A fascinating, first of its kind exploration of Stephen King and his most iconic early books, based on groundbreaking research and interviews with King - all conducted by the first scholar to be given extended access to his private archives.After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maine's inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that document the legendary writer's creative process - most of them never before studied or published. The year she spent exploring King's early drafts and hand-written revisions was guided by one question millions of King's enthralled and terrified readers (including her) have asked themselves: What makes Stephen King's writing stick in our heads and haunt us long after we've closed the book?Bicks focuses on five of his most iconic early works - The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, 'Salem's Lot, and Night Shift--to reveal how he crafted his language, storylines, and characters to cast his enduring literary spells. While tracking King's margin notes and editorial changes, she discovered scenes and alternative endings that never made it to print, but that King is allowing her to publish now. The book also includes interviews Bicks had with King along the way that reveal new insights into his writing process and personal history.Part literary master class, part biography, part memoir and investigation into our deepest anxieties, Monsters in the Archives - authorized by Stephen King himself - is unlike anything ever published about the master of horror. It chronicles what Bicks found when she set out to unearth how King crafted some of his scariest, most iconic moments. But it's also a story about a grown-up English professor facing her childhood fears and getting to know the man whose monsters helped unleash them."Illuminating and original, Monsters in the Archives takes us deep into Stephen King's private papers to show us how he crafted some of his most iconic, haunting books and took possession of so many of our imaginations."-Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

A fascinating, first of its kind exploration of Stephen King and his most iconic early books, based on groundbreaking research and interviews with King - all conducted by the first scholar to be given extended access to his private archives.After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maine's inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that document the legendary writer's creative process - most of them never before studied or published. The year she spent exploring King's early drafts and hand-written revisions was guided by one question millions of King's enthralled and terrified readers (including her) have asked themselves: What makes Stephen King's writing stick in our heads and haunt us long after we've closed the book?Bicks focuses on five of his most iconic early works - The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, 'Salem's Lot, and Night Shift--to reveal how he crafted his language, storylines, and characters to cast his enduring literary spells. While tracking King's margin notes and editorial changes, she discovered scenes and alternative endings that never made it to print, but that King is allowing her to publish now. The book also includes interviews Bicks had with King along the way that reveal new insights into his writing process and personal history.Part literary master class, part biography, part memoir and investigation into our deepest anxieties, Monsters in the Archives - authorized by Stephen King himself - is unlike anything ever published about the master of horror. It chronicles what Bicks found when she set out to unearth how King crafted some of his scariest, most iconic moments. But it's also a story about a grown-up English professor facing her childhood fears and getting to know the man whose monsters helped unleash them."Illuminating and original, Monsters in the Archives takes us deep into Stephen King's private papers to show us how he crafted some of his most iconic, haunting books and took possession of so many of our imaginations."-Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

In Shakespeare, Not Stirred, two professors mix equal parts booze and Bard to help you through your everyday dramas. It’s like having Shakespeare right there in your living room, downing a great drink and putting your crappy day in perspective. So get out your cocktail shaker and lend him your ears.   Each original cocktail and hors d’oeuvre recipe connects Shakespeare’s characters to life’s daily predicaments:    • Drown your sorrows after a workplace betrayal with Othello’s Green-Eyed Monster    • Distract yourself from domestic drama with Kate’s Shrew-driver or Cleopatra’s Flings in a Blanket    • Recapture your youth with Puck’s Magic ’Shrooms    • Mark a romantic occasion with Beatrice and Benedick’s Much Ado About Frothing Featuring classic images from the Folger Shakespeare Library (hilariously doctored to feature some hard-partying Shakespearean protagonists) and Mini-Bards you can raid for extra context and commentary, Shakespeare, Not Stirred is a completely intoxicating experience.From the Hardcover edition.

At the intersections of early modern literature and history, Shakespeare and Women's Studies, Midwiving Subjects explores how Shakespearean drama and contemporary medical, religious and popular texts figured the midwife as a central producer of the body's cultural markers. In addition to attending most Englishwomen's births and testifying to their in extremis confessions about paternity, the midwife allegedly controlled the size of one's tongue and genitals at birth and was obligated to perform virginity exams, impotence tests and emergency baptisms. The signs of purity and masculinity, paternity and salvation were inherently open to interpretation, yet early modern culture authorized midwives to generate and announce them. Midwiving Subjects, then, challenges recent studies that read the midwife as a woman whose power was limited to a marginal and unruly birthroom community and instead uncovers the midwife's foundational role, not only in the rituals of reproduction, but in the process of cultural production itself. As a result of recent changes in managed healthcare and of increased attention to uncovering histories of women's experiences, midwives - past and present - are currently a subject of great interest. This book will appeal to readers interested in Shakespeare as well as the history of women and medicine.

This groundbreaking study of girlhood and cognition argues that early moderns depicted female puberty as a transformative event that activated girls' brains in dynamic ways. Mining a variety of genres from Shakespearean plays and medical texts to autobiographical writings, Caroline Bicks shows how 'the change of fourteen years' seemed to gift girls with the ability to invent, judge, and remember what others could or would not. Bicks challenges the presumption that early moderns viewed all female cognition as passive or pathological, demonstrating instead that girls' changing adolescent brains were lightning rods for some of the period's most vital debates about the body and soul, faith and salvation, science and nature, and the place and agency of human perception in the midst of it all.

This groundbreaking study of girlhood and cognition argues that early moderns depicted female puberty as a transformative event that activated girls' brains in dynamic ways. Mining a variety of genres from Shakespearean plays and medical texts to autobiographical writings, Caroline Bicks shows how 'the change of fourteen years' seemed to gift girls with the ability to invent, judge, and remember what others could or would not. Bicks challenges the presumption that early moderns viewed all female cognition as passive or pathological, demonstrating instead that girls' changing adolescent brains were lightning rods for some of the period's most vital debates about the body and soul, faith and salvation, science and nature, and the place and agency of human perception in the midst of it all.

This groundbreaking study of girlhood and cognition argues that early moderns depicted female puberty as a transformative event that activated girls'' brains in dynamic ways. Mining a variety of genres from Shakespearean plays and medical texts to autobiographical writings, Caroline Bicks shows how ''the change of fourteen years'' seemed to gift girls with the ability to invent, judge, and remember what others could or would not. Bicks challenges the presumption that early moderns viewed all female cognition as passive or pathological, demonstrating instead that girls'' changing adolescent brains were lightning rods for some of the period''s most vital debates about the body and soul, faith and salvation, science and nature, and the place and agency of human perception in the midst of it all.

This groundbreaking study of girlhood and cognition argues that early moderns depicted female puberty as a transformative event that activated girls'' brains in dynamic ways. Mining a variety of genres from Shakespearean plays and medical texts to autobiographical writings, Caroline Bicks shows how ''the change of fourteen years'' seemed to gift girls with the ability to invent, judge, and remember what others could or would not. Bicks challenges the presumption that early moderns viewed all female cognition as passive or pathological, demonstrating instead that girls'' changing adolescent brains were lightning rods for some of the period''s most vital debates about the body and soul, faith and salvation, science and nature, and the place and agency of human perception in the midst of it all.

At the intersections of early modern literature and history, Shakespeare and Women's Studies, Midwiving Subjects explores how Shakespearean drama and contemporary medical, religious and popular texts figured the midwife as a central producer of the body's cultural markers. In addition to attending most Englishwomen's births and testifying to their in extremis confessions about paternity, the midwife allegedly controlled the size of one's tongue and genitals at birth and was obligated to perform virginity exams, impotence tests and emergency baptisms. The signs of purity and masculinity, paternity and salvation were inherently open to interpretation, yet early modern culture authorized midwives to generate and announce them. Midwiving Subjects, then, challenges recent studies that read the midwife as a woman whose power was limited to a marginal and unruly birthroom community and instead uncovers the midwife's foundational role, not only in the rituals of reproduction, but in the process of cultural production itself. As a result of recent changes in managed healthcare and of increased attention to uncovering histories of women's experiences, midwives - past and present - are currently a subject of great interest. This book will appeal to readers interested in Shakespeare as well as the history of women and medicine.

At the intersections of early modern literature and history, Shakespeare and Women''s Studies, Midwiving Subjects explores how Shakespearean drama and contemporary medical, religious and popular texts figured the midwife as a central producer of the body''s cultural markers. In addition to attending most Englishwomen''s births and testifying to their in extremis confessions about paternity, the midwife allegedly controlled the size of one''s tongue and genitals at birth and was obligated to perform virginity exams, impotence tests and emergency baptisms. The signs of purity and masculinity, paternity and salvation were inherently open to interpretation, yet early modern culture authorized midwives to generate and announce them. Midwiving Subjects, then, challenges recent studies that read the midwife as a woman whose power was limited to a marginal and unruly birthroom community and instead uncovers the midwife''s foundational role, not only in the rituals of reproduction, but in the process of cultural production itself. As a result of recent changes in managed healthcare and of increased attention to uncovering histories of women''s experiences, midwives - past and present - are currently a subject of great interest. This book will appeal to readers interested in Shakespeare as well as the history of women and medicine.

A fascinating, first of its kind exploration of Stephen King and his most iconic early books, based on groundbreaking research and interviews with King - all conducted by the first scholar to be given extended access to his private archives.After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maine's inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that document the legendary writer's creative process - most of them never before studied or published. The year she spent exploring King's early drafts and hand-written revisions was guided by one question millions of King's enthralled and terrified readers (including her) have asked themselves: What makes Stephen King's writing stick in our heads and haunt us long after we've closed the book?Bicks focuses on five of his most iconic early works - The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, 'Salem's Lot, and Night Shift--to reveal how he crafted his language, storylines, and characters to cast his enduring literary spells. While tracking King's margin notes and editorial changes, she discovered scenes and alternative endings that never made it to print, but that King is allowing her to publish now. The book also includes interviews Bicks had with King along the way that reveal new insights into his writing process and personal history.Part literary master class, part biography, part memoir and investigation into our deepest anxieties, Monsters in the Archives - authorized by Stephen King himself - is unlike anything ever published about the master of horror. It chronicles what Bicks found when she set out to unearth how King crafted some of his scariest, most iconic moments. But it's also a story about a grown-up English professor facing her childhood fears and getting to know the man whose monsters helped unleash them."Illuminating and original, Monsters in the Archives takes us deep into Stephen King's private papers to show us how he crafted some of his most iconic, haunting books and took possession of so many of our imaginations."-Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

A fascinating, first of its kind exploration of Stephen King and his most iconic early books, based on groundbreaking research and interviews with King - all conducted by the first scholar to be given extended access to his private archives.After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maine's inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that document the legendary writer's creative process - most of them never before studied or published. The year she spent exploring King's early drafts and hand-written revisions was guided by one question millions of King's enthralled and terrified readers (including her) have asked themselves: What makes Stephen King's writing stick in our heads and haunt us long after we've closed the book?Bicks focuses on five of his most iconic early works - The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, 'Salem's Lot, and Night Shift--to reveal how he crafted his language, storylines, and characters to cast his enduring literary spells. While tracking King's margin notes and editorial changes, she discovered scenes and alternative endings that never made it to print, but that King is allowing her to publish now. The book also includes interviews Bicks had with King along the way that reveal new insights into his writing process and personal history.Part literary master class, part biography, part memoir and investigation into our deepest anxieties, Monsters in the Archives - authorized by Stephen King himself - is unlike anything ever published about the master of horror. It chronicles what Bicks found when she set out to unearth how King crafted some of his scariest, most iconic moments. But it's also a story about a grown-up English professor facing her childhood fears and getting to know the man whose monsters helped unleash them."Illuminating and original, Monsters in the Archives takes us deep into Stephen King's private papers to show us how he crafted some of his most iconic, haunting books and took possession of so many of our imaginations."-Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

In Shakespeare, Not Stirred, two professors mix equal parts booze and Bard to help you through your everyday dramas. It’s like having Shakespeare right there in your living room, downing a great drink and putting your crappy day in perspective. So get out your cocktail shaker and lend him your ears.   Each original cocktail and hors d’oeuvre recipe connects Shakespeare’s characters to life’s daily predicaments:    • Drown your sorrows after a workplace betrayal with Othello’s Green-Eyed Monster    • Distract yourself from domestic drama with Kate’s Shrew-driver or Cleopatra’s Flings in a Blanket    • Recapture your youth with Puck’s Magic ’Shrooms    • Mark a romantic occasion with Beatrice and Benedick’s Much Ado About Frothing Featuring classic images from the Folger Shakespeare Library (hilariously doctored to feature some hard-partying Shakespearean protagonists) and Mini-Bards you can raid for extra context and commentary, Shakespeare, Not Stirred is a completely intoxicating experience.From the Hardcover edition.

At the intersections of early modern literature and history, Shakespeare and Women's Studies, Midwiving Subjects explores how Shakespearean drama and contemporary medical, religious and popular texts figured the midwife as a central producer of the body's cultural markers. In addition to attending most Englishwomen's births and testifying to their in extremis confessions about paternity, the midwife allegedly controlled the size of one's tongue and genitals at birth and was obligated to perform virginity exams, impotence tests and emergency baptisms. The signs of purity and masculinity, paternity and salvation were inherently open to interpretation, yet early modern culture authorized midwives to generate and announce them. Midwiving Subjects, then, challenges recent studies that read the midwife as a woman whose power was limited to a marginal and unruly birthroom community and instead uncovers the midwife's foundational role, not only in the rituals of reproduction, but in the process of cultural production itself. As a result of recent changes in managed healthcare and of increased attention to uncovering histories of women's experiences, midwives - past and present - are currently a subject of great interest. This book will appeal to readers interested in Shakespeare as well as the history of women and medicine.

This groundbreaking study of girlhood and cognition argues that early moderns depicted female puberty as a transformative event that activated girls' brains in dynamic ways. Mining a variety of genres from Shakespearean plays and medical texts to autobiographical writings, Caroline Bicks shows how 'the change of fourteen years' seemed to gift girls with the ability to invent, judge, and remember what others could or would not. Bicks challenges the presumption that early moderns viewed all female cognition as passive or pathological, demonstrating instead that girls' changing adolescent brains were lightning rods for some of the period's most vital debates about the body and soul, faith and salvation, science and nature, and the place and agency of human perception in the midst of it all.

This groundbreaking study of girlhood and cognition argues that early moderns depicted female puberty as a transformative event that activated girls' brains in dynamic ways. Mining a variety of genres from Shakespearean plays and medical texts to autobiographical writings, Caroline Bicks shows how 'the change of fourteen years' seemed to gift girls with the ability to invent, judge, and remember what others could or would not. Bicks challenges the presumption that early moderns viewed all female cognition as passive or pathological, demonstrating instead that girls' changing adolescent brains were lightning rods for some of the period's most vital debates about the body and soul, faith and salvation, science and nature, and the place and agency of human perception in the midst of it all.

This groundbreaking study of girlhood and cognition argues that early moderns depicted female puberty as a transformative event that activated girls'' brains in dynamic ways. Mining a variety of genres from Shakespearean plays and medical texts to autobiographical writings, Caroline Bicks shows how ''the change of fourteen years'' seemed to gift girls with the ability to invent, judge, and remember what others could or would not. Bicks challenges the presumption that early moderns viewed all female cognition as passive or pathological, demonstrating instead that girls'' changing adolescent brains were lightning rods for some of the period''s most vital debates about the body and soul, faith and salvation, science and nature, and the place and agency of human perception in the midst of it all.

This groundbreaking study of girlhood and cognition argues that early moderns depicted female puberty as a transformative event that activated girls'' brains in dynamic ways. Mining a variety of genres from Shakespearean plays and medical texts to autobiographical writings, Caroline Bicks shows how ''the change of fourteen years'' seemed to gift girls with the ability to invent, judge, and remember what others could or would not. Bicks challenges the presumption that early moderns viewed all female cognition as passive or pathological, demonstrating instead that girls'' changing adolescent brains were lightning rods for some of the period''s most vital debates about the body and soul, faith and salvation, science and nature, and the place and agency of human perception in the midst of it all.

At the intersections of early modern literature and history, Shakespeare and Women's Studies, Midwiving Subjects explores how Shakespearean drama and contemporary medical, religious and popular texts figured the midwife as a central producer of the body's cultural markers. In addition to attending most Englishwomen's births and testifying to their in extremis confessions about paternity, the midwife allegedly controlled the size of one's tongue and genitals at birth and was obligated to perform virginity exams, impotence tests and emergency baptisms. The signs of purity and masculinity, paternity and salvation were inherently open to interpretation, yet early modern culture authorized midwives to generate and announce them. Midwiving Subjects, then, challenges recent studies that read the midwife as a woman whose power was limited to a marginal and unruly birthroom community and instead uncovers the midwife's foundational role, not only in the rituals of reproduction, but in the process of cultural production itself. As a result of recent changes in managed healthcare and of increased attention to uncovering histories of women's experiences, midwives - past and present - are currently a subject of great interest. This book will appeal to readers interested in Shakespeare as well as the history of women and medicine.

At the intersections of early modern literature and history, Shakespeare and Women''s Studies, Midwiving Subjects explores how Shakespearean drama and contemporary medical, religious and popular texts figured the midwife as a central producer of the body''s cultural markers. In addition to attending most Englishwomen''s births and testifying to their in extremis confessions about paternity, the midwife allegedly controlled the size of one''s tongue and genitals at birth and was obligated to perform virginity exams, impotence tests and emergency baptisms. The signs of purity and masculinity, paternity and salvation were inherently open to interpretation, yet early modern culture authorized midwives to generate and announce them. Midwiving Subjects, then, challenges recent studies that read the midwife as a woman whose power was limited to a marginal and unruly birthroom community and instead uncovers the midwife''s foundational role, not only in the rituals of reproduction, but in the process of cultural production itself. As a result of recent changes in managed healthcare and of increased attention to uncovering histories of women''s experiences, midwives - past and present - are currently a subject of great interest. This book will appeal to readers interested in Shakespeare as well as the history of women and medicine.