Here is a selection of titles added to collection in the past week.

 A not-so-new world: empire and environment in French colonial North America /Christopher M. Parsons. Parsons demonstrates how the French experience of attempting to improve American environments supported not only the acquisition and incorporation of Native American knowledge but also the development of an emerging botanical science that focused on naming new species. Exploring the moment in which settlers, missionaries, merchants, and administrators believed in their ability to shape the environment to better resemble the country they left behind, A Not-So-New World reveals that French colonial ambitions were fueled by a vision of an ecologically sustainable empire.

 Chromophobia /David Batchelor. The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse – a fear of corruption or contamination through color – lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought. Chromophobia has been a cultural phenomenon since ancient Greek times; this book is concerned with forms of resistance to it. Batchelor seeks to go beyond the limits of earlier studies, analyzing the motivations behind chromophobia and considering the work of writers and artists who have been prepared to look at color as a positive value. Exploring a wide range of imagery including Melville’s great white whale, Huxley’s reflections on mescaline, and Le Corbusier’s journey to the East, Batchelor also discusses the use of color in Pop, Minimal, and more recent art.

 Converging empires: citizens and subjects in the north Pacific borderlands, 1867-1945 /Andrea Geiger. Making a vital contribution to our understanding of North American borderlands history through its examination of the northernmost stretches of the U.S.-Canada border, Geiger highlights the role that the north Pacific borderlands played in the construction of race and citizenship on both sides of the international border from 1867, when the United States acquired Russia’s interests in Alaska, through the end of World War II

 Dance, place, and poetics: site-specific performance as a portal to knowing /Celeste Nazeli Snowber. This book explores the relationship between the body, ecology, place, and site-specific performance. The work is situated within arts-based research, particularly within embodied inquiry and poetic inquiry and explores a theoretical foundation for integration of these areas, primarily to share the lived experiences, poetry and dance which have come out of decades of sharing site-specific performances.

 Deep calls to deep: the Psalms in dialogue amid disruption /William P. Brown. Deep Calls to Deep demonstrates a new and generative way of reading the Bible, which looks for differences among texts to engage in dialogue over critical issues that are not only biblical but also are relevant to our contemporary crises. By taking his cue from Martin Luther, Brown explores how the Psalter engages the larger Hebrew Bible in dialogue, specifically how the Psalms counter, complement, reconstrue, and transform biblical traditions and themes across the Hebrew canon, from creation and law to justice and wisdom.

 Interpreting nature: the emerging field of environmental hermeneutics /edited by Forrest Clingerman [and others] The 20th century saw the rise of hermeneutics, the philosophical interpretation of texts, and eventually the application of its insights to metaphorical ‘texts’ such as individual and group identities. It also saw the rise of modern environmentalism which evolved through various stages in which it came to realize that many of its key concerns – ‘wilderness’ and ‘nature’ among them – are contested territory that are viewed differently by different people. This title brings together leading voices at the intersection of these two increasingly important philosophical discussions.

 New avenues in biblical exegesis in light of the Septuagint /edited by Leonardo Pessoa da Silva Pinto and Daniela Scialabba. The present volume collects the contributions written by renowned scholars who address the issue of the role and impact of Septuagint studies on biblical exegesis and theology. The papers range from more methodological discussions to exegetical studies applying various approaches to the Septuagint text. The wide variety of methods applied reveals numerous aspects of the Septuagint and the biblical text in general, such as their composition, history, textual transmission, literary scope and shape, theology.

 The Catholic calumet: colonial conversions in French and Indian North America /Tracy Neal Leavelle. Leavelle examines religious conversions in the upper Great Lakes and Illinois country in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries among the Illinois, Ottawas, and other Algonqiuan-speaking peoples and the rapidly evolving and always contested colonial context in which they occurred.

 The prophets: introducing Israel’s prophetic writings /Stephen L. Cook, John T. Strong, and Steven S. Tuell. The Prophets introduces students to the rise of prophecy in ancient Israel, the messages of individual prophets, the significance of the compositional history of the prophetic writings, and insights for interpreting the message of the prophets today.

 The re-enchantment of the world: secular magic in a rational age /edited by Joshua Landy and Michael Saler. This is an interdisciplinary volume that challenges the long-prevailing view of modernity as ‘disenchanted’.

 Untrustworthy: the knowledge crisis breaking our brains, polluting our politics, and corrupting Christian community /Bonnie Kristian ; foreword by David French. A seasoned journalist shows how the truth crisis in America is straining our relationships, hurting our minds, polluting our politics, and damaging our Christian discipleship.

 When God was a bird: Christianity, animism, and the re-enchantment of the world /Mark I. Wallace. At one time, God was a bird. It is said that in spite of, or better, to spite, this time-honoured wealth of divine avifauna, Christianity divorced God from the avian world in order to defend a pure form of monotheism. This work calls this new but ancient vision of the world ‘Christian animism’ in order to signal the continuity of biblical religion with the beliefs of indigenous & non-Western communities that Spirit enfleshes itself within everything that grows, walks, flies, & swims in and over the Earth.