471 books match the query 'Power' and 110 start with t

cover of The Power of Genre

The Power of Genre

Adena Rosmarin

University of Minnesota Press, 1986

The Power of Genre was first published in 1986. 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.

The Power of Genre is a radical and systematic rethinking of the relationship between literary genre and critical explanation. Adene Rosmarin shows how traditional theories of genre—whether called "historical," "intrinsic," or "theoretical"—are necessarily undone by their attempts to define genre representationally. Rather, Rosmarin argues, the opening premise of critical argument is always critical purpose or, as E. H. Gombrich has said, function, and the genre or "form" follows the reform. The goal is a relational model that works.

Rosemarin analyzes existing theories of genre — those of Hirsch, Crane, Frye, Todorov, Jauss, and Rader are given particular attention—before proposing her own. These analyses uncover the illogic that plagues even sophisticated attempts to treat genre as a preexistent entity. Rosmarin shows how defining genre pragmatically – as explicitly chosen or devised to serve explicitly critical purposes – solves this problem: a pragmatic theory of genre builds analysis of its metaphors and motives into its program, thereby eliminating theory's traditional need to deny the invented and rhetorical nature of its schemes. A pragmatic theory, however, must be tested not only by its internal cohesion but also by its power to enable practice, and Rosmarin chooses the dramatic monologue, an infamously problematic genre, and its recent relative, the mask lyric, as testing grounds. Both genres—variously exemplified by poems of Browning, Thennyson, Eliot, and Pound—are ex post facto critical constructs that, when defined as such, make closely reasoned sense not only of particular poems but also of their perplexed interpretive histories. Moreover, both genres dwell on the historicity, textuality, and redemptive imperfection of the speaking self. This generic obsession ties the poems to their reception and, finally, to the openended, processes of hermeneutic question-and-answer stressed in Rosmarin's framing theory.
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cover of The Power of God: Dynamis in Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology

The Power of God

Dynamis in Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology

Michel René Barnes

Catholic University of America Press, 2001

This study will be useful for those who study the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, as well as those who are interested in the role of scriptural and philosophical resources in Christian theology. Fi
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cover of The Power of Huacas: Change and Resistance in the Andean World of Colonial Peru

The Power of Huacas

Change and Resistance in the Andean World of Colonial Peru

By Claudia Brosseder

University of Texas Press, 2014

Based on extensive archival research, The Power of Huacas is the first book to take account of the reciprocal effects of religious colonization as they impacted Andean populations and, simultaneously, dramatically changed the culture and beliefs of Spanish Christians.

Winner, Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the category of Historical Studies, American Academy of Religion, 2015

The role of the religious specialist in Andean cultures of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries was a complicated one, balanced between local traditions and the culture of the Spanish. In The Power of Huacas, Claudia Brosseder reconstructs the dynamic interaction between religious specialists and the colonial world that unfolded around them, considering how the discourse about religion shifted on both sides of the Spanish and Andean relationship in complex and unexpected ways. In The Power of Huacas, Brosseder examines evidence of transcultural exchange through religious history, anthropology, and cultural studies. Taking Andean religious specialists—or hechizeros (sorcerers) in colonial Spanish terminology—as a starting point, she considers the different ways in which Andeans and Spaniards thought about key cultural and religious concepts. Unlike previous studies, this important book fully outlines both sides of the colonial relationship; Brosseder uses extensive archival research in Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Spain, Italy, and the United States, as well as careful analysis of archaeological and art historical objects, to present the Andean religious worldview of the period on equal footing with that of the Spanish. Throughout the colonial period, she argues, Andean religious specialists retained their own unique logic, which encompassed specific ideas about holiness, nature, sickness, and social harmony. The Power of Huacas deepens our understanding of the complexities of assimilation, showing that, within the maelstrom of transcultural exchange in the Spanish Americas, European paradigms ultimately changed more than Andean ones.

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cover of The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus

The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus

Paul Zanker; translated by Alan Shapiro

University of Michigan Press, 1990

"Art and architecture are mirrors of a society. They reflect the state of its values, especially in times of crisis or transition." Upon this premise Paul Zanker builds an interpretation of Augustan art as a visual language that both expressed and furthered the transformation of Roman society during the rule of Augustus Caesar. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus illustrates how the establishment of monarchy under Augustus Caesar led to the creation of a new system of visual imagery that reflects the consciousness of this transitional age.
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cover of The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response

The Power of Images

Studies in the History and Theory of Response

David Freedberg

University of Chicago Press, 1989

"This learned and heavy volume should be placed on the shelves of every art historical library."—E. H. Gombrich, New York Review of Books

"This is an engaged and passionate work by a writer with powerful convictions about art, images, aesthetics, the art establishment, and especially the discipline of art history. It is animated by an extraordinary erudition."—Arthur C. Danto, The Art Bulletin

"Freedberg's ethnographic and historical range is simply stunning. . . . The Power of Images is an extraordinary critical achievement, exhilarating in its polemic against aesthetic orthodoxy, endlessly fascinating in its details. . . . This is a powerful, disturbing book."—T. J. Jackson Lears, Wilson Quarterly

"Freedberg helps us to see that one cannot do justice to the images of art unless one recognizes in them the entire range of human responses, from the lowly impulses prevailing in popular imagery to their refinement in the great visions of the ages."—Rudolf Arnheim, Times Literary Supplement
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cover of The Power of Intellectuals in Contemporary Germany

The Power of Intellectuals in Contemporary Germany

Edited by Michael Geyer

University of Chicago Press, 2001

A decade after reunification, with Germany laboring to define a new national identity, the defunct German Democratic Republic has gained a second life in the pages of history. The former GDR, and particularly the fate of its intellectuals, has become the subject of novels, memoirs, and films, and it has also become the backdrop for general debates over the power of intellectuals in contemporary media and society.

This new collection of essays considers the demise of the GDR and its impact on the place of intellectuals in Germany today. Distinguished contributors from Germany, Austria, and the United States survey aspects of high and low culture, including the current nostalgia for East German film, the demise of the GDR rock scene, the pivotal role of East German poets, the consolidation and privatization of German media, and the frightening new resurgence of right-wing violence. The result is a timely volume that charts Germany's rocky transition from one world to another.

Contributors:
Mitchell G. Ash
Simone Barck
David Bathrick
John Borneman
Dorothea Dornhof
Michael Geyer
Andreas Graf
Dietrich Hohmann
Andreas Huyssen
Konrad Jarausch
Alexander Kluge
Loren Kruger
Martina Langermann
Siegfried Lokatis
Patricia Anne Simpson
Frank Trommler
Katie Trumpener
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cover of The Power of Journalists

The Power of Journalists

Nick Robinson, Gary Gibbon, Barbara Speed, and Charlie Beckett

Haus Publishing, 2018

We live in a profoundly challenging era for journalists. While the profession has historically taken on the mantle of providing clear, sound information to the public, journalists now face competition from dubious sources online and smear campaigns launched by public figures. In The Power of Journalists, four of the United Kingdom’s foremost journalists—Nick Robinson, Barbara Speed, Charlie Beckett, and Gary Gibbon—give on-the-ground accounts of how they’ve weathered some of the most significant political events of the past five years, including the referendum on Scottish independence and Brexit. These monumental political decisions exposed each journalist to the dangerous vicissitudes of public opinion, and made them all the more certain of their mission. In describing the role of the journalist as truth-teller and protector of impartiality as well as interpreter of controversial facts and trusted source of public opinion, they issue a clarion call for good journalism.
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cover of The Power of Judges

The Power of Judges

David Neuberger and Peter Riddell

Haus Publishing, 2018

To the vast majority of the English public, the role of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court has often been distant and incomprehensible, its judges a caste apart from society. The Power of Judges ends this mystery, exploring the fundamental concept of justice and explaining the main functions of the courts, the challenges they face, and the complexity of the judicial system.

In this lucid account of the judiciary, David Neuberger and Peter Riddell lead us through an array of topics both philosophical and logistical, including the relationships between morality and law and between Parliament and the judiciary. They explain the effects of cuts in legal aid and shed light on complex and controversial subjects like assisted dying and the complexities of combating mass terrorism while protecting personal liberty. Given that many of these issues span national borders, the book also compares the United Kingdom’s legal system with its counterparts in the United States and Germany.

Full of insights, The Power of Judges is an informative and accessible account of the United Kingdom’s judicial system, its contribution to running the country, and the challenges it faces—including the many threats to its effectiveness.
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cover of The Power of Kiowa Song: A Collaborative Ethnography

The Power of Kiowa Song

A Collaborative Ethnography

Luke E. Lassiter

University of Arizona Press, 1998

Many Kiowas believe that song is a gift from God. Its power, argues Luke E. Lassiter, rests in the many ways that community members hear, understand, and feel it: "Song has power. As I begin to understand what this means for my mentors, I am just beginning to understand what this means in my life. They are not just singers. They are vehicles for something greater than all of us. Indeed, I now understand that I am not just a singer. But . . . I will sing until I die." As a boy, Lassiter had an early fascination with pow wows. This interest eventually went from a hobby to a passion. As Lassiter made Kiowa friends who taught him to sing and traveled the pow wow circuit, serving many times as a head singer, he began to investigate and write about the pow wow as an experiential encounter with song. The Power of Kiowa Song shows how song is interpreted, created, and used by individuals, how it is negotiated through the context of an event, and how it emerges as a powerfully unique and specific public expression. The Power of Kiowa Song presents a collaborative, community-wide dialogue about the experience of song. Using conversations with Kiowa friends as a frame, Lassiter seeks to describe the entire experience of song rather than to analyze it solely from a distance. Lassiter's Kiowa consultants were extremely active in the writing of the book, re-explaining concepts that seemed difficult to grasp and discussing the organization and content of the work. In a text that is engaging and easily read, Lassiter has combined experiential narrative with ethnological theory to create a new form of collaborative ethnography that makes anthropology accessible to everyone. This book is designed for anyone interested in Native American studies or anthropology, and it also serves as a resource written by and for the Kiowa themselves.

Hear the Power of Kiowa Song
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cover of The Power of Large Language Models and AI in the Digital Age: Technologies, applications, security and ethics

The Power of Large Language Models and AI in the Digital Age

Technologies, applications, security and ethics

Neha Sharma

The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2026

Large language models (LLMs) represent a profound breakthrough in artificial intelligence. More than just statistical tools, these vast neural networks undergo an intensive training process that unlocks unexpected, emergent abilities. Models like ChatGPT are now demonstrating a surprising grasp of reasoning, semantics, and real-world concepts, leading many researchers to ask: are we witnessing the first sparks of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)?
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cover of The Power of Patristic Preaching: The Word in Our Flesh

The Power of Patristic Preaching

The Word in Our Flesh

Andrew Hofer, OP

Catholic University of America Press, 2023

The Word made flesh is manifested in the lives of those dedicated to his proclamation. The Power of Patristic Preaching: The Word in Our Flesh presents seven early preachers who show, by life and speech, the divine Word’s power at work in weak human life. The book is inspired by this question preached by Origen, “For what does it profit if I should say that Jesus has come in that flesh alone which he received from Mary and I should not show also that he has come in this flesh of mine?” In seven chapters, The Power of Patristic Preaching studies the exemplars of Origen for holiness, Ephrem for the humility of repentance, Gregory of Nazianzus for purification and faith, John Chrysostom for the hope of salvation, Augustine for love, Leo the Great for love of the poor and the weak, and Gregory the Great for accepting our own weakness.  With an emphasis on the incarnation, deification through the virtues, and proclamation, The Power of Patristic Preaching serves as a resource for those dedicated to the ministry of the Word (clerical, religious, and lay), and as a text for students of early Christian theology and practices. A Catholic work for a broad ecumenical audience, the book gives a cry from the heart in a suffering Church traveling through a world that is passing away.
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cover of The Power of Play: Designing Early Learning Spaces

The Power of Play

Designing Early Learning Spaces

Dorothy Stoltz

American Library Association, 2015

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cover of The Power of Politicians

The Power of Politicians

Tessa Jowell and Frances D’Souza

Haus Publishing, 2018

The Power of Politicians takes readers inside the workings of Parliament via an autobiographical account of Tessa Jowell’s own experience of entering politics as an MP. Jowell offers fascinating insights into the workings of Parliament and sheds light on the successful pathways for developing policy into final legislation. The details of the inner workings of politics are interwoven with a powerful personal narrative, as Jowell offers a firsthand account of the role of women in contemporary political life.

With former Lord Speaker Frances D’Souza serving as Jowell’s interlocutor, this book provides a passionate and inspiring interpretation on moral duty. Ultimately, The Power of Politicians offers not just a case study of the life and everyday work of a politician, but also attends to deeper questions about what is demanded from the political class. The overall result is a nothing less than a master class in how to be a good politician.
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cover of The Power of Productivity: Wealth, Poverty, and the Threat to Global Stability

The Power of Productivity

Wealth, Poverty, and the Threat to Global Stability

William W. Lewis

University of Chicago Press, 2004

A powerfully simple explanation of a complex problem: How productivity is the key to global economic growth
 
The disparity between rich and poor countries is the most serious, intractable problem facing the world today. The chronic poverty of many nations affects more than the citizens and economies of those nations; it threatens global stability as the pressures of immigration become unsustainable and rogue nations seek power and influence through extreme political and terrorist acts. To address this tenacious poverty, a vast array of international institutions has pumped billions of dollars into these nations in recent decades, yet despite this infusion of capital and attention, roughly five billion of the world's six billion people continue to live in poor countries. What isn't working? And how can we fix it? 

The Power of Productivity provides powerful and controversial answers to these questions. William W. Lewis, the director emeritus of the McKinsey Global Institute, here draws on extensive microeconomic studies of thirteen nations over twelve years—conducted by the Institute itself—to counter virtually all prevailing wisdom about how best to ameliorate economic disparity. Lewis's research, which included studying everything from state-of-the-art auto makers to black-market street vendors and mom-and-pop stores, conclusively demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, providing more capital to poor nations is not the best way to help them. Nor is improving levels of education, exchange-rate flexibility, or government solvency enough. Rather, the key to improving economic conditions in poor countries, argues Lewis, is increasing productivity through intense, fair competition and protecting consumer rights.

As The Power of Productivity explains, this sweeping solution affects the economies of poor nations at all levels—from the viability of major industries to how the average consumer thinks about his or her purchases. Policies must be enacted in developing nations that reflect a consumer rather than a producer mindset and an attendant sense of consumer rights. Only one force, Lewis claims, can stand up to producer special privileges—consumer interests.

The Institute's unprecedented research method and Lewis's years of experience with economic policy combine to make The Power of Productivity the most authoritative and compelling view of the global economy today, one that will inform political and economic debate throughout the world for years to come.
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cover of The Power of Sacrifice: Roman and Christian Discourses in Conflict

The Power of Sacrifice

Roman and Christian Discourses in Conflict

George Heyman

Catholic University of America Press, 2007

In this work, George Heyman offers a fresh perspective on the similarities between pagan Roman and Christian thinking about the public role of sacrifice in the first two and a half centuries of the Christian era.
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cover of The Power of Signed Songs: Deaf Artists, Intercultural Reach, and the Politics of Music Making

The Power of Signed Songs

Deaf Artists, Intercultural Reach, and the Politics of Music Making

Joana Morêdo Pereira

Gallaudet University Press, 2026

The first of its kind, The Power of Signed Songs: Deaf Artists, Intercultural Reach, and the Politics of Music Making analyzes musical performances that were translated or created in signed languages. Written by an international team of Deaf community researchers, The Power of Signed Songs explores the politics of music making in the form of signed songs, an often controversial art form in Deaf communities. 

While raising questions about culture, translation, and authorship, signed songs demonstrate forms of Deaf cultural resistance, defy traditional conceptions of music, and draw attention to language diversity and intersectionality within Deaf communities in varied European settings. Drawing on both signed music performances and field research, the authors highlight the unique contributions of signing musical artists from both the UK and Portugal. Signed songs and translations illustrate a wide range of creative performance strategies, linguistic word and sign play across languages, and sociolinguistic variation. 

By analyzing how translated songs created by Deaf artists serve as cultural products, translations, and performance, The Power of Signed Songs provides a glimpse into how translations of music can be a form of both transnational and localized cultural resistance. Ultimately, Deaf-centered signed songs are not just artistic expressions but also political statements, challenging the idea that music belongs exclusively to the hearing world.

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cover of The Power of Small States: Diplomacy in World War II

The Power of Small States

Diplomacy in World War II

Annette Baker Fox

University of Chicago Press, 1959

An explosive study into World War II diplomacy and how smaller nations resisted the pressure of Axis and Allied Powers.

As World War II ravaged Europe and Asia, smaller nations such as Turkey, Spain, Finland, and Portugal emerged virtually unscathed. How did these smaller powers, which most wrongly viewed as mere political pawns, survive one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th century?

From the World War II diplomatic history of Turkey, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Spain, Annette Baker Fox walks us through backrooms and intense negotiations to illustrate how smaller nations balanced an ever-shifting political landscape to maintain their neutrality. Heavily researched and well-wrought, this book draws upon primary material and interviews with public figures and scholars to give a new historical dimension into lesser-known nations during a time of great political upheaval.
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cover of The Power of Sympathy

The Power of Sympathy

William Hill Brown, Edited by William S. Kable

The Ohio State University Press, 1900

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cover of The Power of Their Will: Slaveholding Women in Nineteenth-Century Cuba

The Power of Their Will

Slaveholding Women in Nineteenth-Century Cuba

Teresa Prados-Torreira

University of Alabama Press, 2021

CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE, 2022

“This fascinating book explores the unique circumstances of white slaveholding women in 19th-century Cuba and the enslaved peoples they controlled . . .This is a must read for scholars of the Caribbean and the African diaspora. Essential.” —CHOICE

In the early nineteenth century, while abolitionism was rising and the slave trade was declining in the Atlantic world, Spain used this opportunity to massively expand plantation slavery in Cuba. Between 1501 and 1866, more than 778,000 Africans were torn from their homelands and brought to work for the Cuban slaveholding class.

An understudied aspect of Cuban slaveholding society is the role of the white Cuban slave mistress (amas). The Power of Their Will: Slaveholding Women in Nineteenth-Century Cuba illuminates the interaction of female slaveholders and the enslaved during this time. Teresa Prados-Torreira shows, despite the lack of political power in a highly patriarchal society, Cuban women as property owners were instrumental in supporting the long duration of slavery, whether by enforcing the disciplining of the enslaved in the domestic sphere or helping to create the illusion of slavery as a humane institution. Thousands of Creole slaveholding women relied on slaves to lead a comfortable life. Even the subsistence of many poor women depended on the income derived from the hiring out of their enslaved.

In this accessible cultural history, culled from government documents, fiction, newspaper articles, traveler’s accounts, women’s wills, and archival research, Prados-Torreira coalesces a valuable narrative out of the often paradoxical and conflicting stories of the human bonds between the female owner and the enslaved. Narrative chapters, enlivened by vignettes, describe the daily life of slave mistresses in the main cities of Havana and Santiago and other towns, workings of sugar mills and coffee plantations, how slaveholding women coping with slave rebellions and wartime during the Ten Years’ War, and how personal relationships could occasionally affect the balance of power.
 

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cover of The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement

The Power of Tiananmen

State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement

Dingxin Zhao

University of Chicago Press, 2001

In the spring of 1989 over 100,000 students in Beijing initiated the largest student revolt in human history. Television screens across the world filled with searing images from Tiananmen Square of protesters thronging the streets, massive hunger strikes, tanks set ablaze, and survivors tending to the dead and wounded after a swift and brutal government crackdown.

Dingxin Zhao's award-winning The Power of Tiananmen is the definitive treatment of these historic events. Along with grassroots tales and interviews with the young men and women who launched the demonstrations, Zhao carries out a penetrating analysis of the many parallel changes in China's state-society relations during the 1980s. Such changes prepared an alienated academy, gave rise to ecology-based student mobilization, restricted government policy choices, and shaped student emotions and public opinion, all of which, Zhao argues, account for the tragic events in Tiananmen.
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cover of The Power of Two: A Twin Triumph Over Cystic Fibrosis

The Power of Two

A Twin Triumph Over Cystic Fibrosis

Isabel Byrnes and Anabel Stenzel

University of Missouri Press, 2007

For most people, a diagnosis of cystic fibrosis means the certainty of a life ended too soon. But for twin girls with the disease, what began as a family’s stubborn determination grew into a miracle.

            The tragedy of CF has been touchingly recounted in such books as Frank Deford’s Alex: The Life of a Child, but The Power of Two is the first book to portray the symbiotic relationship between twins who share this life-threatening disease through adulthood. Isabel Stenzel Byrnes and Anabel Stenzel tell of their lifelong struggle to pursue normal lives with cystic fibrosis while grappling with the realization that they will die young. Their story reflects the physical and emotional challenges of a particularly aggressive form of CF and tells how the twins’ bicultural heritage—Japanese and German—influenced the way they coped with these challenges.

            Born in 1972, seventeen years before scientists discovered the genetic mutation that causes CF, Isabel and Anabel endured the daily regimen of chest percussion, frequent doctor visits, and lengthy hospitalizations. But they tell how, in the face of innumerable setbacks, their deep-seated dependence on each other allowed them to survive long enough to reap the benefits of the miraculous lung transplants that marked a crossroads in their lives: “We have an old life—one of growing up with chronic illness—and a new life—one of opportunities and gifts we have never imagined before.” In this memoir, they pay tribute to the people who shaped their experience.

            The Power of Two is an honest and gripping portrayal of day-to-day health care, the impact of chronic illness on marriage and family, and the importance of a support network to continuing survival. It conveys an important message to both popular and professional readers as it addresses key psychosocial issues in chronic illness throughout the sufferer’s lifespan and illuminates the human side of advances in biotechnology.

            Even as gene therapy and stem cell research increase the chances for eradicating CF, this stirring account portrays its effects on one family that refused to give up. These two remarkable sisters have much to teach about the power of perseverance—and about the ultimate power of hope.

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cover of The Power of Two: A Twin Triumph over Cystic Fibrosis, Updated and Expanded Edition

The Power of Two

A Twin Triumph over Cystic Fibrosis, Updated and Expanded Edition

Isabel Stenzel Byrnes and Anabel Stenzel

University of Missouri Press, 2014

For most people, a diagnosis of cystic fibrosis means the certainty of a life ended too soon. But for Isabel Stenzel Byrnes and Anabel Stenzel, twin girls with the disease, what began as a family’s stubborn determination grew into a miracle.

The tragedy of CF has been touchingly recounted in such books as Frank Deford’s Alex: The Life of a Child, but The Power of Two is the first book to portray the symbiotic relationship of twins who share this life-threatening disease through adulthood.Isabel and Anabel tell of their lifelong struggle to pursue normal lives with cystic fibrosis while grappling with the realization that they will die young. Their story reflects the physical and emotional challenges of a particularly aggressive form of CF and is an honest and gripping portrayal of the daily struggle associated with long-term hospitalization, the impact of chronic illness on marriage and family, and the importance of a support network to continuing survival.
Born in 1972, seventeen years before scientists discovered the genetic mutation that causes CF, the Stenzel twins endured the daily regimen of chest percussion, frequent doctor visits, and lengthy hospitalizations. But in the face of innumerable setbacks, their deep-seated dependence on each other allowed them to survive long enough to reap the benefits of the miraculous lung transplants that marked a turning point in their lives: “We have an old life—one of growing up with chronic illness—and anew life—one of opportunities and gifts we have never imagined before.” In this memoir, they pay tribute to the people who shaped their experience. These two remarkable sisters have much to teach about the power of perseverance—and about the ultimate power of hope.
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cover of The Power of Words: Anglo-Saxon Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg on his Seventieth BirthdayANGLO-SAXON STUDIES PRESENTED TO DONALD G. SCRAGG ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

The Power of Words

Anglo-Saxon Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg on his Seventieth BirthdayANGLO-SAXON STUDIES PRESENTED TO DONALD G. SCRAGG ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

Hugh Magennis

West Virginia University Press, 2006

The Power of Words: Anglo-Saxon Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg on his Seventieth Birthday edited by Jonathan Wilcox and Hugh Magennis will find its place on the same shelf with these and other such valuable tomes in the discipline. This is a complex and carefully edited book, that showcases the work of some of Professor Scragg’s best students and most admiring professional friends. The contents range from several studies in homiletic literature, one of Professor Scragg’s own passions, to other of his pursuits, including editing theory and orthography. These are not, however, derivative essays that recommend a single adjustment in a reading or to a source study; instead, they are studies that do what Professor Scragg himself did: they observe clues to larger realities, and they point the way to a broader comprehension of our discipline and its several methodologies.

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cover of The Power of Words: Studies on Charms and Charming in Europe

The Power of Words

Studies on Charms and Charming in Europe

James Kapalo

Central European University Press, 2013

n medieval and early modern Europe, the use of charms was a living practice in all strata of society. The essays in this latest CEU Press publication explore the rich textual tradition of archives, monasteries, and literary sources. The author also discusses texts amassed in folklore archives and ones that are still accessible through field work in many rural areas of Europe.
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cover of The Power of Writing: Dartmouth '66 in the Twenty-First Century

The Power of Writing

Dartmouth '66 in the Twenty-First Century

Edited by Christiane Donahue and Kelly Blewett

Dartmouth College Press, 2015

At the 1966 Dartmouth Seminar, scholars gathered to debate the direction of English Studies in the academy. This debate had far-reaching effects and arguably forever changed writing instruction in the United States. To commemorate the 45th anniversary of this gathering, Dartmouth College hosted an event both celebrating the past and looking toward the future. Then as now, there is this simple truth: writing well matters, and it matters in institutions of higher education across disciplines. Yet what it means to be a good writer in the academy and in the public sphere remains a site of controversy and discussion. The Power of Writing: Dartmouth ’66 in the Twenty-First Century argues that any discussion of why writing well matters should extend beyond composition and rhetoric scholars to capture the knowledge that outstanding teachers and writers themselves put to work every day. The editors have brought together scholars and public intellectuals (including New York Times best-selling authors David McCullough and Steve Strogatz) from the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and interdisciplinary fields to engage in a dialogue about some of the controversial questions related to writing today. Readers will engage with questions about what it means to write well and how different answers affect the teaching and learning of writing in higher education. Each anchor article—representing disciplines as varied as musicology, African studies, mathematics, and history—receives responses from Dartmouth faculty and nationally renowned faculty members in writing studies programs. This timely and wide-ranging collection will have appeal far beyond writing instructors and is specifically designed for readers across disciplines.
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cover of The Power of the Badge: Sheriffs and Inequality in the United States

The Power of the Badge

Sheriffs and Inequality in the United States

Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman

University of Chicago Press, 2024

A sobering exploration of the near unchecked power of sheriffs in the United States.

Across the United States, more than 3,000 sheriffs occupy a unique position in the US political and legal systems. Elected by voters—usually in low-visibility, noncompetitive elections—sheriffs oversee more than a third of law enforcement employees and control almost all local jails. They have the power to both set and administer policies, and they can imprison, harm, and even kill members of their communities. Yet, they enjoy a degree of autonomy not seen by other political officeholders.

The Power of the Badge offers an unprecedented, data-rich look into the politics of the office and its effects on local communities. Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman draw on two surveys of sheriffs taken nearly a decade apart, as well as election data, case studies, and administrative data to show how a volatile combination of authority and autonomy has created an environment where sheriffs rarely change; elections seldom create meaningful accountability; employees, budgets, and jails can be used for political gains; marginalized populations can be punished; and reforms fail. Farris and Holman also track the increasingly close linkages between sheriffs and right-wing radical groups in an era of high partisanship and intra-federal conflict.

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cover of The Power of the Between: An Anthropological Odyssey

The Power of the Between

An Anthropological Odyssey

Paul Stoller

University of Chicago Press, 2008

It is the anthropologist’s fate to always be between things: countries, languages, cultures, even realities. But rather than lament this, anthropologist Paul Stoller here celebrates the creative power of the between, showing how it can transform us, changing our conceptions of who we are, what we know, and how we live in the world.

Beginning with his early days with the Peace Corps in Africa and culminating with a recent bout with cancer, The Power of the Between is an evocative account of the circuitous path Stoller’s life has taken, offering a fascinating depiction of how a career is shaped over decades of reading and research. Stoller imparts his accumulated wisdom not through grandiose pronouncements but by drawing on his gift for storytelling. Tales of his apprenticeship to a sorcerer in Niger, his studies with Claude Lévi-Strauss in Paris, and his friendships with West African street vendors in New York City accompany philosophical reflections on love, memory, power, courage, health, and illness.

Graced with Stoller’s trademark humor and narrative elegance, The Power of the Between is both the story of a distinguished career and a profound meditation on coming to terms with the impermanence of all things.
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cover of The Power of the Steel-tipped Pen: Reconstructing Native Hawaiian Intellectual History

The Power of the Steel-tipped Pen

Reconstructing Native Hawaiian Intellectual History

Noenoe K. Silva

Duke University Press, 2017

In The Power of the Steel-tipped Pen Noenoe K. Silva reconstructs the indigenous intellectual history of a culture where—using Western standards—none is presumed to exist. Silva examines the work of two lesser-known Hawaiian writers—Joseph Ho‘ona‘auao Kānepu‘u (1824–ca. 1885) and Joseph Moku‘ōhai Poepoe (1852–1913)—to show how the rich intellectual history preserved in Hawaiian-language newspapers is key to understanding Native Hawaiian epistemology and ontology. In their newspaper articles, geographical surveys, biographies, historical narratives, translations, literatures, political and economic analyses, and poetic works, Kānepu‘u and Poepoe created a record of Hawaiian cultural history and thought in order to transmit ancestral knowledge to future generations. Celebrating indigenous intellectual agency in the midst of US imperialism, The Power of the Steel-tipped Pen is a call for the further restoration of native Hawaiian intellectual history to help ground contemporary Hawaiian thought, culture, and governance.
[more]
cover of The Power of the Texas Governor: Connally to Bush

The Power of the Texas Governor

Connally to Bush

By Brian McCall

University of Texas Press, 2009

George W. Bush called it "the best job in the world," yet many would argue that the Texas governorship is a weak office. Given few enumerated powers by the Texas Constitution, the governor must build a successful relationship with the state legislature—sometimes led by a powerful lieutenant governor or speaker of the opposing party—to advance his or her policy agenda. Yet despite the limitations on the office and the power of the legislative branch, many governors have had a significant impact on major aspects of Texas's public life—government, economic development, education, and insurance reform among them. How do Texas governors gain the power to govern effectively?

The Power of the Texas Governor takes a fresh look at the state's chief executives, from John Connally to George W. Bush, to discover how various governors have overcome the institutional limitations of the office. Delving into the governors' election campaigns and successes and failures in office, Brian McCall makes a convincing case that the strength of a governor's personality—in particular, his or her highly developed social skills—can translate into real political power. He shows, for example, how governors such as Ann Richards and George W. Bush forged personal relationships with individual legislators to achieve their policy goals. Filled with revealing insights and anecdotes from key players in each administration, The Power of the Texas Governor offers new perspectives on leadership and valuable lessons on the use of power.

[more]
cover of The Power to Destroy: How Bad Economics Drove America’s Decline

The Power to Destroy

How Bad Economics Drove America’s Decline

James K. Galbraith

University of Chicago Press, 2026

Acclaimed economist James K. Galbraith sounds an urgent alarm: how conventional economic ideas and policies are unequipped to account for the most daunting challenges of our geopolitical moment.

Amid a mounting sense of American decline, Americans live with a new kind of dissonance: economists announcing that everything is fundamentally fine. Where growth is steady, unemployment is low, prices are (somewhat) stable, and stocks are high—what’s there to worry about? 

The Power to Destroy shows that this dissonance reflects a failure to evolve. James K. Galbraith’s incisive history of economic policy in this century is grounded in the fundamental problem that today’s experts are still deploying tools from all yesterday’s wars: obsolete economic ideas, measures, and doctrines focused on market functioning and crude economic indicators like output and prices. These methods, many of them honed a century ago against a vastly different social landscape, offer little hope in the face of today’s more existential threats. 

Such conventional policies, Galbraith argues, are increasingly ill-equipped to counter the daunting challenges of our moment—from inflation to trade sanctions, industrial cold wars, and climate change—and, left unacknowledged, are accelerating the end of the US economy as we know it. Shortcomings include the weak responses to the inflation of 2021-2022; the sanctions war against Russia; the rise of China; the weak and ineffective attempt at industrial revival; and the impending demographic crisis. All have roots in a flawed body of outdated economic thought that has been sustained for ideological rather than practical reasons. They now promise to hinder the United States in the emerging multipolar world. 

As Galbraith makes plain, for all the virtues of the market system, governments and their policies make markets possible. The ideas behind the policies—for better or worse—will determine the fate of the US economy—and new and better ideas are urgently needed. The alternative—sticking with economic ideas and policies we know and currently use—brings the power to destroy us all. 

[more]
cover of The Power to Die: Slavery and Suicide in British North America

The Power to Die

Slavery and Suicide in British North America

Terri L. Snyder

University of Chicago Press, 2015

The history of slavery in early America is a history of suicide. On ships crossing the Atlantic, enslaved men and women refused to eat or leaped into the ocean. They strangled or hanged themselves. They tore open their own throats. In America, they jumped into rivers or out of windows, or even ran into burning buildings. Faced with the reality of enslavement, countless Africans chose death instead.

In The Power to Die, Terri L. Snyder excavates the history of slave suicide, returning it to its central place in early American history. How did people—traders, plantation owners, and, most importantly, enslaved men and women themselves—view and understand these deaths, and how did they affect understandings of the institution of slavery then and now? Snyder draws on ships’ logs, surgeons' journals, judicial and legislative records, newspaper accounts, abolitionist propaganda and slave narratives, and many other sources to build a grim picture of slavery’s toll and detail the ways in which suicide exposed the contradictions of slavery, serving as a powerful indictment that resonated throughout the Anglo-Atlantic world and continues to speak to historians today.
[more]
cover of The Power to Heal: Civil Rights, Medicare, and the Struggle to Transform America's Health Care System

The Power to Heal

Civil Rights, Medicare, and the Struggle to Transform America's Health Care System

David Barton Smith

Vanderbilt University Press, 2016

In less than four months, beginning with a staff of five, an obscure office buried deep within the federal bureaucracy transformed the nation's hospitals from our most racially and economically segregated institutions into our most integrated. These powerful private institutions, which had for a half century selectively served people on the basis of race and wealth, began equally caring for all on the basis of need.

The book draws the reader into the struggles of the unsung heroes of the transformation, black medical leaders whose stubborn courage helped shape the larger civil rights movement. They demanded an end to federal subsidization of discrimination in the form of Medicare payments to hospitals that embraced the "separate but equal" creed that shaped American life during the Jim Crow era. Faced with this pressure, the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations tried to play a cautious chess game, but that game led to perhaps the biggest gamble in the history of domestic policy. Leaders secretly recruited volunteer federal employees to serve as inspectors, and an invisible army of hospital workers and civil rights activists to work as agents, making it impossible for hospitals to get Medicare dollars with mere paper compliance. These triumphs did not come without casualties, yet the story offers lessons and hope for realizing this transformational dream.

This book is the recipient of the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize from Vanderbilt University Press for the best book in the area of medicine.
[more]
cover of The Power to Name: A History of Anonymity in Colonial West Africa

The Power to Name

A History of Anonymity in Colonial West Africa

Stephanie Newell

Ohio University Press, 2013

Between the 1880s and the 1940s, the region known as British West Africa became a dynamic zone of literary creativity and textual experimentation. African-owned newspapers offered local writers numerous opportunities to contribute material for publication, and editors repeatedly defined the press as a vehicle to host public debates rather than simply as an organ to disseminate news or editorial ideology. Literate locals responded with great zeal, and in increasing numbers as the twentieth century progressed, they sent in letters, articles, fiction, and poetry for publication in English- and African-language newspapers.

The Power to Name offers a rich cultural history of this phenomenon, examining the wide array of anonymous and pseudonymous writing practices to be found in African-owned newspapers between the 1880s and the 1940s, and the rise of celebrity journalism in the period of anticolonial nationalism. Stephanie Newell has produced an account of colonial West Africa that skillfully shows the ways in which colonized subjects used pseudonyms and anonymity to alter and play with colonial power and constructions of African identity.

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cover of The Price of Power: America Since 1945

The Price of Power

America Since 1945

Herbert Agar

University of Chicago Press, 1957

Once the sword of power has been drawn, it can never again be sheathed. That is the lesson the United States has been learning ever since she emerged from World War II as one of the great world powers. This central issue dominates Herbert Agar's exciting narrative history of the first twelve years of American world responsibility. He reviews the events and crises that have marked postwar history—the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, the Berlin airlift, the Eightieth Congress and Truman's election, the Hiss case, the collapse of Nationalist China, the McCarthy hearings, the atom and hydrogen bombs, McCarthy's "retirement," and Eisenhower's first election. In the great tradition of journalism and history, Mr. Agar has based his writings on close observation of recent world events and on his acquaintance with the people who have participated in them. He presents a vigorous and brilliant interpretation of the difficult years of America's coming of age in the field of international politics and diplomacy and a candid evaluation of the price America must pay as the world's most powerful nation.
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cover of The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

The Pursuit of Power

Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

William H. McNeill

University of Chicago Press, 1982

In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow—banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another—to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the seventeenth century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the twentieth. His central argument is that a commercial transformation of world society in the eleventh century caused military activity to respond increasingly to market forces as well as to the commands of rulers. Only in our own time, suggests McNeill, are command economies replacing the market control of large-scale human effort. The Pursuit of Power does not solve the problems of the present, but its discoveries, hypotheses, and sheer breadth of learning do offer a perspective on our current fears and, as McNeill hopes, "a ground for wiser action."
 
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cover of The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the LA Underground

The Real Hiphop

Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the LA Underground

Marcyliena Morgan

Duke University Press, 2009

Project Blowed is a legendary hiphop workshop based in Los Angeles. It began in 1994 when a group of youths moved their already renowned open-mic nights from the Good Life, a Crenshaw district health food store, to the KAOS Network, an arts center in Leimert Park. The local freestyle of articulate, rapid-fire, extemporaneous delivery, the juxtaposition of meaningful words and sounds, and the way that MCs followed one another without missing a beat, quickly became known throughout the LA underground. Leimert Park has long been a center of African American culture and arts in Los Angeles, and Project Blowed inspired youth throughout the city to consider the neighborhood the epicenter of their own cultural movement. The Real Hiphop is an in-depth account of the language and culture of Project Blowed, based on the seven years Marcyliena Morgan spent observing the workshop and the KAOS Network. Morgan is a leading scholar of hiphop, and throughout the volume her ethnographic analysis of the LA underground opens up into a broader examination of the artistic and cultural value of hiphop.

Morgan intersperses her observations with excerpts from interviews and transcripts of freestyle lyrics. Providing a thorough linguistic interpretation of the music, she teases out the cultural antecedents and ideologies embedded in the language, emphases, and wordplay. She discusses the artistic skills and cultural knowledge MCs must acquire to rock the mic, the socialization of hiphop culture’s core and long-term members, and the persistent focus on skills, competition, and evaluation. She brings attention to adults who provided material and moral support to sustain underground hiphop, identifies the ways that women choose to participate in Project Blowed, and vividly renders the dynamics of the workshop’s famous lyrical battles.

[more]
cover of The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection

The Rise of the American Conservation Movement

Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection

Dorceta E. Taylor

Duke University Press, 2016

In this sweeping social history Dorceta E. Taylor examines the emergence and rise of the multifaceted U.S. conservation movement from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. She shows how race, class, and gender influenced every aspect of the movement, including the establishment of parks; campaigns to protect wild game, birds, and fish; forest conservation; outdoor recreation; and the movement's links to nineteenth-century ideologies. Initially led by white urban elites—whose early efforts discriminated against the lower class and were often tied up with slavery and the appropriation of Native lands—the movement benefited from contributions to policy making, knowledge about the environment, and activism by the poor and working class, people of color, women, and Native Americans. Far-ranging and nuanced, The Rise of the American Conservation Movement comprehensively documents the movement's competing motivations, conflicts, problematic practices, and achievements in new ways.
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cover of The Servant Leader: Unleashing the Power of Your People

The Servant Leader

Unleashing the Power of Your People

Robert P. Neuschel

Northwestern University Press, 2005

In The Servant Leader, Robert P. Neuschel makes the case that our leadership is experiencing a diminution in ethics and a loss of enduring values. These weakening factors are exacerbated by a preoccupation with the short term. As Neuschel puts it, "We are more concerned about achieving quick shareholder value than building an enduring organization that can increase its capacity to produce useful products or services more competitively and more effectively on an enduring basis." He lays the blame at the feet of our corporate leadership.

He asks: what steps might we take to revitalize the quality and strength of our leadership? He then forcefully and straightforwardly gives an outline of what he believes are the major changes in leadership we must bring about. As a professor of management and strategy, and earlier, as a director and senior partner at a major consulting firm, and as a captain in the U. S. Army, Neuschel observed the best of leadership, and practiced it. He shares his insights with us in The Servant Leader.
[more]
cover of The Sign of the Burger: Mcdonald'S And The Culture Of Power

The Sign of the Burger

Mcdonald'S And The Culture Of Power

Joe Kincheloe

Temple University Press, 2002

"I didn't want to remain a hick from the mountains... In my cultural naivete I saw McDonald's as a place somehow where modern culture capital could be dispensed. Keeping these memories in mind as years later I monitored scores of conversations about the Golden Arches in the late 1990's, it became apparent that McDonald's is still considered a marker of a modern identity."

So begins a complicated journey into the power of one of the most recognizable signs of American capitalism: The Golden Arches. The Sign of the Burger examines how McDonald's captures our imagination: as a shorthand for explaining the power of American culture; as a symbol of the strength of consumerism; as a bellwether for the condition of labor in a globalized economy; and often, for better or worse, a powerful educational tool that often defines the nature of culture for hundreds of millions the world over.

While many books have offered simple complaints of the power of McDonald's, Joe Kincheloe explores the real ways McDonald's affects us. We see him as a young boy in Appalachia, watching the Golden Arches going up as the—hopeful—arrival of the modern into his rural world. And we travel with him around the world to see how this approach of the modern affects other people, either through excitement or through attempts at resisting McDonald's power, often in unfortunate ways. Through it all, Kincheloe makes clear, with lucidity and depth, the fact that McDonald's growth will in many ways determine both the nature of accepting and protesting its ever-expanding presence in our global world.

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[more]
cover of The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration: Power on Parade, 1877-1995

The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration

Power on Parade, 1877-1995

Thomas M. Spencer

University of Missouri Press, 2021

The Veiled Prophet organization has been a vital institution in St. Louis for more than a century. Founded in March 1878 by a group of prominent St. Louis businessmen, the organization was fashioned after the New Orleans Carnival society the Mystick Krewe of Comus. In The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration, Thomas Spencer explores the social and cultural functions of the organization's annual celebration—the Veiled Prophet parade and ball—and traces the shifts that occurred over the years in its cultural meaning and importance. Although scholars have researched the more pluralistic parades of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, very little has been done to examine the elite-dominated parades of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This study shows how pluralistic parades ceased to exist in St. Louis and why the upper echelon felt it was so important to end them.

Spencer shows that the celebration originated as the business elite's response to the St. Louis general strike of 1877. Symbolically gaining control of the streets, the elites presented St. Louis history and American history by tracing the triumphs of great men—men who happened to be the Veiled Prophet members' ancestors. The parade, therefore, was intended to awe the masses toward passivity with its symbolic show of power. The members believed that they were helping to boost St. Louis economically and culturally by enticing visitors from the surrounding communities. They also felt that the parades provided the spectators with advice on morals and social issues and distracted them from less desirable behavior like drinking and carousing.

From 1900 to 1965 the celebration continued to include educational and historical elements; thereafter, it began to resemble the commercialized leisure that was increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. The biggest change occurred in the period from 1965 to 1980, when the protests of civil rights groups led many St. Louisans to view the parade and ball as wasteful conspicuous consumption that was often subsidized with taxpayers' money. With membership dropping and the news media giving the organization little notice, it soon began to wither. In response, the leaders of the Veiled Prophet organization decided to have a "VP Fair" over the Fourth of July weekend. The 1990s brought even more changes, and the members began to view the celebration as a way to unite the St. Louis community, with all of its diversity, rather than as a chance to boost the city or teach cultural values. The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration is a valuable addition not only to the cultural history of Missouri and St. Louis but also to recent scholarship on urban culture, city politics, and the history of public celebrations in America.

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cover of The Syntax of Sports, Class 2: The Power of the Particular

The Syntax of Sports, Class 2

The Power of the Particular

Patrick Barry

Michigan Publishing Services, 2020

What can we learn from baseball great Ted Williams about how to improve our writing? What can we learn we from the iconic ESPN show SportsCenter  about how to manage information? And are you sure you really know what the word “peruse” means? 

Explore these and other questions in the second volume of The Syntax of Sports, a series designed to recreate a popular course at the University of Michigan. Here are a few things students have said about the experience of taking it.

  •  “Patrick Barry is the best teacher I have ever had. I have never learned so much in a class. I hated English my whole life until I took this course.”

  • “I feel like this is and always will be the most valuable class I've ever taken here.”

  • “I genuinely wanted to show up to this class due to the amount I knew I would learn.” 

  •  “I'm going to severely SEVERELY miss this course.”

  • “Every student should try to take one of Prof. Barry’s classes if he or she wants to become a better writer.”

  •  “My writing is now 113x better.”

[more]
cover of The Tocco of the Greek Realm: Nobility, Power and Migration in Latin Greece (14th – 15th centuries)

The Tocco of the Greek Realm

Nobility, Power and Migration in Latin Greece (14th – 15th centuries)

Nada Zečević

Central European University Press, 2015

This book is about the Tocco family, the most prominent kindreds in Latin Greece during the 14th and 15th centuries. Originally from the Italian South, their five generations ruled the Greek regions of the Heptanese, Epiros and Peloponnese. By exploring the elaborate structures of their power, this monograph reveals an intricate nexus of dynamic personal and political relations, as well as larger socio-historical processes that transformed this family from junior nobility of the Angevin Naples into independent elite ruling a region on the crossroads between the Byzantine East and the Latin West. In doing so, this saga of the Tocco nobility, power and migration gives a critical overview of the early-modern and modern scholarship dealing with this family, cross-examining, at the same time, a most extensive pool of primary sources: Latin and Greek narratives, family documents and genealogies until now largely unpublished or little known to the scholarship, legal sources and diplomatic correspondence, commercial books and archeological reports.
[more]
cover of The Tree That Bends: Discourse, Power, and the Survival of Maskoki People

The Tree That Bends

Discourse, Power, and the Survival of Maskoki People

Patricia Riles Wickman

University of Alabama Press, 1999

A new paradigm for the interpretation of southeastern Native American and Spanish colonial history and a new way to view the development of the United States

In her compelling and controversial arguments, Wickman rejects the myths that erase Native Americans from Florida through the agency of Spaniards and diseases and make the area an empty frontier awaiting American expansion. Through research on both sides of the Atlantic and extensive oral history interviews among the Seminoles of Florida and Oklahoma, Wickman shatters current theories about the origins of the people encountered by the Spaniards and presents, for the first time ever, the Native American perspective. She describes the genesis of the groups known today as Creek, Seminole, and Miccosukee—the Maskoki peoples—and traces their common Mississippian heritage, affirming their claims to continuous habitation of the Southeast and Florida. Her work exposes the rhetoric of conquest and replaces it with the rhetoric of survival.


An important cross-disciplinary work, The Tree That Bends reveals the flexibility of the Maskoki people and the sociocultural mechanisms that allowed them to survive the pressures introduced at contact. Their world was capable of incorporating the New without destroying the Old, and their descendants not only survive today but also succeed as a discrete culture as a result.


 

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cover of The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power

The Trouble with Men

Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power

David Shields

The Ohio State University Press, 2019

David Shields’s The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power is an immersion into the perils, limits, and possibilities of human intimacy. All at once a love letter to his wife, a nervy reckoning with his own fallibility, a meditation on the impact of porn on American culture, and an attempt to understand marriage (one marriage, the idea of marriage, all marriages), The Trouble with Men is exquisitely balanced between the personal and the anthropological, nakedness and restraint. While unashamedly intellectual, it’s also irresistibly readable and extremely moving. Over five increasingly intimate chapters, Shields probes the contours of his own psyche and marriage, marshalling a chorus of other voices that leaven, deepen, and universalize his experience; his goal is nothing less than a deconstruction of eros and conventional masculinity. Masterfully woven throughout is an unmistakable and surprisingly tender cri de coeur to his wife. The risk and vulnerability on display are in the service of radical candor, acerbic wit, real emotion, and profound insight—exactly what we’ve come to expect from Shields, who, in an open invitation to the reader, leaves everything on the page.
[more]
cover of The Visions of Sor María de Agreda: Writing Knowledge and Power

The Visions of Sor María de Agreda

Writing Knowledge and Power

Clark Colahan

University of Arizona Press, 1994

Sor María de Agreda (1602-65) was a Spanish nun and visionary who is best known as the author of the widely read biography of the Virgin Mary, The Mystical City of God, and as the missionary who "bilocated" to the American Southwest, reportedly appearing to Indians there without ever leaving Spain. Her role as advisor to King Philip IV contributed further to her legend. Clark Colahan now offers the first major study of Sor María's writings, including translations of two previously unpublished works: Face of the Earth and Map of the Spheres and the first half of her Report to Father Manero, in which she reflects on her bilocation.
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cover of The X Club: Power and Authority in Victorian Science

The X Club

Power and Authority in Victorian Science

Ruth Barton

University of Chicago Press, 2018

In 1864, amid headline-grabbing heresy trials, members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science were asked to sign a declaration affirming that science and scripture were in agreement. Many criticized the new test of orthodoxy; nine decided that collaborative action was required. The X Club tells their story.

These six ambitious professionals and three wealthy amateurs—J. D. Hooker, T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, John Lubbock, William Spottiswoode, Edward Frankland, George Busk, T. A. Hirst, and Herbert Spencer—wanted to guide the development of science and public opinion on issues where science impinged on daily life, religious belief, and politics. They formed a private dining club, which they named the X Club, to discuss and further their plans. As Ruth Barton shows, they had a clear objective: they wanted to promote “scientific habits of mind,” which they sought to do through lectures, journalism, and science education. They devoted enormous effort to the expansion of science education, with real, but mixed, success. 

​For twenty years, the X Club was the most powerful network in Victorian science—the men succeeded each other in the presidency of the Royal Society for a dozen years. Barton’s group biography traces the roots of their success and the lasting effects of their championing of science against those who attempted to limit or control it, along the way shedding light on the social organization of science, the interactions of science and the state, and the places of science and scientific men in elite culture in the Victorian era.
[more]
cover of Theatre and Cartographies of Power: Repositioning the Latina/o Americas

Theatre and Cartographies of Power

Repositioning the Latina/o Americas

Edited by Jimmy A. Noriega and Analola Santana

Southern Illinois University Press, 2018

From the colonial period to independence and into the twenty-first century, Latin American culture has been mapped as a subordinate “other” to Europe and the United States. This collection reconsiders geographical space and power and the ways in which theatrical and performance histories have been constructed throughout the Americas. Essays bridge political, racial, gender, class, and national divides that have traditionally restricted and distorted our understanding of Latin American theatre and performance. Contributors—scholars and artists from throughout the Americas, including well-known playwrights, directors, and performers—imagine how to reposition the Latina/o Americas in ways that offer agency to its multiple peoples, cultures, and histories. In addition, they explore the ways artists can create new maps and methods for their creative visions.
 
Building on hemispheric and transnational models, this book demonstrates the capacity of theatre studies to challenge the up-down/North-South approach that dominates scholarship in the United States and presents a strong case for a repositioning of the Latina/o Americas in theatrical histories and practices.
 
[more]
cover of Theatrical Jazz: Performance,  À??, and the Power of the Present Moment

Theatrical Jazz

Performance, À??, and the Power of the Present Moment

Omi Osun Joni L. Jones

The Ohio State University Press, 2015

Omi Osun Joni L. Jones provides the first full-length study of an artistic form, the theatrical jazz aesthetic, that draws on the jazz principles of ensemble—the break, the bridge, and the blue note. Theatrical Jazz:  Performance, À??, and the Power of the Present Moment is a study of the use of jazz aesthetics in theatre as created by major practitioners of the form, giving particular attention to three innovative artists: Laurie Carlos, Daniel Alexander Jones, and Sharon Bridgforth.
 
Theatrical Jazz examines how artists are made and how artists make art. In charting their overlapping artistic genealogies, the book also discusses the work of veteran artists Aishah Rahman, Robbie McCauley, Sekou Sundiata, Ntozake Shange, and Erik Ehn, as well as the next generation of theatrical jazz innovators, Grisha Coleman, Walter Kitundu, Florinda Bryant, and Zell Miller III. Using autocritography as a primary methodology, the author draws on her role as performer, collaborator, audience/witness, and dramaturg in theatrical jazz, and her experiences with Yoruba spiritual traditions, to excavate the layers and nuances of this performance form.  Jones’s use of performative writing, a blend of intellectual, artistic, and sensory experiences, allows scholars and students not only to read but also to “hear” the principles of theatrical jazz on the page.
 
[more]
cover of Theories Of The New Class: Intellectuals And Power

Theories Of The New Class

Intellectuals And Power

Lawrence Peter King

University of Minnesota Press, 2004

Demonstrates the centrality of thinking about intellectual class formation to social theory

Old as the notion of the “New Class” is (the term was coined by anarchist Mikhail Bakunin around 1870), the idea of the ascendancy of an intellectual elite continues to engage, and perplex, social theorists. In Theories of the New Class, Iván Szelényi, one of the most incisive and respected analysts of the intellectual class, and his colleague Lawrence King put New Class theories into a broad historical framework for the first time.

Addressing the intellectual history of Marxism and socialism, theories of the increasing role of the state and technocratic elites in capitalism, and theories of contemporary social change, King and Szelényi’s work clearly links the centrality of thinking about intellectual class formation to a variety of theoretical and political projects that have shaped social theory and influenced political realities over the past century.King and Szelényi show that the idea of the New Class has stubbornly entered and reentered the agenda of critical social theorizing throughout the last century. Indeed, they interpret that the last century as a history of projects by different groups of the highly educated—factions of intellectuals, bureaucrats, technocrats, managers, and the left-wing humanistic intelligentsia—to gain ultimate power. A rare empirical discussion of theory, Theories of the New Class invigorates class theories by grounding them in contemporary issues; at the same time, it uses modern polemics to revitalize historical debates on the origins of capitalism.
[more]
cover of There She Goes Again: Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises

There She Goes Again

Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises

Aviva Dove-Viebahn

Rutgers University Press, 2024

There She Goes Again interrogates the representation of ostensibly powerful women in transmedia franchises, examining how presumed feminine traits—love, empathy, altruism, diplomacy—are alternately lauded and repudiated as possibilities for effecting long-lasting social change. By questioning how these franchises reimagine their protagonists over time, the book reflects on the role that gendered exceptionalism plays in social and political action, as well as what forms of knowledge and power are presumed distinctly feminine. The franchises explored in this book illustrate the ambivalent (post)feminist representation of women protagonists as uniquely gifted in ways both gendered and seemingly ungendered, and yet inherently bound to expressions of their femininity. At heart,There She Goes Again asks under what terms and in what contexts women protagonists are imagined, envisioned, embodied, and replicated in media. Especially now, in a period of gradually increasing representation, women protagonists demonstrate the importance of considering how we should define—and whether we need—feminine forms of knowledge and power.
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