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  [Introduction to] After the Future: Postmodern Times and Places

  Gary Shapiro

  This book brings together diverse aspects of postmodernism by philosophers, literary critics, historians of architecture, and sociologists. It addresses the nature of postmodernism in painting, architecture, and the performing arts, and explores the social and political implications of postmodern theories of culture.
  
  The book raises the question of whether postmodernism is to be seen as one more epoch or period within a succession of eras, or as a challenge to the modernist practice of periodization itself.
  
  The nature of the subject and of subjectivity is explored in order to resituate and contextualize the autonomous subject of the modern literary traditions.
  
  Postmodern approaches to philosophy, both analytical and continental (including the work of Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, and Cavell) are scrutinized and compared with a view to the question of foundationalism and with respect to philosophy's historical reflection on its own exclusionary practices.
  
  After the Future discusses the ramifications of technology and programs for the renewal of community in a radically pluralistic society. It also discusses the question of language and the diverse ways of distinguishing the articulate from the inarticulate.

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  [Introduction to] Folklore from Contemporary Jamaicans

  Daryl Cumber Dance

  There is not now available, nor has there ever been, a general and comprehensive introductory collection of the rich folklore of Jamaica. Yet, despite this widespread enthrallment with the better-known aspects of Jamaican folk life and culture, the fact remains that no extensive general collection of the vast range of Jamaican folklore has been assembled.

  Dr. Dance spent six months in Jamaica from June through November 1978 researching and compiling stories and folklore for this book.

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  [Introduction to] Nietzschean Narratives

  Gary Shapiro

  Taking issue with a widely held view that Nietzsche's writings are essentially fragmentary or aphoristic, Gary Shapiro focuses on the narrative mode that Nietzsche adopted in many of his works. Such themes as eternal recurrence, the question of origins, and the problematics of self-knowledge are reinterpreted in the context of the narratives in which Nietzsche develops or employs them.

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  [Introduction to] The Medical Offset Effect and Public Health Policy: Mental Health Industry in Transition

  Jonathan B. Wight and John L. Fiedler

  Does the timely treatment of mental illness result in a drop in the cost of health care, and if so, what is the cost effectiveness? This study provides an overview, synthesis, and analysis of the medical offset effect. It demonstrates that a medical offset effect does exist and the size of the effect is significant. A behavioral model provides a precise method for ascertaining the dimensions of medical offset and an explanation of the underlying causal relationships. The offset effect for an important population group is analyzed through the use of Medicaid patient data from Georgia and Michigan. This clear, concise book will provide students, researchers, mental health professionals, insurance companies, and government agencies with an understanding of the current and potential future relationships between general medical care and mental health care services.
  
  The Medical Offset Effect begins with the historical and structural evolution of the mental health industry since World War II. The book then reviews medical offset literature. The behavioral model is followed by an empirical analysis and the book concludes with a general analytical framework for the development of a national mental health policy in light off the medical offset effect.

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  [Introduction to] Achim von Arnim's Novellensammlung 1812: Balance and Mediation

  Thomas Paul Bonfiglio

  Working within the context of current Arnim studies, Bonfiglio demonstrates how Novellensammlung 1812 is a coherent opus that allegorically represents a cosmology structured by Arnim's early work in physics along with his reception of Schelling's Naturphilosophie. These influences laid the foundation for an electromagnetic cosmology that informs Arnim's historiography, aesthetics, and poetics. Bonfiglio focuses his study on how Arnim's Romantic science determines his use of tropes, his Romantic idealism, and his own idiom of Romantic irony.

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  [Introduction to] Long Gone: The Mecklenburg Six and the Theme of Escape in Black Folklore

  Daryl Cumber Dance

  Magnitude of the Death Row escape on May 31, 1984 of six condemned men (Linwood Briley, James Briley, Earl Clanton, Jr., Willie Leroy Jones, Derick Lynn Peterson, and Lem Tuggle) incarcerated in the Mecklenburg Correction Center in Boydton, Virginia is chronicled.

  The terror it inspired in Virginia and up and down the East Coast, and even into Canada, evoked memories of the numerous exploits of fugitives and out-laws on the run in Black folktales, Black toasts, Black music, and Black literature.

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  [Introduction to] A Gentle Introduction to the VAX System

  John R. Hubbard

  This book was written originally for students enrolled in computer science courses at the University of Richmond. Very few had worked on a large time-sharing system like the VAX.

  The purpose of this book is to help the novice become comfortable using any of the Digital Equipment Corporations VAX computers, from the Micro-VAX to the powerful VAX 8000 system. The book is meant to be used as a tutorial.

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  [Introduction to] Diné Bibeehaz'aanii: A Handbook of Navajo Government

  David E. Wilkins

  The Diné (Navajos) inhabit a vast land of beauty and grace. It is a sprawling territory, bounded by sacred mountains and great rivers. The Navajo Reservation, first delineated in the 1868 treaty, has nearly quadrupled in size since then through some twenty-five additions. Today, the Diné land base is some 25,000 square miles (sixteen million acres roughly), encompassing a large portion of northeastern Arizona, a part of northwester New Mexico, and some 1,900 square miles in southeastern Utah. This tremendous stretch of land, the largest Indian reservation in the county, is slightly larger than the state of West Virginia.

  Navajo Tribal Government is the subject of this manual. Government institutions and processes may come into power overnight, but to understand them completely an historical review must be done. Therefore, a good part of this study is devoted to examining historical development that shaped Navajo government into its present form.

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  [Introduction to] Fifty Caribbean Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical and Critical Sourcebook

  Daryl Cumber Dance

  The beginnings of Caribbean literature lie hidden In the folklore of the plantation era and in the prim, condescending travelogues, the exotic novels, and the apparently naive slave narratives - often authored by Whites - that began to appear as early as the eighteenth century. Francis Williams, the classically educated Black poet of 18th century Jamaica, used conventional Augustan poetics to protest racism and assert the common humanity of mankind. The vision draws from Caribbean life. By the 19th century some black poets began to write of their own concerns and experiences, some writing in the local vernacular.

  The essays in this book are intended to introduce the reader to the wide range of important Caribbean writers, from the pioneers to the contemporaries.

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  [Introduction to] "The Polytyque Churche": Religion and Early Tudor Political Culture, 1465-1516

  Peter Kaufman

  For nearly five centuries readers of history have been treated to a one sided view of the late medieval English Church, and that narrow, negative vision has been permitted to stand for the whole. Most of the misconceptions about the clerical contribution to the tutor dynasty's formative years stem from criticisms of clerical worldliness composed by More, Erasmus, Colet, and others. The Polytyque Churche is Kaufman's attempt to restore the reputation of the late medieval English church and its position in political culture.

  At the core of the book, Kaufman analyzes these deceptive accusations against the church. He prefaces his discussion with an illuminating chronicle of the continuing deception--a history of the history of earliest Tutor political culture. Kaufman's fresh perspectives on the religious dimensions of public service and on the political character and consequences of ecclesiastical administration are fully crystallized in his presentation of scenes from clerical life that illustrate his central theme--the interpretation of religion and political culture. Kaufman maps that interpretation by examining four points of contact: allegedly "secular" pageants, ecclesiastical measures against late medieval crime, the church's immunities, and parish life. From this analysis emerges a partial recovery of the "the polytyque churche" in a presentation that coaxes students, scholars, and other readers to reconsider the whole issue of the relationships between church and state, religion and politics.

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  [Introduction to] Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th Century American South

  Edward L. Ayers

  Exploring the major elements of southern crime and punishment at a time that saw the formation of the fundamental patterns of class and race, Edward L. Ayers studies the inner workings of the police, prison, and judicial systems, and the nature of crime.

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  [Introduction to] Hermeneutics: Questions and Prospects

  Gary Shapiro and Alan Sica

  The essays in this collection are meant to be representative both of the current work on the nature of interpretation and of the necessity for such work to go beyond narrow disciplinary interests. Several individuals and institutions aided in bringing the essays together. Since a 1981 conference, many of these papers have been revised to take into account the exchange of views that took place. The other essays in the book are intended to reflect the broad range of hermeneutical alternatives that are now being actively explored.

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  The Politics of Annexation: Oligarchic Power in a Southern City

  John V. Moeser and Rutledge M. Dennis

  American central cities have long faced problems associated with population losses and deteriorating economies. As middle-class citizens move to the suburbs and as shopping centers and industry join them, the city experiences considerable difficulty raising money to fund the services needed by its growing low-income population. Just as the dwindling middle class produces strains in the city's economy, it also alters and reshapes the contours of the city's politics. This was particularly true of the 1960s since the vast majority of the out-migrants was white and a large proportion of the growing number of low-income city residents was black. Cities that historically were dominated by the white elite were so changed demographically that the political status quo was threatened. Quick, effective remedies were necessary for the white elite to achieve political stability and to reduce the dangers confronting the established order.

  A strategy traditionally employed by most cities and still available to some cities is annexation. Such a strategy works equally well for cities faced with an erosion of established power as for cities encumbered with declining bases of public revenue. For those cities surrounded by suburban municipalities, annexation is a useless device. Other cities, however, by expanding their boundaries to include unincorporated suburban areas, can acquire additional land, commercial/industrial enterprises, and people, all of which may generate new revenue to match their increased expenditures. Furthermore, additional population drawn from predominately white suburbs may represent new votes for a city faced with an increasing black population. This strategy has proven to be particularly useful in the South where, generally, the annexation laws are less restrictive than those in other parts of the country, where the cities are less likely to be hemmed in by other municipalities, and where racial politics over the years has been most acute.

  After an eight year effort to expand its boundaries, the City of Richmond, Virginia, on January 1, 1970, annexed twenty-three square miles and 47,000 people from Chesterfield County. At first glance, apart from the length of time involved in the land acquisition, this 1970 Richmond annexation could be viewed as one of hundreds of municipal annexations since 1945. In fact, however, the boundary expansion was unique. It so captured the attention of public officials and academicians across the nation that it may now constitute the most celebrated municipal annexation in recent American history. Apart from the legal issues raised during the litigation following the annexation (U.S. District Court Judge Robert E. Merhige once classified the case as the most complex since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka), and the questions which the case poses for urban planners, economists, and political and social thinkers, the annexation primarily reflects an intense power struggle between establishment whites and the city's activist blacks. It is the politics surrounding the Richmond annexation that invokes such interest among scholars and the lay public as well.

  This book constitutes a political analysis of the 1970 annexation. Specifically, this study explores the political rationale for annexation, the process by which the intent was converted into public policy and the political actors involved in the process. Though the study of. the annexation includes legal, economic, and urban planning issues, those issues are only peripheral to the central concern-power.

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  [Introduction to] Shuckin' and Jivin': Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans

  Daryl Cumber Dance

  An exciting new collection of Black American folklore, running the gamut from anecdotes concerning life among the slaves to obviously contemporary jokes. In their frank expression of racial attitudes and unexpurgated wit, these tales represent a radical departure from earlier collections.