Faculty Publications

Weird City: Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin, Texas
Joshua Long

Austin, Texas, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, is experiencing one of the most dynamic periods in its history. Wedged between homogenizing growth and a long tradition of rebellious nonconformity, many Austinites feel that they are in the midst of a "battle for the city's soul."

This book explores the complex and eccentric history of the "Keep Austin Weird" movement. What began as a whimsical grassroots expression of city pride in 2000...

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Thomas Hare and Political Representation in Victorian Britain
Floyd Parsons

This book is an account of the life and work of Thomas Hare (1806–1891) as a political theorist within the context of the history of party politics in Victorian Britain. It focuses on his principle of personal representation and its association with proportional representation, in opposition to the principle of virtual representation. By linking this debate to contemporary arguments over parliamentary reform, the book demonstrates the relation between political theory and party politics...

Myths and counter-myths of America: New World Allegories in the 20th-Century Italian Literature and Film
Fabio Ferrari

Italian fantasies of America’s apocalyptic Otherness continue to function along the same culturally-defensive lines evidenced in more distant eras, from 1492 to 1929 to 2001. What is the theoretical cause of this historically resilient attraction-repulsion dynamic? Yesterday, like today, Italian literary and cinematic representations of America’s “imminent collapse” seem to serve as metaphoric and didactic means for “redeeming” the integrity of Italian identity...

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