New Releases - Fall 2018

Books

Ahab’s Return: Or, The Last Voyage

Jeffrey Ford ’79, MA ’81 (Morrow/Harper Collins, 20187)

Ford’s novel reimagines two of the most legendary characters in American literature: Captain Ahab and Ishmael of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Told with wisdom, suspense, a modicum of dry humor and horror, and a vigorous stretching of the truth, Ahab’s Return charts an intriguing voyage. Ford is the author of three story collections and eight novels, including the Edgar Award-winning The Girl in the Glass and the Shirley Jackson Award-winning The Shadow Year.

Points of Departure: Rethinking Student Source Use and Writing Studies Research Methods

Sandra Jamieson, MA ’86, PhD ’91, with Tricia Serviss (editors) (Utah State University Press, 2018)

Points of Departure encourages a return to empirical research about writing and shows how to develop methods for coding and characterizing student texts, their choice of source material and the resources used to teach information literacy. This book is a guide for both new and experienced researchers in writing studies. Jamieson is professor of English and director of Writing Across the Curriculum at Drew University.

I Held Lincoln: A Union Sailor’s Journey Home

Richard E. Quest ’86, MA ’95 (Potomac Books, 2018)

Lt. Benjamin Loring (1824– 1902) was a Civil War sailor who commanded the gunboat USS Wave, was captured by the Confederates, escaped (twice) and was at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865, where he witnessed the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and helped carry him from the theater. Using Loring’s recently discovered private journal, Quest gives insight into a man who was largely unknown for generations. Quest is founding president and executive director of the nonprofit Books in Homes USA. He is a former history teacher and administrator, and was a dean and associate vice president of several colleges.

The Beloved Wild

Melissa Ostrom ’95 (Macmillan, 2018)

Ostrom has had short fiction published in The Florida Review, Quarter After Eight, The Baltimore Review and Passages North, among other journals. The Beloved Wild is her young-adult debut. Harriet Winter is the eldest daughter in a New Hampshire farming family. Harriet’s mother wants her to marry the farmer next door, but Harriet would rather make her own choices. So she disguises herself as a boy and follows her brother to New York’s Genesee Valley, where they encounter sickness, uninvited strangers and difficult emotions. Macmillan will be publishing Ostrom’s second novel, tentatively titled The Unleaving, in 2019.

Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America

Dante DiStefano ’01, MA ’04, MAT ’06, PhD ’15, and Maria Isabel Alvarez (editors) (NYQ Books, 2018)

Several Binghamton University alumni and faculty have works included in this book, which raises funds for the National Immigration Law Center. At a time when a large chunk of America has fallen under the spell of reality television, these poems give us a rare dose of imaginative empathy that only poetry can deliver.

Protecting Your Child from Sexual Abuse: What You Need to Know to Keep Your Kids Safe

Elizabeth L. Jeglic, MA ’01, PhD ’03, with Cynthia Calkins (Skyhorse Publishing, 2018)

Recent news stories and the #MeToo movement have brought child sexual abuse into the forefront of social consciousness. In the United States, millions of children are sexually abused by the time they reach adulthood. Each case prompts the questions: Why didn’t anyone know? What can we do? Jeglic and Calkins — both sexual violence prevention researchers, professors at John Jay College, psychologists and mothers of young children — provide digestible facts and figures as well as thought-provoking discussion questions to help parents and community groups begin the conversation.

Sawbill: A Search for Place

Jennifer Case, PhD ’14 (University of New Mexico Press, 2018)

We all want a sense of place. That can be, understandably, tough to develop when your family doesn’t set down roots for very long. Sawbill is a memoir that Case drafted while pursuing a doctorate in English at Binghamton University. A series of relocations took Case’s family all over the United States. Not having a place she could truly call home, she found emotional solace in Sawbill Lodge, a moribund fishing resort her grandparents operated in Minnesota. She chronicles her unsettled life alongside the lodge’s unpredictable history. What resulted is a memoir with deep meditations on the meaning of home, family and environment. Case is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas and assistant nonfiction editor at Terrain.org.

Unruly Catholic Nuns: Sisters’ Stories

Jeane DelRosso ’92 editor, with Leigh Eicke and Ana Kothe (SUNY Press, 2017)

Few religious groups are more misunderstood than Roman Catholic nuns. This book is intended to provide a vital corrective to the way people of any faith view the role of women and sisters in the Catholic Church. Unruly Catholic Nuns combines autobiography, fiction, poetry and prose to explore the nuns’ experiences with Catholicism in ways that comply with and oppose the Church’s doctrines. DelRosso is a professor of English and women’s studies, and director of the Elizabeth Morrissy Honors Program at Notre Dame of Maryland University.

Writing Postindustrial Places: Technoculture Amid the Cornfields

Michael Salvo, MA ’93 (Routledge, 2017)

Salvo uses case studies to discuss how technical communicators create opportunities that link resources with needs. By exploring the relationship between postindustrial writing and developments in energy production, manufacturing and agriculture, Salvo shows how technological and industrial innovation rely on communicative and organizational suppleness. He is director of professional writing and associate professor in the rhetoric and composition program at Purdue University.

Multimedia

Give Us This Day

Roger Lee Hall, MA ’72 (Pine Tree Multimedia, 2017)

Hall’s latest multimedia collection features two musical traditions that began in the 1780s at the birth of American culture. The Stoughton Musical Society, organized in 1786, is the oldest surviving choral society. And the United Society of Shakers is the oldest religious communal society in the country. Hall began his study of Shaker music while a graduate student of ethnomusicology at Binghamton. He is director of the Center for American Music Preservation.