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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Academic Podcasting and Mobile Assisted Language Learning Applications and Outcomes
2011
Betty Rose Facer and Mohammed Abdous

The use of Academic Podcasting Technology and MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning) is reshaping teaching and learning by supporting, expanding, and enhancing course content, learning activities, and teacher-student interactions. Academic Podcasting and Mobile Assisted Language Learning: Applications and Outcomes shares innovative and pedagogically effective ways to improve foreign language education by identifying the instructional uses and benefits of academic podcasting technology and MALL in foreign language acquisition. These include instructional uses, students' perceived learning gains, how instructors can use/have used the technology (successes and challenges), study abroad experiences with the technology, pedagogical impact, and economic perspectives on its use. [From Amazon.com]
You Are Beautiful: A Journey of Discovery
2011
Joy Lynn Francis

You are beautiful, priceless, and cherished. Discover that you are loved, and you are lovely. Within these pages, learn that God can heal the brokenhearted. Uncover the startling truth that He is your faithful comforter, redeemer, healer, and best friend. Have you ever felt unworthy? Ugly? Unwanted? Ashamed? Then this book is for you. Learn how journeys lead to destiny. Feel what it's like to walk in the promises of God after years in the wilderness. Discover that you are truly valuable and loved… [From Amazon.com]
Hairspray
2011
Dana Heller

By reconsidering assumptions about mainstream popular culture and its revolutionary possibilities, author Dana Heller reveals that John Waters' popular 1988 film "Hairspray" is the director's most subversive movie. Represents the first scholarly work on any of film director John Waters' films Incorporates original interview material with the director Reveals meanings embedded in the film's narrative treatment of racial and sexual politics. [Amazon.com]
Latin America and the United States: A Documentary History
2011
Robert H. Holden (Editor) and Eric Zolov (Editor)

Latin America and the United States: A Documentary History brings together the most important documents on the history of the relationship between the United States and Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present. In addition to standard diplomatic sources, the book includes documents touching on the transnational concerns that are increasingly taught in the classroom, including economic relations, environmental matters, immigration, human rights, and culture. The collection illuminates key issues while representing a variety of interests and views as they have both persisted and shifted over time, including often-overlooked Latin American perspectives and U.S. public opinion.

Now fully revised in its second edition, Latin America and the United States: A Documentary History features updated selections on current trends, including key new documents on immigration, regional integration, indigenous political movements, democratization, and economic policy. The second edition adds twenty-one documents and revises ten existing texts to ensure maximum clarity. The first edition's careful consideration of the Latin American perspective on hemispheric relations has been strengthened in the second edition, with many selections translated from the original Spanish by the editors… [From Amazon.com]
State Crime: Current Perspectives
2011
Dawn L. Rothe (Editor) and Christopher W. Mullens (Editor)

Current media and political discourse on crime has long ignored crimes committed by States themselves, despite their greater financial and human toll. For the past two decades, scholars have examined how and why States violate their own laws and international law and explored what can be done to reduce or prevent these injustices. Through a collection of essays by leading scholars in the field, State Crime offers a set of cases exemplifying state criminality along with various methods for controlling governmental transgressions. With topics ranging from crimes of aggression to nuclear weapons to the construction and implementation of social controls, this volume is an indispensable resource for those who examine the behavior of States and those who study crime in its varied forms. [From Amazon.com]
Introduction to Effective Music Teaching: Artistry and Attitude
2011
Alfred S. Townsend

Introduction to Effective Music Teaching: Artistry and Attitude provides the prospective teacher with front-line tested strategies and approaches that are based on current research and the author's three decades of service as a public school music educator, department chairman, and public school district music administrator. Starting with a brief overview of the history of music education in public schools, Alfred Townsend gives the reader a deeper understanding of the importance of music education to all students, gifted or not. Readers then examine artistry (command of content and mastery of methods) and the ABCs of teacher attitude, the critical component that unlocks learning for many students. With an open and accessible writing style, Dr. Townsend reviews the six components of effective teaching, showing that artistry and attitude can be combined to fuel student learning and teacher leadership. Using all of this information, the reader constructs a personal, practical philosophy of music teaching and learning that will form the basis for his or her instruction. Readers will also experience artistry and attitude in action through well-written case studies of effective teachers. With increasingly diverse student populations teachers now face, this book provides music teachers with ways to interact effectively with students of all backgrounds, attitudes, and talent. [From Amazon.com]
The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz: The First English Translation of Verne's Original Manuscript
2011
Jules Verne (1828-1925) and Peter Schulman (Translator and Editor)

Widely rumored to exist, then circulated in a corrupt form, Jules Verne’s final and arguably most daring and hauntingly beautiful novel—his own “invisible man”—appears here for the first time in a faithful translation. Readers of English can rediscover the pleasures of Verne’s storytelling in its original splendor and enjoy a virtually unknown gem of action, adventure, and style from a master of French literature.

Wilhelm Storitz, the son of a famous Prussian scientist (and possessor of his father’s secrets—even, perhaps, a formula that confers invisibility), vows revenge on the family that has denied him the love of his life, Myra Roderich. Wilhelm’s actions on the eve of Myra’s wedding unfold in a surprising and sinister way, leading to an ending that will astonish the reader… [From Amazon.com]
Revitalizing Electoral Geography
2011
Barney Warf (Editor) and Jonathan Leib (Editor)

Electoral Geography, the analysis of spatial patterns of voting, is undergoing a renaissance with new methodological advances, theoretical shifts and changes in the political landscape. Integrating new conceptual approaches with a broad array of case studies from the USA, Europe and Asia, this volume examines key questions in electoral geography: How has electoral geography changed since the 1980s when the last wave of works in this sub discipline appeared? In what ways does contemporary scholarship in social theory inform the analysis of elections and their spatial patterns? How has electoral geography been reconfigured by social and technological changes and those that shape the voting process itself? How can the comparative analysis of elections inform the field? In addressing these issues, the volume moves electoral geography beyond its traditional, empiricist focus on the United States to engage with contemporary theoretical developments and to outline the myriad theoretical, conceptual and methodological perspectives and applications that together are ushering in electoral geography's revitalization. The result is a broader, comparative analysis of how elections reflect and in turn shape social and spatial relations. [From Amazon.com]
Philip K. Dick and Philosophy
2011
Dylan E. Wittkower (Editor)

Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) is the giant imagination behind so much recent popular culture--both movies directly based on his writings, such as Blade Runner (based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and The Adjustment Bureau plus cult favorites such as A Scanner Darkly, Imposter, Next, Screamers, and Paycheck and works revealing his powerful influence, such as The Matrix and Inception. With the much anticipated forthcoming publication in 2011 of volume 1 of Exegesis, his journal of spiritual visions and paranoic investigations, Dick is fast becoming a major influence in the world of popular spirituality and occult thinking.

In Philip K. Dick and Philosophy: Do Androids have Kindred Spirits?, thirty-four Dick fans and professional thinkers confront the fascinating and frightening ideas raised by Dick's mind-blowing fantasies. Is there an alien world behind the everyday reality we experience? If androids can pass as human, should they be given the same consideration as humans? Do psychotics have insights into a mystical reality? Would knowledge of the future free us or enslave us? This volume also includes two Dick short stories: "Beyond Lies the Wub," and "The Eyes Have It."
Explaining Foreign Policy: U.S. Decision-Making in the Gulf Wars
2011
Steve A. Yetiv

Steve A. Yetiv has developed an interdisciplinary, integrated approach to studying foreign policy decisions, which he applies here to understand better how and why the United States went to war in the Persian Gulf in 1991 and 2003. Yetiv’s innovative method employs the rational actor, cognitive, domestic politics, groupthink, and bureaucratic politics models to explain the foreign policy behavior of governments. Drawing on the widest set of primary sources to date―including a trove of recently declassified documents―and on interviews with key actors, he applies these models to illuminate the decision-making process in the two Gulf Wars and to develop theoretical notions about foreign policy. What Yetiv discovers, in addition to empirical evidence about the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars, is that no one approach provides the best explanation, but when all five are used, a fuller and more complete understanding emerges. [From Amazon.com]
The Petroleum Triangle: Oil, Globalization, and Terror
2011
Steve A. Yetiv

In The Petroleum Triangle, Steve A. Yetiv tells the interconnected story of oil, globalization, and terrorism. Yetiv asks how Al-Qaeda, a small band of terrorists, became such a real and perceived threat to American and global security, a threat viewed as profound enough to motivate the strongest power in world history to undertake extraordinary actions, including two very costly wars… [From Amazon.com]
The United Nations in Latin America: Aiding Development
2010
Francis Adams

The United Nations has increased its worldwide efforts to promote sustainable development. In this book, noted scholar Francis Adams examines the United Nations' actions in Latin America, particularly in light of meeting basic human needs, promoting gender equity, and preserving natural environments. While previous books have focused on a single UN agency, this book is the first to analyze the development work of various UN institutions and agencies that sponsor economic and social programs in the developing world as well as the UN's various funding initiatives, global conferences, and institutional goals. This book will be a necessary addition for students and scholars of Latin American politics and Development.
Murder in the Métro: Laetitia Toureaux and the Cagoule in 1930s France
2010
Gayle K. Brunelle and S. Annette Finley-Croswhite

On the evening of May 16, 1937, the train doors opened at the Porte Dorée station in the Paris Métro to reveal a dying woman slumped by a window, an eight-inch stiletto buried to its hilt in her neck. No one witnessed the crime, and the killer left behind little forensic evidence. This first-ever murder in the Paris Métro dominated the headlines for weeks during the summer of 1937, as journalists and the police slowly uncovered the shocking truth about the victim: a twenty-nine-year-old Italian immigrant, the beautiful and elusive Laetitia Toureaux. Toureaux toiled each day in a factory, but spent her nights working as a spy in the seamy Parisian underworld. Just as the dangerous spy Mata Hari fascinated Parisians of an earlier generation, the mystery of Toureaux's murder held the French public spellbound in pre-war Paris, as the police tried and failed to identify her assassin.

By examining documents related to Toureaux's murder -- documents the French government has sealed from public view until 2038 -- Brunelle and Finley-Croswhite link Toureaux's death not only to the Cagoule but also to the Italian secret service, for whom she acted as an informant. Their research provides likely answers to the question of the identity of Toureaux's murderer and offers a fascinating look at the dark and dangerous streets of pre--World War II Paris. [Amazon.com]
Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics: Landmark Essays and Controversies
2010
Lindal Buchanan (Editor) and Kathleen J. Ryan (Editor)

Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics: Landmark Essays and Controversies gathers significant, oft-cited scholarship about feminism and rhetoric into one convenient volume. Essays examine the formation of the vibrant and growing field of feminist rhetoric; feminist historiographic research methods and methodologies; and women’s distinct sites, genres, and styles of rhetoric. The book’s most innovative and pedagogically useful feature is its presentation of controversies in the form of case studies, each consisting of exchanges between or among scholars about significant questions. These debates have shaped the field’s past and continue to influence its present and future directions. The collection provides both students and teachers with an accessible introduction to and comprehensive overview of the intersections of feminisms and rhetorics. [From the Publisher]
African Americans and Global aAfairs Contemporary Perspectives
2010
Michael L. Clemons (Editor)

The repression historically faced by African Americans has had an important effect on the nature of the group’s participation in foreign affairs. This book offers a much-needed and long-overdue survey of the field, setting the stage for further exploration and analysis. Chapters discuss the Congressional Black Caucus and TransAfrica Forum; African American political organizations and Africa; Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice; the evaporation of strong black voices in events such as those in Rwanda and Darfur; and self-critical Pan Africanism... [From Amazon.com]
The Ways that Police Deal with People: The Theory and Practice of Process-Based Policing
2010
Mengyan Dai

Using data from systematic social observations of police-citizen encounters, the statistical analyses demonstrate the importance of understanding the dynamics of police citizen encounters. The findings suggest how to enhance police legitimacy and improve the experiences of police citizen interactions. This book will appeal to criminal justice scholars and practitioners. [From Amazon.com]
White House Politics and the Environment: Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush
2010
Byron W. Daynes and Glen Sussman

Presidents and their administrations since the 1960s have become increasingly active in environmental politics, despite their touted lack of expertise and their apparent frequent discomfort with the issue. In White House Politics and the Environment: Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush, Byron W. Daynes and Glen Sussman study the multitude of resources presidents can use in their attempts to set the public agenda. They also provide a framework for considering the environmental direction and impact of U.S. presidents during the last seven decades, permitting an assessment of each president in terms of how his administration either aided or hindered the advancement of environmental issues… [From Amazon.com]
Sorry, Wrong Answer: Trivia Questions That Even Know-It-Alls Get Wrong
2010
Rod L. Evans

In Sorry, Wrong Answer, Rod Evans takes readers on a tour of misleading trivia, debunking commonly held assumptions and sharing surprising "right" answers. [Amazon.com]
Volume: Writings on Graphic Design, Music, Art, and Culture
2010
Kenneth FitzGerald

Volume—a word that refers to sound, collections, and the measurement of space—is a crucial characteristic of both graphic design and popular music. While expressing different aspects of these two pervasive cultural mediums, the term also introduces a discussion on their many links. Volume: Writings on Graphic Design, Music, Art, and Culture is a collection of both new and classic writings by frequent Emigre contributor and educator Kenneth FitzGerald that survey the discipline of graphic design in context with the parallel creative fields of contemporary music and art. The topics of the writings are diverse: the roles of class in design, design education, Lester Bangs and Creem magazine, pornography, album cover art, independent record labels, anonymity and imaginary creative identities, and design as cultural chaos-maker. [Amazon.com]
Press Professionalization and Propaganda: The Rise of Journalistic Double-Mindedness, 1917-1941
2010
Burton St. John III

Increasingly, Americans are turning away from the traditional press--especially newspapers--for the news of the day. In fact, by May 2009 a Pew survey revealed that 63 percent of Americans said they would not miss their paper if it ceased publishing. Other surveys have revealed that since the late 1990s, Americans have significant concerns about the mainstream news media's credibility, with no less than 56 percent voicing reservations about the press's accuracy. At the same time, the mainstream news has continued to show a proclivity for using information proffered by public relations sources; in fact, some studies point to newsrooms that use such propaganda materials for up to 75-80 percent of their stories. As traditional newsrooms continue to either downsize (or, in some cases, disappear) and propaganda materials proliferate, the American public will continue to encounter difficulties obtaining from journalism the accurate and relevant information it needs to make informed decisions within our democracy. Current scholarship about journalism's increasing problems with relevancy often focuses on explorations of the advent of new media technologies and/or journalism's dysfunctional business models. Although those studies are important, they tend toward a presentism that ignores dilemmas that derive from the enduring ways that the press gathers and constructs news. This book argues that the problem of press relevancy can be traced to historical groundings that continue to inform newsroom practices. Specifically, it makes the distinctive claim that modern journalism's own professionalism has made the press prone to using propaganda materials, thus contributing to increasing news media irrelevance. ... [Amazon.com]
The Politics of Destroying Surplus Small Arms: Inconspicuous Disarmament
2010
Aaron Karp (Editor)

Although it receives much less attention than better known disarmament processes, the destruction of small arms is reshaping the military arsenals of the world. Out of roughly 200 modern military small arms world-wide, about 500,000 are destroyed every year. The commitment of major governments and international organizations makes small arms destruction is a permanent addition to the global disarmament repertoire. But the prospects for greater military small arms disarmament may be declining, as war in Afghanistan and Iraq create unprecedented demand for second-hand weaponry... [From Amazon.com]
Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War, 1945-1960
2010
Lorraine M. Lees

Keeping Tito Afloat draws upon newly declassified documents to show the critical role that Yugoslavia played in U.S. foreign policy with the communist world in the early years of the Cold War. After World War II, the United States considered Yugoslavia to be a loyal Soviet satellite, but Tito surprised the West in 1948 by breaking with Stalin. Seizing this opportunity, the Truman administration sought to "keep Tito afloat" by giving him military and economic aid. President Truman hoped that American involvement would encourage other satellites to follow Tito's example and further damage Soviet power. However, Lees demonstrates that it was President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles who most actively tried to use Tito as a "wedge" to liberate the Eastern Europeans… [From Amazon.com]
J.S. Mill: Moral, Social and Political Thought
2010
Dale E. Miller

This book offers a clear and highly readable introduction to the ethical and social-political philosophy of John Stuart Mill. Dale E. Miller argues for a "utopian" reading of Mill's utilitarianism. He analyses Mill's views on happiness and goes on to show the practical, social and political implications that can be drawn from his utilitarianism, especially in relation to the construction of morality, individual freedom, democratic reform, and economic organization. By highlighting the utopian thinking which lies at the heart of Mill's theories, Miller shows that rather than allowing for well-being for the few, Mill believed that a society must do everything in its power to see to it that each individual can enjoy a genuinely happy life if the happiness of its members is to be maximized. Miller provides a cogent and careful account of the main arguments offered by Mill, considers the critical responses to his work, and assesses its legacy for contemporary philosophy. [From Amazon.com]
A Few Spells: Poems
2010
Rénee Olander

"Renée Olander's poems are distinctly female, which is to say fertile, passionate, powerful, sorrowful, sexy, stunning, and strong. Sit with them, spend time with them, hold them close, embrace them. You'll be glad you did. Reading A Few Spells is akin to being in the company of a wise and treasured friend," writes poet Lesléa Newman. [ODUscrivener.wordpress.com]
Public Journalism 2.0: The Promise and Reality of a Citizen-Engaged Press
2010
Jack Rosenberry and Burton St. John III

Public Journalism 2.0 examines the ways that civic or public journalism is evolving, especially as audience-created content―sometimes referred to as citizen journalism or participatory journalism―becomes increasingly prominent in contemporary media. As the contributors to this edited volume demonstrate, the mere use of digital technologies is not the fundamental challenge of a new citizen-engaged journalism; rather, a deeper understanding of how civic/public journalism can inform citizen-propelled initiatives is required.Through a mix of original research, essays, interviews, and case studies, this collection establishes how public journalism principles and practices offer journalists, scholars, and citizens insights into how digital technology and other contemporary practices can increase civic engagement and improve public life. ... [Amazon.com]