Premodern Monsters: A Varied Compilation of Pre-modern Judeo-Christian and Japanese Buddhist Monstrous Discourses

Edited by Allan Wright, University of Alberta

ISBN: 978-1-64889-903-4
Availability: Forthcoming
$105 £84 €98

Monster Studies is a rising academic topic. Despite hesitancy at first, the subject is now examined by scholars of various academic interests and backgrounds. However, the dominant monster investigations are from the post-1900s. This volume focuses on Premodern monsters. The purpose of this volume is to examine various monsters from diverse cultures in order to indicate how each monstrous discourse derives from their mythology’s socio-cultural context. The volume examines several Monsters within their socio-cultural matrix. This includes a variety of monstrosities from diverse cultures and periods. Namely, the examined creatures, or perceived creatures, stem from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament (Pauline epistles), Reformation England, the Japanese Noh play Dōjōji, Yamauba Myths, and Yōkai Relics from early modern Japanese Buddhism.

Pedagogy: Using Television Shows, Games, and Other Media in the Classroom

Edited by Laura Dumin, University of Central Oklahoma

April 2024 / ISBN: 978-1-64889-901-0
Availability: In stock
202pp. ¦ $74 £59 €69

This book takes a dive into moving beyond the essay as the only method for teaching and learning content. Authors range from instructors in K-12 to instructors in higher education and look at concepts as varied as using VR technologies to provide immersive experiences to students to use an app to help supplement teaching. Instructors in a variety of fields, both in and out of the writing classroom, may find project and assignment ideas to argue in their own classrooms. Instructors looking to provide a transformative learning experience in a new way will find lots of options here.

Catholic Neurotheology

Andrew Newberg, Thomas Jefferson University and Mary Clare Smith, Sisters of Notre Dame

April 2024 / ISBN: 978-1-64889-898-3
Availability: In stock
400pp. ¦ $86 £69 €81

The topic of “neurotheology” has garnered increasing attention in the academic, religious, scientific, and popular worlds. It is the field of study that explores the intersection between the brain and religious and spiritual phenomena. However, there have been no extensive attempts at exploring specifically how Catholic religious thought and experience may intersect with neurotheology. The purpose of 'Catholic Neurotheology' is to fully engage this groundbreaking area. Topics are related to a neurotheological approach to the foundational Catholic beliefs derived from Scripture and Tradition, an exploration of the various elements of Catholicism and of Catholic rituals and practices, and a review of Catholic spiritualities and mysticism. Specific Catholic scholars are considered in terms of the relationships among their ideas/teachings and different brain processes. 'Catholic Neurotheology' engages these topics in an easy-to-read style and incorporates scientific, religious, philosophical, and theological aspects of the emerging field of neurotheology. By reviewing the concepts in a stepwise, simple, yet thorough discussion, readers regardless of their background will be able to understand the complexities and breadth of neurotheology from a Catholic perspective. More broadly, issues include a review of the neurosciences and neuroscientific techniques; religious and spiritual experiences; theological development and analysis; liturgy and ritual; philosophy, epistemology, and ethics; and social implications, all from a Catholic perspective.

Germanic Philology: Perspectives in Linguistics and Literature

Edited by Heiko Wiggers, Wake Forest University and Tina Boyer, Wake Forest University

April 2024 / ISBN: 978-1-64889-897-6
Availability: In stock
244pp. ¦ $92 £74 €86

'Germanic Philology: Perspectives in Linguistics and Literature' offers new, compelling, and thought-provoking contributions to the field of Germanic Linguistics. Nine authors from three different continents (North America, Europe, and South America) present in this edited volume their latest research on such diverse topics as Old High German, Old Saxon and Early New High German poetry, Yiddish, German Heritage speakers in the U.S., Germanic language periodization, paleography, and gender issues in Modern Standard German. 'Germanic Philology: Perspectives in Linguistics and Literature' strives to rekindle dialogue and discourse about topics in Germanic Linguistics while at the same time providing innovative and interesting talking points to the discipline in an international, trans-Atlantic framework. The articles featured in this volume will appeal to students and instructors of Germanic Linguistics alike as well as to anyone interested in this subject.

Whisk of the Red Broom: Stalin & Ukraine, 1928-1933

M. Andrew Holowchak

April 2024 / ISBN: 978-1-64889-860-0
Availability: In stock
262pp. ¦ $72 £58 €67

Once Joseph Stalin took the lead of the Soviet Bolshevists after the death of Vladimir Lenin, he quickly turned away from Lenin’s New Economic Policy, with its many concessions to capitalism, to a policy of one-country socialism, driven by his first Five Year Plan (1928) and a plan that other Bolsheviks like Lenin and Trotsky thought impossible. That shift, radical, forced Stalin to “urbanize” the USSR’s vast rural areas—that is, to impose a factory-like model on the Soviet countryside to maximize its efficiency. That required collectivizing the numerous Soviet farms—making large farms of the numerous small farms. Ukraine was to be the model republic due to its vastness and black, fertile lands. Not only were the republics to be collectivized, they were also to be Russified for the sake of model efficiency and centralization of control. And so, while Stalin, early in his political life, preached respect for the cultural diversity of its many republics and the right of secession of any republic, the need to collectivize the Soviet farms for the sake of one-country socialism demanded compliance. Ukrainian peasant-farmers were non-compliant, for they readily saw that the State was asking them for everything and giving back nothing but the pledge of efficient farms to benefit the State, and non-compliance forced Stalin’s authoritarian hand. He imposed laws that brutally punished non-compliant peasants, called “kulaks.” The plan was dekulakization. The intransigents were dispossessed of their property, alienated from other villagers, exiled, and exterminated. The result in Ukraine was the gross inefficiency of both collective and individual farms. That led to intolerance of Ukrainian culture and theft of Ukrainian grain, and even all other findable foodstuffs, to punish Ukrainians. The end was a great famine in 1932 and 1933 in which some four million Ukrainians died. Did Stalin believe that he could urbanize the Soviet countryside? Did Stalin think that socialism could take root in the backwater Soviet Union without the aid of Western succor? Did Stalin hate Ukrainians because many pressed for a cultural identity separate from that of Russia? Had Stalin’s plan of dekulakization from the beginning been a policy of political genocide? Those are some of the many questions I aim to answer in this book. I focus much on Stalin’s writings in the efforts to ascertain his mindset as a dictator.