University Ink - A Showcase of UofL Authorship

Boredom is a common human experience. It may strike us as straightforward--a mere absence or lack, an emotional emptiness of sorts, yet it is anything but simple. It is complicated: personal and social, biological and cultural, both ever-changing and constant. It can spur action, both productive and harmful. It affects us differently based on our social identity and standing. Boredom is both a mirror of the complexities of human existence and a cause of them. In The Anatomy of Boredom, Andreas Elpidorou offers a groundbreaking examination of this ubiquitous yet enigmatic dimension of human existence, illuminating its profound influence on our personal and social lives. Through interdisciplinary analysis, careful argumentation, and captivating insights, Elpidorou presents a functional theory of boredom, which understands and individuates boredom in terms of its role in our mental, behavioral, and social existence. This theory provides a compelling synthesis of existing research, connects the present of boredom to its history, and allows us to apply our knowledge of boredom to relatively unexplored domains, such as its relationship to the good life, self-regulation and self-control, poverty and capitalism, advancements in AI, animal emotions, and even aesthetics and art appreciation. Ultimately, the study of boredom is revealed to be more than just an analysis of an intricate and important affective experience; it is also shown to be an insightful investigation into the complexities of human (and even non-human) existence.

In an era of global political passions, many have wondered whether some sort of natural affinity exists between political style and substance. Does liberal democracy speak the language of rationality and sincerity while political emotion, imagery, and embodiment properly belong to authoritarianism? Taking an ethnographic approach to the relationship between political form and political content, Drama of Democracy explores the material substance of representations (things like heady crowds and rousing images) together with language-based forms of political communication, such as public oration and community meetings.   Drawing on a decade of research in the city of Mumbai, Lisa Björkman shows that embodied performance is the very site and substance of representation and demonstrates how Mumbaikars evaluate performative bids to represent. The ethnographic accounts demonstrate the extraordinary fluency in this evaluative work in Mumbai, where people from all walks of life are remarkably astute at navigating and assessing political signs and representations, endlessly discussing and debating possible meanings of the city's dense material-semiotic ecologies--whether words or images, cash or crowds, flyers or flowers.   In Mumbai, Björkman argues, the evaluative criterion of representation is not whether something is sign or substance, or even whether people are deemed to utter truths or falsehoods. Rather, what matters is whether and how a performance activates and actuates the social relations and political subjectivities that it professes to display. Drama of Democracy highlights Mumbaikars' communicative fluency and theatrical acumen to offer a conceptual toolbox through which contemporary political churnings around the globe might be understood.

From Lucretius's horror loci and Buddhist drowsiness to the religious boredom of acedia and the philosophical explorations of Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, boredom has long been a subject of philosophical fascination. Its story, unfolding through millennia, encompasses apathy, weariness, disaffection, melancholy, ennui, tedium, and monotony. Today, boredom assumes new forms: the drudgery of precarious work, the alienation of neoliberalism, the emptiness of leisure, and the overstimulation of our hyperconnected, technologically saturated lives. The History and Philosophy of Boredom is an outstanding collection, exploring boredom's intellectual history from its early origins in classical thought to its contemporary manifestations. Containing eighteen specially commissioned chapters by an international team of contributors, the volume is organized into four thematic parts: Ancient Philosophical Perspectives Religious and Medieval Explorations Modern Philosophical Investigations Critical and Interdisciplinary Approaches Topics include boredom in Socratic dialogue, Daoist and Buddhist traditions, Stoicism, and Cynicism; the religious significance of boredom in Judaism and early Christianity; boredom's role in the works of Kant, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Mill, and Nietzsche; philosophical pessimism; phenomenological approaches; boredom as a political phenomenon; and boredom's intersections with capitalism, socialism, racial identity, and transhumanism. The History and Philosophy of Boredom is indispensable for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, emotion studies, phenomenology, and moral psychology. It will also interest scholars in religion, classics, sociology, and the history of psychology.

The poems in Kristi Maxwell' s Wide Ass of Night, prod and probe the ways encounters make and change us, and embrace the possibility of pleasure amidst the realities of diminishment and damage. Often funny, sometimes mournful, Maxwell' s poems give credence to the claim that " poetry is a language that squirms," valuing proliferation over reduction and embracing slipperiness instead of trying to pin down the world. Maxwell' s newest and most audacious collection yet takes in as much of the human experience as possible into a tight embrace that is equal parts loving and menacing.

Disintegrating Empire examines the entangled histories of three threads of decolonization: the French welfare state, family migration from Algeria, and the French social workers who mediated between the state and their Algerian clients. After World War II, social work teams, midlevel bureaucrats, and government ministries stitched specialized social services for Algerians into the structure of the midcentury welfare state. Once the Algerian Revolution began in 1954, many successive administrations and eventually two independent states--France and Algeria--continuously tailored welfare to support social aid services for Algerian families migrating across the Mediterranean. Disintegrating Empire reveals the belated collapse of specialized services more than a decade after Algerian independence. The welfare state's story, Elise Franklin argues, was not one merely of rise and fall but of winnowing services to "deserving" clients. Defunding social services--long associated with the neoliberal turn in the 1980s and beyond--has a much longer history defined by exacting controls on colonial citizens and migrants of newly independent countries. Disintegrating Empire explores the dynamic, conflicting, and often messy nature of these relationships, which show how Algerian family migration prompted by decolonization ultimately exposed the limits of the French welfare state.  

The wide-ranging disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic altered the experiences of place, technology, time, and school for students. This book explores how students' responses to these extraordinary times shaped their identities as learners and writers, as well as their perceptions of education. This book traces the voices of a diverse group of university students, from first-year to doctoral students, over the first two years of the pandemic. Students discussed the effects of having their homes forced to serve as classrooms, work, and living spaces, as they also navigated much of school and life through their digital screens. The affective and embodied experiences of this disruption and uncertainty, and the memories and narratives constructed from those experiences, challenged and remade students' relationships with place, digital media, and school itself. Understanding students' perceptions of these times has implications for imagining innovative and empathetic approaches to literacy and learning going forward. In a time when disruptions, including but not limited to the pandemic, continue to ripple and resonate through education and culture, this book provides important insights for researchers and teachers in literacy and writing studies, education, media studies, and any seeking a better understanding of students and learning in this precarious age. 2025 recipient of the Divergent Publication Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research from the Initiative for Literacy in a Digital Age

"Social Movement Literature introduces readers to the study of those cultural texts that have come to define modern social movements. Looking at movements such as the Civil Rights Movement, feminist and queer movements, environmental movements, and contemporary movement such as #metoo and Black Lives Matter, this volume focuses not just on the texts that social movements have produced, but also on those that have inspired and been inspired by those movements. As such, Social Movement Literature seeks to address a number of key questions : how do social movements develop and present not just their goals, but also their broader identities, using texts and other media? How are these movement texts received and further disseminated? Are there common features across movement texts? How and why do some of these texts continue to resonate today? By combining both textual and historical approaches to the analysis of social movements, this volume aims to give readers both an understanding of how social movements emerge, and why they remain both political and culturally relevant today"-- Provided by publisher.

In many popular depictions of Black resistance to slavery, stereotypes around victimization and the heroic efforts of a small number of individuals abound. These ideas ignore the powers of ordinary families and obscure the systematic working of racism. Tending to the Past: Selfhood and Culture in Children's Narratives about Slavery and Freedom examines Black-authored historical novels and films for children that counter this distortion and depict creative means by which ordinary African Americans survived slavery and racism in early America. Tending to the Past argues that this important, understudied historical writing-freedom narratives-calls on young readers to be active, critical thinkers about the past and its legacies within the present. The book examines how narratives by children's book authors, such as Joyce Hansen, Julius Lester, Marilyn Nelson, and Patricia McKissack, and the filmmakers Charles Burnett and Zeinabu irene Davis, were influenced by Black cultural imperatives, such as the Black Arts Movement, to foster an engaged, culturally aware public. Through careful analysis of this rich body of work, Tending to the Past thus contributes to ongoing efforts to construct a history of Black children's literature and film attuned to its range, specificity, and depths. Tending to the Past provides illuminating interpretations that will help scholars and educators see the significance of the freedom narratives' reconstructions in a neoliberal era, a time of shrinking opportunities for many African Americans. It offers models for understanding the powers and continuing relevance of the Black child's creative agency and the Black cultural practices that have fostered it.

Analyzes the major laws promulgated during the Xi Jinping era against a background of the politics and ideology of the Xi regime in general. The Chinese Dream and Law study situates the Chinese Dream in the modern utopianism discourse since the Late Qing, following Kang Youwei and Mao Zedong. As a tool to promote the Chinese Dream, the legal reforms during the period depart from the "thin constitutionalism" of the first three decades of the post-Mao era and resemble aspects of Legalism. Although the current regime has made some progress in protecting people's socioeconomic rights through law, it has retreated on upholding judicial independence to protect people's civil and political rights, especially those vis-à-vis the state. The first three decades since post-Mao reform are an aberration that deviates from the normal trajectory of modern Chinese political development. The decade-long efforts by the current regime have slowed the growing official corruption and have slightly narrowed the growing income gap, although economic growth was cut in half. The Chinese style of utopianism could mean a "better place"?as in the country's ancient past. It could also become a "no place" in the modern diverse world because this human hope that has a universal claim is often built on authoritarian means.

1898年，中國首份婦女報刊問世。自此，女性走入公共空間，從閨閣才女逐步轉型為專業報人。直到抗戰前，婦女報刊蓬勃發展，不僅匯集了元氣淋漓的女性聲音，催生了女性文化社群，更成為推動婦女解放與社會變革的重要陣地。從國族議題到切身事務，女報人始終把女性本身當作出發點及終點，在男性主導的社會中開闢了屬於女性的話語空間。 本書考察1898年至1937年間，北京、天津、上海、東京四地百餘種婦女報刊，勾勒出女報人的歷史群像，描繪了一幅報刊中的近現代女性主義發展史。除了國共兩黨主導的婦女運動，作者也發掘出基督教婦女、自由主義女性主義者、社會改良派女性等多元群體。即使立場、階級、信仰各異，她們始終共同守護著女性公共表達的空間。在歷史動盪中，她們隨國家變革調整生存策略，讓女性聲音得以留存、擴大，迴響至今。

Transparent made history as the first television show to feature a transgender character in the main role, as the first streaming series to win the Golden Globe for Best Television Series, and as, in the words of journalist Debra Nussbaum Cohen, "the Jewiest show ever." No television show in history has depicted the lives of American Jews with as much attention to Jewish rituals, quirks, or culture. And no series has portrayed issues of gender and sexuality alongside Judaism with such nuance and depth, making Transparent a landmark series in the history of television.   Blessings beyond the Binary brings together leading scholars to analyze and offer commentary on what scholar Josh Lambert calls "the most important work of Jewish culture of the century so far." The book explores the show's depiction of Jewish life, religion, and history, as well as Transparent's scandals and criticisms and how it fits into and diverges from today's transgender and queer politics.    The first book to focus on Transparent, Blessings beyond the Binary offers a rich analysis of the groundbreaking series and its connections to contemporary queer, trans, and Jewish life.  

In 1793, Thomas Jefferson and the American Philosophical Society became entangled in a natural history / political debacle that involved sending an ambitious French botanist named André Michaux on an expedition to the Pacific. Had it been successful, the expedition would have made the Lewis and Clark commission a decade later unwarranted, or at best, a historical footnote. But just when Michaux was set to embark, French Minister Plenipotentiary—“Citizen”—Genet arrived on the scene, drawing Michaux into a covert mission that complicated everything.