No comments about Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis.

2 comments about In Passionate Pursuit: A Memoir.

1. Any student of the liberal arts - and, for that matter, anyone who has ever been inspired by a book, a painting, or a fragment of a song - should run out and buy this book immediately! Comini's rich, hypnotic prose brings her world alive and takes one on a journey of the senses through her brilliant career. Making deft use of language, Comini's writing is both deeply personal and introspective, tracing her growth as a person and as a scholar. At the same time, the narrative provides a warm, refreshing look at how art is "pursued," with the indomitable Comini and her trusty camera on the forefront of some of modern art's greatest re-discoveries. A cult icon amongst young intellectuals, Comini's articles and public lectures are the stuff of academic legend, so this book written in Comini's own words is a treat for her readers. This book takes up Goethe's call to arms: "Strive! Strive! Strive!"



2. I have just finished reading Alessandra Comini's autobiography, "In Passionate Pursuit", which was recommended to me through your "personal recommendations" list on your Amazon.com site. This memoir which covers six decades of the author's life and career as an art historian was a delight to read. There were many sections where I had to actually put the book down and wipe my eyes, as I found myself tearing up with emotions of both joy and sadness. As a mental health counselor, professional musician, and patron of the arts myself, I was touched by how Comini so beautifully integrated her love for art history and musicology with equal passion and pursuit! Life can become such a balancing act for all of us and how many of us truly follow our heart's calling as Comini does? Equally, how many of us, especially when we age, look back and wish we had pursued those dreams much differently?
   Comini's book rejuvenates the human spirit. Her colorful descriptions of each site she visited makes readers feel as if they are standing there beside her. Intertwined with her journeys and discoveries are those very reflective moments such as having to say goodbye to life-long friends she has made along the way. Heart wrenching was the moment when she opened a letter mailed to her after her own mother's death, a letter in her mother's handwriting compassionately consoling others who had had a loved one die. Poignantly, she describes another period in her life when she dropped out of graduate school in order to assist Hungarian Refugees as they fled to Vienna during the Hungarian Revolution. Subsequently, she so bravely, and honestly describes her own battle with breast cancer which gives hope to women everywhere who are going through similar experiences. Alessandra Comini's introductory description of discovering Schiele's prison cell leads the reader into an exuberant, 233 pages of the author's adventures, travels, and personal memoirs. Comini's book is "real" and can reach audiences from those in the arts' world, students, and especially those who have ever had a slight tug in their heart to follow their own dreams.

1 comments about Yankee on the Prairie: Howard R. Barnard, Pioneer Educator.

1. This book is a wonderful account of the life and times of Howard Barnard, as well as the life of an educator on the prairie. It encompasses the life's work of Barnard and his trials tribulations in a new land. The book is written with zest and demonstrates Miller's love for education, history and western Kansas.

No comments about With Unfailing Dedication: Rural Teachers in the War Years.

No comments about My Iowa Journey: The Life Story of the University of Iowa's First Tenured African American Professor.

1 comments about Women/Writing/Teaching.

1. In the late 1980's and early 1990's, the field of feminist composition began to expand rapidly as women writers and teachers explored the possibilities of autobiographical literary criticism and the relationship between feminist theory, gender studies, and writing pedagogy. Numerous books appeared concerning these subjects including The Intimate Critique: Autobiographical Literary Criticism, a collaborative work by Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, and Frances Murphey Zauhar; Cynthia L. Caywood's and Gillian R. Overing's Teaching Writing: Pedagogy, Gender, and Equity; and Feminine Principles and Women's Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric, written by Janet Emig and Louise Wetherbee Phelps. In reaction and response to the issues raised in these works, Women / Writing / Teaching, using a new approach-that of autobiographical writing-enters the conversation concerning feminist pedagogical practices. This style of delivery, as editor Jan Zlotnik Schmidt, Professor of English and Coordinator of the Composition Program at the State University of New York, New Paltz, indicates "prompts us to lay 'claim' to our lives (to use Patricia Hampi's term); to connect past and present; to reflect on and to re-envision our experiences; and to authorize and to shape our complex identities as feminist writing teachers" (3).

   As a woman, a writer, a first year composition teacher, and a feminist, I approached Women / Writing / Teaching with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Used to the sterile, proscribed language of English academia, I expected, from both the book's title and its classification under feminist theory, to delve into a dense, untenable mass of postmodern jargon; however, I discovered a wonderfully rich, full-bodied collection of autobiographical essays that explore the complexity of women's lives and their multiple identities as wives, daughters, mothers, writers, women, teachers, and professionals as well as their development of authority. The poignant and at times heart-wrenching personal narratives, written by some of the most prominent researchers and authors within the field of feminist composition studies (such as Lynn Z. Bloom, Ann V. Dean, Min-Zhan Lu, Adrienne Rich, and Nancy Sommers), forced me to examine not only my own various roles but also my own sense of voice. Coached (and coerced) by the academy to write according to a particular standard of style and delivery, I was first shocked and then liberated by the use of the personal "I"; however, upon reflection, I realized, with some measure of sorrow, that I had no idea how to even begin to express my own sense of self, which effectively had been erased from my writing. As I continued to read the essays in Women / Writing / Teaching and simultaneously to explore my own feelings toward the construction of my multiple identities and their influence on my writing and teaching styles, I found a new sense of purpose, a desire to emulate the vision of feminist composition pedagogy illustrated within these narratives.

   Heralded by Marilyn Shapiro for its expression of "true love and excitement about the teaching of writing," Women / Writing / Teaching explores the ways in which women teachers forge connections between themselves and their students, between the private and public spheres, between the personal and academic, between the classroom and the world outside, and finally among past, present, and future. In addition, this collection of essays addresses numerous issues of growing concern among female scholars in the field of composition studies and includes a comprehensive bibliography dedicated to the study of feminist composition and autobiographical writing. In addition, despite the absence of an index, the text, divided into three sections entitled "Silence and Words, "Authority and Authorship," and "Visions of Embodied Teaching," respectively, is accessible and easy to navigate.

   Directed toward women writers and instructors of writing, the collection presents a feminist vision of writing instruction that incorporates the past and present experiences of female writers and encourages the inclusion of their multiple identities as women, as teachers, as writers, as members of specific classes and ethnicities, and as participants in particular cultures. By crossing the boundaries of these identities and by intertwining the elements of writing and teaching, the authors in this anthology introduce a pedagogical approach that recognizes, as Schmidt indicates in the introduction to the work, the "need to merge autobiographical reflection, contemplations of the writing life, and critical examination of our pedagogical practices in order to more fully comprehend our complex lives and struggles as feminist writing teachers in the academy" (3). These essays advocate a breaking of the silence, the emergence from decades of female oppression in an effort to establish women as figures of power and authority within the professions of writing and writing instruction.

   The moving self explorations, the incredible stories of suppression and subjugation, the empowering narratives of female success and authoritative identity development interwoven with humor, grief, pain, and exhilaration illuminate the essential power that women have to create and re-create themselves within their writing and their classrooms. In addition, these personal narratives illustrate the ways in which the diversity of individuals and their experiences can enhance the writing process and bring new vision to their students. Thus, the power of Women / Writing / Teaching lies in its ability to stimulate personal exploration and growth, an experience that no female writer or teacher should miss.

1 comments about Against the Tide: An Autobiographical Account of a Professional Outsider.

1. Woods gives us an engaging narrative of his life. From what is undoubtedly a vanished lifestyle in a fishing family in New Zealand before World War 2, to air combat over the Pacific during that war, and then the decades afterwards in academia.

   Many readers may find his descriptions of the war to be the most interesting sections. Not your typical autobiography of an academic!

   He became quite an expect on plasma research. But in this field, funding at Oxford, or indeed anywhere in Britain, was sparse, compared to the Americans and Russians. Early plasma research was small scale. But as efforts grew to scale up the densities and temperatures, so too did the funding requirements rise. It must have been a continual source of frustration to him.

1 comments about The Search for Thomas F. Ward, Teacher of Frederick Delius.

1. Since his achievements as a music publisher are familiar, may I recall that Don Gillespie's biography is a masterpiece of historical recreation--personal and yet factual, detailed and yet thorough--about an obscure but influential music figure in American music a century ago. For those who don't already know, Ward taught Delius, assigned to manage a plantation in northern Florida, more than he learned at the Leipzig music academy a few years later. One charm of Gillespie's book is incorporating his research efforts into the narrative. Indeed, were I a professor of graduate musicology, this is the sort of book I would give to my best students as an example of how to do uniquely valuable scholarship with otherwise forgotten eminences. The awards this book did not receive upon publication are hereby discredited

No comments about Who's Who in American Education, 1988-1989/Inaugural Edition (Who's Who in American Education).

No comments about House of Mirrors: Performing Autobiograph(icall)y in Language/Education.