Gettysburg College Faculty Books

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Gettysburg 1963: Civil Rights, Cold War Politics, and Historical Memory in America’s Most Famous Small Town

Jill Ogline Titus

Publication Date: 11-2021

The year 1963 was unforgettable for Americans. In the midst of intense Cold War turmoil and the escalating struggle for Black freedom, the United States also engaged in a nationwide commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. Commemorative events centered on Gettysburg, site of the best-known, bloodiest, and most symbolically charged battle of the conflict. Inevitably, the centennial of Lincoln’s iconic Gettysburg Address received special focus, pressed into service to help the nation understand its present and define its future--a future that would ironically include another tragic event days later with the assassination of another American president.

In this fascinating work, Jill Ogline Titus uses centennial events in Gettysburg to examine the history of political, social, and community change in 1960s America. Examining the experiences of political leaders, civil rights activists, preservation-minded Civil War enthusiasts, and local residents, Titus shows how the era’s deep divisions thrust Gettysburg into the national spotlight and ensured that white and Black Americans would define the meaning of the battle, the address, and the war in dramatically different ways.
Adapting: A Chinese Philosophy of Action

Mercedes Valmisa

Publication Date: 9-14-2021

If you are from the West, it is likely that you normally assume that you are a subject who relates to objects and other subjects through actions that spring purely from your own intentions and will. Chinese philosophers, however, show how mistaken this conception of action is. Philosophy of action in Classical China is radically different from its counterpart in the Western philosophical narrative. While the latter usually assumes we are discrete individual subjects with the ability to act or to effect change, Classical Chinese philosophers theorize that human life is embedded in endless networks of relationships with other entities, phenomena, and socio-material contexts. These relations are primary to the constitution of the person, and hence acting within an early Chinese context is interacting and co-acting along with others, human or nonhuman.

This book is the first monograph dedicated to the exploration and rigorous reconstruction of an extraordinary strategy for efficacious relational action devised by Classical Chinese philosophers, one which attempts to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency-what Mercedes Valmisa calls "adapting" or "adaptive agency" (yin) As opposed to more unilateral approaches to action conceptualized in the Classical Chinese corpus, such as forceful and prescriptive agency, adapting requires heightened self- and other-awareness, equanimity, flexibility, creativity, and response. These capacities allow the agent to “co-raise” courses of action ad hoc: unique and temporary solutions to specific, non-permanent, and non-generalizable life problems.

Adapting is one of the world's oldest philosophies of action, and yet it is shockingly new for contemporary audiences, who will find in it an unlikely source of inspiration to cope with our current global problems. This book explores the core conception of adapting both on autochthonous terms and by cross-cultural comparison, drawing on the European and Analytic philosophical traditions as well as on scholarship from other disciplines. Valmisa exemplifies how to build meaningful philosophical theories without treating individual books or putative authors as locations of stable intellectual positions, opening brand-new topics in Chinese and comparative philosophy.
Muslim Communities and Cultures of the Himalayas: Conceptualizing the Global Ummah

Jacqueline H. Fewkes and Megan Adamson Sijapati

Publication Date: 12-21-2020

This book chronicles individual perspectives and specific iterations of Muslim community, practice, and experience in the Himalayan region to bring into scholarly conversation the presence of varying Muslim cultures in the Himalaya.

The Himalaya provide a site of both geographic and cultural crossroads, where Muslim community is simultaneously constituted at multiple social levels, and to that end the essays in this book document a wide range of local, national, and global interests while maintaining a focus on individual perspectives, moments in time, and localized experiences. It presents research that contributes to a broadly conceived notion of the Himalaya that enriches readers’ understandings of both the region and concepts of Muslim community and highlights the interconnections between multiple experiences of Muslim community at local levels.

Drawing attention to the cultural, social, artistic, and political diversity of the Himalaya beyond the better understood and frequently documented religio-cultural expressions of the region, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of Anthropology, Geography, History, Religious Studies, Asian Studies, and Islamic Studies.
Power Sharing and Democracy in Post-Civil War States: The Art of the Possible

Caroline A. Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie

Publication Date: 6-2020

Power Sharing and Democracy in Post-Civil War States examines the challenge of promoting democracy in the aftermath of civil war. Hartzell and Hoddie argue that minimalist democracy is the most realistic form of democracy to which states emerging from civil war violence can aspire. The adoption of power-sharing institutions within civil war settlements helps mitigate insecurity and facilitate democracy's emergence. Power sharing promotes 'democratization from above' by limiting the capacity of the state to engage in predatory behavior, and 'democratization from below' by empowering citizens to participate in politics. Drawing on cross-national and case study evidence, Hartzell and Hoddie find that post-civil war countries that adopt extensive power sharing are ultimately more successful in transitioning to minimalist democracy than countries that do not. Power Sharing and Democracy in Post-Civil War States presents a new and hopeful understanding of what democracy can look like and how it can be fostered.
Airbnb, Short-Term Rentals and the Future of Housing

Barbara S. Heisler and Lily M. Hoffman

Publication Date: 11-3-2020

How do Airbnb and short-term rentals affect housing and communities? Locating the origins and success of Airbnb in the conditions wrought by the 2008 financial crisis, the authors bring together a diverse body of literature and construct case studies of cities in the US, Australia and Germany to examine the struggles of local authorities to protect their housing and neighborhoods from the increasing professionalization and commercialization of Airbnb.

The book argues that the most disruptive impact of Airbnb and short-term rentals has been on housing and neighborhoods in urban centers where housing markets are stressed. Despite its claims, Airbnb has revealed itself as platform capitalism, incentivizing speculation in residential housing. At the heart of this trajectory is its business model and control over access to data. In a first narrative, the authors discuss how Airbnb has institutionalized short-term rentals, consequently removing long-term rentals, contributing to rising rents and changing neighborhood milieus as visitors replace long-term residents. In a second narrative the authors trace the transformation of short-term rentals into a multibillion-dollar hybrid real estate sector promoting a variety of flexible tenure models. While these models provide more options for owners and investors, they have the potential to undermine housing security and exacerbate housing inequality.

While the overall effects have been similar across countries and cities, depending on housing systems, local response has varied from less restrictive in Australia to increasingly restrictive in the United States and most restrictive in Germany. Although Airbnb has made some concessions, it has not given any city the data needed to efficiently enforce regulations, making for costly externalities. Written in a clear and direct style, this volume will appeal to students and scholars in Urban Studies, Urban Planning, Housing and Tourism Studies.
Continuity and Rupture in Roman Mediterranean Gaul: An Archaeology of Colonial Transformations at Ancient Lattara

Benjamin P. Luley

Publication Date: 2020

With the decline in popularity of the term “Romanization” as a way of analyzing the changes in the archaeological record visible throughout the conquered provinces of the Roman Empire, scholars have increasingly turned to the important concept of “identity” to understand the experiences of local peoples living under Roman rule. Studies of identity in the Roman Empire have thus emphasized how local peoples, rather than simply passively copying Roman culture, actively created and recreated complex and multi-faceted identities that incorporated local traditions within the increasingly connected and “globalized” world of the empire. How did the violent nature of Roman rule in the provinces impact local communities and the ways in which individuals interacted with one another? This book provides a detailed study of the ways in which the Celtic-speaking peoples of the ancient settlement of Lattara in Roman Mediterranean Gaul fashioned their lives under two centuries of Roman rule,and in particular the ways in which the creation of these lived experiences was entangled in the larger processes of Roman colonialism.

The important archaeological settlement and port of Lattara (located today in modern Lattes in Mediterranean France), was occupied from ca 500 BCE to 200 CE, and has been the focus of extensive excavations by international teams of archaeologists for over 35 years. The author seeks to understand the ways in which the daily lives of the inhabitants of Lattara were shaped and constrained by the particular historical circumstances of Roman rule, involving the violent conquest of the province between 125-121 BCE, the pacification of numerous revolts in the in the first half of the first century BCE, and the imposition of an oppressive system of taxation, land redistribution, and grain levies.

Through a detailed analysis of the large corpus of archaeological evidence dating from ca. 200 BCE to 200 CE at Lattara, the author argues that the violent establishment of Roman rule in Mediterranean Gaul engendered very different forms of social relationships and interactions that structured the community during the late first century BCE and onward. This involved a new organization of domestic space and living arrangements, new relationships structuring the production and exchange of material goods, different relationships between the community and the wider spiritual world, and new strategies for acquiring political influence and power, based upon the increasing importance of material wealth. All of this occurred by the very end of the first century BCE despite the continued persistence of many aspects of local identity, particularly evident in religious practices. Furthermore, these new social relationships were arguably paramount in the daily practices of reproducing Roman rule at Lattara, and in the larger province of Mediterranean Gaul more generally; practices that were in particular rooted in an ever-increasing socio-economic hierarchy.
Archaeology of a World of Changes: Late Roman and Early Byzantine Architecture, Sculpture and Landscapes

Dominic Moreau, Carolyn S. Snively, Alessandra Guiglia, Isabella Baldini, Ljubomir Milanović, Ivana Popović, Nicolas Beaudry, and Orsolya Heinrich-Tamáska

Publication Date: 3-31-2020

Published in memory of Prof. Claudia Barsanti, Archaeology of a World of Changes provides a selection of papers presented in sessions on Late Roman and Early Byzantine archaeology, architecture, sculpture and landscapes of the 23rd International Congress of Byzantine Studies, “Byzantium - A World of Changes” (Belgrade, 22-27 August 2016). The variety of topics in archaeology and art history that are discussed in this volume illustrates the richness of material culture in the Roman East and the Eastern Mediterranean during the transition to the Middle Ages, especially in Greece and the Balkans. Christian buildings, not only churches but also episcopal palaces, along with their architecture and decoration, receive special attention. Indeed, the volume includes the complete proceedings of a round table on the historical development, the architectural typologies and the domestic spaces of bishops’ residences which took place at the Congress.
Inward Baptism: The Theological Origins of Evangelicalism

Baird L. Tipson

Publication Date: 8-1-2020

Inward Baptism analyses the theological developments that led to the great evangelical revivals of the mid-eighteenth century. Baird Tipson here demonstrates how the rationale for the "new birth," the characteristic and indispensable evangelical experience, developed slowly but inevitably from Luther's critique of late medieval Christianity.

Addressing the great indulgence campaigns of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Luther's perspective on sacramental baptism, as well as the confrontation between Lutheran and Reformed theologians who fastened on to different aspects of Luther's teaching, Tipson sheds light on how these disparate historical moments collectively created space for evangelicalism.

This leads to an exploration of the theology of the leaders of the Evangelical awakening in the British Isles, George Whitefield and John Wesley, who insisted that by preaching the immediate revelation of the Holy Spirit during the "new birth," they were recovering an essential element of primitive Christianity that had been forgotten over the centuries. Ultimately, Inward Baptism examines how these shifts in religious thought made possible a commitment to an inward baptism and consequently, the evangelical experience.
Queering the Global Filipina Body: Contested Nationalisms in the Filipina/o Diaspora.

Gina Velasco

Publication Date: 11-2020

Contemporary popular culture stereotypes Filipina women as sex workers, domestic laborers, mail order brides, and caregivers. These figures embody the gendered and sexual politics of representing the Philippine nation in the Filipina/o diaspora. Gina K. Velasco explores the tensions within Filipina/o American cultural production between feminist and queer critiques of the nation and popular nationalism as a form of resistance to neoimperialism and globalization.

Using a queer diasporic analysis, Velasco examines the politics of nationalism within Filipina/o American cultural production to consider an essential question: can a queer and feminist imagining of the diaspora reconcile with gendered tropes of the Philippine nation? Integrating a transnational feminist analysis of globalized gendered labor with a consideration of queer cultural politics, Velasco envisions forms of feminist and queer diasporic belonging, while simultaneously foregrounding nationalist movements as vital instruments of struggle.
Let Justice Be Done: Writings from American Abolitionists, 1688-1865

Kerry S. Walters

Publication Date: 2020

Almost from the first arrival of enslaved Africans in 1619 until the end of the antebellum period, a prophetic crusade to eliminate the sin of slavery stirred the American conscience. The abolitionists were deeply faithful Christians who believed that if anything was contrary to the will of God, it was human bondage. Mocked, threatened, and abused, their influence was ultimately profound.

Let Justice Be Done includes representative voices of the abolitionist cause—women and men, black and white. Among them are towering figures such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Lucretia Mott. Their struggle against one of the greatest evils to blemish American history demonstrated that religious faith can and rightfully should be a powerful force in calling out injustice, speaking truth to power, and planting seeds of change.
America’s Public Lands: From Yellowstone to Smokey Bear and Beyond, Second Edition

Randall K. Wilson

Publication Date: 2020

How it is that the United States—the country that cherishes the ideal of private property more than any other in the world—has chosen to set aside nearly one-third of its land area as public lands? Now in a fully revised and updated edition covering the first years of the Trump administration, Randall Wilson considers this intriguing question, tracing the often-forgotten ideas of nature that have shaped the evolution of America’s public land system. The result is a fresh and probing account of the most pressing policy and management challenges facing national parks, forests, rangelands, and wildlife refuges today.

The author explores the dramatic story of the origins of the public domain, including the century-long effort to sell off land and the subsequent emergence of a national conservation ideal. Arguing that we cannot fully understand one type of public land without understanding its relation to the rest of the system, he provides in-depth accounts of the different types of public lands. With chapters on national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, Bureau of Land Management lands, and wilderness areas, Wilson examines key turning points and major policy debates for each land type, including recent Trump Administration efforts to roll back environmental protections. He considers debates ranging from national monument designations and bison management to gas and oil drilling, wildfire policy, the bark beetle epidemic, and the future of roadless and wilderness conservation areas. His comprehensive overview offers a chance to rethink our relationship with America’s public lands, including what it says about the way we relate to, and value, nature in the United States.
Role Theory in the Middle East and North Africa: Politics, Economics and Identity

Yasemin Akbaba and Özgür Özdamar

Publication Date: 6-3-2019

Since December 2010, a series of uprisings, revolutions, coups and civil wars have shaken up the Middle East and North Africa region. In this chaotic political environment, several countries have been trying to influence this regional transformation. The implications of this transformation are of great importance for the region, its people and global politics.

Using a rich combination of primary and secondary sources, elite interviews and content analysis, Yasemin Akbaba and Özgür Özdamar apply role theory to analyze ideational (e.g. identity, religion) and material (e.g. security, economy) sources of national role conceptions in Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The authors take a closer look at the transformation of these four powers’ foreign policies since the beginning of Arab uprisings, with a specific focus on religion. Each case study is written to a common template allowing for clear comparative analyses.

Written in a clear and accessible style, Role Theory in the Middle East and North Africa offers a thought provoking and pioneering insight into the usefulness of role theory in foreign policy making in the developing world. The perfect combination of theoretically oriented and empirically rich analysis make this volume an ideal resource for scholars and researchers of International Relations, Foreign Policy, Middle East Politics and International Security.
The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality and Politics in Civil War America

Michael J. Birkner, Randall M. Miller, and John W. Quist

Publication Date: 6-2019

The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens examines the political interests, relationships, and practices of two of the era’s most prominent politicians as well as the political worlds they inhabited and informed. Building upon previous scholarship on James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens, the contributors track their personal connections across lines of gender and geography and underline the importance of elementary facts of political association—such as with whom one ate and conversed on a regular basis, the complex social milieu of Washington, and the role of rumor—in determining relationships and political allegiances. The essays in this volume collectively invite further consideration of how parties, personality, place, and private lives influenced the political interests and actions of an age affected by race, religion, region, and civil war.
The World Cup as World History

William D. Bowman

Publication Date: 10-2019

The World Cup as World History uses football’s premier event to analyze modern sports and world history. William D. Bowman traces the history of a tournament that has become a global phenomenon that generates intense political, economic, and cultural interest and profound discussions about racial, ethnic, and gender identity in the contemporary era. By focusing on the World Cup, the book keeps a tight thematic focus that allows for an integrated discussion of the core issues of globalization, money and finance, sport as spectacle, race and gender, and contemporary politics.
Going to the Source, Volume I: To 1877

Victoria Bissell Brown and Timothy J. Shannon

Publication Date: 2019

Many document readers offer lots of sources, but only Going to the Source combines a rich selection of primary sources with in-depth instructions for how to use each type of source. Mirroring the chronology of the U.S. history survey, each chapter familiarizes students with a single type of source while focusing on an intriguing historical episode such as the Cherokee Removal or the 1894 Pullman Strike. Students practice working with a diverse range of source types including photographs, diaries, oral histories, speeches, advertisements, political cartoons, and more. A capstone chapter in each volume prompts students to synthesize information on a single topic from a variety of source types. The wide range of topics and sources across 28 chapters provides students with all they need to become fully engaged with America’s history.
Indagaciones: Introducción a los estudios culturales hispanos

Mary Ann Dellinger, Ellen Mayock, and Beatriz Trigo

Publication Date: 7-2019

Indagaciones is a postintermediate Spanish textbook that introduces students to a wide variety of visual, audio, and written texts and teaches critical textual analysis in Spanish through a cultural studies approach. Deepening and enhancing students' knowledge of the expression of culture within Latin America, Spain, and U.S.-Latin@ areas, Indagaciones gives students ample opportunities to practice reading, listening, and viewing cultural content and textual analysis, including understanding culture, expanding their vocabulary, and learning how to engage in analysis. Students will gain the abilities to critically approach a cultural text, synthesize its main points, and prepare multimodal analyses all within a communicative context. This book provides the linguistic scaffolding necessary to help L2 students advance beyond the intermediate language level and heritage students progress, providing glosses, conceptual discussions, grammatical information, and introducing students to key texts from around the Spanish-speaking world.
Arthur: God and Hero in Avalon

Christopher R. Fee

Publication Date: 2-11-2019

For fifteen centuries, legends of King Arthur have inspired generations. In the misty past of a Britain under siege, half-remembered events became shrouded in ancient myth and folklore. The resulting tales were told and retold, until over time Arthur, Camelot, Avalon, the Round Table, the Holy Grail, Excalibur, Lancelot and Guinevere all became instantly recognizable icons. Along the way, Arthur’s life and times were recast in the mould of the hero’s journey: his miraculous conception at Tintagel through the magical intercession of his shaman guide, Merlin; the childhood deed of pulling the Sword from the Stone through which Arthur was anointed King; the Quest for the Holy Grail, the most sacred object in Christendom; the betrayal of Arthur by his wife and champion; and the apocalyptic battle between Good and Evil, ending with Arthur’s journey to the Otherworld.

Arthur: God and Hero in Avalon views Arthur in terms of comparative mythology, and argues that the Once and Future King remains relevant because his story speaks so eloquently about universal human needs and anxieties. The book discusses the tales of King Arthur, from the very earliest versions to the most recent film and television adaptations, and offers readers an insight into why Arthur remains so popular.
Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History

Christopher R. Fee, Jeffrey B. Webb, Anika N. Jensen, Benjamin S. Kratz, Susanna L. Mills, Isabella Rosedietcher, Reilly M. Vore, and Juliet M. Wilson

Publication Date: 5-2019

This up-to-date introduction to the complex world of conspiracies and conspiracy theories provides insight into why millions of people are so ready to believe the worst about our political, legal, religious, and financial institutions.

Unsupported theories provide simple explanations for catastrophes that are otherwise difficult to understand, from the U.S. Civil War to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Ideas about shadowy networks that operate behind a cloak of secrecy, including real organizations like the CIA and the Mafia and imagined ones like the Illuminati, additionally provide a way for people to criticize prevailing political and economic arrangements, while for society's disadvantaged and forgotten groups, conspiracy theories make their suffering and alienation comprehensible and provide a focal point for their economic or political frustrations.

These volumes detail the highly controversial and influential phenomena of conspiracies and conspiracy theories in American society. Through interpretive essays and factual accounts of various people, organizations, and ideas, the reader will gain a much greater appreciation for a set of beliefs about political scheming, covert intelligence gathering, and criminal rings that has held its grip on the minds of millions of American citizens and encouraged them to believe that the conspiracies may run deeper, and with a global reach.
How the Body Shapes Knowledge: Empirical Support for Embodied Cognition

Rebecca Fincher-Kiefer

Publication Date: 3-2019
- If you are leaning backwards in your chair, are you more likely to think about the past than the future?
- When you say that someone "leaves me cold," do you literally feel cold?
- What role does the body play in our perceptions of the world?
- Is the mind a calculating machine, or are our thoughts and emotions "grounded" in specific, felt, bodily experience?
Questions like these have long driven research in embodied cognition, a theory of mental functioning that has gained increasing prominence in recent decades.

This book explores embodied cognition from an experimental psychology perspective. Author Rebecca Fincher-Kiefer examines a wealth of evidence, including behavioral studies supported by neuroscientific findings, that suggest that our knowledge of the world is represented, or grounded, in the neural pathways that were used when we initially experienced those concepts.

A "reuse" of these same neural pathways, according to embodiment theory, is therefore what constitutes thinking.

With compelling descriptions and an investigative spirit, this book is essential reading for graduate and undergraduate students, and anyone seeking to understand the past, present, and future of human cognition.
Power Sharing and Power Relations After Civil War

Caroline A. Hartzell and Andreas Mehler

Publication Date: 2019

There are numerous studies on the role of power-sharing agreements in the maintenance of peace in postconflict states. Less explored, however, is the impact of power sharing on the quality of the peace. Do power-sharing institutions in fact transform the balance of power among actors in the aftermath of civil wars? And if so, how? As they address these issues, seeking to establish a new research agenda, the authors provide a rich new analytical approach to understanding how power sharing actually works.
The Gates Ajar

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Elizabeth Duquette, and Claudia Stokes

Publication Date: 5-14-2019

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s 1868 Reconstruction-era novel The Gates Ajar, in its portrait of inconsolable grief following the American Civil War, helped to shape enduring American ideas about heaven and demonstrated that for American women, the war didn’t simply end at Appomattox. When Mary Cabot loses her beloved brother, Union soldier Royal, in the war, she feels as though she will never feel peace again until the arrival of her widowed aunt Winifred. Sharing the wisdom that has comforted her through her grief, Winifred offers Mary a groundbreaking view of the afterlife: a place of loving reunion with all those who were lost. As Winifred ministers to Mary, her vision of the afterlife circulates in the community and attracts local adherents who have similarly suffered losses in the war. Written with the intention of illuminating and bettering the lives of women after the war, The Gates Ajar is an empowering manifesto on conquering grief and a timeless manual for optimism.
Conjunctions and Interjections in Modern Standard Arabic

Abdulkareem Said Ramadan

Publication Date: 3-26-2019

Conjunctions and Interjections in Modern Standard Arabic is a grammar for Modern Standard Arabic introducing conjunctions and interjections from the most basic to the most advanced, with drills for each grammatical point. Skill in the use of conjunctions and interjections is essential for acquiring proficiency in expressing relationships of causation, order, time sequence and other relationships among events and ideas.

Each chapter presents the grammar of conjunctions and interjections in clearly organized tables with examples of each use. An additional section presents multiple drills for practice and functional use.

Aimed as a textbook for students for all four years of university Arabic, and for independent learners.
Atlantic Lives: A Comparative Approach to Early America

Timothy J. Shannon

Publication Date: 1-25-2019

Atlantic Lives offers insight into the lived experiences of a range of actors in the early modern Atlantic World. Organized thematically, each chapter features primary source selections from a variety of non-traditional sources, including travel narratives from West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The fully-revised and expanded second edition goes into even greater depth in exploring the diverse roles and experiences of women, Native Americans, and Africans, as well as the critical theme of emerging capitalism and New World slavery. New chapters also address captivity experiences, intercultural religious encounters, and interracial sexuality and marriage.With classroom-focused discussion questions and suggested additional readings accompanying each chapter, Atlantic Lives provides students with a wide-ranging introduction to the many voices and identities that comprised the Atlantic World.
Faith Matters: Reflections on the Christian Life

Kerry S. Walters

Publication Date: 6-17-2019

In a day in which Christians too often reduce faith to mere sentimentality and atheists decry it as superstitious nonsense, Fr. Kerry Walters offers a series of reflections intended to show that, indeed, faith matters. Drawn from his popular weekly newspaper column “Faith Matters,” these short meditations explore Christian faith from the perspectives of doctrine, spirituality, ethics, politics, art and science, the saints, and the holy seasons that mark the Christian year and set the rhythm of Christian living.
Harriet Tubman: A Life in American History

Kerry S. Walters

Publication Date: 11-2019

Harriet Tubman: A Life in American History is an indispensable resource for high school and college students about the life and times of anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman, who exemplifies how slaves took the initiative to free themselves and others.

Harriet Tubman served a pivotal role in leading slaves to freedom in the decade before the Civil War. This biography offers a demythologized chronicle of her life and work with information about her life as a slave, role as conductor on the Underground Railroad, work as a military scout during the Civil War, and postwar activism for blacks and women.

The book provides valuable context that situates Harriet Tubman against the backdrop of the slavery debate in antebellum America, and the hardships endured by ex-slaves in postbellum America. As such, the timeframe covers nearly a full century, from the first quarter of the 19th to the first quarter of the 20th. In addition to ten biographical chapters and a short timeline, Harriet Tubman includes an interpretive essay reflecting on her importance in American history. The volume also includes an appendix of primary documents about Tubman's life and work, a bibliography, and a number of sidebars and short commentaries embedded in the text, inviting readers to explore connections between Tubman's life and political, intellectual, and social culture.

Features:
- Provides readers with a comprehensive but readable account of Tubman's life
- Provides readers with an overview of American abolitionism and the Underground Railroad
- Explores the pivotal role of religious faith in Tubman's activism
- Suggests several comparisons between Tubman's activism and current struggles for social justice