Bold Ideas, Essential Reading since 1936.

Rutgers University Press is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge for a wide range of readers. The Press reflects and extends the University’s core mission of research, instruction, and service. They enhance the work of their authors through exceptional publications that shape critical issues, spark debate, and enrich teaching. Core subjects include: film and media studies, sociology, anthropology, education, history, health, history of medicine, human rights, urban studies, criminal justice, Jewish studies, American studies, women's, gender, and sexuality studies, LGBTQ, Latino/a, Asian and African studies, as well as books about New York, New Jersey, and the region.

Rutgers also distributes books published by Bucknell University Press.

Showing 1,151-1,200 of 2,552 items.

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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Kabbalistic Revolution

Reimagining Judaism in Medieval Spain

Rutgers University Press

The set of Jewish mystical teachings known as Kabbalah are often imagined as timeless texts. Yet, as this fresh approach shows, Kabbalah flourished in a specific time and place, one where anti-Semitic propaganda was on the rise. Hartley Lachter, a scholar of religion studies, transports us to medieval Spain and demonstrates how Kabbalah served as a radical rebuke to the era’s prejudices, placing the increasingly marginalized Jews at the center of the divine universe. 

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Reading Prisoners

Literature, Literacy, and the Transformation of American Punishment, 1700–1845

Rutgers University Press

Shining new light on early American prison literature, Reading Prisoners weaves together insights about the rise of the early American penitentiary, the history of early American literacy instruction, and the transformation of crime writing in the “long” eighteenth century. Jodi Schorb overturns much conventional wisdom as she illuminates how prisoners first entered print as readers and writers, from the colonial American jail to the early national penitentiary. 

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A Ray of Light in a Sea of Dark Matter

Rutgers University Press

What’s in the dark?  Countless generations have gazed up at the night sky and asked this question. 

A Ray of Light in a Sea of Dark Matter offers readers an accessible explanation of how astronomers probe dark matter.  Readers quickly gain an understanding of what might be out there, how scientists arrive at their findings, and why this research is important to us. Engaging and insightful, Charles Keeton gives everyone an opportunity to be an active learner and listener in our ever-expanding universe.

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New Jersey's Postsuburban Economy

Rutgers University Press

Based on James W. Hughes and Joseph J. Seneca’s nearly three-decade-long Rutgers Regional Report series, New Jersey’s Postsuburban Economy presents the issues confronting the state and brings to the forefront ideas for meeting these challenges. Hughes and Seneca describe the forces that are now propelling the state into yet another economic era. Their explanations are set in the context of historical and economic transformations as well as the technological, demographic, and transportation shifts.

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Raised at Rutgers

A President's Story

Rutgers University Press

In Raised at Rutgers, Richard L. McCormick offers a candid account of his life and work at one of America’s leading public universities, from his childhood in the 1950s through his tumultuous presidency which began in 2002 and lasted nearly a decade. McCormick not only paints a vivid portrait of what it is like to run a major university, he also illuminates the most important challenges facing higher education in America.

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Therapeutic Revolutions

Medicine, Psychiatry, and American Culture, 1945-1970

Rutgers University Press

Therapeutic Revolutions examines the evolving relationship between American medicine, psychiatry, and culture from World War II to the dawn of the 1970s. In this richly layered intellectual history, Martin Halliwell ranges from national politics, public reports, and health care debates to the ways in which film, literature, and the mass media provided cultural channels for shaping and challenging preconceptions about health and illness.

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Black Dogs and Blue Words

Depression and Gender in the Age of Self-Care

Rutgers University Press

Black Dogs and Blue Words analyzes the rhetoric surrounding depression. Kimberly K. Emmons maintains that the techniques and language of depression marketing strategies--vague words such as "worry," "irritability," and "loss of interest"--target women and young girls and encourage self-diagnosis and self-medication. Further, depression narratives and other texts encode a series of gendered messages about health and illness.

As depression and other forms of mental illness move from the medical-professional sphere into that of the consumer-public, the boundary at which distress becomes disease grows ever more encompassing, the need for remediation and treatment increasingly warranted. Black Dogs and Blue Words demonstrates the need for rhetorical reading strategies as one response to these expanding and gendered illness definitions.

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Beasts of the Earth

Animals, Humans, and Disease

Rutgers University Press

Beginning with the domestication of farm animals nearly 10,000 years ago, Beasts of the Earth traces the ways that human-animal contact has evolved over time. Today, shared living quarters, overlapping ecosystems, and experimental surgical practices where organs or tissues are transplanted from non-humans into humans continue to open new avenues for the transmission of infectious agents. Other changes in human behavior like increased air travel, automated food processing, and threats of bioterrorism are increasing the contagion factor by transporting microbes further distances and to larger populations in virtually no time at all.

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The Reappeared

Argentine Former Political Prisoners

Rutgers University Press

Between 1976 and 1983, during a period of brutal military dictatorship, armed forces in Argentina abducted 30,000 citizens. These victims were tortured and killed, never to be seen again. Although the history of los desaparecidos, “the disappeared,” has become widely known, the stories of the Argentines who miraculously survived their imprisonment and torture are not well understood. The Reappeared is the first in-depth study of an officially sanctioned group of Argentine former political prisoners, the Association of Former Political Prisoners of Córdoba, which organized in 2007. 

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Mean Lives, Mean Laws

Oklahoma's Women Prisoners

Rutgers University Press

 Oklahoma has long held the dubious honor of having the highest female incarceration rate in the country, nearly twice the national average. Mean Lives, Mean Laws puts a human face on this alarming statistic, revealing the troubled backgrounds and harsh laws that lead so many Oklahoman women to commit crimes. Drawn from over a decade of first-hand research, the book provides a rigorous analysis of the criminal justice system, yet also gives voice to the women locked within it. 

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Loft Living

Culture and Capital in Urban Change

Rutgers University Press

Since its initial publication, Loft Living has become the classic analysis of the emergence of artists as a force of gentrification and the related rise of “creative city” policies around the world. This 25th anniversary edition, with a new introduction, illustrates how loft living has spread around the world and that artists’ districts—trailing the success of SoHo in New York—have become a global tourist attraction. 

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Fictions Inc.

The Corporation in Postmodern Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture

Rutgers University Press

Fictions Inc. explores how depictions of the corporation in American literature, film, and popular culture have changed over time. Paying particular attention to the rise of neoliberalism, the emergence of biopolitics, and the legal status of “corporate bodies,” Fictions Inc. shows that representations of corporations have come to serve, whether directly or indirectly, as symbols for larger economic concerns often too vast or complex to comprehend.

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Urban Nightlife

Entertaining Race, Class, and Culture in Public Space

Rutgers University Press

Sociologists have long been curious about the ways in which city dwellers negotiate urban public space. How do they manage myriad interactions in the shared spaces of the city? In Urban Nightlife, sociologist Reuben May undertakes a nuanced examination of urban nightlife, drawing on ethnographic data gathered in a Deep South college town to explore the question of how nighttime revelers negotiate urban public spaces as they go about meeting, socializing, and entertaining themselves. 

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Misconception

Social Class and Infertility in America

Rutgers University Press

In Misconception: Social Class and Infertility in America, Ann V. Bell overturns stereotypes of reproduction that frame poor women as too fertile and white, affluent women as not fertile enough by comparing experiences of infertility across socioeconomic groups. In comparing class experiences, Bell is able to go beyond just examining infertility. Misconception reveals the social, cultural, and economic forces surrounding reproduction, family, motherhood and health in contemporary America. 

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Misconception

Social Class and Infertility in America

Rutgers University Press

In Misconception: Social Class and Infertility in America, Ann V. Bell overturns stereotypes of reproduction that frame poor women as too fertile and white, affluent women as not fertile enough by comparing experiences of infertility across socioeconomic groups. In comparing class experiences, Bell is able to go beyond just examining infertility. Misconception reveals the social, cultural, and economic forces surrounding reproduction, family, motherhood and health in contemporary America. 

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Living with Insecurity in a Brazilian Favela

Urban Violence and Daily Life

Rutgers University Press

Living with Insecurity in a Brazilian Favela examines how inequality, racism, drug trafficking, police brutality, and gang activities affect the daily lives of the people of Caxambu. Ben Penglase argues that urban violence and a larger context of inequality create a social world that is deeply contradictory and ambivalent.

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Deserving Desire

Women's Stories of Sexual Evolution

Rutgers University Press

Marriage. Motherhood. Divorce. Menopause. Most women experience these changes over the course of their lives and these changes often impact sexuality. In Deserving Desire, Beth Montemurro takes a unique look at the evolution of women’s sexuality over time, with a specific focus on the development of sexual subjectivity—that is sexual confidence, agency, and a sense of entitlement to sexual desire.

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Health Humanities Reader

Rutgers University Press

In this definitive new collection, fifty-four leading scholars come together to survey the vital work being done in the health humanities. Reflecting the extraordinary diversity of this burgeoning field, it brings together nurses and philosophers, scientists and historians, to discuss everything from mental illness to doctor-patient relationships.  Including forty six original essays organized around twelve topics, Health Humanities Reader is written in an accessible style that presents serious issues with warmth and humor.


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Screenwriting

Rutgers University Press

 With contributions from established film scholars and accomplished screenwriters, this collection of original essays gives readers a comprehensive portrait of both the art and business of screenwriting. Examining the films of celebrated writer-directors from Preston Sturges to Alexander Payne, while also revealing the work of journeyman writers and “script doctors” who toil in obscurity, Screenwriting charts the ever-evolving roles that screenwriters have played, from the dawn of Hollywood to the age of YouTube.  

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Like a Natural Woman

Spectacular Female Performance in Classical Hollywood

Rutgers University Press

 Classic Hollywood starlets like Esther Williams, Carmen Miranda, Lena Horne, Jane Russell, and Zsa Zsa Gabor are rarely hailed as naturalistic performers or as serious actresses. Like a Natural Woman challenges these assumptions, revealing the work and acting training that went into the onscreen and off-screen performances of celebrities who always appeared to be “playing themselves.” Drawing from a wealth of films and publicity materials, Kirsten Pullen gives us a fresh take on both Hollywood acting techniques and the performance of femininity itself. 

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Law and the Gay Rights Story

The Long Search for Equal Justice in a Divided Democracy

Rutgers University Press

 In this gripping new book, legal expert Walter Frank offers an in-depth look at pivotal court cases in the struggle for gay rights. Along the way, he tells the story of the individuals who were willing to take risks by fighting for those rights. Bringing complex legal issues down to earth for the non-lawyer, Law and the Gay Rights Story not only provides a vivid chronicle of the past fifty years, but also explores where the battle for gay rights might go from here. 

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The Migration of Musical Film

From Ethnic Margins to American Mainstream

Rutgers University Press

 In this groundbreaking new book, Desirée J. Garcia examines one of the unsung influences on the Hollywood musical—the lower budget folk musicals produced by Mexican, Yiddish, and African-American filmmakers. Far from mere escapist entertainments, these films expressed both the struggles and dreams of immigrants and minorities in America.  Offering a revised history of the American musical, The Migration of Musical Film provides a window into the ways in which Americans and immigrants have negotiated the boundaries of belonging in our society. 

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The Methamphetamine Industry in America

Transnational Cartels and Local Entrepreneurs

Rutgers University Press

 The result of a study stretching from small-town America to Mexican cartels, and from law enforcement officers and drug treatment workers to local dealers and users, this book tells the story of how methamphetamine markets evolved in the United States—and thrived, despite vigorous legal and law enforcement challenges. Through the eyes and words of dealers, users, police officers, and treatment workers, the authors produce a complex picture of the social operation, organization, and meaning of the meth industry in America.

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Activism and the Olympics

Dissent at the Games in Vancouver and London

Rutgers University Press

In Activism and the Olympics, Boykoff provides a critical overview of the Olympic industry and its political opponents in the modern era. After presenting a brief history of Olympic activism, he turns his attention to on-the-ground activism through the lens of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, drawing from personal interviews with activists, journalists, civil libertarians, and Olympic organizers. 

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American Hybrid Poetics

Gender, Mass Culture, and Form

Rutgers University Press

 American Hybrid Poetics explores the ways in which hybrid poetics—a playful mixing of disparate formal and aesthetic strategies—have been the driving force in the work of a historically and culturally diverse group of women poets who are part of a robust tradition in contesting the dominant cultural order. Amy Moorman Robbins examines the ways in which five poets—Gertrude Stein, Laura Mullen, Alice Notley, Harryette Mullen, and Claudia Rankine—use hybridity as an implicitly political strategy to interrupt and contest the language of the dominant culture as it is reproduced in genres of mainstream mass culture.

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Cinematography

Edited by Patrick Keating
Rutgers University Press

The first book to provide a comprehensive chronicle of the art of cinematography, from the 1890s to the present day, this collection introduces readers to the people behind the camera, the roles they play, the equipment they use, and the indelible images they have created. Including over 50 film stills, Cinematography vividly illustrates how the cinematographer’s art has evolved in tandem with major technological and economic shifts in the film industry. 

 

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