The books listed on this guide represent only a sample of the titles available in the library's collection. To find more titles of interest to you, search the library catalog.
Cultural Practices, Political Possibilities by
Culture has long been regarded as one of the most complicated concepts in the social sciences, possibly over theorized. Its ubiquity, tangled senses of particularity and the almost universal recognition of that assumed particularity require an extended vocabulary for framing the politics embedded in it. Cultural Practices, Political Possibilities attempts to explain the political significance and overlaps of cultural constructions as witnessed in global-local clashes, convergences of texts and contexts, within the state and community, identity and the self. Through various case-studies, concepts and interdisciplinary perspectives, the multinational group of authors from diverse academic backgrounds interprets cultural constructions of politics as factionalizing, identitarian, situational and particularistic in their links, affirmations and consequential divides. Each contribution, in its unique way explores the performative asymmetries and contradictions witnessed in diverse cultural interactions that shape new areas of political investigation.The book will be welcomed by students of international relations, environmental politics, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.
The Jury in America by
The jury trial is one of the formative elements of American government, vitally important even when Americans were still colonial subjects of Great Britain. When the founding generation enshrined the jury in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they were not inventing something new, but protecting something old: one of the traditional and essential rights of all free men. Judgment by an "impartial jury" would henceforth put citizen panels at the very heart of the American legal order. And yet at the dawn of the 21st century, juries resolve just two percent of the nation's legal cases and critics warn that the jury is "vanishing" from both the criminal and civil courts. The jury's critics point to sensational jury trials like those in theO. J. SimpsonandMenendezcases, and conclude that the disappearance of the jury is no great loss. The jury's defenders, from journeyman trial lawyers to members of the Supreme Court, take a different view, warning that the disappearance of the jury trial would be a profound loss.InThe Jury in America, a work that deftly combines legal history, political analysis, and storytelling, Dennis Hale takes us to the very heart of this debate to show us what the American jury system was, what it has become, and what the changes in the jury system tell us about our common political and civic life. Because the jury is so old, continuously present in the life of the American republic, it can act as a mirror, reflecting the changes going on around it. And yet because the jury is embedded in the Constitution, it has held on to its original shape more stubbornly than almost any other element in the American regime. Looking back to juries at the time of America's founding, and forward to the fraught and diminished juries of our day, Hale traces a transformation in our understanding of ideas about sedition, race relations, negligence, expertise, the responsibilities of citizenship, and what it means to be a citizen who is "good and true" and therefore suited to the difficult tasks of judgment.Criminal and civil trials and the jury decisions that result from them involve the most fundamental questions of right, and so go to the core of what makes the nation what it is. In this light, in conclusion, Hale considers four controversial modern trials for what they can tell us about what a jury is, and about the fate of republican government in America today.
Shame of Southern Politics by
As a leader of the Southern Regional Council in the early 1960s, and later as executive director of the Field Foundation, Leslie Dunbar's advocacy and behind-the-scenes organizing made him one of the most significant (but least recognized) people in the civil rights movement. His essays and speeches often helped set the agenda. They also continue to offer a prophetic voice in our struggle to create a more humane and fully integrated America. The Shame of Southern Politics gathers for the first time fourteen of Dunbar's essays and speeches on the courage and values of the southern civil rights movement. Dunbar's selected writings, ranging from the classic 1961 essay "The Annealing of the South" to a post-September 11th meditation, give eloquent voice to the best of America's liberal tradition. A new essay entitled "1968" offers Dunbar's unique take on that transformational year.
The Parties Respond by
An updated examination of contemporary issues surrounding party politics in the United States
A Constitutional History of the U. S. Supreme Court by 
Political Parties and Political Development. (SPD-6) by 
Guide to U. S. Political Parties by 
Political Parties in the Digital Age by 
Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Political Theory by 
Evil in Contemporary Political Theory by 
