This book highlights the modernity of Polish Jewish culture through its literature, poetry, film, cabaret, theater, architecture, the visual arts, and music in urban centers large and small. The contributors expertly reassert the belonging of Jews in Polish lands and showcase the multivalent texture of Polish Jewish cultural production before World War II.
 

Policing Victimhood analyzes semi-structured interviews with 54 service providers in the Midwestern US, a region that, though colloquially understood as “flyover country,” regularly positions itself as a leader in state-level anti-trafficking policies and collaborative networks. These frontline workers’ perceptions and narratives are informed by their interpersonal, day-to-day encounters with exploited or trafficked persons. Their insights underscore how anti-trafficking policies are put into practice and influenced by specific ideologies and stereotypes. Extending the reach of street-level bureaucracy theory to anti-trafficking initiatives, Corinne Schwarz demonstrates how frontline workers are uniquely positioned to perpetuate or radically counter punitive anti-trafficking efforts.

On the Turtle’s Back is the first collection of folklore from the Lenape people, New Jersey’s native inhabitants. Originally compiled by anthropologist M. R. Harrington over a century ago, but never published until now, it shares the tribe’s cherished tales about the world’s creation, epic heroes, and ordinary human foibles.

As the U.S. population ages, and as health care needs become more complex, demand for paid care workers in home and institutional settings has increased. Migrants Who Care draws attention to the reserve of immigrant labor that is called upon to meet this need, telling the little-known story of a group of English-speaking West African immigrants who have become central to the U.S. health and long-term care systems.

Imagine losing the ability to smile. After suffering permanent facial difference, Faye Linda Wachs finds a community of people reconstructing identity while coping with what she terms a social disability. By detailing personal accounts and interviews of those facing microaggressions and internal disruptions to communication, Metamorphosis explores the process of reconstructing the self.
 

Mainstreaming Gays examines a key transitional period linking the eras of legacy and streaming, when queer production and interaction was transformed by the emergence of digital media, the rising influence of fan cultures, and increasing interest in LGBTQ content. It is critical reading for those interested in media production, fandom, subcultures, and LGBTQ digital media.
 

Ideal Beauty reveals the woman behind the Garbo mystique, a tough negotiator who used her newfound power in Hollywood to develop a distinctly new feminist screen persona. Examining how she was an icon who helped to define female beauty in the twentieth century, the book also considers Garbo’s spiritual and sexual exploration away from the camera’s glare.  

Chinese Marriages in Transition documents the nuanced and multidirectional nature of the transformations in Chinese marriage, gender roles, and family. Using complex and large-scale historical national data as well as comprehensive data from multiple countries, Xiaoling Shu and Jingjing Chen demonstrate that Chinese new familism consists of values both old and new.

The Prism of Human Rights illustrates how women’s human rights campaigns have taken off in rural Ecuador. Drawing on two decades of research and activism, Friederic shows how the initial promises of legal empowerment often give way to self-blame, social isolation, and more extreme structural violence, and she demonstrates how one rural community is renegotiating beliefs about gender, the family, the meaning of violence, and even community development.

A tale of false accusations, social stigma, and adultery, The Outcast is an early masterwork from Nobel Prize–winning Italian author Luigi Pirandello. Combining elements of Zolaesque naturalism with emerging modernist aesthetics, the novel is notable for its deft use of irony and its resourceful and resilient heroine.