This book is the story of the struggle to achieve the civil service system that is in place today in Louisiana. It has its villains and its heroes, its times of crisis and times of triumph. Civil Changes ends its chronicle with the approach of the second decade of the 21st century, but the story is ongoing, as the Department of State Civil Service, the Civil Service Commission, and the Louisiana Civil Service League carry on their work to devise and implement more efficient and effective means of serving the citizens of the state.

This book is the first to examine gender and violence in Australian literature. It argues that literary texts by Australian women writers offer unique ways of understanding the social problem of gendered violence, bringing this often private and suppressed issue into the public sphere. It draws on the international field of violence studies to investigate how Australian women writers challenge the victim paradigm and figure women's agencies. In doing so, it provides a theoretical context for the increasing number of contemporary literary works by Australian women writers that directly address gendered violence, an issue that has taken on urgent social and political currency. By analysing Australian women's literary representations of gendered violence, this book rethinks victimhood and agency, particularly from a feminist perspective. One of its major innovations is that it examines mainstream Australian women's writing alongside that of Indigenous and minoritised women. In doing so it provides insights into the interconnectedness of Australia's diverse settler, Indigenous and diasporic histories in chapters that examine intimate partner violence, violence against Indigenous women and girls, family violence and violence against children, and the war and political violence.

This book is the first to examine gender and violence in Australian literature. It argues that literary texts by Australian women writers offer unique ways of understanding the social problem of gendered violence, bringing this often private and suppressed issue into the public sphere. It draws on the international field of violence studies to investigate how Australian women writers challenge the victim paradigm and figure women's agencies. In doing so, it provides a theoretical context for the increasing number of contemporary literary works by Australian women writers that directly address gendered violence, an issue that has taken on urgent social and political currency. By analysing Australian women's literary representations of gendered violence, this book rethinks victimhood and agency, particularly from a feminist perspective. One of its major innovations is that it examines mainstream Australian women's writing alongside that of Indigenous and minoritised women. In doing so it provides insights into the interconnectedness of Australia's diverse settler, Indigenous and diasporic histories in chapters that examine intimate partner violence, violence against Indigenous women and girls, family violence and violence against children, and the war and political violence.

With Hawks and Angels: Episodes from a Southern Life chronicles the fortunate life of a man born in the Cajun country of Louisiana and his interaction with the three distinct parts of his home state: the swampy, laissez-faire South where he was born, the red clay hills and piney woods of northern Louisiana where his relatives lived, and exotic New Orleans, where he was educated. Author Joel Lafayette Fletcher III examines his childhood on the campus of what is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where his father, Joel Lafayette Fletcher Jr., was president for twenty-five years, to his time as a student at Tulane. The book follows Fletcher through his service as a naval officer—when he began to admit to himself, accept, and explore who he really was—to his life in Europe and, eventually, Virginia where he now resides. With Hawks and Angels intimately explores the life of a young man growing up in the racially segregated Deep South while coming to terms with being gay at a time when being out was not socially acceptable. Based on his personal journals and recollections and filled with the unique characters he met along the way, With Hawks and Angels is the culmination of writing that, for Fletcher, was a way of holding onto an important part of his true self that for many years he felt compelled to hide.

The Original Gothic-Horror Literary Classic

Mary Shelley's deceptively simple story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he brings to life, first published in 1818, is now more widely read-and more widely discussed by scholars-than any other work of the Romantic period. From the creature's creation to his wild lament over the dead body of his creator in the Arctic wastes, the story retains its narrative hold on the reader even as it spins off ideas in rich profusion.

About the Author:

Mary Shelley (30 August 1797 - 1 February 1851) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. She died in London in 1851.

"This is the definitive collectors edition and is a stunning and impressive uanabridged representation of a classic literary work."

- Publisher's Weekly

This book of new essays investigates the category of the post-colonial as a theoretical concept, discourse, and state of mind. In an international forum of both literary critics and writers, these essays look at contemporary writing in English throughout the world in an attempt to revision the current critical practice of post-colonial studies. Structured as a dialogue between different views, Critics and Writers Speak will add to the self-reflexivity among post-colonial critics, extending the debate and stimulating dialogue about the future of post-colonial studies.

A wave of life stories and autobiographical narratives by Aboriginal women began in the late 1970s and gained momentum a decade later with the publication of Sally Morgan's My Place (1987), which became a bestseller. While some of the books of the first wave focused mainly (if not exclusively) on the author, Aboriginal women's life stories widened over time to include transgenerational histories of the family. Reading Aboriginal Women's Life Stories is an important discussion of books that have shaped our understanding of contemporary Indigenous Australian literature. Anne Brewster provides an in-depth textual analysis of three key titles and situates them in relation to concepts of history, race, gender, family, storytelling and Aboriginality in modern Australia.'Looking back, we can recognise now what an extraordinary phenomenon these life stories are, and how they have changed understandings of Aboriginality and writing ... The return of this classic book in a new edition is a welcome reminder that Anne Brewster's careful, deeply respectful and informed approach to these writings is as necessary now as it ever was.'Professor Gillian Whitlock FAHA

This book of new essays investigates the category of the post-colonial as a theoretical concept, discourse, and state of mind. In an international forum of both literary critics and writers, these essays look at contemporary writing in English throughout the world in an attempt to revision the current critical practice of post-colonial studies. Structured as a dialogue between different views, Critics and Writers Speak will add to the self-reflexivity among post-colonial critics, extending the debate and stimulating dialogue about the future of post-colonial studies.