This book tells the story of how five comedic pioneers—Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Robert Townsend, and Arsenio Hall—joined forces to revolutionize American popular culture. Known as Hollywood’s “Black Pack,” they shattered Hollywood norms, using sharp social satire to boldly critique America’s persistent racial inequalities.

This edited volume brings together an exciting cross-regional inter-disciplinary group of scholars, scholar activists, artists and others. Each chapter focuses on a different form of “creative resistance” to the last two decades of social disconnection, increased income disparity and new burdens placed on reproductive labor and the environment taking place in China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Each chapter demonstrates how individuals and communities across East Asia are making their stands in the everyday--focused on making more liveable presents and more possible futures.

This edited volume brings together an exciting cross-regional inter-disciplinary group of scholars, scholar activists, artists and others. Each chapter focuses on a different form of “creative resistance” to the last two decades of social disconnection, increased income disparity and new burdens placed on reproductive labor and the environment taking place in China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Each chapter demonstrates how individuals and communities across East Asia are making their stands in the everyday--focused on making more liveable presents and more possible futures.

Monsters vs. Patriarchy examines female monstrosity as it appears in horror films from around the world and considers specific political, scientific, and historical contexts to better understand how we construct and reconstruct monstrosity, using an intersectional approach to examine the imposition of gender and racial hierarchies that support national power structures and horrorize female and other subjects.

This book offers a robust account of women’s leadership in journalism, looking at the obstacles they overcame and the strategies they used to solve problems and handle crises. These profiles of inspiring women in prominent media positions from the nineteenth century to today showcases their eagerness to experiment, take risks, and innovate and offers useful lessons in moral leadership.

This book offers a robust account of women’s leadership in journalism, looking at the obstacles they overcame and the strategies they used to solve problems and handle crises. These profiles of inspiring women in prominent media positions from the nineteenth century to today showcases their eagerness to experiment, take risks, and innovate and offers useful lessons in moral leadership.

Insiders, Outliers showcases the educational histories and lifewide writing experiences of adult HBCU students to illuminate critical needs for more age-inclusive practices across academia. Their cases also show the centrality of writing in fueling changes for these students and the people and institutions that they care about—including higher education.
 

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is one of the most important figures in the history of American labor. This stirring biography traces her personal and political life, foregrounding her commitment to civil liberties as the enduring force behind her worldview and returns her to her rightful place at the heart of the working-class movement.
 

Climate Bridge compares New Jersey and the German Ruhr region to build an international perspective on how to enact climate action at the government-public interface. The book grew from fifteen years of collaboration between scholars in New Jersey and Germany through summer programs, a landscape architecture design studio, internships for Rutgers University students, and joint publications. Notably, settlement patterns and brownfield issues reveal similarities between the underserved in both regions. 

Emile Weaver seemed like the perfect college student—a studious, athletic, and popular sorority sister. So why did she kill her newborn baby? American Infanticide answers this question by situating Emile’s tragic crime in a long intellectual and social history that reveals why our legal responses to infanticide are so deeply misguided.

This book explains how, in less than 100 years, Queens transformed from an agricultural hinterland to a vital urban corridor. This richly illustrated, vital work of history charts the rapid transformation of the Queens landscape and identifies what drove the borough’s development.
 

Thrillers, Chillers, and Killers is the first book to explore in detail noir storytelling in cinema and on radio. Arguing that radio’s noir dramas were a counterpart to, influence on, or a spin-off from the noir films, this scrupulously researched yet accessible study challenges conventional understandings of noir as well as shedding new light on a medium that was cinema’s major rival.
 

The first intensive study of Mervyn LeRoy’s work, as varied in form as it is crucial to an understanding of American cinema and American culture.

The first intensive study of Mervyn LeRoy’s work, as varied in form as it is crucial to an understanding of American cinema and American culture.

The first biography of prolific modern American artist Leon Bibel, this book tells how a boy from a Jewish shtetl received support from New Deal agencies that recognized his talents. Reprinting over 240 of Bibel’s works, many in vivid color, it reveals how he depicted everything from the horrors of lynching to the pleasures of everyday life.  

Imagining the Tropics is a history of the development of tourism in the Caribbean across the twentieth century that focuses on the ways women’s labors of hospitality, writing, and advocacy built the industry and its ubiquitous imagery of tropical island relaxation, escape, and romance.

A new edition of 1897’s Citizen Bird, the first birding guide for children and a vital text in the history of American conservationism, updated with explanatory footnotes, supplemental historical material, and a new introduction that places the book in its cultural context. 
 

Back to Black provides the first full-length critical analysis of Jules Feiffer’s late-career graphic novels Kill My Mother (2014), Cousin Joseph (2016), and The Ghost Script (2018), examining how they pay playful homage to the cinematic techniques and iconography of film noir while addressing serious themes like McCarthyism, antisemitism, and gender discrimination.

 

What happens when older workers lose their jobs in a recessionary economy filled with employers who favor hiring younger workers? From hard falls to soft landings, American Idle uses in-depth interviews to detail how these workers simultaneously embrace and resist the pervasive messages of the neoliberal era as they manage the painful mismatch between expectation and reality.
 

Always an Academic Immigrant is a collective memoir that gives voice to eighty-one academics who immigrated from thirty-seven countries for a career in higher education. It reveals the challenges they faced adapting to new national and institutional cultures and the vital contributions immigrants have made to academia as scholars, teachers, and leaders.