June 2006

The Antiquities Act; a century of American archaeology, historic preservation, and nature conservation; edited by David Harmon, Francis P. McManamon, and Dwight T. Pitcaithley. University of Arizona Press 2006 326p $45.00, pa $19.95
ISBN 0-8165-2560-9; 0-8165-2561-7; LC 2005-35156
Contributors assess the legacy of the Antiquities Act which, since enacted in 1906, has preserved such national monuments as Acadia, the Grand Canyon, and Olympic National Park, as well as such historic and archaeological sites as Thomas Edison’s laboratory and Gila Cliff Dwellings.

Byerman, Keith
Remembering the past in contemporary African American fiction. The University of North Carolina Press 2005 228p $49.95, pa $19.95
ISBN 0-8078-2980-3; ISBN 0-8078-5647-9; LC 2005-10242
Examining the trend among African American novelists of the late twentieth century to write about black history rather than their own present, the author offers close readings of over twenty novels by such writers as Ernest Gaines, Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison, John Edgar Wideman, and Charles Johnson.

Cygnifiliana: essays in classics, comparative literature, and philosophy presented to Professor Roy Arthur Swanson on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday; edited by Chad Matthew Schroeder. Lang, P. 2005 210p $65.95
ISBN 0-8204-7880-6; LC 2005-10687
Contributors cover a wide range of subjects, from Greek, Roman, Italian, Scandinavian, and German literary studies to modern pop culture.

Defining genre and gender in Latin literature; essays presented to William S. Anderson on his seventy-fifth birthday; edited by William W. Batstone & Garth Tissol. Lang, P. 2005 (Lang classical studies) 363p $78.95
ISBN 0-8204-7829-6; LC 2004-27488
This collection of essays considers the ways in which such genres of Greek literature as elegy, epic, lyric, and comedy were redefined to assimilate into Roman culture and society.

Difficult justice; commentaries on Levinas and politics; edited by Asher Horowitz and Gad Horowitz. University of Toronto Press 2006 330p $60.00
ISBN 0-8020-8009-X
Contributors explore how Levinas’s work relates to a wide range of philosophical, ethical, and political questions, concerning such topics as liberalism, German conservatism and the Nazi movement, the feminine, and political theology.

The Eagle and the virgin; nation and cultural revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940; edited by Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis. Duke Univ. Press 2006 363p $84.95, pa $23.95
ISBN 0-8223-3657-X; 0-8223-3668-5; LC 2005-28220
Scholars of political and social history, communications, and art history examine the nation-building efforts of the government, artists, and entrepreneurs in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution. The creation of national symbols and heroes; the aesthetics of music and architecture; and the evolution of state projects to promote health and education are among the subjects covered.

Gonzalez Mandri, Flora
Guarding cultural memory; Afro-Cuban women in literature and the arts. University of Virginia Press 2006 (New World studies) 232p $55.00, pa $21.50
ISBN 0-8139-252508; 0-8139-2526-6; LC 2005-27354
The author investigates the ways in which the works of the poet and cultural critic Nancy Morejón, the poet Excilia Saldaña, the filmmaker Gloria Rolando, and the artists María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Belkis Ayón redefine autobiography as creative expression for the integration of Hispanic and African peoples and heritages into a Cuban identity.

The Gospel according to superheroes; religion and popular culture; edited by B. J. Oropeza; foreword by Stan Lee. Lang, P. 2005 295p pa $32.95
ISBN 0-8204-7422-3; LC 2005-7317
Starting with Superman in the 1930s, and then such superheroes as Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Captain America, the Hulk, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four, this collection of essays seeks to demonstrate how religious and mythological themes are often interconnected in comic books.

Gray, Erik
The poetry of indifference; from the Romantics to the Rubaiyat. University of Massachusetts Press 2005 151p $34.95
ISBN 1-55849-490-1; LC 2005-5403
Works by Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth, Robert Browning, and Edward FitzGerald are analyzed in this study of human emotion and experience.
 

Griffiths, Paul
The substance of things heard; writings about music. University of Rochester Press 2005 (Eastman studies in music) 378p $65.00
ISBN 1-58046-206-5; LC 2005-18351
The author discusses works by such composers as Sofia Gubaidulina, Steve Reich, Elliott Carter, harrison Birtwhistle, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and their interpretations by prominent pianists, singers, and conductors.

Honor, status, and law in modern Latin America; edited by Sueann Caulfield, Sarah C. Chambers, & Lara Putnam. Duke Univ. Press 2005 331p $89.95, pa $24.95
ISBN 0-8223-3575-1; 0-8223-3587-5; LC 2004-29836
Essays explore how honor was understood and used in daily social relations in Latin America from the early nineteenth century to the rise of nationalist challenges to liberalism in the 1930s. The role of patriarchy, nation-building in Peru, the abolition of slavery in Rio de Janeiro, the formation of Costa Rica’s multiethnic society, and the status of women in highland Bolivia are among the topics covered.

Images and imagery; frames, borders, limits¾interdisciplinary perspectives; edited by Leslie Boldt-Irons, Corrado Federici, and Ernesto Virgulti. Lang, P. 2005 (Studies on themes and motifs in literature, v74) 293p $73.95
ISBN 0-8204-7423-1; LC 2004-27910
This collection of essays examines connections between literary texts and visual images through such mediums as television, film, photography, theater, and paintings. Marshall McLuhan, Gustave Moreau, Frank O’Hara, Emily Carr, comic books, and dadaism are among the people and subjects discussed.

Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural narratives in North America; edited by Mark Cronlund Anderson, Irene Maria F. Blayer. Lang, P. 2005 (Studies on themes and motifs in literature, v73) 173p $59.95
ISBN 0-8204-7409-6; LC 2004-14682
Contributors ranging from graduate students to leading scholars assess the influence of narrative or stories upon relationships between voice, identity, and culture.

Logan, William
The undiscovered country; poetry in the age of tin. Columbia Univ. Press 2005 382p $29.50
ISBN 0-231-13638-2; LC 2005-41413
The author offers thoughts on the lives and works of such poets who have shaped contemporary verse as Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, Milton, Robert Lowell, and Sylvia Plath.

Mermann-Jozwiak, Elisabeth
Postmodern vernaculars; Chicana literature and postmodern rhetoric. Lang, P. 2005 147p pa $22.95
ISBN 0-8204-7634-X; LC 2004-27487
Examining works by such Chicana authors as Gaspar de Alba, Gloria Anzaldua, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Emma Perez, and Pat Mora, the author seeks to show how, from social, cultural, and historical contexts, Chicana literature is one vernacular of postmodernism.

New studies in the history of American slavery; edited by Edward E. Baptist and Stephanie M. H. Camp. The University of Georgia Press 2006 306p $54.95, pa $22.95
ISBN 0-8203-2563; 0-8203-2694-1; LC 2005-18759
The Atlantic and internal slave trades, slave midwives as health workers, the assimilation of African American runaways into Creek communities, and the meanings of death to Jamaican slaves and slave owners are some of the topics covered in this look at the cultural history of slavery’s social, political, and economic systems.

Pikillacta: the Wari empire in Cuzco; edited by Gordon F. McEwan. University of Iowa Press 2005 182p $49.95
ISBN 0-87745-931-2; LC 2004-58856
Contributors investigate when, why, and how Pikillacta, the largest provincial site of Peru’s pre-Inca Wari empire, was built and what it was used for.

Sex in development; science, sexuality, and morality in global perspective; Vincanne Adams and Stacy Leigh Pigg, editors. Duke Univ Press 2005 342p $84.95, pa $23.95
ISBN 0-8223-3479-8; 0-8223-3491-7; LC 2004-25372
Essays explore how development projects around the world in the areas of population management, disease prevention, and maternal and child health intentionally and unintentionally influence ideas about “normal” sexual practices and identities.

Simone de Beauvoir’s fiction; women and language; Alison T. Holland and Louise Renee, editors. Lang, P. 2005 196p $63.95
ISBN 0-8204-7085-6; LC 2005-6956
This collection of essays analyzes the philosophical ideas inherent in Beauvoir’s writing practice in her novels and short stories.

Spanish studies in Shakespeare and his contemporaries; edited by Jose Manuel Gonzalez. University of Del. Press 2006 327p $60.00
ISBN 0-87413-903-1; LC 2005-50679
Explicating the maturity of Shakespearian scholarship in Spain, contributors present a textual and comparative study between Shakespeare and such writers as Manuel Herrera, Cervantes, Francisco de Quevedo, Calderon.

Sterritt, David
Guiltless pleasures; a David Sterritt film reader. The University Press of Mississippi 2005 281p $50.00, pa $20.00
ISBN 1-57806-780-4; 1-57806-818-5; LC 2004-29419
In this compilation of essays from the 1970s to the present, the author offers his thoughts on films and filmmakers that depart from the ordinary norms of commercial cinema. Stan Brakhage, Robert Wilson, and Gaspar Noe are among those covered.

Theology and the political; the new debate; Creston Davis, John Milbank, and Slavoj Zizek, editors; with an introduction by Rowan Williams. Duke Univ. Press 2005 (SIC) 476p $99.95, pa $29.95
ISBN 0-8223-3460-7; 0-8223-3472-0; LC 2004-28227
Scholars from the fields of theology, philosophy, literature, and political theory discuss the ethics and consequences of human action within the context of thought of such theorists as Plato, Marx, Levinas, Derrida, Augustine, and Lacan.

Travis, Jennifer
Wounded hearts; masculinity, law, and literature in American culture. The University of North Carolina Press 2005 222p $59.95, pa $22.50
ISBN 0-8078-2974-9; 0-8078-5635-5; LC 2005-10250
The author traces the history of male emotionalism through readings of works by Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Edith Wharton.

Vernon, Richard
Friends, citizens, strangers: essays on where we belong. University of Toronto Press 2005 325p $65.00
ISBN 0-8020-9079-6
The author examines the similarities and differences on the attachments human beings form with friends and those formed with strangers. Works by Locke, Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Rousseau, and Comte are among the texts explored.

The World of John Winthrop; essays on England and New England, 1588-1649; Francis J. Bremer and Lynn A. Botelho, editors. Massachusetts Historical Society 2005 (Massachusetts Historical Society studies in American history and culture, no.9) 408p $50.00
ISBN 0-934909-88-1; LC 2005-33980
English and American scholars reflect on the emigration of Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the colonists from Stuart England to America from cultural, political, economic, familial, and religious perspectives.