Reel Vulnerability explores the way American popular culture thinks about vulnerability, arguing that our culture and our scholarship remain stubbornly invested in the myth of the helplessness of the female body. It examines the shifting constructions of vulnerability in the wake of the cultural upheavals of World War II, the Cold War, and 9/11, placing defenseless male bodies onscreen alongside representations of the female body in the military, in the interrogation room, and on the margins.

Jonathan Boyarin explores a wide range of scholarship in Jewish studies to argue that Jewish family forms and ideologies have varied greatly throughout the times and places where Jewish families have found themselves. He considers a range of family configurations from biblical times to the twenty-first century, including strictly Orthodox communities and new forms of family, including same-sex parents, and suggests productive ways to think about possible futures for Jewish family forms.

Ten cases decided between 1960 and 2011, including the Karen Ann Quinlan decision, the Baby M case, the Mount Laurel decision, Megan’s Law, and the series of decisions known as Abbott/Robinson that directed state funding of poor urban schools on par with suburban districts, shed light on landmark decisions and their impact on national and global events. Different experts cover each case, providing insight into the court’s approach and decision-making process.

This thoroughly updated fourth edition reflects the challenges New Jersey has overcome and those it continues to face. State politics and government have been almost entirely reshaped in recent decades, and those changes are analyzed in every chapter. It offers a comprehensive overview, covering New Jersey’s political history; campaigns and elections; interest groups; the constitution; the development of government institutions; relationships with neighboring states, the federal government, and its own municipalities and counties; tax and spending policies; and quality of life.

On-Demand Culture is unique in its focus on the effects of digital technologies on movie distribution. It offers a compelling introduction to a world in which movies have become digital files and navigates through the complexities of digital delivery to show how new modes of access (online streaming services, digital downloads , DVD kiosks in grocery stores) are redefining how audiences obtain and consume motion picture entertainment and destabilizing the business of culture.

Julie J. Park examines how losing racial diversity in a university affects the everyday lives of its students. She uses a student organization as a case study to show how reductions in racial diversity impact the ability of students to sustain multiethnic communities. The book contributes to our understanding of race and inequality in collegiate life and is a valuable resource for educators and researchers interested in the influence of racial politics on students’ lives.

Focusing on work by both celebrated and unknown Soviet directors and screenwriters, this is the first book written about all Soviet narrative films dealing with the Holocaust from 1938 to 1991. In addition to studying the completed films, it analyzes the projects that were banned at various stages of production. Archival research and in-depth interviews are used to tell the stories of filmmakers who found authentic ways to represent the Holocaust in the face of official silencing.

David Gillota examines the ways in which contemporary comic works both reflect and participate in national conversations about race and ethnicity. Such well-known texts as Chappelle’s Show, South Park, and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, as well as numerous stand-up comedy acts, children’s films, and situation comedies are analyzed to explore how various humorists respond to multiculturalism and the increasing diversity of the American population.

Domestic Negotiations explores how U.S. Mexicana and Chicana authors and artists across different historical periods and regions use domestic space to actively claim their own histories. Drawing from a range of archival sources and cultural productions, the book demonstrates how the very sites of domesticity are used to engage with the many political and recurring debates about race, gender, and immigration affecting the lives of Mexicanas and Chicanas from the early twentieth century to today.

This book examines the ways that recent U.S. Latina literature challenges popular definitions of nationhood and national identity. It explores the works of Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American writers Denise Chavez, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Esmeralda Santiago, and Himilce Novas to show how these texts argue for the legitimate belonging of Latino/as within U.S. borders and counter much of today’s anti-immigration rhetoric.

Do Babies Matter? is the first comprehensive examination of the relationship between family formation and the academic careers of men and women. The book draws on over a decade of research using unprecedented data resources, including the Survey of Doctorate Recipients, a nationally representative panel survey of PhDs in America, and multiple surveys of faculty and graduate students at the ten-campus University of California system.

Structural Intimacies brings together scholarship on the structural dimensions of the AIDS epidemic and the social construction of sexuality to address the continuing HIV epidemic in the Black population, It asserts that shifting forms of sexual stories, structural intimacies, are emerging and presents a compelling argument: in an era of deepening medicalization of HIV/AIDS, public health must move beyond individual-level interventions to community-level health equity frames and policy changes.

Through interviews with three generations of Yalálag Zapotecs (“Yalaltecos”) in Los Angeles and Yalálag, Oaxaca, Adriana Cruz-Manjarrez examines the impact of international migration on this community, tracing five decades of migration to Los Angeles to delineate migration patterns, community formation in Los Angeles, and the emergence of transnational identities of the first and second generations of Yalálag Zapotecs in the U.S.

Framing Fat examines competing messages about body fat by considering the vantage point of cultural actors representing the fashion-beauty complex, public health, the food industry, and the fat acceptance movement. In doing so, it provides a more comprehensive view of the obesity epidemic and shows how strong cultural debates play a powerful role in shaping individual behavior.

Falling Back documents the transition to adulthood for young inner-city men of color who have, by the age of eighteen, already been imprisoned. It is based on over three years of ethnographic research with black and Latino males on the cusp of adulthood and incarcerated at a rural reform school. The book portrays the complexities of human decision-making as these men strove to “fall back,” or avoid reoffending and become productive adults.

This book chronicles the history of the war between Russia and Circassia, describes in detail the final genocidal campaign, and follows the Circassians in diaspora through five generations as they struggle to survive and return home. It updates the story to the present day as the Circassian community works to gain international recognition of the genocide as the region prepares for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the site of the Russians’ final victory over the Circassians.

In the Godfather Garden is the true story of the life of Richie “the Boot” Boiardo, one of the most powerful and feared men in the New Jersey underworld and the gangster who inspired the creation of HBO’s The Sopranos. Richard Linnet provides an inside look this once-powerful Mafia crew led by the Boot, based on recollections of a grandson of the Boot himself and complemented by never-before-published family photos.

In the early twentieth century, arguments between “nature” and “nurture” pitted a rigid genetic determinism against the idea that genes were flexible and open to environmental change. This book tells the story of three Viennese biologists who sought to show how the environment could shape heredity through the impact of hormones and explores the dynamic of failure in science through both scientific and social lenses.