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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Wearing Wealth and Styling Identity: Tapis from Lampung, South Sumatra, Indonesia
Mary Louise Totton
Located between the two maritime routes connecing East and West Asia, Sumatra, the fabled Isle of Gold, was for centuries the source for much of the world's pepper. In the southern tip of Sumatra, the peoples of Lampung, or "Pepperland," poured the profits of their trade into ceremonial materials and adornments. The ornate tubular sarongs known as tapis were hand-woven from cotton and silk threads, colored with ancestral dye recipes, embellished with gold- and silver-wrapped threads, embroidered with silk or pineapple fiber threads, and appliqued with mirrors and mica. These ...Read More
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Materials for the Sociolinguistic Description and Corpus-Based Study of Spanish in Barcelona: Toward a Documentation of Colloquial Spanish in Naturally Occurring Groups
Robert Vann
This book reflects on the Spanish of Catalonia and furnishes documentary resources for studying colloquial Spanish spoken in naturally occurring social groups in Barcelona. Part I addresses many complex issues necessary to appropriately contextualize Spanish language usage in Barcelona and linguistic analysis of such usage, with discussions of language contact, ethnolinguistic identities, language ideologies, ways of speaking, corpus-based research, fieldwork methodology, and speaker profiles. Part II presents the first known publication of orthographically transcribed spoken language corpus data from colloquial Spanish conversations in naturally occurring social groups in Catalonia. The ...Read More
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Emily Hamilton and Other Writings
Sukey Vickery and Scott Slawinski
Sukey Vickery’s Emily Hamilton is an epistolary novel dealing with the courtship and marriages of three women. Originally published in 1803, it is one of the earliest examples of realist fiction in America and a departure from other novels at the turn of the nineteenth century. From the outset its author intended it as a realist project, never delving into the overly sentimental plotting or characterization present in much of the writing of Vickery’s contemporaries. Emily Hamilton explores from a decidedly feminine perspective the idea of a woman’s right to ...Read More
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Emily Dickinson and the Labor of Clothing
Daneen Wardrop
Daneen Wardrop's Emily Dickinson and the Labor of Clothing begins by identifying and using the dating tools of fashion to place the references to clothing in Dickinson's letters and poems, and to locate her social standing through examining her fashion choices in the iconic daguerreotype. In addition to detailing the poetics of fashion in Dickinson's work, the author argues that close examination of Dickinson and fashion cannot be separated from the changing ways that garments were produced during the nineteenth century, embracing issues of domestic labor, the Lowell textile mills, ...Read More
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The Journey Begins: Seven Stops to Freedom, the Legend of Sojourner Truth, the River to Cross
Von Washington
Travel with a slave family as they seek freedom in Canada, and experience slavery in The Journey Begins. Geared toward school age children, these two historical plays in one book bring history to life.
In Seven Stops to Freedom, follow Josh Acres as he escapes from slavery in Mississippi and meets his wife, Anna, and son, Malik, in Kentucky. They travel north to Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and eventually into Canada. This story reveals the mystery, danger, and adventure of the famous invisible Underground Railroad spearheaded by the legendary conductor Harriet ...Read More
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The Doctoral Degree in English Education
Allen Webb
The Doctoral Degree in English Education gathers the testimonies of graduate students and their professors, mostly former public school language arts teachers, as they develop their abilities as English teachers, earn the most advanced degree in their field, become professional leaders, and begin teaching at the university level. Responding to an on-going national shortage of professors of English education, this book provides first-hand information on deciding to pursue a doctorate, undertaking graduate studies, teaching university methods courses, writing dissertations, and entering the field as a professor of English education. Essential ...Read More
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RTI Success: Proven Tools and Strategies for Schools and Classrooms
Elizabeth Whitten, Kelli J. Esteves, and Alice Woodrow
This all-in-one resource provides information on Response to Intervention (RTI) as well as step-by-step administrator guidelines and practical teacher tools for implementation. Despite ongoing federal initiatives meant to increase the profile and prevalence of RTI in the nation's schools, many educators continue to have questions about the framework. What are the three tiers of intervention? How do screening and progress monitoring work? Is there funding available? "RTI Success" provides the "what" and "how-to" information that educators have been asking for. Features of the book include: Step-by-step guidelines for implementing RTI100+ ...Read More
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Historical Dictionary of Medieval China
Victor Cunrui Xiong
The crucial period of Chinese history, 220-960, falls naturally into contrasting phases. The first phase, also known as that of "early medieval China," is an age of political decentralization. Following the breakup of the Han empire, China was plunged into civil war and fragmentation and stayed divided for nearly four centuries. The second phase started in 589, during the Sui dynasty, when China was once again brought under a single government. Under the Sui, the bureaucracy was revitalized, the military strengthened, and the taxation system reformed. The fall of the ...Read More
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The Culture of the Gift in Eighteenth-Century England
Linda Zionkowski and Cynthia Klekar
Offering a variety of disciplinary perspectives, The Culture of the Gift in Eighteenth-Century England analyzes the long-overlooked role of gift exchange in literary texts, cultural documents, and economic relations in the period from 1660-1800. Contributors argue that the gift was instrumental to the workings of eighteenth-century society: it supported the phenomenal rise of charities, explained the increasingly complicated trade relations, enforced conventions of obligation and social hierarchies, and both strengthened and challenged the emergence of a market economy. Building upon the works of recent theorists, these essays provide innovative readings ...Read More