<div> <div> James Baldwin, one of the major African American writers of the twentieth century, has been the subject of a substantial body of literary criticism. As a prolific and experimental author with a marginal perspective?a black man during segregation and the Civil Rights era, a homosexual at a time when tolerance toward gays was not common?Baldwin has fascinated readers for over half a century. Yet Baldwin?s critics have tended to separate his weighty, complex body of work and to examine it piecemeal. <i>A Criminal Power: James Baldwin and the Law</i> is the first thematic study to analyze the complete scope of his work. It accomplishes this through an expansive definition and thorough analysis of the social force that oppressed Baldwin throughout his life: namely, the law. Baldwin, who died in 1987, attempted suicide in 1949 at the age of 25 after spending eight-days in a French prison following an absurd arrest for ?receiving stolen goods??a sheet that his acquaintance had taken from a hotel. This seemingly trite incident made Baldwin painfully aware of what he would later call the law?s ?criminal power.? </div> <div> Up to now, the only book-length studies to address Baldwin?s entire career have been biographies and artistic ?portraits.? D. Quentin Miller corrects this oversight in a comprehensive volume that addresses and unifies all of Baldwin?s work. Miller asserts that the Baldwin corpus is a testament to how the abuse of power within the American legal, judicial, and penal systems manifested itself in the twentieth century. </div> </div>
<div> <i>The Religion of Empire: </i> <i>Political Theology in Blake?s Prophetic Symbolism</i> is the first full-length study devoted to interpreting Blake?s three long poems, showing the ways in which the Bible, myth, and politics merge in his prophetic symbolism. In this book, G. A. Rosso examines the themes of empire and religion through the lens of one of Blake?s most distinctive and puzzling images, Rahab, a figure that anchors an account of the development of Blake?s political theology in the latter half of his career. Through the Rahab figure, Rosso argues, Blake interweaves the histories of religion and empire in a wide-ranging attack on the conceptual bases of British globalism in the long eighteenth century. This approach reveals the vast potential that the question of religion offers to a reconsideration of Blake?s attitude to empire. <br /> <br /> <i>The Religion of Empire</i> also reevaluates Blake?s relationship with Milton, whose influence Blake both affirms and contests in a unique appropriation of Milton?s prophetic legacy. In this context, Rosso challenges recent views of Blake as complicit with the nationalism and sexism of his time, expanding the religion-empire nexus to include Blake?s esoteric understanding of gender. Foregrounding the role of female characters in the longer prophecies, Rosso discloses the variegated and progressive nature of Blake?s apocalyptic humanism. <br /> </div>
<div> In <i>Metafilm: Materialist Rhetoric and Reflexive Cinema</i>, Christopher Carter examines paradoxical rhetoric in visual culture, analyzing movies that immerse viewers in violent narratives while examining the ethics of the transaction. Featuring the films of Michael Haneke, Atom Egoyan, Icíar Bollaín, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Ryan Coogler, Carter analyzes how personal conflict intermingles with the inherent violence of warfare, transnational economics, labor exploitation, and racism in genres ranging from horror to historical recreation and from depictions of genocide to records of police brutality. These films, Carter argues, reflect on their construction, distribution, and audience engagement, emphasizing the material design and the economics of rhetoric in ways most films do not. <br /> <br /> Ultimately, <i>Metafilm</i> reframes materialism as a multimodal composing-in-action, or <i>reflexive materialism,</i> focusing on movies that dramatize their entanglement in economic and historical trauma while provoking forms of resistance during and after viewing. Carter contends that even as we recognize the division of social power in the films, we must also recognize how the concept is subversive and eludes control. In looking at the interplay between the films? content and their production, circulation, and reception, Carter explores how the films persuade us to identify with onscreen worlds before probing our expectations?validating some, rejecting others, and sometimes proposing new ways of watching altogether. <br /> </div>