Books published by Ohio State University Press

In The Ethics of Persuasion: Derrida's Rhetorical Legacies, Brooke Rollins argues that some of the most forceful and utilitarian examples of persuasion involve significant ethical dimensions. Using the work of Jacques Derrida, she draws this ethical imperative out from a series of canonical rhetorical texts that have traditionally been understood as insistent or even guileful instances of persuasion. Her reconsideration of highly determined pieces by Gorgias, Lysias, Isocrates, and Plato encourages readers to inherit the rhetorical tradition differently, and it pinpoints the important rhetorical dimensions of Derrida's own work. Drawing on Derrida's (non)definition of ethics and his pointed accounts of performativity, Rollins argues that this vital ethical component of many ancient theories, practices, and pedagogies of persuasion has been undertheorized for more than two millennia. Through deconstructive readings of some of these texts, she shows us that we are not simply sovereign beings who both wield and guard against linguistic techniques of rule. Our persuasive endeavors, rather, are made possible by an ethics-an always prior encounter with otherness that interrupts self-presence.

Columbus, Ohio, is a place whose identity centers on its supposed lack of identity-an American "every place" that has launched countless chain dining concepts. Enter the contributors to this wide-ranging volume, who are all too happy to fight back against that reputation, even as they recognize it as an inevitable facet of the ever-growing city they call home. "Maybe we're not having trouble designing a definitive identity," writes Amanda Page in her introduction. "Maybe we are a city that is constantly considering what it will become."Race, sports, the endless squeeze of gentrification, the city's booming literary and comics scenes, its reputation as a haven for queer life, the sometimes devastating differences in perspective among black and white, native and transplant residents-and more than one tribute to Buckeye Donuts-make this anthology a challenging and an energizing read. From Hanif Abdurraqib's sparkling and urgent portrait of Columbus's vital immigrant culture as experienced through Crew games to Nick Dekker's insights into breakfast as a vehicle for getting to know a city to the poetry of Maggie Smith and Ruth Awad, the pieces gathered here show us a Columbus far more textured than any test marketer could dream up.

Jordan Peele's Get Out: Political Horror is a collection of sixteen essays devoted to exploring Get Out's roots in the horror tradition and its complex and timely commentary on twenty-first-century US race relations. The first section, "The Politics of Horror," traces the influence of the gothic and horror tradition on Peele's film, from Shakespeare's Othello, through the female gothic and Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives, to the modern horror film, including the zombie, rural, suburban, and body-swap subgenres of horror. The second section, "The Horror of Politics," takes up Get Out's varied political interventions-notably its portrayal of the continuation of slavery and the deformation of the black body and mind in white, so-called progressive America. Contributors address Peele's film alongside African American figures such as Nat Turner, W. E. B. Du Bois, and James Baldwin. Taken together, the essays illuminate how Get Out stands as both a groundbreaking intervention in the horror tradition as well as a devastating unmasking of racism in the contemporary United States.

The Rust Belt was once the crown of American manufacturing, a symbol of the country's economic prowess. But now it is named for what it has become: a deteriorating stretch of industrial cities left behind by a post-industrial world. In Dayton: The Rise, Decline, and Transition of an Industrial City, Adam A. Millsap turns his focus to his hometown, an archetypal Rust Belt city, to examine its history and discuss its future.Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, Millsap's book explores the economic background of the region made famous by J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. From early twentieth-century optimism, through the Great Depression and post-WWII manufacturing decline, to Dayton now, with its labor-force problems and opioid crisis, Millsap tracks the underlying forces driving the city's trajectory. Race relations, interstates, suburbanization, climate, crime, geography, and government policies all come into play as Millsap develops a picture of the city, past and present. By examining the past, Millsap proposes a plan for the future, claiming that there is hope for Dayton to thrive again. And if Dayton can rise from its industrial ashes, then perhaps the Rust Belt can shed its stigma and once again become the backbone of American innovation.

The powerful essays in Paul Crenshaw's This One Will Hurt You range in subject matter from the fierce tornadoes that crop up in Tornado Alley every spring and summer to a supposedly haunted one-hundred-year-old tuberculosis sanatorium that he lived on the grounds of as a child. They ruminate on the effects of crystal meth on small southern towns, Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, and the ongoing struggle of being a parent in an increasingly disturbing world. They surprise, whether discovering a loved one's secret, an opossum's motivation, or the unexpected decision four beer-guzzling, college-aged men must make. They tell stories of family and the past, the histories of small things such as walls and weather, and the faith it takes to hold together in the face of death. With eloquence, subtle humor, and an urgent poignancy, Crenshaw delivers a powerful and moving collection of nonfiction essays, tied together by place and the violence of the world in which we live.

On the Back of a Turtle is an all-inclusive history of the Huron-Wyandot people-from before the creation of the Great Island, now called North America, to the present day. No other full-length history of the Huron-Wyandot people exists. Presented in a conversational, easy-to-read style, the book is a compelling and informative telling of the story of the Huron-Wyandot people as told by a tribal historian. As characters and tribes emerge in the Huron-Wyandot's oral tradition of creation, and take their respective places upon the Great Island, the author reveals the most difficult element of the Huron-Wyandot's history: how the tribal name was obtained. With the knowledge of how both Huron and Wyandot are relevant names for one tribe of people, the author then shares his tribe's amazing history. The reader will be fascinated to learn how one of the smallest tribes, birthed amid the Iroquois Wars, rose to become one of the most respected and influential tribes of North America.

Sue Eisenfeld is a Yankee by birth, a Virginian by choice, an urbanite who came to love the rural South, a Civil War buff, and a nonobservant Jewish woman. In Wandering Dixie, she travels to nine states, uncovering how the history of Jewish southerners converges with her personal story and the region''s complex, conflicted present. In the process, she discovers the unexpected ways that race, religion, and hidden histories intertwine. From South Carolina to Arkansas, she explores the small towns where Jewish people once lived and thrived. She visits the site of her distant cousin and civil rights activist Andrew Goodman''s murder during 1964''s Freedom Summer. She also talks with the only Jews remaining in some of the "lost" places, from Selma to the Mississippi Delta to Natchitoches, and visits areas with no Jewish community left-except for an old temple or overgrown cemetery. Eisenfeld follows her curiosity about Jewish Confederates and casts an unflinching eye on early southern Jews'' participation in slavery. Her travels become a journey of revelation about our nation''s fraught history and a personal reckoning with the true nature of America. 

Through language both reverent and reckless, Katie Condon''s debut collection renders the body a hymn. Praying Naked is Eden in the midst of the fall, the meat of the apple sweet as sex. In this collection, God is a hopeless and dangerous flirt, mothers die and are resurrected, and disappointing lovers run like hell for the margins. With effortless swagger and confessional candor, Condon lays bare the thrill of lust and its subsequent shame. In poems brimming with "the desire / to be desired" by men, by God, by lovers'' other women, by oneself, she renders a world in which wildflowers are coated in ash and dark bedrooms flicker with the blue light of longing. The speaker implores like an undressed wound: "is it wrong to feel a hurt kind of beautiful?" Ecstatic and incisive, Praying Naked is a daring sexual and spiritual reckoning by a breathtaking new poet.

Exploring the history humans share with gorillas, Voices from the Ape House offers a behind-the-scenes look at the complicated social lives of western lowland gorillas through the eyes of a devoted zookeeper. The memoir traces Beth Armstrong''s love and fascination for animals, from her childhood to her work with captive primates as an adult. Through her eyes, readers sense the awe and privilege of working with these animals at the Columbus Zoo. Individual gorillas there had an enormous effect on her life, shaping and influencing her commitment to improving gorilla husbandry and to involving her zoo in taking an active role to protect gorillas in the wild. Through anecdotal stories, readers get a glimpse into the fascinating lives of gorillas-the familiar gentleness of mothers and fathers toward their infants, power plays and social climbing, the unruly nature of teenagers, the capacity for humor, and the shared sadness by group members as they mourn the death of one of their own. In the end, Armstrong''s conflict with captivity and her lifelong fondness for these animals helped shape a zoo program dedicated to gorilla conservation. 

Finalist for the Publishing Triangle''s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian NonfictionYou have a history, and a body. You are a history, and a body. Your body has (is) a history, too. As a girl, Julie Marie Wade was uninterested in makeup, boy-watching, and other trappings of conventional girlhood, much to her mother''s disappointment. Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe-movie stars immortalized as feminine ideals, even as they both died tragically and young-were lodestars that threw Wade''s own definition of beauty into relief as she stumbled into adulthood.Now, in Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing, Wade traces the intimate story of coming of age in one particular body (as a lesbian, an only child, a Protestant attending Catholic school). She uses the language and tenets of music, math, religion, fairy tales, poetry, and art to reckon with the many facets of embodiment, sexuality, and love in our contemporary world. The diet industry, popular culture, and her own family all provide rich material for what is ultimately a lyrical and unflinching investigation into the questions that prickle deep within the human heart. 

My Private Lennon: Explorations from a Fan Who Never Screamed offers a new point of view from which to consider the Beatles'' impact on society and on the individual. In a series of linked autobiographical essays that explore the musical, cultural, and personal aspects of intense music fandom, Sibbie O''Sullivan dismantles the grand narrative of the fifteen-year-old hysterical female Beatles fan and replaces it with an introspective and often humorous tale about how the band shaped her intellectual and artistic development. My Private Lennon charts the author''s realization that the Beatles, especially John Lennon, were a crucial force in her development. A radical departure from other books written by Beatles fans, My Private Lennon invites its readers to consider subjects not usually found in works about Lennon and the band, such as the constraints of memory, the male body, grief, the female breast, race, cultural issues, and the importance of privacy in our over-mediated world. In pieces that engage cultural issues and historical contexts, My Private Lennon creates a witty and provocative intimacy with readers who value the power of art to change one''s life and who love John Lennon and the Beatles. 

In 2014 Sonya Bilocerkowycz is a tourist at a deadly revolution. At first she is enamored with the Ukrainians'' idealism, which reminds her of her own patriotic family. But when the romantic revolution melts into a war with Russia, she becomes disillusioned, prompting a return home to the US and the diaspora community that raised her. As the daughter of a man who studies Ukrainian dissidents for a living, the granddaughter of war refugees, and the great-granddaughter of a gulag victim, Bilocerkowycz has inherited a legacy of political oppression. But what does it mean when she discovers a missing page from her family''s survival story-one that raises questions about her own guilt?In these linked essays, Bilocerkowycz invites readers to meet a swirling cast of post-Soviet characters, including a Russian intelligence officer who finds Osama bin Laden a few weeks after 9/11; a Ukrainian poet whose nose gets broken by Russian separatists; and a long-lost relative who drives a bus into the heart of Chernobyl. On Our Way Home from the Revolution muddles our easy distinctions between innocence and culpability, agency and fate.

Through a series of variations on the theme of love-unrequited, polyamorous, monogomous, scandalous, adulterous-Desirae Matherly''s Echo''s Fugue explores love in all its failures and delusions. Patterned on the unfinished The Art of Fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach which has been a mystery for centuries, Echo''s Fugue undertakes Bach''s project in prose-the tantalizing numerical correspondences throughout, the repetition of a single theme, the unfinished final piece. Matherly''s essays appear as letters, indexes, narrative, or sentence diagrams, each defying the rules of the blank page. Song lyrics, obsession, Greek mythology, psychology, game theory, and human sexuality form a fragmented narrative about loss and unhealthy attachments. Mimicry of Bach''s fugues leads the author to questions about love, sex, desire, the "Bach or Stravinsky" paradigm in game theory, and relationships considered taboo by mainstream standards.What authority speaks clearest with regard to love, sex, and desire-and is objectivity even possible? The final essay attempts to resolve this question while echoing the puzzle of Bach''s final unfinished fugue. 

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2020In Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics, Sean Guynes and Martin Lund bring together a series of essays that contextualize the histories and stakes of whiteness studies, superhero comics, and superhero studies for academics, fans, and media-makers alike. The volume illustrates how the American comic book superhero is fundamentally a figure of white power and white supremacy and ultimately calls for diversity in superhero comics as well as a democratized media culture.Contributors not only examine superhero narratives but also delve into the production, distribution, audience, and reception of those narratives, highlighting the imbrication of forces that have helped to create, normalize, question, and sometimes even subvert American beliefs about whiteness and race. Unstable Masks considers the co-constitutive nature of identity, representation, narrative, production and consumption, and historical and cultural contexts in forging the stereotypes that decide who gets to be a superhero and who gets to be American on the four-color pages of comic books.

Thirty years after her father's death, Karen McClintock sets out to find the gay father she never really knew. As we follow the unraveling family secret, we find ourselves drawn into her story as they stumble into infidelity, grieve heartbreaking losses, and remain loyal in love.Set in Columbus, Ohio, My Father's Closet tells the story of how just before the war, McClintock's parents fell in love and married, while overseas in Germany the man whom she believes became her father's lover was concealing his Jewish and gay identities in order to escape to America. A set of her father's journals, letters her parents sent to each other during the Second World War, and a mysterious painting all lead her toward the truth about her gay father. McClintock weaves a complex secret into the fabric of lives we truly care about. And in the process, she leads us out of her father's closet.This gripping memoir captures the longing children feel for a distant or hidden parent and taps into the complexity of human connection and abandonment. The characters are resilient and vibrant. The hidden lovers, the nosey neighbors, and surprise lovers all show up. In the end, this extraordinary family finds ways to connect and freedom to love. Anyone who grew up with a family secret will appreciate the dynamics afoot in this fast-paced and compelling story.