Afro-Eccentricity: Beyond the Standard Narrative of Black Religion

Choice, in its review of Afro-Eccentricity: Beyond the Standard Narrative of Black Religion, declared, "Hart (UNC Greensboro) has made a major contribution to the theoretical literature of black religion."

As Professor William D. Hart, Head of the Department of Religious Studies, describes, "In this text, I explore the Standard Narrative of Black Religion and under the term"Afro-Eccentricity," critical revisions and alternatives" (2). The publisher's website notes that "Hart explores four distinctive contributions to the discourse of Black Religion against the counterpoint of the Standard Narrative of Black Religion as the 'Black Church.' Three overlapping versions of the Standard Narrative - Souls, Church, and Ancestor - dominate scholarly and popular accounts of Black Religion."

Hart focuses on four figures, Charles H. Long, William R. Jones, Cornel West, and Theophus Smith, who, the publisher's site continues, "variously revise, circumvent, or otherwise break free of the confines of the Standard Narrative, thus providing a richer and less church-bound account of Black Religion. Though affirming their Afro-Eccentricity, Hart does not hesitate in raising questions about their work through narrative and discourse analysis."

While as of this writing (February 29, 2012), the print version of Afro-Eceentricity was checked out, the book is also available in electronic format from the University Libraries

Three books from Professor James Fisher

Head of the Theatre Department Professor James Fisher has recently published three books on the history of American theater. Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater, is part of the Historical Dictionaries of Literature and Art series by Scarecrow Press. In the words of one review: "This two-volume set highlights the prominent people, movements, events, and organizations that shaped American theater from 1930 to 2010. Fisher offers a well-executed introductory essay that references
the cultural changes that influenced the theatrical experiences of the period. Supplementing the essay is a chronology featuring detailed impacts of events on theater year by year. . . . This is an excellent resource for theater practitioners and for scholarly researchers" (Choice).

Professor Fisher also recently edited a collection of essays, To Have or Have Not: Essays on Commerce and Capitalism in Modernist Theatre. As he writes in the book's introduction, "This eclectic collection spans dramatic works written during and about the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism, Karl Marx’s theories, Wall Street, immigration, the Gilded and Jazz Ages, the two world wars, the Great Depression, the post-World War II economic 'boom,' and the recent (2007-2011) economic crisis and contemporary cultural issues” (1). Professor Fisher contributed one of the book's essays, "'Money is Our God Here': The Comedy of Capital in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Money and Philip Barry's Holiday." UNCG's Professor Christine Woodworth also wrote one chapter, "Back-Alleys to Basements: Narratives of Class and (Il)legal Abortion on the American Stage." The University Libraries' collection includes this book in both print and electronic formats.

For more information about Professor Fisher's recent publications, please see our blog post from one year ago!

Indian Angles and Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India

In 2011, Professor Mary Ellis Gibson, English and Women's and Gender Studies, published two companion books with Ohio University Press: Indian Angles: English Verse in Colonial India from Jones to Tagore and Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780-1913. Both works contribute greatly to the scholarship of literature in English in India during the long nineteenth century and serve to introduce this poetry to a wider audience.

From the publisher's website:

"In Indian Angles, Mary Ellis Gibson provides a new historical approach to Indian English literature. Gibson shows that poetry, not fiction, was the dominant literary genre of Indian writing in English until 1860 and that poetry written in colonial situations can tell us as much or even more about figuration, multilingual literacies, and histories of nationalism than novels can. Gibson recreates the historical webs of affiliation and resistance that were experienced by writers in colonial India—writers of British, Indian, and mixed ethnicities."

"Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780–1913: A Critical Anthology makes accessible for the first time the entire range of poems written in English on the subcontinent from their beginnings in 1780 to the watershed moment in 1913 when Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature. . . . With accurate and reliable texts, detailed notes on vocabulary, historical and cultural references, and biographical introductions to more than thirty poets, this collection will significantly reshape the understanding of English language literary culture in India. It allows scholars to experience the diversity of poetic forms created in this period and to understand the complex religious, cultural, political, and gendered divides that shaped them."

Death in Crete

In Prehistoric Crete: Regional and Diachronic Studies on Mortuary Systems, editor Joanne M.A. Murphy (Classical Studies) brings together a group of essays that present "a diverse sample of contemporary scholarship on Crete." Archaeologists, divided by the time periods they study as well as locale, have built research silos, and Murphy seeks to bridge that gap with this volume.

As the publisher notes, "since the inception of Minoan archaeology, studies pertaining to tombs and tomb deposits have played seminal roles in our understanding of Minoan culture and the reconstruction of Bronze Age society. For several geographical areas and chronological periods of Cretan history, tombs are the most abundant source of data. Each author in this volume take a clear and distinct approach . . . including some that emphasize political geography . . . some that examine the commemoration of the dead . . . and others that underline the overlap between mortuary rituals and religion."

In addition to editing the book, Murphy contributed the introduction and a chapter entitled "Landscape and Social Narrative: A Study of Regional Social Structures in Prepalatial Crete."

What to do with data--new book by Lynda Kellam

UNCG's University Libraries are fortunate to have data services librarian Lynda Kellam on hand to guide students, staff, and faculty through the ever-growing world of numeric data resources. The World Bank and other NGOs and government agencies have opened up tremendous amounts of data on climate change, nutrition, education, and much much more, and at UNCG, our researchers can turn to Kellam to navigate the numbers. But smaller libraries typically are unable to employ data experts. That's where Kellam's Numeric Data Services and Sources for the General Reference Librarian comes to the rescue. Numeric Data Services provides librarians everywhere the tools they need to develop data services. As London School of Economics and Political Science Data Manager Tanvi Desai blogs,

"This guidebook serves as a primer to developing and supporting social science statistical and numeric data sources in the academic library. It provides strategies for the establishment of data services and offers short descriptions of the essential sources of free and commercial social science statistical and numeric data. Finally, it discusses the future of numeric data services, including the integration of statistics and data into library instruction and the use of Web 2.0 tools to visualize data."

To learn more about Kellam's research and how to incorporate statistics into library instruction, listen as Kellam sits down with the creators of Adventures in Library Instruction.

Advancing Your Career: Getting and Making the Most of Your Doctorate

Emeritus Professor Dale Brubaker, Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations, recently published Advancing Your Career: Getting and Making the Most of Your Doctorate, a book co-authored with his son, Michael Brubaker.

Advancing Your Career is appropriate for the reader considering applying to graduate school, to the student in the midst of assistantships and exams, to the researcher embarking on a dissertation, to the newly-minted Ph.D, to the graduate professor advising a new crop of students. The book provides a road map of what to expect and advice on how to navigate issues such as selecting a committee and "The 'Table Manners' of Doctoral Student Leadership."

John Hattie, Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute, University of Melbourne, calls Advancing Your Career "the book that all doctoral students, advisors, and supervisors need to read to know what to do next. It maximizes the fun and worthwhile aspects of completing the thesis and degree while remaining realistic to the fact that it may not all be a bed of roses. The authors helped me hear the voices of the students--the caring striving, thriving, and surviving.

Ronald Williamson, Professor of Educational Leadership, Eastern Michigan University, notes "It's about time someone had the courage to talk about the joys and the challenges of doctoral study. In Advancing Your Career the discussion is open, honest, and takes the mystery out of the process. It also provides students with a set of tools they can use to reflect on their own experience. The ability to critique your own work and to maneuver through the politics of the doctorate are important to your skill as a researcher. That's exactly why Advancing Your Career is such an important addition to the literature."

Blaire Cholewa, Assistant Professor of Counselor Education, Kean University, says that "Brubaker and Brubaker have created a wonderful, detailed map that simplifies and demystifies the often grueling journey of obtaining a doctorate. This book provides invaluable information and insight for every step of the doctoral process and gives readers an honest account of the hurdles to come as well as provides them with the tools to prevail. I only wish such a book had existed to help me navigate my own doctoral journey."

Book Talk on November 8--Choices Women Make: Agency in Domestic Violence, Assisted Reproduction, and Sex Work

Dr. Carisa Showden, Political Science, will discuss her new book, Choices Women Make: Agency in Domestic Violence, Assisted Reproduction, and Sex Work, at the Multicultural Resource Center in the EUC on Tuesday, November 8, at 4 pm.

Dr. Showden's book, published earlier this year, examines women's agency in several contexts. As the publisher (University of Minnesota Press) describes:

"In Showden’s analysis, women’s agency emerges as an individual and social construct, rooted in concrete experience, complex and changing over time. She traces the development and deployment of agency, illustrating how it plays out in the messy workings of imperfect lives. In a series of case studies, she considers women within situations of intimate partner violence, reproductive decision making, and sex work such as prostitution and pornography. Each narrative offers insight into how women articulate their self-understanding and political needs in relation to the pressures they confront."

For further reading, see Dr. Showden's post on the University of Minnesota Press' blog. Here she takes on the "mainstream" view of domestic violence, as articulated in a recent Glamour article, exploring the question of women's agency in abusive relationships and challenging the assumption that all women have more options:

"What the article misses in framing the question in this way is that while some women indisputably do have more options—and more to the point, more good options—than they did forty or fifty years ago, not all women do. To have 'good choices' available, material resources have to be more widely distributed, gender norms (what we might in our philosophical language call 'discursive resources') have to change, and laws and public policies have to support an array of ways that women and men deal with ending abuse. So women have 'more choices than ever' only to the degree that they have increased access to healthcare, good jobs, day care, supportive friends and family networks, full citizenship status, mobility, access to legal interventions that enable them to negotiate effectively with their partners when needed, and a strong enough sense of self to buck gender norms about responsibility for the maintenance of relationships and being a good partner. Not all women have most of these resources."