A Pulitzer Prize–winning poet who confessed the unrelenting anguish of addiction and depression, Anne Sexton (1928–1974) was also a dedicated teacher. In this book, Paula M. Salvio opens up Sexton’s classroom, uncovering a teacher who willfully demonstrated that the personal could also be plural. Looking at how Sexton framed and used the personal in teaching and learning, Salvio considers the extent to which our histories—both personal and social—exert their influence on teaching. In doing so, she situates the teaching life of Anne Sexton at the center of some of the key problems and questions in feminist teaching: navigating the appropriate distance between teacher and student, the relationship between writer and poetic subject, and the relationship between emotional life and knowledge. Examining Sexton’s pedagogy, with its “weird abundance” of tactics and strategies, Salvio argues that Sexton’s use of the autobiographical “I” is as much a literary identity as a literal identity, one that can speak with great force to educators who recognize its vital role in the humanities classroom.

Offers discussion and examples of how white scholars can use anti-racist scholarship as part of the long-term civil rights struggle to create real equality in the United States. Most would agree that racism is a moral and spiritual violation of the human spirit and the human community and one of the most destructive social problems in the United States. In this thought-provoking and challenging book, Scheurich contends that white racism is interwoven within social science research, social institutions such as public education, and society in general, directly destroying any legitimate claim to democracy. This volume offers discussions and examples of how white scholars can use anti-racist scholarship as part of the long-term civil rights struggle to create real equality in the United States. Other scholars, who both agree and disagree with Scheurich’s perspective, contribute to the volume.

In Apocalyptic Dread, Kirsten Moana Thompson examines how fears and anxieties about the future are reflected in recent American cinema. Through close readings of such films as Cape Fear, Candyman, Dolores Claiborne, Se7en, Signs, and War of the Worlds, Thompson argues that a longstanding American apocalyptic tradition permeates our popular culture, spreading from science-fiction and disaster films into horror, crime, and melodrama. Drawing upon Kierkegaard’s notion of dread—that is, a fundamental anxiety and ambivalence about existential choice and the future—Thompson suggests that the apocalyptic dread revealed in these films, and its guiding tropes of violence, retribution, and renewal, also reveal deep-seated anxieties about historical fragmentation and change, anxieties that are in turn displaced onto each film’s particular “monster,” whether human, demonic, or eschatological.

Focusing on the rich context of esoteric Jerish literature, this collection presents indepth analyses of JewishAmerican poetry. Gitenstein defines Jewish messianism and the literary genre of the apocalyptic, describes historical movements and kabbalistic theories, and analyzes their influence as part of the postHolocaust consciousness. Represented are works by such poets as Irving Feldman, Jack Hirschman, John Hollander, David Meltzer, and Jerome Rothenberg.

Considered by many to be the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is a masterpiece of narrative fiction rich in plot, character development, and compositional detail. The tale, written by a woman in service to Japan’s imperial court in the early eleventh century, portrays a world of extraordinary romance, lyric beauty, and human vulnerability. Appraising Genji is the first work to bring the rich field of Genji reception to the attention of an English-language audience. Patrick W. Caddeau traces the tale’s place in Japanese culture through diaries, critical treatises, newspaper accounts, cinematic adaptation, and modern stage productions. The centerpiece of this study is a treatise on Genji by Hagiwara Hiromichi (1815–1863), one of the most astute readers of the tale who, after becoming a masterless samurai, embarked on a massive study of Genji. Hiromichi challenged dominant modes of literary interpretation and cherished beliefs about the supremacy of the nation’s aristocratic culture. In so doing, he inspired literary critics and authors as they struggled to articulate theories of fiction and the novel in early modern Japan. Appraising Genji promises to enhance our understanding of one of the greatest literary classics in terms of intellectual history, literary criticism, and the quest of scholars in early modern Japan to define their nation’s place in the world.

This groundbreaking book examines the significance of the news media for the political beliefs and behavior of contemporary Americans. Relying on original, in-depth interviews with members of the group known as Generation X, Marco Calavita analyzes the memories and understandings of these individuals’ political development dating back to childhood. Specifically, he focuses on the developmental significance of news media engagement in the context of institutions and phenomena like family, peers, schooling, and popular culture. Calavita succeeds where others have failed at exploring the inevitably contextualized and ecological nature of individual political development, and the specific roles of news media in that development. Apprehending Politics illuminates the subtle but fundamental power of news media in who we are politically, and how we got that way.

Makes the perhaps surprising argument that in the last quarter of the twentieth century the Arab-Israeli conflict has been winding down. The Middle East conflict, be it between the state of Israel and Arab states or between Jews and Palestinians, is a staple of international news. Utilizing both theoretical approaches and empirical evidence, Hemda Ben-Yehuda and Shmuel Sandler argue that despite the recent upswing in violence, particularly over the Palestinian issue, conflict has gradually been giving way, since the 1970s, to a more orderly regime of conflict management. By integrating ethnonational theoretical literature into their analysis, the authors move beyond the current International Relations debate over the relative merits of realist/neo-realist approaches versus neo-liberal-institutional approaches. Ethnic-state disputes are the primary source for failing to terminate the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Interdisciplinary study of the role of violence in the Mediterranean and Europe. The Archaeology of Violence is an interdisciplinary consideration of the role of violence in social-cultural and sociopolitical contexts. The volume draws on the work of archaeologists, anthropologists, classicists, and art historians, all of whom have an interest in understanding the role of violence in their respective specialist fields in the Mediterranean and Europe. The focus is on three themes: contexts of violence, politics and identities of violence, and sanctified violence. In contrast to many past studies of violence, often defined by their subject specialism, or by a specific temporal or geographic focus, this book draws on a wide range of both temporal and spatial examples and offers new perspectives on the study of violence and its role in social and political change. Rather than simply equating violence with warfare, as has been done in many archaeological cases, the volume contends that the focus on warfare has been to the detriment of our understanding of other forms of “non-warfare” violence and has the potential to affect the ways in which violence is recognized and discussed by scholars, and ultimately has repercussions for understanding its role in society.

An exploration of John Dee’s Enochian magic of angel contact, its reinterpretation over the years, and its endurance to the present day. This fascinating work explores John Dee’s Enochian magic and the history of its reception. Dee (1527–1608/9), an accomplished natural philosopher and member of Queen Elizabeth I’s court, was also an esoteric researcher whose diaries detail years of conversations with angels achieved with the aid of crystal-gazer Edward Kelley. His Enochian magic offers a method for contacting angels and demons based on secrets found in the apocryphal Book of Enoch. Examining this magical system from its Renaissance origins to present day occultism, Egil Asprem shows how the reception of Dee’s magic is replete with struggles to construct and negotiate authoritative interpretational frameworks for doing magic. Arguing with Angels offers a novel, nuanced approach to questions about how ritual magic has survived the advent of modernity and demonstrates the ways in which modern culture has recreated magical discourse.

Aristotle belongs to the small class of philosophers who were not only influential in a particular field of philosophy but also shaped the profile of every philosophical discipline. In this book Otfried Höffe provides a comprehensive introduction to the life and work of Aristotle, covering well-known Aristotelian topics such as ethics, politics, and metaphysics as well as the less familiar, such as biology, psychology, and rhetoric. Höffe also compares Aristotle to other major figures in the history of European (especially German) philosophy, making connections to Kant and Hegel that are particularly insightful. A picture of Aristotle emerges as a philosopher who is much more modern than previously thought, one whose writings are still relevant today and continue to make valuable contributions to many contemporary philosophical debates.