After the storm: black intellectuals explore the meaning of Hurricane Katrina; edited by David Dante Troutt. The New Press 2006 164p $22.95
ISBN 1-59558-116-2; LC 2006-08883
Thirteen African-American scholars comment on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, with particular attention to the role of the black community of New Orleans, the racial politics involved in the evacuation of the city, and the reporting of the event.

Bishir, Catherine W.
Southern built: American architecture, regional practice. University of Virginia Press 2006 332p $35.00
ISBN 0-8139-2538-X; 0-8139-2539-8; LC 2005-37586
Catherine W. Bishir describes how the people of the American South created their own unique domestic and civic architecture using Northern and European models, while simultaneously developing local, vernacular forms. The subjects range in variety from gracious plantation manor houses to practical brick jailhouses; included are discussions of the architects, patrons, and laborers, both pre- and post-Civil War.

Boarding school blues: revisiting American Indian educational experiences; edited and with an introduction by Clifford E. Trafzer, Jean A. Keller, and Lorene Sisquoc. University of Nebraska Press 2006 256p pa $20.00
ISBN 0-8032-9463-8; LC 2006-04484
This collection of essays focuses on the Native American off-reservation boarding schools, which were established by the United States government in the 19th century for the education and assimilation of American Indians into American society. Basing their research upon primary documents and interviews with former students, the authors explore the histories of the individual schools that were established (such as Carlisle Indian Industrial School), the different tribes that were involved, and the significant personalities that emerged.

Casting gender: women and performance in intercultural contexts; edited by Laura Lengel & John T. Warren. P. Lang 2005 (Critical intercultural communication studies, v7) 214p pa $29.95
ISBN 0-8204-7419-3; LC 2004-11679
These essays discuss the role of women in the performing arts, focusing on women’s cultural identities as expressed in theater, film, and performance art. The use of performance as a means of intercultural communication and as a vehicle for social change is a major theme.

Crossing waters, crossing worlds: the African diaspora in Indian country; edited by Tiya Miles and Sharon P. Holland. Duke University Press 2006 pa $23.95
ISBN 0-8223-3865-3; LC 2006-11042
These essays explore the intersection of Native American and African American cultures, past and present. Topics include the aftermath of black slavery in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, the status of Afro-Indians in colonial Mexico, and the controversy surrounding the ethnic identity of the 1998 Miss Navajo Nation, who had an African-American father.
 

Crowds; edited by Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew Tiews. Stanford University Press 2006 439p $24.95
ISBN 0-8047-5480-2; LC 2005-26558
The crowd (AKA the multitude, the mob, the throng) is the common theme of
these essays. The social and political aspects of crowds, the representation of crowds in
literature and film, and crowd behavior at sporting events, political rallies, and rock
concerts, are among the topics examined.

Davis, Mary E.
Classic chic: music, fashion, and modernism. University of California Press 2006
(California studies in 20th-century music) 332p $39.95
ISBN 0-520-24542-3; LC 2005-35586
The world of high fashion design and the world of creative musicianship coincide in this
study of the arts in the early twentieth century. Fashion’s requirements of originality and
constant change were shared by the composers of the period. The personal and creative
connections between figures as diverse as Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, the Ballet
Russe and Vogue magazine, are examined.

Enlightenment and emancipation; edited by Susan Manning and Peter France. Bucknell
University Press 2006 (Bucknell studies in eighteenth-century literature and culture)
233p $51.50
ISBN 0-8387-5619-0; LC 2006-05879
Scholars from various disciplines address the question: “Was the Enlightenment a force
for emancipation?” The view that the Enlightenment was a return to reason and a
liberation from superstition and custom is countered by the view that the “mind-forged
manacles” of Enlightenment thinkers imprisoned the free and irrational spirit, hampering
creative thought and expression.

Excavating Asian history: interdisciplinary studies in archaeology and history; Norman
Yoffee and Bradley L Crowell, editors. University of Arizona Press 2006 352p $55.00
ISBN 0-8165-2418-1; LC 2006-06346
This work explores the relationship between history and archaeology in the study of
pre-modern Asia. Case studies and theoretical articles reveal how the two disciplines
support each other while sometimes coming into conflict over rival claims to knowledge.

Gabara, Rachel
From split to screened selves: French and francophone autobiography in the third
person. Stanford University Press 2006 213p $55.00
ISBN 0-8047-5356-3; LC 2006-04626
A study of recent autobiographies by French and French-speaking literary authors and filmmakers, all of whom shun the use of traditional first-person narrative in favor of experimentation with alternate narrative forms.

Gyasi, Kwaku A.
The francophone African text: translation and the postcolonial experience. P. Lang 2006 (Francophone cultures and literatures, v48) 133p $59.95
ISBN 0-8204-7830-X; LC 2004-27469
This work focuses on African writers’ use of the French language, a process of creative translation in which the French words refer back to the indigenous African languages for meaning.

Hippolyte, Jean-Louis
Fuzzy fiction. University of Nebraska Press 2006 (Stages, v21) 319p $45.00
ISBN 0-8032-2429-X; LC 2006-11670
Hippolyte examines the novels of the avant-garde French writers Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Marie Redonnet, Eric Chevillard, Francois Bon, and Antoine Volodine, who exemplify the use of vagueness in contemporary French literature.

Guercio, Gabrielle
Art as existence: the artist’s monograph and its project. The MIT Press 2006 378p $50.00
ISBN 0-262-07268-8; LC 2005-54485
Gabriele Guerico examines the literary form known as the “artist’s monograph”: i.e., the description of the life and work of individual visual artists, which had its origin in the 16th century with Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects. How this literary form differs from standard biography, and what methods the
authors use as they attempt to link the creative work of the artist with the mundane facts of the artist’s life and times, is the subject of these essays.

In the agora: the public face of Canadian philosophy; edited by Andrew D. Irvine and John S. Russell, with a foreword by John Ralston Saul. University of Toronto Press 2006 486p $75.00, pa $32.95
ISBN 0-8020-3895-6; 0-8020-3717-4; LC 2006-286004
A collection of short essays by Canadian philosophers who have made important contributions to the public debate on contemporary issues. Among the many topics discussed are free speech, free trade, citizenship, terrorism, and the environment.

Law and the sacred; edited by Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Merrill Umphrey. Stanford University Press 2007 (Amherst series in law, jurisprudence, and social thought) 192p $45.00
ISBN 978-0-8047-5575-7; 0-8047-5575-2; LC 2006-6012939
These essays explore the complex interdependence of law and religion. Moving beyond the traditional categories of sacred and secular, the authors examine topics as diverse as the sacralization of law (as in “our sacred Constitution”), the applications of Islamic legal theory, and the modern foundations of sovereign political power.

Letting be: Fred Dallmayr’s cosmopolitical vision; edited by Stephen F. Schneck. University of Notre Dame Press 2006 382p pa $35.00
ISBN 978-0-268-04124-3; 0-268-04124-5; LC 2006-18618
Essays presented in honor of political theorist Fred Dallmayr on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. Topics include critical assessments of modernity, discussions of comparative political theory, and examinations of the need for establishing a global “cosmopolitical” understanding of civilization.

Raaflaub, Kurt A.
Origins of democracy in ancient Greece; [by] Kurt A. Raaflaub, Josiah Ober, and Robert W. Wallace, with chapters by Paul Cartledge and Cynthia Farrar. University of California Press 2007 (Joan Palevsky imprint in classical literature) 242p $34.95
ISBN 978-0-520-24562-4; 0-520-24562-8; LC 2006-26246
The origins of democracy in ancient Athens is the subject of this book. The authors of the essays address such questions as: Why did democracy first develop in Greece and not elsewhere? Was democracy “invented” or did it develop over time? What were the social and political foundations that made this development possible?

Religion and the new ecology: environmental responsibility in a world of flux; edited by David M. Lodge & Christopher Hamlin; foreword by Peter H. Raven. University of Notre Press 2006 325p pa $40.00
ISBN 978-0-268-03404-7; 0-268-03404-7; LC 2006-18597
These essays, offered by authors who think of nature as a dynamic process rather than as a static entity, ask the reader to abandon the old philosophical dichotomy between stable nature and disruptive human activity, and to reconsider the intellectual foundations of theories concerning human responsibility to nature.

Returning to Irigaray: feminist philosophy, politics, and the question of unity; edited by Maria C. Cimitile, Elaine P. Miller. State University of New York Press, 2007 (SUNY series in gender theory) 334p pa $28.95
ISBN 0-7914-6920-4; LC 2005-37171
These essays offer a critical assessment of the relation of the early critical and poetic writings of Luce Irigaray (influential philosopher and theorist in the field of feminist thought) to her later writings on politics and practical philosophy.

Romanowski, Sylvie.
Through strangers’ eyes: fictional foreigners in old regime France. Purdue University Press 2005 (Purdue studies in Romance literatures, v33) 257p pa $43.95
ISBN 1-55753-406-3; LC 2005-13496
The author explores the depiction of foreigners in French literature, beginning with Montaigne’s 1580 essay “Des cannibales” and continuing into the 18th century, including Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes.

Rossetti, Gina M.
Imagining the primitive in naturalist and modernist literature. University of Missouri Press 2006 196p $37.50
ISBN 0-8262-1625-0; LC 2005-29965
The author discusses the depiction of “primitive” characters in early 20th century American literature in literary and sociological terms, focusing on works by Jack London, Frank Norris, Eugene O’Neill, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Nella Larsen.

Saul, Joanne.
Writing the roaming subject: the biotext in Canadian literature. University of Toronto Press 2006 175p $45.00
ISBN 0-8020-9012-5; LC 2006-299638
This work focuses on a group of Canadian writers who pose questions about cultural differences and national identity when writing about their own lives and their experiences of displacement. The authors in question are Michael Ondaatje, Daphne Marlatt, Roy Kiyooka, and Fred Wah.

Scambray, Kenneth
Queen Calafia’s paradise: California and the Italian American novel. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2007 211p
ISBN 0-8386-4117-2; LC 2006-17912
This work examines the fiction of Italian-American authors set in California.

Visionary observers: anthropological inquiry and education; edited by Jill B.R. Cherneff and Eve Hochwald, foreword by Sydel Silverman. University of Nebraska Press 2006 (Critical studies in the history of anthropology) 261p pa $29.95
ISBN 0-8032-6464-X; LC 2006-09265
These essays examine the relationship between anthropology and public policy. The authors consider the careers of nine twentieth century American anthropologists who made significant contributions to discussions of race, ethnicity, socialization, and education.

Siegel, Lee
Falling upwards: essays in defense of the imagination. Basic Books 2006 337p $25.00
ISBN 978-0-465-07800-4; 0-465-07800-1; LC 2006-24173
Essays by Lee Siegel on contemporary literature and arts, in which he celebrates works that show imagination, intuition, and true feeling in opposition to dry intellect and artistic orthodoxy.