Author: edited by Robert J. Pekkanen, Steven Rathgeb Smith, and Yutaka Tsujinaka When the Susan G. Komen foundation pulled funding for Planned Parenthoods breast exam program, the public uproar brought new focus to the high political and economic stakes faced by nonprofit organizations. The missions of 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations, political action committees, and now Super PACs have become blurred as issues of advocacy and political influence have become increasingly entangled. Questions abound: Should a nonprofit advocate for its mission and its constituents with a goal of affecting public policy? What are the limits of such advocacy work? Will such efforts fundamentally jeopardize nonprofit work? What can studies of nonprofit advocacy efforts reveal? Editors Robert J. Pekkanen, Steven Rathgeb Smith, and Yutaka Tsujinaka recognize the urgent need for relevant research and insight into these issues as direct and indirect government services are squeezed by federal cutbacks. Nonprofits and Advocacy defines advocacy and clarifies the differences among advocacy, lobbying, political activity, and education, as well as advocacy measurements. Providing original empirical data and innovative theoretical arguments, this comparative study is organized into two parts. The first part focuses on local and national dimensions of nonprofit advocacy, and the second part looks at organizational politics and strategies. The conclusion considers basic questions about nonprofit advocacy and seeks to draw lessons from research efforts and practice. Providing a critical look at the multidimensional roles and advocacy efforts of nonprofits, this volume will be valued by scholars, students, leaders, and activistsmany of whom advocate for the interests of their organizations while delivering services to the same group of constituents. The research is also relevant for policymakers involved in cross-sector public policy initiatives as they strive to provide more efficient public-private solutions to challenging governance issues.

Author: Daniel P. Watkins In this first critical study of Anna Letitia Barbaulds major work, Daniel P. Watkins reveals the singular purpose of Barbaulds visionary poems: to recreate the world based on the values of liberty and justice. Watkins examines in close detail both the form and content of Barbaulds Poems, originally published in 1773 and revised and reissued in 1792. Along with providing careful readings of the poems, readings that situate the works in their broader political, historical, and philosophical contexts, Watkins explores the relevance of the introductory epigraphs and the importance of the poems placement throughout the volume. At the center of Watkinss study is Barbaulds effort to develop a visionary poetic stance. He argues that the deliberate arrangement of the poems creates a coherent portrayal of Barbaulds poetic, political, and social vision, a vision born of her deep belief that the principles of love, sympathy, liberty, and pacifism are necessary for a secure and meaningful human reality. In tracing the contours of this effort, Watkins examines, in particular, the tension in Barbaulds poetry between her desire to engage directly with the political realities of the world and her equally strong longing for a pastoral world of peace and prosperity. Scholars of British literature and women writers will welcome this important study of one of the eighteenth centurys foremost writers.

Author: Robert S. Cox A product of the spiritual hothouse of the Second Great Awakening, Spiritualism became the fastest growing religion in the nation during the 1850s, and one of the principal responses to the widespread perception that American society was descending into atomistic particularity. InBody and Soul, Robert Cox shows how Spiritualism sought to transform sympathy into social practice, arguing that each individual, living and dead, was poised within a nexus of affect, and through the active propagation of these sympathetic bonds, a new and coherent society would emerge. Phenomena such as spontaneous somnambulism and sympathetic communion with the deadwhether through seance or spirit photographywere ways of transcending the barriers dissecting the American body politic, including the ultimate barrier, death. Drawing equally upon social, occult, and physiological registers, Spiritualism created a unique social physiology in which mind was integrated into body and body into society, leading Spiritualists into earthly social reforms, such as womens rights and anti-slavery.From the beginning, however, Spiritualist political and social expression was far more diverse than has previously been recognized, encompassing distinctive proslavery and antiegalitarian strains, and in the wake of racial and political adjustments following the Civil War, the movement began to fracture. Cox traces the eventual dissolution of Spiritualism through the contradictions of its various regional and racial factions and through their increasingly circumscribed responses to a changing world. In the end, he concludes, the history of Spiritualism was written in the limits of sympathy, and not its limitless potential.Robert S. Cox is Curator of Manuscripts at the American Philosophical Society.

Author: Elizabeth Cook-Lynn In Defense of Loose Translations is a memoir that bridges the personal and professional experiences of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. Having spent much of her life illuminating the tragic irony of being an Indian in America, this provocative and often controversial writer narrates the story of her intellectual life in the field of Indian studies. Drawing on her experience as a twentieth-century child raised in a Sisseton Santee Dakota family and under the jurisdictional policies that have created significant social isolation in American Indian reservation life, Cook-Lynn tells the story of her unexpectedly privileged and almost comedic affirmative action rise to a professorship in a regional western university. Cook-Lynn explores how different opportunities and setbacks helped her become a leading voice in the emergence of Indian studies as an academic discipline. She discusses lecturing to professional audiences, activism addressing nonacademic audiences, writing and publishing, tribal-life activities, and teaching in an often hostile and, at times, corrupt milieu. Cook-Lynn frames her lifes work as the inevitable struggle between the indigene and the colonist in a global history. She has been a consistent critic of the colonization of American Indians following the treaty-signing and reservation periods of development. This memoir tells the story of how a thoughtful critic has tried to contribute to the debate about indigenousness in academia.