Search results for ""The University of Chicago Press""

In this absorbing history, Henry Warner Bowden chronicles the encounters between native Americans and the evangelizing whites from the period of exploration and colonization to the present. He writes with a balanced perspective that pleads no special case for native separatism or Christian uniqueness. Ultimately, he broadens our understanding of both intercultural exchanges and the continuing strength of American Indian spirituality, expressed today in Christian forms as well as in revitalized folkways."Bowden makes a radical departure from the traditional approach. Drawing on the theories and findings of anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, he presents Indian-missionary relations as a series of cultural encounters, the outcomes of which were determined by the content of native beliefs, the structure of native religious institutions, and external factors such as epidemic diseases and military conflicts, as well as by the missionaries' own resources and abilities. The result is a provocative, insightful historical essay that liberates a complex subject from the narrow perimeters of past discussions and accords it an appropriate richness and complexity. . . . For anyone with an interest in Indian-missionary relations, from the most casual to the most specialized, this book is the place to begin."—Neal Salisbury, Theology Today"If one wishes to read a concise, thought-provoking ethnohistory of Indian missions, 1540-1980, this is it. Henry Warner Bowden's history, perhaps for the first time, places the sweep of Christian evangelism fully in the context of vigorous, believable, native religions."—Robert H. Keller, Jr., American Historical Review

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With "Ancestor of the West", three distinguished French historians reveal the story of the birth of writing and reason, demonstrating how the logical and religious structures of Near Eastern and Mesopotamian cultures served as precursors to those of the West.

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The Knowledge Most Worth Having represents the essence of education at the University of Chicago—faculty and students grappling with key intellectual questions that span the humanities, while still acknowledging the need to acquire a depth of knowledge in one’s chosen field. The papers collected here were delivered during an often-heated conference at the university in 1966, and include contributions from such scholars as Northrop Frye, Richard McKeon, and, of course, the dean of the college, Wayne Booth himself. Taken as a whole, they present a passionate defense of liberal education, one that remains highly relevant today.

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The search for a "patient zero" popularly understood to be the first infected case in an epidemic has been key to media coverage of major infectious disease outbreaks for more than three decades. Yet the term itself did not exist before the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. How did this idea so swiftly come to exert such a strong grip on the scientific, media, and popular consciousness? In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay interprets a wealth of archival sources and interviews to demonstrate how this seemingly new concept drew upon centuries-old ideas and fears about contagion and social disorder. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaetan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak. McKay shows how investigators from the US Centers for Disease Control inadvertently created the term amid their early research into the emerging health crisis; how an ambitious journalist dramatically amplified the idea in his determination to reframe national debates about AIDS; and how many individuals grappled with the notion of patient zero adopting, challenging and redirecting its powerful meanings as they tried to make sense of and respond to the first fifteen years of an unfolding epidemic. With important insights for our interconnected age, Patient Zero untangles the complex process by which individuals and groups create meaning and allocate blame when faced with new disease threats. What McKay gives us here is myth-smashing revisionist history at its best.

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Before news organizations began putting their content online, people got the news in print or on TV and almost always outside of the workplace. But nowadays, most of us keep an eye on the headlines from our desks at work, and we have become accustomed to instant access to a growing supply of constantly updated stories on the Web. This change in the amount of news available as well as how we consume it has been coupled with an unexpected development in editorial labor: rival news organizations can now keep tabs on the competition and imitate them, resulting in a decrease in the diversity of the news. Peeking inside the newsrooms where journalists create stories and the work settings where the public reads them, Pablo J. Boczkowski reveals why journalists contribute to the growing similarity of news - even though they dislike it - and why consumers acquiesce to a media system they find increasingly dissatisfying. Comparing and contrasting two newspapers in Buenos Aires with similar developments in the United States, "News at Work" offers an enlightening perspective on living in a world with more information but less news.

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Pre-eminent among European political philosophers, Norberto Bobbio has throughout his career turned to the political theory of Thomas Hobbes. Gathered here for the first time are the most important of his essays which together provide both a valuable introduction to Hobbes's thought and a fresh understanding of Hobbes's place in the theory of modern politics. Tracing Hobbes's work through De Cive and Leviathan, Bobbio identifies the philosopher's relation to the tradition of natural law. That Hobbes must now be understood in both this tradition as well as in the seemingly contradictory positivist tradition becomes clear for the first time in Bobbio's account. Bobbio also demonstrates that Hobbes cannot be easily labelled "liberal" or "totalitarian"; in Bobbio's provocative analysis of Hobbes's justification of the state, Hobbes emerges as a true conservative. Though his primary concern is to reconstruct the inner logic of Hobbes's thought, Bobbio is also attentive to the philosopher's biography and weaves into his analysis details of Hobbes's life and world--his exile in France, his relation with the Mersenne circle, his disputes with Anglican bishops, and accusations of heresy leveled against him. The result is a revealing, thoroughly new portrait of the first theorist of the modern state.

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"The Shaping of American Anthropology is a book which is outstanding in many respects. Stocking is probably the leading authority on Franz Boas; he understands Boas's contributions to American anthropology, as well as anthropology in general, very well. . . . He is, in a word, the foremost historian of anthropology in the world today. . . . The reader is both a collection of Boas's papers and a solid 23-page introduction to giving the background and basic assumptions of Boasian anthropology."—David Schneider, University of Chicago "While Stocking has not attempted to present a person biography, nevertheless Boas's personal characteristics emerge not only in his scholarly essays, but perhaps more vividly in his personal correspondence. . . . Stocking is to be commended for collecting this material together in a most interesting and enjoyable reader."—Gustav Thaiss, American Anthropologist

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The first edition of this book profoundly challenged and divided students of philosophy, sociology, and the history of science when it was published in 1976. In this second edition, Bloor responds in a substantial new Afterword to the heated debates engendered by his book.

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Most women in the West use contraceptives in order to avoid having children. But in rural Gambia and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, many women use contraceptives for the opposite reason - to have as many children as possible. Using ethnographic and demographic data from a three-year study in rural Gambia, Contingent Lives explains this seemingly counterintuitive fact by juxtaposing two very different understandings of the life course: one is a linear, Western model that equates aging and the ability to reproduce with the passage of time, the other a Gambian model that views aging as contingent on the cumulative physical, social, and spiritual hardships of personal history, especially obstetric trauma. Viewing each of these two models from the perspective of the other, Caroline Bledsoe produces fresh understandings of the classical anthropological subjects of reproduction, time, and aging as culturally shaped within women's conjugal lives. Her insights will be welcomed by scholars of anthropology and demography as well as by those working in public health, development studies, gerontology, and the history of medicine.

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Tupperware Home Parties, Shaklee Corporation, Amway, Mary Kay Cosmetics—theirs is an approach to business that violates many of the basic tenets of modern American commerce. Yet these direct selling organizations, fashioned by charismatic leaders and built upon devoted armies of door-to-door representatives, have grown to constitute an $8.5 billion a year industry and provide a livelihood for more than 5 million workers, the vast majority of them women. The first full-scale study of this industry, Charismatic Capitalism, revises the standard contention that the rationalization of social institutions is an inevitable consequence of advanced capitalism. Nicole Woolsey Biggart argues instead that less rational organizations built on social networks may actually be more economically viable.

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With Biotechnology and Society, Hallam Stevens offers an up-to-date primer to help us understand the interactions of biotechnology and society and the debates, controversies, fears, and hopes that have shaped how we think about bodies, organisms, and life in the twenty-first century. Stevens addresses such topics as genetically modified foods, cloning, and stem cells; genetic testing and the potential for discrimination; fears of (and, in some cases, hopes for) designer babies; personal genomics; biosecurity; and even biotech art. Taken as a whole, the book presents a clear, authoritative picture of the relationship between biotechnology and society today, and how our conceptions (and misconceptions) of it could shape future developments. It will be an essential volume for students and scholars working with biotechnology, while still being accessible to the general reader interested in the details behind breathless news stories about biotech's promise and perils.

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In this study of literature and law before and since the Civil War, Stephen M. Best shows how American conceptions of slavery, property, and the idea of the fugitive were profoundly interconnected. The Fugitive's Properties uncovers a poetics of intangible, personified property emerging out of antebellum laws, circulating through key nineteenth-century works of literature, and informing cultural forms such as blackface minstrelsy and early race films.Best also argues that legal principles dealing with fugitives and indebted persons provided a sophisticated precursor to intellectual property law as it dealt with rights in appearance, expression, and other abstract aspects of personhood. In this conception of property as fleeting, indeed fugitive, American law preserved for much of the rest of the century slavery's most pressing legal imperative: the production of personhood as a market commodity. By revealing the paradoxes of this relationship between fugitive slave law and intellectual property law, Best helps us to understand how race achieved much of its force in the American cultural imagination. A work of ambitious scope and compelling cross-connections, The Fugitive's Properties sets new agendas for scholars of American literature and legal culture.

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The accelerating interpenetration of nature and culture is the hallmark of the new "light-green" social order that has emerged in postwar France, argues Michael Bess in this penetrating new history. On one hand, a preoccupation with natural qualities and equilibrium has increasingly infused France's economic and cultural life. On the other, human activities have laid an ever more potent and pervasive touch on the environment, whether through the intrusion of agriculture, industry, and urban growth, or through the much subtler and more well-intentioned efforts of ecological management. The Light-Green Society limns sharply these trends over the last fifty years. The rise of environmentalism in the 1960s stemmed from a fervent desire to "save" wild nature-nature conceived as a qualitatively distinct domain, wholly separate from human designs and endeavors. And yet, Bess shows, after forty years of environmentalist agitation, much of it remarkably successful in achieving its aims, the old conception of nature as a "separate sphere" has become largely untenable. In the light-green society, where ecology and technological modernity continually flow together, a new hybrid vision of intermingled nature-culture has increasingly taken its place.

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While museums across North America are replicating "Zen rock gardens" in their courtyards and miniature versions now decorate offices, these Zen gardens remain enigmatic, their philosophical and aesthetic significance obscured. French historian Francois Berthier traces the history of the karesansui garden in Reading Zen in the Rocks, here translated by Graham Parkes and beautifully illustrated with photographs of all the major gardens discussed. Berthier traces the roles of Shinto and Zen Buddhism in the evolution of the garden and also considers how manual laborers from the lowest classes in Japan had a hand in creating some of its highest examples. Parkes contributes an equally original and substantive essay, which delves into the philosophical importance of rocks and their "language of stone," delineating the difference between Chinese and Japanese rock gardens and their relationship to Buddhism. Together, the two essays compose one of the most comprehensive and elegantly written studies of this haunting garden form. Reading Zen in the Rocks is a handsome addition to the library of anyone interested in gardening, Eastern philosophy, and the combination of the two that the karesansui so superbly represents.

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During the performances of fashionable operas in an unidentified but "civilized" town in northern Europe, the musicians (with the exception of the conscientious bass drummer) tell tales, read stories, and exchange gossip to relieve the tedium of the bad music they are paid to perform. In this delightful and now classic narrative written by the brilliant composer and critic Hector Berlioz, we are privy to twenty-five highly entertaining evenings with a fascinating group of distracted performers. As we near the two-hundredth anniversary of Berlioz's birth, Jacques Barzun's pitch-perfect translation of Evenings with the Orchestra --with a new foreword by Berlioz scholar Peter Bloom--testifies to the enduring pleasure found in this most witty and amusing book. "[F]ull of knowledge, penetration, good sense, individual wit, stock humor, justifiable exasperation, understanding exaggeration, emotion and rhetoric of every kind." --Randall Jarrell, New York Times Book Review "To succeed in [writing these tales], as Berlioz most brilliantly does, requires a combination of qualities which is very rare, the many-faceted curiosity of the dramatist with the aggressively personal vision of the lyric poet."--W. H. Auden, The Griffin

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Voting is an examination of the factors that make people vote the way they do. Based on the famous Elmira Study, carried out by a team of skilled social scientists during the 1948 presidential campaign, it shows how voting is affected by social class, religious background, family loyalties, on-the-job relationships, local pressure groups, mass communication media, and other factors. Still highly relevant, Voting is one of the most frequently cited books in the field of voting behavior.

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Geoffrey Bennington sets out here to write a systematic account of the thought of Jacques Derrida. Responding to Bennington's text at every turn is Derrida's own, excerpts from his life and thought that resist circumscription. Together these texts, as a dialogue and a contest, constitute a critical introduction to one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century. Bennington's account of Derrida leads the reader through the philosopher's work on language and writing, and through more mysterious themes of signature, sexual difference, law, and affirmation. Seeking to escape this systematic rendering - in fact, to prove it impossible - Derrida interweaves Bennington's text with surprising and disruptive "periphrases": reflections on his mother's death agony, commentaries on St. Augustine's "Confessions", memories of childhood, remarks on Judaism, and references to his collaborator's efforts.

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Robert C. Benchley's sketches and articles, published in periodicals like Life, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, earned him a reputation as one of the sharpest humorists of his time; his influence—on contemporaries such as E. B. White, James Thurber, and S. J. Perelman, or followers like Woody Allen, Steve Martin, and Richard Pryor—has left an indelible mark on the American comic tradition. The Benchley Roundup collects those pieces, selected by Benchley's son Nathaniel, "which seem to stand up best over the years"-a compendium of the most endearing and enduring work from one of America's funniest and most penetrating wits."It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by then I was too famous."—Robert Benchley

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Scientists have long counseled against interpreting animal behavior in terms of human emotions, warning that such anthropomorphizing limits our ability to understand animals as they really are. With "Wild Justice", Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce unequivocally challenge this long-held view. Marrying years of behavioral and cognitive research with compelling and moving anecdotes, Bekoff and Pierce reveal that animals exhibit a broad repertoire of moral behaviors, including fairness, empathy, trust, and reciprocity. Animals, in short, are incredibly adept social beings, relying on rules of conduct to navigate intricate social networks that are essential to their survival. Ultimately, Bekoff and Pierce draw the astonishing conclusion that there is no moral gap between humans and other species: morality is an evolved trait that we unquestionably share with other social mammals.

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This work seeks to show that science is rooted not just in conversation but in disagreement, doubt and uncertainty. Mara Beller argues that it is precisely this culture of dialogue and controversy within the scientific community that fuels creativity. Beller draws her argument from her reading of the history of the quantum revolution, especially the development of the Copenhagen interpretation. One of several competing approaches, this version succeeded largely due to the rhetorical skills of Niels Bohr and his colleagues. Using archival research, Beller shows how Bohr and others marketed their views, misrepresenting and dismissing their opponents as "unreasonable" and championing their own not always coherent or well-supported position as "inevitable".

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One of French writer Georges Perec's most famous pieces, "I Remember", consists of 480 numbered paragraphs - each just a few short lines recalling a memory from his childhood. The work has neither a beginning nor an end, nor does it contain any analysis. But it nonetheless reveals profound truths about French society during the 1940s and '50s. Taking Perec's book as its cue, "Telling About Society" explores the unconventional ways we communicate what we know about society to others. The third in distinguished teacher Howard S. Becker's best-selling series of writing guides for social scientists, the book explores the many ways knowledge about society can be shared and interpreted through different forms of telling - fiction, films, photographs, maps, even mathematical models - many of which remain outside the boundaries of conventional social science. Eight case studies, including the photographs of Walker Evans, the plays of George Bernard Shaw, the novels of Jane Austen and Italo Calvino, and the sociology of Erving Goffman, provide convincing support for Becker's argument: that every way of telling about society is perfect - for some purpose. The trick is, as Becker notes, to discover what purpose is served by doing it this way rather than that. With Becker's trademark humor and eminently practical advice, "Telling About Society" is an ideal guide for social scientists in all fields and for anyone interested in communicating knowledge in unconventional ways.

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In Balinese Worlds, Fredrik Barth proposes a new model for anthropological analysis of complex civilizations that is based on a fresh, synthetic account of culture and society in North Bali and one that takes full notice of individual creativity in shaping the contours of this dynamic culture. In this detailed ethnography of the Northern district of Buleleng, Barth rejects mainstream anthropological generalizations of Bali as a cultural system of carefully articulated parts. Instead—drawing on many sources, including the sociology of knowledge, interactional analysis, postmodern thought, and his own exceptionally varied field experience—Barth presents a new model that actually generates variation. Barth's innovative analysis of Balinese life highlights both the constructive and the disorganizing effects of individual action, the constant flux of interpretation, and the powerful interaction of memory and social relationships, and knowledge as a cultural resource. Balinese Worlds is a unique contribution not only to Balinese studies but also to the theory and methods of the anthropology of complex societies.

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First published in 1959, Surrealism remains the most readable introduction to the French surrealist poets Apollinaire, Breton, Aragon, Eluard, and Reverdy. Providing a much-needed overview of the movement, Balakian places the surrealists in the context of early twentieth-century Paris and describes their reactions to symbolist poetry, World War I, and developments in science and industry, psychology, philosophy, and painting. Her coherent history of the movement is enhanced by her firsthand knowledge of the intellectual climate in which some of these poets worked and her interviews with Reverdy and Breton. In a new introduction, Balakian discusses the influence of surrealism on contemporary poetry. This volume includes photographs of the poets and reproductions of paintings by Ernst, Dali, Tanguy, and others.

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How did Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Cubans become known as "Hispanics" and "Latinos" in the United States? How did several distinct cultures and nationalities become portrayed as one? Cristina Mora answers both these questions and details the scope of this phenomenon in Making Hispanics. She uses an organizational lens and traces how activists, bureaucrats, and media executives in the 1970s and '80s created a new identity category-and by doing so, permanently changed the racial and political landscape of the nation. Some argue that these cultures are fundamentally similar and that the Spanish language is a natural basis for a unified Hispanic identity. But Mora shows very clearly that the idea of ethnic grouping was historically constructed and institutionalized in the United States. During the 1960 census, reports classified Latin American immigrants as "white," grouping them with European Americans. Not only was this decision controversial, but also Latino activists claimed that this classification hindered their ability to portray their constituents as under-represented minorities. Therefore, they called for a separate classification: Hispanic. Once these populations could be quantified, businesses saw opportunities and the media responded. Spanish-language television began to expand its reach to serve the now large, and newly unified, Hispanic community with news and entertainment programming. Through archival research, oral histories, and interviews, Mora reveals the broad, national-level process that led to the emergence of Hispanicity in America.

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With extraordinary concision and clarity, A. J. Ayer gives an account of the major incidents of Bertrand Russell's life and an exposition of the whole range of his philosophy. "Ayer considers Russell to be, except possibly for Wittgenstein, the most influential philosopher of our time. In this book [he] gives a lucid account of Russell's philosophical achievements."—James Rachels, New York Times Book Review"I am sure [this] is the best introduction of any length to Russell, and I suspect that it might serve as one of the best introductions to modern philosophy. . . . Ayer begins with a brief, austere, and balanced account of Russell's life: as in Russell's autobiography this means his thought, books, women, and politics. Tacitus (and Russell) would have found the account exemplary. Ayer ends with a sympathetic and surprisingly detailed survey of Russell's social philosophy. But the bulk of this book consists of a chapter on Russell's work in logic and the foundations of mathematics, followed by a chapter on his epistemological views and one on metaphysics. . . . I find it impossible to imagine that this book will not remain indefinitely the very best book of its sort."—Review of Metaphysics"The confrontation or conjunction of Ayer and Russell is a notable event and has produced a remarkable book—brilliantly argued and written."—Martin Lebowitz, The Nation

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In this era of tweets and blogs, it is easy to assume that the self-obsessive recording of daily minutiae is a recent phenomenon. But Americans have been navel-gazing since nearly the beginning of the republic. The daily planner - variously called the daily diary, commercial diary, and portable account book - first emerged in colonial times as a means of telling time, tracking finances, locating the nearest inn, and even planning for the coming winter. They were carried by everyone from George Washington to the soldiers who fought the Civil War. And by the twentieth century, this document had become ubiquitous in the American home as a way of recording a great deal more than simple accounts. In this appealing history of the daily act of self-reckoning, Molly McCarthy explores just how vital these unassuming and easily overlooked stationery staples were to those who used them. From their origins in almanacs and blank books through the nineteenth century and on to the enduring legacy of written introspection, McCarthy has penned an exquisite biography of an almost ubiquitous document that has borne witness to American lives in all of their complexity and mundanity.

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The history of Haiti has been marked by oppression at the hands of colonial and dictatorial overlords, but there has also been a history of resistance and sometimes triumph. This study aims to show that Haiti's vibrant and expressive music has been a important element in the struggle, in which power, politics and resistance have been inextricably fused. The text explores such diverse genres as Haitian jazz, troubadour traditions, Vodou-jazz, "konpa", "mini-djaz", new generation, and roots music. Averill examines the complex interaction of music with power in contexts such as honorific rituals, sponsored street celebrations, Carnival, and social movements spanning the political spectrum. With first-hand accounts by musicians, photographs, song texts and ethnographic descriptions, this book examines the profound manifestations of power and song in the day-to-day efforts of ordinary Haitians to rise above political repression.

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"A Monastery in Time" is the first book to describe the life of a Mongolian Buddhist monastery - the Mergen Monastery in Inner Mongolia - from inside its walls. From the Qing occupation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the Cultural Revolution, Caroline Humphrey and Hurelbaatar Ujeed tell a story of religious formation, suppression, and survival over a history that spans three centuries. Often overlooked in Buddhist studies, Mongolian Buddhism is an impressively self-sustaining tradition whose founding lama, the Third Mergen Gegen, transformed Tibetan Buddhism into an authentic counterpart using the Mongolian language. Drawing on fifteen years of fieldwork, Humphrey and Ujeed show how lamas have struggled to keep Mergen Gegen's vision alive through tremendous political upheaval, and how such upheaval has inextricably fastened politics to religion for many of today's practicing monks. Exploring the various ways Mongolian Buddhists have attempted to link the past, present, and future, Humphrey and Ujeed offer a compelling study of the interplay between the individual and the state, tradition and history.

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Dismissing oversimplified and politically-charged views of the politics of Shi'ite Islam, Said Amir Arjomand offers a richly researched sociological and historical study of Shi'ism and the political order of premodern Iran that exposes the roots of what became Khomeini's theocracy.

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Unlike many social movements, the gay and lesbian struggle for visibility and rights has succeeded in combining a unified group identity with the celebration of individual differences. In "Forging Gay Identities", Elizabeth Armstrong explores how this happened, developing a new approach that draws on both social movement and organizational theory. She traces the evolution of gay life, gay organizations and gay identity in San Francisco from the 1950s to the mid-1990s, identifying two events as pivotal in their evolution. First, in 1969 the encounter between early homophile organizing and the New Left produced gay liberation and its signature contribution - coming out. Second, the sudden decline of the New Left in the early 1970s reduced the viability of the radical gay-liberation goal of societal transformation and prompted gay activists to redirect their movement to the affirmation of gay identity and the pursuit of gay rights. "Forging Gay Identities" should be valuable for anyone studying social movements, culture, identity politics or ogranizational theory.

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Hannah Arendt began her scholarly career with an exploration of Saint Augustine's concept of caritas, or neighborly love, written under the direction of Karl Jaspers and the influence of Martin Heidegger. After her German academic life came to a halt in 1933, Arendt carried her dissertation into exile in France, and years later took the same battered and stained copy to New York. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, as she was completing or reworking her most influential studies of political life, Arendt was simultaneously annotating and revising her dissertation on Augustine, amplifying its argument with terms and concepts she was using in her political works of the same period. The disseration became a bridge over which Arendt traveled back and forth between 1929 Heidelberg and 1960s New York, carrying with her Augustine's question about the possibility of social life in an age of rapid political and moral change.In Love and Saint Augustine, Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark make this important early work accessible for the first time. Here is a completely corrected and revised English translation that incorporates Arendt's own substantial revisions and provides additional notes based on letters, contracts, and other documents as well as the recollections of Arendt's friends and colleagues during her later years.

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In Sappho in Early Modern England, Harriette Andreadis examines public and private expressions of female same-sex sexuality in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Before the language of modern sexual identities developed, a variety of discourses in both literary and extraliterary texts began to form a lexicon of female intimacy. Looking at accounts of non-normative female sexualities in travel narratives, anatomies, and even marital advice books, Andreadis outlines the vernacular through which a female same-sex erotics first entered verbal consciousness. She finds that "respectable" women of the middle classes and aristocracy who did not wish to identify themselves as sexually transgressive developed new vocabularies to describe their desires; women that we might call bisexual or lesbian, referred to in their day as tribades, fricatrices, or "rubsters," emerged in erotic discourses that allowed them to acknowledge their sexuality and still evade disapproval.

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Historically Nicaragua has been mired in poverty and political conflict, yet the country has become a model for the successful emergence of democracy in a developing nation. Learning Democracy tells the story of how Nicaragua overcame an authoritarian government and American interventionism by engaging in an electoral revolution that solidified its democratic self-governance. By analyzing nationwide surveys conducted during the 1990, 1996, and 2001 Nicaraguan presidential elections, Leslie E. Anderson and Lawrence C. Dodd provide insight into one of the most unexpected and intriguing recent advancements in third world politics. They offer a balanced account of the voting patterns and forward-thinking decisions that led Nicaraguans to first support the reformist Sandinista revolutionaries, only to replace them with a conservative democratic regime a few years later. Addressing issues largely unexamined in Latin American studies, Learning Democracy is a unique and probing look at how the country's mass electorate moved beyond revolutionary struggle to establish a more stable democratic government by realizing the vital role of citizens in democratization processes.

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Over a lifetime of studying Cuban Santeria and other religions related to Orisha worship - a practice also found among the Yoruba in West Africa - Stephan Palmie has grown progressively uneasy with the assumptions inherent in the very term Afro-Cuban religion. In "The Cooking of History" he provides a comprehensive analysis of these assumptions, in the process offering an incisive critique both of the anthropology of religion and of scholarship on the cultural history of the Afro-Atlantic World. Understood largely through its rituals and ceremonies, Santeria and related religions have been a challenge for anthropologists to link to a hypothetical African past. But, Palmie argues, precisely by relying on the notion of an aboriginal African past, and by claiming to authenticate these religions via their findings, anthropologists - some of whom have converted to these religions - have exerted considerable influence upon contemporary practices. Critiquing widespread and damaging simplifications that posit religious practices as stable and self-contained, Palmie calls for a drastic new approach that properly situates cultural origins within the complex social environments and scholarly fields in which they are investigated.

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This paperback edition of A Place on the Corner marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elijah Anderson's sociological classic, a study of street corner life at a local barroom/liquor store located in the ghetto on Chicago's South Side. Anderson returned night after night, month after month, to gain a deeper understanding of the people he met, vividly depicting how they created—and recreated—their local stratification system. In addition, Anderson introduces key sociological concepts, including "the extended primary group" and "being down." The new preface and appendix in this edition expand on Anderson's original work, telling the intriguing story of how he went about his field work among the men who frequented Jelly's corner.

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In recent decades, Oliver Wendell Holmes has been praised as "the only great American legal thinker" and "the most illustrious figure in the history of American law." But in Albert Alschuler's critique of both Justice Holmes and contemporary legal scholarship, a darker portrait is painted - that of a man who, among other things, espoused Social Darwinism, favored eugenics, and, as he himself acknowledged, came "devilish near to believing that might makes right."

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Each year, natural disasters threaten the strength and stability of communities worldwide. Yet responses to the challenges of recovery vary greatly and in ways that aren't always explained by the magnitude of the catastrophe or the amount of aid provided by national governments or the international community. The difference between resilience and disrepair, Daniel P. Aldrich shows, lies in the depth of communities' social capital. "Building Resilience" highlights the critical role of social capital in the ability of a community to withstand disaster and rebuild the infrastructure and ties that are at the foundation of any community. Aldrich examines the post-disaster responses of four distinct communities - Tokyo following the 1923 earthquake, Kobe after the 1995 earthquake, Tamil Nadu after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and New Orleans post-Katrina - and finds that those with robust social networks were better able to coordinate recovery. In addition to quickly disseminating information and assistance, communities with an abundance of social capital were able to minimize the migration of people and resources out of the area. With governments increasingly overstretched and natural disasters likely to increase in frequency and intensity, an understanding of what contributes to efficient reconstruction is more important than ever. "Building Resilience" underscores a critical component of an effective response.

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In the sink-or-swim world of academia, a great graduate advisor can be a lifesaver. But with university budgets shrinking and free time evaporating, advisors often need a mentor themselves to learn how to best support their advisees. Bruce M. Shore, an award-winning advisor with more than forty years of advising experience, is just the coach that graduate advisors need. With The Graduate Advisor Handbook: A Student-Centered Approach, Shore demystifies the advisor-student relationship, providing tips and practical advice that will help both students and advisors thrive. One of the first books to approach advising from the advisor's point of view, the handbook highlights the importance of a partnership in which both parties need to be invested. Shore emphasizes the interpersonal relationships at the heart of advising and reveals how advisors can draw on their own strengths to create a rewarding rapport. The Graduate Advisor Handbook moves chronologically through the advising process, from the first knock on the door to the last reference letter. Along the way it covers transparent communication, effective motivation, and cooperative troubleshooting. Its clear-eyed approach also tackles touchy subjects, including what to do when personal boundaries are crossed and how to deliver difficult news. Sample scripts help advisors find the right words for even the toughest situations. With resources dwindling and student and advising loads increasing, graduate advisors need all the resources they can find to give their students the help they need. The Graduate Advisor Handbook has the cool-headed advice and comprehensive coverage that advisors need to make the advising relationship not just effective but also enjoyable.

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Originally published in 1529, this work argues that women are more than equal to men in all things that really matter, including the public spheres from which they have long been excluded. Rather than directly refuting prevailing wisdom, Agrippa uses women's superiority as a rhetorical device and overturns the misogynistic interpretations of the female body in Greek medicine, the Bible, Roman and canon law, theology, moral philosophy and politics. He raised the question of why women were excluded and provided answers based not on sex but on social conditioning, education and the prejudices of their more powerful oppressors. His declamation, disseminated through the printing press, illustrated the power of that new medium, soon to be used to generate a larger reformation of religion.

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The state of Israel is often spoken of as a haven for the Jewish people, a place rooted in the story of a nation dispersed, wandering the earth in search of its homeland. Born in adversity but purportedly nurtured by liberal ideals, Israel has never known peace, experiencing instead a state of constant war that has divided its population along the stark and seemingly unbreachable lines of dissent around the relationship between unrestricted citizenship and Jewish identity. By focusing on the perceptions and histories of Israel's most marginalized stakeholders - Palestinian Israelis; Arab Jews, and non-Israeli Jews - Atalia Omer cuts to the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict, demonstrating how these voices provide urgently needed resources for conflict analysis and peace building. Navigating a complex set of arguments about ethnicity, boundaries, and peace and offering a different approach to the renegotiation and reimagination of national identity and citizenship, Omer pushes the conversation beyond the bounds of the single narrative and toward a new and dynamic concept of justice - one that offers the prospect of building a lasting peace.

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Faced with the difficult task of discerning Plato's true ideas from the contradictory voices he used to express them, scholars have never fully made sense of the many incompatibilities within and between the dialogues. In the magisterial "Plato's Philosophers", Catherine H. Zuckert explains for the first time how these prose dramas cohere to reveal a comprehensive Platonic understanding of philosophy. To expose this coherence, Zuckert examines the dialogues not in their supposed order of composition but according to the dramatic order in which Plato indicates they took place. This unconventional arrangement lays bare a narrative of the rise, development, and limitations of Socratic philosophy. In the drama's earliest dialogues, for example, non-Socratic philosophers introduce the political and philosophical problems to which Socrates tries to respond. A second dramatic group shows how Socrates develops his distinctive philosophical style. And, finally, the later dialogues feature interlocutors who reveal his philosophy's limitations. Despite these limitations, Zuckert concludes, Plato made Socrates the dialogues' central figure because Socrates raises the fundamental human question: What is the best way to live?

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Plato's dialogues show Socrates at different ages, beginning when he was about nineteen and already deeply immersed in philosophy and ending with his execution five decades later. By presenting this model philosopher across a fifty-year span of his life, Plato leads his readers to wonder: Does that time period correspond to the development of Socrates' thought? In this magisterial investigation of the evolution of Socrates' philosophy, Laurence Lampert answers in the affirmative. The chronological route that Plato maps for us, Lampert argues, reveals the enduring record of philosophy as it gradually took the form that came to dominate the life of the mind in the West. The reader accompanies Socrates as he breaks with the century-old tradition of philosophy, turns to his own path, gradually enters into a deeper understanding of nature and human nature, and discovers the successful way to transmit his wisdom to the wider world. Focusing on the final and most prominent step in that process and offering detailed textual analysis of Plato's "Protagoras, Charmides, and Republic", "How Philosophy Became Socratic" charts Socrates' gradual discovery of a proper politics to shelter and advance philosophy.

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An actor's deepest desire is to be understood. But when asked to pronounce such words as "chanson," "phantasime," or "quaestor," many otherwise unflappable actors can be rendered speechless. The "Eloquent Shakespeare" aims to untie those tongues and help anyone speak Shakespeare's language with ease. More than 17,500 entries make it the most comprehensive pronunciation guide to Shakespeare's words, from the common to the arcane. Each entry is written in the International Phonetic Alphabet and represents standard American pronunciations, making this dictionary perfect for teachers, actors, and directors all over North America. Renowned Shakespearean voice and text coach Gary Logan has spent years teaching Shakespeare's works to some of the best actors in the world. His book includes proper names and foreign words and phrases, as well as an extensive introduction that covers everything from how to interpret the entries to scansion dynamics. Designed especially for actors, directors, stage managers, and teachers, "The Eloquent Shakespeare" is a one-of-a-kind resource for performing Shakespeare's dramatic works.

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North America is more a political and an economic invention than a place people call home. Nonetheless, the region shared by the United States and its closest neighbors is an intriguing frame for comparative American studies. "Continental Divides" is the first book to study the patterns of contact, exchange, conflict, and disavowal among cultures that span the borders of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Rachel Adams considers a broad range of literary, filmic, and visual texts that exemplify cultural traffic across North American borders. She investigates how our understanding of key themes, genres, and periods within U.S. cultural study is deepened, and in some cases transformed, when Canada and Mexico enter the picture. How, for example, does the work of the iconic American writer Jack Kerouac read differently when his Franco-American origins and Mexican travels are taken into account? Or how would our conception of American modernism be altered if Mexico were positioned as a center of artistic and political activity? In this engaging analysis, Adams charts the lengthy and often unrecognized traditions of neighborly exchange, both hostile and amicable, that have left an imprint on North America's varied cultures.

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For decades, the history of sexuality has been a multidisciplinary project serving competing agendas. Lesbian, gay, and queer scholars have produced powerful narratives by tracing the continuity of homosexual or queer subject as continuous or discontinuous. Yet organizing historical work around categories of identity as normal or abnormal often obscures how sexual matters were known or talked about in the past. Set against the backdrop of women's work experiences, friendships, and communities during World War I, "Disturbing Practices" draws on a substantial body of new archival material to expose the roadblocks still present in current practices and imagine new alternatives. In this landmark book, Laura Doan clarifies the ethical value and political purpose of identity history - and indeed its very capacity to give rise to innovative practices borne of sustained exchange between queer studies and critical history. "Disturbing Practices" insists on taking seriously the imperative to step outside the logic of identity to address questions as yet unasked about the modern sexual past.

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A close look at how wylers, a popular musical style from the island of St. Kitts and Nevis, expresses a unique mode of relation in the postcolonial Caribbean. In Island Time, ethnomusicologist Jessica Swanston Baker examines wylers, a musical form from St. Kitts and Nevis that is characterized by speed. Baker argues that this speed becomes a useful and highly subjective metric for measuring the relationship between Caribbean aspirations and the promises of economic modernity; women's bodily autonomy and the nationalist fantasies that would seek to curb that autonomy; and the material realities of Kittitian-Nevisian youth living in the disillusionment following postcolonial independence. She traces the wider Caribbean musical, cultural, and media-based resonances of wylers, posing an alternative model to scholarship on Caribbean music that has tended to privilege the big islandsTrinidad, Jamaica, and Haitithus neglecting not only the unique cultural worlds of smaller nations but als

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The Eyes of the World focuses on the lives and experiences of Eastern Congolese people involved in extracting and transporting the minerals needed for digital devices. The digital devices that, many would argue, define this era exist not only because of Silicon Valley innovations but also because of a burgeoning trade in dense, artisanally mined substances like tantalum, tin, and tungsten. In the tentatively postwar Eastern DR Congo, where many lives have been reoriented around artisanal mining, these minerals are socially dense, fueling movement and innovative collaborations that encompass diverse actors, geographies, temporalities, and dimensions. Focusing on the miners and traders of some of these “digital minerals,” The Eyes of the World examines how Eastern Congolese understand the work in which they are engaged, the forces pitted against them, and the complicated process through which substances in the earth and forest are converted into commodified resources. Smith shows how violent dispossession has fueled a bottom-up social theory that valorizes movement and collaboration—one that directly confronts both private mining companies and the tracking initiatives implemented by international companies aspiring to ensure that the minerals in digital devices are purified of blood.

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