bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Belt and Road Initiative
Authors: Rosenberg Jerry M.
Published: July 2024

As the US and the European Union dealt with the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, China moved quickly to create the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. The aim was to develop ports, rails, roads and more, in nations around the world. China now has contracts in over 148 countries and provides loans and workers to fulfill these projects, all with hidden agendas. The intent behind the initiative is to economically dominate the world in short time, assuring China’s goal of becoming the most powerful nation in the world. There is a growing mistrust of the BRI in recipient countries, between the elites and the populations at large. To combat the initiative, Europe is hoping to evolve a Global Gateway (GG) and President Biden is calling for a Build Back Better World (B3W) to attract a global network for developing nations with needed funds. Also outlined is the New EU–US sponsored Marshall Plan (NEMP), borrowing the best concepts from the original 1948 Marshall Plan, to assist in combating the statecraft of China.
Choral Treatises and Singing Societies in the Romantic Age
Authors: Friddle David
Published: July 2024

Choral Treatises and Singing Societies in the Romantic Age charts the interrelated beginning and development of choral methods and community choruses beginning in the early nineteenth century. Using more than one-hundred musical examples, illustrations, tables, and photographs to document this phenomenon, author David Friddle writes persuasively about this unusual tandem expansion. Beginning in 1781, with the establishment of the first secular singing group in Germany, Friddle shows how as more and more choral ensembles were founded throughout Germany, then Europe, Scandinavia, and North America, the need for singing treatises quickly became apparent. Music pedagogues Hans Georg Nägeli, Michael Traugott Pfeiffer, and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi invented the genre that became modern choral methods; initially these books were combinations of music fundamental primers, with frequent inclusion of choral works intended for performance. Eventually authors branched out into choral conducting textbooks, detailed instructions on how to found such a community-based organization, and eventually classroom music instruction. The author argues that one of the greatest legacies of this movement was the introduction of vocal music education into public schools, which led to greater musical literacy as well as the proliferation of volunteer choirs. All modern choral professionals can find the roots their career during this century.
China and America’s Tech War from AI to 5G
Authors: Abrams A. B.
Published: July 2024

China and America’s Tech War from AI to 5G examines how Sino-U.S. geopolitical competition has increasingly centered on the performances of the two countries’ technology sectors and their ability to dominate development of critical next generation technologies. It analyzes and compares the strengths of China and the U.S., ranging from the ability to produce and attract talent, to the degree of government support and the scale and funding for technological research. Abrams reviews and weighs important technology areas such as green energy, artificial intelligence, Quantum Computing, and 5G will likely have, the means both parties have exercised to gain advantages, and the consequences of leadership for the county who attains it.
The Missed Revolution at the Origins of United States
Authors: Maurini Alessandro
Published: July 2024

The Declaration of Independence was not only its first paragraph, that is the political manifesto of the right of revolution – the right of independence. The Declaration was also its second paragraph, that is the political manifesto of the Enlightenment constitutional project of the natural rights of man – the project which unified American and European Enlightenment in the Atlantic space with an Enlightenment Natural Rights of Man Talk.

What happened to that project in the American constitutional process?

To rewrite the history of the origins of the United States tracking down in the institutional and public debate that Enlightenment language, that constitutional project and that cultural heritage means to tell a passionate and glorious struggle that was lost. It means to talk – together with about the true and republican revolution, that of the right of independence – about a missed revolution – that of the natural rights of man. From a historiographical point of view, it means, in the American revolution, to break the continuity between the Declaration and the Constitution.

Therefore, now those rights become fundamental in the current debate on the contemporary human rights – a debate in which their historical foundation is brought into question.
The 1980s British Conspiracy Thriller
Authors: Lynch Paul
Published: July 2024

In this book, Paul Lynch explores the genre of the British conspiracy thriller, a confrontational and dark response to what novelists and filmmakers perceived as an increasingly Orwellian secret state in the political landscape of the time. Through analyses of a variety of film and television productions, Lynch examines the ways in which they were influenced by their Hollywood and European counterparts and the work of John le Carré, conveying the real-world practices of the British intelligence services that served as inspiration and evaluating the genre’s effectiveness in providing meaningful political commentary to mainstream audiences.

Lynch draws on extensive interviews with novelists, film producers, screenwriters, and directors to form the basis of detailed and original case studies about films such as Defence of the Realm (1986), The Whistle Blower (1986), and The Fourth Protocol (1987). In addition to these case studies, Lynch also includes declassified intelligence material and interviews with former members of the intelligence community to reveal the extent to which popular television and cinema accurately reflected the inner workings of the security services at that time. Scholars of film studies, cultural history, political science, and adaptation studies will find this book of particular interest.
The Shepherd of Hermas As Scriptura Non Grata
Authors: Heaton Robert D.
Published: July 2024

Composed within the first Christian century by a Roman named Hermas, the Shepherd remains a mysterious and underestimated book to scholars and laypeople alike. Robert D. Heaton argues that early Christians mainly received the Shepherd positively and accepted it unproblematically alongside texts that would ultimately be canonized, requiring decisive actions to exclude it from the late-emerging collection of texts now known as the New Testament. Freshly evaluating the evidence for its popularity in patristic treatises, manuscript recoveries, and Christian material culture, Heaton propounds an interpretation of the Shepherd of Hermas as a book meant to guide his readers toward salvation. Ultimately, Heaton depicts the loss of the Shepherd from the closed catalogue of Christian scriptures as a deliberate constrictive move by the fourth-century Alexandrian bishop Athanasius, who found it useless for his political, theological, and ecclesiological objectives and instead characterized it as a book favored by his heretical enemies. While the book’s detractors succeeded in derailing its diffusion for centuries, the survival of the Shepherd today attests that many dissented from the church’s final judgment about Hermas’s text, which portends a version of early Christianity that was definitively overridden by devotion to Christ himself, rather than principally to his virtues.
Offender Rehabilitation Issues
Authors: Ubah Charles B.A.
Published: July 2024

Most of the studies that discuss offender rehabilitation focus on the debate over whether prison-based education programs work, ignoring the important issues that these programs undertake. Using a critical approach, Offender Rehabilitation Issues: Critical Lessons for Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Public Policy fills the gap by highlighting the offender rehabilitation programs that continue to divide scholars, policy makers, correctional practitioners, students, and the public. This book demonstrates and reaffirms that offender rehabilitation programs and recidivism rates are important and critical social issues that do not exist in a vacuum, are complex interacting social processes and issues with broader social, economic, legal, and political environmental forces and pressures.
Practical Symbolic Interactions in the Shrine of the South
Authors: Cataldi John F.
Published: July 2024

Practical Symbolic Interactions in the Shrine of the South: Conversations with a Damn Yankee finds that Lexington-Rockbridge, VA, community sentiments toward Southern symbols such as the Confederate Battle Flag and Robert E. Lee are not necessarily reducible to a racial divide. John F. Cataldi uses data to demonstrate that most black and white respondents navigate a social balance between the extremes of conservation and progress as a way to productively coexist and unify as a community rather than maintain an insular posture or cause division based solely on symbolic ideology. These findings challenge conventional sociological and media-provided paradigms and broaden the discussion of what tolerance and situational context mean for a large spectrum of community members who live in the milieu of Confederate symbols every day.
The Rhetoric of the Corrupt Bargain in the 1824 Election
Authors: Kiewe Amos
Published: July 2024

In this book, Amos Kiewe explores the story of the 1824 Presidential election, when the House of Representatives elected the president after no candidate won outright the majority of the Electoral College. Though most in the nation assumed that Andrew Jackson, who won the popular vote and the plurality of the Electoral College, would be elected the presidency by the House, Kiewe demonstrates how maneuvering, vote trading, and special favors dictated a different outcome. Through inspecting speeches, statements, private letters, and published accounts, Kiewe simultaneously intersects rhetoric, history, and politics as variables that help to tell the story of the 1824 presidential election. Scholars of communication, political science, and history will find this book of particular interest.
The Cultural Core of Media Systems
Authors: Gross Peter
Published: July 2024

This book offers an alternative perspective to the reigning socio-political and economic approaches to evaluating media systems and why and how they function. Peter Gross outlines a cultural model, a "kaleidoscopic cultural prism," for assessing the nature and functioning of these systems. By testing this model in one Eastern European country, Romania, Gross contributes to existing scholarship on media theory, media and transformation, East and Central European media, Romanian media, and East and Central European transformations in general. Awareness of the inherent negatives in the cultural bricolage accumulated over the centuries while Romanians lived under physical, administrative, and ideological dominance of various empires is increasingly sown among the new generations. This reality makes a culture-driven understanding of Romania’s media system even more urgent and meaningful for comprehending the evolving transformation. Scholars of communication, media studies, and Eastern European studies will find this book of particular interest.
Mixed Emotions and Indigenous Language Maintenance in Post-Disaster Reconstruction Communities
Authors: Chen Chun-Mei
Published: July 2024

Mixed Emotions and Indigenous Language Maintenance in Post-Disaster Reconstruction Communities examines the interplay between emotions and Indigenous language maintenance among Paiwan families after they relocated to post-disaster reconstruction communities in Taiwan. In the view of sociocultural theory, mixed emotions mediate social action by connecting language resources and family language maintenance experiences. Against the context of Indigenous families and reconstruction communities, the author utilizes orientation activities to investigate mixed emotions, language practices, and language socialization among Paiwan family members. This book also explores the multimodal space of emotions, language practices in Indigenous language, and the language repertoire from micro-level family practices to meso- and macro-level community mobilization. The results of this volume shed light on emotions in family language policy, family communication in the teaching of heritage knowledge in Indigenous societies, and most importantly, Indigenous language maintenance in the context of post-disaster reconstruction. This book contributes to the documentation of the Paiwan language in the reconstruction communities, language equality, and the maintenance of the Indigenous language in post-disaster reconstruction communities. It can be used to develop the conceptual underpinnings of Indigenous language policies, Indigenous education programs, and Indigenous language maintenance practices.
Reinterpreting the Constitution
Authors: Mannino Edward F.
Published: July 2024

In the Senate Confirmation Hearings on his nomination, Chief Justice John Roberts memorably stated that he believed that the proper role of judges is "to call balls and strikes," an analogy repeated by Justice Kavanaugh in his hearings. This book makes clear, however, that the justices have often changed the strike zone. They have overruled past precedent, significantly expanded or limited prior rulings, created new constitutional rights such as that protecting same-sex marriage, while striking down constitutional rights recognized for many years, including a woman's right to choose an abortion. The book carefully reviews some 200 cases, highlighting what the justices themselves have said in explaining their rulings. It also notes how the dissenting opinions are particularly valuable in explaining the dissenters' often accurate contentions that some decisions significantly changed prior precedent. The book begins with cases decided in the 19th and 20th centuries to give the background of the constitutional issues discussed, but the overall focus is on 21st-century decisions since they have accelerated changes in constitutional law.
The Decisions to Open a Relationship
Authors: Beggan James K.
Published: July 2024

The unique contribution of The Decisions to Open a Relationship: To Three or Not to Three is how James K. Beggan considers the social and psychological processes involved in how someone makes the decision to transition from a monogamous to a consensually nonmonogamous relationship. Informed by extensive research drawn from sociology, psychology, and the decision-making literature, Beggan provides a comprehensive analysis of processes associated with expressing the desire to open a previously closed romantic relationship, with special emphasis on the unique dynamics of the triad. His analysis provides valuable insights into managing jealousy, maintaining trust, and establishing healthy boundaries. He examines moral issues associated with breaking the promise of a monogamous relationship to satisfy goals related to personal growth. The book addresses issues related to intersectionality that involve sexual orientation, gender identity, and race.
Economics and the Public Good
Authors: Pascarella John  Antonio
Published: July 2024

What is the nature of economics? How does economics relate to politics? Readers searching for the Ancient Greeks’ answers to these questions often turn to Aristotle, focusing on small portions of the Politics and Nicomachean Ethics that relate to money-making, exchange, and household management. While this approach yields some understanding of economics and politics, it fails to account for how Aristotle’s theoretical inquiry into these practical matters reflects the character of his political philosophy. According to Aristotle, the Ethics and Politics together form “the philosophy concerning the human things.” All human things begin with choice, an intellectual desire and need for the good. Aristotle’s care for this desire is the heart of his political philosophy. Through a close, literal, and careful reading of Aristotle’s political philosophy, readers discover the natural boundaries to economic and political life. Simultaneously theoretical and practical, Aristotle’s political philosophy offers readers a perspective of economics and politics that provides them the experience of the knowledge they need to desire and live within the limit of the good.
Humans and Robots
Authors: Nyholm Sven
Published: July 2024

Can robots perform actions, make decisions, collaborate with humans, be our friends, perhaps fall in love, or potentially harm us? Even before these things truly happen, ethical and philosophical questions already arise. The reason is that we humans have a tendency to spontaneously attribute minds and “agency” to anything even remotely humanlike. Moreover, some people already say that robots should be our companions and have rights. Others say that robots should be slaves. This book tackles emerging ethical issues about human beings, robots, and agency head on. It explores the ethics of creating robots that are, or appear to be, decision-making agents. From military robots to self-driving cars to care robots or even sex robots equipped with artificial intelligence: how should we interpret the apparent agency of such robots? This book argues that we need to explore how human beings can best coordinate and collaborate with robots in responsible ways. It investigates ethically important differences between human agency and robot agency to work towards an ethics of responsible human-robot interaction.
Before China's Belt and Road
Authors: Kay Rachel , Ji Yingfeng
Published: July 2024

Since China’s announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, commentary on China’s activity across Eurasia and beyond has proliferated. English-language media tends to depict China as an aggressive power devoted to projecting its geopolitical influence, and portrays the BRI as a new and potentially threatening project.

Before China’s Belt and Road: Central Asian Connectivity Through Time challenges these prevailing assumptions about the BRI. It places the BRI in the context of the historical relationship between China and its neighbours, focusing on the Central Asian countries, whose close economic links with China long predate the BRI. The authors argue that the BRI does not constitute a new approach on the ground. Throughout Central Asia’s past, bi- and multilateral cooperation, regional institution building and person-to-person trade all have played enduringly central roles. Before China’s Belt and Road shows how these phenomena are also central to the BRI framework, suggesting that the BRI’s implementation is by no means an entirely top-down intervention by Beijing.
War and Algorithm
Authors: Liljefors Max , Noll Gregor , Steuer Daniel
Published: July 2024

New military technologies are animated by fantasies of perfect knowledge, lawfulness, and vision that contrast sharply with the very real limits of human understanding, law, and vision. Thus, various kinds of violent acts are proliferating while their precise nature remains unclear. Especially man–machine ensembles, guided by algorithms, are operating in ways that challenge conceptual understanding.

War and Algorithm looks at the increasing power of algorithms in these emerging forms of warfare from the perspectives of critical theory, philosophy, legal studies, and visual studies. The contributions in this volume grapple with the challenges posed by algorithmic warfare and trace the roots of new forms of war in the technological practices and forms of representation of the digital age. Together, these contributions provide a first step toward understanding—and resisting—our emerging world of war.
The Other of Climate Change
Authors: Baldwin Andrew
Published: July 2024

If the predictions are correct, climate change will force millions of people from their homes, threatening a future of humanitarian crises, political violence, and strife. In The Other of Climate Change, Andrew Baldwin intervenes in the international political debate about climate change and human migration to tell a different story. He argues that international attempts to govern those who stand to be displaced by climate change are as much or more to do with resuscitating European humanism at a moment in which geophysical phenomena like climate change and the Anthropocene threaten to extinguish the human altogether. Through detailed interpretations of the figure of the climate migrant/refugee, Baldwin traces the contours of an emerging form of planetary racial rule – racial futurism - unfolding in the context of the climate change crisis. He shows how racial futurism takes shape as a political response to the crisis of humanism that is said to lay at the heart of the climate change crisis. Along the way, he examines numerous themes that are at the forefront of contemporary thinking about climate change and politics, including the political, humanism, sovereignty, neoliberalism, the international, and race. Ultimately, the book is a plea for scholars, activists, and policymakers to take seriously the way race and racism are bound up with the political discourse on climate change and migration and to ask what this means for the wider political debate about climate change and the future.
Rethinking Masculinities
Authors: Riley Heidi
Published: July 2024

Masculinity associated with armed groups tends to be built on assumptions of violence and insecurity. Rethinking Masculinities: Ideology, Identity and Change in the People’s War in Nepal and Its Aftermath, however, examines other ways in which the experience of participation in an armed group may impact on notions of masculinity held by low-ranking male combatants, both during conflict and in its aftermath. Using the case of Nepal, this book explores how men of the People’s Liberation Army experienced and engaged with an ideology espoused by the leadership that was more gender-positive than what existed in broader Nepali society.

Focusing on masculinity change across four different time frames: (1) pre-conflict, (2) conflict time, (3) the cantonment period, and (4) post-conflict – Heidi Riley’s analysis pays close attention to changes in attitudes towards gender specific roles and conduct, as well as perceptions of gender hierarchies. Building on feminist and masculinities literature, Rethinking Masculinities also makes a vital contribution to broader peace and conflict scholarship on insurgency, rebel recruitment, and demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration (DDR). The book exposes how masculinity change is not straightforward but influenced by both past and present, which leads to contradiction and continuity in a post-conflict context.
A Social Theory of Congress
Authors: Alexander Brian
Published: July 2024

What is the role that norms play in the U.S. Congress? At a time of unprecedented partisanship and high-profile breaches of legislative norms in the modern Congress, the relationship between norms and the functioning of the institution is a growing and pressing concern. Despite the importance of the topic, recent scholarship has not focused on congressional norms. Meanwhile, previous research leaves open many relevant questions about the role of norms in the Congress of the twenty-first century.

A Social Theory of Congress brings norms back in to the study of Congress by defining what are legislative norms, identifying which norms currently exist in the U.S. Congress, and examining the effects that congressional norms have. This book provides a new research approach to study congressional norms through a comprehensive review of previous scholarship and a combination of interviews, survey research, and analysis of member behavior. What’s more, an innovative theoretical framework — a social theory of Congress — provides new perspectives in the study of legislatures and political behavior.

The findings are striking. Norms of cooperation are surprisingly alive and well in an otherwise partisan Congress. But norms of conflict are on the rise. In addition, norms of a changing culture are affecting how members understand their role as lawmakers and in their interactions among one another. Together, these findings suggest that norms play an important role in the functioning of the legislature and as norms evolve so too does the performance of Congress in American democracy.
The Oromo Movement and Imperial Politics
Authors: Jalata Asafa
Published: July 2024

Focusing on the issue of the Oromo national struggle for liberation, statehood, and democracy, this book critically examines the dialectical relationship between Ethiopian colonialism and Oromo culture, epistemology, politics, and ideology in the context of the accumulated collective grievances of the Oromo nation. Specifically, the book identifies chains of sociological and historical factors that facilitated the development of Oromummaa (Oromo nationalism) and the Oromo national movement. It demonstrates how the Oromo national movement has been challenging and transforming Ethiopian imperial politics, tracks the different forms and phases of the movement, and maps out its future direction.

Currently, the Oromo are the largest ethno-national group and political minority in the Ethiopian Empire. They were colonized and incorporated into Ethiopia as colonial subjects in the last decades of the 19th century through the alliance of Abyssinian/Ethiopian colonialism and European imperialism. Since their colonization, the Oromo people have been treated as second-class citizens and have been economically exploited and culturally and politically suppressed. Despite the fact that Oromo resistance to Ethiopian colonialism existed during the process of their colonization and subjugation, it was only in the 1960s and 1970s that Oromo nationalists initiated organized efforts to liberate their people. Presently, Oromo nationalism plays a central role in Ethiopian politics.
The Socratic Individual
Authors: Ward Ann
Published: July 2024

The author explores the recovery of Socratic philosophy in the political thought of G.W.F. Hegel, Soren Kierkegaard, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Ward identifies the cause of the renewed interest in Socrates in Hegel’s call for the absorption of the individual within the modern, liberal state and the concomitant claim that Socratic skepticism should cease because history has reached its end and perfection. Recoiling from Hegel’s attempt to chain the individual within the “cave,” nineteenth century thinkers push back against his deification of the state. Yet, underlying Kierkegaard, Mill and Nietzsche’s turn to Socrates is their acceptance of Hegel’s critique of the liberal conception of the rights-bearing individual. Like Hegel, they agree that such an individual is an unworthy competitor to the state. In search of a noble individual to hold up against the state and counter the belief in the “end” of history, Kierkegaard, Mill and Nietzsche bring back and transform Socrates in significant ways. For Kierkegaard the Socratic philosopher in modern times is the person of faith, for Mill the public intellectual whose idiosyncratic identity arises from the freedom of speech, and for Nietzsche the Dionysian artist. Each model the beauty of individuality in our democratic age.
Incarcerated Resistance
Authors: Stanger Anya
Published: July 2024

Who would go to prison on purpose?

Incarcerated Resistance tells the stories of 43 activists from the School of the America’s Watch and Plowshares movements who have chosen to commit illegal nonviolent actions against the state and endure the court trials and lengthy prison sentences that follow. Employing this high-risk tactic is one of the most extreme methods in the nonviolent toolkit and typically entails intentionally breaking the law, most often through crimes of trespass onto federal property or the destruction of federal property. Though they have knowingly broken the law and generally expect to be incarcerated, their goal is to raise awareness and to resist, not necessarily to go to jail. The majority of “justice action prisoners” seek not-guilty verdicts, and use the space of the courtroom and subsequent media attention as opportunities to share information about their issues of concern.

Rooted in individual stories and told through a feminist framework that is attentive to relations of power, Incarcerated Resistance is as much about nuclear weapons and solidarity activism as it is about the U.S. prison system and patriarchal culture. Almost all war-resisting “justice action prisoners” are white, well-educated, Christian, and over the age of 60. Privilege, gender, and religious identity especially shape what happens to this committed group of nonviolent activists, as their identities may also be strategically deployed to bolster their acts of resistance, in important but fraught attempts to “use” privilege “for good.”

From the decision to act through their release from prison, nonviolent resistance illuminates the interconnected struggles required to upend systemic violence, and the ways that we are all profoundly affected by America’s deep-seated structures of inequality.
Sacred Disobedience
Authors: Coggan Sharon L.
Published: July 2024

Sacred Disobedience: A Jungian Analysis of the Saga of Pan and the Devil traces the ancient Greek God Pan, who became distorted into the image of the Devil in early Christianity. When Pan was demonized, the powerful qualities he represented became repressed, as Pan’s visage twisted into the model of the Devil. This book follows a Jungian analysis of this development. In ancient Greek religion, Pan was worshipped as an honored deity, corresponding to an inner psycho-spiritual condition in which the primitive qualities he represented were fully integrated into consciousness, and these qualities were valued and affirmed as holy. But in the era of early Christianity Pan “dies,” and the Devil is born, a twisted inflation, possibly due to an underlying repression. In the Jungian system, repressed psychic contents do not disappear, as proponents of the new order tacitly assume, but distort and grow more powerful, or “inflate,” to cripple the psyche that refuses to incorporate these split-off elements. Repressed contents will expand to explosive force as the repressed elements eventually return regressively from below. It becomes important then, to understand what qualities the primitive Goat God carried, to appreciate what was repressed in the Western psycho-spiritual system, and what subsequently needs reintegration.
Before Belief
Authors: Stevens Bruce A.
Published: July 2024

First things are spiritually and theologically important. Before Belief explores the precognitive human experience of transcendence, illuminating how such foundational experiences are formative of attachment relationships with people and ultimately with God. The book proposes an implicit learning model rather than rely on Freud’s or Jung’s understanding of the unconscious, with a goal of recovering unconscious spiritual learning. Once discovered and put into language, early learning needs to be tested and integrated into life experience and expressed in committed living. The theories examined and advanced in the work are also carried through in practical case studies that demonstrate the pastoral and clinical salience of understanding and connecting people to those grounding experiences.
Decolonizing the Classroom
Authors: Krim Jessica S. , Hernandez Jennifer M.
Published: July 2024

Sixty-seven years after Brown V. Board of Education, public education is more segregated and entrenched in white supremacy than in the Jim Crow Era of this nation. The authors argue that an equitable education begins when we remove white supremacy from our teacher preparation programs. This book analyzes the multiple ways in which educator preparation programs continue to center whiteness and white supremacy. Innovative and affective practices are offered by the authors to enhance our educator preparation programs to center the lived experiences of students with marginalized identities in order to create a high-quality, equitable, educational experience.
Ethnic Positioning in Southwestern Mixed Heritage Writing
Authors: Kádár Judit Ágnes
Published: July 2024

Ethnic Positioning in Southwestern Mixed Heritage Writing explores how Southwestern writers and visual artists provide an opportunity to turn a stigmatized identity into a self-conscious holder of valuable assets, cultural attitudes, and memories. The problem of mixed ethno-cultural heritage is a relevant feature of North American populations, faced by millions. Narratives on blended heritage show how mixed-race authors utilize their multiple ethnic experiences, knowledge archives, and sensibilities. They explore how individuals attempt to cope with the cognitive anxiety, stigmas, and perceptions that are intertwined in their blended ethnic heritage, family and social dynamics, and the renegotiation of their ethnic identity. The Southwest is a region riddled by Eurocentric and Colonial concepts of identity, yet at the same time highly treasured in the Frontier experiences of physical mobility and mental and spiritual journeys and transformations. Judit Ágnes Kádár argues that the process of ethnic positioning is a choice made by mixed heritage people that results in renegotiated identities, leading to more complex and engaging concepts of themselves.
Mississippi after Katrina
Authors: Trivedi Jennifer
Published: July 2024

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the American Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. Biloxi, Mississippi, a small town on the coast, was one of the towns devastated directly by the storm. Drawing on ethnographic, media, and historic document research and analysis, Jennifer Trivedi explores the pre-disaster cultural, historical, social, political, and economic distinctions that shaped the recovery ofBiloxi and Biloxians. Trivedi examines how networks of people, groups, and institutions worked to prepare for and recover from the hurricane, reinforcing the distinctions that existed before the storm.
Linguistic Landscaping and the Pacific Region
Authors: Johnson Diane Elizabeth
Published: July 2024

In Linguistic Landscaping and the Pacific Region: Colonization, Indigenous Identities, and Critical Discourse Theory, Diane Elizabeth Johnson provides four case studies, each exploring the use of language in public spaces in an area of the Pacific in which colonization has played a major role: The Kingdom of Hawai‘i/Hawai‘i, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Kanaky/New Caledonia, and Tahiti. Each of these studies is informed by critical discourse theory, highlighting the ways in which hegemonic structures may be established, reinforced, and— particularly in times of crisis—contested and overturned. The book introduces the case studies in the context of a parallel introduction to the Pacific region, critical discourse theory, and research on linguistic landscapes. The critical discussion is accessible to students and others who are approaching these contexts and theories for the first time, while also locating the author’s work in relation to existing scholarship. Johnson urges readers to listen carefully to the voices of indigenous peoples at a time when the danger of Western certainties has been fully exposed.
The Partisan Court
Authors: Rebe Ryan J.
Published: July 2024

The Era of Political Partisanship on the U.S. Supreme Court challenges conventional notions of consensus-building and neutral decision-making on the U.S. Supreme Court and argues that the justices vote their partisan preferences on election law cases. By focusing specifically on election law, Rebe reveals a consistent pattern of partisanship on the Court. The findings controvert popular perceptions of non-biased decision-making and fundamental fairness. The aggregate analysis shows that the justices vote along party-lines in a majority of election law cases, and consensus-building is rare when there is a contentious electoral issue at stake. Moreover, these decisions often conflict with principles of stare decisis, originalism, or judicial restraint. The topics covered include: gerrymandering, campaign finance, voter ID laws, and mail-in voting, among others. Rebe also conducts a content analysis of the most controversial election law cases of the past twenty years, such as: Vieth v. Jubelirer, Crawford v. Marion County, Citizens United v. FEC, and Shelby County v. Holder. This book provides a thorough overview of two decades of election law cases and sheds light on the impact these decisions have had on remaking America’s electoral institutions.
Police-Related Deaths in the United States
Authors: Baker David
Published: July 2024

Police Related Deaths in the United States examines how police related deaths in the US occur; how investigations are conducted into these deaths; and why such deaths and the investigatory processes into them provoke such concern in the wider American society. The book considers such deaths as being the result of structural and systemic factors in policing, the criminal justice system, and broader socio-political and socio-legal landscapes in the U.S.. It argues that an increasingly aggressive police mindset allied with relatively toothless regulatory frameworks effectively lead to police being enabled by the criminal justice system to use lethal force with relative impunity. The book considers the disproportionate number of deaths in marginalized communities, for example: people of color, people who are mentally unwell, and LGBTQ people. Each chapter in the book begins with a case study of a specific police related death and places issues within that case in the wider context of policing in the US. David Baker argues that the effects of these deaths go beyond merely policing and criminal justice, and corrodes the core fabric of American society.
Civics Education in Contentious Times
Authors: Toledo William
Published: July 2024

Civics Education in Contentious Times: Working with Teachers to Create Locally-Specific Curricula in a Post-Truth World is a longitudinal research study that focuses on the collaboration between a researcher and elementary teachers to design and implement locally-specific civics curriculum in a predominately Latinx-serving Title I school. William Toledo details how the design team wrote and taught this curricular unit in the midst of contentious socio-political contexts and how themes from these greater contexts entered classrooms, along with proposing conceptual frameworks for teaching civic perspective-taking in these instances.
Francisco de Vitoria and the Evolution of International Law
Authors: Amell Amaya
Published: July 2024

Francisco de Vitoria and the Evolution of International Law: Justifying Injustice is a reconstruction of the philosophical and legal theories of Fray Francisco de Vitoria, hailed by many as one of the primary founders of international law, and how these served to introduce the theory of an international community in which all nations take part, regardless of religious beliefs. The impact of the conquest of the Americas resulted in a transformation or re-articulation of the Old World’s preconceived notions of human nature and the rights of people and nations. Due to the need for a more universal principle, the theory of international law began to expand. In order to present a perspective on international law and human rights beyond the scope of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, Vitoria’s thoughts are compared to those of Hugo Grotius and John Locke, to show how the issues of natural, human, and divine law evolved through time. Their questioning of the right to invade other countries and subdue their inhabitants brought to light the conflictive relationship between colonial expansion and the law of nations and was an essential part of debates among intellectuals, jurists, and theologians in an attempt to find a way to reconcile these two often-contradictory notions.
Rock and Roll, Desegregation Movements, and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era
Authors: Fowler Beth
Published: July 2024

The rock and roll music that dominated airwaves across the country during the 1950s and early 1960s is often described as a triumph for integration. Black and white musicians alike, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lee Lewis, scored hit records with young audiences from different racial groups, blending sonic traditions from R&B, country, and pop. This so-called "desegregation of the charts" seemed particularly resonant since major civil rights groups were waging major battles for desegregation in public places at the same time. And yet the centering of integration, as well as the supposition that democratic rights largely based in consumerism should be available to everyone regardless of race, has resulted in very distinct responses to both music and movement among Black and white listeners who grew up during this period. Rock and Roll, Desegregation Movements, and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era: An "Integrated Effort" traces these distinctions using archival research, musical performances, and original oral histories to determine the uncertain legacies of the civil rights movement and early rock and roll music in a supposedly post-civil rights era.
Religious Pluralism
Authors: LoPresti Matthew S.
Published: July 2024

Ultimate reality is often characterized in terms of what are thought to be a variety of incompatible concepts, like God, Dao, Brahman, śūnyatā, etc. Matthew S. LoPresti suggests that if we shift to a process metaphysics, our horizon of pluralistic understanding shifts as well, allowing multiple religious ultimates, effective religious practices, and their respective salvific projects to simultaneously exist without contradiction. Religious Pluralism: Towards a Comparative Metaphysics of Religion examines the plausibility of a genuine religious pluralism, arguing in favor of the authenticity of a plurality of the world’s major religious traditions.

Responses to the philosophical challenges of religious diversity have often been misidentified as forms of relativism or pluralisms, so this book provides a more robust taxonomy to encourage the field to be more uniform and precise. LoPresti argues that John B. Cobb, Jr.’s Whiteheadian-based approach, known as “Deep Religious Pluralism,” functions as a non-relativistic basis for a meta-theology of world religions. Through discussions of classical and contemporary South Asian philosophy, Western analytic philosophy, and process philosophy, in addition to the writings of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), LoPresti argues that a proper engagement with religious pluralism requires intimate knowledge of Western and non-Western traditions.
Frontier Orientalism and the Turkish Image in Central European Literature
Authors: Sabatos Charles D.
Published: July 2024

This comparative study analyzes the ways that Central European writers used stereotypes of the Turks to develop their national identities from the early modern period to the present. Charles D. Sabatos uses Andre Gingrich’s concept of “frontier Orientalism” to foreground his analysis of Central European Orientalism, designating the nations of the former Habsburg Empire as the occident and the Turks as the oriental “Other.” This study applies theoretical approaches to literary history—as developed by scholars such as Stephen Greenblatt and Linda Hutcheon—to a range of texts from the early modern period, the nineteenth-century national revivals, interwar independence, and the communist and postsocialist regimes. By following these depictions across literatures and over an extensive historical period, this study illustrates how the Turkish stereotype evolved from a menace to a more abstract yet still powerful metaphor of resistance, and finally to a mythical figure that evoked humor as often as fear.
Amazonian Quichua Language and Life
Authors: Nuckolls Janis B. , Swanson Tod D.
Published: July 2024

In Amazonian Quichua Language and Life: Introduction to Grammar, Ecology, and Discourse from Pastaza and Upper Napo, Janis B. Nuckolls and Tod D. Swanson discuss two varieties of Quichua, an indigenous Ecuadorian language. Drawing on their linguistic and anthropological knowledge, extensive fieldwork, and personal relationships with generations of speakers from Pastaza and Napo communities, the authors open a door into worlds of intimate meaning that knowledge of Quichua makes accessible. Nuckolls and Swanson link grammatical lessons with examples of naturally occurring discourse, traditional narratives, conversations, songs, and personal experiences to teach readers about the languages’ structures and discourse patterns and speakers’ sensory depictions, ecological aesthetics, and emotional perspectives.
Machiavelli's Platonic Problems
Authors: Bogiaris Guillaume
Published: July 2024

Machiavelli is traditionally understood has a thinker who rejected Platonism in bulk. This book argues that even if it is correct to describe him as unsympathetic to Platonic thought, his philosophy addresses it in a deep and nuanced manner. In order to see this, one must first disentangle Machiavelli’s conversation with Plato from his criticism of Christian Florentine Neoplatonism. Once this is done, Machiavelli’s work reveals itself to engage key Platonic themes, such as love, the place of philosophical education in politics, and the relationship between policymaking and mythmaking. This engagement helps us further characterize and clarify essential concepts and axioms of Machiavellian thought, such as fortúna, virtue, the importance of self-reliance, and the proper sources of political knowledge.
Liberia under Samuel Doe, 1980-1985
Authors: Gershoni Yekutiel
Published: July 2024

On April 12, 1980, a group of soldiers led by Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe executed a bloody coup that put an end to the Americo-Liberian minority regime in Liberia, transforming Africa’s first republic into a military dictatorship. In Liberia under Samuel Doe, 1980-1985: The Politics of Personal Rule, Yekutiel Gershoni examines the evolution and effects of Samuel K. Doe’s reign in Liberia. Gershoni shows Doe’s path to absolute power, corruption, and dictatorship and the economic crises and political turmoil that ensued, even after his murder in 1990. Liberia under Samuel Doe also examines the role of the United States as Liberia’s closest ally, detailing how Doe managed to attract American diplomatic and military support due to U.S. interests in the Cold War. Through in-depth research, primary sources, and interviews with diplomats, politicians, and activists, Gershoni carefully details the timeline of Doe’s rise to power and the lasting effects of his dictatorial legacy.
Imagination and Adolescent Trauma
Authors: Walsh Mary Caswell
Published: July 2024

Exploring the role of imagination in trauma recovery, the author shares the arresting dreams and stories of traumatized adolescents. Describing the impact of trauma on adolescent health and development, the author provides promising research into the use of breathing skills, HRV Biofeedback, and dream work to promote healthy breathing, emotion regulation, and restorative dreaming. Research suggests that these interventions can decrease post-traumatic distress and assist in the creation of meaningful posttraumatic narratives. The author explores the role of embodied imagination in adolescent spiritual development and posttraumatic growth. These interventions provide clinicians and pastoral caregivers with simple and effective ways of helping adolescents heal from trauma in holistic and dynamic ways that respect the integrated constitution of the human person.