Faculty Monographs and Chapters

This collection is a "virtual bookshelf" of monographs and book chapters authored by Ursinus College faculty. It is intended only to highlight faculty publications - in most cases the full text will not be available for download.

Printing is not supported at the primary Gallery Thumbnail page. Please first navigate to a specific Image before printing.

Switch View to Grid View Slideshow

Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism

Meredith Goldsmith and Emily J. Orlando

Hailed for her remarkable social and psychological insights into the Gilded Age lives of privileged Americans, Edith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, was also a transnational author who cultivated contradictory approaches to identity, difference, and belonging. As literary studies continue to expand beyond nation-based topics, readers are becoming more interested in the international scope of her life and writing.

Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism shows that Wharton was highly engaged with global issues of her time, due in part to her extensive travel abroad. Examining both her canonical and lesser-known works and including her art historical discoveries, her political writings, and her travel writing, the essays in this volume explore Wharton’s diverse, complex, and sometimes problematic relationship to a cosmopolitan vision.
Making the News Popular: Mobilizing U.S. News Audiences

Anthony Nadler

The professional judgment of gatekeepers defined the American news agenda for decades. Making the News Popular examines how subsequent events brought on a post-professional period that opened the door for imagining that consumer preferences should drive news production--and unleashed both crisis and opportunity on journalistic institutions. Anthony Nadler charts a paradigm shift, from market research's reach into the editorial suite in the 1970s through contemporary experiments in collaborative filtering and social news sites like Reddit and Digg. As Nadler shows, the transition was and is a rocky one. It also goes back much further than many experts suppose. Idealized visions of demand-driven news face obstacles with each iteration. Furthermore, the post-professional philosophy fails to recognize how organizations mobilize interest in news and public life. Nadler argues that this civic function of news organizations has been neglected in debates on the future of journalism. Only with a critical grasp of news outlets' role in stirring broad interest in democratic life, he says, might journalism's digital crisis push us towards building a more robust and democratic news media.
Principle and Prudence in Western Political Thought

Jonathan Marks and Christopher Lynch

Discussions of the place of moral principle in political practice are haunted by the abstract and misleading distinction between realism and its various principled or “idealist” alternatives. This volume argues that such discussions must be recast in terms of the relationship between principle and prudence: as Nathan Tarcov maintains, that relationship is “not dichotomous but complementary.” In a substantive introduction, the editors investigate Leo Strauss’s attack on contemporary political thought for its failure to account for both principle and prudence in politics. Leading commentators then reflect on principle and prudence in the writings of great thinkers such as Homer, Machiavelli, and Hegel, and in the thoughts and actions of great statesmen such as Pericles, Jefferson, and Lincoln. In a concluding section, contributors reassess Strauss’s own approach to principle and prudence in the history of political philosophy.
Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the Life of Anna Murray Douglass

M. Nzadi Keita

BRIEF EVIDENCE OF HEAVEN: POEMS FROM THE LIFE OF ANNA MURRAY DOUGLASS by M. Nzadi Keita imagines how free-born, illiterate Anna Murray Douglass, wife to Frederick Douglass, the most vibrant black writer/orator of the 19th century, saw the world as an independent woman, mother, and an abolitionist in her own right. Poet Sonia Sanchez wrote the introduction.
Mismatched Women: The Siren's Song Through the Machine

Jennifer Fleeger

In 2009, Susan Boyle's debut roused Simon Cowell from his grumbling slumber on the television show "Britain's Got Talent" and viewers across the world rallied to the side of the unemployed, older woman with the voice of a trained Broadway star. In Mismatched Women, author Jennifer Fleeger argues that the shock produced when Boyle began to sing belies cultural assumptions about how particular female bodies are supposed to sound. Boyle is not an anomaly, but instead belongs to a lineage of women whose voices do not "match" their bodies by conventional expectations, from George Du Maurier's literary Trilby to Metropolitan Opera singer Marion Talley, from Snow White and Sleeping Beauty to Kate Smith and Deanna Durbin. Mismatched Women tells a new story about female representation in film by theorizing a figure regularly dismissed as an aberration. The mismatched woman is a stumbling block for both sound and feminist theory, argues Fleeger, because she has been synchronized yet seems to have been put together incorrectly, as if her body could not possibly house the voice that the camera insists belongs to her. Fleeger broadens the traditionally cinematic context of feminist psychoanalytic film theory to account for literary, animated, televisual, and virtual influences. This approach bridges gaps between disciplinary frameworks, showing that studies of literature, film, media, opera, and popular music pose common questions about authenticity, vocal and visual realism, circulation, and reproduction. The book analyzes the importance of the mismatched female voice in historical debates over the emergence of new media and unravels the complexity of female representation in moments of technological change. [from the publisher]
In the Crossfire: Marcus Foster and the Troubled History of American School Reform

John P. Spencer

As media reports declare crisis after crisis in public education, Americans find themselves hotly debating educational inequalities that seem to violate their nation's ideals. Why does success in school track so closely with race and socioeconomic status? How to end these apparent achievement gaps? In the Crossfire brings historical perspective to these debates by tracing the life and work of Marcus Foster, an African American educator who struggled to reform urban schools in the 1960s and early 1970s.

As a teacher, principal, and superintendent—first in his native Philadelphia and eventually in Oakland, California—Foster made success stories of urban schools and children whom others had dismissed as hopeless, only to be assassinated in 1973 by the previously unknown Symbionese Liberation Army in a bizarre protest against an allegedly racist school system. Foster's story encapsulates larger social changes in the decades after World War II: the great black migration from South to North, the civil rights movement, the decline of American cities, and the ever-increasing emphasis on education as a ticket to success. Well before the accountability agenda of the No Child Left Behind Act or the rise of charter schools, Americans came into sharp conflict over urban educational failure, with some blaming the schools and others pointing to conditions in homes and neighborhoods. By focusing on an educator who worked in the trenches and had a reputation for bridging divisions, In the Crossfire sheds new light on the continuing ideological debates over race, poverty, and achievement.

Foster charted a course between the extremes of demanding too little and expecting too much of schools as agents of opportunity in America. He called for accountability not only from educators but also from families, taxpayers, and political and economic institutions. His effort to mobilize multiple constituencies was a key to his success—and a lesson for educators and policymakers who would take aim at achievement gaps without addressing the full range of school and non-school factors that create them.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Matt Kozusko

George Lyman Kittredge's insightful editions of Shakespeare have endured in part because of his eclecticism, his diversity of interests, and his wide-ranging accomplishments—all of which are reflected in the valuable notes in each volume. The plays in the New Kittredge Shakespeare series retain the original Kittredge notes and introductions, changed or augmented only when some modernization seems necessary. These new editions also include introductory essays by contemporary editors, notes on the plays as they have been performed on stage and film, and additional student materials.

These plays are being made available by Focus with the permission of the Kittredge heirs.
Sounding American: Hollywood, Opera, and Jazz

Jennifer Fleeger

Sounding American: Hollywood, Opera, and Jazz tells the story of the interaction between musical form, film technology, and ideas about race, ethnicity, and the nation during the American cinema's conversion to sound. Contrary to most accepted narratives about the conversion, which tend to explain the competition between the Hollywood studios' film sound technologies in qualitative and economic terms, this book argues that the battle between disc and film sound was waged primarily in an aesthetic realm. Opera and jazz in particular, though long neglected in studies of the film score, were extremely important in defining the scope of the American soundtrack, not only during the conversion, but also once sound had been standardized. Examining studio advertisements, screenplays, scores, and the films themselves, author Jennifer Fleeger concentrates on the interactions between musical form and film technology, arguing that each of the major studios appropriated opera and jazz in a unique way in order to construct its own version of an ideal American voice. Traditional histories of Hollywood film music have tended to concentrate on the unity of the score, a model that assumes a passive spectator. Sounding American claims that the classical Hollywood film is essentially an illustrated jazz-opera with a musical structure that encourages an active form of listening and viewing in order to make sense of what is ultimately a fragmentary text. [from the publisher]
War and Literature

Laura Ashe, Ian Patterson, and Susanna A. Throop

"War was the first subject of literature; at times, war has been its only subject. In this volume, the contributors reflect on the uneasy yet symbiotic relations of war and writing, from medieval to modern literature. War writing emerges in multiple forms, celebratory and critical, awed and disgusted; the rhetoric of inexpressibility fights its own battle with the urgent necessity of representation, record and recognition. This is shown to be true even to the present day: whether mimetic or metaphorical, literature that concerns itself overtly or covertly with the real pressures of war continues to speak to issues of pressing significance, and to provide some clues to the intricate entwinement of war with contemporary life. Particular topics addressed include writings of and about the Crusades and battles during the Hundred Years War; Shakespeare's treatment of war; Auden's 'Journal of an Airman'; and War and Peace"-- publisher description.

Contents:

Acts of vengeance, acts of love : crusading violence in the twelfth century / Susanna A. Throop -- Peril, flight and the Sad Man : medieval theories of the body in battle / Katie L. Walter -- "Is this war?" : British fictions of emergency in the Hot Cold War / James Purdon -- Crossing the Rubicon : history, authority and civil war in twelfth-century England / Catherine A.M. Clarke -- "The reader myghte lamente" : the sieges of Calais (1346) and Rouen (1418) in chronicle, poem and play / Joanna Bellis -- Shakespeare's casus belly, or, Cormorant war, and the wasting of men on Shakespeare's stage / Andrew Zurcher -- Unnavigable kinship in a time of conflict : Loyalist calligraphies, sovereign power and the "muckle honor" of Elizabeth Murray Inman / Carol Watts -- Proclaiming the war news : Richard Caton Woodville and Herman Melville / Tom F. Wright -- A feeling for numbers : representing the scale of the war dead / Mary A. Favret -- The guilt of the noncombatant and W.H. Auden's "Journal of an airman" / Rachel Galvin -- Does Tolstoy's War and peace make modern war literature redundant? / Mark Rawlinson.
Ender's Game and Philosophy: Genocide is Child's Play

Kelly Sorensen, D. E. Wittkower, and Lucinda Rush

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card’s award-winning 1985 novel, has been discovered and rediscovered by generations of science fiction fans, even being adopted as reading by the U.S. Marine Corps. Ender's Game and its sequels explore rich themes — the violence and cruelty of children, the role of empathy in war, and the balance of individual dignity and the social good — with compelling elements of a coming-of-age story. Ender’s Game and Philosophy brings together over 30 philosophers to engage in wide-ranging discussion on issues such as: the justifiability of pre-emptive strikes; how Ender’s disconnected and dispassionate violence is mirrored in today’s drone warfare; whether the end of saving the species can justify the most brutal means; the justifiability of lies and deception in wartime, and how military schools produce training in virtue. The authors of Ender’s Game and Philosophy challenge readers to confront the challenges that Ender’s Game presents, bringing new insights to the idea of a just war, the virtues of the soldier, the nature of childhood, and the serious work of playing games. [From the publisher]
Siblings: Brothers and Sisters in American History

C. Dallett Hemphill

Brothers and sisters are so much a part of our lives that we can overlook their importance. Even scholars of the family tend to forget siblings, focusing instead on marriage and parent-child relations. Based on a wealth of family papers, period images, and popular literature, this is the first book devoted to the broad history of sibling relations, spanning the long period of transition from early to modern America.

Illuminating the evolution of the modern family system, Siblings shows how brothers and sisters have helped each other in the face of the dramatic political, economic, and cultural changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book reveals that, in colonial America, sibling relations offered an egalitarian space to soften the challenges of the larger patriarchal family and society, while after the Revolution, in antebellum America, sibling relations provided order and authority in a more democratic nation. Moreover, Hemphill explains that siblings serve as the bridge between generations. Brothers and sisters grow up in a shared family culture influenced by their parents, but they are different from their parents in being part of the next generation. Responding to new economic and political conditions, they form and influence their own families, but their continuing relationships with brothers and sisters serve as a link to the past. Siblings thus experience and promote the new, but share the comforting context of the old. Indeed, in all races, siblings function as humanity's shock-absorbers, as well as valued kin and keepers of memory. This wide-ranging book offers a new understanding of the relationship between families and history in an evolving world. It is also a timely reminder of the role our siblings play in our own lives. [from the publisher]
Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095-1216

Susanna A. Throop

"Only recently have historians of the crusades begun to seriously investigate the presence of the idea of crusading as an act of vengeance, despite its frequent appearance in crusading sources. Understandably, many historians have primarily concentrated on non-ecclesiastical phenomena such as feuding, purportedly a component of "secular" culture and the interpersonal obligations inherent in medieval society. This has led scholars to several assumptions regarding the nature of medieval vengeance and the role that various cultures of vengeance played in the crusading movement. This monograph revises those assumptions and posits a new understanding of how crusading was conceived as an act of vengeance in the context of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Through textual analysis of specific medieval vocabulary it has been possible to clarify the changing course of the concept of vengeance in general as well as the more specific idea of crusading as an act of vengeance. The concept of vengeance was intimately connected with the ideas of justice and punishment. It was perceived as an expression of power, embedded in a series of commonly understood emotional responses, and also as an expression of orthodox Christian values. There was furthermore a strong link between religious zeal, righteous anger, and the vocabulary of vengeance. By looking at these concepts in detail, and in the context of current crusading methodologies, fresh vistas are revealed that allow for a better understanding of the crusading movement and those who "took the cross," with broader implications for the study of crusading ideology and twelfth-century spirituality in general" - from the publisher.
Thunder at a Playhouse: Essaying Shakespeare and the Early Modern Stage

Matt Kozusko and Peter Kanelos

What happens when scholarship on the early modern stage is presented on a recreation of an early modern stage? This question, which at its heart is the question of the relationship between scholarship and performance, animates Thunder at a Playhouse: Essaying Shakespeare and the Early Modern Stage. The essays in this collection all began as papers given at the Blackfriars Conference, a biennial gathering that "stages" scholarship by asking presenters to use the space of the stage, the playhouse, the audience, and even actors to test out suppositions and hypotheses about early English theater. Recognizing the slipperiness of putting theory into practice and of having practice inform theory, the editors, Peter Kanelos and Matt Kozusko, committed to the root concept of the essay as "attempt," asked the volume's contributors to develop their positions as fully and as presently possible. The result is a collection of work by both distinguished and emerging scholars that engages critical issues of early modern performance in fresh and vital ways.

The construction of "early modern" playhouses, such as the Blackfriars in Virginia and Shakespeare's Globe in London, and the increasing interest in exploring "original practices" on the early modern stage, have provoked reflection, deliberation, and debate. What might we understand empirically about early modern theater, and what is the value of speculative reconstruction/speculation? How might this sort of knowledge be employed on the modern stage? And, critically, what are the purposes of such pursuits for scholars and theater practitioners? Intending to acknowledge the array of lively approaches to early modern theater and to encourage conversation and collaboration between scholars, the editors have compiled a wide-ranging selection of essays. Featuring new work by David Bevington, Roslyn Knutson, Lars Engle, Peter Hyland, Lois Potter and others, Thunder at a Playhouse offers insight into such varied topics as Hamlet's highbrow conception of drama, the portrayal of barbers, babies, and angels on the early modern stage, the timing of quick changes in Jonson's The Alchemist, Shakespeare's reading of Marlowe, and James Burbage's intentions in purchasing the Blackfriars.

Thunder at a Playhouse will be of interest to anyone concerned with theatrical performance, the history of the stage, or early modern literary culture. This collection is particularly timely, speaking to and directly addressing the convergence of theory and practice in the study of early modern drama.
Vengeance in the Middle Ages: Emotion, Religion and Feud

Susanna A. Throop and Paul R. Hyams

"This volume aims to balance the traditional literature available on medieval feuding with an exploration of other aspects of vengeance and culture in the Middle Ages. The volume begins with an examination of the historiography of medieval vengeance, as well as the difficulties of investigating such a concept in the medieval period and the pressing reasons for so doing. Interdisciplinary articles from scholars in Europe and North America then follow, many contesting or enlarging traditional approaches to and interpretations of vengeance in the Middle Ages. Geographically, the articles in the volume highlight Western Europe (particularly the Anglo-Norman world), Scotland, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. Thematically, the articles are concerned with heroic cultures of vengeance, vengeance as a legal and political tool, Christian justification and expression of vengeance, literature and the distinction between discourse and reality, and the emotions of vengeance. Methodologically, these interdisciplinary studies incorporate tools borrowed from anthropology, the study of emotion, and modern social and literary theories. Aimed at professional scholars and graduate students within the broad field of medieval studies, incorporating the subfields of history, literature, and religious studies, this collection will also prove interesting to non-medievalists interested in the history of emotion, the justification of human conflict, and the theoretical role of discourse and its applicability to specific historical periods. Although the articles will be written in English, both the geographical scope of the volume and its international contributors will promote its use outside the English-speaking academic world" - from the publisher.

Contents:

"Vengeance is mine" : saintly retribution in Medieval Ireland / Máire Johnson -- The "fyre of Ire kyndild" in the fifteenth-century Scottish marches / Jackson W. Armstrong -- Living in fear of revenge : religious minorities and the right to bear arms in fifteenth-century Portugal / François Soyer -- Chivalric feud in tenth-century France / Dominique Barthélemy -- The way vengeance comes : rancorous deeds and words in the world of Orderic Vitalis / Thomas Roche -- Verbal and physical violence in the historie of Aurelio and Isabell / Marina Brownlee -- Was there really such a thing as feud in the high Middle Ages? / Paul R. Hyams -- Zeal, anger, and vengeance : the emotional rhetoric of crusading / Susanna A. Throop -- Afterword : neither unnatural nor wholly negative : the future of medieval vengeance / Paul R. Hyams.
Learning for Meaning's Sake: Toward the Hermeneutic University

Stephanie Mackler

Universities, and the societies they serve, suffer from a crisis of meaning: We have fanatically developed our ability to produce knowledge, leaving our ability to craft meaning by the wayside. University graduates often have an abundance of knowledge but lack the wisdom to use it meaningfully. Meanwhile, people inside and outside academia are searching for meaning but are imprisoned in a lexicon of clichés and sound bites that stunts their quest.

In response, Learning for Meaning’s Sake begins with the assertion that higher education in the 21st century should renounce its obsession with job training and knowledge production and should, instead, turn toward questions of meaning. Drawing upon a diverse range of philosophical thought, Learning for Meaning’s Sake offers the vision and philosophical foundation for a new type of higher learning - one that is devoted to the existential questions at the core of human existence.
Medieval Christianity in Practice

Miri Rubin and Susanna A. Throop

"Comprising forty-two selections from primary source materials, each translated with an introduction and commentary by a specialist in the field, this collection illustrates the religious cycles, rituals, and experiences that gave meaning to medieval Christian individuals and communities. The texts represent the practices through which Christians conducted their individual, family, and community lives and explore such life-cycle events as birth, confirmation, marriage, sickness, death, and burial. The texts also document religious practices related to themes of work, parish life, and devotions, as well as power and authority" -- From publisher's description.

Contents:

Baptismal practice in Germany / Peter Cramer -- Cathars and baptism / Shulamith Shahar -- The early medieval barbatoria / Yitzhak Hen -- Lollard instruction / Rita Copeland -- Florentine marriage in the fifteenth century / Christiane Klapisch-Zuber -- Annulment of Henry III's "marriage" to Joan of Ponthieu confirmed by Innocent IV on 20 May 1254 / David d'Avray -- Agius of Corvey's account of the death of Hathumoda, first abbess of Gandersheim, in 874 / Frederick S. Paxton -- A royal funeral of 1498 / Alain Boureau -- Charms to ward off sheep and pig murrain / William C. Jordan -- Fishermen and mariners / Harold S. Fox -- Storms at sea on a voyage between Rhodes and Venice, November 1470 / Olivia Remie Constable -- Rules and ritual on the Second Crusade campaign to Lisbon, 1147 / Susanna A. Throop -- The consecration of church space / Dominique Iogna-Prat -- Fourteenth-century instructions for bedside pastoral care / Joseph Ziegler -- How to behave in church and how to become a priest / Daniel Bornstein -- A sermon on the virtues of the contemplative life / Katherine L. Jansen -- Preaching and pastoral care of a devout woman (deo devota) in fifteenth-century Basel / Hans-Jochen Schiewer -- Doing penance / Sarah Hamilton -- A penitential diet / Rob Meens -- A layman's penance / Joseph Goering -- Prayers / Virginia Reinburg -- Two healing prayers / Eamon Duffy -- Images in the world : reading the crucifixion / Sara Lipton -- The Old English nine herbs charm / Debby Banham -- Amulets and charms / Peter Murray Jones -- A deaf-mute's story / Sharon Farmer -- Bequests for the poor / Brigitte Resl -- Translation of the body of St. Junianus / Thomas Head -- Pilgrimage and spiritual healing in the ninth century / Julia M.H. Smith -- Interrogation of Waldensians / Peter Biller -- The lives of the Beghards / Walter Simons -- The renovation of the chapel in the Beguinage of Lille / Penny Galloway -- The practices of Devotio moderna / John Van Engen -- The possession of Blessed Jordan of Saxony / Aviad M. Kleinberg -- On the stigmatization of Saint Margaret of Hungary / Gábor Klaniczay -- Eschatological prophecy : "woe to the world in one hundred years" / Robert E. Lerner -- Raymond de Sabanac, preface to Constance de Rabastens, 'The revelations' / Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski -- The life of the hermit Stephen of Obazine / György Geréby and Piroska Nagy -- Creating an anchorhold / Alexandra Barratt -- The ritual for the ordination of nuns / Nancy Bradley Warren -- An Anglo-Saxon queen's consecration / Janet L. Nelson -- Mass at the election of the mayor of London, 1406 / Caroline Barron.
The Chancery of God: Protestant Print, Polemic and Propaganda Against the Empire, Magdeburg 1546-1551

Nathan Rein

The disastrous protestant defeat in the Schmalkaldic War (1546-47) and the promulgation of the Ausburg Interim (1548) left the fate of German Protestantism in doubt. In the wake of these events, a single protestant town, Magdeburg, offered organized, sustained resistance to Emperor Charles V's drive to consolidate Habsburg hegemony and reinstitute uniform Roman Catholic worship throughout Germany. In a flood of printed pamphlets, Magdeburg's leaders justified their refusal to surrender with forceful appeals to religious belief and German tradition. Magdeburg's resistance, interdiction and eventual siege attracted admiring attention from across Europe. The teachings developed and disseminated by Protestant thinkers in defence of the city's stance would ultimately influence political theorists in Switzerland, France, Scotland and even North America. Magdeburg's ordeal formed a signal crisis in the emergence of German Lutheran confessional identity. The Chancery of God is the first English language monograph on Magdeburg's anti-Imperial resistance and pamphlet campaign. The book offers an analysis of Magdeburg's printed output (over 200 publications) during the crucial years of 1546-51, texts which present a broad spectrum of arguments for resistance and suggest a coherent identity and worldview that is characteristically and self-consciously Protestant.
Knowledge and Politics in Plato's Theaetetus

Paul Stern

The Theaetetus is one of the most widely studied of any of the Platonic dialogues because its dominant theme concerns the significant philosophical question, what is knowledge? In this new interpretation of the Theaetetus, Paul Stern provides the first full-length treatment of its political character in relationship to this dominant theme. Stern argues that this approach sheds significant light on the distinctiveness of the Socratic way of life, with respect to both its initial justification and its ultimate character.
Advances in Teaching Physical Chemistry

Mark D. Ellison and Tracy A. Schoolcraft

"This book brings together the latest perspectives and ideas on teaching modern physical chemistry. It includes perspectives from experienced and well-known physical chemists, a thorough review of the education literature pertaining to physical chemistry, a thorough review of advances in undergraduate laboratory experiments from the past decade, in-depth descriptions of using computers to aid student learning, and innovative ideas for teaching the fundamentals of physical chemistry. This book will provide valuable insight and information to all teachers of physical chemistry" -- From the publisher.

Contents:

Advances in teaching physical chemistry: overview / Mark D. Ellison, Tracy A. Schoolcraft -- What to teach in physical chemistry: is there a single answer? / Gerald R. Van Hecke -- Decisions in the physical chemistry course / Robert G. Mortimer -- Integrating research and education to create a dynamic physical chemistry curriculum / Arthur B. Ellis -- The evolution of physical chemistry courses / Peter Atkins -- Philosophy of chemistry, reduction, emergence, and chemical education / Eric Scerri -- Teaching and learning physical chemistry: a review of education research / Georgios Tsaparlis -- Modern developments in the physical chemistry laboratory / Samuel A. Abrash -- Existence of a problem-solving mindset among students taking quantum mechanics and its implications / David E. Gardner, George M. Bodner -- Physical chemistry curriculum: into the future with digital technology / Theresa Julia Zielinski -- "Partial derivatives: are you kidding?": teaching thermodynamics using virtual substance / Chrystal D. Bruce, Carribeth L. Bliem, John M. Papanikolas -- Molecular-level simulations as a chemistry teaching tool / Jurgen Schnitker -- Introduction of a computational laboratory into the physical chemistry curriculum / Roseanne J. Sension -- The effects of physical chemistry curriculum reform on the American chemical society DivCHED physical chemistry examinations / Richard W. Schwenz -- Walking the tightrope: teaching the timeless fundamentals in the context of modern physical chemistry / Michelle M. Francl -- The process oriented guided inquiry learning approach to teaching physical chemistry / J.N. Spencer, R.S. Moog -- Teaching physical chemistry: let's teach kinetics first / James M. LoBue, Brian P. Koehler -- Fitting physical chemistry into a crowded curriculum: a rigorous one-semester physical chemistry course with laboratory / HollyAnn Harris.
Perfection and Disharmony in the Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jonathan Marks

In Perfection and Disharmony in the Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jonathan Marks offers a new interpretation of the philosopher's thought and its place in the contemporary debate between liberals and communitarians. Against prevailing views, he argues that Rousseau's thought revolves around the natural perfection of a naturally disharmonious being. At the foundation of Rousseau's thought he finds a natural teleology that takes account of and seeks to harmonize conflicting ends. The Rousseau who emerges from this interpretation is a radical critic of liberalism who is nonetheless more cautious about protecting individual freedom than his milder communitarian successors. Marks elaborates on the challenge that Rousseau poses to liberals and communitarians alike by setting up a dialogue between him and Charles Taylor, one of the most distinguished ethical and political theorists at work today.
Bowing to Necessities: A History of Manners in America, 1620-1860

C. Dallett Hemphill

Anglo-Americans wrestled with some profound cultural contradictions as they shifted from the hierarchical and patriarchal society of the seventeenth-century frontier to the modern and fluid class democracy of the mid-nineteenth century. How could traditional inequality be maintained in the socially leveling environment of the early colonial wilderness? And how could nineteenth-century Americans pretend to be equal in an increasingly unequal society?

Bowing to Necessities argues that manners provided ritual solutions to these central cultural problems by allowing Americans to act out--and thus reinforce--power relations just as these relations underwent challenges. Analyzing the many sermons, child-rearing guides, advice books, and etiquette manuals that taught Americans how to behave, this book connects these instructions to individual practices and personal concerns found in contemporary diaries and letters. It also illuminates crucial connections between evolving class, age, and gender relations. A social and cultural history with a unique and fascinating perspective, Hemphill's wide-ranging study offers readers a panorama of America's social customs from colonial times to the Civil War. [from the publisher]
A Preliminary List of the Flora of the Perkiomen Region

Whorten A. Kline, Thomas R. Brendle, and Joseph R. Mumbauer

41 page annotated list of vascular plants collected by the authors in and around the Perkiomen Creek in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. "About the year 1915 Dr. Kline, Brendle and Mumbauer began to make weekly collecting trips. This preliminary catalogue rests mostly upon the work done on these trips." [from the Foreword]