Arts and Humanities Commons^™

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."

Irish Renaissance (Chapter Seven Of Other Renaissances: A New Approach To World Literature), Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Critics have several names for the movement that took place in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century. Each name seems to suggest a different interpretation of the events at that time, and each interpretation, in turn, reflects a different idea of Ireland’s relationship with the rest of the world. The Irish Revival, a term most often used to discuss the literary movement, implies that the greatness of a people can be resuscitated after it has been nearly lost, and is thus a term in keeping with a nationalist agenda. The Celtic Twilight, a term coined by W. …

“Untiring Joys And Sorrows”: Yeats And The Sidhe, Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "In popular culture, the idea of Irishness has long been associated with the idea of fairies and leprechauns. This association has been explored by scholars who treat the Sidhe—also known as the daoine maithe, or the “good people”—as either a sociological or a literary construct. Most often, the sociological con- struct is somewhat insidious and the literary construct tends to be romantic. Recently, Angela Bourke has explored how the folkloric understanding of the fairies may be used to explain the otherwise inexplicable—for instance, when hormonal changes that come about through puberty or menopause were explained by saying that …

Stephen King, Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Stephen King, popularly known as “The King of Horror,” is one of the more prolific and successful writers of the twentieth century. Despite a reputation for writing only horror and gore, however, King has written works that do not qualify as either horror or supernatural but rather are thoughtful, intricate slices of human experience that often cause us to reflect on our own childhoods, not always with fond nostalgia. He encourages his readers to get in touch with their own memories of what being a child really means, and innocence has little to do with King's version of childhood. Believing …

Observe The Sons Of Ulster Talking Themselves To Death (Chapter In The Theatre Of Frank Mcguinness: Stages Of Mutability), Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Within Irish drama of the late 20'h century, the use of language as a marker for lrishness begins to shift away from a focus on accents and Hiberno-English, towards a use of language that attempts to actually establish new truths: truths about relationships and alliances, truths about history, truths about memory, and especially truths about identity. Language becomes the very means of change and hope, in drama that has become concerned with the use of language not as signifier of nation but as reiteration of the stories that might be able to change through that reiteration. What is 'true' …

The Damnation Of Bryan Dalyrimpleand Theron Ware: F. Scott Fitzgerald's Debt To Harold Frederic, William Jolliff

Faculty Publications - Department of English

F. Scott Fitzgerald's debt to the fin de siecle American naturalists is well known. Princetonian Amory Blaine gives the most famous suggestion of the influence in This Side of Paradise when he finds himself "rather surprised by his discovery through a critic named Mencken of several excellent American novels: 'Vandover and the Brute,' 'The Damnation of Theron Ware,' and 'Jennie Gerhardt'" (209). Henry Dan Piper notes that "Fitzgerald wrote this particular passage during the summer of 1919, when he revised his novel for the last time. It is likely that he had heard about all three books very recently" ("Norris …

Book Review: Flowering Of The Cumberland , And: Ransom Street Quartet: Poems And Stories , And: Johnny's Cosmology, Bill Jolliff

Faculty Publications - Department of English

The University of Nebraska Press has given us a gift by republishing Harriette Simpson Arnow's Flowering ofthe Cumberland. Though much has changed in the fields of history writing and literary non-fiction in the intervening decades, rereading Arnow reminds us that good prose is always in style and that good stories never die.

Juanita Brown Tobin's Ransom Street Quartet is a half-successful book of poems. And since the other half is less a failure than a curiosity, the whole is worth reading. Fortunately the book leads with its strength.

In Johnny's Cosmology, North Carolina poet John York presents his own engaging …

Review Of "Homeworks: A Book Of Tennessee Writers", Bill Jolliff

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

Review Of Powell's "Old And New Testaments", Bill Jolliff

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

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."

Review Of Loewen's "No Permanent City: Stories From Mennonite History And Life", Bill Jolliff

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.