Archive for October, 2008

The Association of American University Presses (AAUP) provides a valuable service called Books for Understanding. It is a website that compiles titles on specific subjects, most often as crises occur, a major news story breaks, or debate on any topic heats up.

The recent financial crisis in the world prompted a call for books on topics as diverse as Wall Street and Financial Markets, Financial Panics and Market Crises, Market Regulation, and Business Ethics. Other relevant lists are Afghanistan and the Taliban, Mexico, and many more.

Not all lists are about crises in the world; some focus on arts and literature, such as Writing of Place and the L.M. Montgomery list. These lists are excellent resources, and Laurier Press contributes to them on a regular basis. You can subscribe to these lists through an RSS feed, which is a great way to keep up to date with what is happening in the world.

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The big news this week, of course, is the settlement of the lawsuit between Google and publishers. The new agreement will make in-copyright books available for preview (outside the publisher–Google Partners program) but users will have to pay for a full view of the book. The Google pages are proclaiming it good news, but I was also pleased to see the following from Peter Givler, Executive Director of the Association of American University Presses. He calls it “a good resolution that serves the interests of all the parties and, most important, of readers and researchers everywhere.” Visit the Authors Guild website for a good page of links.

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The books are coming in fast and furious. Here’s a sample of what has come in lately, and you can visit our website to see all the details.

The Agent in the Margin: Nayantara Sahgal’s Gandhian Fiction
Clara A.B. Joseph“How lucky we are to have this book, which captures the unusual place of Nayantara Sahgal’s committed writing in contemporary Indian literature. Best known as Jawaharlal Nehru’s niece and a severe critic of her cousin Indira Gandhi, Sahgal appears in Joseph’s vividly concise analysis as a strong writer mapping agency for Indian collective identity. Grounding her approach in an acute summation of the entire arc of her subjects life-thought, Clara Joseph balances brilliantly her literary criticism of Sahgal’s work with philosophical elements that make her book an interesting theoretical piece thoroughly woven with rigor and deep sensitivity. As such, postcolonial and Gandhian scholars are offered here the opportunity to consider the interaction between Gandhian ideology and Sahgal’s fiction in the context of the making of post-independence India.” — Ramin Jahanbegloo, University of Toronto, author of India Revisited (2007) and The Spirit of India (2008)Big Picture Realities: Canada and Mexico at the Crossroads
Daniel Drache, editor

In the post-NAFTA era, Canada and Mexico face dramatic and irreversible changes from the Bush revolution in foreign public policy, the rising economic power of China and India, new concerns about border security and human rights, and the trends of economic integration. The essays in Big Picture Realities: Canada and Mexico at the Crossroads address the sea change in the political economic order of North America and chronicle the attempts of Canada and Mexico, two very different societies, to come to terms with the accumulated and often contradictory effects of micro and macro changes.

Afghanistan: Transition Under Threat
Geoff Hayes and Mark Sedra, editors

Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
In Afghanistan: Transition under Threat, leading Afghanistan scholars and practitioners paint a full picture of the situation in Afghanistan and the impact of international and particularly Canadian assistance. They review the achievements of the reconstruction process and outline future challenges, focusing on key issues like the narcotics trade, the Pakistan—Afghanistan bilateral relationship, the Taliban-led insurgency, and continuing endemic poverty. This collection provides new insight into the nature and state of Afghanistan’s post-conflict transition and illustrates the consequences of failure.

“Hayes, Sedra, and their colleagues provide the most comprehensive and balanced assessment to date of the international effort in Afghanistan.” — Barnett R. Rubin, Director of Studies and Senior Fellow, Center on International Cooperation, New York University

Harmony and Dissent: Film and Avant-garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth Century
R. Bruce Elder

“Filmmaker Bruce Elder has added to his distinguished critical and scholarly works on avant-garde cinema his most original book, Harmony and Dissent: Film and Avant-garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth Century. In it he makes a convincing case for the centrality of cinema as a unique mode of inspired cognition in the wake of the revolutionary art movements of the 1910s and 1920s. His learned investigation of the mystical heritage informing even the most dogmatically rationalist areas of modernist art and polemics puts the work of Richter, Eggeling, and Eisenstein in a thoroughly new and dazzling light.” — P. Adams Sitney, Princeton University, author of Eyes Upside Down: Visionary Filmmakers and the Heritage of Emerson (2008)

German Diasporic Experiences: Identity, Migration, and Loss
Mathias Schulze, James M. Skidmore, David G. John, Grit Liebscher, and Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach, editors

Co-published with the Waterloo Centre for German Studies

For centuries, large numbers of German-speaking people have emigrated from settlements in Europe to other countries and continents. In German Diasporic Experiences: Identity, Migration, and Loss, more than forty international contributors describe and discuss aspects of the history, language, and culture of these migrant groups, individuals, and their descendants. Part I focuses on identity, with essays exploring the connections among language, politics, and the construction of histories—national, familial, and personal—in German-speaking diasporic communities around the world. Part II deals with migration, examining such issues as German migrants in postwar Britain, German refugees and forced migration, and the immigrant as a fictional character, among others. Part III examines the idea of loss in diasporic experience with essays on nationalization, language change or loss, and the reshaping of cultural identity.

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Today is the Canadian Federal Election so be sure to get out and vote and make your voice heard. In honour of election day, here are some of the books with political themes we’ve published over the years.

The Language of Canadian Politics: A Guide to Important Terms & Concepts, 4th edition

John McMenemy

This important book is used in many political science classrooms across the country. Be sure to check out our website for material added since publication.

With nearly 600 cross-referenced entries, The Language of Canadian Politics offers brief essays on the many facets of the Canadian political system, including institutions, events, laws, concepts, and public policies. Concisely written, it is an important resource for people interested in contemporary politics, as well as those interested in the historic context of contemporary political behaviour. Readers not familiar with Canadian government and politics will find the book an invaluable introduction; others will welcome this updated indispensable reference.

Uneasy Partners:Multiculturalism and Rights in Canada Janice Stein, David Robertson Cameron, John Ibbitson, Will Kymlicka, John Meisel, Haroon Siddiqui, and Michael Valpy

The contributors to this volume examine the conflict between equality rights, as embedded in the Charter, and multiculturalism as policy and practice, and ask which charter value should trump which and under what circumstances

“In the midst of the debate on Canadian multiculturalism and whither it’s bound comes a timely book from Wilfrid Laurier University Press…. If you have a genuine interest in the future of Canada this book is essential reading…. If you believe the Canadian concept of multiculturalism is worth preserving…This book offers eight viewpoints that pave the way.”— Ben Viccari, Canscene

Lines Drawn upon the Water:First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders and Borderlands

Karl S. Hele, editor

The essays in Lines Drawn upon the Water examine the impact of the Canadian—American border on communities, with reference to national efforts to enforce the boundary and the determination of local groups to pursue their interests and define themselves.

Although both governments regard the border as clearly defined, local communities continue to contest the artificial divisions imposed by the international boundary and define spatial and human relationships in the borderlands in their own terms.

A Question of Commitment:Children’s Rights in Canada

R. Brian Howe, editor, and Katherine Covell, editor

In 1991, the Government of Canada ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, requiring governments at all levels to ensure that Canadian laws and practices safeguard the rights of children. A Question of Commitment: Children’s Rights in Canada is the first book to assess the extent to which Canada has fulfilled this commitment.

The editors, R. Brian Howe and Katherine Covell, contend that Canada has wavered in its commitment to the rights of children and is ambivalent in the political culture about the principle of children’s rights. A Question of Commitment expands the scope of the editors’ earlier book, The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada, by including the voices of specialists in particular fields of children’s rights and by incorporating recent developments.

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If you’re in the area of Kitchener-Waterloo this weekend, please consider joining ordinary citizens who love the arts at the Kitchener Farmers’ Market at 11:30. If you use Facebook you can join the group here.

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WATERLOO REGION INFORMAL CELEBRATION OF CANADIAN ART & CULTURE

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 noon, Saturday, October 11, 2008
Kitchener Farmer’s Market

Dear Artist Colleagues and Arts Supporters,

We are gathering this Thanksgiving weekend to show support of Canadian art & culture in the face of Harper’s cuts and his expressed contempt for the arts and their value. The informal celebration will take place this coming Saturday morning the 11th from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 noon at the Kitchener Market. Please come prepared to mingle and talk to people about the arts. Bring a banner saying “ordinary Canadian who cares about the arts”. We will lift them in unison at the stroke of noon: it is not just funding cuts to the arts, but the future of this country that is at stake here.

Please let your friends and colleagues know. We need the arts community to pull together on this but we also need to reach out to the community at large. Let’s gather in the courtyard on the King Street side of the building before & after the event.

The message will come across loud and clear if we have a good number of people there.

Come regardless, but if you can let us know you’re coming.

Contacts:

Anne-Marie Donovan: adonovan0476@rogers.com
Julianna Yau: desk@juliannayau.com
Martin de Groot: mdg@golden.net
Waterloo Regional Arts Council: wrac@golden.net

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