With the capture of East Jerusalem by Israel in the Six-Day War, the historic spot became a magnifying lens for the conflict between Arabs and Jews. Gerald Caplan, a community psychiatrist renowned for his work with normal people under stress, explores in this study points of friction between the two populations and offers new insight into the sources of tension.

Dr. Caplan investigated the relations between Arabs and Jews in a variety of settings, ranging from a moment of crisis, the burning of a mosque, to more routine, everyday contacts, as in government offices and the market place. These interactions suggested a characteristic pattern of negotiating disputes, which was borne out in the course of a stand-up confrontation between the Arabs and the Israeli government over the payment of taxes. Fortified with his new understanding of the dynamics of Arab-Jewish behavior, Dr. Caplan then embarked on a pioneering effort to establish a vocational education program for the Arabs of Jerusalem.

His experiences, described in this book, enlarge the function of the community mental health consultant well beyond its traditional bounds. The conclusions are applicable throughout the world, wherever dissonance and strife prevail--be it Boston, Belfast, or Berlin.

Meg Logan has not been farther than two miles from home in six years. She has agoraphobia, a debilitating anxiety disorder that entraps its sufferers in the fear of leaving safe havens such as home. Paradoxically, while at this safe haven, agoraphobics spend much of their time ruminating over past panic experiences and imagining similar hypothetical situations. In doing so, they create a narrative that both describes their experience and locks them into it.

Constructing Panic offers an unprecedented analysis of one patient's experience of agoraphobia. In this novel interdisciplinary collaboration between a clinical psychologist and a linguist, the authors probe Meg's stories for constructions of emotions, actions, and events. They illustrate how Meg uses grammar and narrative structure to create and recreate emotional experiences that maintain her agoraphobic identity.

In this work Capps and Ochs propose a startling new view of agoraphobia as a communicative disorder. Constructing Panic opens up the largely overlooked potential for linguistic and narrative analysis by revealing the roots of panic and by offering a unique framework for therapeutic intervention. Readers will find in these pages hope for managing panic through careful attention to how we tell the story of our lives.

Plato’s Four Muses reconstructs Plato’s authorial self-portrait through a fresh reading of the Phaedrus, with an Introduction and Conclusion that contextualize the construction more broadly. The Phaedrus, it is argued, is Plato’s most self-referential dialogue, and Plato’s reference to four Muses in Phaedrus 259c–d is read as a hint at the “ingredients” of philosophical discourse, which turns out to be a form of provocatively old-fashioned mousikê.

Andrea Capra maintains that Socrates’s conversion to “demotic”—as opposed to metaphorical—music in the Phaedo closely parallels the Phaedrus and is apologetic in character, since Socrates was held responsible for dismissing traditional mousikê. This parallelism reveals three surprising features that define Plato’s works: first, a measure of anti-intellectualism (Plato counters the rationalistic excesses of other forms of discourse, thus distinguishing it from both prose and poetry); second, a new beginning for philosophy (Plato conceptualizes the birth of Socratic dialogue in, and against, the Pythagorean tradition, with an emphasis on the new role of writing); and finally, a self-consciously ambivalent attitude with respect to the social function of the dialogues, which are conceived both as a kind of “resistance literature” and as a preliminary move toward the new poetry of the Kallipolis.

The essays in Goddesses and Monsters recognize popular culture as a primary repository of ancient mythic energies, images, narratives, personalities, icons, and archetypes.  Together, they take on the patriarchal myth, where serial killers are heroes, where goddesses—in the form of great white sharks, femmes fatales, and aliens—are ritually slaughtered, and where pornography is the core story underlying militarism, environmental devastation, and racism.  They also point to an alternative imagination of female power that still can be found behind the cult devotion given to Princess Diana and animating all the goddesses disguised as popular monsters, queen bitches, mammies, vamps, cyborgs, and sex bombs.

Slowness is frequently seen as a response to modernity’s cult of speed and efficiency, and its influence in contemporary culture can be felt in artistic trends such as “slow cinema” or “slow TV.” Despite the popularity of these labels, however, slowness remains undertheorized in contemporary narrative scholarship. What makes a narrative slow, and what conceptual and analytical tools are best suited to account for this slowness? Is slowness a feature of certain narratives, an experiential response to these narratives, or both? How is narrative slowness related to the pace and rhythm of plot, and how does it carry cultural significance?

Slow Narrative across Media illuminates the concept of slow narrative and demonstrates how it manifests across media forms: from short stories to novel cycles, to comics, to music, to experimental film. Led by editors Marco Caracciolo and Ella Mingazova, contributors draw on cognitive and rhetorical approaches to narrative as well as on econarratology to bring into focus both the media-specific ways in which narrative evokes slowness and the usefulness of a transmedial approach to this phenomenon.

Contributors:
Jan Baetens, Raphaël Baroni, Lars Bernaerts, Marco Caracciolo, Karin Kukkonen, Ella Mingazova, Peggy Phelan, Greice Schneider, Roy Sommer, Carolien Van Nerom, Gary Weissman

Emilio Carballido was one of the most innovative and accomplished of Mexico's playwrights and one of the outstanding creators in the new Latin American theater. By his mid-forties he had already produced an impressive body of works in two very different veins. On the one hand, he mastered the techniques of the "well-made play." On the other, he developed a richly rewarding vein of fantasy, sometimes poetic, sometimes comic, sometimes macabre—and sometimes all three.

The plays in this volume are in the latter vein, ranging from surrealist farce in "The Intermediate Zone" to the grotesqueries of "The Time and the Place," from tragicomedy in "Theseus" to the dreamlike permutations of "The Golden Thread." But even at his most fantastic, Carballido never loses his remarkable gift for characterization: his peevish Minotaur, his raffish Nahual (were-jaguar) are wholly believable monsters.

Recognized in Mexico as one of the country's most important contemporary dramatists, Emilio Carballido has only recently become known in other countries through his plays and short stories. This translation introduces Carballido as a novelist. In The Norther what makes and breaks human relationships is his central interest as he traces the course of a relationship between a widow and a young man. The characters are created as their emotional and psychological outlines are drawn, and it is in the characterization that the hand of the dramatist is revealed. But it is Carballido's novelistic talent that has made The Norther the object of widely divergent interpretations. The critical conflict aroused by this novel is discussed in an Introduction by the translator, Margaret Sayers Peden.

Who are the “race men” standing for black America? It is a question Hazel Carby rejects, along with its long-standing assumption: that a particular type of black male can represent the race. A searing critique of definitions of black masculinity at work in American culture, Race Men shows how these defining images play out socially, culturally, and politically for black and white society—and how they exclude women altogether.

Carby begins by looking at images of black masculinity in the work of W. E. B. Du Bois. Her analysis of The Souls of Black Folk reveals the narrow and rigid code of masculinity that Du Bois applied to racial achievement and advancement—a code that remains implicitly but firmly in place today in the work of celebrated African American male intellectuals. The career of Paul Robeson, the music of Huddie Ledbetter, and the writings of C. L. R. James on cricket and on the Haitian revolutionary, Toussaint L’Ouverture, offer further evidence of the social and political uses of representations of black masculinity.

In the music of Miles Davis and the novels of Samuel R. Delany, Carby finds two separate but related challenges to conventions of black masculinity. Examining Hollywood films, she traces through the career of Danny Glover the development of a cultural narrative that promises to resolve racial contradictions by pairing black and white men—still leaving women out of the picture.

A powerful statement by a major voice among black feminists, Race Men holds out the hope that by understanding how society has relied upon affirmations of masculinity to resolve social and political crises, we can learn to transcend them.

Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss, the founders of Dumbarton Oaks, were not, per se, collectors of American art. Nevertheless, they acquired interesting and, at times, important examples of American paintings, drawings, etchings, and sculptures. Such acquisitions were but a part of an overall collection which comprised ancient Chinese, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Pre-Columbian, and European old master artworks as well as rare books, literary manuscripts and correspondence, important furnishings, unusual bibelots, and concert-quality instruments. The American artworks that remain at Dumbarton Oaks offer an important insight into the Blisses’ remarkable breadth of vision for their collection.

This volume catalogues the American art collection at Dumbarton Oaks and is published in conjunction with an exhibition, “American Art at Dumbarton Oaks.” An introductory essay describes the formation of this collection by Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss and their parents Anna and William H. Bliss, while the subsequent catalogue entries elaborate on nineteen artworks by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Elihu Vedder, Walter Gay, Childe Hassam, Albert Edward Sterner, Henry Golden Dearth, and Bernice Cross. Richly illustrated with color plates and comparative illustrations, this catalogue will be an important and enduring reference for scholars, students, and admirers of American art.

Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss were consummate collectors and patrons. After purchasing Dumbarton Oaks in 1920, they significantly redesigned the house and its interiors, built important new structures, added over fifty acres of planned gardens, hosted important musical evenings and intellectual discussions in their Music Room, and acquired a world-class art collection and library.

The illustrated essays in this volume reveal how the Blisses’ wide-ranging interests in art, music, gardens, architecture, and interior design resulted in the creation of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Their collections of Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art and rare garden books and drawings are examined by Robert Nelson, Julie Jones, and Therese O’Malley, respectively. James Carder provides the Blisses’ biography and discusses their patronage of various architects, including Philip Johnson, and the interior designer Armand Albert Rateau. The Blisses’ collaboration with Beatrix Farrand on the creation of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens is recounted by Robin Karson, and their commission of Igor Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto and its premiere by Nadia Boulanger is examined by Jeanice Brooks. The volume demonstrates that every aspect of the Blisses’ collecting and patronage had a place in the creation of what they came to call their “home of the humanities.”

As we follow the path of a giant water bug or peer over the wing of a gypsy moth, we glimpse our world anew, at once shrunk and magnified. Owing to their size alone, insects’ experience of the world is radically different from ours. Air to them is as viscous as water to us. The predicament of size, along with the dizzying diversity of insects and their status as arguably the most successful organisms on earth, have inspired passion and eloquence in some of the world’s most innovative scientists. A World of Insects showcases classic works on insect behavior, physiology, and ecology published over half a century by Harvard University Press.

James Costa, Vincent Dethier, Thomas Eisner, Lee Goff, Bernd Heinrich, Bert Hölldobler, Kenneth Roeder, Andrew Ross, Thomas Seeley, Karl von Frisch, Gilbert Waldbauer, E. O. Wilson, and Mark Winston—each writer, in his unique voice, paints a close-up portrait of the ways insects explore their environment, outmaneuver their enemies, mate, and care for kin.

Selected by two world-class entomologists, these essays offer compelling descriptions of insect cooperation and warfare, the search for ancient insect DNA in amber, and the energy economics of hot-blooded insects. They also discuss the impact—for good and ill—of insects on our food supply, their role in crime scene investigation, and the popular fascination with pheromones, killer bees, and fire ants. Each entry begins with commentary on the authors, their topics, and the latest research in the field.

The teacher's role is utterly unique. Assigned at random to a group of children who think, learn, and interrelate in complex, subtle, and individual ways, he or she is expected to transmit specific educational material uniformly in a set amount of time. Appropriately, this book on classroom dynamics is also unique. By applying eclectic methodological strategies to the study of teacher–student interactions, it gets beyond the biases that underlie more traditional analyses of classroom life.

Carew and Lightfoot devise and implement diverse methods for describing, recording, and interpreting classroom processes, and then synthesize their findings for each of the four classrooms studied. Fascinating stories emerge of how the four teachers, each with limited resources of time, space, energy, and emotion, distribute their attention among their students. Over time, patterns develop. Some are patterns of positive discrimination, in which the teachers recognize and respond to individual children's needs; and others are patterns of negative discrimination, in which the teachers reveal particular biases on such grounds as race and sex. Consciously or not, the teachers display their individuality in terms of values, motivations, reasoning, and behavior.

The original and thorough approach of Beyond Bias reveals teachers in their many facets, from what makes them most effective to what leaves them most vulnerable. All professionals and researchers concerned with the educational process will find immense value in Carew and Lightfoot's careful analysis of what a teacher is and enlightened synthesis of what a teacher should be and can be.

Parents of children with disabilities often situate their activism as a means of improving the world for their child. However, some disabled activists perceive parental activism as working against the independence and dignity of people with disabilities. This thorny relationship is at the heart of the groundbreaking Allies and Obstacles.

The authors chronicle parents’ path-breaking advocacy in arenas such as the right to education and to liberty via deinstitutionalization as well as how they engaged in legal and political advocacy. Allies and Obstacles provides a macro analysis of parent activism using a social movement perspective to reveal and analyze the complex—and often tense—relationship of parents to disability rights organizations and activism. 

The authors look at organizational and individual narratives using four case studies that focus on intellectual disability, psychiatric diagnoses, autism, and a broad range of physical disabilities including cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy. These cases explore the specific ways in which activism developed among parents and people with disabilities, as well as the points of alliance and the key points of contestation. Ultimately, Allies and Obstacles develops new insights into disability activism, policy, and the family.