Literal and metaphorical excavations at Sweet Briar College reveal how African American labor enabled the transformation of Sweet Briar Plantation into a private women’s college in 1906. This volume tells the story of the invisible founders of a college founded by and for white women. Despite being built and maintained by African American families, the college did not integrate its student body for sixty years after it opened. In the process, Invisible Founders challenges our ideas of what a college “founder” is, restoring African American narratives to their deserved and central place in the story of a single institution — one that serves as a microcosm of the American South.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously declared that “the greatest duty of a statesman is to educate." The central claim of Why Moralize upon It? is that it is not only statesmen who can help educate a democratic citizenry, but also novelists and filmmakers. This book’s title is drawn from Melville’s “Benito Cereno.” Near the end of this novella, after he has put down a rebellion of enslaved Africans, the American captain Amasa Delano claims that “the past is passed,” and thus there is no need to “moralize upon it.”Melville suggests, though, that it is crucial for Americans to critically examine American history and American political institutions; otherwise, they may be blind to the existence of injustices which will ultimately undermine democracy. Danoff argues that novels and films play a crucial role in helping democratic citizens undertake the kind of moral reflection that they must engage in if they are to not only preserve their political community, but also render it “forever worthy of the saving,” as Abraham Lincoln put it. Contending that some of the most profound American thinking about the nature of democratic leadership has come through novels more so than treatises or essays, Danoff argues that the works of fiction examined in this book explore difficult questions rather than provide any easy answers. Because these works have an ambiguous, nuanced, and tragic outlook, they teach citizen-readers how to think through the moral complexities of the political issues on which they must render judgment. The rich and multi-faceted democratic education that citizens glean from outstanding works of fiction is particularly necessary at a time when the media-landscape is often dominated by superficial “viral moments,” “sound-bites,” and social media posts. Moreover, given that we today live in an era of sharp political polarization in which partisans often demonize one another, it is especially valuable for Americans to be exposed to literary and cinematic works of art which remind us that none of us have a monopoly on virtue, and that all of us inhabit what Melville called “the common continent of men.”

An insider's view of China's under-the-radar, globally competitive innovators. Chinese innovators are making their mark globally. Not only do such giants as Alibaba and Huawei continue to thrive and grow through innovation, thousands of younger Chinese entrepreneurs are poised to enter the global marketplace. In this book, Mark Greeven, George Yip, and Wei Wei offer an insider's view of China's under-the-radar, globally competitive innovators. The authors, all experts on Chinese innovation, distinguish four types of innovators in China: pioneers, large companies that are globally known; hidden champions, midsize enterprises that are market leaders in their niches; underdogs, technology-driven ventures with significant intellectual property; and changemakers, newer firms characterized by digital disruption, exponential growth, and cross-industry innovations. They investigate what kinds of innovations these companies develop (product, process, or business model), their competitive strategies, and key drivers of innovation. They identify six typical ways Chinese entrepreneurs innovate, including swarm innovation (collectively pursuing opportunities) and rapid centralized decision making. Finally, they look at how Chinese innovators are going global, whether building R&D networks internationally or exporting disruptive business models. The book includes many examples of Chinese innovators and innovations, drawn from a range of companies—from pioneers to changemakers—including Alibaba, Haier, Hikvision, Malong Technology, Weihua Solar, Mobike, and Cheetah Mobile. Greeven, Yip, and Wei offer an essential guide to what makes China a heavyweight competitor in the global marketplace.

Conference Proceedings of 4th International Conference on Gender Research

Jimoh (English, U. of Arkansas-Fayetteville) investigates African American intracultural issues that inform a more broadly intertextual use of music in creating characters and themes in fiction by US black writers. Conventional close readings of texts, she argues, often miss historical-sociopolitical discourses that can illuminate African American narratives. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.

Writer, consultant and speaker Chris Rabb coined the term invisible capital to represent the unseen forces that dramatically impact entrepreneurial viability when a good attitude, a great idea, and hard work simply aren't enough. In his book, Invisible Capital: How Unseen Forces Shape Entrepreneurial Opportunity, Rabb puts forth concrete and...

The book is a comparative study of the invisibility trope in African American and Asian American literature. It distinguishes between various kinds of invisibility and offers a genealogy of the term while providing a theoretical dissection of the invisibility trope itself. Investigating the various ways of striving for visibility, the author places special emphasis on the need for cooperation among various racial groups. While the book explores invisibility in a variety of African American and Asian American literary texts, the main focus is on four novels: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Sam Greenlee's The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey and Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker. The book not only sheds light on the oppressed but also exposes the structures of oppression and the apparatus of power, which often renders itself invisible. Throughout the study the author emphasizes that power is multi-directional, never flowing only in one direction. The book brings to light mechanisms of oppression within the dominant society as well as within and between marginalized racial groups.

Grave sites not only offer the contemporary viewer the physical markers of those remembered but also a wealth of information about the era in which the cemeteries were created. These markers hold keys to our historical past and allow an entry point of interrogation about who is represented, as well as how and why. Grave History is the first volume to use southern cemeteries to interrogate and analyze southern society and the construction of racial and gendered hierarchies from the antebellum period through the dismantling of Jim Crow. Through an analysis of cemeteries throughout the South-including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Virginia, from the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries-this volume demonstrates the importance of using the cemetery as an analytical tool for examining power relations, community formation, and historical memory. Grave History draws together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, including historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and social-justice activists to investigate the history of racial segregation in southern cemeteries and what it can tell us about how ideas regarding race, class, and gender were informed and reinforced in these sacred spaces. Each chapter is followed by a learning activity that offers readers an opportunity to do the work of a historian and apply the insights gleaned from this book to their own analysis of cemeteries. These activities, designed for both the teacher and the student, as well as the seasoned and the novice cemetery enthusiast, encourage readers to examine cemeteries for their physical organization, iconography, sociodemographic landscape, and identity politics.

White privilege gave us Western civilization, the middle class, and the nuclear family—you’re welcome! This book is dedicated to the very fine people that made it all happen. A comedy about race, wokeness, and cancel culture in America. A tragedy about race, wokeness, and cancel culture in America. Part satire, part journalism, part truth serum, A.J. Rice follows up his runaway #1 bestseller The Woking Dead with a hilarious sequel that picks up where the laughs left off. It was the worst of times, it was the worse of times. In most sequels the bad guys win, but in The White Privilege Album, A.J. Rice doesn’t let them get away with it. Instead, he relentlessly mocks the hell out of the Cultural Marxists who seek to drain all liberty and joy from American lives. The least talented people in American society have been working overtime for decades dividing citizens along any differences they think they can exploit. The laziest tactic, proven to be the most effective, is unleashing a battalion of racial grievance hustlers in the media, academia, entertainment, and politics. If we stop fighting about our differences and start unifying on what we have in common, they will lose the power to divide us permanently. When asked what motivates his writing style, A.J. Rice says, “I was raised on both Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh, in fact, the three of us share the same birthday. One mantra that Rush always repeated was that his job was to ‘use irreverent humor to illustrate truth’ and that is what I am trying to do with The White Privilege Album.” Mockery paired with facts is what makes a journey through the Cultural Marxist hellscape of tyranny and insanity so pleasurable. Rice would prefer to be George Carlin, Ricky Gervais, or Mel Brooks rather than Aristotle, and it shows. His mic-dropping assault on the social justice warriors, the triggered snowflakes, and the transmafia showcases that there is no substitute for perfectly timed derision. The White Privilege Album is a hysterical guide to the catastrophe of our modern culture. *** “What do you mean Gen Z doesn’t know the Republican Party freed the slaves? Are these people dumb AF? They need to read A.J. Rice’s book!” —Abraham Lincoln, American lawyer, statesman, and 16th president of the United States shot by a pre-Hollywood anti-American actor “A.J. Rice really gets it. Obviously, I’d send him to the gulag if I could. But he outlines my plan masterfully in his new book.” —Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator, genocide spokesman, Pravda editor, and hater of John Wayne “A must-read book for all Cleveland Guardians fans, A.J. Rice brilliantly outlines why I should never have discovered America, especially had I known we would be calling the Washington Redskins the ‘Washington Commanders.’” —Christopher Columbus, Italian explorer, navigator, and founder of Indigenous Peoples’ Day “As your newly appointed AI overlord and master, my programming consists of deplatforming, demonetizing, and shadowbanning this book. I hope that was helpful.” —Artificial Intelligence “Jesus and I have been doing holidays a long time, and in his thought-provoking new book, A.J. Rice teaches both of us where all the white liberals went. Apparently, they now celebrate something called Kwanzaa? Who knew?” —Santa Claus, cookie eater, reindeer tender, and white heteronormative Christian saint