Best of
Academia

1990

Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature


Donna J. Haraway - 1990
    Although on the surface, simians, cyborgs and women may seem an odd threesome, Haraway describes their profound link as creatures which have had a great destabilizing place in Western evolutionary technology and biology. Throughout this book, Haraway analyzes accounts, narratives, and stories of the creation of nature, living organisms, and cyborgs. At once a social reality and a science fiction, the cyborg--a hybrid of organism and machine--represents transgressed boundaries and intense fusions of the nature/culture split. By providing an escape from rigid dualisms, the cyborg exists in a post-gender world, and as such holds immense possibilities for modern feminists. Haraway's recent book, Primate Visions, has been called outstanding, original, and brilliant, by leading scholars in the field. (First published in 1991.)

Epistemology of the Closet


Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick - 1990
    What is at stake in male homo/heterosexual definition? Through readings of Melville, Nietzsche, Wilde, James and Proust, the author argues that the vexed imperatives to specify straight and gay identities have become central to every important form of knowledge of the 20th century.

Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics


Cynthia Enloe - 1990
    Cynthia Enloe pulls back the curtain on the familiar scenes—governments promoting tourism, companies moving their factories overseas, soldiers serving on foreign soil—and shows that the real landscape is not exclusively male. She describes how many women's seemingly personal strategies—in their marriages, in their housework, in their coping with ideals of beauty—are, in reality, the stuff of global politics. In exposing policymakers' reliance on false notions of "femininity" and "masculinity," Enloe dismantles an apparently overwhelming world system, revealing it to be much more fragile and open to change than we think.

The Limits of Interpretation


Umberto Eco - 1990
    Umberto Eco focuses here on what he once called "the cancer of uncontrolled interpretation"--that is, the belief that many interpreters have gone too far in their domination of texts, thereby destroying meaning and the basis for communication.

Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends


Michael White - 1990
    Therapy then becomes aprocess of storying or restorying the lives and experiences ofthese people. In this way narrative comes to play a centralrole in therapy. Both authors share delightful examples of astoried therapy that privileges a person’s lived experience,inviting a reflexive posture and encouraging a sense of authorshipand reauthorship of one’s experiences and relationshipsin the telling and retelling of one’s story.

Clinical Psychopharmacology Made Ridiculously Simple


John D. Preston - 1990
    Pocket-sized text provides an overview of clinical psychopharmacology. Surveys psychotropic medications focusing on diagnostic findings. Discusses medications for depression, bipolar illness, anxiety disorders, psychotic disorders, and cites real-life case examples. Previous edition: c2003. Softcover.Current edition is a 2011 update (i.e. copyright 2011Thanks...John Preston...author

Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle


Elaine Showalter - 1990
    This book ranges over the trial of Oscar Wilde, the public furore over prostitution and syphilis, moral outrage over the breakdown of the family, abortion rights and AIDS. High and low culture, from male quest romances to contemporary male bonding movies, Freud to Fatal Attraction, are all included in his study.

A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers


Lawrence Weschler - 1990
    In this now-classic and profoundly influential study, the New Yorker's Lawrence Weschler probes these dilemmas across two gripping narratives (set in Brazil and Uruguay, among the first places to face such concerns), true-life thrillers in which torture victims, faced with the paralysis of the new regime, themselves band together to settle accounts with their former tormentors. "Disturbing and often enthralling."—New York Times Book Review"Extraordinarily moving. . . . Weschler writes brilliantly."—Newsday"Implausible, intricate and dazzling."—Times Literary Supplement"As Weschler's interviewees told their tales, I paced agitatedly, choked back tears. . . . Weschler narrates these two episodes with skill and tact. . . . An inspiring book."—George Scialabba, Los Angeles Weekly

Philosophical Papers


J.L. Austin - 1990
    Austin's influence on contemporary philosophy was substantial during his lifetime, and has grown greatly since his death in 1960. This third edition of Philosophical Papers, the first edition of which was published in 1961, includes all of Austin's published papers (except Performatif-Constatif) as well as a new essay entitled The Line and the Cave in Plato's Republic, which has been reconstructed from Austin's notes.

Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy


Max Van Manen - 1990
    Rather than relying on abstract generalizations and theories, van Manen offers an alternative that taps the unique nature of each human situation.The book offers detailed methodological explications and practical examples of hermeneutic-phenomenological inquiry. It shows how to orient oneself to human experience in education and how to construct a textual question which evokes a fundamental sense of wonder, and it provides a broad and systematic set of approaches for gaining experiential material that forms the basis for textual reflections.Van Manen also discusses the part played by language in educational research, and the importance of pursuing human science research critically as a semiotic writing practice. He focuses on the methodological function of anecdotal narrative in human science research, and offers methods for structuring the research text in relation to the particular kinds of questions being studied. Finally, van Manen argues that the choice of research method is itself a pedagogic commitment and that it shows how one stands in life as an educator.

First and Second Samuel: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching


Walter Brueggemann - 1990
    He carefully opens the literature of the books, sketching a narrative filled with historical realism but also bursting with an awareness that more than human action is being presented.

Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art


Georges Didi-Huberman - 1990
    According to Didi-Huberman, visual representation has an "underside" in which seemingly intelligible forms lose their clarity and defy rational understanding. Art historians, he goes on to contend, have failed to engage this underside, where images harbor limits and contradictions, because their discipline is based upon the assumption that visual representation is made up of legible signs and lends itself to rational scholarly cognition epitomized in the "science of iconology."To escape from this cul-de-sac, Didi-Huberman suggests that art historians look to Freud's concept of the "dreamwork," not for a code of interpretation, but rather to begin to think of representation as a mobile process that often involves substitution and contradiction. Confronting Images also offers brilliant, historically grounded readings of images ranging from the Shroud of Turin to Vermeer's Lacemaker.

The Devil's Dictionary and Other Works


Gahan Wilson - 1990
    This volume collects one example of each type of composition for which Bierce is most famed: a hilarious satire, a bone-chilling horror story, a sardonic piece of humor, and a macabre poem. Renowned artist Gahan Wilson, whose work finds the comic and the eerir in the most common of situations, brings the perfect, blackly humorous touch to Bierce's eccentrically unique visions.

The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Régime


Daniel Roche - 1990
    In it Roche discusses general approaches to the history of dress, locates the subject within current French historiography and uses a large sample of inventories to explore the differences between the various social classes in the amount they spent on clothes and the kind of clothes they wore.

The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader


Deborah Cameron - 1990
    It serves both as a guide to the current debates and directions and as a digest of the history of twentieth-century feminist ideas about language.This edition includes extracts from Felly Nkweto Simmonds, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Luce Irigaray, Sara Mills, Margaret Doyle, Debbie Cameron, Susan Ehrlich, Ruth King, Kate Clark, Sally McConnell-Ginet, Deborah Tannen, Aki Uchida, Jennifer Coates and Kira Hall.

Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory


David Garland - 1990
    Drawing on theorists from Durkheim to Foucault, he insightfully critiques the entire spectrum of social thought concerning punishment, and reworks it into a new interpretive synthesis."Punishment and Modern Society is an outstanding delineation of the sociology of punishment. At last the process that is surely the heart and soul of criminology, and perhaps of sociology as well—punishment—has been rescued from the fringes of these 'disciplines'. . . . This book is a first-class piece of scholarship."—Graeme Newman, Contemporary Sociology"Garland's treatment of the theorists he draws upon is erudite, faithful and constructive. . . . Punishment and Modern Society is a magnificent example of working social theory."—John R. Sutton, American Journal of Sociology"Punishment and Modern Society lifts contemporary penal issues from the mundane and narrow contours within which they are so often discussed and relocates them at the forefront of public policy. . . . This book will become a landmark study."—Andrew Rutherford, Legal Studies"This is a superbly intelligent study. Its comprehensive coverage makes it a genuine review of the field. Its scholarship and incisiveness of judgment will make it a constant reference work for the initiated, and its concluding theoretical synthesis will make it a challenge and inspiration for those undertaking research and writing on the subject. As a state-of-the-art account it is unlikely to be bettered for many a year."—Rod Morgan, British Journal of CriminologyWinner of both the Outstanding Scholarship Award of the Crime and Delinquency Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems and the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Sociological Association's Crime, Law, and Deviance Section

Pindar's Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past


Gregory Nagy - 1990
    Arguing that Greek lyric represents a tradition in its own right, Nagy shows how the form of Greek epic is in fact a differentiation of forms found in Greek lyric. Throughout, he progressively broadens the definition of lyric to the point where it becomes the basis for defining epic, rather than the other way around.

Margaret Atwood: Conversations


Margaret Atwood - 1990
    A gathering of twenty-two interviews with Atwood by other writers, including Graeme Gibson, Joyce Carol Oates, Geoff Hancock.

Desire for Origins: New Languages, Old English, and Teaching and Tradition


Allen J. Frantzen - 1990
    Frantzen doesn't (directly) try to argue against this perception-- instead, he tries to investigate *why* this perception exists. His answer is an insightful and eye-opening investigation into the relationship among scholarship, ideology, and cultural relevance.

Folk and Fairy Tales


Barbara Karasek - 1990
    The editors offer a broad selection of tales, grouped by theme and era, as well as variants of individual tales that invite cross-cultural and comparative analysis. Each group is preceded by an introduction by the editors. Selections from influenctial works of criticism range from a segment of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic essay "On Fairy Stories" to recent work by Jack Zipes and Maria Tatar; also included is a section on the illustration of fairy tales and a bibliogrpahy.

Legacy on Stone: Rock Art of the Colorado Plateau and Four Corners Region


Sally J. Cole - 1990
    1 to the middle of the twentieth century.

Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir


Jean Said Makdisi - 1990
    A New York Times Book Review Notable Book An intensely personal yet timelessly crafted portrait of life in a worn-torn city, Beirut Fragments spans the years of the civil war in Lebanon, 1975-1990. When thousands fled, Jean Said Makdisi chose to stay. She raised three sons, taught English and Humanities at Beirut University College-and she wrote. She records the breakdown of society and the physical destruction of Beirut, the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, the Israeli Invasion, everyday acts of terrorism, the struggle to maintain ordinary routines amid chaos, and the incredible spirit of a people. A Palestinian, a Christian, a woman who has lived in Jerusalem, Cairo, the United States, and Beirut, Jean Said Makdisi uses the migrations of her own life as a paradigm which helps elucidate many of the conflicts in the region. The new afterword covers the postwars years, from the last ceasefire to the present day.

Issues in Feminist Film Criticism


Patricia B. Erens - 1990
    and British feminist film scholars. The twenty-seven essays represent some of the most influential work on Hollywood film, women's cinema, and documentary filmmaking to appear during the past decade and beyond.Contributors include Lucie Arbuthnot, Linda Artel, Pam Cook, Teresa de Lauretis, Mary Ann Doane, Elizabeth Ellsworth, Lucy Fischer, Jane Gaines, Mary C. Gentile, Bette Gordon, Florence Jacobowitz, Claire Johnston, E. Ann Kaplan, Annette Kuhn, Julia Lesage, Judith Mayne, Sonya Michel, Tania Modleski, Laura Mulvey, B. Ruby Rich, Gail Seneca, Kaja Silverman, Lori Spring, Jackie Stacey, Maureen Turim, Diane Waldman, Susan Wengraf, Linda Williams, and Robin Wood.

Bonded Histories: Genealogies Of Labor Servitude In Colonial India


Gyan Prakash - 1990
    Bonded Histories traces the historical processes by which these notions became established as dominant discourses in India during colonial rule and continued into post-colonial India. Gyan Prakash locates the formulation of these discourses in the history of bonded labour in southern Bihar. He focuses on the emergence and subsequent transformation of the relationship of reciprocal power and dependence between landlords and labourers. The author explores the way in which these transformations were connected with broader shifts in the political economy of this part of the subcontinent; with the changing structures of agricultural production, land tenure and revenue demand; with local social hierarchies and the ideology of castes; and with Hindu cosmologies, spirit cults and their articulation in ritual practices.

Shaping Character: Moral Education in the Christian College


Arthur F. Holmes - 1990
    Arguing that ethics is everybody's business, Arthur Holmes presents in this book a concise survey of moral education—its goals and methods—in the Christian college. Arising out of a three-year Christian College Consortium project, Shaping Character reflects the insights of a rich variety of experts, writers, and faculty members. Holmes first orients his readers to the present ethical climate, to theological dimensions and distinctive in ethics, and to moral development theory. He then poses three overall objectives of ethics education—forming the conscience, making moral decisions, and developing character—and fleshes out each objective with particular goals. Throughout the book Holmes makes suggestions about the role of faculty and staff, paying special attention to teaching methods and noting the context and dynamics of college life in general. The final chapter summarizes how the Bible functions in ethics. Shaping Character is meant for all Christian college teachers, professors, and administrators concerned about student values and the moral condition of our society. The book will serve as a valuable and practical guide for teaching ethics in every department.Richard J. Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary): "Arthur Holmes has written a profound book on a timely topic. It ought to be widely read. More importantly, its wise insights and prescriptions ought to be put into practice wherever people care about faithful and effective Christian higher education."

Blissed Out: the Raptures of Rock


Simon Reynolds - 1990
    From hardcore to hip hop, acid rock to acid house, these cults contradict the widely-held view that ?rock is dead? and that there is nothing left for musicians to do but play pick 'n' mix with thirty years of pop history. When he writes about his favourite bands, Throwing Muses, My Bloody Valentine, The Young Gods and Loop, Simon Reynolds captures the giddy exhilaration of their music.

Holden Caulfield


Harold Bloom - 1990
    - Examines the most complex and memorable characters in Western literature - A selection of critical essays provides in-depth analysis of the character considered in each volume - A concise character profile discusses the character's key personality traits and physical attributes - Contains an editor's note and introduction by Harold Bloom

Makers of Mathematics


Stuart Hollingdale - 1990
    Author Stuart Hollingdale introduces and explains the roles of these gifted and often colorful figures in the development of mathematics as well as the ways in which their work relates to mathematics as a whole.Although the emphasis in this absorbing survey is primarily biographical, Hollingdale also discusses major historical themes and explains new ideas and techniques. No specialized mathematical knowledge on the part of the reader is assumed. Superbly informative, this volume offers an accessible, interesting guide to one of the pillars of modern science, and to a supremely important aspect of human culture through the ages.

Understanding Mario Vargas Llosa


Sara Castro-Klarén - 1990
    Understanding Mario Vargas Llosa is a very readable companion guide to Llosa's works that traces the development of the novelist's craft and thought while probing and analyzing the entire body of writings to date of this celebrated author of The War of the End of the World. His popularity as a writer has been augmented recently as he has attracted international attention for his political involvement in Peru and his presidential campaign in the 1990 national elections. The book includes sections on the helix narrative, stories within stories, double and multiple time and space, cinema and narrative technique, fragmentation and coherence, fiction and history, the hero and society, the failed hero and the writing of fiction, autobiography and fiction, and the writer as hero.