Results by title

Victoria Bricker’s painstaking work is based on almost one thousand provenienced notarial documents and letters written by native speakers of Yucatec Maya from colonial times to the modern day. Because the documents are dated and also specify the town where they were written, Bricker was able to determine when and where grammatical changes first appeared in the language and the trajectory of their movement across the Yucatan peninsula. This exemplary grammar of Yucatec Maya includes examples and careful explanations of the phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures of the language. Bricker’s research is distinguished in its treatment of seemingly aberrant spellings of Maya words as clues to the way they were actually pronounced at different times in the past. Her chapters include topics seldom covered, such as deictic particles, affects, and reduplication. Of special interest is a poetic form of reduplication composed of couplets (or triplets) found in documents from each of the centuries, indicating the continuity of this genre from the Colonial to the Modern version of this language.
 

Patrick Paul Hogan’s A Student Commentary on Pausanias Book 1 introduces the first book of Pausanias’ “Description of Greece” to students of Classical Greek. Pausanias’ second century CE work is the only surviving ancient description of the monuments and artwork of mainland Greece. Book 1 of the “Description” covers Athens, its demes, and Megara—that is, Attica, the heart of the ancient Greek world. It offers not only a walking description of buildings, statues, and artwork by an ancient traveler but also insight into the mindset of an educated Greek of the Roman imperial age: his reaction to Roman domination and Classical Greek history and culture, his deeply felt religious beliefs, and his ideas regarding Hellenism and Hellenic identity.

This textbook, the first on Pausanias aimed at students in almost a century, brings Pausanias back into the classroom for a new generation of readers. It is based on the Greek text edited by M. H. Rocha-Pereira and includes philological and historical commentary by Hogan. This volume elucidates difficult syntax and helps the reader with the immense number of names and places Pausanias mentions. It is suitable for students of Classical Greek at the graduate and undergraduate levels, whether Classical philologists or Classical archaeologists and art historians. Professors of archaeology will find this textbook an excellent starting point for any course on Pausanias and easily supplemented by their own knowledge of material remains and modern finds.

For centuries, the Akulmiut people—a Yup’ik group—have been sustained by the annual movements of whitefish. It is a food that sustains and defines them. To this day, many Akulmiut view not only their actions in the world, but their interactions with each other, as having a direct and profound effect on these fish. Not only are fish viewed as responding to human action and intention in many contexts, but the lakes and rivers fish inhabit are likewise viewed as sentient beings, with the ability to respond both positively and negatively to those who travel there.
This bilingual book details the lives of the Akulmiut living in the lake country west of Bethel, Alaska, in the villages of Kasigluk, Nunapitchuk, and Atmautluak. Akulmiut Neqait is based in conversations recorded with the people of these villages as they talk about their uniquely Yup'ik view of the world and how it has weathered periods of immense change in southwest Alaska. While many predicted that globalization would sound the death knoll for many distinctive traditions, these conversations show that Indigenous people all over the planet have sought to appropriate the world in their own terms. For all their new connectedness, the continued relevance of traditional admonitions cannot be denied.
 

This book draws on little-known oral histories from the Yup’ik people of southwest Alaska to detail a period of bow-and-arrow warfare that took place in the region between 1300 and 1800. The result of more than thirty years of research, discussion, and field recordings involving more than one hundred Yup’ik men and women, Anguyiim Nalliini tells a story not just of war and violence, but also of its cultural context—the origins of place names, the growth of indigenous architectural practices, the personalities of prominent warriors and leaders, and the eventual establishment of peaceful coexistence.

The book is presented in bilingual format, with facing-page translations, and it will be hailed as a landmark work in the study of Alaska Native history and anthropology.

Antisthenes of Athens (c. 445-365 BCE) was a famous ancient disciple of Socrates, senior to Plato by fifteen years and inspirational to Xenophon. He is relevant to two of the greatest turning points in ancient intellectual history, from pre-Socraticism to Socraticism, and from classical Athens to the Hellenistic period. A better understanding of Antisthenes leads to a better understanding of the intellectual culture of Athens that shaped Plato and laid the foundations for Hellenistic philosophy and literature as well. Antisthenes wrote prolifically, but little of this text remains today. Susan Prince has collected all the surviving passages that pertain most closely to Antisthenes’ ancient reputation and literary production, translates them into English for the first time, and sets out the parameters for their interpretation, with close attention to the role Antisthenes likely played in the literary agenda of each ancient author who cited him.

This is the first translation of Antisthenes’ remains into English. Chapters present the ancient source, the original Greek passage, and necessary critical apparatus. The author then adds the modern English translation and notes on the context of the preservation, the significance of the testimonium, and on the Greek. Several new readings are proposed.

Antisthenes of Athens will be of interest to anyone seeking to understand Antisthenes and his intellectual context, as well as his contributions to ancient literary criticism, views on discourse, and ethics.

Archaic Bookkeeping brings together the most current
scholarship on the earliest true writing system in human
history. Invented by the Babylonians at the end of the
fourth millennium B.C., this script, called proto-cuneiform,
survives in the form of clay tablets that have until now
posed formidable barriers to interpretation. Many tablets,
excavated in fragments from ancient dump sites, lack a clear
context. In addition, the purpose of the earliest tablets
was not to record language but to monitor the administration
of local economies by means of a numerical system.

Using the latest philological research and new methods
of computer analysis, the authors have for the first time
deciphered much of the numerical information. In
reconstructing both the social context and the function of
the notation, they consider how the development of our
earliest written records affected patterns of thought, the
concept of number, and the administration of household
economies. Complete with computer-generated graphics keyed
to the discussion and reproductions of all documents referred
to in the text, Archaic Bookkeeping will interest
specialists in Near Eastern civilizations, ancient history,
the history of science and mathematics, and cognitive
psychology.

Around the Texts of Writing Center Work reveals the conceptual frameworks found in and created by ordinary writing center documents. The values and beliefs underlying course syllabi, policy statements, website copy and comments, assessment plans, promotional flyers, and annual reports critically inform writing center practices, including the vital undertaking of tutor education.

In each chapter, author R. Mark Hall focuses on a particular document. He examines its origins, its use by writing center instructors and tutors, and its engagement with enduring disciplinary challenges in the field of composition, such as tutoring and program assessment. He then analyzes each document in the contexts of the conceptual framework at the heart of its creation and everyday application: activity theory, communities of practice, discourse analysis, reflective practice, and inquiry-based learning.

Around the Texts of Writing Center Work approaches the analysis of writing center documents with an inquiry stance—a call for curiosity and skepticism toward existing and proposed conceptual frameworks—in the hope that the theoretically conscious evaluation and revision of commonplace documents will lead to greater efficacy and more abundant research by writing center administrators and students.