College of Arts & Letters Bookshelf

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

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The Legacy Renewed Football and Foreman Field : Norfolk Division--Old Dominion University
2009
Peter C. Stewart and Thomas R. Garrett

Just in time for the return of Old Dominion football, a university history professor and alumnus have teamed up to publish a book about the school's humble beginnings in the sport, and about the venerable stadium that has been revitalized as the venue for games decades after the steel cleats and leather helmets were retired in 1940. "The Legacy Renewed: Football and Foreman Field: Norfolk Division - Old Dominion University" represents the collaborative efforts of Peter C. Stewart, associate professor emeritus of history, and Thomas R. Garrett '72 (M.S.Ed. '81). Stewart, who still teaches a History of Sports course at the university, wrote the text, while Garrett acquired the historical photos and conducted some of the research. The book, published by Outer Banks Press, includes a foreword by another graduate, ESPN SportsCenter anchor Jay Harris '87. [From Amazon.com]
Migration, Accommodation and Language Change: Language at the Intersection of Regional and Ethnic Identity
2008
Bridget L. Anderson

This work marries qualitative ethnographic methods to quantitative acoustic methods. The analysis describes how internal and external factors in phonological change differ and demonstrates how these two forces interact to structure the phonological systems of Appalachian and African American Southern Migrant speakers in the Detroit, Michigan area. [Amazon.com]
Once Upon a Time: Myth, Fairy Tales and Legends in Margaret Atwood's Writings
2008
Sarah A. Appleton (Editor)

While it is often acknowledged that Margaret Atwood's novels are rife with allusions from the oral tradition of myth, legends, fables, and fairy tales, the implications of her liberal usage bear study. The essays in this volume have been written by some of the most influential Margaret Atwood scholars internationally, each exploring Atwoodâs use of primal, indeed archetypal, narratives to illuminate her fiction and poetry. These essays interact with all types of such narratives, from fairy tales and legends, to Greek, Roman, Biblical, and pagan mythologies, to contemporary processes of myth and tale creation. And, as the works in this collection demonstrate, Atwoodâs use of myths and fairy tales allows for an abundance of old, yet fresh material for contemporary readers. By reconciling, yet by also revisioning, the archetypal motifs, characters, and narratives, Atwoodâs writings present a familiar, yet unique, reading experience. [From Amazon.com]
Robert Ryman: Critical Texts Since 1967
2008
Vittorio Colaizzi (Editor) and Karsten Schubert (Editor)

Through an extremely restricted vocabulary, Robert Ryman became a leading figure on the fringes of Minimalist and Conceptual art. This anthology of essays reviews and charts the evolution of the artist's critical reception. A comprehensive selection of over 60 essays and exhibition reviews has been collated into one volume, including texts by some of the most influential art historians, art critics, and cultural commentators, like Lucy Lippard, Dan Cameron, Ernesto Pujol, and Robert Storr. The writers look at Ryman's work within the context of the 'challenge to painting' during the 1960s, the artist's work in relation to other influential painters in art history, and contemporary cultural trends. Drawing upon the words of key contemporary thinkers, an introduction by Vittorio Colaizzi explores the importance of elements of 'support, color, brushstroke' in Ryman's paintings. [Amazon.com]
Old Nations, New Voters: Nationalism, Transnationalism, and Democracy in the Era of Global Migration
2008
David Earnest

In this groundbreaking study, David C. Earnest analyzes why democracies give noncitizens the right to vote. Bringing together theoretical debates in international relations and comparative politics about globalization, sovereignty, nationalism, citizenship, and state building, he examines how twenty-five democracies are coping with growing populations of immigrants who increasingly demand political rights. Earnest employs statistical analyses, along with case studies, to uncover surprising facts that national courts are not necessarily progressive and that the left-right differences of political parties disguise intriguing coalitions that may either welcome or marginalize immigrants. The author concludes that rather than undermining the rights of citizens, the enfranchisement of noncitizens reflects shared national myths. In this respect, when faced with growing migration, old nations welcome new voters in ways that reinforce the bond between the nation and state." [From Amazon.com]
Little House, Long Shadow Laura Ingalls Wilder's Impact on American Culture
2008
Anita Clair Fellman

Fellman shows that Laura Ingalls Wilder's magical Little House series contained a covert political message that made many readers comfortable with the resurgence of conservatism. Because both Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, opposed the New Deal programs being implemented as they wrote, their books use family history as an argument against the state's protection of individuals from economic uncertainty, emphasizing the Ingalls family's isolation and resilience in the face of crises. Fellman argues that the books' popularity helped lay the groundwork for a negative response to big government and a positive view of political individualism, contributing to the acceptance of contemporary conservatism while perpetuating a mythic West. Fellman also explores the continuing presence of the books--and their message--in modern cultural institutions from classrooms to tourism, newspaper editorials to Internet message boards.
Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible
2008
Imtiaz H. Habib

Containing an urgently needed archival database of historical evidence, this volume includes both a consolidated presentation of the documentary records of black people in Tudor and Stuart England, and an interpretive narrative that confirms and significantly extends the insights of current theoretical excursus on race in early modern England. Here for the first time Imtiaz Habib collects the scattered references to black people-whether from Africa, India or America-in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and arranges them into a systematic, chronological descriptive index. He offers an extended historical and theoretical interpretation of the records in six chapters, which serve as an introductory guide to the index even as they articulate a specific argument about the meaning of the records. Both the archival information and interpretive scholarship provide a strong framework from which future historical debates on race in early modern England can proceed. [Amazon.com]
Nietzsche's 'On the Genealogy of Morality': An Introduction
2008
Lawrence J. Hatab

Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is a forceful, perplexing, important book, radical in its own time and profoundly influential ever since. This introductory textbook offers a comprehensive, close reading of the entire work, with a section-by-section analysis that also aims to show how the Genealogy holds together as an integrated whole. The Genealogy is helpfully situated within Nietzsche's wider philosophy, and occasional interludes examine supplementary topics that further enhance the reader's understanding of the text. Two chapters examine how the Genealogy relates to standard questions in moral and political philosophy. Written in a clear, accessible style, this book will appeal to students at every level coming to read the Genealogy for the first time, and a wider range of readers will also benefit from nuanced interpretations of controversial elements in Nietzsche's work. [From Amazon.com]
On Their Own: Women Journalists and the American Experience in Vietnam
2008
Joyce Hoffmann

Over three hundred women, both print and broadcast journalists, were accredited to chronicle America’s activities in Vietnam. Many of those women won esteemed prizes for their reporting, including the Pulitzer, the Overseas Press Club Award, the George Polk Award, the National Book Award, and the Bancroft Prize for History. Tragically, several lost their lives covering the war, while others were wounded or taken prisoner. In this gripping narrative, veteran journalist Joyce Hoffmann tells the important yet largely unknown story of a central group of these female journalists, including Dickey Chapelle, Gloria Emerson, Kate Webb, and others. Each has a unique and deeply compelling tale to tell, and vivid portraits of their personal lives and professional triumphs are woven into the controversial details of America’s twenty-year entanglement in Southeast Asia. [Amazon.com]
Beyond the Page: Latin American Poetry from the Calligramme to the Virtual
2008
Angélica Jiménez Huízar

This scholarly monograph offers a fresh look at modern experimental poetry in Spanish, Portuguese and French produced in Latin America. The work uses a variety of interdisciplinary approaches to examine how these experimental poetic forms can be best interpreted and understood through a performative lens. Examined structures and textures inherent in these performed works vary: they include paintings, typographical art, optophonetic (visual representations of sounds) techniques, and music, to name only a few examples. The investigative scope of the study is large---it includes texts from Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil and includes texts in Spanish, Portuguese and French. Through detailed analysis Professor Huizar demonstrates what we can read in the visual and sound components of these poems as performance on a page, and while these may be limited on the bound text, they do produce a performativity that is predictive of current technological innovations of the canon whose performative and interactive aspects include the latest multi-media technologies resulting in forms as cyper poetry and hypertextuality, electronic music and pictorial language. [From Amazon.com]
Writing Across Distances and Disciplines: Research and Pedagogy in Distributed Learning
2008
Joyce Magnotto Neff and Carl Whithaus

Writing Across Distances and Disciplines addresses questions that cross borders between onsite, hybrid, and distributed learning environments, between higher education and the workplace, and between distance education and composition pedagogy. This groundbreaking volume raises critical issues, clarifies key terms, reviews history and theory, analyzes current research, reconsiders pedagogy, explores specific applications of WAC and WID in distributed environments, and considers what business and education might teach one another about writing and learning. Exploring the intersection of writing across the curriculum, composition studies, and distance learning, it provides an in-depth look at issues of importance to students, faculty, and administrators regarding the technological future of writing and learning in higher education. [From Amazon.com]
Innocents Abroad Too: Journeys Around the World on Semester at Sea
2008
Michael Pearson

Most people don't get the opportunity to circumnavigate the globe. Michael Pearson has had the good fortune to do it twice. As a two-term professor in the Semester at Sea Program, Pearson journeyed by ship in 2002 and 2006 to such countries as Japan, China, Vietnam, India, Myanmar, Egypt, Turkey, South Africa, and Cuba. In Innocents Abroad Too he shares his experiences and candid impressions transporting the reader to bustling streets outside Shanghai's City God Temple to the Serengeti Plain. Along the way Pearson provides a literary journey, enriching his encounters with descriptions of the great books and great writers who have also brought the world closer to their readers. These touchstones are combined with journalistic sketches of the people and places he visits and Pearson's thoughtful meditations on the significance of travel and the importance of encountering the new. In the rich tradition of travel literature Innocents Abroad Too offers a blend of experience and imagination, worlds familiar and strange, seen through the eyes of a true traveler. [Amazon.com]
Beauté Suburbaine/Suburban Beauty
2008
Jacques Réda (Author) and Peter Schulman (Translator)

Collection of poems by Jacques Réda originally published in 1985. Translated from the French by Peter Schulman, ODU Professor of French and International Studies.
The Sweet In-Between: A Novel
2008
Sheri Reynolds

Kenny Lugo has grown up in a family that’s not really hers. Her mother died of cancer when Kenny was very young, and Aunt Glo–who is, in fact, her daddy’s girlfriend–took her in when her father was sent to jail for drug trafficking. Now, as Kenny approaches her eighteenth birthday and the end of the government checks Glo has been receiving looms, she is desperate to prove that this house and these people really do belong to her. But when a senseless murder occurs next door in their small coastal town, Kenny can’t get it out of her mind. She has always been consumed by the ways in which she is different–and inherently unworthy–so the unjust death of a young woman with everything to live for becomes an obsession. In the end, hers is a story of an unforgettable young woman whose redemption comes from a source she never would have imagined. {Amazon.com]
Trading Away Our Future: How to Fix Our Government-Driven Trade Deficits and Faulty Tax System Before it's Too Late
2008
Raymond L. Richman, Howard B. Richman, and Jesse T. Richman

We are Trading Away Our Future and most economists have been caught with their heads in the sand. They think that the trade deficits are the result of free market forces. But the trade deficits are caused by foreign government currency manipulations and the foolish subsidies that the US tax system gives to foreign savings.
The American People know that something is wrong. They know that the Chinese and Japanese governments manipulate their currencies to steal American industries. They are intrigued by Governor Huckabee's endorsement of the Fair Tax, a proposal that would abolish the IRS, renew American investment, Strengthen the dollar, and help solve the trade deficits.
If nothing is done, then resolutely nondemocratic China will replace the United States as the world's premier power. In this book the Richmans explain solutions that are within our grasp. [Amazon.com]
Architects of Delusion: Europe, America, and the Iraq War
2008
Simon Serfaty

The commencement of war in Iraq in 2003 was met with a variety of reactions around the globe. In Architects of Delusion, Simon Serfaty presents a historical analysis of how and why the decision to wage war was endorsed by some of America's main European allies, especially Britain, and opposed by others, especially France and Germany… [From Amazon.com]
A Recast Partnership?: institutional Dimensions of Transatlantic Relations
2008
Simon Serfaty (Editor)

Forty years ago, at the peak of the Cold War, Henry Kissinger noted the "troubled" state of the transatlantic partnership, which he called "the most constructive American foreign policy since the end of World War II." A few years later, Kissinger called for new initiatives--"a fresh act of creation"--that would respond to "new problems and new opportunities" in ways equal to those undertaken by the postwar generation of leaders of Europe and America after 1945. The essays in this new CSIS volume do just that. Each of the authors--leading authorities on the Euro-Atlantic community--assesses the current state of transatlantic relations, questions where we are heading, and reflects on how best to proceed… [From Amazon.com]
Race, Reason, and Massive Resistance: The Diary of David J. Mays, 1954-1959
2008
James R. Sweeney (Editor)

This book is an edited version of the diary of David J. Mays, a prominent Richmond, Virginia attorney, from the spring of 1954 through the spring of 1959. Mays served as counsel to a legislative commission appointed by Governor Thomas Stanley to devise a response to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Mays provides an insider's view of the so-called Gray Commission which devised a plan that tacitly permitted token integration. He also comments on the rejection of that approach by the governor and others loyal to the state's dominant political leader, U. S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, who favored a policy of massive resistance to school desegregation. Mays correctly assesses the legal deficiencies of the massive resistance program which resulted in the closing of schools in three communities before it was declared unconstitutional by both state and federal courts.
Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict: Debating Fourth-Generation Warfare
2008
Terry Terriff (Editor), Aaron Karp (Editor), and Reginia Karp (Editor)

This volume covers a timely debate in contemporary security studies: can armed forces adjust to the rising challenge of insurgency and terrorism, the greatest transformation in warfare since the birth of the international system? Containing essays by leading international security scholars and military professionals, it explores the Fourth-Generation Warfare thesis and its implications for security planning in the twenty-first century. No longer confined to the fringes of armed conflict, guerrilla warfare and terrorism increasingly dominate world-wide military planning. For the first time since the Vietnam War ended, the problems of insurgency have leapt to the top of the international security agenda and virtually all countries are struggling to protect themselves against terrorist threats. Coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are bogged down by an insurgency, and are being forced to rely on old warfare tactics rather than modern technologies to destroy their adversaries. These theorists argue that irregular warfare―insurgencies and terrorism―has evolved over time and become progressively more sophisticated and difficult to defeat as it is not centered on high technology and state of the art weaponry. [From Amazon.com]
iPod and Philosophy: iCon of an ePoch
2008
Dylan E. Wittkower (Editor)

The iPod is transforming the lives of millions, changing their relationship to music and to each other. IniPod and Philosophy, 18 philosophers with diverse specialties and points of view bring their expertise to bear on this international cultural phenomenon. They explore such questions as how individuals become defined by their iPods, what the shuffle feature says about the role of randomness in people's lives, and much more.
The Absence of Grand Strategy: The United States in the Persian Gulf, 1972-2005
2008
Steve A. Yetiv

Analyzing the evolution of the United States' foreign policy in the Persian Gulf from 1972 to 2005, Yetiv offers a provocative and panoramic view of American strategies in a region critical to the functioning of the entire global economy. Ten cases―from the policies of the Nixon administration to George W. Bush's war in Iraq―reveal shifting, improvised, and reactive policies that were responses to unanticipated and unpredictable events and threats. In fact, the distinguishing feature of the U.S. experience in the Gulf has been the absence of grand strategy… [From Amazon.com]
Adamah: Poeme
2008
Céline Zins (Author) and Peter Schulman (Translator)

Adamah is by prominent French poet and writer Céline Zins; this premiere edition includes the English translation by Peter Schulman, ODU Professor of French and International Studies.
Jack Sheppard
2007
William Harrison Ainsworth, Edward H. Jacobs (Editor), and Manuela Mourão (Editor)

In London Labour and the London Poor (1861) Henry Mayhew wrote, “Of all books, perhaps none has ever had so baneful effect upon the young mind, taste, and principles” as Jack Sheppard. An historical novel based on the exploits of John Sheppard, a thief who was executed in 1724, Jack Sheppard was blamed for inciting working-class crime and vagrancy for decades after its 1839 publication. ... This Broadview edition includes the original George Cruikshank illustrations, as well as a rich selection of contemporary reviews of the novel and material on the historical Jack Sheppard, Victorian urban street culture, and the novel’s popular theatrical adaptations.
Conversion: Poems
2007
Remica Bingham-Risher

The first of three sections in this book concern real or imagined relatives and acquaintances and events such as a fish fry and a visit to a grandmother in a nursing home. The second part deals with such topics as the Civil Rights Movement, abused prisoners of war, and the black artist who painted Bill Clinton's portrait. Many of the poems in the final part are based on events in the Bible. This is the first book by this author and winner of the 2007 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award.
The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany
2007
Michael C. Carhart

In the late 1770s, as a wave of revolution and republican unrest swept across Europe, scholars looked with urgency on the progress of European civilization. The question of social development was addressed from Edinburgh to St. Petersburg, with German scholars, including C. G. Heyne, Christoph Meiners, and J. G. Eichhorn, at the center of the discussion.

Michael Carhart examines their approaches to understanding human development by investigating the invention of a new analytic category, "culture." In an effort to define human nature and culture, scholars analyzed ancient texts for insights into language and the human mind in its early stages, together with writings from modern travelers, who provided data about various primitive societies. Some scholars began to doubt the existence of any essential human nature, arguing instead for human culture. If language was the vehicle of reason, what did it mean that all languages were different? Were rationality and virtue universal or unique to a given nation? [From Amazon.com]