At the dawn of the new millennium, Western culture is marked by various fantasies that imagine our future selves and their forms of embodiment. These fantasies are part of a rapidly growing cultural discourse about the future of the human body; the ever more illusive boundary between the human, the animal, and the technological; and the cultural consequences of greater human-technological integration.

The American Womans Home, originally published in 1869, was one of the late nineteenth centurys most important handbooks of domestic advice. The result of a collaboration by two of the eras most important writers, this book represents their attempt to direct womens acquisition and use of a dizzying variety of new household consumer goods available in the postCivil War economic boom. It updates Catharine Beechers influential Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841) and incorporates domestic writings by Harriet Beecher Stowe first published in The Atlantic in the 1860s.

Into Our Own Hands traces the womens health care movement in the United States. Richly documented, this study is based on more than a decade of research, including interviews with leading activists; documentary material from feminist health clinics and advocacy organizations; a survey of womens health movement organizations in the early 1990s; and ethnographic fieldwork. 

 The Montclair Art Museum — heralded by Art and Antiques as “ . . . a model of the best that America’s regional museums have to offer today” — has been a significant visual arts center for more than eighty-five years. Established in 1914 as the Garden State’s first public art museum with the vision and generosity of community leaders and pioneering collectors of American and native American Art, the Museum’s holdings have become an important cultural repository both for New Jersey and the nation. Many devotees of American art have enjoyed the Museum’s individual works at different exhibits around the country. This volume combines Native and other American art within a range of artistic media in provocative and insightful ways, and its commentaries reflect the careful scholarship and commitment to public education for which the Museum is well known.

Students do months of research before choosing just the right college, but once theyre on campus, how many of them actually research the professors who are teaching their classes? To optimize your college education you need to find your schools best teachers but how? What Every College Student Should Know is a guide to discovering the best teachers at your school and learning everything you can from them. Here, the unique writing combination of a professor and a student provides you with perspectives from both sides of the equation.

The ancient practice of sati — the self-immolation of a woman on her husband’s funeral pyre — was outlawed by the British administration in India in 1829, and sati was widely believed to have died out. The fate of 18-year-old Roop Kanwar changed that perception. Mala Sen explores the reality of life and death for women in modern India in a study that is both illuminating and terrifying.

John F. Hoffecker provides an overview of Pleistocene or Ice-Age settlement in Eastern Europe with a heavy focus on the adaptations of Neanderthals and modern humans to this harsh environmental setting. Hoffecker argues that the Eastern European record reveals a stark contrast between Neanderthals and modern humans with respect to technology and social organization, both of which are tied to the development of language and the use of symbols. Desolate Landscapes will bring readers up to date with the rich archaeological record in this significant region and its contribution to our understanding of one of our most important events in human evolution - the rise of modern humans and the extinction of the Neanderthals. 

In this beautifully written book, Jon L. Berquist guides the reader through the Hebrew Bible, examining ancient Israel’s ideas of the body, the unstable roles of gender, the deployment of sexuality, and the cultural practices of the time. Conducting his analysis with reference to contemporary theories of the body, power, and social control, Berquist offers not only a description and clarification of ancient Israelite views of the body, but also an analysis of how these views belong to the complex logic of ancient social meanings.

There are few issues more divisive than what has become known as “the right to die.” One camp upholds “death with dignity,” regarding the terminally ill as autonomous beings capable of forming their own judgment on the timing and process of dying. The other camp advocates “sanctity of life,” regarding life as intrinsically valuable, and that should be sustained as long as possible. Is there a right answer? Raphael Cohen-Almagor takes a balanced approach in analyzing this emotionally charged debate, viewing the dispute from public policy and international perspectives.

During the nineteenth century, the content and institutional organization of the sciences evolved dramatically, altering the public's understanding of knowledge. As science grew in importance, many women of letters tried to incorporate it into a female worldview. Nina Baym explores the responses to science displayed in a range of writings by American women. Conceding that they could not become scientists, women insisted, however, that they were capable of understanding science and participating in its discourse. They used their access to publishing to advocate the study and transmission of scientific information to the general public.