Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2024 -

Duncan's Edinburgh Companion to Globalgothic is an expansive text that succinctly captures the evolution of the gothic genre from a global perspective. Written by a wide and diverse range of scholars, the essays illustrate the growth of the gothic as a vehicle for discussing 21st-century viewpoints. This selection upholds the gothic's tradition of using mystery and the supernatural to explore current fears and the desire for systemic change while exemplifying how present-day scholars utilize this tradition to examine the perspectives often marginalized and overlooked in early gothic literature, but that are the priority of current and future generations of readers and scholars. The essays are well researched with a preference for the literary criticism of modern writers and critics. The Edinburgh Companion to Globalgothic is a wonderful example of the next direction this generation will take the study of future literature and the gothic tradition. Duncan (Linnaeus Univ. Centres, Sweden) is on the pulse of contemporary literary concerns, and her collection embodies the progression of how readers will discuss them. Valuable for all who wish to keep abreast of the ongoing discourse.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.

The essays in this collection are particularly strong: they are insightful, well researched, and well written. There is now a robust critical literature about the second generation, the children of Holocaust survivors (sometimes the term is also applied to the children of perpetrators). In the present volume Berger (Florida Atlantic Univ.) and Wilson (Univ. of Calgary) take the next step, analyzing the fiction, memoirs, and films of the third generation--the grandchildren. Berger and Victoria Aarons (contributors to this volume) have both written well-received volumes on both generations. The notion of postmemory--a term coined by Marianne Hirsch to signal the transmission of trauma from the generation that actually experienced the Holocaust to their offspring--is central to understanding 2G and 3G, as the second and third generations are often termed. The contributors are diverse (from Canada, the US, Australia, Germany, Israel, England, and Romania), as are the authors discussed: Nora Krug, Amy Kurzweil, Max Czollek, Mirna Funk, Julie Orringer, Susanne Fritz, Fabrice Humbert, Uriel Sinai, Dana Doron, Bram Presser, Cynthia Banham, Nava Semel. The tropes discussed in the essays vary widely--return, witnessing, inherited memory, grief, regret, resentment, revenge--and many of the essays are quest narratives, as the grandchildren go in search of their grandparents' story after their death.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

This important new work by Attridge (emer., Univ. of York, UK) is as ambitious in depth as it is impressive in breadth. Attridge centers his analysis on James Joyce's Ulysses, a novel he believes is unparalleled for the immense challenge it presents to the tradition of the novel that preceded the modernist explosion. The formal inventiveness introduced by Ulysses, Attridge claims, began a "renovation of the novel tradition" that propels literary innovation to the present day. Attridge advances this claim with a series of persuasive, subtle readings of Ulysses that introduce such concepts as "inorganic form" to describe a detaching of form from content so that their relationship "is no longer organic" or intrinsic but characterized, instead, by a degree of arbitrariness that can account for, among other things, wide variations in style within a single work. After exploring Ulysses' unique formal richness, Attridge expands the scope of his analysis to trace Joycean patterns in the work of writers spanning continents, including W. F. Hermans, Zoe Wicomb, and Kamila Shamsie. For students of modernism in general and Joycean scholars in particular, this book is indispensable.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

This latest update of the venerated introduction to the fundamentals of studying life writing and autobiography by Smith (emer., Univ. of Michigan) and Watson (emer., The Ohio State Univ.) has been significantly rewritten to track the ongoing expansion of life-writing genres as well as the theoretical lenses used to study them. Separate sections on generic conventions, human subjectivity, and creative artifice provide a bird's-eye view of the field's varied and interdisciplinary critical lenses. This edition's contents have been restructured to focus on a wide spectrum of approaches that theorists have developed for a creative product that transcends boundaries of genre, medium, and culture. This book is an essential tool for anyone seeking a firm grounding in this increasingly complex and expansive field, from its theoretical origins to key contemporary developments, as well as its future directions. While instructors will find this book an invaluable primer for both graduate and upper-level undergraduate students, it is also indispensable for scholars seeking a thorough yet succinct account of this unusually broad field. The volume includes an expansive, alphabetically organized generic lexicon with detailed descriptions of the many forms and formats of self-representation that scholars have studied and a robust list of prominent autobiographical and life-writing texts.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Editors Wampole (Princeton Univ.) and independent scholar Childs are to be praised for promoting a broad view of essayism, with chapters on subjects ranging from Puritan tracts and The Federalist to postmodern poetry and essay films. Every chapter is a comfortable one-sitting read of about 15 pages. Chapters are accessibly written for a broad readership, and nearly every one is a gem. Chronological sections cover ever-briefer periods, from part 1, "The Emergence of the American Essay (1710-1865)," to part 4, "Toward the Contemporary American Essay (2000-2020)," so it is worth noting that the decades since 1945 occupy more pages than the prior centuries. Contributors share a commitment to the proposition expressed in Wampole's introduction "that a natural compatibility exists between the essay form and the unusual experiment called the United States" (p. 2). Thus, The Cambridge History of the American Essay can be seen as providing "an alternative history of the United States told through one of its most robust traditions" (p. 4). While there is currently an embarrassment of riches when it comes to edited collections on the essay--see The Edinburgh Companion to the Essay CH, Sep'23, 61-0030--this volume easily earns a place in the first rank.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty.

This brief work is a sparklingly original exposition of a much-studied topic: the history of the English language. Trudgill (Univ. of Fribourg, Switzerland) takes readers beyond the usual story of English--German invasion, Norman Conquest, global imperialism--to peer into the nooks and crannies of history. Trudgill covers the intricacies of Germanic prehistory and the possible influence of Basque and Finno-Samic. One learns about the dialects of Frisian and the now-extinct languages Norn and Cumbric. In writing about the era of colonization, Trudgill considers English settlements in places like Bermuda, Newfoundland, and Colombia, and English in the South Pacific, Asia, and India. And one learns about language retreat and transcultural diffusion. Readers will appreciate the care Trudgill has taken in writing about geography, situating the narrative with familiar landmarks and providing 27 maps, most of them well keyed. Numerous "languages notes" boxes flesh out events, languages, and linguistic details. In addition, Trudgill is scrupulous about noting the tragedies of language spread--the dispossessed and enslaved populations all through the English spreading world. The Long Journey of English will be a fine resource for those interested in the history of English.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.