"Literature, Language, and Politics" brings together papers drawn from and inspired by the controversial, landmark symposium on "Politics and the Discipline" held at the 1987 Modern Language Association meeting in San Francisco.
During the 1980s, debates raged both within and outside academe over curriculum, with conservatives arguing for a return to an educational philosophy based on the "classics" of Western civilization and a multi-cultural coalition of liberals, leftists, and feminists seeking to preserve the diversity of educational experience fought for since the 1960s.
Engaging this crucial debate, the contributors to "Literature, Language, and Politics" argue that the conservative educational agenda imperils not only scholarship and academic freedom but the very social well-being of the nation. They call for firm resistance to any attempts to make education conform to the social agenda of one race, one gender, one language, or one ideology; for a continuation of attempts to broaden the curriculum until it reflects the experience of women and men of all classes and all cultures.
Includes essays by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Gerald Graff, Annette Kolodny, Paul Lauter, Ellen Messer-Davidow, Catharine R. Stimpson, and Ana Celia Zentella.

In a world where the acceptance of relativism has caused erosion in the tradition of Cartesian dualism, representationalism in the arts has come under serious questioning. The contributors to this book seek new standards for defining and evaluating works of art.

"Relativism in the Arts" brings together thinkers in the fields of music, art criticism, literary criticism, philosophy, and the "history of consciousness" to confront the problems of relativist aesthetics. Their essays range from theoretical discussions of the definition of art in our times to close examinations of particular artworks or art forms. The introduction by Betty Jean Craige presents reasons for the cultural self-reflectivity that gives rise to the peculiarities of modern art.

Cultural Writing. Current Affairs. Essays. A year after the attack on the United States, women of varied ethnic and religious backgrounds examine this question. Many of these writers grew up outside the U.S. and bring a world perspective to their responses. Some are U.S.-born but have been shaped by multi-cultural experiences. Consequently, the collection creates a unique mirror that reflects the U.S. from both inside and out, revealing the clash between the economically driven force of globalization embodied by the U.S. and the stateless, transnational terrorist organization that feeds on religious fundamentalism, poverty and hatred of the United States. These writers share a desire to open a world dialogue between cultures, between sexes, so we can prevent anything like the events of 9/11 from happening again anywhere in the world. Contributors include Toni Morrison, Julia Alvarez, Laura Nakazawa, Bipsi Sidhwa, Judy Dworkin Mahnaz Afkhami and others.

Students of nature around the world revere Eugene Odum (1913-2002) as a founder and pioneer of ecosystem ecology. This holistic approach is perhaps best summarized by Odum's oft-quoted statement that "the ecosystem is greater than the sum of its parts." Odum's textbook Fundamentals of Ecology is a classic, published in numerous editions and translations worldwide. Betty Jean Craige depicts the intellectual growth, creativity, and vision of the scientist who made the ecosystem concept central to his discipline and translated the principles of ecosystem ecology into lessons in preserving the natural environment.

Written in 1929--1930, when Federico Garcia Lorca was visiting Columbia University, Poet in New York stands as one of the great Waste Land poems of the 20th century. It expresses, as Betty Jean Craige writes in this volume,"a sudden radical estrangement of the poet from his universe" -- an an estrangement graphically delineated in the dissonant, violent imagery which the poet derives from the technological world of New York. Craige here describes -- through close analysis of the structure, style, and themes of individual works in Poet in New York -- the chaos into which this world plunges the poet, and the process whereby he is able, gradually, to recover his identity with the regenerative forces of nature. Her study demonstrates that, though seemingly unique in form and motifs, Poet in New York is integral with Lorca's overall poetic achievement.