LSU Faculty Published Books

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Battleground Africa: Cold War in the Congo. 1960-1965

2013
Lise A. Namikas

Winner of the 2013 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title

Battleground Africa traces the Congo Crisis from post-World War II decolonization efforts through Mobutu's second coup in 1965 from a radically new vantage point. Drawing on recently opened archives in Russia and the United States, and to a lesser extent Germany and Belgium, Lisa Namikas addresses the crisis from the perspectives of the two superpowers and explains with superb clarity the complex web of allies, clients, and neutral states influencing U.S.-Soviet competition.

Unlike any other work, Battleground Africa looks at events leading up to independence, then considers the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the series of U.N.-supported constitutional negotiations, and the crises of 1964 and 1965. Finding that the U.S. and the USSR each wanted to avoid a major confrontation, but also misunderstood its opponent's goals and wanted to avoid looking weak or losing its political standing in Africa, Namikas argues that a series of exaggerations and misjudgements helped to militarize the crisis, and ultimately, helped militarize the Cold War on the continent.
Gods of the Mississippi

2013
Michael Pasquier

From the colonial period to the present, the Mississippi River has impacted religious communities from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Exploring the religious landscape along the 2,530 miles of the largest river system in North America, the essays in Gods of the Mississippi make a compelling case for American religion in motion--not just from east to west, but also from north to south. With discussion of topics such as the religions of the Black Atlantic, religion and empire, antebellum religious movements, the Mormons at Nauvoo, black religion in the delta, Catholicism in the Deep South, and Johnny Cash and religion, this volume contributes to a richer understanding of this diverse, dynamic, and fluid religious world.
Stealing Things: Theft and the Author in Nineteenth-Century France

2013
Rosemary A. Peters

Stealing Things traces the representations of thieves and thievery in nineteenth-century French novels. Re-reading canonical texts by Balzac, the Comtesse de S gur, and Zola through the lens of crime, Peters highlights bourgeois anxiety about ownership and objects while considering the impact of literature on popular attitudes about crime and its legislation and punishment. A detailed analysis of the role of objects, this work chronicles nineteenth-century changes in legal attitudes, popular mentalities, and individual and social identity, focusing particularly on the resulting transformations in representations of gender, class, and (criminal) subjectivity.
Life, War, Earth: Deleuze and the Sciences

2013
John Protevi

A deep exploration of the many possibilities inherent in linking Gilles Deleuze's philosophy to contemporary science, John Protevi's Life, War, Earth demonstrates how Deleuze's ontology of the virtual, intensive, and actual can enhance our understanding of important issues in cognitive science, biology, and geography. Protevi illustrates how a Deleuzian approach can illuminate a wide range of concerns and subjects, including ancient and contemporary warfare, human individuation processes, the "granularity problem," panpsychism, the E. coli bacterium, the assassination attempt on U.S. representative Gabrielle Giffords, and the affective dimensions of the Occupy movement.

Frequently ambitious but always rooted in the empirical, Life, War, Earth shows how the social and the somatic are not opposed to each other but are interwoven on three time scales--the evolutionary, the developmental, and the behavioral--and on three political scales--the geopolitical, the bio-neuro-political, and the technopolitical.

Deeply attuned to the internalities of the thought of Deleuze, the book offers a unique reading of his corpus and a useful method for applying Deleuzian techniques to the natural sciences, the social sciences, political phenomena, and contemporary events.
The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger

2013
Françous Raffoul

Martin Heidegger is one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers. His ground-breaking works have had a hugely significant impact on contemporary thought through their reception, appropriation and critique. His thought has influenced philosophers as diverse as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Adorno, Gadamer, Levinas, Derrida and Foucault, among others. In addition to his formative role in philosophical movements such as phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, deconstruction and post-modernism, Heidegger has had a transformative effect on diverse fields of inquiry including political theory, literary criticism, theology, gender theory, technology and environmental studies.

The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger is the definitive reference guide to Heidegger's life and work, presenting fifty-eight original essays written by an international team of leading Heidegger scholars. The volume includes comprehensive coverage of Heidegger life and contexts, sources, influences and encounters, key writings, major themes and topics, and reception and influence. This is the ideal research tool for anyone studying or working in the field of Heidegger Studies today.
Insects and Sustainability of Ecosystem Services

2013
Timothy Duane Schowalter

With few exceptions, insects are perceived in industrialized countries as undesirable pests. In reality, relatively few insects interfere with us or our resources. Most have benign or positive effects on ecosystem services, and many represent useful resources in non-industrialized countries. Challenging traditional perceptions of the value of insects, Insects and Sustainability of Ecosystem Services explores the ways insects affect the ecosystem services we depend upon. It also fosters an appreciation for the amazing diversity, adaptive ability, and natural roles of insects.

The book discusses how the ways in which we manage insects will determine an ecosystem's capacity to continue to supply services. It reviews aspects of insect physiology, behavior, and ecology that affect their interactions with other ecosystem components and ecosystem services, emphasizing critical effects of insects on the sustainability of ecosystem processes and services. The author examines the integration of insect ecology with self-regulatory aspects of ecosystems that control primary production, energy and nutrient fluxes, and global climate--functions that underlie the sustainability of ecosystem services.

Clearly, we need environmental policies that meet needs for pest control where warranted, but do not undermine the important contributions of insects to sustaining ecosystem processes and services. With in-depth coverage of the multiple, often compensatory, effects of insects on various resources or ecosystem services and on the consequences of control tactics for those resources or services, Insects and Sustainability of Ecosystem Services recommends changes in perspectives and policies regarding insects that will contribute to sustainability of ecosystem services.
Competitive Sorption and Transport of Heavy Metals in Soils and Geological Media Geological Media

2013
Hussein Magdi Selim

Most reported incidents of soil contamination include an array of heavy metals species rather than a single ion. The various interactions in these multicomponent or multiple-ion systems significantly impact the fate and transport of heavy metals, and competition for sorption sites on soil matrix surfaces is a common phenomenon. Because of this, considering competitive sorption is an important part of predicting contaminant transport. Competitive Sorption and Transport of Heavy Metals in Soils and Geological Media gives you the information needed to understand heavy metals' sorption and transport in the vadose zone and aquifers.

The book brings together state-of-the art research on the competitive sorption and mobility of single versus multiple heavy metal species. It also relates the transport mechanisms to the processes that govern sorption mechanisms. The work offers new experimental evidence on the fate of multiple heavy metals in soil columns and new field results on how multiple ions influence the mobility of metals in the soil profile under water-unsaturated flow.

Emphasizing modeling approaches, the book begins with an overview of the competitive behavior of heavy metals. It then takes a closer look at various heavy metals, discussing their behavior in tropical soils, speciation and fractionation, accumulation, migration, competitive retention, and the contamination of water resources at the watershed scale. The book also presents extensive data on phosphate, a commonly used fertilizer, and its role in facilitating the release of trace elements. The final chapter looks at the effect of waterlogged conditions on arsenic and cadmium solubilization.

Edited by an internationally recognized researcher and featuring expert contributors, this comprehensive work addresses the complex physical and chemical phenomena of sorption mechanisms. Presenting the latest research, it helps you to better predict the potential mobility of multiple heavy metals in soils.
Chemicals from Biomass: Integrating Bioprocesses into Chemical Production Complexes for Sustainable Development

2013
Debalina Sengupta

Chemicals from Biomass: Integrating Bioprocesses into Chemical Production Complexes for Sustainable Development helps engineers optimize the development of new chemical and polymer plants that use renewable resources to replace the output of goods and services from existing plants. It also discusses the conversion of those existing plants into faci.
Against Dogmatism: Dwelling in Faith and Doubt

2013
Madhuri M. Yadlapati

Many contemporary discussions of religion take an absolute, intractable approach to belief and nonbelief that privileges faith and dogmatism while treating doubt as a threat to religious values. As Madhuri M. Yadlapati demonstrates, however, there is another way: a faith (or nonfaith) that embraces doubt and its potential for exploring both the depths and heights of spiritual reflection and speculation. Through three distinct discussions of faith, doubt, and hope, Yadlapati explores what it means to live creatively and responsibly in the everyday world as limited, imaginative, and questioning creatures. She begins with a perceptive survey of diverse faith experiences in Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Protestant Christianity and then narrows her focus to Protestant Christianity and Hinduism to explore how the great thinkers of those faiths have embraced doubt in the service of spiritual transcendence.

Yadlapati traces religious perspectives on trust, humility, belonging, commitment, and lively skepticism as they relate to faith and doubt. Drawing on various doctrines, scriptures, and the writings of great religious thinkers such as C. S. Lewis, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, and Raimon Panikkar, Yadlapati demonstrates how doubt can serve to enhance faith, not hinder it. Defending the rich tapestry of faith and doubt against polarization, Against Dogmatism reveals an ecumenical middle way, a spiritual approach native to traditions in which faith and doubt are interwoven in constructive and dynamic ways.
On the Spectra of Quantum Groups

2013
Milen Yakimov

Joseph and Hodges-Levasseur (in the A case) described the spectra of all quantum function algebras R q [G] on simple algebraic groups in terms of the centres of certain localisations of quotients of R q [G] by torus invariant prime ideals, or equivalently in terms of orbits of finite groups. These centres were only known up to finite extensions. The author determines the centres explicitly under the general conditions that the deformation parameter is not a root of unity and without any restriction on the characteristic of the ground field. From it he deduces a more explicit description of all prime ideals of R q [G] than the previously known ones and an explicit parametrisation of SpecR q [G] .
Women Living Zen: Japanese Sōtō Buddhist Nuns

2012
Paula Kane Robinson Arai

In this study, based on both historical evidence and ethnographic data, Paula Arai shows that nuns were central agents in the foundation of Buddhism in Japan in the sixth century. They were active participants in the Soto Zen sect, and have continued to contribute to the advancement of the sect to the present day. Drawing on her fieldwork among the Soto nuns, Arai demonstrates that the lives of many of these women embody classical Buddhist ideals. They have chosen to lead a strictly disciplined monastic life over against successful careers and the unconstrained contemporary secular lifestyle. In this, and other respects, they can be shown to stand in stark contrast to their male counterparts.
Control of Partial Differential Equations: Cetraro, Italy 2010

2012
Piermarco Cannarsa

The term "control theory" refers to the body of results - theoretical, numerical and algorithmic - which have been developed to influence the evolution of the state of a given system in order to meet a prescribed performance criterion. Systems of interest to control theory may be of very different natures. This monograph is concerned with models that can be described by partial differential equations of evolution. It contains five major contributions and is connected to the CIME Course on Control of Partial Differential Equations that took place in Cetraro (CS, Italy), July 19 - 23, 2010. Specifically, it covers the stabilization of evolution equations, control of the Liouville equation, control in fluid mechanics, control and numerics for the wave equation, and Carleman estimates for elliptic and parabolic equations with application to control. We are confident this work will provide an authoritative reference work for all scientists who are interested in this field, representing at the same time a friendly introduction to, and an updated account of, some of the most active trends in current research.
Modeling the Environment: Techniques and Tools for the 3D Illustration of Dynamic Landscapes

2012
Bradley Cantrell

A single-source guide to harnessing the power of 3D visualization tools for analysis and representation of landscapes

Current technology allows designers to model environmental phenomena and space in new and exciting ways that go beyond the two-dimensional plane. The models, illustrations, and animations that can be created usher in a new paradigm of landscape representation that can become analytical tools as well as beautiful imagery. The text focuses on digital modeling methods that can be used to express rich environments using digital tools to develop, composite, and animate scenes.

This full-color book provides coverage of 3D visualization tools for land planning and landscape architecture. The methods and theories in Modeling the Environment present landscape representation around a core set of ideas--scene, object, terrain, environment/atmosphere, time/dynamics, and the composite--that centers representation on human experience. Supported by www.lab.visual-logic.com, a website offering tutorials and forums, the text shows you how to use Autodesk 3ds Max to create dynamic landscape environments while also referring to a range of other tools including Google SketchUp, Autodesk Maya, and AutoCAD Civil 3D. It also demonstrates how to integrate 3D visualization tools into existing workflows, and offers critical coverage of intelligent drawings and representations, giving you a glimpse at the future of the profession. This book:

Includes sections intended to build upon one another in order to understand the environment as a composite representation of multiple systems interacting

Shows how to integrate 3D visualization tools into existing workflows, as opposed to offering an entirely new workflow

Emphasizes modeling, animation, and simulation as both design analysis tools and presentation tools

Modeling the Environment is essential reading for professionals in landscape architecture, urban planning and design, architecture, and related disciplines who are looking to be at the forefront of technology.
A Guide to Academia: Getting Into and Surviving Grad School, Postdocs, and Research Job

2012
Prosanta Chakrabarty

A Guide to Academia is a handbook for all those individuals thinking seriously about going to graduate school. Written by an author with extensive experience navigating the academic world, the book explains all the steps and potential bumps in the road that a student might encounter as they take the plunge into academia. Each chapter begins with a section called the "hard truth," which will help students determine if they are on the right path. Starting with an undergraduate student looking for a graduate school, the reader is taken on a journey up the academic ladder through graduate studies, a postdoctoral fellowship and an assistant professorship. Each chapter gives advice on not only how to survive the current stage but how to get to the next stage quickly. Enhanced with material from the author's own job applications and interview presentations, A Guide to Academia provides concrete examples of the tools needed for a successful career in academia.
Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: Raiding the Temple of Wisdom

2012
Jon Cogburn

This volume will convince readers that the swift ascent of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons to worldwide popularity in the 1970s and 1980s is "the most exciting event in popular culture since the invention of the motion picture."
Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy presents twenty-one chapters by different writers, all D&D aficionados but with starkly different insights and points of view. It will be appreciated by thoughtful fans of the game, including both those in their thirties, forties, and fifties who have rediscovered the pastime they loved as teenagers and the new teenage and college-student D&D players who have grown up with gaming via computer and console games and are now turning to D&D as a richer, fuller gaming experience.
The book is divided into three parts. The first, "Heroic Tier: The Ethical Dungeon-Crawler," explores what D&D has to teach us about ethics and about how results from the philosophical study of morality can enrich and transform the game itself. Authors argue that it's okay to play evil characters, criticize the traditional and new systems of moral alignment, and (from the perspective of those who love the game) tackle head-on the recurring worries about whether the game has problems with gender and racial stereotypes. Readers of Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy will become better players, better thinkers, better dungeon-masters, and better people.
Part II, "Paragon Tier: Planes of Existence," arouses a new sense of wonder about both the real world and the collaborative world game players create. Authors look at such metaphysical questions as what separates magic from science, how we express the inexpressible through collaborative storytelling, and what the objects that populate Dungeons and Dragons worlds can teach us about the equally fantastic objects that surround us in the real world.
The third part, "Epic Tier: Leveling Up," is at the crossroads of philosophy and the exciting new field of Game Studies. The writers investigate what makes a game a game, whether D&D players are artists producing works of art, whether D&D (as one of its inventors claimed) could operate entirely without rules, how we can overcome the philosophical divide between game and story, and what types of minds take part in D&D.
We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861

2012
William James Cooper Jr.

In this carefully researched book William J. Cooper gives us a fresh perspective on the period between Abraham Lincoln's election in November 1860 and the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, during which all efforts to avoid or impede secession and prevent war failed. Here is the story of the men whose decisions and actions during the crisis of the Union resulted in the outbreak of the Civil War.

Sectional compromise had been critical in the history of the country, from the Constitutional Convention of 1787 through to 1860, and was a hallmark of the nation. On several volatile occasions political leaders had crafted solutions to the vexing problems dividing North and South. During the postelection crisis many Americans assumed that once again a political compromise would settle yet another dispute. Instead, in those crucial months leading up to the clash at Fort Sumter, that tradition of compromise broke down and a rapid succession of events led to the great cataclysm in American history, the Civil War.

All Americans did not view this crisis from the same perspective. Strutting southern fire-eaters designed to break up the Union. Some Republicans, crowing over their electoral triumph, evinced little concern about the threatened dismemberment of the country. Still others--northerners and southerners, antislave and proslave alike--strove to find an equitable settlement that would maintain the Union whole. Cooper captures the sense of contingency, showing Americans in these months as not knowing where decisions would lead, how events would unfold. The people who populate these pages could not foresee what war, if it came, would mean, much less predict its outcome.

We Have the War Upon Us helps us understand what the major actors said and did: the Republican party, the Democratic party, southern secessionists, southern Unionists; why the pro-compromise forces lost; and why the American tradition of sectional compromise failed. It reveals how the major actors perceived what was happening and the reasons they gave for their actions: Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Stephen A. Douglas, William Henry Seward, John J. Crittenden, Charles Francis Adams, John Tyler, James Buchanan, and a host of others. William J. Cooper has written a full account of the North and the South, Republicans and Democrats, sectional radicals and sectional conservatives that deepens our insight into what is still one of the most controversial periods in American history.
Comics and the U.S. South

2012
Brannon Costello

Comics and the U.S. South offers a wide-ranging and long overdue assessment of how life and culture in the United States South is represented in serial comics, graphic novels, newspaper comic strips, and webcomics. Diverting the lens of comics studies from the skyscrapers of Superman's Metropolis or Chris Ware's Chicago to the swamps, back roads, small towns, and cities of the U.S. South, this collection critically examines the pulp genres associated with mainstream comic books alongside independent and alternative comics. Some essays seek to discover what Captain America can reveal about southern regionalism and how slave narratives can help us reread Swamp Thing; others examine how creators such as Walt Kelly (Pogo), Howard Cruse (Stuck Rubber Baby), Kyle Baker (Nat Turner), and Josh Neufeld (A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge) draw upon the unique formal properties of the comics to question and revise familiar narratives of race, class, and sexuality; and another considers how southern writer Randall Kenan adapted elements of comics form to prose fiction. With essays from an interdisciplinary group of scholars, Comics and the U.S. South contributes to and also productively reorients the most significant and compelling conversations in both comics scholarship and in southern studies.
The Press and Rights to Privacy: First Amendment Freedoms vs. Invasion of Privacy Claims

2012
Erin K. Coyle

Since Florida Star v. B.J.F. was published in 1989, state high court and federal circuit court of appeals rulings have most often found that free expression interests trump privacy. Some rulings, however, have recognized that fundamental democratic values undergird free expression rights as well as rights to privacy. Coyle argues that courts and communicators should attempt to reconcile future clashes among the right to publish and rights to privacy in manners that consider interests on both sides of the conflict. She suggests several steps that courts and communicators should take to continue limiting successful invasion of privacy claims to extreme cases.
Intensive One-Session Treatment of Specific Phobias

2012
Thompson Elder Davis

Whether it's dogs, spiders, blood, heights or some other fear, specific phobias are one of the most prevalent mental health problems, affecting as many as one in eight people. In recent years, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has emerged as particularly effective in treating young people and adults with specific phobias. And of these methods, one-session treatment stands out as a long-lasting, cost-effective intervention of choice.

Intensive One-Session Treatment of Specific Phobias not only provides a summary of the evidence base, it also serves as a practical reference and training guide. This concise volume examines the phenomenology, epidemiology, and etiology of phobias, laying the groundwork for subsequent discussion of assessment strategies, empirically sound one-session treatment methods, and special topics. In addition, expert contributors address challenges common to exposure therapy, offer age-appropriate guidelines for treating young clients, and describe innovative computer-assisted techniques.

Organized to be read individually or in sequence, chapters delve into key areas, including:

Evidence-based assessment and treatment of specific phobias in children, adolescents, and adults. One-session treatment theory and practice with children, adolescents, and adults. Handling difficult cases of specific phobias in youth. Interventions for specific phobias in special populations. Training and assessing therapists in one-session treatment. Ethical issues in considering exposure.

Intensive One-Session Treatment of Specific Phobias is an essential resource for researchers, clinicians, and graduate students in child, school, clinical, and counseling psychology; social work; and general and special education.
The Best American Short Plays 2010-2011

2012
William W. Demastes

The plays in this collection, the first volume by series editor William W. Demastes, explore the universal theme of love. The works are at turns comedic and serious and cover various facets of love from friendship to family to romance.
Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and Complexity Theory: The "Fascinating Imaginative Realm" of William E. Doll

2012
William E. Doll

The first collection of the key works of the major curriculum studies scholar William E. Doll, Jr., this volume provides an overview of his scholarship over his fifty-year career and documents the theoretical and practical contribution he has made to the field . The book is organized in five thematic sections: Personal Reflections; Dewey, Piaget, Bruner, Whitehead: Process And Transformation; Modern/Post-Modern: Structures, Forms and Organization; Complexity Thinking; and Reflections on Teaching .

The complicated intellectual trajectory through pragmatism, postmodernism and complexity theory not only testifies to Doll's individual lifetime works but is also intimately related to the landscape of education to which he has made an important contribution. Of interest to curriculum scholars around the world, the book will hold special significance for graduate students and junior scholars who came of the age in the field Doll helped create: one crafted by postmodernism and, more recently, complexity theory.
Beyond Cairo: US Engagement with the Muslim World

2012
Darrell Ezell

The US's once-enthusiastic commitment to restore trustworthy relations with the Muslim world has dwindled considerably since Obama's 2009 Cairo speech. This book tackles Washington's lagging engagement with the Muslim world and provides a roadmap for how the US can use public diplomacy to re-engage it.
Working Through Whiteness: Examining White Racial Identity and Profession with Pre-Service Teachers

2012
Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner

White educators comprise between 85-92 percent of the current teaching force in the United States, yet in the race toward leaving no child behind, contemporary educational research often invests significant time and energy looking for ways to reach students who represent difference without examining the nature of those who do the work of educating the nation's public school children. Educational research that has looked at racial identity is often void of earnest discussion of the identity of the teachers, how that identity impacts teacher beliefs about students and families, and ultimately how teachers frame their understanding of the profession. This book takes readers on a journey to explore the nature of pre-service teachers' narratives as a means of better understanding racial identity and the way teachers enter the profession. Through a case study analysis approach, Examining White Racial Identity and Profession with Pre-service Teachers examines the nature of white racial identity as seen through the narratives of nine pre-service teachers as well as his own struggles with racial identity. This text draws on racial identity, critical race theory, and discourse and narrative analysis to reveal how participants in the study used discourse structures to present beliefs about race and their own understandings and ultimately how the teachers' narratives display underdeveloped understandings of their choices to become educators. Fasching-Varner also critically examines his own racial identity auto-ethnographically, and ultimately proposes a new, non-developmental model for thinking about white racial identity. This text aims to help teacher educators and teachers to work against the privileges of whiteness so as to better engage students in culturally relevant ways.
The Age of Nixon: A Study in Cultural Power

2012
Carl Howard Freedman

The fundamental argument of this book is, first, that Richard Nixon, though not generally regarded as a charismatic or emotionally outgoing politician like Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, did establish profound psychic connections with the American people, connections that can be detected both in the brilliant electoral success that he enjoyed for most of his career and in his ultimate defeat during the Watergate scandal; and, second and even more important, that these connections are symptomatic of many of the most important currents in American life. The book is not just a work of political history or political biography but a study of cultural power: that is, a study in the ways that culture shapes our politics and frames our sense of possibilities and values. In its application of Marxist, psychoanalytic, and other theoretical tools to the study of American electoral politics, and in a way designed for the general as well as for the academic reader, it is a new kind of book.
Discrete-Time Linear Systems: Theory and Design with Applications

2012
Guoxiang Gu

Discrete-Time Linear Systems: Theory and Design with Applications combines system theory and design in order to show the importance of system theory and its role in system design. The book focuses on system theory (including optimal state feedback and optimal state estimation) and system design (with applications to feedback control systems and wireless transceivers, plus system identification and channel estimation).