Obamanomics and Francisconomics, is committed to combining the experience and life of two leaders, belonging to two different worlds but so similar in some respects with the current economy. The two terms, in fact, are two neologisms (like many others present in the text) coined by the author on the basis of Obama, Francis and their economy, to make the reader completely immersed in the underlying concept that the author wants to express. It makes us reflect on how effectively these two aspects of reality do not differ much from each other and how much the future and sustainability depend "on the ability and willingness of President Barack Obama and Pope Francis to produce more leaders than followers. These leaders are, in Obama's words, the 'relay race which is human progress'." Dr. Zekeh S. Gbotokuma is a globetrotter, polyglot (Ngbaka, Lingala, French, English, Italian, German, and some Spanish), Lexicographer, and a Congolese-American who refers to himself as a cosmocitizen. He earned a Doctorate in Philosophy from Gregorian University, a post-doctoral Diploma in International Studies from the Italian Society for International Organization, a BA in Theology from Pontifical Urban University, all in Rome, Italy. He also holds several Certificates (English as Foreign Language from St. Luke's Priory, Wincanton, UK; Certificate in French from the Institut d'Etudes Françaises de Touraine, Tours, France; Certificate in German as Foreign Language, from Goethe Institute Boppard, Germany; and a Certificate in African Studies from Yale University. After twelve years of education and work in Europe, he is currently an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland (USA), and the founding President of Polyglots in Action for Diversity, Inc. (PAD). He is the former Director of the Center for Global Studies at MSU. His "extraordinary commitment to global learning and international understanding" made him the recipient of the prestigious Dr. Sandye Jean McIntyre, II International Award 2008. He is also one of Afrimpact Magazine's 100 Most Influential People Awards 2017 and 2021 recipients. He is the author of numerous multilingual publications (written in English, French, Italian, and Lingala), including, among others, DEMOCRACY AND DEMOGRAPHICS IN THE USA: The Squad's Roadmap to Transform the Blue Wave Into a Blue Tsunami in the 2020 Elections (Amazon Kindle, November 2020); A Polyglot Pocket Dictionary of Lingala, English, French, and Italian (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016 Global Safari: Checking In and Checking Out in Pursuit of World Wisdoms, the American Dream, and Cosmocitizenship (CSP, 2015); and A Pan-African Encyclopedia (Edwin Mellen Press, 2003).

A Polyglot Pocket Dictionary of Lingala, English, French and Italian represents a glossary that allows the reader to appreciate positive diversity and interculturalism through multilingualism. Building on, and referring to, the author’s experiences of studying and living abroad as a series of transits, transitions, and translations, it urges the reader to enhance their global competency and brain power, and to seek cosmocitizenship through the study of world languages and cultures. To this end, it shares enlightening reflections on the benefits of multilingualism, and allows the reader to develop basic language skills in Lingala, English, French, and Italian. As such, in addition to the glossary, this work also contains key facts about the languages at hand, as well as useful phrases, weekdays, numbers, and elements of grammar.

In What the Village Gave Me, the contributors—all women of color—present their varied experiences regarding the conceptualizations of womanhood, beauty, and gender roles. The goal of this book is to illuminate how these issues intersect with the transmission of cultural norms, marriage rates, and the development of professional self-efficacy. What the Village Gave Me illuminates topics relevant to women of color and touches upon careers, relationships, gender role understanding and subscription, ethnic identity, and cultural representation. This collection addresses how women who self-identify as “women of color” see themselves and manage their location in their work-life, families, and communities. By giving voice to the contributors, readers are afforded glimpses into the lives of these women and are provided with a valuable tool in the broader discourse on womanhood. This collection will help them see how race, class, and ethnicity work to divide or unite women.

“To be someone—to be anyone—is about...not being someone else. Miller’s amused and inspired book is utterly compelling.” —Adam Phillips “A compendium of expressions of wonder over what might have been...Swept up in our real lives, we quickly forget about the unreal ones. Still, there will be moments when, for good or ill, we feel confronted by our unrealized possibilities.” —New Yorker We live one life, formed by paths taken and untaken. Choosing a job, getting married, deciding on a place to live or whether to have children—every decision precludes another. But what if you’d gone the other way? From Robert Frost to Sharon Olds, Virginia Woolf to Ian McEwan, Jane Hirshfield to Carl Dennis, storytellers of every stripe consider the roads not taken, the lives we haven’t led. What is it that compels us to identify with fictional and poetic voices tantalizing us with the shadows of what might have been? Not only poets and novelists, but psychologists and philosophers have much to say on this question. Miller finds wisdom in all of these, revealing the beauty, the allure, and the danger of sustaining or confronting our unled lives. “Miller is charming company, both humanly and intellectually. He is onto something: the theme of unled lives, and the fascinating idea that fiction intensifies the sense of provisionality that attends all lives. An extremely attractive book.” —James Wood “An expertly curated tour of regret and envy in literature...Miller’s insightful and moving book—both in his own discussion and in the tales he recounts—gently nudges us toward consolation.” —Wall Street Journal “I wish I had written this book...Examining art’s capacity to transfix, multiply, and compress, this book is itself a work of art.” —Times Higher Education

An ambitious look at the African novel and its connections to African philosophy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries The African Novel of Ideas focuses on the role of the philosophical novel and the place of philosophy more broadly in the intellectual life of the African continent, from the early twentieth century to today. Examining works from the Gold Coast, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, and tracing how such writers as J. E. Casely Hayford, Imraan Coovadia, Tendai Huchu, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, and Stanlake Samkange reconcile deep contemplation with their social situations, Jeanne-Marie Jackson offers a new way of reading and understanding African literature. Jackson begins with Fante anticolonial worldliness in prenationalist Ghana, moves through efforts to systematize Shona philosophy in 1970s Zimbabwe, looks at the Ugandan novel Kintu as a treatise on pluralistic rationality, and arrives at the treatment of “philosophical suicide” by current southern African writers. As Jackson charts philosophy's evolution from a dominant to marginal presence in African literary discourse across the past hundred years, she assesses the push and pull of subjective experience and abstract thought. The first major transnational exploration of African literature in conversation with philosophy, The African Novel of Ideas redefines the place of the African experience within literary history.

Even though it’s frequently asserted that we are living in a golden age of scripted television, television as a medium is still not taken seriously as an artistic art form, nor has the stigma of television as “chewing gum for the mind” really disappeared. Philosopher Martin Shuster argues that television is the modern art form, full of promise and urgency, and in New Television, he offers a strong philosophical justification for its importance. Through careful analysis of shows including The Wire, Justified, and Weeds, among others; and European and Anglophone philosophers, such as Stanley Cavell, Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, and John Rawls; Shuster reveals how various contemporary television series engage deeply with aesthetic and philosophical issues in modernism and modernity. What unifies the aesthetic and philosophical ambitions of new television is a commitment to portraying and exploring the family as the last site of political possibility in a world otherwise bereft of any other sources of traditional authority; consequently, at the heart of new television are profound political stakes.