Research & Innovation

People are often given this identif ier in order to live into something, for better or worse, that may signify their progenitors’ current circumstance, or even as a response to occasions of intrauterine vicissitudes prior to in-breaking.

Derived from the word "to propagate," the idea and practice of propaganda concerns nothing less than the ways in which human beings communicate, particularly with respect to the creation and widespread dissemination of attitudes, images, and beliefs. Much larger than its pejorative connotations suggest, propaganda can more neutrally be understood as a central means of organizing and shaping thought and perception, a practice that has been a pervasive feature of the twentieth century and that touches on many fields. It has been seen as both a positive and negative force, although abuses under the Third Reich and during the Cold War have caused the term to stand in, most recently, as a synonym for untruth and brazen manipulation.

Propaganda analysis of the 1950s to 1989 too often took the form of empirical studies about the efficacy of specific methods, with larger questions about the purposes and patterns of mass persuasion remaining unanswered. In the present moment where globalization and transnationality are arguably as important as older nation forms, when media enjoy near ubiquity throughout the globe, when various fundamentalisms are ascendant, and when debates rage about neoliberalism, it is urgent that we have an up-to-date resource that considers propaganda as a force of culture writ large.

The handbook will include twenty-two essays by leading scholars from a variety of disciplines, divided into three sections. In addition to dealing with the thorny question of definition, the handbook will take up an expansive set of assumptions and a full range of approaches that move propaganda beyond political campaigns and warfare to examine a wide array of cultural contexts and practices.

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Focusing on cultural politics, Ontiveros reveals neglected stories about the Chicano movement and its impact: how writers used the street press to push back against the network news; how visual artists such as Santa Barraza used painting, installations, and mixed media to challenge racism in mainstream environmentalism; how El Teatro Campesino’s innovative “actos,” or short skits,sought to embody new, more inclusive forms of citizenship; and how Sandra Cisneros and other Chicana novelists broadened the narrative of the Chicano movement. In the Spirit of a New People articulates a fresh understanding of how the Chicano movement contributed to the social and political currents of postwar America, and how the movement remains meaningful today.

From the publisher:

Lucky That Way, a nuanced, richly engaging memoir, chronicles the joys and tribulations of a daughter who rediscovers her father as he nears the end of his life. Ernie Gerhardt, an artist and teacher, is largely estranged from his five children, but when he suffers a debilitating stroke, his daughter Pamela must fly to Las Vegas to tend to him. This is Pamela Gerhardt’s heartfelt story about a family coming to terms with their aging father’s illness and imminent death takes readers on an emotional roller coaster that highlights love, loss, humor, and sadness.

Awards

Lucky That Way won the 2014 award for the best memoir from the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville provides timely, critical essays on Melville's classic works. The essays have been specially commissioned for this volume and provide a complete overview of Melville's career. Melville's major novels are discussed, along with a range of his short fiction and poetry, including neglected works ripe for rediscovery. The volume includes essays on such new topics as Melville and oceanic studies, Melville and animal studies, and Melville and the planetary, along with a number of essays that focus on form and aesthetics. Written at a level both challenging and accessible, this New Companion brings together a team of leading international scholars to offer students of American literature the most comprehensive introduction available to Melville's art.

Julie R. Enszer's second collection mines the multiple meanings of sisterhood, exploring the burdens and joys of sisters, real and imagined. These poems ache with loss: of a sister, of friends from AIDS, of elder poets, of innocence, of exuberance and idealism in middle age. But at the same time, these poems affirm life: the desire of humans to live, to hold one another tightly, to build new ways of living amid fragile remains.

This unique literary anthology is devoted to unruly Catholic women. In short stories, poems, personal essays, and drama, the contributors describe women’s struggles with Catholicism and also complicate contemporary understandings of women’s relationships to their faith. Catholicism often oppresses the women in these creative pieces, but it also inspires them to challenge literary, social, political, and religious hierarchies. The collection reflects the considerations of a wide range of women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, geographic locations, and generations; they encompass the gamut of reactions to the Catholic experience—humor, anger, nostalgia, critique, appreciation, and engagement or rejection on one’s own terms. Authors address real life versus Catholic dogma, motherhood, childhood, alienation from the Church, Catholic school days, mentors and exemplary figures, Church strictures on women’s sexualities, and leaving or remaining in the Church among many other experiences. Readers will find this a rich and multifaceted exploration, one that offers new perspectives and moments of recognition.

Reexamining the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, In the Spirit of a New People brings to light new insights about social activism in the twentieth-century and new lessons for progressive politics in the twenty-first. Randy J. Ontiveros explores the ways in which Chicano/a artists and activists used fiction, poetry, visual arts, theater, and other expressive forms to forge a common purpose and to challenge inequality in America.

Focusing on cultural politics, Ontiveros reveals neglected stories about the Chicano movement and its impact: how writers used the street press to push back against the network news; how visual artists such as Santa Barraza used painting, installations, and mixed media to challenge racism in mainstream environmentalism; how El Teatro Campesino’s innovative “actos,” or short skits,sought to embody new, more inclusive forms of citizenship; and how Sandra Cisneros and other Chicana novelists broadened the narrative of the Chicano movement. In the Spirit of a New People articulates a fresh understanding of how the Chicano movement contributed to the social and political currents of postwar America, and how the movement remains meaningful today.

Read more at the publisher's website.

"Finding Gordon Lipschitz" is the story of one man's desperate search for his long-lost friend and high school valedictorian. At his twenty-five year high school reunion, Harris Greenberg realizes that his once promising life has turned into a depressing failure. When he discovers that Gordon Lipschitz hasn't been seen since graduation, Harris embarks on a desperate mission to find him. Enlisting the help of old friends, Gordon is found in the most unlikely place, a shell of his former self. The search becomes a journey of self-discovery for four friends whose lives turned out much differently than any of them expected.

Based on material from Byzantine and Old Church Slavonic homilies and from Byzantine rhetorical commentaries, the book redefines and expands our understanding of both Byzantine and Old Church Slavonic prose rhythm. It positions rhetorical rhythm at the intersection of prose and poetry and explores its role in argumentation and persuasion, suggesting that rhetorical rhythm can carry across linguistic boundaries, and in general aims to demonstrate the stylistic and argumentative importance of rhythm in rhetorical practice. Along the way, it challenges the entrenched separation between content and style and emphasizes the role of rhythm as a tool of invention and a means of creating shared emotional experience.