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.

Showing 281-320 of 2,599 items.

The Activist Collector

Lida Clanton Broner’s 1938 Journey from Newark to South Africa

Rutgers University Press

“After twenty-eight years of desire and determination, I have visited Africa, the land of my forefathers.” So wrote Lida Clanton Broner (1895–1982), an African American housekeeper and hairstylist from Newark, New Jersey, upon her return from an extraordinary nine-month journey to South Africa in 1938. This epic trip was motivated not only by Broner’s sense of ancestral heritage, but also a grassroots resolve to connect the socio-political concerns of African Americans with those of Black South Africans under the segregationist policies of the time. During her travels, this woman of modest means circulated among South Africa’s Black intellectual elite, including many leaders of South Africa’s freedom struggle. Her lectures at Black schools on “race consciousness and race pride” had a decidedly political bent, even as she was presented as an “American beauty specialist.” 

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Unsafe Words

Queering Consent in the #MeToo Era

Rutgers University Press

Telling a queerer side of the #MeToo story, Unsafe Words brings together academics, activists, artists, and sex workers to tackle challenging questions about sex, power, consent, and harm. Resisting the heteronormative assumptions, class norms, and racial privilege underlying much #MeToo discourse, they explore how queer communities might better prevent and respond to sexual violence.

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Seton Hall University

A History, 1856–2006

Rutgers University Press

In this vivid and elegantly written history, Dermot Quinn examines how Seton Hall University was able to develop as an institution while keeping faith with its founder’s vision. It also tells the stories of the people who shaped the university and were shaped by it: the presidents, the priests, the faculty, the staff, and of course, the students.
 

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Poetries - Politics

A Celebration of Language, Art, and Learning

Edited by Jenevieve DeLosSantos; Foreword by Susan Lawrence
Rutgers University Press

Poetries – Politics: A Celebration of Language, Art, and Learning  is a catalogue that celebrates the best of innovative humanities pedagogy and creative graphic design and that provides a platform for the incredible generative power of student-led work.

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Matchmaking in the Archive

19 Conversations with the Dead and 3 Encounters with Ghosts

Rutgers University Press

To help preserve the legacies left by earlier generations, artist E.G. Crichton selected 19 innovative LGBTQ artists, writers, and musicians to pair with deceased person whose personal artifacts are part of the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society archive. Including 25 pages of vivid images, Matchmaking in the Archive documents this remarkable creative project. 

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Making Uncertainty

Tuberculosis, Substance Use, and Pathways to Health in South Africa

Rutgers University Press

Making Uncertainty: Tuberculosis, Substance Use, and Pathways to Health explores what happens when tuberculosis and substance use intersect in healthcare facilities in Cape Town, South Africa. Through a close look at life and care, this fine-grained hospital ethnography provides new perspectives on how sickness and health are made.

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Building Financial Empowerment for Survivors of Domestic Violence

A Path to Hope and Freedom

Rutgers University Press

Little of the research on domestic violence has sought to either fully understand the impact of financial abuse or to determine which intervention strategies are most effective for the financial empowerment of survivors. Building Financial Empowerment for Survivors of Domestic Violence aims to address this critical knowledge gap by providing those who work with survivors of domestic violence with practical knowledge on how to empower the financial well-being and stability of survivors.

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A Pill for Promiscuity

Gay Sex in an Age of Pharmaceuticals

Rutgers University Press

This collection brings together academics, artists, and activists—from different generations, countries, ethnic backgrounds, and HIV statuses—to reflect on how gay sex has changed in a post-PrEP era, critique the role Big Pharma now plays in queer life, and argue for the value of sexual community, promiscuity, and pleasure. 

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A History of Horror, 2nd Edition

Rutgers University Press

A History of Horror, 2nd Edition, with rare stills from classic films, is the only book to offer a comprehensive survey of the ever-popular horror film genre. Chronologically examining over fifty horror films from key periods, this one-stop sourcebook unearths the historical origins of legendary characters and explores how the genre fits into the Hollywood studio system and how its enormous success in American and European culture expanded globally over time.

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To Defend This Sunrise

Black Women’s Activism and the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua

Rutgers University Press

To Defend this Sunrise: Black Women’s Activism and the Geography of Race in Nicaragua examines how black women activists on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua have resisted historical and contemporary patterns of racialized state violence, economic exclusion, territorial dispossession, and political repression from the 19th century to the present.

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To Defend This Sunrise

Black Women's Activism and the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua

Rutgers University Press

To Defend this Sunrise: Black Women’s Activism and the Geography of Race in Nicaragua examines how black women activists on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua have resisted historical and contemporary patterns of racialized state violence, economic exclusion, territorial dispossession, and political repression from the 19th century to the present.

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Reversing the Gaze

What If the Other Were You?

Rutgers University Press

Tired of being scrutinized, criticized, and fetishized for her black skin, Cameroon-born scholar Geneviève Makaping turns the tables on Italy’s white majority, regarding them through the same unsparing gaze to which minorities are subjected.Reversing the Gaze offers a unique perspective on otherness and the work we must do to create a truly inclusive society. 

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Perfect Copies

Reproduction and the Contemporary Comic

Rutgers University Press

Perfect Copies examines comics as a literary art form that is explicitly made for reproduction. What does mechanical reproduction have to do with ideas of family and biological reproduction? Five chapters closely examine the connections between two types of reproduction through various works by five exciting contemporary comics artists.

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My Language Is a Jealous Lover

Rutgers University Press

My Language Is a Jealous Lover bears witness to the frustrations, soul-searching, pain, and joys of embracing another tongue. Adrián N. Bravi weaves together his own experiences as an Argentinian-Italian with the stories of authors who lived and wrote between multiple languages, including Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, Ágota Kristóf, and Joseph Brodsky.

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In Praise of Disobedience

Clare of Assisi, A Novel

By Dacia Maraini; Introduction by Rudolph Bell; Translated by Jane Tylus
Rutgers University Press

An author receives a mysterious e-mail begging her to tell the story of Clare of Assisi, the thirteenth-century Italian saint. As she becomes captivated by this subversive figure, the author tells the inspirational story of Saint Claire, a visionary who liberated herself from the chains of materialism and patriarchy. 
 

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Gray Love

Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60

Rutgers University Press

Gray Love tells stories about the most common of themes: seeking and sometimes finding love. Forty-five men and women, 60 and 94, from diverse backgrounds write about dating, building a relationship or fashioning a life alone. The longing for connection in old age is palpable, with more senior singles than ever searching online and elsewhere.

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Global Child

Children and Families Affected by War, Displacement, and Migration

Rutgers University Press

Global Child highlights the unique features of participatory, arts-based, and socio-ecological approaches to studying war-affected children and families, demonstrating the collective strength as well as the limitations and the ethical implications of such research. Building on work across the Global South and the Global North, this book aims to deepen an understanding of this tri-pillared approach, and the potential for this methodology to contribute to improved practices in working with war-affected children and their families.

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A World of Many

Ontology and Child Development among the Maya of Southern Mexico

Rutgers University Press

A World of Many explores the world-making efforts of Tzotzil Maya children from two different localities within the municipality of Chenalhó, Chiapas. It shows that as they create their worlds, children create themselves as distinct human beings, being differently in their world.
 

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Writing the Black Diasporic City in the Age of Globalization

Rutgers University Press

Writing the Black Diasporic City in the Age of Globalization analyzes creative works set in Boston, London, New York, Toronto, as well as Global South cities such as Accra, Kingston, and Lagos to theorize the city as a generative, “semicircular” social space, where the changes of globalization are most profoundly experienced.

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Transnational Cultural Flow from Home

Korean Community in Greater New York

Rutgers University Press

Transnational Cultural Flow from Home examines New York Korean immigrants’ collective efforts to preserve their cultural traditions and cultural practices and their efforts to transmit and promote them to New Yorkers by focusing on the Korean cultural elements such as language, foods, cultural festivals, and traditional and contemporary performing arts. This publication was supported by the 2022 Korean Studies Grant Program of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2022-P-009).

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Radical Hospitality

American Policy, Media, and Immigration

Rutgers University Press

Radical Hospitality centers hospitality as a primary metaphor and ethical framework governing the relationship of the migrant to both the “native” population and the host nation. The book examines the history of US immigration policy and media coverage to evaluate hospitality or hostility towards immigrants, and the impact this may have for immigrants’ sense of home and belonging within the nation.

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Just Like Us

Digital Debates on Feminism and Fame

Rutgers University Press

In Just Like Us: Digital Debates on Feminism and Fame, Caitlin E. Lawson examines the rise of celebrity feminism, its intersections with digital culture, and its complicated relationships with race, sexuality, capitalism, and misogyny. Through in-depth analyses of online debates, Lawson demonstrates how networked negotiations of celebrity culture and feminism are transforming popular engagements with the movement.

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Global Visions of Violence

Agency and Persecution in World Christianity

Rutgers University Press

Global Visions of Violence argues that violence creates a lens, bridge, and method to examine Christianity worldwide. These chapters illuminate often hidden landscapes that have been shaped by global visions of violence, showing how Christians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America respond to violence as they express their Christian faith. 
 

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From Protest to President

A Social Justice Journey through the Emergence of Adult Education and the Birth of Distance Learning

Rutgers University Press

In this remarkable memoir, former Thomas Edison State University president George A. Pruitt describes how his experiences growing up in Mississippi and the South Side of Chicago during the civil rights movement led him to become a trailblazer for access to higher education for adult learners.


 

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From Popular to Insurgent Intellectuals

Peasant Catechists in the Salvadoran Revolution

Rutgers University Press

From Popular to Insurgent Intellectuals explains how a group of Catholic lay catechists educated in liberation theology became early regional protagonists in El Salvador’s revolutionary war (1980-92). The book chronicles the steps by which state violence led peacful men of God to join a revolutionary organization in which they came to play important roles for the duration of the twelve-year military conflict.

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Digital Me

Trans Students Exploring Future Possible Selves Online

Rutgers University Press

The Internet is a potent site from which to theorize, but also imagine, invest in, and explore the prismatic possibilities for life. Digital Me explores how transgender people use the internet in myriad ways. The book explores online life--from cultivating identity to creating community and everything in between.

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How Schools Meet Students' Needs

Inequality, School Reform, and Caring Labor

Rutgers University Press

Drawing on conversations with teachers and classroom observations in two elementary schools, How Schools Meet Students' Needs explores the factors that enable and constrain teachers in their efforts to meet students' needs and the consequences of how schools organize this work on teachers' labor and students' learning.
 

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The "Puerto Rican Problem" in Postwar New York City

Rutgers University Press

This book presents the first comprehensive examination of the campaign and narrative of the "Puerto Rican problem" in New York City from 1945 to 1960. It looks at how this campaign influenced the incorporation of Puerto Ricans to the US, the policies of the governments of Puerto Rico and New York, and the ways Puerto Ricans were perceived by Americans for decades.
 

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Spirits in the Consulting Room

Eight Tales of Healing

Rutgers University Press

The book shows how trained transcultural mediators help to redress the power imbalance between doctors and the migrants they treat, providing patients with advocates who respect the authority of their experiences. Its groundbreaking insights can be applied to any medical situation where doctors and patients find themselves speaking different languages. 

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Prestige Television

Cultural and Artistic Value in Twenty-First-Century America

Rutgers University Press

Prestige Television explores how an array of 21st century US programming is produced and received in ways that elevate select series above the competition in a saturated market. Essays focusing on diverse series, ranging from widely recognized constituents such as The Americans to contested examples like Queen of the South highlight how contributing authors extend conceptions of the genre beyond expected parameters.

 

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Prestige Television

Cultural and Artistic Value in Twenty-First-Century America

Rutgers University Press

Prestige Television explores how an array of 21st century US programming is produced and received in ways that elevate select series above the competition in a saturated market. Essays focusing on diverse series, ranging from widely recognized constituents such as The Americans to contested examples like Queen of the South highlight how contributing authors extend conceptions of the genre beyond expected parameters.

 

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Photo-Attractions

An Indian Dancer, an American Photographer, and a German Camera

Rutgers University Press

A groundbreaking study of global modernity and the cultural interchange between America and South Asia, Photo-Attractions uses a rare and unpublished set of 1938 photographs taken by the photographer Carl Van Vechten of the Indian dancer Ram Gopal in exotic costumes to raise provocative questions about race, sexual identity, photographic technology, colonial histories, and transcultural desires.

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Opting Out

Women Messing with Marriage around the World

Rutgers University Press

Opting Out offers sensitive and powerful ethnographic portrayals of women in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who are quietly opting out of marriage. Across these diverse geographic contexts,this edited volume shows that women are the (often unwitting, mostly unacknowledged) protagonists of profound changes in marriage, gender, and kinship.
 

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Opting Out

Women Messing with Marriage around the World

Rutgers University Press

Opting Out offers sensitive and powerful ethnographic portrayals of women in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who are quietly opting out of marriage. Across these diverse geographic contexts,this edited volume shows that women are the (often unwitting, mostly unacknowledged) protagonists of profound changes in marriage, gender, and kinship.
 

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Intoxication

An Ethnography of Effervescent Revelry

Rutgers University Press

Why do people across cultures gather regularly to intoxicate themselves? Vivid and at times deeply personal, Intoxication offers new insights into a wide variety of intoxicating experiences, from the intimate feeling of connection among concertgoers to the adrenaline-fueled rush of a fight to the thrill of jumping off a balcony into a swimming pool. Sébastien Tutenges shows what it means and feels to move beyond the ordinary into altered states in which the transgressive, spectacular, and unexpected takes place.

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Families We Need

Disability, Abandonment, and Foster Care’s Resistance in Contemporary China

Rutgers University Press

Families We Need is an ethnography of the temporary, yet transformative relationships between disenfranchised, older foster mothers and disabled, orphaned foster children in China, and the power of these seemingly marginal relationships to confront state power, disrupt intercountry adoption, and challenge our assumptions about the limits of foster kinship.

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Way Down in the Hole

Race, Intimacy, and the Reproduction of Racial Ideologies in Solitary Confinement

Rutgers University Press

Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with inmates, correctional officers, and civilian staff that conducted in solitary confinement units, Way Down in the Hole explores the myriad ways in which daily, intimate interactions between those locked up twenty-four hours a day and the correctional officers charged with their care, custody, and control produce and reproduce hegemonic racial ideologies.
 

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The Internet Is for Cats

How Animal Images Shape Our Digital Lives

Rutgers University Press

An in-depth study of online animal photos, memes, and videos, The Internet is for Cats includes textual analysis and interviews with everyone from animal-loving Redditors to TikTok influencers seeking to make their pets famous. It will leave you with a new appreciation for the human social practices behind the animal images you encounter online.  

 

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The American Historical Imaginary

Contested Narratives of the Past

Rutgers University Press

The American Historical Imaginary: Contested Narratives of the Past in Mass Culture analyzes the shared understanding of America’s past that is formed through entertainment, education, and politics. Caroline Guthrie examines our historical imaginary and argues it is crucial to understanding our national identity.
 

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Stained Glass Ceilings

How Evangelicals Do Gender and Practice Power

Rutgers University Press

This book speaks to the intersection of gender and power within American evangelicalism by examining the formation of evangelical leaders at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Asbury Theological Seminary, arguing that evangelical culture upholds male-centered structures of power even as it facilitates meaning and identity for both men and women.

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