At an elite East Coast university, an ambitious young black student and her esteemed white professor meet to discuss a paper the college junior is writing about the American Revolution. They're both liberal. They're both women. They're both brilliant. But very quickly, discussions of grammar and Google turn to race and reputation, and before they know it, they're in dangerous territory neither of them had foreseen – and facing stunning implications that can't be undone.
Zoe, a black student at a liberal arts college, is called into her white professor’s office to discuss her paper about slavery’s effect on the American Revolution. What begins as a polite clash in perspectives explodes into an urgent debate about race, history, and power.
In a terrifyingly short time, a male college instructor and his female student descend from a discussion of her grades into a modern reprise of the Inquisition. Innocuous remarks suddenly turn damning. Socratic dialogue gives way to heated assault. And the relationship between a somewhat fatuous teacher and his seemingly hapless pupil turns into a fiendishly accurate X ray of the mechanisms of power, censorship, and abuse.
Fiction. Poetry. NICETIES is a subversive text of lingual dissonance in which vocality precedes sense-making operations. Its phonics disrupt narrative through syntactical atonalities. "If you're weary of mild, obedient prose, try plunging into the pages of Elizabeth Mikesch's exuberant debut. This book is witchcraft: stories refreshingly loosely translated from the real by a mind that moves on its own."—Noy Holland "It will hardly do the trick to say that NICETIES is a breath of fresh air. In Elizabeth Mikesch's compressedly melodious prose, a reader inhales purifying drafts of something entirely unexpected in these literary dog days—not some novelty intoxicant concocted as a careerist stunt but some rarer ether releasing itself at long last into the world to dazzle, yes, but also to clarify so much of what we had never dreamed clarifiable about the ecstasy of our human mess."—Gary Lutz
“Another winner....Todd again excels at vivid atmosphere and the effects of war in this specific time and place. Grade: A.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer “Readers who can’t get enough of Maisie Dobbs, the intrepid World War I battlefield nurse in Jacqueline Winspear’s novels…are bound to be caught up in the adventures of Bess Crawford.” —New York Times Book Review Charles Todd, author of the resoundingly acclaimed Ian Rutledge crime novels (“One of the best historical series being written today” —Washington Post Book World) debuts an exceptional new protagonist, World War I nurse Bess Crawford, in A Duty to the Dead. A gripping tale of perilous obligations and dark family secrets in the shadows of a nightmarish time of global conflict, A Duty to the Dead is rich in suspense, surprise, and the impeccable period atmosphere that has become a Charles Todd trademark.
Nice is the secret ingredient to a better life. It makes us happy. It may even be what makes us civilized—when we say thank you, shake hands, send flowers, we’re doing the nice things that bring people together. ?A compulsive and chunky book for lovers of trivia, popular history, customs, and culture—and a perfect gift to say “you’re nice”—The Book of Nice is an entertaining, quirky compendium of those signs, traditions, and expressions that we so often take for granted, yet turn out to be quite fascinating. It’s about why we cover a yawn (originally to prevent evil spirits from entering our bodies, now to hide the impression that something’s boring us). About holiday traditions—it’s thanks to Guy Lombardo’s December 31 broadcast in 1929 that we now sing “Auld Lang Syne” on New Year’s Eve. About customary offerings—the wedding cake evolved out of the Roman use of wheat as a symbol of fertility (and it’s much tastier than bits of grain). And about those simple yet essential niceties—how Thomas Edison championed an obscure term, “hello” (if Alexander Graham Bell had gotten his way, we’d all be saying “ahoy”). Why not put a little nice in your day?
This book argues that today’s professoriate has become increasingly theatrical, largely as a result of neoliberal policies in higher education, but also in response to an anti-intellectual scrutiny that has become pervasive throughout the Western world. The Theatrical Professoriate: Contemporary Higher Education and Its Academic Dramas examines how the Western professoriate increasingly finds itself enacting command performances that utilize scripting, characterization, surrogation, and spectacle—the hallmarks of theatricality—toward neoliberal ends. Roxworthy explores how the theatrical nature of today’s professoriate and the resultant glut of performances about academia on stage and screen have contributed to a highly ambivalent public fascination with academia. She further documents the "theatrical turn" witnessed in American higher education, as academic institutions use performance to intervene in the diversity issues and disciplinary disparities fueled by neoliberalism. By analyzing academic dramas and their audience reception alongside theoretical approaches, the author reveals how contemporary academia drives the professoriate to perform in what seem like increasingly artificial ways. Ideal for practitioners and students of education, ethnic, and science studies, The Theatrical Professoriate deftly intervenes in Performance Studies’ still-unsettled debates over the differential impact of live versus mediated performances.
This collection of essays by an international group of authors explores the ways in which law and legal institutions are used in countries coming to terms with traumatic pasts, and, in some cases, traumatic presents. Drawing on work in politics, philosophy, theology, sociology and law, this book will appeal to a wide audience of researchers and academics working in these areas.
. Exploring how and why babies were moved across borders, The Traffic in Babies is a fascinating look at how social workers and other policy makers tried to find birth mothers, adopted children, and adoptive parents
