New Books December 2023: Home

This book explores the history of the debate, from 1915 to the present, about the meaning of academic freedom, particularly as concerns the limits of political activism on the college campus. The book introduces readers to the origins of the modern research university in the United States, the professionalization of the role of the university teacher, and the rise of alternative conceptions of academic freedom challenging the professional model and radicalizing the image of the university. Leading thinkers on the subject of academic freedom--Arthur Lovejoy, Angela Davis, Alexander Meiklejohn, Edward W. Said, among others--spring to life. What is the relationship between freedom of speech and academic freedom? Should communists be allowed to teach? What constitutes unacceptable political "indoctrination" in the classroom? What are the implications for academic freedom of creating Black Studies and Women's Studies departments? Do academic boycotts, such as those directed against Israel, violate the spirit of academic freedom? The book provides the context for these debates. Instead of opining as a judge, the author discloses the legal, philosophical, political, and semantic disagreements in each controversy. The book will appeal to readers across the social sciences and humanities with interests in scholarly freedom and academic life.

This expansive history of knowledge and its openness makes a strong and nuanced case for opening scholarly knowledge to the public.

An accessible and important look at what is truly behind our digital outrage. On any given day, at any given hour, across the various platforms constituting what we call social media, someone is angry. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Reddit. 4Chan. In The Rhetoric of Outrage: Why Social Media is Making Us Angry Jeff Rice addresses the critical question of why anger has become the dominant digital response on social media. He examines the theoretical and rhetorical explanations for the intense rage that prevails across social media platforms, and sheds new light on how our anger isn't merely a reaction against singular events, but generated out of aggregated beliefs and ideas. Captivating, accessible, and exceedingly important, The Rhetoric of Outrage encourages readers to have the difficult conversations about what is truly behind their anger.

Yellowstone National Park is the focal point of the 22-million-acre, multifaceted Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which is located in northwestern Wyoming and in parts of eastern Idaho and Montana. Yellowstone embodies a uniquely American identity as a place where nature--largely untouched and unmanaged--is allowed to flourish. This is a detailed survey that blends Yellowstone's past into its present and explores its likely future. It covers the first inhabitants of the area; the explorers and visionary conservationists who first brought Yellowstone to public attention; the unsung early heroes of the park's ranger service; the flora, fauna, and spectacular geology of the region; and all the other elements that have culminated in the creation, preservation, and international popularity of the park. Finally, the book covers the possible paths for the park in light of global climate change.

Drawing on ethnographic research, this book explores different experiences of urban Native identity across two pan-Indian communities in NE Ohio. In addition to elucidating how false memories of Indian-ness invisibilize and overwrite the stories and identities of urban Indigenous people, this research reveals the significance of continuous relations with tribal nations to the persistence of Indigenous peoples and perspectives in twenty-first century US society.

Holocaust accounts typically cast Jewish victims as meek, going "like sheep to the slaughter." Given such portrayals, people ask, "Why didn't Jews resist?" But Jews did resist, staging armed uprisings in ghettos and camps throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. This book's goal is not to dispel the myth of Jewish passivity, however; instead, it argues that Jewish resistance deserves explanation. Research on social movements shows that protest occurs when protesters have an opportunity for action and both the material resources and belief in themselves to get their protest off the ground, but members of Jewish resistance movements lacked these factors. So why did they fight back? Using methods of comparative-historical sociology, the book answers this question by comparing three Jewish ghettos during World War II: Warsaw (site of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943), Vilna (where activists planned for armed resistance in the ghetto but could not achieve that goal), and Lodz (where no plans for armed resistance emerged). It finds that resistance rested on Jews' assessments of the threats facing them, and especially on their hope for survival. Somewhat ironically, armed resistance took place only once activists reached the critical conclusion that they had no hope for survival and saw such resistance as the best response to their situation. These findings have implications for other examples of resistance under extreme conditions, such as prison riots and rebellions of enslaved people.

A concise overview of a neglected decade in American history as the nation reflects on its 50th anniversary.

The story of Roman Catholicism has never followed a singular path. In no time period has this been more true than over the last two centuries. Beginning with the French Revolution, extending to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, and concluding with present-day crises, John T. McGreevy chronicles the dramatic upheavals and internal divisions shaping the most multicultural, multilingual, and global institution in the world. Catholicism provides a mesmerizing assessment of the Church's complex role in modern history. From African Catholics fighting for political (and religious) independence, Latin American Catholics attracted to a theology of liberation, and Polish and South Korean Catholics demanding democratic governments, McGreevy surveys the currents of reform and reaction that have shaped the world's largest religious community, more than one billion strong.

Grades and assessment are elephants in almost every room where discussions of education are underway. This book examines the what, why, and whether of grades: When do they fail? What harm do they do and how can we mitigate that harm? Can we construct more poetic, less supposedly objective, models for assessment? The word 'ungrading' means raising an eyebrow at grades as a systemic practice, distinct from simply 'not grading.' The word is a present participle, an ongoing process, not a static set of practices. Ungrading is a systemic critique, a series of conversations we have about grades, ideally drawing students into those conversations with the goal of engaging them as full agents in their own education. This book represents over 20 years of thinking and writing about grades. The work of ungrading is to ask hard questions, point to the fundamental inequities of grades, and push for structural change. There are lots of places to begin this work. This book offers a handful of jumping off points, pedagogies and practices to explore to make assessment more equitable.

Campus Misinformation shows how misinformation about colleges and universities has proliferated in recent years. Currently popular but misleading claims about so-called free speech crises and a lack of intellectual diversity on college campuses emerged in the mid-2010s and continue to shape public discourse about higher education. Such claims, which this book defines as "campus misinformation," impede constructive deliberation about higher learning while helping to normalize suspect ideas about First Amendment freedoms and democratic participation. Campus Misinformation is a study, above all, of misleading language and its detrimental effects. The chapters in this book detail how campus misinformation popularizes flawed arguments about such specific key terms or concepts as viewpoint diversity, trigger warnings, safe spaces, free speech, and orthodoxy. The sum of that terminology reflects elitist and politically reactionary meta-discourse rather than consistently informed and responsible arguments about colleges and universities. More disturbing still, portions of campus misinformation resemble both past and present forms of organized resistance to creating multicultural institutions of higher learning. Campus Misinformation helps readers to identify examples of misinformation while encouraging them to advocate for better quality public debates about academic freedom in higher education and democratic participation beyond. This book should matter to anyone concerned about the state of higher education and the state of our democracy alike.

Solutions to workplace burnout often involve victim-blaming: Stressed? Try therapy-or a new job. But burnout is a sign of defective workplaces, not workers. Drawing on decades of research, Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter show managers how to recognize burnout and fix problems cost-effectively, improving employees' productivity and health.

Long before anyone ever heard of "protest music", people in America were singing about their struggles. They sang for justice and fairness, food and shelter, and equality and freedom; they sang to be acknowledged. Sometimes they also sang to oppress. This book uncovers the history of these people and their songs, from the moment Columbus made fateful landfall to the start of World War II, when "protest music" emerged as an identifiable brand. Cutting across musical genres, Will Kaufman recovers the passionate voices of America itself. We encounter songs of the mainland and the conquered territories of Hawai'i, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines; we hear Indigenous songs, immigrant songs and Klan songs, minstrel songs and symphonies, songs of the heard and the unheard, songs of the celebrated and the anonymous, of the righteous and the despicable. This magisterial book shows that all these songs are woven into the very fabric of American history.

The newest edition of this valuable tool offers students easy-to-understand guidance on going beyond Google to find, evaluate, and use quality informational sources that will enable them to write better research papers.

Scholars writing about how the federal government should respond to state and local fiscal stress fall into roughly two camps. One group argues that federal bailouts create excessive moral hazard. Another group argues that federal aid is instead a necessary form of macroeconomic stimulus given the pro-cyclical nature of state budgets. While this debate is important, it is incomplete. This chapter will show that there is another consideration that has often been the dominant concern in federal responses to state and local budget crises: maintaining the ability of states and cities to borrow to build infrastructure and make other investments. It will explain how these three interests - avoiding moral hazard, stimulating the economy during recessions, and preserving state capacity to borrow - interact, laying out a "trilemma" at the core of federal responses to state and local budget crises.