Research & Innovation

Creolization describes the cultural adaptations that occur when a community moves to a new geographic setting. Exploring the consciousness of peoples defined as "creoles" who moved from the Old World to the New World, this collection of eighteen original essays investigates the creolization of literary forms and genres in the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Two friends with the same first name present the true story of their lives told in a way never before seen. Born from their extraordinary friendship, this fresh, zine-like book tells of their passage into adulthood through poems and bold full-color images interwoven throughout.

Rather than regarding the bodily exterior as the primary location in which identity categories—such as gender, sexuality, race, and disability—are expressed, he focuses on the interior experience of sensation, whereby these politics come to be felt.

Modeled on but not identical to Cayce Pollard's “violent reactivity to the semiotics of the marketplace,” Gibson's proposed coolhunting ethos treats the brand name as a cognitive map of the multinational economic supply chains that underlie the glossy surface of the brand.

Imagine you step into a vintage clothing store in a new city. You see: the usual mix of leather jackets, crinoline, motorcycle t-shirts, a yellow sundress, a poison ring. Only all of these clothes belong to Alison Stine, and she's there, saying, "Try this-- it'll fit you better" or "This shirt I've never even worn." As you stand in front of the full-length mirror, tags dangling from your sleeves, you start to see, slowly, what Stine sees: A bullied girl in a science classroom; a sleight-of-hand trick in a dark auditorium; a teenager running in snow from a party.

Alison Stine loans us her poems like costumes to try or weapons to borrow. Like magic tools, they carry a risk of sight, of quick travel. Like hand-me-downs, they bring an expectation of being further passed along when the next celebration, the next neighbor kid, calls for them. Second-hand, they have a fleece comfort. Spell-dark, they arrive with a falcon's grip.

The finely-sculpted poems of The Currency animate the world of art and architecture, from Caravaggio and Frank Gehry to the contemporary artist Maurizio Cattelan and the filmmaker Jean-Pierre Limosin. Exploring such works of art for how they lead us to pause for thought and breath--how they infuse mind and body in equal measure, helping us keep and pass the time we spend--Otremba poignantly articulates the hues of familial life.

In Kitchens, Smokehouses, and Privies, Michael Olmert takes us into the eighteenth-century backyards of colonial America. He explores the many small outbuildings that can still be found at obscure rural farmsteads throughout the Tidewater and greater mid-Atlantic, in towns like Williamsburg and Annapolis, and at elite plantations such as Mount Vernon and Monticello.

These structures were designed to support the performance of a single task: cooking food; washing clothes; smoking meat; storing last winter's ice; or keeping milk, cheese, and cream fresh. Privies and small offices are also addressed, as is the dovecote, in which doves were raised for their eggs, squab meat, feathers, and fertilizer. Often, these little buildings were clustered in such a way as to resemble a small village, knit together by similar design details and building materials: they were all constructed in weatherboards or in brick, for instance, or were arranged in a single file or positioned at the four corners of the yard.

In this appealing book, featuring nearly a hundred crisp black-and-white photographs, Olmert explains how these well-made buildings actually functioned. He is riveted by the history of outbuildings: their architecture, patterns of use, folklore, and even their literary presence. In two appendixes he also considers octagonal and hexagonal structures, which had special significance, both doctrinal and cultural, in early America.

 

Archaeologists and historians still have many questions about the design and function of outbuildings-questions that are often difficult to answer because of the ephemeral nature of these structures; they were not documented-any more than laundry rooms and storage units inspire rhapsodies today. Olmert's book, deeply grounded in scholarship, eminently readable, and profusely illustrated, takes these buildings seriously and gives them the attention they deserve.

From across the Atlantic, Ian McEwan weighed in with Saturday. There were movies by Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, and Steven Spielberg. In popular music, Bruce Springsteen led off with The Rising, David Bowie followed with Reality, and Leonard Cohen and Neil Young gave us “On that Day” and “Let’s Roll.” Robert Haas offered a burned-out pastoral in the 2005 “Bush’s War,” while Frank Bidart, Jorie Graham, C. K. Williams, Tom Sleigh, and Josh Weiner also turned to poetic form as the necessary and appropriate record of a war.

Three generations of women, each with a special attraction to water, yearn to find where they belong. Ernie, 70 years old and ailing, is a dowser who finds underground water with a stick. Veronica, 38, has moved inland after many years near the sea, only to realize how powerfully she misses it. Her 19-year-old daughter, Simpson, feels an affinity for a tranquil mountain lake that soon yields a terrifying secret.

Living in forced togetherness far from the ocean, the women struggle against the weight of responsibilities they long to escape. Not until they understand that it's possible to be a daughter of the sea anywhere does each one finally make the pilgrimage that will set her free.

"Who is this Gatsby anyhow?" Answering that question, voiced by one of the book s characters, is fundamental to teaching F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Although there is no simple answer, classroom analysis of this classic American novel can lead to a rich exploration of the colorful yet contradictory period Fitzgerald dubbed the Jazz Age. The novel also prompts considerations of novelistic technique, specifically point of view, characterization, and narrative structure.

This volume aims to give instructors of The Great Gatsby multiple tools and strategies for teaching the novel and for introducing students to the culture of the 1920s. Part 1, "Materials," reviews the novel s composition history and the scholarly resources related to the novel. In part 2, "Approaches," contributors demonstrate a range of frameworks that usefully inform teaching, from the new historicism to feminist and gender studies to narrative theory. They also examine the novel s complex artistry, variety of motifs and symbol patterns, and cultural and social influences, such as the era s changing racial attitudes, the rise of a new suburban culture, and the dichotomy of East versus West in America.