Search results for ""louisiana state university press""

Afrodiasporic Forms explores the epistemological possibilities of the "Black world" paradigm and traces a literary and cultural cartography of the monde noir and its constitutive African diasporas across multiple poetic, visual, and cultural permutations. Examining the transatlantic slave trade and modern racial slavery, Raquel Kennon challenges the US-centric focus of slavery studies and draws on a transnational, eclectic archive of materials from Lusophone, Hispanophone, and Anglophone sources in the Americas to inspect evolving, multitudinous, and disparate forms of Afrodiasporic cultural expression.Spanning the 1830s to the twenty-first century, Afrodiasporic Forms traverses national, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries as it investigates how cultural products of slavery's afterlife—including poetry, prose, painting, television, sculpture, and song—shape understandings of the African diaspora. Each chapter uncovers multidirectional pathways for exploring representations of slavery, considering works such as a Brazilian telenovela based on Bernardo Guimarães's novel A Escrava Isaura, Robert Hayden's poem "Middle Passage," Kara Walker's sculpture A Subtlety, and Juan Francisco Manzano's Autobiografía de un esclavo. Kennon's expansive method of comparative reading across the diaspora uses eclectic pairings of canonical and popular textual and artistic sources to stretch beyond disciplinary and national borders, promoting expansive diasporic literacies.

Read more less

Angela Voras ­-Hills's Louder Birds, her debut collection of poetry, is a beautiful study of the natural world, motherhood, and the inherent desire for meaning. This collection of complex lyric poems holds a haunting absence at its center, an absence that is ""impossible to navigate."" Yet Voras- ­Hills presses on, untangling the distinctions that surround her (human and animal, domestic and wild) with both bravery and respect. She writes, ""The boundaries between home and the road / are insecure: it's impossible to navigate this landscape. / We've all been in the presence of something dark / and have chosen not to seek shelter."" As the poet hones in on naming the void, her surroundings grow more threatening- but not once does she surrender or turn back. Voras- ­Hills's poems are smart enough to know the distinctions themselves are tenuous at best, and wise enough to know that we must always pay our dues to the world beyond our door. Wondrous, ruminative, and revelatory, Louder Birds is a collection that is not to be missed.

Read more less

Behind the historical accounts of the great men of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People lies the almost forgotten story of the black women who not only participated in the organization but actually helped it thrive in the early twentieth-century South. In Invisible Activists, Lee Sartain examines attitudes toward the gender, class, and citizenship of African American activists in Louisiana and women's roles in the campaign for civil rights in the state. In the end, he argues, it was the women working behind the scenes in Louisiana's branches of the NAACP who were the most crucial factor in the organization's efficiency and survival.During the first half of the twentieth century—especially in the darkest days of the Great Depression, when membership waned and funds were scarce—a core group of women maintained Louisiana's NAACP. Fighting on the front line, Sartain explains, women acted as grassroots organizers, running public relations campaigns and membership drives, mobilizing youth groups, and promoting general community involvement. Using case studies of several prominent female NAACP members in Louisiana, Sartain demonstrates how women combined their fundraising skills with an extensive network of community and family ties to fund the NAACP and, increasingly, to undertake the day-to-day operations of the local organizations themselves.Still, these women also struggled against the double obstacles of racism and sexism that prevented them from attaining the highest positions within NAACP branch leadership. Sartain illustrates how the differences between the sexes were ultimately woven into the political battle for racial justice, where women were viewed as having inherent moral superiority and, hence, the potential to lift the black population as a whole. Sartain concludes that despite the societal traditions that kept women out of leadership positions, in the early stages of the civil rights movement, their skills and their contributions as community matriarchs provided the keys to the organization's progress.Highly original and essential to a comprehensive study of the NAACP, Invisible Activists gives voice to the many individual women who sustained the influential civil rights organization during a time of severe racial oppression in Louisiana. Without such dedication, Sartain asserts, the organization would have had no substantial presence in the state.

Read more less

In The Cemeteries of New Orleans, Peter B. Dedek reveals the origins and evolution of the Crescent City's world-famous necropolises, exploring both their distinctive architecture and their cultural impact. Spanning centuries, this fascinating body of research takes readers from muddy fields of crude burial markers to extravagantly designed cities of the dead, illuminating a vital and vulnerable piece of New Orleans's identity.Where many histories of New Orleans cemeteries have revolved around the famous people buried within them, Dedek focuses on the marble cutters, burial society members, journalists, and tourists who shaped these graveyards into internationally recognizable emblems of the city. In addition to these cultural actors, Dedek's exploration of cemetery architecture reveals the impact of ancient and medieval grave traditions and styles, the city's geography, and the arrival of trained European tomb designers, such as the French architect J. N. B. de Pouilly in 1833 and Italian artist and architect Pietro Gualdi in 1851.As Dedek shows, the nineteenth century was a particularly critical era in the city's cemetery design. Notably, the cemeteries embodied traditional French and Spanish precedents, until the first garden cemetery- the Metairie Cemetery- was built on the site of an old racetrack in 1872. Like the older walled cemeteries, this iconic venue served as a lavish expression of fraternal and ethnic unity, a backdrop to exuberant social celebrations, and a destination for sightseeing excursions. During this time, cultural and religious practices, such as the celebration of All Saints' Day and the practice of Voodoo rituals, flourished within the spatial bounds of these resting places. Over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, however, episodes of neglect and destruction gave rise to groups that aimed to preserve the historic cemeteries of New Orleans- an endeavor, which, according to Dedek, is still wanting for resources and political will.Containing ample primary source material, abundant illustrations, appendices on both tomb styles and the history of each of the city's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cemeteries, The Cemeteries of New Orleans offers a comprehensive and intriguing resource on these fascinating historic sites.

Read more less

Biographer and critic Jeffrey Meyers knew the novelist James Salter (1925–2015) during the last decade of his life, visited him twice on Long Island, and received eighty letters from him. Meyers's knowledge of Salter's life provides many new insights about the personal, literary, and historical background of his work. This appreciative book, the first full-length study in twenty-six years, is intended to introduce Salter to new readers and show his achievement as a writer of novels, stories, screenplays, memoirs, and travel essays. Salter had an extraordinary range of experience as West Point graduate; fighter pilot in the Korean War; downhill skier, rock climber, and mountain climber; screenwriter and film director; connoisseur of food and wine; world traveler and sophisticated observer. In an elegant blend of literary criticism and intimate memoir, with crisp prose and an eye for telling detail, Meyers discusses Salter's family and friends; the significance of his book and chapter titles; characters' names and cultural allusions; literary influences, especially Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald; development of his fictional style and techniques; awareness of weather and light; supreme delineation of sexual ecstasy; recurrent themes of war and love; strange career and late recognition. A detailed chronology tracks the key dates and events in Salter's life, and a chronological bibliography shows the development of his literary reputation. For Meyers, Salter's lyrical evocation of people and places, of luxurious decadence and the danger of death, are unsurpassed in contemporary literature. This book appears just before the centenary of Salter's birth.

Read more less

Mike the Tiger-the only live tiger mascot in the United States-is an iconic presence on LSU's campus. From his tiger sanctuary next to Tiger Stadium, he draws a steady stream of fans, adults and children alike. In this new book about LSU's favorite tiger, Mike's former veterinarian David G. Baker reflects on his decades of caring for three of the live mascots, beginning with Mike V in 1996. Baker gives fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpses of the tigers as he recounts episodes such as Mike VI's cancer diagnosis, treatment, and death, and the search for Mike VII. He gives details about the tiger's daily care and routine, provides answers to commonly asked questions about the mascot program, and discusses Mike's popular social media presence. He also delves into new traditions, such as the creation of "meat art" for Mike to devour before home football games and the overnight holding of graduation rings in the night house with Mike. In addition to Baker's own text, Mike: The Tigers of LSU includes remembrances from many of the tiger's veterinary student caretakers over the years, who reveal how caring for Mike the Tiger impacted their lives. Loaded with more than one hundred new and historical photos, Mike is sure to please the most avid fans of LSU's mascot.

Read more less

Finalist for the Lincoln Prize!Traditional histories of the Civil War describe the conflict as a war between North and South. Kenneth W. Noe suggests it should instead be understood as a war between the North, the South, and the weather. In The Howling Storm, Noe retells the history of the conflagration with a focus on the ways in which weather and climate shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns. He further contends that events such as floods and droughts affecting the Confederate home front constricted soldiers' food supply, lowered morale, and undercut the government's efforts to boost nationalist sentiment. By contrast, the superior equipment and open supply lines enjoyed by Union soldiers enabled them to cope successfully with the South's extreme conditions and, ultimately, secure victory in 1865. Climate conditions during the war proved unusual, as irregular phenomena such as El Niño, La Niña, and similar oscillations in the Atlantic Ocean disrupted weather patterns across southern states. Taking into account these meteorological events, Noe rethinks conventional explanations of battlefield victories and losses, compelling historians to reconsider long-held conclusions about the war. Unlike past studies that fault inflation, taxation, and logistical problems for the Confederate defeat, his work considers how soldiers and civilians dealt with floods and droughts that beset areas of the South in 1862, 1863, and 1864. In doing so, he addresses the foundational causes that forced Richmond to make difficult and sometimes disastrous decisions when prioritizing the feeding of the home front or the front lines. The Howling Storm stands as the first comprehensive examination of weather and climate during the Civil War. Its approach, coverage, and conclusions are certain to reshape the field of Civil War studies.

Read more less

In a world of constant change and crisis, the relationship between humans and their environment has never been more vital. Louisiana Herb Journal invites readers into the world of medicinal herbs, introducing fifty herbs found in Louisiana, with details on identification, habitat, distribution, healing properties, and traditional uses, including instruction on traditional preparation methods such as tinctures and teas.Interspersed with these practical details, herbalist Corinne Martin shares stories that foster a true connection between readers and the world around them, from tales of childhood cherry picking to harvest mishaps to folklife traditions passed down through the generations. Accessible to experienced and rookie herbalists alike, Louisiana Herb Journal offers a new way of looking at the natural world, getting to know one's "home ground" through a lens of healing and participation.Family connections, an intimate knowledge of the surrounding lands and waters, strong community bonds, an irrepressible resilience, and a great capacity for celebrating life despite hardships are part and parcel of what it means to be from Louisiana. A celebration of the state and the cultures of those who live there, Louisiana Herb Journal reflects on the value of medicinal herbs in promoting personal healing and addressing current challenges to the state's environmental and economic stability. Readers will gain a deeper recognition of the natural wealth Louisiana enjoys and the ways that our stewardship of wild plants can impact our personal health as well as the state's ecological future.

Read more less

Help Me, Information is propelled by the speed and motion of the poems that define earlier acclaimed books by David Kirby, poems that move the way the mind does on a good day, puddle-jumping from one topic to another and then coming in for a nice soft landing. Colloquial in tone, balancing narrative breadth with precise detail, Kirby's poetry displays his voracious curiosity about history, science, literature, and popular culture. Yet here he also reinvents himself with poems that recall the compactness of Jack Gilbert, the sweep of Allen Ginsberg, and the introspection of Frank O'Hara.Help Me, Information presents a fresh Kirby, familiar yet new.

Read more less

The Café Brûlot examines the cocktail that was born of a legend and has endured through the centuries, showcasing New Orleans's love of flavored drama. A combination of coffee, liquor, and fire, Café Brûlot also goes by the name Café Brûlot Diabolique, "devilishly incendiary coffee." Varying somewhat depending on what restaurant makes it, the base ingredients of this unusual after-dinner drink are coffee, brandy, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, oranges, cloves, and sometimes an orange liqueur. Although the drink may have originated in France, Café Brûlot is primarily mixed in New Orleans, making it a unique Crescent City tradition. In this entertaining little book, Sue Strachan delves into the history of the cocktail, the story of its various ingredients, and the customary implements used to serve it.

Read more less

After D-Day is one of a small but growing body of works that examine the Allied liberators of France. This study focuses on both the French experience of the U.S. Army and the American soldiers' reaction to the French during the liberation and its immediate aftermath. Drawing on French and American archival materials, as well as dozens of memoirs, diaries, letters, and newspapers, Robert Lynn Fuller follows French and American interactions, starting in the skies over France in 1942 and ending with the liberation of Alsace in 1945. Fuller pays special attention to French life in the war zones, where living under constant shelling offered a miserable experience for those forced to endure it. The French stoically withstood those travails-sometimes inflicted by the Americans-when they saw their sacrifices as the price of liberation and victory over Germany. As Fuller shows, when the French did not believe afflictions brought by the Americans advanced the cause of success, their tolerance waned, sometimes dramatically. Fuller maintains that the Allied bombing of France was an important yet often overlooked chapter of World War II, one that inflicted more death and destruction than the ground war still to come. Yet the ground campaign, which began with the Allied invasion of Normandy, unleashed enormous violence that killed, injured, or rendered homeless tens of thousands of French civilians. Fuller examines French and American records of the fate of civilians in the principal battle zones, Normandy and Lorraine, as well as in overlooked liberated regions, such as Orl?®anais and Champagne, that largely escaped widespread damage and casualties. Despite French gratitude toward the Americans for the liberation of their country, relations began to cool in the fall and winter of 1944 as progress on the battlefield slowed and then appeared to reverse with the German offensive in the Ardennes. Revealing in stark detail the experiences of French civilians with the American military, After D-Day presents a compelling coda to our understanding of the Allied conquest of German-occupied France.

Read more less

Gregory S. Taylor's Central Prison: A History of North Carolina's State Penitentiary is the first scholarly study to explore the prison's entire history, from its origins in the 1870s to its status in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Taylor addresses numerous features of the state's vast prison system, including chain gangs, convict leasing, executions, and the nearby Women's Prison, to describe better the vagaries of living behind bars in the state's largest penitentiary. He incorporates vital elements of the state's history into his analysis to draw clear parallels between the changes occurring in free society and those affecting Central Prison. Throughout, Taylor illustrates that the prison, like the state itself, struggled with issues of race, gender, sectionalism, political infighting, finances, and progressive reform. Finally, Taylor also explores the evolution of penal reform, focusing on the politicians who set prison policy, the officials who administered it, and the untold number of African American inmates who endured incarceration in a state notorious for racial strife and injustice. Central Prison approaches the development of the penal system in North Carolina from a myriad of perspectives, offering a range of insights into the workings of the state penitentiary. It will appeal not only to scholars of criminal justice but also to historians searching for new ways to understand the history of the Tar Heel State and general readers wanting to know more about one of North Carolina's most influential-and infamous-institutions.

Read more less

Molly Brodak's The Cipher is a deft and unsparing study of the limits of knowledge and belief, and of what solace can be found within those limits. "We stand on the rim of the void," Brodak writes. "We hold our little lamps of knowing / on the rim, and look in." Drawing vividly from mathematics, Christianity, European history, urban life, and the natural world, these poems reveal a vision of contemporary experience that is at once luminous and centered on an unshakable emptiness. Wise, sharp, and sometimes devastating, The Cipher leads us through a world in which little can be trusted, takes its measure, and does not look away.

Read more less

This Tilted World Is Where I Live gathers one hundred poems by Henry Taylor, drawing on over fifty years of published work by this witty, adept, and vital literary voice. Seventy-five poems appear from his previous books, spanning from The Horse Show at Midnight (1966) through The Flying Change (1985), which won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, to his latest volume, Crooked Run (2006). The book opens with twenty-five recent poems collected for the first time.From the beginning, Taylor has worked in both traditional and more open forms, avoiding rigid allegiance to either mode as he has responded to the world around him, from the horse farm in Virginia where he grew up, to the deserts around Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he and his wife Mooshe have lived for the past several years. In tones and moods ranging between grief and explosive hilarity, these poems confront a consistent set of themes. Taylor has long been drawn to considerations of what we mean by loving one another, how violence can intrude without warning into innocent lives, and how the things we have always seen can change with the passage of time. Gwendolyn Brooks once wrote that he ""is a truly important poet. Familiar and strange."" This Tilted World Is Where I Live offers an invaluable encapsulation of Taylor's knack for crafting poems that are not only fun but also instructive in the art of paying attention- of which he is a master.

Read more less

Drawing on over fifty years of research and study, archaeologist Jon L. Gibson comes to well-founded yet bold conclusions about the Archaic mounds in the Lower Mississippi Valley and the peoples who made them. Examining topics ranging from the architectural incorporation of cosmic cycles and standard measures to traditional native myths and magical beliefs, Archaic Earthworks of the Lower Mississippi Valley is the definitive study of the history and ethos of a much-debated era.

Read more less

Challenges prevailing ways of thinking about the impact of the Civil War on the American South. Above all, Gaines Foster's work encourages Americans to confront the new divisions within their society even as they wrestle with old national - not just southern - failings.

Read more less

dark // thing is a multifaceted work that explores the darkness/otherness by which the world sees Black people. Ashley M. Jones stares directly into the face of the racism that allows people to be seen as dark things, as objects that can be killed/enslaved/oppressed/devalued. This work, full as it is of slashes of all kinds, ultimately separates darkness from thingness, affirming and celebrating humanity.

Read more less

For over four decades, John Coykendall's passion has been preserving the farm heritage of a small community in rural southeastern Louisiana. A Tennessee native and longtime master gardener at Blackberry Farm, Coykendall has become a celebrity in a growing movement that places a premium on farm-to-table cuisine with locally sourced, organic, and heirloom foods and flavors. While his work takes him around the world searching for seeds and the cultural knowledge of how to grow them, what inspires him most is his annual pilgrimage to Louisiana. Drawn to the Washington Parish area as a college student, Coykendall forged long-lasting friendships with local farmers and gardeners. Over the decades, he has recorded oral histories, recipes, tall tales, agricultural knowledge, and wisdom from generations past in more than eighty illustrated and handwritten journals. At the same time, he has unearthed and safeguarded rare varieties of food crops once grown in the area, then handed them back to the community. In Preserving Our Roots: My Journey to Save Seeds and Stories, Coykendall shares a wealth of materials collected in his journals, ensuring they are passed on to future generations. organised by season, the book offers a narrative chronicle of Coykendall's visits to Washington Parish since 1973. He highlights staple crops, agricultural practices, and favourite recipes from the families and friends who have hosted him. Accompanied by a rich selection of drawings, journal pages, and photographs, along with over forty recipes, Preserving Our Roots chronicles Coykendall's passion for recording foods and narratives that capture the rhythms of daily life on farms, in kitchens, and across generations.

Read more less

More Than This, like David Kirby's previous acclaimed collections, is shot through with the roadhouse fervor of early rock 'n' roll. Yet these rollicking poems also contain an oceanic feeling more akin to the great symphonies of Europe than the two-minute singles of Little Richard and other rock pioneers, as Kirby seeks to startle, to please, to unwind the knots that we get ourselves into and make it possible to being anew. Little goes unnoticed in these poems: death is present, along with love, friendship, food, religious ardor and philosophical skepticism, nights on the town and quiet evenings at home. With More Than This, his twelfth collection, Kirby takes readers back in time and out in space, offering quiet wisdom and a sense of the endless possibilities that art and life give us all.

Read more less

White, black, and Native American women in the early South often viewed motherhood as a composite of roles, ranging from teacher and nurse to farmer and politician. Within a multicultural landscape, mothers drew advice and consolation from female networks, broader intellec-tual currents, and an understanding of their own multifaceted identities to devise their own standards for child rearing. In this way, by con-structing, interpreting, and defending their roles as parents, women in the South maintained a certain degree of control over their own and their children's lives. Focusing on Virginia and the Carolinas from 1750 to 1835, Katy Simpson Smith's widely praised study examines these maternal practices to reveal the ways in which diverse groups of women struggled to create empowered identities in the early South.We Have Raised All of You contributes to a wide variety of historical conversations by affirming the necessity of multicultural- not simply bi-racial- studies of the American South. Its equally weighted analysis of white, black, and Native American women sets it distinctly apart from other work. Smith shows that while women from different backgrounds shared similar experiences within the trajectory of motherhood, no universal model holds up under scrutiny. Most importantly, this book suggests that parenthood provided women with some power within their often-circumscribed lives. Alternately restricted, oppressed, belittled, and enslaved, women sought to embrace an identity that would give them some sense of self-respect and self-worth. The rich and varied roles that mothers inherited, Smith shows, afforded women this empowering identity.This paperback edition includes a new preface by Smith that examines the power of storytelling, and the ways in which we think and talk about the past. No one, she suggests, is better suited to tell our collective story than our mothers.

Read more less

Hybrid Creatures, Matthew Baker's sharp and innovative collection, follows four very different protagonists as they search for, and struggle with, connection: an amateur hacker attempts to track down his vanished mentor; a math prodigy, the child of divorced parents, struggles with being torn between his two families; a composer takes a spontaneous trip to Nashville while mourning his husband's death and gets trapped on a hotel rooftop with a hipster; and a wayward philosopher accepts a job working for an industrial farming corporation. Through-out, Baker explores the inner dialogue of failed, floundering, and successful bonds between strangers, among family and friends, and even within a person. Pairing the emotional pursuit of connection with multiple forms of communication, Baker weaves the languages of HTML, mathematics, mu-sical notations, and propositional logic into his storytelling in order to unveil nuances of experiences and emotions. This poignant formal invention articulates loneliness, grief, doubt, and comfort in ways that are inaccessible through traditional language alone.In both form and content, Baker captures the complexities of breaking and forming connections with other people, and the various lan-guages we use to navigate this inescapable human need, resulting in a moving exploration of interpersonal bonds.

Read more less

Over sixty years after his death, Wallace Stevens remains one of the major figures of American modernist poetry, celebrated for his masterful style, formal rigor, and aesthetic investigations of the natural, political, and metaphysical worlds. In Making the Poem, noted Stevens scholar George S. Lensing explores the poet's progress in the creation of his body of work, considering its development, composition, and reception.Drawing on little-known sources and nuanced readings of Stevens' texts, Lensing expands the customary view of the poet's creative approaches. This wide-ranging study extends from the origins and overlapping themes of well-known poems through the social and political backgrounds that marked Stevens' work to the prosodic and musical elements central to his style. Making the Poem features a dynamic new reading of the important early poem ""Sea Surface Full of Clouds""- viewing it alongside his wife Elsie's journal describing the sea voyage that inspired the poem- and an extensive, multiperspective treatment of the widely anthologized ""The Idea of Order at Key West,"" as well as a careful excavation of the poem ""Mozart, 1935"" in the context of the U.S. Great Depression. Lensing concludes with a discussion of the gradual (and sometimes reluctant) recognition Stevens' work received from poets and critics in Great Britain and Ireland. Stemming from decades of research and writing, Making the Poem: Stevens' Approaches presents a holistic view of his creative achievements and a wealth of new material for readers to draw upon in their future encounters with the poetry of Wallace Stevens.

Read more less

Whether your garden consists of large raised beds or a few pots on the patio, Kathryn K. Fontenot's The Louisiana Urban Gardener offers easy guidelines and useful tools to jump-start and maintain small yet bountiful gardens.Beginning and sustaining a successful home garden in an urban environment can be a daunting prospect, but Fontenot eliminates the guesswork with tips on testing and preparing soil, guidelines on what to purchase from local garden centers, and basic techniques, schedules, and strategies to produce a thriving crop. From where to plant for the best juicy home-grown tomatoes to how to organically protect against pests to when to grow fragrant oregano and rosemary, this resource offers definitive answers and ensures that novices have all the expertise they need to enjoy Louisiana's year-round growing climate.The Louisiana Urban Gardener includes: Guidance on choosing the best location for your garden Tips on garden design for containers, raised beds, and in-ground gardens Advice for preparing the best soil for your garden Strategies for managing insects, disease, and weeds Season-by-season instruction on what to plant and when to harvest An appendix on Louisiana gardens to visit for inspiration Tending to pots of young peas, sharing a fresh summer watermelon with friends, or bringing extra beets and kale to coworkers on a winter day are just a few of the rewards of gardening. The Louisiana Urban Gardener gives everyone, from young professionals to retirees, the knowledge they need to enjoy all the pleasures of homegrown food.

Read more less

From the revelers on horseback in Eunice and Mamou to the miles-long New Orleans parade routes lined with eager spectators shouting ""Throw me something, mister!,"" no other Louisiana tradition celebrates the Pelican State's cultural heritage quite like Mardi Gras. In Carnival in Louisiana, Brian J. Costello offers Mardi Gras fans an insider's look at the customs associated with this popular holiday and travels across the state to explore each area's festivities.Costello brings together the stories behind the tradition, gleaned from his research and personal involvement in Carnival. His fascinating tour of the season's parades, balls, courirs, and other events held throughout Louisiana go beyond the well-known locales for Mardi Gras. Exploring the diverse cultural roots of state-wide celebrations, Costello includes festivities in Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Roads, and Shreveport. From venerable floats to satirical parades, exclusive events to spontaneous street parties, Carnival in Louisiana is an indispensable guide for Mardi Gras attendees, both veteran Krewe members seeking to expand their horizons and first-time tourists hoping to experience of all sides of Louisiana's favorite season.

Read more less

Throughout the Civil War, irregular warfare, including the use of hit-and-run assaults, ambushes, and raiding tactics, thrived in localized guerrilla fights within the Border States and the Confederate South. The Guerrilla Hunters offers a comprehensive overview of the tactics, motives, and actors in these conflicts, from the Confederate-authorised Partisan Rangers, a military force directed to spy on, harass, and steal from Union forces, to men like John Gatewood, who deserted the Confederate army in favour of targeting Tennessee civilians believed to be in sympathy with the Union.With a foreword by Kenneth W. Noe and an afterword by Daniel E. Sutherland, this collection represents an impressive array of the foremost experts on guerrilla fighting in the Civil War. Providing new interpretations of this long-misconstrued aspect of warfare, these scholars go beyond the conventional battlefield to examine the stories of irregular combatants across all theaters of the Civil War, bringing geographic breadth to what is often treated as local and regional history. The Guerrilla Hunters shows that instances of unorthodox combat, once thought isolated and infrequent, were numerous, and many clashes defy easy categorisation. Novel methodological approaches and a staggering diversity of research and topics allow this volume to support multiple areas for debate and discovery within this growing field of Civil War scholarship.

Read more less

Cassandra Harrell remembers watching her grandmother, Big Mama, fry hot-water corn bread in a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet on her electric stove. Only four years old, Harrell had to crawl onto a kitchen chair to see the yellow cornmeal batter skillfully dropped into sizzling oil. Once fried to a golden brown, the bread was served with one of Big Mama's many delicious meals like a plate of turnip greens and smoked meat or a bowl of beef stew. Growing up in a small, close-knit community in southwest Tennessee, Harrell received a culinary education from her family, learning her trade by example: she listened to her mother and grandmother and watched them in the kitchen as they cooked tomatoes, onions, and cabbage they gathered from the family's large backyard garden. Over the next forty years, Harrell honed her appreciation of good food through cooking, both at home and as a professional caterer.Soul Food Advisor shares more than 150 of Harrell's personal and family recipes, from Big Mama's Neck Bone Soup to Harrell's own low-cholesterol, low-sodium Country Black-eyed Peas and Okra. Recipes range from modern favourites like hush puppies, barbecue, and Tennessee-style coleslaw, to lesser-known dishes such as hoecakes, mayonnaise drop rolls, jelly cake, and a whole chicken baked on top of cornbread dressing. In addition to delicious recipes, Harrell includes snippets of southern food history, personal memories from the kitchen, and time-tested cooking tips. Both home and professional cooks, as well as food historians, will embrace Harrell's celebration of soul food as she recounts its authentic recipes, iconic dishes, and irresistible flavors. From the home kitchens that perfected this family-centered cuisine, Soul Food Advisor reveals the secrets of southern cooking, one dish at a time.

Read more less

The successful realisation of diversity, resilience, usefulness, profitability, or beauty in landscape design requires a firm understanding of the stakeholders' values. This collection, which incorporates a wide variety of geographic locations and cultural perspectives, reinforces the necessity for clear and articulate comprehension of the many factors that guide the design process.As the contributors to this collection reveal, dominant and emerging social, political, philosophical, and economic concerns perpetually assert themselves in designed landscapes, from manifestations of class consciousness in Napa Valley vineyards to recurring themes and conflicts in American commemorative culture as seen in designs for national memorials. One essay demonstrates the lasting impact of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny on the culture and spaces of the Midwest, while another considers the shifting historical narratives that led to the de-domestication and subsequent re-wilding of the Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands. These eleven essays help foster the ability to conduct a balanced analysis of various value systems and produce a lucid visualization of the necessary tradeoffs. Offering an array of case studies and theoretical arguments, Values in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design encourages professionals and educators to bring self-awareness, precision, and accountability to their consideration of landscape designs.

Read more less

In the inter war era, the rise of the largest political movement in modern French history, the powerful Croix de Feu (1927- 1936), and its successor, the Parti Social Français, or PSF (1936- 1945), led to a sharp rightward turn in France's political culture. Political Belief in France, 1927- 1945 traces the central role of women in this shift, arguing that they transformed the Croix de Feu/PSF from a paramilitary league for veterans into a social reform movement that sought to remake the politics, society, and culture of the French Republic.Following the creation of a Women's Section in 1934, the women of the Croix de Feu/PSF developed a wide array of social programs, including welfare services, youth development, and health-care initiatives. At a time of economic depression and high unemployment, these popular programs tempered the organization's fearsome reputation as a violent paramilitary group. While the efforts of the Women's Section had the veneer of moderation, they accentuated the long-standing conservative image of France as a deeply Christian society and sought to assimilate people of different ethnoreligious backgrounds into the dominant national community. Croix de Feu/PSF women promoted their socialagenda as a religious and patriotic duty, a reflection of the individual's responsibility to make personal sacrifices on behalf of their vision for France's Christian civilization.The Croix de Feu/PSF's ethnoreligious nationalism circulated throughout the French imperial nation-state, making the movement the premier defender of an empire at the height of its power. But women in North African branches faced substantial marginalization, and the movement remained dangerously sectarian in the Maghreb, driving indigenous activists from reformism to anticolonialism.The Croix de Feu/PSF thus set the stage for both the authoritarian, anti-Semitic Vichy regime and the decolonization that followed the war. The first book on women of the French far right in the age of fascism, Political Belief in France, 1927- 1945 contributes to the fields of French history, gender studies, the history of fascism, and the history of empire.

Read more less

During the Civil War, southerners produced a vast body of writing about their northern foes, painting a picture of a money-grubbing, puritanical, and infidel enemy. Damn Yankees! explores the proliferation of this rhetoric and demonstrates how the perpetual vilification of northerners became a weapon during the war, fostering hatred and resistance among the people of the Confederacy.Drawing from speeches, cartoons, editorials, letters, and diaries, Damn Yankees! examines common themes in southern excoriation of the enemy. In sharp contrast to the presumed southern ideals of chivalry and honor, Confederates claimed that Yankees were rootless vagabonds who placed profit ahead of fidelity to religious and social traditions. Pervasive criticism of northerners created a framework for understanding their behavior during the war. When the Confederacy prevailed on the field of battle, it confirmed the Yankees' reputed physical and moral weakness. When the Yankees achieved military success, reports of depravity against vanquished foes abounded, stiffening the resolve of Confederate soldiers and civilians alike to protect their homeland and the sanctity of their women from Union degeneracy.From award-winning Civil War historian George C. Rable, Damn Yankees! is the first comprehensive study of anti-Union speech and writing, the ways these words shaped perceptions of and events in the war, and the rhetoric's enduring legacy in the South after the conflict had ended.

Read more less

In the autumn of 1871, Alexis Romanov, the fourth son of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, set sail from his homeland for an extended journey through the United States and Canada. A major milestone in U.S.-Russia relations, the tour also served Duke Alexis's family by helping to extricate him from an unsuitable romantic entanglement with the daughter of a poet. Alexis in America recounts the duke's progress through the major American cities, detailing his meetings with celebrated figures such as Samuel Morse and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and describing the national self-reflection that his presence spurred in the American people. The first Russian royal ever to visit the United States, Alexis received a tour through post-Civil War America that emphasized the nation's cultural unity. While the enthusiastic American media breathlessly reported every detail of his itinerary and entourage, Alexis visited Niagara Falls, participated in a bison hunt with Buffalo Bill Cody, and attended the Krewe of Rex's first Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans. As word of the royal visitor spread, the public flocked to train depots and events across the nation to catch a glimpse of the grand duke. Some speculated that Russia and America were considering a formal alliance, while others surmised that he had come to the United States to find a bride. The tour was not without incident: many city officials balked at spending public funds on Alexis's reception, and there were rumors of an assassination plot by Polish nationals in New York City. More broadly, the visit highlighted problems on the national level, such as political corruption and persistent racism, as well as the emerging cultural and political power of ethnic minorities and the continuing sectionalism between the North and the South. Lee Farrow joins her examination of these cultural underpinnings to a lively narrative of the grand duke's tour, creating an engaging record of a unique moment in international relations.

Read more less

In Eldest Daughter, Ava Leavell Haymon displays her mastery of the craft and engages us with the poetic gifts we have come to expect from her. As in previous collections, she combines the sensory and the spiritual in wild verbal fireworks. Concrete descriptions of a woman's life in the mid-twentieth-century American South mix with wider concerns about family lies and truths, and a culture that supports or forbids clear speech.In a passage from The Holy Ghost Attends Vacation Bible School, the physical world of children interplays with the divine: ""The least likely place the Holy Ghost ever descended was in east Mississippi. Red clay hills and church politics soured on years of inbreeding. Every deacon drove a pickup. At Bible School, the kids played red rover and rolled down the sharp slope behind the Baptist church. He recognized the dizziness at the bottom and the fear of having your name called, but the grass stains, the torn blouses, and sprained wrists -- these were beyond Him.""Haymon's poems encourage us to revel in the natural world and enjoy its delights, as well as to confront the difficult realities that keep us from doing so.

Read more less

Swamper, a fictitious swamp rabbit, lives in the bottomland hardwood forest, or overflow swamp, which is a very real environment. In twelve ""letters"" addressed to his human friends, Swamper shares his vivid observations about life in a Louisiana swamp. With excitement and captivating detail Swamper explains ecological concepts such as food webs, energy flow, decomposition, and reproduction. He recounts adventures like escaping his predators, the great horned owl and the red fox, and swimming for his life after a flood forces him to find higher ground. The observant swamp rabbit even describes the seasonal migration of birds and the monthly phases of the moon. While educating readers about the interconnected life cycles found in a natural habitat, Swamper's first-hand account of the richness and value of the wetlands will also help them develop a deeper appreciation for this delicate ecosystem. Written for 8- 12-year-olds, the content aligns with life science and environmental science educational standards for 4th through 7th grades. Also Includes:A glossary of key termsQuestions and a creative activity for each letterBiologically accurate drawings of animals and habitatColor photographs of the environmentSupplementary online resources for teachers and parents

Read more less

In this expansive study, Bryan Giemza recovers a neglected subculture and retrieves a missing chapter of Irish Catholic heritage by canvassing the literature of American Irish writers from the U.S. South. Giemza offers a defining new view of Irish American authors and their interrelationships within both transatlantic and ethnic regional contexts. From the first Irish American novel, published in Winchester, Virginia, in 1817, Giemza investigates a cast of nineteenth-century writers contending with the turbulence of their time, writers influenced by both American and Irish revolutions. Additionally, he considers dramatists and propagandists of the Civil War and Lost Cause memoirists who emerged in its wake. Some familiar names reemerge in an Irish context, including Joel Chandler Harris, Lafcadio Hearn, and Kate (O'Flaherty) Chopin. Giemza also examines the works of twentieth-century southern Irish writers, such as Margaret Mitchell, John Kennedy Toole, Flannery O'Connor, Pat Conroy, Anne Rice, Valerie Sayers, and Cormac McCarthy. For each author, Giemza traces the influences of Catholicism as it shaped both faith and ethnic identity, pointing to shared sensibilities and contradictions. Flannery O'Connor, for example, resisted identification as an Irish American, while Cormac McCarthy, described by some as ""anti-Catholic,"" continues a dialogue with the Church from which he distanced himself. Giemza draws on many never-before-seen documents, including authorized material from the correspondence of Cormac McCarthy, interviews from the Irish community of Flannery O'Connor's native Savannah, Georgia, and Giemza's own correspondence with writers such as Valerie Sayers and Anne Rice. This lively literary history prompts a new understanding of how the Irish in the region helped invent a regional mythos, an enduring literature, and a national image.

Read more less

From backwoods bars and small-town dives to swampside dance halls and converted clapboard barns, Louisiana Saturday Night offers an anecdotal history and experiential guidebook to some of the Gumbo State's most unique blues, Cajun, and zydeco clubs. Music critic Alex V. Cook uncovers south Louisiana's wellspring of musical tradition, showing us that indigenous music exists not as an artifact to be salvaged by preservationists, but serves as a living, breathing, singing, laughing, and crying part of Louisiana culture. Louisiana Saturday Night takes the reader to both offbeat and traditional venues in and around Baton Rouge, Cajun country, and New Orleans, where we hear the distinctive voices of musicians, patrons, and owners -- like Teddy Johnson, born in the house that now serves as Teddy's Juke Joint. Along the way, Cook ruminates on the cultural importance of the people and places he encounters, and shows their critical role in keeping Louisiana's unique music alive. A map, a journal, a snapshot of what goes on in the little shacks off main roads, Louisiana Saturday Night provides an indispensable and entertaining companion for those in pursuit of Louisiana's quirky and varied nightlife.

Read more less

The name ""Suzanne Perron"" is synonymous with exquisite detail. Her expertly tailored gowns -- worn at the elaborate balls of Mardi Gras and down the aisle at New Orleans weddings -- draw from the legacy of couture design. After years working alongside Vera Wang, Carolina Herrera, Anna Sui, and Ralph Rucci in New York, Louisiana native Perron returned home in 2005 to open her own custom design business, specializing in once-in-a-lifetime gowns for brides, debutantes, and Mardi Gras royalty. Designing in Ivory and White captures the rise of this talented designer, from her first Singer sewing machine to her success on Seventh Avenue to her post-Katrina move to a city in need of ""something beautiful,"" as well as her design technique and meticulous craft. In addition to her personal story, Perron shares her process from the inside out, including: methods for creating crinolines and foundations; using draping and pattern making to transform a sketch into a three-dimensional form; manipulating fabric into pleats, pintucks, and folds; and hand sewing intricate beading, lace, embroidery, and flawless hems.Her techniques and breathtaking artistry are realized through a showcase of sixteen Suzanne Perron designs. Full-length and detail shots illustrate Perron's gorgeous silhouettes and masterful handwork. Each gown also has a story that illuminates the client experience from the first sketch to the final fitting.Designing in Ivory and White serves as a testament to the ambition and skill required to design unique dresses, and will provide inspiration for independent designers, sewing hobbyists, and all who admire couture fashion.

Read more less

Though remembered largely by history as Andrew Jackson's nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson was himself a significant figure in nineteenth-century America: a politician, planter, diplomat, newspaper editor, and vice-presidential candidate. His relationship with his uncle and mentor defined his life, as he struggled to find the political and personal success that he wanted and his uncle thought he deserved. In Old Hickory's Nephew, the first definitive biography of this enigmatic man, Mark R. Cheathem explores both Donelson's political contributions and his complex, tumultuous, and often-overlooked relationship with Andrew Jackson. Born in Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1799, Donelson lost his father only five years later. Andrew Jackson soon became a force in his nephew's life, seeing in his namesake his political protégé. Jackson went so far as to predict that Donelson would one day become president. After attending West Point, Donelson helped establish the Jacksonian wing of the Democratic party and edited a national Democratic newspaper. As a diplomat, he helped bring about the annexation of Texas and, following in his uncle's footsteps, he became the owner of several plantations. On the surface, Donelson was a political and personal success.But few lives are so straightforward. The strong relationship between the uncle and nephew - defined by the concept of honor that suffused the southern society in which they lived - quickly frayed when Donelson and his wife defied his uncle during the infamous Peggy Eaton sex scandal of Jackson's first presidential administration. This resulted, Cheathem shows, in a tense relationship, full of distrust and suspicion, between Donelson and Jackson that lasted until the ""Hero of New Orleans"" died in 1845. Donelson later left the Democratic party in a tiff and joined the American, or Know Nothing, party, which selected him as Millard Fillmore's running mate in 1856. Though Donelson tried to establish himself as his uncle's political successor and legator, his friends and foes alike accused him of trading on his uncle's name to gain political and financial success.The life of Andrew Jackson Donelson illuminates the expectations placed upon young southern men of prominent families as well as the complexities and contradictions in their lives. In this biography, Cheathem awakens interest in a nearly forgotten but nonetheless intriguing figure in American history.

Read more less

In William Faulkner, William James, and the American Pragmatic Tradition, David H. Evans pairs the writings of America's most intellectually challenging modern novelist, William Faulkner, and the ideas of America's most revolutionary modern philosopher, William James. Though Faulkner was dubbed an idealist after World War II, Evans demonstrates that Faulkner's writing is deeply connected to the emergence of pragmatism as an intellectual doctrine and cultural force in the early twentieth century. Tracing pragmatism to its very roots, Evans examines the nineteenth-century confidence man of antebellum literature as the original practitioner of the pragmatic principle that a belief can give rise to its own objects. He casts this figure as the missing link between Faulkner and James, giving him new prominence in the prehistory of pragmatism. Moving on to Jamesian pragmatism, Evans contends that James's central innovation was his ability to define truth in narrative terms - just as the confidence man did - as something subjective and personal that continually shapes reality, rather than a set of static, unchanging facts.In subsequent chapters Evans offers detailed interpretations of three of Faulkner's most important novels, Absalom, Absalom!, Go Down, Moses, and The Hamlet, revealing that Faulkner, too, saw truth as fluid. By avoiding conclusion and finality, these three novels embody the pragmatic belief that life and the world are unstable and constantly evolving. Absalom, Absalom! stages a conflict of historical discourses that - much like the pragmatic concept of truth - can never be ultimately resolved. Evans shows us how Faulkner explores the conventional and arbitrary status of racial identity in Go Down, Moses, in a way that is strikingly similar to James's criticism of the concept of identity in general. Finally, Evans reads The Hamlet, a work that is often used to support the idea that Faulkner is opposed to modernity, as a depiction of a distinctly pragmatic and modern world.With its creative coupling of James's philosophy and Faulkner's art, Evans's lively, engaging book makes a bold contribution to Faulkner studies and studies of southern literature.

Read more less

Drummer, record producer, bandleader, jazz researcher, and cigar-chomping raconteur Barry Martyn is a New Orleans original who happens to have been born in England. Implausible though this may seem, it makes perfect sense to members of the New Orleans traditional jazz community, who view themselves as an extended family based on merit as much as nativity. For more than forty years, Martyn has been a fixture in the Crescent City's jazz scene, laying down the beat for generations of celebrated musicians and avidly promoting the city's unique musical heritage around the world. In Walking with Legends -- based on over forty hours of interviews with Martyn by fellow British jazz enthusiast and author Mick Burns -- Martyn reflects upon his life in jazz and offers a window into a musical world that few have understood, let alone witnessed from the inside. At the age of nineteen, jazz fanatic Martyn found his way to the Crescent City and began working as a professional drummer in clubs and studios. The first white man in the United States to join a black musician's union, he eventually started his own record label and recorded hundreds of jam sessions that today are regarded as classics in Europe. In 1972, he formed the Legends of Jazz, an old-style New Orleans jazz band that toured the world and took New Orleans jazz into the American showbiz mainstream.Martyn's life story provides unique intimate glimpses of a vanished generation of New Orleans musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Kid Sheik Cola, Harold Dejan, Joe Watkins, Albert Nicholas, Kid Thomas, Andrew Blakeney, and many others. Throughout his chronicle, Martyn highlights the continual clash of cultures that arose from an avid British pupil learning lessons of life and music from elderly African American strangers who take him under their wing both out of curiosity and self-interest. Together, they find a way to connect through music, even if the road gets a little bumpy at times. A standard-bearer for New Orleans's jazz drumming tradition, Martyn remains one of the city's busiest musicians and most avid promoters of New Orleans music. In Walking with Legends, he honors the legacies of the African American musicians who taught and inspired him and affirms the importance of the human relationships that make the music possible.

Read more less

Louisiana is in a desperate battle to save what remains of its coastal wetlands, which are disappearing at the rate of a football field--size area every 38 minutes. Most people are unaware of the devastating transformation of this remote region, though the effects are detrimental for the entire country economically, culturally, and environmentally. Hoping that art will inspire concern where statistics have not, and focusing on the marshlands' beauty rather than their destruction, nature photographer C. C. Lockwood and painter Rhea Gary have joined together in Marsh Mission to show that a picture is worth at least a thousand words. Their rapturous thirty photographs and thirty paintings may well leave one speechless.For an entire year, C.C. immersed himself in the wetlands, living on a houseboat -- the Wetland Wanderer -- with his wife, Sue, a schoolteacher, who created an interactive classroom from the boat via the Internet. They covered more than 5,000 miles, taking the pulse of their environs and documenting everything from oil rigs to egrets and vivid setting suns. Rhea sometimes joined the Lockwoods and other times ventured out in her own bateau, designed to hold an easel for making oil-on-paper sketches. She produced the final oil paintings on canvas in her studio.In his photographs, C.C. captures the quiet, hidden activity of the wetlands in all their paradisaical aspects. Breathtaking detail -- the reward of day-in and day-out vigilance. Rhea conveys her emotional response to the light, color, and mood of the landscape with bold impressionistic strokes in raspberry, tangerine, lime, fuchsia, azure, and yellow. Hot -- like the culture and the climate of south Louisiana. Together, the two impart an aesthetic experience that explains better than any map or scientific data the irreplaceable treasure being lost. A narrative by each artist enhances their visual testimony and gives a rare glimpse into the creative process.Formed by silt deposits from the Mississippi River, Louisiana's coastal region constitutes 40 percent of all U.S. marshlands, but it is sinking at an alarming rate because the river's leveed banks -- while essential for flood control and ship navigation -- obstruct silt replenishment. With Marsh Mission, C. C. Lockwood and Rhea Gary offer a visionary tribute to this endangered, national natural resource. Their images should arouse awareness, appreciation, and, especially, action.

Read more less

David King Gleason provides a grand tour of Virginia's distinctive plantation homes. As the architectural historian Calder Loth states in his prefatory note, ""Gleason's elegant photographs provide a seductive image of life in 'Old Virginia.' He presents one inviting house after another, complete with handsome interiors, and spacious grounds dotted with boxwoods and venerable trees.""Unlike those in the Deep South, most of Virginia's plantation homes were built before the antebellum period and mainly reflect colonial, English Georgian, and Jeffersonian styles of architecture. Gleason has photographed the homes in all seasons, framing some in the pink blossoms of springtime dogwoods, showing others surrounded by the golden hues of autumn, and presenting still others blanketed in January snows. Many of the photographs provide aerial perspectives that encompass not only the homes themselves but outbuildings and dependencies, great lawns and terraced gardens.The book begins with homes in the Tidewater region, where Bacon's Castle, built in 1665 on the south bank of the James River, still stands. It is the oldest surviving house not only in Virginia but in all of English-settled North America. Other houses from the Tidewater region include Westover, considered one of the most beautiful Georgian residences in the United States; Brandon, at one time the home of Benjamin Harrison; Appomattox Manor, where Ulysses S. Grant headquartered for a period during the Civil War; and Carter's Grove, near Williamsburg. In northern Virginia and the Shenandoah valley are Gunston Hall, near Alexandria; Woodlawn, in Fairfax County; Washington's Mount Vernon; and Melrose, a castellated manor inspired by the romantic literature of Sir Walter Scott. In the Piedmont, Gleason photographed such houses as Ash Lawn, the home of James Monroe; Edgemont, an exquisitely proportioned house showing Thomas Jefferson's influence; and Estouteville, whose great center hall opens onto identical Tuscan porticos framing magnificent views of the Virginia countryside. Gleason's photographs of a mist-shrouded Monticello are among the most beautiful in the book. In all, Gleason has photographed more than eighty of Virginia's finest plantation homes. Extensive captions provide concise histories of each house, including its original builder and subsequent owners, and its occupants, either friendly or hostile, during the Revolutionary or Civil wars.

Read more less

In recent years, ethnographers have recognized south Louisiana as home to perhaps the most complex rural society in North America. More than a dozen French-speaking immigrant groups have been identified there, Cajuns and white Creoles being the most famous. In this guide to the amazing social, cultural, and linguistic variation within Louisiana's French-speaking region, Carl A. Brasseaux presents an overview of the origins and evolution of all the Francophone communities.Brasseaux examines the impact of French immigration on Louisiana over the past three centuries. He shows how this once-undesirable outpost of the French empire became colonized by individuals ranging from criminals to entrepreneurs who went on to form a multifaceted society—one that, unlike other American melting pots, rests upon a French cultural foundation.A prolific author and expert on the region, Brasseaux offers readers an entertaining history of how these diverse peoples created south Louisiana's famous vibrant culture, interacting with African Americans, Spaniards, and Protestant Anglos and encountering influences from southern plantation life and the Caribbean. He explores in detail three still cohesive components in the Francophone melting pot, each one famous for having retained a distinct identity: the Creole communities, both black and white; the Cajun people; and the state's largest concentration of French speakers—the Houma tribe.A product of thirty years' research, French, Cajun, Creole, Houma provides a reliable and understandable guide to the ethnic roots of a region long popular as an international tourist attraction.

Read more less

George Bourne was one of the early American republic's first immediate abolitionists, an influential figure who paved the way for the campaign against slavery in the antebellum period. His approach to reform was shaped by a conservative Protestant outlook that became increasingly hostile to Catholicism. In To Preach Deliverance to the Captives, Ryan C. McIlhenny examines the interplay of Bourne's pioneering efforts in abolitionism and his intensely anti-Catholic views. McIlhenny portrays Bourne as both a radical and a conservative, a reformer who desired to get back to the roots of Christianity for the purpose of completely dismantling slavery. Bourne's commentary on a variety of controversial topics, slavery, race, and citizenship; the role of women; Christianity and republicanism; the importance of the Bible; and the place of the church in civil society, put him at the center of many debates. He remains a complex figure: a polymath situated within the political, social, and cultural possibilities of an early republic that he was eager to play a part in shaping. Bourne's religious radicalism gave rise to his hope for an emerging post-revolutionary republic that would focus mainly on its religious foundations. The strength of the American nation, in Bourne's mind, rested not only on institutions indicative of a republican form of government but also on a pure Christianity, exemplified best in historical Protestantism. To Bourne, the future of the fledgling nation depended not only on principles and institutions but also on the activism of Protestant leaders like himself.

Read more less

In this subtle and candid collection, Lisa Ampleman mixes contemporary elements and historical materials as she speaks back to the literary tradition of courtly love. Instead of bachelor knights bemoaning their allegedly cruel beloveds, Romances emphasizes the voices of female troubadours, along with those of historical figures such as Dante's wife, Petrarch's Laura, and Anne Boleyn. Ampleman also incorporates the work of the Italian Renaissance poet Gaspara Stampa, mentioned in Rilke's Duino Elegies, through a series of adaptations of her verse. Elsewhere, a contemporary sonnet sequence dedicated to Courtney Love shows the 1990s grunge rocker as subject, object, performer, and mother. As her poems reflect on popular romantic ideas about the past, the means by which elegies romanticize the dead, or the conventional romance of a happy marriage, Ampleman addresses a range of romantic entanglements: courtly and commonplace, sentimental and prosaic, toxic and mutual.

Read more less

What is the shape of progress inside a subpar environment, when escape is not possible, and life must be measured as the relative extremity of multiple misfortunes? Is it the shape of a bird?"" Miracles Come on Mondays begins with a voice- stark, chilling, totally captivating- that searches a barren landscape for a single receptive ear. With echoes of Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, and Lydia Davis, Penelope Cray creates dark and sometimes darkly funny scenes that most resemble the works of Kafka. Cray's characters strain against the indifference of everyday life until, too tired to yearn anymore, they begin the systematic work of making their worlds mentally and spiritually tolerable. And yet, somehow, there's joy. This book asks us to let go of our ideas of sense and replace them with something better, something that somehow makes more sense than sense. Cray has written a debut work of fiction that feels entirely new and deeply true.

Read more less

Jane Austen has resonated with readers across generations like no other writer. More than two hundred years after the publication of her most celebrated novel, Pride and Prejudice, people around the world continue to honor ""dear Jane."" In Performing Jane, Sarah Glosson explores this vibrant fandom, examining a long history of Austen fans engaging with her work, from wearing hand- ­sewn bonnets and period- ­appropriate corsets to creating spirited fanfiction and comical gifsets. Sophisticated and engaging, this study demonstrates that Austen fans of today have a great deal in common with those who loved the English novelist long before the term ""fan"" came into use. Performing Jane analyzes three ways fans engage with Austen and her work: collecting material related to the writer, whether in physical scrapbooks or on social ­-media platforms; creating and consuming imitative works, including fanfiction and modernized adaptations such as The Lizzie Bennet Diaries; and making pilgrimages to Steventon, Hampshire, Chawton Cottage, and even to annual meetings of Jane Austen societies. Key to Glosson's exploration of Austen fans is the notion that all of these activities, whether occurring in private or in public, are fundamentally performative. And in counterbalance to studies that center on fans with a tendency to transform and disrupt the original text, this study provides much- ­needed understanding of a fandom that predominantly reaffirms Austen's works. Because Austen's writing has bridged the realms of both literary and popular culture, this fandom serves as an excellent case study to understand the ways in which we draw distinctions between fandom and other forms of intensive engagement and, more importantly, to appreciate how fluid those distinctions can be. Performing Jane embraces a holistic view of the long history of Austen fandom, relying on archival research, literary and visual analyses, and ethnographic study. This groundbreaking book not only demonstrates the ways in which fan practices, today and in the past, are performative, but also provides fresh perspectives into fandom and contributes to our understanding of the ways readers engage with literature.

Read more less

When Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, thousands of patriotic southerners rushed to enlist for the Confederate cause. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who grew up in the border state of Missouri in a slave-holding family, was among them. Clemens, who later achieved fame as the writer Mark Twain, served as second lieutenant in a Confederate militia, but only for two weeks, leading many to describe his loyalty to the Confederate cause as halfhearted at best. After all, Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and his numerous speeches celebrating Abraham Lincoln, with their trenchant call for racial justice, inspired his crowning as ""the Lincoln of our Literature."" In The Reconstruction of Mark Twain, Joe B. Fulton challenges these long-held assumptions about Twain's advocacy of the Union cause, arguing that Clemens traveled a long and arduous path, moving from pro-slavery, secession, and the Confederacy to pro-union, and racially enlightened. Scattered and long-neglected texts written by Clemens before, during, and immediately after the Civil War, Fulton shows, tout pro-southern sentiments critical of abolitionists, free blacks, and the North for failing to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. These obscure works reveal the dynamic process that reconstructed Twain in parallel with and response to events on American battlefields and in American politics. Beginning with Clemens's youth in Missouri, Fulton tracks the writer's transformation through the turbulent Civil War years as a southern-leaning reporter in Nevada and San Francisco to his raucous burlesques written while he worked as a Washington correspondent during the impeachment crises of 1867--1868. Fulton concludes with the writer's emergence as the country's satirist-in-chief in the postwar era. By explaining the relationship between the author's early pro-southern writings and his later stance as a champion for racial justice throughout the world, Fulton provides a new perspective on Twain's views and on his deep involvement with Civil War politics.A deft blend of biography, history, and literary studies, The Reconstruction of Mark Twain offers a bold new assessment of the work of one of America's most celebrated writers.

Read more less