Flannery O’Connor’s fiction continues to haunt American readers, in part because of its uncanny ability to remind us who we are and what we need. Foss’s book reveals the extent to which O’Connor was a serious reader of the history of political philosophy. She understood the ideas upon which the American regime rests, and she evaluated those ideas from the standpoint of both faith and reason. Foss’s book explains why O’Connor feared that the modern habit to govern by tenderness would lead to terror. After a thorough account of her familiarity with the history of political philosophy, Foss shows how the works of Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Locke, Rousseau, and Nietzsche inform O’Connor’s stories. This does not mean that O’Connor was writing about politics in the narrow sense. Her vision was deeply theological, and she carefully avoided topical stories that promote social agendas. Her concern was with the health of the American regime more broadly, insofar as the manners of a regime affect citizens’ attitudes toward religion. O’Connor does not present a political theory of her own, but as Foss argues, she was a political philosopher in the original sense of the word. Her stories give clear accounts of her political wisdom. Foss further shows the continued relevance of her wisdom in age dominated by abstract modern theories, such as that of John Rawls.

Awarded third place in pilgrimages/Catholic travel by the Catholic Media Association. Historian Kevin Schmiesing takes you to more than two-dozen sites and events that symbolize and embody America’s rich and sometimes tumultuous Catholic past, including the Santa Fe Trail, Gettysburg, and the Bourbon Trail. You’ll also meet both famous and infamous Catholics—including Augustus Tolton, Dr. Samuel Mudd, and Frances Cabrini—who impacted our nation’s history. The idea for A Catholic Pilgrimage through American History came from Schmiesing’s mother, he says. She turned every childhood vacation into a pilgrimage, purposely inserting religious sites into the family’s journey to places such as Niagara Falls, Washington, DC, or Myrtle Beach. Catholics have been part of the American experiment since the beginning—in founding the colonies and expanding the west, building education and health care systems, abolishing slavery, fighting on the front lines, and advancing science, technology, and space exploration. Each of the twenty-seven sites on Schmiesing’s virtual itinerary—including, the Washington Monument, Wounded Knee Creek, the University of Notre Dame, and Mission San Diego de Alcalá—transports you to a significant time in US history and connects the dots to our Catholic heritage. You will meet notable Catholics such as John F. Kennedy, Black Elk, and Katharine Drexel, and learn more about their contributions to history. You will explore the various and sometimes conflicting roles Catholics have played in key periods and events through the stories of shrines, memorials, and other historic places including: the Catholic Plymouth Rock—St. Mary’s City, Maryland; the Bourbon Trail—Church of St. Thomas, Bardstown, Kentucky; the Pope’s Stone—the Washington Monument in the District of Columbia; a Catholic mission and a Native American tragedy: Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota; and the home of the first Black priest—the churches of Quincy, Illinois.

This volume provides a fresh perspective on current democratic theory and practice by recovering the rich evaluations of democracy in the history of political thought. Each author addresses a single thinker’s reflections on the virtues and defects of democracy and the relationship between democracy and other regimes. Together, these essays explore the tensions within the democratic way of life that arise from an attachment to equality, liberty, citizenship, law, and the divine. Above all, this work aims at recovering a more complex understanding of democracy, connecting the perennial questions of political philosophy to the perplexities and crises of modern democracy.

A literary treasure of over one hundred unpublished letters from National Book Award-winning author Flannery O'Connor and her circle of extraordinary friends. Flannery O’Connor is a master of twentieth-century American fiction, joining, since her untimely death in 1964, the likes of Hawthorne, Hemingway, and Faulkner. Those familiar with her work know that her powerful ethical vision was rooted in a quiet, devout faith and informed all she wrote and did. Good Things Out of Nazareth, a much-anticipated collection of many of O’Connor’s previously unpublished letters—along with those of literary luminaries such as Walker Percy (The Moviegoer), Caroline Gordon (None Shall Look Back), Katherine Anne Porter (Ship of Fools), Robert Giroux and movie critic Stanley Kauffmann. The letters explore such themes as creativity, faith, suffering, and writing. Brought together, they form a riveting literary portrait of these friends, artists, and thinkers. Here we find their joys and loves, as well as their trials and tribulations as they struggle with doubt and illness while championing their beliefs and often confronting racism in American society during the civil rights era. Praise for Good Things Out of Nazareth “An epistolary group portrait that will appeal to readers interested in the Catholic underpinnings of O'Connor's life and work . . . These letters by the National Book Award–winning short story writer and her friends alternately fit and break the mold. Anyone looking for Southern literary gossip will find plenty of barbs. . . . But there’s also higher-toned talk on topics such as the symbolism in O’Connor’s work and the nature of free will.”—Kirkus Reviews “A fascinating set of Flannery O’Connor’s correspondence . . . The compilation is highlighted by gems from O’Connor’s writing mentor, Caroline Gordon. . . . While O’Connor’s milieu can seem intimidatingly insular, the volume allows readers to feel closer to the writer, by glimpsing O’Connor’s struggles with lupus, which sometimes leaves her bedridden or walking on crutches, and by hearing her famously strong Georgian accent in the colloquialisms she sprinkles throughout the letters. . . . This is an important addition to the knowledge of O’Connor, her world, and her writing.”—Publishers Weekly

This collection, the first of its kind, brings together specially commissioned academic essays to mark fifty years since the death of John Kennedy Toole.

Presenting the first interdisciplinary consideration of his political thought, Updike and Politics: New Considerations establishes a new scholarly foundation for assessing one of the most recognized and significant American writers of the post-1945 period. This book brings together a diverse group of American and international scholars, including contributors from Japan, India, Israel, and Europe. Like Updike himself, the collection canvases a wide range of topics, including Updike’s too often overlooked poetry and his single play. Its essays deal with not only political themes such as the traditional aspects of power, rights, equality, justice, or violence but also the more divisive elements in Updike’s work like race, gender, imperialism, hegemony, and technology. Ultimately, the book reveals how Updike’s immense body of work illuminates the central political questions and problems that troubled American culture during the second half of the twentieth century as well as the opening decade of the new millennium.

This book links the questions people ask about why things exist, why the world is the way it is, and whether and how it is possible to change their society or world with the societal myths they develop and teach to answer those questions and organize and bring order to their communal lives. It also is about the need for change in western societies’ current organizing concept, classical (Lockean) liberalism. Despite the attempts of numerous insightful political thinkers, the myth of classical liberalism has developed so many cracks that it cannot be put back together again. If not entirely failed, it is at this point unsalvageable in its present form. Never the thought of just one person, the liberal model of individual religious, political, and economic freedom developed over hundreds of years starting with Martin Luther’s dictum that every man should be his own priest. Although, classical liberalism means different things to different people, at its most basic level, this model sees human beings as individuals who exist prior to government and have rights over government and the social good. That is, the individual right always trumps the moral and social good and individuals have few obligations to one another unless they actively choose to undertake them. Possibility’s Parents argues that Lockean liberalism has reached the end of its logic in ways that make it unable to handle the western world’s most pressing problems and that novelists whose writing includes the form and texture of myth have important insights to offer on the way forward.

Lights, Camera, Execution!: Cinematic Portrayals of Capital Punishment fills a prominent void in the existing film studies and death penalty literature. Each chapter focuses on a particular cinematic portrayal of the death penalty in the United States. Some of the analyzed films are well-known Hollywood blockbusters, such as Dead Man Walking (1995); others are more obscure, such as the made-for-television movie Murder in Coweta County (1983). By contrasting different portrayals where appropriate and identifying themes common to many of the studied films – such as the concept of dignity and the role of race (and racial discrimination) – the volume strengthens the reader’s ability to engage in comparative analysis of topics, stories, and cinematic techniques.Written by three professors with extensive experience teaching, and writing about the death penalty, film studies, and criminal justice, Lights, Camera, Execution! is deliberately designed for both classroom use and general readership.

Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics in 21st Century Film and Literature analyzes literature and films that speak to our age of anxiety resulting from the decline of narratives that provided individuals with a meaningful human life. The authors argue that the twentieth-century sought to free individuals from the constraints of authoritative cultural traditions and institutions, liberating the autonomous self. Yet this has given rise to anxiety rather than liberation. Instead of deriving one’s sense of purpose from one’s role and place within a community, the consumer has been deceived into thinking that their identity can be purchased through the meaning represented by the conspicuous consumption of a brand. The same phenomenon manifests itself in politics within recent populist revolts against globalist politics. In addition, the rapid pace of technological development is driving an unprecedented faith in the malleability of human beings, raises doubts as to what it means to be a person. Utilizing paradigms from the fields of Communication/Rhetoric and Political Philosophy the book shows how the self has been displaced from its natural habitat of the local community. The book traces the origins of modern anxiety as well as possible remedies. Considered in the book are such popular culture artifacts as Downton Abbey, WALL-E, Hacksaw Ridge, Westworld, and Lord of the Rings and zombie films.

For eight seasons the hit HBO series Game of Thrones painted a picture of a fantasy world filled with images such as white walkers (the undead), a three-eyed raven, and dragons. All these elements set the series visually apart, far distant from our realities. And yet, after each episode and season, viewers were left pondering about the wars, political games, diplomacy, and human rights violations that somehow resonated with the world today. Laura D. Young and Ñusta Carranza Ko’s groundbreaking book provides the answers to these questions that international relations scholars, historians, and fans have been wanting to know. How does Game of Thrones mirror international politics and how may the series provide a useful tool for better understanding the theories, concepts, and thematic issues in international relations? Game of Thrones and the Theories of International Relations connects the prominent international relations theories—realism, liberalism, constructivism, and critical identity theories—to the series, providing examples from various characters whose actions reflect applied scenarios of decision-making and strategizing.