2006-2007 BOOKS BY WGS FACULTY
Dean J. Franco, Ethnic American Literature: Comparing Chicano, Jewish, and African American Writing (University of Virginia Press, 2006) In Ethnic American Literature, Franco offers a comparative approach to ethnic literature that begins by accounting for the intrinsic historical, geographical, and political contingencies of different American cultures. These contingencies, he argues, dictate critical perspectives that are ultimately ethical and that establish the terms for the study of ethnic literature in the first place. Franco looks at a range of writing, from novels by Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Toni Morrison, and Alejandro Morales, to literature and criticism by Tony Kushner, Cherrie Moraga, and Jos茅 Lim贸n, among others. While the early chapters focus specifically on what mourning means in these different cultural contexts in the representation of and response to trauma and loss, the later ones critically examine metaphors of the borderlands, diaspora, and nationalism. Shannon Gilreath, Sexual Politics: The Gay Person in America Today (Series on Law, Politics and Society) (University of Akron Press, 2006) Contemporary and controversial, Shannon Gilreath's Sexual Politics is an important update to the continuing debate over the place of the gay person in American law, politics, and religion. Gilreath skillfully navigates a number of complex issues, including the delicate balance between sexual privacy and public equality, the entwining of religion and U.S. law and politics, and gay marriage. He offers astute academic observations and a depth of personal reflections to create an unmatched critique of the gay person in American society. Ultimately, Gilreath argues for the further emergence of gay and lesbian ethos of public attentiveness and the practice of "transformative politics," encompassing all those activities of the gay and lesbian person. Conversational and written with a compelling frankness, this book is vital for the serious legal and political student and the informed lay reader alike.
Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith, African American Families (Sage Publications, 2007) African American Families provides a systematic sociological study of contemporary life for families of African descent living in the United States. Analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data, authors Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith identify the structural barriers that African Americans face in their attempts to raise their children and create loving, healthy families. Using the lens provided by the race, class, and gender paradigm, a variety of examples illustrate the ways in which multiple systems of oppression interact with patterns of self-defeating behavior to create barriers that deny many African Americans access to the American dream.
Michaelle L. Browers, Democracy And Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East) (Syracuse University Press, 2006) This book provides a significant and unique contribution to the emerging literature of comparative political thought. Michaelle L. Browers offers compelling evidence, with extensive analysis and references, that a rigorous debate is taking place in Arabic concerning the value of democracy and civil society. Exploring the globalization of ideas of democracy and civil society, Browers addresses the question of what occurs when concepts cross the boundaries of cultures or languages. She analyzes the historical concept of democracy in Arab and Islamic political thought, the transformations that have occurred over the past several decades resulting from Arab forays into an international discussion of civil society and what these transformations tell us about the status of ideological and conceptual debates in the region. Wanda Balzano, Anne Mulhall, and Moynagh Sullivan (Editors), Irish Postmodernisms and Popular Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) Irish postmodernisms and contemporary popular culture are often invoked in critical and public discussions as negative and corrosive spaces; in this collection, the contributors reexamine such valuations, making use of critical feminist, racial, queer, psychoanalytic and postcolonial frameworks in their analyses of Irish 'postmodernity' in the era of globalization. Considering local and global, 'traditional' and emergent 'Irishness' side by side, the collection redefines the ways in which popular culture in Ireland as well as Ireland in popular culture are understood.
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