Books published by Lexington Books

The films of Sofia Coppola have moved and entranced audiences with her minimalist style, moody soundscapes, and commitment to centering the lives and experiences of women and girls. A Critical Companion to Sofia Coppola explores the implications of her stories, images, and convictions in a comprehensive study of all eight of her major works. Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, each chapter offers a fresh, interdisciplinary reading of one of Coppola's films and her treatment of core themes like masculinity, sexual politics, bodies, and love. Rigorously researched and unique, the arguments presented within this volume shed new light on one of the most important women filmmakers in film history.

John Stuart Mill and Epistemic Democracy explores the epistemic, or cognitive, character of democratic institutional practices and the protection of basic liberties in Mills political thought. Mapping Mills theory of representative democracy and critically engaging Mills more controversial issues, Ivan Cerovac identifies the epistemic criteria within these proposals and uses them as a basis for unifying Mills political thought. The book addresses the epistemic role of wide democratic participation on the one hand and institutional mechanisms used to filter the public willsuch as political representation, plural voting proposals, partisanship, division of epistemic and political laboron the other, and it analyzes how Mill tries to resolve the conflict between political and epistemic values. Characterizing Mill as both a political instrumentalist and an epistemic democrat, Cerovac sets Mills theory in a broader explanatory framework and compares it with contemporary accounts of epistemic justification. Emphasizing Mills normative considerations regarding franchise and the exercise of political power over others, this book discusses how to implement the epistemic ideal in real-world politics. It will be a fascinating read for anyone interested in democratic decision-making.

Building on various feminist theories of ethos, the authors in this collection explore how North American Catholic women from various periods, races, ethnicities, sexualities, and classes have used elements of the group's positionality to make change. The women considered in the book range from the earliest Catholic sisters who arrived in the United States to women who held the Church hierarchy accountable for the sexual abuse scandals. The book analyzes women such as those in an African American order who developed an ethos that would resist racism. Chapters also consider better known Catholic women such as Dolores Huertas, Mary Daly, and Joan Chittister.

Geoengineering, the idea of addressing climate change through large-scale technological projects, stands out among contested technologies in the degree to which its scope of possibilities and its premise are characterized by global existential risks. Despite controversy, this field has been shifting toward mainstream consideration. Geoengineering Discourse Confronting Climate Change: The Move from Margins to Mainstream in Science, News Media, and Politics examines the trajectory of geoengineering through critical discourse analysis of three key genres: science policy reports, news journalism, and congressional hearings. Brynna Jacobson explores how reports from distinguished scientific societies have constructed certain notions of legitimacy around geoengineering, how narratives within news coverage have reflected and shaped the public discourse and understanding of geoengineering, and how geoengineering has garnered political support from both major political parties in the United States. Through analysis of discursive conventions within these genres, the author reveals the evolution of notions of normalcy, legitimacy, and imperative around the field of geoengineering.

Movies and television series are excellent tools for teaching political science and international relations. Understanding how stories in various film and television genres illustrate political ideas can better assist students and fans understand and appreciate the political subtext of these media products. This book examines politics through five film genres and their variants. Gangster movies focus on American and other organized crime. They reached their zenith in the films of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Political thrillers express paranoia about secrecy and political conspiracies, while action movies channel anger at foreign and domestic threats to order. Superhero films and TV present modern characters who seek to serve society as they face personal struggles about their individual identities. War movies promote positive images of wars when conflicts are perceived as successful, but often include antiwar messages when wars turn out badly. Western movies fell out of favor in the 1970s and 1980s but have undergone a renaissance since the 1990s. Westerns can be taken as either political parables, or as meditations on policing, anarchy, community organization. The author argues that while these genres all offer escape, they also offer important political lessons.

In The Intersectional Other, Alex Rivera deconstructs the history of power in the United States, critiquing the white colonialism and heteronormativity evident in psychological and medical literature and rejecting the deficiencies projected onto queer Black, Indigenous, and Other People of Color (BIPOC). Rivera compels her readers to envision a world where Intersectional Others hold not just power, but the capacity to evoke societal transformations through creativity, self-love, and revolution. The Intersectional Other boldly reimagines the margins, creating a radical space for readers to de-vilify Otherness and conjure a better future.

The American Dream and Dreams Deferred: A Dialectical Fairy Tale shows how rival interpretations of the Dream reveal the dialectical tensions therein. Exploring often neglected voices, literatures, and histories, Carlton D. Floyd and Thomas Ehrlich Reifer highlight moments when the American Dream appears both simultaneously possible and out of reach. In so doing, the authors invite readers to make a new collective dream of a better future, on socially just, multicultural, and ecologically sustainable foundations.

Happiness in Kant's Practical Philosophy: Morality, Indirect Duties, and Welfare Rights examines the role and normative implications of Kants understanding of happiness for his moral, political, and legal philosophy. Kant's underlying assumptions about happiness are rarely overtly discussed or given much detail in his works. By bringing these assumptions to the fore, Alice Pinheiro Walla sheds light on some puzzling claims and on the scattered, sometimes contradictory remarks Kant makes about happiness. The book shows that happiness shapes or indirectly influences Kant's methodology and many of his conclusions, including his views on the nature of practical rationality, meta-ethics, the role of the state, and of political justification. The challenge with happiness is that it is impossible to know for certain what will make us happy, and what we take to be happiness changes over our lifetime. The book argues that Kant offers a distinctive strategy for dealing with this indeterminacy of happiness, one rooted in understanding our duties to ourselves and others. Happiness in Kant's Practical Philosophy provides a map of the areas in which the concept of happiness or considerations about the happiness of individuals appear in Kant's practical works and analyses the way they relate to central themes of his practical theory.

In The Transmedia Construction of the Black Panther: Long Live the King, Bryan J. Carr explores and analyzes the evolution of the Black Panther character since his inception in the 1960s across comics, film, television, video games, and music. The Black Panther, Carr argues, is the sum of the creative works of countless individuals across various media that have each contributed to the legacy of the first mainstream Black superhero, all happening against a backdrop of social and cultural upheaval, global political struggle for equality, and the long shadow of colonizing Western attitudes. The Panther's existence is a complex one that not only illustrates in microcosm those same struggles in the historically white superhero space, but also offers a perfect case study for media trends of representation then and now. Carr addresses a number of questions: Does the Black Panther really represent a powerful counter-narrative to long-standing regressive attitudes toward Black identity and Africa? Who were the key contributors to our understanding of the character? And finally, how can we use the character to understand the complexities of our modern consolidated media systems? Scholars of media studies, film and television studies, comics studies, cultural studies, critical race studies, and African studies will find this book particularly useful.

In this book, Brian Baugus examines home schooling as an education enterprise, arguing that successful home school families have the same characteristics and motivations as entrepreneurs. Baugus examines the history and economic theories behind home schooling to explain the rational decision-making that motivates home schooling endeavors, examining dissatisfaction with mainstream education, expectations of return on investment, and resistance from established providers.

Gender and Sexuality in Ghanaian Societies explores cultural dynamics embedded in the interstices of agency, vulnerability, and power within patriarchal structures that seek to regulate the sexual lives of women in Ghana. Emphasizing the centrality of gender as a motive force for sexual expression, the book stresses that contemporary Ghanaian women's sexual expressions are caught at the intersection of traditional gender expectations of heteronormativity and women's perceptions of how heteronormativity should operate in their lives. The book's emphasis on women's agency is significant because it highlights a flaw in earlier, Western accounts of African women's lives under Africa's special brand of patriarchy that held women in total subjection to men. Gender and Sexuality debunks that trope and presents Ghanaian women's dynamism, resilience, and vulnerabilities embedded in the diverse cultures in which they live.

From historical games to hyperrealism to retro gaming, Authenticity in the Music of Video Games explores, the shifting understanding of authenticity among players. What do gamers believe authenticity to be? How are their expectations structured by the soundtrack? And how do their actions impact the overall interaction of sound with narrative? Ranging from harmonic analysis to more multimedia approaches, the book links musical analysis to the practical experience of gamers.

Representing Latina/x Reproductive Decision Making examines representations of reproductive decisions in cultural texts and engages with scholarship on Latina/x representation to interrogate what these representations mean for Latinx popular culture. Melissa Huerta demonstrates that cultural texts ranging from the work of Teatro Luna and television series like Jane the Virgin and Vida to the film Quinceaera and Favianna Rodriguez's artwork can challenge traditional notions of Latina/x reproductive decisions, pointing to more inclusive understandings of people's experiences. Huerta argues for the importance of cultural representation in theater, television, film and art and analyzes the roles language and images play in shaping meaning. This book will be of interest to scholars of cultural studies, gender studies, Latin American studies, and film and media studies.

Rape in Period Drama Television considers the representation of rape and rape myths in a number of the most influential recent television period dramas. Like the corset, has become a shorthand for womens oppression in the past. Sexual violence has long been, and still is, commonplace in television period drama, often used to add authenticity and realism to shows or as a sensationalist means of chasing ratings. However, the authors illustrate that the depiction of rape is more than a mere reminder that the past was a dangerous place for women (and some men). In these series, they argue, rape functions as a kind of ';anti-heritage' device that dispels the nostalgia usually associated with period television and reflects back on the current cultural moment, in which the #MeToo and #Timesup movement have increased awareness of the prevalence of sexual abuse, but in which legal and political processes have not yet caught up. In doing so, Rape in Period Drama Television sets out to explore the assumptions and beliefs which audiences continue to hold about rape, rapists, and victims.

With the tomboy figure currently operating in a liminal space between extinction and resurgence, Reclaiming the Tomboy: The Body, Identity, and Representation is an unabashed celebration of her rebellious, independent, and pioneering spirit. This collection examines the tomboy as she appears throughout history, in the arts and in real-life. It also addresses how she has changed over the centuries, adapting to the world around her and breaking new boundaries in new ways (sometimes with a "simple" selfie). While this collection addresses the claim of the tomboy as being antiquated or even "problematic," it more vigorously offers examples of where she is thriving and benefiting from her tomboy identity. Ultimately, this book underscores the tomboy's legacy as well as why she is still relevant, if not needed, today.

Marveling Religion: Critical Discourses, Religion, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is an edited volume that explores the intersection of religion and cinema through the lenses of critical discourse. The focus of the shared inquiry are various films comprising the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and corresponding Netflix series. The contributors explore various religious themes and how they intersect with culture through the canon on the MCU. The first part focuses on responses to the societal, governmental, and cultural context that solidified with clarity during the 2016 Presidential Election cycle in the United States and in the following administration. Additionally, it provides lenses and resources for engaging in productive public actions. Part two explores cultural resources of sustaining activism and resistance as well as some of the key issues at stake in public action. The third part centers on militarization and resistance to state violence. Taken in concert, these three sections work together to provide frames for understanding while also keeping us engaged in the concrete action to mobilize social change. The overarching aim of the volume is to promote critical discourse regarding the dynamics of activism and political resistance.

Third Parties, Outsiders, and Renegades analyzes 10 third-party, outsider, or renegade presidential candidates and explores each one's impact on the political process. The list of modern outsider candidates who have attracted the public's attention is fairly long, but most of the time the candidates never garner enough support to become elected or they self-destruct somewhere along the way. A few, however, have taken votes away from more mainstream candidates and changed the course of political parties or election outcomes. This book provides readers with an analysis of how their rhetoric, political tactics, and issues have challenged the political status quo and impacted later campaigns. The future viability of outsider candidates is discussed in light of current political polarization and the legacy of Donald J. Trump, the first elected outsider president, and considers how outsider candidates might be able to compete in upcoming elections given the current political divisions within the nation. Scholars and students of communication, political science, and rhetoric will find this book particularly interesting.

Gender, Genre, and Race in Post-Neo-Slave Narratives provides an innovative conceptual framework for describing representations of slavery in twenty-first century American cultural productions. Covering a broad range of narrative forms ranging from novels like The Known World to films like 12 Years a Slave and the music of Missy Elliott, Dana Renee Horton engages with post-neo-slave narratives, a genre she defines as literary and visual texts that mesh conventions of postmodernity with the neo-slave narrative. Focusing on the characterization of black women in these texts, Horton argues that they are portrayed as commodities who commodify enslaved people, a fluid and complex characterization that is a foundational aspect of postmodern identity and emphasizes how postmodern identity restructures the conception of slave-owners.

What does it mean for an historically colonial church to become the ';church of the poor' in a world marked by pervasive and persistent coloniality? Re-membering the Reign of God addresses this question through historical and theological reflection on the decolonial evolution of El Salvador's ecclesial base communities (CEBs) in their own particular context of coloniality and prophetic hope. The CEBs' witness represents a rich locus for decolonizing theology and challenging the whole church to join the church of the poor in its prophetic praxis of decolonial solidarity.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a logician, a philosopher, and one of the twentieth century's most visible public intellectuals. Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell: A Cultural Sociology brings those three aspects together to trace Russell's changing views on the role of science and technology in society throughout his long intellectual career. Drawing from cultural sociology, history of science, and philosophy, Javier Pérez-Jara and Lino Camprubí provide a fresh multidimensional analysis of the general themes of science, technology, utopia, and apocalypse. The book critically examines Russell's influential interpretations of the turn-of-the-century mathematical logic, World War I, the metaphysics and epistemology of mind and matter, World War II, nuclear holocaust, and the Vietnam War. In Russell's compelling narratives, humanity was a powder keg and the match was represented by different and successive meta-adversaries, such as religion, communism, and American imperialism. And the only way to avoid a coming global Holocaust was to follow his own salvific recipes.In working around Russell's role in the cultural perception of the final destiny of humanity, Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell invites the reader to think about the place of the techno-scientific sphere in human progress and decadence in both our current epoch and the distant future.

The legendary Russian biography series, The Lives of Remarkable People, has played a significant role in Russian culture from its inception in 1890 until today. The longest running biography series in world literature, it spans three centuries and widely divergent political and cultural epochs: Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia. The authors argue that the treatment of biographical figures in the series is a case study for continuities and changes in Russian national identity over time. Biography in Russia and elsewhere remains a most influential literary genre and the distinctive approach and branding of the series has made it the economic engine of its publisher, Molodaia gvardiia. The centrality of biographies of major literary figures in the series reflects their heightened importance in Russian culture. The contributors examine the ways that biographies of Russia's foremost writers shaped the literary canon while mirroring the political and social realities of both the subjects' and their biographers' times. Starting with Alexander Pushkin and ending with Joseph Brodsky, the authors analyze the interplay of research and imagination in biographical narrative, the changing perceptions of what constitutes literary greatness, and the subversive possibilities of biography during eras of political censorship.

In Indigenous Knowledge: An Alternative for Food Security and Wellness in Africa, Emmanuel O. Oritsejafor argues that Indigenous Knowledge (IK) needs to play a central role in addressing food insecurity because IK methods result in sustainable agricultural practices which improve wellness. The application of IK in global communities demonstrates why it is an invaluable development alternative. For instance, Native Indians in the America's have survived over several generations using IK for agriculture and wellness purposes. Oristejafor establishes the severity and breadth of food insecurity on the continent of Africa and critiques the western-led development model which has proven to be inadequate in solving Africa's food security needs. In this regard, Oritsejafor suggests that indigenous knowledge(IK) should serve as one of the central models for addressing food security because it takes into account consideration for the specificities of local conditions and relies on the knowledge and the environment of African communities. Contrarily, he posits that the reliance on modern technologies have not been able to halve hunger and poverty in Africa.

Interpersonal Violence Against Children and Youth uses empirical research to provide an overview of the risk factors, different types of violence against children and youth, their victimizations (online and offline), as well as prevention practices and strategies. Pulling together researchers, practitioners, and educators from around the world, this book addresses the various practices and efforts different countries use to protect children and prevent interpersonal violence. These forms of violence include parental or caregiver initiated, actions of peers, intimate partner-related, or that among strangers and are not limited to maltreatment, bullying, emotional strife, sexual assault, or homicidal violence. This book would be of interest to those studying criminology, criminal justice, sociology, social work, law, forensic pathology and others.

This book provides a bidirectional investigation of Asia's spatiotemporality by asking how Asia is located and how localities are Asianized. Historical and theoretical inquiries into architecture and urbanism in order to trace a notional "common divisor" are integrated with readings of this Asian imagery. Such a common divisor is conditioned to Asia's phenomenal postcolonial subjectivation and showcases Asia's unique character. This book contends that the postcolonial condition of architecture in Asia suggests a potential and critical bridge to better understanding of the region. Theoretically, "display-ness" is a strategic and allegoric carrier that is in the focus of this book in order to emphasize the quality of display in a broader sense of time and space. Asia's architectural and urban spectacle thus is meaningly magnified and intensified with this notion of display-ness to ground the cohesive abstraction among ideological discourse production, innovative theorizations, and empirical phenomena in contemporary scholarship.

In Words and Meaning in Metasemantics, Juan José Colomina-Almiñana puts forward a new way of understanding the linguistic and philosophical foundations of the study of language: the Interactive Theory. This theory states that the meaning of our sentences is much more than the truth values their components clauses carry. Since language is a human artifact, Words and Meaning in Metasemantics also explains the role that our reasons, dispositions, inferences, acts, and awareness have in the content-fixing of the sentences speakers employ to refer to the world in which they belong.

This study examines the role of southern Italian women who remained behind when their husbands emigrated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By piecing together limited archival source material, the author argues that married women were not voiceless or powerless when their husbands were abroad, but they took on roles beyond their limited legal position. They petitioned local officials, requested passports, received remittances, and handled the family finances, all in the absence of their husbands, the legal head of the family. The study also emphasizes the connection forged between women and the new Italian state at a time when women did not have political rights. Centering on Basilicataa ';forgotten' region of the Italian south and one that has not been a major focus of scholarly investigationthis study challenges stereotypes that the Italian south was backwards, uncivilized, and lagging behind northern Italy. The author argues that large scale emigration greatly impacted the married women left behind in the villages of Basilicata, changing their social, political, and economic role.

New Criticism and Pedagogical Directions for Contemporary Black Women Writers is a collection of critical and pedagogical essays that shed new light on the creative depths of Black women writers. On the one hand, some Black women writers have been heavily anthologized, they have more often than not been restricted by critical metanarratives. Some of their works have been lionized while others remain neglected. On the other hand, some Black women writers have been ignored and understudied. This collection corrects the gaps in our critical thinking about Black women writers by introducing them to a new generation of undergraduate and graduate students, and by presenting pedagogical essays to our colleagues currently working in the field.

This seminal book is the first sustained critical work that engages with the varieties of literature following the triple disastersthe earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Education and Language in the Philippines provides a comprehensive overview of the critical role of education and language development in the Philippines. Lorraine Pe Symaco and Francisco P. Dumanig highlight the economic, social, and political factors that led to the complexity of the country's education system and language policies. In addition, they provide a nuanced discussion of the pressing issues regarding the contextual realities of Philippine education language policies and reforms, the role of multilingual education in learners' identity formation, and the impact of multi-ethnic teaching approaches. The book emphasizes that in a plurilingual country, social actors contribute in many ways to the changes of language education policy. It explores and discusses how such policies are implemented and results in the development of multilingual education. This book is the first to comprehensively examine the interconnected roles of education and language in the Philippines.

Child Survivors of Genocide: Trauma, Resilience, and Identity in Guatemala presents mixed-method, comparative ethnographic research conducted with orphaned child survivors who are now adults. These survivors were orphaned during Guatemala's thirty-six-year internal armed conflict and particularly during the heightened period of genocide from 1978 to 1983, referred to as la violencia. Raised for the majority of their childhoods in a family-style permanent residential home in the highlands region, the author examines the long-term consequences that these individuals have faced not only from grieving the loss of their parents and family members but also because of their orphan status. While they suffer from lasting trauma, these child survivors have become resilient, well-adapted adults with a strong internalized sense of ethnic identity. They also engage in creative and transformative practices regarding ethnic identity and belonging that have contributed to their abilities to adapt to their life circumstances in positive, constructive ways, and have expanded what it means to be Maya Indigenous Guatemalans today. Child survivors' experiences offer inspiration, justify expanded research with child survivors as their own distinct survivor group, and warrant reconsideration of in-country residential care when other forms of loving, nurturing in-country care are unavailable.