs the subject's relation to itself, the other and political sociality as a whole, rendering the human less a named and recognizable 'being' than an anonymous 'living corpse', a human thing. In a sustained engagement with Blanchot, Levinas, Hegel, Agamben and Derrida, The Ontology of Death articulates a new theory of the subject, beyond political subjectivity defined by sovereignty and beyond the Heideggerian notion of ontological selfhood.
Call Number: PN56.C355 A68 2023
ISBN: 9781350339484
Publication Date: 2023-05-18
Ruin and Resilience by Daniel Spoth; Scott Romine (Series edited by)In Ruin and Resilience, Daniel Spoth confronts why the environmental stories told about the U.S. South curve inevitably toward distressing plotlines. Examining more than a dozen works of postbellum literature and cinema, Spoth?s analysis winds from John Muir?s walking journey across the war-torn South, through the troubling of southern environmentalism?s modernity by Faulkner and Hurston, past the accounts of its acceleration in Welty and O?Connor, and finally into the present, uncovering how the tragic econarrative is transformed by contemporary food studies, climate fiction, and speculative tales inspired by the region. Phrased as a reaction to the rising temperatures and swelling sea levels in the South, Ruin and Resilience conceptualizes an environmental, ecocritical ethos for the southern United States that takes account of its fundamentally vulnerable status and navigates the space between its reactionary politics and its ecological failures.
Call Number: PS261 .S67 2023
ISBN: 9780807179369
Publication Date: 2023-04-05
Gothic Literary Travel and Tourism by Alex BevanAn exploration of Gothic tourism's interweaving of site and story. This book investigates the relationship between contemporary Gothic tourist sites and Gothic fiction, contending that the tourist attractions are storytelling spaces. Famous Gothic texts such as Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey are reimagined in contemporary literary Gothic tourism, as Gothic attractions serve as spaces wherein multiple intersecting Gothic narratives come to life--from folkloric tales to local ghost stories.
Call Number: PR830.T3 B48 2023
ISBN: 9781786839947
Publication Date: 2023-07-24
Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked by Sheila Black (Editor); Michael Northen (Editor); Annabelle Hayse (Editor)"I remember I believed all my problems would be solved, if only I were beautiful. Then I was beautiful." --Jonathan Mack, from his story "The Right Way to be Crippled and Naked." Welcome to the worlds of the disabled. The physically disabled. The mentally disabled. The emotionally disabled. What does that word "disabled" mean anyway? Is there a right way to be crippled? Editors Sheila Black and Michael Northen (co-editors of the highly praised anthologyBeauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability) join newcomer Annabelle Hayse to present short stories by Dagoberto Gilb, Anne Finger, Stephen Kuusisto, Thom Jones, Lisa Gill, Floyd Skloot, and others. These authors -- all who experience the "disability" they write about -- crack open the cage of our culture's stereotypes. We look inside, and, through these people we thought broken, we uncover new ways of seeing and knowing.
Call Number: PS509.P58 R54 2017
ISBN: 9781941026359
Publication Date: 2017-02-07
LGBTQ+ Literature in the West by Robert C. EvansA survey, within one volume, of the history of critical responses to LGBTQ literature from the beginning to the present day, this book explores changes in attitudes, literature and criticism over a period of two and a half thousand years. For various reasons it focuses on literature of 'the West', trying to give readers a clear sense, within a relatively short compass, not only of the development of 'queer' literature (perhaps the most encompassing of all terms) but especially of critical responses to that literature, notably during the past century and particularly the past fifty years.All in all, this book offers a roadmap to much of the excellent scholarship concerning LGBTQ literature that has arisen in the last half-century - an era of unparalleled interest in the topic and an era that has moved the topic from the distant sidelines of literary study to a place ever closer to the center of things.
Call Number: PN491.3 .E93 2023
ISBN: 9781350371828
Publication Date: 2023-05-18
Being There, Being Here by Maurice EbileeniArabic is unconditionally the national language of Palestinians, but for many it is no longer their mother-tongue. More than a century after the early waves of immigration to the Americas, and more than seven decades after the Nakba of 48, generations of Palestinians have grown up in a variety of different contexts within Israel-Palestine and the world at large. This ongoing scattered state has led to the proliferation of Palestinian culture as it is simultaneously growing in multiple directions, depending on geographical, political, and lingual contextualization. The Palestinian story no longer exists exclusively in Arabic. A new generation of Palestinian and Palestinian-descended writers and artists from both Latin and North America, Scandinavia, and Europe at large, as well as Israel-Palestine are bringing stories of their heritage and the Palestinian nation into a variety of languages such Spanish, Italian, English, Danish, and Hebrew--among so many other languages. Being There, Being Here is the product of an eight-year long journey in which Maurice Ebileeni explores how the Palestinian homeland is being imagined in multiple languages from a variety of positions both locally and globally. The book poses unsettling questions about this current situation and also looks to the future to speculate about how a Palestinian nation might still house the notion of home for an increasingly diverse Palestinian population.
Call Number: PN849.I8 E25 2022
ISBN: 9780815637608
Publication Date: 2022-06-16
Writing and Desire by Jonathan Alexander (Contribution by)Writing and Desire is a sustained, multimovement exploration of how writers, particularly queer writers, think and feel through desire as central to their writing practice. In a time of political, social, global, and ecological unrest, how might we understand desire - the desire for things to be different, the desire for a better world - as a crucial dimension of contemporary human experience? What might such a recentering of desire offer us, personally and politically? And how is writing itself, as one of the primary ways through which we express and explore ourselves, central to the expression and exploration of desire? Drawing on recent theoretical work in queer theory and the new materialism, Jonathan Alexander studies a range of queer and trans writers and artists who center desire in their practice and argues that conceptualizing writing as desire allows us to reexperience both writing and our world as saturated with our dreams and wishes for change. In a book both elegant and unsettling, and by turns personal, analytic, and experimental, Alexander challenges us - and himself - to think about desire and writing as the deepest manifestation of our hopes for the future.
Call Number: PN171.P83 A44 2023
ISBN: 9780822947776
Publication Date: 2023-06-06
Count Dracula Goes to the Movies by Lyndon W. JoslinFirst published in 1897, Bram Stoker's Dracula has never been out of print. Yet most people are familiar with the title character from the movies. Count Dracula is one of the most-filmed literary characters in history--but has he (or Stoker's novel) ever been filmed accurately? In its third edition, this study focuses on 18 adaptations of Dracula from 1922 to 2012, comparing them to the novel and to each other. Fidelity to the novel does not always guarantee a good movie, while some of the better films are among the more freely adapted. The Universal and Hammer sequels are searched for traces of Stoker, along with several other films that borrow from the novel. The author concludes with a brief look at four latter-day projects that are best dismissed or viewed for ironic laughs.
Call Number: PR6037.T617 D784 2017
ISBN: 9781476669878
Publication Date: 2017-04-13
Dimensions of the Fantastic by Daniel Ferreras SavoyeNot to be confused with fantasy or the supernatural, the fantastic is in actuality its own beast and perhaps the most deeply frightening of all narrative modes. From Dracula and Nightmare on Elm Street, to Carrie and Them, the fantastic has become an ideal vehicle to denounce deep cultural dysfunctions that affect not only the way we understand reality, but also how we construct it. This work studies the various dimensions of the fantastic mode, examining the influences of iconic authors such as H.P. Lovecraft and Jean Ray, and addressing key narrations such as Guy de Maupasasant's The Horla and Jordan Peele's Get Out. It explains why the fantastic is not about ghosts or monsters, but about the incomprehensible sides of our own reality, and the terrifying unknown.
Call Number: PN56.F34 F46 2023
ISBN: 9781476689302
Publication Date: 2023-05-29
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics by Veronica Chambers; Donna Brazile; Yolanda Caraway; Leah Daughtry; Minyon Moore"For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics. It's a wonderful, necessary book."- Hillary ClintonThe four most powerful African American women in politics share the story of their friendship and how it has changed politics in America.The lives of black women in American politics are remarkably absent from the shelves of bookstores and libraries. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is a sweeping view of American history from the vantage points of four women who have lived and worked behind the scenes in politics for over thirty years--Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore--a group of women who call themselves The Colored Girls. Like many people who have spent their careers in public service, they view their lives in four-year waves where presidential campaigns and elections have been common threads. For most of the Colored Girls, their story starts with Jesse Jackson's first campaign for president. From there, they went on to work on the presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Over the years, they've filled many roles: in the corporate world, on campaigns, in unions, in churches, in their own businesses and in the White House. Through all of this, they've worked with those who have shaped our country's history--US Presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, well-known political figures such as Terry McAuliffe and Howard Dean, and legendary activists and historical figures such as Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, and Betty Shabazz. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is filled with personal stories that bring to life heroic figures we all know and introduce us to some of those who've worked behind the scenes but are still hidden. Whatever their perch, the Colored Girls are always focused on the larger goal of "hurrying history" so that every American -- regardless of race, gender or religious background -- can have a seat at the table. This is their story.
Call Number: E185.96 .B829 2019
ISBN: 9781250137739
Publication Date: 2019-10-01
Milestones in Musical Theatre by Mary Jo Lodge (Editor)Milestones in Musical Theatre tracks ten of the most significant moments in musical theatre history, from some of its earliest incarnations, especially those crafted by Black creators, to its rise as a global phenomenon. Designed for weekly use in musical theatre courses, these ten chosen snapshots chart the development of this unique art form and move through its history chronologically, tracking the earliest operettas through the mid-century Golden Age classics, as well as the creative explosion in directing talent which reshaped the form, and moves toward inclusivity which have recast its creators. Each chapter explores how the musical and its history have been deeply influenced by a variety of factors, including race, gender and nationality, and examines how each milestone represents a significant turning point for this beloved art form. Milestones are a range of accessible textbooks, breaking down the need-to-know moments in the social, cultural, political and artistic development of foundational subject areas. This book is ideal for diverse and inclusive undergraduate musical theatre history courses.
Call Number: ML2054 .M52 2023
ISBN: 9781032188263
Publication Date: 2023-06-27
Intersecting Genre by Jason OlsenCreative writing takes on many genres, or forms: fiction, poetry, nonfiction and dramatic writing. Whilst all have their own principles and 'rules', all modes of writing overlap and borrow from each other, and so what you learn in one form can influence, inform and inspire your practice in others. Intersecting Genre holds this idea at its heart, embracing the dissolution of disciplinary and genre boundaries to discuss the ways each genre supports the others. Whilst traditional approaches typically discuss one genre independent of others, this book explores genre relationships with each chapter focusing on the intersection between 2 modes and what you can learn and the skills you can transfer by combining the wisdom gained from the study of, for example, fiction and poetry together. With most introductory creative writing courses aiming to apprise you of such mechanics of writing as narrative, pace, vocabulary, dialogue, imagery and viewpoint, Intersecting Genre is the ideal companion, offering a unique methodology that analyses these ideas as they feature across the different genres, thus giving you the ultimate, well-rounded introduction before you settle into the modes of writing that best suit you as your progress with your writing. Covering fiction, poetry, nonfiction, writing plays and screenwriting, and also taking stock of the forms that do not fit neatly into any genre silo, this book uses models, critical questions, writing warm-ups and writing practice exercises to give you a solid understanding of the points discussed and encouraging you to put them to practice in your own work. With the field of creative writing evolving constantly, and with approaches to teaching and learning the subject vast and continually expanding, this book offers a dynamic, and uniquely holistic method for developing your writing skills, asking you to deeply consider the issues, and possibilities, present in genre.
Call Number: PN187 .O47 2023
ISBN: 9781350288652
Publication Date: 2023-09-07
Reimagining Illness by Heather MeekIn eighteenth-century Britain the worlds of literature and medicine were closely intertwined, and a diverse group of people participated in the circulation of medical knowledge. In this pre-professionalized milieu, several women writers made important contributions by describing a range of common yet often devastating illnesses. In Reimagining Illness Heather Meek reads works by six major eighteenth-century women writers - Jane Barker, Anne Finch, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Frances Burney - alongside contemporaneous medical texts to explore conditions such as hysteria, melancholy, smallpox, maternity, consumption, and breast cancer. In novels, poems, letters, and journals, these writers drew on their learning and literary skill as they engaged with and revised male-dominated medical discourse. Their works provide insight into the experience of suffering and interrogate accepted theories of women's bodies and minds. In ways relevant both then and now, these women demonstrate how illness might be at once a bodily condition and a malleable construct full of ideological meaning and imaginative possibility. Reimagining Illness offers a new account of the vital period in medico-literary history between 1660 and 1815, revealing how the works of women writers not only represented the medicine of their time but also contributed meaningfully to its developments.