Drawing on the theories of philosophers of ethics including Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, Damaged Lives: Southern and Caribbean Narrative from Faulkner to Naipaul studies how moral skepticism harms ordinary human beings. In response to an indecisive and uncommitted culture, many writers from the American South and the Caribbean have sought unambiguous sources of order and belief. Damaged Lives shows how a yearning for conviction pervades the writing of William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Agee, Flannery O Connor, Mary Hood, and V. S. Naipaul. This book will be...

Applying diverse biblical studies methodologies, Sexual Violation in the Hebrew Bible, analyzes Genesis 34 and 2 Samuel 13, narratives that contain the sexual violation of a woman. More specifically, this book explores the various contexts in which critical Hebrew words were used and how they have been interpreted. Hebrew Bible laws dealing with rape and other sexual improprieties are addressed. Two aspects of narrative criticism characterization and rhetoric clearly show that the maternal brothers of Dinah and Tamar, the violated women, come to the foregrounds of the narratives while...

Mythic Paradigms in Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts approaches literary and visual texts from the perspective of Hesperian identification and representation. Included is the first translation into English of Fichte s Supplement of 1801, a document whose content sheds light not only on the atheism controversy of the 1790s, but also on literary/philosophical polarizations in the -Republic of Letters-. Condensed from the Hesperian atmospherics of Italy and Latin elegy, Faust II entails a Goethean celebration of auditory and visual sensation. In a text devoted to...

This book provides a concise introduction to the practical and theoretical complexities of studying urban youth culture today. Looking across disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and education, Dimitriadis explores the ways urban youth have been framed - in often limiting and problematic ways - in the popular and academic imagination. Moving beyond critique alone, this highly accessible primer opens a discussion about what a truly powerful, emergent field of critical youth studies might look like. Looking toward the future of this field, this book discusses the most important...

Although originally designed as instruments to gauge students progress, tests eventually were used to modify curricula, learning materials, pedagogy, and many practical features of schooling. Tests were employed to shape attitudes toward national issues such as employment, immigration, and defense. Worried about the enormous consequences that were at stake, advocates and opponents pitched their cases to educators, parents, journalists, and policymakers and also targeted special audiences. Testing proponents pleaded with military leaders, businesspeople, and scholastic publishers while their...

Informed by whiteness studies, Kyle Kusz s groundbreaking book examines the role that sport discourses play in reproducing a central, normative, and superior position for white masculinity in American culture and society at the turn of the twenty-first century. Specifically, Kusz illuminates how the American sports media through cover stories detailing the so-called disappearance of the white (male) athlete in American sports or the rise of extreme sports produced a set of contradictory images of white masculinity as victimized and unprivileged, yet superior and squarely centered in American...

Niccolo Machiavelli may not have been a cynical realist as he is often portrayed. On the contrary, this book argues that he precociously possessed the characteristics of an impassioned, sometimes misguided idealist, obsessed with the idea of Italian unification, but blinded to the practicalities of attaining that goal. William J. Landon suggests that these characteristics may help to explain his appeal to Italy s -Risorgimento- founders. This interdisciplinary volume, which also contains the first translation of a -Discourse or Dialogue Concerning our Language- since 1961, works well as a...

Oliverio Girondo is a leading figure of the Spanish American avant-garde. Parody, the Avant-Garde, and the Poetics of Subversion in Oliverio Girondo examines the presence and function of parody in Girondo s early poetry and drawings. It illustrates how, through the subversion of both conventional and vanguard poetics, these texts discredit the values imposed upon artistic production by institutionalized models and social codes. This book assesses the extent to which Girondo followed the theories outlined in his critical writings and considers how his works fit into the general...