Homebound Heroics

This book traces the effects of the feminist and civil rights movements in the construction of Hollywood action heroes. Starting in the late 1980s, action blockbusters regularly have featured masculine figures who choose love and community over the path of the stoic loner committed solely to duty. The American heroic quest of the past 25 years increasingly has involved a reclamation of home, creating a place for the Hero at the hearth, part of a more intimate community with less restrictive gender and racial boundaries. The author presents pieces of contemporary popular culture that create the complex mosaic of the present-day American heroic ideal. Hollywood popular films are examined that best represent the often painful shift from traditional heroic masculinity to a masculinity that is less "exceptional" and more vulnerable. There are also chapters on how issues of race and gender intersect with the new masculinity and on subgenres of 1990s films that also developed this postfeminist masculinity.

Filipino Americans, who experience life in the United States as immigrants, colonized nationals, and racial minorities, have been little studied, though they are one of our largest immigrant groups. Based on her in-depth interviews with more than one hundred Filipinos in San Diego, California, Yen Le Espiritu investigates how Filipino women and men are transformed through the experience of migration, and how they in turn remake the social world around them. Her sensitive analysis reveals that Filipino Americans confront U.S. domestic racism and global power structures by living transnational lives that are shaped as much by literal and symbolic ties to the Philippines as they are by social, economic, and political realities in the United States. Espiritu deftly weaves vivid first-person narratives with larger social and historical contexts as she discovers the meaning of home, community, gender, and intergenerational relations among Filipinos. Among other topics, she explores the ways that female sexuality is defined in contradistinction to American mores and shows how this process becomes a way of opposing racial subjugation in this country. She also examines how Filipinos have integrated themselves into the American workplace and looks closely at the effects of colonialism.

It is only in childhood that books have any deep influence on our lives--Graham Greene The luminous books of our childhood will remain the luminous books of our lives.--Joyce Carol Oates Writers, as they often attest, are deeply influenced by their childhood reading. Salman Rushdie, for example, has said that The Wizard of Oz made a writer of me. Twice-Told Tales is a collection of essays on the way the works of adult writers have been influenced by their childhood reading. This fascinating volume includes theoretical essays on Salman Rushdie and the Oz books, Beauty and the Beast retold as Jane Eyre, the childhood reading of Jorge Luis Borges, and the remnants of nursery rhymes in Sylvia Plath's poetry. It is supplemented with a number of brief commentaries on children's books by major creative writers, including Maxine Hong Kingston and Maxine Kumin.

In antebellum society, women were regarded as ideal nurses because of their sympathetic natures. However, they were expected to exercise their talents only in the home; nursing strange men in hospitals was considered inappropriate, if not indecent. Nevertheless, in defiance of tradition, Confederate women set up hospitals early in the Civil War and organized volunteers to care for the increasing number of sick and wounded soldiers. As a fledgling government engaged in a long and bloody war, the Confederacy relied on this female labor, which prompted a new understanding of women’s place in public life and a shift in gender roles. Challenging the assumption that Southern women’s contributions to the war effort were less systematic and organized than those of Union women, Worth a Dozen Men looks at the Civil War as a watershed moment for Southern women. Female nurses in the South played a critical role in raising army and civilian morale and reducing mortality rates, thus allowing the South to continue fighting. They embodied a new model of heroic energy and nationalism, and came to be seen as the female equivalent of soldiers. Moreover, nursing provided them with a foundation for pro-Confederate political activity, both during and after the war, when gender roles and race relations underwent dramatic changes. Worth a Dozen Men chronicles the Southern wartime nursing experience, tracking the course of the conflict from the initial burst of Confederate nationalism to the shock and sorrow of losing the war. Through newspapers and official records, as well as letters, diaries, and memoirs—not only those of the remarkable and dedicated women who participated, but also of the doctors with whom they served, their soldier patients, and the patients’ families—a comprehensive picture of what it was like to be a nurse in the South during the Civil War emerges.

This short, elegiac volume makes an impassioned case for the fundamental importance of the forgotten virtue of reverence, and how awe for things greater than oneself can - indeed must - be a touchstone for other virtues like respect, humility, and charity. Ranging widely over diverse cultural terrain - from Philip Larkin to ancient Greek poetry, from modern politics to Chinese philosphy - Woodruff shows how absolutely essential reverence is to a well-functioning society.

Elder Law: Practice, Policy, and Problems is designed with the teacher and learner in mind. It combines a client-focused approach with in-depth discussions of elder law related policy issues. Designed to be simultaneously practical and theoretical, it provides students with specific legal knowledge and a conceptual framework for understanding key issues facing older adults and the attorneys who represent them. The author’s narrative frames a series of primary materials including cases, statutes, regulations, and sample documents, as well as excerpts from articles designed to stimulate student thinking and discussion. Problems and hypothetical exercises—many of which relate to client counseling—ask students to imagine themselves in the role of the elder law attorney, and to describe how they would handle various scenarios, such as a client meeting. In addition, questions in each section prompt students to critique key policies and thereby test their understanding of those policies. New to the Second Edition: Comprehensive updates that capture changes in law and policy, including major revisions to nursing home regulations, new developments in guardianship law, and an emerging line of cases on age discrimination in hiring New coverage of: family caregiving and caregivers’ rights “Gray divorce” and its implications for policy design and planning Supported decision-making Social service interventions that address elder abuse Professors and students will benefit from: Very clearly organized content A client-centered approach Integrated discussion of policy and current issues supported by relevant cases, statutes, regulations, sample documents, and commentaries. All relevant statutory material being within the casebook, meaning there is no need to require a separate statutory supplement Practice problems of varying difficulty that encourage students to apply what they are learning to realistic client-focused hypothetical scenarios Questions throughout the text that prompt critical thinking, and prepare students to engage in classroom discussion Exercises that can be used for either independent or in-class assignments

A comprehensive guide for those caring for a loved one nearing the end of life. Many people seek the comfort and dignity of dying at home. Advances in pharmacology and hospice care allow the dying to remain at home relatively free of pain and symptoms, but navigating professional services, insurance coverage, and family dynamics often compounds the complexity of this process. Extensively updated and revised, this third edition of Andrea Sankar's Dying at Home: A Family Guide for Caregiving provides essential information that caregivers and dying persons need to navigate this journey. Featuring contributions by professionals and personal stories from in-depth case studies of family caregivers, this guide discusses the challenges, resources, benefits, and barriers to care at home. With updates on advance care planning, developments in palliative care medicine, and the availability of legally assisted dying, this edition discusses how to: • Arrange medical care, nursing, and ancillary therapies • Understand costs, sources of financial support, and insurance coverage • Collaborate with health professionals in the home • Assist in implementing pain management techniques • Find social and spiritual support, as well as self-care for caregivers • Handle family dynamics and legal matters • Collaborate to make complex care and treatment decisions • Navigate the process of dying and caring for the body after death

Lombardo's Odyssey offers the distinctive speed, clarity, and boldness that so distinguished his 1997 Iliad.