Visible Scholarship Initiative

Elizabeth Mazzolini: Histories of the dustheap

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:53:48 -0400

Garbage, considered both materially and culturally, elicits mixed responses. Our responsibility toward the objects we love and then discard is entangled with our responsibility toward the systems that make those objects. Histories of the Dustheap uses garbage, waste, and refuse to investigate the relationships between various systems--the local and the global, the economic and the ecological, the historical and the contemporary--and shows how this most democratic reality produces identities, social relations, and policies. Histories of the Dustheap offers a range of perspectives on a variety of incarnations of garbage, inviting the reader to consider garbage in a way that goes beyond the common "buy green" discourse that empowers individuals while limiting environmental activism to consumerist practices.

Jeff Mann: Purgatory, a novel

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:12:00 -0500

During the Civil War, two young soldiers on opposite sides find themselves drawn together. One man, Ian, is a war-weary but scholarly Southerner who has seen too much bloodshed, especially the tortures inflicted upon the enemy by his vicious, sadistic commanding officer, his uncle. The other, Drew, is a Herculean Yankee captured by the ragtag Confederate band and forced to become a martyr for all the sins of General Sheridan's fires. When these two find themselves admiring more than one another's spirit and demeanor, when passions erupt between captor and captive, will this new romance survive the arduous trek to Purgatory Mountain? Lammy-winning author Jeff Mann's first full-length novel brings two opposed war heroes together in a page-turning historical drama of homomasculine love.

Matthew Wisnioski: Engineers for change

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 10:12:00 -0500

In the late 1960s an eclectic group of engineers joined the antiwar and civil rights activists of the time in agitating for change. The engineers were fighting to remake their profession, challenging their fellow engineers to embrace a more humane vision of technology. In Engineers for Change, Matthew Wisnioski offers an account of this conflict within engineering, linking it to deep-seated assumptions about technology and American life. Beginning in the mid-1960s, society began to view technology in a more negative light. Engineers themselves were seen as conformist organization men propping up the military-industrial complex. A dissident minority of engineers offered critiques of their profession that appropriated concepts from technology's critics. Wisnioski argues that in responding to the challenges posed by critics within their profession, engineers in the 1960s helped shape our dominant contemporary understanding of technological change as the driver of history.

Steven Fisher and Barbara Smith: Transforming Places

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:15:22 -0500

In this era of globalization's ruthless deracination, place attachments have become increasingly salient in collective mobilizations across the spectrum of politics. Like place-based activists in other resource-rich yet impoverished regions across the globe, Appalachians are contesting economic injustice, environmental degradation, and the anti-democratic power of elites. This collection of seventeen original essays by scholars and activists from a variety of backgrounds explores this wide range of oppositional politics, querying its successes, limitations, and impacts. The editors' critical introduction and conclusion integrate theories of place and space with analyses of organizations and events discussed by contributors. Transforming Places illuminates widely relevant lessons about building coalitions and movements with sufficient strength to challenge corporate-driven globalization.

James Ivory: Virtual lives: A reference handbook

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 16:32:00 -0400

Virtual Lives: A Reference Handbook describes the history, development, and role of virtual worlds, also known as virtual environments and immersive virtual environments. It provides detailed background about virtual worlds and their societal impact, from early precursors and inspirations to the latest trends and developments. Specifics on user demographics are included, as are descriptions of virtual worlds' functions, discussion of societal concerns and opportunities, and information about relevant research data and key persons and organizations. Although virtual worlds in their current form are a relatively new phenomenon, other online social environments have served as precursors for decades and literary inspirations go back even further. This handbook therefore covers some early developments dating back to the mid-20th century. Its primary focus, however, is on developments since the mid-1990s and especially on the current state and social impact of virtual worlds, including their impact both in the United States and around the world.

Erika Meitner: Ideal Cities

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 10:58:00 -0400

This collection of autobiographical narrative and lyric poems explores the relationship between body and place—specifically the pleasures and dangers of women’s corporeal experiences. Ideal Cities is guided by an epigraph from Song of Songs, and the metaphorical idea of bodies as cities, and cities as bodies. How do women’s bodies become sites of inscription via sex, childbirth, and other highly physical acts? These poems also investigate urban, suburban, and rural borderlands. Who do we leave behind or look past? What do we discard, as purposeful markers or accidental refuse? How can these people, places, and objects be woven into larger ideas about nature, sense of place, home, exile, and both personal and collective memory?

Anthony A. Peguero: Gender, immigration, and school victimization

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:13:49 -0400

It is well established that violence can seriously lead to mental health disorders, disrupt interpersonal social relationships, derail educational progress, and negatively impact life-course trajectories for youth. Despite the prevalence and problems associated with youth violence, studies that examine the disparities linked to race and ethnicity, immigration, and gender in relationship to the exposure and consequences of violence for youth are underrepresented and limited. Dr. Peguero’s research agenda is focused on addressing the gap in the sociological, criminological, and educational research literature in the pursuit of ameliorating the likelihood of violence, as well as the consequences, for marginalized and vulnerable youth populations. While Dr. Peguero’s work focuses on how violence contributes to social inequalities, this area of research is still in its infancy and future research will continue to incorporate interdisciplinary approaches to further this line of inquiry.

Emily Satterwhite: Dear Appalachia: Readers, Identity, and Popular Fiction since 1878

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:02:59 -0400

Much criticism has been directed at negative stereotypes of Appalachia perpetuated by movies, television shows, and news media. Books, on the other hand, often draw enthusiastic praise for their celebration of the simplicity and authenticity of the Appalachian region. Dear Appalachia: Readers, Identity, and Popular Fiction since 1878 employs the innovative strategy of examining fan mail, reviews, and readers' geographic affiliations to understand how readers have imagined the region and what purposes these imagined geographies have served for them. As Emily Satterwhite traces the changing visions of Appalachia across the decades, from the Gilded Age (1865–1895) to the present, she finds that every generation has produced an audience hungry for a romantic version of Appalachia.

Dwight Bigler: Miss Mackenzie

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:58:00 -0500

"She moved up her hair from off her ears, knowing where she would find a few that were grey, and shaking her head, as though owning to herself that she was old; but as her fingers ran almost involuntarily across her locks, her touch told her that they were soft and silken; and she looked into her own eyes, and saw that they were bright; and her hand touched the outline of her cheek, and she knew that something of the fresh bloom of youth was still there; and her lips parted, and there were her white teeth; and there came a smile and a dimple, and a slight purpose of laughter in her eye, and then a tear. She pulled her scarf tighter across her bosom, feeling her own form, and then she leaned forward and kissed herself in the glass."

—Anthony Trollope, in Miss Mackenzie, 1865

Neal King: Passion of the Christ

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 10:58:00 -0500

“Neal King knows more about the making, marketing and reception of The Passion of the Christ than anyone else. He gives us an elegant and perceptive analysis of the controversies that surrounded Gibson’s film and a sociological portrait of their origins in the competing objectives of polarized groups. King’s book is an essential source on the making and meaning of a film that has been both celebrated and condemned.”
- Stephen Prince, author of Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism

“This book is a means to reignite interest in the film and inspire debate surrounding it. Neal’s resurrection of the film may help it take its rightful place in cinematic history.”
- Lauren Felton, Filmwerk

Brian Britt: Biblical curses and the displacement of tradition

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 10:58:24 -0500

In Biblical Curses and the Displacement of Tradition Brian Britt offers an intriguing perspective on curses as the focus of debates over the power, pleasure, and danger of words. Biblical authors transformed ancient Near Eastern curses against rival ethnic groups, disobedient ancestors, and the day of one’s own birth with great variety and ingenuity. Transformations of biblical curses proliferated in post-biblical history, even during periods of ‘secularization’. This study argues that biblical, early modern, and contemporary transformations of curses constitute displacements rather than replacements of earlier traditions. The crucial notion of displacement draws from Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, Nietzsche’s critical philosophy, and Benjamin’s engagement with textual tradition; it highlights not only manifest shifts but also many hidden continuities between cursing in biblical texts and cursing in such ‘secular’ domains as literature, law, politics, and philosophy. The tradition of biblical cursing—neither purely ‘religious’ nor purely ‘secular’—travels through these texts and contexts as it redefines verbal, human, and supernatural power.

Laura Zanotti: Governing disorder

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:40:14 -0400

The end of the Cold War created an opportunity for the United Nations to reconceptualize the rationale and extent of its peacebuilding efforts, and in the 1990s, democracy and good governance became legitimizing concepts for an expansion of UN activities. In Governing Disorder, Zanotti combines her firsthand experience of UN peacebuilding operations with the insights of Michel Foucault to examine the genealogy of post–Cold War discourses promoting international security. Zanotti also maps the changes in legitimizing principles for intervention, explores the specific techniques of governance deployed in UN operations, and identifies the forms of resistance these operations encounter from local populations and the (often unintended) political consequences they produce.