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Critical Study Of Work
edited by Rick Baldoz, Charles Koeber and Philip Kraft
Temple University Press, 2001
Two broad developments reshaped work at the end of the twentieth century. The first was the implosion of the Soviet Union and the worldwide triumph of market capitalism. The second was the increasing use of computer-based production technologies and management command-and-control systems. How do we make sense of these important developments.

The editors have assembled a collection of provocative, original essays on work and workplaces throughout the world that challenge the current celebration of globalization and new technologies. Building on labor process analysis, individual case studies venture beyond factory and office to examine "virtual" workplaces, computer-era cottage work, and emotional and household labor. The settings range from Indian and Irish software factories to Brazilian supermarkets, Los Angeles sweatshops, and Taiwanese department stores.

Other essays seek to make theoretical sense of increasingly de-centered production chains, fluid work relations, and uncertain employment. Individually and collectively the authors construct a new critical study of work, highlighting the connections between geography, technology, gender, race, and class. They offer an accessible and flexible approach to the study of workplace relations and production organization -- and even  the notion of work itself.
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Hawthorne
A Critical Study, Revised Edition
Hyatt H. Waggoner
Harvard University Press

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H.R.F. Keating
Post-Colonial Detection, A Critical Study
Meera Tamaya
University of Wisconsin Press, 1993
In Keating’s novels, set in India, the bumbling, but always human, Inspector Ghote manages to solve crimes with a post-colonial mix of inherited Scotland Yard/Holmesian deductive methods and his understanding of his native country’s culture. This book is based on the premise that successful sleuths have much in common with cultural anthropologists—indeed the latter have often been termed detectives of cultures. Keating’s Ghote novels are in the tradition of Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Indian mysteries, and James McClure’s South African novels, which serve up the human, experiential aspects of the cultural and ethnic conflicts that newspapers miss.
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John Dickson Carr
A Critical Study
S. T. Joshi
University of Wisconsin Press, 1990
John Dickson Carr is known as the master of the “locked-room” mystery—the “impossible crime.” But Carr also wrote short stories, radio plays, essays, introductions, and book reviews. S. T. Joshi has written the first full-length study of Carr’s entire work and pays particular attention to this author’s three best-known detectives: Henri Bencolin, Dr. Gideon Fell, and Sir Henry Merrivale.
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The Novels of John Steinbeck
A Critical Study
Howard Levant
University of Missouri Press, 1983

Too often, Steinbeck’s work has been studied piecemeal, even when the intention was for a rounded view. In this study, Howard Levant analyzes the patterns in Steinbeck’s work, taking an approach that permits a judgment of each novel in the context of a greater appreciation of the shape of Steinbeck’s long career.

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The Novels of Theodore Dreiser
A Critical Study
Donald Pizer
University of Minnesota Press, 1976

The Novels of Theodore Dreiser was first published in 1976. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Relying heavily on the manuscripts and letters in the Dreiser Collection of the University of Pennsylvania Library, Professor Pizer seeks to establish the facts of the sources and composition of each of Dreiser's eight novels and to study the themes and form of the completed works. In this study he relates what can be discovered about the factual reality of a novel to its imaginative reality. His interpretation of the novels avoids the suggestion that there is a single overriding theme or direction in Dreiser's work and emphasizes that Dreiser deserves examination primarily on the basis of the individuality and worth of each of his novels. A separate chapter is devoted to each of the novels: Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, The "Genius," The Financier, The Titan, An American Tragedy, The Bulwark, and The Stoic.

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Planets in Peril
A Critical Study of C. S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy
David C. Downing
University of Massachusetts Press, 1995
A critical study of C.S. Lewis's ""Ransom Trilogy"" which analyses Lewis's methods and meanings, concentrating on this trilogy but also including relevant secondary work. Lewis's literary scholarship and display of Christian values are incorporated into this discussion.
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Poe
A Critical Study
Edward H. Davidson
Harvard University Press

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Stories Of Raymond Carver
A Critical Study
Kirk Nesset
Ohio University Press, 1994
Raymond Carver, known in some circles as the “godfather of minimalism,” has been credited by many as the rejuvenator of the once-dying American short story. (See the link on this page to a 2008 Kenyon Review story that discusses the recent controversy over the editing of Carver’s stories.) Drawing on representative tales from each of Carver’s major volumes of fiction, Nesset’s critical exploration leads us deep into the heart of Carver country, an eerie post-industrial world of low-rent survivors. In the earliest fiction, the politics of sex are tied to politics of fortune and chance; marriage as an institution is capricious and unsettling. In later stories, the gesture of telling stories provides an escape for certain of these characters, metaphorically and otherwise; and in Carver’s last stories, subtle strategies of language offer a similar, if more tentative release. From beginning to end, Carver’s distinctive, highly imitative style is intrinsic to his subject and is crucial in presenting what Carver called the “dark side of Reagan’s America.”

In this comprehensive study of Carver, Nesset discusses the relationship of minimalism and postmodern trends and the rise of new realism. By locating Carver in the gallery of American letters, Nesset shows him to be at once more simple and more complex than we might have believed, skillfully laying the groundwork for Carver studies to come.
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Understanding Chekhov
A Critical Study Of Chekhov'S Prose And Drama
Donald Rayfield
University of Wisconsin Press, 1999
Of all Russian writers, Chekhov is one of the best liked and most easily appreciated. Yet he is also one of the most elusive. Here Donald Rayfield reveals the layers of meaning on which the great dramatist's stories and plays are built. He examines his brief twenty-year creative life, from medical student supplementing his income by writing comic stories to his rapid rise as the father of twentieth-century drama and narrative prose. Understanding Chekhov is enriched by revelations from previously unexplored archival material, which deepen our understanding of Chekhov's sources, preoccupations, philosophy, and his relations with theater, with fellow writers, and with contemporary ideas.
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Writing Religion
The Case for the Critical Study of Religion
Edited by Steven W. Ramey
University of Alabama Press, 2015
In 2002, the University of Alabama's Department of Religious Studies established the annual Aronov Lecture Series to showcase the works of nationally recognized scholars of religion capable of reflecting on issues of wide relevance to scholars from across the humanities and social sciences. Writing Religion: The Case for the Critical Study of Religion is an edited collection of essays that highlights critical contributions from the first ten Aronov lecturers.
 
Section one of the volume, “Writing Discourses,” features essays by Jonathan Z. Smith, Bruce Lincoln, and Ann Pellegrini that illustrate how critical study enables the analysis of discourses in society and history. Section two, “Riting Social Formations,” includes pieces by Arjun Appadurai, Judith Plaskow, and Nathan Katz that reference both the power of rites to construct society and the act of riting as a form of disciplining that both prescribes and proscribes. The writings of Tomoko Masuzawa, Amy-Jill Levine, Aaron W. Hughes, and Martin S. Jaffee appear in section three, “Righting the Discipline.” They emphasize the correction of movements within the academic study of religion.
 
Steven W. Ramey frames the collection with a thoughtful introduction that explores the genesis, development, and diversity of critical analysis in the study of religion. An afterword by Russell McCutcheon reflects on the critical study of religion at the University of Alabama and rounds out this superb collection.
 
The mission of the Department of Religious Studies is to “avoid every tendency toward confusing the study of religion with the practice of religion.” Instruction about—rather than in—religion is foundational to the department’s larger goal of producing knowledge of the world and its many practices and systems of beliefs. Infused with this spirit, these fascinating essays, which read like good conversations with learned friends, offer significant examples of each scholar’s work. Writing Religion will be of value to graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and scholars interested in the study of religion from a critical perspective.
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