This book presents a series of essays by the renowned historian Joan Wallach
Scott that explore the history and theory of academic freedom and the value of
critical inquiry today. Scott gives a nuanced reflection on the tensions
within one of academia's cherished concepts.
"Only one of our wisest, deftest, most knowing prose stylists at the height of her powers could have invented for readers the utterly beguiling experience that is De Potter's Grand Tour ... One of the most delightful books I've read in years."-Jaimy Gordon, author of Lord of Misrule In 1905, a tourist agent and amateur antiques collector named Armand de Potter mysteriously disappears off the coast of Greece. His body is never recovered, and his wife, Aimée, is left to manage his affairs on her own. But as she starts to piece together his life, she realizes that everything was not as Armand had said. Infused with details from letters and diary entries, their story twists forward and backward through time, revealing a lost world of fake identities, underground antiques networks, and a husband who wasn't what he seemed. Told with masterful agility, De Potter's Grand Tour is a tale as grand as the tour guide at its center. Drawing on real documents only recently discovered, Joanna Scott points delicately toward the story's historical basis and unfolds a detective tale of the highest order.
"Austrian artist Egon Schiele comes to life in a narrative that defies convention, history, and identity. A self-professed genius and student of August Klimt, Scott's Schiele repeatedly challenges the boundaries of early twentieth-century Europe. Thrown in jail on charges of immorality, Schiele's Mephistophelean reputation only grows in stature until at the age of twenty-eight, the artist dies in the Great Flu Pandemic. Told from a crosscurrent of voices, viewpoints and times."--page 4 of cover.
A vividly imagined novel from award-winning Joanna Scott. In the mid-1950s, an American family travels to an island off the coast of Italy to make a fortune in gemstones.
The story follows four-year-old Bo, who, after losing his mother in a tragic car accident, becomes the center of a contentious custody battle. As he navigates this turmoil, he retreats into a haunting inner world, seeking solace away from the unfamiliar faces surrounding him. This journey explores themes of loss, isolation, and the impact of trauma on a young child's psyche.
A study of the problem faced by feminists arguing for political rights in the
context of liberal democracy. They argued that the differences between men and
women were irrelevant for citizenship, yet by acting on behalf of women, they
introduced the very idea of difference they sought to eliminate.
Charlie and the Children is a novel about an American soldier who goes to war, fathers a son, and abandons him. He is taken captive by the Viet Cong and held in a cave in a tunnel underground. Sick, starving, and alone, he grdually loses his grip on reality and becomes convinced that one of his captors is his lost son. In clear, lyrical prose, Joanna C Scott has written a book that is at the same time mythic and believable. Although a number of fine Vietnam war novels have been published, Charlie and the Children is unique in its concern and its surpassing quality.