"Lynwood Montell has collected ghost tales all over the state of Kentucky, from coal mining settlements to river landings, from highways to battlefields. He presents these suspense-filled stories just as he first heard or read them: as bona fide personal experiences or as events witnessed by family members or friends. There are over 250 stories in Ghosts across Kentucky that are set in specific places and times. They include tales of graveyards, haunted dormitories, animal ghosts, and vanishing hitchhikers. Montell describes weird lights, unexplained sounds, felt presences, and disappearing apparitions. Phantom workmen, fallen soldiers, young lovers, and executed criminals appear in these pages, along with the living who chance upon them. Though the focus is on the stories themselves, Montell also includes a chapter explaining our fascination with the supernatural and the deep truths these storytelling traditions reveal about our lives and our pasts.William Lynwood Montell, emeritus professor of folk studies at Western Kentucky University, is the author of several books, including Killings."

What makes people decide to vote? In addressing this simple question, Andr\u00e9 Blais examines the factors that increase or decrease turnout at the aggregate, cross-national level and considers what affects people\u2019s decision to vote or to abstain. In doing so, Blais assesses the merits and limitations of the rational choice model in explaining voter behavior. The past few decades have witnessed a rise in the popularity of the rational choice model in accounting for voter turnout, and more recently a groundswell of outspoken opposition to rational choice theory. Blais tackles this controversial subject in an engaging and personal way, bringing together the opposing theories and literatures, and offering convincing tests of these different viewpoints. Most important, he handles the discussion in a clear and balanced manner. Using new data sets from many countries, Blais concludes that while rational choice is an important tool—even when it doesn\u2019t work—its empirical contribution to understanding why people vote is quite limited. Whether one supports rational choice theory or opposes it, Blais\u2019s evenhanded and timely analysis will certainly be of interest, and is well-suited for advanced undergraduate and graduate-level classes.

In 1995, Kentucky governor Brereton Jones granted parole to ten women who had been convicted of killing, conspiring to kill, or assaulting the men who had abused them for years. The media began referring to them as the "Sisters in Pain," a name they embraced. These are their stories. Linda Elisabeth Beattie and Mary Angela Shaughnessy's interviews of seven of the Sisters in Pain detail the physical, sexual, or psychological abuse they suffered at the hands of their husbands or boyfriends, battery beyond comprehension. Anyone who has ever asked, "Why don't they just leave?" will come to understand the interconnected strands of abuse that make just living through another day a personal triumph.Beattie and Shaughnessy address the pervasive nature of domestic violence in America and explore the legal ramifications of fighting back. Their interviews with the Sisters in Pain reveal the ways in which these women have picked up the pieces of their shattered lives and learned to face the future.

Since the 1930s, appeasement has been labeled as a futile and possibly dangerous policy. In this landmark study, Stephen Rock seeks to restore appeasement to its proper place as a legitimate--and potentially successful--diplomatic strategy. Appeasement was discredited by Neville Chamberlain's disastrous attempt to satisfy Adolf Hitler's territorial ambitions and avoid war in 1938. Rock argues, however, that there is very little evidence to support the belief that dissatisfied states and their leaders cannot be appeased or that appeasement undermines a state's credibility in later attempts at deterrence.Rock looks at five case studies from the past 100 years, revealing under what conditions appeasement can achieve its goals. From British appeasement of the United States near the beginning of the twentieth century to American conciliation of North Korea in the early 1990s, Rock concludes that appeasement succeeds or fails depending on the nature of the adversary, the nature of the inducements used on the antagonist, and the existence of other incentives for the adversary to acquiesce. Appeasement in International Politics suggests the type of appeasement strategy most appropriate for various situations. The options range from pure inducements, reciprocity, to a mixture of inducements and threats. In addition to this theoretical framework, Rock's explicit comparison of appeasement and deterrence offers important guidelines for policymakers on when and how to implement a strategy of appeasement.At a time when the strategy of engagement plays an increasingly central--and controversial--role in U.S. foreign policy, Appeasement in International Politics reestablishes the long-discredited use of inducements as an effective means of preventing conflict.

New definitions of American femininity were formed in the pivotal 1920s, an era that vastly expanded the "market" for sexually explicit displays by women. Angela J. Latham shows how quarrels over and censorship of women's performance -- particularly in the arenas of fashion and theater -- uniquely reveal the cultural idiosyncracies of the period and provide valuable clues to the developing iconicity of the female body in its more recent historical phases. Through disguise, display, or judicious appropriation of both, performance became a crucial means by which women contested, affirmed, mitigated, and revolutionized norms of female self-presentation and self-stylization. Fashion was a hotly contested arena of bodily display. Latham surveys 1920s fashion trends and explores popular fashion rhetoric. Resistance to social mandates regarding women's fashion was nowhere more pronounced than in the matter of "bathing costumes." Latham critiques locally situated contests over swimwear, including those surrounding the first Miss America Pageant, and suggests how such performances sanctioned otherwise unacceptable self-presentations by women.Looking at American theater, Latham summarizes major arguments about censorship and the ideological assumptions embedded within them. Although sexually provocative displays by women were often the focus of censorship efforts, "leg shows," including revues like the Zeigfeld Follies, were in their heyday. Latham situates the popularity of such performances that featured women's bodies within the larger context of censorship in the American theater at this time.

Constitutional reform has been one of the most significant aspects of democratization in late twentieth century Latin America. In The Friendly Liquidation of the Past—one of the first texts to examine this issue comprehensively —Van Cott focuses on the efforts of Bolivia and Colombia to incorporate ethnic rights into their fragile democracies. In the1990s, political leaders and social movements in Bolivia and Colombia expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of democracy--its exclusionary nature, the distance and illegitimacy of the state, and the empty promise of citizenship. The highly symbolic act of constitution making elevated a public struggle for rights to the level of a discussion on the meaning of democracy and the nature of the state. Based on interviews with more than 100 participants in the reforms, Van Cott demonstrates how issues promoted by social movements—recognizing ethnic diversity, expanding political participation and improving representation, and creating spheres of cultural and territorial autonomy—were placed on the constitutional reform agenda and transformed through strategic interaction with political power-brokers into the nation’s highest law. The analysis follows each reform through five years of implementation to assess the early results of what Van Cott suggests is an emerging regional model of multicultural constitutionalism. The Friendly Liquidation of the Past fills an important gap in the study of ethnic politics and constitutional reform in the Andes, linking the literature on institutions and political reform to work in political theory on participatory democracy and multiculturalism.

After 21 years of military rule, Brazil returned to democracy in 1985. Over the past decade and a half, Brazilians in the Nova Rep\u00fablica (New Republic) have struggled with a range of diverse challenges that have tested the durability and quality of the young democracy. How well have they succeeded? To what extent can we say that Brazilian democracy has consolidated? What actors, institutions, and processes have emerged as most salient over the past 15 years? Although Brazil is Latin America's largest country, the world's third largest democracy, and a country with a population and GNP larger than Yeltsin's Russia, more than a decade has passed since the last collaborative effort to examine regime change in Brazil, and no work in English has yet provided a comprehensive appraisal of Brazilian democracy in the period since 1985.Democratic Brazil analyzes Brazilian democracy in a comprehensive, systematic fashion, covering the full period of the New Republic from Presidents Sarney to Cardoso. Democratic Brazil brings together twelve top scholars, the \u201cnext generation of Brazilianists,\u201d with wide-ranging specialties including institutional analysis, state autonomy, federalism and decentralization, economic management and business-state relations, the military, the Catholic Church and the new religious pluralism, social movements, the left, regional integration, demographic change, and human rights and the rule of law. Each chapter focuses on a crucial process or actor in the New Republic, with emphasis on its relationship to democratic consolidation. The volume also contains a comprehensive bibliography on Brazilian politics and society since 1985. Prominent Brazilian historian Thomas Skidmore has contributed a foreword to the volume.Democratic Brazil speaks to a wide audience, including Brazilianists, Latin Americanists generally, students of comparative democratization, as well as specialists within the various thematic subfields represented by the contributors. Written in a clear, accessible style, the book is ideally suited for use in upper-level undergraduate courses and graduate seminars on Latin American politics and development.

Performance studies have been increasingly influential on recent developments in musicology, theater, art, and dance history, as these fields shift from primarily text-based disciplines to consider performativity, subjective experience, and particularized practice. At the same time, the editors argue, investigations into the pre- and early-modern periods have been rare in performance studies. Acting on the Past assembles some of the foremost scholars to theorize particular historical performances -- in dance, opera, theater, and music. Exploring relationships between archive and act, text and sounding, subject and practice, this collection expands and redefines our understanding of both past and performance.CONTRIBUTORS: Annette Richards, Karen Bassi, Joseph Roach, Shelby Rchardson, Catherine M. Soussloff, Mary Carruthers, John Butt, Carolyn Dean, Susan McClary, James Miller.

Dwayne Cox and William Morison trace the twists and turns of the University of Louisville's two hundred year journey from provincial academy to national powerhouse.From the 1798 charter that established Jefferson Seminary to the 1998 opening of Papa John Stadium, Cox and Morison reveal the unique and fascinating history of the university's evolution. They discuss the early failures to establish a liberal arts college; tell the extraordinary story of the Louisville Municipal College, U of L's separate division for African Americans during the era of segregation; detail the political wrangling and budgetary struggles of the university's move from quasi-private to state-supported institution; and confront head-on the question of the university's founding date. The history of the University of Louisville defies the stereotype of orderly and planned growth. For many years, the university was essentially a consortium of two professional schools -- medicine and law. Not until the first decade of the twentieth century did the liberal arts gain a firm and permanent foothold. Because of its early emphasis on practical, professional education and the virtual autonomy of its separate units for many years, the University of Louisville is unusual in the annals of higher education.

For one hundred years, Heart of Darkness has been among the most widely read and taught novels in the English language. Hailed as an incisive indictment of European imperialism in Africa upon its publication in 1899, more recently it has been repeatedly denounced as racist and imperialist. Peter Firchow counters these claims, and his carefully argued response allows the charges of Conrad's alleged bias to be evaluated as objectively as possible. He begins by contrasting the meanings of race, racism, and imperialism in Conrad's day to those of our own time. Firchow then argues that Heart of Darkness is a novel rather than a sociological treatise; only in relation to its aesthetic significance can real social and intellectual-historical meaning be established.Envisioning Africa responds in detail to negative interpretations of the novel by revealing what they distort, misconstrue, or fail to take into account. Firchow uses a framework of imagology to examine how national, ethnic, and racial images are portrayed in the text, differentiating the idea of a national stereotype from that of national character. He believes that what Conrad saw personally in Africa should not be confused with the Africa he describes in the novel; Heart of Darkness is instead an envisioning and a revisioning of Conrad's experiences in the medium of fiction.

This book identifies a major problem facing developing nations and the countries and sources that fund them: the lack of attention and/or effective strategies available to prevent farmers in underdeveloped and poorly endowed regions from sinking still deeper into poverty while avoiding further degradation of marginal environments. The contributors propose an alliance of scientific knowledge with native skill as the best way to proceed, arguing that folk systems can often provide effective management solutions that are not only locally effective, but which may have the potential for spatial diffusion. While this has been said before, the volume makes one of the best articulated statements of how to implement such an approach.

For the newly established New England colonies, the war with the Indians of 1675-77 was a catastrophe that pushed the settlements perilously close to worldly ruin. Moreover, it seemed to call into question the religious mission and spiritual status of a group that considered itself a Chosen People, carrying out a divinely inspired "errand into the wilderness." Seven texts reprinted here reveal efforts of Puritan writers to make sense of King Philip's War. Largely unavailable since the 19th century, they represent the various divisions of Puritan society and literary forms typical of Puritan writing, from which emerged some of the most vital genres of American popular writing. Thoroughly annotated, the book contains a general introduction and introductions to each text.

While countless memoirs have been written about depression and therapy, no one has examined how the "talking cure" of psychotherapy is presented in novels and other works of literature. Beginning with an overview of the principles of psychotherapy and its growing use as a treatment for mental and emotional disorders, Lilian Furst addresses the patient's view of the value of talk.Patients' portrayals of psychotherapy in literary works range from serious to satirical and from comic to ironic, with some descriptions verging on the grotesque. Furst identifies the overtalkers, undertalkers, and duet voices that shape the individual experiences of psychotherapy. While the voices of the overtalkers overwhelm those of their therapists, undertalkers are reluctant to express or acknowledge their feelings. Particularly revealing are the instances where patient and therapist provide separate but parallel renderings of the same therapy.Just Talk looks at a wide range of questions about psychotherapy. Furst considers the patient's first impressions of the therapist and how the patient is prompted to engage in talk. She looks for signs of self-deception or self-betrayal on the patient's part and asks how the therapist's behavior affects the patient's responses and the ultimate outcome of the therapy.Furst examines such well-known works as Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, Plath's The Bell Jar, and Lodge's Therapy, as well as lesser-known novels, to discuss how patients react to psychotherapy as a cure for mental and emotional disorders. Her analysis of these narratives adds significantly to our understanding of the dynamic relationship between patient and therapist and reveals much about the healing process that is not addressed in technical casebooks.

Not until the eighteenth century was the image of the tender, full-time mother invented. This image retains its power today. Inventing Maternity demonstrates that, despite its association with an increasingly standardized set of values, motherhood remained contested terrain. Drawing on feminist, cultural, and postcolonial theory, Inventing Maternity surveys a wide range of sources--medical texts, political tracts, religious doctrine, poems, novels, slave narratives, conduct books, and cookbooks. The first half of the volume, covering the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries, considers central debates about fetal development, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and childbearing. The second half, covering the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, charts a historical shift to the regulation of reproduction as maternity is increasingly associated with infanticide, population control, poverty, and colonial, national, and racial instability. In her introduction, Greenfield provides a historical overview of early modern interpretations of maternity. She concludes with a consideration of their impact on current debates about reproductive rights and technologies, child custody, and the cycles of poverty.

Seven essays on the amalgamation of technology and culture. The amalgamations of technology and culture; technology and everyday life; hidden stories of hearing aids; modern genetics and the alien inside; biotechnology and the reinterpretation of nature.

Latin American women were among those who led the suffrage movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and their opposition to military dictatorships has galvanized more recent political movements throughout the region. But because of the continuous attempts to silence them, activists have struggled to make their voices heard. At the heart of Voices of Resistance are the testimonies of thirteen women who fought for human rights and social justice in their communities. Some played significant roles in the Cuban Revolution of 1959, while others organized grassroots resistance to the seventeen-year Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Though the women share many objectives, they are a diverse group, ranging in age from thirty to eighty and coming from varied ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. The Cuban and Chilean women Judy Maloof interviewed use the narrative form to reinvent themselves. Maloof includes narratives from a poet, a tobacco worker, a political prisoner, an artist, and a social worker to demonstrate the different faces of their struggle. In the process, these women were able to begin to put together their fragmented lives. Speaking out is both a means for personal liberation and a political act of protest against authoritarian regimes. The bond that these women have is not simply that they have suffered; they share a commitment to resisting violence and confronting inequities at great personal risk.