Uses satirical parodies of screenplays and political blogs to reveal the cracks in our post-9/11 American psyche.

Colton is Juno’s best friend. He’d usually be the one she goes to for advice on what do you do when you fall in love with your best Imagine you’re a matchmaker and you realize too late you’re in love with your childhood best friend. You only have yourself to blame—you’re the one who matched him and now he’s engaged to be married. When you find yourself in this position there’s a few secrets you’re going to need to keep… Secret #1 – Smile when he tells you the happy news, even if your heart cracks in half. Secret #2 – Don’t compare yourself to his beautiful French fiancée. You’re just as beautiful. Secret #3 – Don’t tag along to the tux fitting with him alone. Just no. Secret #4 – Don’t help him learn to dance to his wedding song. Secret #5 – Erase all memories of the two of you through the years when lines blurred for even the briefest of moments. And the one you never saw coming… Secret #6 – Definitely, don’t stand and object—someone else might just do it for you.

The immediate origins of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions are well known. In the midst of the Second Great Awakening and a growing Trinitarian-Unitarian controversy, a small group of college students met in 1806 to discuss the spiritual condition of the Asian nations. A storm arose and they took shelter in a haystack. From this “Haystack Prayer Meeting” came the resolve to take the Gospel to those who had not heard. The Field Is the World tells the story of the students’ petition to the General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts to seek ways to respond to Christ’s call to preach the gospel to every creature. The resulting Board of Commissioners became the first evangelical mission organization to transcend denominational affiliations in the U.S. and to represent the epitome of the missionary enterprise at large. Donald Philip Corr has presented one of a limited number of scholarly works on the Board’s ministry beyond the U.S., particularly its pioneering efforts on the role of preaching and social work and the theme of indigenization among unreached peoples.

A fresh account of the US presidential rhetoric embodied in Cold War international travel. Crowds swarm when US presidents travel abroad, though many never hear their voices. The presidential body, moving from one secured location to another, communicates as much or more to these audiences than the texts of their speeches. In The World is Our Stage, Allison M. Prasch considers how presidential appearances overseas broadcast American superiority during the Cold War. Drawing on extensive archival research, Prasch examines five foundational moments in the development of what she calls the “global rhetorical presidency:” Truman at Potsdam, Eisenhower’s “Goodwill Tours,” Kennedy in West Berlin, Nixon in the People’s Republic of China, and Reagan in Normandy. In each case, Prasch reveals how the president’s physical presence defined the boundaries of the “Free World” and elevated the United States as the central actor in Cold War geopolitics.

Do you worry about our planet, with its environmental crises, global warming, widespread violence, and global poverty? Do you feel powerless to change your life and impact your world? What in the World Is Going On reframes these crises as an invitation to open our minds and hearts to a new awareness of our fundamental interdependence with all beings. With breathtaking optimism, it offers courage and hope to all who hold the world in their hearts and grieve. Crises bring opportunities. We are poised to vastly expand our consciousness, allowing us to address our deep fears and create communities which embrace and serve all of us. The rich conversation between Manjushri, the Tibetan teacher, and the student probes the roots of our fears and challenges our common assumptions about the roles of science and markets in our world. It rejects the inflated claims of our ego-selves and the stifling confines of materialism. The Teacher assures us everything can be changed. We can escape our isolation, celebrate our interdependence with all beings, and heal our communities. The worldwide web allows us to connect with like-minded people around the world. This epochal shift in energy and consciousness is well underway. The Teacher encourages all of us to trust our emerging visions, dissolve the fears shrouding our best selves, and allow our natural compassion to flow out into the world.

Since the early 1970s southern fiction has been increasingly attentive to social issues, including the continuing struggles for racial justice and gender equality, the loss of a sense of social community, and the decline of a coherent regional identity. The essays in The World Is Our Home focus on writers who have explicitly addressed social and cultural issues in their fiction and drama, including Dorothy Allison, Horton Foote, Ernest J. Gaines, Jill McCorkle, Walker Percy, Lee Smith, William Styron, Alice Walker, and many others. The contributors provide valuable insights into the transformation of southern culture over the past thirty years and probe the social and cultural divisions that persist. The collection makes an important case for the centrality of social critique in contemporary southern fiction.

Understanding and responding to globalization's intoxicating economic, political, and social challenges (and opportunities) -- with creativity, imagination and "new-age innovation"