Böcker utgivna av Michigan State University Press

This timely book brings together activist scholars from a number of disciplines (political science, geography, sociology, anthropology, and communications) to provide new insights into a growing trend in publicly engaged research and scholarship.

For thousands of years, humans have categorized animals as either domestic or wild. And yet, around the world, a more nuanced relationship exists, that of commensal animals, species that have adapted to our homes, our towns, and our artificial landscapes, finding ways to gain benefit from our activities and so becoming an important part of our everyday lives. A fascinating investigation, this text draws on archaeological records to explore human-animal relations.

Sixteen essential contemporary creative nonfiction writers reflect on whatever far, dark edge of the genre they find themselves most drawn to. The result is a fascinating anthology that wonders at the historical and contemporary borderlands between fiction and nonfiction, the illusion of time on the page, the mythology of memory, the impact of technology on our writerly lives, and about what and why we write.

When it became public that Osama bin Laden's death was announced with the phrase "e;Geronimo, EKIA!"e; many Native people, including Geronimo's descendants, were insulted to discover that the name of a Native patriot was used as a code name for a world-class terrorist. Geronimo descendant Harlyn Geronimo explained, "e;Obviously to equate Geronimo with Osama bin Laden is an unpardonable slander of Native America and its most famous leader."e; The Militarization of Indian Country illuminates the historical context of these negative stereotypes, the long political and economic relationship between the military and Native America, and the environmental and social consequences. This book addresses the impact that the U.S. military has had on Native peoples, lands, and cultures. From the use of Native names to the outright poisoning of Native peoples for testing, the U.S. military's exploitation of Indian country is unparalleled and ongoing.

In this lively series of conversations with writer Michel Treguer, Rene Girard revisits the major concepts of mimetic theory and explores science, democracy, and the nature of God and freedom. Girard affirms that "e;our unprecedented present is incomprehensible without Christianity."e; Globalization has unified the world, yet civil war and terrorism persist despite free trade and economic growth. Because of mimetic desire and the rivalry it generates, asserts Girard, "e;whether we're talking about marriage, friendship, professional relationships, issues with neighbors or matters of national unity, human relations are always under threat."e; Literary masters including Marivaux, Dostoevsky, and Joyce understood this, as did archaic religion, which warded off violence with blood sacrifice. Christianity brought a new understanding of sacrifice, giving rise not only to modern rationality and science but also to a fragile system that is, in Girard's words, "e;always teetering between a new golden age and a destructive apocalypse."e; Treguer, a skeptic of mimetic theory, wonders: "e;Is what he's telling me true...or is it just a nice story, a way of looking at things?"e; In response, Girard makes a compelling case for his theory.

A systematic introduction into the mimetic theory of the French-American literary theorist and philosophical anthropologist Ren Girard, this essential text explains its three main pillars (mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism, and the Biblical "e;difference"e;) with the help of examples from literature and philosophy. This book also offers an overview of Ren Girard's life and work, showing how much mimetic theory results from existential and spiritual insights into one's own mimetic entanglements. Furthermore it examines the broader implications of Girard's theories, from the mimetic aspect of sovereignty and wars to the relationship between the scapegoat mechanism and the question of capital punishment. Mimetic theory is placed within the context of current cultural and political debates like the relationship between religion and modernity, terrorism, the death penalty, and gender issues. Drawing textual examples from European literature (Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kleist, Stendhal, Storm, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Proust) and philosophy (Plato, Camus, Sartre, Lvi-Strauss, Derrida, Vattimo), Palaver uses mimetic theory to explore the themes they present. A highly accessible book, this text is complemented by bibliographical references to Girard's widespread work and secondary literature on mimetic theory and its applications, comprising a valuable bibliographical archive that provides the reader with an overview of the development and discussion of mimetic theory until the present day.

Drawing on the latest research in archaeozoology, archaeology, and molecular biology, Animals as Domesticates traces the history of the domestication of animals around the world. From the llamas of South America and the turkeys of North America, to the cattle of India and the Australian dingo, this fascinating book explores the history of the complex relationships between humans and their domestic animals. With expert insight into the biological and cultural processes of domestication, Clutton-Brock suggests how the human instinct for nurturing may have transformed relationships between predator and prey, and she explains how animals have become companions, livestock, and laborers. The changing face of domestication is traced from the spread of the earliest livestock around the Neolithic Old World through ancient Egypt, the Greek and Roman empires, South East Asia, and up to the modern industrial age.

First published in French in 1979, The Ambivalence of Scarcity was a groundbreaking work on mimetic theory. Now expanded upon with new, specially written, and never-before-published conference texts and essays, this revised edition explores Rene Girard's philosophy in three sections: economy and economics, mimetic theory, and violence and politics in modern societies.

A collection of peer-reviewed scholarship from an annual forum that focuses on topics related to the languages and cultures of Algonquian peoples. This series touches on a variety of subject areas, including anthropology, archaeology, education, history, Indigenous studies, literature, music, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology.

A collection of peer-reviewed scholarship from an annual forum that focuses on topics related to the languages and cultures of Algonquian peoples. This series touches on a variety of subject areas, including anthropology, archaeology, education, history, Indigenous studies, literature, music, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology.

In this debut poetry collection by an award-winning fiction writer, the longing for God and the poignancy of family life echo each other's music. The traditional forms of sonnet, sestina, and villanelle punctuate more modern verse forms, this combination being only one of the strands binding past and present.

A collection of peer-reviewed scholarship from an annual forum that focuses on topics related to the languages and cultures of Algonquian peoples. This series touches on a variety of subject areas, including anthropology, archaeology, education, history, Indigenous studies, literature, music, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology.

Looking back, within, and ahead - while ultimately focusing on the here and now - Kristin Brace traverses landscapes of memory, dreams, and the imagination, exploring the fragments and shifting perspectives that shape experience and identity and reinvigorate the creation of meaning.

A collection of peer-reviewed scholarship from an annual forum that focuses on topics related to the languages and cultures of Algonquian peoples. This series touches on a variety of subject areas, including anthropology, archaeology, education, history, Indigenous studies, literature, music, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology.

Employing a rhetorical lens to analyse the aesthetic practices of Americanization, Leslie Hahner argues that Americanization not only tutored students in the practices of citizenship but also created a normative visual metric that modified how Americans would come to understand, interpret, and judge their own patriotism and that of others.

As a first step toward building a new understanding, Imagining China tackles the complicated question of how Americans, Chinese, and their respective allies imagine themselves enmeshed in nations, old rivalries, and emerging partnerships, while simultaneously meditating on the powers and limits of nationalism.

According to political theory, the primary function of the modern state is to protect its citizens-both from each other and from external enemies. Yet it is the states that essentially commit major forms of violence, such as genocides, ethnic cleansings, and large-scale massacres, against their own citizens. In this book Paul Dumouchel argues that this paradoxical reversal of the state's primary function into violence against its own members is not a mere accident but an ever-present possibility that is inscribed in the structure of the modern state. Modern states need enemies to exist and to persist, not because they are essentially evil but because modern politics constitutes a violent means of protecting us against our own violence. If they cannot-if we cannot-find enemies outside the state, they will find them inside. However, this institution is today coming to an end, not in the sense that states are disappearing, but in the sense that they are increasingly failing to protect us from our own violence. That is why the violent sacrifices that they ask from us, in wars and even in times of peace, have now become barren.

The Sweetness of Freedom presents an eclectic grouping of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century immigrants' narratives and the personal artifacts, historical documents, and photographs these travelers brought on their journeys to Michigan. Most of the oral histories in this volume are based on interviews conducted with the immigrants themselves. Some of the immigrants presented here hoped to gain better education and jobs. Others-refugees-fled their homelands because of war, poverty, repression, religious persecution, or ethnic discrimination. All dreamt of freedom and opportunity. They tell why they left their homelands, why they chose to settle in Michigan, and what they brought or left behind. Some wanted to preserve their heritage, religious customs, traditions, and ethnic identity. Others wanted to forget past conflicts and lost family members. Their stories reveal how they established new lives far away from home, how they endured homesickness and separation, what they gave up and what they gained.

Offers a personal expression about race, coming of age in the 1960s, a forbidden friendship, and the author's personal love for Dr Martin Luther King Jr. This book presents a remembrance of his life at Cincinnati's notorious Woodward High School, a microcosm of the 1960s and of America itself.

The Copts, or Egyptian Christians, are a relatively small and tight-knit ethno-religious group, numbering perhaps three thousand people and living mostly in the Detroit metropolitan area. Since they began immigrating to Michigan in the mid-1960s, their community has grown exponentially. Granted exceptional access to the Coptic community, Eliot Dickinson provides the first in- depth profile of this unique and remarkably successful immigrant group. Drawing on personal interviews to infuse the book with warmth and depth. Copts in Michigan offers readers a compelling view into this vibrant community.

In 1872, the world's first national park was founded at Yellowstone. Although ideas of nature conservation were not embraced generally by the American public, five more parks were created before the turn of the century. By 1916, the year that the National Park Service was born, the country could boast of fourteen national parks, including such celebrated areas as Yosemite and Sequoia. Kathy Mason demonstrates that Congress, park superintendents, and the American public were forming general, often tacit notions of the parks' purpose before the new bureau was established. Although the Park Service recently has placed some emphasis on protecting samples of North America's ecosystems, the earliest national parks were viewed as natural museums-monuments to national grandeur that would edify visitors. Not only were these early parks to preserve monumental and unique natural attractions, but they also had to be of no use to mining, lumbering, agriculture, and other "e;productive"e; industries. Natural Museums examines the notions of park monumentalism, "e;worthlessness,"e; and national significance, as well as the parks' roles as wilderness preserves and recreational centers.

First Amendment rights have been among the most fiercely debated topics in the aftermath of 9/11. In the current environment and fervor for "e;homeland security,"e; personal freedoms in exchange for security are coming under more scrutiny. Among these guaranteed freedoms are the protection of religious expression given by the U.S. Constitution and the constitutional prohibitions against behaviors that violate the separation of church and state. The mandate that the government "e;shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"e; is a general principle that has guided American courts in interpreting the original intent of the First Amendment. In Religious Expression and the American Constitution, Haiman focuses on the current state of American law with respect to a broad range of controversial issues affecting religious expression, both verbal and nonverbal, along with a review of the recent history of each issue to provide a full understanding.

This work examines the growth of Michigan State University's pace-setting international programme beginning in 1956, when President John Hannah named the nation's first international dean, Glen Taggart, to head a university-wide effort.

Cold War Rhetoric is the first book in over twenty years to bring a sustained rhetorical critique to bear on central texts of the Cold War. The rhetorical texts that are the subject of this book include speeches by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, the Murrow- McCarthy confrontation on CBS, the speeches and writings of peace advocates, and the recurring theme of unAmericanism as it has been expressed in various media throughout the Cold War years. Each of the authors brings to his texts a particular approach to rhetorical criticism-strategic, metaphorical, or ideological. Each provides an introductory chapter on methodology that explains the assumptions and strengths of their particular approach.

Ellen Tucker Emerson's biography of her mother, Lidian Jackson Emerson, provides important insights into the life of Ralph Waldo Emerson's wife of 46 years. Delores Bird Carpenter has carefully edited this narrative to enhance continuity and to ensure completeness.

In this comprehensive, balanced overview of immigration, Nancy Brown Diggs examines the abusive, unethical conditions under which many immigrants work, and explores how what was once a border problem now extends throughout the country. Drawing from a wide spectrum of sources, she demonstrates how the current situation is untenable for both illegal immigrants and American citizens.

War, violence, and the disruption of social orders are critical areas of focus in mimetic theory, and a mimetic perspective applied to the study of politics illuminates social processes and phenomena over and beyond typical explanations offered by mainstream political science. Unlike traditional political science ontology, the mimetic perspective highlights neither individuals nor groups, but "e;doubles,"e; or "e;mimetic twins."e; According to this perspective, in order to grasp the fundamental rationales of political processes, we need to concentrate on the distinctive propensity of either individuals or groups to engage in mimetic contests resulting from their unreflective disposition to imitate each other's desire. This disposition has been strikingly described by the French-American anthropologist Rene Girard: "e;Once his basic needs are satisfied (indeed sometimes even before), man is subject to intense desires, though he may not know precisely for what."e; Via mimetic theory, Farneti highlights phenomena that political scientists have consistently failed to notice, such as reciprocal imitation as the fundamental cause of human discord, the mechanisms of spontaneous polarization in human conflicts (i.e., the emergence of dyads or "e;doubles"e;), and the strange and ever-growing resemblance of the mimetic rivals, which is precisely what pushes them to annihilate each other.

James Baldwin's Later Fiction examines the decline of Baldwin's reputation after the middle 1960s, his tepid reception in mainstream and academic venues, and the ways in which critics have often mis-represented and undervalued his work. Scott develops readings of Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Just Above My Head that explore the interconnected themes in Baldwin's work: the role of the family in sustaining the arts, the price of success in American society, and the struggle of black artists to change the ways that race, sex, and masculinity are represented in American culture. Scott argues that Baldwin's later writing crosses the cultural divide between the 1950s and 1960s in response to the civil rights and black power movements. Baldwin's earlier works, his political activism and sexual politics, and traditions of African American autobiography and fiction all play prominent roles in Scott's analysis.

When Russel B. Nye and Martin Gardner teamed up to bring out a new edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, theirs was the first critical analysis of L. Frank Baum American classic.