The goal is to eventually record most books written or edited by Western Michigan University faculty, staff and students. We will start by entering the most recent publications first and work our way back to older books. There is a WMU Authors section in Waldo Library, where most of these books can be found. Most are available with another copy in the general stacks of Waldo or in the branch libraries.
With a few exceptions, we do not have the rights to put the full text of the book online, so there will be a link to a place where you can purchase the book.
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
-
The Thorn Puller
Hiromi Itō and Jeffrey Angles
Winner of the Sakutaro Hagiwara Prize and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize Caught between two cultures, award-winning author Hiromi Ito tackles subjects like aging, death, and suffering with dark humor, illuminating the bittersweet joys of being alive. The first novel to appear in English by award-winning author Hiromi Ito explores the absurdities, complexities, and challenges experienced by a woman caring for her two families: her husband and daughters in California and her aging parents in Japan.
...Read More
-
Breaking the Silence: Anthology of Liberian Poetry
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
Named a Notable African Book of 2023 by Brittle Paper Breaking the Silence is the first comprehensive collection of literature from Liberia since before the nation's independence. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley has gathered work from the 1800s to the present, including poets and emerging young writers exploring contemporary literary traditions with African and African diaspora poetry that transcends borders. In this collection, Liberia's founding settlers wrestle with their identity as African free slaves in the homeland
...Read More
-
Music and History: Bridging the Disciplines
Jeffrey H. Jackson and Stanley C. Pelkey
This book begins with a simple question: Why haven't historians and musicologists been talking to one another?
Historians frequently look to all aspects of human activity, including music, in order to better understand the past. Musicologists inquire into the social, cultural, and historical contexts of musical works and musical practices to develop theories about the meanings of compositions and the significance of musical creation. Both disciplines examine how people represent their experiences. This collection of
...Read More
-
Responsible Communication: Ethical Issues in Business, Industry, and the Professions
James A. Jaska and Michael Pritchard
Technological developments often place people at risk, globally, internationally or locally. Exploring ethical concerns about communications in such risk areas, this volume considers to what extent international, ethical or moral standards can be formulated to deal with such risks.
-
An Archaeology of Disbelief
Edward Jayne
An Archaeology of Disbelief traces the origin of secular philosophy to pre-Socratic Greek philosophers who proposed a physical universe without supernatural intervention. Some mentioned the Homeric gods, but others did not. Atomists and Sophists identified themselves as agnostics if not outright atheists, and in reaction Plato featured transcendent spiritual authority. However, Aristotle offered a physical cosmology justified by evidence from a variety of scientific fields. He also revisited many pre-Socratic assumptions by proposing that existence
...Read More
-
Oliver Ellsworth His Central Role in the Establishment of Federal Sovereignty
Edward Jayne
After the passage of the Constitution in 1787 the central government of the United States still lacked full federal sovereignty. Two years later this deficiency was remedied with the passage of the Judiciary Act, which gave the federal Supreme Court the power to review and reverse state Supreme Court decisions. The author of this crucial legislation was Oliver Ellsworth, who had served on the Committee of Detail that had written the first draft of the
...Read More
-
An Archaeology of Disbelief: The Origin of Secular Philosophy
Edward Jayne and Elaine Anderson Jayne
An Archaeology of Disbelief traces the origin of secular philosophy to pre-Socratic Greek philosophers who proposed a physical universe without supernatural intervention. Some mentioned the Homeric gods, but others did not. Atomists and Sophists identified themselves as agnostics if not outright atheists, and in reaction Plato featured transcendent spiritual authority. However, Aristotle offered a physical cosmology justified by evidence from a variety of scientific fields. He also revisited many pre-Socratic assumptions by proposing that existence
...Read More
-
Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free
Alexander Jefferson and Lewis H. Carlson
This book is a rare and important gift. One of the few memoirs of combat in World War II by a distinguished African-American flier, it is also perhaps the only account of the African-American experience in a German prison camp.Alexander Jefferson was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down defending a country that considered them to be second-class citizens. A Detroit native, Jefferson enlisted in 1942, trained at
...Read More
-
Sociology of Religion: A Critical Primer
Walter A. Jensen
Written with the aim of increasing public interest in the study of religion, this primer makes available, to both the student and layman alike, a substantial amount of practical information about the modern non-theological study of religion. Focusing on three key areas of interest -- (1) the difficulties in defining religion, (2) the secularization / desecularization debate, and (3) an overview of Prof. Rudolf J. Siebert's critical theory of religion -- the reader will easily
...Read More
-
Developing Critical Awareness at the Middle Level: Using Texts As Tools for Critique and Pleasure
Holly Johnson and Lauren Freedman Ph.D.
presents an instructional approach that mixes critique and pleasure, allowing middle-level students to read literature they enjoy while they develop critical awareness and address issues of social justice.
-
Building Reading Confidence In Adolescents: Key Elements That Enhance Proficiency
Holly Johnson, Lauren Freedman, and Karen F. Thomas
The authors present a research-based approach for building reading self-efficacy and focus on four concepts necessary to learners' literacy success: confidence, independence, metacognition, and stamina.
-
The Art of The One-Act: An Anthology
Arnold Johnston and Deborah Ann Percy
Drama. Edited by Arnold Johnston and Deborah Ann Percy. Includes One-Act plays by Constance Alexander, Claudia Barnett, Gaylord Brewer, Kent R. Brown, Joe Byers, Carey Daniels, Jim Daniels, Lisa Dillman, Christopher Farran, Steve Feffer, Bethany Gauthier, Michael Hemmingson, Michael Hohnstein, Lewis Horton, Richard Keller, Holly Wlater Kerby, Judy Klass, Maryann Lesert, James Magruder, Gloria G. Murray, Rich Orloff, Steven Schutzman, Danny Sklar, Bill Teitelbaum, Troy Tradup, Allison Williams.
...Read More
-
Time, Tense, and Reference
Aleksandar Jokic and Quentin Smith
Among the many branches of philosophy, the philosophy of time and the philosophy of language are more intimately interconnected than most, yet their practitioners have long pursued independent paths. This book helps to bridge the gap between the two groups. As it makes clear, it is increasingly difficult to do philosophy of language without any metaphysical commitments as to the nature of time, and it is equally difficult to resolve the metaphysical question of whether
...Read More
-
Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion
Katherine Joslin
Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion places the iconic New York figure and her writing in the context of fashion history and shows how dress lies at the very center of her thinking about art and culture. The study traces American patronage of the Paris couture houses from Worth and Doucet through Poiret and Chanel and places Wharton's characters in these establishments and garments to offer fresh readings of her well-known novels. Less known
...Read More
-
Jane Addams : a writer's life
Katherine Joslin
Jane Addams, a Writer's Life is an expansive, revealing, and refreshing re-examination of the renowned reformer as an imaginative writer. Jane Addams is best known for her groundbreaking social work at Hull-House, the force of her efforts toward Progressive political and social reform, and the bravery of her commitment to pacifism, for which she received the Nobel Peace Prize. Here, Joslin moves beyond this history to present Addams as a literary figure. Katherine Joslin examines
...Read More
-
Crossings in Text and Textile
Katherine Joslin and Daneen Wardrop
Crossings in Text and Textile explores the diverse range of transatlantic representations of clothing in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature. This collection of essays demonstrates that fashion history and literary history, when examined together, prompt fresh understandings of the complexities of race, class, and sexual identity. By bridging material culture and discourse, Crossings establishes the significance of fashion--while neglecting none of its aesthetic appeal--to offer historicized readings on a variety of topics, from Jane Austen's
...Read More
-
The Fur Trade
Rachel B. Juen and Michael Nassaney
Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project - Booklet Series, No. 2
Table of contents:
New France and the Fur Trade
North American Rivalries
How the Fur Trade Worked
Trade Routes and Transportation
A Two Way Trade: The Movement of Goods and Furs
People of the Trade in New France
Fur Trade Society
Native Peoples and the Fur Trade
Trade Goods and the Material Culture of the Fur
Trade Animal Exploitation
Conclusion
Fur Trade Timeline...Read More
-
History of How the Spaniards Arrived in Peru
Catherine Julien
Catherine Julien's new translation of Titu Cusi Yupanqui's Relasçion de como los Españoles Entraron en el Peru--an account of the Spanish conquest of Peru by the last indigenous ruler of the Inca empire--features student-oriented annotation, facing-page Spanish, and an Introduction that sets this remarkably rich source in its cultural, historical, and literary contexts.
-
Reading Inca History
Catherine Julien
At the heart of this book is the controversy over whether Inca history can and should be read as history. Did the Incas narrate a true reflection of their past, and did the Spaniards capture these narratives in a way that can be meaningfully reconstructed? In Reading Inca History,Catherine Julien finds that the Incas did indeed create detectable life histories.
The two historical genres that contributed most to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish narratives about the
...Read More
-
Becoming the Second City: Chicago's Mass News Media, 1833-1898
Richard Junger
Becoming the Second City examines the development of Chicago's press and analyzes coverage of key events in its history to call attention to the media's impact in shaping the city's cultural and historical landscape. In concise, extensively documented prose, Richard Junger illustrates how nineteenth-century newspapers acted as accelerants that boosted the growth of Chicago in its early history by continually making and remaking the city's public image as the nation's populous "Second City." Highlighting the
...Read More
-
Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations
Mitch Kachun
With the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, many African Americans began calling for "a day of publick thanksgiving" to commemorate this important step toward freedom. During the ensuing century, black leaders built on this foundation and constructed a distinctive and vibrant tradition through their celebrations of the end of slavery in New York State, the British West Indies, and eventually the United States as a whole. In this revealing study, Mitch Kachun
...Read More
-
First Martyr of Liberty
Mitch Kachun
First Martyr of Liberty explores how Crispus Attucks's death in the 1770 Boston Massacre led to his achieving mythic significance in African Americans' struggle to incorporate their experiences and heroes into the mainstream of the American historical narrative. While the other victims of the Massacre have been largely ignored, Attucks is widely celebrated as the first to die in the cause of freedom during the era of the American Revolution. He became a symbolic embodiment
...Read More
