College of Arts & Letters Bookshelf

A gallery of books by faculty from the College of Arts & Letters, Old Dominion University. Faculty books are also listed under specific departments.

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Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the Middle Ages
2006
Erin L. Jordan

By examining a significant corpus of secular and monastic charters, this study provides a more complex understanding of the role of religious patronage in medieval society, specifically offering a glimpse of the experience of female rulers in a period when actions were often constrained and obscured by gender bias. [From the publisher]
Firefly Cloak: A Novel
2006
Sheri Reynolds

Firefly Cloak is the powerfully vivid coming-of-age story of Tessa Lee, who, after being abandoned by her mother, sets off on a risky journey to discover what she has lost. When eight-year-old Tessa Lee and her brother, Travis, are abandoned in a campground by their desperate mother and her boyfriend of the moment, they are left with only two things: a phone number written in Magic Marker on Travis’s back and their mother’s favorite housecoat, which she leaves wrapped around her sleeping children. This housecoat, painted with tiny fireflies, becomes totemic for Tessa Lee, providing a connection to her past and to the beautiful mother she lost. Seven years later, when word arrives that her mother has been spotted working at a tourist trap on a seaside boardwalk not far from where Tessa Lee lives, she sets off on a dangerous journey to try to recover what has been taken from her. [Amazon.com]
Crime Prevention through Environmental Design: How Investing in Physical and Social Capital Makes Communities Safer
2006
Garland F. White

Provides an examination of the major criminological perspectives on the presence of crime and disorder in residential communities. This book features perspectives examined with a framework made up of two central dimensions - social and physical capital. [from Amazon.com]
The Bowery Boys: Street Corner Radicals and the Politics of Rebellion
2005
Peter Adams

In the decades before the Civil War, the miserable living conditions of New York City's lower east side nurtured the gangs of New York. This book tells the story of the Bowery Boys, one gang that emerged as part urban legend and part street fighters for the city's legions of young workers. Poverty and despair led to a gang culture that was easily politicized, especially under the leadership of Mike Walsh who led a distinct faction of the Bowery Boys that engaged in the violent, almost anarchic, politics of the city during the 1840s and 1850s. Amid the toppled ballot boxes and battles for supremacy on the streets, many New Yorkers feared Walsh's gang was at the frontline of a European-style revolution. A radical and immensely popular voice in antebellum New York, Walsh spoke in the unvarnished language of class conflict. Admired by Walt Whitman and feared by Tammany Hall, Walsh was an original, wildly unstable character who directed his aptly named Spartan Band against the economic and political elite of New York City and New England. As a labor organizer, state legislator, and even U.S. Congressman, the leader of the Bowery Boys fought for shorter working hours, the right to strike, free land for settlers on the American frontier, against child labor, and to restore dignity to the city's growing number of industrial workers. [From Amazon.com]
Rhine Crossings: France and Germany in Love and War
2005
Aminia M. Brueggemann and Peter Schulman (Editors)

Rhine Crossings explores the conflicts and resolutions that have characterized the relationship between France and Germany over the past two centuries. Despite their varying outlooks on life and style (the French esprit and the German wesen), and despite three bloody wars (the Franco-Prussian and the two world wars), there has always been and still is a vital intellectual, political, and cultural exchange between these former archenemies. The essays in this book detail the admiration and antagonism in French and German attempts to seek each other out while keeping their individual senses of self. Focusing on representative works of literature, film, and philosophy, the contributors identify the problems vexing these countries (war, economic competition) as well as possible solutions (the Maastricht treaty, increasing youth exchange). From the literary salons of the eighteenth century to the trenches of the twentieth, from a love-hate relationship to one of cooperation and peace, this book investigates the unique and volatile dialectic between these two nations and cultures." [From Amazon.com]
Making Trieste Italian, 1918-1954
2005
Maura Elise Hametz

The port of Trieste, standing at a crucial strategic point at the head of the Adriatic, had a turbulent history in the mid-twentieth century. With the disappearance of the Habsburg Empire after the First World War, it passed into Italian hands. During the Second World War, the Nazis reclaimed the city as part of the Reich. In 1945, Trieste slipped through Tito's fingers and was internationalized under Allied military government control, returning to Italian sovereignty in 1954. This book examines Trieste's transformation from an imperial commercial center at the crossroads of the Italian, German and Balkan worlds to an Italian border city on the southern fringe of the iron curtain. Concentrating on local sources, the book shows how Triestines, renowned for their cosmopolitan Central European affiliations, articulated an Italian civic identity after the First World War, and traces the fitful process of affirming Trieste's Italianness over the course of nearly four decades of liberal, Fascist and international rule. It suggests that Italianization resulted from complicated interactions with Rome and interference by international powers attempting to strengthen Western Europe at the edge of the Balkans. [From Amazon.com]
The Selling of 9/11: How a National Tragedy Became a Commodity
2005
Dana Heller (Editor)

The Selling of 9/11 argues that the marketing and commodification of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, reveal the contradictory processes by which consumers in the United States (and around the world) use, communicate, and construct national identity and their sense of national belonging through cultural and symbolic goods. Contributors illuminate these processes and make important connections between myths of nation, practices of mourning, theories of trauma, and the politics of post-9/11 consumer culture. Their essays take critical stock of the role that consumer goods, media and press outlets, commercial advertising, marketers and corporate public relations have played in shaping cultural memory of a national tragedy. [Amazon.com]
Trill & Mordent
2005
Luisa A. Igloria

The lush and humid poems of Luisa Igloria’s Trill & Mordent are a feast for the ear and the eye. Bursts of color and music punctuate Igloria’s dense, crafted lines, inviting the reader into Filipina life, a world at once strange and yet familiar to an American reader, opening wider perspectives into the commonalities and differences between America and the country it has so deeply influenced over the past century, the Philippines. [wordtech.com]
Bitter Milk
2005
John McManus

From Whiting Award-winning writer John McManus comes a debut novel of startling originality and mystery. The son of an unknown father and an ostracized mother, and the next of kin in a long line of bastard relatives, nine-year-old Loren Garland lives a life of subtle mystery beneath the shadow of an East Tennessee mountain. It is on his family's broken-down estate that Loren's imagination grows, and with it, the extraordinary voice of Bitter Milk, a young boy named Luther who may be Loren's imaginary friend, his conscience, or his evil twin. And yet outside the puzzle of Loren's brain, there are the darker goings-on of his family―his mother who wishes she were a man, his new uncle who plans to develop the Garland land into real estate, and his withered grandfather who holds the clan together through truculence and fear. When Loren's mother disappears, he must set out on a quest of his own devising, tossing aside the trappings of youth in order to discover the truth of the world. [Amazon.com]
Chasing Esther: Jewish Expressions of Cultural Difference
2005
David Metzger and Peter Schulman
Open Windows: Remediation Strategies in Global Film Adaptations
2005
Kyle Nicholas (Editor) and Jørgen Rober Christensen (Editor)

Open Windows: Remediation Strategies in Global Media Adaptations meets the need for a fresh look at the narrative, technique, and industrial practices of media production and reception. The authors employ myriad analytical techniques, focusing on semiotics, auteur style, historical and political economic analysis to examine the dynamic interplay of popular media. How does translation impact reception? What is the role of online communities in repurposing texts? How do iconic figures cross media? What happens when classics are adapted for specific target markets? With particular attention to the evolving role of audiences, Open Windows evokes an emerging media scape in which novels, comics, television, music, videogames and other media are continuously repurposed and recirculated. Nicholas and Christensen have collected a series of cogent essays from international authors, each tightly focused on a particular aspect of remediation or adaptation. The result is an informed cross-section of analysis that will provoke discussion among students of contemporary cultural and media studies. [Amazom.com]
Crime and Elder Abuse: An Integrated Perspective
2005
Brian K. Payne

Designed to be used in undergraduate or graduate courses on topics related to elderly persons, criminal justice practices, or the treatment of victims, this book addresses the nature of the abuse of the elderly, victimization effects, causes, investigative techniques, and future policy and research. Each chapter in the text begins with a case scenario that describes an elderly person's victimization experience and concludes with the consequences of that experience. Chapter 2 discusses the way that social scientists have gauged the victimization experiences of older adults and the way that certain disciplines have ignored these incidents. This is followed by a chapter that considers the specific types of offenses that involve elderly persons as targets. Chapter 4 addresses the specific consequences of offenses against elderly persons and compares these consequences to those experienced by younger victims. Chapter 5 offers some insight into the way that the criminal justice system and other decision makers detect and respond to crimes against elderly persons. Chapter 6 considers various explanations of crimes against elderly persons and contrasts those explanations with theories aimed at describing youthful offenses. The concluding chapter offers recommendations for future research, policy, and programs that deal with offenses against elderly persons. [From the publisher]
Drugs and Policing: A Scientific Perspective
2005
Brian K. Payne and Randy R. Gainey

This book fills a void in the literature by examining from a scientific perspective the official police response to drugs, drug use, abuse, and dealing and how the different levels of police agencies process drug cases. Current drug texts simply do not address the drug problem from a criminal justice or criminological perspective in a clear, consistent fashion. … This book will appeal to a number of criminal justice, criminology, and sociology program courses on drug abuse. Professionals interested in learning more about the criminal justice response to the drug problem, as well as police academies may also find the book useful. [from publisher website]
Greta Pratt: Using History
2005
Greta Pratt, Rennard Strickland (Contributor), and Karal Ann Marling (Contributor)

According to critic Howard Zinn (People's History of the United States), "Greta Pratt's extraordinary photographs give us glimpses of people and places that stimulate us to think about our history, not only of the great American West, but of the nation itself. Her point of view is delightfully antic and provocative. We want not only to enjoy the moment of our viewing, but also to study and ponder each photograph, challenged to find its larger meaning." Using History takes us on a tour of Americans celebrating their past. From Civil War battle reenactments to Abraham Lincoln impersonators to colossal buffalos and Indians, Greta Pratt's color photographs examine how historic iconography is used, and her work challenges us to question who Americans are. Taking an approach that is both affectionate toward her subjects yet sardonic about the larger implications of their actions, Pratt cuts to the heart of the ambivalent drives that move Americans. [Amazon.com]
Race, Ethnicity, and the Politics of City Redistricting: Minority-Opportunity Districts and the Election of Hispanics and Blacks to City Councils
2004
Joshua G. Behr

Nationwide study of the proposal and adoption of minority-opportunity districts at the local level. Why do cities with similar minority populations vary greatly in the adoption of minority-opportunity districts and, by extension, differ in the number of elected Hispanic and black representatives? Through in-depth research of the districting processes of more than 100 cities, Race, Ethnicity, and the Politics of City Redistricting provides the first nationwide study of minority-opportunity districts at the local level. Joshua G. Behr explores the motives of the players involved, including incumbent legislators, Department of Justice officials, and organized interests, while investigating the roles that segregation, federal oversight, litigation, partisan elections, and resource disparity, among others, play in the election of Hispanics and blacks. Behr's book documents—for both theorists and practitioners—the necessary conditions for enhancing minority-opportunity districts at the local level…. [From Amazon.com]
"Deutschlands Einzige Kolonie ist das Meer!" Die Deutsche Hochseefischerei und die Fischereikonflikte des 20. Jahrhunderts
2004
Ingo Heidbrink

In the 20th century, the seas off Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland were the main areas of the German deep-sea fishing fleet for many decades. The fishers and fishing vessels were often only a few nautical miles away from the coasts of the North Atlantic Islands, which was increasingly a source of conflict.

On the one hand, the good catches in the North Atlantic created the economic boom of the fishing towns on the German coast. On the other hand, the islands separated from their former European colonial motherland and developed their own interest - not only political but also economic On the sovereignty over the resource fish. The principle of "freedom of the seas" had reached its limits, and fishing conflicts between the European nations and the shores of the fishing areas arose. In the 1970s, they culminated in the so-called "Cod-war" with Iceland.

The present study analyzes the German role in these conflicts for the first time on a scientific basis and shows the consequences of the conflicts for the German coastal regions. At the same time, she explained that the drastic reduction of the German deep-sea fishing fleet had not been an unpredictable development since the 1980s, but that its rapid growth almost a century earlier was based exclusively on the colonial status of the shore areas. [From www.dsm.museum]
Buffalo Head Solos: Poems
2004
Tim Seibles

"Reading Tim Seibles reminds me of the Buddhist parable of the burning house: everyone ignores the flames, pretends there is no smoke, no pain, no prospect of death. Or, if there is, it will only happen to someone else, someone in another world. According to these teachings, aversion and attachment are not the greatest barriers to fulfillment; it is indifference that endangers a soul. Not to embrace or confront what is undeniably there but to detach ourselves and retreat. It is precisely this indifference that these poems challenge with lyric insistence - begging, assailing, teasing, affirming. In this mystical, romantic and political collection, Seibles is willing to take a chance, any chance to engage the general malaise of our times. He is a musician of the spirit and of the body, and it is that quality which carries us forward breath by breath, line by line. The journey is oddly enchanting, even transformative"--Nin Andrews. [Amazon.com]
Crude Awakenings: Global Oil Security and American Foreign Policy
2004
Steve A. Yetiv

The real story of global oil over the past twenty-five years is not about the spillover effects of Palestinians fighting Israelis, or terrorist attacks on U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, or Iraq's stormy relationship with Kuwait. It is not even about periodic small- and large-scale U.S. attacks on Iraq. Rather, the real story is about longer-term developments that have changed the international relations of the Middle East, politics at the global level, and world oil markets. These developments have increased oil stability. [From the Introduction]
Deepening Democracy: Global Governance and Political Reform in Latin America
2003
Francis Adams

Adams surveys the impact of transnational organizations and NGOs on Latin American politics since 1990. The transition from military to civilian rule in Latin American countries has benefited local progressive forces, but resilient remnants favoring the past's authoritarian politics have compelled organizations like the UN, IMF, OAS, and World Bank to engage in various campaigns to deepen democratic institutions and norms. Adams argues that to understand current political transformations in the region, one must consider the existing role of external organizations. Latin America is offered as a prime example of the increased influence transnational authorities have over political decisions that had long been the exclusive prerogative of national governments… [From Amazon.com]
Theoretical Explorations and Empirical Investigations of Communication and Prayer
2003
E. James Baesler

Nearly every definition of prayer refers to some type of communication phenomenon, yet most scholars, especially those in the field of communication, have not pursued the study of prayer as communication. This work brings the relational characteristics of communication into contact with the spiritual life of prayer. It employs quantitative and qualitative methodologies to legitimize the study of prayer as a communication phenomenon, create a theoretical model of prayer, provide three empirical tests of the model and apply the model to several different contexts, including health, eastern religions and teaching. The future of communication and prayer research is also considered in terms of theory building, improvements in methodology, and practical applications. This study should be of interest to scholars in the fields of communication, religious studies, psychology and medicine. [Amazon.com]
Wedding Song: Memoirs of an Iranian Jewish Woman
2003
Farideh Goldin

Farideh Goldin was born to her fifteen-year-old mother in 1953 and into a Jewish community living in an increasingly hostile Islamic state—prerevolutionary Iran. This memoir is Goldin’s passionate and painful account of her childhood in a poor Jewish household and her emigration to the United States in 1975. As she recalls trips to the market and the mikvah, and as she evokes ritual celebrations like weddings, Goldin chronicles her childhood, her extended family, and the lives of the women in her community in Shiraz, a southern Iranian city. Her memoir details her parents’ "courtship" (her father selected her mother from a group of adolescent girls), her mother’s lonely life as a child-bride, and Goldin’s childhood home which was presided over by her paternal grandmother. Goldin’s memoir conveys not just the personal trauma of growing up in a family fraught with discord but also the tragic human costs of religious dogmatism. ... [Amazon.com]
Not home, but Here: Writing from the Filipino Diaspora
2003
Luisa A. Igloria (Editor)

An exceptional collection of essays-- these are meditations that explore the enigma and the complexity of the Filipino diaspora as well as the hopes and triumphs of writing, living, and being in between cultures. This collection edited with a powerful introduction by Luisa Igloria, inspries the reader as well as those interested in diasporic studies to comprehend the sorrows as well as joys of living in the spaces between worlds." -- Marjorie Agosin -- Chilean American author "A lovely and powerful book -- a meditation on what it means to be other. It's about journeys; its's about memory. It's about recovery and discovery. Ultimately healing and transformative, this is a book to savor." -- Marianne VIlanueva, [Amazon.com]
Born on a Train: 13 Stories
2003
John McManus

Two years ago--at twenty-two--John McManus captivated writers and critics with his first story collection and became the youngest recipient of the Whiting Writers Award. Now McManus returns with a collection of stories equally piercing and visionary: stories about the young and old, compromised by circumstance and curiosity, and undergoing startling transformations. In "Eastbound," a car driven by two elderly sisters breaks down on an elevated highway: Beneath them lies the lost country of the South, overrun with concrete and shopping centers but still possessing the spectres and secrets of the past. In "Brood," a plucky young heroine moves with her mother into the home of the mother's online boyfriend: She will use the Audubon Guide to Birds, and her own wits to survive the advances of the boyfriend's teenaged son. In "Cowry," two backpackers in New Zealand race to witness the first sunrise of the twenty-first century. [Amazon.com]
At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700-1763
2003
Jane T. Merritt

Examining interactions between Native Americans and whites in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, Jane Merritt traces the emergence of race as the defining difference between these neighbors on the frontier. Before 1755, Indian and white communities in Pennsylvania shared a certain amount of interdependence. They traded skills and resources and found a common enemy in the colonial authorities, including the powerful Six Nations, who attempted to control them and the land they inhabited. Using innovative research in German Moravian records, among other sources, Merritt explores the cultural practices, social needs, gender dynamics, economic exigencies, and political forces that brought Naive Americans and Euromericans together in the first half of the eighteenth century.

But as Merritt demonstrates, the tolerance and even cooperation that once marked relations between Indians and whites collapsed during the Seven Years' War. By the 1760s, as the white population increased, a stronger, nationalist identity emerged among both white and Indian populations, each calling for new territorial and political boundaries to separate their communities. Differences between Indians and whites--whether political, economic, social, religious, or ethnic--became increasingly characterized in racial terms, and the resulting animosity left an enduring legacy in Pennsylvania's colonial history. [From Amazon.com]
Crime in the Home Health Care Field: Workplace Violence, Fraud and Abuse
2003
Brian K. Payne

Over the past couple of decades, individuals have come to rely more on home health care visits for their health care needs. While there have been decreases in hospital stays and in the percentage of older persons living in nursing homes the consequence has been the emergence of a new type of occupational crime: home health care abuse. In considering offending in the home health care industry, it is important to focus on crimes by and against home health care professionals. This book is one of the first to fully address abuses occurring in the home health care industry. Its intent is not to suggest that home health care is a dangerous field for workers and consumers; rather, the intent is to shed some light on the types of misconduct found in home health care. Each chapter will include a wealth of examples to illustrate that these incidents actually are real, devastating, and significant. At the end of each chapter the reader will find a series of discussion questions designed to encourage the reader to reflect back on the content of the chapter through the eyes of those involved in the response to home health care fraud… [From Amazon.com]