Search results for ""university of south carolina press""

This book presents an international comparative study of a mode of emancipation that worked to reinforce the institution of slavery. Manumission - the act of freeing a slave while the institution of slavery continues - has received relatively little scholarly attention as compared to other aspects of slavery and emancipation. To address this gap, editors Rosemary Brana-Shute and Randy J. Sparks present a volume of essays that comprise the first-ever comparative study of manumission as it affected slave systems on both sides of the Atlantic. In this landmark volume, an international group of scholars consider the history and implications of manumission from the medieval period to the late nineteenth century as the phenomenon manifested itself in the Old World and the New. The contributors demonstrate that although the means of manumission varied greatly across the Atlantic world, in every instance the act served to reinforce the sovereign power structures inherent in the institution of slavery. In some societies only a master had the authority to manumit slaves, while in others the state might grant freedom or it might be purchased. Regardless of the source of manumission, the result was viewed by its society as a benevolent act intended to bind the freed slave to his or her former master through gratitude if no longer through direct ownership. The possibility of manumission worked to inspire faithful servitude among slaves while simultaneously solidifying the legitimacy of their ownership. The essayists compare the legacy of manumission in medieval Europe; the Jewish communities of Levant, Europe, and the New World; the Dutch, French, and British colonies; and the antebellum United States, while exploring wider patterns that extended beyond a single location or era. They also document the fates of manumitted slaves, some of whom were accepted into freed segments of their societies; while others were expected to vacate their former communities entirely. The contributors investigate the cultural consequences of manumission as well as the changing economic conditions that limited the practice by the eighteenth century to understand better the social implications of this multifaceted aspect of the system of slavery.

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This book presents an analysis of the dynamic relationship between apocalyptic prophesies and medieval Muslim politics. ""Messianic Beliefs and Imperial Politics in Medieval Islam"" analyzes the role of Muslim messianic and apocalyptic beliefs in the development of the 'Abbasid Caliphate to highlight connections between charismatic authority and institutional developments in the early ninth century. Hayrettin Yucesoy studies the relationship between rulers and religion to advance understanding of the era's political actions and, more specifically, to illustrate how messianic beliefs influenced 'Abbasid imperial politics and contributed to the reshaping of the caliphate under al-Ma'mun (809-33) after a decade-long civil war. Yucesoy challenges traditional sociological views that marginalize messianic beliefs as oppositional ideologies of disfranchised social classes to be used against the political establishment. Instead he finds a mode of symbiosis between messianic beliefs, political reform, and imperial ambitions put in motion by al-Ma'mun's acute understanding of the sociopolitical and ideological context of his time. Yucesoy demonstrates how the caliphate absorbed influences from the late antique world and Near Eastern cultures to fashion a prophetic vision that served to undergird al-Ma'mun's imperial aspirations. A comprehensive portrait of the caliph and his reign emerges from this study as a result. By drawing on records of Muslim and non-Muslim apocalyptic prophecies circulating among the general public and educated elites alike, this study demonstrates the pertinence of messianic beliefs to medieval Muslim politics and illustrates the manner in which the caliph responded and shaped societal concerns on three distinct fronts: domestic fiscal and administrative reforms, an increase in missionary and military activities, and religious reform. Yucesoy shows that political usefulness contributed to the longevity of charismatic ideologies by addressing how the 'Abbasid ruling class adopted such beliefs as a medium to initiate governmental reforms and expand their authority. This work adds new layers to ongoing interdisciplinary discourse about the importance of religion in Islamic sociopolitical life, both historically and in the contemporary Muslim world.

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This book provides a descriptive inventory of the major components in the Matthew J. and Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. The collection documents the literary career and thought of one of America's greatest novelists. The catalogue includes a listing of editions of all English-language printings of books by Fitzgerald including proof and review copies and the collection's many books inscribed by the author. Fitzgerald manuscripts, revised typescripts, correspondence, and business documents are also cited, as well as Fitzgerald screenplays and Princetoniana. There is a separate section on Zelda Fitzgerald. Highlights of the collection include the only set of unrevised galleys for The Great Gatsby, titled Trimalchio; one of the two existing acting scripts for Fie! Fie! Fi-Fi!; Fitzgerald's annotated copy of James Joyce's Ulysses; a copy of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls inscribed to Fitzgerald; and Fitzgerald memorabilia such as his engraved whiskey flask, a briefcase, and other family materials. Each item is described in detail - including title, publication information, and call number, where relevant, and explanatory notes. Many items in the collection, including all Fitzgerald inscriptions, are illustrated. The Matthew J. and Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald at the University of South Carolina provides a valuable resource not only for Fitzgerald scholars, but also for those interested in Fitzgerald's friends and literary associates (including Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Ring Lardner, John Dos Passos, and Maxwell Perkins) and in American culture between the world wars.

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Understanding Thomas Mann offers a comprehensive guide to the novels, short stories, novellas, and nonfiction of one of the most renowned and prolific German writers. In addition to analyzing Mann's most famous works, including Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, and Doctor Faustus, Hannelore Mundt introduces readers to lesser-known works, among them Joseph and His Brothers, Lotte in Weimar, and The Black Swan. In close readings, Mundt illustrates how Mann's masterly prose captures both his time and the complexities of human existence with a unique blend of humor, compassion, irony, and ambiguity. Mundt takes readers chronologically from Mann's literary beginnings in 1894 to his last novel, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. She considers the influence of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche on the emergence of Mann's literary voice, his conflicted feelings about his bourgeois background, and his life as Germany's representative writer in the Weimar Republic and in exile. Mundt places Mann's works in the realistic and modern traditions and discusses his recurring thematic concerns - the individual's rebellion against oppressive bourgeois conventions and antihumanistic principles, the need for an unremitting questioning of authority and ostensibly absolute truths, and the antagonism between individualistic freedom and social responsibility. In light of the recent publication of Mann's diaries, disclosing his homosexual inclinations, Mundt also identifies the textual strategies he adopted for revealing and simultaneously masking his secret sexuality. Mann emerges from Mundt's analysis as a writer who plays with opposing perspectives in his fictional renderings of both the alienated individual and Germany's cultural and political history. Mundt suggests that the openness of his works, paired with his deep insights into human existence, explains his stature as a literary figure whose importance extends worldwide.

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A facsimile of the classic volume of love letters from the Scottish bard. It includes letters from the G Ross Roy Collection of Burnsiana.

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The Southern Literary Messenger enjoyed an impressive thirty-year run (1834-1864) and was, in its time, the South's most important literary periodical. Published in Richmond, Virginia, the monthly magazine was originally edited by Edgar Allan Poe and is remembered for publishing poems, fiction, and essays by the nation's leading authors - both male and female, northern and southern - including William Gilmore Simms, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Joseph G. Baldwin, John Pendleton Kennedy, Mary E. Lee, and Caroline Lee Hentz. In 1905, Benjamin Blake Minor (1818-1905), editor of the ""Messenger"" during the 1840s, wrote the only book-length study of the magazine. Minor recounts in detail the relationships he forged with notable authors and includes excerpts from correspondence with Poe and others. Most important, Minor identifies and discusses hundreds of lesser contributors who might otherwise remain anonymous. He also describes the struggles the magazine's editors endured as they published essays on the divisive issue of slavery. Minor's authoritative account of the journal's history and influence is augmented in this edition with a new introduction by Wells that places Minor's account in historical context.

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Critical Perspectives on Pat Barker brings together an international roster of scholars who pay detailed attention to the work and career of this prizewinning British writer, providing critical insight into each of her nine novels, from Union Street (1982) through the Regeneration trilogy (1991-95) to Double Vision (2003). The eighteen essays in the volume are organized into five sections: ""Writing Working-Class Women,"" ""Dialogue under Pressure,"" ""Men at War,"" ""The Talking Cure,"" and ""Regenerating the Wasteland."" Taken individually, each of the essays yields a variety of insights into Barker's fictions; taken as a whole, the collection provides a fresh and timely overview of Barker's oeuvre and her creative exploration of society. The volume probes Barker's keenly historicized and yet topical preoccupations: the social and psychological ramifications of planned violence in war and random violence in British villages and cities, and the comforts and tensions in relationships, whether between men in war, women in postindustrial cities, or men and women in sex and marriage. The volume also dissects Barker's unflinching gaze on class, sex, murder, and psychosis, and her provocative and emotionally moving images. It includes an interview with the novelist, incorporates her observations on writing her most recent novel, Double Vision, in the aftermath of wars in Bosnia and Iraq, and explores the film adaptation of Regeneration. The volume also presents Sarah Daniels's dramatic adaptation of Barker's novel Blow Your House Down, which has been staged but has not previously appeared in print.

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Once nearly as ubiquitous as dictionaries and cookbooks are today, letter-writing manuals and their predecessors served to instruct individuals not only on the art of letter composition but also, in effect, on personal conduct. Poster and Mitchell contend that the study of letter-writing theory, which bridges rhetorical theory and grammatical studies, represents an emerging discipline in need of definition. In this volume, they gather the contributions of eleven experts to sketch the contours of epistolary theory and collect the historic and bibliographic materials - from Isocrates to email - that form the basis for its study.

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This is a 2001 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. It is a compelling study of O'Connor's fiction as illuminated by the teaching of the desert monastics. 'Lord, I'm glad I'm a hermit novelist', Flannery O'Connor wrote to a friend in 1957. Sequestered by ill health, O'Connor spent the final thirteen years of her life on her isolated family farm in rural Georgia. During this productive time she developed a fascination with fourth-century Christians who retreated to the desert for spiritual replenishment and whose isolation, suffering, and faith mirrored her own. In ""Flannery O'Connor"", Hermit Novelist, Richard Giannone explores O'Connor's identification with these early Christian monastics and the ways in which she infused her fiction with their teachings. Surveying the influences of the desert fathers on O'Connor's protagonists, Giannone shows how her characters are moved toward a radical simplicity of ascetic discipline as a means of confronting both internal and worldly evils while being drawn closer to God. Artfully bridging literary analysis, O'Connor's biography, and monastic writings, Giannone's study explores O'Connor's advocacy of self-denial and self-scrutiny as vital spiritual weapons that might be brought to bear against the antagonistic forces she found rampant in modern American life.

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Understanding Jill McCorkle introduces readers to the novels and short story collections of Jill McCorkle's growing canon. Since 1984 McCorkle has written five novels and two books of short stories, entering the publishing world, as one reviewer noted, ""with the literary equivalent of a rebel yell"". Filling the gap of critical study on McCorkle, Barbara Bennett analyzes the widely read and admired output of this prolific southern woman writer. Bennett identifies and discusses the diverse characters, thematic concerns and keen sense of language that distinguish McCorkle's work. Bennett offers a brief overview of McCorkle's life, traces the influence on her work, and places her decisively in the ""third generation"" of 20th-century southern writers. While noting McCorkle's links to such prominent southern women writers as Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, Bennett explains how McCorkle's characterizations, attitude of affirmation and references to popular culture distance her from her predecessors. Bennett devotes individual chapters to each of McCorkle's novels and story collections. She discusses the themes that unify these diverse works, including the tension between independence and dependence, the imbuing presence of strength in femininity, the direct conflict between the nurturing of others and the preservation of self, and the opposition of purity and virginity to sexual freedom and expression. Bennett explores McCorkle's development of characters ranging from a young white girl approaching womanhood to a troubled middle-aged man reviewing his life's choices, from an elderly black woman on the verge of retirement to a yound minister struggling with his career path. She finds that in such rich and varied voices, McCorkle crafts stories of a region no longer burdened by the past but now grappling with ordinary family problems.

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The life of the unparalleled purveyor of the Great American Songbook, Marian McPartland, is celebrated in this engrossing biography. In this book, Paul de Barros considers McPartland's full life and shows her to have been a courageous compositional innovator as well as an immensely talented popularizer and educator.

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In this pioneering study of the long and arduous struggle for civil rights in South Carolina, longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, bombings, cross burnings, death threats, arson, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured—as well as the astonishing courage, devotion, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality.Through extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred fifty civil rights activists, many of whom had never shared their stories with anyone, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, preaching, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins. Participants' use of nonviolent direct action altered the landscape of civil rights in South Carolina and reverberated throughout the South.These firsthand accounts include the unsung petitioners who risked their lives by supporting Summerton's Briggs v. Elliot, a lawsuit that led to the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision; the thousands of students who were arrested and jailed in 1960 for protests in Rock Hill, Orangeburg, Denmark, Columbia, and Sumter; and the black female employees and leaders who defied a governor and his armed troops during the 1969 hospital strike in Charleston.Brinson also highlights contributions made by remarkable but lesser-known activists, including James M. Hinton Sr., president of the South Carolina Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Thomas W. Gaither, Congress of Racial Equality field secretary and scout for the Freedom Rides; Charles F. McDew, a South Carolina State College student and co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and Mary Moultrie, grassroots leader of the 1969 hospital workers' strike.These intimate stories of courage and conviction, both heartbreaking and inspiring, shine a light on the progress achieved by nonviolent civil rights activists while also revealing white South Carolinians' often violent resistance to change. Although significant racial disparities remain, the sacrifices of these brave men and women produced real progress—and hope for the future.

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Meet the coaches, athletes, and other larger-than-life characters that laid the foundation for today's Gamecock NationIn A Gamecock Odyssey: University of South Carolina Sports in the Independent Era, author Alan Piercy chronicles the significant events and describes the larger-than-life characters of the years following the university's departure from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). The University of South Carolina experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows in its athletics history. With colorful storytelling and Gamecock pride, Piercy gives curious college sports fans and diehard Gamecocks a behind-the-scenes tour of these raucous decades. Tales of interpersonal clashes between football head coach Paul Dietzel and men's basketball head coach Frank McGuire, the Icarian rise and fall of women's basketball coach Pam Parsons, George Rogers and his magical Heisman Trophy-winning season, the birth of USC's beloved mascot, Cocky, and other USC sports stories converge, stirring feelings of amusement, nostalgia, and pride. A Gamecock Odyssey captures the spirit of the time and shows the reader how those years influenced today's Gamecock athletics culture.

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An accessible and important look at what is truly behind our digital outrageOn any given day, at any given hour, across the various platforms constituting what we call social media, someone is angry. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Reddit. 4Chan. In The Rhetoric of Outrage: Why Social Media is Making Us Angry Professor Jeff Rice addresses the increasingly critical question of why anger has become the dominant digital response on social media. He examines the theoretical and rhetorical explanations for the intense rage that prevails across social media platforms, and sheds new light on how our anger isn't merely a reaction against singular events, but generated out of subversive, aggregated beliefs and ideas. Captivating, accessible, and exceedingly important, The Rhetoric of Outrage: Why Social Media Is Making Us Angry encourages readers to have the difficult conversations about what is truly behind their anger.

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Delightful tales of hunting and fishing, family, friends, dogs, and precious time well spent and cherished Nationally recognized and award-winning writer Jim Mize captures the true essence of sport and living life to the fullest in this collection of stories about his outdoor escapades. In tales spanning more than five decades, Mize invites readers into carefree days hiking through the Colorado Rockies with a fly rod and leisurely casting poppers to bluegill on small southern ponds. Cold days shivering in a duck blind or deer hunting trips lost in fog all make for fine memories. And then there are the dogs. Meet boot-eating Labs, setters with fine noses, and a Brittany Spaniel that loved to bounce through frosted kudzu. Mize's humorous stories entertain and remind readers of their own turkey hunting or creek fishing excursions. Black-and-white line drawings from artist Bob White illustrate stories filled with laughter, quiet contemplation, and wonder. Mize reminds the young and old that the pleasure of the pursuit matters most.

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First published in 1930 as 200 Years of Charleston Cooking, this collection of more than three hundred recipes was gathered by Blanche S. Rhett from housewives and their African American cooks in Charleston, South Carolina. From enduring favorites like she-crab soup and Hopping John to forgotten delicacies like cooter (turtle) stew, the recipes Rhett collected were full of family secrets but often lacked precise measurements. With an eye to precision that characterized home economics in the 1930s, Rhett engaged Lettie Gay, director of the Home Institute at the New York Herald Tribune, to interpret, test, and organize the recipes in this book. Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking is replete with southern charm and detailed instructions on preparing the likes of shrimp with hominy, cheese straws, and sweet potato pie not to mention more than one hundred pages of delightful cakes and candies.

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For centuries the Atlantic world has been a site of encounter and exchange, a rich point of transit where one could remake one's identity or find it transformed. Through this interdisciplinary collection of essays, Laura R. Prieto and Stephen R. Berry offer vivid new accounts of how individuals remapped race, gender, and sexuality through their lived experience and in the cultural imagination. Crossings and Encounters is the first single volume to address these three intersecting categories across the Atlantic world and beyond the colonial period.The Atlantic world offered novel possibilities to and exposed vulnerabilities of many kinds of people, from travelers to urban dwellers, native Americans to refugees. European colonial officials tried to regulate relationships and impose rigid ideologies of gender, while perceived distinctions of culture, religion, and ethnicity gradually calcified into modern concepts of race. Amid the instabilities of colonial settlement and slave societies, people formed cross-racial sexual relationships, marriages, families, and households. These not only afforded some women and men with opportunities to achieve stability; they also furnished ways to redefine one's status. Crossings and Encounters spans broadly from early contact zones in the seventeenth-century Americas to the postcolonial present, and it covers the full range of the Atlantic world, including the Caribbean, North America, and Latin America. The essays examine the historical intersections between race and gender to illuminate the fluid identities and the dynamic communities of the Atlantic world.

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This pictorial autobiography of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald documents two lives that have become legendary. The book draws almost entirely from the scrapbooks and photograph albums that the Fitzgeralds scrupulously kept as their personal record and provides a wealth of illustrative material not previously available. The book offers: Fitzgerald's thoughts about his early loves in St Paul, Minnesota; a photograph of the country club in Montgomery, Alabama, where the two met; reviews of ""This Side of Paradise""; poems to the couple from Ring Lardner; snapshots of their trips abroad; Fitzgerald's careful accounting of his earnings; a photograph of the house on Long Island where ""The Great Gatsby"" was conceived; postcards with Fitzgerald's drawings for his daughter. These rare photographs and memorabilia combine into a narrative augmented by selections from Scott's and Zelda's own writings, conveying the spirit of particuular moments in their lives.

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What did Occupy Wall Street accomplish? While it began as a startling disruption in politics as usual, in The Democratic Ethos Freya Thimsen argues that the movement's long-term importance rests in how its commitment to radical democratic self-organization has been adopted within more conventional forms of politics. Occupy changed what counts as credible democratic coordination and how democracy is performed, as demonstrated in opposition to corporate political influence, rural antifracking activism, and political campaigns.By comparing instances of progressive politics that demonstrate the democratic ethos developed and promoted by Occupy and those that do not, Thimsen illustrates how radical and conventional rhetorical strategies can be brought together to seek democratic change. Combining insights from rhetorical studies, performance studies, political theory, and sociology, The Democratic Ethos offers a set of conceptual tools for analyzing anticorporate democracy-movement politics in the twenty-first century.

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Every four years presidential hopefuls and the national media travel the primary election circuit through Iowa and New Hampshire. Once the dust Settles in these states, the nation's focus turns to South Carolina, the first primary in the delegate-rich South. Historically Iowa and New Hampshire have dominated the news because they are first, not because of their predictive ability or representativeness. In First in the South, H. Gibbs Knotts and Jordan M. Ragusa make the case for shifting the national focus to South Carolina because of its clarifying and often-predictive role in selecting presidential nominees for both the Republican and Democratic Parties. To establish the foundation for their claim, Knotts and Ragusa begin with an introduction to the fundamentals of South Carolina's primary. They then detail how South Carolina achieved its coveted "First in the South" status and examine the increasing importance of this primary since the first contest in 1980. Throughout the book they answer key questions about the Palmetto State's process, using both qualitative information--press reports, primary sources, archival documents, and oral histories--and quantitative data--election results, census data, and exit polls. Through their research Knotts and Ragusa argue that a key factor that makes the South Carolina primary so important is the unique demographic makeup of the state's Democratic and Republican electorates. Knotts and Ragusa also identify major factors that have bolstered candidates' campaigns and propelled them to victory in South Carolina. While the evidence confirms the conventional wisdom about endorsements, race, and being from a southern state, their analysis offers hope to political newcomers and candidates who have not mastered the art of fundraising. Succinct and accessible, First in the South is a glimpse behind the curtain of the often-mysterious presidential primary process.

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An anthology exploring the modernization of the South Carolina upcountry and the region’s role in creating the New South.Continuing the theme of unexplored moments introduced in Recovering the Piedmont Past: Unexplored Moments in Nineteenth-Century Upcountry South Carolina History, Timothy P. Grady joins with Andrew H. Myers to edit this second anthology that uncovers the microhistory of this northwest region of the state. Topics include the influence of railroads on traveling circuses, tourist resorts and visits by Booker T. Washington during the rise of Jim Crow, pioneering efforts by progressives to identify the cause of pellagra disease, a debate over populism involving “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, the acculturation of Greek immigrants, and the daily lives of Civilian Conservation Corps workers during the New Deal.After years of being overshadowed by the coastal elite, upcountry South Carolinians began to play a vital role in modernizing the region and making it an integral part of the “New South.” In a study of this shift in the balance of power, the contributors examine religious history, the economic boom and bust, popular recreational activities, and major trends that played out in small places. By providing details and nuance that illuminate the historical context of the New South and engaging with the upcountry from fresh angles, this second volume expresses a deep local interest while also speaking to broader political and social issues.Melissa Walker, the George Dean Johnson, Jr. Professor of History Emerita at Converse College and coeditor of Recovering the Piedmont Past: Unexplored Moments in Nineteenth-Century South Carolina History, provides a foreword.

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In this provocative and interdisciplinary work, Michael J. Hyde develops a philosophy of communication ethics in which the practice of rhetoric plays a fundamental role in promoting and maintaining the health of our personal and communal existence. He examines how the force of interruption—the universal human capacity to challenge our complacent understanding of existence—is a catalyst for moral reflection and moral behavior.Hyde begins by reviewing the role of interruption in the history of the West, from the Big Bang to biblical figures to classical Greek and contemporary philosophers and rhetoricians to three modern thinkers: Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Emmanuel Levinas. These thinkers demonstrate in various ways that interruption is not simply a heuristic tool, but constitutive of being human. After developing a critical assessment of these thinkers, Hyde offers four case studies in public moral argument that illustrate the applicability of his findings regarding our interruptive nature. These studies feature a patient suffering from heart disease, a disability rights activist defending her personhood, a young woman dying from brain cancer who must justify her decision, against staunch opposition, to opt for medical aid in dying, and the benefits and burdens of what is termed our “posthuman future” with its accelerating achievements in medical science and technology. These improvements are changing the nature of the interruption that we are, yet the wisdom of such progress has yet to be determined. Much more public moral argument is required.Hyde’s philosophy of communication ethics not only calls for the cultivation of wisdom but also promotes the fight for truth, which is essential to the livelihood of democracy.

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Revelations on craft from a foundational scholar of Cormac McCarthyDevotees of Cormac McCarthy's novels are legion, and deservedly so. Embracing Vocation, which tells the tale of his journey to become one of America's greatest living writers, will be invaluable to scholars and literary critics—and to the many fans—interested in his work.Dianne C. Luce, a foundational scholar of McCarthy's writing, through extensive archival research, examines the first fifteen years of his career and his earliest novels. Novel by novel, Luce traces each book's evolution. In the process she unveils McCarthy's working processes as well as his personal, literary, and professional influences, highlighting his ferocious devotion to both his craft and burgeoning art. Luce invites us to see the fascinating evolution of an American author with a unique vision all his own. Until there is a full-on biography, this study, along with Luce's previous, Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy's Tennessee Period, is the finest available portrait of an American genius unfolding.

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What did Occupy Wall Street accomplish? While it began as a startling disruption in politics as usual, in The Democratic Ethos Freya Thimsen argues that the movement's long-term importance rests in how its commitment to radical democratic self-organization has been adopted within more conventional forms of politics. Occupy changed what counts as credible democratic coordination and how democracy is performed, as demonstrated in opposition to corporate political influence, rural antifracking activism, and political campaigns.By comparing instances of progressive politics that demonstrate the democratic ethos developed and promoted by Occupy and those that do not, Thimsen illustrates how radical and conventional rhetorical strategies can be brought together to seek democratic change. Combining insights from rhetorical studies, performance studies, political theory, and sociology, The Democratic Ethos offers a set of conceptual tools for analyzing anticorporate democracy-movement politics in the twenty-first century.

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An engaging study of Black Feminism as expressed through literature written by and about Black girlsIn Light and Legacies: Stories of Black Girlhood and Liberation, author Janaka Lewis examines Black girlhood in American literature from the mid-twentieth century to the present. The representation of Black girlhood in contemporary literature has long remained underexplored. Through this literary history of "Black Girl Magic," Lewis offers one of the first studies in this rapidly growing field of study. Light and Legacies poignantly showcases the activist dimensions of creative literature through work by women writers such as Toni Morrison and Toni Cade. As vectors of protest, these stories reflect historical events while also creating an enduring space of liberation and expression. The book provides didactic and reflective portrayals of the Black experience—an experience which has long been misunderstood. In a work both enlightening and personal, Lewis brilliantly weaves accounts of her own journey in conjunction with the liberating stories that shaped her and so many others.

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Since its publication in 2003, Understanding David Foster Wallace has served as an accessible introduction to the rich array of themes and formal innovations that have made Wallace's fiction so popular and influential. A seminal text in the burgeoning field of David Foster Wallace studies, the original edition of Understanding David Foster Wallace was nevertheless incomplete as it addressed only his first four works of fiction--namely the novels The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest and the story collections Girl with Curious Hair and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. This revised edition adds two new chapters covering his final story collection, Oblivion, and his posthumous novel, The Pale King. Tracing Wallace's relationship to modernism and postmodernism, this volume provides close readings of all his major works of fiction. Although critics sometimes label Wallace a postmodern writer, Boswell argues that he should be regarded as the nervous leader of some still-unnamed (and perhaps unnamable) third wave of modernism. In charting a new direction for literary practice, Wallace does not seek to overturn postmodernism, nor does he call for a return to modernism. Rather his work moves resolutely forward while hoisting the baggage of modernism and postmodernism heavily, but respectfully, on its back. Like the books that serve as its primary subject, Boswell's study directly confronts such arcane issues as postmodernism, information theory, semiotics, the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and poststructuralism, yet it does so in a way that is comprehensible to a wide and general readership--the very same readership that has enthusiastically embraced Wallace's challenging yet entertaining and redemptive fiction.

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A well-constructed and reasoned debunking of the mythology of amateurism in for-profit NCAA athleticsThe NCAA and the Exploitation of College Profit-Athletes provides a comprehensive historical, sociological, legal, financial, and managerial argument for the reclassification of profit-athletes as employees. The authors cut through the institutional doublespeak of approved benefits, cost-of-attendance stipends, or "name, image, likeness" (NIL) collectives and provide evidence that the NCAA's amateurism has been a collusive, exploitative, and racialized "pay for play" scheme that disproportionately affects Black profit-athletes. They offer a forward-thinking structure in which individual labor contracts, or a potential collective bargaining agreement, address profit-athlete compensation and working conditions.

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An oasis of art and nature, Brookgreen Gardens is America's first public sculpture garden and largest collection of American figurative sculpture. Founded in 1931 by Archer Milton Huntington and Anna Hyatt Huntington, its lush South Carolina coastal location is an exquisite setting for the more than two thousand works by four hundred twenty-five artists-including more than one hundred sculptures and other works by Anna Huntington, many placed in the gardens she designed. In 1984, Brookgreen was designated as a National Historic Landmark, highlighting the number of women sculptors whose work is presented in the collection, as well as the significance of the work of Anna Huntington. Today, Brookgreen has become a cultural institution unlike any other, blending sculpture, historic sites, botanical gardens, and the Lowcountry Zoo. As Brookgreen begins its ninetieth year, this volume celebrates the art, nature, and history ensconced in its 9,127 acres. More than one hundred fifty color photographs; an introduction by president and CEO, Page Kiniry; and a foreword by its chairman of the board, Dick Rosen, bring Brookgreen Gardens to life on the page.

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Citizenship on Catfish Row focuses on three seminal works in the history of American culture: the first full-length narrative film, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation; the first integrated musical, Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern's Showboat; and the first great American opera, George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Each of these works sought to make a statement about American identity in the form of a narrative, and each included in that narrative a prominent role for Black people.Each work included jarring or discordant elements that pointed to a deeper tension between the kind of stories Americans wish to tell about themselves and the historical and social reality of race. Although all three have been widely criticized, their efforts to connect the concepts of nation and race are not only instructive about the history of the American imagination but also provide unexpected resources for contemporary reflection.

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A new preface covers Mamet's most recent plays and nonfiction writingUnderstanding David Mamet analyzes the broad range of David Mamet's plays and places them in the context of his career as a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction prose, as well as drama. In addition to playwriting and directing for the theater, Mamet also writes, directs, and produces for film and television, and he writes essays, fiction, poetry, and even children's books. Author Brenda Murphy centers her discussion around Mamet's most significant plays—Glengarry Glen Ross, Oleanna, American Buffalo, Speed-the-Plow, The Cryptogram, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Edmond, The Woods, Lakeboat, Boston Marriage, and The Duck Variations—as well as his three novels—The Village, The Old Religion, and Wilson. Murphy also notes how Mamet's one-act and less known plays provide important context for the major plays and help to give a fuller sense of the scope of his art. In her new preface, Murphy provides an overview of Mamet's plays, fiction, and essays in the 2010s and the continued move to the right in his political and cultural thinking.

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The first detailed linguistic history of South Carolina, with a new preface by the authorIn Voices of Our Ancestors Patricia Causey Nichols offers the first detailed linguistic history of South Carolina as she explores the contacts between distinctive language cultures in the colonial and early federal eras and studies the dialects that evolved even as English became paramount in the state. As language development reflects historical development, Nichols's work also serves as a new avenue of inquiry into South Carolina's social history from the epoch of Native American primacy to the present day.Because Charleston was among the foremost colonial American seaports, South Carolina experienced a diverse influx of cultures and languages from the onset, drawing influences from Native Americans, enslaved African Americans, and a plethora of European peoples—Scots-Irish, English, Jewish, German, and French Huguenot chief among them. Nichols tells the richly complex story of language contact from groups representing three continents and myriad cultures. In examining how South Carolinians spoke in public and private we glean much about how they developed a common culture while still honoring as best they could the heritages and tongues of their ancestors. Nichols pays particular attention to the development of the Gullah language among the coastal African American peoples and the ways in which this language—and others of South Carolina's early inhabitants—continues to influence the communication and culture of the state's current populations.Nichols's synthetic treatment of language history makes expert use of primary source materials and is further enhanced by the author's field research with Gullah-speaking African Americans and with descendants of Native Americans, as well as her keen observation of her own European American community in South Carolina. Through her deft analysis of contemporary language variations and regional and ethnic speech communities, she advances our understanding of how diverse the South Carolina experience has been, from the lowcountry to the upcountry and all points in between, and yet how the need to communicate shared experiences and values has united the state's population with a common meaningful language in which the diverse voices of our ancestors can still be heard.

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The winner of every major American literary prize, John Updike (1932-2009) was one of the most popular and prolific novelists of his time and a major cultural figure who traced the high point and fall of midcentury American self-confidence and energy. A superb stylist with sixty books to his credit, he brilliantly rendered the physical surfaces of the nation's life even as he revealed the intense longings beneath those surfaces. In Understanding John Updike, Frederic Svoboda elucidates the author's deep insights into the second half of the twentieth century as seen through the lives of ordinary men and women. He offers extended close readings of Updike's most significant works of fiction, templates through which his entire oeuvre may be understood.A small-town Pennsylvanian whose prodigious talent took him to Harvard, a staff position at the New Yorker, and ultimately a life in suburban Massachusetts, where the pace of his literary output never slowed, Updike was very much in the American cultural tradition. His series of Rabbit Angstrom novels strongly echo Sinclair Lewis's earlier explorations of middle America, while The Witches of Eastwick and related novels are variations on Nathaniel Hawthorne's nineteenth-century classic The Scarlet Letter. His number-one best seller Couples examines what Time magazine called "the adulterous society" in the last year of the Kennedy administration, following the nation's fall from idealism into self-centeredness. Understanding John Updike will give both new readers and those already familiar with the author a firm grasp of his literary achievement. This outline of Updike's professional career highlights his importance in the life of the nation--not only as a novelist but also as a gifted essayist, reviewer, cultural critic, and poet.

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Citizenship on Catfish Row focuses on three seminal works in the history of American culture: the first full-length narrative film, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation; the first integrated musical, Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern's Showboat; and the first great American opera, George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Each of these works sought to make a statement about American identity in the form of a narrative, and each included in that narrative a prominent role for Black people.Each work included jarring or discordant elements that pointed to a deeper tension between the kind of stories Americans wish to tell about themselves and the historical and social reality of race. Although all three have been widely criticized, their efforts to connect the concepts of nation and race are not only instructive about the history of the American imagination but also provide unexpected resources for contemporary reflection.

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Randall Kenan is an American author best known for his novel A Visitation of Spirits and his collection of stories Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a nominee for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction, and named a New York Times Notable Book. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as the Whiting Writers Award, Sherwood Anderson Award, John Dos Passos Award, Rome Prize, and North Carolina Award for Literature. Understanding Randall Kenan is the first book-length critical study of Kenan, offering a brief biography and an exploration of his considerable oeuvre—memoir, short stories, novels, journalism, folklore, and essays. Kenan's writing can be complex and sometimes highly stylized while covering a broad range of topics, though he often explores African Americans' complicated relationships, specifically as they struggle to make connections along other axes of class, gender, and sexual identity. Crank explores these themes and how they influence Kenan's work through a personal interview with the author.

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Examines the evolving lives of two men who were crucial political figures in the consequential decades prior to the Civil WarAlthough neither of them lived to see the Civil War, John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun did as much any two political figures of the era to shape the intersectional tensions that produced the conflict. William F. Hartford examines the lives of Adams and Calhoun as a prism through which to view the developing sectional conflict. While both men came of age as strong nationalists, their views, like those of the nation, diverged by the 1830s, largely over the issue of slavery. Hartford examines the two men's responses to issues of nationalism and empire, sectionalism and nullification, slavery and antislavery, party and politics, and also the expansion of slavery. He offers fresh insights into the sectional conflict that also accounts for the role of personal idiosyncrasy and interpersonal relationships in the coming of the Civil War.

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Alex Engebretson offers the first comprehensive study of Marilynne Robinson's fiction and essays to date, providing an overview of the author's life, themes, and literary and religious influences. Understanding Marilynne Robinson examines this author of three highly acclaimed novels and recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the Orange Prize for fiction, and the National Humanities Medal. Through close readings of the novels and essay collections, Engebretson uncovers the unifying elements of Robinson's work: a dialogue with liberal Protestantism, an emphasis on regional settings, the marked influence of nineteenth-century American literature, and the theme of home. The study begins with Housekeeping, Robinson's haunting debut novel, which undertakes a feminist revision of the Western genre. Twenty-four years later Robinson began a literary project that would bring her national recognition, three novels set in a small, rural Iowa town. The first was Gilead, which took up the major American themes of race, the legacy of the Civil War, and the tensions between secular and religious lives. Two more Gilead novels followed, Home and Lila, both of which display Robinson's gift for capturing the mysterious dynamics of sin and grace.In Understanding Marilynne Robinson, Engebretson also reviews her substantial body of non-fiction, which demonstrates a dazzling intellectual range, from the contemporary science-religion debates, to Shakespeare, to the fate of liberal democracy. Throughout this study Engebretson makes the argument for Marilynne Robinson as an essential, deeply unfashionable, visionary presence within today's literary scene.

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Solitary Pagans is the first book to explore the growing phenomenon of contemporary Pagans who practice alone. Although the majority of Pagans in the United States have abandoned the tradition of practicing in groups, little is known about these individuals or their way of practice. Helen A. Berger fills that gap by building on a massive survey of contemporary practitioners. By examining the data, Berger describes solitary practitioners demographically and explores their spiritual practices, level of social engagement, and political activities. Contrasting the solitary Pagans with those who practice in groups and more generally with other non-Pagan Americans, she also compares contemporary U.S. Pagans with those in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.Berger brings to light the new face of contemporary paganism by analyzing those who learn about the religion from books or the Internet and conduct rituals alone in their gardens, the woods, or their homes. Some observers believe this social isolation and political withdrawal has resulted in an increase in narcissism and a decline in morality, while others argue to the contrary that it has produced a new form of social integration and political activity. Berger posits the implications of her findings to reveal a better understanding of other metaphysical religions and those who shun traditional religious organizations.

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An exploration of the University of South Carolina's trailblazing approach to the first-year experienceAs an innovative educational experiment, University 101 was designed to support students' transition to and success in college. Now, fifty years after its inception, the program continues to bring national recognition to the University of South Carolina. From Educational Experiment to Standard Bearer celebrates this milestone by exploring the course's origins; its evolution and success at the university; its impact on first-year students, upper-level students serving as peer leaders, faculty and staff instructors, and the university community and culture; and its role in launching the international first-year experience movement.By highlighting the most significant takeaways, lessons learned, and insights to practitioners on other campuses, this book will serve as an inspiration and road map for other institutions to invest in this proven concept and focus on the ingredients that lead to a successful program. John N. Gardner, founding director and architect of University 101, provides a foreword.

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A vivid and moving story about family, courage, and the power of educationRuth remembers the day the sheriff pulled up in front of her family's home with a white neighbor claiming Ruth's father owed her recently deceased husband money. It was 1940 in Jim Crow South Carolina, and even at the age of 11, Ruth knew a Black person's word wasn't trusted. But her father remained calm as he waited on her mother's return from the house. She had retrieved a gray book, which she opened and handed to the sheriff. Satisfied by what he saw, the sheriff and the woman left. Ruth didn't know what was in that book, but she knew it was important.In Beatrice's Ledger, Ruth R. Martin brings to life the stories behind her mother's entries in that well-worn ledger, detailing her family's daily struggle to survive. Enriched by public records and interviews with people still living in Smoaks, South Carolina, Martin weaves history, humor, and poignant reflection into a compelling narrative about the power of family and the place we call home.

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Seventeen hunter-scholars explore the hunting experience and question common negative stereotypesDespite the academy having a reputation for supporting broad and open inquiry in scholarship, some academics have not extended this open-minded support to colleagues’ personal pursuits. A variety of scholars enjoy hunting, which has been stereotyped by some as an activity of the unsophisticated. In Hunting and the Ivory Tower, Douglas Higbee and David Bruzina present essays by seventeen hunter-scholars who explore the hunting experience and question negative assumptions about hunting made by intellectuals and academics who do not hunt.Higbee and Bruzina suspect most academics’ understanding of hunting is based on brief television news reports of hunter-politicians and commercials for reality TV shows such as Duck Dynasty. The editors contend that few scholars appreciate the complexities of hunting or give much thought to its ethical, ecological, and cultural ramifications. Through this anthology they hope to start a conversation about both hunting and academia and how they relate.The contributors to this anthology, all academics from a variety of disciplines, have firsthand hunting experience. Their essays vary in style and tone from the scholarly to the personal and represent the different ways in which scholars engage with their avocation. The essays are grouped into three sections: the first focuses on the often-fraught relation between hunters and academic culture; the second section offers personal accounts of hunting by academics; and the third portrays hunting from an explicitly academic point of view, whether in terms of value theory, metaphysics, or history. Combined, these essays render hunting as a culturally rich, deeply personal, and intellectually satisfying experience worthy of further discussion.A foreword is provided by Robert DeMott, the Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He is a teacher, writer, critic, and internationally respected expert on novelist John Steinbeck.

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Ever since his first novel, Fight Club, was made into a cult film by David Fincher, Chuck Palahniuk has been a consistent presence on the New York Times best-seller list. A target of critics but a fan favorite, Palahniuk has been loathed and loved in equal measure for his dark humor, edgy topics, and confrontational writing style. In close readings of Fight Club and the thirteen novels that this controversial author has published since, Douglas Keesey argues that Palahniuk is much more than a “shock jock” engaged in mere sensationalism. His visceral depictions of sex and violence have social, psychological, and religious significance. Keesey takes issue with reviewers who accuse Palahniuk of being an angry nihilist and a misanthrope, showing instead that he is really a romantic at heart and a believer in community. In this first comprehensive introduction to Palahniuk’s fiction, Keesey reveals how this writer’s outrageous narratives are actually rooted in his own personal experiences, how his seemingly unprecedented works are part of the American literary tradition of protagonists in search of an identity, and how his negative energy is really social satire directed at specific ills that he diagnoses and wishes to cure. After tracing the influence of his working-class background, his journalistic education, and his training as a “minimalist” writer, Understanding Chuck Palahniuk exposes connections between the writer’s novels by grouping them thematically: the struggle for identity (Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Survivor, Choke); the horror trilogy (Lullaby, Diary, Haunted); teen terrors (Rant, Pygmy); porn bodies and romantic myths (Snuff, Tell-All, Beautiful You); and a decidedly unorthodox revision of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Damned, Doomed).Drawing on numerous author interviews and written in an engaging and accessible style, Understanding Chuck Palahniuk should appeal to scholars, students, and fans alike.

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Patriots and Indians examines relationships between elite South Carolinians and Native Americans through the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods. Eighteenth-century South Carolinians interacted with Indians in business and diplomatic affairs, as enemies and allies during times of war and less frequently in matters of scientific, religious, or sexual interest. Jeff W. Dennis elaborates on these connections and their seminal effects on the American Revolution and the establishment of the state of South Carolina.Dennis illuminates how southern Indians and South Carolinians contributed to and gained from the intercultural relationship, which subsequently influenced the careers, politics, and perspectives of leading South Carolina patriots and informed Indian policy during the Revolution and early republic. In eighteenth-century South Carolina, what it meant to be a person of European American, Native American, or African American heritage changed dramatically. People lived in transition; they were required to find solutions to an expanding array of sociocultural, economic, and political challenges. Ultimately their creative adaptations transformed how they viewed themselves and others.While Native Americans were not the only “others” of the Revolutionary world, they were nonwhite, nonslave, and non-Christian allies of Britain who inhabited many millions of acres of highly arable land. For radical spokesmen such as William Henry Drayton, along with many white people on the frontier, Indians were viewed as a defining enemy during the American Revolution. Dennis contends that the stronger the attachment these men felt to the Whig cause and their aversion to the British, the harsher their attitudes toward Indians. In contrast the closer they were to Indians, socially and psychologically, the more lenient they appeared toward Native Americans. This difference of opinion carried over into national policies toward Native Americans. Following independence, some South Carolina patriots such as Andrew Pickens imagined an American identity broad and honorable enough to include Indians.

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The Lost Woods is a collection of fifteen short stories, most of them set in and around the fictional small town of Sledge, South Carolina. The events narrated in the stories begin in the 1930s and continue to the present day. The stories aren't accounts of hunting methods or legends of trophy kills--they are serious stories about hunting that are similar in style to William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses. The collection traces the evolution of two families--the Whites and the Chapmans--as well as the changes in hunting and land use of the past eighty years. Some of these stories are narrated in third person; others are told by a wide range of characters, from grown men and women to children, but only from one perspective--that of the hunter. As they walk the woods in search of turkeys, deer, or raccoons, these characters seek something more than food. They seek a lost connection to some part of themselves. The title ""the lost woods"" is adapted from Cherokee myths and stories wherein people must return again and again to the woods to find animals that were lost. Thereby, we find not only food, but who we are. Through these stories Rice reminds us that hunting is inextricably entwined with identity. As one of the oldest rituals that we as a species know, it reflects both our nobility and our depravity. Through it we return again and again to find the lost woods inside ourselves.

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Capturing the rich contrasts of the land and the intimate history of generations in the Mississippi Delta, Into the Flatland, by Kathleen Robbins, is a series of photographs documenting the terrain, people, and culture of her ancestry. The photographer returned to her childhood farm in Bell Chase as an adult in 2001 after completing graduate studies in New Mexico. She and her brother then lived on their family farm for nearly two years, breathing life back into family properties that had been long dormant.In this series, which won the Photo-NOLA prize in 2011, Robbins highlights the diversity of the landscape of the Delta, from expansive, dusty cotton fields to green, vibrant swamps. Her photographs capture the people and the architecture that are present on the land and also reminiscent of a time long past, before the mechanization of farming and the exodus of her people from their native soil. The presence of Robbins’s family in some of her photographs brings an intimacy to her portrait of the Delta and shows the tension between past and present. Including a short story by a National Endowment for the Arts recipient, Cynthia Shearer, Into the Flatland transports the reader into the rich history of Mississippi. At turns both colorful and gray, the photographs capture not only the Delta landscape, but also the stark and rugged images of people and buildings that sink as deeply into the land as the roots of the trees in the woods and swamps. As large masses of birds flock to the vast blue sky, Robbins remains fixed on the ground, her lens trained on the home and the landscape of her past.

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The radical changes wrought by the rise of the salon system in nineteenth-century Europe provoked an interesting response from painters in the American South. Painterly trends emanating from Barbizon and Giverny emphasized the subtle textures of nature through warm colour and broken brush stroke. Artists' subject matter tended to represent a prosperous middle class at play, with the subtle suggestion that painting was indeed art for art's sake and not an evocation of the heroic manner. Many painters in the South took up the stylistics of Tonalism, Impressionism, and naturalism to create works of a very evocative nature, works which celebrated the Southern scene as an exotic other, a locale offering refuge from an increasingly mechanized urban environment.Scenic Impressions offers an insight into a particular period of American art history as borne out in seminal paintings from the holdings of the Johnson Collection of Spartanburg, South Carolina. By consolidating academic information on a disparate group of objects under a common theme and important global artistic umbrella, Scenic Impressions will underscore the Johnsons' commitment to illuminating the rich cultural history of the American South and advancing scholarship in the field, specifically examining some forty paintings created between 1880 and 1940, including landscapes and genre scenes. A foreword, written by Kevin Sharp, director of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, introduces the topic. Two lead essays, written by noted art historians Pennington, Estill Curtisand Martha R. Severens, discuss the history and import of the Impressionist movement--abroad and domestically--and specifically address the school's influence on art created in and about the American South. The featured works of art are presented in full colour plates and delineated in complementary entries written by Pennington and Severens. Also included are detailed artist biographies illustrated by photographs of the artists, extensive documentation, and indices. Featured artists include Wayman Adams, Colin Campbell Cooper, Elliott Daingerfield, G. Ruger Donoho, Harvey Joiner, John Ross Key, Blondelle Malone, Lawrence Mazzanovich, Paul Plaschke, Hattie Saussy, Alice Ravenel, Huger Smith, Anthony Thieme, and Helen Turner.

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