Our goal is to eventually record most books written or edited by Western Michigan University faculty, staff and students. If you are a WMU faculty or staff member and have a book you would like to include in this list, please contact wmu-scholarworks@wmich.edu
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Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, and the Limits of Epic Masculinity
Sara Poor and Jana Schulman
This collection of essays explores the place, function, and meaning of women as characters, authors, constructs, and cultural symbols in a variety of epics from the Middle Ages, including those of Persia, Spain, France, England, Germany, and Scandinavia.nbsp; Medieval epics are traditionally believed to narrate the deeds of men at war. This volume draws our attention not only to the key roles women often play in these narratives, but also to the larger implications they might have for thehistory of gender. Rather than invite simple cross-cultural generalizations about epic women, ...Read More
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Immigrants and Their International Money Flows
Susan Pozo
International migration with an emphasis on workers' remittances. Chapters cover the impact of remittances on economic development and the interplay of immigration policies with human capital acquisition and labor markets in out-migration areas. Included are: * Migration and Remittances, by Susan Pozo. In her introductory chapter, Pozo discussues why remittances have become such an important topic to immigration researchers. * International Migration and Economic Development in Low-Income Countries: Lessons from Recent Data, by Robert E.B. Lucas. Lucas contributes a general overview of international migration and notes that, while understanding the ...Read More
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Jazz Singing: Developing Artistry and Authenticity
Diana R. Spralding
The book vocal jazz artists have been waiting for! Finally, here is a substantial definition of what vocal jazz artists actually do physically and vocally. The findings are based on over three decades of teaching and almost four years of acoustic research including a study of 20 jazz artists from the first generation of modern jazz singers. Learn 9 different uses of vibrato. Learn how to practice and execute appropriate vowels, diphthongs and text treatment so as to sound more authentic. Study 10 common elements of 6 complete transcriptions of ...Read More
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Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya
Bilinda Straight
The Samburu of northern Kenya struggle to maintain their pastoral way of life as drought and the side effects of globalization threaten both their livestock and their livelihood. Mirroring this divide between survival and ruin are the lines between the self and the other, the living and the dead, "this side" and inia bata, "that side." Cultural anthropologist Bilinda Straight, who has lived with the Samburu for extended periods since the 1990s, bears witness to Samburu life and death in Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya.
Written mostly in the ...Read More -
Evaluation Theory, Models, and Applications
Daniel Stufflebeam and Anthony Shinkfield
Evaluation Theory, Models, and Applications is designed for evaluators and students who need to develop a commanding knowledge of the evaluation field: its history, theory and standards, models and approaches, procedures, and inclusion of personnel as well as program evaluation. This important book shows how to choose from a growing array of program evaluation approaches.
In one comprehensive resource, the authors have compiled vital information from the evaluation literature and draw on a wide range of practical experiences. Using this book, evaluators will be able to identify, analyze, and judge ...Read More
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Enterprise Systems Education in the 21st Century
Andrew S. Targowski and J. Michael Tarn
IT education, particularly at business colleges, is undergoing a transformation because of the emerging federated systems or enterprise-wide systems (ES). This follows a trend in industry, which uses complex software applications like SAP and others. This movement toward ES in industry has created major challenges for integrating ES into the classroom.Enterprise Systems Education in the 21st Century presents methods of reengineering business curricula in order to use ES solutions. It also helps ES vendors understand the higher education environment so they can support college and university programs. Enterprise Systems Education ...Read More
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Reminiscences on Surgery, History and Humanities
Luis Toledo-Pereya
"This book introduces writings on the history and philosophy of surgery the previously appeared in the Journal of Investigative Surgery. These writings were selected and organized after careful analysis to include those works that demonstrated the best cohesive unit in telling about the evolution of surgery and its masters."
*from the preface
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Evaluation in Social Work: The Art and Science of Practice
Yvonne Unrau, Peter Gabor, and Rick Grinnell
Social work practice is built upon the linkage between the objectives and goals of clients, programs, and agencies, and the evaluation process is critical for making sure those links are strong. Building on its earlier editions with seven new chapters and complete revisions of the others, as well as a strong online companion website presence, this text is more relevant and user-friendly than ever. It provides a straightforward introduction to program evaluation couched within the quantitative and qualitative traditions--the approaches most commonly used to gain social work knowledge. The result ...Read More
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China's Geography: Globalization and the Dynamics of Political, Economic, and Social Change
Gregory Veeck, Clifton W. Pannell, Christopher J. Smith, and Youquin Huang
Despite China's growing importance on the world stage, it is often and easily misunderstood. Indeed, there are many Chinas, as this sustained survey of contemporary China vividly illustrates. Offering the first comprehensive geography of the reform era, the authors trace the changes occurring in this ancient nation across both time and space. Beginning with China's diverse landscapes and environments, and continuing through its formative history and tumultuous recent past, this text places China in its international context as a massive developing nation that must meet the needs of its 1.3 ...Read More
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Where Do I Go from Here?: Meeting the Unique Educational Needs of Migrant Students
Karen Vocke
"Where Do I Go From Here?" by Karen Vocke is a practical and well written book that will appeal to teachers, administrators, and other community members where migrant workers live and these workers'' children go to school. The book contains valuable resources, including lesson plans and other materials that could be used by teachers of other ESL children, as well as by teachers whose students are not learners of English. The book helps the reader become aware that educational opportunity and equality do not exist as static entities, but rather ...Read More
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Tied to the Great Packing Machine: The Midwest and Meatpacking
Wilson Warren
Ambitious in its historical scope and its broad range of topics, Tied to the Great Packing Machine tells the dramatic story of meatpacking's enormous effects on the economics, culture, and environment of the Midwest over the past century and a half. Wilson Warren situates the history of the industry in both its urban and its rural settings--moving from the huge stockyards of Chicago and Kansas City to today's smaller meatpacking communities--and thus presents a complete portrayal of meatpacking's place within the larger agro-industrial landscape.
Writing from the vantage point of ...Read More -
The Grammar Plan Book: A Guide to Smart Teaching
Constance Weaver
Thanks to Connie Weaver, generations of teachers have come to understand that the most efficient way to teach grammar that's relevant for writing is to embed it within writing instruction. Now her Grammar Plan Book is designed with precisely one thing in mind: to be the best resource you've ever used for teaching grammar to strengthen writing. This new book helps you apply a limited amount of grammar instruction directly to writing and enables you to map out instruction in the way that best serves the needs of your students.
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Ritual, Discourse, and Community in Cuban Santeria: Speaking a Sacred World
Kristina Wirtz
How do Santería practitioners in Cuba create and maintain religious communities amidst tensions, disagreements, and competition among them, and in the absence of centralized institutional authority? What serves as the "glue" that holds practitioners of different backgrounds together in the creation of a moral community? Examining the religious lives of santeros in Santiago de Cuba, Wirtz argues that these communities hold together not because members agree on their interpretations of rituals but because they often disagree. Religious life is marked by a series of "telling moments"--not only the moments themselves ...Read More
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Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and Organizations
Mark Zachry and Charlotte Thralls
Bringing together prominent scholars from a variety of disciplines, Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and Organizations offers readers an engaging set of essays on the complicated relationship between discourse and the many institutions within which people act. Each author brings a unique theoretical perspective to conceptualizing how discourse is regulated and how it regulates when human activity is organized for such purposes as work or belonging to a profession. Together, the contributors to this collection offer a provocatively complex picture of ...Read More