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Paradise ICON is an annual writing workshop occurring every year during ICON, Iowa's Oldest Science Fiction Convention. This volume of nine new stories from past participants of the workshop range between Greek, Norse, and Christian myth imaginings, time travel, space travel to both the Moon and Venus, a story of Hell, the Devil, and fairy futures, and these stories range from fantasy to science fiction to horror. The wild locations, compelling characters,...
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Ever gotten lost in a book? Or on your bicycle? Or both at once, by falling through a portal on the page? Anything is possible in this collection of fifteen very short stories and one comic. Ranging from science fiction to fantasy and traveling in time from a reimagined past to the heat death of the universe, these stories combine the personal and popular power of spokes and words. Meet a young graduate who rides off to become a velo-archivist, a...
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In his introduction, guest editor James Patterson observes, "I often hear people lamenting the state of Hollywood ... If that's the case, I've got one thing to say: read these short stories. You can thank me later." Patterson has collected a batch of stories that have the sharp tension, drama, and visceral emotion of an Oscar-worthy Hollywood production. Spanning the extremes of human behavior, The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 features characters...
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From the mid-19th century until the rise of the modern welfare state in the early 20th century, Anglo-American philanthropic giving gained an unprecedented measure of cultural authority as it changed in kind and degree. Civil society took on the responsibility for confronting the adverse effects of industrialism, and transnational discussions of poverty, urbanization, women's work, and sympathy provided a means of understanding and debating social...
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For more than three centuries, St. Petersburg, founded in 1703 by Peter the Great as Russia's westward-oriented capital and as a visually stunning showcase of Russia's imperial ambitions, has been the country's most mythologized city. Like a museum piece, it has functioned as a site for preservation, a literal and imaginative place where Russians can commune with idealized pasts. Preserving Petersburg represents a significant departure from traditional...
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New Stories from the Midwest presents a collection of stories that celebrate an American region too often ignored in discussions about distinctive regional literature. The editors solicited nominations from more than 300 magazines, literary journals, and small presses and narrowed the selection to 19 authors. The stories, written by Midwestern writers or focusing on the Midwest, demonstrate that the quality of fiction from and about the heart of the...
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In a time of national introspection regarding the country's involvement in the persecution of Jews, Poland has begun to reimagine spaces of and for Jewishness in the Polish landscape, not as a form of nostalgia but as a way to encourage the pluralization of contemporary society. The essays in this book explore issues of the restoration, restitution, memorializing, and tourism that have brought present inhabitants into contact with initiatives to revive...
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Any glance at the contemporary history of the world shows that the problem of evil is a central concern for people everywhere. In the last few years, terrorist attacks, suicide bombings, and ethnic and religious wars have only emphasized humanity's seemingly insatiable capacity for violence. In Feminist Philosophy and the Problem of Evil, Robin May Schott brings an international group of contemporary feminist philosophers into debates on evil and...
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Why teach music? Who deserves a music education? Can making and learning about music serve the common good? A collection of essays considers the answers.
In Humane Music Education for the Common Good, scholars and educators from around the world offer unique responses to the recent UNESCO report titled Rethinking Education: Toward the Common Good. This report suggests how, through purpose, policy, and pedagogy, education can and must respond to the...
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With real-life stories, this collection "focuses on the role of music in the often-delicate negotiations surrounding weddings in immigrant communities" (Ellen Koskoff, author of A Feminist Ethnomusicology).
Music in the American Diasporic Wedding explores the complex cultural adaptations, preservations, and fusions that occur in weddings between couples and families of diverse origins. Discussing weddings as a site of negotiations between generations,...
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How is the Holocaust remembered in Romania since the fall of communism? Alexandru Florian and an international group of contributors unveil how and why Romania, a place where large segments of the Jewish and Roma populations perished, still fails to address its recent past. These essays focus on the roles of government and public actors that choose to promote, construct, defend, or contest the memory of the Holocaust, as well as the tools-the press,...
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As communist regimes denigrated Western countries for widespread unemployment and consumer excess, socialist Eastern European states simultaneously legitimized their power through their apparent ability to satisfy consumers' needs. Moving beyond binaries of production and consumption, the essays collected here examine the lessons consumption studies can offer about ethnic and national identity and the role of economic expertise in shaping consumer...
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This innovative reassessment of ritual murder accusations brings together scholars working in history, folklore, ethnography, and literature. Favoring dynamic explanations of the mechanisms, evolution, popular appeal, and responses to the blood libel, the essays rigorously engage with the larger social and cultural worlds that made these phenomena possible. In doing so, the book helps to explain why blood libel accusations continued to spread in Europe...
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How should I use technology in my courses? What impact does technology have on student learning? Is distance learning effective? Should I give online tests and, if so, how can I be sure of the integrity of the students' work? These are some of the questions that instructors raise as technology becomes an integral part of the educational experience. In Quick Hits for Teaching with Technology, award-winning instructors representing a wide range of academic...
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Exploring the origins, organization, subject matter, and performance contexts of singers and singing, Women's Songs from West Africa expands our understanding of the world of women in West Africa and their complex and subtle roles as verbal artists. Covering Cte d'Ivoire, the Gambia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and beyond, the essays attest to the importance of women's contributions to the most widespread form of verbal art in Africa.
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In the constant deluge of media coverage on Islam, Muslims are often portrayed as terrorists, refugees, radicals, or victims, depictions that erode human responses of concern, connection, or even a willingness to learn about Muslims. On Islam helps break this cycle with information and strategies to understand and report the modern Muslim experience. Journalists, activists, bloggers, and scholars offer insights into how Muslims are represented in...
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Drawing on archives and oral histories, a detailed account of graduate folklore programs in American and Canadian academic institutions.
To ensure continuity and foster innovation within the discipline of folklore, we must know what came before. Folklore in the United States and Canada is an essential guide to the history and development of graduate folklore programs throughout the United States and Canada.
As the first history of folklore studies...
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Thirteen essays exploring the role of antisemitism in the political and intellectual life of Europe.
In recent years, the mask of tolerant, secular, multicultural Europe has been shattered by new forms of antisemitic crime. Though many of the perpetrators do not profess Christianity, antisemitism has flourished in Christian Europe. In this book, thirteen scholars of European history, Jewish studies, and Christian theology examine antisemitism's insidious...
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Leading scholars in the interdisciplinary field of geo-spatial visual studies examine the social experience of cinema and the different ways in which film production developed as a commercial enterprise, as a leisure activity, and as modes of expression and communication. Their research charts new pathways in mapping the relationship between film production and local film practices, theatrical exhibition circuits and cinema going, creating new forms...
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An essay collection that demonstrates how emotional ties and intimate affiliations remain critical to the dimensions of modern Christianity.
Scholars of religion have come a long way since William James famously made of religion a matter between man and his maker. For decades now, they have been attentive to the ways in which religion takes shape as the product of broad social forces, focusing on the dynamics of power and culture as heuristics for...