Faculty Publications

St. Jerome's University faculty members participate in a broad range of research projects in a variety of disciplines.  The following list represents the books that have been authored or edited by our faculty. These books are available in the St. Jerome’s University Library.  For a full list of publications produced by individual faculty members, please refer to the web directory and search by individual names:  https://www.sju.ca/directory

book cover Link to Catalogue Morris, Mary. A Very Private Diary: An Irish Galway to D-Day. Edited by Carol Acton. London, UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014.

The newly discovered diary of a wartime nurse – a fascinating, dramatic and unique insight into the experiences of a young nurse in the Second World War. ‘I always seem to be saying good-bye to men whom I might have loved had there been enough time…’ 1939: 18-year-old trainee nurse Mary Mulry arrives in London from Ireland, hoping for adventure. Little did she know what the next seven years would bring. In her extraordinary diary, published now for the first time, Mary records in intimate detail her life as a nurse, both on the Home Front and on the frontline. From nursing children during bombing raids in London to treating Allied soldiers in Normandy, Mary’s experiences gave her vivid and unforgettable material for the private diary she was dedicated to keeping. Filled with romance, glamour and inevitably sadness, too, these are the rich memories of an irrepressible personality, living through the turbulent years of the Second World War. [Source: publishers' website]

book cover Link to Catalogue Belanger, Yale D., and P. Whitney Lackenbauer, eds. Blockades or Breakthroughs?: Aborignal Peoples Confront the Canadian State. Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014.

Blockades have become a common response to Canada's failure to address and resolve the legitimate claims of First Nations. Blockades or Breakthroughs? debates the importance and effectiveness of blockades and occupations as political and diplomatic tools for Aboriginal people. The adoption of direct action tactics like blockades and occupations is predicated on the idea that something drastic is needed for Aboriginal groups to break an unfavourable status quo, overcome structural barriers, and achieve their goals. But are blockades actually "breakthroughs"? What are the objectives of Aboriginal people and communities who adopt this approach? How can the success of these methods be measured? This collection offers an in-depth survey of occupations, blockades, and their legacies, from 1968 to the present. Individual case studies situate specific blockades and conflicts in historical context, examine each group’s reasons for occupation, and analyze the media labels and frames applied to both Aboriginal and state responses. Direct action tactics remain a powerful political tool for First Nations in Canada. The authors of Blockades or Breakthroughs? Argue that blockades and occupations are instrumental, symbolic, and complex events that demand equally multifaceted responses. [Source: publisher's website]

book cover Link to Catalogue Snyder, Gary. Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder. Edited by Chad Wriglesworth. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press, 2014.

In 1969 Gary Snyder returned from a long residence in Japan to northern California, to a homestead in the Sierra foothills where he intended to build a house and settle on the land with his wife and young sons. He had just published his first book of essays, Earth House Hold. A few years before, after a long absence, Wendell Berry left New York City to return to land near his grandfather’s farm in Port Royal, Kentucky, where he built a small studio and lived there with his wife as they restored an old house on their newly acquired homestead. In 1969 Berry had just published Long–Legged House. These two founding members of the counterculture and of the new environmental movement had yet to meet, but they knew each other’s work, and soon they began a correspondence. Neither man could have imagined the impact their work would have on American political and literary culture, nor could they have appreciated the impact they would have on one another. Snyder had thrown over all vestiges of Christianity in favor of becoming a devoted Buddhist and Zen practitioner, and had lived in Japan for a prolonged period to develop this practice. Berry’s discomfort with the Christianity of his native land caused him to become something of a renegade Christian, troubled by the church and organized religion, but grounded in its vocabulary and its narrative. Religion and spirituality seemed like a natural topic for the two men to discuss, and discuss they did. They exchanged more than 240 letters from 1973 to 2013, remarkable letters of insight and argument. The two bring out the best in each other, as they grapple with issues of faith and reason, discuss ideas of home and family, worry over the disintegration of community and commonwealth, and share the details of the lives they’ve chosen to live with their wives and children. Contemporary American culture is the landscape they reside on. Environmentalism, sustainability, global politics and American involvement, literature, poetry and progressive ideals, these two public intellectuals address issues as broad as are found in any exchange in literature. No one can be unaffected by the complexity of their relationship, the subtlety of their arguments, and the grace of their friendship. This is a book for the ages. [Source: publisher's website]

book cover Link to Catalogue Briggs, Catherine, ed. Modern Canada: 1945 to Present. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Featuring both scholarly articles and brand new essays, this engaging collection traces the compelling history of postwar Canada and examines the fundamental changes that have transformed and redefined this nation since 1945. Together, the readings reveal Canada's steady move toward a culture and national identity based on tolerance, diversity, and social justice. [Source: publisher's website]

book cover Link to Catalogue Atkin, Michelle. Balancing Liberty and Security: An Ethical Study of U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, 2001-2009. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2013.

This work examines the philosophical foundations of information ethics and their potential for application to contemporary problems in U.S. foreign intelligence surveillance. Questions concerning the limits of government intrusion on protected Fourth Amendment rights are examined against the backdrop of the post-9/11 period. Changes to U.S. foreign intelligence surveillance law and policy are analyzed by applying the traditional ethical theories commonly used to support or discount these changes, namely utilitarian and contractarian ethical theories. The resulting research combines both theoretical elements, through its use of analytic philosophy, and qualitative research methods, through its use of legislation, court cases, news media, and scholarship surrounding U.S. foreign intelligence surveillance. Using the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Terrorist Surveillance Program as case examples, the author develops and applies a normative ethical framework based on a legal proportionality test that can be applied to future cases involving U.S. foreign intelligence surveillance. The proportionality test developed in this research, which is based on a modified version of the Canadian Oakes Test, seeks to balance legitimate concerns about collective security against the rights of the individual. As a new synthesis of utilitarian and contractarian ethical principles, the proportionality test laid out in this book has potential for application beyond U.S. foreign intelligence surveillance. It could act as a guide to future research in other applied areas in information policy research where there is a clear tension between individual civil liberties and the collective good of society. Problems such as passenger screening, racial and ethnic profiling, data mining, and access to information could be examined using the framework developed in this study. [Source: book cover]

book cover Link to Catalogue Lackenbauer, P. Whitney. Canadian Rangers: A Living History. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2013.

The Canadian Rangers stand sentinel in the farthest reaches of our country. For six decades, this dedicated group of citizen-soldiers has quietly served as Canada’s eyes, ears, and voice in isolated coastal and northern communities. How does this minimally trained and lightly equipped force make a meaningful contribution to national defence and to sustainable communities? One of Canada’s leading experts on northern issues answers this question using official records, extensive interviews, and on-the-ground participation in Ranger exercises from coast to coast to coast. Lackenbauer reveals how the Rangers have evolved into a flexible, inexpensive, and culturally inclusive way for Canada to “show the flag.” The Rangers offer living proof that military activities designed to assert sovereignty need not cause insecurity for residents of remote regions. Local knowledge, stewardship, and national security prove compatible and mutually reinforcing. The Canadian Rangers also tells the untold story of a successful partnership that has developed between the Canadian Forces and Aboriginal peoples, a partnership rooted in traditional knowledge and skills and characterized by acceptance and crosscultural understanding. [Source: publisher's website]

book cover Link to Catalogue Bednarski, Steven. Curia: A Social History of a Provençal Criminal Court in the Fourteenth Century. Montpellier, FR: Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2013.

Curia tells the social history of a late medieval criminal court, its users, and its operators. This court was a seigneurial possession of the Knights Hospitaller located in the Provençal town of Manosque. The book is based on an exhaustive study of over 1,500 criminal inquest records from between 1340 and 1403. These documents preserve the detailed words and deeds of medieval townspeople. From them, the book presents ’history from below,’ to consider how people manoeuvred in society. It lays bare solidarities, enmities, passions, and lies. Between its tales of adultery, wife assault, child abuse, treason, theft, and arson, it stitches together the fabric of everyday life. While the criminal records reveal how individuals navigated social spaces, they also highlight a pivotal moment in western juridical development. By the fourteenth century, court operators deliberately drew men and women into the workings of justice, and encouraged them to use courts as institutionalized fora for conflict resolution. At the same time, increased buy-in from subjects offered court operators renewed opportunities for traditional, top-down regulation. [Source: publisher's website]

book cover Link to Catalogue Tataryn, Myroslaw, and Maria Tataryn-Truchan. Discovering Trinity in Disability: A Theology for Embracing Difference. Toronto, ON: Novalis, 2013.

A challenge to Christians to rethink, through a theological lens, how we embrace disability in our communities. As parents of three daughters, two of whom are disabled, the authors explore the Scriptures and writings of early Christian thinkers to challenge conventional attitudes and fears toward those who are different. Drawing on their respective doctorates in Theology and Literature and their family experience, the authors husband and wife, father and mother endeavor to respond to the question of suffering in a Church where we believe that God answers the prayers of his followers. Disability is an enduring, fundamental aspect of humanity that has been manipulated and wronged by society, they tell us. Through their exploration of historic and contemporary disability issues, they draw on the theology of the Trinity to bring to light a new, theological perspective on inclusiveness in our communities. [Source: publisher's website]

book cover Link to Catalogue Zunic, Nikolaj, ed. Distinctions of Being: Philosophical Approaches to Reality. Washington, DC: American Maritain Association, 2013.

What is reality? What are the diverse ways of being? Can God be known from nature? These and other quintessentially metaphysical questions are addressed in the newest volume from the American Maritain Association, Distinctions of Being. Metaphysics--as conceived by Aristotle, extended by Thomas Aquinas, and given modern expression by prominent philosophers such as Jacques Maritain--deals principally with the question of being, the basis of reality. This work considers the necessary distinctions at the heart of metaphysics, the distinctions between nature and spirit; the world and God; and the different forms of knowing in science, philosophy, and being. [Source: Amazon.ca]

book cover Link to Catalogue Kline, Scott. Ethical Being: A Catholic Guide to Contemporary Issues. Toronto, ON: Novalis, 2013.

An essential guide for Catholics seeking to better understand Catholic ethics and their contribution to contemporary moral discussion. Recognizing the tension between Catholicism's rich tradition of moral thought in a society that has largely rejected the foundations from which it came, Kline seeks to provide Catholics with the tools to critically consider difficult issues in ethics. It is his belief that Catholics have something valuable to contribute to public debates over today s most pressing ethical issues, however, we often need some guidance to engage fully in those discussions. Kline engages readers with a lively review of the history and framework of Catholic ethics. He explores the nature of ethics and the themes and sources of Christian moral thought so as to equip us with the tools for dialogue. We are invited to consider the many moral problems that speckle our daily lives and what our tradition may offer to guide us. Ultimately, Kline challenges us to consider who we wish to become in light of our morality and values. [Source: publisher's website]