Bold Ideas, Essential Reading since 1936.
Rutgers University Press is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge for a wide range of readers. The Press reflects and extends the University’s core mission of research, instruction, and service. They enhance the work of their authors through exceptional publications that shape critical issues, spark debate, and enrich teaching. Core subjects include: film and media studies, sociology, anthropology, education, history, health, history of medicine, human rights, urban studies, criminal justice, Jewish studies, American studies, women's, gender, and sexuality studies, LGBTQ, Latino/a, Asian and African studies, as well as books about New York, New Jersey, and the region.
Rutgers also distributes books published by Bucknell University Press.
Transformed States
Medicine, Biotechnology, and American Culture, 1990–2020
Transformed States offers a timely history of the politics, ethics, medical applications and cultural representations of the biotechnological revolution, from the Human Genome Project to the Covid-19 pandemic. In exploring the entanglements of mental and physical health in an age of biotechnology, it views the post-Cold War 1990s as the horizon for understanding the intersection of technoscience and culture in the early twenty-first century.
Rutgers Then and Now
Two Centuries of Campus Development: A Historic and Photographic Odyssey
Rutgers University has come a long way since it was granted a royal charter in 1766. It migrated from a parsonage in Somerville, to New Brunswick-sited The Sign of the Red Lion tavern, to stately Old Queens, expanding northward along College Avenue, and beyond. Replete with more than 500 campus images, Rutgers, Then and Now offers stunning pictorial and historical evidence of what it was then, side by side, with what it is today, a vital hub for research and beloved home for students.
Post-Crisis Leadership
Resilience, Renewal, and Reinvention in the Aftermath of Disruption
Crisis leadership—which takes account of leading before, during, and after crisis—is an imperative for leaders at all levels. Often relegated as an afterthought in crisis scholarship and practice, the ability to navigate the post-crisis period can distinguish highly effective leaders and organizations. This book introduces a research-informed framework for this critical, and often neglected, phase of crisis leadership.
Persisting Pandemics
Syphilis, AIDS, and COVID
Syphilis, AIDS, and COVID disprove any belief that scientific discoveries have ended the period of acute epidemic diseases that once defined 19th century life and replaced them with chronic cardiovascular diseases and cancers. Today, we cope with a greater array of epidemics than those who lived during the 19th century, even though we have the biomedical means to control them. Our cumulative experience with epidemic diseases, together with our attempts to eliminate them, remains a continued component of our existence.
Making the Human
Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans
Making the Human grapples with the interactions between narrative, materiality, and Asian American racialization. Examining contemporary debates over the role of Asian Americans in affirmative action, media representation, police brutality, and public health discourses, Sugino argues media and cultural narratives about Asian Americans shape contemporary ideas about humanity, justice, family, and nation in ways that naturalize hierarchy.
Lifting the Shadow
Reshaping Memory, Race, and Slavery in U.S. Museums
Lifting the Shadow examines how the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Montgomery’s Legacy Museum and Tulsa’s Greenwood Rising are challenging the national narrative on slavery and race by placing racial oppression at the center of American history and linking historical slavery to contemporary racial injustice.
Inside Tenement Time
Suss, Spirit, and Surveillance
Inside Tenement Time is a study of Jamaican literary and cultural texts presenting surveillance in the Caribbean. The project introduces two Afro-Indigenous variations on surveillance--sussveillance and spiritveillance--as exemplars of vernacular arts and shows that Caribbean hegemonies are flexible. The book reads the Smile Jamaica concert (1976) and the Tivoli Incursion (2010) as states of high surveillance emergency.
Inaccessible Access
Rethinking Disability Inclusion in Academic Knowledge Creation
Inaccessible Access ethnographically addresses barriers to inclusion within knowledge-making. It focuses on the social, environmental, communicative, and epistemological barriers that people with disabilities confront and embody throughout the course of their learning, living and in the specific context of their Higher Education Institutions and in research.
Inaccessible Access
Rethinking Disability Inclusion in Academic Knowledge Creation
Inaccessible Access ethnographically addresses barriers to inclusion within knowledge-making. It focuses on the social, environmental, communicative, and epistemological barriers that people with disabilities confront and embody throughout the course of their learning, living and in the specific context of their Higher Education Institutions and in research.
Cinema under National Reconstruction
State Censorship and South Korea’s Cold War Film Culture
Drawing upon primary documents from the Korean Film Archive’s digitized database and framing South Korean film censorship from a transnational perspective, Cinema Under National Reconstruction redefines censorship as a productive feedback system where both state regulators and filmmakers played active roles in shaping the new narrative or sentiment of the nation on the big screen.
Cinema under National Reconstruction
State Censorship and South Korea's Cold War Film Culture
Drawing upon primary documents from the Korean Film Archive’s digitized database and framing South Korean film censorship from a transnational perspective, Cinema Under National Reconstruction redefines censorship as a productive feedback system where both state regulators and filmmakers played active roles in shaping the new narrative or sentiment of the nation on the big screen.
Children as Social Butterflies
Navigating Belonging in a Diverse Swiss Kindergarten
Children as Social Butterflies offers an analysis of how children negotiate social belonging. Ursina Jaeger followed the children of a kindergarten class in a stigmatized and diverse neighborhood for several years, both inside and outside of school. Along with giving vivid insights into the children's everyday lives, she examines how social differentiation is learned in diverse societies.
Black Feminist Anthropology, 25th Anniversary Edition
Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics
Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis and Poetics established a new canon that guaranteed the voices, theorizing, and experiences of Black Feminist anthropologists could shine out loud in ways that 25 years later are still “healing,” “life-saving,” and an affirmation of these transformative and decolonized contributions. It is both an archive and a legacy for the next generation.
Walking East Harlem
A Neighborhood Experience
East Harlem native Christopher Bell takes you on three separate walking tours of his beloved neighborhood, sharing fascinating stories about its theatres, museums, art spaces, schools, churches, mosques, and synagogues. You’ll also learn about the people who have lived in this famously diverse community, including actress Cecily Tyson and opera singer Marian Anderson.
Remittance as Belonging
Global Migration, Transnationalism, and the Quest for Home
Conceptualizing remittance as an expression of migrants’ belonging, this book presents detailed accounts of the emergence, growth, decline, and revival of remittance as a function of transformations in Bangladeshi migrants’ sense of belonging to home.
Pandemonium Logs
Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 2020–2022
In 2015, Ben Miller moved from New York City to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to focus on his writing. Working a day job in a hospital, he had a front-row seat to the Covid-19 pandemic. His book gives voice to the doctors, nurses, staff, and patients he observed.
More-than-Human Aging
Animals, Robots, and Care in Later Life
Aging is not only reserved for humans. Similarly, how humans age is often a process in which other-than-humans – be it other species or technology – become entangled or carved out. The contributions to this edited volume open a conversation about how aging is always a hybrid, more-than-human process.
More-than-Human Aging
Animals, Robots, and Care in Later Life
Aging is not only reserved for humans. Similarly, how humans age is often a process in which other-than-humans – be it other species or technology – become entangled or carved out. The contributions to this edited volume open a conversation about how aging is always a hybrid, more-than-human process.
Making It
Success in the Commercial Kitchen
The restaurant industry is one of the few places in America where workers from lower-class backgrounds can rise to positions of power and prestige. But what determines who succeeds or fails in this pressure-cooker environment? Through extensive interviews and fieldwork, sociologist Ellen Meiser discovers how status in the kitchen is tied to knowledge, interpersonal skills, and emotional labor.
Genocide Studies
Pathways Ahead
In recent years, the world has been shaken by numerous events that have caused and continue to cause massive human suffering, from the COVID-19 pandemic to intrastate and interstate armed conflicts. These crises confound definition and label, but now is the time to think about current manifestations of genocide and those likely to emerge in the future
Genocide Studies
Pathways Ahead
In recent years, the world has been shaken by numerous events that have caused and continue to cause massive human suffering, from the COVID-19 pandemic to intrastate and interstate armed conflicts. These crises confound definition and label, but now is the time to think about current manifestations of genocide and those likely to emerge in the future
Finding God in All the Black Places
Sacred Imaginings in Black Popular Culture
Using a media studies lens of television, film, music, and digital culture, Finding God in All the Black Places argues that Black spirituality and church religiosity bolster audiences' understanding of and cultural competence with Black popular culture.
Embracing Queer Students’ Diverse Identities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities
A Primer for Presidents, Administrators, and Faculty
Embracing Queer Students’ Diverse Identities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: A Primer for Presidents, Administrators, and Faculty serves as a resource for Historically Black College and University (HBCU) stakeholders and highlights fundamental concerns and urgent topics regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) HBCU constituents.
Embracing Queer Students’ Diverse Identities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities
A Primer for Presidents, Administrators, and Faculty
Embracing Queer Students’ Diverse Identities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: A Primer for Presidents, Administrators, and Faculty serves as a resource for Historically Black College and University (HBCU) stakeholders and highlights fundamental concerns and urgent topics regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) HBCU constituents.
Difficult Attachments
Anxieties of Kinship and Care
Anthropologists have long considered kinship as the basis for social solidarity. But, what about when it is not? What about instances when kinship is characterized by neglect, violence, negative affect, or a lack of care? This edited volume, featuring slim and cutting-edge essays from a diverse group of anthropologists at different career stages, explores situations when kinship is experienced as difficult and ambivalent.
Care and Agency
The Andean Community through the Eyes of Children
This book describes the lives of children in rural communities of the Andes Mountains of Peru. It foregrounds the children’s own perceptions and feelings, so far as they can be known by researchers using ethnographic methods. It shows the great variety of Andean childhoods – some happy, others harsh and demanding – and suggests the options children face: follow the many to migrate to the city or risk their hopes on a better future in the rural setting.
Background Artist
The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong
Background Artist tells the inspiring story of Tyrus Wong, a Chinese immigrant who eventually became a best-selling greeting card designer, Warner Bros. sketch artist, and instrumental influence on the beloved Disney animated film, Bambi. Covering his remarkable 106-year life, this book celebrates a multi-talented and pioneering Asian-American artist whose work shaped the American imagination.
Bruce Songs
The Music of Bruce Springsteen, Album-by-Album, Song-by-Song
Bruce Songs: The Music of Bruce Springsteen, Album-by-Album, Song-by-Song is an authoritative guide by Kenneth Womack and Kenneth L. Campbell, delving into Bruce Springsteen's entire musical catalog, offering detailed album analysis, historical context, and song-by-song exploration. Packed with contemporary insights and rich visuals, it's an essential companion for Springsteen fans and music enthusiasts.
We Take Care of Our Own
Faith, Class, and Politics in the Art of Bruce Springsteen
The Bravest Pets of Gotham
Tales of Four-Legged Firefighters of Old New York
Singular Sensations
A Cultural History of One-Panel Comics in the United States
Reel Kabbalah
Jewish Mysticism and Neo-Hasidism in Contemporary Cinema
Reel Kabbalah studies representations of esoteric Jewish conceptual traditions known as Kabbalah and Hasidism in five important fictional films from the first decade of the twenty-first century. The book considers how film both stands in continuity with those traditions and modifies them in the New Age, often mystical vein of what is known as neo-Kabbalah and neo-Hasidism.
Performing the News
Identity, Authority, and the Myth of Neutrality
Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike, Second Edition
Laboring in the Shadow of Empire
Race, Gender, and Care Work in Portugal
Laboring in the Shadow of Empire: Race, Gender and Care Work in Portugal examines the everyday lives of an African descendant care service workforce that labors in an ostensibly “anti-racial” Europe and against the backdrop of the Portuguese colonial empire. While much of the literature on global care work has focused on Asian and Latine migrant care workers, there is comparatively less research that explicitly examines African care workers and their migration histories to Europe. Sociologist Celeste V. Curington focuses on Portugal—a European setting with comparatively liberal policies around family settlement and naturalization for migrants. In this setting, rapid urbanization in the late twentieth century, along with a national push to reconcile work and family, have shaped the growth of paid home care and cleaning service industries.
Isle of Rum
Havana Club, Cultural Mediation, and the Fight for Cuban Authenticity
Focusing on Havana Club rum as a case study, Isle of Rum examines the ways in which western cultural producers, working in collaboration with the Cuban state, have assumed responsibility for representing Cuba to the outside world. Christopher Chávez focuses specifically on the role of advertising practitioners, musicians, filmmakers, and visual artists, who stand to benefit economically by selling an image of Cuba to consumers who desperately crave authentic experiences that exist outside of the purview of the marketplace.
Gender Play
Boys and Girls in School
Decentering Epistemologies and Challenging Privilege
Critical Care Ethics Perspectives
This book discusses the ways care ethics contributes to the decentering of dominant epistemologies and to the challenging of privilege, and considers how to decenter care ethics itself via an encounter with non-Western philosophical traditions and alternative epistemologies. Written by scholars from different countries, disciplines and intellectual traditions, the volume offers original care ethics contributions on epistemic injustice, privileged irresponsibility, ecofeminism, settler colonialism, social movements such as BLM, and on various racialized and gendered inequities tied to care work.
Decentering Epistemologies and Challenging Privilege
Critical Care Ethics Perspectives
This book discusses the ways care ethics contributes to the decentering of dominant epistemologies and to the challenging of privilege, and considers how to decenter care ethics itself via an encounter with non-Western philosophical traditions and alternative epistemologies. Written by scholars from different countries, disciplines and intellectual traditions, the volume offers original care ethics contributions on epistemic injustice, privileged irresponsibility, ecofeminism, settler colonialism, social movements such as BLM, and on various racialized and gendered inequities tied to care work.
Blessings Beyond the Binary
Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family
Blessings Beyond the Binary: Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family brings together leading scholars to analyze and offer commentary on the groundbreaking streaming series Transparent. The book explores the show’s depiction of Jewish life, religion, and history, as well as Transparent’s scandals, criticisms, and how it fits and diverges from today’s transgender and queer politics.