University Alabama Press imprint: 831 books

"What have I in common with Jews? I hardly have anything in common with myself!" --Franz Kafka Kafka's quip--paradoxical, self-questioning, ironic--highlights vividly some of the key issues of identity and self-representation for Jewish writers in the 20th century. No group of writers...

Traces the sources of power and large-scale organization of prehistoric peoples among Archaic societies. By focusing on the first instances of mound building, pottery making, fancy polished stone and bone, as well as specialized chipped stone, artifacts, and their widespread exchange, this...

Is theater really dead? Does the theater, as its champions insist, really provide a more intimate experience than film? If so, how have changes in cinematic techniques and technologies altered the relationship between stage and film? What are the inherent limitations of representing three-dimensional...

In Haints, Arthur Redding examines the work of contemporary American authors who draw on the gothic tradition in their fiction, not as frivolous or supernatural entertainments, but to explore and memorialize the ghosts of their heritage.   Ghosts, Redding argues, serve as lasting witnesses...

By what narrow path is the ineffable silence of Zen cleft by the scratch of a pen? The distilled insights of forty years, Norman Fischer’s Experience: Thinking, Writing, Language, and Religion is a collection of essays by Zen master Fischer about experimental writing as a spiritual practice.   Raised...

Eugene O’Neill Remembered offers new views into the playwright’s life by capturing the direct memories of those who were close to him through interviews, memoirs, and other recollections. These sixty-two remembrances create an unprecedented image of O’Neill. Known principally as the author...

At a time when so many options exist for access to theatrical entertainments, it is no surprise that theatre practitioners and scholars are often preoccupied with the role of the audience. While space undoubtedly impacts the rehearsal and production processes, its greater significance seems to rest...

A fully annotated edition of a classic work detailing the cultures of five southeastern American Indian tribes during the Contact Period. James Adair was an Englishman who lived and traded among the southeastern Indians for more than 30 years, from 1735 to 1768. During that time he covered...

Year of the Pig is a personal account of one avid hunter's pursuit of wild pigs in eleven American states. Mark Hainds tied his mission to the Chinese calendar's Year of the Pig in 2007 and journeyed through longleaf forests, cypress swamps, and wiliwili forests in search of his prey. He used a range...

The Transmutation of Love and Avant-Garde Poetics is a probing examination of how the writing of sexual love undergoes a radical revision by avant-garde poets in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Today, the exploration of love by poets—long a fixture of Western poetic tradition—is thought...

This first biographical and literary assessment of Frances Newman highlights one of the most experimental writers of the Southern Renaissance. Novelist, translator, critic, and acerbic book reviewer Frances Newman (1883-1928) was praised by Virginia novelist James Branch Cabell and critic H....

Frank Norris Remembered is a collection of reminiscences by Norris’s contemporaries, friends, and family that illuminate the life of one of America’s most popular novelists.   Considering his undergraduate education spent studying art at Académie Julian in Paris and creative writing...

Fosters a holistic understanding of the roles of Maya heroic figures as cornerstones of cultural identity and political resistance and power.   In the sixteenth century, Q’eqchi’ Maya leader Aj Poop B’atz’ changed the course of Q’eqchi’ history by welcoming Spanish invaders to his community...

This interdisciplinary collection of essays explores in-depth a topic previously neglected by scholars:  John Steinbeck's early continuing preoccupation with ecology and marine biology and the effect of that interest on his writings.  Written by scholars from various disciplines, the essays offer...