Moving Color
Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism
Moving Color is the first book-length study of the beginnings of color cinema. It traces the legacy of color history from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the cinema of the early twentieth century and explores the implications of this genealogy on experimental and contemporary digital cinemas.
We Are in This Dance Together
Gender, Power, and Globalization at a Mexican Garment Firm
We Are in This Dance Together uses in-depth interviews with over sixty workers, managers, and policy makers to document and analyze events leading up to the female-led factory strike in March 2001 at a high-end producer of men’s suits in Mexico and the strike’s aftermath—including harassment from managers, corrupt union officials and labor authorities, and violent governor-sanctioned police actions. It illustrates how the women’s shared identity as workers and mothers, deserving of dignity, respect, and a living wage, became the basis for radicalization and led to further civic organizing against the state, the company, and the corrupt union to demand justice.
Treacherous Texts
An Anthology of U.S. Suffrage Literature, 1846-1946
The Case That Never Dies
The Lindbergh Kidnapping
Since its original publication in 2004, The Case That Never Dies has become the standard account of the Lindbergh Kidnapping. Now, in a new afterword, Lloyd C. Gardner presents a surprise conclusion based on recently uncovered pieces of evidence that were missing from the initial investigation as well as an evaluation of Charles Lindbergh’s role in the search for the kidnappers. Out of the controversies surrounding the actions of Colonel Lindbergh, Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the New Jersey State Police, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Gardner presents a well-reasoned argument for what happened on the night of March 1, 1932.
The End of American Lynching
The End of American Lynching questions how we think about the dynamics of lynching, what lynchings mean to the society in which they occur, how lynching is defined, and the circumstances that lead to lynching. Ashraf H. A. Rushday looks at three lynchings over the course of the twentieth century—one in Coatesville, Pennsylvania in 1911, one in Marion, Indiana in 1930, and one in Jasper, Texas in 1998—to see how Americans developed two distinct ways of thinking and talking about this act before and after the 1930s.
Down to Earth
Satellite Technologies, Industries, and Cultures
Though satellites are now used by a wide array of entertainment, communications, and information technologies, from radio stations to GPS devices, the business of making, launching, and maintaining satellites is still shrouded in mystery. Down to Earth presents the first comprehensive overview of the geopolitical maneuvers, financial investments, scientific innovations, and ideological struggles that take place behind the scenes of this fascinating industry.
Disenchanting Citizenship
Mexican Migrants and the Boundaries of Belonging
Luis F. B. Plascencia’s Disenchanting Citizenship explores two interrelated issues: U.S. citizenship and the Mexican migrants’ position in the United States. Through an extensive and multifaceted collection of interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, ethno-historical research, and public policy analysis, Plascencia probes the ways in which citizenship discourses are understood and taken up by individuals. The book uncovers citizenship’s root as a Janus-faced construct that encompasses a simultaneous process of inclusion and exclusion. This notion of citizenship is mapped on to the migrant experience, arguing that the acquisition of citizenship can lead to disenchantment with the very status desired. Using the experience of Mexican migrants, Plascencia expands the understanding of the dynamics of U.S. citizenship as a form of membership and belonging.
Narrative Landmines
Rumors, Islamist Extremism, and the Struggle for Strategic Influence
Narrative Landmines explores how rumors fit into and extend narrative systems and ideologies, particularly in the context of terrorism, counter-terrorism, and extremist insurgencies. Beyond face-to-face communication, this book also addresses the role of new and social media in the creation and spread of rumors. Its concern is to foster a more sophisticated understanding of how oral and digital cultures work alongside economic, diplomatic, and cultural factors that influence the struggles between states and non-state actors in the proverbial battle of hearts and minds. By providing fresh data from Singapore, Iraq, and Indonesia, the authors make a compelling argument for understanding rumors in these contexts as “narrative IEDs”, weapons that can aid the extremist cause.
The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking
Out from Hollywood's Shadow, 1929-1939
In The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking, Lisa Jarvinen focuses specifically on how Hollywood lost a lucrative international Spanish-speaking audience between 1929 and 1939, along with talent it had carefully nurtured in the United States. Employing studio records from Warner Bros., Fox Films, and United Artists, Jarvinen examines the lasting effects of the transition to sound on both Hollywood practices and cultural politics in the Spanish-speaking world. Using case studies based on archival research in the United States, Spain, and Mexico, she shows how language, as a key marker of cultural identity, led to new expectations from audiences and new possibilities for film producers.
The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking
Out from Hollywood's Shadow, 1929-1939
In The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking, Lisa Jarvinen focuses specifically on how Hollywood lost a lucrative international Spanish-speaking audience between 1929 and 1939, along with talent it had carefully nurtured in the United States. Employing studio records from Warner Bros., Fox Films, and United Artists, Jarvinen examines the lasting effects of the transition to sound on both Hollywood practices and cultural politics in the Spanish-speaking world. Using case studies based on archival research in the United States, Spain, and Mexico, she shows how language, as a key marker of cultural identity, led to new expectations from audiences and new possibilities for film producers.
Main Street and Empire
The Fictional Small Town in the Age of Globalization
In Main Street and Empire, Ryan Poll argues that the small town, as evoked by the image of “Main Street,” is not a relic of the past but rather a metaphorical screen upon which the nation’s “everyday” stories and subjects are projected on both a national and global level. It brings together a wide range of literary, cultural, and political texts to examine how the small town is used to imagine and reproduce the nation throughout the twentieth- and into the twenty-first century.
Emily Dickinson in Love
The Case for Otis Lord
In Emily Dickinson in Love, John Evangelist Walsh provides the first full-length work to solve this puzzle based wholly on documented facts and the poet’s own writings. He identifies the lover as Otis Lord, a friend of the poet’s father, and portrays the broad dimensions of their clandestine thirty-year romance.
Becoming Mexipino
Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego
Becoming Mexipino is a social-historical interpretation of two ethnic groups, one Mexican, the other Filipino, whose paths led both groups to San Diego, California from 1900 to 1965. Rudy Guevarra traces their earliest interactions under Spanish colonialism, when they did not strongly identify as Mexican or Filipino, to illustrate how these historical ties and cultural bonds laid the foundation for what would become close interethnic relationships and communities in twentieth-century San Diego as well as in other locales throughout California and the Pacific West Coast.
The Malthusian Moment
Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism
The Malthusian Moment locates the origins of modern American environmentalism in a twentieth-century revival of interest in Thomas Malthus’s theory of population growth, shedding new light on some of the big stories of postwar American life: the role of the federal government, urban and suburban problems, the Civil Rights and women’s movements, the role of scientists in a democracy, new attitudes about sex and sexuality, and the emergence of the “New Right.”
The Malthusian Moment
Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism
The Malthusian Moment locates the origins of modern American environmentalism in a twentieth-century revival of interest in Thomas Malthus’s theory of population growth, shedding new light on some of the big stories of postwar American life: the role of the federal government, urban and suburban problems, the Civil Rights and women’s movements, the role of scientists in a democracy, new attitudes about sex and sexuality, and the emergence of the “New Right.”
Overpotential
Fuel Cells, Futurism, and the Making of a Power Panacea
Overpotential charts the twists and turns in the ongoing quest to create the perfect fuel cell. By exploring the gap between the theory and practice of fuel cell power, Matthew N. Eisler opens a window into broader issues in the history of science, technology, and society after the Second World War, including the sociology of laboratory life, the relationship between academe, industry, and government in developing advanced technologies, the role of technology in environmental and pollution politics, and the rise of utopian discourse in science and engineering.
Rendition to Torture
Many Americans were surprised following the attacks of 9/11 at how easily the United States embraced torture as well as the supposedly lesser evil of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Extraordinary rendition—sending people captured in the “war on terror” to nations long counted among the world’s worst human rights violators—hid from the public eye cruel and bloody interrogations. In Rendition to Torture, Alan W. Clarke explains how the United States adopted torture as a matter of official policy; how and why it turned to extraordinary rendition as a way to outsource more extreme, mutilating forms of torture; and outlines the steps the United States took to hide its abuses.
Pretty People
Movie Stars of the 1990s
In the 1990s, American civil society got upended and reordered as many social, cultural, political, and economic institutions were changed forever. Pretty People examines a wide range of Hollywood icons who reflect how stardom in that decade was transformed as the nation itself, signaling significant changes to familiar ideas about gender, race, ethnicity, age, class, sexuality, and nationality.
The New Anthology of American Poetry
Postmodernisms 1950-Present
Steven Gould Axelrod, Camille Roman, and Thomas Travisano continue the standard of excellence set in Volumes I and II of this extraordinary anthology. Volume III provides the most compelling and wide-ranging selection available of American poetry from 1950 to the present. Its contents are just as diverse and multifaceted as America itself and invite readers to view the world of poetry in the larger historical context of American culture. Nearly three hundred poems allow readers to explore canonical works by such poets as Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath, as well as song lyrics from such popular musicians as Bob Dylan and Queen Latifah.
American Cinema of the 2000s
Themes and Variations
The decade from 2000 to 2009 is framed, at one end, by the traumatic catastrophe of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and, at the other, by the election of the first African-American president of the United States. In between, the U.S. and the world witnessed the rapid expansion of new media and the Internet, such natural disasters as Hurricane Katrina, uprisings around the world, and a massive meltdown of world economies. In American Cinema of the 2000s, essays from ten top film scholars examine such popular series as the groundbreaking Matrix films and the gripping adventures of former CIA covert operative Jason Bourne; new, offbeat films like Juno; and the resurgence of documentaries like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.
Many Skies
Alternative Histories of the Sun, Moon, Planets, and Stars
The Battle for the Bs
1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema
In The Battle for the B’s, Blair Davis analyzes how B-films were produced, distributed, and exhibited in the 1950s and demonstrates the new possibilities that existed for low-budget filmmaking at a time when many in Hollywood abandoned the B’s. B-movies innovated such industrial components as demographic patterns and marketing approaches, created such genres as science fiction and the teen-oriented films of the early and mid fifties, and led to the emergence of “New Poverty Row,” a movement now known as underground cinema.
Honor Bound
Race and Shame in America
In Honor Bound, David Leverenz argues that in the United States, the rise and decline of white people’s racial shaming reflects the rise and decline of white honor. To explore the implications of this argument, he casts an unusually wide net, from ancient and modern cultures of honor to social, political, and military history to American literature and popular culture.
Surviving HIV/AIDS in the Inner City
How Resourceful Latinas Beat the Odds
New Jersey for Kids
New Jersey for Kids is a handy reference guide offering hundreds of educational and entertaining ideas for parents and their children to explore and enjoy in the Garden State. Activities are designed specifically for kids ages 12 and under and cover a wide array of fun ways to enrich their intellectual lives, build their athletic skills, express themselves creatively, or just have room to play. Chapters are organized by category so it is easy to locate just the right activities to suit an individual child’s interests. Along with descriptions and commentary, all listings include recommended age ranges, handicap accessibility, and estimated durations of activities as well as practical information on hours, price ranges, web sites and phone numbers.
Genetics and the Unsettled Past
The Collision of DNA, Race, and History
Genetics and the Unsettled Past considers the alignment of genetic science with commercial trends in genealogy, with legal and forensic developments, and with pharmaceutical innovation to examine how these trends lend renewed authority to biological understandings of race and history. Essays by scholars across a wide range of disciplines—biology, history, cultural studies, law, medicine, anthropology, ethnic studies, sociology—explore the emerging and often contested connections among race, DNA, and history.
The New Jew in Film
Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema
The New Jew in Film is grounded in the study of over three hundred films from Hollywood and beyond. Nathan Abrams explores these new and changing depictions of Jews, Jewishness, and Judaism, providing a wider, more representative picture of this transformation. Chapters explore masculinity, femininity, passivity, agency, and religion as well as a departure into new territory—including bathrooms and food. Abrams reveals how the representation of the Jew is used to convey confidence or anxieties about Jewish identity and history as well as questions of racial, sexual, and gender politics.
Narrative Landmines
Rumors, Islamist Extremism, and the Struggle for Strategic Influence
Narrative Landmines explores how rumors fit into and extend narrative systems and ideologies, particularly in the context of terrorism, counter-terrorism, and extremist insurgencies. Beyond face-to-face communication, this book also addresses the role of new and social media in the creation and spread of rumors. Its concern is to foster a more sophisticated understanding of how oral and digital cultures work alongside economic, diplomatic, and cultural factors that influence the struggles between states and non-state actors in the proverbial battle of hearts and minds. By providing fresh data from Singapore, Iraq, and Indonesia, the authors make a compelling argument for understanding rumors in these contexts as “narrative IEDs”, weapons that can aid the extremist cause.
Exploring Nature's Bounty
One Hundred Outings Near New York City
Exploring Nature’s Bounty invites us to share the rich array of agricultural delights that Lucy D. Rosenfeld and Marina Harrison have discovered within a two-hour radius of New York City, from beautiful vineyards to the latest in hydroponic green houses to peach-filled orchards to community farms and historic sites. Readers will find a list of festivals featuring local produce as well as a guide to choosing an outing that will best fit readers, their families, and their taste buds. Directions and information on schedules, guided tours, and walks within many sites are provided.
Their Time Has Come
Youth with Disabilities on the Cusp of Adulthood
Valerie Leiter argues that there are crucial missing links between federal disability policies and youth’s lives. Her argument is based on thorough examination of federal disability policy and interviews with young people with disabilities, their parents, and rehabilitation professionals. Attention is given to the diversity of expectations, the resources available to them, and the impact of federal policy and public and private attitudes on their transition to adulthood.
Girlhood
A Global History
Cultural Genocide
Cultural Genocide establishes a theoretical basis for understanding why groups can be readily brought to seek the elimination of out-groups using the tactic of cultural destruction. Lawrence Davidson applies his theory to four uses of cultural genocide, with two pre-Holocaust case studies and two post-Holocaust case studies. He examines the mechanisms that may be used to combat today’s cultural genocide as well as the contemporary social and political forces at work that must be overcome in the process.
Transatlantic Spectacles of Race
The Tragic Mulatta and the Tragic Muse
In Transatlantic Spectacles of Race, Kimberly Manganelli argues that the tragic mulatta and tragic muse, who have heretofore been read separately, must be understood as two sides of the same phenomenon. Bringing together an impressive array of cultural texts that includes novels, melodramas, travel narratives, diaries, and illustrations, the book reveals the value of transcending literary, national, and racial boundaries.
Transatlantic Spectacles of Race
The Tragic Mulatta and the Tragic Muse
In Transatlantic Spectacles of Race, Kimberly Manganelli argues that the tragic mulatta and tragic muse, who have heretofore been read separately, must be understood as two sides of the same phenomenon. Bringing together an impressive array of cultural texts that includes novels, melodramas, travel narratives, diaries, and illustrations, the book reveals the value of transcending literary, national, and racial boundaries.
Return to Centro Histórico
A Mexican Jew Looks for His Roots
Inspired by a stirring e-mail exchange with his father, award-winning essayist and cultural commentator , Ilan Stavans decided to do something bizarre: revisit his hometown, Mexico City, accompanied by a tour guide. With the same linguistic verve and insight that has made him one of the most distinguished voices in American literature today, Ilan Stavans invites readers along for a personal journey that is not only his own, but that of an entire culture. Return to Centro Histórico makes it possible for readers to understand the intimate role that Jews have played in the devleopment of Hispanic civilzation.
Green Planet
How Plants Keep the Earth Alive
Through Soviet Jewish Eyes
Photography, War, and the Holocaust
These wartime photographers were the first liberators to bear witness with cameras to Nazi atrocities, three years before Americans arrived at Buchenwald and Dachau. In this passionate work, David Shneer tells their stories and highlights their work through their very own images-he has amassed never-before-published photographs from families, collectors, and private archives.
Through Soviet Jewish Eyes helps us understand why so many Jews flocked to Soviet photography; what their lives and work looked like during the rise of Stalinism, during and then after the war; and why Jews were the ones charged with documenting the Soviet experiment and then its near destruction at the hands of the Nazis.
Apocalypse Never
Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World
Locavore Adventures
One Chef's Slow Food Journey
Developed in Italy, where fresh ingredients and artisanal techniques are prized, the Slow Food movement has rapidly gained a following in North America. In Locavore Adventures, acclaimed New Jersey chef and restaurateur Jim Weaver shares his story of founding the Central New Jersey chapter of Slow Food, connecting local farmers, food producers, and chefs with the public to forge communities that value the region's unique bounty. More than forty recipes will inspire readers to be creative in their own kitchens.