Recent Books by WGS Faculty

Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accomondation and Transformation (Cambridge UP, 2009) Michaelle Browers

Arab nationalism and Islamism have been the two most potent ideological forces in the Arab region across the twentieth century. Over the last two decades, however, an accommodation of sorts has been developing between liberals, socialists and Islamists, to protest unpopular foreign and domestic policies, such as those aimed at cooperation with Israel or the war in Iraq. By examining the writings of Arab nationalist, socialist and Islamist intellectuals, and through numerous interviews with political participants from different persuasions, Michaelle Browers traces these developments from the 'Arab age of ideology', as it has been called, through an 'age of ideological transformation', demonstrating clearly how the recent flow of ideas from one group to another have their roots in the past. Political Ideology in the Arab World assesses the impact of ideological changes on Egypt's Kifaya! [Enough!] movement and Yemen's joint meeting parties.

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This volume provides preaching students and clergy with introductory knowledge of current approaches and methods in biblical studies, familiarity with the questions and aims that pertain to them, and facility with various methods of biblical exegesis. Approaches to biblical interpretation are then examined in light of the questions and concerns that arise specifically in the context of preaching. Methods of biblical interpretation are reviewed and explained in succinct fashion and related directly to the dynamics that give rise to the sermon and shape exegesis for sermon preparation, namely, the preacher's engagement with the text, the author's context, and the congregation. This volume enables preachers to approach the biblical text with greater clarity.

Sociology of Sport and Social Theory presents current research perspectives from major sport scholars and leading sociologists regarding issues germane to the sociology of sport. Each chapter of this resource explains historical and contemporary social theories and applies these theories to current topics in sport, such as performance-enhancing drugs, gender, race and identity issues, and the role of religion in sport.

Interracial Intimacies: An Examination of Powerful Men and Their Relationships across the Color Line (Carolina Academic Press, 2009) Earl Smith and Angela Hattery

Unique among books on interracial relationships, this book examines the lives of high profile men who have produced public discourses on race and interracial relationships and who themselves, often contradictory to their rhetoric, were or continue to be involved in love relationships across the color line.

Interracial Relationships in the 21st Century (Carolina Academic Press, 2009) Earl Smith and Angela Hattery

Interracial Relationships in the 21st Century is a unique set of essays - both personal and research based - that explore a variety of issues related to interracial couplings in the 21st Century United States. Edited by Earl Smith and Angela Hattery, this volume brings together the leading scholars in both the social sciences and the humanities who explore interracialities. The chapters cover a wide range of topics related to navigating interracial relationships, including the tensions around interracial relationships in conservative Christian churches; the role that racism and patriarchy play in shaping intimate partner violence among interracial couples; the children of interracial unions and their attempts to negotiate a racial identity; and an examination of the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in a chapter on interracial, same sex couples.

Librarians tend to love their work and consider librarianship a great career. This book is by a talented librarian who wants to introduce people, especially people searching for the right career, to the profession. It answers such questions as: What do librarians do? What are the different types of libraries and professional jobs in libraries? What are librarians all about and what hot issues do they discuss in their professional lives? What do I do to become a librarian? What are some important things to know once I'm in a masters program in library science? This book is an essential introduction to the profession for someone who is at the point of choosing a career.

African-American Families (Sage Publications, 2007) Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith

African American Families provides a systematic sociological study of contemporary life for families of African descent living in the United States. Analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data, authors Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith identify the structural barriers that African Americans face in their attempts to raise their children and create loving, healthy families. Using the lens provided by the race, class, and gender paradigm, a variety of examples illustrate the ways in which multiple systems of oppression interact with patterns of self-defeating behavior to create barriers that deny many African Americans access to the American dream.

Irish Postmodernisms and Popular Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) Wanda Balzano, Anne Mulhall, Moynagh Sullivan (editors)

Irish postmodernisms and contemporary popular culture are often invoked in critical and public discussions as negative and corrosive spaces; in this collection, the contributors reexamine such valuations, making use of critical feminist, racial, queer, psychoanalytic and postcolonial frameworks in their analyses of Irish 'postmodernity' in the era of globalization. Considering local and global, 'traditional' and emergent 'Irishness' side by side, the collection redefines the ways in which popular culture in Ireland as well as Ireland in popular culture are understood.

Race, Sport and the American Dream (Carolina Academic Press, 2007) Earl Smith

This book reports the main findings of a five-year research project investigating the scope and consequences of the deepening relationship between African American males and the institution of sport. While there is some scholarly literature on the topic, author Smith tries to understand through this project how sport has changed the nature of African American Civil Society and has come to be a major influence on economic opportunities, schooling and the shaping of African American family life.

Sexual Identity Law in Context, Cases, and Materials (American Casebook) (West Law School, 2007) Shannon Gilreath

This book puts the law concerning lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people into a social context. The result is that students better understand the law by understanding the social issues underlying the legalities. Material providing background discussion (law review articles, journal articles from other disciplines, journalism, history, science, philosophy, traditional prose, and comparative law materials) supplements cases that involve all major aspects of sexual identity law. The book provides a detailed course designed for an upper-level law school seminar, but introductory explanation provided for major legal concepts makes it suitable for beginning students as well.

Ways of Being, Ways of Reading: Asian American Biblical Interpretation (Chalice Press, 2006) Mary Foskett and Jeffrey Kah-jin Kuan (Editors)

This is a collection of essays that address biblical interpretation and the Bible’s role from an Asian North point of view. Beginning with the history of biblical interpretation in Asian countries and cultures, this impressive collection by noted contemporary scholars address issues and themes as cultural hermeneutics, the politics of identity, and what constitutes Asian American theology.

Democracy And Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East)(Syracuse University Press, 2006) Michaelle L. Browers

This book provides a significant and unique contribution to the emerging literature of comparative political thought. Michaelle L. Browers offers compelling evidence, with extensive analysis and references, that a rigorous debate is taking place in Arabic concerning the value of democracy and civil society. Exploring the globalization of ideas of democracy and civil society, Browers addresses the question of what occurs when concepts cross the boundaries of cultures or languages. She analyzes the historical concept of democracy in Arab and Islamic political thought, the transformations that have occurred over the past several decades resulting from Arab forays into an international discussion of civil society and what these transformations tell us about the status of ideological and conceptual debates in the region.

A Place to Believe in: Locating Medieval Landscapes (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006) Clares A. Less and Gillian R. Overing

The essays in A Place to Believe In reveal places real and imagined, ancient and modern: Anglo- Saxon Northumbria (home of Whitby and Bede’s monastery of Jarrow), Cistercian monasteries of late medieval Britain, pilgrimages of mind and soul in Margery Kempe, the ruins of Coventry Cathedral in 1940, and representations of the sacred landscape in today’s Pacific Northwest. A strength of the collection is its awareness of the fact that medieval and modern viewpoints converge in an experience of place and frame a newly created space where the literary, the historical, and the cultural are in ongoing negotiation with the geographical, the personal, and the material.

Philip Roth Studies on Roth and Race (Volume 2, Number 2, Fall 2006) Dean J. Franco

As the articles in this issue make clear, asking if Roth writes about race is a little like asking if Jews are white. The answers—”yes,” “no,” and “it depends”—apply to both questions and point to the wide arena wherein race itself is defined, described, performed, negotiated, and deconstructed: America itself. And Philip Roth does write about America. Not just “Jewish America,” unless one considers that Roth’s America is always underwritten by the (raced) experience of Jews in this country, which is itself marked by the intertwining of blacks and Jews in American public and cultural life. In short, writing about Jews, or writing about America itself, is already writing about race.

Ethnic American Literature: Comparing Chicano, Jewish, and African American Writing (University of Virginia Press, 2006) Dean J. Franco

In Ethnic American Literature, Franco offers a comparative approach to ethnic literature that begins by accounting for the intrinsic historical, geographical, and political contingencies of different American cultures. These contingencies, he argues, dictate critical perspectives that are ultimately ethical and that establish the terms for the study of ethnic literature in the first place. Franco looks at a range of writing, from novels by Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Toni Morrison, and Alejandro Morales, to literature and criticism by Tony Kushner, Cherrie Moraga, and José Limón, among others. While the early chapters focus specifically on what mourning means in these different cultural contexts in the representation of and response to trauma and loss, the later ones critically examine metaphors of the borderlands, Diaspora, and nationalism.

Sexual Politics: The Gay Person in America Today (Series on Law, Politics and Society) (University of Akron Press, 2006) Shannon Gilreath

Contemporary and controversial, Shannon Gilreath's Sexual Politics is an important update to the continuing debate over the place of the gay person in American law, politics, and religion. Gilreath skillfully navigates a number of complex issues, including the delicate balance between sexual privacy and public equality, the entwining of religion and U.S. law and politics, and gay marriage. He offers astute academic observations and a depth of personal reflections to create an unmatched critique of the gay person in American society. Ultimately, Gilreath argues for the further emergence of gay and lesbian ethos of public attentiveness and the practice of "transformative politics," encompassing all those activities of the gay and lesbian person. Conversational and written with a compelling frankness, this book is vital for the serious legal and political student and the informed lay reader alike.

Thomas Dixon Jr. and the Birth of Modern America: Making the Modern South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006) Michele Gillespie, Randal Hall (eds)

Thomas Dixon Jr.(1864–1946) is best remembered today as the author of the racist novels that served as the basis for D. W. Griffith’s controversial 1915 classic film The Birth of a Nation. But in his lifetime, Dixon also enjoyed great renown as a minister, lecturer, lawyer, and actor. And although the native southerner’s blatant racist, chauvinist, and white supremacist views are abhorrent today, they found enthusiastic reception among his audiences throughout the country. This book explains why. Distinguished scholars of religion, film, literature, music, history, and gender studies offer a provocative examination of Dixon’s ideas, personal life, and career and in the process illuminate the evolution of white racism in the early twentieth century and its legacy down to the present. The contributors analyze Dixon’s sermons, books, plays, and films, seeking to understand the appeal of his message within the white culture of the Progressive era. They also explore the critical responses of African Americans contemporary with Dixon. Dixon proves to have been a pioneer in understanding modern methods of moving mass audiences. He experimented with tricks to excite a crowd—intermingling politics, religion, and entertainment in ways that still reverberate today. He pushed for the war in Cuba, advocated the subservience of blacks and women, and was avidly anti-Communist as a writer and stage director. By delving into the context and complexity of Dixon’s life, this splendid book raises fascinating questions about the power of popular culture in forming Americans' views in any age.

Fractured Borders surveys a wide range of contemporary writing about breast, uterine, and ovarian cancer, including works by Marilyn Hacker, Margaret Edson, Carole Maso, Audre Lorde, Eve Sedgwick, Mahasweta Devi, Lucille Clifton, Alicia Ostriker, Jayne Anne Phillips, Terry Tempest Williams, and Jeanette Winterson, among many others. Taking its title from two lines in Audre Lorde’s powerful elegy, “The Night-blooming Jasmine” (“death is a fractured border/through the center of my days”), this intellectually and emotionally engaging study examines writers’ depictions of the borders women inhabit in living with cancer as well as those they traverse when facing death. Mary DeShazer’s scholarly approach to cancer literature relies on close interpretive readings as well as a variety of theoretical perspectives which include postmodern theories of the body, performance theory, feminist literary criticism, French feminisms, and disability studies. This is a much needed book that will be a vademecum for a wide variety of readers: from cancer survivors and their families to health care activists and medical practitioners, from literary scholars and feminist theorists to teachers of cultural studies and women’s health issues.

Kleist's Female Leading Characters And The Subversion Of Idealist Discourse (Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature) by Grant P. McAllister

Heinrich von Kleist's problematic relationship with the philosophy and the aesthetics of idealism informs his parodic, rebellious, and destructive oeuvre. This book focuses on this relationship and examines Kleist's female leading characters and their role as amorphous ciphers for his own subversive aesthetic theory. Through parody these characters call into question idealist philosophy regarding truth, knowledge, and gender, and offer a theory of aesthetic representation that replaces traditional binary oppositions with pluralities and nonclosure. Nietzsche may have opened the door to postmodernism; however, Kleist unlocked it with four cunning female voices. This is the first book in Kleist scholarship to focus solely on Kleist's female leading figures and their symbolic role as both character and literary theory-a theory anticipating Derridean deconstruction.

The Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005) by Mary M. Dalton and Laura R. Linder (eds)

This is the first book to offer critical essays devoted specifically to the old and ubiquitous form of television programming: the situation comedy. As prime-time television remains a very influential medium, helping formulate cultural sensibilities, attitudes, values, and assessments of the social world, the study of this topic is essential. The book raises an important central question: how has the genre historically constructed their subjects in relation to the dominant ideology? The essays contained in this book are written from a variety of perspectives—theoretical, historical, and industrial— and they will form a strong foundation in media studies. They address relevant topics in relation to sitcoms, such as conventions of the form, the family, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, work and social class, and ideology, and are informed by cultural and media studies, feminist and queer theory.

Women in African Development:The Challenge of Globalization And Liberalization in the 21st Century (Trenton, NJ: AfricaWorld Press, 2005) by Sylvain H. Boko, Mina Baliamoune-Lutz, Sitawa R. Kimuna (eds)

This book is the first of its kind to analyze and bring to the forefront of policy making the linkages that exist between globalization and the role of women in development in Africa. Its basic premise is that one of the most effective ways to ensure increased and sustainable development in Africa is through the improvement of African women’s skills and ensuring their access to tools such as credit, training, and technology. It significantly recognizes that understanding and supporting the potentialities of African women in the context of the new economic realities facing Africa (i.e. globalization) is crucial to the future of Africa’s economic development. This is an important book which, standing as a policy manual, will help to disseminate the strategies, conclusions, and recommendations to a diversity of audiences, including NGOs, national and international government agencies, businesses, women’s groups, international educational organizations, as well as academic institutions and multilateral financial ones.