A remarkable partnership between the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Moi University School of Medicine in Kenya has built one of the most comprehensive and successful programs in the world to control HIV/AIDS. Calling upon the resources of the Americans, the ingenuity of the Kenyans, and their shared determination to care for patients who had been given up for dead, the program has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and described as a miracle by the U.S. ambassador to Kenya. Doctors from Kenya and the United States -- employing methods once considered unfeasible, such as successfully administered antiretroviral regimes -- have created a model program for saving lives and empowering the sick and impoverished. Against formidable odds, these partners demonstrate how medicine and caring can overturn preconceived notions about Africa and help wipe out the world's most devastating pandemic.

Devoted to all aspects of the poetry and life of American modernist poet Wallace Stevens, The Wallace Stevens Journal has been publishing scholarly articles, poems, book reviews, news, and bibliographies since 1977. The Journal regularly features previously unpublished primary or archival material and photographs, as well as interpretive criticism of the writer’s poetry and essays, theoretical reflections, biographical and contextual studies, comparisons with other writers, and original art work. Increasingly international in orientation, this double-blind peer-reviewed journal welcomes a diversity of approaches and perspectives. Sponsored by The Wallace Stevens Society.

Walls: Essays, 1985–1990, Kenneth McClane’s first book of autobiographical essays (originally published in 1991), is closely related to his second collection, Color, published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2009. Walls is a powerful and deeply moving meditation on relationships. It begins with an essay on the death of McClane’s brother, Paul, which “changed everything. Time, my work, everything found a new calculus.” His brother’s life and death are present in some way in all the essays that follow “A Death in the Family,” as McClane tells us about giving a poetry reading in a maximum-security prison; his experience of being one of the first two African American students to attend America’s oldest private school; teaching creative writing; his sister, Adrienne; a divestment protest at Cornell; and his encounters with James Baldwin. McClane has written a new preface to this paperback edition of Walls, in which he reminds us that we are inevitably interconnected: we are each other’s witness.

This useful classroom resource for professors wishing to incorporate notions of justice into their courses examines a variety of America’s most challenging social issues (education, poverty, homelessness, crime, and health care), interwoven with racial and ethnic themes. Anthony J. Cortese illustrates how the tension between moral relativism on the one hand, and universal ethics on the other, makes concrete policy discussion difficult. He illustrates how, through a synthesis of justice, law, and power, a social ethics approach to public policy could resolve various intergroup conflicts and social problems. Included at the end of each chapter are “What You Can Do” exercises and activities that encourage students to apply what they have learned to their own lives.

Because of their visibility in society and ability to shape public opinion, prominent literary figures were among the first targets of Communist repression, torture, and incarceration. Authors such as Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn famously documented the experience of internment in Soviet gulags. Little, however, has been published in the English language on the work of writers imprisoned by other countries of the Soviet bloc. For the first time, The Walls Behind the Curtain presents a collection of works from East European novelists, poets, playwrights, and essayists who wrote during or after their captivity under communism. Harold B. Segel paints a backdrop of the political culture and prison and labor camp systems of each country, detailing the onerous conditions that writers faced. Segel then offers biographical information on each writer and presents excerpts of their writing. Notable literary figures included are Václav Havel, Eva Kantůrková, Milan Šimečka, Adam Michnik, Milovan Djilas, Paul Goma, Tibor Déry, and Visar Zhiti, as well as many other writers.This anthology recovers many of the most important yet overlooked literary voices from the era of Communist occupation. Although translated from numerous languages, and across varied cultures, there is a distinct commonality in the experiences documented by these works. The Walls Behind the Curtain serves as a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit and a quest for individual liberty for which many writers forfeited their lives.

Exploring three major hubs of muralist activity in California, where indigenist imagery is prevalent, Walls of Empowerment celebrates an aesthetic that seeks to firmly establish Chicana/o sociopolitical identity in U.S. territory. Providing readers with a history and genealogy of key muralists’ productions, Guisela Latorre also showcases new material and original research on works and artists never before examined in print. An art form often associated with male creative endeavors, muralism in fact reflects significant contributions by Chicana artists. Encompassing these and other aspects of contemporary dialogues, including the often tense relationship between graffiti and muralism, Walls of Empowerment is a comprehensive study that, unlike many previous endeavors, does not privilege non-public Latina/o art. In addition, Latorre introduces readers to the role of new media, including performance, sculpture, and digital technology, in shaping the muralist’s “canvas.” Drawing on nearly a decade of fieldwork, this timely endeavor highlights the ways in which California’s Mexican American communities have used images of indigenous peoples to raise awareness of the region’s original citizens. Latorre also casts murals as a radical force for decolonization and liberation, and she provides a stirring description of the decades, particularly the late 1960s through 1980s, that saw California’s rise as the epicenter of mural production. Blending the perspectives of art history and sociology with firsthand accounts drawn from artists’ interviews, Walls of Empowerment represents a crucial turning point in the study of these iconographic artifacts.

John Thomas Biggers (1924–2001) was one of the most significant African American artists of the twentieth century. He was known for his murals, but also for his drawings, paintings, and lithographs, and was honored by a major traveling retrospective exhibition from 1995 to 1997. He created archetypal imagery that spoke positively to the rich and varied ethnic heritage of African Americans, long before the Civil Rights era drew attention to their African cultural roots. His influence upon other artists was profound, both for the power of his art and as professor and elder statesman to younger generations. Olive Jensen Theisen’s long-time commitment to the art of John Biggers resulted from the serendipitous discovery of an early Biggers mural in a school storeroom in the mid-1980s. Theisen immediately recognized the artist, the work, and its significance. She then set about returning The History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas to a place of honor and found herself becoming a friend and recorder of John Biggers’s stories and experiences relating to the creation of his other murals too, including Family Unity at Texas Southern University. Containing more than eighty color and black-and-white illustrations, Walls That Speak is a richly illustrated update of an earlier edition published in 1996. The artist completed new murals between its publication and his death in 2001. In addition to the inclusion of the new murals, Theisen has added a chapter on Biggers’s African art collection. The only work exclusively dedicated to his murals, this book will appeal to all those interested in murals or African American art.