Largely remembered for his mysterious disappearance in May 1971, Lew Welch was an important voice of the Beat Generation and San Francisco Renaissance. He spoke of key issues that America was facing in the aftermath of World War II—from the rise of consumerism and complacent suburban sensibilities to the threat of environmental disaster. He championed American speech, idioms, and identities. He found inspiration in the words of Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams, in the philosophies of Senzaki and the Buddha, and in his myriad friendships with some of the most renowned and revered poets, musicians, and artists of the 1950s and 1960s. His search for authenticity in language and poetry was a small part of a far greater search to establish a clear sense of himself.

He, Leo investigates Welch’s life and work in a chronological fashion, structured around Welch’s own notion of how three main aspects of his life—The Man, The Mountain, and The City—were interdependent. From his birth until his disappearance and presumed death, Welch’s life was often defined by problems, including a complex relationship with his mother, a long struggle with alcohol, and a fluctuating mental state. He was open and candid about everything, a fact that is evident in all aspects of his work.

Each of the three main sections of He, Leo includes key poems, essays, and events—both personal and cultural—to help establish Welch’s importance as a prominent poet and figure during the San Francisco Renaissance. Despite his crushing self-criticism and his reputation as a “friend of,” he was a bona fide poet with a strong voice and message of his own. With this first full-length biography, Ewan Clark restores Lew Welch to his rightful place as an important member of a significant American literary and cultural movement.

 

The Visionary Queen argues that sixteenth-century noblewoman Marguerite de Navarre is more than a French author, political figure, or non-schismatic religious reformer. She is a visionary, as demonstrated in her efforts to better society, especially for women, in her literary writings (notably the Heptaméron), in her writings’ responses to her male contemporaries, and in the symbolism of the labyrinth reflected in her life and works.

Barbara Smith has been doing groundbreaking work since the early 1970s, describing a Black feminism for Black women. This collection contains some of her major essays on Black women's literature, Black lesbian writing, on racism in the women's movement, Black-Jewish relations, and homophobia in the Black community. Her forays into these areas ignited dialogue about topics that few other writers were addressing at the time, and which, sadly, remain pertinent to this day. This 25th anniversary edition, in a beautiful new package, retains the urgency these essays had when they were first written.  

The Brodsky Center at Rutgers: Three Decades, 1986-2017, chronicles the history and artists involved with an internationally acclaimed print and papermaking studio at Rutgers University. Judith K. Brodsky conceived, founded, and directed the atelier, which, from its onset, provided state-of-the-arts technology and expertise for under-represented contemporary artists — women, Indigenous, and from diasporas of the African, Eastern European, Latin and Asian communities — to make innovative works on paper. These artistic creations presented new narratives to American and global visual arts from voices previously not heard or seen.

Playful Frames: Styles of Widescreen Cinema studies the poetics of the auteur-driven widescreen image, offering nimble, expansive analyses of the work of four distinctive filmmakers – Jean Negulesco, Blake Edwards, Robert Altman, and John Carpenter – who creatively inhabited the nooks and crannies of widescreen moviemaking during the final decades of the twentieth century.

Home Girls, the pioneering anthology of Black feminist thought, feaures writing by Black feminist and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and contains work by many of feminisms foremost thinkers. This edition features an updated list of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides Barbara Smith the opportunity to look back on forty years of the struggle, as well as the influence the work in this book has had on generations of feminists. The preface from the previous Rutgers edition remains, as well as all of the original pieces, set in a fresh new package. 

An Age of Accountability highlights the role of test-based accountability as a policy framework in American education. Even after very clear disappointments no other policy framework has emerged to challenge its hegemony, and many Americans continue to believe that accountability remains a vital necessity, even if educators and policy scholars disagree.

An astute, lavishly illustrated evaluation of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars

Exploring representations of Latinx people from Scarface to Narcos, this book examines how pop culture has framed Latin America as the villain in America’s long and ineffectual War on Drugs.

This collection ponders the personal and political implications for Haitians at home and abroad resulting from the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Claiming Space examines the growing tradition of decorating mortarboards at college graduations, offering a performance-centered approach to these material sites of display. 

Original stories of Black family life in Louisville, Kentucky, for readers of Dantiel Moniz (Milk Blood Heat) and Kai Harris (What the Fireflies Knew).
“Surprising and revelatory. . . . I love this book.” —Stephanie Powell Watts, author of No One Is Coming to Save Us

Fighting Feelings investigates the lived experiences of women of colour to reveal the complex ways that white supremacy is felt, endured, and navigated.

This riveting insider’s account of how the COVID-19 pandemic unfurled in one of Canada’s hardest-hit provinces draws on the lessons learned to provide a hopeful vision for building a healthier future.

This volume examines the organization and ritual economy of a pre-Columbian chiefdom that developed in central Honduras over a 1,400-year period from 400 BC–AD 1000. 

A unique study of an Andean community’s water rituals and the extraordinary document describing how they should be performed.

Mexico’s Valleys of Cuicatlán and Tehuacán provides an accessible overview of an extraordinary region of Central Mexico. Through firsthand experience and engaging prose, the authors provide a synthesis of the environment, plants, and peoples of the valleys, showing their importance and influence as Mesoamerican arteries for environmental and cultural interchange through Mexico.

Project management is in everything we do, from our personal lives to our professional careers. It is the fastest growing profession in the world and the skills learned in this book can be used for any sort of project, large or small: setting up a small business; planning a wedding, family vacation, company picnic, and major events; and organizing construction or aerospace projects.
 

A life-and-times biography of the minister and social reformer Renwick C. Kennedy