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 1,161-1,180 of 2,552 items.

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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