Blanche H. Gelfant's book Cross-Cultural Reckonings both demonstrates and questions the applicability of postmodern cultural and literary theories to realistic texts - to fiction and autobiographies valued for their truth. Drawing together an unusual combination of Russian, American, and Canadian writers, the various essays of this book provide new and original perspectives upon the puzzling issues of national identity, of historical change and continuity, of gender and the integrity of literary genres, the boundaries between text and context, and the underlying if overlooked conflicts between the postmodern critic's skepticism and a writer's belief in the transcendence of art and truth. To avoid the contingencies inherent in binary comparisons, the essays in this book seek a triadic form analogous to the triptych or polyptych of the visual arts. Multi-faceted, non-linear, and open-ended, such a form might allow the academic essay to recover a waywardness that traces back to Montaigne, cited in prefactory notes, and to the etymological meaning of the essay as an exagium or weighing, as an act of reckoning. A study at once elegant, erudite, and personal, Cross-Cultural Reckonings reckons with writers of different backgrounds and reputation in whom Gelfant discovers surprising affinities - among them the Russian writers Lydia Chukovskaya, Natalya Baranskaya, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn; Ethel Wilson, a highly reputed Canadian writer; the famous cross-cultural figure, Emma Goldman; and established as well as new or rediscovered American writers, such as Willa Cather, Saul Bellow, Arlene Heyman, and Meridel Le Sueur. These writers are discussed singly and in comparative essays, each of whichis discrete and self-contained, while all interconnect and reflect upon each other as exemplary demonstrations of cross-cultural literary criticism and the deferred final judgment that results from a weighing and reweighing of books.

Insights from the history of numerical notation suggest that how humans write numbers is an active choice involving cognitive and social factors. Over the past 5,000 years, more than 100 methods of numerical notation--distinct ways of writing numbers--have been developed and used by specific communities. Most of these are barely known today; where they are known, they are often derided as cognitively cumbersome and outdated. In Reckonings, Stephen Chrisomalis considers how humans past and present use numerals, reinterpreting historical and archaeological representations of numerical notation and exploring the implications of why we write numbers with figures rather than words.

An illuminating study of how former Korean "comfort women" and their supporters have redressed history through protests, tribunals, theater, and memorial-building projects

This book illuminates our understanding of what happens when different cultures meet. Twelve cultural historians explore the mechanism and inner dynamic of such encounters, and demonstrate that while they often occur on the wave of global forces and influences, they only acquire meaning locally, where culture inherently resides.

This far-reaching collection of essays offers a serious and thought-provoking account of the complexities spawned by cross-cultural interpretation. The essays hold broad implications for issues spanning the range of literary criticism: the relations of text and context; the usefulness of genre as a defining term; the consequences of binary thinking; the links between practical criticism and literary theory; and--perhaps most explosively--from the visions and revisions invoked by shifting notions of nationality to the unpredictable attitudes toward gender and sexual difference entertained by the field of literary criticism at large.

Introduction: the editors -- Points of departure : gender & power and its sequels -- "Theories don't grow on trees" : contextualizing gender knowledge / Myra Marx Ferree -- Hegemonic, nonhegemonic, and "new" masculinities / James W. Messerschmidt and Michael A. Messner -- From object to subject : situating transgender lives in sociology / Kristen Schilt -- The larger scope of gender analysis -- Postcoloniality and the sociology of gender / Raka Ray -- Race, indigeneity, and gender : lessons for global feminism / Mara Viveros Vigoya -- Categories, structures, and intersectional theory / Joya Misra -- Four dimensions of relationship, struggle, and change -- Why "heteronormativity" is not enough : a feminist sociological perspective on heterosexuality / Stevi Jackson -- Gender inequality and feminism in the new economy / Christine L. Williams and Megan Tobias Neely -- Gender politics in academia in the neoliberal age / Barbara Poggio -- The holy grail of organizational change : toward gender equality at work / Yvonne Benschop and Marieke van den Brink -- Dynamics of masculinities -- Concerning tradition in studies on men and masculinities in ex-colonies / Kopano Ratele -- Rethinking patriarchy through unpatriarchal male desires / Gul Ozyegin -- On the elasticity of gender hegemony : why hybrid masculinities fail to undermine gender and sexual inequality / Tristan Bridges and C.J. Pascoe -- Agendas for theory -- Limitations of the neoliberal turn in gender theory : (re)turning to gender as a social structure / Barbara J. Risman, Kristen Myers, and Ray Sin -- Paradoxes of gender redux : multiple genders and the persistence of the binary / Judith Lorber -- The monogamous couple, gender hegemony, and polyamory / Mimi Schippers -- Conclusion: theory work, or reckoning with gender / Raewyn Connell -- About the contributors -- Index -- Notes