Georges Perec (1936–82) was one of the most inventive and original writers of the twentieth century. A fascinating aspect of his work as a novelist, filmmaker, and essayist is its intrinsically geographical nature. With many major projects on space and place, Perec’s writing speaks to a variety of geographical, urban, and architectural concerns—both in a substantive way, including a focus on cities, streets, and homes, and in a methodological way, as in his experiments with urban observation and exploration.

Georges Perec’s Geographies explores Perec’s geographical interests. The book is divided into two parts: Part I, “Perec’s Geographies,” explores space and place within Perec’s films, radio plays, and literature, from descriptions of actual streets to the fictional places within his work. Part II, “Perecquian Geographies,” explores geography in works directly inspired by Perec, including writing, photographs and photo essays, soundscapes, theater, and dance. Extending Perecquian criticism beyond literary and French studies to disciplines including geography, urban studies, and architecture, Georges Perec’s Geographies offers a complete and systematic examination that will be of interest not only to Perec scholars but also to students and researchers across these subjects.
 

The story of our deep and multifaceted connections to geological matter—the very bedrock of our lives.
 
From small beach pebbles to huge megaliths, stones have been revered, collected, enhanced, sculpted, or engraved for practical and artistic purposes throughout the ages. They have been used to delineate boundaries and to build homes and shelters and utilized for cooking, games, and competitions. This surprising and fascinating compendium of stone facts, myths, and stories reveals the impact and importance of stones in our history and culture. Cally Oldershaw introduces the science in an accessible way and covers the aesthetic appeal of stones, their practical uses, and metaphysical properties. With an eclectic mix of examples from the Stone Age to the present, Stones engagingly excavates the story of this essential matter.

In Transforming Ethos Rosanne Carlo synthesizes philosophy, rhetorical theory, and composition theory to clarify the role of ethos and its potential for identification and pedagogy for writing studies. Carlo renews focus on the ethos appeal and highlights its connection to materiality and place as a powerful instrument for writing and its teaching—one that insists on the relational and multimodal aspects of writing and makes prominent its inherent ethical considerations and possibilities.
 
Through case studies of professional and student writings as well as narrative reflections Transforming Ethos imagines the ethos appeal as not only connected to style and voice but also a process of habituation, related to practices of everyday interaction in places and with things. Carlo addresses how ethos aids in creating identification, transcending divisions between the self and other. She shows that when writers tell their experiences, they create and reveal the ethos appeal, and this type of narrative/multimodal writing is central to scholarship in rhetoric and composition as well as the teaching of writing. In addition, Carlo considers how composition is becoming compromised by professionalization—particularly through the idea of “transfer”—which is overtaking the critical work of self-development with others that a writing classroom should encourage in college students.
 
Transforming Ethos cements ethos as an essential term for the modern practice and teaching of rhetoric and places it at the heart of writing studies. This book will be significant for students and scholars in rhetoric and composition, as well as those interested in higher education more broadly.