Beyond Representational Correctness

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organized by Philippe Vergne

"Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress presents a comprehensive overview of Walker's work, beginning with her first cut-paper wall installation, Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, 1994, through new multimedia installations that feature layers of colored projections. The 1996 series of twenty-four watercolors, Brown Follies, is reproduced in full, as are many views of Walker's past exhibitions. Throughout the book is a selection of Walker's writings printed as they appear typed on index cards. These writings reveal a rarely seen side of the artist, whose words are as provocative as her installations and drawings. Also included are four essays that discuss Walker's place in art history, formal and narrative dimensions of her work, her relation to culture at large, and issues of race, sexuality, and representation addressed in her art."--Jacket. "Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress presents a comprehensive overview of Walker's work, beginning with her first cut-paper wall installation, Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, 1994, through new multimedia installations that feature layers of colored projections. The 1996 series of twenty-four watercolors, Brown Follies, is reproduced in full, as are many views of Walker's past exhibitions. Throughout the book is a selection of Walker's writings printed as they appear typed on index cards. These writings reveal a rarely seen side of the artist, whose words are as provocative as her installations and drawings. Also included are four essays that discuss Walker's place in art history, formal and narrative dimensions of her work, her relation to culture at large, and issues of race, sexuality, and representation addressed in her art."--BOOK JACKET.

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Patricia J. Williams

In these pages we encounter figures and images plucked from headlines -from Tonya Harding to Lani Guinier, Rush Limbaugh to Hillary Clinton, Clarence Thomas to Dan Quayle - and see how their portrayal, encoding certain stereotypes, often reveals more about us than about them. What are we really talking about when we talk about welfare mothers, for instance? Why is calling someone a "redneck" okay, and what does that say about our society? When young women appear on Phil Donahue to represent themselves as Jewish American Princesses, what else are they doing? These are among the questions Williams considers as she uncovers the shifting, often covert rules of conversation that determine who "we" are as a nation.

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Donald Van de Mark

"What makes some high achievers great human beings? ... Confirming the theories of psychologist Abraham Maslow, Van de Mark brings to life 19 specific personality traits that you can develop within yourself to emulate the great and the good--"--Page 4 of cover.

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Toby L. Parcel and Elizabeth G. Menaghan

Parents' Jobs and Children's Lives considers the effects of parental working conditions on children's cognition and social development. It also investigates how parental work affects the home environments that parents create for their children, and how these home environments influence the children directly. The theoretical underpinnings of the book draw from both sociology and economics; in addition, the authors make use of literature derived from developmental psychology. Theoretically eclectic, they rely on the personality and social structure framework developed by Melvin Kohn and his colleagues, on arguments regarding the importance of family social capital developed by James Coleman, as well as on ideas from Gary Becker's "new home economics" as guides to model specification. The empirical basis for Parcel and Menaghan's study is a series of multivariate analyses using data drawn from the 1986 and 1988 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey's Child-Mother data set. This data set matches longitudinal data on mothers, derived from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, with data on the children of these mothers born as of 1986. Children aged 3 to 6 were given age-appropriate developmental assessments every two years in order to assess the influence of parental work on short-term changes in their cognition and social behavior. The authors also devote considerable attention to the effects of fathers' work and family structure on the well-being of their children. . Parcel and Menaghan's work brings evidence to bear on both the theoretical perspectives guiding the analyses and on current policy debates regarding the nexus of work and family.