front cover of Under the Starry Flag
Under the Starry Flag
How a Band of Irish Americans Joined the Fenian Revolt and Sparked a Crisis over Citizenship
Lucy E. Salyer
Harvard University Press, 2018

Winner of the Myrna F. Bernath Book Award

“A stunning accomplishment…As the Trump administration works to expatriate naturalized U.S. citizens, understanding the history of individual rights and state power at the heart of Under the Starry Flag could not be more important.”
Passport

“A brilliant piece of historical writing as well as a real page-turner. Salyer seamlessly integrates analysis of big, complicated historical questions—allegiance, naturalization, citizenship, politics, diplomacy, race, and gender—into a gripping narrative.”
—Kevin Kenny, author of The American Irish

In 1867 forty Irish American freedom fighters, outfitted with guns and ammunition, sailed to Ireland to join the effort to end British rule. They were arrested for treason as soon as they landed. The Fenians, as they were called, claimed to be American citizens, but British authorities insisted that they remained British subjects. Following the Civil War, the Fenian crisis dramatized the question of whether citizenship should be considered an inalienable right.

This gripping legal saga, a prelude to today’s immigration battles, raises important questions about immigration, citizenship, and who deserves to be protected by the law.

[more]

logo for University of Manitoba Press
Undressed Toronto
From the Swimming Hole to Sunnyside, How a City Learned to Love the Beach, 1850–1935
Dale Barbour
University of Manitoba Press, 2021

front cover of The Unintended Reformation
The Unintended Reformation
How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society
Brad S. Gregory
Harvard University Press, 2015

In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West.

Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science—as the source of all truth—necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge.

The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past.

[more]

front cover of The Unplanned Lesson
The Unplanned Lesson
How to Stop Searching for Activities and Start Engaging Students
Ian Roth and Paul Wicking
University of Michigan Press, 2023
The complexities of language education demand that teachers have the flexibility to be able to adapt their plans during lessons in order to meet the needs of their students. Yet teachers are trained to meticulously prepare lesson plans and numerous activities to keep their students engaged. This can lead to teachers feeling locked into the plan they spent time preparing. The Unplanned Lesson suggests a new paradigm for how to prepare for and conduct language lessons based on curating what the authors term “structures.” By focusing on structures that are flexible, evolvable, repeatable, and memorable, teachers can reduce the amount of time they spend planning and increase the amount of time students are engaged in deliberate practice. Designed to integrate with any syllabus or textbook, The Unplanned Lesson approach aims to allow teachers to transform their classrooms by giving them more time to focus on supporting their students’ learning. 
[more]

front cover of Unspooled
Unspooled
How the Cassette Made Music Shareable
Rob Drew
Duke University Press, 2024
Well into the new millennium, the analog cassette tape continues to claw its way back from obsolescence. New cassette labels emerge from hipster enclaves while the cassette’s likeness pops up on T-shirts, coffee mugs, belt buckles, and cell phone cases. In Unspooled, Rob Drew traces how a lowly, hissy format that began life in office dictation machines and cheap portable players came to be regarded as a token of intimate expression through music and a source of cultural capital. Drawing on sources ranging from obscure music zines to transcripts of Congressional hearings, Drew examines a moment in the early 1980s when music industry representatives argued that the cassette encouraged piracy. At the same time, 1980s indie rock culture used the cassette as a symbol to define itself as an outsider community. Indie’s love affair with the cassette culminated in the mixtape, which advanced indie’s image as a gift economy. By telling the cassette’s long and winding history, Drew demonstrates that sharing cassettes became an acceptable and meaningful mode of communication that initiated rituals of independent music recording, re-recording, and gifting.
[more]

front cover of Unwritten Rule
Unwritten Rule
How to Fix the British Constitution
Stephen Green, Thomas Legg, and Martin Donnelly
Haus Publishing, 2021
A consideration of how to repair the British state.

Not since Ireland broke away from the United Kingdom has the British state been so fragile. Northern Ireland now operates under trading rules that are legally separate from the rest of the nation. In Wales, support for independence is running at a historical high, and Scotland is more conscious than ever of its individual identity and has aspirations for a European future. With public trust and confidence in government at record lows, the United Kingdom faces a crisis that can only be repaired by a new constitutional settlement. Unwritten Rule calls for a radical realignment, embracing a federal approach that would accommodate devolution as the best way of bringing about a successful and diverse national life, increasing democratic control over local and national decision-making, and modernizing national political structures.
[more]

front cover of Using Servant Leadership
Using Servant Leadership
How to Reframe the Core Functions of Higher Education
Letizia, Angelo J.
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Using Servant Leadership provides an instructive guide for how faculty members can engage in servant leadership with administrators, students, and community members. By utilizing a wide range of research and through a series of case studies, Angelo J. Letizia demonstrates how, with a bit of creative thinking, the ideals of servant leadership can work even in the fractious, cash-strapped world of contemporary higher education. Furthermore, he considers how these concepts can be implemented in pedagogy, research, strategic planning, accountability, and assessment. This book points the way to a more humane university, one that truly serves the public good.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter