Bøger udgivet af University of Alabama Press

Uses case studies from America, broadly conceived, to ask trenchant theoretical questions that are of interest to scholars and students within and beyond the subfield of American religious history

"Since John Hersey's Hiroshima-the classic account, published in 1946, of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of that city-very few books have examined the meaning and impact of World War II through the eyes of Japanese men and women who survived that conflict. Tattered Kimonos in Japan does just that: It is an intimate journey into contemporary Japan from the perspective of the generation of Japanese soldiers and civilians who survived World War II, by a writer whose American father and Japanese father-in-law fought on opposite sides of the conflict. The author, a former NPR senior editor, is Jewish, and he approaches the subject with the sensibilities of having grown up in a community of Holocaust survivors. Mindful of the power of victimhood, memory, and shared suffering, he travels across Japan, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, meeting a compelling group of men and women whose lives, even now, are defined by the trauma of war, and by lingering questions of responsibility and repentance for Japan's wartime aggression. The image of a tattered kimono from Hiroshima is the thread that drives the narrative arc of this emotional story about a writer's encounter with history, inside the Japan of his father's generation, on the other side of his father's war. This is a book about history with elements of family memoir. It offers a fresh and truly unique perspective for readers interested in World War II, Japan, or Judaica; readers seeking cross-cultural journeys; and readers intrigued by Japanese culture, particularly the kimono"--

"The American poet Larry Eigner (1927-1996) is the subject of a true renaissance in recent literary scholarship. Until recently, Eigner was relegated to a peripheral place next to the work of his friends and fellow poets Robert Creeley and Charles Olson. Eigner was nonetheless a key figure in the "New American Poetry" that grew from the Black Mountain School and the San Francisco Renaissance, and a major influence on the l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e poets who followed in their footsteps. Eigner suffered from cerebral palsy his entire life, limiting his mobility and his ability to communicate both verbally and in writing, and yet he went on to make a place for himself as one of the most prolific and innovative American poets of the late twentieth century. In 2010, the University of California Press published The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner in a four-volume set that runs to 1,868 pages, meant principally for libraries and collectors. In 2016, the University of Alabama Press published Calligraphy Typewriters: The Selected Poems of Larry Eigner, a more affordable paperback of the poet's most significant work, meant for a popular readership and the classroom. Other volumes have followed, among them Momentous Inconclusions: The Life and Work of Larry Eigner (University of New Mexico Press, 2021), a gathering of critical appreciations of Eigner's work and legacy, and George Hart's Finding the Weight of Things: Larry Eigner's Ecrippoetics (forthcoming, University of Alabama Press, 2022). While each of these volumes makes available either Eigner's poetry or critical studies of his work, none of them have ever presented a comprehensive biography of the poet, other than the biographical context necessary for the framing of each volume. Jennifer Bartlett's The Sustaining Air will be the first single-volume biographical account of Eigner's life. Bartlett-a poet, teacher, and life-long disability advocate who herself lives with cerebral palsy-covers every significant phase of Eigner's life: his childhood and young adulthood in Swampscott, Massachusetts, where he began typing poems with one finger on the manual typewriter that was a bar mitzvah gift; his first publications and the maturation of his poetic interests through correspondence with many noteworthy poets of the era; how he and his family contended with his disability both before and after his move to Berkeley, California, and the ever-expanding circle of friends, poets, caretakers, and collaborators that he established there. The result is a deft, incisive, and inspiring account of a singular figure and voice in postwar American poetry"--

"The 43 innovative fictions in Infinite Constellations showcase the voices and visions of 30 remarkable writers, both new and established, from the global majority: Native American/First Nation writers, South Asian writers, East Asian writers, Black American writers, Latinx writers, and Caribbean and Middle Eastern writers. These are visions both familiar and strange, but always rooted in the mystery of human relationships, the deep honoring of memory, and the rootedness to place and the centering of culture"--

"A comprehensive history of the Provincetown Players and their influence on modern American theatre The Provincetown Players created a revolution in American theatre, making room for truly modern approaches to playwriting, stage production, and performance unlike anything that characterized the commercial theatre of the early twentieth century. In Staging America: The Artistic Legacy of the Provincetown Players, Jeffery Kennedy gives readers the unabridged story in a meticulously researched and comprehensive narrative that sheds new light on the history of the Provincetown Players. This study draws on many new sources that have only become available in the last three decades; this new material modifies, refutes, and enhances many aspects of previous studies. At the center of the study is an extensive account of the career of George Cram Cook, the Players' leader and artistic conscience, as well as one of the most significant facilitators of modernist writing in early twentieth-century American literature and theatre. It traces Cook's mission of "cultural patriotism," which drove him toward creating a uniquely American identity in theatre. Kennedy also focuses on the group of friends he calls the "Regulars," perhaps the most radical collection of minds in America at the time; they encouraged Cook to launch the Players in Provincetown in the summer of 1915 and instigated the move to New York City in fall 1916. Kennedy has paid particular attention to the many legends connected to the group (such as the "discovery" of Eugene O'Neill), and also adds to the biographical record of the Players' forty-seven playwrights, including Susan Glaspell, Neith Boyce, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Floyd Dell, Rita Wellman, Mike Gold, Djuna Barnes, and John Reed. Kennedy also examines other fascinating artistic, literary, and historical personalities who crossed the Players' paths, including Emma Goldman, Charles Demuth, Berenice Abbott, Sophie Treadwell, Theodore Dreiser, Claudette Colbert, and Charlie Chaplin. Kennedy highlights the revolutionary nature of those living in bohemian Greenwich Village who were at the heart of the Players and the America they were responding to in their plays. "--

"A zanier bunch of characters has seldom been collected between the covers of a novel. And yet, eccentric though they may be, it is impossible not to love them." --New York Times