LSU Faculty Published Books

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Hillary Clinton's Race for the White House: Gender Politics and the Media on the Campaign Trail

2010
Regina G. Lawrence

Senator Hillary Clinton won 18 million votes in 2008 - nearly twice that of any presidential nominee in recent history - yet she failed to secure the Democratic nomination. In this compelling look at Clinton's historic candidacy, Regina Lawrence and Melody Rose explore how she came so close to breaking the ultimate glass ceiling in US politics, why she fell short, and what her experience portends for future female candidates in the media-saturated game of presidential politics. The result is more than just a postmortem of the Clinton campaign. Lawrence and Rose craft a sophisticated argument about the complex mix of gender stereotypes, media routines, and the particulars of individual character and electoral context that will shape the prospects of any woman who competes in the presidential arena. A compelling look at how Hillary Clinton came so close to breaking the ultimate glass ceiling in US politics, why she fell short, and what her experience portends for future female candidates in the media-saturated game of presidential politics.
Prescription for Heterosexuality: Sexual Citizenship in the Cold War Era

2010
Carolyn Herbst Lewis

In this lively and engaging work, Carolyn Lewis explores how medical practitioners, especially family physicians, situated themselves as the guardians of Americans' sexual well-being during the early years of the Cold War. She argues that many doctors viewed their patients' sexual habits as more than an issue of personal health. They believed that a satisfying sexual relationship between heterosexual couples with very specific attributes and boundaries was the foundation of a successful marriage, a fundamental source of happiness in the American family, and a crucial building block of a secure nation.

Drawing on hundreds of articles and editorials in medical journals as well as other popular and professional literature, Lewis traces how medical professionals defined and reinforced heterosexuality in the mid-twentieth century, giving certain heterosexual desires and acts a veritable stamp of approval while labeling others as unhealthy or deviant. Lewis links their prescriptive treatment to Cold War anxieties about sexual norms, gender roles, and national security. Doctors of the time, Lewis argues, believed that "unhealthy" sexual acts, from same-sex desires to female-dominant acts, could cause personal and marital disaster; in short, says Lewis, they were "un-American."
Treasures of LSU

2010
Laura F. Lindsay

In celebration of Louisiana State University's sesquicentennial, Treasures of LSU trumpets the numerous and diverse riches found throughout the Baton Rouge campus and beyond. The 101 distinguished artworks, architectural gems, research collections, and scientific and cultural artifacts highlighted here represent only a small fraction of the material resources that surround and engage LSU faculty, staff, and students on a daily basis. As LSU chancellor emeritus Paul W. Murrill declares in his foreword, "All reflect expressions of superb quality. All encourage, in one way or another, the human spirit to soar."
Some of these treasures act as artistic backdrops to everyday campus life. In Unity Ascending, the striking Frank Hayden sculpture, greets all who enter the LSU Student Union. Vibrant Depression-era murals decorate the corridors of Allen Hall. Other treasures reside in out-of-the-way places. The Department of Geology and Geophysics houses the Henry V. Howe Type Collection of shelled microorganisms -- tiny, beautifully varied fossils that frequently aid geologists in determining the ages of rocks and features of ancient environments. The LSU Museum of Natural Science, in Foster Hall, holds one of the largest and most prestigious research collections of bird specimens in the world.
An LSU cadet uniform and a hand-spun Acadian quilt from the LSU Textile & Costume Museum; an enchanting silky-camellia specimen from the collections of the LSU Herbarium, founded in 1869; pottery by Walter Anderson and portraits by William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds from the LSU Museum of Art -- all showcase the immense variety of LSU's assets. Other featured treasures include a historic dogtrot house at the LSU Rural Life Museum, John James Audubon's double elephant folio Birds of America from the E. A. McIlhenny Natural History Collection at Hill Memorial Library, and cherished campus landmarks like the Indian Mounds, the French House, and Mike the Tiger's habitat.
Full-page color photographs set off the treasures to stunning effect. Interpretive essays by LSU faculty, staff, and students explain the origins, history, and sometimes myths surrounding each item. Published by LSU Press during its seventy-fifth year of operation, Treasures of LSU is itself a treasure that inspires pleasure and amazement in discovering the wealth and diversity of LSU's resources and affirms the university's numerous cultural contributions to the world community.
Plato: A Transitional Reader

2010
Wilfred Major

Plato was born c. 427 B.C. in Athens, Greece, to an aristocratic family very much involved in political government. Pericles, famous ruler of Athens during its golden age, was Plato's stepfather. Plato was well educated and studied under Socrates, with whom he developed a close friendship. When Socrates was publically executed in 399 B.C., Plato finally distanced himself from a career in Athenian politics, instead becoming one of the greatest philosophers of Western civilization. Plato extended Socrates's inquiries to his students, one of the most famous being Aristotle.

Plato's The Republic is an enduring work, discussing justice, the importance of education, and the qualities needed for rulers to succeed. Plato felt governors must be philosophers so they may govern wisely and effectively. Plato founded the Academy, an educational institution dedicated to pursuing philosophic truth. The Academy lasted well into the 6th century A.D., and is the model for all western universities. Its formation is along the lines Plato laid out in The Republic.
Wartime Dissent in America: A History and Anthology

2010
Robert Mann

Through the speeches, essays and interviews of some of the most compelling individuals in American history who stood against the key conflicts of their lifetimes, this book gives remarkable insight into wartime dissent in the U.S. from the revolutionary war to the war on terror.
Over Ten Million Served: Gendered Service in Language and Literature Workplaces

2010
Michelle Annette Massé

All tenured and tenure-track faculy know the trinity of promotion and tenure criteria: research, teaching, and service. While teaching and research are relatively well defined areas of institutional focus and evaluation, service work is rarely tabulated or analyzed as a key aspect of higher education's political economy. Instead, service, silent and invisible, coexists with the formal "official" economy of many institutions, just as women's unrecognized domestic labor props up the formal, official economies of countries the world over. Over Ten Million Served explores what academic service is and investigates why this labor is often not acknowledged as "labor" by administrators or even by faculty themselves, but is instead relegated to a gendered form of institutional caregiving. By analyzing the actual labor of service, particularly for women and racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities, contributors expose the hidden economy of institutional service, challenging the feminization of service labor in the academy for both female and male academic laborers.
The Agile Librarian's Guide to Thriving in Any Institution

2010
Michelynn McKnight

Agile librarians love their work and are appreciated for it. They have expertise in the practice of their profession and in the business of gaining and maintaining influence, as well as in effective marketing and public relations. This useful handbook describes and illustrates proven methods to get your library and information services the attention and support they deserve. Discover what your parent organization needs and values most. Delight your clients, your boss and non-librarian decision makers. Build a credible image and strengthen positive communication. Gather, analyze, and use valid evidence to support decisions. Keep your career green, growing and agile!

Agile librarians love their work and are appreciated for it. They have expertise in the practice of their profession and in the business of gaining and maintaining influence, as well as in effective marketing and public relations. This useful handbook describes and illustrates proven methods to get your library and information services the attention and support they deserve. Discover what your parent organization needs and values most. Delight your clients, your boss and non-librarian decision makers. Build a credible image and strengthen positive communication. Gather, analyze, and use valid evidence to support decisions. Keep your career green, growing and agile!
Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World

2010
Solimar Otero

Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World explores how Yoruba and Afro-Cuban communities moved across the Atlantic between the Americas and Africa in successive waves in the nineteenth century. In Havana, Yoruba slaves from Lagos banded together to buy their freedom and sail home to Nigeria. Once in Lagos, this Cuban repatriate community became known as the Aguda. This community built their own neighborhood that celebrated their Afrolatino heritage. For these Yoruba and Afro-Cuban diasporic populations, nostalgic constructions of family and community play the role of narrating and locating a longed-for home. By providing a link between the workings of nostalgia and the construction of home, this volume re-theorizes cultural imaginaries as a source for diasporic community reinvention. Through ethnographic fieldwork and research in folkloristics, Otero reveals that the Aguda identify strongly with their Afro-Cuban roots in contemporary times. Their fluid identity moves from Yoruba to Cuban, and back again, in a manner that illustrates the truly cyclical nature of transnational Atlantic community affiliation. Solimar Otero is Associate Professor of English and a folklorist at Louisiana State University. Her research centers on gender, sexuality, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and Yoruba traditional religion in folklore, literature and ethnography. Dr. Otero is the recipient of a Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund grant (2013), a fellowship at the Harvard Divinity School's Women's Studies in Religion Program (2009 to 2010), and a Fulbright award (2001).
Fathers on the Frontier: French Missionaries and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the United States, 1789-1870

2010
Michael Pasquier

In the late eighteenth century, French emigre priests fled the religious turmoil of the French Revolution and found themselves leading a new wave of Roman Catholic missionaries in the United States. Fathers on the Frontier explores the diverse ways these missionary priests guided thedevelopment of the early American church in Maryland, Kentucky, Louisiana, and other pockets of Catholic settlement throughout much of the trans-Appalachian West. Over the course of their evangelistic endeavor, this relatively small group of priests introduced Gallican, ultramontane, and missionaryprinciples to a nascent institutional church prior to the immigration of millions of European Catholics in the nineteenth century.As author Michael Pasquier shows, this transformation of American Catholicism did not come easily. Several generations of French priests struggled to reconcile their romantic expectations of missionary life with their actual experiences as servants of a foreign church scattered throughout afrontier region with limited access to friends and family members still in France. As they became more accustomed to the lifeways of the American South and West, French missionaries expressed anxiety about apparent discrepancies between how they were taught to practice the priesthood in Frenchseminaries and what the Holy See expected them to achieve as representatives of a universal missionary church.At no point did French missionaries engage more directly in distinctively American affairs than in the religious debates surrounding slavery, secession, and civil war. These issues, Pasquier argues, compelled even the most politically aloof missionaries to step out of the shadow of Rome and staketheir church on the side of the Confederacy. In so doing, they set in motion a strain of Catholicism more amenable to Southern concepts of social conservatism, paternalism, and white supremacy, and strikingly different from the liberal, progressive strain that historians have usually highlighted. Focusing on the collective thoughts, feelings, and actions of priests who found themselves caught between the formal canonical standards of the church and the informal experiences of missionaries in American culture, Fathers on the Frontier illuminates the historical intersection of American, French, and Roman interests in the United States.
Going North, Thinking West: The Intersections of Social Class, Critical Thinking, and Politicized Writing Instruction

2010
Irvin Peckham

A long-time writing program administrator and well-respected iconoclast, Irvin Peckham is strongly identified with progressive ideologies in education. However, in Going North Thinking West , Peckham mounts a serious critique of what is called critical pedagogy--primarily a project of the academic left--in spite of his own sympathies there. College composition is fundamentally a middle-class enterprise, and is conducted by middle-class professionals, while student demographics show increasing presence of the working class. In spite of best intentions to ameliorate inequitable social class relationships, says Peckham, critical pedagogies can actually contribute to reproducing those relationships in traditional forms--not only perpetuating social inequities, but pushing working class students toward self-alienation, as well. Peckham argues for more clarity on the history of critical thinking, social class structures and teacher identity (especially as these are theorized by Pierre Bourdieu), while he undertakes a critical inquiry of the teaching practices with which even he identifies. Going North Thinking West focuses especially on writing teachers who claim a necessary linkage between critical thinking and writing skills; these would include both teachers who promote the fairly a-political position that argumentation is the obvious and necessary form of academic discourse, and more controversial teachers who advocate turning a classroom into a productive site of social transformation. Ultimately, Peckham argues for a rereading of Freire (an icon of transformational pedagogy), and for a collaborative investigation of students' worlds as the first step in a successful writing pedagogy. It is an argument for a pedagogy based on service to students rather than on transforming them.
The LSU Rural Life Museum & Windrush Gardens: A Living History

2010
Faye Phillips

In 1861, Louisiana settler William S. Pike established an incredible five-hundred-acre plantation seven miles from the heart of present-day Baton Rouge. His progeny continued to cherish the land for generations, all while pursuing unique and active lives. William Stephen Pike Burden Jr. became an amateur magician, and Ollie Brice Steele Burden, inspired by the formal gardens of Europe, designed Windrush Gardens. Today, the land is home to Louisiana State University's Rural Life Museum and houses rare collections of Louisiana folk life and working plantation materials. In this comprehensive history of LSU's beloved landmark, archivist Faye Phillips brings to life the hardships and toils, vision and determination of families in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Louisiana.
Nonlinear Dynamics with Polymers: Fundamentals, Methods and Applications

2010
John Anthony Pojman

Closing a gap in the literature, this is the first comprehensive handbook on this modern and important polymer topic.
Edited by highly experienced and top scientists in the field, this ready reference covers all aspects, including material science, biopolymers, gels, phase separating systems, frontal polymerization and much more.
The introductory chapter offers the perfect starting point for the non-expert.
The Origins of Responsibility

2010
François Raffoul

François Raffoul approaches the concept of responsibility in a manner that is distinct from its traditional interpretation as accountability of the wilful subject. Exploring responsibility in the works of Nietzsche, Sartre, Levinas, Heidegger, and Derrida, Raffoul identifies decisive moments in the development of the concept, retrieves its origins, and explores new reflections on it. For Raffoul, responsibility is less about a sovereign subject establishing a sphere of power and control than about exposure to an event that does not come from us and yet calls to us. These original and thoughtful investigations of the post-metaphysical senses of responsibility chart new directions for ethics in the continental tradition.
Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles

2010
Panthea Reid

In Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles , Panthea Reid examines the complex life of this iconic feminist hero and twentieth-century literary giant.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Tillie Olsen spent her young adulthood there, in Kansas City, and in Faribault, Minnesota. She relocated to California in 1933 and lived most of her life in San Francisco. From 1962 on, she sojourned frequently in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Santa Cruz, and Soquel, California. She was a 1920s "hell-cat"; a 1930s revolutionary; an early 1940s crusader for equal pay for equal work and a war-relief patriot; an ex-GI's ideal wife in the later 1940s; a victim of FBI surveillance in the 1950s;a civil rights and antiwar advocate during the 1960s and 1970s; and a life-long orator for universal human rights.

The enigma of Tillie Olsen is intertwined with that of the twentieth century. From the rebellions in Czarist Russia, through the terrors of the Depression and the hopes of the New Deal, to World War II, the Nuremberg Trials, and the United Nations' founding, to the cold war and House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, to later progressive and repressive movements, the story of Olsen's life brings remote events into focus.

In her classic short story "I Stand Here Ironing" and her groundbreaking Tell Me a Riddle, Yonnondido, and Silences, Olsen scripted powerful, moving prose about ordinary people's lives, exposing the pervasive effects of sexism, racism, and classism and elevating motherhood and women's creativity into topics of study. Popularly referred to as "Saint Tillie," Olsen was hailed by many as the mother of modern feminism.

Based on diaries, letters, manuscripts, private documents, resurrected public records, and countless interviews, Reid's artfully crafted biography untangles some of the puzzling knots of the last century's triumphs and failures and speaks truth to legend, correcting fabrications and myths about and also by Tillie Olsen.
Groupthink Versus High-Quality Decision Making in International Relations

2010
Mark Schafer

Are good and bad outcomes significantly affected by the decision-making process itself? Indeed they are, in that certain decision-making techniques and practices limit the ability of policymakers to achieve their goals and advance the national interest.

The success of policy often turns on the quality of the decision-making process. Mark Schafer and Scott Crichlow identify the factors that contribute to good and bad policymaking, such as the personalities of political leaders, the structure of decision-making groups, and the nature of the exchange between participating individuals. Analyzing thirty-nine foreign-policy cases across nine administrations and incorporating both statistical analyses and case studies, including a detailed examination of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, the authors pinpoint the factors that are likely to lead to successful or failed decision making, and they suggest ways to improve the process. Schafer and Crichlow show how the staffing of key offices and the structure of central decision-making bodies determine the path of an administration even before topics are introduced. Additionally, they link the psychological characteristics of leaders to the quality of their decision processing. There is no greater work available on understanding and improving the dynamics of contemporary decision making.
1927 and the Rise of Modern America

2010
Charles J. Shindo

When Charles Lindbergh landed at LeBourget Airfield on May 21, 1927, his transatlantic flight symbolized the new era-not only in aviation but also in American culture. The 1920s proved to be a transitional decade for the United States, shifting the nation from a production-driven economy to a consumption-based one, with adventurous citizens breaking new ground even as many others continued clinging to an outmoded status quo.

In his new book, Charles Shindo reveals how one year in particular encapsulated the complexity of this transformation in American culture. Shindo's absorbing look at 1927 shatters the stereotypes of the Roaring '20s as a time of frivolity and excess, revealing instead a society torn between holding on to its glorious past while trying to navigate a brave new world. His book is a compelling and entertaining dissection of the year that has come to represent the apex of 1920s culture, combining references from popular films, music, literature, sports, and politics in a captivating look back at change in the making.

As Shindo notes, while Lindbergh's flight was a defining event, there were others: The Jazz Singer, for example, brought sound to the movies, and the 15 millionth Model T rolled off of Ford's assembly line. Meanwhile, the era's supposed live-for-today frivolity was clouded by Prohibition, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, and the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Such events, Shindo explains, reflected a fundamental disquiet running beneath the surface of a nation seeking to accommodate and understand a broad array of changes--from new technology to natural disasters, from women's forays into the electorate to African-Americans' migration to the urban north.

Shindo, however, also notes that this was an era of celebrity. He not only examines why Lindbergh and Ford were celebrated but also considers the rise and growing popularity of the infamous, like convicted murderers Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray, and he illuminates the explosive growth of professional sports and stars like baseball's Babe Ruth. In addition, he takes a close look at cinematic heroines like Mary Pickford and the "It" girl Clara Bow to demonstrate the conflicting images of women in popular culture.

Distinctive and insightful, Shindo's richly detailed analysis of 1927's key events and personalities reveals the multifaceted ways in which people actually came to grips with change and learned to embrace an increasingly modern America.
Activities for Elementary School Social Studies

2010
James W. Stockard

Revised edition of the invaluable guidebook for developing interest, meaning, and true understanding in the classroom! According to Piaget, all higher-order thinking skills have their bases in activities involving concrete manipulation and observation. The third edition of this highly regarded collection of social studies activities, now with new contributing author Mary Margaret Wogan, continues to be based on the premise that children learn best through experiences and activities learning by doing. It features new activities for each social studies category (geography, history, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, and interdisciplinary). Three important additions to the key elements of the easy-to-follow activity format make it easier for instructors to meet standards-based curriculum requirements:

- A detailed treatment of National Council of Social Studies standards addressed

- Specific multiple intelligences addressed (This concept is reinforced by a new multiple intelligences section in the back of the book)

- Useful Web site(s) for group/individual research (URLs for sites that will expand or enrich the learning experience for the activity)

By engaging pupils in meaningful, worthwhile social studies activities, instructors can emphasize the processes of learning rather than the products, resulting in a richly rewarding experience for pupils and teacher alike.
Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery via Logic-Based Methods: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications

2010
Evangelos Triantaphyllou

The importance of having ef cient and effective methods for data mining and kn- ledge discovery (DM&KD), to which the present book is devoted, grows every day and numerous such methods have been developed in recent decades. There exists a great variety of different settings for the main problem studied by data mining and knowledge discovery, and it seems that a very popular one is formulated in terms of binary attributes. In this setting, states of nature of the application area under consideration are described by Boolean vectors de ned on some attributes. That is, by data points de ned in the Boolean space of the attributes. It is postulated that there exists a partition of this space into two classes, which should be inferred as patterns on the attributes when only several data points are known, the so-called positive and negative training examples. The main problem in DM&KD is de ned as nding rules for recognizing (cl- sifying) new data points of unknown class, i. e. , deciding which of them are positive and which are negative. In other words, to infer the binary value of one more attribute, called the goal or class attribute. To solve this problem, some methods have been suggested which construct a Boolean function separating the two given sets of positive and negative training data points.
Elements of Environmental Engineering: Thermodynamics and Kinetics

2010
Kalliat T. Valsaraj

Revised, updated, and rewritten where necessary, but keeping the clear writing and organizational style that made previous editions so popular, Elements of Environmental Engineering: Thermodynamics and Kinetics, Third Editioncontains new problems and new examples that better illustrate theory. The new edition contains examples with practical flavor such as global warming, ozone layer depletion, nanotechnology, green chemistry, and green engineering. With detailed theoretical discussion and principles illuminated by numerical examples, this book fills the gaps in coverage of the principles and applications of kinetics and thermodynamics in environmental engineering and science.

New topics covered include:

Green Chemistry and Engineering Biological Processes Life Cycle Analysis Global Climate Change

The author discusses the applications of thermodynamics and kinetics and delineates the distribution of pollutants and the interrelationships between them. His demonstration of the theoretical foundations of chemical property estimations gives students an in depth understanding of the limitations of thermodynamics and kinetics as applied to environmental fate and transport modeling and separation processes for waste treatment. His treatment of the material underlines the multidisciplinary nature of environmental engineering.

This book is unusual in environmental engineering since it deals exclusively with the applications of chemical thermodynamics and kinetics in environmental processes. The book's multimedia approach to fate and transport modeling and in pollution control design options provides a science and engineering treatment of environmental problems.
Computational Science ICCS 2009, Part I

2009
Gabrielle Allen

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a tri?ing investment of fact. " Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi The challenges in succeeding with computational science are numerous and deeply a?ect all disciplines. NSF's 2006 Blue Ribbon Panel of Simulation-Based 1 Engineering Science (SBES) states 'researchers and educators [agree]: com- tational and simulation engineering sciences are fundamental to the security and welfare of the United States. . . We must overcome di?culties inherent in multiscale modeling, the development of next-generation algorithms, and the design. . . of dynamic data-driven application systems. . . We must determine better ways to integrate data-intensive computing, visualization, and simulation. - portantly,wemustoverhauloureducationalsystemtofostertheinterdisciplinary study. . . The payo?sformeeting these challengesareprofound. 'The International Conference on Computational Science 2009 (ICCS 2009) explored how com- tational sciences are not only advancing the traditional hard science disciplines, but also stretching beyond, with applications in the arts, humanities, media and all aspects of research. This interdisciplinary conference drew academic and industry leaders from a variety of ?elds, including physics, astronomy, mat- matics,music,digitalmedia,biologyandengineering. Theconferencealsohosted computer and computational scientists who are designing and building the - ber infrastructure necessary for next-generation computing. Discussions focused on innovative ways to collaborate and how computational science is changing the future of research. ICCS 2009: 'Compute. Discover. Innovate. ' was hosted by the Center for Computation and Technology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
Computational Science ICCS 2009, Part II

2009
Gabrielle Allen

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a tri?ing investment of fact. " Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi The challenges in succeeding with computational science are numerous and deeply a?ect all disciplines. NSF's 2006 Blue Ribbon Panel of Simulation-Based 1 Engineering Science (SBES) states 'researchers and educators [agree]: com- tational and simulation engineering sciences are fundamental to the security and welfare of the United States. . . We must overcome di?culties inherent in multiscale modeling, the development of next-generation algorithms, and the design. . . of dynamic data-driven application systems. . . We must determine better ways to integrate data-intensive computing, visualization, and simulation. - portantly,wemustoverhauloureducationalsystemtofostertheinterdisciplinary study. . . The payo?sformeeting these challengesareprofound. 'The International Conference on Computational Science 2009 (ICCS 2009) explored how com- tational sciences are not only advancing the traditional hard science disciplines, but also stretching beyond, with applications in the arts, humanities, media and all aspects of research. This interdisciplinary conference drew academic and industry leaders from a variety of ?elds, including physics, astronomy, mat- matics,music,digitalmedia,biologyandengineering. Theconferencealsohosted computer and computational scientists who are designing and building the - ber infrastructure necessary for next-generation computing. Discussions focused on innovative ways to collaborate and how computational science is changing the future of research. ICCS 2009: 'Compute. Discover. Innovate. ' was hosted by the Center for Computation and Technology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
Draculas, Vampires, and Other Undead Forms: Essays on Gender, Race, and Culture

2009
John Edgar Browning

Since the publication of Dracula in 1897, Bram Stoker's original creation has been a source of inspiration for countless artists, writers, and filmmakers. From Universal's early black-and-white films to Hammer's Technicolor representations, iterations of Dracula have become cemented in mainstream cinema. This anthology investigates and explores the far larger body of work that has reinvented Dracula from sources beyond such films.
Lifespan Perspectives on Natural Disasters: Coping with Katrina, Rita, and Other Storms

2009
Katie E. Cherry

Some of our most disturbing images of Hurricane Katrina involve the very old, trapped in flooded nursing homes, and the very young, sick in toxic trailers. Using the Katrina-Rita nexus as its reference point, Lifespan Perspectives on Natural Disasters takes the developmental long view on human strengths and vulnerabilities during large-scale devastation and crisis. An expert panel of behavioral scientists and first responders analyzes the psychological impact of natural disasters on--and coping faculties associated with--children, adolescents, and young, middle-aged, older, young-old and late-life oldest-old adults. This timely information is invaluable both to mental health service providers and to those tasked with developing age-appropriate disaster preparedness, intervention, and recovery programs. In addition, the book references other deadly storms as well as other major catastrophic events (e.g., the September 11 attacks, the Indian Ocean Tsunami), and includes such topics as:

Young children's understanding of hurricanes. Positive adjustment in youth after Katrina. How families make meaning out of disaster. Disaster recovery in the workplace. Recovery services for the frail elderly. Coping and health in late life. Preparation and training mental health personnel for disasters.

Unique in the disaster literature, Lifespan Perspectives on Natural Disasters serves as a research reference and idea book for professionals and graduate-level students in psychology, social work, and disaster preparedness and services.
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess

2009
Andrei Codrescu

This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life." --The Posthuman Dada Guide

The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world--all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. This epic game at Zurich's Café de la Terrasse--a battle between radical visions of art and ideological revolution--lasted for a century and may still be going on, although communism appears dead and Dada stronger than ever. As the poet faces the future mass murderer over the chessboard, neither realizes that they are playing for the world. Taking the match as metaphor for two poles of twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought, politics, and life, Andrei Codrescu has created his own brilliantly Dadaesque guide to Dada--and to what it can teach us about surviving our ultraconnected present and future. Here dadaists Duchamp, Ball, and von Freytag-Loringhoven and communists Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev appear live in company with later incarnations, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gilles Deleuze, and Newt Gingrich. The Posthuman Dada Guide is arranged alphabetically for quick reference and (some) nostalgia for order, with entries such as "eros (women)," "internet(s)," and "war." Throughout, it is written in the belief "that posthumans lining the road to the future (which looks as if it exists, after all, even though Dada is against it) need the solace offered by the primal raw energy of Dada and its inhuman sources.
Philosophy Through Video Games

2009
Jon Cogburn

How can Wii Sports teach us about metaphysics?

Can playing World of Warcraft lead to greater self-consciousness?

How can we learn about aesthetics, ethics and divine attributes from
Zork, Grand Theft Auto, and Civilization?

A variety of increasingly sophisticated video games are rapidly overtaking books, films, and television as America's most popular form of media entertainment. It is estimated that by 2011 over 30 percentnbsp;of US households will own a Wii console - about the same percentage that owned a television in 1953.

In Philosophy Through Video Games, Jon Cogburn and Mark Silcox - philosophers with game industry experience - investigate the aesthetic appeal of video games, their effect on our morals, the insights they give us into our understanding of perceptual knowledge, personal identity, artificial intelligence, and the very meaning of life itself, arguing that video games are popular precisely because they engage with longstanding philosophical problems.

Topics covered include:

* The Problem of the External World

* Dualism and Personal Identity

* Artificial and Human Intelligence in the Philosophy of Mind

* The Idea of Interactive Art

* The Moral Effects of Video Games

* Games and God's Goodness

Games discussed include:

Madden Football, Wii Sports, Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft, Sims Online, Second Life, Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, Elder Scrolls, Zork, EverQuest Doom, Halo 2, Grand Theft Auto, Civilization, Mortal Kombat, Rome: Total War, Black and White, Aidyn Chronicles