Humanities and Politics Faculty Book and Book Chapters

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The American Judicial System: A Very Short Introduction

Charles L. Zelden

The book provides a very short, but complete introduction to the institutions and people, the rules and processes, that make up the American judicial system. Jargon free and aimed at a general reader, it explains the where, when, and who of American courts. It also makes clear the how and why behind the law as it affects everyday people. It is, in a word, a starting place to understanding the third branch of American government at both the state and the federal levels, a guide to those wishing to know the basics of the American judicial system, and a cogent synthesis of how the various elements that make up the law and legal institutions fit together.
Narrative Autophagy and the Ethics of Storytelling in “Heart of Darkness”

Aileen M. Farrar

[Book Description]

Joseph Conrad’s ethical perspective is one of the deepest in twentieth-century fiction, yet its study has been overlooked in recent scholarship. Joseph Conrad and Ethics is one of very few books fully devoted to ethics in Conrad’s fiction. It offers a thorough, in-depth analysis of Conrad’s ethical reflection that challenges and extends current scholarly discussions.

The authors of this theoretically informed, accessible volume examine Conrad’s representation of ethics through the lens of Levinas, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, and Ricoeur, among others, and confront Conrad’s ethical perspective to these philosophers’ views. Through detailed studies of works like “Heart of Darkness,” The Secret Agent, Lord Jim and Under Western Eyes, they navigate the conflicted terrain of ethics and morality, highlighting the enmeshment of ethics and aesthetics, ethics and narrative, and ethics and ideology in Conrad’s fiction. The key issues they address include the ethics of storytelling and readership, ethical commitment and detachment, the ethics of uncertainty and uneasiness, and planetary ethics and ethical disillusionment.
Conrad is ambivalent about ethics and this interdisciplinary volume pivots around a fundamental Conradian ethical paradox: how to account for ethical responsibility in a world not meant for ethics in the first place and, as Conrad stated, whose “aim cannot be ethical at all.” It demonstrates that Conrad adopts a planetary ethics that embraces the human condition in its universality, while he also doubts the viability of ethics itself. Via his protagonists’ moral predicaments he expresses both the necessity of ethics in human relationships and the impossibility of individual ethical fulfillment.

The book is volume 30 of the series Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives, edited by Wiesław Krajka. It explores a major, understudied Conradian topic – Ethics, and adds an important thematic and theoretical dimension to this series. The chapters are written by experts from various universities worldwide, in keeping with the international, cosmopolitan spirit of Eastern and Western Perspectives. The authors’ wide-ranging, original perspectives on ethics open new venues in Conrad scholarship that will greatly benefit scholars and students of Conrad, modernism, and ethics.
Chapter 14: Ethnic Enclaves in a Time of Plague: A Comparative Analysis of New York City and Chicago

Amanda Furiasse and Sher Afgan Tareen

Book Description:

The COVID-19 pandemic was not a great ‘equaliser’, but rather an event whose impact intersected with pre-existing inequalities affecting different people, places, and geographic scales. Nowhere is this more apparent than in housing.

Written by an international group of experts, this book casts light on how the virus has impacted the experience of home and housing through the lens of wider urban processes around transportation, land use, planning policy, racism, and inequality. Case studies from around the world examine issues around gentrification, housing processes, design, systems, finance and policy.

Offering crucial insights for reforming cities to be more resilient to future crises, this is an invaluable resource for scholars and policy makers alike.
(Not So) “Vicious and Depraved”: Ida Lupino's Portraits of Men

Marlisa Santos

Ida Lupino, Filmmaker begins with an exploration of biographical studies and analytical treatments of Lupino's film and television work as director, moving forward to assess Lupino's career in film and television with particular attention given to Lupino's singular, pioneering achievements and her role(s) within the cultural milieu(s) of her time, particularly the representation of women in cinema. Each chapter includes a close analysis of the film or television work with insights drawn from film history and cultural/gender studies to demonstrate that Lupino was a significant directorial figure in the development of film, especially in the late 1940s and early 1950s-and in television extending well into the 1960s. Lupino left her imprint on filmmaking and her canon of film and television work continue to influence Hollywood movie making.

The contributors to this volume assess Lupino's main strengths as a filmmaker-her treatment of narrative movement, plotting, dialogue, gender roles, and uses of tradition representations of men and women in frames of parody and satire. The book collectively examines the successes (and failures) of Lupino's directorial career, including focusing on the reasons why she initially proved to be so strategic to the progress of women behind the camera.
The Crowdsourced Panopticon: Conformity and Control on Social Media

Jeremy Weissman

Behind the omnipresent screens of our laptops and smartphones, a digitally networked public has quickly grown larger than the population of any nation on Earth. On the flipside, in front of the ubiquitous recording devices that saturate our lives, individuals are hyper-exposed through a worldwide online broadcast that encourages the public to watch, judge, rate, and rank people’s lives. The interplay of these two forces - the invisibility of the anonymous crowd and the exposure of the individual before that crowd - is a central focus of this book. Informed by critiques of conformity and mass media by some of the greatest philosophers of the past two centuries, as well as by a wide range of historical and empirical studies, Weissman helps shed light on what may happen when our lives are increasingly broadcast online for everyone all the time, to be judged by the global community.
Propaganda

Katy Doll
Chapter 16: The Intersection of Immigration, Social Conflict, and Art: Dance and Identity in “East” Haifa

Amanda Furiasse

Book Description:

Like an ecosystem, cities develop, change, thrive, adapt, expand, and contract through the interaction of myriad components. Religion is one of those living parts, shaping and being shaped by urban contexts. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Cities is an outstanding interdisciplinary reference source to the key topics, problems, and methodologies of this cutting-edge subject. Representing a diverse array of cities and religions, the common analytical approach is ecological and spatial. It is the first collection of its kind and reflects state-of-the-art research focusing on the interaction of religions and their urban contexts. Comprising 29 chapters, by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into three parts:
- Contemporary issues in religion and cities
Within these sections, emerging research and analysis of current dynamics of urban religions are examined, including: housing, economics, and gentrification; sacred ritual and public space; immigration and the refugee crisis; political conflicts and social change; ethnic and religious diversity; urban policy and religion; racial justice; architecture and the built environment; religious art and symbology; religion and urban violence; technology and smart cities; the challenge of climate change for global cities; and religious meaning-making of the city.

The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Cities is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies and urban studies. The Handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as sociology, history, architecture, urban planning, theology, social work, and cultural studies.
Chapter 7: Rethinking the Maze: Africana Religions, Somatic Memory, and the Journey to Consciousness

Amanda Furiasse

In the first two seasons of the HBO series Westworld, human guests pay exorbitant fees to spend time among cybernetic Hosts—partially sentient AI robots—and live out often violent fantasies. In Theology and Westworld, scholars from a range of disciplines within religious studies examine the profound questions that arise when the narrative of Westworld interacts with the study of religion. From transhumanism and personhood to morality and divinity, this book contributes to, confounds, and challenges ideas that are found in the study of religion and philosophy. Taken together, the chapters further our understanding of what it means to live in a world where the hard questions of human existence are explored through the medium of popular culture.
Gender Identity in Jordan, Palestine, and Israel

Amanda Furiasse

Book Description:

Gender and Identity around the World explores a variety of gender and LGBTQ experiences and issues in countries from all the world's regions. Guided by more than 50 recognized academic experts, readers will examine how gender and LGBTQ identities are developed, fought for, perceived, and policed in countries as diverse as France, Brazil, Russia, Jordan, Iraq, and China.

Each chapter opens with a general introduction to a country or group of countries and flows into a discussion of gender and identity in terms of culture, education, family life, health and wellness, law, work, and activism in that region of the world. A section on contemporary issues specific to the country or group of countries follows this discussion.
Features
- Readers gain in-depth information from more than 50 recognized experts writing from around the world
- Readers can compare and contrast life experiences from a number of different geopolitical and cultural regions
- Each chapter explores a country or region's gender and LGBTQ experiences in terms of culture, law, family life traditions, education, health and wellness practices, work norms, and activist movements
Race, Power, and the Law: Southern Legal and Constitutional History

Sally E. Hadden and Charles L. Zelden

A sweeping historiographical collection, Reinterpreting Southern Histories updates and expands upon the iconic volumes Writing Southern History and Interpreting Southern History, both published by Louisiana State University Press. With nineteen original essays cowritten by some of the most prominent historians working in southern history today, this volume boldly explores the current state, methods, innovations, and prospects of the richly diverse and transforming field of southern history.

Two scholars at different stages of their careers coauthor each essay, working collaboratively to provide broad knowledge of the most recent historiography and an expansive vision for historiographical contexts. This innovative approach provides an intellectual connection with the earlier volumes while reflecting cutting-edge scholarship in the field. Underlying each essay is the cultural turn of the 1980s and 1990s, which introduced the use of language and cultural symbols and the influence of gender studies, postcolonial studies, and memory studies. The essays also rely less on framing the South as a distinct region and more on contextualizing it within national and global conversations.

Reinterpreting Southern Histories, like the two classic volumes that preceded it, serves as both a comprehensive analysis of the current historiography of the South and a reinterpretation of that history, reaching new conclusions for enduring questions and establishing the parameters of future debates.
“An Example for Other Small Nations to Follow”: John F.Kennedy, Ireland and Decolonization

David Kilroy

[Book Description] Using John F. Kennedy as a central figure and reference point, this volume explores how postcolonial citizens viewed the US president when peak decolonization met the Cold War. Exploring how their appropriations blended with their own domestic and regional realities, the chapters span sources, cases and languages from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe to explore the history of US and third world relations in a way that pushes beyond US-centric themes.

Examining a range of actors, Globalizing the U.S. Presidency studies various political, sociocultural and economic domestic and regional contexts during the Cold War era, and explores themes such as appropriation, antagonism and contestation within decolonisation. Attempting to both de-americanize and globalize John F. Kennedy and the US Presidency, the chapters examine how the perceptions of the president were fed by everyday experiences of national and international postcolonial lives. The many examples of worldwide interest in the US president at this time illustrate that this time was a historical turning point for the role of the US on the global stage. The hopes and fears of peaking decolonization, the resulting pressure on Washington, Moscow and other powers, and a new mediascape together ushered in a more comprehensive globalization of international politics, and a new meaning to 'the United States in the world'.
An Example for Other Small Nations to Follow”: John F. Kennedy, Ireland and Decolonization

David P. Kilroy

David P. Kilroy Remembered by many observers as the highlight of his 1963 state visit, in an emotional address before the joint houses of the Oireachtas, John F. Kennedy referred to Ireland as “the first of the small nations in the twentieth century to win its struggle for independence. ” Kennedy promoted the young republic as an example of postcolonial modernization for emerging states in Africa and Asia to emulate. Veteran Irish parliamentary reporter Brian Inglis noted that “hardened politicians wept in their seats” as Kennedy characterized Ireland’s leaders as men who knew “the meaning of foreign domination” and praised them for now providing a voice for other small nations on the world stage. Kennedy’s message resonated strongly with political leadership on both sides of the parliamentary aisle, most of whom were veterans of Ireland’s armed independence struggle between 1916 and 1921. Officials in the Irish Department of External Affairs...

Book Description

Using John F. Kennedy as a central figure and reference point, this volume explores how postcolonial citizens viewed the US president when peak decolonization met the Cold War. Exploring how their appropriations blended with their own domestic and regional realities, the chapters span sources, cases and languages from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe to explore the history of US and third world relations in a way that pushes beyond US-centric themes.

Examining a range of actors, Globalizing the U.S. Presidency studies various political, sociocultural and economic domestic and regional contexts during the Cold War era, and explores themes such as appropriation, antagonism and contestation within decolonisation. Attempting to both de-americanize and globalize John F. Kennedy and the US Presidency, the chapters examine how the perceptions of the president were fed by everyday experiences of national and international postcolonial lives. The many examples of worldwide interest in the US president at this time illustrate that this time was a historical turning point for the role of the US on the global stage. The hopes and fears of peaking decolonization, the resulting pressure on Washington, Moscow and other powers, and a new mediascape together ushered in a more comprehensive globalization of international politics, and a new meaning to 'the United States in the world'.
Born in Chanel, Christen in Gucci: The Rhetoric of Brand Names and Haute Couture in Jamaican Dancehall

Andrea E. Shaw-Nevins

Dancehall: A Reader on Jamaican Music and Culture contextualizes the emergence of the globally popular dancehall genre, while tracing the complex and often contradictory aspects of its evolution, dispersion and politics. This collection of foundational essays places dancehall in context with cutting-edge analyses of performance modes and expression, genre development, and impact in the wider local, regional and international socio-political milieu of struggles by black Jamaicans in particular and cultural adherents more broadly.

Dancehall is one of eight musical genres created in Jamaica and, in the past two decades, it has become one of the most influential Jamaican cultural exports since reggae. The impact of dancehall extends far beyond Jamaica and is evident in music genres (such as hip hop, trip hop, jungle, reggaeton, South African kwaito and Nigerian Afrobeats) and international fashion, film and dance.

This interdisciplinary volume documents various aspects of dancehall’s global impact, evolution and influence in gender, political economy, geography, ethnomusicology, spirituality, music production, fashion and language. Each selection interrogates the range of meanings ascribed to dancehall culture, a phenomenon which has been seen to be associated with violence, crime and debauchery. This collection exposes the immense cultural work towards self-expression and identity in post-colonial Jamaica which takes shape through dancehall and the contributors apply a new level of seriousness, depth and academic rigour to dancehall studies.
Chapter 7: Killing Eve and the Necessity of the Female Villain du Jour

Kathleen J. Waites

This volume of essays provides a critical foray into the methods used to construct narratives which foreground antiheroines, a trope which has become increasingly popular within literary media, film, and television. Antiheroine characters engage constructions of motherhood, womanhood, femininity, and selfhood as mediated by the structures that socially prescribe boundaries of gender, sex, and sexuality. Within this collection, scholars of literary, cultural, media, and gender studies address the complications of representing agency, autonomy, and self-determination within narrative texts complicated by age, class, race, sexuality, and a spectrum of privilege that reflects the complexities of scripting women on and off screen, within and beyond the page. This collection offers perspectives on the alternate narratives engendered through the motivations, actions, and agendas of the antiheroine, while engaging with the discourses of how such narratives are employed both as potentially feminist interventions and critiques of access, hierarchy, and power.
All Rise: The Prospects and Challenges of Lower Federal Judicial Biography

Charles L. Zelden

Charles Zelden’s essay, “All Rise: The Prospects and Challenges of Lower Federal Judicial Biography,” picks up where Kobrick concluded. Zelden laments the paucity of biographies of lower-federal-court judges, while nonetheless 12. See Funk, infra ch. 2. 13. See Hall, infra ch. 3. 14. See Grisinger, infra ch. 4. 15. See Kobrick, infra ch. 5. 5 Approaches to Federal Judicial History Federal Judicial Center appreciating the challenges that routinely face these biographers. Historically speaking, Zelden writes, lower federal judges “are generally not well known, the importance of their work is not self-evident, their papers are often scattered or fragmentary or thin, and the wider context in which they operate is not wellestablished.” But especially because the lower federal courts are the front line of interaction between the federal judiciary and the people, Zelden believes that biographers should persist in trying to write more and better biographies of lower federal judges. This is a unique opportunity, he concludes, to weigh “the difference between law on the books and law as applied” throughout the federal judiciary.
Bush v. Gore: Exposing the Hidden Crisis in American Democracy

Charles L. Zelden

Who could forget the Supreme Court's controversial 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore or the 2000 presidential campaign and election that preceded it? Hanging chads, butterfly ballots, endless recounts, raucous allegations, and a constitutional crisis were all roiled into a confusing and potentially dangerous mix--until the Supreme Court decision allowed George W. Bush to become the 43rd President of the United States, despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore.

Praised by scholars and political pundits alike, the original edition of Charles Zelden's book set a new standard for our understanding of that monumental decision. A probing chronicle and critique of the vexing and acrimonious affair, it offered the most accurate and up-to-date analysis of a remarkable episode in American politics. Highly readable, its comprehensive coverage, depth of documentation and detail, and analytic insights remain unrivaled on the subject.

In this third expanded edition Zelden offers a powerful history of voting rights and elections in America since 2000. Bush v. Gore exposes the growing crisis by detailing the numerous ways in which the unlearned and wrongly learned "lessons of 2000" have impacted American election law through the growth of voter suppression via legislation and administrative rulings, and, provides a clear warning of how unchecked partisanship arising out of Bush v. Gore threatens to undermine American democracy in general and the 2020 election in particular.
Introduction

Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan

Utopia and Dystopia in the Age of Trump:Images from Literature and Visual Arts treats literature, film, television series, and comic books dealing with utopian and dystopian worlds reflecting on or anticipating our current age. From Henry James’s dreamlike utopia of “The Great Good Place” to the psychotic world of Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, from science fiction and recent horror films, television adaptations of books such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and new series such as Black Mirror to the repressive Hitlerian dystopia of Katherine Burdekin’s Swastika Night, the contributors examine the development of scenarios that either prefigure the rise of individuals such as Donald J. Trump or suggest alternatives to them. Ultimately, one might say of the worlds presented here, viewed from different social and political perspectives: one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia.
Utopia and Dystopia in the Age of Trump: Images from Literature and Visual Arts

Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan

Utopia and Dystopia in the Age of Trump:Images from Literature and Visual Arts treats literature, film, television series, and comic books dealing with utopian and dystopian worlds reflecting on or anticipating our current age. From Henry James’s dreamlike utopia of “The Great Good Place” to the psychotic world of Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, from science fiction and recent horror films, television adaptations of books such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and new series such as Black Mirror to the repressive Hitlerian dystopia of Katherine Burdekin’s Swastika Night, the contributors examine the development of scenarios that either prefigure the rise of individuals such as Donald J. Trump or suggest alternatives to them. Ultimately, one might say of the worlds presented here, viewed from different social and political perspectives: one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia.

This is the fifth in a series of books edited by Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan, and published by Rowman & Littlefield with Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend and Images of the Modern Vampire: The Hip and the Atavistic (both in 2013) focused on the vampire legend in traditional and modern thought. The Supernatural Revamped: From Timeworn Legends to Twenty-First-Century Chic (2016) examined a range of supernatural beings in literature, film, and other forms of popular culture. Apocalyptic Chic: Visions of the Apocalypse and Post-Apocalypse in Literature and Visual Arts (2017) dealt with legends and images of the apocalypse and post-apocalypse in film and graphic arts, literature and lore from early to modern times, and from peoples and cultures around the world.
Chapter 13: Savage Monster or Grieving Mother? Sabra and Marvel’s Political Theology of Reconciliation in Israel-Palestine

Amanda Furiasse

Book Description

In Theology and the Marvel Universe, fourteen contributors examine theological themes and ideas in the comic books, television shows, and films that make up the grand narrative of the Marvel Universe. Engaging in dialogue with theological thinkers such as Willie James Jennings, Franz Rosenzweig, Søren Kierkegaard, René Girard, Kelly Brown Douglas, and many others, the chapters explore a wide variety of topics, including violence, sacrifice, colonialism, Israeli-Palestinian relations, virtue ethics, character formation, identity formation, and mythic reinvention. This book demonstrates that the stories of Thor, Daredevil, Sabra, Spider-Man, Jessica Jones, Thanos, Luke Cage, and others engage not just our imagination, but our theological imagination as well.
Working Juju: Representations of the Caribbean Fantastic

Andrea E. Shaw-Nevins

Working Juju examines how fantastical and unreal modes are deployed in portrayals of the Caribbean in popular and literary culture as well as in the visual arts. The Caribbean has historically been constructed as a region mantled by the fantastic. Andrea Shaw Nevins analyzes such imaginings of the Caribbean and interrogates the freighting of Caribbean-infused spaces with characteristics that register as fantastical. These fantastical traits may be described as magical, supernatural, uncanny, paranormal, mystical, and speculative. The book asks throughout, What are the discursive threads that run through texts featuring the Caribbean fantastic?

In Working Juju, Nevins teases out the multilayered and often obscured connections among texts such as the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, planter and historian Edward Long's History of Jamaica, and Grenadian sci-fi writer Tobias Buckell's Xenowealth series set in the future Caribbean. Fantastical representations of the region generally occupy one of two spaces. In the first, the Caribbean fantastic facilitates an imagining of the colonial experience and its aftermath as one in which the region and its representatives exercise agency and in which the humanity of the region's inhabitants is asserted. Alternately, the fantastic is sometimes situated as a signifier of the irrational and uncivilized. The thread that unites portrayals of the fantastic Caribbean in the latter kind of works is that they tend to locate Caribbean belief systems as powerful, even at times inadvertently in contradiction to the text's ideological posture. Nevins shows how the singular "Caribbean" identity that emerges in these text is at odds with the complex historical narratives of actual Caribbean countries and colonies.
Feminism-Reboot in Mad Max: Fury Road and The Handmaid’s Tale

Kathleen J. Waites

Utopia and Dystopia in the Age of Trump:Images from Literature and Visual Arts treats literature, film, television series, and comic books dealing with utopian and dystopian worlds reflecting on or anticipating our current age. From Henry James’s dreamlike utopia of “The Great Good Place” to the psychotic world of Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, from science fiction and recent horror films, television adaptations of books such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and new series such as Black Mirror to the repressive Hitlerian dystopia of Katherine Burdekin’s Swastika Night, the contributors examine the development of scenarios that either prefigure the rise of individuals such as Donald J. Trump or suggest alternatives to them. Ultimately, one might say of the worlds presented here, viewed from different social and political perspectives: one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia.

This is the fifth in a series of books edited by Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan, and published by Rowman & Littlefield with Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend and Images of the Modern Vampire: The Hip and the Atavistic (both in 2013) focused on the vampire legend in traditional and modern thought. The Supernatural Revamped: From Timeworn Legends to Twenty-First-Century Chic (2016) examined a range of supernatural beings in literature, film, and other forms of popular culture. Apocalyptic Chic: Visions of the Apocalypse and Post-Apocalypse in Literature and Visual Arts (2017) dealt with legends and images of the apocalypse and post-apocalypse in film and graphic arts, literature and lore from early to modern times, and from peoples and cultures around the world.
That Sinking Feeling: Cornell Woolrich and the Uncanny Noir Mood

Marlisa Santos

Film noir is one of the most enduring and popular genres in cinema. But it did not spring up spontaneously, fully formed. Rather, its origins can be traced to sources as varied as Victorian literature, German Expressionism, and American art and photography. In this comprehensive collection of essays that's packed with illustrations and artwork, a team of eminent scholars and film writers present thorough analyses of the influence of prototypes on the classic period of film noir.
‘Fat’ as Political Disobedience: Black Women Blogging the Resistance

Andrea Shaw-Nevins and Jazmyn Brown

This is an insightful and essential new volume for academics and professionals interested in the lived experience of those who struggle with disordered eating. Embodiment and Eating Disorders situates the complicated – and increasingly prevalent – topic of disordered eating at the crossroads of many academic disciplines, articulating a notion of embodied selfhood that rejects the separation of mind and body and calls for a feminist, existential, and sociopolitically aware approach to eating disorder treatment. Experts from a variety of backgrounds and specializations examine theories of embodiment, current empirical research, and practical examples and strategies for prevention and treatment.
Feminism

Kathleen J. Waites

Evolutionary psychology is a hybrid discipline that draws insights from modern evolutionary theory, biology, cognitive psychology, anthropology, economics, computer science, and paleoarchaeology. The discipline rests on a foundation of core premises: 1. Manifest behavior depends on underlying psychological mechanisms, information processing devices housed in the brain, in conjunction with the external and internal inputs that trigger their activation. 2. Evolution by selection is the only known causal process capable of creating such complex organic mechanisms. 3. Evolved psychological mechanisms are functionally specialized to solve adaptive problems that recurred for humans over deep evolutionary time. 4. Selection designed the information processing of many evolved psychological mechanisms to be adaptively influenced by specific classes of information from the environment. 5. Human psychology consists of a large number of functionally specialized evolved mechanisms, each sensitive to particular forms of contextual input, that get combined, coordinated, and integrated with each other to produce manifest behavior. Evolutionary psychology is one of the fastest growing academic areas within psychology. The field is now served by half a dozen high-quality journals dedicated to the field, including a new Springer journal, Evolutionary Psychological Science, set to launch in 2015 and edited by Todd Shackelford, a co-editor of the current proposal. In addition, there are now over a dozen extremely well-selling undergraduate textbooks dedicated to evolutionary psychology, along with several recent Handbooks dedicated to the field. The field is now ready for an Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. This encyclopedia will be extraordinarily comprehensive and wide-ranging. If the standard Handbook runs 500 printed pages, we envision this project might run 1000 printed pages per volume, but of course this will depend on how many entries we include, and the length of those entries. We anticipate having entries of varying length, depending on the importance of the topic or issue. For example, an entry on the prominent topic of “sex differences” might run the equivalent of 20 printed pages, whereas an entry on female orgasm, a more recent focus of research in evolutionary psychology, might run 10 printed pages. And then we expect to have briefer entries still that address much more focused topics and issues (for example, cultural differences in tattooing and scarification).
Apocalyptic Chic: Visions of the Apocalypse and Post-Apocalypse in Literature and Visual Arts

Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan

This book deals with legends and images of the apocalypse and post-apocalypse in film and graphic arts, literature and lore from early to modern times and from peoples and cultures around the world. It reflects an increasingly popular leitmotif in literature and visual arts of the 21st century: humanity’s fear of extinction and its quest for survival -- in revenant, supernatural, or living human form. It is the logical continuation of a series of collected essays examining the origins and evolution of myths and legends of the supernatural in Western and non-Western tradition and popular culture. The first two volumes of the series, The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013) and Images of the Modern Vampire: The Hip and the Atavistic. (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013) focused on the vampire legend. The third, The Supernatural Revamped: From Timeworn Legends to Twenty-First-Century Chic (2016), focused on a range of supernatural beings in literature, film, and other forms of popular culture.