What's New

• You Know My Method Van Dover, J. K. You Know My Method
  Abstract:

  You Know My Method surveys the century following Edgar Allan Poe's invention of the fictional detective in 1841. The same century saw the development of the idea of the scientist as a person who defined himself by his use of a disciplined method of inquiry. By 1940, the detective had established himself as the most popular figure in literature, and science had become the custodian of truth in the modern world. These two developments were not unrelated.

  The four principal writers covered are Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, R. Austin Freeman, and Arthur B. Reeve. Another dozen more writers are treated somewhat more briefly: Gaboriau, Pinkerton, Green, Morrison, Futrelle, and Leroux, among others.

  Authors: Van Dover, J. K.
  Keywords: Detective Fiction; Science; Literary History; Mystery
• The Other Mother: A Lesbian's Fight for Her Daughter Abrams, Nancy The Other Mother: A Lesbian's Fight for Her Daughter
  Abstract:

  On a spring day in 1993, Nancy Abrams helped her daughter dress for day care, packed her lunch, and said good-bye. Next she drove to court, where she learned that in the eyes of the law she was nothing more than "a biological stranger" to the child she helped bring into the world and raise. That was the last time she would see her daughter or hear her voice for five years.

  The Other Mother begins as Abrams and her female lover decide to start a family together. With giddy anticipation, they search for a sperm donor, shop for baby clothes and crib, and attend childbirth classes. But despite their high hopes, the relationship begins to fall apart, and they separate when their daughter is a toddler. Problems between the two intensify until, shortly before her daughter's fifth birthday, Abrams loses custody.

  In unprecedented depth, Abrams's compelling narrative examines the social, legal, and political implications of gay and lesbian parenting. Her haunting memoir asks the question, "What makes a mother?" It is a question that biological parents, co-parents, adoptive parents, step-parents, and divorced parents must each answer in their own way. In telling one woman's story, The Other Mother makes a solid case for legal protections, including marriage, for lesbian and gay families.

  Authors: Abrams, Nancy
  Keywords: GLBT; Homosexuality; Lesbian Studies; Motherhood; Biography; Autobiography
• Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History Anderson, Norman D. Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History
  Abstract:

  The Ferris wheel, perhaps more than any other amusement ride, symbolizes all that is magic about amusement parks and county fairs. Towering above the carousel, hot dog stands, and kiddie rides, the Ferris wheel lifts young and old alike for never-to-be forgotten views. Few passengers forget their first ride on the queen of the midway and the sensations they felt when the rapidly spinning wheel carried them over the top.

  Authors: Anderson, Norman D.
  Keywords: American Studies; Ferris Wheel; Carnival; Engineering
• Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target: The Functions of Criticism in Our Time Arac, Jonathan Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target: The Functions of Criticism in Our Time
  Abstract:

  If racially offensive epithets are banned on CNN air time and in the pages of USA Today, Jonathan Arac asks, shouldn't a fair hearing be given to those who protest their use in an eighth-grade classroom? Placing Mark Twain's comic masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn, in the context of long-standing American debates about race and culture, Jonathan Arac has written a work of scholarship in the service of citizenship.

  Huckleberry Finn, Arac points out, is America's most beloved book, assigned in schools more than any other work because it is considered both the "quintessential American novel" and "an important weapon against racism." But when some parents, students, and teachers have condemned the book's repeated use of racist words their protests have been vehemently and often snidely countered by cultural authorities, whether in the universities or in the New York Times and the Washington Post. The paradoxical result, Arac contends, is to reinforce racist structures in our society and to make a sacred text of an important book that deserves thoughtful reading and criticism. Arac does not want to ban Huckleberry Finn, but to provide a context for fairer, fuller, and better-informed debates.

  Arac shows how, as the Cold War began and the Civil Rights movement took hold, the American critics Lionel Trilling, Henry Nash Smith, and Leo Marx transformed the public image of Twain's novel from a popular "boy's book" to a central document of American culture. Huck's feelings of brotherhood with the slave Jim, it was implied, represented all that was right and good in American culture and democracy. Drawing on writings by novelists, literary scholars, journalists, and historians, Arac revisits the era of the novel's setting in the 1840s, the period in the 1880s when Twain wrote and published the book, and the post–World War II era, to refute many deeply entrenched assumptions about Huckleberry Finn and its place in cultural history, both nationally and globally. Encompassing discussion of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, Archie Bunker, James Baldwin, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, and Mark Fuhrman.

  Authors: Arac, Jonathan
  Keywords: American Studies; Huckleberry Finn; Mark Twain; Literary Criticism; Mississippi River; Race Relations; Lionel trilling; Nationalism
• Elizabethan Popular Culture Ashley, Leonard R. N. Elizabethan Popular Culture
  Abstract:

  Leonard R. N. Ashley delights readers with a collection of facts and folklore of the people of Queen Elizabeth I's era. He describes sports and pastimes, religion and superstition, cooking, life in town and country, and the rising bourgeois class. In chapters titled "Cakes and Ale," "The Playhouse and the Bearbaiting Pit," and "Hey nonny nonny," Ashley paints an enlightening portrait of a time made memorable by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

  Authors: Ashley, Leonard R. N.
  Keywords: Europoean Studies; Elizabethan; Popular Culture
• The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century Baldasty, Gerald J. The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century
  Abstract:

  The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century traces the major transformation of newspapers from a politically based press to a commercially based press in the nineteenth century.

  Gerald J. Baldasty argues that broad changes in American society, the national economy, and the newspaper industry brought about this dramatic shift.

  Increasingly in the nineteenth century, news became a commodity valued more for its profitablility than for its role in informing or persuading the public on political issues. Newspapers started out as highly partisan adjuncts of political parties. As advertisers replaced political parties as the chief financial support of the press, they influenced newspapers in directing their content toward consumers, especially women. The results were recipes, fiction, contests, and features on everything from sports to fashion alongside more standard news about politics.

  Baldasty makes use of nineteenth-century materials —newspapers from throughout the era, manuscript letters from journalists and politicians, journalism and advertising trade publications, government reports—to document the changing role of the press during the period. He identifies three important phases: the partisan newspapers of the Jacksonian era (1825–1835), the transition of the press in the middle of the century, and the influence of commercialization of the news in the last two decades of the century.

  Authors: Baldasty, Gerald J.
  Keywords: Media Studies; Commercialization; Journalism; 19th Century; Advertising
• The American Film Industry Balio, Tino The American Film Industry
  Abstract:

  Upon its original publication in 1976, The American Film Industry was welcomed by film students, scholars, and fans as the first systematic and unified history of the American movie industry. Now this indispensible anthology has been expanded and revised to include a fresh introductory overview by editor Tino Balio and ten new chapters that explore such topics as the growth of exhibition as big business, the mode of production for feature films, the star as market strategy, and the changing economics and structure of contemporary entertainment companies. The result is a unique collection of essays, more comprehensive and current than ever, that reveals how the American movie industry really worked in a century of constant change-from kinetoscopes and the coming of sound to the star system, 1950s blacklisting, and today's corporate empires.

  Authors: Balio, Tino
  Keywords: Film and Theater Studies; Film; Film Industry; Film History; Cinema
• Outlawed Pigs: Law, Religion, and Culture in Israel Barak-Erez, Daphne Outlawed Pigs: Law, Religion, and Culture in Israel
  Abstract:

  The prohibition against pigs is one of the most powerful symbols of Jewish culture and collective memory. Outlawed Pigs explores how the historical sensitivity of Jews to the pig prohibition was incorporated into Israeli law and culture.

  Daphne Barak-Erez specifically traces the course of two laws, one that authorized municipalities to ban the possession and trading in pork within their jurisdiction and another law that forbids pig breeding throughout Israel, except for areas populated mainly by Christians. Her analysis offers a comprehensive, decade-by-decade discussion of the overall relationship between law and culture since the inception of the Israeli nation-state.

  By examining ever-fluctuating Israeli popular opinion on Israel's two laws outlawing the trade and possession of pigs, Barak-Erez finds an interesting and accessible way to explore the complex interplay of law, religion, and culture in modern Israel, and more specifically a microcosm for the larger question of which lies more at the foundation of Israeli state law: religion or cultural tradition.

  Authors: Barak-Erez, Daphne
  Keywords: Food; Law; Religion; Judaism; Islam; Israel; Pork; Symbols
• The Gentle Art of Murder: The Detective Fiction of Agatha Christie Bargainnier, Earl F. The Gentle Art of Murder: The Detective Fiction of Agatha Christie
  Abstract:

  This study of the technique of Agatha Christie's detective fiction-sixty-seven novels and more than one hundred short stories—is the first extensive analysis of her accomplishments as a writer. Bargainnier demonstrates that Christie thoroughly understood the conventions of her genre and, with seemingly inexhaustible ingenuity, was able to develop for more than fifty years surprising variations within those conventions.

  Authors: Bargainnier, Earl F.
  Keywords: Mystery; Agatha Christie; Fiction; Thriller; Dectective
• Oy Pioneer!: A Novel Barr, Marleen S. Oy Pioneer!: A Novel
  Abstract:

  What would happen if a feminist Jewish wit and scholar invaded David Lodge's territory? Marleen S. Barr, herself a pioneer in the feminist criticism of science fiction, provides a giddily entertaining answer in this feisty novel. Oy Pioneer! follows professor Sondra Lear as she makes her inimitable way through a world of learning—at times fantastic, at times all too familiar, often hilarious, and always compulsively interesting.

  As if Mel Brooks and Erica Jong had joined forces to recreate Sex and the City for the intellectual set, the story is a heady mix of Jewish humor, feminist insight, and academic satire. Lear is a tenured radical and a wildly ambitious intellectual, but is subject nonetheless to the husband-hunting imperatives of her Jewish mother. Her adventures expand narrative parameters according to Barr's term "genre fission."

  Mixing elements of science fiction, fantasy, ethnic comedy, satire, and authentic experience of academic life, Oy Pioneer! is uncommonly fun—a Jewish feminist scholar's imaginative text boldly going where no academic satire has gone before—and bringing readers along for an exhilarating ride.

  Authors: Barr, Marleen S.
  Keywords: Science Fiction; Novel; Fiction; Jewish Women; Virginia; Women Teachers
• In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies Bendix, Regina In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies
  Abstract:

  Authenticity is a notion much debated, among discussants as diverse as cultural theorists and art dealers, music critics and tour operators. The desire to find and somehow capture or protect the "authentic" narrative, art object, or ceremonial dance is hardly new. In this masterful examination of German and American folklore studies from the eighteenth century to the present, Regina Bendix demonstrates that the longing for authenticity remains deeply implicated in scholarly approaches to cultural analysis.

  Searches for authenticity, Bendix contends, have been a constant companion to the feelings of loss inherent in modernization, forever upholding a belief in a pristine yet endangered cultural essence and fueling cultural nationalism worldwide. Beginning with precursors of Herder and Emerson and the "discovery" of the authentic in expressive culture and literature, she traces the different, albeit intertwined, histories of German Volkskunde and American folklore studies. A Swiss native educated in American folklore programs, Bendix moves effortlessly between the two traditions, demonstrating how the notion of authenticity was used not only to foster national causes, but also to lay the foundations for categories of documentation and analysis within the nascent field of folklore studies.

  Bendix shows that, in an increasingly transcultural world, where Zulu singers back up Paul Simon and where indigenous artists seek copyright for their traditional crafts, the politics of authenticity mingles with the forces of the market. Arguing against the dichotomies implied in the very idea of authenticity, she underscores the emptiness of efforts to distinguish between folklore and fakelore, between echt and ersatz.

  Authors: Bendix, Regina
  Keywords: Folklore/Mythology; Folklore; Germany; Philosophy; Romanticism
• Cannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and Sexuality Berglund, Jeff Cannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and Sexuality
  Abstract:

  Objects of fear and fascination, cannibals have long signified an elemental "otherness," an existence outside the bounds of normalcy. In the American imagination, the figure of the cannibal has evolved tellingly over time, as Jeff Berglund shows in this study encompassing a strikingly eclectic collection of cultural, literary, and cinematic texts.

  Cannibal Fictions brings together two discrete periods in U.S. history: the years between the Civil War and World War I, the high-water mark in America's imperial presence, and the post-Vietnam era, when the nation was beginning to seriously question its own global agenda. Berglund shows how P. T. Barnum, in a traveling exhibit featuring so-called "Fiji cannibals," served up an alien "other" for popular consumption, while Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Tarzan of the Apes series tapped into similar anxieties about the eruption of foreign elements into a homogeneous culture. Turning to the last decades of the twentieth century, Berglund considers how treatments of cannibalism variously perpetuated or subverted racist, sexist, and homophobic ideologies rooted in earlier times. Fannie Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes invokes cannibalism to new effect, offering an explicit critique of racial, gender, and sexual politics (an element to a large extent suppressed in the movie adaptation). Recurring motifs in writing by contemporary American Indian authors Gerald Vizenor, Anna Lee Walters, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Sherman Alexie suggest how Western expansion has, cannibalistically, laid the seeds of its own destruction. And James Dobson's recent efforts to use allegations of cannibalism in China to energize his pro-life agenda testify still further to the currency and pervasiveness of this powerful trope.

  By highlighting practices that preclude the many from becoming one, these representations of cannibalism, Berglund argues, call into question the comforting national narrative of e pluribus unum.

  Authors: Berglund, Jeff
  Keywords: American History; Colonialism; Race; Gender; Sexuality; Literary Criticism; Cannibalism; Abortion
• The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb: An American Slave Bibb, Henry The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb: An American Slave
  Abstract:

  First published in 1849 and largely unavailable for many years, The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb is among the most remarkable slave narratives. Born on a Kentucky plantation in 1815, Bibb first attempted to escape from bondage at the age of ten. He was recaptured and escaped several more times before he eventually settled in Detroit, Michigan, and joined the antislavery movement as a lecturer.

  Bibb's story is different in many ways from the widely read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. He was owned by a Native American; he is one of the few ex-slave autobiographers who had labored in the Deep South (Louisiana); and he writes about folkways of the slaves, especially how he used conjure to avoid punishment and to win the hearts of women. Most significant, he is unique in exploring the importance of marriage and family to him, recounting his several trips to free his wife and child. This new edition includes an introduction by literary scholar Charles Heglar and a selection of letters and editorials by Bibb.

  Authors: Bibb, Henry
  Keywords: African and African American Studies; Autobiography; Slavery; Kentucky; Henry Bibb; Biography; Slave Narrative
• Theo: An Autobiography Bikel, Theodore Theo: An Autobiography
  Abstract:

  An award-winning actor on screen and stage (The Defiant Ones, The African Queen, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof), an activist for civil rights and progressive causes worldwide, and a singer whose voice has won him great applause, Theodore Bikel here tells his own compelling life story. Born in Austria, raised in Palestine, educated in England, and with a stellar career in the United States and around the world, Bikel offers a personal history parallel to momentous events of the twentieth century. In an eloquent, fiercely committed voice, he writes of the Third Reich, the birth of the State of Israel, the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s, and the tumultuous 1960s in America. In a new postscript to this paperback edition, he looks at recent events in the Middle East and takes both sides to task for their excesses.

  Authors: Bikel, Theodore
  Keywords: Autobiography; Acting; Singing; Judiasm; Biography