Weaving together somatic psychotherapy, dance/movement therapy, and sex therapy approaches, this uniquely interdisciplinary and practical book offers guidance on how to strengthen your connection with pleasure, receptivity, and ecstasy in an embodied way. Melissa Walker contextualizes the erotic body as being embedded in a sex-negative culture. Taking an experiential somatic approach, this book helps readers map the erotic self to establish a whole-body sexuality, becoming an important sexuality ally in a larger social movement toward erotic inclusiveness. This groundbreaking text illuminates how to shed the harmful messages that an individual has internalized about their sexuality, to learn the language of their somatic self, and begin to build a whole-body appreciation for their creative potential. Filled with questions, guided experientials, and map-building practices that help readers learn more about themselves, this book is essential reading for sex therapists to navigate the vast map of sexuality to create true health and sexual evolution.

Weaving together somatic psychotherapy, dance/movement therapy, and sex therapy approaches, this uniquely interdisciplinary and practical book offers guidance on how to strengthen your connection with pleasure, receptivity, and ecstasy in an embodied way. Melissa Walker contextualizes the erotic body as being embedded in a sex-negative culture. Taking an experiential somatic approach, this book helps readers map the erotic self to establish a whole-body sexuality, becoming an important sexuality ally in a larger social movement toward erotic inclusiveness. This groundbreaking text illuminates how to shed the harmful messages that an individual has internalized about their sexuality, to learn the language of their somatic self, and begin to build a whole-body appreciation for their creative potential. Filled with questions, guided experientials, and map-building practices that help readers learn more about themselves, this book is essential reading for sex therapists to navigate the vast map of sexuality to create true health and sexual evolution.

Kansas Boy: The Memoir of A. J. Bolinger offers the twenty-first-century reader delightful and revealing insights on life during an era of dramatic change in American history. Bolinger describes those years as 'bursting with energy, wild with ambition.' The Kansas of his childhood and young adulthood was a place where life was lived at a rapid pace: investors pursued fortunes as town developers, settlers sought to establish prosperous farms and ranches, and reformers tried to create an ideal society. A. J. opens his account with a vividly detailed description of the prairie itself, including how the frontier settlements of Kansas were in the process of becoming established communities. Born and raised in Elk County, Kansas, he tells stories of ranching and cattle drives. Retelling some of the legends of early Kansas, he debunks more than a few frontier myths. As he moves toward adulthood his accounts of farming and small-town life grow increasingly aware of the agricultural crisis of the 1880s and 1890s faced by farmers and small-town businesses as they struggled with the growing power of corporations, in particular the railroads. In doing so he offers ground-level insights into the appeal of the Populist movement and the rise of the People' Party. The challenges result in the Bolinger family's move to the city of Topeka where A. J. attends Washburn College. As a college student he helps temperance activist Carry Nation wage her antisaloon campaign and goes to Washburn's new law school. His first step in pursuing what would be a lifelong career in the law is to replicate his family's and his era's pattern of moving to where new opportunities lay: the Oklahoma territory. A. J. Bolinger (1881-1977) offers today's reader a deeply felt memoir with keen insights and thoughtful commentary that is by turns startlingly progressive and deeply conservative. He offers us a richer understanding of life on the prairies and plains of the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century.

Soon after her fiftieth birthday, Melissa Walker set out on a journey that many women of her generation have mapped only in their dreams. Having spent her adult life raising children and climbing the academic ladder, Walker decided to put some of the environmental theories she'd taught into practice. Leaving her suburban life, she ventured into the wilderness. Like many American chroniclers before her who have surrendered to the aimless pleasures of the road, Walker had no geographical destination in mind, but she did have two definite goals - one personal, one political - for her journey. She was looking for the peace and solitude of the backcountry, certainly, but she also wanted to learn the dynamics of preserving wild places and to devote herself to that cause. Walker took off on three extended solitary trips over the next two years, establishing a way of life for herself that continues to this day. In the Sky Islands of southern Arizona, on the banks of the Popo Agie River and the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming, in Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, and Olympic National Park, in Gila and Glacier Peak Wilderness, she encountered the hazards of wild animals and extreme weather, and she began to reassess what parts of her life she could control. Her belief in the primacy of individual achievement changed as she confronted the hidden structures of life. And her understanding of her environment broadened when in addition to grizzly bears, bighorn sheep, and mountain lions, she also met ranchers, loggers, cowboys, and outfitters whose livelihoods depend on activities that may threaten wilderness. Living on Wilderness Time is a book for those who have visited wild places and want to return and for others whose overcommitted urban lives make them long for land where time is measured differently and human beings are scarce. Above all it is a call to join those, like Aldo Leopold, who see wilderness as vital to the human community.

This edition is the short story version of the novel, The Pornographers, and is sold only on Jaded Ibis website, or free with purchase of The Pornographers by Christopher Grimes. Contact the publisher for more information: questions at Jaded Ibis Productions dot com From take-off to landing, these linked stories move at the speed of sound through post 9-11 angst, yoga, bureaucratic helplessness, marriage, collective public insecurity and family. A group of minor bureaucrats operating under the unfunded directive of "Homeland Security" try to start a commercial pornography site in order to generate revenue for their city. Their research into the porn industry does in fact suggest it as a viable solution to their economic woes. Meanwhile their wives threaten to follow a guru to India in search of their own inner security. Pornographies humorously lays bare serious and real concerns about 21st Century America.

"The single brilliantly funny voice of something genuinely new." - Walter Benn Michaels, American literary theorist, and author of The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History "It is a pleasure to think about what Grimes's art is thinking, but the greatest pleasure, like the pleasure of music, is in the unfolding inventions of the language itself." - Curtis White, American Book Review From take-off to landing, The Pornographers moves at the speed of sound through post 9-11 angst, yoga, bureaucratic helplessness, marriage, collective public insecurity and family. A group of minor bureaucrats operating under the unfunded directive of "Homeland Security" try to start a commercial pornography site in order to generate revenue for their city. Their research into the the porn industry does in fact suggest it as a viable solution to their economic woes. Meanwhile their wives threaten to follow a guru to India in search of their own inner security. The Pornographers sizzles with ripe language, humor and serious and real concerns about America in the 21st Century, all bundled with good, old-fashioned dramatic suspense. Oh, and by the way, the novel is written as a single, grammatically-correct sentence.

It was hard times, French Carpenter Clark recalls, a sentiment unanimously echoed by the sixteen other women who talk about their lives in Country Women Cope with Hard Times. Born between 1890 and 1940 in eastern Tennessee and western South Carolina, these women grew up on farms, in labor camps, and in remote towns during an era when the region's agricultural system changed dramatically. As daughters and wives, they milked cows, raised livestock, planted and harvested crops, worked in textile mills, sold butter and eggs, preserved food, made cloth, sewed clothes, and practiced remarkable resourcefulness. Their recollections paint a vivid picture of rural life in the first half of the twentieth century for a class of women underrepresented in historical accounts. Through her edited interviews with these women, Melissa Walker provides firsthand descriptions of the influence of modernization on ordinary people struggling through the agricultural depression of the 1920s and 1930s and its aftermath. Their oral histories make plain the challenges such women faced and the self-sacrificing ways they found to confront hardship. While the women detail the difficulties of their existence--the drought years, early freezes, low crop prices, and tenant farming--they also recall the good times and the neighborly assistance of well-developed mutual aid networks, of which women were the primary participants.

This volume tells the stories of women born between 1890 and 1940 in eastern Tennessee and western South Carolina, who grew up on farms, in labour camps and in remote towns during an era when the region's agricultural system changed dramatically.

This collection of essays by eight scholars of southern women's history traces the evolution of southern women's lives during the twentieth century. Throughout this era, southern life, and in particular the opportunities for southern women, changed dramatically as southern women have taken leadership roles in business, government, education, and social programs.

The essayists employ a variety of approaches, ranging from case studies to historical overviews, but they all carefully place the developments in southern women's lives in a national context. Most important, each author seeks to understand the nature of change in these women's lives over the last century and to forecast the course of their lives in the future.

The first effort to synthesize research on southern women during this period, this collection will be useful to both scholars and students of southern history. Students will be provided with an introduction to women's involvement in many areas of southern society, while scholars will appreciate the essays as a guide to new directions for research.

An anthology exploring the modernization of the South Carolina upcountry and the region’s role in creating the New South. Continuing the theme of unexplored moments introduced in Recovering the Piedmont Past: Unexplored Moments in Nineteenth-Century Upcountry South Carolina History, Timothy P. Grady joins with Andrew H. Myers to edit this second anthology that uncovers the microhistory of this northwest region of the state. Topics include the influence of railroads on traveling circuses, tourist resorts and visits by Booker T. Washington during the rise of Jim Crow, pioneering efforts by progressives to identify the cause of pellagra disease, a debate over populism involving “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, the acculturation of Greek immigrants, and the daily lives of Civilian Conservation Corps workers during the New Deal. After years of being overshadowed by the coastal elite, upcountry South Carolinians began to play a vital role in modernizing the region and making it an integral part of the “New South.” In a study of this shift in the balance of power, the contributors examine religious history, the economic boom and bust, popular recreational activities, and major trends that played out in small places. By providing details and nuance that illuminate the historical context of the New South and engaging with the upcountry from fresh angles, this second volume expresses a deep local interest while also speaking to broader political and social issues. Melissa Walker, the George Dean Johnson, Jr. Professor of History Emerita at Converse College and coeditor of Recovering the Piedmont Past: Unexplored Moments in Nineteenth-Century South Carolina History, provides a foreword.

The industrial expansion of the twentieth century brought with it a profound shift away from traditional agricultural modes and practices in the American South. The forces of economic modernity -- specialization, mechanization, and improved efficiency -- swept through southern farm communities, leaving significant upheaval in their wake. In an attempt to comprehend the complexities of the present and prepare for the uncertainties of the future, many southern farmers searched for order and meaning in their memories of the past. In Southern Farmers and Their Stories, Melissa Walker explores the ways in which a diverse array of farmers remember and recount the past. The book tells the story of the modernization of the South in the voices of those most affected by the decline of traditional ways of life and work. Walker analyzes the recurring patterns in their narratives of change and loss, filling in gaps left by more conventional political and economic histories of southern agriculture. Southern Farmers and Their Stories also highlights the tensions inherent in the relationship between history and memory. Walker employs the concept of "communities of memory" to describe the shared sense of the past among southern farmers. History and memory converge and shape one another in communities of memory through an ongoing process in which shared meanings emerge through an elaborate alchemy of recollection and interpretation. In her careful analysis of more than five hundred oral history narratives, Walker allows silenced voices to be heard and forgotten versions of the past to be reconsidered. Southern Farmers and Their Stories preserves the shared memories and meanings of southern agricultural communities not merely for their own sake but for the potential benefit of a region, a nation, and a world that has much to learn from the lessons of previous generations of agricultural providers.

Kansas Boy: The Memoir of A. J. Bolinger offers the twenty-first-century reader delightful and revealing insights on life during an era of dramatic change in American history. Bolinger describes those years as 'bursting with energy, wild with ambition.' The Kansas of his childhood and young adulthood was a place where life was lived at a rapid pace: investors pursued fortunes as town developers, settlers sought to establish prosperous farms and ranches, and reformers tried to create an ideal society. A. J. opens his account with a vividly detailed description of the prairie itself, including how the frontier settlements of Kansas were in the process of becoming established communities. Born and raised in Elk County, Kansas, he tells stories of ranching and cattle drives. Retelling some of the legends of early Kansas, he debunks more than a few frontier myths. As he moves toward adulthood his accounts of farming and small-town life grow increasingly aware of the agricultural crisis of the 1880s and 1890s faced by farmers and small-town businesses as they struggled with the growing power of corporations, in particular the railroads. In doing so he offers ground-level insights into the appeal of the Populist movement and the rise of the People's Party. The challenges result in the Bolinger family's move to the city of Topeka where A. J. attends Washburn College. As a college student he helps temperance activist Carry Nation wage her antisaloon campaign and goes to Washburn's new law school. His first step in pursuing what would be a lifelong career in the law is to replicate his family's and his era's pattern of moving to where new opportunities lay: the Oklahoma territory. A. J. Bolinger (1881-1977) offers today's reader a deeply felt memoir with keen insights and thoughtful commentary that is by turns startlingly progressive and deeply conservative. He offers us a richer understanding of life on the prairies and plains of the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century.

Riveting, revealing stories from women of all walks of southern life taking on the challenges of the Progressive Era. From the 1890s to the end of World War I, the reformers who called themselves progressives helped transform the United States, and many women filled their ranks. Through solo efforts and voluntary associations, both national and regional, women agitated for change, addressing issues such as poverty, suffrage, urban overcrowding, and public health. Southern Women in the Progressive Era presents the stories of a diverse group of southern women-African Americans, working-class women, teachers, nurses, and activists-in their own words, casting a fresh light on one of the most dynamic eras in U.S. history. These women hailed from Virginia to Florida and from South Carolina to Texas and wrote in a variety of genres, from correspondence and speeches to bureaucratic reports, autobiographies, and editorials. Included in this volume, to name but a few of the selections, are the previously unpublished memoir of the civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded a school for black children; the correspondence of a textile worker, Anthelia Holt, whose musings to a friend reveal the day-to-day joys and hardships of mill-town life; the letters of the educator and agricultural field agent Henrietta Aiken Kelly, who attempted to introduce silk culture to southern farmers; and the speeches of the popular novelist Mary Johnson, who fought for women's voting rights. Always illuminating and often inspiring, each story highlights the part that regional identity-particularly race-played in health and education reform, suffrage campaigns, and women's club work. Together these women's voices reveal the promise of the Progressive Era, as well as its limitations, as women sought to redefine their role as workers and citizens of the United States. A foreword if provided by Marjorie J. Spruill, professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina and the author of Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics.

This title features Civil War letters to and from Spartanburg, South Carolina, rich with details on the battlefront and home front. ""Upcountry South Carolina Goes to War"" chronicles through correspondence the lives and concerns of prominent families in piedmont South Carolina during the late-antebellum and Civil War eras. The 124 letters presented here were written by members of the Anderson, Brockman, and Moore families of Spartanburg County, neighboring planter-class families united by their shared Scots-Irish ancestry and their membership at Nazareth Presbyterian Church. Edited by Tom Moore Craig, a descendant of the volume's subjects, and augmented with an introduction by Southern historian Melissa Walker and Craig, these letters offer valuable firsthand accounts of evolving attitudes toward the war as conveyed between battlefronts and the home front. The majority of the letters were written by or to John Crawford Anderson, Andrew Charles Moore, and Thomas John Moore - contemporaries drawn together by their common dedication to the Confederate cause. The earliest letters in this collection were written by these young men and their relatives from boarding schools, South Carolina College, the Citadel, Limestone College, and the University of Virginia Law School. Andrew Charles Moore's letters describing his travels to Washington, D.C., and New York in the spring of 1860 give insight into the prevailing politics of the nation on the cusp of division. The wartime correspondence begins in 1861 as the men of service age from each family join the Confederate ranks and write from military camps in Virginia and the Carolinas. Letters describe combat in the battles of Five Forks, First and Second Manassas, the Wilderness, Secessionville, Spotsylvania, Petersburg, and Seven Pines. Though the surviving combatants remain staunch patriots to the Southern cause until the bitter end, their letters show the waning of initial enthusiasm in the face of the realities of combat, loss of lives, and supply shortages. The letters from the home front offer a more pragmatic assessment of the period and its hardships. Embedded in this dialogue are valuable elements of social and economic history, including references to popular music and literature, accounts of fundraising efforts to sustain the war, and laments on the fluctuating prices and availability of staple crops and commodities. Included as well are two letters by family slaves who accompanied their masters to war, rare finds as it was illegal in South Carolina to teach slaves to read and write. The collection ends with John Crawford Anderson's letter home from Appomattox, Thomas John Moore's poignant story of his return from a prison camp on Johnson's Island on Lake Erie, and a letter from cousin John Cunningham outlining his plan to implement a sharecropping system on his plantation. Emblematic of the fates of many Southern families, the experiences of these representative South Carolinians are dramatically illustrated in their letters from the eve of the Civil War through its conclusion.

These previously unpublished private writings expand our understanding of Grace King (1852-1932) as a writer and as a nineteenth-century, middle-class, white southern woman. A prolific New Orleans author who transcended the local-color genre of her day, King has long been admired for her versatility in many written forms, her depictions of both black and white women in a variety of settings and situations, and her insights into the intricate social structure of her native city. Over a span of forty-six years, King produced four histories, three novels and two novellas, three collections of stories, two biographies, an autobiography, a play, and numerous articles and sketches. At age thirty-four she began a journal "to find my own peace in my own life." As Melissa Walker Heidari notes, King's journals offer "what is so lacking in her published autobiography: humor, irony, and a more candid assessment of herself and others. The Grace King of the autobiography is an interesting subject, but Grace King in her journals is alive and compelling." King's journals became a sourcebook for writing ideas, an outlet for opinions on current issues that she felt uncomfortable discussing publicly, and a record of her experiences at home and on her travels in the northern United States and Europe. She also used her journals as a form of therapy for her grief over the loss of loved ones and for her regrets, both personal and professional. This volume comprises King's journals of 1886-1901, 1904, and 1907-1910. Heidari's introduction puts King's life and work in the context of recent scholarship in women's life narratives and discusses what the journals reveal about such topics as the lives of unmarried women in the nineteenth-century South, the ways Victorian families dealt with diseases like alcoholism and depression, and the challenges facing women writers of the period.