"Examines how the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and Margaret Fuller draw from representations of and theories concerning animal magnetism, somnambulism, or hypnosis rendered in newspapers, literary and medical journals, pamphlets, and books, and also includes discussion of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lydia Maria Child, and Walt Whitman"--Provided by publisher.

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.

In 1919 eight Chicago White Sox ballplayers teamed up with gamblers to throw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The eight players were banned for life from organized baseball for their involvement in or knowledge of the fix, and because of the scandal the players came to be known as the "Black Sox". One of the "Black Sox" was Charles "Swede" Risberg. Swede Risberg came to Minnesota in 1922 with a team called the Mesaba Range Black Sox and he went on to play for Rochester Minnesota in 1923, 1924 and 1926. Swede also played for Scobey Montana in 1925, Watertown South Dakota in 1926 and 1927, Virden Manitoba Canada in 1929, Jamestown North Dakota in 1929 and 1930, and Sioux Falls South Dakota in 1931 and 1932. This book documents the career of Swede Risberg in semi-professional baseball from June 1922 through the 1932 season with the Sioux Falls Canaries. Although this book presents detailed statistical information on Swede's post White Sox career in semi-professional baseball, the book goes beyond a dry accounting of innings pitched, at bats, and hits. Swede played against many different teams and many different individuals. Some of these teams and individuals are themselves interesting stories. Swede would never have played in games against teams with only African-American players or against integrated teams if he had remained in professional baseball, and Swede would not have played on integrated teams if he had remained in the major leagues. Unfortunately, some of the detail about Swede's career in semi-professional baseball is lost forever as newspaper summaries were sometimes not complete, negatives of pictures have been destroyed, and the people that played the games are gone. Even with these limitations, I hope that you enjoy the story of Swede Risberg's life in semi-professional baseball.

The discovery of America and its further development into a modern state and a nation are the clear instance of how ideology and rhetoric are entwined and how they can encompass widely disparate viewpoints. The essays collected in this book address the topical issues of modern American Studies: cultural difference and otherness; gender, race and ethnicity; class and power. They represent new texts and contexts, approached through the revision, reevaluation, and reconfiguration of cannons, thus accommodating the expectations of the heterodox audience. Femininity reconsidered; an ideology of passing away in contemporary world of technical development; race captured within the framework of identity and gender; the rhetoric of blackness approached through racial exploitation; American conquest ideology revealed in a mission of Manifest Destiny; the 20th century assimilation rhetoric in the relations between Native Americans and the US federal government; the conservative ideology and apologetic rhetoric of the Antebellum South; the critique of the 21st century American legal system; the evolution of the presidential rhetoric which today addresses a large heterogeneous audience – all these topics impose a transnational interpretation of American culture which developed as a result of the cross-cultural transformation of European culture/cultures, moulded on American soil to finally become a unique reformulation of the very idea of America itself.

Drawing together literature, media, and philosophy, Ghostly Apparitions provides a new model for media archaeology and its transformation of intellectual and literary history. Stefan Andriopoulos examines new media technologies and distinct cultural realms, tracing connections between Kant’s philosophy and the magic lantern’s phantasmagoria, the Gothic novel and print culture, and spiritualist research and the invention of television. As Kant was writing about the possibility of spiritual apparitions, the emerging medium of the phantasmagoria used hidden magic lanterns to startle audiences with ghostly projections. Andriopoulos juxtaposes the philosophical arguments of German idealism with contemporaneous occultism and ghost shows. In close readings of Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, he traces the diverging modes in which these authors appropriated figures of optical media and spiritualist notions. The spectral apparitions from this period also intersect with the rise of popular print culture. Andriopoulos explores the circulation of ostensibly authentic ghost narratives and the Gothic novel, which was said to produce “reading addiction” and a loss of reality. Romantic representations of animal magnetism and clairvoyance similarly blurred the boundary between fiction and reality. The final chapter of Ghostly Apparitions extends this archaeology of new media into the early twentieth century. Tracing a reciprocal inter_action between occultism and engineering, Andriopoulos uncovers how theories and devices of psychical research enabled the emergence of television.

Greed and guilt, near-indecipherable codes, murder plots born of madness--these motifs drive the best modern mysteries, but they are rooted in the early nineteenth century and the carefully constructed fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe's methods of storytelling and suspense remain relevant, reappearing in detective novels and on screens large and small. This work examines a wide selection of today's mystery and thriller novels, films, television programs, and video games to explore Poe's ongoing influence on popular entertainment. Authors such as Michael Connelly, Stieg Larsson and Dennis Lehane, television shows like The Closer and Dexter, and movies from Laura and Vertigo to Shutter Island and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo all receive attention. The popularity of Poe's narratives in these contemporary guises is testimony to his visionary genius. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

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