Through their search to achieve a sense of academic identity the authors in this volume have brought us new textures and ideas from their research to help us all in our creation and location of spaces we can claim as our own. Working within the traditions of academic scholarship, we are reformulating what we see and presenting it in a previously unexplored perspective of connections and possibilities. Through our presentation of this view, we are asserting a new location for the academic identity negotiation that will challenge and reinforce our positioning within scholarly endeavors. The articles contained in these pages are themselves markers of identity produced within and created to define the academic culture. From this base of academic tradition, the essays contained in this volume share grounding in the exploration of culturally produced markers of identity pulling from various academic disciplines. Through the examination of the performance of identity markers, each scholar develops and reveals connections that we may utilize in our ever-expanding perspective of scholarly subjects and approaches.

The words on the pages of this book will transport the reader from the sun-drenched heat wave in Florida to the awesome glory of Heaven. Autumn arrives in God’s Kingdom during its most peaceful era. She participates in making our Lord’s realm a productive one. Many of her angelic brothers receive Father’s medallion as a reward for their achievements. Everyone seems happy—but one brother demands titles, a crown, and a throne nearest to God’s heart though he did nothing to earn his promotion. His unhappiness grows until he betrays God, gathers supporters, and moves from the Sacred Region to the North. There, he sets up an empire and his reign of terror begins. Autumn and Kaela work undercover in the North as God’s all-seeing eyes and all-hearing ears. They return to the Holy Kingdom where they become saints in Prince Michael’s army. Now, the race is on to stop Lucifer from pursuing his plan to seize Father’s throne. A dungeon is built to house the lawless, but angels are light-loving entities who will perish in the darkness. A sphere is built to house the leaders of the North. Autumn is at God’s side when a bloody altercation ensues between Prince Michael’s saints and northern aggressors that results in Lucifer’s capture and incarceration. And, she is present when Immanuel is introduced to Heaven’s angels. Autumn and the Angel is a faith-based fantasy book that discloses the author’s belief that more than Lucifer’s desire to rule from God’s throne led to his fall from grace. This book is the first installment of Autumn’s adventures in Heaven. The second installment, The Trial of the Great Lucifer, reveals the result of Heaven’s first criminal trial and the events that led to Lucifer’s fall to Hell.

On the anniversary of the dedication of the monastery church at Clairvaux, Saint Bernard spoke to the community to explain the meaning of the feast: “What sanctity can these stones have that we should celebrate their festival? They do indeed have sanctity, but it is because of your bodies. . . . Your bodies are holy because of your souls, and this house is holy because of your bodies.”The thirty-eight sermons in this volume carry forth this theme, revealing the holiness of the monastic life as monks alternate through the rhythm of the day and the year between the opus Dei and manual labor, journeying faithfully through life to death and the transitus to glory. The twelfth-century Ecclesiastica Officia of the Cistercian Order required abbots to speak formally to their communities in chapter on seventeen fixed days, mostly liturgical feasts. This volume witnesses to Bernard’s fulfillment of this requirement and includes sermons for the Assumption and Nativity of the Virgin and the Feast of All Saints, sermons devoted to the feasts of particular saints celebrated during the autumn months, sermons for the time of harvest, and funeral sermons that look forward to the eternal joy in the communion of saints.

During the mid-nineteenth century, a quarter of a million travelers—men, women, and children—followed the “road across the plains” to gold rush California. This magnificent chronicle—the second installment of Will Bagley’s sweeping Overland West series—captures the danger, excitement, and heartbreak of America’s first great rush for riches and its enduring consequences. With narrative scope and detail unmatched by earlier histories, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them retells this classic American saga through the voices of the people whose eyewitness testimonies vividly evoke the most dramatic era of westward migration. Traditional histories of the overland roads paint the gold rush migration as a heroic epic of progress that opened new lands and a continental treasure house for the advancement of civilization. Yet, according to Bagley, the transformation of the American West during this period is more complex and contentious than legend pretends. The gold rush epoch witnessed untold suffering and sacrifice, and the trails and their trials were enough to make many people turn back. For America’s Native peoples, the effect of the massive migration was no less than ruinous. The impact that tens of thousands of intruders had on Native peoples and their homelands is at the center of this story, not on its margins. Beautifully written and richly illustrated with photographs and maps, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them continues the saga that began with Bagley’s highly acclaimed, award-winning So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812–1848, hailed by critics as a classic of western history.