Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's Books

Stone

An Ecology of the Inhuman

By: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

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Stone

An Ecology of the Inhuman

By: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

Stone maps the force, vivacity, and stories within our most mundane matter, stone. For too long stone has served as an unexamined metaphor for the “really real”: blunt factuality, nature’s curt rebuke. Yet, medieval writers knew that stones drop with fire from the sky, emerge through the subterranean lovemaking of the elements, tumble along riverbeds from Eden, partner with the masons who build worlds with them. Such motion suggests an ecological enmeshment and an almost creaturely mineral life. Although geological time can leave us reeling, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues that stone’s endurance is also an invitation to apprehend the world in other than human terms. Never truly inert, stone poses a profound challenge to modernity’s disenchantments. Its agency undermines the human desire to be separate from the environment, a bifurcation that renders nature “out there,” a mere resource for recreation, consumption, and exploitation. Written with great verve and elegance, this pioneering work is notable not only for interweaving the medieval and the modern but also as a major contribution to ecotheory. Comprising chapters organized by concept —“Geophilia,” “Time,” “Force,” and “Soul”—Cohen seamlessly brings together a wide range of topics including stone’s potential to transport humans into nonanthropocentric scales of place and time, the “petrification” of certain cultures, the messages fossils bear, the architecture of Bordeaux and Montparnasse, Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste disposal, the ability of stone to communicate across millennia in structures like Stonehenge, and debates over whether stones reproduce and have souls. Showing that what is often assumed to be the most lifeless of substances is, in its own time, restless and forever in motion, Stone fittingly concludes by taking us to Iceland⎯a land that, writes the author, “reminds us that stone like water is alive, that stone like water is transient.”

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286

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U of Minnesota Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1452944652

ISBN 13

9781452944654

Monster Theory

Reading Culture

By: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

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Monster Theory

Reading Culture

By: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

The contributors to Monster Theory consider beasts, demons, freaks and fiends as symbolic expressions of cultural unease that pervade a society and shape its collective behavior. Through a historical sampling of monsters, these essays argue that our fascination for the monstrous testifies to our continued desire to explore difference and prohibition.

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315

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U of Minnesota Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0816628556

ISBN 13

9780816628551

Earth

By: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen,Linda T. Elkins-Tanton

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Earth

By: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen,Linda T. Elkins-Tanton

A literary scholar and a planetary scientist look at the Earth as object, viewed from the outside, and as a singular orb that is a challenge to scale and human self-importance.

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145

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501317911

ISBN 13

9781501317910

Stone

An Ecology of the Inhuman

By: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

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Stone

An Ecology of the Inhuman

By: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

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286

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U of Minnesota Press

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ISBN 10

1452944652

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9781452944654

Noah's Arkive

By: Jeffrey J. Cohen,Julian Yates

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Noah's Arkive

By: Jeffrey J. Cohen,Julian Yates

A timely rethinking of the archetypal story of Noah, the great flood, and who was left behind as the waters rose Most people know the story of Noah from a children’s bible or a play set with a colorful ship, bearded Noah, pairs of animals, and an uncomplicated vision of survival. Noah’s ark, however, will forever be haunted by what it leaves to the rising waters so that the world can begin again. In Noah’s Arkive, Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates examine the long history of imagining endurance against climate catastrophe—as well as alternative ways of creating refuge. They trace how the elements of the flood narrative were elaborated in medieval and early modern art, text, and music, and now shape writing and thinking during the current age of anthropogenic climate change. Arguing that the biblical ark may well be the worst possible exemplar of human behavior, the chapters draw on a range of sources, from the Epic of Gilgamesh and Ovid’s tale of Deucalion and Pyrrah, to speculative fiction, climate fiction, and stories and art dwelling with environmental catastrophe. Noah’s Arkive uncovers the startling afterlife of the Genesis narrative written from the perspective of Noah’s wife and family, the animals on the ark, and those excluded and so left behind to die. This book of recovered stories speaks eloquently to the ethical and political burdens of living through the Anthropocene. Following a climate change narrative across the millennia, Noah’s Arkive surveys the long history of dwelling with the consequences of choosing only a few to survive in order to start the world over. It is an intriguing meditation on how the story of the ark can frame how we think about environmental catastrophe and refuge, conservation and exclusion, offering hope for a better future by heeding what we know from the past.

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432

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U of Minnesota Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1452969345

ISBN 13

9781452969343

The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition – MLA 2021 Update

By: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

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The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition – MLA 2021 Update

By: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

Considering the composition classroom as a mad scientist’s laboratory, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition introduces different kinds of writing as experiments. Writing an essay is a task that can strike fear into a student’s heart, but performing an experiment licenses creativity and doesn’t presume that one knows the outcome from the start. The Mad Scientist’s Guide covers the kinds of writing most often required on college campuses, while also addressing important steps and activities frequently overlooked in composition guides, such as revision and peer reviewing. Actual examples of student writing are included throughout, as are helpful reminders and tips to help students polish their skills. Above all, the Mad Scientist’s Guide seeks to make writing fun.

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266

Publisher

Broadview Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1770489169

ISBN 13

9781770489165

The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition

A Somewhat Cheeky but Exceedingly Useful Introduction to Academic Writing

By: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

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The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition

A Somewhat Cheeky but Exceedingly Useful Introduction to Academic Writing

By: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

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266

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Broadview Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1770487239

ISBN 13

9781770487239

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory

An Overview

By: Jeffrey R. Di Leo

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Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory

An Overview

By: Jeffrey R. Di Leo

The most exhaustive mapping of contemporary literary theory to date, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of the field of contemporary literary theory. Examining 75 key topics across 15 chapters, it provides an approachable and encyclopedic introduction to the most important areas of contemporary theory today. Proceeding broadly chronologically from early theory all the way through to postcritique, Di Leo masterfully unpacks established topics such as psychoanalysis, structuralism and Marxism, as well as newer topics such as trans* theory, animal studies, disability studies, blue humanities, speculative realism and many more. Featuring accessible discussion of the work of foundational theorists such as Lacan, Derrida and Freud as well as contemporary theorists such as Haraway, Braidotti and Hayles, it offers a magisterial examination of an enormously rich and varied body of work.

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Page Count

473

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1350366145

ISBN 13

9781350366145

Sentiment, Reason, and Law

Policing in the Republic of China on Taiwan

By: Jeffrey T. Martin

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Sentiment, Reason, and Law

Policing in the Republic of China on Taiwan

By: Jeffrey T. Martin

What if the job of police was to cultivate the political will of a community to live with itself (rather than enforce law, keep order, or fight crime)? In Sentiment, Reason, and Law, Jeffrey T. Martin describes a world where that is the case. The Republic of China on Taiwan spent nearly four decades as a single-party state under dictatorial rule (1949–1987) before transitioning to liberal democracy. Here, Martin describes the social life of a neighborhood police station during the first rotation in executive power following the democratic transition. He shows an apparent paradox of how a strong democratic order was built on a foundation of weak police powers, and demonstrates how that was made possible by the continuity of an illiberal idea of policing. His conclusion from this paradox is that the purpose of the police was to cultivate the political will of the community rather than enforce laws and keep order. As Sentiment, Reason, and Law shows, the police force in Taiwan exists as an "anthropological fact," bringing an order of reality that is always, simultaneously and inseparably, meaningful and material. Martin unveils the power of this fact, demonstrating how the politics of sentiment that took shape under autocratic rule continued to operate in everyday policing in the early phase of the democratic transformation, even as a more democratic mode of public reason and the ultimate power of legal right were becoming more significant.

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226

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501740075

ISBN 13

9781501740077

American Society

Toward a Theory of Societal Community

By: Talcott Parsons,Giuseppe Sciortino,Jeffrey C. Alexander

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American Society

Toward a Theory of Societal Community

By: Talcott Parsons,Giuseppe Sciortino,Jeffrey C. Alexander

Never before published, American Society is the product of Talcott Parsons' last major theoretical project. Completed just a few weeks before his death, this is Parsons' promised 'general book on American society'. It offers a systematic presentation and revision of Parson's landmark theoretical positions on modernity and the possibility of objective sociological knowledge. Even after the passage of many years, American Society imparts a remarkably provocative interpretation of US society and a creative approach to social theory.

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541

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317263766

ISBN 13

9781317263760

Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom

Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism

By: Jeffrey J. Kripal

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Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom

Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism

By: Jeffrey J. Kripal

William Blake once wrote that "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." Inspired by these poetic terms, Jeffrey J. Kripal reveals how the works of scholars of mysticism are often rooted in their own mystical experiences, "roads of excess," which can both lead to important insights into these scholars' works and point us to our own "palaces of wisdom." In his new book, Kripal addresses the twentieth-century study of mysticism as a kind of mystical tradition in its own right, with its own unique histories, discourses, sociological dynamics, and rhetorics of secrecy. Fluidly combining autobiography and biography with scholarly exploration, Kripal takes us on a tour of comparative mystical thought by examining the lives and works of five major historians of mysticism—Evelyn Underhill, Louis Massignon, R. C. Zaehner, Agehananda Bharati, and Elliot Wolfson—as well as relating his own mystical experiences. The result, Kripal finds, is seven "palaces of wisdom": the religious power of excess, the necessity of distance in the study of mysticism, the relationship between the mystical and art, the dilemmas of male subjectivity and modern heterosexuality, a call for ethical criticism, the paradox of the insider-outsider problem in the study of religion, and the magical power of texts and their interpretation. An original and penetrating analysis of modern scholarship and scholars of mysticism, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom is also a persuasive demonstration of the way this scholarly activity is itself a mystical phenomenon.

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431

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University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226453790

ISBN 13

9780226453798

Engaging the Law in China

State, Society, and Possibilities for Justice

By: Neil Jeffrey Diamant,Stanley B. Lubman,Kevin J. O'Brien

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Engaging the Law in China

State, Society, and Possibilities for Justice

By: Neil Jeffrey Diamant,Stanley B. Lubman,Kevin J. O'Brien

This book explores legal mobilization, culture, and institutions in contemporary China from a perspective informed by 'law and society' scholarship.

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270

Publisher

Stanford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804750483

ISBN 13

9780804750486

Gothic Things

Dark Enchantment and Anthropocene Anxiety

By: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

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Gothic Things

Dark Enchantment and Anthropocene Anxiety

By: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

Offering an innovative approach to the Gothic, Gothic Things: Dark Enchantment and Anthropocene Anxiety breaks ground with a new materialist analysis of the genre, highlighting the ways that, since its origins in the eighteenth century, the Gothic has been intensely focused on “ominous matter” and “thing power.” In chapters attending to gothic bodies, spaces, books, and other objects, Gothic Things argues that the Gothic has always been about what happens when objects assume mysterious animacy or potency and when human beings are reduced to the status of just one thing among many—more powerful—others. In exploring how the Gothic insistently decenters the human, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock reveals human beings to be enmeshed in networks of human and nonhuman forces mostly outside of their control. Gothic Things thus resituates the Gothic as the uncanny doppelgänger of twenty-first-century critical and cultural theory, lurking just beneath the surface (and sometimes explicitly surfacing) as it haunts considerations of how human beings interact with objects and their environment. In these pages the Gothic offers a dark reflection of the contemporary “nonhuman turn,” expressing a twenty-first-century structure of feeling undergirded by anxiety over the fate of the human: spectrality, monstrosity, and apocalypse. Substituting horror for hope, the Gothic, Weinstock explains, has been a philosophical meditation on human relations to the nonhuman since its inception, raising significant questions about how we can counter anthropocentric thought in our quest to live more harmoniously with the world around us.

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Page Count

157

Publisher

Fordham Univ Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1531503438

ISBN 13

9781531503437

Plant Theory

Biopower and Vegetable Life

By: Jeffrey T. Nealon

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Plant Theory

Biopower and Vegetable Life

By: Jeffrey T. Nealon

In our age of ecological disaster, this book joins the growing philosophical literature on vegetable life to ask how our present debates about biopower and animal studies change if we take plants as a linchpin for thinking about biopolitics. Logically enough, the book uses animal studies as a way into the subject, but it does so in unexpected ways. Upending critical approaches of biopolitical regimes, it argues that it is plants rather than animals that are the forgotten and abjected forms of life under humanist biopower. Indeed, biopolitical theory has consistently sidestepped the issue of vegetable life, and more recently, has been outright hostile to it. Provocatively, Jeffrey T. Nealon wonders whether animal studies, which has taken the "inventor" of biopower himself to task for speciesism, has not misread Foucault, thereby managing to extend humanist biopower rather than to curb its reach. Nealon is interested in how and why this is the case. Plant Theory turns to several other thinkers of the high theory generation in an effort to imagine new futures for the ongoing biopolitical debate.

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166

Publisher

Stanford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804796785

ISBN 13

9780804796781

The Vampire Film

Undead Cinema

By: Jeffrey Weinstock

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The Vampire Film

Undead Cinema

By: Jeffrey Weinstock

This introductory volume offers an elegant analysis of the enduring appeal of the cinematic vampire. From Georges Méliès' early cinematic experiments to Twilight and Let the Right One In, the history of vampires in cinema can be organised by a handful of governing principles that help make sense of this movie monster's remarkable fecundity. Among these principles are that the cinematic vampire is invariably about sex and the vexed human relationship with technology, and that the vampire is always an overdetermined body condensing what a culture considers other. This volume includes in-depth studies of films including Powell's A Fool There Was, Franco's Vampyros Lesbos, Cronenberg's Rabid, Kümel's Daughters of Darkness, and Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire.

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153

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231850034

ISBN 13

9780231850032

Orthodox Jews in America

By: Jeffrey S. Gurock

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Orthodox Jews in America

By: Jeffrey S. Gurock

Although there are many good books on the history of Jews in America and a smaller subset that focuses on aspects of Orthodox Judaism in contemporary times, no one, until now, has written an overview of how Orthodoxy in America has evolved over the centuries from the first arrivals in the 17th century to the present. This broad overview by Gurock (Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History, Yeshiva Univ.; Judaism's Encounter with American Sports) is distinctive in examining how Orthodox Jews have coped with the personal, familial, and communal challenges of religious freedom, economic opportunity, and social integration, as well as uncovering historical reactionary tensions to alternative Jewish movements in multicultural and pluralistic America. Gurock raises penetrating questions about the compatibility of modern culture with pious practices and sensitively explores the relationship of feminism to traditional Orthodox Judaism. There are several excellent reference sources on Orthodox Jews in America, e.g., Rabbi Moshe D. Sherman's outstanding Orthodox Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook, to which this is an accessible and illuminating companion; recommended not only for serious readers on the topic but for general readers as well.David B. Levy, Touro Coll. Women's Seminary Lib., Brooklyn, NY Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Page Count

802

Publisher

Indiana University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0253220602

ISBN 13

9780253220608

Earth

By: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen,Linda T. Elkins-Tanton

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Earth

By: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen,Linda T. Elkins-Tanton

A literary scholar and a planetary scientist look at the Earth as object, viewed from the outside, and as a singular orb that is a challenge to scale and human self-importance.

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145

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501317911

ISBN 13

9781501317910

Monstrous Things

Essays on Ghosts, Vampires, and Things That Go Bump in the Night

By: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

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Monstrous Things

Essays on Ghosts, Vampires, and Things That Go Bump in the Night

By: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

An indispensable resource for students and researchers of paranormal myth and media, this book explores the undead and unholy in literature, film, television, and popular culture. Following an introduction to frightful manifestations in media, sections address ghosts, vampires, and monsters individually, and each section includes a broad consideration of the ghost, vampire or monster in American culture. The section dedicated to ghosts examines the "spectral turn" of popular culture and the ghost's relation to justice and mourning, with particular attention to Toni Morrison and Herman Melville. In the vampires section, the author considers the undead bloodsucker's relationship to anti-Semitism, suicide, and cinema. The third section discusses monsters in relation to topics such as global pandemics, terrorism, mass shootings, "stranger danger," and social otherness, with attention to a range of popular culture texts including the films IT and It Follows.

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Page Count

244

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

1476647844

ISBN 13

9781476647845

Book's by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

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