May 2005

Across the continent; Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and the making of America; edited by Douglas Seefeldt, Jeffrey L. Hantman, and Peter S. Onuf. University of Va. Press 2005 222p $29.50

ISBN 0-8139-2313-1; LC 2004-11981

Essays explore the global geopolitics that provided the context for the expedition.

The ancient economy; evidence and models; edited b y J. G. Manning and Ian Morris. Stanford Univ. Press 2005 285p (Social science history) $60.00

ISBN 0-8047-4805-5; LC 2004-25985

Contributors include Roger S. Bagnall, Richard Saller, Mario Liverani, Avner Greif, and John K. Davies.

Baker, Robert

The extravagant; crossings of modern poetry and modern philosophy. University of Notre Dame Press 2005 405p $65.00, pa $30.00

ISBN 0-268-02181-3; 0-268-02182-1; LC 2005-2504

Kant, Wordsworth, Lyotard, Rimbaud, Nietzsche, Bataille, Kierkegaard, Dickinson, Mallarme, and Derrida are discussed.

Barash, David P. and Nanelle R. Barash

Madame Bovary’s ovaries; a Darwinian look at literature. Delacorte Press 2005 262p $24.00

ISBN 0-385-33801-5; LC 2005-298037

The authors explore works by Salinger, Austen, Shakespeare, Fielding, and others, through the lens of evolutionary biology.

Bei Dao

Midnight’s gate; translated from the Chinese by Matthew Fryslie; edited by Christopher Mattison. New Directions 2005 255p pa $19.95

ISBN 0-8112-1584-9; LC 2004-28185

Personal essays form a travelogue of seven countries the poet has lived in since his exile from China in 1989.

Cavell, Stanley

Philosophy the day after tomorrow. The Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press 2005 302p $27.95

ISBN 0-674-01704-8; LC 2004-46229

Essays explore grace in works by figures as diverse as Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Fred Astaire, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Thoreau.

Childhood lost; how American culture is failing our kids; edited by Sharna Olfman. Praeger Publishers 2005 226p (Childhood in America) $39.95

ISBN 0-275-98139-8; LC 2004-28036

Contributors from across such disciplines as anthropology, economics, education, journalism, and religion, explore contemporary American culture and its devastating effects on children.

Espiritu, Augusto Fauni

Five faces of exile; the nation and Filipino American intellectuals. Stanford Univ. Press 2005 312p (Asian America) $65.00, pa $24.95

ISBN 0-8047-5120-X; 0-8047-5121-8; LC 2004-22526

A close reading of the texts and social practices of five trans-Pacific Filipino American writers: Carlos P. Romulo, Jose Garcia Villa, N. V. M. Gonzalez, Bienvenido Santos, and Carlos Bulosan.

Gender, genre, & identity in women’s travel writing; Kristi Siegel, editor. Peter Lang 2004 320p pa $32.95

ISBN 0-8204-4905-9; LC 2003-25257

Topics range from Anna Leonowens’s portrayal of Siam to current feminist "descripting" of the male-road-buddy genre.

Genette, Gerard

Essays in aesthetics; translated by Dorritt Cohn. University of Neb. Press 2005 236p (Stages, v20) $45.00, pa $25.00

ISBN 0-8032-2197-5; 0-8032-7110-7; LC 2004-63769

Stendhal, Proust, Manet, Pisarro, and Canaletto are among the artists and writers discussed.

Halverson, Cathryn

Maverick autobiographies; women writers and the American West, 1900-1936. The University of Wisconsin Press 2004 230p (Wisconsin studies in autobiography) $45.00

ISBN 0-299-19720-4; LC 2003-20567

This analysis of Western women’s literature explores autobiographical writings by Mary MacLane, Opal Whiteley, and Juanita Harrison.

Harris, W. C.

E pluribus unum: nineteenth-century American literature and the Constitutional paradox. University of Iowa Press 2005 314p $39.95

ISBN 0-87745-934-7; LC 2004-58851

Readings of Poe’s Eureka, Whitman’s Leaves of grass, Melville’s Billy Budd, and William James’ The varieties of religious experience.

Images of the corpse; from the Renaissance to cyberspace; edited by Elizabeth Klaver. The University of Wisconsin Press; Popular Press 2004 238p $65.00, pa $19.95

ISBN 0-299-19790-5; 0-299-19794-8; LC 2003-20575

Includes essays on postmortem photography, the corpse as artist’s model, the computerized Visible Human Project, and images of dead women in Copycat and Silence of the lambs.

Law on the screen; edited by Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Merrill Umphrey. Stanford Univ. Press 2005 264p (Amherst series in law, jurisprudence, and social thought) $50.00

ISBN 0-8047-5162-5; LC 2004-22528

Contributors offer jurisprudential readings of Death and the maiden, Devil in a blue dress, A civil action, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, Mulholland Drive, and Paradise lost (parts 1 & 2).

Leak, Jeffrey B.

Racial myths and masculinity in African American literature. The University of Tenn Press 2005 160p $30.00

ISBN 1-57233-357-X; LC 2004-9522

Works by Frederick Douglass, Brent Wade, Ralph Ellison, Ernest J, Gaines, Richard Wright, David Bradley, and Toni Morrison are explicated.

LoBrutto, Vincent

Becoming film literate; the art and craft of motion pictures; foreword by Jan Harlan. Praeger Publishers 2005 384p $49.95

ISBN 0-275-98144-4; LC 2004-28099

Using 50 films, the author illustrates such important concepts as editing, production design, cinematography, sound, and acting, as well as various genres, nationalities, and film eras.

MacKinnon, Catharine A.

Women’s lives, men’s laws. The Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press 2005 558p $39.95

ISBN 0-674-01540-1; LC 2004-52086

A collection of 29 previously uncollected and unpublished works investigating the role of law in women’s everyday lives.

Margolis, Stacey

The public life of privacy in nineteenth-century American literature. Duke Univ. Press 2005 235p (New Americanists) $74.95, pa $21.95

ISBN 0-8223-3536-0; 0-8223-3549-2; LC 2004-23364

The author, using the work of Twain, James, Warner, Hawthorne, Chesnutt, and Hopkins, explores how individuals were shaped by their interactions with society.

Martin, Ronald E.

The languages of difference; American writers and anthropologists reconfigure the primitive, 1878-1940. University of Del. Press; Associated Univ. Presses 2005 280p $53.50

ISBN 0-87413-904-X; LC 2004-19363

Essays focus on Henry Lewis Morgan, Henry Adams, Eugene O’Neill, Franz Boas, William Faulkner, Margaret Mead and Zora Neale Hurston.

Owens, Margaret E.

Stages of dismemberment; the fragmented body in late medieval and early modern drama. University of Del. Press; Associated Univ. Presses 2005 332p $59.50

ISBN 0-87413-888-4; LC 2004-19366

The author, covering a wide range of plays from the fifteenth century to the closing of theaters in 1642, includes extensive analysis of R. B.’s Apius and Virginia, Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI, and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.

Personal autonomy; new essays on personal autonomy and its role in contemporary moral philosophy; edited by James Stacey Taylor. Cambridge Univ. Press 2005 350p $70.00

ISBN 0-521-83796-0; LC 2004-45810

Scholars investigate the relationship between autonomy and moral responsibility, freedom, political philosophy, and medical ethics.

Postcolonial approaches to the European Middle Ages; translating cultures; edited by Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams. Cambridge Univ. Press 2005 298p (Cambridge studies in medieval literature) $80.00

ISBN 0-521-82731-0; LC 2004-51852

Ranging across academic disciplines, from art history to cartography, and from Anglo-Saxon to Hispanic studies, contributors highlight connections between medieval and postcolonial studies.

Religion in the contemporary South; changes, continuities, and contexts; edited by Corrie E. Norman and Don S. Armentrout. The University of Tenn. Press 2005 332p pa $21.95

ISBN 1-57233-361-8; LC 2004-14317

Mark K. Bauman, Wayne Flint, Nancy A. Hardesty, Samuel S. Hill, and Bill J. Leonard are among the contributing scholars.

Riley, Denise

Impersonal passion; language as affect. Duke Univ. Press 2005 142p pa $19.95

ISBN 0-8223-3512-3; LC 2004-18748

The feminist theorist discusses problems of identity, expression, language, and politics.

Wills, David

Matchbook; essays in deconstruction. Stanford Univ. Press 2005 221p $60.00, pa $24.95

ISBN 0-8047-4135-2; 0-8047-4136-0; LC 2005-2879

Nine essays written around, or in response to, work published by Jacques Derrida since 1980.