While he celebrated higher education as the engine of progress in every aspect of American life George Keller also challenged academias sacred cows and entrenched practices with provocative ideas designed to induce creative discomfort Completed shortly before his death in 2007 Higher Education and the New Society caps the career of one of higher educations exceptional minds Refining and expanding ideas Keller developed over his fiftyyear career this book is a clarion call for change In the face of a transformed American society marked by population shifts technological upheavals and a volatile economic landscape Keller urges leaders in higher education to see and confront their own serious problems With characteristic forthrightness and inimitable wit Keller targets critical areas where bold thinking is especially important taking on such explosive issues as the configuration of academic disciplines the runaway problem of bigtime sports the decline of the liberal arts and the urgent problems of finances and costs Keller expected this book to ignite discussion and controversy within academic circles and he hoped fervently that it would also lead to real thinking real analysis and urgently needed transformation
Author: Dorothee Brantz, Sonja Dümpelmann
This collection covers a spectrum of topics related to nature in the city, including the design of sports grounds, problems with plant species, racial conflicts in urban parks, and countercultural ecotopias.
Author: Erin Lamm, Afterword by Alison Rice
New translation of multiple-award-winning Algerian writer Maissa Bey's autofiction about the plight of North African immigrant women in Paris.
Author: edited by Edward L. Ayers, Gary W. Gallagher, and Andrew J. Torget
Crucible of the Civil War offers an illuminating portrait of the states wartime economic, political, and social institutions. Weighing in on contentious issues within established scholarship while also breaking ground in areas long neglected by scholars, the contributors examine such concerns as the wars effect on slavery in the state, the wartime intersection of race and religion, and the development of Confederate social networks. They also shed light on topics long disputed by historians, such as Virginias decision to secede from the Union, the development of Confederate nationalism, and how Virginians chose to remember the war after its close.
Author: Mindy Fried
Caring for Red is Mindy Fried's moving and colorful account of caring for her ninety-seven-year-old father, Mannyan actor, writer, and labor organizerin the final year of his life. This memoir chronicles the actions of two sisters as they discover concentric circles of support for their father and attempt to provide him with an experience of engaged aging in an assisted living facility.The story is also that of a daughter of a powerful and outspoken man who took risks throughout his life and whose political beliefs had an enduring impact on his family. (After Manny was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he was blackballed and his family was shunned.)As an actor, Manny was affiliated with Elia Kazan's Group Theatre and the Federal Theatre Project. He did Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Ibsen, and played everything from the tormented father in Arthur Miller's All My Sons to an infant in a baby carriage in Thornton Wilder's Infancy, from the Rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof topoignantly for this bookthe role of Morrie in Tuesdays with Morrie.As she devotes herself to caring for her dying father, Mindy grapples anew with the complexity of their relationship. She questions whether she can be there for him and how to assert her own voice as her father's caregiver in his last days.
Author: Rachel C. Lee
Drawing on a wide array of literary, historical, and theoretical sources, Rachel Lee addresses current debates on the relationship among Asian American ethnic identity, national belonging, globalization, and gender. Lee argues that scholars have traditionally placed undue emphasis on ethnic-based political commitments--whether these are construed as national or global--in their readings of Asian American texts. This has constrained the intelligibility of stories that are focused less on ethnicity than on kinship, family dynamics, eroticism, and gender roles. In response, Lee makes a case for a reconceptualized Asian American criticism that centrally features gender and sexuality. Through a critical analysis of select literary texts--novels by Carlos Bulosan, Gish Jen, Jessica Hagedorn, and Karen Yamashita--Lee probes the specific ways in which some Asian American authors have steered around ethnic themes with alternative tales circulating around gender and sexual identity. Lee makes it clear that what has been missing from current debates has been an analysis of the complex ways in which gender mediates questions of both national belonging and international migration. From anti-miscegenation legislation in the early twentieth century to poststructuralist theories of language to Third World feminist theory to critical studies of global cultural and economic flows, The Americas of Asian American Literature takes up pressing cultural and literary questions and points to a new direction in literary criticism.
Author: Reynolds Farley
The Census is a most valuable source of information about our lives; these volumes make the story it has to tell accessible to all who want to know. Lee Rainwater, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral SciencesA lucid and balanced overview of major trends in the United States and essential reading for policymakers. State of the Union is a reality check that provides the factual basis for policy analysis.Peter Gottschalk, Boston CollegeState of the Union: America in the 1990s is the definitive new installment to the United States Census Series, carrying forward a tradition of census-based reports on American society that began with the 1930 Census. These two volumes offer a systematic, authoritative, and concise interpretation of what the 1990 Census reveals about the American people today. Volume One: Economic Trends focuses on the schism between the wealthy and the poor that intensified in the 1980s as wages went up for highly educated persons but fell for those with less than a college degree. This gap was reflected geographically, as industries continued their migration from crumbling inner cities to booming edge cities, often leaving behind an impoverished minority population. Young male workers lost ground in the 1980s, but women made substantial strides, dramatically reducing the gender gap in earnings. The amount of family income devoted to housing rose over the decade, but while housing quality improved for wealthy, older Americans, it declined for younger, poorer families. Volume Two: Social Trends examines the striking changes in American families and the rapid shifts in our racial and ethnic composition. Americans are marrying much later and divorcing more often, and increasing numbers of unmarried women are giving birth. These shifts have placed a growing proportion of children at risk of poverty. In glaring contrast, the elderly were the only group to make gains in the 1980s, and are now healthier and more prosperous than ever before. The concentrated immigration of Asians and Latinos to a few states and cities created extraordinary pockets of diversity within the population. Throughout the 1990s, the nation will debate questions about the state of the nation and the policies that should be adopted to address changing conditions. Will continued technological change lead to even more economic polarization? Will education become an increasingly important factor in determining earnings potential? Did new immigrants stimulate the economy or take jobs away from American-born workers? Will we be able to support the rapidly growing population of older retirees? State of the Union will help us to answer these questions and better understand how well the nation is adapting to the pervasive social and economic transformations of our era.A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Census Series
Author: Jaegwon Kim
Contemporary discussions in philosophy of mind have largely been shaped by physicalism, the doctrine that all phenomena are ultimately physical. Here, Jaegwon Kim presents the most comprehensive and systematic presentation yet of his influential ideas on the mind-body problem. He seeks to determine, after half a century of debate: What kind of (or how much) physicalism can we lay claim to? He begins by laying out mental causation and consciousness as the two principal challenges to contemporary physicalism. How can minds exercise their causal powers in a physical world? Is a physicalist account of consciousness possible? The book's starting point is the supervenience argument (sometimes called the exclusion argument), which Kim reformulates in an extended defense. This argument shows that the contemporary physicalist faces a stark choice between reductionism (the idea that mental phenomena are physically reducible) and epiphenomenalism (the view that mental phenomena are causally impotent). Along the way, Kim presents a novel argument showing that Cartesian substance dualism offers no help with mental causation. Mind-body reduction, therefore, is required to save mental causation. But are minds physically reducible? Kim argues that all but one type of mental phenomena are reducible, including intentional mental phenomena, such as beliefs and desires. The apparent exceptions are the intrinsic, felt qualities of conscious experiences (qualia). Kim argues, however, that certain relational properties of qualia, in particular their similarities and differences, are behaviorally manifest and hence in principle reducible, and that it is these relational properties of qualia that are central to their cognitive roles. The causal efficacy of qualia, therefore, is not entirely lost. According to Kim, then, while physicalism is not the whole truth, it is the truth near enough.
Author: Rebecca M. Valette
Rebecca M. Valette examines the short stories of French author Arthur de Gobineau. Through detailed analysis, Valette underscores Gobineau's originality and his contribution to French literature.