Ashgate Publishing Co.

Surrealism, feminism, psychoanalysis.

Using cultural sites such as women's magazines, fashions, debutante culture, sexology, the modernist lesbian subculture, pornography and female criminality, Lusty (gender and culture studies, U. of Sydney) analyzes female identity in terms of their own aesthetic and intellectual practice and women surrealists' uses of Freud's construction of femininity. She is proficient at locating the ambiguities about what constitutes "the feminine" by such thinkers as Breton, Bataille, Lacan and Benjamin and artists of various stripes, and through the lens of such as Cindy Sherman and Judith Butler investigates the modernist preoccupation with the subjectivity and representation. The result is a fresh look at how surrealism and gender inform literary criticism, gender studies, visual culture, cultural studies and cultural history, despite what Freud said about women. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Thomas Hardy's novel universe; astronomy, cosmology, and gender in the post-Darwinian world.

In a series focusing on major authors of the Romantic and Victorian periods, Gossin (history of science and literary studies, U. of Texas-Dalles) presents what is evidently the first book-length study of cosmology in the novels of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) — said to be an avid amateur astronomer. Drawing from both astronomy and the humanities toward a "literary history of science," she treats such themes as impersonal natural laws, survival of the fittest, and "moral astrophysics" in seven novels including Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, A Pair of Blue Eyes, and Two on a Tower. Illustrations include early astronomers and celestial images. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Towards a theology of scientific endeavour; the descent of science.

A thick description of natural science inevitably leads Kaiser (Western Theological Seminary) to theological questions and cultivates a thick description of nature, humanity, history, and God. Each of these four leads in turn to a chapter beginning with some aspect of natural science and raising questions about what makes such an endeavor possible. They are called by the foundations he finds: cosmic, anthropological, cultural, and societal. A final chapter looks at the unity of knowledge. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Transforming legal education; learning and teaching the law in the early twenty-first century.

The liberal model of legal education is increasingly being undermined — economically, commercially, culturally, educationally — by chronic underfunding and the pressures of neoliberalist policies and globalization, argues Maharg (U. of Strathclyde, UK), and what is needed is a new critical legal education that embraces multiliteracies and is multimodal, as well as one that takes account of the blurring of the domains of academic and everyday work and leisure, authority and purpose, market and individual choice, and knowledge-in-itself and knowledge-for-others. It also must account for the social relations that influence knowledge generation and the evolution of knowledge, change to cope with the pressures of globalization on higher education, and promote greater engagement between higher education and the professions. In service of this goal, he reappraises the current model of legal education from the perspective of a transactional realist approach based in Deweyan pragmatism. Part of this reappraisal is conducted through the examination of historical moments that include the 1920s encounter between Dewey and the realist reformers in Columbia Law School, 18th century Enlightenment conceptualizations of moral education, and medieval forms of reading and writing, along with their present-day implications for, respectively, the New Legal Realism movement in the US, methods of ethical education in law schools, and communicative forms embodied by the wireless web and social software. He also addresses the implications of recent issues in e-learning. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The University of Google; education in the (post) information age.

Brabazon (media, U. of Brighton) surveys the teaching end of the academe and finds it sorely lacking, with librarians begging for funds and instructors seeking little more than skill development and generic competencies from their phenomenally bored students. She finds that information is not longer geared for social good but merely packaged for sale. In a series of humorous observations and practical ideas, Brabazon shifts the focus of the university back to learning and includes the benefits of the digital age, but not at the expense of real teaching. He differentiates information literacy and real understanding, flexible learning and wastes of time, popular culture and culture to be transmitted as a part of being a civilization, and the changes that must come to critical literacy in a post-9/11 world. Perhaps the academe wishes to survive and will take notice. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

An unreasoned act of being; sculptures by Himmat Shah.

This retrospective of the totemic figures of Indian sculptor Himmat Shah includes 181 color reproductions and correspondence between the artist and a friend. Sinha offers a few pages of text considering the artist's life, work, and influence on the contemporary Indian canon. Oversize: 8.75x11.25 inches. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Victorian animal dreams; representations of animals in Victorian literature and culture.

Along with their many other proclivities, Victorians were obsessed by animals, and entertained the idea that they were completely sentient beings, even as those same Victorians kept themselves busy making some of those sentient beings extinct. Given that their relationship included guilt as well as love, it is no wonder Victorians raised serious questions about possession of animals, manipulating their lives and maintaining special knowledge of their bodies and habits. This collection of 14 essays details the combination of science and sentiment in that relationship (pet memorials, hunting expeditions, animal-based fashions and literary metaphors), the contributions of sex and violence (rude domestic animals, horses and sexual dominance, whales and albatrosses as market commodities), and sin and bestiality (animals as sites of imperial encounter, stray dogs and stray women, racialized crocodiles and tales of tigers). The result is both scholarly and fun. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Warfare in Europe 1792-1815.

Twenty-two previously published articles on the complex era of European warfare during the era of Napoleon are gathered in this volume, in facsimile of their original publication. The articles are grouped by major topic — contexts, the French armies, the European armies, and Britain's war with France — with individual topics that include conflict of command in the Russian Army in 1812, Denmark in the Napoleonic wars, and the collapse of the Second Coalition. Among the journals in which the articles originally appeared are German history, French historical studies, Journal of modern history, and Selected papers of the consortium on revolutionary Europe. Schneid (High Point U., North Carolina) contributes a lengthy introduction detailing the major events and issues of warfare in this period, complete with bibliography. The volume contains a name, but no subject index. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Who ran the cities?; city elites and urban power structures in Europe and North America, 1750-1940.

Presented by Roth (history, Johann Wolfgang Goethe U., Germany) and Beachy (history, Goucher College, US), these 12 studies have their origins in an eponymous session of the Sixth International Conference on Urban History concerned with the identification of urban elites and the role of elite power in urban politics and hosted by the European Association of Urban Historians in September 2002. The studies focus on urban elites and elite politics in cities of Britain, Continental Europe, and North America in separate sections, with each section characterized by a particular theme: respectively, the role of wealth and power in determining elite status and the expression of status in city constitutions; the meaning of cultural institutions and informal networks for urban political culture and elites; and the role of the masses in urban politics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

William L. Rowe on philosophy of religion; selected writings.

Rowe is best known for his philosophical challenges to theistic belief as his contribution to the revival of Anglo-American philosophy of religion since the 1970s. Among the topics are a second look at the evidential argument from evil, the problem of divine perfection and freedom, modal versions of the ontological argument, and Dewey and Wieman on religion within the bounds of naturalism. A bibliography of his published works is included. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Women, ethnicity, and nationalisms in Latin America.

Anthropologists look at how women have contributed to nation building in Latin America, how states and institutions have excluded women from the nation, how women have participated in the ethnic and nationalist movements of the present, how the myths and symbols of national culture glorify and idealize the female body, and how women have expressed their ideas about culture or politics through academic or artistic endeavors. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Women, medicine, and theatre, 1550-1750; literary mountebanks and performing quacks.

The issue of early modern European women on the professional stage is profoundly linked with, and usefully considered in conjunction with, the performative marketing of medicine and cosmetics, suggests Katritzky (theater studies, Open U., Britain). Studying itinerant performing and healing women, she re-focuses a wide range of documents to allow these women to take center stage rather than be cast into the shadow of the rare freak sensationalized in mainstream history. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)