Liberal Arts In Print - Summer 2025
Studies in Arthurian and Chronicle Traditions in Memory of Fiona Tolhurst
Edited and Contributions by Dorsey Armstrong, Professor of English (Boydell & Brewer)
In her all-too-short but ground-breaking academic career, Fiona Tolhurst made significant contributions to the discipline of Arthurian Studies, advancing, amongst much else, understanding of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Arthurian Women, the English Mortes, and modern Arthuriana, including cinematic versions of the legend. These assembled essays reflect her commitment to explication of Arthurian and Chronicle texts and contexts.
Making Death and Life in Palestine
Edited by Tithi Bhattacharya, Associate Professor of History (Pluto Press)
Social reproduction theory is a big idea. It explores how the daily renewal of human life, and therefore human labor, is essential to capitalism. Here, leading feminists come together to apply the theory to one of its most extreme settings—that of Palestine.
Becoming a YouTube Musician: How People Learn, Create, and Connect Online
By Christopher Cayari, Associate Professor of Music (Routledge)
In "Becoming a YouTube Musician: How People Learn, Create, and Connect Online,” associate professor of music Christopher Cayari explores how YouTube creators are using digital video to create and consume music, develop online communities, and engage in formal, informal, and experimental music learning.
Fair and Foul: Beyond the Myths and Paradoxes of Sport
By Cheryl Cooky, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies (Bloomsbury)
Sport is a pervasive aspect of US society. Most children in the U.S. are involved in organized sport and it's the subject of much conversation, media content, leisure activity, and discretionary spending. There is a growing number of broadcast networks, online news sites, social media accounts, and streaming platforms devoted to covering sports that fans consume with keen interest. But do we truly understand sport? Fair and Foul explores our love of sport, just as it reveals sport's darker side-the influence of big business, corruption, price gouging, media grandstanding, and more.
Global Bunyan and Visual Art
Edited by Angelica Duran, Professor of English (Bloomsbury)
In “Global Bunyan and Visual Art," English professor Angelica Duran focuses on the global reach of John Bunyan's works and legend through multiple media, such as shieldry, stained glass, and Marvel comics. The book, which is Duran’s 10th published title, provides a unique opportunity to discover the varied and generative influence of Bunyan, promoting a varied appreciation of the unparalleled reach of his most famous work “The Pilgrim’s Progress."
Handbook of Gender and Activism
Edited by Rachel L. Einwohner, Professor of Sociology (Edward Elgar)
This Handbook examines how gender shapes social activism and is shaped by activism. With an interdisciplinary focus, it explores the effects of the gender binary on experiences of activism, considering how different movements negotiate and, at times, challenge these traditional conceptions. It then moves beyond the binary to explore how gender is challenged by contemporary movements.
A Terrifying Brush with Optimism
By Brian Leung, Professor of English (Sarabande Books)
In a cultural moment where folks are stripped of their dignity or shed it willingly, the figures in this book wonder at the utility of maintaining their own. A collection of new and selected works, there's a touch of Hamlet's question in there along with some I Ching. Can monkeys pray? Are we better off living in the real world or a speculative one?
Designing With Light
By Michael McNamara, Associate Professor of Rueff School of Design, Art, and Performance (Routledge)
In its eighth edition, Designing with Light introduces readers to the art, craft, and technology of stage lighting to help them create designs that shape the audience’s emotional reaction to—and understanding of—a stage production. This edition is fully updated to include current information on the technology and equipment for stage lighting.
Tender Voyeur
By Donald Platt, Professor of English (Grid Books)
This poetry book tells the story of the author’s coming out as bisexual, as related through meditations on the artwork of John Singer Sargent. Tender Voyeur features high-quality reproductions of Sargent’s paintings and drawings, interlaced with poems that interrogate the place of same-sex love at the turn of the 20th century and explore conflicting sexual desires in the different worlds of Sargent and of the author.
Women in the Orthodox Tradition
By Ashley Marie Purpura, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies (Notre Dame Press)
Women in the Orthodox Tradition brings feminist insights into dialogue with Orthodox Christianity to theologically identify and respond to challenges of gender equality. In acknowledging the messy entanglement between tradition, theology, and historical patriarchal values, the book advocates for women’s voices, contributions, and diverse humanity within the church.
Underdetermination and Theoretical Virtues
By Dana Tulodziecki, Associate Professor of Philosophy (Cambridge University Press)
This Element in the series of Elements in Philosophy of Science advances a novel view—the Epistemic Labour View—about the role, limits, and potential of the theoretical virtues as the arbiters of various versions of underdetermination. A central focus is to go beyond the often abstract discussions in this area and show how the theoretical virtues can illuminate and resolve issues surrounding actual cases of underdetermination found in scientific practice.