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THE LIFE OF SHERMAN COOLIDGE, ARAPAHO ACTIVIST
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln)
ISBN: 978-1496233479 (Hardcover, 2022)
Sherman Coolidge's (1860-1932) panoramic life as survivor of the Indian Wars, witness to the maladministration of the reservation system, mediator between Native and white worlds, and ultimate defender of Native rights and heritage made him the embodiment of his era in American Indian history. Born to a band of Northern Arapaho in present-day Wyoming, Doa-che-wa-a (Runs On Top) endured a series of harrowing tragedies against the brutal backdrop of the nineteenth-century Indian Wars. As a boy he experienced the merciless killings of his family in vicious raids and attacks, surviving only to be given up by his starving mother to U.S. officers stationed at a western military base. Doa-che-wa-a was eventually adopted by a sympathetic infantry lieutenant who changed his name and set his life on a radically different course. Over the next sixty years Coolidge inhabited western plains and eastern cities, rode in military campaigns against the Lakota, entered the Episcopal priesthood, labored as missionary to his tribe on the Wind River Reservation, fomented dangerous conspiracies, married a wealthy New York heiress, .....
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met with presidents and congressmen, and became one of the nation's most prominent Indigenous persons as leader of the Native-run reform group the Society of American Indians. Coolidge's fascinating biography is essential for understanding the myriad ways Native Americans faced modernity at the turn of the century.
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OJIBWE, ACTIVIST, PRIEST: THE LIFE OF FATHER PHILIP BERGIN GORDON, TIBISHKOGIJIK
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press (Madison)
ISBN: 978-9004342101 (Hardcover, 2019)
Born in Wisconsin, Philip Bergin Gordon—whose Ojibwe name, Tibish-kogijik, is said to mean Looking into the Sky—became one of the first Native Americans to be ordained as a Catholic priest in the United States. Gordon’s devotion to Catholicism was matched only by his dedication to the protection of his people. A notable Native rights activist, his bold efforts to expose poverty and corruption on reservations and his reputation for agitation earned him the nickname “Wisconsin’s Fighting Priest.”
Drawing on previously unexplored materials, Tadeusz Lewandowski paints a portrait of a contentious life. Ojibwe, Activist, Priest examines Gordon’s efforts to abolish the Bureau of Indian Affairs, his membership in the Society of American Indians, and his dismissal from his Ojibwe parish and exile to a tiny community where he would be less likely to stir up controversy. Lewandowski illuminates a significant chapter in the struggle for Native American rights through the views and experiences of a key Native progressive.
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RED BIRD, RED POWER: THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF ZITKALA-ŠA
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (Norman)
ISBN: 978-0806164533 (Paperback, 2019)
ISBN: 978-0806151786 (Hardcover, 2016)
Red Bird, Red Power tells the story of one of the most influential—and controversial—American Indian activists of the twentieth century. Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938), also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was a highly gifted writer, editor, and musician who dedicated her life to achieving justice for Native peoples. Here, Tadeusz Lewandowski offers the first full-scale biography of the woman whose passionate commitment to improving the lives of her people propelled her to the forefront of Progressive-era reform movements.
Lewandowski draws on a vast array of sources, including previously unpublished letters and diaries, to recount Zitkala-Ša’s unique life journey. Her story begins on the Dakota plains, where she was born to a Yankton Sioux mother and a white father. Zitkala-Ša, whose name translates as “Red Bird” in English, left home at age eight to attend a Quaker boarding school, eventually working as a teacher at Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
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By her early twenties, she was the toast of East Coast literary society. Her short stories for the Atlantic Monthly (1900) are, to this day, the focus of scholarly analysis and debate. In collaboration with William F. Hanson, she wrote the libretto and songs for the innovative Sun Dance Opera (1913).
And yet, as Lewandowski demonstrates, Zitkala-Ša’s successes could not fill the void of her lost cultural heritage, nor dampen her fury toward the Euro-American establishment that had robbed her people of their land. In 1926, she founded the National Council of American Indians with the aim of redressing American Indian grievances.
Zitkala-Ša’s complex identity has made her an intriguing—if elusive—subject for scholars. In Lewandowski’s sensitive interpretation, she emerges as a multifaceted human being whose work entailed constant negotiation. In the end, Lewandowski argues, Zitkala-Ša’s achievements distinguish her as a forerunner of the Red Power movement and an important agent of change.
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DWIGHT MACDONALD ON CULTURE: THE HAPPY WARRIOR OF THE MIND, RECONSIDERED
ISBN: 978-3631626900
Publisher: Peter Lang (Frankfurt am Main, 2013)
Dwight Macdonald was the most prominent excoriator of mass culture in the 1950s and '60s. Since that time his reputation has not fared well. Derided as elitist and passé, his tracts now represent everything wrong-headed about mid-century cultural criticism. Nonetheless, Macdonald deserves reconsideration. His detractors, though uncovering many of Macdonald's failings, have in part misunderstood him, while the field of cultural studies has misclassified his essays in the radical rather than conservative tradition of criticism. Dwight Macdonald on Culture seeks to amend ..............
previous misconceptions offering new perspectives on a figure who grappled with issues of culture that remain ever pertinent.
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NO MORE POLGLISH! A POLISH STUDENT'S HANDBOOK FOR ELIMINAT-ING INTERLINGUAL ERRORS
ISBN: 978-8373958975
Publisher: University of Opole Press (Opole, 2020)
No More Polglish! draws on two decades of working with Polish students of English at the university level. It aims to catalog and elucidate common errors derived from Polish language transfer, and help readers speak English confidently, correctly, and idiomatically. The handbook’s light tone and easy-to-digest format make learning fast and pleasant. No More Polglish! is recommended for high school and university students who wish to improve their language skills, as well as teachers looking to enhance classroom content. Each chapter includes a selection of exercises for revising information, followed by an answer key.
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MAKING YOUR ENGLISH 'ENGLISH': A POLISH STUDENT'S HANDBOOK FOR RAISING LANGUAGE AWARENESS THROUGH ATTENTION TO INTER-LINGUAL ERRORS
ISBN: 978-8373954816
Publisher: University of Opole Press (Opole, 2011)
This handbook is designed to aid Polish students in improving their English through an examination of typical errors caused by first language interference. The author is an American native speaker who has taught in Poland for over a decade, and is intimately acquainted with the problems Polish students face when trying to master English. Making Your English 'English' is currently in its sixth printing.
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THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF SHERMAN AND GRACE COOLIDGE
T. Lewandowski, Ed.
ISBN: 978-1-4962-3405-6
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, 2023)
Sherman and Grace Coolidge were a remarkable couple in many respects. Sherman (Runs On Top), born in the early 1860s into the Northern band of Arapahos, experienced the extreme violence of the Indian Wars, including the death of his father, as a young boy. Grace was born into wealth and privilege in 1873, only to reject her life as a New York heiress and become a missionary on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. It was there that they met and later married in 1902. Both went on to achieve prominence: he as the president of the Native-run reform group the Society of American Indians (1911–1923), she as the author of Teepee Neighbors, a book describing
her time on the reservation that drew praise from critics such as H. L. Mencken. Offering unprecedented entrée into the most significant writings and documents of a leading Native American advocate and his wife, this volume is an intimate portrait of their life.
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ZITKALA-ŠA: LETTERS, SPEECHES, AND UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS, 1898–1929
T. Lewandowski, Ed.
ISBN: 978-9004342101
Publisher: Brill Press (Leiden, 2018)
Gertrude Bonnin, better known by her Lakota name, Zitkala-Ša, was one of the most prominent American Indians of the early 20th century. A talented writer, orator, and musician, she devoted much of her life to the protection of Native peoples. As such, Bonnin corresponded with many other distinguished persons within the early Native rights movement, including Carlos Montezuma, Richard Henry Pratt, and Arthur C. Parker, as well as Fathers Martin Kenel and William H. Ketcham of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions.
This volume gathers together Bonnin’s letters, lesser-known writings and speeches, illuminating her private and public struggles.
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SEX IN THE STATES: MEDIA, LITERATURE, AND DISCOURSE
T. Lewandowski and S. Kuźnicki, Eds.
ISBN: 978-83-7395-932-3
Publisher: University of Opole Press (Opole, 2022)
In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon distinguishes several clear indicators that an imperial society is unraveling. Among markers such as economic inequality and conspicuous consumption, he points to obsession with sex as a warning sign revealed by history. Despite its past Puritan roots and repressed Victorian attitudes, the United States has, arguably, begun to indulge this obsession on an unprecedented scale. It is estimated that over 100 million Americans—or a third of the population—watch pornography on a daily basis. In other realms the
story is much the same. Fifty Shades of Grey, Donald Trump’s famous line “Grab ’em by the p****,” and the Jeffery Epstein saga all collude to capture the current Zeitgeist of imperial decline. Now more than ever, Sex in the States seems a topic worth considering. If you’d like to explore more, open our volume and take a peek.
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THE BOUNDS OF RESPONSIBILITY
T. Lewandowski and E. G. Ilie, Eds.
ISBN: 978-1-84888-315-4
Publisher: Inter-Disciplinary Press (Oxford, 2014)
Republished: Brill Press (Leiden, 2019)
This volume examines our fundamental obligations as humans. The chapters offer innovative models and philosophies for responsible living, covering the areas of consumption, bioethics, community inclusion, disability, the EU debt crisis, and the body. Each, nevertheless, grapples with the central question of what we owe others, whether on the personal, societal, industrial, governmental or international level, and the problem of how far these responsibilities are realized and extended.
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