Bøger udgivet af Vanderbilt University Press

This is look at the portrayal of child deaths, actual and literary, throughout the 19th century, exploring the relationship between grief and words, experience and consolation.

The obscure first-generation female cadres of the Greek communist movement were cultivated in the 1920s in the context of Bolshevization, while others were mobilized by antifascism and resistance to the Axis occupation. A number of these women traveled to Moscow to undertake training in the communist universities for foreigners established by the Comintern. Refugee to Revolutionary examines the national and transnational world the female cadres of the Greek communist movement traversed, situated between their own aspirations, the objectives of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), and the global ambitions of the Comintern. Drawing largely on data contained in the individual files (anketas) of the KKE cadres located in the Comintern archive at the Russian State Archive for Socio-Political History (RGASPI), as well as Greek Communist Party archival materials, this history is told largely in the voice, albeit the "official" voice, of the subjects themselves. These voices reveal much about the personal, cultural, social, and gendered dimensions of their experience. They convey a story of opportunity and sacrifice and the sense of being part of something historic and extraordinary. The overarching purpose of this book is two-pronged: The first is to address a historiographical void attributable to a combination of factors, which includes the inaccessibility of Soviet archival materials and a persistent hegemonic masculinity that continues to define the historiography of Greek communism. Second, this work is situated within a new literature represented by scholars such as Brigitte Studer, Lisa Kirschenbaum, Francisca De Haan, and others, which destabilizes Cold War paradigms that have long dominated evaluations of agency, identity, and subjectivity in the western historiography of communism.

Specters, Monsters, and the Damned examines a rich selection of Spanish fantastic literature to illustrate how the language of the supernatural expresses the fears of complex societies beset by dizzying change and perceived decline. Throughout the nineteenth century, amid governmental upheavals and imperial losses, Spain's dominant political, legal, and scientific voices constructed the prototypical citizen as male, middle-class, and "ethnically pure." The role of realist novels by canonical authors like Benito Pérez Galdós, Emilia Pardo Bazán, and Leopoldo Alas in forging this Spanish identity has been meticulously examined over the last half century, to the exclusion of many other genres. This book complements existing scholarship by demonstrating how a neglected corpus of late nineteenth- and turn-of-the-century fantastic short fictions, many by the same canonical authors, engages with processes of national identity formation in unexpected and ambiguous ways. Tang offers innovative readings of eleven fantastic short stories and one novella as they first appeared, some serialized and others illustrated, in Spanish periodicals from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Drawing on original archival research, she demonstrates how these stories--in which the everyday is suddenly and inexplicably disrupted by the supernatural--often employ gothic imagery (specifically that of the specter, the monster, and the curse) to depict as threatening those who deviate from cultural norms in terms of class, gender, and race. Tang argues, however, that these unsettling, open-ended narratives likewise allow readers to question how and why certain designated groups are privileged by society. She contends that the fantastic depiction of reality as unstable in these works ultimately facilitates an interrogation of those values that are accepted as natural by the reigning social order, gesturing toward the inhumanity not of the marginalized, but of the dominant group.

The term "gastrocracy" refers to the appropriation of discourses and practices related to the sourcing, preparation, distribution, and consumption of food for political purposes. The intersections of gastronomy and governance, dating in Spain to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, have become highly visible over the past decade, when political debates around nationalism in its different forms have taken the guise of discussions about regional and local cuisines. Concomitant with the rise of the "slow food" movement and following UNESCO's addition in 2011 of "Gastronomic Meal of the French" to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, public and private associations all around Spain have been established with the goal of achieving recognition by UNESCO for Spanish, Catalan, and other national cuisines. In 2016, Gastro Marca España--an association and a web portal--was launched to raise the profile of food in Spain's national brand. Eliciting wide public participation, coopted for political purposes, regarded as a factor of economic development on any scale, and integrated into every so-called banal nationalism, the production, distribution, and consumption of food are highly relevant for historical analysis. Seeking to encourage a broader discussion about Peninsular gastrocracies, this book brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from different sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific who have spearheaded research on gastronomy and governance in Spain.

Thinkers like W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Gilroy have long championed sound as an affective register of Black subjectivity, particularly in the African Atlantic. Prior studies in this vein focus on the phonic contours of slavery and its afterlives in Anglophone or Caribbean contexts. The tendency furthers Mexico's marginalization within narratives of the Black and African diaspora and mutes Afrosonic traditions that date back to the sixteenth century. Indeed, the New Spanish archive contains whispers of the region's Black sound cultures, including monetary records for the voices of enslaved singers and representations of Afro-descendant music in the castas paintings. Despite such evidence, it is difficult to attend fully to these subaltern voices, for the cultural filters of the lettered elite often mute or misinterpret non-European sounds. Amplifications of Black Sound from Colonial Mexico: Vocality and Beyond is the first extensive study of Afro-descendant sonorities in New Spain or elsewhere in colonial Latin America. In the New Spanish context, Amplifications of Black Sound from Colonial Mexico attends to Afro-descendant sonorities through a filter of percussion. This framework remixes Jacques Derrida's reading of the ear's anatomy as antithetical to the philosophical voice with Afrosonic theories like Gilroy's lower frequencies or Fred Moten's phonic materiality. Its aim is to unsettle the divide between self and other so the auditory archive might emerge as a polyphonic record that exceeds dichotomies of sounding object/listening subject. Armed with percussive headphones and a historical DJ mindset, Amplifications of Black Sound from Colonial Mexico samples Afro-descendant sounds in the archive in order to amplify Black subjectivities from New Spain. It seeks to recover and rearticulate Afro-descendant voices and auditory practices in New Spain. As scholars like Gary Tomlinson, Ana María Ochoa Gautier and Kathryn de Luna have shown, Western writing is a limited mode for capturing non-European sounds in the early Americas.

Empathy and Performance advances a study of spectators and audiences by examining works from Latin American and Latinx underrepresented author-actors. Sández studies the dramatized dilemma of cultural understanding in "Our America," a term that refers to a collective political identity shared by Spanish-speaking Americans and their current struggles in the contemporary United States. Sández argues that to conceptualize empathy one needs to understand how subjects organize, classify, and limit themselves, not only as agents, but also as interpreters. What sort of affiliations do these performances promote? How do they break, reinforce, or queer societal expectations about the Latinx body, the white body, or simply, the staged body? To survey different answers to these queries, Sández analyzes performances such as "Indigurrito" (Nao Bustamante), "Dominicanish" (Josefina Baez), ¡Bienvenidos Blancos! or Welcome White People! (Alex Torra), and the apology delivered by the group Veterans Stand with Standing Rock on the Dakota Pipeline protest. In these artistic enactments, which range from 1992 to 2014, the, historical construct of boundaries and bodies becomes evident. Following recent work on empathy (Lanzoni, Maibom, Bloom, Hogan, among others), Sández examines the establishment of identity categories through performance and their ability to spur elaborative empathy from audiences.

Now back in print! A collection of old Southern humor.

Derived from first-hand accounts and oral histories collected and stored at Vanderbilt University as well as newspapers and other local history sources, this collection is an invaluable look at the ';Gay Nineties' in Nashvillians' own words. It is, however, not a complete insight into Nashville in the 1890s. Readers should take note that the book focuses almost exclusively on the experiences and worldviews of white Nashvillians. These stories have incredible value for local historians and anyone interested in Nashville history, but the book's failure to deal with raceas evidenced by Waller's belief that ';the social order was thought to be providential,' which was clearly not true for Nashville's Black residents who struggled against the unjust systems designed to oppress themis a grave shortcoming.

Now back in print! The stories of Nashville at the turn of the century in the voices of the people who lived them.

The Way We Work reveals that a seismic change has occurred in the workplace since the appearance in 1974 of Studs Terkel's Working. Terkel's subjects, despite their alienation, had a sense of themselves as workers and felt that in the workplace they were part of a community.The people Terkel interviewed were highly class conscious in a way that today seems radical and even anachronistic. By contrast, while some of the narrators in The Way We Work feel passionate about their work, others are barely conscious that they are workers. In transit from one job to another, some workers find it hard to take either their co-workers or their job situation too much to heart. One pronoun rarely used by the narrators of the works in this anthology is we.Each of the 43 pieces in The Way We Work represents a voice that is idiosyncratic, ironic, or humorous. Alongside such acclaimed writers as Tom Wolfe, Rick Bass, Barbara Garson, Ha Jin, Charles Bowden, Erica Funkhouser, Allan Gurganus, Catherine Anderson, Philip Levine, Edward Conlon, and Mona Simpson, appear the narratives of little-known writers. No other collection of writings about contemporary work in this country showcases the personal accounts of employees from a creative, literary perspective. These writings address such current issues as the effects of globalization, sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and the weakening of unions, as well as a general sense of worker disengagement in the workplace. Speaking in multiple genres, the men and women whose voices are collected here run the whole gamut of the workplace. From an executive at an office products company to a migrant fruit picker to a stripper to a doctor to a cleaner of garbage trucks, The Way We Work captures, with passion and honesty, the experiences of a myriad of workers.

Refereed and edited papers on the most current developments in the theory and applications of curves and surfaces.

A stimulating and innovative consideration of the concept, causes, and practice of peace in societies both ancient and modern, human and primate.We know a great deal about aggression, conflict, and war, but relatively little about peace, partially because it has been such a scarce phenomenon throughout history and in our own times. Peace is more than the absence of war. Peace requires special relationships, structures, and attitudes to promote and protect it. A Natural History of Peace provides the first broadly interdisciplinary examination of peace as viewed from the perspectives of social anthropology, primatology, archeology, psychology, political science, and economics. Among other notable features, this volume offers: a major theory concerning the evolution of peace and violence through human history; an in-depth comparative study of peaceful cultures with the goal of discovering what it is that makes them peaceful; one of the earliest reports of a new theory of the organization and collapse of ancient Maya civilization; a comparative examination of peace from the perspective of change, including the transition of one of the world's most violent societies to a relatively peaceful culture, and the decision-making process of terrorists who abandon violence; and a theory of political change that sees the conclusion of wars as uniquely creative periods in the evolution of peace among modern nations.

Carefully refereed and edited papers on the most current developments in the theory and applications of curves and surfaces. This volume, with its companion volume, contains a selection of papers presented at the Third International Conference on Curves and Surfaces which was held in June 1996 at Chamonix, France. Each book contains several invited survey lectures prepared by leading experts in the fields of approximation theory, computer- aided geometric design, numerical analysis, and wavelets. In addition, each book includes a number of closely related full-length research papers which have been refereed and meticulously edited. These books should be of great interest to mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists working in the field of Approximation Theory, Computer-Aided Geometric Design (CAGD), Computer Graphics, Numerical Analysis, CAD/CAM, and application areas.

The Realms of Oblivion explores the complexities involved in reconciling competing versions of history, channeled through Davies Manor, a historic site near Memphis that once centered a wealthy slave-owning family's sprawling cotton plantation. Interrogating the forces of memorialization that often go unquestioned in the stories we believe about ourselves and our communities, this book simultaneously tells an informative and engrossing bottom-up history--of the Davies family, of the Black families they enslaved and exploited across generations, and of Memphis and Shelby County--while challenging readers to consider just what upholds the survival of that history into the present day. Written in an engaging and critical style, The Realms of Oblivion is grounded in a rich source base, ranging from nineteenth-century legal records to the personal papers of the Davies family to twentieth-century African American oral histories. Author Andrew C. Ross uses these sources to unearth the stark contrast between the version of Davies Manor's history that was built out of nostalgia, and the version that records have proven to actually be true. As a result, Ross illuminates the ongoing need for a deep and honest reckoning with the history of the South and of the United States, on the part of both individuals and community institutions such as local historic sites and small museums.

An Alternate Selection of These Book ClubsBook-of-the-Month ClubQuality Paperback BooksOne SpiritNurse's Book SocietyThe Good CookLife-saving advice for doctors and patients--both those at risk of a first stroke and those who have already had a mini-stroke, the #1 risk factor facing survivorsThis book is written in the hope of preventing strokes, based on advice Dr. Spence has given to the more than 16,000 at-risk patients he has seen. It is divided into two sections -- "What Your Doctor Can Do" and "What You Can Do."Quitting smoking, following a Mediterranean diet, taking appropriate drugs to reduce blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood clotting, and appropriate surgery for severely narrowed arteries in the neck can reduce stroke by as much as 75 percent in high-risk people. * Especially among African Americans, but in anyone with blood pressure that is difficult to control, two simple blood tests (measuring renin and aldosterone) make all the difference to successful treatment. * A Mediterranean diet will reduce stroke by nearly half in high-risk people. Dr. Spence provides a collection of gourmet "anti-stroke" recipes that he prepares for himself.* Vitamin treatment with folic acid, B6, and B12 may prevent stroke by lowering levels of a new risk factor called homocysteine.* Advanced imaging methods are improving management of arteries by providing feedback on the effectiveness of therapy.* Transcranial Doppler embolus detection can identify, among patients with narrowing of the carotid arteries who do not yet have symptoms, the ones who are likely to benefit from surgery or stenting. This approach is the powerful medicine for stroke prevention that patients and their physicians need and will learn from this book.

Whether looming over public squares or dotting old battlefields, monuments certify a culture's present by securing its past and pledging its future. They embody exemplary persons or events and the shared ideals they stood for, prompting an obligation to keep those ideals standing now and forever. But monuments also exaggerate the staying power of civilizations and of art. In the second half of the twentieth century, postmodern critics often decried monuments not only for their pretensions and stiffness but also for their supposed role in perpetuating oppressive cultural conventions. Even so, many artists and thinkers of the same period tried to reimagine monuments in ways that were humbler and more provisional but still culturally confirming.In Castings, Guy Rotella examines the work of five important poets who have engaged in that effort: Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, James Merrill, Derek Walcott, and Seamus Heaney. Considering their wider careers as well as particular poems--including Bishop's "The Monument," Lowell's "For the Union Dead," Merrill's "Bronze," Walcott's "The Sea Is History," and Heaney's "In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge"--Rotella argues that these writers are less concerned with defending or condemning monuments than with pursuing ancient and current debates about the political, aesthetic, and broadly cultural issues that monuments condense. Among these concerns are the competing claims of life and art, persistence and change, meaning and meaninglessness, the self and society, and the governing and the governed.Original and provocative, Rotella's readings will make us ponder how the human impulse to build to last, to reify our culturally derived and ideologically driven faiths, might coexist with those other creeds of our place and time: relativism, multiculuralism, and diversity.

Choice Outstanding Academic Book 1998Temptation of the Word offers an ambitious and careful reading of the creative process--the origin of themes and the development of literary techniques--that Mario Vargas Llosa has brought to each of his novels, published through 1996. To understand the novelists intellectual environment, Efrain Kristal analyzes the entire corpus of Vargas Llosas writings, his literary influences in several languages, his intellectual biography, and his political activism, all in the light of the evolving political turbulence of his times and his own changing concept of literature.

A bold, gender-inflected reinterpretation of secular Spanish texts of the early modern period that focuses on sexual violence as expressive of cultural and political issues. Marcia Welles applies her extensive knowledge of Spanish Golden Age literature and her insightful grasp of current literary theory to synthesize a wide range of material into a uniquely engaging and refreshing interpretation of well-known texts. While the subject of rape and violence has been studied in other European literatures, Persephone's Girdle is the first to do so in the field of early modern Spanish literature.