UBC Press

The Politics of the Female Body

Postcolonial Women Writers

Rutgers University Press

Is it possible to simultaneously belong to and be exiled from a community? In Politics of the Female Body, Ketu H. Katrak argues that it is not only possible, but common, especially for women who have been subjects of colonial empires.

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François Truffaut and Friends

Modernism, Sexuality, and Film Adaptation

By Robert Stam

Rutgers University Press

The book also moves beyond Truffaut's film and the mnage--trois involving Roch, Hessel, and Grund to explore the intertwined lives and work of other famous artists and intellectuals, including Marcel Duchamp, Walter Benjamin, and Charlotte Wolff. Tracing the tangled webs that linked these individuals' lives, Stam opens the door to an erotic/writerly territory where the complex interplay of various artistic sensibilities-all mulling over the same nucleus of feelings and events-vividly comes alive.

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Beyond Sun and Sand

Caribbean Environmentalisms

Edited by Sherrie L. Baver and Barbara Deutsch Lynch

Rutgers University Press

Filtered through the lens of the North American and European media, the Caribbean appears to be a series of idyllic landscapes-sanctuaries designed for sailing, diving, and basking in the sun on endless white sandy beaches. Conservation literature paints a similarly enticing portrait, describing the region as a habitat for endangered coral reefs and their denizens, parrots, butterflies, turtles, snails, and a myriad of plant species.

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Off the Pedestal

New Women in the Art of Homer, Chase, and Sargeant

Edited by Holly Pyne Connor

Rutgers University Press

Off the Pedestal is the first book to explore the radical change that occurred in the representation of women immediately after the Civil War. Three critical essays draw on the visual culture of the period to show how postbellum social changes in the United States brought issues of subordination and autonomy to the surface for women in much the same way that it did for blacks. As women began attending college in greater numbers, entering professions previously dominated by men, and demanding greater personal freedom, these “new women” were featured more frequently in the visual arts and in a manner that made it clear that they had ambitions outside the domestic sphere.

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Scientific Evidence and Equal Protection of the Law

By Angelo N Ancheta

Rutgers University Press

Scientific Evidence and Equal Protection of the Law provides unique insights into the judicial process and scientific inquiry by examining major decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, civil rights advocacy, and the nature of science itself. Angelo Ancheta discusses leading equal protection cases such as Brown v. Board of Education and recent litigation involving race-related affirmative action, gender inequality, and discrimination based on sexual orientation. He also examines less prominent, but equally compelling cases, including McCleskey v. Kemp, which involved statistical evidence that a state’s death penalty was disproportionately used when victims were white and defendants were black, and Castaneda v. Partida, which established key standards of evidence in addressing the exclusion of Latinos from grand jury service. For each case, Ancheta explores the tensions between scientific findings and constitutional values.

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Gay TV and Straight America

By Ron Becker

Rutgers University Press

After decades of silence on the subject of homosexuality, television in the 1990s saw a striking increase in programming that incorporated and, in many cases, centered on gay material. In shows including Friends, Seinfeld, Party of Five, Homicide, Suddenly Susan, The Commish, Ellen, Will & Grace, and others, gay characters were introduced, references to homosexuality became commonplace, and issues of gay and lesbian relationships were explored, often in explicit detail.

In Gay TV and Straight America, Ron Becker draws on a wide range of political and cultural indicators to explain this sudden upsurge of gay material on prime-time network television. Bringing together analysis of relevant Supreme Court rulings, media coverage of gay rights battles, debates about multiculturalism, concerns over political correctness, and much more, Becker's assessment helps us understand how and why televised gayness was constructed by a specific culture of tastemakers during the decade.

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Off the Pedestal

New Women in the Art of Homer, Chase, and Sargeant

Edited by Holly Pyne Connor

Rutgers University Press

Off the Pedestal is the first book to explore the radical change that occurred in the representation of women immediately after the Civil War. Three critical essays draw on the visual culture of the period to show how postbellum social changes in the United States brought issues of subordination and autonomy to the surface for women in much the same way that it did for blacks. As women began attending college in greater numbers, entering professions previously dominated by men, and demanding greater personal freedom, these “new women” were featured more frequently in the visual arts and in a manner that made it clear that they had ambitions outside the domestic sphere.

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Feminist Inquiry

From Political Conviction to Methodological Innovation

By Mary Hawkesworth

Rutgers University Press

Feminist Inquiry provides scholars and students with a comprehensive guide to methodological issues within feminist scholarship. Mary Hawkesworth presents lucid introductions to key philosophical debates about the nature of knowledge, an original account of feminist scholarship’s contributions to these debates, and a sophisticated assessment of the analytical tools that feminist scholars have created to improve understandings of the world. Drawing upon contentious debates concerning the incidence of rape, public support for reproductive rights, affirmative action, and welfare reform, Hawkesworth demonstrates how seemingly abstract questions about the nature of knowledge have palpable effects on the lives of contemporary women and men.

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Speaking of Earth

Environmental Speeches That Moved the World

Edited by Alon Tal

Rutgers University Press

A compelling anthology of environmental speeches by prominent and articulate leaders from around the globe. This book is required reading for anyone who cares about the future of our planet--and especially for those who don't yet care enough.

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Be Not Deceived

The Sacred and Sexual Struggles of Gay and Ex-gay Christian Men

By Michelle Wolkomir

Rutgers University Press

In Be Not Deceived, Michelle Wolkomir explores the difficult dilemma that gay Christians face in their attempts to reconcile their religious and sexual identities. She introduces the ideologies and practices of two alternative and competing ministries that offer solutions for Christians who experience homosexual desire.

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New Jersey's Environments

Past, Present, and Future

By Neil M. Maher

Rutgers University Press

In New Jersey’s Environments,historians, policy-makers, and earth scientists use a case study approach to uncover the causes and consequences of decisions regarding land use, resources, and conservation. Nine essays consider topics ranging from solid waste and wildlife management to the effects of sprawl on natural disaster preparedness. The state is astonishingly diverse and faces more than the usual competing interests from environmentalists, citizens, and businesses.

This book documents the innovations and compromises created on behalf of and in response to growing environmental concerns in New Jersey, all of which set examples on the local level for nationwide and worldwide efforts that share the goal of protecting the natural world.

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What Democracy Looks Like

A New Critical Realism for a Post-Seattle World

Edited by Amy Lang; By Cecelia Tichi

Rutgers University Press

The convergence of activists in Seattle during the World Trade Organization meetings captured the headlines in 1999. These demonstrations marked the first major expression on U.S. soil of worldwide opposition to inequality, privatization, and political and intellectual repression. This turning point in world politics coincided with an ongoing quandary in academia-particularly in the humanities where the so-called "death of theory" has left the field on tenuous footing.

In What Democracy Looks Like, the editors and twenty-seven contributors argue that these crises-in the world and the academy-are not unrelated. The essays insist that, in the wake of "Seattle," teachers and scholars of American literature and culture are faced with the challenge of addressing new points of intersection between American studies and literary studies. The narrative, the poem, the essay, and the drama need to be reexamined in ways that are relevant to the urgent social and political issues of our time.

Collectively urging scholars and educators to pay fresh attention to the material conditions out of which literature arises, this path-breaking book inaugurates a new critical realism in American literary studies. It provides a crucial link in the growing need to merge theory and practice with the goal of reconnecting the ivory tower elite to the activists on the street.

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Antirevialism in Antebellum America

A Collection of Religious Voices

Edited by James D. Bratt

Rutgers University Press

If revivals typified the era when Americans launched and defined their new nation, then objections to these revivals embodied the growing discontent at what the nation had become. An important and long overdue collection, this book urges an understanding of anti-revival literature both in the context of the era when it emerged as well as in terms of the broader dynamic of American life.

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Lethal Punishment

Lynchings and Legal Executions in the South

By Margaret Vandiver

Rutgers University Press

Tying her research to contemporary debates over the death penalty, Vandiver argues that modern death sentences, like lynchings of the past, continue to be influenced by factors of race and place, and sentencing is comparably erratic.

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Liquid Relations

Contested Water Rights and Legal Complexity

By Dik Roth, Rutgerd Boelens, and Margreet Zwarteveen

Rutgers University Press

Water management plays an increasingly critical role in national and international policy agendas. Growing scarcity, overuse, and pollution, combined with burgeoning demand, have made socio-political and economic conflicts almost unavoidable. Proposals to address water shortages are usually based on two key assumptions: (1) water is a commodity that can be bought and sold and (2) “states,” or other centralized entities, should control access to water.

Liquid Relations criticizes these assumptions from a socio-legal perspective.

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American Cinema of the 1940s

Themes and Variations

Edited by Wheeler Winston Dixon

Rutgers University Press

The 1940s was a watershed decade for American cinema and the nation. Shaking off the grim legacy of the Depression, Hollywood launched an unprecedented wave of production, generating some of its most memorable classics. Featuring essays by a group of respected film scholars and historians, American Cinema of the 1940s brings this dynamic and turbulent decade to life with such films as Citizen Kane, Rebecca, The Lady Eve, Sergeant York, How Green Was My Valley, Casablanca, Mrs. Miniver, The Road to Morocco, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Kiss of Death, Force of Evil, Caught, and Apology for Murder. Illustrated with many rare stills and filled with provocative insights, the volume will appeal to students, teachers, and to all those interested in cultural history and American film of the twentieth century.

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Who Defines Indigenous?

Identities, Development, Intellectuals, and the State in Northern Mexico

By Carmen Martinez Novo

Rutgers University Press

For years, conventional scholarship has argued that minority groups are better served when the majority groups that absorb them are willing to recognize and allow for the preservation of indigenous identities. But is the reinforcement of ethnic identity among migrant groups always a process of self-liberation? In this surprising study, Carmen Martínez Novo draws on her ethnographic research of the Mixtec Indians’ migration from the southwest of Mexico to Baja California to show that sometimes the push for indigenous labels is more a process of external oppression than it is of minority empowerment.

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Awesome Families

The Promise of Healing Relationships in the International Churches of Christ

By Kathleen E. Jenkins

Rutgers University Press

In Awesome Families, Kathleen Jenkins draws on four years of ethnographic research to explain how and why so many individuals-primarily from middle- to upper-middle-class backgrounds-were attracted to this religious group that was founded on principles of enforced community, explicit authoritative relationships, and therapeutic ideals. Weaving classical and contemporary social theory, she argues that members were commonly attracted to the structure and practice of family relationships advocated by the church, especially in the context of contemporary society where gender roles and family responsibilities are often ambiguous.

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American Cinema of the 1950s

Themes and Variations

Edited by Murray Pomerance; Introduction by Murray Pomerance

Rutgers University Press

Bringing together original essays by ten respected scholars in the field, American Cinema of the 1950s explores the impact of the cultural environment of this decade on film, and the impact of film on the American cultural milieu. Contributors examine the signature films of the decade, including From Here to Eternity,Sunset Blvd., Singin' in the Rain, Shane, Rear Window, and Rebel Without a Cause, as well as lesser-known but equally compelling films, such as Dial 1119, Mystery Street, Suddenly, Summer Stock, The Last Hunt, and many others.

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An Unexpected Minority

White Kids in an Urban School

By Edward W. Morris

Rutgers University Press

In An Unexpected Minority, sociologist Edward Morris addresses these far-reaching questions by exploring attitudes about white identity in a Texas middle school composed predominantly of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians. Based on his ethnographic research, Morris argues that lower-income white students in urban schools do not necessarily maintain the sort of white privilege documented in other settings. Within the student body, African American students were more frequently the "cool" kids, and white students adopted elements of black culture-including dress, hairstyle, and language-to gain acceptance. Morris observes, however, that racial inequalities were not always reversed. Stereotypes that cast white students as better behaved and more academically gifted were often reinforced, even by African American teachers.

Providing a new and timely perspective to the significant role that non-whites play in the construction of attitudes about whiteness, this book takes an important step in advancing the discussion of racial inequality and its future in this country.

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