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Angels and Demons
Serge-Thomas Bonino
Catholic University of America Press, 2016
Angels occupy a significant space in contemporary popular spirituality. Yet, today more than ever, the belief in the existence of intermediary spirits between the human and divine realms needs to be evangelized and Christianized. Angels and Demons offers a detailed synthesis of the givens of the Christian tradition concerning the angels and demons, as systematized in its essential principles by St. Thomas Aquinas. Certainly, the doctrine of angels and demons is not at the heart of Christian faith, but its place is far from negligible. On the one hand, as part of faith seeking understanding, angelology has been and can continue to be a source of enrichment for philosophy. Thus, reflection on the ontological constitution of the angel, on the modes of angelic knowledge, and on the nature of the sin of Satan can engage and shed light on the most fundamental areas of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. On the other hand, angelology, insofar as it is inseparable from the ensemble of the Christian mystery (from the doctrine of creation to the Christian understanding of the spiritual life), can be envisioned from an original and fruitful perspective.
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Angels and Outcasts
An Anthology of Deaf Characters in Literature
Trent Batson
Gallaudet University Press, 1985
"This is a fascinating, enjoyable book. It could well be used in study groups at the high school or college level to explore both history and attitudes toward deafness." --Rehabilitation Literature "The editors are not enthralled, as so many of us seem to be, simply that deaf (or disabled) characters exist in literature; they ask why... The rest of the disability movement could learn from them." --The Disability Rag Dickens, Welty, and Turgenev are only three of the master storytellers in Angels and Outcasts. This remarkable collection of 14 short stories offers insights into what it means to be deaf in a hearing world. The book is divided into three parts: the first section explores works by nineteenth-century authors; the second section concentrates on stories by twentieth-century authors; and the final section focuses on stories by authors who are themselves deaf. Each section begins with an introduction by the editors, and each story is preceded by a preface. Angels and Outcasts concludes with an annotated bibliography of other prose works about the deaf experience. In addition to fascinating reading, it provides valuable insights into the world of the deaf. Trent Batson is Director of Academic Technology at Gallaudet University. Eugene Bergman, former Associate professor of English at Gallaudet University, is now retired.
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ANGELS IN ACTION
WHAT SWEDENBORG SAW AND HEARD
Robert Kirven
Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 1994

Angels live in communities, wear clothes, and have no wings! So said Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish scientist and seer who, for the last twenty-seven years of his life, visited heaven and hell almost daily and met angels and evil spirits. Swedenborg's visions and the meaning they can have in our lives are explained in this remarkable book. Author Robert H. Kirven also shows how angels work for us from birth through death and how we can be angels on earth.

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Angels in Mourning
Sublime Madness, Ennui and Melancholy in Modern Thought
Roger Bartra
Reaktion Books, 2018
Sublime madness, ennui, and melancholy: a condition of imbalance, chaotic and desolate—and a keystone of modern Western thought. Why did this threatening expression of languor and disorder gain such traction at the heart of a European culture supposedly guided by the light of rationalism? In Angels in Mourning, Roger Bartra investigates how three seemingly lucid European thinkers—Immanuel Kant, Max Weber, and Walter Benjamin—addressed the irrational and the dolorous in their work. Drawing attention to marginal and under-explored aspects of their thought, Bartra illuminates the disparate ways in which these foundational philosophers gazed into the darkness. His surprising and insightful study suggests one explanation for how melancholy found such a prominent space in Western society: the blossoming of Romanticism, that deep-seated protest against the Enlightenment and the capitalist order.
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Angels in the American Theater
Patrons, Patronage, and Philanthropy
Edited by Robert A. Schanke
Southern Illinois University Press, 2007
Angels in the American Theater: Patrons, Patronage, and Philanthropy examines the significant roles that theater patrons have played in shaping and developing theater in the United States. Because box office income rarely covers the cost of production, other sources are vital. Angels—financial investors and backers—have a tremendous impact on what happens on stage, often determining with the power and influence of their money what is conceived, produced, and performed. But in spite of their influence, very little has been written about these philanthropists.
Composed of sixteen essays and fifteen illustrations, Angels in the American Theater explores not only how donors became angels but also their backgrounds, motivations, policies, limitations, support, and successes and failures. Subjects range from millionaires Otto Kahn and the Lewisohn sisters to foundation giants Ford, Rockefeller, Disney, and Clear Channel. The first book to focus on theater philanthropy, Angels in the American Theater employs both a historical and a chronological format and focuses on individual patrons, foundations, and corporations.
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Approaching the Millennium
Essays on Angels in America
Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 1997
Tony Kushner's complex and demanding play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes has been the most talked about, analyzed, and celebrated play of the decade. The critic Harold Bloom has included Kushner's play in his "Western canon" alongside Shakespeare and the Bible, and drama scholar John M. Clum has termed it "a turning point in the history of gay drama, the history of American drama, and of American literary culture." While we might be somewhat wary of the instant canonization that such critical assessments confer, clearly Kushner's play is an important work, honored by the Pulitzer Prize, thought worthy of recognition on "purely aesthetic" grounds at the same time that it has been embraced--and occasionally rejected--for its politics.
Kushner's play explicitly positions itself in the current American conflict over identity politics, yet also situates that debate in a broader historical context: the American history of McCarthyism, of immigration and the "melting pot," of westward expansion, and of racist exploitation. Furthermore, the play enters into the politically volatile struggles of the AIDS crisis, struggles themselves interconnected with the politics of sexuality, gender, race, and class.
The original essays in Approaching the Millennium explore the complexities of the play and situate it in its particular, conflicted historical moment. The contributors help us understand and appreciate the play as a literary work, as theatrical text, as popular cultural phenomenon, and as political reflection and intervention. Specific topics include how the play thematizes gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity; the postmodern incarnation of the Brechtian epic; AIDS and the landscape of American politics. The range of different international productions of Angels in America provides a rich basis for discussion of its production history, including the linguistic and cultural shifts required in its "translation" from one stage to the next.
The last section of Approaching the Millennium includes interviews with Tony Kushner and other key creators and players involved in the original productions of Angels. The interviews explore issues raised earlier in the volume and dialogues between the creative artists who have shaped the play and the critics and "theatricians" engaged in responding to it.
Contributors to this volume are Arnold Aronson, Art Borreca, Gregory W. Bredbeck, Michael Cadden, Nicholas de Jongh, Allen J. Frantzen, Stanton B. Garner, Deborah R. Geis, Martin Harries, Steven F. Kruger, James Miller, Framji Minwalla, Donald Pease, Janelle Reinelt, David Román, David Savran, Ron Scapp, and Alisa Solomon.
Deborah Geis is Associate Professor of English, Queens College, City University of New York. Steven F. Kruger is Professor and Chair of the Department of English, Queens College, City University of New York.
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Armenian Apocrypha Relating to Angels and Biblical Heroes
Michael E. Stone
SBL Press, 2016

Explore how the vivid and creative Armenian spiritual tradition shaped biblical stories to serve new needs

Michael E. Stone’s latest book includes texts from Armenian manuscripts that are relevant to the development and growth of biblical themes and subjects. Most of these texts have not been published previously. Stone has collected a fascinating corpus of texts about biblical heroes, such as Joseph and Jonah, Nathan the Prophet, and Asaph the Psalmist. In addition, he has included documents illustrating particular points of the biblical story. This work reflects not just on how the Bible was interpreted in medieval times, but also how its stories and details were shaped by and served the needs of the vivid and creative Armenian spiritual tradition.

Features:

  • Expanded stories from Exodus
  • Introductions,translations, and notes
  • Insights into the Armenian "Embroidered Bible," through which many biblical incidents were known to Armenian literature, art, and thought
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Become Like the Angels
Benjamin P. Blosser
Catholic University of America Press, 2012
Become Like the Angels explores Origen's legacy and, in particular, his teachings about the origin, nature, and destiny of the human person. By way of a historical critical approach, Benjamin P. Blosser discusses the influence of Middle Platonic philosophy on the human soul and then compares it with Origen's teaching.
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Before the Closet
Same-Sex Love from "Beowulf" to "Angels in America"
Allen J. Frantzen
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Allen J. Frantzen challenges the long accepted view that the early Middle Ages tolerated and even fostered same-sex relations and that intolerance of homosexuality developed only late in the medieval period. Frantzen shows that in early medieval Europe, the Church did not tolerate same-sex acts, in fact it was an age before people recognized the existence—or the possibility—of the "closet."

With its ambitious scope and elegant style, Before the Closet sets same-sex relations in Anglo-Saxon sources in relation to the sexual themes of contemporary opera, dance, and theatre. Frantzen offers a comprehensive analysis of sources from the seventh to the twelfth century and traces Anglo-Saxon same-sex behavior through the age of Chaucer and into the Renaissance.

"Frantzen's marvelous book . . . opens up a world most readers will never have even known was there. It's a difficult topic, but Frantzen's comprehensive, readable and even wryly funny treatment makes this an unexpected pleasure."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
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Believing in South Central
Everyday Islam in the City of Angels
Pamela J. Prickett
University of Chicago Press, 2021
The area of Los Angeles known as South Central is often overshadowed by dismal stereotypes, problematic racial stigmas, and its status as the home to some of the city’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods. Amid South Central’s shifting demographics and its struggles with poverty, sociologist Pamela J. Prickett takes a closer look, focusing on the members of an African American Muslim community and exploring how they help each other combat poverty, job scarcity, violence, and racial injustice. Prickett’s engaging ethnography relates how believers in this longstanding religious community see Islam as a way of life, a comprehensive blueprint for individual and collective action, guiding how to interact with others, conduct business, strive for progress, and cultivate faith.

Prickett offers deep insights into the day-to-day lived religion of the Muslims who call this community home, showing how the mosque provides a system of social support and how believers deepen their spiritual practice not in spite of, but through, conditions of poverty. Prickett breaks past the stigmas of urban poverty, revealing a complex and vibrant community by telling the stories of longstanding residents of South Central—like Sister Ava, who offers food to the local unhoused people and finds the sacred in her extensive DVD collection. In addition to her portraits of everyday life among Muslims in South Central, Prickett also provides vivid and accessible descriptions of Ramadan and histories of the mosque, situates this community within the larger story of the Nation of Islam, explores gender issues, and unpacks the interaction between African American Muslims and South Asian and Arab American Muslims, revealing both the global and local significance of this religious tradition.
 
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The Book of Stones and Angels
Harold Schweizer
Tupelo Press, 2015
Thematically exploring the contrasts and dynamic interplay between solidity and ephemerality, in his first book of poems Harold Schweizer creates great dramatic tension by poising complex, expansive sentences against the strictures of taut margins. While portraying angels as unfettered, Schweizer doesn’t accept the platonic notion that we ever transcend our physical world. Instead, he imagines angels as immanent, everywhere: “they / inhabit all things.” The Book of Stones and Angels attempts to disclose the angelic lightness of stones in the obstinate materiality of angels, amid the lightness and frailty of our existence.
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Bring Now the Angels
Poems
Dilruba Ahmed
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020
This collection juxtaposes text from Google Search autocomplete with the intimate language of prayer. Corporate jargon co-exists with the incantatory and ancient ghazal form. Ahmed’s second book of poetry explores the terrain of loss—of a beloved family member, of human dignity & potential, of the earth as it stands, of hope. Her poems weave mourning with the erratic process of healing, skepticism with an unsteady attempt to regain faith.
With poems that are by turns elegiac, biting, and tender, Bring Now the Angels conveys a desire to move toward transformation and rebirth, even among seemingly insurmountable obstacles: chronic disease, corporate greed, environmental harm, and a general atmosphere of anxiety and violence.

BRING NOW THE ANGELS

To test your pulse as you sleep.
Bring the healer            the howler                    the listening ear—
 
Bring                an apothecary               to mix               the tincture—
            We need the salve
the tablet                      the capsule
            of the hour—                Bring sword-eaters
and those          who will swallow fire—
                                                Fetch the guardian
 
to flatten the wheelchair,
                                    to hoist it toward heaven:
the public shuttle awaits
                                    the ceaseless trips to the clinic.
To the bedside manner
                                    summon witness: this medic’s
disdain toward patients              the physician’s dismissal
                                    of pain—
And call the druggist, again, to drug us senseless—
 
Bring a nomad              to index our debts
            tuck      each invoice                 into broken walls
 
of regret—                    Call the cleric               the clerk
            the messengers divine—
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Brutes or Angels
Human Possibility in the Age of Biotechnology
James T. Bradley
University of Alabama Press, 2013
A guide to the rapidly progressing Age of Biotechnology, Brutes or Angels provides basic information on a wide array of new technologies in the life sciences, along with the ethical issues raised by each

With stem cell research, Dolly the cloned sheep, in vitro fertilization, age retardation, and pharmaceutical mind enhancement, humankind is now faced with decisions that it has never before had to consider. The thoughtfulness, or lack of it, that we bring to those decisions will largely determine the future character of the living world.
 
Brutes or Angels will facilitate informed choice making about the personal use of biotechnologies and the formulation of public policies governing their development and use. Ten biotechnologies that impact humans are considered: stem cell research, embryo selection, human genomics, gene therapies, human reproductive cloning, age retardation, cognition enhancement, the engineering of nonhuman organisms, nanobiology, and synthetic biology.
 
With deft and assured use of metaphors, analogies, diagrams, and photographs, James T. Bradley introduces important biological principles and the basic procedures used in biotechnology. Various ethical issues--personhood, personal identity, privacy, ethnic discrimination, distributive justice, authenticity and human nature, and the significance of mortality in the human life cycle--are presented in a clear and unbiased manner. Personal reflection and group dialogue are encouraged by questions at the end of each chapter, making this book not only a general guide to better informed and nuanced thinking on these complex and challenging topics but also an appropriate text for bioethics courses in university science departments and for adult education classes.
 
Standing at the beginning of the twenty-first century, with burgeoning abilities to enhance and even create life in ways unimaginable just a few decades ago, humans have an awesome responsibility to themselves and other species. Brutes or Angels invites us to engage each other in meaningful dialogue by listening, gathering information, formulating thoughtful views, and remaining open to new knowledge and ethical argumentation.
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Catching Hell In The City Of Angels
Life And Meanings Of Blackness In South Central Los Angeles
João H. Costa Vargas
University of Minnesota Press, 2006
Since the 1980s, Los Angeles has become the most racially and economically divided city in the United States. In the poorest parts of South Central Los Angeles, buildings in disrepair—the legacy of racial unrest. Moving beyond stereotypes of South Central's predominantly African American residents, João H. Costa Vargas recounts his almost two years living in the district. Personal, critical, and disquieting, Catching Hell in the City of Angels examines the ways in which economic and social changes in the twentieth century have affected the black community, and powerfully conveys the experiences that bind and divide its people.

Through compelling stories of South Central, including his own experience as an immigrant of color, Vargas presents portraits of four groups. He talks daily with women living in a low-income Watts apartment building; works with activists in a community organization against police brutality; interacts with former gang members trying to maintain a 1992 truce between the Bloods and the Crips; and listens to amateur jazz musicians who perform in a gentrified section of the neighborhood. In each case he describes the worldviews and the definitions of “blackness” these people use to cope with oppression. Vargas finds, in turn, that blackness is a form of racial solidarity, a vehicle for the renewal of African American culture, and a political expression of revolutionary black nationalism.

Vargas reveals that the social fault lines in South Central reflect both contemporary disparities and long-term struggles. In doing so, he shows both the racialized power that makes “blackness” a prized term of identity and the terrible price that African Americans have paid for this emphasis. Ultimately, Catching Hell in the City of Angels tells the story of urban America through the lives of individuals from diverse, overlapping, and vibrant communities.

João H. Costa Vargas is assistant professor in the Center for African and African American Studies and the department of anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin.

Robin D. G. Kelley is the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous books, including Yo Mama's Disfunktional: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America.
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Con Thien
The Hill of Angels
James P. Coan
University of Alabama Press, 2007
Con Thien is a memoir/history of a much-beleaguered Marine outpost of the DMZ
 
Throughout much of 1967, a remote United States Marine firebase only two miles from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) captured the attention of the world’s media. That artillery-scarred outpost was the linchpin of the so-called McNamara Line intended to deter incursions into South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese Army. As such, the fighting along this territory was particularly intense and bloody, and the body count rose daily.
 
Con Thien combines James P. Coan’s personal experiences with information taken from archives, interviews with battle participants, and official documents to construct a powerful story of the daily life and combat on the red clay bulls-eye known as "The Hill of Angels." As a tank platoon leader in Alpha Company, 3d Tank Battalion, 3d Marine Division, Coan was stationed at Con Thien for eight months during his 1967-68 service in Vietnam and witnessed much of the carnage.
 
Con Thien was heavily bombarded by enemy artillery with impunity because it was located in politically sensitive territory and the U.S. government would not permit direct armed response from Marine tanks. Coan, like many other soldiers, began to feel as though the government was as much the enemy as the NVA, yet he continued to fight for his country with all that he had. In his riveting memoir, Coan depicts the hardships of life in the DMZ and the ineffectiveness of much of the U.S. military effort in Vietnam.
 
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CONVERSATIONS WITH ANGELS
WHAT SWEDENBORG HEARD IN HEAVEN
DONALD ROSE
Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 1996

"...an engaging, fascinating contribution to angelic studies."
---Reviewer's Bookwatch

This fresh translation brings together the most remarkable selections from Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg's works about the wisdom imparted to him by angels. These stories reveal the angels' natures, their spiritual loves, their heavenly education, and the true source of wisdom and beauty. These spirits share their knowledge for the good of those on earth, who are themselves created to become angels.

Look for this book's companion piece, Debates with Devils.

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A Gift of Angels
The Art of Mission San Xavier del Bac
Bernard L. Fontana; photographs by Edward McCain
University of Arizona Press, 2010
It rises suddenly out of the Sonoran Desert landscape, towering over the tallest tree or cactus, a commanding building with a sensuous dome, elliptical vaults, and sturdy bell towers. There is nothing else like it around, nor does it seem there should be. This incongruity of setting is what strikes first-time visitors to Mission San Xavier del Bac. This great church is of another place and another time, while its beauty is universal and timeless.

Mission San Xavier del Bac is a two-century-old Spanish church in southern Arizona located just a few miles from downtown Tucson, a metropolis of more than half a million people in the American Southwest. A National Historic Landmark since 1963, the mission’s graceful baroque art and architecture have drawn visitors from all over the world.

Now Bernard Fontana—the leading expert on San Xavier—and award-winning photographer Edward McCain team up to bring us a comprehensive view of the mission as we’ve never seen it before. With 200 stunning full-color photographs and incisive text illuminating the religious, historical, and motivational context of these images, A Gift of Angels is a must-have for tourists, scholars, and other visitors to San Xavier.

From its glorious architecture all the way down to the finest details of its art, Mission San Xavier del Bac is indeed a gift of angels.
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The Guardian Angel Diary
GRANT SCHNARR
Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 2011

Minister Grant Schnarr draws together the voices of young people he has met and counseled to weave a fictional tale of love, fear, and hope.

Sixteen-year-old Nicole Bealart is a typical teenager, living in a world of homework, school plays, and her own imagination—a world turned upside-down when she is diagnosed with brain cancer. Her father, who never dealt with her mother’s death from lung cancer six years before, begins drinking heavily; she is left trying to care for herself and her younger brother, Luke, while juggling school and her growing fears about her own mortality. Seeking answers, she begins writing a journal that becomes a vehicle for her to communicate with her guardian angel. As she approaches the date of an operation that may either save her life or end it, her inner and outer worlds collide and combine to give her a new understanding of family, friendship, and life.

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Impasse of the Angels
Scenes from a Moroccan Space of Memory
Stefania Pandolfo
University of Chicago Press, 1997
The image of the ethnographer in the field who observes his or her subjects from a distance while copiously taking notes has given way in recent years to a more critical and engaged form of anthropology. Composed as a polyphonic dialogue of texts, Stefania Pandolfo's Impasse of the Angels takes this engagement to its limit by presenting the relationship between observer and observed as one of interacting equals and mutually constituting interlocuters.

Impasse of the Angels explores what it means to be a subject in the historical and poetic imagination of a southern Moroccan society. Passionate and lyrical, ironic and tragic, the book listens to dissonant, often idiosyncratic voices—poetic texts, legends, social spaces, folktales, conversations—which elaborate in their own ways the fractures, wounds, and contradictions of the Maghribî postcolonial present. Moving from concrete details in a traditional ethnographic sense to a creative, experiential literary style, Impasse of the Angels is a tale of life and death compellingly addressing readers from anthropology, literature, philosophy, postcolonial criticism, and Middle Eastern studies.
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In the Presence of Angels
Andrea R. Garrison
Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 2013

In October 2004, Andrea Garrison’s mother, Mattie Pearl, passed into the spiritual world. The weeks leading up to her crossing were a powerful time for Andrea and the rest of her family as Mattie Pearl shared her love, her insights, and her visions of heaven with those around her.

Andrea knew from the time she was a little girl that there was a spiritual reality beyond what we could see, and her mother encouraged her to explore different understandings of the Divine. As an adult, Andrea encountered the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and was struck by the similarities between his theology and her experiences. Her quest to find others who knew about the Swedish mystic led her to new friends and, ultimately, a deeper exploration of her family history.

Originally published as The Crossing Over of Mattie Pearl, this expanded edition tells more about Andrea’s family history, including the role her father played in her life, as well as her reflections on Emanuel Swedenborg. Anyone who has mourned the loss of a loved one or been curious about the other side will be inspired and uplifted by this true story of a remarkable woman.

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LA Sports
Play, Games, and Community in the City of Angels
Wayne Wilson
University of Arkansas Press, 2018
LA Sports brings together sixteen essays covering various aspects of the development and changing nature of sport in one of America’s most fascinating and famous cities. The writers cover a range of topics, including the history of car racing and ice skating, the development of sport venues, the power of the Mexican fan base in American soccer leagues, the intersecting life stories of Jackie and Mack Robinson, the importance of the Showtime Lakers, the origins of Muscle Beach and surfing, sport in Hollywood films, and more.
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The Lives of Angels
Emanuel Swedenborg
Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 2013
Until his mid-fifties, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) was merely a genius. As a young man, he traveled extensively throughout Europe to study the cutting-edge science of his time. Upon returning to his native Sweden, he went to work for the board of mines, where he introduced technical advances and gained an international reputation for his understanding of mechanics and metallurgy. In his spare time, he published studies in mathematics, astronomy, economic theory, and anatomy.

As his professional career was winding to a close, a remarkable spiritual awakening changed the course of his life. He believed that God allowed him to journey in spirit form to the afterlife and talk to angels, devils, and the spirits of the departed—not just once, but continuously, for decades—and he spent the rest of his life recording what he saw.

The Lives of Angels is a collection of Swedenborg’s most striking insights about life in heaven, with vivid descriptions of angels’ homes, their language, their communities, and even their romantic relationships. He tells us that angels are with us throughout our lives, guiding and supporting us, and that any person on earth can become an angel after death if he or she is loving and selfless. The introduction by Grant Schnarr gives readers a modern framework for understanding Swedenborg’s compelling vision of the spiritual world.
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Nightmare on Main Street
Angels, Sadomasochism, and the Culture of Gothic
Mark Edmundson
Harvard University Press, 1997

Once we've terrified ourselves reading Anne Rice or Stephen King, watching Halloween or following the O. J. Simpson trial, we can rely on the comfort of our inner child or Robert Bly's bongos, an angel, or even a crystal. In a brilliant assessment of American culture on the eve of the millennium, Mark Edmundson asks why we're determined to be haunted, courting the Gothic at every turn--and, at the same time, committed to escape through any new scheme for ready-made transcendence.

Nightmare on Main Street depicts a culture suffused with the Gothic, not just in novels and films but even in the nonfictive realms of politics and academic theories, TV news and talk shows, various therapies, and discourses on AIDS and the environment. Gothic's first wave, in the 1790s, reflected the truly terrifying events unfolding in revolutionary France. What, Edmundson asks, does the ascendancy of the Gothic in the 1990s tell us about our own day?

And what of another trend, seemingly unrelated--the widespread belief that re-creating oneself is as easy as making a wish? Looking at the world according to Forrest Gump, Edmundson shows how this parallel culture actually works reciprocally with the Gothic.

An unchecked fixation on the Gothic, Edmundson argues, would result in a culture of sadomasochism. Against such a rancorous and dispiriting possibility, he draws on the work of Nietzsche and Shelley, and on the recent creations of Toni Morrison and Tony Kushner, to show how the Gothic and the visionary can come together in persuasive and renovating ways.

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An Ocean Full of Angels
The Autobiography of 'Isa Ben Adam
Peter Kreeft
St. Augustine's Press, 2011

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Outcasts and Angels
The New Anthology of Deaf Characters in Literature
Edna Edith Sayers
Gallaudet University Press, 2012

In 1976, Trent Batson and Eugene Bergman released their classic Angels and Outcasts: An Anthology of Deaf Characters in Literature. In it, they featured works from the 19th and 20th centuries by well-known authors such as Charles Dickens and Eudora Welty. They also presented less-well-known deaf authors, and they prefaced each excerpt with remarks on context, societal perceptions, and the dignity due to deaf people. Since then, much has transpired, turning around the literary criticism regarding portrayals of deaf people in print. Edna Edith Sayers reflects these changes in her new collection Outcasts and Angels: The New Anthology of Deaf Characters in Literature.

       Sayers mines the same literary vein as the first volume with rich new results. Her anthology also introduces rare works by early masters such as Daniel Defoe. She includes three new deaf authors, Charlotte Elizabeth, Howard T. Hofsteater, and Douglas Bullard, who offer compelling evidence of the attitudes toward deaf people current in their eras. In search of commonalities and comparisons, Sayers reveals that the defining elements of deaf literary characters are fluid and subtly different beyond the predominant dueling stereotypes of preternaturally spiritual beings and thuggish troglodytes.

       Outcasts and Angels demonstrates these subtle variations in writings by Ambrose Bierce, Isak Dinesen, Nadine Gordimer, and Flannery O’Connor. Stories by Juozas Grušas, Julian Barnes, and many other international authors broaden the scope of this updated inquiry into the deaf literary character. Sayer’s preface and closing essay bring any disparate parts together, completing Outcasts and Angels as a fitting, contemporary companion to the original classic collection.

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