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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Outside Shooter: A Memoir
2003
Philip Raisor

Philip Raisor was on the losing side in two of the most storied basketball games ever played. He started at guard for the Muncie Central Bearcats, who fell in the 1954 Indiana state final to tiny Milan, the David-over-Goliath event that inspired the movie Hoosiers. On a basketball scholarship to the University of Kansas, he watched his Wilt Chamberlain–led Jayhawks lose the 1957 NCAA championship in triple overtime to North Carolina. In Outside Shooter, Raisor recounts the hard knocks and hard-won triumphs of a basketball odyssey across 1950s America, from Indiana to Kansas to Louisiana, and from adolescence to adulthood... [from Amazon.com]
A Meditation on Social Problems
2003
Ron Roberts, Wynne Wrights, and Kent Sandstrom

Sociological reflections on contemporary social problems.
The Sunday of Fiction: The Modern French Eccentric
2003
Peter Schulman

In a world of increasing conformity, the modern eccentric can be seen as a contemporary hero and guardian of individualism. This study defines the modern eccentric in twentieth-century French literature and compares the notions of the eccentric in nineteenth and twentieth-century French literature by tracing the eccentric's relationship to time, space, and society. While previous studies have focused on the notion of eccentricity in purely formal terms, The Sunday of Fiction delineates the eccentric as a fully fictional character. This work also completes prior criticism by exploring twentieth-century fictional eccentrics in works by authors such as Raymond Queneau, Jean-Echenoz, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, and Georges Perec, and by filmmakers such as Jacques Tati and Pierre Etaix. Notions of eccentricity since the nineteenth century shift from rather foppish, outlandish representations of aristocratic eccentrics towards a more popular, discreet figure who is uniquely in tune with vanishing spaces of daily life: amusement parks, cafes, grand movie palaces. While the modern world around them is obsessed with speed, technology, and innovation, modern French eccentrics view daily life as a sort of holiday to be savored. In this way, The Sunday of Fiction details the various means modern eccentrics employ to successfully transform the humdrum into the marvelous, or rather Mondays into Sundays. [From Amazon.com]
The Marketing of Eros: Performance, Sexuality, Consumer Culture
2003
Peter Schulman and Frederick Alfred Lubich (Editors)

Impact of the Sexual Revolution of the 20th Century on literature, philosophy, film, fashion, journalism, ethics, gender ideologies, advertising, commodity culture, and popular entertainment. Rilke, Nietzsche, fashion and fin de siècle morphine narratives, showgirls and the New Woman, Weimar cabaret, Weimar women and advertising, renegotiating gender in the "Roaring Twenties", the representation of working women in German journals from the turn of the century to the Third Reich, film criticism of H.D. and Adrienne Rich, European and Hollywood cinema. [From Amazon.com]
Walter Mosley: A Critical Companion
2003
Charles E. Wilson

Readers of this Critical Companion will discover the richness of Mosley's writings, as well as his contributions to the African-American literary tradition, the genres of detective writing and science fiction, and American literature in general. Mosley's influences, inspirations, obstacles, and successes are presented in a richly drawn biographical chapter, which incorporates the author's most recent interviews. [Amazon.com]
Ken Burns's America
2002
Gary R. Edgerton

This is the first book-length study to critically examine the work of Ken Burns, the innovative producer-director as a television auteur, a pivotal programming influence within the industry, and a popular historian who portrays a uniquely personal and compelling version of the country's past for tens of millions of viewers nationwide. Ken Burns's America has a three-fold agenda: First it looks at the ideas and individuals that have influenced Burns in the creation of his easily-recognized style, as well as in the development and maturation of his ideological outlook. Second, the book gives readers a window on the Ken Burns production machine. Gary Edgerton shows us the inner working of Florentine Films. Finally, he looks at Burns as a popular historian who reevaluates the nation's historical legacy from a new generational perspective and, in the process, becomes one of the major cultural commentators of our era. The volume finally takes the full measure of the man and the industry he has helped to create. [Amazon.com]
Orientalism and Empire: North Caucausus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian Frontier, 1845-1917
2002
Austin Jersild

This text aims to sheds light on the little-studied Russian empire in the Caucasus by exploring the tension between national and imperial identities on the Russian frontier. Austin Jersild contributes to the growing literature on Russian orientalism and the Russian encounter with Islam, and reminds us of the imperial background and its contribution to the formation of the 20th-century ethno-territorial Soviet state. [Amazon.com]
Wendewelten: Paradigmenwechsel in der Deutschen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte nach 1945
2002
Frederick Alfred Lubich

Through essays, interviews, and a poem, Lubich examines the changes in German literature and culture after 1945.
Altered Habits: Reconsidering the Nun in Fiction
2002
Manuela Mourão

In a comprehensive analysis of the nun in literature, Manuela Mourão challenges the notion that nuns are "women who lead unnatural lives, most probably because they were disappointed in love or because they failed to adjust to 'reality'. Unique in the breadth of its historical and literary scope--the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries and the national literatures of France and England, with references to those of Portugal, Italy, and the U.S. Altered Habits examines the representation of nuns and convents in a range of primary sources, both canonical and more culturally marginal.... [Amazon.com]
Incarcerating White-Collar Offenders: The Prison Experience and Beyond
2002
Brian K. Payne

This book provides corrections professionals and criminal justice students with a framework for understanding the white-collar offender as well as to help guide and assist those responsible for overseeing the incarceration of white-collar offenders.
Point of View and Grammar: Structural Patterns of Subjectivity in American English Conversation
2002
Joanne Scheibman

This book proposes that subjective expression shapes grammatical and lexical patterning in American English conversation. Analyses of structural and functional properties of English conversational utterances indicate that the most frequent combinations of subject, tense, and verb type are those that are used by speakers to personalize their contributions, not to present unmediated descriptions of the world. These findings are informed by current research and practices in linguistics which argue that the emergence, or conventionalization, of linguistic structure is related to the frequency with which speakers use expressions in discourse. The use of conversational data in grammatical analysis illustrates the local and contingent nature of grammar in use and also raises theoretical questions concerning the coherence of linguistic categories, the viability of maintaining a distinction between semantic and pragmatic meaning in analytical practice, and the structural and social interplay of speaker point of view and participant interaction in discourse. [Amazon.com]
Le dernier livre du siècle deux Américains enquêtent sur l'intelligentsia Française au tournant du siècle
2002
Peter Schulman and Mischa Zabotin

Through interviews (surveys) of French personalities, the authors examine French intellectual life at the end of the 20th century.
The 13 Culprits
2002
Georges Simenon and Peter Schulman (Translator)

Georges Simenon (1903-1989) not only created the finest series of French detective novels in the cases of Inspector Jules Maigret, but he was also, according to Andre Gide, perhaps the greatest and most truly novelistic novelist in France today. But before he wrote about Maigret, he contributed series of short tales to the magazine Detective in 1929 and 1930, collected in 3 books. The first of those volumes, The 13 Culprits, has never previously been published in English, despite extravagant praise from Alexander Woolcott, Ellery Queen, and other experts. [Amazon.com]

Translated from the French by Peter Schulman, ODU Professor of French and International Studies.
Confederate Industry: Manufacturers and Quartermasters in the Civil War
2002
Harold S. Wilson

By 1860 the South ranked high among the developed countries of the world in per capita income and life expectancy and in the number of railroad miles, telegraph lines, and institutions of higher learning. Only the major European powers and the North had more cotton and woolen spindles.

This book examines the Confederate military's program to govern this prosperous industrial base by a quartermaster system. By commandeering more than half the South's produced goods for the military, the quartermaster general, in a drift toward socialism, appropriated hundreds of mills and controlled the flow of southern factory commodities… [From Amazon.com]
Television Histories: Shaping Collective Memory in the Media
2001
Gary R. Edgerton (Editor) and Peter C. Rollins

From Ken Burns's documentaries to historical dramas such as Roots, from A&E's Biography series to CNN's coverage of such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, television has become the primary source for historical information for tens of millions of Americans today. Why has television become such a respected authority? What falsehoods enter our collective memory as truths? How is one to know what is real and what is imagined -- or ignored -- by producers, directors, or writers? Gary Edgerton and Peter Rollins have collected a group of essays that answer these and many other questions. The contributors examine the full spectrum of historical genres, as well as institutions such as the History Channel and production histories of such series as The Jack Benny Show, which ran for fifteen years... [Amazon.com]
Bitter Witness: Otto Dix and the Great War
2001
Linda F. McGreevy

Bitter Witness is an intensive, factual study of Otto Dix’s war-related art. It is the first book to place Dix’s etching cycle, Der Krieg, alongside numerous paintings and drawings in the perspective of his war experience on two fronts from mid-1915 to 1918’s finale. It includes a full history of the war, the Weimar Republic’s socio-political upheavals, and the Nazi years, following Dix and his colleagues, including Kaethe Kollwitz, through the artistic movements and events in the first half of Germany’s most turbulent century. [From Amazon.com]
Frank Lloyd Wright & Lewis Mumford: Thirty Years of Correspondence
2001
Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer and Robert Wojitowicz (Editors)

What began as a simple letter--a mid-career architect's comments to a young writer--turned into a 32-year correspondence, by turns amusing, inflamed, and conciliatory. Frank Lloyd Wright and Lewis Mumford, two pivotal figures in 20th-century American architecture and urbanism, were both passionate writers, keenly aware of world events. Their 150 letters from 1926--1958 covered a wide range of topics, including Wright's position in the history of American architecture and contemporary practice, their friends and rivals, the invention and spread of the International Style, and political events in Europe and the US. A fallout over isolationist politics in the early 1940s led to a 10-year gap in their exchange, and when it resumed, the two were on an entirely different footing: Wright, the elder dean of American architecture at the height of his creative powers, and Mumford, an established critic in late middle age deeply committed to rebuilding a humanist outlook in the aftermath of World War II. Frank Lloyd Wright & Lewis Mumford offers an intimate look inside the minds and hearts of these two cultural giants, deepening our understanding of the men and the society they helped shape. [From Amazon.com]
Gloria Naylor: A Critical Companion
2001
Charles E. Wilson

In each of her five novels, Gloria Naylor invites the reader to join her characters in their journeys to move beyond established boundaries and embrace an increasingly diverse society. With lucid analyses of each work, this Critical Companion helps readers comprehend how Naylor successfully links the trials of her African American characters to the struggles of human beings at variance with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Insights into Naylor's own struggles and successes are provided in a richly drawn biographical chapter, which incorporates fresh materials from a recent interview conducted for this book. Naylor's place within the larger framework of the African American narrative traditions is considered as well. [Amazon.com]
Dollar Diplomacy: United States Economic Assistance to Latin America
2000
Francis Adams

United States economic assistance programs in Latin America have been frequently restructured since the 1960s. This volume examines the evolution of US aid to the region, describes and explains US aid policy towards Latin America, and accounts for changes in the aid regime since 1960. While US aid policy typically reflects developmental, political and economic motivations, the relative weight of each motive can only be understood through close analysis of the broader historical context. In conclusion, the book reviews the most pressing social and economic problems in Latin America, and advances a set of policy recommendations for reforming United States assistance policy in the 21st century. [From amazon.com]
Shakespeare and Race: Postcolonial Praxis in the Early Modern Period
2000
Imtiaz Habib

Shakespeare and Race is a provocative new study that reveals a connection between the subject of race in Shakespeare and the advent of early English colonialism. Citing generally neglected archival evidence, Imtiaz Habib argues that a small population of captured Indians and Africans brought to England during the 16th century provided the impetus for Elizabethan constructions of race rather than existing European traditions in which blackness was represented metaphorically. He explores Tudor and Stuart dramatic representations of black characters, focusing specifically on how race affected Shakespeare personally and historically over the course of his career. Using postcolonial paradigms combined with neo-Marxist, feminist, and psychoanalytic insights, Habib discusses the possible existence of a black woman that Shakespeare knew and wrote about in his Sonnets and examines the design of his black male characters, including Aaron, Othello, and Caliban. Shakespeare and Race represents a significant contribution that will fascinate scholars of literature as well as those interested in the cultural impact of colonialism. [Amazon.com]
Deutsche Binnentankschiffahrt, 1887-1994
2000
Ingo Heidbrink

Binnentank shipping has been and is, like no other, influenced by a single cargo, by its economic fluctuations and by its particular danger potential. Heidbrink explores this special field of shipping, both technical and economic and political developments, devotes himself to the history and special conditions of the transport of dangerous goods. In addition, he is also paying attention to the spectacular disasters and the safety regulations developed as well as the living and working conditions on board. Even almost forgotten waterways, which were of great importance for the development of the industrial city of Germany, are presented. [From Amazon.com]
Accidental Migrations: An Archaeology of Gothic Discourse
2000
Edward Jacobs

This book offers a powerful and new consideration of the nature of the Gothic. It demonstrates how all of the discursive traditions associated with the English word "Gothic" make language interact with migration, collection and display, balance, and rediscovery. Accidental Migrations makes a notable contribution to the theorization and reconsideration of eighteenth-century historiography. [Amazon.com]
Women and Reform in a New England Community, 1815-1860
2000
Carolyn J. Lawes

As part of the ongoing reevaluation of the prehistory of the women's movement, Carolyn Lawes analyzes the organized social activism of the mostly middle-class, urban, white women of Worcester, Massachusetts, and finds that they were at the center of community life and leadership. Neither frontier nor densely urban, Worcester encountered the stresses common to so many communities in the Northeast during the first half of the nineteenth century. It was also the site of the first two national women's rights conventions in the 1850s.Arguing against the long-accepted paradigm of separate public and private spheres for women's lives, Lawes defines and describes what women were able to do and why, and seeks to reinterpret American women's history. [From Jet.com]
Morality, Rules, and Consequences: A Critical Reader
2000
Elinor Mason (Editor), Dale E. Miller (Editor), and Brad Hooker (Editor)

What determines whether an action is right or wrong? One appealing idea is that a moral code ought to contain a number of rules that tell people how to behave and that are simple and few enough to be easily learned. Another appealing idea is that the consequences of actions matter, often more than anything else. Rule consequentialism tries to weave these two ideas into a general theory of morality. This theory holds that morally wrong actions are the ones forbidden by rules whose acceptance would maximize the overall good. Morality, Rules, and Consequences: A Critical Reader explores for students and researchers the relationship between consequentialist theory and moral rules. Most of the chapters focus on rule consequentialism or on the distinction between act and rule versions of consequentialism. [from Amazon.com]
Stop Breakin Down
2000
John McManus

In a voice somewhere between Cormac McCarthy and Kurt Cobain, John McManus explores young people living in extreme situations. Some are in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains, some in the Pacific Northwest, a few are in the Western deserts of Utah and Nevada, one is in England, and many are scattered throughout the Southern US. All are desperate for something beyond the ordinary lives that are given to them, and everyone is absolutely unforgettable. [Amazon.com]