Uneasy Alliance

Uneasy Alliance illuminates the recent search in literary studies for a new interface between textual and contextual readings. Written in tribute to G.A.M. Janssens, the twenty-one essays in the volume exemplify a renewed awareness of the paradoxical nature of literary texts both as works of literary art and as documents embedded in and functioning within a writer's life and culture. Together they offer fresh and often interdisciplinary perspectives on twentieth-century American writers of more or less established status (Henry James, Edna St. Vincent Millay, E.E. Cummings, Vladimir Nabokov, Flannery O'Connor, Saul Bellow, Michael Ondaatje, Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros) as well as on those who, for reasons of fashion, politics, ideology, or gender, have been unduly neglected (Booth Tarkington, Julia Peterkin, Robert Coates, Martha Gellhorn, Isabella Gardner, Karl Shapiro, the young Jewish-American writers, Julia Alvarez, and writers of popular crime and detective fiction). Exploring the fruitful interactions and uneasy alliance between literature and ethics, film, biography, gender studies, popular culture, avant-garde art, urban studies, anthropology and multicultural studies, together these essays testify to the ongoing pertinence of an approach to literature that is undogmatic, sensitive and sophisticated and that seeks to do justice to the complex interweavings of literature, culture and biography in twentieth-century American writing.

This book deals with the complex and challenging organizational and scientific issues that arose in the operation of the MRC.

Paul Frymer argues provocatively that two-party competition in the United States leads to the marginalization of African Americans and the subversion of democracy. Scholars have long claimed that the need to win elections makes candidates, parties, and government responsive to any and all voters. Frymer shows, however, that party competition is centered around racially conservative white voters, and that this focus on white voters has dire consequences for African Americans. As both parties try to attract white swing voters by distancing themselves from blacks, black voters are often ignored and left with unappealing alternatives. African Americans are thus the leading example of a "captured minority." Frymer argues that our two-party system bears much of the blame for this state of affairs. Often overlooked in current discussions of racial politics, the party system represents a genuine form of institutional racism. Frymer shows that this is no accident, for the party system was set up in part to keep African American concerns off the political agenda. Today, the party system continues to restrict the political opportunities of African American voters, as was shown most recently when Bill Clinton took pains to distance himself from African Americans in order to capture conservative votes and win the presidency. Frymer compares the position of black voters with other social groups--gays and lesbians and the Christian right, for example--who have recently found themselves similarly "captured." Rigorously argued and researched, Uneasy Alliances is a powerful challenge to how we think about the relationship between black voters, political parties, and American democracy.

The struggle to rebuild Sanctuary continues in the eleventh entry in this shared-world fantasy series. The storms of war have passed Sanctuary by, and ordinary folk are confident the worst is behind them. Citizens work to restore their lives as the reconstruction brings new life to the city in more ways than one. However, it’s not sunny skies for everyone. Some residents are opting to settle old debts by the sword, and others are still vanishing off the streets. Meanwhile, Shupansea, ruler of the Beysib, is troubled by bloody nightmares, wondering what they could mean . . . Dive into the action-packed shared world of sword and sorcery, featuring stories by some of fantasy’s best authors, including Lynn Abbey, Robert Lynn Asprin, C. J. Cherryh, Jon DeCles, Chris Morris, C. S. Williams, Robin W. Bailey, and Diana L. Paxson. “It’s a collection to be raced through, to see what will happen. And it’s a collection to drag one’s feet through, lest the end come too soon.” —Fantasy-Faction

With the plight of escalating numbers of refugees around the world growing more desperate every year, the American religious organizations dedicated to helping them are faced with an increasingly complicated relationship with the U.S. government. In this groundbreaking new book, J. Bruce Nichols uncovers some disturbing facts and trends to demonstrate that the traditional separation of church and state in this country is not easily applied to the conduct of American foreign policy. Government has become increasingly dependent on the services of religious relief agencies for the implementation of refugee assistance. These agencies are for their part equally dependent on the government for funds, for strategic assistance, and for the freedom to function in many parts of the world. National security and foreign policy considerations often overwhelm humanitarian concerns. A number of hard questions emerge. Do certain religious groups receive preferential treatment for political reasons? Is the church/state relationship abroad compatible with constitutional guarantees of religious freedom? Have the refugees--and the religious groups helping them--become mere political pawns in the global power struggle? After reviewing the history of U.S. government relations with religious relief agencies, the author closely examines three politically explosive refugee situations: Honduras, Thailand, and the Sudan. As the Sanctuary trials in the United States have demonstrated, treatment of Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees has been greatly complicated by the conflicting attitudes of liberal religious groups and the U.S. and Honduran governments. By contrast, an evangelical group working with Laotian refugees in Thailand found itself inadvertently embroiled in U.S. policy debates over Laos and Vietnam. While in the Sudan, Nichols discovers close ties between religious relief organizations and the U.S. government in the surreptitious and extra-legal manueverings to remove the Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) to Israel. Nichols concludes that increasing political and moral disagreement between the government and the religious community now threatens the American tradition of worldwide humanitarian assistance and at the same time mirrors the wider loss of consensus in American foreign policy. He ends on a note of cautious optimism with a proposal for guidelines for responsible future coexistence and cooperation between church and state abroad.