Many thanks to the website Romantic Circles Reviews and Receptions for inviting me to guest post to their blog about my Rock and Romanticism titles, and many thanks to Suzanne Barnett for inviting me to do so.
Rock and Romanticism on RCRR
Reading as Democracy in Crisis Now Available for Purchase
I’m pleased to announce that Reading as Democracy in Crisis: Interpretation, Theory, History is now available for order on Rowman & Littlefield’s website.
The chapters in this book demonstrate how the variety of reading strategies represented by the figures and movements discussed within its pages were motivated in part by different historical circumstances, many of which involved periods of crisis in democracy. These circumstances range from Plato’s Thirty Tyrants to the French Revolution to the two World Wars and the Holocaust, from the Civil Rights movement to LBGTQ rights to the Arab Spring in Egypt to social media. It covers figures and movements such as Plato and Derrida; Hegel; Marx; Wittgenstein; Warren; Rosenblatt; Adorno, Foucault, Derrida, and Frow; Butler; and Object-Oriented Ontology alongside Digital Humanities. Chapters include:
1 Democracy as Context for Theory: Plato and Derrida as Readers of Socrates, by James Rovira
2 Historian, Forgive Us: Study of the Past as Hegel’s Methodology of Faith, by Aglaia Maretta Venters
3 Karl Marx: The End of the Enlightenment, by Eric Hood
4 Ludwig Wittgenstein: Toward a Dialectical Pragmatism, by Steve Wexler
5 Robert Penn Warren: Poetry, Racism, and the Burden of History, by Cassandra Falke
6 Louise Rosenblatt: The Reader, Democracy, and the Ethics of Reading, by Meredith N. Sinclair
7 Aesthetic Theory: From Adorno to Cultural History, by Philip Goldstein
8 Judith Butler: A Livable Life, by Darcie Rives-East
9 Networking the Great Outdoors: Object-Oriented Ontology and the Digital Humanities, by Roger Whitson
The following 30% discount code is valid until April 30, 2020:Â LEX30AUTH19. It should work on the publisher’s website linked above.
This book presents straightforward explanations of each figure’s or movement’s central ideas alongside an original thesis about each figure or movement, so it can also be useful for introducing students to different theoretical approaches to texts.
Reading as Democracy in Crisis: Interpretation, Theory, History
I’m pleased to announce that Reading as Democracy in Crisis: Interpretation, Theory, History was made available for purchase by Lexington Books, the academic imprint of Rowman & Littlefield, in April of 2019. The featured image above by photographer Rebekah Rovira is the full image used for the cover — you can view actual cover on this post. Many thanks to the contributors who stuck with this project for so long. Chapters include:
Introduction
— by James Rovira
1. Democracy as Context for Theory: Plato and Derrida as Readers of Socrates
— by James Rovira
2. Historian, Forgive Us: Study of the Past as Hegel’s Methodology of Faith
— by Aglaia Maretta Venters
3. Karl Marx: The End of the Enlightenment
— by Eric Hood
4. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Toward a Dialectical Pragmatism
— by Steve Wexler
5. Robert Penn Warren: Poetry, Racism, and the Burden of History
— by Cassandra Falke
6. Louise Rosenblatt: The Reader, Democracy, and the Ethics of Reading
— by Meredith N. Sinclair
7. Aesthetic Theory: From Adorno to Cultural History
— by Philip Goldstein
8. Judith Butler: A Livable Life
— by Darcie Rives-East
9. Networking the Great Outdoors: Object-Oriented Ontology and the Digital Humanities
— by Roger Whitson
Classic Books on Zoetic Press
Zoetic Press is a relatively new publishing company that produces interactive e-books using an app called “Lithomobilus.” It is at present only available only on iOS, but an Android version is coming soon. Their projects involve publishing ebooks that feature classic, public-domain novels alongside contemporary responses to them, and they have a literary magazine featuring books reviews as well. The table of contents for each work is a straight line down the middle of the screen displaying novel chapters to the left and contemporary responses to the right, chapter by chapter.
http://zoeticpress.com/
At present they have editions of Frankenstein, Alice in Wonderland, The Strangely-Brown Episode, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, The Wizard of Oz, Bulfinch’s Mythology, and The King in Yellow, plus one “Unbound” edition that is organized around an initial submission by a current writer followed up by response works. More are in the works.
Just Finished Up at Digital Mitford…
I just finished an intensive training workshop in TEI for the Digital Mitford Project headed by Elisa Beshero-Bondar. She blogs about her work at Confessions of a Digital Romanticist and at the Digital Mitford Project Blog. Elisa is an inspiring, energetic, motivated, tireless, and highly ethical leader who is trying to create a massive archive of Mary Russell Mitford’s works that aspire to the highest standards for digital archiving. I’m proud to be contributing to this project. We all feel very grateful to be working with her. I should also add that she’s a great teacher — very patient and does a good job explaining complex, highly detail oriented  processes.
James Rovira 