Books

Rhetorica in Motion is the first collected work to investigate feminist rhetorical research methods in both contemporary and historical contexts. The contributors analyze familiar themes, such as archival, literary, and online research, but also looks to other areas of rhetoric, such as disability studies; gerontology/aging studies; Latina/o, queer, and transgender studies; performance studies; and transnational feminisms in both the United States and larger geopolitical spaces.

This volume examines the factors that contribute to the use of children in war, the effects of war upon children, and the perpetual cycle of warfare that engulfs many of the world’s poorest nations. It offers viable policies to reduce child recruitment, and reintegrate child soldiers into society after war.

Acting as an important historical archive for the Jews of Eastern Europe, The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture examines the progress of Yiddish culture from its origins in Tsarist and inter-war Poland to its apex with the founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute in 1925.

Dancing Into Darkness is Sondra Horton Fraleigh’s chronological diary of her deepening understanding of and appreciation for the art form of butoh, as she moves from a position of aesthetic response as an audience member to that of assimilation as a student of Zen and butoh. Fraleigh witnesses her own artistic and personal transformation through essays, poems, interviews, and reflections spanning twelve years of study, much of it in Japan.

Prominent philosophers analyze the work of Thomas Kuhn, including his monumental study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, from a broad perspective, comparing earlier logical empiricism and logical positivism with the new philosophy inspired by Kuhn in the early 1960s.

Dion’ study examines the major political role of organized labor in establishing and effecting change in Mexico’s social protection programs throughout the twentieth-century.

“As always with a Bob Hicok book, fascinating and a book you sort of can’t help but pick up and suddenly, two hours later, find yourself having read straight through. I can think of just about no contemporary poets who publish such consistently great work.”—Corduroy Books

“I have long believed that Lynn Emanuel is one of the most innovative and subversive poets now writing in America. Her aesthetic and artistic choices consistently invoke a complex hybrid poetics that radically reimagines the shape of our poetic discourse. The brilliant, shattering, and disturbing poems of Noose and Hook are not only wry critiques of recent poetic and cultural activity in this country but also compelling signposts to what yet might be possible in our future. This is Lynn Emanuel’s most exquisite and powerful book yet.”—David St. John

Sidney Weintraub examines the current relationship of Mexico and the United States as one of sustained dependence and dominance. The chapters examine the consequences of this imbalance in six major policy areas: trade; investment and finance; narcotics; energy; migration; and the border.

“Sometimes we have questions that seem to defy answers or even suppositions but then we find Love and Strange Horses to help us map out a course to continue loving life. A really wonderful, thoughtful read by an intriguing new voice.”—Nikki Giovanni

Winner of the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Award (Poetry)

Wit’s End is an original perspective on women’s use of humor as a performative strategy, seen in works of twentieth-century American literature. Zwagerman argues that women, whose direct, explicit performative speech has been traditionally denied, or not taken seriously, have often turned to humor as a means of communicating with men.

Maria Bucur explores the interactions between the science of eugenics and modernization efforts in Romania between World Wars I and II.

Nicholas Rescher offers his perspectives on many of the foundational concerns of philosophy. He sees the need to inquire as an evolutionary tool for adapting to a hostile environment and shows how philosophy has developed in an evolutionary fashion, building upon acquired knowledge and upon itself. In a historical thread that informs and enriches his overview, Rescher recalls Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Kant, Hegel, Leibniz, Laplace, Bertrand Russell, and others. Overall, he argues for philosophy as an unavoidable instrument for rational, cogent responses to large questions.

When Hegel described the Americas as an inferior continent, he was repeating a contention that inspired one of the most passionate debates of modern times. This thesis drew heated responses from politicians, philosophers, publicists, and patriots on both sides of the Atlantic. The ensuing polemic reached its apex in the late eighteenth century and is far from extinct today. The Dispute of the New World is the definitive study of this debate.

Race and Renaissance presents the first history of African American life in Pittsburgh after World War II. It examines the origins and significance of the second Great Migration, the persistence of Jim Crow into the postwar years, the second ghetto, the contemporary urban crisis, the civil rights and Black Power movements, and the Million Man and Million Woman marches, among other topics.