Lethal Imagination

Lethal Imagination
Author: Michael A. Bellesiles
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 1999-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0814712967
GET BOOK

Examining the role of violence in America's past, this collection of essays explores its history and development from slave patrols in the colonial South to gun ownership in the 20th century. The contributors focus not only on individual acts such as domestic violence, murder, duelling, frontier vigilantism and rape, but also on group and state-led acts such as lynchings, slave uprisings, the establishment of rifle clubs, legal sanctions of heterosexual aggression, and invasive medical experiments on women's bodies.

Lethal Violence

Lethal Violence
Author: Harold V. Hall
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 848
Release: 2024-11-01
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 104029491X
GET BOOK

Lethal Violence: A Sourcebook on Fatal Domestic, Acquaintance and Stranger Aggression applies the lethal violence sequence analysis to a wide-ranging array of fatal aggression, resulting in a multitude of observations and principles of violence. This sourcebook provides base rate information and cases for each type of fatal interaction, then applies the knowledge to violence-related situations and settings.

Deadly Powers

Deadly Powers
Author: Paul A. Trout
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2011-11-15
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1616145021
GET BOOK

In this illuminating and evocative exploration of the origin and function of storytelling, the author goes beyond the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell, arguing that mythmaking evolved as a cultural survival strategy for coping with the constant fear of being killed and eaten by predators. Beginning nearly two million years ago in the Pleistocene era, the first stories, Trout argues, functioned as alarm calls, warning fellow group members about the carnivores lurking in the surroundings. At the earliest period, before the development of language, these rudimentary "stories" would have been acted out. When language appeared with the evolution of the ancestral human brain, stories were recited, memorized, and much later written down as the often bone-chilling myths that have survived to this day. This book takes the reader through the landscape of world mythology to show how our more recent ancestors created myths that portrayed animal predators in four basic ways: as monsters, as gods, as benefactors, and as role models. Each incarnation is a variation of the fear-management technique that enabled early humans not only to survive but to overcome their potentially incapacitating fear of predators. In the final chapter, Trout explores the ways in which our visceral fear of predators is played out in the movies, where both animal and human predators serve to probe and revitalize our capacity to detect and survive danger. Anyone with an interest in mythology, archaeology, folk tales, and the origins of contemporary storytelling will find this book an exciting and provocative exploration into the natural and psychological forces that shaped human culture and gave rise to storytelling and mythmaking.

The Autonomy of the Self from Richardson to Huysmans

The Autonomy of the Self from Richardson to Huysmans
Author: Frederick Garber
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2014-07-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1400855187
GET BOOK

Frederick Garber studies in a wide range of English, French, German, and American literary texts instances of the struggle for the self's autonomy during the period preceding modernism. In tracing a pattern that changes from the unsettling of bourgeois conditions in Richardson to the collapse of that challenge in the Decadents, he demonstrates that this period is characterized by a pervasive dialectic of aloofness and association. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Her Own Hero

Her Own Hero
Author: Wendy L. Rouse
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2019-03-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 147980729X
GET BOOK

The surprising roots of the self-defense movement and the history of women’s empowerment. At the turn of the twentieth century, women famously organized to demand greater social and political freedoms like gaining the right to vote. However, few realize that the Progressive Era also witnessed the birth of the women’s self-defense movement. It is nearly impossible in today’s day and age to imagine a world without the concept of women’s self defense. Some women were inspired to take up boxing and jiu-jitsu for very personal reasons that ranged from protecting themselves from attacks by strangers on the street to rejecting gendered notions about feminine weakness and empowering themselves as their own protectors. Women’s training in self defense was both a reflection of and a response to the broader cultural issues of the time, including the women’s rights movement and the campaign for the vote. Perhaps more importantly, the discussion surrounding women’s self-defense revealed powerful myths about the source of violence against women and opened up conversations about the less visible violence that many women faced in their own homes. Through self-defense training, women debunked patriarchal myths about inherent feminine weakness, creating a new image of women as powerful and self-reliant. Whether or not women consciously pursued self-defense for these reasons, their actions embodied feminist politics. Although their individual motivations may have varied, their collective action echoed through the twentieth century, demanding emancipation from the constrictions that prevented women from exercising their full rights as citizens and human beings. This book is a fascinating and comprehensive introduction to one of the most important women’s issues of all time. This book will provoke good debate and offer distinct responses and solutions.

Sacred Violence in Early America

Sacred Violence in Early America
Author: Susan Juster
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2016-03-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812292820
GET BOOK

Sacred Violence in Early America offers a sweeping reinterpretation of the violence endemic to seventeenth-century English colonization by reexamining some of the key moments of cultural and religious encounter in North America. Susan Juster explores different forms of sacred violence—blood sacrifice, holy war, malediction, and iconoclasm—to uncover how European traditions of ritual violence developed during the wars of the Reformation were introduced and ultimately transformed in the New World. Juster's central argument concerns the rethinking of the relationship between the material and the spiritual worlds that began with the Reformation and reached perhaps its fullest expression on the margins of empire. The Reformation transformed the Christian landscape from an environment rich in sounds, smells, images, and tactile encounters, both divine and human, to an austere space of scriptural contemplation and prayer. When English colonists encountered the gods and rituals of the New World, they were forced to confront the unresolved tensions between the material and spiritual within their own religious practice. Accounts of native cannibalism, for instance, prompted uneasy comparisons with the ongoing debate among Reformers about whether Christ was bodily present in the communion wafer. Sacred Violence in Early America reveals the Old World antecedents of the burning of native bodies and texts during the seventeenth-century wars of extermination, the prosecution of heretics and blasphemers in colonial courts, and the destruction of chapels and mission towns up and down the North American seaboard. At the heart of the book is an analysis of "theologies of violence" that gave conceptual and emotional shape to English colonists' efforts to construct a New World sanctuary in the face of enemies both familiar and strange: blood sacrifice, sacramentalism, legal and philosophical notions of just and holy war, malediction, the contest between "living" and "dead" images in Christian idology, and iconoclasm.

Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

Encyclopedia of Race and Crime
Author: Helen Taylor Greene
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 1025
Release: 2009-04-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452266093
GET BOOK

"The organization of the reader′s guide—especially the groupings of landmark cases, race riots, and criminology theories—is impressive ... Other related titles lack the breadth, detail, and accessibility of this work ... Recommended for all libraries; essential for comprehensive social studies collections." —Library Journal As seen almost daily on local and national news, race historically and presently figures prominently in crime and justice reporting within the United States, in the areas of hate crimes, racial profiling, sentencing disparities, wrongful convictions, felon disenfranchisement, political prisoners, juveniles and the death penalty, and culturally specific delinquency prevention programs. The Encyclopedia of Race and Crime covers issues in both historical and contemporary context, with information on race and ethnicity and their impact on crime and the administration of justice. These two volumes offer a greater appreciation for the similar historical experiences of varied racial and ethnic groups and illustrate how race and ethnicity has mattered and continues to matter in the administration of American criminal justice. Key Features Covers a number of broad thematic areas: basic concepts and theories of criminal justice; the police, courts, and corrections; juvenile justice; public policy; the media; organizations; specific groups and populations; and specific cases and biographies Addresses such topics as gender, hate/bias crimes, immigrant experiences, international and cross-cultural issues, race and gangs, and race and law, Presents experiences of all major racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., including Asians, Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and Ethnic Whites, as well as religious minorities, such as Muslims Includes coverage of recent incidents like the alleged rape of a black female North Carolina Central University student by white male members of the Duke University Lacrosse Team;, the Jena 6 incident; the Tulia, Texas drug arrests; the Rodney King beating; the O. J. Simpson trials in the 1990s; and more recent racial profiling incidents Two appendices provide information on locating and interpreting statistical data on race and crime, as well as detailed instructions on how to access statistical data on the web for such specific areas as arrests, drugs, gang membership, hate crimes, homicide trends, juvenile justice, prison populations, racial profiling, the death penalty, and victimization Because the topic of race and crime is of wide interest and relevance, entries in this Encyclopedia are written in an accessible style to appeal to a broad audience, making it a welcome addition to academic and public libraries alike.

Contemporary Western

Contemporary Western
Author: White John White
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2019-05-03
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 1474427952
GET BOOK

The September 11th attacks in 2001 and the subsequent 'War on Terror' have had a profound effect on American cinema, and the contemporary Western is no exception. In this book, John White explores how films such as Open Range, True Grit and Jane Got a Gun reinforce a conservative myth of America exceptionalism; endorsing the use of extreme force in dealing with enemies and highlighting the importance of defending the homeland. Placing their characters within a dark world of confusion and horror, these films reflect the United States' post-9/11 uncertainties, and the conflict between civilised values and the brutality employed to defend them.

Sapphic Slashers

Sapphic Slashers
Author: Lisa Duggan
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2001-01-10
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 082238101X
GET BOOK

On a winter day in 1892, in the broad daylight of downtown Memphis, Tennessee, a middle class woman named Alice Mitchell slashed the throat of her lover, Freda Ward, killing her instantly. Local, national, and international newspapers, medical and scientific publications, and popular fiction writers all clamored to cover the ensuing “girl lovers” murder trial. Lisa Duggan locates in this sensationalized event the emergence of the lesbian in U.S. mass culture and shows how newly “modern” notions of normality and morality that arose from such cases still haunt and distort lesbian and gay politics to the present day. Situating this story alongside simultaneously circulating lynching narratives (and its resistant versions, such as those of Memphis antilynching activist Ida B. Wells) Duggan reveals how stories of sex and violence were crucial to the development of American modernity. While careful to point out the differences between the public reigns of terror that led to many lynchings and the rarer instances of the murder of one woman by another privately motivated woman, Duggan asserts that dominant versions of both sets of stories contributed to the marginalization of African Americans and women while solidifying a distinctly white, male, heterosexual form of American citizenship. Having explored the role of turn-of-the-century print media—and in particular their tendency toward sensationalism—Duggan moves next to a review of sexology literature and to novels, most notably Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. Sapphic Slashers concludes with two appendices, one of which presents a detailed summary of Ward’s murder, the trial, and Mitchell’s eventual institutionalization. The other presents transcriptions of letters exchanged between the two women prior to the crime. Combining cultural history, feminist and queer theory, narrative analysis, and compelling storytelling, Sapphic Slashers provides the first history of the emergence of the lesbian in twentieth-century mass culture.

Encyclopedia of American Folklore

Encyclopedia of American Folklore
Author: Linda Watts
Publisher: Infobase Holdings, Inc
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2020-07-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1646930002
GET BOOK

Folklore has been described as the unwritten literature of a culture: its songs, stories, sayings, games, rituals, beliefs, and ways of life. Encyclopedia of American Folklore helps readers explore topics, terms, themes, figures, and issues related to this popular subject. This comprehensive reference guide addresses the needs of multiple audiences, including high school, college, and public libraries, archive and museum collections, storytellers, and independent researchers. Its content and organization correspond to the ways educators integrate folklore within literacy and wider learning objectives for language arts and cultural studies at the secondary level. This well-rounded resource connects United States folk forms with their cultural origin, historical context, and social function. Appendixes include a bibliography, a category index, and a discussion of starting points for researching American folklore. References and bibliographic material throughout the text highlight recently published and commonly available materials for further study. Coverage includes: Folk heroes and legendary figures, including Paul Bunyan and Yankee Doodle Fables, fairy tales, and myths often featured in American folklore, including "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Princess and the Pea" American authors who have added to or modified folklore traditions, including Washington Irving Historical events that gave rise to folklore, including the civil rights movement and the Revolutionary War Terms in folklore studies, such as fieldwork and the folklife movement Holidays and observances, such as Christmas and Kwanzaa Topics related to folklore in everyday life, such as sports folklore and courtship/dating folklore Folklore related to cultural groups, such as Appalachian folklore and African-American folklore and more.