Books in the Humanities

Author's Website - Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay
Print edition

Editor's Website - Tere Paniagua
This is a bilingual children's book of reflections about Abuelitas/Little Grandmas, written by the children of La Casita's Dual Language Reading Circles.

Editor's Website - Lois Agnew
Print edition
Noted scholars in rhetoric and writing studies explore the relationship between rhetoric and ethics and the implications of this inquiry for scholars, teachers, and students of writing in the twenty-first century.

Author's Website - Yingi Ma
Print edition
Over the past decade, a wave of Chinese international undergraduate students?mostly self-funded?has swept across American higher education. From 2005 to 2015, undergraduate enrollment from China rose from under 10,000 to over 135,000. This privileged yet diverse group of young people from a changing China must navigate the complications and confusions of their formative years while bridging the two most powerful countries in the world. How do these students come to study in the United States? What does this experience mean to them? What does American higher education need to know and do in order to continue attracting these students and to provide sufficient support for them? In Ambitious and Anxious, the sociologist Yingyi Ma offers a multifaceted analysis of this new wave of Chinese students based on research in both Chinese high schools and American higher-education institutions. Ma argues that these students' experiences embody the duality of ambition and anxiety that arises from transformative social changes in China. These students and their families have the ambition to navigate two very different educational systems and societies. Yet the intricacy and pressure of these systems generate a great deal of anxiety, from applying to colleges before arriving, to studying and socializing on campus, and to looking ahead upon graduation. Ambitious and Anxious also considers policy implications for American colleges and universities, including recruitment, student experiences, faculty support, and career services.

Author's Website - Odlanyer Hernandez deLara
Cases of study from Latin American battlefields dispute and contest master narratives from an archaeological perspective in a historical context that influences local national identities.

Author's Website - Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn
Print edition

Ars Vitae rediscovers a path to well-being and happiness: a return to classical philosophy and the cultivation of an inner life.

Editor's Website - Martha Diede
Print edition

This book engages historical and theoretical frameworks in higher education as well as personal histories of overcoming various barriers to success.

Author's Website - Alan Allport
Print edition

The first in a two-part reexamination of the Second World War from a British perspective.

Author's Website - Ivana Bajic-Hajdukovic
Print edition

How does emigration affect those left behind? The fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s led citizens to look for a better, more stable life elsewhere. For the older generations, however, this wasn't an option. In this powerful and moving work, Ivana Bajic-Hajdukovic reveals the impact that waves of emigration from Serbia had on family relationships and, in particular, on elderly mothers who stayed. With nowhere to go, and any savings given to their children to help establish new lives, these seniors faced the crumbling country, waves of refugees from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, NATO bombing, the failing economy, and the trial and ouster of Slobodan Milosevic. "Can You Run Away from Sorrow?" poignantly depicts the intimacy of family relationships sustained through these turbulent times in Serbia and through the next generation's search for a new life. Bajic-Hajdukovic explores transformations in family intimacy during everyday life practices--in people's homes, in their food and cooking practices, in their childcare, and even in remittances and the exchange of gifts. "Can You Run Away from Sorrow?" illustrates not only the tremendous sacrifice of parents, but also their profound sense of loss--of their families, their country, their stability and dignity, and most importantly, of their own identity and hope for what they thought their future would be.

Editor's Website - Charles E. Morris III
Editor's Website - Kendall R. Phillips
This edited volume features essays derived from presentations delivered at the 15th Biennial Public Address Conference held at Syracuse University in October 2016, as well as additional material. The Conceit of Context explores the often invoked--indeed a central term in the history of rhetorical studies--but less often engaged concept of context. In this volume, we center the notion of context as the site of engagement, critique, and imagination, seeking to deepen the critical and political promise of context in the study of public discourse.

Editor's Website - Chris R. Kyle
This collection explores the dynamics of local/national political culture in seventeenth-century Britain, with particular reference to political communication. It examines the degree to which connections were forged between politics in London, Whitehall and Westminster, politics in the localities and the patterns and processes that can be recovered. The goal is to create a dialogue between two prominent strands in recent historiography and between the work of social and political historians of the early modern period. Chapters by leading historians of Stuart England examine how the state worked to communicate with its people and how local communities, often far from the metropole, opened their own lines of communication with the centre.

Editor's Website - Jules Gibbs
Editor's Website - Tere Paniagua
A bilingual edition of poems written by women from around the world. This bilingual edition (English & Spanish) features the poetic voices of Natalie Scenters-Zapico, Raquel Salas Rivera, Ana Merino, Aurora Luque, and Erika Martínez, in a meaningful text with loosely defined borders, where translation and dialogue with other poets occupies a central role.

Editor's Website - Shubha Ghosh
This innovative book explores forgotten disputes over intellectual property and the ways in which authors, inventors, publishers, courts, and sovereigns have managed these disputes throughout the centuries. With an eye on reform, it chronicles the resilience of legal rules and challenges the methodology behind traditional legal analyses.Disentangling lore from traditions, expert contributors incorporate contextual understandings that are rooted in history, sociology, political science, and literary studies into their analyses. They explore the context of particular cases to reveal the ramifications of specific doctrines for the evolution of intellectual property practices. Chapters illuminate the various facets of intellectual property lore: contract, authorship, common law, and wartime property. Utilising novel methods and previously unpublished materials on copyright, patent, and trademark law, the book examines legal history and developments from multiple perspectives. This rich and accessible book will prove to be a valuable resource for students, academics of intellectual property law, and legal historians. Its use of new materials and exploration of key cases will also be beneficial for intellectual property legal practitioners.

Author's Website - Frederick C. Beiser
David Friedrich Strauss is a central figure in 19th century intellectual history. The first major source for the loss of faith in Christianity in Germany, his work Das Leben Jesu was the most scandalous publication in Germany during his time. His book was a critique of the claims to historicaltruth of the New Testament, which had been the mainstay of Protestantism since the Reformation. As the father of unbelief, his critique of Christianity preceded that of Nietzsche, Marx, Feuerbach, and Schopenhauer. His views imposed a harsh fate upon him - he was persecuted for his beliefs byreligious and political authorities and was denied employment in the university and government, forcing him to live as a free-lance writer. He led a wandering and isolated life as an outcast. Here, Frederick C. Beiser studies the intellectual development of Strauss and recounts his fate, which beganin faith as a young man but finally ended in unbelief.

Editor's Website - Martin S. Shanguhyia
Ebook edition
The book complicates the development process and experience in Africa by drawing from past and current trends, particularly as shaped by ethnic traditions, colonialism, material needs, religious ethics, poverty, state-craft, and leadership.

Author's Website - George Kallander
Ebook edition
This book examines the Diary of 1636-- translated from literary Chinese into English for the first time and with a critical introduction and extensive annotations—and illuminates a traumatic moment for early modern Korean politics and society.

Author's Website - Mark Coleman
The Dignity Doctrine lays out a pragmatic framework for how humanity can attain a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world.

Author's Website - Gregg Lambert
Ebook edition
A new conceptual diagram of Foucault's original vision of the biopolitical order.

Editor's Website - Michael Gill
A provocative peek into this complicated film as a space for subversion, activism, and imaginative power.

Author's Website - Madonna Harrington Meyer
Author's Website - Ynesse Abdul-Malak
Childhood disabilities, particularly cognitive disabilities, are on the rise yet social programs and services to help US families respond to disabilities are not. Many families turn to grandparents for assistance juggling work, family responsibilities, and specialized therapies. This book is based on in-depth interviews with grandparents who are providing at least some care to grandchildren with disabilities. The analyses will help to better understand (1) under what conditions grandparents provide care and support, (2) what types and intensities of care and support grandparents provide, and (3) the impact of that care and support on grandparents' social, emotional, physical, and financial wellbeing.   In this fascinating and provocative book, Madonna Harrington Meyer and Ynesse Abdul-Malak take readers on a deep dive into the complex lives of grandparents who care for their disabled grandchildren. In Grandparenting Children with Disabilities, their interviews reveal the joy, meaning, and purpose grandparents find in caregiving, the challenges and frustrations they encounter, and the many ways they compromise their own health and well-being for the sake of their grandchildren.  Drawing from theories of cumulative inequality and from their deep knowledge of the US policy context, the authors lay bare the systemic failures that leave families of children with disabilities without adequate support and that place the most vulnerable among them at grave physical, emotional, and financial risk... Jane McLeod, Provost Professor, Indiana University   Grandparents in the U.S. already take on far more parenting responsibilities as compared to their peers in other countries. Grandparenting Children with Disabilities demonstrates that the intensity of these responsibilities is compounded for those whose grandchildren have disabilities given limited policy supports and a society still largely unaccommodating to those with disabilities. This book beautifully navigates the tension between the love these grandparents have for their grandchildren and the challenges they face caring for them. Pamela Herd, Professor, Georgetown University   Grandparenting Children with Disabilities offers important insights about the lived experience of older adults who care for and care about their grandchildren...The authors skillfully integrate the stories they tell with consideration of macro social structural influences and life course perspectives... I recommend it highly! Eva Kahana, Distinguished University Professor, Case Western Reserve  

Editor's Website - Samantha Kahn Herrick
This collection explores the historical value of texts celebrating saints--both the most abundant medieval source material and among the most difficult to use--and shows how historians use these sources to shed light on important aspects of the medieval past.

Author's Website - Elizabeth F. Cohen
A political scientist explains how the American immigration system ran off the rails -- and proposes a bold plan for reform Under the Trump administration, US immigration agencies terrorize the undocumented, target people who are here legally, and even threaten the constitutional rights of American citizens. How did we get to this point? In Illegal, Elizabeth F. Cohen reveals that our current crisis has roots in early twentieth century white nationalist politics, which began to reemerge in the 1980s. Since then, ICE and CBP have acquired bigger budgets and more power than any other law enforcement agency. Now, Trump has unleashed them. If we want to reverse the rising tide of abuse, Cohen argues that we must act quickly to rein in the powers of the current immigration regime and revive saner approaches based on existing law. Going beyond the headlines, Illegal makes clear that if we don't act now all of us, citizen and not, are at risk.

Author's Website - Mary Karr
Who knew it was possible to laugh out loud at a book about love, alcoholism, depression, marriage, motherhood, and God? This memoir tells of a woman's difficult childhood in Texas and her process finding relief in her love for her son, or the help of others who came before her. This unclassifiable book is, ultimately, a story of growing up and finding a place in the world.

Author's Website - John D. Caputo
Ebook edition
This sparkling collection of essays invites readers to join a seasoned scholar on his journey to catch "radical theology" in action, both in the Church and our culture at large. Capturing a career's worth of thought and erudition, this rich volume treats readers to creative thought, careful argumentation, and sophisticated analysis transmitted through the lucid, accessible prose that has earned the author a wide readership of academics and non-academics alike. In tackling "radical theology," John D. Caputo has in mind the deeper stream that courses its way through various historical and confessional theologies, upon which these theologies draw even while it disturbs them from within. They are well served by this disturbance because it keeps them on their toes. When we read about professional theologians' losing their jobs in confessional institutions, the chances are that, by earnestly digging into what is going on in their tradition, they have hit upon radical theological rock. Unlike modernist dismissals of religion, radical theology does not debunk but re-invents the theological tradition. Radical theology, Caputo says, is a double deconstruction--of supernatural theology on the one hand and of transcendental reason on the other, and therefore of the settled distinctions between the religious and the secular. Caputo also addresses the challenge for radical theology to earn a spot in the curriculum, given that the "radical" makes it suspect among the confessional seminaries while the "theology" renders it suspect among university seminars. Journeying from the academy to contemporary American culture, In Search of Radical Theology includes a captivating presentation of radical political theology for the time of Trump. This utterly unique volume not only brings readers on an enlightening tour of Caputo's thought but also invites us to accompany the author as he travels into intriguing new territories.

Editor's Website - Virginia Burrus
This volume features critical editions of the Latin texts and English translations of three versions of the Life of Saint Constantina, dating from the sixth to the twelfth centuries; it also includes an introduction and commentaries to contextualize these virtually unknown works.

Author's Website - Don Mitchell
Ebook edition
The problem of homelessness in America underpins the definition of an American city: what it is, who it is for, what it does, and why it matters. And the problem of the American city is epitomized in public space. Mean Streets offers, in a single, sustained argument, a theory of the social and economic logic behind the historical development, evolution, and especially the persistence of homelessness in the contemporary American city. By updating and revisiting thirty years of research and thinking on this subject, Don Mitchell explores the conditions that produce and sustain homelessness and how its persistence relates to the way capital works in the urban built environment. He also addresses the historical and social origins that created the boundary between public and private. Consequently, he unpacks the structure, meaning, and governance of urban public space and its uses. Mitchell traces his argument through two sections: a broadly historical overview of how homelessness has been managed in public spaces, followed by an exploration of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence that expands our national discussion. Beyond the mere regulation of the homeless and the poor, homelessness has metastasized more recently, Mitchell argues, to become a general issue that affects all urbanites.

Author's Website - Amanda Eubanks Winkler
Ebook edition
Music, Dance, and Drama in Early Modern English Schools is the first book to systematically analyze the role that the performing arts played in English schools after the Reformation.

Author's Website - Stephen Kuusisto
poems dedicated to Robert Bly

Editor's Website - David Sobel
Ebook edition
This is the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. Since its revival in the 1970s political philosophy has been a vibrant field in philosophy, one that intersects with jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory.OSPP aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in political philosophy and these closely related subfields. This volume features eight papers that address a range of central topics and represent cutting edge work in the field.

Author's Website - Renée Stevens
The design industry has evolved rapidly over the past decade. Effective and successful designers no longer need to just "make things," they need to be curious thinkers who understand how to solve problems that have a true impact on the world we live in and how to show the power of designing for social good. Now more than ever, the graphic design industry needs a book that teaches the foundations and theories of design while simultaneously speaking to the topics of history, ethics, and accessibility in order to make designs that are the most effective for all people. In Powered by Design, educator, designer, and public speaker Renee Stevens brings a truly up to date and thoughtful approach to an introduction to graphic design. As Assistant Professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Communication at Syracuse University, Stevens created this book to be at home equally in academia and outside of the school setting. With a conversational and approachable tone, Stevens' book is for anyone who wants to gain a more practical understanding of what graphic design is today, and the power and potential it has: from students to novice graphic designers to anyone who wants to build a solid foundation of design skills so that they can work more effectively with professional designers. Stevens covers topics such as: * Choosing the right typeface * Hierarchy and visual weight * Creating design systems * Balancing tension * Visualizing data * Understanding color and mood * Defining a story structure * User testing and critique * Immersive design (designing for all the senses) * Determining when a design is finished * How to make a living with design Woven throughout is the crucial idea that you must embrace empathy in everything you design in order to create work that is the most inclusive. Design has the power and potential to make real impact in our everyday lives, and this book will show you how to do that starting with your first design experience.

Editor's Website - Colin Elman
Ebook edition
Whilst a great deal of progress has been made in recent decades, concerns persist about the course of the social sciences. Progress in these disciplines is hard to assess and core scientific goals such as discovery, transparency, reproducibility, and cumulation remain frustratingly out of reach. Despite having technical acumen and an array tools at their disposal, today's social scientists may be only slightly better equipped to vanquish error and construct an edifice of truth than their forbears - who conducted analyses with slide rules and wrote up results with typewriters. This volume considers the challenges facing the social sciences, as well as possible solutions. In doing so, we adopt a systemic view of the subject matter. What are the rules and norms governing behavior in the social sciences? What kinds of research, and which sorts of researcher, succeed and fail under the current system? In what ways does this incentive structure serve, or subvert, the goal of scientific progress?

Author's Website - Micah Shippee
Reality Bytes explores meaningful adoption of new technologies with a framework that leverages augmented and virtual realities to amplify instruction, supercharge student motivation, encourage creativity, and make otherwise impossible educational adventures accessible to all.

Editor's Website - Biko Mandela Gray
Ebook edition
This book sheds light on the phenomenon of white rage, and maps out the uneasy relationship between white anxiety, religious fervour, American identity and perceived black racial progress. Contributors to the volume examine the sociological construct of the 'white labourer', whose concerns and beliefs can be understood as religious in foundation. They uncover that white religious fervor correlates to notions of perceived white loss and perceived black progress. In discussions ranging from the Constitution to the Charlottesville riots and the evangelical Christian community's uncritical support for Trump, this collection argues that it is not economics but religion and race that stand as the primary motivating factors for the rise of white rage and white supremacist sentiment in the United States.

Author's Website - Mike Goode
Using case studies of specific medial afterlives of William Blake's, Walter Scott's, and Jane Austen's writings, Romantic Capabilities develops and models an original critical methodology that that bridges historicist literary criticism and reception studies with media studies and formalism. Following an introductory theoretical chapter that explains the book's unconventional approach to the archive, Romantic Capabilities analyzes significant popular "media behaviors" exhibited by three major Romantic British literary corpuses: the viral circulation of William Blake's pictures and proverbs across contemporary media, the gravitation of Victorian panorama painters and 3D photographers to Walter Scott's historical fictions, and the ongoing popular practice of writing fanfiction set in the worlds of Jane Austen's novels and their imaginary country estates. The result is a book that reveals Blake to be an important early theorist of viral media and the law, Scott's novels to be studies in vision that helped give rise to modern immersive media, and Austenian realism to be a mode of ecological design whose project fanfiction grasps and extends.

Editor's Website - Kameshwar C. Wali
Ebook edition
The correspondence in Chandra's journals revealed in his own words the depth of his pursuit of science as well as his personal struggles, and such material is significant for the public to have a deeper understanding of the man behind the legend. The first part of the project was completed at the time of the Chandra birth centennial in 2010 with the publication of A Scientific Autobiography: Chandrasekhar. It provided a rare and personal insight into the joys and struggles of a brilliant scientist at work.There remained yet a wealth of correspondence that shed significant insight into Chandra's life, and this included the correspondence during his days as a student in India and Cambridge, his trials and tribulations in the competitive world of British academia, his travels to Russia and Germany, and his unexpected encounter with Sir Arthur Eddington. It also included selected correspondence and conversations with Lalitha, his wife of over sixty years. These letters and conversations with her reflect her own views of their life. She, a student of physics herself, eventually gave up her own work in science to become an integral part of Chandra's life. As Chandra wrote, 'The full measure of of my indebtedness] cannot really be recorded; it is too deep and too all persuasive. Let me then record simply that Lalitha was the motivating source and strength of my life ...'

Author's Website - Joanne Punzo Waghorne
Ebook edition
This book examines spirituality in Singapore, showing how important the city state is for understanding contemporary global configurations of urban space, religion, and spirituality. Joanne Punzo Waghorne highlights how the formal religious spaces temples, churches, and mosques have been confined to allotted sites on the map of Singapore, whereas various "spiritual" organizations, particularly of Hindu origins and headed by a guru, still continue to operate as "societies" classified by the government with other "clubs." These unconventional religiosities are not confined but ironically make their own places, meeting in ostensive secular venues- high-rise flats, malls, businesses, and community centers, thus existing in the overall space of religion, commerce, and the state. The book argues that State of Singapore also operates between the secular and the religious, constructing an overarching spatial regime that both accommodates and yet rivals the alternate spheres that spiritual movements construct under its umbrella. Both spatial configurations challenge the presumed relationships between myth and reality, religion and commerce, the ethereal and the concrete, the sacred and the secular, on the levels of self, community, and polity. Singapore, now deemed a model for urban development in Asia, also offers an understanding of a new post-secularity and perhaps reveals where the urbanized world is headed.

Author's Website - Jules Gibbs
The one-word titles of Jules Gibbs’ snakes & babies are potentialities of immense expansion. These poems are incapable of being singular, inert, quiet. They are manifold, animated, agitated by energies of politics, dreams, and desires – systems of menace and pleasure. She obeys Celan’s advice to “Speak, but keep yes and no unsplit,” but in all other ways is disobedient to “love’s old patterns.” The weather is rain. The ecology is woman. The time is violence. The angels are emus, flightless and endangered. The voice talks back to our alienation and annihilation. In Gibbs’ hands, poems are a “voodoo that eats through paper,” an alternate history that wounds as it cures.

Editor's Website - Ryan D. Griffiths
Ebook edition
How can we understand the strategic interaction between secessionist movements and sovereign states? A casual review of the many secessionist struggles around the world, both violent and peaceful, shows a variety of types. Some, like Catalonia, are pursuing their ends using combinations of electoral capture and civil demonstrations, just as the Spanish government is working to delegitimize these efforts and defeat them in the polls. Regions like Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) lack the same institutional connectivity with the larger state of Azerbaijan and are relegated to a de facto (but unrecognized) status where defense, deterrence, and diplomacy are critical. For its part, Azerbaijan invokes its territorial integrity and attempts to deny all forms of recognition to the breakaway region. Other regions from West Papua to Tibet are faced with the hard choice between civil resistance and the use of violence, and their states are keen to suppress their efforts and hide them from the world. What features are common across all of these examples, and how do they differ? This volume synthesizes a number of theories and theoretical approaches that purport to explain the strategies of secession and counter-secession. This is an important topic. Apart from the many legal and cartographical issues that attend secessionist activity, the potential for conflict is a very real concern. Estimates put the share of civil wars driven by secessionism at about 50%,1 and according to Barbara Walter secessionism is the chief source of violence in the world today.2 Secessionism is destabilizing because, at the least, it presents a direct challenge to existing political systems. Yet surprisingly, the strategic interaction between states and secessionists is an area in which we have incomplete understanding.

Author's Website - Margaret G. Hermann
Author's Website - Stuart S. Brown
Ebook edition
"The strength of this book is that it does not look at a single case or even a few disparate examples of drug, weapon, and human trafficking but looks at many patterns--intra-regionally, cross-nationally, and internationally. It is an innovative addition to the literature on the nature of the safe havens--or 'black spots'--currently being used for illicit activity. This book will make a clear impact on the scholarship of transnational crime and the geopolitics of the illicit global economy." --Jeremy Morris, Aarhus University, Denmark 

Transnational criminal, insurgent, and terrorist organizations seek places that they can govern and operate from with minimum interference from law enforcement. This book examines 80 such safe havens which function outside effective state-based government control and are sustained by illicit economic activities. Brown and Hermann call these geographic locations 'black spots' because, like black holes in astronomy that defy the laws of Newtonian physics, they defy the world as defined by the Westphalian state system. The authors map flows of insecurity such as trafficking in drugs, weapons, and people, providing an unusually clear view of the hubs and networks that form as a result. As transnational crime is increasing on the internet, Brown and Hermann also explore if there are places in cyberspace which can be considered black spots. They conclude by elaborating the challenges that black spots pose for law enforcement and both national and international governance.

Author's Website - Will Scheibel
Ebook edition
This volume on Twin Peaks in the Wayne State University Press "TV Milestones" series analyzes and historicizes the television show Twin Peaks from its 1990-1991 run on ABC to its 2017 continuation on Showtime.