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 1,171-1,200 of 2,552 items.
Phantom Ladies
Hollywood Horror and the Home Front
By Tim Snelson
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.
War Is Not a Game
The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement They Built
By Nan Levinson
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.
The New Neighborhood Senior Center
Redefining Social and Service Roles for the Baby Boom Generation
By Joyce Weil
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.
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.
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.
Reading Prisoners
Literature, Literacy, and the Transformation of American Punishment, 1700–1845
By Jodi Schorb
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.
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.
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.
New Jersey's Postsuburban Economy
By James W. Hughes and Joseph Seneca
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Beasts of the Earth
Animals, Humans, and Disease
By E. Fuller Torrey and Robert H. Yolken
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.
The Reappeared
Argentine Former Political Prisoners
By Rebekah Park
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.
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.
Loft Living
Culture and Capital in Urban Change
By Sharon Zukin
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.
Fictions Inc.
The Corporation in Postmodern Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture
By Ralph Clare
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.
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.
Misconception
Social Class and Infertility in America
By Ann V. Bell
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.
Misconception
Social Class and Infertility in America
By Ann V. Bell
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.
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.
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.
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.
Screenwriting
Edited by Andrew Horton and Julian Hoxter
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.
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.
Law and the Gay Rights Story
The Long Search for Equal Justice in a Divided Democracy
By Walter Frank
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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