Research & Innovation

The intelligence, the imagination, the quick humor in Solar Prominence all point in the same direction: toward the poem as a made thing, a thing of light, crafted, the way craft, through its various art, transforms the generalities into the specifics of magic. The layering of detail, the building and unbuilding of the arguments of narrative, the commissions and omissions of the poet's autobiography form designs as well as designations, symbols as well as signatures. There is a wealth of information here, but changed, at every turn, into different riches. -- Stanley Plumly

Author and compiler Barry Lee Pearson calls this volume a "blues quilt." These stories, collected over thirty years, are told in the blues musicians' own words. Pearson interviewed over one hundred musicians, recording and transcribing their stories. These are stories from well-known musicians such as John Lee Hooker, Koko Taylor, David "Honeyboy" Edwards, and Little Milton, and from more obscure artists such as Big Luck Carter, Henry Dorsey, Joseph Savage, and J.T. Adams. Pearson provides an introduction to the world of blues and the genre of blues stories as well as brief biographies of the musicians.

This all-new edition of Hawthorne’s celebrated 1851 novel is based on The Ohio State University Press’s Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

It is accompanied by thorough explanatory annotations and an insightful introduction to the novel and antebellum culture by Robert S. Levine.

"Contexts" brings together a generous selection of primary materials intended to provide readers with background on the novel’s central themes.  Historical documents include accounts of Salem’s history by Thomas Maule, Robert Calef, Joseph B. Felt, and Charles W. Upham, which Hawthorne drew on for The House of the Seven Gables.  The importance of the house in antebellum America—as a manifestation of the body, a site of genealogical history, and a symbol of the republic’s middle class—is explored through the diverse writings of William Andrus Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe, and J. H. Agnew, among others.  The impact of technological developments on the novel, especially of daguerreotypy, is considered through the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gustave de Beaumont, and Alexis de Tocqueville, among others.  Also included are two of Hawthorne’s literary sketches—"Alice Doane’s Appeal" and "The Old Apple Dealer"—that demonstrate the continuity of Hawthorne’s style, from his earlier periodical writing to his later career as a novelist.

"Criticism" provides a comprehensive overview of the critical commentary on the novel from its publication to the present.  Among the twenty-seven critics represented are Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry James, Nina Baym, Eric Sundquist, Richard H. Millington, Alan Trachtenberg, Amy Schrager Lang, and Christopher Castiglia.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Hamilton offers a major revisionist reading of the works of Anthony Munday, one of the most prolific authors of his time, who wrote and translated in many genres, including polemical religious and political tracts, poetry, chivalric romances, history, and drama. Long dismissed as a hack, Munday is here restored to his rightful position as an historical figure at the centre of many important polital and cultural events in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.

A series of planning meetings and site visits aimed at developing archival tools and best practices for preserving born-digital documents produced by contemporary authors.

This work examines the interplay of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality through the lens of Catholicism in a wide range of works by women writers, forging interdisciplinary connections among women's studies, religion, and late twentieth-century literature. Discussing a diverse group of authors, Jeana DelRosso posits that the girlhood narratives of such writers constitute highly charged sites of their differing gestures toward Catholicism and argues that an understanding of the ways in which women write about religion from different cultural and racial contexts offers a crucial contribution to current discussions in gender, ethnic, and cultural studies.

This volume offers thirteen original essays by leading scholars of a major American modernist novelist. Willa Cather's luminous prose is 'easy' to read yet surprisingly difficult to understand. The essays collected here cover the full range of Cather's career, including most of her twelve novels, situating her work in a broad range of critical, cultural, and literary contexts. Lindemann's introduction explores current trends in Cather scholarship as well as the author's place in contemporary culture.

Tolkien made a continuous effort over six decades to construct a comprehensive mythology, to include not only the stories themselves but also the storytellers, scribes, and bards who were the offspring of his thought. In Interrupted Music Flieger illuminates the structure of Tolkien's work, allowing the reader to appreciate its broad, overarching design and its careful, painstaking construction.

Conrad's work has taken on a new importance in the dawning of the 21st century: in the wake of September 11 many cultural commentators returned to his novel The Secret Agent to discuss the roots of terrorism, and the overarching theme of colonialism in much of his work has positioned his writing as central to not only literature scholars, but also to postcolonial and cultural studies scholars and, more recently, to scholars interested in globalization.

Long dismissed as a hack who wrote only for money, Munday is here restored to his rightful position as an historical figure at the centre of many important political and cultural events in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. In Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560-1633, Hamilton reinterprets Munday as a writer who began his career writing on behalf of the Catholic cause and subsequently negotiated for several decades the difficult terrain of an ever-changing Catholic-Protestant cultural, religious, and political landscape. She argues that throughout his life and writing career Munday retained his Catholic sensibility and occasionally wrote dangerously on behalf of Catholics.