December 2006

Anthes, Bill
Native moderns; American Indian painting, 1940-1960. Duke Univ. Press 2006 (Objects/histories) 235p $84.95, pa $23.95
ISBN 0-8223-3850-5; 0-8223-3866-1; LC 2006-8056
The author examines how cross-cultural exchanges among Native and non-Native collectors, artists, and writers inspired aesthetic innovations in works by such Native artists as the Pueblo painters Jose Lente and Jimmy Byrnes, the Ojibwe painter George Morrison, the Cheyenne painter Dick West, and the Dakota painter Oscar Howe.

Blaser, Robin
The fire; the collected essays of Robin Blaser; edited and with a commentary by Miriam Nichols. University of Calif. Press 2006 516p $65.00, pa $29.95
ISBN 0-520-24510-5; 0-520-24511-3; LC 2005-25772
The author offers various perspectives on “New American” poets, the state of humanities, current events, and deconstructive philosophies. Among the figures discussed are Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Mary Butts, Jack Spicer, Louis Dudek, and J. S. Bach.

Bolduc, Michelle
The medieval poetics of contraries. University Press of Florida 2006 304p $65.00
ISBN 0-8130-2989-9; LC 2006-49006
Exploring how religious authors crossed over to vernacular lyric poetry and how writers of fictive works sanctified their own voices, the author examines these contraries as significant features of the construction and reception of a vernacular literary authority.

Bunnell, Peter C.
Inside the photograph; writings on twentieth-century photography; foreword by Malcolm Daniel. Aperture 2006 288p $29.95
ISBN 1-59711-021-3; LC 2006-7629
Addressing the history of modern photography, the author offers analyses on the life and work of such photographers as Alfred Stieglitz, Minor White, Ruth Bernhard, Aaron Siskind, Clarence H. White, Diane Arbus, and Jerry Uelsmann.

The Claim to community; essays on Stanley Cavell and political philosophy; edited by Andrew Norris. Stanford Univ. Press 2006 389p $65.00, pa $24.95
ISBN 978-0-8047-5129-2; 978-0-8047-5132-2; LC 2006-6601
In this study of political philosophy, American, English, French, and Italian philosophers and political theorists explore such topics as moral perfectionism, race, political community, political friendship, distinctions between fact and value, and differences between political and aesthetic disagreement.

Confucian cultures of authority; edited by Peter D. Hershock and Roger T. Ames. State Univ. of New York Press 2006 (SUNY series in Asian studies development) 258p $81.50, pa $27.95
ISBN 0-7914-6797-X; 0-7914-6798-8; LC 2005-23942
Contributors, examining the role of value and authority in Chinese Confucian culture, assess such topics as the rules of ritual, parental authority in early medieval tales, authority in writings on women, and the anti-Confucianism of Lu Xun, a twentieth-century writer and reformer.

Discovering North American rock art; edited by Lawrence L. Loendorf, Christopher Chippindale, and David S. Whitley. The University of Arizona Press 2005 334p $55.00
ISBN 0-8165-2483-1; LC 2005-17338
Essays investigate the origins and meanings behind images etched into and painted on stone by ancient Native Americans from the high plains of southern Alberta in Canada to prehistoric caves in the southeastern United States. Other regions covered include the Central Mississippi River Valley, the American Southwest, and the Deep South.

Gardner, Thomas
A door ajar; contemporary writers and Emily Dickinson. Oxford Univ. Press 2006 256p $45.00
ISBN 0-19-517493-3; LC 2005-16287
The author considers the influence of Dickinson’s poetry upon the lives and works of Marilynne Robinson, Susan Howe, Charles Wright, and Jorie Graham.

Gascon, Christopher D.
The woman saint in the Spanish Golden Age drama. Bucknell Univ. Press 2006 203p $43.50
ISBN 0-8387-5647-6; LC 2005-58186
In this analysis of the woman saint in the baroque comedia, the author explores the various ways male and female dramatists present the figure of the ascetic woman in seventeenth-century Spanish theater. Among the playwrights examined are Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, and Angela de Azevedo.

Gates, Philippa
Detecting men; masculinity and the Hollywood detective film. State Univ. of New York Press 2006 (SUNY series, cultural studies in cinema/video) 346p $89.50, pa $29.95
ISBN 0-7914-6813-5; 0-7914-6814-3; LC 2005-24123
Examining the history of the Hollywood detective genre, the author assesses the ways that detective films have depicted changing social attitudes toward heroism, law enforcement, masculinity, and justice.

Hoagland, Tony
Real sofistikashun; essays on poetry and craft. Graywolf Press 2006 201p pa $15.00
ISBN 1-55597-455-4; LC 2006-924335
Metaphor, tone, and rhetorical and compositionl strategies are among the subjects covered in this discussion of specific poetic devices.

Jacques Lacan and the other side of psychoanalysis; reflections on Seminar XVII; edited by Justin Clemens and Russell Grigg. Duke Univ. Press 2006 (SIC, 6) 331p $84.95, pa $23.95
ISBN 0-8223-3707-X; 0-8223-3719-3; LC 2005-31589
Contributors consider Lacan’s thoughts on the Oedipus complex and the superego, the role of primal effects in political life, the status of knowledge, and the relation between psychoanalytic practices and the modern university.

Jamaica Kincaid and Caribbean double crossings; edited by Linda Lang-Peralta. University of Del. Press 2006 171p $42.50
ISBN 0-87413-928-7; LC 2006-2596
This collection of essays, focusing on recent texts by Jamaica Kincaid, explores issues of identity, imperialism, and the double consciousness of the diasporic writer, and draws comparisons with such writers as Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Bronte, and Jean Rhys.

Li, Victor
The neo-primitivist turn; critical reflections on alterity, culture, and modernity. University of Toronto Press 2006 292p $65.00
ISBN 0-8130-2989-9
Focusing on the works of such theorists as Marianna Torgovnick, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Jurgen Habermas, the author addresses how the concept and deployment of the primitive is still utilized in contemporary theoretical discourses.

Lowney, John
History, memory, and the literary left; modern American poetry, 1935-1968. University of Iowa Press 2006 (Contemporary North American poetry series) 287p $39.95
ISBN 1-58729-508-3; LC 2006-44519
The author investigates the impact of the Depression on late modernist American poetry from the socioeconomic crisis of the 1930s to the emergence of new social movements in the 1960s. Muriel Rukeyser, Thomas McGrath, George Oppen, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Langston Hughes are among the writers studied.

The Manifesta decade; debates on contemporary art exhibitions and biennials in post-wall Europe; edited by Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic. The MIT Press 2005 337p $35.00
ISBN 0-262-22076-8; LC 2005-43888
Curators, historians, philosophers, anthropologists, and architects reflect on the cultural and political conditions of European exhibition practice since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

McElhaney, Joe
The death of classical cinema; Hitchcock, Lang, Minnelli. State Univ. of New York Press 2006 255p $95.50, pa $31.95
ISBN 0-7914-6887-9; 0-7914-6888-7; LC 2005-36236
The author considers how films made by Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, and Vincente Minnelli during the decline of the traditional Hollywood studio system are linked to such modernist works as Godard’s Contempt, Fellini’s La dolce vita, and Antonioni’s Red desert.

A Poetry criticism reader; edited by Jerry Harp & Jan Weissmiller. University of Iowa Press 2006 155p
pa $19.95
ISBN 0-87745-995-9; LC 2006-44450
Essays discuss the various ways poets are influenced by traditions from the poetry of the past. Among the poets studied are Donald Justice, seamus Heaney, James Tate, Paul Muldoon, Jorie Graham, and Czeslae, Milosz.

Poteet, William Mark
Gay men in modern southern literature; ritual, initiation, and the construction of masculinity. Peter Lang 2006 225p pa $31.95
ISBN 0-8204-8691-4; LC 2006-22447
The author examines how traditional Southern cultural attitudes influenced concepts of masculinity, initiation, and homosexuality in works by Tennessee Williams, Charles Nelson, and Reynolds Price.

A Pre-Columbian world; Jeffrey Quilter and Mary Miller, eds. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection (dist. by Harvard Univ. Press) 2006 395p $55.00
ISBN 0-88402-315-X; LC 2006-9533
Conceptualizing the peoples and cultures of the ancient New World, essays explore such topics as history, memory, and knowledge in Andean visual imagery and Pre-Columbian narrative, rain making, and Maya beliefs about animal transformations.

Raschke, Debrah
Modernism, metaphysics, and sexuality. Susquehanna Univ. Press 2006 240p $48.50
ISBN 1-57591-106-X; LC 2006-2556
Utilizing Luce Irigaray’s theories on Western metaphysics, the author assesses the construction of sexual identities in modernist texts by Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf.

Transforming politics, transforming America; the political and civic incorporation of immigrants in the United States; edited by Taeku Lee, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, and Ricardo Ramirez. University of Va. Press 2006 (Race, ethnicity, and politics) 307p $49.50
ISBN 0-8139-2545-2; LC 2005-33301
Scholars in the fields of political science and sociology discuss implications of the post-1965 wave of immigration to the United States in regard to political participation, citizenship, policy debates, congressional apportionment, race relations, and racial and ethnic categorization.

Treuer, David
Native American fiction; a user’s manual. Graywolf Press 2006 212p pa $15.00
ISBN 1-55597-452-X; LC 2006-924340
Examining works by Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, Sherman Alexie, Forrest Carter, and James Welch, the author discusses interpretations of these texts by their authors, critics, and their readers.

Wright, J. Lenore
The philosopher’s I; autobiography and the search for the self. State Univ. of New York Press 2006 217p $74.50, pa $24.95
ISBN 0-7914-6913-1; 0-7914-6914-X; LC 2005-36302
In this study of philosophers’ autobiographies as a genre of philosophical writing, the author focuses on Augustine’s Confessions, Descartes’ Meditations, Hazel Barnes’s The story I tell myself, Nietzsche’s Ecce homo, and Rousseau’s The confessions.

Yosemite: art of an American icon; edited by Amy Scott. Autry National Center; University of Calif. Press 2006 221p $65.00, pa $34.95
ISBN 0-520-24921-6; 0-520-24922-4; LC 2006-12105
This collection of essays, exploring the relationship between art and the environment in Yosemite National Park, includes two hundred works art that feature paintings, photography, basketry, and other artworks by artists from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.