Latest Update at HOMER August 20, 2007

Hi Folks:

I can't believe that summer is almost at an end and classes will be starting pretty soon. I may not be able to do a complete library presentation using the library classroom but I can still visit your class and do a brief introduction of myself and the library resources and how the students can use them for their paper. Let me know if anyone is interested.

Now, here is the list of the most recent acquisition's at HOMER:

Puerto Rican and Latinos Studies

General

Immigration

• Stowell, Jacob I. Immigration and crime: the effects of immigration on criminal behavior. New York: LFB Scholarly Pub. LLC, 2007. [Note from Publisher] Stowell examines the impact of immigration on violent crime. Crimiological theory, and particularly social disorganization theory, has held that immigration is inextricably linked to crime. Stowell tests whether patterns of neighborhood-level violence are partially attributable to the population characteristics of an area, and, in particular, to its nativity composition. His analyzes offer both support for and challenges to social disorganization theory. Consistent with theoretical expectations, immigration is found to be indirectly associated with levels of violence. Little support, however, is found for the notion that immigrants are a largely homogeneous population, or that immigration is positively associated with property crime. The results call for a refinement of the disorganization theory, one that is sensitive to the differences among the foreign-born population and one that does not assume a negative impact of immigration on neighborhood social structure and violence.

• Hill, Laura E. Out-of-school immigrant youth. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2007. [Note from Publisher] Some 73,00 immigrants ages 13 to 18 live in California but are not enrolled in school. Many more are beyond school age but did not enroll in U.S. schools when they were eligible. Youth who are not in school receive few federal and state resources, and we know little about their circumstances. One federal program, Migrant Education, serves this population of young people. Working with data from this program and from the U.S. Census, the author examines the following questions: Who are out-of-school immigrant youth and how are they faring? What are the needs of these youth? What services appear to be related to positive outcomes, such as returning to school?

Literature

• Caulfield, Carlotta (ed.) A companion to US Latino literatures / edited by Carlota Caulfield, Darién J. Davis. Woodbridge, UK: Tamesis; Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2007. [Note from Publisher] Unique in its scope and perspective, [this book] focuses on various literary genres, and cinema, related to Latinos. Each essay considers not only Latino writers who were born or raised in the United States, but also Latin American writers who took up residence in the United States but may also be considered part of the literary scene of their countries of origin. Rather than follow one specific mode of organization and presentation, each contributor has offered his or her original perspective on the subject matter or theme.
  

Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Women Rights

• Davies, Catherine. South American independence: gender, politics, text / Catherine Davies, Claire Brewster and Hilary Owen. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006. [Note from Publisher] The struggle for independence in Latin America during the first half of the nineteenth century was accompanied by wide-ranging debates about political rights, nationality, and citizenship. South American Independence investigates the neglected role of gender in that discussion. Examining women writers from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Colombia, the authors trace the contradictions inherent in revolutionary movements that, while arguing for the rights of all, remained ambivalent, at best, about the place of women. Through studies of both published and unpublished writings, South American Independence reveals the complex role of women in shaping the vexed ideologies of independence.

• Caldwell, Kia Lilly. Negras in Brazil: re-envisioning black women, citizenship, and the politics of identity. New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2007. [Note from the Publisher] In Negras in Brazil, Kia Lilly Caldwell examines the life experiences of Afro-Brazilian women whose stories have until now been largely untold. This pathbreaking study analyzes the links between race and gender and broader processes of social, economic, and political exclusion. Drawing on ethnographic research with social movement organizations and thirty-five life history interviews, Caldwell explores the everyday struggles Afro-Brazilian women face in their efforts to achieve equal rights and full citizenship. She also shows how the black women’s movement, which has emerged in recent decades, has sought to challenge racial and gender discrimination in Brazil. While proposing a broader view of citizenship that includes domains such as popular culture and the body, Negras in Brazil highlights the continuing relevance of identity politics for members of racially marginalized communities.

Democracy—Politics

• Munck, Gerardo L. (ed.) Regimes and democracy in Latin America: theories and methods / edited by Gerardo L. Munck. Publisher: Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007. [Note from Publisher] This volume focuses on democracy in Latin America, and both assesses the state of current knowledge on the topic and identifies new research frontiers in the study of Latin American politics. It provides an overview of research agendas and strategies used in the literature over the past four decades. It tackles a series of central questions-What is democracy? Is democracy an absolute value? Are current conceptualizations of democracy adequate? It distinguishes between qualitative and quantitative approaches to the conceptualization and measurement of democracy, and presents a dataset on political regimes and democracy that illustrates how the differences between these two standard approaches might be overcome. Finally, it evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of conventional methods used to generate and test explanations of the causes and consequences of democracy, and proposes alternative ways to advance ongoing substantive debates given the current state of theory and data.

Slavery

• Beckles, Hilary. Trading souls: Europe’s transatlantic trade in Africans / Hilary McD. Beckles, Verene A. Shepherd ; with a foreword by P.J. Patterson. Kingston, Jamaica; Miami: Ian Randle Publishers, 2007. [Note from Publisher] This book fills this gap and considers the origins and development of trading in slaves. Like its companion, Saving Souls, this text tries to make sense of the silence and denial even as it seeks to break the ideologies of race and color that continue to haunt human relations more than a century after emancipation.

Argentina

• Sitrin, Marina (ed.). Horizontalidad/Horizontalism: voices of popular power in Argentina / edited by Marina Sitrin. Edinburgh, Scotland; Oakland, CA : AK Press, c2006. [Note from Publisher] Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina is an oral history of the autonomous social movements in Argentina since the popular rebellion in 2001. It reflects the voices of many dozens of people who are recreating their lives and communities using horizontal forms of social organization. These movements range from occupied and recuperated factories, arts and independent media collectives, indigenous communities, neighborhood assemblies, feminist and queer groups and unemployed workers movements.