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Books by USF authors featured in the Gleeson Library READ posters

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Women Artists in Interwar France

Paula J. Birnbaum

"Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities" illuminates the importance of the Societe des Femmes Artists Modernes, more commonly known as FAM, and returns this group to its proper place in the history of modern art. In particular, this volume explores how FAM and its most famous members - Suzanne Valadon, Marie Laurencin, and Tamara de Lempicka - brought a new approach to the most prominent themes of female embodiment: the self-portrait, motherhood, and the female nude. These women reimagined art's conventions and changed the direction of both art history and the politics of their contemporary art world. FAM has been excluded from histories of modern art despite its prominence during the interwar years. Paula Birnbaum's study redresses this omission, contextualizing the group's legacy in light of the conservative politics of 1930s France. The group's artistic response to the reactionary views and images of women at the time is shown to be a key element in the narrative of modernist formalism. Although many FAM works are missing-one reason for the lack of attention paid to their efforts - Birnbaum's extensive research, through archives, press clippings, and first-hand interviews with artists' families, reclaims FAM as an important chapter in the history of art from the interwar years.
Making Home from War: Stories of Japanese American Exile and Resettlement

Brian Komei Dempster

Many books have chronicled the experience of Japanese Americans in the early days of World War II, when over 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were taken from their homes along the West Coast and imprisoned in concentration camps. When they were finally allowed to leave, a new challenge faced them--how do you resume a life so interrupted?

For most, going home meant learning to live in a hostile, racist environment. Some returned to find they had lost their homes and had little choice but to bide their time in transitional housing, including community halls, churches, housing projects, and tent camps. Their employment options were also limited; they often worked as domestics, dishwashers, and field laborers to help support their families. The effects of these experiences reverberate to this day, and Making Home from War reaches into the past, melds together what was once hidden, and tells the often neglected or hushed story of what happened after the war.

With honesty and an eye for detail, Making Home from War is the long-awaited sequel to the award-winning From Our Side of the Fence. Written by twelve Japanese American elders who gathered regularly at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California, Making Home from War is a collection of stories about their exodus from concentration camps into a world that in a few short years had drastically changed. In order to survive, they found the resilience they needed in the form of community, and gathered reserves of strength from family and friends. Through a spectrum of conflicting and rich emotions, Making Home from War demonstrates the depth of human resolve and faith during a time of devastating upheaval.
African Initiatives in Healing Ministry

Lilian Dube

Healing ministry is becoming more prominent in many different Christian traditions in Southern Africa. In the past, it was largely confined to the 'Spirit-type' African Independent Churches (AICs), where it was (and still is) a recruitment technique par excellence. For these denominations, healing is central to the mission, and the church is primarily seen as a healing institution. In the Western Initiated Churches (WICs), healing was earlier seen as peripheral, but has become more central in recent years. This book focuses on churches' healing ministries in Zimbabwe, looking at the historical setting and the background to Christianity. The book examines the traditional religion among the Shona people of Zimbabwe, as well as the healing traditions in African independent churches in general. It consists of four case studies of healing in different Christian denominations in Zimbabwe: two African independent churches and two Western-initiated churches (Roman Catholic and Anglican). The book also looks at the wider application of the case studies, and the general implications for Christianity in Africa.
There are people who think that painters shouldn't talk: a Gustonbook

Patrick James Dunagan

Written in and around the Spring of 2009, composed of short, fragmentary blocks of verse and prose, including several quoted sources, GUSTONBOOK is a workman's notebook of sorts sketched out in response to several years spent contemplating the work and life of painter Philip Guston in relation to the ongoing world, i.e., exhibitions, books on/about Guston, other books/art works amid daily walks, drinks, and talks. More explorations than explanations, the entries contained herein situate the eye of memory as witness to the immediate surrounds of now: day to day, hour by hour, the concern never (always) changing. As Guston once said, gesturing out the window, "Who wants that? and you can't have it anyway."
Suburban Dreams

Beth Yarnelle Edwards

Sometimes, I'm so interested in what's going on with people in their homes that I want to know what's in the closet or under the bed. In my photographs I aspire to tell the viewer not just about what can be seen, but also about things that are hidden and locked away.

For years American artist Beth Yarnelle Edwards has been making photographs in idyllic suburban middle-class settings in America and Europe. In her pictures she combines documentary interest and cinematographic staging.
Tasting the Good Life: Wine Tourism in the Napa Valley

George Gmelch and Sharon Bohn Gmelch

While anthropologists often have been accused of failing to "study up," this book turns an anthropological lens on an elite activity – wine tasting. Five million people a year, from the US and abroad, travel to California's Napa Valley to experience the "good life": to taste fine wines, eat fine food, and immerse themselves in other sophisticated pleasures while surrounded by bucolic beauty.

Written in a highly readable style by anthropologists George and Sharon Gmelch, Tasting the Good Life examines who wine tourists are and what the "tasting" experience is all about. It also examines the growth of wine tourism in the valley and the impact it is having on the landscape and the lives of the people who live there. In addition to the authors’ own analysis, they present the personal narratives of 17 people who work in Napa tourism ― from winemaker to vineyard manager, from celebrity chef to wait staff, from hot air balloonist to masseuse. Their stories provide unexpected and entertaining insights into this new form of tourism, the people who engage in it, its impact on a now iconic place, and American consumer culture in the 21st century.
A double life : discovering motherhood

Lisa Catherine Harper

There is no denying it: motherhood splits a woman's life forever, into a before and an after. To this doubled life Lisa Catherine Harper brings a wealth of feeling and a wry sense of humor, a will to understand the emotional and biological transformations that motherhood entails, and a narrative gift that any reader will enjoy. Harper documents her own journey across this great divide as a seasoned explorer might, observing, researching, relating anecdotes and critical information. From late-night Lindy Hop dancing to crippling sciatica, morning sickness to indulgent meals, graduate seminars to sophisticated ultrasounds, Harper marries scientific details with intimate insights as she uncovers the fascinating strangeness of this remarkably familiar territory. Following Harper's first pregnancy from conception to her daughter's first word, A Double Life looks at how the biological facts of motherhood give rise to life-altering emotional and psychological changes. It shows us how motherhood transforms the female body, hijacks a woman's mind, and splits her life in two, creating an identity both brand new and as old as time. It charts the passage from individual to incubator, from pregnancy, labor, and nursing to language acquisition, from coupledom to the complex reality of family life. Harper's carefully researched story reminds us that motherhood's central joys are also its most essential transformations.
All This

Lily Iona MacKenzie

All This is wonderful collection of poems. Indicative of the title, the poems range from the conventional lyric/narrative that captures an intense moment of emotion, an epiphany glimpsed briefly out of the corner of the eye, to the more experimental. Some of the poetry use intertextuality, language from other works, to explore meaning, perception, and layers of experience. Other poems play with language, letting it lead into unexpected places, exploring new terrain. In a few, placement on the page conveys the feel of musical notation and phrasing, the page a theatre where the interaction of language makes meaning rather than recreates a remembered event. At times, words in a poem are treated as paint and the sheet of paper as an expressionistic canvas. A book of poetry to keep close by you at all times.
Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Careers

Patricia Mitchell

They Can’t Touch You... Know Your Own Power!
Women are challenged to still compete in a man’s world. This is hard to believe when in many respects we have come so far. But statistics do not lie and women still earn only seventy cents to each dollar a man earns. Despite the high levels of education women obtain, we still only hold a very small percentage of senior executive positions.
If you are embarking on a career or if you are still in the game, maybe it will be of assistance to read about the Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Careers.
Keep this little book as a friendly reminder to help you along the way. Go from being unaware to taking a bold stand.
“At last! A must read for women to avoid career missteps—brilliant!”
—Dr. Lily Benavides Social Scientist & Leadership Development Educator
“This book is a timely addition to the career woman’s get-ahead toolkit.”
—Dr. Cathy F. Corcoran Academy of Art University
“Truly a wonderful find and great read for women who want to make a difference.”
—Stephanie Harkness Founder & CEO of Largest Contract Manufacturer of Medical Devices of Silicon Valley
“A great commonsense approach to managing your career as a woman.”
—Dr. Marion Moreno Former Director, Executive Education, Charles Schwab
“A fabulous little book on best practices for women of any age; truly fabulous.”
—Dennis Nahat Artistic Director, Ballet San Jose
Proceeds from this book will go to support the scholarship program for students attending the Ballet San Jose School, San Jose California.
Damascus

Joshua Mohr

It's 2003 and the country is divided evenly for and against the Iraq War. Damascus, a dive bar in San Francisco's Mission District, becomes the unlikely setting for a showdown between the opposing sides.

Tensions come to a boil when Owen, the bar's proprietor who has recently taken to wearing a Santa suit full-time, agrees to host the joint's first (and only) art show by Sylvia Suture, an ambitious young artist who longs to take her act to the dramatic precipice of the high-wire by nailing live fish to the walls as a political statement.

An incredibly creative and fully rendered cast of characters orbit the bar. There's No Eyebrows, a cancer patient who has come to the Mission to die anonymously; Shambles, the patron saint of the hand job; Revv, a lead singer who acts too much like a lead singer; and Owen, donning his Santa costume to mask the most unfortunate birthmark imaginable.

Damascus is the place where confusion and frustration run out of room to hide. By gracefully tackling such complicated topics as cancer, Iraq, and issues of self-esteem, Joshua Mohr has painted his most accomplished novel yet.
Parallel Programming

Peter Pacheco

Author Peter Pacheco uses a tutorial approach to show students how to develop effective parallel programs with MPI, Pthreads, and OpenMP. The first undergraduate text to directly address compiling and running parallel programs on the new multi-core and cluster architecture, An Introduction to Parallel Programming explains how to design, debug, and evaluate the performance of distributed and shared-memory programs. User-friendly exercises teach students how to compile, run and modify example programs. Key features:
- Takes a tutorial approach, starting with small programming examples and building progressively to more challenging examples
- Focuses on designing, debugging and evaluating the performance of distributed and shared-memory programs
- Explains how to develop parallel programs using MPI, Pthreads, and OpenMP programming models
Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to the NMAI

Dean Rader

From Sherman Alexie's films to the poetry and fiction of Louise Erdrich and Leslie Marmon Silko to the paintings of Jaune Quick-To-See Smith and the sculpture of Edgar Heap of Birds, Native American movies, literature, and art have become increasingly influential, garnering critical praise and enjoying mainstream popularity. Recognizing that the time has come for a critical assessment of this exceptional artistic output and its significance to American Indian and American issues, Dean Rader offers the first interdisciplinary examination of how American Indian artists, filmmakers, and writers tell their own stories.

Beginning with rarely seen photographs, documents, and paintings from the Alcatraz Occupation in 1969 and closing with an innovative reading of the National Museum of the American Indian, Rader initiates a conversation about how Native Americans have turned to artistic expression as a means of articulating cultural sovereignty, autonomy, and survival. Focusing on figures such as author/director Sherman Alexie (Flight, Face, and Smoke Signals), artist Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, director Chris Eyre (Skins), author Louise Erdrich (Jacklight, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse), sculptor Edgar Heap of Birds, novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, sculptor Allen Houser, filmmaker and actress Valerie Red Horse, and other writers including Joy Harjo, LeAnne Howe, and David Treuer, Rader shows how these artists use aesthetic expression as a means of both engagement with and resistance to the dominant U.S. culture. Raising a constellation of new questions about Native cultural production, Rader greatly increases our understanding of what aesthetic modes of resistance can accomplish that legal or political actions cannot, as well as why Native peoples are turning to creative forms of resistance to assert deeply held ethical values.
My ruby slippers : the road back to Kansas

Tracy Seeley

Sure, there’s no place like home—but what if you can’t really pinpoint where home is? By the time she was nine, Tracy Seeley had lived in seven towns and thirteen different houses. Her father’s dreams of movie stardom, stoked by a series of affairs, kept the family on edge, and on the move, until he up and left. Thirty years later, settled in what seems like a charmed life in San Francisco, a diagnosis of cancer and the betrayal of a lover shake Seeley to her roots—roots she is suddenly determined to search out. My Ruby Slippers tells the story of that search, the tale of a woman with an impassioned if vague sense of mission: to find the meaning of home.

Seeley finds herself in a Kansas that defies memory, a place far more complex and elusive than the sum of its cultural myths. On back roads and in her many back years, Seeley also finds unexpected forgiveness for her errant father, and, in the face of mortality, a sense of what it means to be rooted in place, to dwell deeply in the only life we have.
Black Nationalism in the United States: from Malcolm X to Barack Obama

James Lance Taylor

Black nationalism. Is it an outdated political strategy? Or, as James Taylor argues in his rich, sweeping analysis, a logical response to the failure of post civil rights politics? Taylor offers a provocative assessment of the contemporary relevance and interpretation of black nationalism as both a school of thought and a mode of mobilization. Fundamental to his analysis is the assertion that black nationalism should be understood not simply as a separatist movement the traditional conception but instead as a common-sense psychological orientation with long roots in US political history. Providing entirely new lines of insight and analysis, his work ranges from the religious foundations of black political ideologies to the nationalist sentiments of today s hip-hop generation.
From Timbuktu to the Mississippi Delta: how West African standards of aesthetics have shaped the music of the Delta blues.

Pascal Bokar Thiam

From Timbuktu to the Mississippi Delta explores how West African standards of aesthetics and sociocultural traits have moved into mainstream American culture and become social norms. I was curious to know why African Americans (and the country as a whole, for that matter) began clapping on beats two and four, and why we’d get dirty looks if we were caught clapping on the wrong beat. I had a desire to know why the identity of the music of our nation, with its majority population of European descent, had the musical textures, bent pitches, and blue notes of Africa. I wondered why a sense of swing developed here that was closer in syncopation to African culture than to the classical music of Vienna or the Paris Opera. And finally, I wanted to know why our nation’s youth moved suggestively on the dance floor with their hips—movements that are closer in aesthetics to African dance than to ballet. The journey began on the banks of the mighty Niger River.
Caribou Island : a novel

David Vann

“Dazzling…. Vann knows the darkness but he writes from the compassionate light of art. This is an essential book.” —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

“Exceptional….An unflinching portrait of bad faith and bad dreams.” —Ron Rash, author of Burning Bright

Set against the backdrop of Alaska’s unforgiving wilderness, Caribou Island is David Vann’s dark and captivating tale of a marriage pulled apart by rage and regret. With this eagerly anticipated debut novel, a masterful follow-up to his internationally bestselling short fiction anthology, Legend of a Suicide, Vann takes up the mantle of Louise Erdrich, Marilyn Robinson, and Rick Moody, delivering a powerfully wrought, enthrallingly emotional narrative of struggle and isolation.
Acting Together II, Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict: Building Just and Inclusive Communities

Roberto Gutierrez Varea

Acting Together volume II continues where the first volume left off, presenting more inspiring examples of peacebuilding performances in conflict-ridden regions. Where the first volume emphasizes theater and ritual's potential for resistance and catharsis in the midst of direct violence and in the aftermath of mass violence, the second volume focuses on performance's ability to bridge gaps and create inclusion in the more subtle context of structural violence and social exclusion. Drawing examples from the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe, this volume also includes practical recommendations for policy makers, a toolkit for practitioners, and a wealth of resources for artists and educators.
Acting together: performance and the creative transformation of conflict

Roberto Gutierrez Varea

Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict volume I explores performance as a social justice, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding tool in regions fractured by violence, dislocation, poverty, and oppression. Nine case studies from six continents shape a vocabulary for evaluating community, artist, and ritual-based performance, giving voice to silenced truths.

Performative genres of positive resistance and peace building include traditional and nontraditional theater, storytelling, nonviolent protest, vigil, skateboarding, martial arts, and hip-hop and rap. Photos and vivid firsthand accounts expose performance's unique ability to bypass polemics, heal wounds, and engender a more peaceful future in Argentina, Peru, Serbia, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Palestine, India, Australia, and the United States.
Class and Power in the New Deal: Corporate Moderates, Southern Democrats, and the Liberal-Labor Coalition

Michael J. Webber

Class and Power in the New Deal provides a new perspective on the origins and implementation of the three most important policies that emerged during the New Deal—the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Social Security Act. It reveals how Northern corporate moderates, representing some of the largest fortunes and biggest companies of that era, proposed all three major initiatives and explores why there were no viable alternatives put forward by the opposition. More generally, this book analyzes the seeming paradox of policy support and political opposition. The authors seek to demonstrate the superiority of class dominance theory over other perspectives—historical institutionalism, Marxism, and protest-disruption theory—in explaining the origins and development of these three policy initiatives. Domhoff and Webber draw on extensive new archival research to develop a fresh interpretation of this seminal period of American government and social policy development.
Remaking Citizenship: latina Immigrants and the New American Politics

Kathleen Coll

Standing at the intersection of immigration and welfare reform, immigrant Latin American women are the target of special scrutiny in the United States. Both the state and the media often present them as scheming "welfare queens" or long-suffering, silent victims of globalization and machismo. This book argues for a reformulation of our definitions of citizenship and politics, one inspired by women who are usually perceived as excluded from both. Weaving the stories of Mexican and Central American women with history and analysis of the anti-immigrant upsurge in 1990s California, this compelling book examines the impact of reform legislation on individual women's lives and their engagement in grassroots political organizing. Their accounts of personal and political transformation offer a new vision of politics rooted in concerns as disparate as domestic violence, childrearing, women's self-esteem, and immigrant and workers' rights.
The empire strikes out : how baseball sold U.S. foreign policy and promoted the American way abroad

Robert Elias

It's our game . . . America's game: it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere--belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly as our Constitution's laws, [and] is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.--WALT WHITMAN SPEAKING ABOUT BASEBALL

Is the face of American baseball throughout the world that of goodwill ambassador or ugly American? Has baseball crafted its own image or instead been at the mercy of broader forces shaping our society and the globe? The Empire Strikes Out gives us the sweeping story of how baseball and America are intertwined in the export of "the American way."

From the Civil War to George W. Bush and the Iraq War, we see baseball's role in developing the American empire, first at home and then beyond our shores. And from Albert Spalding and baseball's first World Tour to Bud Selig and the World Baseball Classic, we witness the globalization of America's national pastime and baseball's role in spreading the American dream. Besides describing baseball's frequent and often surprising connections to America's presence around the world, Elias assesses the effects of this relationship both on our foreign policies and on the sport itself and asks whether baseball can play a positive role or rather only reinforce America's dominance around the globe. Like Franklin Foer in How Soccer Explains the World, Elias is driven by compelling stories, unusual events, and unique individuals. His seamless integration of original research and compelling analysis makes this a baseball book that's about more than just sports.
Diaspora Diplomacy: Philippine Migration and its Soft Power Influences.

Jay Gonzalez

Diaspora Diplomacy: Philippine Migration and its Soft Power Influences is about the remarkable and untapped soft power that international migrants possess and how various sectors-from governments, NGOs, business, and international organizations- could tap this valuable resource to enhance global cooperation and development. With compelling stories from Filipina and Filipino migrants in San Francisco, London, Dubai, Dhaka, and Singapore comprising the large Philippine diaspora, this book illustrates how this widespread community performs numerous acts of public diplomacy, bridging the cultural and economic gap between its homeland and its new home base
The Mythologist

Vamsee Juluri

As a child, i was a god now, if only that were true, what a beautiful story my life would have made the truth was, i was only almost a god' growing up in the film studios of madras in the shadow of the emergency, p parashuram wants nothing more than to play lord krishna in a biopic his big grandfather, legendary director of subversive epics and father of the industry will make for him this never happens the industry betrays big grandfather, he fades away, and the only realities that remain in young parashuram's life are the myths that fuelled his grandfather's films and his solitary, overactive imagination after a desultory stint at boarding school, parashuram comes back to the charred world of his grandfather's dreams he has just settled down to a life of quiet despair when a woman we know only as ak bursts into his life-a fast-talking, well-connected wheeler-dealer who becomes his elder sister, takes him to america and gives him a job but even as parashuram's life looks up, airplanes crash into the twin towers and he is stranded in san francisco, alone, paranoid, and without a passport when he tries to confront and make sense of events, parashuram finds that all he has is the fantastic world of goddesses and gorgons of his beloved myths
Work & Days

Dean Rader

Released in September, 2010, Works & Days, has garnered unusual critical attention for a first book. Known for his book reviews and op-ed pieces as well as for his scholarly work in the areas of American Indian studies and visual and popular culture, Dean Rader has produced a debut collection that is an ambitious and funny series of poems that judge Claudia Keelan has described as "a primer for MFA programs everywhere." Divided into three sections--"Works," "&," and "Days"--Rader's poems map the intersecting roads of the personal and the cultural. The first section, "Works," contains poems about works that shape how the author sees the world, like the poetry of Wallace Stevens, popular music, the art of Robert Motherwell, the mysteries of Havana, Hesiod's ruminations on duty and the divine, and Frog and Toad. "&" is a more playful experimental section that connects the themes of "Works" (poems about Michael Jackson, pumpkins, Dorothea Lange, and Frog and Toad) with the autobiographical final section. "Days" begins with the poet's 30th birthday and marks each subsequent birthday until his 41st, which loops back to the path of "Works" with a final closing poem inspired by the Estonian composer Arvo Part (and, of course, Frog and Toad).
Imagining Black womanhood : the negotiation of power and identity within the Girls Empowerment Project

Stephanie Sears

Examines how Black girls and women negotiate and resist dominant stereotypes in the context of an Africentric, womanist youth organization for disadvantaged girls.

Imagining Black Womanhood illuminates the experiences of the women and girls of the Girls Empowerment Project, an Africentric, womanist, single-sex, after-school program located in one of the Bay Area’s largest and most impoverished housing developments. Stephanie D. Sears carefully examines the stakes of the complex negotiations of Black womanhood for both the girls served by the project and for the women who staffed it. Rather than a multigenerational alliance committed to women’s and girls’ empowerment, the women and girls often appeared to struggle against each other, with the girls’ “politics of respect” often in conflict with the staff’s “politics of respectability,” a conflict especially highlighted in the public contexts of dance performances. This groundbreaking case study offers significant insights into practices of resistance, identity work, youth empowerment, cultural politics, and organizational power.