Showing 1,151-1,200 of 2,619 items.

Beautiful Terrible Ruins

Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline

Rutgers University Press

Detroit is the epicenter of an explosive growth in images of urban decay. In Beautiful Terrible Ruins, art historian Dora Apel explores a wide array of these images of ruin, ranging from photography, advertising, and television, to documentaries, video games, and zombie and disaster films. The author shows how, through the aesthetic distancing of representation, the beauty and fascination of these images helps us to cope with the overarching anxieties of our time.  
 

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Our Caribbean Kin

Race and Nation in the Neoliberal Antilles

Rutgers University Press

Our Caribbean Kin explores the extent to which Dominicans, Haitians, and Puerto Ricans have imagined one another as part of the same big family, rallying against the forces of European colonialism, US imperialism, and neoliberalism. Drawing from a vast archive of texts, ranging from nineteenth-century political tracts to twenty-first-century online forums, Alaí Reyes-Santos considers both the benefits and the limits of these kinship tropes, uncovering the conflicts and internal hierarchies among Antilleans, while also discovering how they have created cohesion across differences.  
 

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Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India

Rutgers University Press

Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India analyzes how diverse deaf people become oriented toward each other and disoriented from their families and other kinship networks. Michele Friedner argues that the experiences of deaf people offer an important portrayal of contemporary self-making and sociality under new regimes of labor and economy in India. More broadly, this book explores how deafness, deaf sociality, and sign language relate to contemporary society. 
 

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The Bronx

The Ultimate Guide to New York City's Beautiful Borough

Rutgers University Press

Use this handy, comprehensive illustrated guidebook to discover the often-overlooked rich cultural, historical, and natural attractions of the Bronx—one of the five boroughs of New York City. Author and foremost Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan and educator Shelley Olson provide detailed descriptions, information, and maps visitors need, including hours and directions, to enjoy both famous and lesser-known historic and architectural marvels, museums, art galleries, performance venues, gardens, parks, and recreation facilities.
 

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The Price of Nuclear Power

Uranium Communities and Environmental Justice

Rutgers University Press

In The Price of Nuclear Power, environmental sociologist Stephanie Malin offers an on-the-ground portrait of several uranium communities caught between the harmful legacy of previous mining booms and the potential promise of new economic development. An insightful look at the local impact of the nuclear renaissance and community members’ shifting notions of environmental justice, this book warns that this industry needs to be closely followed to mitigate the social and environmental tensions inherent in the rebirth of uranium mining.
 

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Taking the Heat

Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen

Rutgers University Press

A number of recent books, magazines, and television programs have emerged that promise to take viewers inside the exciting world of professional chefs. While media suggest that the occupation is undergoing a transformation, one thing remains clear: being a chef is a decidedly male-dominated job. Taking the Heat examines how the world of professional chefs is gendered, what conditions have led to this gender segregation, and how women chefs feel about their work in relation to men.
 

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Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture

Rutgers University Press

In Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture, Jennifer Ann Ho shines a light on the hybrid and indeterminate aspects of race, revealing ambiguity to be paramount to a more nuanced understanding both of race and of what it means to be Asian American. Ho argues that seeing race as ambiguous puts us one step closer to a potential antidote to racism.

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The Forgotten Men

Serving a Life without Parole Sentence

Rutgers University Press

In The Forgotten Men, criminologist Margaret E. Leigey provides an insightful account of a group of inmates sentenced to life without parole. Imprisoned for at least twenty years, with virtually no chance of release, these men make up one of the most marginalized segments of the U.S. prison population. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty-five such prisoners, Leigey describes how they struggle to construct meaningful lives and provides a much-needed analysis of the policies behind life-without-parole sentencing. 
 

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The Renewal of the Kibbutz

From Reform to Transformation

Rutgers University Press

The Renewal of the Kibbutz explores the waves of kibbutzim reforms since 1990. Looking through the lens of organizational theories that predict how open or closed a group will be to change, the authors find that the less successful kibbutzim were the most receptive to reform, and reforms then spread through imitation from the economically weaker kibbutzim to the strong. Survey data is used to understand which reforms were the most common and which were most successful.

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Sound

Dialogue, Music, and Effects

Edited by Kathryn Kalinak
Rutgers University Press

Sound introduces key concepts, seminal moments, and pivotal figures in the development of cinematic sound, revealing the unseen work of film composers, Foley artists, elocution coaches, and many more. Each of the book’s six chapters cover a different era in the history of Hollywood, from silent films to the digital age, and each is written by an expert in that period. After you read Sound, you’ll never see—or hear—movies in quite the same way.
 
 

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Shaky Foundations

The Politics-Patronage-Social Science Nexus in Cold War America

Rutgers University Press

Shaky Foundations provides the first extensive examination of a new patronage system for the social sciences that emerged in the early Cold War years and took more definite shape during the 1950s and early 1960s. Focusing on the defense department, the Ford Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, Mark Solovey explores the struggles of these various funders to define what counted as legitimate social science and how their policies and programs helped to shape the goals, subject matter, methodologies, and social implications of academic social research in the nuclear age.    

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Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11

Horror, Exploitation, and the Cinema of Sensation

Rutgers University Press

Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11 challenges the conventional wisdom about horror movies like Hostel and the Saw series. Aaron Kerner argues that, even as these films express anxieties and sadistic fantasies that have emerged from the War on Terror, they are rooted in a much longer tradition of American violence. He also reveals how the “torture porn” aesthetic has gone mainstream, popping up in everything from the television thriller Dexter to the reality show Hell’s Kitchen
 

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Film Criticism in the Digital Age

Rutgers University Press

Now that well-paying jobs in film criticism have largely evaporated, while blogs, message boards, and social media have given new meaning to the saying that “everyone’s a critic,” urgent questions have emerged about the critic’s status and purpose. In Film Criticism in the Digital Age, ten scholars from across the globe, as well as critics and bloggers, come together to consider whether we are witnessing the extinction of serious film criticism or seeing the seeds of its rebirth in a new form.
 

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Film Criticism in the Digital Age

Rutgers University Press

Now that well-paying jobs in film criticism have largely evaporated, while blogs, message boards, and social media have given new meaning to the saying that “everyone’s a critic,” urgent questions have emerged about the critic’s status and purpose. In Film Criticism in the Digital Age, ten scholars from across the globe, as well as critics and bloggers, come together to consider whether we are witnessing the extinction of serious film criticism or seeing the seeds of its rebirth in a new form.
 

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Testing for Athlete Citizenship

Regulating Doping and Sex in Sport

Rutgers University Press

Incidents of doping in sports are common in news headlines, despite regulatory efforts. How did doping become a crisis? What does a doping violation actually entail? Who gets punished for breaking the rules of fair play? In Testing for Athlete Citizenship, Kathryn E. Henne, a former competitive athlete and expert in the law and science of anti-doping regulations, examines the development of sports governance aimed at controlling performance enhancement in international sports.
 

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Techno-Orientalism

Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media

Rutgers University Press

To judge from many speculative fiction films and books, the future will be full of cities that resemble Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and it will be populated mainly by cold, unfeeling citizens who act like robots. Techno-Orientalism investigates the phenomenon of imagining Asia and Asians in hypo- or hyper-technological terms in literary, cinematic, and new media representations, while critically examining the stereotype of Asians as both technologically advanced and intellectually primitive, in dire need of Western consciousness-raising. 
 

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Techno-Orientalism

Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media

Rutgers University Press

To judge from many speculative fiction films and books, the future will be full of cities that resemble Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and it will be populated mainly by cold, unfeeling citizens who act like robots. Techno-Orientalism investigates the phenomenon of imagining Asia and Asians in hypo- or hyper-technological terms in literary, cinematic, and new media representations, while critically examining the stereotype of Asians as both technologically advanced and intellectually primitive, in dire need of Western consciousness-raising. 
 

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The Cool and the Crazy

Pop Fifties Cinema

Rutgers University Press

In the 1950s, Hollywood made a variety of sensational movies meant to capitalize upon current events, moral panics, and popular fads. The Cool and the Crazy examines seven of the decade’s key film cycles, including short-lived trends like boxing and juvenile delinquency movies, as well as uniquely ‘50s takes on established genres like the Western.  Delivering sharp critical insights in jazzy, accessible prose, Peter Stanfield offers an appreciation of cinema as a “pop” medium, unabashedly derivative, faddish, and ephemeral.

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The Holocaust Averted

An Alternate History of American Jewry, 1938-1967

Rutgers University Press

In The Holocaust Averted: An Alternate History of American Jewry, 1938–1967, Jeffrey Gurock imagines what might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred and challenges readers to contemplate how the road to acceptance and empowerment for today’s American Jews would have been harder than it actually was. As Gurock tells his tale, he concludes every chapter with a short section that describes what actually happened and, thus, further educates the reader.
 

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Indian Spectacle

College Mascots and the Anxiety of Modern America

Rutgers University Press

Indian Spectacle explores the ways in which white, middle-class Americans have consumed narratives of masculinity, race, and collegiate athletics through the lens of Indian-themed athletic identities, mascots, and music. Drawing on a cross-section of American institutions of higher education, Guiliano investigates the role of sports mascots in the big business of twentieth-century American college football in order to connect mascotry to expressions of community identity, individual belonging, stereotyped imagery, and cultural hegemony.  

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The American Revolution in New Jersey

Where the Battlefront Meets the Home Front

Rutgers University Press

Battles were fought in many colonies during the American Revolution, but New Jersey was home to more sustained and intense fighting over a longer period of time. The nine essays in The American Revolution in New Jersey, examine the many challenges New Jersey residents faced at the intersection of the front lines and the home front. Using a wide historical lens, the contributors capture the decades before and after the conflict as they interpret the causes of the war and the consequences of New Jersey’s reaction to the Revolution.
 

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Mexico on Main Street

Transnational Film Culture in Los Angeles before World War II

Rutgers University Press

Mexico on Main Street takes us inside a forgotten world: the film culture that thrived within Los Angeles’s Mexican immigrant community in the early decades of the twentieth-century. Drawing from rare archives, Colin Gunckel demonstrates how these immigrants not only consumed Hollywood and Mexican films, but also produced fan publications, fiction, criticism, music, and live theatrical events. This book demonstrates how a site-specific study of cultural and ethnic issues challenges our existing conceptions of U.S. film history, Mexican cinema, and the history of Los Angeles. 
 

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Rediscover the Hidden New Jersey

Rutgers University Press

This revised edition contains new sections on Lawnside, the Morris Canal, Albert Einstein in Princeton, The Bordentown Manual Training School, Rockefeller/Ocean County Park, the bicycle railroad, Morro Castle, Alice Paul, and more.

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The Road to Citizenship

What Naturalization Means for Immigrants and the United States

Rutgers University Press

In The Road to Citizenship, Sofya Aptekar analyzes what the process of becoming a citizen means for newly minted Americans and what it means for the United States as a whole. Examining the evolution of the discursive role of immigrants in the American society, immigrants’ own understandings of naturalization, and the growing inequality in who gets citizenship, Aptekar’s in-depth research uncovers considerable contradictions in the way  naturalization works today. Aptekar contends that debates about immigration must be broadened beyond the current focus on borders and documentation to include larger questions about the definition of citizenship. 

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Shades of White Flight

Evangelical Congregations and Urban Departure

Rutgers University Press

In Shades of White Flight, sociologist Mark T. Mulder investigates a case of “white flight” where seven church congregations from one denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, left Chicago en masse in the 1960s and 70s and relocated their churches in nearby suburbs. Using a wealth of both archival and interview data, Mulder examines the migration of these Chicago church members, revealing how their churches not only failed to inhibit white flight, but actually facilitated the congregations’ departure.
 

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Making Asian American Film and Video

History, Institutions, Movements

Rutgers University Press

Making Asian American Film and Video gives readers a unique behind-the-scenes look at the various institutions that have bankrolled and distributed the genre over the course of its fifty year evolution. Jun Okada explores how state-run media outlets like PBS served as crucial support for Asian American films, but also imposed limitations. In addition, she considers a number of Asian American filmmakers who have opted out of producing state-funded films, from Wayne Wang to Gregg Araki to Justin Lin. 
 

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Art Direction and Production Design

Edited by Lucy Fischer
Rutgers University Press

It is impossible to imagine filmmaking without an understanding of the contributions of art direction and production design. In Art Direction and Production Design, six outstanding scholars survey the careers of notable art directors, the influence of specific design styles, the key roles played by particular studios and films in shaping the field, the effect of technological changes on production design, and the shifts in industrial modes of organization. 

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The Things That Fly in the Night

Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora

Rutgers University Press

The Things That Fly in the Night explores images of vampirism in Caribbean and African diasporic folk traditions and in contemporary fiction. Giselle Anatol considers the explosion of soucouyant and other vampire narratives among writers of Caribbean and African heritage who in the past twenty years have rejected the demonic image of the character and used her instead to urge for female mobility, racial and cultural empowerment, and anti colonial resistance.

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Jewish Mad Men

Advertising and the Design of the American Jewish Experience

Rutgers University Press

Attractively illustrated and insightfully written, Jewish Mad Men looks at how advertising helped shape the evolution of American Jewish life and culture over the past one hundred years.  Drawing on case studies of famous ad campaigns—from Levy’s Rye Bread to Hebrew National hot dogs—Kerri P. Steinberg uses the lens of advertising to illuminate the Jewish trajectory from outsider to insider, and the related arc of immigration, acculturation, upward mobility, and suburbanization.

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Hiking the Road to Ruins

Daytrips and Camping Adventures to Iron Mines, Old Military Sites, and Things Abandoned in the New York City Area...and Beyond

Rutgers University Press

In this easy to use, informative, and occasionally eccentric guidebook, David A. Steinberg blazes the trail to more than twenty-five unusual landmarks and hard-to-find destinations that are mostly within a two-hour drive of New York City. Suitable for the experienced hiker or camping adventurer—as well as anyone that has the desire to explore—Hiking the Road to Ruins has been updated to include detailed directions and GPS coordinates to specific sites as well as many new hikes.

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The Autobiography of Citizenship

Assimilation and Resistance in U.S. Education

Rutgers University Press

At the turn of the twentieth century, America was faced with a radically mixed population, one with a disturbing new mix of races and religions. In The Autobiography of Citizenship, Tova Cooper looks at how citizen education programs tried to impose unity on this divergent population, and how the new citizens in turn often resisted these efforts, embracing their own view of what it means to be an American. 

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Our Aging Bodies

Rutgers University Press

Our Aging Bodies provides a clear, scientifically based explanation of what happens to all the major organ systems and bodily processes as people age. Throughout the book, Gary F. Merrill weaves in personal anecdotes and stories that help clarify and reinforce the facts and principles of the underlying scientific processes and explanations. Accessible to a general reader interested in the aging process, this book will also educate anyone wishing to have a more informed discussion with their physician.

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It's Not Your Fault!

Strategies for Solving Toilet Training and Bedwetting Problems

Rutgers University Press

It’s Not Your Fault! offers evidence-based solutions for toilet training and to help parents of children suffering from delayed toilet training, bed wetting, and daytime urinary wetting. Using sound advice based on testing and research in a real world setting, Dr. Joseph Barone, M.D., educates parents who have been misguided by bad advice from friends, TV talk shows, the Internet, or parenting books. Easing the frustration and blame parents feel, It’s Not Your Fault! provides hope and guidance to parents desperate to help their children overcome urinary control and toilet training problems by enabling them to take charge of the situation.

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Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood

Rutgers University Press

Shirley Temple was America’s sweetheart, the top box-office star of the 1930s. Yet her films are difficult for some modern viewers to enjoy, since several show her portraying vamps and harlots, while others depict a little girl being romanced by adult men. Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood offers a provocative look at Temple’s star persona and what it reveals about changing attitudes toward childhood, sexuality, innocence, and fandom. 

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Smoking Privileges

Psychiatry, the Mentally Ill, and the Tobacco Industry in America

Rutgers University Press

The mentally ill may represent as much as half of the smokers in America. In a groundbreaking look at this little-known public health problem, Smoking Privileges offers an insightful historical account of the intersection of smoking and mental illness, placing this issue in the context of changes in psychiatry, in the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, and in the experience of mental illness over the last century. 

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Black Female Sexualities

Rutgers University Press

The twelve original essays in Black Female Sexualities reveal the diverse ways black women perceive, experience, and represent sexuality. The contributors highlight the range of tactics that black women use to express their sexual desires and identities. Yet they do not shy away from exploring the complex ways in which black women negotiate the more traumatic aspects of sexuality and grapple with the legacy of negative stereotypes. 

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Caring on the Clock

The Complexities and Contradictions of Paid Care Work

Rutgers University Press

Caring on the Clock is the first book to bring together cutting-edge research on a wide range of paid care occupations, placing the various studies within a comprehensive and comparative framework. The book includes twenty-two original essays by leading researchers across a range of disciplines—including sociology, psychology, social work, and public health—and provides a wealth of insight into these workers, who take care of our most fundamental needs, often at risk to their own economic and physical well-being. 

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Cinema Civil Rights

Regulation, Repression, and Race in the Classical Hollywood Era

Rutgers University Press

Cinema Civil Rights presents the untold history of how black audiences, activists, and lobbyists influenced the depiction of race in American films of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Drawing from extensive archival research, Ellen C. Scott takes us to the sites, both inside and outside of Hollywood, where these representations were shaped. She thus offers a nuanced examination of the film industry’s role in both articulating and censoring the national conversation on race. 

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Aging and Loss

Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan

Rutgers University Press

Based on nearly a decade of research, Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan examines how the landscape of aging is felt, understood, and embodied by older adults themselves. In detailed portraits, anthropologist Jason Danely delves into the everyday lives of older Japanese adults as they construct narratives through acts of reminiscence, social engagement, and ritual practice, and reveals the pervasive cultural aesthetic of loss and of being a burden. 

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The Raritan River

Our Landscape, Our Legacy

Rutgers University Press

 The Raritan River shows New Jersey for what it is—home to some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. This lavishly illustrated book tells the story of an amazing region where protected environments coexist with land left in ruins by rampant industrialization and where the reckless pursuit of commerce scarred the lands along its banks. Shaw reminds us that people are the solution and aims to show what is possible when we rescue the land, restore the habitat, and create harmony with nature.

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Don't Act, Just Dance

The Metapolitics of Cold War Culture

Rutgers University Press

Drawing on fresh archival material, Catherine Gunther Kodat questions several commonly-held beliefs about the purpose and meaning of modernist cultural productions during the Cold War. Rather than read the dance through a received understanding of Cold War culture, Don’t Act, Just Dance reads Cold War culture through the dance, and in doing so establishes a new understanding of the politics of modernism in the arts of the period.

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Reproductive Justice

The Politics of Health Care for Native American Women

Rutgers University Press

In Reproductive Justice, sociologist Barbara Gurr provides the first book examining Native American women’s reproductive healthcare. Drawing on interviews and focus group data, archival research, and discussions with healthcare professionals, Gurr paints an insightful portrait of the Indian Health Service (IHS)—the federal agency tasked with providing healthcare to Native Americans—shedding much-needed light on Native American efforts to obtain prenatal care, childbirth care, access to contraception and abortion services.

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Battleground New Jersey

Vanderbilt, Hague, and Their Fight for Justice

Rutgers University Press

In Battleground New Jersey, historian and Boardwalk Empire author Nelson Johnson chronicles reforms to the system through the stories of Arthur T. Vanderbilt—the first chief justice of the state’s modern-era Supreme Court—and Frank Hague—former mayor of Jersey City. Although Vanderbilt and Hague clashed on matters of public policy and over the need to reform New Jersey’s antiquated and corrupt court system, they were two of the most powerful politicians in twentieth-century America.

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Puerto Ricans in the Empire

Tobacco Growers and U.S. Colonialism

Rutgers University Press

A major contribution to the debate over U.S. colonialism, Puerto Ricans in the Empire shows how Puerto Ricans won inclusion in the empire, in terms that were defined not only by the colonial power, but also by the colonized. Focusing on the tobacco growing industry, Teresita Levy reveals how farmers became an effective political force in the empire, successfully lobbying U.S. administrators in San Juan and Washington, to improve their lives and boost their share of the tobacco-leaf market. 

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Family Activism

Immigrant Struggles and the Politics of Noncitizenship

Rutgers University Press

Drawing upon the idea of the “impossible activism” of undocumented immigrants, Amalia Pallares argues that those without legal status defy this “impossible” context by relying on the politicization of the family to challenge justice within contemporary immigration law. The culmination of a seven-year-long ethnography of undocumented immigrants and their families in Chicago, as well as national immigrant politics, Family Activism examines the ways in which the family has become politically significant.

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Family Activism

Immigrant Struggles and the Politics of Noncitizenship

Rutgers University Press

Drawing upon the idea of the “impossible activism” of undocumented immigrants, Amalia Pallares argues that those without legal status defy this “impossible” context by relying on the politicization of the family to challenge justice within contemporary immigration law. The culmination of a seven-year-long ethnography of undocumented immigrants and their families in Chicago, as well as national immigrant politics, Family Activism examines the ways in which the family has become politically significant.

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Phantom Ladies

Hollywood Horror and the Home Front

Rutgers University Press

Overturning the assumption that horror movies have traditionally catered to men, Phantom Ladies takes us back to the early 1940s, when Hollywood first discovered an untapped market of female horror fans. Drawing from newly unearthed archival materials, Tim Snelson shows how woman-centered modes of horror film emerged during the war years, emphasizing both female heroines and female monsters. Phantom Ladies is a spine-tingling, eye-opening read. 

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War Is Not a Game

The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement They Built

Rutgers University Press

On July 23, 2004, five marines, two soldiers, and one airman became the most unlikely of antiwar activists. War Is Not a Game tells the story of these men and women, and the many others who joined them, harnessing their disillusionment, idealism, and determination to become leaders of a nationwide movement, Iraq Veterans Against the War. Nan Levinson chronicles the accomplishments of these brave veterans, showing that sometimes the most vital battles take place on the home front.

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The New Neighborhood Senior Center

Redefining Social and Service Roles for the Baby Boom Generation

Rutgers University Press

In The New Neighborhood Senior Center, Joyce Weil uses in-depth ethnographic methods to examine a working-class senior center in Queens, New York. She explores the ways in which social structure directly affects the lives of older Americans and traces the role of political, social, and economic institutions and neighborhood processes in the decision to close such centers throughout the city of New York. 

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Dashiell Hammett and the Movies

Rutgers University Press

Dashiell Hammett and the Movies offers the first comprehensive study of how this iconic American writer’s work was translated to the silver screen. Comparing multiple versions of classics like The Maltese Falcon, William Mooney demonstrates that Hammett’s work was widely adaptable, exploited by the Hollywood studios in a variety of genres and inspiring generations of filmmakers. Packed with behind-the-scenes detail on the writing and production of each movie, this book offers a fresh take on a literary titan.

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