Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life examines films, literature, and art that focus on aging, often made by people who are over sixty-five. These texts are analyzed alongside recent gerontology research and extensive commentary from interviews and surveys of seniors to show how "stories" illuminate the dynamics of growing old by blending fact with imagination, giving a fuller picture of the aging process. 

 

This book highlights Franz Boas’s historic trip to Puerto Rico in 1915, which included the documentation of oral folklore. On that trip, a rising anthropologist involved in the project, John Alden Mason, collected one of the largest oral folklore collections from any Spanish-speaking country or territory. The stories, many of them written by rural cultural informants, the Jibaros, offer an outstanding view of an early twentieth century Puerto Rican identity. 

This Rutgers University Press classic is a tale of the life and times of I. F. “Izzy” Stone. Robert Cottrell weaves together material from interviews, letters, archival materials, and government documents, and Stone’s own writings to tell the tale of one of the most significant journalists, intellectuals, and political mavericks of the twentieth century.

A concise introduction to one of today’s fastest-growing, most exciting fields, Comics Studies: A Guidebook outlines core research questions and introduces comics’ history, form, genres, audiences, and industries. Authored by a diverse roster of leading scholars, this Guidebook offers a perfect entryway to the world of comics scholarship.

In Blaming Teachers, Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz reveals that historical professionalization reforms subverted public school teachers’ professional legitimacy. Policymakers and school leaders understood teacher professionalization initiatives as efficient ways to bolster the bureaucratic order of the schools rather than as means to amplify teachers’ authority and credibility.

Indianapolis began its secondary system with a singular, decidedly academic high school, but ended the 1960s with multiple high schools with numerous paths to graduation. Making a Mass Institution describes how this process created both a distinct youth culture and a divided and unjust system, one that effectively sorted students geographically, economically, and racially.

Why do Americans presume to know “what’s really going on” in marginal religions? Sex abuse happens in all communities, but American religious outsiders often face disproportionate allegations of sexual abuse. Abusing Religion argues that sex abuse in minority religious communities is an American problem, not (merely) a religious one.