Description: Influential philosopher Michel Serres’s foundational work uses fable to explore how human relations are identical to that of the parasite to the host body. Among Serres’s arguments is that by being pests, minor groups can become major players in public dialogue—creating diversity and complexity vital to human life and thought.

Michel Serres is professor in history of science at the Sorbonne, professor of Romance languages at Stanford University, and author of several books, including Genesis.

Description: “Every reading is, strictly speaking, unrepeatable; something in it, of it, will vary. Recollections of reading accumulate in relation to this iterable specificity; each takes its predecessors as its foundation, each inflects them with its backward-looking futurity.” In Ex-foliations, Terry Harpold investigates paradoxes of reading’s backward glances in the theory and literature of the digital field.

Description: In late-fourteenth-century England, the persistent question of how to live the best life preoccupied many pious Christians. One answer was provided by a new genre of prose guides that adapted professional religious rules and routines for lay audiences. These texts engaged with many of the same cultural questions as poets like Langland and Chaucer; however, they have not received the critical attention they deserve until now. Nicole Rice analyses how the idea of religious discipline was translated into varied literary forms in an atmosphere of religious change and controversy. By considering the themes of spiritual discipline, religious identity, and orthodoxy in Langland and Chaucer, the study also brings fresh perspectives to bear on Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales. This new juxtaposition of spiritual guidance and poetry will form an important contribution to our understanding of both authors and of late medieval religious practice and thought.

Description: Will America come to own the twenty-first century? Will its power and ideas dominate the globe? Or will the United States buckle underneath the pressure of new international challenges?

This groundbreaking book looks at changing patterns of American thought and culture at the dawn of the new millennium, a time in which the world's richest nation has never been more powerful or controversial. The volume brings together eminent North American and European thinkers to investigate the crucial issues and challenges facing the United States. From the subterranean political shifts of the electoral landscape to the latest biomedical advances, from the literary response to 9/11 to the rise of reality television, this collection explores the political, social, and cultural contours of contemporary American life.

Description: This completely updated and expanded second edition of the wide-ranging and accessible Routledge History of Literature in English covers the main developments in the history of British and Irish literature with accompanying language notes exploring the interrelationships between language and literature. Highly praised for its readability and narrative style it charts the principal features of literary language development and highlights key language topics. With a span of over a thousand years, from AD 600 to the present day, it emphasizes the growth of literary writing, its traditions, conventions and changing characteristics, and includes literature from the margins, both geographical and cultural.

Description: British Identities, Heroic Nationalisms, and the Gothic Novel, 1764-1824 considers three interlocking developments of this period: the emergence of the Gothic novel at a time when national upheavals required the construction of a new nationalist identity, the Gothic novel's redefinition of heroes and heroism in that nationalist debate, and changes within class and gender as well as audience and author relations. The scope of this study extends beyond the confines of the novel proper to include chapbooks and illustrated reactions.

Description: The influence of colonialism and race on the development of African literature has been the subject of a number of studies. The effect of patriarchy and gender, however, and indeed the contributions of African women, have up until now been largely ignored by the critics. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender is the first extensive account of African literature from a feminist perspective.

In this first radical and exciting work Florence Stratton outlines the features of an emerging female tradition in African fiction. A chapter is dedicated to each to the works of four women writers: Grace Ogot, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Ba. In addition she provides challenging new readings of canonical male authors such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo'o and Wole Soyinka. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender thus provides the first truly comprehensive definition of the current literary tradition in Africa.

Description: This new study is a major contribution to sign language study and to literature generally, looking at the complex grammatical, phonological and morphological systems of sign language linguistic structure and their role in sign language poetry and performance. Chapters deal with repetition and rhyme, symmetry and balance, neologisms, ambiguity, themes, metaphor and allusion, poem and performance, and blending English and sign language poetry. Major poetic performances in both BSL and ASL--with emphasis on the work of the deaf poet Dorothy Miles--are analyzed using the tools provided in the book.

Description: Written by established pulp fiction and popular culture author Server, Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers includes information on more than 200 nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. Arranged in alphabetical order, each entry includes a biographical sketch and list of the author's works (arranged by pseudonym). Also included is an introduction that serves as a concise overview and traces the start of the industry of pulp serials to the genre that it is today.

Paperback: 256 pages
Data: November 4, 2003
Format: PDF
Description: This excellent reference traces the construction and maintenance of the digital collections and services that have been available day in and day out to users worldwide for more than a decade. It examines applicable guidelines for any library looking to build and manage systems, conduct and evaluate projects, and scout new directions for mainstreaming and hybridizing the building of a digital library. Including contributions from seasoned experts in specializations such as staffing, collection development, and technology project management for digital libraries, Becoming a Digital Library discusses the techniques for finding and training the right people to build a digital library.