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Ranging from math to literature to philosophy, Uncountable explains how numbers triumphed as the basis of knowledge—and compromise our sense of humanity.

Our knowledge of mathematics has structured much of what we think we know about ourselves as individuals and communities, shaping our psychologies, sociologies, and economies. In pursuit of a more predictable and more controllable cosmos, we have extended mathematical insights and methods to more and more aspects of the world. Today those powers are greater than ever, as computation is applied to virtually every aspect of human activity. Yet, in the process, are we losing sight of the human? When we apply mathematics so broadly, what do we gain and what do we lose, and at what risk to humanity?

These are the questions that David and Ricardo L. Nirenberg ask in Uncountable, a provocative account of how numerical relations became the cornerstone of human claims to knowledge, truth, and certainty. There is a limit to these number-based claims, they argue, which they set out to explore. The Nirenbergs, father and son, bring together their backgrounds in math, history, literature, religion, and philosophy, interweaving scientific experiments with readings of poems, setting crises in mathematics alongside world wars, and putting medieval Muslim and Buddhist philosophers in conversation with Einstein, Schrödinger, and other giants of modern physics. The result is a powerful lesson in what counts as knowledge and its deepest implications for how we live our lives.
 

In Undoing Suicidism, Alexandre Baril argues that suicidal people are oppressed by what he calls structural suicidism, a hidden oppression that, until now, has been unnamed and under-theorized. Each year, suicidism and its preventionist script and strategies reproduce violence and cause additional harm and death among suicidal people through forms of criminalization, incarceration, discrimination, stigmatization, and pathologization. This is particularly true for marginalized groups experiencing multiple oppressions, including queer, trans, disabled, or Mad people. 
 
Undoing Suicidism questions the belief that the best way to help suicidal people is through the logic of prevention. Alexandre Baril presents the thought-provoking argument that supporting assisted suicide for suicidal people could better prevent unnecessary deaths. Offering a new queercrip model of (assisted) suicide, he invites us to imagine what could happen if we started thinking about (assisted) suicide from an anti-suicidist and intersectional framework. 
 
Baril provides a radical reconceptualization of (assisted) suicide and invaluable reflections for academics, activists, practitioners, and policymakers.
 

HONORABLE MENTION, 2024 Conference on College Composition and Communication Outstanding Book Award in Edited Collection!

A collection of accessible, interdisciplinary essays that explore archival practices to unsettle traditional archival theories and methodologies.
 
What would it mean to unsettle the archives? How can we better see the wounded and wounding places and histories that produce absence and silence in the name of progress and knowledge? Unsettling Archival Research sets out to answer these urgent questions and more, with essays that chart a more just path for archival work.
 
Unsettling Archival Research is one of the first publications in rhetoric and writing studies dedicated to scholarship that unsettles disciplinary knowledge of archival research by drawing on decolonial, Indigenous, antiracist, queer, and community perspectives. Written by established and emerging scholars, essays critique not only the practices, ideologies, and conventions of archiving, but also offer new tactics for engaging critical, communal, and digital archiving within and against systems of power. Contributors reflect on efforts to unsettle and counteract racist, colonial histories, confront the potentials and pitfalls of common archival methodologies, and chart a path for the future of archival research otherwise. Unsettling Archival Research intervenes in a critical issue: whether the discipline’s assumptions about the archives serve or fail the communities they aim to represent and what can be done to center missing voices and perspectives. The aim is to explore the ethos and praxis of bearing witness in unsettling ways, carried out as a project of queering and/or decolonizing the archives.
 
Unsettling Archival Research takes seriously the rhetorical force of place and wrestles honestly with histories that still haunt our nation, including the legacies of slavery, colonial violence, and systemic racism.
 

A comprehensive overview of the controversy surrounding Hitler’s Willing Executioners.

Few if any books of the past fifty years have moved a broad section of the German public to think about their country’s Nazi past as has Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners. The main argument of his book is that Germans committed the unthinkable acts of the Holocaust not because they were forced to but out of a deeply held conviction that killing Jews was morally just. Unwilling Germans? traces the intense and varied reception of a book that has created more heated debate than any other treatment of Germany’s genocidal past.

When Goldhagen’s book first appeared, it was almost universally dismissed by journalists and historians alike. However, following a book tour in Germany, Goldhagen started winning over many of his ardent detractors and finding a young, receptive audience. Although German scholars reacted to Goldhagen and his argument with outrage and dismissal, ironically the German public was mesmerized by both the book and Goldhagen himself.Unwilling Germans? reprints articles that originally appeared in German newspapers, the popular press, and journals, as well as offering original essays. Among the writers whose work is represented are historians, journalists, political scientists, and literary critics, including Jürgen Habermas and Klaus Theweleit. The book traces the initial reactions in Germany to the debate surrounding the U.S. publication of the book, the subsequent reviews and reactions upon the publication of the German translation, and recent commentary by Goldhagen and the American historian Christopher Browning. A unique and fascinating collection, Unwilling Germans? will help to sort out the confusing nature of the response to the “Goldhagen Debate,” and shed light on both Germany’s continuing process of coming to terms with its Nazi past and the resonances of that debate in the United States.ISBN 0-8166-3100-X Cloth $44.95xxISBN 0-8166-3101-8 Paper $17.95224 pages 5 7/8 x 9 JuneTranslation inquiries: University of Minnesota Press