Browse by title

Across more than two centuries Afro-America has created a huge and dazzling variety of literary self-expression. Designs of Blackness provides less a narrative literary history than, precisely, a series of mappings—each literary-critical and comparative while at the same time offering cultural and historical context. This carefully re-edited version of the 1998 publication opens with an estimation of earliest African American voice in the names of Phillis Wheatley and her contemporaries. It then takes up the huge span of autobiography from Frederick Douglass through to Maya Angelou. "Harlem on My Mind," which follows, sets out the literary contours of America’s premier black city. Womanism, Alice Walker’s presiding term, is given full due in an analysis of fiction from Harriet E. Wilson to Toni Morrison. Richard Wright is approached not as some regulation "realist" but as a more inward, at times near-surreal, author. Decadology has its risks but the 1940s has rarely been approached as a unique era of war and peace and especially in African American texts. Beat Generation work usually adheres to Ginsberg and Kerouac, but black Beat writing invites its own chapter in the names of Amiri Baraka, Ted Joans and Bob Kaufman. The 1960s has long become a mythic change-decade, and in few greater respects than as a black theatre both of the stage and politics. In Leon Forrest African America had a figure of the postmodern turn; his work is explored in its own right and for how it takes its place in the context of other reflexive black fiction. "African American Fictions of Passing" unpacks the whole deceptive trope of "race" in writing from Williams Wells Brown through to Charles Johnson. The two newly added chapters pursue African American literary achievement into the Obama-Trump century, fiction from Octavia Butler to Darryl Pinkney, poetry from Rita Dove to Kevin Young.

For years, students and faculty of communication studies have enjoyed the lively, enriched learning experience that an honors curriculum provides. This book draws attention to a dynamic, yet underexplored, site of communication pedagogy: honors education. Honor societies were established in American colleges and universities over a century ago, and the demand for honors courses has grown significantly since that time. Demand for communication studies honors courses began in the 1950s and the first communication studies honor society was founded in the 1980s. This book begins with a description of the unique qualities and pedagogical approaches of honors communication courses. Several chapters are devoted to describing how to teach honors communication courses (e.g., honors public speaking, honors interpersonal, and honors rhetoric) and to providing practical resources for those interested in teaching honors communication. This book also describes how to advise and mentor honors communication students in independent research projects and in groups such as Lambda Pi Eta honor society.

The purpose of Latinas Pathways to STEM: Exploring Contextual Mitigating Factors is to present transnational case studies of Latinas and Mexicanas pursuing a STEM degree/career from the states of Georgia, New York, Texas, as well as México. In this book, the authors underscore that the experiences of the participants highlighted in this book provide insights into how to support successful Latinas/Mexicanas in STEM career pipelines and pathways. In doing so, the authors address the need for a set of approaches to STEM education policy that acknowledges that institutionalized pipelines often create replication by funding intervention programs that attempt to sterilize context by identifying variables and ignoring the associated contextual mitigating factors (CMFs). Researchers and funders of STEM intervention efforts can learn from the analysis of these case studies that successful Latinas/Mexicanas developed tactical understanding, which reinforced their identity and resisted how they were positioned by negative CMFs, reaffirming their aspirations and successes in STEM. Education graduate students, research methodologists, policy makers, and practitioners will find CMF analysis as an additional useful methodological conceptual tool to interrogate how sociocultural factors position designated underrepresented people in STEM pipelines and pathways. Education policies that advocate for the existence and maintenance of pipelines that increase underrepresented Latinas/Mexicanas in STEM are important but are often crafted with blind spots that leave out how context mitigates policy especially at the individual level.

Este libro aborda el debate sobre los supuestos morales que subyacen a las regulaciones y prácticas, es decir, a las normas restrictivas sobre aborto en América Latina. En particular propone que la noción de biolegitimidad es un aspecto central de esta moralidad y que es en virtud del menor valor que se le reconoce o asigna a la vida de las mujeres, que tales restricciones se mantienen en todos los países de la región. Este menor valor se vincula, en el campo de la reproducción, con el rechazo a las mujeres que se niegan —cuando abortan— a la maternidad como un destino. Así, la persistencia de las normas restrictivas sobre aborto se fundamenta en la menor legitimidad que se otorga a la vida de las mujeres como biografía, limitando su libertad en materia de autodeterminación reproductiva. En este trabajo se cruzan el feminismo, la salud pública, el derecho y la bioética, el campo en el cual se ordena la conversación aquí propuesta. En suma, el libro ofrece una reflexión sobre los valores y principios que informan las normas —entendidas tanto en su sentido formal en cuanto disposiciones del derecho positivo, como en su sentido informal en tanto prácticas sociales— sobre aborto en América Latina.

Nowhere are the chaotic debates surrounding contemporary aspect theory more heated than in discussions of the theory’s application to Hellenistic Greek, and especially its understanding of the semantics of the Greek perfect tense. This book is a distilled academic debate among three of the best-known scholars on the subject, each defending his own unique interpretation while engaging the other two. The Perfect Storm will prove an indispensable resource for any scholar seeking to write convincingly on the Greek perfect in the future.

Religion and Racism provides an extensive examination of the paradox that arises from the intersection of being a Christian and a racist. A racist believes that one racial group is superior to another. Yet, since the nation’s revolutionary birth, the United States claims a pious, devout mantle of Christianity that served as the nation’s moral compass, while engaging in horrendous acts of racial violence. How can a white Christian male, sit in a church, engage in Christian prayers, and then in cold-bloodied fashion murder nine African American Christians in their own church?　Christians traditionally have always designated "churches" as places of refuge and sanctuary. The binary of whiteness and Christianity emerged and came to dominate much of the world. In the United States and other parts of the world, whiteness and Christianity have served to subjugate people of color even as such people themselves also came to embrace Christ's teachings, often at the cost of the loss of their traditional forms of religion and culture. Armed with the Bible and deep-seated belief in racial superiority, European colonizers came to shape most of the world as we know it today. The result has been an unequal control of the world’s resources and vastly disparate living standards for people of color and whites, both internationally and within specific nations. People of color have been treated as highly valued commodities, while simultaneously being stripped of their humanity—with the sanction of the Christian faith.

The ascent of Donald Trump, a person often perceived as racist and lacking in moral character, was achieved largely with the support of white evangelicals (Wehner, 2020). Rev. James Wallis (2019), founder and editor of　Sojourners magazine, called upon fellow evangelicals to reject Donald Trump’s racist attacks. Mark Galli, editor in chief of Christianity Today, called for Trump’s removal from office for his gross immorality and ethical incompetence. In both instances there has been an awakening to the paradox of strong evangelical support of a man who seems to be the embodiment of much that is antithetical to espoused evangelical beliefs. Despite the awakening by some evangelicals, there are many who continue to embrace Trump, believing that God is working through him to achieve their goals.

Surfing the Anthropocene shows how the "big tension" between the speed and scale of digital media characterizes affective life on the public screen today. An innovative look launched in the wake of the 2016 election, Jenkins illustrates how the big tension is reflected in how we feel and talk about digital media. Exploring a variety of modes from following news on Twitter to discussion on Facebook, activism to witnessing police shooting videos, the book demonstrates how responses to the big tension make political activity more like videogames, with an "immeditative" temporality and "attentional" spatiality contrasted with meditative and tending modes such as gardening. As a near-monoculture of immeditative, attentional modes emerge, consumerism and affect privilege become reinforced in ways that make addressing the problems of the Anthropocene especially draining and difficult.

Original concepts throughout the book, including the big tension but also the affected subject, translucency, and homo modus, are sure to influence thinking about digital media. If you wonder why life today feels particularly urgent, heated, and intense, Surfing the Anthropocene offers a compelling answer—the big tension—as well as a way to reimagine digital experience with an eye towards surviving, rather than just surfing, the Anthropocene.

At a time when populist movements have gained ground across the globe and migrants have taken center stage as unwanted pariahs in the eyes of many this book dares to tackle a culturally relevant threat, much talked about but seldom systematically uncovered or analyzed: the socio-cultural domination that permeates the minds of many Black students in the United Kingdom as they negotiate between what they learn as history at school and their lived experiences and expectations. Kay Traille shed light on this visible invisible specter and uncovers the rich tapestry of forgotten ordinary histories that should make societies richer and better. Using the words of students, teachers, government reports and fictional narratives this book challenges the audience to place themselves into this historical stream of culture to better understand and teach black students. Through the means of critical race theory, social constructivism and aspects of social constructionism, a narrative approach and personal experiences the author excavates points of personal connection through the gateway of stories to enter worlds and make meaning. Traille points out the study of history is socially constructed and not impartial academic information and most history teachers in the United Kingdom are White, female and middleclass and increasingly the students they teach are not, undoubtedly making for cultural dissonance between students and teachers. Furthermore, students and teachers knowing and unwittingly grapple with silent vivid racist experiences in and outside of the classroom that bleed into history lessons. The way students are socialized and taught may impact on their ability to function with alternative narratives or participate as active and engaged contributors to democratic life. This book invites the audience to uncover and acknowledge cultural biases, oppressive power relationships and dominating epistemologies to emerge better equipped to plan for and teach these students, allowing them to know they are valued and an integral part of British society.

Trump’s Followers: A Socio-Semiotic Analysis uses semiotic theory, psychoanalytic theory, and sociological theory to analyze Donald Trump’s followers and to understand what motivates them and explain why they behave the way they do when at his rallies. It makes use of ideas from Gustave Le Bon’s classic The Crowd, ideas from Freud about the psyche and social groups, and works by many other important scholars and writers. The book is written in an accessible style and is illustrated with many drawings by the author.

L’évolution de la structure des âges au sein de la population de l’Union européenne représente un défi majeur sur le terrain de l’emploi. Les conditions de travail permettant aux travailleurs âgés de se maintenir sur le marché de l’emploi jusqu’au moment où ils souhaitent prendre leur retraite sont au cœur de ce défi. Se basant sur une approche multidisciplinaire, cet ouvrage propose des solutions innovantes destinées à l’ensemble des acteurs de terrain.

Après avoir abordé le cadre général et posé quelques notions-clés, le livre examine dans un second temps l’évolution des normes sociales et des politiques publiques de l'Union européenne en matière de vieillissement. Les normes juridiques européennes qui concernent l’interdiction de la discrimination sur la base de l’âge et les conditions de travail sont également explorées. Enfin, dans sa dernière partie, l’ouvrage tente d’expliquer les raisons pour lesquelles la majorité de ces normes ne sont pas effectives, proposant des pistes de solutions pour les rendre plus efficaces.