Digital Commons @ West Chester University

Follow

• 

  The Writer's Options: Lessons in Style and Arrangement

  Max Morenberg and Jeff Sommers

  The Writer's Options encourages readers to investigate their writing “options” through sentence-combining and rearrangement to create more sophisticated, more effective compositions. The text contains ample practice with arranging and rearranging sentences, paragraphs, and essays as a means of strengthening prose and conveying a more effective message.

• 

  Approaches to Teaching Homer's Iliad and Odyssey

  Kostas Myrsiades

  Homer's epics usually appear first in anthologies used for the general literature courses required of most college and high school students throughout the country. His influence extends beyond the confines of English and classics departments into seminars offered in comparative literature, history, philosophy, and the social sciences. This volume in the Approaches to Teaching World Literature series describes how teachers present Homer in the classroom and convey to students the importance of his epics in Western culture.

• 

  Others Must Dance for the Lord Dionysus Now: a Poetic Memoir

  Kostas Myrsiades

  A poetic memoir in which mythic figures ascend from funeral spaces to stroll the village streets and descend again to light their darkened realms, of saints in wooden casings stern above the bedsheets of shuttered homes, of wrinkled men whose vineyards suck their life's wine, of wine-stained easrth and sun-dyed thighs, of returning home and leaving, again and again.

• 

  Reading Homer: Film and Text

  Kostas Myrsiades

  These nine new essays on Homer's epics deal not only with major Homeric themes of time (honor), kleos (fame), geras (rewards), the psychology of Homeric warriors, and the re-evaluation of type scenes, but also with Homer's influence on contemporary film. Following the introduction and an essay which sets the historical background for the epics, four essays are devoted to fresh analysis of key passages and themes while another four turn to a discussion of the film 'Troy' and Homer's influence on two other genres of American cinema.

• 

  The Beat Generation: Critical Essays

  Kostas Myrsiades

  It has been fifty years since the Beats first came upon the literary scene and although the academy’s hostility toward the Beats has not completely abated, it has certainly diminished. Today mainstream publishers are adding many Beat titles to their lists, and students of Beat literature can draw upon a wealth of critical resources that have been published in the last twenty years. The fourteen critical essays gathered in this collection verify that Jack Kerouac is still the undisputed king of the Beats followed by William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. At the same time, however, the Beat movement is shown to be broader and more far reaching than previously thought, encompassing names such as Oscar Zeta Acosta and William Kotzwinkle and even suggesting influences on contemporary German literature in authors like Wolf Wondratschek, Rolf Dieter Brinkman, and Jörg Fauser.

• 

  Karagiozis: 3 Classic Plays

  Kostas Myrsiades and Linda Myrsiades

  From the Greek Karagiozis Folk/Popular Theater are presented in new English translations, 3 classic plays to celebrate 200 years of documented Karagiozis performances in Greece. The 3 plays are: "The hero Katsandonis", "Alexander the Great and the Cursed Snake", and "Karagiozis Baker".

• 

  Margins in the Classroom: Teaching Literature

  Kostas Myrsiades and Linda Myrsiades

  Brings together established scholars and emerging voices from diverse backgrounds to show how politics and theory can and do affect the most pressing problems confronting the contemporary teacher of literature. The essays in this volume go beyond questioning and examining existing practices to suggest fresh approaches to teaching the expanding literary canon within the context of the politics of the educational institution.

• 

  Un-Disciplining Literature: Literature, Law, and Culture

  Kostas Myrsiades and Linda Myrsiades

  This collection offers fresh and challenging essays by scholars in law, English and comparative literature, social and political thought, and communication studies. It explores unique angles of vision that allow us to read legal opinions as well as criminal cases, abortion clinic violence, trial testimony (victim impact statements), legal authority, and legal fictions of personal and national identity (passports). The literature it analyzes ranges from Shakespeare's Richard II and The Merchant of Venice to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm, and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Providing a breadth of material, this collection breaks through disciplinary boundaries as new voices challenge old paradigms, pushing marginalized questions into the center of the literature and law enterprise.

• 

  Cultural Representation in Historical Resistance: Complexity and Construction in Greek Guerrilla Theater

  Linda Myrsiades and Kostas Myrsiades

  Traces the history of Greek resistance theatre which began under Nazi occupation.

• 

  Karagiozis: Culture and Comedy in Greek Puppet Theater

  Linda S. Myrsiades and Kostas Myrsiades

  Karagiozis—a form of comic folk drama employing stock puppet figures—was immensely popular in Greece until recent years, when newer forms of entertainment have virtually eclipsed it. Derived from ancient Byzantine and Greek sources, it takes its name from the principal puppet character, the clever, humpbacked fool-hero Karagiozis, who appears in many guises, surrounded by a cast of folk caricatures from all walks of life.
  
  
  

• 

  The Intricate Nature of Mathematics

  Viorel Nitica and Catalin Nitica

  This book emerged from a set of lecture notes used by one of the authors to teach a 200 level course in Nature of Mathematics. The course was introduced as a bridge from traditional Calculus I, II, III courses to higher level courses of Mathematics, such as Abstract Algebra and Advanced Calculus. The book introduces basic notions from set theory, symbolic logic, functions and relations, number theory, combinatorics and graph theory. It also gives an introduction to more abstract mathematical proofs. The techniques discussed in the book include: direct proof, in particular proof by enumeration of cases, proof by contradiction, proof by mathematical induction, proofs using Well Ordering Principle, pigeonhole principle, inclusion-exclusion principle and coloring arguments.

• 

  The First Brain: The Neuroscience of Planarians

  Oné R. Pagán

  Discusses why the planarian is a unique organism, and what role it has played in neurobiological research. Accessibly written for the non-scientist reader, but contains enough detail to be useful for the scientific community as well. Shows the variety of ways that the planarian has affected biology, zoology, neuroscience.

• 

  Ursa Minor and Other Poems

  Takis Papatsonis, Kimon Friar, and Kostas Myrsiades

  Modern Greek poetry by Takis Papatsonis. Translated by Kimon Friar and Kostas Myrsiades.

• 

  The Transparent Illusion: Image and Ideology in French Text and Film

  Rebecca M. Pauly

  This unique study interprets forty major French films, their texts and intertexts, analyzing them both as windows on their subject, projections of the imagination, and as frames or mirrors reflecting the cultural contexts that produced them. They are grouped in three major categories, foregrounding their relationship to history, literature or the filmmaking process itself, in ascending order of opacity and modernity. This much needed work offers not only comparative cultural perspectives on French text and film but also a better understanding of the poetics of image and ideology.

• 

  Beverly Cleary

  Pat Pflieger

  Finally an academic tome on one of America's most beloved children's authors. Pflieger discusses and analyzes all of Cleary works as well as giving some biographical material about her. Academic journals, popular press magazines and newspapers about Cleary's novels are all cited in order to provide other people's reviews and analysis of Cleary's works. This book is a must for anyone who has read any of Cleary's novel and would be particularly useful for college students who are thinking of becoming English teachers, librarians or Ph.D. students in children's literature. Unlike many academic writers, Pflieger's writing style is clear and easy to understand which is a nice contrast to all the boring, pedantic academic writings which are often employed when analyzing children's literature.

• 

  Letters from Nineteenth-Century American Children to Robert Merry's Museum Magazine

  Pat Pflieger

  This collection of letters offers an insight into 19th century America viewed through the eyes of children. They wrote about themselves, their families, and their activities. The letters display children's attitudes to major events, public figures, minorities, women's right, and the Civil War.

• 

  The Fog's Net

  Pat Pflieger

  Devora, the weaver, must make a net for the Fog, who promises not to take away her brother, a fisherman, if she complies. When her brother does not return from the sea the next day, Devora realizes that the Fog has not kept its promise, and that it is she who must go and rescue him.

• 

  Tourism and the Power of Otherness: Seductions of Difference

  David Picard and Michael A. Di Giovine

  This book explores the paradoxes of Self-Other relations in the field of tourism. It particularly focuses on the 'power' of different forms of 'Otherness' to seduce and to disrupt, and, eventually, also to renew the social and cosmological orders of 'modern' culture and everyday life.

• 

  Feminist Auteurs: Reading Women's Films

  Geetha Ramanathan

  Feminist Auteurs examines a rich and diverse body of work that has received insufficient attention both in film studies and in feminist theory on film. Looking at individual films within the context of feminist film as a genre, Ramanathan examines film from diverse cultural traditions, while paying close attention to what might be regarded as feminist in different cultural contexts. The films chosen expand our ideas of feminism covering as they do film from Africa, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the US. Full-length interpretations of twenty-four films, both older and contemporary, including Vagabond, India Song,Bhaji on the Beach, Chocolat, and Daughters of the Dust lay out a complete and powerful framework for reading women’s film.

• 

  Locating Gender in Modernism: The Outsider Female

  Geetha Ramanathan

  This book visits modernism within a comparative, gendered, and third-world framework, questioning current scholarly categorisations of modernism and reframing our conception of what constitutes modernist aesthetics. It describes the construction of modernist studies and argues that despite a range of interventions which suggest that philosophical and material articulations with the third world shaped modernism, an emphasis on modernist "universals" persists. Ramanathan argues that women and third-world authors have reshaped received notions of the modern and revised orthodox ideas on the modern aesthetic.

• 

  Sexual Politics and the Male Playwright: The Portrayal of Women in Ten Contemporary Plays

  Geetha Ramanathan

  Traditional studies of theater have long neglected an overall study of female roles as written by male playwrights. Are the roles blatantly sexist or do they adhere to the cultural norms that even progressive male playwrights cannot ignore? From Georg Buchners Woyzeck to David Hares Plenty, the ten plays studied here have traditionally been seen as extraordinarily innovative and progressive. Despite their seeming openness, each of the plays is affected by the playwrights sexual politics. Laid out is a framework for studying the plays in a feminist context that permits a new reading of the female roles, while still allowing the critic enjoyment of the performance as a whole.

• 

  Approaches to Select Texts in World Literature

  Geetha Ramanathan and Christian Kwame Awuyah

  This book covers many selections in world literature from the epic, dramatic, prose, novel, and African-American poetry traditions.

• 

  Argumentation and Debate: A Public Speaking Approach

  Martin Remland, Tim Brown, and Kay Neal

  Argumentation and Debate: A Public Speaking Approach addresses the needs of students with no prior experience in formal debate, limited experience in public speaking, and little or no plans to compete in speech and debate tournaments. The publication takes content beyond the classroom by featuring a chapter dedicated to discussing argumentation and debate in different professional contexts.

• 

  Intercultural Communication: A Peacebuilding Perspective

  Martin Remland, Tricia S. Jones, Anita K. Foeman, and Dolores Rafter Arvalo

  We live in an increasingly more globalized world, where living and working with people of various cultures is a nearly everyday occurrence. These interactions, combined with ever-growing opportunities for students to explore and study in foreign settings, make it important to master effective ways to engage and learn from these experiences.Intercultural Communication will engage readers interested in developing intercultural competence with an eye towards fostering diverse and vibrant communities that coexist peacefully.

• 

  Greek-American Relations from Monroe to Truman

  Angelo Repousis

  Repousis chronicles American public attitudes and government policies toward modern Greece from its war for independence (1821–1829) to the Truman Doctrine (1947) when Washington intervened to keep Greece from coming under communist domination.