Research Guides: Books in the Humanities: ©2022 Titles

Books in the Humanities celebrates its 8th year in 2023, featuring 45 books by Syracuse University authors and editors published in 2022. The Syracuse University Humanities Center began the Books in the Humanities tradition in 2016 to recognize humanities-rooted scholarship among our colleagues, campus-wide. Join us for this year's celebration

8th Annual Books in the Humanities Celebration

May 3, 2023, 4:00-5:30pm, Strasser Legacy Room 220 Eggers

Send your upcoming book release news to humcenter@syr.edu for consideration in future celebrations!

2022 Titles

White Educators Negotiating Complicity: Roadblocks Paved with Good Intentions by Barbara Applebaum
Call Number: LB1778.2 .A66 2022
ISBN: 9781666904154
Publication Date: 2021-11-17
Author’s Website – Barbara Applebaum
Print edition
While there is a proliferation of research on white educators who teach courses around anti-racism, Applebaum’s book focuses on white educators who teach about whiteness to racially diverse groups of students, and who acknowledge and attempt to negotiate their complicity in systemic injustice—a paradox through which attempts to disrupt systemic white supremacy often reproduce it.
The Archaeology of Harriet Tubman's Life in Freedom by Douglas V. Armstrong
Call Number: E444.T82 A77 2022
ISBN: 9780815637363
Publication Date: 2022-09-30
Author’s Website – Douglas V. Armstrong
Print edition
Despite often-told accounts of Tubman’s social activism, less is known of her later years and her continued efforts for social justice, women’s rights, and care for the elderly. Armstrong reconstructs and interprets Tubman’s public and private life in freedom through integrating his own archaeological findings with historical research.
Johann Friedrich Herbart: Grandfather of Analytic Philosophy by Frederick C. Beiser
Call Number: B395.H4663 B45 2022
ISBN: 9780192849854
Publication Date: 2022-05-03
Author’s Website – Frederick C. Beiser
Print edition
In this first intellectual biography of Herbart in English, Beiser studies the development of one of 19th-century Germany's most important philosophers, from his education in Oldenburg and Jena, emergence as competitor of Schelling and Hegel, to his final years in Göttingen.
Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies by Mona Bhan (Editor); Haley Duschinski (Editor); Deepti Misri (Editor)
Call Number: DS485.K25 R68
ISBN: 9780367353438
Publication Date: 2022-09-22
Editor's Website – Mona Bhan
Print edition
This volume presents emerging critical knowledge frameworks and perspectives that foreground situated histories and resistance practices to challenge colonial and postcolonial forms of governance and state building. Its five-part approach situates Critical Kashmir Studies scholarship within global scholarly conversations on nationalism, sovereignty, indigenous movements, human rights, and international law.
Feeling the Gaze: Image and Affect in Contemporary Argentine and Chilean Performance by Gail A. Bulman
Call Number: PN2451 .B85 2022
ISBN: 9781469667430
Publication Date: 2022-08-25
Author’s Website – Gail A. Bulman
Print edition
Bulman explores the visual elements in eight contemporary Argentine and Chilean theater performances to show how staged images can awaken spectators' emotions to activate their intellect, and provoke deep contemplation of social, historical, and political themes. Examples demonstrate a transgressive power to make spectators see, feel, and potentially act against injustices and violence.
A Midsummer Night's Dream: Language and Writing by R. S. White; Dympna Callaghan (Series edited by)
Call Number: PR2827 .W556 2022
ISBN: 9781350103870
Publication Date: 2022-06-30
Editor's Website – Dympna Callaghan
Print edition
This lively and informative guide to Shakespeare's popular comedy equips you with the critical skills to analyze its language, structure and themes and to expand and enrich your own response to the play. Each chapter offers a 'Writing matters' section, clearly linking the analysis of Shakespeare's language to your own writing strategies in coursework and examinations.
The Winter's Tale: Language and Writing by Mario DiGangi; Dympna Callaghan (Series edited by)
Call Number: PR2839 .D54 2022
ISBN: 9781350175549
Publication Date: 2022-06-30
Editor's Website – Dympna Callaghan
Print edition
Through expert guidance on understanding, interpreting, and writing about Shakespeare's language, this volume demonstrates that careful attention to Shakespeare's complex dramatic language can clarify the structure and concerns of the play, while providing deep and satisfying engagement with the social, political, and ethical questions Shakespeare raises.
Specters of God: An Anatomy of the Apophatic Imagination by John D. Caputo
Call Number: BT83.585 .C37 2022
ISBN: 9780253063007
Publication Date: 2022-10-04
Author’s Website – John D. Caputo
Print edition
Caputo poses many mystical questions and analyses of several key "spectral" figures from medieval angelology to argue that the name of God is not the master name of a super-being who is going to save us but a placeholder for sources deep in our apophatic imaginary.
Looking back: ... a life with baseball by Herm Card
Call Number: GV873 .C373 2022
ISBN: 9798800647563
Publication Date: 2022
Author’s Website – Herm Card
No E-book available.
Card draws on a lifetime of experience in the game he loves to present a collection of thoughtful, insightful and often emotional examples of why baseball means so much to so many of us. Having played, coached, umpired, broadcast, photographed and written about the game at every level he offers a perspective that is at once personal and universal.
Clinical Simulations As Signature Pedagogy: Educator Preparation Across the Disciplines by Benjamin Dotger (Editor); Kelly Chandler-Olcott (Editor)
Call Number: LB1029.S5 C556 2021
ISBN: 9781682537053
Publication Date: 2022-03-15
Editor's Website – Benjamin Dotger
Editor's Website – Kelly Chandler-Olcott
Print edition
This co-edited volume explores the use of live-actor simulations as an engaging training tool to better prepare educational professionals for school-wide challenges. Through original case studies, the book’s contributors demonstrate how simulations provide a safe shared-learning environment that closely approximates authentic problems of practice –a useful tool for educators, counselors, and administrators.
Sunset Boulevard by Steven Cohan
Call Number: PN1997.S845 C64 2022
ISBN: 978-1-8390-2408-5
Publication Date: 2022-09-08
Author’s Website – Steven Cohan
Print edition
Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard was a critical and commercial success on its release in 1950 and remains a classic of film noir and one of the best-known Hollywood films about Hollywood. Cohan draws on original archival research to shed new light on the film's production history, contributions by its creators, its reception and enduring appeal.
Diversity and Satire: Laughing at Processes of Marginalization by Charisse L'Pree Corsbie-Massay
Call Number: PN6149.S2 C67
ISBN: 9781119651970
Publication Date: 2022-12-01
Author’s Website – Charisse L'Pree Corsbie-Massay
No E-book available.
In our changing media and cultural environment, satire has emerged as an increasingly popular approach for promoting diversity and inclusion. Effective satire highlights the absurdity of marginalization processes, but misinterpretation can potentially reinforce historical power dynamics and perpetuate marginalization. Chapters feature artifacts that contextualize the material, offering guidance for distinguishing and engaging with satirical content.
Sugar Street by Jonathan Dee
Call Number: PS3554.E355 S84 2022
ISBN: 9780802160003
Publication Date: 2022-09-13
Author’s Website – Jonathan Dee
Print edition
Full of dark humor and insight, Dee’s male narrator attempts to disavow his former life of privilege and enter a blameless new existence. Having opted out of his material possessions and human connections, the pillars of his new self - simplicity, kindness, above all invisibility - grow shakier as he butts up against the daily lives of his neighbors in their politically divided working-class city.
Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb by Sean J. Drake
Call Number: LC212.522.C2 D73 2022
ISBN: 9780520381353
Publication Date: 2022-03-22
Author’s Website – Sean J. Drake
Print edition
The author addresses long-standing problems of educational inequality from a nuanced perspective, looking at how race and class intersect to affect modern school segregation. Drawing on ethnographic observation and dozens of interviews, Drake’s findings suggest a new way forward for scholars whose work sits at the intersection of education, race and ethnicity, class, and immigration.
DisCrit Expanded: Reverberations, Ruptures, and Inquiries by Subini A. Annamma (Editor); Beth A. Ferri (Editor); David J. Connor (Editor); Alfredo J. Artiles (Series edited by)
Call Number: LC4031 .D573 2022
ISBN: 9780807766347
Publication Date: 2022-02-25
Editor's Website – Beth A. Ferri
Print edition
This sequel to the influential 2016 work DisCrit―Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education explores how DisCrit has both deepened and expanded, providing increasingly nuanced understandings about how racism and ableism circulate across geographic borders, academic disciplines, multiplicative identities, intersecting oppressions, and individual and cultural resistances.
Pandemic Politics: The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID by Shana Kushner Gadarian; Sara Wallace Goodman; Thomas B. Pepinsky
Call Number: RA644.C67 G334 2022
ISBN: 9780691218991
Publication Date: 2022-10-11
Author’s Website – Shana Kushner Gadarian
No E-book available.
COVID-19 has killed more people than any war or public health crisis in American history, but the scale and grim human toll of the pandemic were not inevitable. With this in-depth account of a uniquely American tragedy, Gadarian illustrates how the Trump administration chose partisanship over public health, with disastrous consequences for all.
Digital Performance in Everyday Life by Lyndsay Michalik Gratch; Ariel Gratch
Call Number: HM851 .G4453 2022
ISBN: 9781138342118
Publication Date: 2021-11-01
Author’s Website – Lyndsay Michalik Gratch
Print edition
Communication technologies and the social norms that developed alongside them have altered the ways we perform as and for ourselves and each other in virtual spaces. Through a range of topics and examples, this book addresses how the physical and virtual have become inseparable, and how the digital is always rooted in embodied action.
Phenomenology of Black Spirit by Biko Mandela Gray; Ryan J. Johnson
Call Number: B808.9 .G73
ISBN: 9781399510974
Publication Date: 2022-11-30
Author’s Website – Biko Mandela Gray
Print edition
Co-authors (Gray and Ryan Johnson) focus on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Black Thought to demonstrate how its abstract dialectic is transformed when put into conversation with the lived dialectics of Black Thought: from Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs through to Malcolm X and Angela Davis. Forcing Hegelianism into the embodied history of Black Thought reveals a phenomenology of America whose spirit is Black.
When Freedom Speaks: The Boundaries and the Boundlessness of Our First Amendment Right by Lynn Greenky
Call Number: KF4772 .G77 2022
ISBN: 9781684580934
Publication Date: 2022-05-24
Author’s Website – Lynn Greenky
Print edition
This book chronicles the stories behind our First Amendment right to speak our minds. Given her background as a lawyer, rhetorician, and teacher, Greenky’s unique perspective makes concepts easier to understand and clearly applicable to our lives, offering a wide range of examples described in accessible language.
Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction by Kathleen A. Hinchman (Editor); Heather K. Sheridan-Thomas (Editor); Donna E. Alvermann (Foreword by)
Call Number: LB1631 .B44 2022
ISBN: 9781462548262
Publication Date: 2022-04-01
Editor's Website – Kathleen A. Hinchman
Print edition
This engaging book reviews key topics in literacy instruction for grades 5-12 and provides research-based recommendations for practice. Leading scholars, through vivid case studies, provide thoughtful discussion topics and activities in each chapter, and detailed ideas for program and lesson planning, making this an indispensable professional development tool.
Climate Change As Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet by Matthew T. Huber
Call Number: HX550.E25 H83 2022
ISBN: 9781788733885
Publication Date: 2022-05-10
Author’s Website – Matthew T. Huber
Print edition
The climate crisis is not primarily a problem of ‘believing science’ or individual ‘carbon footprints’ – it is a class problem rooted in who owns, controls and profits from material production. Huber argues that, as in classical socialist movements of the early 20th Century, winning the climate struggle requires a form of planetary working-class solidarity.
The Rhetoric of the Corrupt Bargain in the 1824 Election: Clay, Jackson, and Democratic Strategy by Amos Kiewe
Call Number: E375 .K54 2022
ISBN: 9781666925319
Publication Date: 2022-09-21
Author’s Website – Amos Kiewe
Print edition
Kiewe intersects rhetoric, history, and politics to tell the story of the 1824 presidential election, when the House of Representatives elected the president after no candidate won outright the majority of the Electoral College. Through inspecting speeches, statements, private letters, and published accounts, Kiewe demonstrates how maneuvering, vote trading, and special favors dictated the outcome.
Living While Black: Using Joy, Beauty, and Connection to Heal Racial Trauma by Guilaine Kinouani
Call Number: HT1581 .K56 2022
ISBN: 9780807054581
Publication Date: 2022-01-25
Print edition
Kinouani focuses on how racism affects both physical and mental health, giving voice to the diverse, global experiences of Black people. She presents eye-opening research and guidance on how to set boundaries and
process micro-aggressions; protect children from racism; handle difficult race-based conversations; navigate the complexities of Black love; and identify and celebrate the wins.
The World Is Gone: Philosophy in Light of the Pandemic by Gregg Lambert
Call Number: B819 .L222 2021
ISBN: 9781517913380
Publication Date: 2022-02-08
Author’s Website – Gregg Lambert
Print edition
This book explores the existential implications of the Covid-19 crisis through meditations.
Recollections and Reflections: From My Life in Nazi Germany, Wartime England, and America by H. Richard Levy
Call Number: D743 .L668 2022
ISBN: 9781954744646
Publication Date: 2022-03-25
Author’s Website – H. Richard Levy
No E-book available.
Levy writes about his tumultuous childhood in Germany; his migration to England and the U.S.; his marriage and involvement with the 1960s Civil Rights movement; his appointment as the first Biochemist hired by Syracuse University; and describes an emotional return to his native Leipzig after seventy years.
The Emerald Handbook of Computer-Mediated Communication and Social Media by Jeremy Harris Lipschultz (Editor); Karen Freberg (Editor); Regina Luttrell (Editor)
Call Number: HM742 .E54 2022
ISBN: 9781800715981
Publication Date: 2022-06-27
Editor's Website – Regina Luttrell
Print edition
Joining a thriving field of new media, this collective volume authored by global academics features important research by thought leaders within computer-mediated communication (CMC) and social media. Uniquely relating research and emerging trends, this handbook is an indispensable resource for graduate students or seasoned practitioners.
Wonder Woman: Warrior, Disrupter, Feminist Icon by Regina Luttrell
Call Number: PN6728.W6 L88 2022
ISBN: 9781538153888
Publication Date: 2022-10-12
Author’s Website – Regina Luttrell
Print edition
Luttrell presents a remarkable, in-depth exploration of iconic feminist superhero, Wonder Woman— from her creation, mysterious identity, and evolution to her extraordinary impact on legions of fans. The book reveals how Wonder Woman’s journeys are a reflection of each wave within the feminist movement and how her impact on culture and society continues to be felt today.
Ice Ages: Their Social and Natural History by Allan Mazur
Call Number: QE741.2 .M39 2022
ISBN: 9781316519400
Publication Date: 2022-02-10
Author’s Website – Allan Mazur
Print edition
Mazur's book tells the appealing history of the scientific 'discovery' of Ice Ages. What caused them and what were their affects on the social history of humanity? The book discusses implications for the current ‘controversies’ over anthropogenic climate change, public understanding of science, and (lack of) 'trust in experts'--especially relevant right now.
The Golden Pot: A Fairytale for Our Time by Dennis McCort
Call Number: PS3613.C38284 G65 2022
ISBN: 9783962581091
Publication Date: 2022-09-01
Author’s Website – Dennis McCourt
No E-book available.
McCort’s comic novel for children of all ages tells the story of graduate student Anselm MacGregor, as he braves the perils of a spiritual journey from ignorance to enlightenment. Set in the concrete jungle of the New Jersey/New York metropolitan area of today, the penurious Ph.D. candidate in English literature forges a psychospiritual apprenticeship with an archivist.
Clock and Compass: How John Byron Plato Gave Farmers a Real Address by Mark Monmonier
Call Number: GA407.P53 M66 2022
ISBN: 9781609388218
Publication Date: 2022-04-12
Author’s Website – Mark Monmonier
Print edition
This story follows the title’s namesake, who attended a vocational high school, became a farmer in his mid-30s, and patented several inventions including the “Clock System,” which assigned addresses to rural residences without house numbers. It’s a tale of persistence and failure as rural farming declined and technology and capitalism overtook Plato’s chances at geographic immortality.
Routledge Handbook of Sport Fans and Fandom by Danielle Sarver Coombs (Editor); Anne Osborne (Editor)
Call Number: GV715 .R47 2022
ISBN: 9780367358310
Publication Date: 2022-04-29
Editor's Website – Anne Osborne
Print edition
Co-editors Osborne and Coombs examine different theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of fans—including experiences of diverse and marginalized fan groups—presenting cutting-edge discussion across broad thematic areas such as performance and identity, the business of fandom, and the transformative effects of digital and social media.
A New African Elite: Place in the Making of a Bridge Generation by Deborah Pellow
Call Number: LA1627 .P45 2022
ISBN: 9781800733787
Publication Date: 2022-03-11
Author’s Website – Deborah Pellow
Print edition
Focusing on a sub-set of first-generation higher-educated students of the Dagomba of northern Ghana, this book traces the group’s relocation to Accra, the capital, hundreds of miles south. Through charting their path into elite status, Pellow demonstrates how tools gained through education and social connections influence politics back home.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker by Kendall R. Phillips
Call Number: PN1992.77.K653 P45 2022
ISBN: 9780814349045
Publication Date: 2022-08-16
Author’s Website – Kendall R. Phillips
Print edition
Before Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The X-Files, there was Carl Kolchak (in the 1970s), a world-weary Chicago newspaper reporter with a cheap, seersucker suit and a penchant for uncovering monsters lurking in every corner. Phillips explores the enduring impact of the Kolchack series on current television horror.
The Running Body: A Memoir by Emily Pifer
Call Number: GV1061.15.P544 R86 2022
ISBN: 9781637680544
Publication Date: 2022-10-17
Author’s Website – Emily Pifer
Print edition
This work wrestles and reckons with power and agency, language and story, body dysphoria and beauty standards, desire and addiction, loss and healing, told through multiple modes of storytelling—memoir, meditation, and cultural analysis—interweaving research, argument, and experience. Fractures, figurative and literal, run through the narrative as Pifer explores the ways bodies become entangled in stories.
Unbridled: Studying Religion in Performance by William Robert
Call Number: PR6037.H23 E6376 2022
ISBN: 9780226816586
Publication Date: 2022-03-18
Author’s Website – William Robert
Print edition
Robert uses Peter Shaffer’s enigmatic play, Equus, to introduce readers (and his students) to the study of religion, provoking them to conceive of religion in unfamiliar, even uncomfortable ways. Its themes of ritual, sacrifice, worship, power, desire, violence, and sexuality can be approached through open questions, contrasting perspectives, and alternative modes of interpretation and appreciation.
The Preparator's Handbook: A Practical Guide for Preparing and Installing Collection Objects by Andrew Saluti
Call Number: AM133 .S25
ISBN: 9781538139219
Publication Date: 2022-09-01
Author’s Website – Andrew Saluti
Print edition
Saluti’s volume is an invaluable resource for emerging museum professionals and others with minimal previous experience or training, working in galleries and collections. It explores, explains, and illustrates the basics for the preparation and installation professionals. Step-by-step guides outline museum-standard procedures for most types of collection objects, including works on paper, archival volumes, and historic artifacts.
Liberation Day by George Saunders
Call Number: PS3569.A7897 A6 2022
ISBN: 9780525509592
Publication Date: 2022-10-18
Author’s Website – George Saunders
Print edition
Saunders’ latest collection explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. Collectively, nine subversive, prismatic, deeply resonant stories masterfully encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.
Gene Tierney: Star of Hollywood's Home Front by Will Scheibel
Call Number: PN2287.T48 S34 2022
ISBN: 9780814348208
Publication Date: 2022-09-12
Author’s Website – Will Scheibel
Print edition
Perhaps one of the most recognized faces of studio-era Hollywood, Gene Tierney personified "ordinariness" both on- and off-screen, also becoming one of the first stars whose treatment for mental illness became public knowledge. Scheibel examines the arc of Tierney's career—her making, unmaking, and remaking at Twentieth Century Fox—in the 1940s and 50s.
Identity by Erica Shumener
Call Number: BD236 .S489 2022
ISBN: 9781009001342
Publication Date: 2022-09-15
Author’s Website – Erica Shumener
Print edition
This work takes a closer look at one notorious criterion of object identity, Leibniz's Law: 1) the form of identity criteria; 2) the indiscernibility of identicals; 3) the identity of indiscernibles—the more controversial half of Leibniz's Law. The author considers alternatives to Leibniz's Law as well as the possibility that there are no adequate identity criteria to be found.
Institutional Grammar: Foundations and Applications for Institutional Analysis by Christopher K. Frantz; Saba Siddiki
Call Number: H97 .F735 2022
ISBN: 9783030863715
Publication Date: 2022-02-25
Author’s Website – Saba Siddiki
Print edition
This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to Institutional Grammar (IG), an approach for analysing the design of institutions. It includes applications and introduces methodological guidance as well as developing novel analytical opportunities for researchers of diverse disciplinary backgrounds and interests to apply or build upon.
Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 8 by David Sobel (ed.), Steven Wall (ed.)
Call Number: JA71 .O955 v.8
ISBN: 9780191947681
Publication Date: 2021-12-08
Editor's Website – David Sobel
Print edition
Since its revival in the 1970s, political philosophy has been a vibrant field that intersects with jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory. This volume presents examples of the best contemporary work on topics of fair compensation, republican political theory, toleration and rights to do wrongs, pardons and humanitarian intervention.
Filipinx American Studies: Reckoning, Reclamation, Transformation by Antonio Tiongson (Editor); Rick Bonus (Editor)
Call Number: E184.F4 F56 2022
ISBN: 9780823299584
Publication Date: 2022-06-07
Editor's Website – Antonio Tiongsong
Print edition
This volume spotlights the unique suitability and situatedness of Filipinx American studies both as a site for reckoning with the work of historicizing U.S. empire in all of its entanglements, as well as a location for reclaiming and theorizing the interlocking histories and contemporary trajectories of global capitalism, racism, sexism, and heteronormativity.
Money in Politics by Simon Weschle
Call Number: JF2112.C28 W47 2022
ISBN: 9781316511848
Publication Date: 2022-06-09
Author’s Website – Simon Weschle
Print edition
In politics, money is often the name of the game. Politicians enrich themselves while in office, spend campaign money to finance their re-election, and accept lucrative 'golden parachute' jobs after leaving office. Weschle argues that we can only fully comprehend the role of money in politics when we view it as a common system to be analyzed and critiqued.
The U.S.-China Trade War: Global News Framing and Public Opinion in the Digital Age by Louisa Ha (Editor); Lars Willnat (Editor)
Call Number: HF1456.5.C6 U5264 2022
ISBN: 9781611864212
Publication Date: 2022-04-01
Editor's Website – Lars Willnat
Print edition
Contributors examine the effects of news framing and agenda-setting during the trade war in the Chinese and U.S. news media. With social media frequently blamed for spreading misinformation and rumors, this book illustrates how professional and user-generated media can reduce international conflicts, foster mutual understanding, and transcend nationalism and ethnocentrism.
Leaving the Grove: A Quit Lit reader by Christopher Flanagan (Editor); Glenn Wright (Editor)
Call Number: HF5384 .L43 2022
ISBN: 9780977784790
Publication Date: 2021-07-01
Editor's Website – Glenn Wright
No E-book available.
Wright (et.al) presents the first book-length work devoted to the phenomenon of “quit lit”—farewells to academia by those at all levels (graduate student through tenured professor) who have elected to resign their posts or stop looking for one. Contributors examine the academic labor system, precarity, graduate education, and the future of the professoriate.