Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Afterword: Horizons Of Transformation: When Age, Literacy And Scholarship Meet, Louise Wetherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Revolution Demythologized, Jonathan Allison

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Social Class In Applied Linguistics By David Block, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

As Block writes in the prologue and the epilogue, the book is primarily about erasure; his motivation for writing the book is to highlight “the substantial and sometimes complete erasure of social class in applied linguistics research due to the ways in which applied linguists frame their discussions of issues such as identity, inequality, disadvantage and exclusion” (pp. ix–x). Overall, Block achieves his goal of illustrating the widespread absence of social class in applied linguistics; however, the book itself makes some missteps in exploring the very construct it claims as its focus.

The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter …

[Review Of The Book: Migrant Modernism: Postwar London And The West Indian Novel, By J. Dillon Brown], Allyson Salinger Ferrante

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Familiar Strangeness: American Fiction And The Language Of Photography, 1939–1945 By Stuart Burrows (Review), Peter Lurie

English Faculty Publications

Stuart Burrows's book makes a strangely familiar claim. Its premise traces an arc in literary history and understandings of vision and epistemology that we think we know but which, in Burrows' hands, in fact turns toward a different idea about American prose realism than one with which we're familiar (that is, that writers responded to the daguerreotype by emulating its representational fidelity). Realist writers like Hawthorne, Stephen Crane, and the early James, Burrows shows, were hardly naïve about the changes in perception wrought by a then-new technology of vision like photography. For their realism is not a version of fiction …

Book Review: Understanding The Book Of Mormon, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

With over 150 million copies in circulation, the Book of Mormon has yet to find its niche in historical, religious or literary studies. Largely ignored by scholars and berated by Evangelicals, the text may find a more successful path to a larger audience, hopes historian Grant Hardy, if historical and religious questions are bracketed in deference to the work’s surprisingly complex and interesting literary dimensions

Jewish Power In America: Myth And Reality (Review), Michael Galchinsky

English Faculty Publications

This is a book review of Henry Feingold's book Jewish Power in America. (2008). New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Review Of Creating Language Crimes: How Law Enforcement Uses (And Misuses) Language By Roger W. Shuy, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

As he states in his preface, Shuy draws on his 30+ years as a linguistics professor at Georgetown University and his 25+ years as an expert witness and legal consultant to create this text that spans the mundane and the riveting, the commonplace and the esoterica of forensic linguistics. In so doing, his book “describes twelve actual cases in which alleged crimes were actually created by the use of various conversational strategies employed by law enforcement and its representatives, where no such crime is actually indicated by the language evidence” (12). When we read the transcripts associated with these cases, …

Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue Of The Ethiopian Jews (Review), Michael Galchinsky

English Faculty Publications

This is a book review of Stephen Spector's book, Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews. (2005). New York: Oxford University Press.

The Late Modernism Of Cormac Mccarthy (Review), Peter Lurie, Mark A. Eaton

English Faculty Publications

David Holloway's titular phrasing "late modernism" has an effective ring. It captures the theoretical underpinnings of his recent book, The Late Modernism of Cormac McCarthy, evoking Fredric Jameson's work, on which Holloway heavily relies, while also situating McCarthy precisely where he wants him to be, historically and culturally. According to Holloway, McCarthy's fiction constitutes an important redoubt against the diminishing of modernism's once-valorous stance by forging a productive opposition to what he sees as a final stage in capitalist expansion. At the heart of Holloway's project is his concern to restore an oppositional vitality to literary production, or what …

Review Of Jack Santino’S Signs Of War And Peace, Jeannie Thomas

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Masquerade And Identities: Essays On Gender, Sexuality, And Marginality By Efrat Tseëlon, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In the introduction to this collection of essays, the editor discusses ‘issues of masquerade as identity construction and as identity critique through a range of styles and narrative forms’ (p. 4). All of the scholarship here relies on a performative viewpoint to explore a range of symbolic and literal ‘masks’ in different social settings. In fact, the book’s blurb prepares us to delve into ‘the role of disguise in constructing, expressing, and representing marginalised identities, and in undermining easy distinctions between “true” identity and artifice.’

Review Of Progay/Antigay: The Rhetorical War Over Sexuality By Ralph R. Smith And Russell R. Windes, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

When I was asked to review Progay/Antigay, I actually felt both trepidation and excitement for two reasons. First, I have a personal interest in the subject matter because I am a gay man who considers himself moderately active in both politics and the gay community. Second, I live in Nebraska, a state whose voters recently banned legal recognition of same-sex relationships, whether they be called ‘marriage’ or ‘domestic partnership’ or ‘civil union.’ For these reasons, I felt that the text could potentially elucidate the bitter struggle that we in the Midwest had just been through.

Review Of Mediated Discourse: The Nexus Of Practice. London: Routledge By Ron Scollon, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

What I like very much about this book is that it epitomizes the notion of qualitative research. It is a beautifully written exploration of the way mediated discourse gets accomplished, but it also clarifies ways of analyzing discourse with rich discussions of theory and analysis based on a number of illustrations taken from everyday events. Scollon explores an everyday practice that most people probably take for granted, and he proposes a way of examining this ‘practice’ in a new way. This practice is ‘handing’, and it serves as the centerpiece of this book. We ‘hand’ books to each other, we …

Thinking Along With Foucault (Book Review Of 'Ways Of Reading: An Anthology For Writers,' 5th Ed., Edited By David Bartholomae And Anthony Petrosky), Jeffrey P. Cain

English Faculty Publications

Book review by Jeffrey Cain.

Bartholomae, David and Anthony Petrosky. Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999. ISBN 9780312178932

Review Of English Grammar: Prescriptive, Descriptive, Generative, Performance By Kathryn Riley And Frank Parker, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Riley and Parker's English Grammar served as the text in a dual-level course that I teach called The Structure of English. I had not taught this particular class before, and I was very interested in this book because it presents a variety of approaches to grammar in highly accessible language. The book also appeals to me pedagogically because it assumes little or no background knowledge of linguistics generally or even grammar specifically on the students' part. Riley and Parker (R&P) divide the text by theme; that is, the book begins with prescriptive grammar, continues with descriptive grammar and generative …

Philo T. Farnsworth: The Father Of Television, H. Bert Jenson

English Faculty Publications

DURING A RECENT TOUR of our nation's Capitol, with all its fine art, frescoes, and statuary, our guide explained that each state had been given permission to place in the Capitol two statue honoring famous person from that state. Being Utah born and raised, I glanced around Statuary Hall and quickly found the larger-than-life- sized statue of Brigham Young-who else? I wondered whom the other statue from Utah honored. What person besides Brigham Young did Utah feel to be that important? A we passed through the Hall of Columns and the Senate/ House corridor, the guide pointed out the bronze …

Book Review: Samuel Johnson And The Culture Of Property By Kevin Hart, Steven Scherwatzky

English Faculty Publications

Review of Kevin Hart's Samuel Johnson and the Culture of Property. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Review Of English Syntax: From Word To Discourse By Lynn M. Berk, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Berk prefaces this book by stating that her ‘overall approach is loosely discourse/functional’ and that she tries ‘to ensure that students learn the basics of English grammar but that at the same time they come to understand the richness and complexity of the system’ (xv). In the main, B fulfills her promise by exploring a variety of grammatical concepts and the way many of those grammatical structures function discursively.

English Sound Stucture [Book Review], Janet Mueller Bing

English Faculty Publications

Review of English Sound Structure, by John Harris. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994.