Books by Faculty Members

2019-2020 Books

Lexicon of Argead Macedonia
Langer Blomquist, 2020

Editors: Waldemar Heckel, Joannes Heinrichs, Sabine Muller, Frances Pownall (History and Classics)

This is the first lexicon focusing exclusively on Argead Makedonia. Spanning from the mythical foundation of the realm to the death of the last Argead ruler, Alexander IV, 247 entries written by 44 international scholars provide information on central aspects of the politics, culture, society, and economy of Argead Makedonia, on the ancient evidence, and on scholarly issues. Argead Makedonia emerged in the 7th century BC. From the late 6th century to its rise to hegemony under Philip II in the 4th century BC, it formed part of Mediterranean history and crossed the paths of the Greek poleis, the Persian Empire, and neighbouring regions such as Thessaly, Illyria, and Thrace.

The Human Person: What Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas Offer Modern Psychology
Springer, 2019

Authors: Thomas L. Spalding (Psychology), James M. Stedman, Christina L. Gagné, Matthew Kostelecky

This book introduces the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of the human person to a contemporary audience, and reviews the ways in which this view could provide a philosophically sound foundation for modern psychology. The book presents the current state of psychology and offers critiques of the current philosophical foundations. In its presentation of the fundamental metaphysical commitments of the Aristotelian-Thomistic view, it places the human being within the broader understanding of the world.

Lost Harvests
MGill-Queen's University Press, 2019

Author: Sarah Carter (History and Classic)

Agriculture on Plains Indian reserves is generally thought to have failed because the Indigenous people lacked either an interest in farming or an aptitude for it. In Lost Harvests Sarah Carter reveals that reserve residents were anxious to farm and expended considerable effort on cultivation; government policies, more than anything else, acted to undermine their success.

Through an examination of the relevant published literature and of archival sources in Ottawa, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, Carter provides an in-depth study of government policy, Indian responses, and the socio-economic condition of the reserve communities on the prairies in the post-treaty era. The new introduction by the author offers a reflection on Lost Harvests, the influences that shaped it, and the issues and approaches that remain to be explored.

The Jesuit Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix's (1682-1761) Journal of a Voyage in North America:  An Annotated Translation
Brill, 2019

Author: Micah True (Modern Languages and Cultural Studies)

The French Jesuit Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix's 1744 journal of his voyage through French North America-New France, Louisiana, and the Caribbean-is among the richest eighteenth-century accounts of the continent's colonization, as well as its indigenous inhabitants, flora, and fauna. Micah True's new translation of this influential text is the first to appear since 1763. It provides the first complete and reliable English version of Charlevoix's journal and reveals the famous Jesuit to have been a better literary stylist than has often been assumed on the basis of earlier translations. Complemented by a detailed introduction and richly annotated, this volume finally makes accessible to an Anglophone audience one of the key texts of eighteenth-century French America.


How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation
Duke University Press, 2019

Author: Natalie Loveless (Art & Design)

In recent years, the rise of research-creation-a scholarly activity that considers art practices as research methods in their own right-has emerged from the organic convergences of the arts and interdisciplinary humanities, and it has been fostered by universities wishing to enhance their public profiles. In How to Make Art at the End of the World Natalie Loveless draws on diverse perspectives-from feminist science studies to psychoanalytic theory, as well as her own experience advising undergraduate and graduate students-to argue for research-creation as both a means to produce innovative scholarship and a way to transform pedagogy and research within the contemporary neoliberal university. Championing experimental, artistically driven methods of teaching, researching, and publication, research-creation works to render daily life in the academy more pedagogically, politically, and affectively sustainable, as well as more responsive to issues of social and ecological justice.

A Sculptor's Life
Radiant Press, 2019

Author: Peter Hide, (Art & Design)

This art book provides a retrospective of Peter Hide's career as an internationally renowned sculptor - from the early 1970's when he burst onto the art scene in England, to his remarkable upsurge in Canada as one of our most sought-after and collected sculptors. Hide is best known for upright, large-scale sculptures made of welded, rusted steel. "Iron Bridge" refers to one of Hide's seminal works, and also speaks to the "bridge" between England and Canada, the places that have most influenced his work. The power of Peter Hide's sculpture comes from his willingness to exploit aspects of feeling and emotional states in his sculptures, while avoiding any suggestion that feeling is the subject. Iron Bridge features over 80 colour images of Hide's work that are woven among a substantial text featuring essays and interviews by a number of fellow artists and critics.

Environmental Economics: Concepts, Methods and Policies
Publisher: Routledge, 2019

Authors: Dodo J. Thampapillai, Matthias Ruth, Vice-President Research, University of Alberta

Environmental Economics explores the ways in which economic theory and its applications, as practised and taught today, must be modified to explicitly accommodate the goal of sustainability and the vital role played by environmental capital.

Pivoting around the first and second laws of thermodynamics, as well as the principles of ecological resilience, this book is divided into five key parts, which includes extensive coverage of environmental microeconomics and macroeconomics. It drills down into issues and challenges including consumer demand; production and supply; market organisation; renewable and non-renewable resources; environmental valuation; macroeconomic stabilisation, and international trade and globalisation. Drawing on case studies from forestry, water, soil, air quality, and mining, this book will equip readers with skills that enable the analyses of environmental and economic policy issues with a specific focus on the sustainability of the economy.

Advanced Introduction to Ecological Economics Elgar Advanced Introductions Series
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019

Author: Matthias Ruth, Vice-President Research, University of Alberta

Any human endeavor is shaped by, and shapes, changes in the physical and biological environment. In this Advanced Introduction, Matthias Ruth draws on a diverse set of theories, methods and applications to critically assess key concepts in ecological economics.

Handbook on Resilience of Socio-Technical Systems
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019

Editors: Matthias Ruth, Vice-President Research, University of Alberta, and the late Stefan Goessling-Reisemann, formerly University of Bremen, Germany

Improving the resilience of social systems is a goal increasingly adopted in our modern world. This unique and comprehensive Handbook focuses on the interdependencies of these social systems and the technologies that support them. It explores the ways in which the resilience of elements and social systems interact with each other to promote or undermine resilience for one or both, how these interactions manifest themselves through space and time, and how they can be shaped through active intervention

Technology and American Society A History, 3rd Edition
Publisher: Routledge, 2019

Authors: Gary Cross, Richard Szostak (Department of Economics)

Providing a global perspective on the development of American technology, Technology and American Society offers a historical narrative detailing major technological transformations over the last three centuries. With coverage devoted to both dramatic breakthroughs and incremental innovations, authors Gary Cross and Rick Szostak analyze the cause-and-effect relationship of technological change and its role in the constant drive for improvement and modernization. This fully-updated 3rd edition extends coverage of industry, home, office, agriculture, transport, constructions, and services into the twenty-first century, concluding with a new chapter on recent electronic and technological advances. Technology and American Society remains the ideal introduction to the myriad interactions of technological advancement with social, economic, cultural, and military change throughout the course of American history.


Video Game Discourse Approaches to Videogame Discourse: Lexis, Interaction, Textuality
Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2019

Authors: Astrid Ensslin (Modern Languages and Cultural Studies) and Isabel Baltiero

The first significant collection of research in videogame linguistics, Approaches to Videogame Discourse features an international array of scholars in linguistics and communication studies exploring lexis, interaction and textuality in digital games. In the first section, "Lexicology, Localisation and Variation," chapters cover productive processes surrounding gamer slang (ludolects), creativity and borrowing across languages, as well as industry-, genre-, game- and player-specific issues relating to localization, legal jargon and slang. "Player Interactions" moves on to examine communicative patterns between videogame players, focusing in particular on (un)collaborative language, functions and negotiations of impoliteness and issues of power in player discourse. In the final section, "Beyond the 'Text'," scholars grapple with issues of multimodality, paratextuality and transmediality in videogames in order to develop and enrich multimodal theory, drawing on key concepts from ludonarratology, language ideology, immersion and transmedia studies. With implications for meaningful game design and communication theory, Approaches to Videogame Discourse examines in detail how video games function as means and objects of communication; how they give rise to new vocabularies, textual genres and discourse practices; and how they serve as rich vehicles of ideological signification and social engagement.

Ancient Macedonians in Greek & Roman Sources From History to Historiography
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales, 2019

Editors: Tim Howe, Frances Pownall (History and Classics)

Recent scholars have analysed ways in which authors of the Roman era appropriated the figure of Alexander the Great. The essays in this collection cast a wider net, to show how Classical Greek, Hellenistic and Roman authors reinterpreted and sometimes misinterpreted information on ancient Macedonians to serve their own literary and political aims. Although Roman ideas pervade the historiographical tradition, this volume shows that the manipulation of ancient Macedonian history largely occurred much earlier. This yields a richer and more balanced reflection of both the history and the historiography of this important and controversial people.

Dao and Sign in History Daoist Arche-Semiotics in Ancient and Medieval China
Publisher: SUNY Press, 2019

Author: Daniel Fried (East Asian Studies)

From its earliest origins in the Dao De Jing, Daoism has been known as a movement that is skeptical of the ability of language to fully express the truth. While many scholars have compared the earliest works of Daoism to language-skeptical movements in twentieth-century European philosophy and have debated to what degree early Daoism does or does not resemble these recent movements, Daniel Fried breaks new ground by examining a much broader array of Daoist materials from ancient and medieval China and showing how these works influenced ideas about language in medieval religion, literature, and politics. Through an extended comparison with a broad sample of European philosophical works, the book explores how ideas about language grow out of a given historical moment and advances a larger argument about how philosophical and religious ideas cannot be divided into "content" and "context."

Ukrainian Epic and Historical Song: Folklore in Context
Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2019

Author: Natalie Kononenko (Modern Languages and Cultural Studies)

Ukrainian epic, or dumy, were first recorded from blind mendicant minstrels in the nineteenth century. Yet they reflect events dating back to as early as the 1300's. Ukrainian Epic and Historical Song provides new translations in contemporary English. It also explains the historical events celebrated in epic and other historical songs: fierce battles, rebellion against tyranny, the struggles of captivity, the joys of escape from slavery. Natalie Kononenko's expert translation and analysis of Ukrainian epics provides a sweeping social history of folklore that is vital to Ukrainian identity. A translation of at least one variant of every known epic is included. Whereas earlier trends in folklore scholarship emphasized genre purity and compartmentalization, Kononenko critically examines the events about which songs were sung. Her emphasis on the lives of ordinary people rather than on leaders reshapes our understanding of how epics were composed and performed. Kononenko's ground-breaking analysis also illuminates Ukrainian self-understanding and explains how songs preserve and perpetuate historical memory. Scholars interested in epic song, history, and general folklore will benefit from this work. Members of the Ukrainian diaspora will find new appreciation of Ukrainian folklore.

Feminist Praxis Revisited Critical Reflections on University-Community Engagement
Publisher: Wilfred Laurier Press, 2019

Editors: Amber Dean, Jennifer L. Johnson and Susanne Luhmann (Women's and Gender Studies)

In Feminist Praxis Revisited, Women's and Gender Studies (WGS) practitioners reflect on how the field has sought to integrate its commitment to activism and social change with community-based learning in post-secondary institutions.

Teaching about and for social change has been a core value of the field since its inception, and co-op, practica, and internships have long been part of the curriculum in the professional schools. However, liberal arts faculties are increasingly under pressure to integrate community engagement practices and respond to labour market demands for greater student "employability." That demand creates challenges and possibilities as WGS programs and instructors adapt to changing post-secondary agendas.

This book examines how WGS programs can continue to prioritize the foundational critiques of inequality, power, privilege, and identity in the face of a post-secondary push toward praxis as resumé building, skills acquisition, and the bridging of town-and-gown differences. It pushes students to reflect critically on their own experiences with feminist praxis through critical reflections offered by the contributors along with examples of practical approaches to community-based/experiential learning.

Human Rights in Canada: A History
Publisher: Wilfred Laurier Press, 2019

Author: Dominique Clément (Sociology)

This book shows how human rights became the primary language for social change in Canada and how a single decade became the locus for that emergence. The author argues that the 1970s was a critical moment in human rights history-one that transformed political culture, social movements, law, and foreign policy. Human Rights in Canada is one of the first sociological studies of human rights in Canada. It explains that human rights are a distinct social practice, and it documents those social conditions that made human rights significant at a particular historical moment.

Debating Rights Inflation in Canada: A Sociology of Human Rights (Paperback)
Publisher: Wilfred Laurier Press, 2019

Author: Dominique Clément (Sociology)

Human rights has become the dominant vernacular for framing social problems around the world. In this book, Dominique Clément presents a paradox in politics, law, and social practice: he argues that whereas framing grievances as human rights violations has become an effective strategy, the increasing appropriation of rights-talk to frame any and all grievances undermines attempts to address systemic social problems. His argument is followed by commentator response from several leading human rights scholars and practitioners in Canada and abroad who bridge the divide between academia, public policy, and practice.

Winning Chance
Great Plains Publications, 2019

Author: Katherine Koller (English and Film Studies)

In the stories in Winning Chance , Katherine Koller explores second chances, how we find them, and how we find the courage to take them. Whether they are contractors running into an ex while on the job, a busy mother pursuing community theatre, or a family building an illegal ice rink after an environmental collapse, Katherine Koller has created empathetic portraits of characters searching to connect.