Each year, the Bucknell University Press takes on an undergraduate and a graduate intern, teaching them the ways of an academic press and offering a thorough examination of what it means to work in the publishing community. In his time at the Press, past Bucknell University Press graduate intern Patrick Henry (2008-2010) discovered “the community that one university press could build—on campus, with other presses, and with academics the globe over,” a lesson he learned under the leadership of the Bucknell Press’s director Greg Clingham. After his time with the Press, Henry moved on to Rutgers, interning with The Story Prize, and then on to George Washington where he “co-taught a service-learning course with the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.”

“On a personal note, [he] found that the Press’s community goes far beyond the offices in Taylor Hall. Recently, [he] had an article accepted for publication at European Romantic Review. The essay wouldn’t have been possible without [his] faculty advisors at George Washington, including Tara Ghoshal Wallace—who published Imperial Characters with the Press in 2010.”

As Henry says, his years at the Press were “life-changing” as he worked alongside Clingham and Publishing Manager Nina Forsberg, especially during such an exciting time at the Press as they celebrated their 40^th anniversary and began their partnership with co-publisher Rowman and Littlefield. Remembering his time at the Press, he describes “There was what Nina and [he] called ‘Christmas’: opening boxes of books, fresh from the printer” and “the three of [them], closing each semester over tea and a fruit tart in the Press offices.” With Henry’s time at the Press coinciding with the anniversary, one can find “a few pictures of [him] clad in [his] kilt—at Greg’s request—for the 40^th’s festivities.”

Since Henry’s six years at the Press, he’s been publishing fiction pieces, often relying on

“[his] upbringing in Pennsylvania to write stories that seem familiar, yet strange. [He’s] drawn to historical fiction for the same reason. ‘The Brothers’ (Northville Review) is a flash fiction in which a soldier returns to Pennsylvania after the war in Kosovo—an event that has cast a harrowing light on a childhood memory. In ‘Space Cases’ (Revolution House), a father abandons his son over Space Race hype, so the boy takes comfort in the seemingly alien neighbor boy who builds a cardboard spaceship. In ‘Takeoff’ (Lowestoft Chronicle), a young couple with a rocky marriage sets off for Paris, pinning their hopes on the jet age’s promise of escape.”

Also publishing book reviews on contemporary fiction and poetry, Henry has reviewed Amanda Leduc’s novel The Miracles of Ordinary Men (ECW, 2013), Lisa Dordal’s poetry collection Commemoration (Finishing Line, 2012), and Modern Language Studies has run his longer review essays on Ian McEwan’s novels and David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King.

Henry has also “stayed in touch with the editing and publishing process by working with Modern Language Studies as the journal’s copy editor, and (soon!) [he’ll] be taking over as the journal’s fiction and poetry editor.” With his passion for book publishing, Thomas holds the dream of “running a small press that publishes novellas, novella-length books of criticism, and other odd (yet beautiful) mid-length texts that have a difficult time finding homes in today’s publishing environment.”

Now as Henry works on a few large-scale projects, a manuscript for a short story collection, a novel that “shamelessly raids the genres of historical and detective fiction,” and his dissertation, we at the Press wish Henry the best of luck in his future endeavors.

 

 

Brief Bio: Patrick Thomas Henry is a PhD candidate in the English Department at George Washington University; his dissertation research investigates the aesthetic and political interventions of criticism by Modernist writers. He has earned graduate degrees in English and Creative Writing from Bucknell University and Rutgers University-Newark. His short fiction, poetry, and book reviews have appeared in Revolution House, The Northville Review, Sugar House Review, Necessary Fiction, and Modern Language Studies, amongst others. Beginning in spring 2016, he will serve as the Associate Editor for Fiction and Poetry at Modern Language Studies. He currently lives in Alexandria, VA, with his wife and their two cats.

Website: patrickthomashenry.com

Twitter: @Patrick_T_Henry

 

Along with celebrating Black History Month, we make note of National Freedom Day, occurring on the first of February. In 1865 on February 1^st, President Lincoln signed the 13^th amendment, thereby outlawing slavery. While it didn’t become a national holiday until President Truman signed it into official existence, a former slave, Major Richard Robert Wright, Sr., is the creator of the holiday.

Freedom can be found, and taken away, in many forms, the easiest to see being the physical. So, in line with the idea of freedom, the Press explores the concept through the political, the academic, and the philosophical in Ziad Elmarsafy’s Freedom, Slavery, & Absolutism, John Higgin’s Academic Freedom in a Democratic South Africa, and Olga Sedakova’s Freedom to Believe, respectively.

 

 

Freedom, Slavery, & Absolutism

Ziad Elmarsafy

Ziad Elmarsafy explores the concept of freedom by reading the works of Corneille, Pascal, and Racine as political theories in the guise of literature. Within this framework, a certain model quickly becomes apparent, namely that of absolute sovereignty as the guarantor of freedom. The three writers under consideration share the view that freedom is ensured only by absolute authority rather than the absence of such authority. From Corneille, who modulates freedom through an erotic link to the monarch as a means through which the glorious individual is brought into the state’s fold, to Pascal, who traces the liberation of the will via absolute submission to God, to Racine, for whom absolute submission to the most Christian king is the only route to political and personal salvation, Elmarsafy studies a politics of taking charge that differs markedly from the contemporary orthodoxy that privileges individual freedom. Historically engaged, incisively argued, and persuasively written, Freedom, Slavery, and Absolutism will appeal to literary scholars, to political theorists and to readers interested in the history of ideas.

http://www.bucknell.edu/script/upress/book.asp?f=s&id=13

 

 

 

Academic Freedom in a Democratic South Africa

John Higgins

How do we understand academic freedom today? Does it still have relevance in a global reconfiguring of higher education in the interests of the economy, rather than the public good? And locally, is academic freedom no more than an inconvenient ideal, paid lip service to South Africa’s Constitution as an individual right, but neglected in institutional practice?

This book argues that the core content of academic freedom – the principle of supporting and extending open intellectual enquiry – is essential to realizing the full public value of higher education. John Higgins emphasizes the central role that the humanities, and the particular forms of argument and analysis they embody, bring to this task.
Each chapter embodies the particular force of a critical literacy in action, one which brings into play the combined force of historical inquiry, theoretical analysis, and precise attention to the textual dynamics of all statement so as to challenge and confront the received ideas of the day. These provocative analyses are complemented by probing interviews with three key figures from the Critical Humanities: Terry Eagleton, who discusses the deforming effects of managerialism in British universities; Edward W. Said, who argues for increased recognition of the democratizing force of the humanities; and Jakes Gerwel, who presents some of the most recent challenges for the realization of a humanist politics in South Africa.

http://www.bucknell.edu/script/upress/book.asp?f=s&id=2641

 

 

 

Freedom to Believe

Olga Sedakova

TRANSLATED BY: SLAVA I. YASTREMSKI AND MICHAEL M. NAYDAN

Freedom to Believe is a powerful collection of philosophical and religious essays by a modern poet of distinction. It introduces a highly original and controversial thinker to the Western reader. Olga Sedakova’s central philosophical thought lies in the notion of existential freedom in its association with the liberating power of the arts, especially poetry. These convictions place her firmly in the Russian and European classical cultural traditions, which, in turn, have deep roots in Christianity. Devoutly Orthodox yet fiercely independent in her thinking, Sedakova’s ecumenical humanism places her in opposition to both the “new left” and modern fundamentalism. Indeed, Sedakova’s “conservatism” is more genuinely new than the so-called radicalism of the postmodernists, as she castigates “old totalitarianism” and new commercialism alike, in the name of a new cultural poetics and politics.

http://www.bucknell.edu/script/upress/book.asp?f=s&id=407

Along with the other, more obvious, December holidays, this month we also celebrate Monkey Day! December 14^th is the unofficial holiday reminding you to appreciate your fellow primates. Begun in 2000 by artist Casey Sorrow at Michigan State University, it has spread all over the world with celebrations occurring in zoos such as Lahore Zoo in Pakistan and the Tallinn Zoo in Estonia. A day for costume parties and meant to draw attention to medical research and animal rights, particularly for simians, take part in Monkey Day this year with the Bucknell Press!

Here at the Press, we support Monkey Day this month with a showcase of our own monkey and ecology themed works: Monkey Farm by Donald Dewsbury expands on the history of Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology; Leaders in the Study of Animal Behavior edited by Donald Dewsbury relates the autobiographies of leading scientists in the animal behavior medium; and A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature by Scott M. Devries presents an ecocritical examination of the region’s literature.

 

Monkey Farm: A History of the Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology, Orange Park, Florida, 1930-1965

By Donald Dewsbury

This book is a history of the Yerkes laboratories of Primate Biology. The facility was founded as the Laboratories of Comparative Psychobiology of Yale University by Robert M. Yerkes, one of the leading psychologists of the twentieth century. The Yerkes Laboratories became the largest and most important collection of chimpanzees for research in the world. During its thirty-five-year history it was home to some of the leading behavioral scientists of the time. The book is, in essence, a biography of an institution.

 

 

 

 

Leaders in the Study of Animal Behavior

Edited by Donald Dewsbury

Brought together in this volume are autobiographical chapters written by nineteen of the leaders in establishing the science of animal behavior as a vigorous discipline in the twentieth century. The diversity of the authors parallels the diversity of approaches in the field. The range includes representatives of core ethology, comparative psychology, and general zoology. There are both field and laboratory workers. Ten reside in Europe, nine in the United States. Two have won Nobel Prizes and one a Pulitzer Prize.

The focus of each chapter is the life of the author as related to the discipline — these are scientific autobiographies. Important events are recounted and each author provides his perspective on the field. Contributors to this volume were selected by a panel of seven animal behaviorists, themselves representing different disciplines, who made an effort to select among the most prominent living senior workers in the field.

The book should be an indispensable part of the history of the study of animal behavior — unique in bringing together first-hand accounts of the development of the field written by its leading, living practitioners. It should also be a guide for young students in making intellectual career decisions and seeking models and modes for important research and professional directions. Science is seen as being conducted by living, breathing human beings, with the same aspirations, doubts, and frailties as other human beings.

 

A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature

By Scott M. DeVries

A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature undertakes a comprehensive ecocritical examination of the region’s literature from the foundational texts of the nineteenth century to the most recent fiction. The book begins with a consideration of the ways in which Argentine Domingo Faustino Sarmient’s views of nature through the lens of the categories of “civilization” and “barbarity” from Facundo (1845)  are systematically challenged and revises in the rest of the century. Subsequently, my book develops the argument that a vital part of the cultural critique and aesthetic innovations of Spanish American modernismo involve an ecological challenge to deepening discourses of untamed development from Europe and the United States. In other chapters, many of the well-established titles of regional and indigenista literature are contrasted to counter-traditions within those genres that express aspects of environmental justice, “deep ecology,” the relational role of emotion in nature protectionism and conservationism, even the rights of non-human nature. Finally, the concluding chapters find that the articulation of ecological advocacy in recent fiction is both more explicit than what came before but also impacts the formal elements of literature in unique ways. Textual conventions such as language, imagery, focalization, narrative sequences, metafiction, satire, and parody represent innovations of form that proceed directly from the ethical advocacy of environmentalism. The book concludes with comments about what must follow as a result of the analysis including revisions of canon, the development of literary criticism from novel approaches such as critical animal studies, and the advent of a critical dialogue within the bounds of Spanish American environmentalist literature.

A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature attempts to develop a sense of the way in which ecological ideas have developed over time in the literature, particularly in the way in which many Spanish American texts anticipate several of the ecological discourses that have recently become so central to global culture, current environmentalist thought, and the future of humankind.

The passion for reading starts young as you beg your mom or dad to buy that one or that one, oh, and the one over there! And every time you go to the library it feels like Christmas. That passion will more often than not grow into lifelong readership, one that takes you on thousands of journeys and provides quite the insight into humanity and knowledge.

Digging through the Press database, I discovered several works bringing me back to childhood and that appetite for books has stayed with me all these years. November 10 is Young Reader’s Day and to celebrate those passionate youths, I present to you several Bucknell University Press published works:

The Raven and the Lark by Barbara L. Estrin, an insight into the uses and implications of foundling plots in the English Renaissance; The Skeleton in the Wardrobe by David Holbrook, a critique on C.S. Lewis’s unconscious; and The Garden with Seven Gates by Concha Castroviejo, a collection of 15 stories featuring children protagonists.

 

 

 

The Raven and the Lark

By Barbara L. Estrin

The Raven and the Lark is the first book to survey the multiple uses of foundling plots and their implications for the English Renaissance. Describing why the period produced so many stories about children without a childhood and how the plots appeal to so many Renaissance writers, Barbara L. Estrin opens this study with three chapters that discuss classical, biblical, and contemporary sources. She then analyzes works by Malory, Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare.

As a literary formula the theme offers several possible worlds–in the lost interlude an occasion to affirm the mimetic family and praise art; in the necessary finding an opportunity to rejoice in the dynastic future and praise nature. The Raven and the Lark isolates the foundling theme in the major literature of the Renaissance and defines how writers used it both as a frame for narrative direction and a vehicle for poetic exploration.

 

 

The Skeleton in the Wardrobe

C.S. Lewis’s Fantasies: A Phenomenological Study

By David Holbrook

The “Narnia” stories of C.S. Lewis are widely popular and are believed by many to be renderings of important Christian truths. In church magazines, one may find bishops urging parents to introduce their children to Aslan and the allegorical mythology of Narnia.

When David Holbrook began to read the Narnia books to his children, however, he came to feel that there was something wrong with them. He set out to justify this feeling, prompted by learning that some people won’t give them to children, including a psychotherapist who said they were “full of hate.” Turning from psychoanalytical insight to symbolism, he was puzzled by many questions: What is the significance of the White Witch who blights the land? And how is it that the solutions to all problems turn out to be aggressive ones? It is possible, Holbrook contends, to see in the topography and drama of the Narnia books a very different meaning from that which is commonly suggested.

The Skeleton in the Wardrobe shows the stories to be enactments of a private mythology of Lewis’s unconscious. Lewis believed quite literally that the world hung between conflicting demons and angels, and he urges his reader to give assent to these realities, or perish. But, Holbrook asks, is this any less dangerous than fundamentalism, and does it not lead to strangely irrational conclusions? Holbrook shows convincingly that there are serious doubts about the “message” of the Narnia books, despite the didactic intentions and the conscious benignity.

 

 

The Garden with Seven Gates

By Concha Castroviejo

This collection of fourteen stories and one mini-drama features children protagonists, talking birds, and extraordinary occurrences. Like the tales of Charles Perrault and the brothers Grimm, they speak to fantasies and fears that are our constant companions in life, which means that although they are peopled with children protagonists, they are not for children alone. The introduction provides background on Concha Castroviejo and considers her production of juvenile literature in mid-twentieth-century Spain and in relation to authors like Elizabeth Mulder and María Luisa Gefaell; it then takes up themes in the book and discusses them.

 

As the harvest period comes to an end and nature fades out to make room for the cold, barren ground of winter, the dead are celebrated.

The Celtic festival of Samhain (SAH-in or SOW-in) occurs the night before November 1^st, the Celtic New Year, when the divide between the dead and the living is at its thinnest. To ward off ghosts, bonfires were lit and costumes worn, beginning the tradition of make believe we see today and the fear behind nightly shadows.

A month of tradition and superstition, October and its deathly festivities have been through many variations as the celebrations have been twisted to fit within the controlling religious and political powers. In Ancient Rome, Samhain was combined with both Feralia, the Roman celebration of the dead, and Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees leading to the inclusion of apple bobbing in Halloween festivities today. Even as the Celtic celebration endured, it has gone through many transitions from the original Samhain to All Hallows Eve and eventually becoming the family-friendly Halloween we know today.

Looking through the Bucknell Press’s database, several books came to mind: Modernism and Mourning Edited by Patricia Rae dedicates itself to examining the resistance to mourning through modernist writings; Facing Death: Theme and Variations by F. David Martin argues the need to face death through memory; Charon and the Crossing by Ronnie H. Terpening studies Charon, the Ancient Greek ferryman of Hades, and the cultural need for this deathly symbol. Each continues the fascination of death and the dead, following a long history of traditions and writings.

 

Modernism and Mourning

Edited by Patricia Rae

The essays in Modernism and Mourning examine modernist literature’s propensity for resisting the “work of mourning.” Drawing from recent critical and theoretical work on mourning, they explore how much modernist writing repudiates Freud’s famous injunction to mourners to “work through” their grief, endorsing instead a “resistant mourning” related to, though not always identical with, Freudian “melancholia.”

Several of the essays argue that the messages of modernist literature on mourning, reinforced by its experimental forms, are politically progressive, instructing readers to reject restorative nostalgia and normative mourning rituals that aim to restore the social status quo. Others show how modernist depictions of unresolved mourning are implicitly conservative, suggesting that unresolved grief is a function of structural absence rather than of historical loss, or that confronting and coming to terms with loss would require an expressive masculinity unacceptable within the strictures of capitalist modernity.

Although their chief purpose is to contribute to modernist literary scholarship, the readings here also hint at the pertinence of modernist mourning to the present day, in which the catastrophic losses of 9/11, of retaliatory war, of racially motivated genocide, and of the AIDS epidemic have made the question of how to mourn responsibly a subject of widespread interest. In this vein, several contributors view modernist treatments of mourning as models for ethical mourning, in offering alternatives to the familiar tragic plot of loss and vengeance, or forms of commemoration that do not efface the dead. Others examine the intersection between the language of resistant mourning in poetry and fiction and the discourse on public policy between the two World Wars, demonstrating how the failure of consolation can sometimes provide an opportunity for social reform.

 

 

Facing Death: Theme and Variations

By F. David Martin
If we do not, at some point in our life, face death–thinking hard and straight about it– we turn away from our authenticity. If that facing rejects irrational faith, dogmas, mystification, and personal immortality, is there yet a path free of despair? David Martin argues that participatory pantheism–the experience of the secular and the sacred both as a unity and as a mystery–provides such a path. As we age, the future shortens and the past lengthens. But if we face death, more and more memories–especially the involuntary–are stirred up and cohere into stronger, as well as new, unities.

What paradise there is for the elderly is not so much in what is happening but in remembering what happened in a meaningful way. For Dr. Martin, transformation of memory into the memorable is the transcendent meaning each of us can wrest from our coming to death.

Since nature is our home, Dr. Martin reasons, the more we think participatively (thinking from ) rather than only objectively (thinking at), the more we are aware of the mystery and the majesty of that home. The more we know about our world and ourselves, the more we can understand how much we don’t know. This kind of thinking is a thanking. It brings us within the sacred. We are anchored, and the churning of change no longer sweeps us away.

 

 

Charon and the Crossing

By Ronnie H. Terpening

Charon and the Crossing is the first comprehensive critical study of the figure of the underworld boatman Charon as it is found in the literary tradition from Classical Antiquity through the Italian renaissance and early Baroque period. The tradition of the underworld crossing embraces a variety of genres and writers both major and minor.

The world-wide cultural significance of the concept of an afterlife boatman, traced in the introduction, is noteworthy. In Greek literature alonge, the encounter with Charon is an aspect of many mythic descents, including those of Theseus, Herakles, Dionysos, Alcestis, Orpheus, Persephone, and Psyche. The limits and potentialities of humanity are perhaps nowhere more sharply defined than at the moment of crossing, a myth central to our poetic imagination. When poets throughout the centuries have dealt with fate, death, and an afterlife existence, they have availed themselves countless times of no less a figure than Charon, the ferryman of Hades.

 

 

And keep an eye out for an upcoming Bucknell University Press release:

From Amazons to Zombies: Monsters in Latin America

By Persephone Braham

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The month of October is more than apple-picking and Halloween costumes, it is a month of remembrance for the LGBT community and those who have fought, and continue to fight, for not just tolerance, but acceptance.

Within every documented culture homosexuality has been evident, and yet, even today, the LGBT community still struggles for acceptance. Only in recent years have steps even been taken. Pre-WWII little advancement for the community occurred, although some German scientists such as Sigmund Freud and Magnus Hirschfield studied, and were sympathetic to the plight against, homosexuality.

After WWII, however, as men and women in the LGBT community met through the massive transition, steps finally were taken for equality. The Mattachine Society, founded by Harry Hay and Chuck Rowland, and Daughters of Bilitis, founded by Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, were the first gay and lesbian organizations offering outreach. Along with growing support from prominent psychologists and sociologists, the beginnings of the movement were born. In 1969, Stonewall became the turning point in the cause when patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back against police raids on gay bars. Since then, many advancements have been made and the community has expanded to include a much wider range of sexual and gender identities.

As the fight for acceptance continues today, there exists large amounts of writing on the LGBTQ community, some found in the Bucknell Press’s own collection: Queer People edited by Chris Mounsey and Caroline Gonda depicts the lives and representation of homosexuals in the eighteenth century, from the famous to the anonymous; Masculinity, Senses, Spirit edited by Katherine M. Faull explores the interrelationship between gender and sexuality from the eighteenth century to present; Plot Twists and Critical Turns: Queer Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Theater by Matthew D. Stroud studies the Spanish theater and the absent queer object as well as the strong gender conformity throughout.

 

Queer People: Negotiations and Expressions of Homosexuality, 1700-1800

Edited by Chris Mounsey and Caroline Gonda

This fascinating and diverse collection of essays concerns the lives and representations of homosexuals in the long eighteenth century. The collection addresses and seeks to move beyond the current critical division between essentialists and social constructionists, a division that bedevils the history of sexuality and fissures Queer Theory. Drawing on a wide range of sources as well as theoretical approaches, the essays explore canonical and non-canonical literature, scurrilous pamphlets and court cases, music, religion and politics, consumer culture and sexual subcultures. Eighteenth-century life is depicted here in all its rich variety, from the scandals surrounding Queen Anne to the struggles of laboring-class poets, and from the famous – Defoe, Handel, Boswell, Burney, and the Duchess of Devonshire – to the obscure male frequenters of Mother Clap’s Molly House or the anonymous female participants in the extraordinary story of The She-Wedding.

 

Masculinity, Senses, Spirit

Edited by Katherine M. Faull

Masculinity, Senses, Spirit brings together current work by leading scholars in the fields of gender studies, religion, history and cultural studies to examine the complex interrelationship between gender, sexuality, and the realms of the spirit and the senses in the Atlantic world from the eighteenth century to the present. Ranging in scope from the bridal mysticism of eighteenth century German Moravians through the education theories of the German “Gymnasium,” the creation of the gendered “gourmand,” the “discovery” of homosexuality, and the hyper-masculinized homosocial groupings of the National Socialists, the essays explore the inflections of constructed masculinity in the religious, educational, culinary, political, and social institutions of Germany, France, and North America from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The collection reveals the disparate and yet related worlds of masculine gender performance, recognizing the central role of the body and its relation to the spirit and senses in notions of European and Atlantic masculinity.

 

 

Plot Twists and Critical Turns: Queer Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Theater

By Matthew D. Stroud

Plot Twists and Critical Turns provides a reconsideration of a variety of works of seventeenth-century Spanish theater, both standards and those that are less well-known, from perspectives grounded in recent work in queer studies. Basing his readings on the ideas of such gender theorists as Judith Butlre, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Leo Bersani, Stroud advances the recent trend against closure in comedia criticism by showing that early modern Spanish theater, even given the limitations placed upon it by censorship, public tastes, and its own conventional precepts, is shot through with gaps and spaces that allow one to perceive at least the outlines of an absent queer object, if not overt examples of manifest challenges to gender conformity in Lope’s La Hermosa Ester, Vèlez de Guevara’s La serrana de la Vera, Moreto’s El lindo don Diego, Cervantes’s two Algerian plays, and Calderón’s Las manos blancas no ofenden and El principe constante.