The nine contributors to this collection examine rhetorician Kenneth Burke’s understanding of transcendence, applying it to a wide range of social and political issues, including racial and presidential politics.

A collection of essays providing insights into new directions in rhetorical historyKathleen J. Turner’s 1998 multicontributor volume Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases quickly became a foundational text in the field, and the studies in the book have served as an important roadmap for scholars undertaking such scholarship. In the decades since its publication, developments in rhetorical-historical research, engaged scholarship, and academic interv...

Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke focuses on the little-known but important friendship between two canonical American writers. The story of this fifty-year friendship, however, is more than literary biography; Bryan Crable argues that the Burke-Ellison relationship can be interpreted as a microcosm of the American "racial divide." Through examination of published writings and unpublished correspondence, he reconstructs the dialogue between Burke and Ellison about race that shaped so...

The contributors to this collection come from disparate fields such as theology, literature studies, political science, and communication studies and are guided by a commitment to consider what we can learn from Camus as opposed to where he was wrong or misguided in his life and writing. If there is a place to consider the shortcomings of a human being, especially one as unique as Albert Camus, it will not be found within this volume.The essays in this text are built around the the...

Lewis R. Gordon's Fear of Black Consciousness is a groundbreaking account of Black consciousness by a leading philosopherIn this original and penetrating work, Lewis R. Gordon, one of the leading scholars of Black existentialism and anti-Blackness, takes the reader on a journey through the historical development of racialized Blackness, the problems this kind of consciousness produces, and the many creative responses from Black and non-Black communities in ...

The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory, deadpan, to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last five hundred years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged "contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral psycholog...

The essential handbook for doing historical research in the twenty-first centuryThe Princeton Guide to Historical Research provides students, scholars, and professionals with the skills they need to practice the historian's craft in the digital age, while never losing sight of the fundamental values and techniques that have defined historical scholarship for centuries.Zachary Schrag begins by explaining how to ask good questions and then guides rea...

Introduces key terms, research traditions, debates, and histories for American Studies and Cultural Studies in an updated editionSince its initial publication, scholars and students alike have turned to Keywords for American Cultural Studies as an invaluable resource for understanding key terms and debates in the fields of American studies and cultural studies. As scholarship has continued to evolve, this revised and expanded third edition offers indispens...

Beyond Respectability charts the development of African American women as public intellectuals and the evolution of their thought from the end of the 1800s through the Black Power era of the 1970s. Eschewing the Great Race Man paradigm so prominent in contemporary discourse, Brittney C. Cooper looks at the far-reaching intellectual achievements of female thinkers and activists like Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Barrier Williams, Pauli Murray, and Toni Cade Bambara...

How do we know what happened in the past? We cannot go back, and no amount of historical data can enable us to understand with absolute certainty what life was like “then.” It is easy to demolish the very idea of historical knowing, but it is impossible to demolish the importance of historical knowing. In an age of cable television pundits and anonymous bloggers dueling over history, the value of owning history increases at the same time as our confidence in history as a way of...

What is the purpose of studying history? How do we reflect on contemporary life from a historical perspective and can such reflection help us better understand ourselves, the world around us, and the God we worship and serve?In this introductory textbook, accomplished historian John Fea shows why Christians should study history, how faith is brought to bear on our understanding of the past, and how studying the past can help us more effectively love God and others. Deep historical ...

Reflecting critically on the discipline of African American studies is a complicated undertaking. Making sense of the black American experience requires situating it within the larger cultural, political-economic, and ideological dynamics that shape American life. This volume moves away from privileging racial commonality as the fulcrum of inquiry and moves toward observing the quality of the accounts scholars have rendered of black American life. This book maps the changing conditions of ...