Women on Ice is the first book to study exclusively the lives of women who use methamphetamine (ice, speed, crystal, shards) and the effects of its use on their families. In-depth interviews with women in the suburban counties of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. chronicle the details of their initiation into methamphetamine, the turning points into problematic drug use, and, for a few, their escape from lives veering out of control.

Body Double explores the myriad ways that artists and the creative process have been represented on screen. Through the exploration of many distinct forms of cinema, Lucy Fischer examines such topics as the gender, age, and mental or physical health of fictionalized artists; the dramatized interaction between artists, audiences, and critics; and the formal play of written words and nonverbal images.

Unbecoming Americans identifies a canon of writers who, during the years after World War II, explored forms of belonging in the world outside the domain of modern citizenship. It examines works by C.L.R. James, Richard Wright, Claudia Jones, and Carlos Bulos that show how these writers employed aesthetic alternative forms to the novel, including memoir, cultural criticism, and travel narrative, to contest prevailing notions of race, nation, and citizenship.

Volume 6, An Awful Hush, is about reformers trained “in the school of anti-slavery” trying to practice their craft in the age of Jim Crow and a new American Empire. It recounts new challenges to “an aristocracy of sex,” whether among bishops of the Episcopal church, voters in California, or trustees of the University of Rochester. And it sends last messages about woman suffrage. As Stanton wrote to Theodore Roosevelt on the day before she died, “Surely there is no greater monopoly than that of all men, in denying to all women a voice in the laws they are compelled to obey.”

The national identity of the United States was transformed between 1880 and 1930 due to mass immigration, imperial expansion, the rise of Jim Crow, and the beginning of the suffrage movement. The Romance of Race examines the role of minority women writers and reformers in the creation of modern American multiculturalism by placing minorities at the center of American identity and imagining a new national narrative based on the model of an interracial nuclear family.

In the Public Interest investigates the mechanisms that democratic societies have used to certify that those working as licensed doctors are properly trained and supervised as they deliver critical services to the public. It analyzes the workings of the crucial public institutions charged with maintaining the safety and legitimacy of the U.S. medical profession and provides prescriptive measures, addresses problems in need of reform, and suggests new procedures, resource allocation, and education in medical oversight.

Abandoning the Black Hero examines the motivations that led certain African American authors in mid-twentieth century to shift from writing protest novels about racial injustice to novels focusing primarily, if not exclusively on whites, or white-life novels. These fascinating works have been understudied despite having been written by such defining figures as Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Ann Petry, and Chester Himes, as well as lesser known but formerly best-selling authors Willard Motley and Frank Yerby.

Sustaining Cities spotlights metropolitan and smaller centers in light of globalization and its aftermaths to discover what has happened to them in the wake of the global economic recession. Its nine essays look at such diverse topics as globalization and agriculture, public policies in modern cities, and corporate support in urban areas. Contributors examine how urban planners, architects, novelists, and filmmakers tap the unique and complex character of cities in response to economic, environmental, social, and political changes.

Conventionally translated as the “Jewish Enlightenment,” the Haskalah propelled Jews into modern life. Based on imaginative and historically grounded readings of primary sources, Olga Litvak presents a compelling case for rethinking the relationship between the Haskalah and the experience of political and social emancipation. Litvak challenges the prevailing view that the Haskalah provided the philosophical mainspring for Jewish liberalism.

This ethnographic study brings together scholarship on the anthropology of childhood, tourism, consumption, and exchange to examine how and why children working as unlicensed peddlers and tourist guides along the waterfront of Banaras, India, a popular and iconic tourist destination, elicit such powerful reactions from western visitors and locals in their community and explores how the children themselves experience their work and render it meaningful.

Erin N. Winkler uses in-depth interviews with an economically diverse group of African American children and their mothers to reorient the way we look at how children develop their ideas about race. She shows the importance of considering this process from children’s points of view and listening to their interpretations of their experiences. The roles of gender, skin tone, colorblind rhetoric, peers, family, media, school, and, especially, place in developing children’s racial identities and ideas are also examined.

When non-Orthodox Jews become frum (religious), they encounter much more than dietary laws and Sabbath prohibitions. They find themselves in the midst of a whole new culture, involving matchmakers, homemade gefilte fish, and Yiddish-influenced grammar. Becoming Frum explains how these newcomers learn Orthodox language and culture through their interactions with community veterans and other newcomers. 

The Vulnerable Empowered Woman assesses the state of women’s healthcare today by analyzing popular media representations—television, print newspapers, websites, advertisements, blogs, and memoirs—in order to understand the ways in which breast cancer, postpartum depression, and cervical cancer are discussed in American public life. Tasha N. Dubriwny’s analysis concludes with a call to re-politicize women’s health through narratives that can help us imagine women, and their relationship to medicine, differently.

A Kosher Christmas portrays how Jews are shaping the public and private character of Christmas by transforming December into a joyous holiday season belonging to all Americans through unique and innovative responses, including transforming Hanukkah into the Jewish Christmas; creating a national Jewish tradition of patronizing Chinese restaurants and comedy shows on Christmas Eve; volunteering at shelters and soup kitchens on Christmas Day; and blending holiday traditions into an interfaith hybrid celebration of “Chrismukkah.”

War Culture and the Contest of Images analyzes the relationships among contemporary war, documentary practices, and democratic ideals. Using carefully chosen case studies, Dora Apel examines a wide variety of images and cultural representations of war in the United States and the Middle East, including photography, performance art, video games, reenactment, and social media images. Simultaneously, she explores the merging of photojournalism and artistic practices, the effects of visual framing, and the construction of both sanctioned and counter-hegemonic narratives in a global contest of images.

Life after Death Row examines the post-incarceration struggles of individuals who have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes, sentenced to death, and subsequently exonerated. Drawing upon research on trauma, recovery, coping, and stigma, the authors weave a nuanced fabric of grief, loss, resilience, hope, despair, and meaning to provide the richest account to date of the struggles faced by people striving to reclaim their lives in contemporary American society after years of wrongful incarceration.

Specters of War: Hollywood’s Engagement with Military Conflict looks at the way war has been brought to the screen in various genres and at different historical moments throughout the twentieth century. Elisabeth Bronfen asserts that Hollywood has emerged as a place where national narratives are created and circulated so that audiences can engage with fantasies, ideologies, and anxieties that take hold at a given time, only to change with the political climate.