Congratulations to the Kent State University faculty who authored these books. Kent State University Libraries is happy to include this gallery showcasing these faculty publications.
Browse the Faculty-Authored Books Collections
East-West Literary Imagination: Cultural Exchanges from Yeats to Morrison
02/01/2017This study traces the shaping presence of cultural interactions, arguing that American literature has become a hybridization of Eastern and Western literary traditions. Cultural exchanges between the East and West began in the early decades of the nineteenth century as American transcendentalists explored Eastern philosophies and arts. Hakutani examines this influence through the works of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. He further demonstrates the East-West exchange through discussions of the interactions by modernists such as Yone Noguchi, Yeats, Pound, Camus, and Kerouac.
Finally, he argues that African American literature, represented by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and James Emanuel, is postmodern. Their works exhibit their concerted efforts to abolish marginality and extend referentiality, exemplifying the postmodern East-West crossroads of cultures. A fuller understanding of their work is gained by situating them within this cultural conversation. The writings of Wright, for example, take on their full significance only when they are read, not as part of a national literature, but as an index to an evolving literature of cultural exchanges.
Educating for Cosmopolitanism: Lessons from Cognitive Science and Literature
10/01/2013Drawing on recent findings of cognitive science, Mark Bracher here employs widely taught literary texts - including Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Voltaire's Candide, Camus's "The Guest," and Coetzee's Disgrace - to provide detailed demonstrations of how literary study can be used to develop cosmopolitanism, defined as a commitment to global justice. Cosmopolitanism, Bracher explains, is motivated by compassion for peoples who are distant and different from oneself, and compassion for them is dependent on perceiving their need, their deservingness, and their humanity. These perceptions are often prevented by faulty mindsets, or cognitive schemas, that can be corrected by the pedagogical practices described here.
Enduring Issues in Law and Society
01/01/2014The anthology Enduring Issues in Law and Society is a reflection on how members of society can live together without causing harm to others. The solution is rooted in the basic concepts of equality, fairness, and justice, which informed the selected readings.
The book uses real-world examples to give students information, and encourages them to think critically about contemporary social issues.
Section One helps students understand crime, law, and justice. It introduces social justice theory, and addresses general misinformation about crime. Section Two identifies inequities that contribute to crime including racial inequities, and inequities within the justice system.
Section Three addresses policy and social justice. Readers will learn about specific cases that deal with legal attempts to increase social justice. Section Four focuses on social ills that lead to crime. This section also examines public attitudes toward gun usage for self-protection.
An introduction to each section provides insight into the material and prepares students for effective reading.
Enduring Issues in Law and Society can be used in sociology and criminal justice courses.Enter Invisible
10/01/2005Constantly moving, Wing's debut collection incorporates everything from princesses to life-science texts, birds to classified ads, kickapoos to a criminal Tom and Jerry. She draws on her love of wonder, her interest in the difficult, the improbable, and the uneasy.
Evolutionary Biology and Conservation of Titis, Sakis and Uacaris
05/01/2013The neotropical primate family Pitheciidae consists of four genera Cacajao (uacaris), Callicebus (titis), Chiropotes (bearded sakis) and Pithecia (sakis), whose 40+ species display a range of sizes, social organisations, ecologies and habitats. Few are well known and the future survival of many is threatened, yet pitheciines have been little studied. This book is the first to review the biology of this fascinating and diverse group in full. It includes fossil history, reviews of the biology of each genus and, among others, specific treatments of vocalisations and foraging ecology. These studies are integrated into considerations of current status and future conservation requirements on a country-by-country basis for each species. A state-of-the-art summary of current knowledge, Evolutionary Biology and Conservation of Titis, Sakis and Uacaris is a collective effort from all the major researchers currently working on these remarkable animals.
Exiled in America: Life on the Margins in a Residential Motel
10/01/2016Residential motels have long been places of last resort for many vulnerable Americans—released prisoners, people with disabilities or mental illness, struggling addicts, the recently homeless, and the working poor. Cast aside by their families and mainstream society, they survive in squalid, unsafe, and demeaning circumstances that few of us can imagine.
For a year, the sociologist Christopher P. Dum lived in the Boardwalk Motel to better understand its residents and the varied paths that brought them there. He witnessed moments of violence and conflict, as well as those of care and compassion. As told through the voices and experiences of motel residents, Exiled in America paints a portrait of a vibrant community whose members forged identities in response to overwhelming stigma and created meaningful lives despite crushing economic instability.
In addition to chronicling daily life at the Boardwalk, Dum follows local neighborhood efforts to shut the establishment down, leading to a wider analysis of legislative attempts to sanitize shared social space. He also suggests meaningful policy changes to address the societal failures that lead to the need for motels such as the Boardwalk. The story of the Boardwalk, and the many motels like it, will concern anyone who cares about the lives of America's most vulnerable citizens.