Gettysburg College Faculty Books

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January 6 and the Politics of History

James Downs, Stephanie McCurry, Joanne Freeman, Elizabeth Hinton, Jill Lepore, William Sturkey, and Julian E. Zelizer

Publication Date: 3-1-2024

On January 6, 2021, more than two thousand rioters stormed the doors of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., hoping to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power from former president Donald Trump to his successor, Joseph Biden. The deaths, property damage, and vicious rampage that ensued were witnessed on live television as an unprecedented attack on the democratic process and those who strive to protect it.

As an installment of UGA Press’s History in the Headlines series, this book offers a rich discussion between highly respected scholars on the historical backdrop and context for contemporary issues from the headlines. In addition to the historical context, this conversation demonstrates how historians speak to one another about contentious topics and how they contribute in meaningful ways to the public’s understanding of momentous events. This volume focuses on the historical context of the January 6 attack and employs a free-flowing conversation style that allows the historians a more unconventional format. The participants discuss if—and if so, how—historians should engage in public debates and what that engagement means to their roles as academic authorities in the public.
The Chai-Light Zone: Rod Serling, Secular Jew

Steven Gimbel, Stephen J. Stern, and David DeAngelo

Publication Date: 7-2024

The Twilight Zone is remembered as a science fiction television series that reflected the uneasiness of Cold War America. Its creator, Rod Serling, was a secular Jew who fought in World War II and returned stateside to see moral problems at home, like racism and the potential for technology to rob us of our humanity. The Twilight Zone was Serling's attempt to influence mainstream culture in an ethically positive direction. His moral compass, which shaped his writing on the series, is entangled with his brand of cultural Judaism. By examining a range of episodes, the authors of this volume bring this Jewish moral influence out from the twilight and into the full light of day.
In on the Joke: The Ethics of Humor and Comedy

Steven Gimbel and Thomas Wilk

Publication Date: 1-29-2024

Who is morally permitted to tell jokes about Jews? Poles? Women? Only those in the group? Only those who would be punching up? Anyone, since they are just jokes? All of the standard approaches are too broad or too narrow. In on the Joke provides a more sophisticated approach according to which each person possesses "joke capital" that can serve as "comic insurance" covering certain jokes in certain contexts. When Bob tells a joke about Jews, we can never know exactly what Bob is intending since we cannot see inside Bob’s mind. But we could reasonably infer, if we knew Bob himself was Jewish, if he worked tirelessly for Jewish causes, or was a card-carrying Neo-Nazi. Each would affect his joke capital, and, in certain circumstances, we would have a moral standing to demand to see his ledger to see how much joke capital he had with respect to Jews. The permissibility of that joke depends upon four factors: the joke, the teller of the joke, the audience, and the setting. The view developed in In on the Joke is the only view that clearly explains how each of these components work together in an integrated, effective ethic of humor.
The Battalion: Citizen Soldiers at War on the Western Front

Ian A. Isherwood

Publication Date: 8-16-2024

How did ordinary citizens become soldiers during the First World War, and how did they cope with the extraordinary challenges they confronted on the Western Front? These are questions Ian Isherwood seeks to answer in this absorbing and deeply researched study of the actions and experiences of an infantry battalion throughout the conflict. His work gives us a vivid impression of the reality of war for these volunteers and an insight into the motivation that kept them fighting.

The narrative traces the history of the 8th Battalion The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment), a Kitchener battalion raised in 1914. The letters, memoirs and diaries of the men of the battalion, in particular the correspondence of their commanding officer, reveal in fascinating detail what wartime life was like for this group of men. It includes vivid accounts of the major battles in which they were involved – Loos, the Somme, Passchendaele, the German Spring Offensive, and the final 100 Days campaign.

The battalion took heavy losses, yet those who survived continued to fight and took great pride in their service, an attitude that is at odds with much of the popular perception of the Great War. Ian Isherwood brings in the latest research on military thinking and learning, on emotional resilience, and cultural history to tell their story.
The War That Made America: Essays Inspired by the Scholarship of Gary W. Gallagher

Caroline E. Janney, Peter S. Carmichael, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean

Publication Date: 3-2024

This collection of original essays reveals the richness and dynamism of contemporary scholarship on the Civil War era. Inspired by the lines of inquiry that animated the writings of the influential historian Gary W. Gallagher, this volume includes nine essays by leading scholars in the field who explore a broad range of themes and participants in the nation's greatest conflict, from Indigenous communities navigating the dangerous shoals of the secession winter to Confederate guerrillas caught in the legal snares of the Union’s hard war to African Americans pursuing landownership in the postwar years. Essayists also explore how people contested and shaped the memory of the conflict, from outright silences and evasions to the use of formal historical writing. Other contributors use comparative and transnational history to rethink key aspects of the conflict. The result is a thorough examination of Gallagher’s scholarly legacy and an assessment of the present and future of the Civil War history field.
Indigenous Ecocinema: Decolonizing Media Environments

Salma Monani

Publication Date: 12-2024

Introducing the concepts of d-ecocinema and d-ecocinema criticism, Monani expands the purview of ecocinema studies and not only brings attention to a thriving Indigenous cinema archive but also argues for a methodological approach that ushers Indigenous intellectual voices front and center in how we theorize this archive. Its case-study focus on Canada, particularly the work emanating from the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto--a nationally and internationally recognized hub in Indigenous cinema networks--provides insights into pan-Indigenous and Nation-specific contexts of Indigenous ecocinema.

This absorbing text is the first book-length exploration foregrounding the environmental dimensions of cinema made by Indigenous peoples, including a particlarly fascinating discussion on how Indigenous cinema’s ecological entanglements are a crucial and complementary aspect of its agenda of decolonialism.

Additionally, see West Virginia University Press Booktimist's Q&A with author Salma Monani: https://booktimist.com/2024/12/12/the-author-of-indigenous-ecocinema-describes-new-ways-to-approach-indigenous-responses-to-climate-issues/
Giants and Dwarfs in European Art and Culture, ca. 1350-1750

Robin O'Bryan and Felicia M. Else

Publication Date: 3-16-2024

Not since Edward Wood’s Giants and Dwarfs published in 1868 has the subject been the focus of a scholarly study in English. Treating the topic afresh, this volume offers new insights into the vogue for giants and dwarfs that flourished in late-medieval and early modern Europe. From chapters dealing with the real dwarfs and giants in the royal and princely courts, to the imaginary giants and dwarfs that figured in the crafting of nationalistic and ancestral traditions, to giants and dwarfs used as metaphorical expression, scholars discuss their role in art, literature, and ephemeral display. Some essays examine giants and dwarfs as monsters and marvels and collectibles, while others show artists and writers emphasizing contrasts in scale to inspire awe or for comic effect. As these investigations reveal, not all court dwarfs functioned as jesters, and giant figures might equally be used to represent heroes, anti-heroes, and even a saint.
No Big Deal

Rachele Salvini

Publication Date: 4-19-2024

Dixon e Lena. Londra e Livorno. Due vite apparentemente distanti, eppure così simili. Lui è il bersaglio prediletto delle cattiverie dei compagni di scuola, che lo deridono; delle ragazze, che lo considerano mediocre; del padre, soprattutto, un uomo alcolizzato e violento che lo picchia con metodo. In Italia Lena vive una situazione meno estrema, ma dentro di lei il disagio è lo stesso. Sente di non piacere a nessuno: non ai ragazzi, a cui pare risultare invisibile, e di certo non alla madre, una donna oppressiva e impantanata in un matrimonio ormai al capolinea. Arriva finalmente un approdo, qualcuno su cui fare affidamento – l’amico Ale per Dixon, l’amore di Tommaso per Lena. Ma il vero approdo, per entrambi, diventa la musica, uno strumento per reagire alla confusione dei rapporti disfunzionali e trovare un posto nel mondo. Dixon si unisce come chitarrista ai (No Big Deal), una band indipendente in cerca di gloria, mentre Lena coltiva il sogno di diventare una giornalista musicale trasferendosi a Londra. I loro percorsi paralleli si intersecano in un pub della capitale tra i fumi dell’alcol e le note rock del gruppo, e finiranno per essere inestricabilmente legati. I fantasmi del passato e le insidie del presente presto mostreranno quanto la felicità sia instabile e quanto il successo, anzi il semplice sogno del successo, sia difficile da gestire.
International Relations: Seeking Security, Prosperity, and Quality of Life in a Changing World

James M. Scott, Yasemin Akbaba, Ralph G. Carter, and A. Cooper Drury

Publication Date: 5-2024

IR: Seeking Security, Prosperity, and Quality of Life in a Changing World presents a comprehensive approach to understanding world politics through the lens of security, prosperity, and quality of life in a rapidly evolving global environment. The book not only acquaints students with events, but also broadens the context to analyze larger patterns, making the experience immersive and engaging.

Thoroughly updated, the Fifth Edition incorporates new theoretical perspectives, coverage of important events and trends of recent years, and current data and research.

This title is accompanied by a complete teaching and learning package.
Traces of a Jewish Artist: The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit

Kerry Wallach

Publication Date: 3-12-2024

This is the first ever book on Rahel Szalit (1888–1942), one of the best-known Jewish women artists in Weimar Berlin. Szalit was a sought-after illustrator and painter who was murdered in the Holocaust and was all but lost to history. Szalit’s fascinating life demonstrates how women artists gained access to Jewish and avant-garde movements by experimenting with different media and genres. Drawing on a range of sources from 35 archives in 7 countries (Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Austria, France, Israel, and the US), this biography recovers Szalit’s life and presents a representative collection of her art, bringing Szalit into the larger conversation about Jewish artists, Expressionism, and modern art.
A Place Called Yellowstone: The Epic History of the World's First National Park

Randall K. Wilson

Publication Date: 10-8-2024

It has been called Wonderland, America’s Serengeti, the crown jewel of the National Park System, and America’s best idea. But how did this faraway landscape evolve into one of the most recognizable places in the world? As the birthplace of the national park system, Yellowstone witnessed the first-ever attempt to protect wildlife, to restore endangered species, and to develop a new industry centered on nature tourism.

Yellowstone remains a national icon, one of the few entities capable of bridging ideological divides in the United States. Yet the park’s history is also filled with episodes of conflict and exclusion, setting precedents for Native American land dispossession, land rights disputes, and prolonged tensions between commercialism and environmental conservation. Yellowstone’s legacies are both celebratory and problematic. A Place Called Yellowstone tells the comprehensive story of Yellowstone National Park as the story of the nation itself.
Desire in the Iliad: The Force that Moves the Epic and Its Audience

Rachel H. Lesser

Publication Date: 1-6-2023

This book is the first study to examine desire in the Iliad in a comprehensive way and to explain its relationship to the epic’s narrative structure and audience reception. It offers a new reading of the poem that shows how the characters’ desires, especially those of the mortal hero Achilleus and the divine king Zeus, motivate plot and keep the audience engaged with the epic until and even beyond its end. The author argues that the characters’ desires are primarily organized in narrative triangles that feature two parties in conflict over a third. A variety of desires animate these triangles, including sexual passion, longing for a lost loved one, yearning for lamentation, and aggressive desires for vengeance and status, and they are signified with terms such as erōs, himeros, pothē, menos, thumos, boulē, and eeldōr as well as through the epic’s thematic emotions of grief and anger. This book shows how the mortals’ and gods’ triangular desires together drive and shape two Iliadic plots, the main plot of Achilleus’ withdrawal from the fighting and then return to battle, and the “superplot” of the larger Trojan War story. The author also argues that these plots and their motivating desires arouse the listener’s—or reader’s—own corresponding desires: narrative desire to know and understand the Iliad’s full story, sympathetic desire for characters’ welfare, and empathetic passions, longings, and wishes. Our desires invest us in the epic narrative and their resolution brings us satisfaction.
Serpents of War: An American Officer's Story of World War I Combat and Captivity

Harry Dravo Parkin, Steven Trout, and Ian A. Isherwood

Publication Date: 6-2023

Serpents of War, the memoir of Pennsylvanian Major Harry Dravo Parkin, is a rare account of World War I as seen from the perspective of a battalion commander. As a mid-level officer responsible for the lives and welfare of over a thousand men, Parkin conveys the stress of command at a time when one innocent blunder could cost an officer his combat assignment, brings the inferno of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive to life in terrifying, gory detail, and recounts being taken prisoner by the Imperial German Army—a rare experience among American soldiers in 1918. In addition, Parkin provides a detailed account of the 79th Division’s attack on Mountfaucon, a military action that remains controversial to this day. This is a book by a brave soldier, a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross for his heroism on the battlefield, and a gifted writer.

Serpents of War is an abridged edition of a nearly 200,000-word World War I memoir that resides in Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library, enhanced by the contributions of two scholars of World War I and memory. Written in an unassuming but eloquent style, Parkin’s narrative seldom strains for effect. It possesses a strong sense of setting, a knack for capturing the chaos and strange exhilaration of battle, and a sharp eye for the interpersonal, social dynamics of military life—the personality clashes and simmering feuds, as well as the moments of comradeship and accord. Serpents of War is an absorbing memoir that holds the reader’s attention from beginning to end.
Daughters Healing from Family Mobbing: Stories and Approaches to Recover from Shunning, Aggression, and Family Violence

Stephanie A. Sellers

Publication Date: 4-18-2023

“Family Mobbing” is a strategic process of power and control. When daughters are mobbed, they’re not just shunned, attacked, or slandered: they’re also subjugated by a system of family rules that reinforces patriarchal oppression. What makes mobbing so insidious–and so under-reported–is that here, family itself is the site of violence, trauma, and shame.

Family violence against girls and women is still legal–even in America, and even now. Across cultures, girls and women may be shunned or shamed, emotionally mistreated, or physically attacked by their families to maintain status, social conventions, and the family’s own standing within their community. Family Mobbing tactics can include slander, gossip, rejection, beatings, anti-Queer violence, and even honor killings, child marriages, and forced abortion.

Author Stephanie Sellers–herself a survivor–explores the global phenomenon of Family Mobbing, revealing the secrets and patterns that play out behind closed doors and remain unseen, unacknowledged, and unaddressed.
Peter Williamson, French and Indian Cruelty: A Modern Critical Edition

Timothy J. Shannon

Publication Date: 3-2023

This book is the first scholarly edition of the most popular Native American captivity narrative published in eighteenth-century Britain. In this fully annotated modern version, Timothy J. Shannon re-acquaints modern readers with this popular North American captivity narrative, featuring a Scottish protagonist. He tells the story of Peter Williamson, a native of Aberdeen, who claimed he was kidnapped into indentured servitude in North America, lived as a captive among Indians there, and then fought as a soldier in the Seven Years’ War until he was taken prisoner by the French.
Democracy's Shield: Voices of WWII

Michael J. Birkner, Grace E. Gallagher, and Rachel I. Main

Publication Date: 2022

Based on a body of 700 oral history interviews archived at Gettysburg College, Democracy's Shield relates the American military experience through the voices of those who served – from early awareness of the conflict in Europe and East Asia to the dropping of the atomic bomb, victory, occupation and homecoming.

The text is illustrated with images of artifacts from the library's Special Collections.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Introduction
Portents of War
Pearl Harbor
Draft Status and Volunteering
Exams, Induction, Training
Heading to the Front
Attitudes about the Enemy
Race, Gender and the War Effort
GI Joe
Aboard Ship
Up in the Air
Medical Experience
Leisure Activity
Connections with Home
European Theater
D-Day
Pacific Theater
Experience of Battle
POWs
Death Camps
Atomic Bomb
Occupation
Going Home
Reflections
The Interviewees
Note on Sources
Acknowledgments
About the Editors
The Dwight D. Eisenhower Society
War in Focus
Credits and Illustrations
Donors
Reflections from Pioneering Women in Psychology

Jamila Bookwala and Nicky J. Newton

Publication Date: 4-2022

This volume traces the life journeys of a cohort of influential and transformative women in psychology, now in or nearing retirement, who have changed the discipline and the broader world of academia in significant ways. The 26 reflective essays record how these scholars thrived in an academic landscape that was often, at best, unwelcoming, and, at worst, hostile, toward them. They explicitly and implicitly acknowledge that their paths were inextricably linked with the evolution of women's roles in society; they highlight and celebrate their achievements as much as they acknowledge and recognize the obstacles, barriers, and hurdles they overcame. They tell their stories with candor and humor, resulting in a compilation of inspiring essays. The end result of these individual narratives is a volume that provides a unique resource for current and future academics to help them navigate through the crossroads, curves, and challenges of their own careers in academia.
A Reader in Moral Philosophy

Daniel R. DeNicola

Publication Date: 4-2022

This lively anthology provides classic and contemporary defenses and critiques of the central ethical theories, along with readings on a selection of moral issues such as freedom of expression, immigration, and the treatment of non-human animals. Generous excerpts of canonical texts are included alongside contemporary works, all carefully selected and thoughtfully edited for student use. Readings on the ethical theories are organized intuitively, by implicit source of value: god, human nature, culture, reason, consent, character, emotion, care, particulars, and intuitions. The interconnections among readings amplify teaching possibilities and create a vigorous conversation about morality.
America in the French Imaginary, 1789-1914: Music, Revolution and Race

Diana R. Hallman and César Leal

Publication Date: 5-2022

Following the American Revolution, French authors often viewed the United States as a laboratory for the forging of new practices of liberté and égalité, in affinity with France's own Revolutionary ideals but in competition with lingering anti-American depictions of an inferior, untamed New World.

The volume examines French imagining of America through musical/theatrical portrayals of the American Revolution and Republic, soundscapes of the Statue of Liberty, homages to Washington, Franklin and Lafayette and negotiations of Francophone identity in New Orleans. The subject of race features prominently in paradoxical depictions of slavery, freedom, and revolution in the United States and French Caribbean colonies of 'Amérique' and in varied interpretations of American music and gendered identity. Essays consider French constructions of the Indigenous American and Black American 'exotic' that intersect with tropes of noble, pastoral savagery, menacing barbarism and the 'civilising' potency of French culture. Such French constructions reveal both a revulsion of racial alterity and an attraction to the expressive, even subversive, freedom of Americanness. Investigations of French conceptions of America extend to critiques of American orchestral music, Gottschalk's Louisianan-Caribbean Creole works, Buffalo Bill's spectacles and the cakewalk in Paris. With scholarly contributions on music, dance, theatre and opera, the volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of these disciplines.
Traditional Chinese Fiction in the English-Speaking World: Transcultural and Translingual Encounters

Junjie Luo (罗俊杰)

Publication Date: 8-2022

This book develops interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to analyzing the cross-cultural travels of traditional Chinese fiction. It ties this genre to issues such as translation, world literature, digital humanities, book culture, and images of China. Each chapter offers a case study of the historical and cultural conditions under which traditional Chinese fiction has traveled to the English-speaking world, proposing a critical lens that can be used to explain these cross-cultural encounters. The book seeks to identify connections between traditional Chinese fiction and other cultures that create new meanings and add to the significance of reading, teaching, and studying these classical novels and stories in the English-speaking world. Scholars, students, and general readers who are interested in traditional Chinese fiction, translation studies, and comparative and world literature will find this book useful.
Personal Memories of the Early Analytic Philosophers: Analytic Logic/Synthetic Lives

Jeffrey Maynes and Steven Gimbel

Publication Date: 9-2022

Analytic Philosophy began in the first decades of the 20th century at Cambridge with Bertrand Russell, in Vienna with the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists, and in Berlin with Hans Reichenbach’s Society for Empirical Philosophy. While the story of the rise of this intellectual movement is chronicled in a number of recent and not so recent books, these treatments largely focus on the story of the ideas. Largely missing are the figures themselves, their lives and personalities. Those are saved in the memories of the people who knew them. Analytic Logic/Synthetic Lives is a collection of eleven edited transcripts of oral history interviews collected over twenty years with those who had such memories – the widows, spouses, classmates, and students of these towering figures of 20th century analytic thought. The primary and secondary scholarly literature on the history of early analytic philosophy is plentiful, but the same is not true when it comes to the personal side of these figures. This volume fills that hole by collecting personal remembrances from those who knew them best.
Ecocinema Theory and Practice 2

Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, and Sean Cubitt

Publication Date: 2022

This second volume builds on the initial groundwork laid by Ecocinema Theory and Practice by examining the ways in which ecocritical cinema studies have matured and proliferated over the last decade, opening whole new areas of study and research.

Featuring fourteen new essays organized into three sections around the themes of cinematic materialities, discourses, and communities, the volume explores a variety of topics within ecocinema studies from examining specifc national and indigenous flm contexts to discussing ecojustice, environmental production studies, flm festivals, and political ecology. The breadth of the contributions exemplifes how ecocinema scholars worldwide have sought to overcome the historical legacy of binary thinking and intellectual norms and are working to champion new ecocritical, intersectional, decolonial, queer, feminist, Indigenous, vitalist, and other emergent theories and cinematic prac-tices. The collection also demonstrates the unique ways that cinema studies scholarship is actively addressing environmental injustice and the climate crisis.

This book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of ecocritical flm and media studies, production studies, cultural studies, and environmental studies.
Pollo Fritto e Disperazione

Rachele Salvini

Publication Date: 2022

Autori e autrici dell'America contemporanea, accomunati dall'appartenenza al mondo delle scuole di scrittura creativa di fiction e nonfiction e dalla pubblicazione su prestigiose riviste letterarie. Un taglio minimalista e antiretorico per vivisezionare frammenti e situazioni - infanzia, adolescenza, età adulta e vecchiaia. Temi che spaziano dall'identità culturale e di genere alle nevrosi, dal dolore della perdita all'inafferrabile trascorrere del tempo. Un diffuso senso di solitudine, in cui la comunicazione con l'altro è complicata se non rotta; dove il dolore, a vari livelli, è un'ombra scura che si allunga su un presente fragile e contraddittorio.
Reclaiming the Wicked Son: Finding Judaism in Secular Jewish Philosophers

Stephen J. Stern and Steven Gimbel

Publication Date: 9-2022

Reclaiming the Wicked Son: Finding Judaism in Secular Jewish Philosophers takes the ideas of six well-known secular Jewish philosophers—Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ayn Rand, Peter Singer, Noam Chomsky, and Judith Butler—and views them through a wide range of Jewish lenses from the Talmudic tradition and prophetic Judaism to Kabbalist approaches, thereby understanding the 20th-century secular thinkers as on-going elements of a living Jewish intellectual tradition.

Jewish Studies as a field focuses on Judaism, but Jewishness is broader than Judaism, and as a result, a number of thinkers who come from Jewish backgrounds are excluded from the discourse in Jewish Studies. The goal of this volume is to act as a bridge between the religious and secular Jewish discourse communities, allowing a more inclusive and more comprehensive account of Jewish thought.

While the philosophers who discussed may not have considered themselves to be Jewish philosophers. But, by reading them Judaically, they can be understood in terms of a more robust historical and intellectual context in which they partake of a tradition to which they are not often connected.
German-Jewish Studies: Next Generations

Kerry Wallach and Aya Elyada

Publication Date: 10-2022

As a field, German-Jewish Studies emphasizes the dangers of nationalism, monoculturalism, and ethnocentrism, while making room for multilingual and transnational perspectives with questions surrounding migration, refugees, exile, and precarity. Focusing on the relevance and utility of the field for the twenty-first century, German-Jewish Studies explores why studying and applying German-Jewish history and culture must evolve and be given further attention today. The volume brings together an interdisciplinary range of scholars to reconsider the history of antisemitism—as well as intersections of antisemitism with racism and colonialism—and how connections to German Jews shed light on the continuities, ruptures, anxieties, and possible futures of German-speaking Jews and their legacies.