Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Search For Irishness (Chapter One Of Buffoonery In Irish Drama: Staging Twentieth-Century Post-Colonial Stereotypes), Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "A striking feature in Irish culture since at least the late 19th century is an impulse to define what constitutes "Irish," seemingly to establish the qualifications of those who claim to be Irish. It is an impulse that manifests itself in literature as diverse as George Bernard Shaw's play, john Buff's Other Island, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Seamus Heaney's Station Island. The same impulse is at work in the public lives of figures like Oscar Wilde, who while exiled created a fascinating persona for himself; Patrick O'Brian, who refashioned himself as …

God’S Gift Of Motherhood Comes In Different Ways, Melanie Springer Mock

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Seven years ago this May, my husband and I received an email asking if we were interested in adopting a boy, named Do Minh Quan, from Vietnam. The email was both expected, as we had signed with an adoption agency eight months earlier, and unexpected, since we were hoping to adopt an infant boy from India, not Vietnam."

Book Review: I Smile Back, Melanie Springer Mock

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "When Amy Koppelman published her first novel in 2003, critics heralded her work as a “smart, sensitive first novel” that would be “life-changing” for its readers. In A Mouthful of Air, Koppelman dealt honestly and brutally with the subject of postpartum depression, a disease—she reported in a 2003 interview—affecting 50 to 80 percent of new mothers. Koppelman’s premiere novel offered a departure from others in the mommy-lit. genre, a darker glimpse into the underworld of parenting and away from what one reader called the “now-hackneyed Mothers Struggling and Juggling Babies and Hedge Funds story line.” "

Book Review: Before, Melanie Springer Mock

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "The setting for Irini Spanidou’s third novel, Before, seems promising enough: New York City in the 1970s, SoHo before gentrification, a place on the cusp of change but still, as Spanidou writes in her book’s opening, “dangerous,” beset by crime and sparsely populated by bohemians who party deep into the city’s empty nights. Unfortunately, the novel’s setting, as well as its characters, seem nearly as empty as the streets about which Spanidou writes; as a reader, I must wonder why I am to care about the characters Spanidou creates, or how I am to imagine a setting drawn so …

Book Review: Kristina Lacelle-Peterson's Liberating Tradition: Women’S Identity And Vocation In Christian Perspective, Melanie Springer Mock

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Kristina LaCelle-Peterson’s Liberating Tradition: Women’s Identity and Vocation in Christian Perspective provides such a primer in biblical egalitarianism. LaCelle- Peterson, an associate professor of religion at Houghton College, does a credible job of outlining the important arguments for why Christianity has traditionally excluded women from equality with men and for why women need to be released from the narrow roles in religious institutions where they have for too long been held."

Uniquely Alike: A Review Of Great With Child: On Becoming A Mother, Melanie Springer Mock

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Considering my own insecurities, I began reading Debra Rienstra's Great with Child: On Becoming a Mother with some caution, as the book promised to take its readers on "the fascinating journey of understanding the power and meaning of birth." An acquaintance at a professional conference had highly recommended the book upon discovering I was the mother of two small children -- but then, she had not known my boys were adopted. And thus, the first few pages of Rienstra's text set me on edge: here was another woman sharing her pregnancy woes and describing the "harrowing intensity of birth." …

Book Review: One Foot In Heaven By David Waltner-Toews, Melanie Springer Mock

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "One Foot in Heaven, David Waltner-Toews's first published collection of fiction, is ostensibly a cycle of fourteen stories, tracing the life of Prom, a Ukrainian immigrant who moves to Alberta; Prom's children and their friends; and Prom's neighbors and acquaintances. Yet One Foot in Heaven is far more than a compilation of finely crafted narratives. As with Waltner-Toews's other published work—both his half-dozen poetry collections and his nonfiction work on the environment—One Foot in Heaven reflects a keen sense of the relationship between the material and the spiritual. Just as Waltner-Toews's 1992 book on food poisoning (Food, Sex, and …

On Becoming A Family: Melanie's Story Of Benjamin's Adoption, 2002, Melanie Springer Mock

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "I became a mother in the back of a taxi cab.

No sit-com cliché, this. The taxi was a late-model, jacked up Honda, its plush chairs bedecked by delicate white doilies. Traffic dared not impede my driver, a silently brooding young man who weaved between Cyclos and motorcycles freighted by fruit, vegetables, live chickens, entire families. I sat tensely in the backseat, holding my son, incredulously wondering into what I had just gotten myself."

Book Review: That Half-Barbaric Twang: The Banjo In American Popular Culture, William Jolliff

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "These two recent studies demonstrate the growing academic interest in the history and development of the banjo, and both make intriguing-if sometimes difficult- reading for banjo devotees.

In the years just before the Civil War, the banjo was popularly associated with African-American slaves and with their black-faced imitators, professional minstrel show players. But it was also a popular instrument among white amateur musicians-so popular, in fact, that a single banjo tournament in New York City in 1857 drew over 3000 fans to support their neighborhood favorites. Beginning at this point, Karen Linn's That Half-Barbaric Twang studies the pubic perception …

Book Review: Singing Cowboys And Musical Mountaineers, William Jolliff

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Bill C. Malone, well-known author of Country Music, USA, recently(1993) wrote another book in the field, entitled Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers. Though on a narrower scope, it is equally compelling and insightfut reflecting a rare blend of scholarship, human insight, and a warm, highly readable style."