Search results for ""the university of chicago press""

In the 1960s, many believed that the civil rights movement's successes would foster a new era of racial equality in America. Four decades later, the degree of racial inequality has barely changed. To understand what went wrong, Patrick Sharkey argues that we have to understand what has happened to African American communities over the last several decades. In "Stuck in Place", Sharkey describes how political decisions and social policies have led to severe disinvestment from black neighborhoods, persistent segregation, declining economic opportunities, and a growing link between African American communities and the criminal justice system. As a result, neighborhood inequality that existed in the 1970s has been passed down to the current generation of African Americans. Some of the most persistent forms of racial inequality, such as gaps in income and test scores, can only be explained by considering the neighborhoods in which black and white families have lived over multiple generations. This multigenerational nature of neighborhood inequality also means that a new kind of urban policy is necessary for our nation's cities. Sharkey argues for urban policies that have the potential to create transformative and sustained changes in urban communities and the families that live within them, and he outlines a durable urban policy agenda to help us move in that direction.

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Exploring Peru's lively music industry and the studio producers, radio DJs, and program directors that drive it, "Gentleman Troubadours and Andean Pop Stars" is a fascinating account of the deliberate development of artistic taste. Focusing on popular huayno music and the ways it has been promoted to Peru's emerging middle class, Joshua Tucker tells a complex story of identity making and the marketing forces entangled with it, providing crucial insights into the dynamics among art, class, and ethnicity that reach far beyond the Andes. Tucker focuses on the music of Ayacucho, Peru, examining how media workers and intellectuals there transformed the city's huayno music into the country's most popular style. By marketing contemporary huayno against its traditional counterpart, these agents, Tucker argues, have paradoxically reinforced ethnic hierarchies at the same time that they have challenged them. Navigating between a burgeoning Andean bourgeoisie and a music industry eager to sell them symbols of newfound sophistication, "Gentleman Troubadours and Andean Pop Stars" is a deep account of the real people behind cultural change.

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As the first full-length study of the history of sexuality in America, "Intimate Matters" offered trenchant insights into the sexual behavior of Americans from colonial times to the present. Now, twenty-five years after its first publication, this ground-breaking classic is back in a crucial and updated third edition. With new and extended chapters, John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman give us an even deeper understanding of how sexuality has dramatically influenced politics and culture throughout our history and into the present. Hailed by critics for its comprehensive approach and noted by the US Supreme Court in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas ruling, "Intimate Matters" details the changes in sexuality and the ongoing growth of individual freedoms in the United States through meticulous research and lucid prose.

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Even as unemployment rates soared during the Great Depression, FDR's relief and social security programs faced attacks in Congress and the courts on the legitimacy of federal aid to the growing population of poor. In response, "New Dealers" pointed to a long tradition - dating back to 1790 and now largely forgotten - of federal aid to victims of disaster. In "The Sympathetic State", Michele Landis Dauber recovers this crucial aspect of American history, tracing the roots of the modern American welfare state beyond the New Deal and the Progressive Era back to the earliest days of the republic when relief was forthcoming for the victims of wars, fires, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Drawing on a variety of materials, including newspapers, legal briefs, political speeches, art and literature of the time, and letters from thousands of ordinary Americans, Dauber shows that while this long history of government disaster relief has faded from our memory today, it was extremely well-known to advocates of an expanded role for the national government in the 1930s. Making this connection required framing the Great Depression as a disaster afflicting citizens through no fault of their own. Dauber argues that the disaster paradigm, though successful in defending the New Deal, would ultimately come back to haunt advocates for social welfare. By not making a more radical case for relief, proponents of the New Deal helped create the weak, uniquely American welfare state we have today - one torn between the desire to come to the aid of those suffering and the deeply rooted suspicion that those in need are responsible for their own deprivation. Contrary to conventional thought, the history of federal disaster relief is one of remarkable consistency, despite significant political and ideological change. Dauber's pathbreaking and highly readable book uncovers the historical origins of the modern American welfare state.

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Why is liberalism so often dismissed by thinkers from both the left and the right? To those calling for wholesale transformation or claiming a monopoly on "realistic" conceptions of humanity, liberalism's assured progressivism can seem hard to swallow. Bleak Liberalism makes the case for a renewed understanding of the liberal tradition, showing that it is much more attuned to the complexity of political life than conventional accounts have acknowledged. Anderson examines canonical works of high realism, political novels from England and the United States, and modernist works to argue that liberalism has engaged sober and even stark views of historical development, political dynamics, and human and social psychology. From Charles Dickens's Bleak House and Hard Times to E. M. Forster's Howards End to Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, this literature demonstrates that liberalism has inventive ways of balancing sociological critique and moral aspiration. A deft blend of intellectual history and literary analysis, Bleak Liberalism reveals a richer understanding of one of the most important political ideologies of the modern era.

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Today few would think of astronomy and astrology as fields related to theology. Fewer still would know that physically absorbing planetary rays was once considered to have medical and psychological effects. But this was the understanding of light radiation held by certain natural philosophers of early modern Europe, and that, argues Mary Quinlan-McGrath, was why educated people of the Renaissance commissioned artworks centered on astrological themes and practices. "Influences" is the first book to reveal how important Renaissance artworks were designed to be not only beautiful but also - perhaps even primarily - functional. From the fresco cycles at Caprarola, to the Vatican's Sala dei Pontefici, to the Villa Farnesina, these great works were commissioned to selectively capture and then transmit celestial radiation, influencing the bodies and minds of their audiences. Quinlan-McGrath examines the sophisticated logic behind these theories and practices and, along the way, sheds light on early creation theory; the relationship between astrology and natural theology; and the protochemistry, physics, and mathematics of rays. An original and intellectually stimulating study, "Influences" adds a new dimension to the understanding of aesthetics among Renaissance patrons and a new meaning to the seductive powers of art.

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Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) was the leading Jewish thinker of the German Enlightenment and the founder of modern Jewish philosophy. His writings, especially his attempt during the Pantheism Controversy to defend the philosophical legacies of Spinoza and Leibniz against F. H. Jacobi's philosophy of faith, captured the attention of a young Leo Strauss and played a critical role in the development of his thought on one of the fundamental themes of his life's work: the conflicting demands of reason and revelation. "Leo Strauss on Moses Mendelssohn" is a superbly annotated translation of ten introductions written by Strauss to a multivolume critical edition of Mendelssohn's work. Commissioned in Weimar Germany in the 1920s, the project was suppressed and nearly destroyed during Nazi rule and was not revived until the 1960s. In addition to Strauss' introductions, Martin D. Yaffe has translated various editorial annotations Strauss makes on key passages in Mendelssohn's texts. Yaffe has also contributed an extensive interpretive essay that both analyzes the introductions on their own terms and discusses what Strauss writes elsewhere about the broader themes broached in his Mendelssohnian studies. "Strauss' critique of Mendelssohn" represents one of the largest bodies of work by the young Strauss on a single thinker to be made available in English. It illuminates not only a formerly obscure phase in the emergence of his thought but also a critical moment in the history of the German Enlightenment.

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It's easy to stand in awe of a city's impressive skyline, marveling at its buildings reaching for the clouds and its vast network of roadways and train lines crisscrossing in every direction. It can often seem like everything in a city is man-made, all concrete, steel, and glass. But even the asphalt jungle is not all asphalt - a sidewalk's cracks are filled with nature, if we know where and how to look. To aid us in this quest is "Nature All Around Us", which will help us to recognize (and look after) the natural world we traipse through in our daily lives. "Nature All Around Us" uses the familiar - such as summer Sundays humming with lawn mowers, gray squirrels foraging in planters, and flocks of pigeons - in order to introduce basic ecological concepts. In twenty-five short chapters organized by scale, from the home to the neighborhood to the city at large, it offers a subtle and entertaining education in ecology sure to inspire appreciation and ultimately stewardship of the environment. Various ecological concepts that any urban dweller might encounter are approachably examined, from understanding why a squirrel might act aggressively towards its neighbor to how nutrients and energy contained within a discarded apple core are recycled back into the food chain. Streaming through the work is an introduction to basic ecology, including the dangers of invasive species and the crucial role played by plants and trees in maintaining air quality. Taken as a whole, "Nature All Around Us" is an unprecedented field guide to the ecology of the urban environment that invites us to look at our towns, cities, and even our backyards through the perspective of an ecologist. It is an entertaining, educational, and inspiring glimpse into nature in seemingly unnatural settings, a reminder that we don't have to trek into the wild to see nature - we just have to open our eyes.

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Animal studies and biopolitics are two of the most dynamic areas of interdisciplinary scholarship, but until now, they have had little to say to each other. Bringing these two emergent areas of thought into direct conversation in "Before the Law", Cary Wolfe fosters a new discussion about the status of nonhuman animals and the shared plight of humans and animals under biopolitics. Wolfe argues that the human-animal distinction must be supplemented with the central distinction of biopolitics: the difference between those animals that are members of a community and those that are deemed killable but not murderable. From this understanding, we can begin to make sense of the fact that this distinction prevails within both the human and animal domains and address such difficult issues as why we afford some animals unprecedented levels of care and recognition while subjecting others to unparalleled forms of brutality and exploitation. Engaging with many major figures in biopolitical thought - from Heidegger, Arendt, and Foucault to Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Derrida - Wolfe explores how biopolitics can help us understand both the ethical and political dimensions of the current questions surrounding the rights of animals.

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Educating children and adolescents in public schools about sex is a deeply inflammatory act in the United States. Since the 1980s, intense political and cultural battles have been waged between believers in abstinence until marriage and advocates for comprehensive sex education. In "The Sex Education Debates", Nancy Kendall upends conventional thinking about these battles by bringing the school and community realities of sex education to life through the diverse voices of students, teachers, administrators, and activists. Drawing on ethnographic research in five states, Kendall reveals important differences and surprising commonalities shared by purported antagonists in the sex education wars, and she illuminates the unintended consequences these protracted battles have, especially on teachers and students. Showing that the lessons that most students, teachers, and parents take away from these battles are antithetical to the long-term health of American democracy, she argues for shifting the measure of sex education success away from pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates. Instead, she argues, the debates should focus on a broader set of social and democratic consequences, such as what students learn about themselves as sexual beings and civic actors, and how sex education programming affects school-community relations.

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In 1909 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, on his way back to South Africa from London, wrote his now celebrated tract Hind Swaraj, laying out his vision for the future of India and famously rejecting the technological innovations of Western civilization. Despite his protestations, Western technology endured and helped to make India one of the leading economies in our globalized world. Few would question the dominant role that technology plays in modern life, but to fully understand how India first advanced into technological modernity, argues David Arnold, we must consider the technology of the everyday. "Everyday Technology" is a pioneering account of how small machines and consumer goods that originated in Europe and North America became objects of everyday use in India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather than investigate "big" technologies such as railways and irrigation projects, Arnold examines the assimilation and appropriation of bicycles, rice mills, sewing machines, and typewriters in India, and follows their impact on the ways in which people worked and traveled, the clothes they wore, and the kinds of food they ate. But the effects of these machines were not limited to the daily rituals of Indian society, and Arnold demonstrates how such small-scale technologies became integral to new ways of thinking about class, race, and gender, as well as about the politics of colonial rule and Indian nationhood. Arnold's fascinating book offers new perspectives on the globalization of modern technologies and shows us that to truly understand what modernity became, we need to look at the everyday experiences of people in all walks of life, taking stock of how they repurposed small technologies to reinvent their world and themselves.

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More than one third of adults in the United States are obese. The CDC estimates that there are over 112,000 obesity-related deaths annually, and for years now, the government has waged a very public war on the problem. Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona warned in 2006 that "obesity is the terror within," going so far as to call it a threat that "will dwarf 9/11." Health care reform, prevention and wellness grants, information requirements for menus, Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign it seems like every year brings a new initiative attempting to stem the tide of obesity in the United States. What doesn't get mentioned in all this? The fact that the federal government helped create the obesity crisis in the first place especially in one place where it is acute, among urban African American communities. With Supersizing Urban America, Chin Jou tells that little-known story of how the US government got into the business of encouraging fast food in inner cities, with unforeseen consequences we're only beginning to understand. Jou begins her story in the late 1960s, when predominantly African-American neighborhoods went from having no fast food chain restaurants to being littered with them. She uncovers the federal policies that have helped to subsidize that expansion, including loan guarantees to fast food franchisees, programs intended to promote minority entrepreneurship, and urban revitalization initiatives. On top of all that, fast food companies began to relentlessly market to urban African American consumers. An unintended consequence of these developments was that low-income, minority communities became disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic. ?In the first book about the US government's problematic role in promoting fast food in inner-city America, Jou tells a riveting story of the food industry, obesity, and race relations in America that is essential to understanding health and obesity in contemporary urban America.

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What are the ethical responsibilities of the historian in an age of mass murder and hyper-reality? Can one be postmodern and still write history? For whom should history be written? The author explores these questions through the figure of the "heterological historian". Realizing the philosophical impossibilities of ever recovering "what really happened", this historian nevertheless acknowledges a moral imperative to speak for those who have been rendered voiceless. The book also weighs the impact of modern archival methods, such as photographs, film and the Internet, which bring with them new constraints on the writing of history and which mandate a different vision of community. Drawing on the works of continental philosophers, historiographers, cognitive scientists and filmmakers, the book creates a framework for the understanding of history and the ethical duties of the historian.

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"Wright's views about population genetics and evolution are so fundamental and so comprehensive that every serious student must examine these books firsthand. . . . Publication of this treatise is a major event in evolutionary biology."-Daniel L. Hartl, BioScience

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The environmental movement is plagued by pessimism. And that's not unreasonable: with so many complicated, seemingly intractable problems facing the planet, coupled with a need to convince people of the dangers we face, it's hard not to focus on the negative. But that paints an unbalanced - and overly disheartening - picture of what's going on with environmental stewardship today. There are success stories, and Our Once and Future Planet delivers a fascinating account of one of the most impressive areas of current environmental experimentation and innovation: ecological restoration. Veteran investigative reporter Paddy Woodworth has spent years traveling the globe and talking with people - scientists, politicians, and ordinary citizens - who are working on the front lines of the battle against environmental degradation. At sites ranging from Mexico to New Zealand and Chicago to Cape Town, Woodworth shows us the striking successes (and a few humbling failures) of groups that are attempting to use cutting-edge science to restore blighted, polluted, and otherwise troubled landscapes to states of ecological health-and, in some of the most controversial cases, to particular moments in historical time, before widespread human intervention. His firsthand field reports and interviews with participants reveal the promise, power, and limitations of restoration. Ecological restoration alone won't solve the myriad problems facing our environment. But Our Once and Future Planet demonstrates the role it can play, and the hope, inspiration, and new knowledge that can come from saving even one small patch of earth.

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Although they are often rendered in forms unfamiliar to Western eyes, maps have existed in most cultures. In this text contributors from a variety of disciplines collaborate to describe and address the significance of traditional cartographies. Whether painted on rock walls in South Africa, chanted in a Melanesian ritual, or fashioned from palm fronds and shells in the Marshall Islands, all indigenous maps share a crucial role in representing and codifying the spatial knowledge of their various cultures.

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"Sounding the Centre" is an in-depth look at the power behind classical music and dance in Bangkok, the capital and sacred centre of Buddhist Thailand. Focusing on the ritual honouring teachers of music and dance, Deborah A. Wong reveals a complex network of connections among kings, teachers, knowledge and performance that underlies the classical court arts. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork, Wong lays out the ritual in detail: the way it is enacted, the foods and objects involved, and the people who perform it, emphasizing the way the performers themselves discuss and construct aspects of the ceremony. Only those who have been initiated by a master can manifest the divine in the human realm. The power held by the master musicians, Wong shows, is both ritual and social; they are not just ritual experts, they are also leaders at the government-run National Conservatory. This esoteric knowledge, Wong suggests, has helped Thai classical music endure in the face of changing patronage and the challenges posed by the urban environment that supports it. A compact disc accompanies the book.

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Over the past 15 years, associations throughout the US have organized citizens around issues of equality and social justice, often through local churches. But in contrast to President Bush's vision of faith-based activism, in which groups deliver social services to the needy, these associations do something greater. Drawing on institutions of faith, they reshape public policies that neglect the disadvantaged. To find out how this faith-based form of community organizing succeeds, Richard L. Wood spent several years working with two local groups in Oakland, California - the Pacific Institute for Community Organization and the race-based Centre for Third World Organization. Comparing their activist techniques and achievements, Wood argues that the alternative culture and strategies of these two groups give them radically different access to community ties and social capital. Creative and insightful "Faith in Action" shows how community activism and religious organizations can help build a more just and democratic future for all Americans.

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"Sounding the Centre" is an in-depth look at the power behind classical music and dance in Bangkok, the capital and sacred centre of Buddhist Thailand. Focusing on the ritual honouring teachers of music and dance, Deborah A. Wong reveals a complex network of connections among kings, teachers, knowledge and performance that underlies the classical court arts. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork, Wong lays out the ritual in detail: the way it is enacted, the foods and objects involved, and the people who perform it, emphasizing the way the performers themselves discuss and construct aspects of the ceremony. Only those who have been initiated by a master can manifest the divine in the human realm. The power held by the master musicians, Wong shows, is both ritual and social; they are not just ritual experts, they are also leaders at the government-run National Conservatory. This esoteric knowledge, Wong suggests, has helped Thai classical music endure in the face of changing patronage and the challenges posed by the urban environment that supports it. A compact disc accompanies the book.

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"Delinquency in a Birth Cohort is a turning point in criminological research in the United States," writes Norval Morris in his foreword. "What has been completely lacking until this book is an analysis of delinquency in a substantial cohort of youths, the cohort being defined other than by their contact with any part of the criminal justice system." This study of a birth cohort was not originally meant to be etiological or predictive. Yet the data bearing on this cohort of nearly ten thousand boys born in 1945 and living in Philadelphia gave rise to a model for prediction of delinquency, and thus to the possibility for more efficient planning of programs for intervention. It is expert research yielding significant applications and, though largely statistical, the analysis is accessible to readers without mathematical training. "No serious scholar of the methods of preventing and treating juvenile delinquency can properly ignore this book."—LeRoy L. Lamborn, Law Library Journal "The magnitude of [this] study is awesome. . . . It should be a useful guide for anyone interested in the intricacies of cohort analysis."—Gary F. Jensen, American Journal of Sociology "A book the student of juvenile delinquency will find invaluable."—Criminologist

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From his return to Cambridge in 1929 to his death in 1951, Wittgenstein influenced philosophy almost exclusively through teaching and discussion. These lecture notes indicate what he considered to be salient features of his thinking in this period of his life.

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One of the most well-established relationships in the economics of aging is that between health and wealth. Yet this relationship is changing in conjunction with a rapidly aging population as well as a broad evolution in how people live later in life. Building on findings from earlier volumes in this series, "Investigations in the Economics of Aging" focuses on the changing financial circumstances of the elderly and the relationship of these circumstances to health and health care. Among the topics addressed are out-of-pocket health care costs, the effects of inflation on social security, and the impact of the recent financial crisis on Americans' well-being.

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Thousands of men and women all across Britain in the Victorian age were being mesmerized, twisted into bizarre postures and speaking out in unknown languages, and the Victorians were literally entranced with this phenomenon. The text focuses on mesmerism: who was entranced, who did the entrancing, why mesmerism was such a compelling experience to so many and how it became equally powerful evidence of fraud and "unscientific" behaviour to many others. It illuminates dark areas of the relationship between science and society, allowing the assessment of the role of authority in particular social contexts: who draws the line between the bogus and the authentic and how is the boundary maintained? More fundamentally, what is the nature of the powers that wield, and the influences that bind humans together in a social body?

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As our world becomes increasingly urbanized, an understanding of the context, mechanisms, and consequences of city and suburban environments becomes more critical. Without a sense of what open spaces such as parks and gardens contribute, it's difficult to argue for their creation and upkeep: in the face of schools needing resources, roads and sewers needing maintenance, and people suffering at the hands of others, why should cities and counties spend scarce dollars planting trees and preserving parks? In "Constructed Climates", ecologist William G. Wilson demonstrates the value of urban green. Focusing specifically on the role of vegetation and trees, Wilson shows the costs and benefits reaped from urban open spaces, from cooler temperatures to better quality ground water - and why it all matters. While "Constructed Climates" is a work of science, it does not ignore the social component. Wilson looks at low-income areas that have poor vegetation and shows how enhancing these areas through the planting of community gardens and trees can alleviate social ills. This book will be essential reading for environmentalists and anyone making decisions for the nature and well-being of our cities and citizens.

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When first published in 1980, "The Declining Significance of Race" immediately sparked controversy with its contentious thesis that race was becoming less of a deciding factor in the life chances of black Americans than class. This new edition of the seminal book includes a new afterword in which William Julius Wilson not only reflects on the debate surrounding the book, but also presents a provocative discussion of race, class, and social policy.

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"The image of a pristine isolation has been almost as common in research on foragers as in the popular media. Land filled with Flies is a sustanined argument against such views. Wilmsen marshals an enormous quantity of historical, archival, archeological, ethnographic, and survey data on the Kalahari Zhu to show how far from the reality these images are, how they have their own historical provenance, how they have been analytically distorting, and how they have proven politically pernicious for living groups like the Zhu."—Pauline Peters, Science"[A] major work. . . . Anthropologists will, and should, use Wilmsen's meticulously detailed study to revise their early lectures in the introductory course, and no future study of African 'foragers' should ignore it."—Parker Shipton, American Anthropologist"An impressive book. . . . The reader need only read the first few pages to judge both the quality and ambitiousness of the work. . . . Essential reading."—David R. Penna, Africa Today

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Since the dawn of Romanticism, artists and intellectuals in Germany have maintained an abiding interest in the gods and myths of antiquity while calling for a new mythology suitable to the modern age. In this study, George S. Williamson examines the factors that gave rise to this distinct and profound longing for myth. In doing so, he demonstrates the entanglement of aesthetic and philosophical ambitions in Germany with some of the major religious conflicts of the nineteenth century. Through readings of key intellectuals ranging from Herder and Schelling to Wagner and Nietzsche, Williamson highlights three crucial factors in the emergence of the German engagement with myth: the tradition of Philhellenist neohumanism, a critique of contemporary aesthetic and public life as dominated by private interests, and a rejection of the Bible by many Protestant scholars as the product of a foreign, "Oriental" culture. According to Williamson, the discourse on myth in Germany remained bound up with problems of Protestant theology and confessional conflict through the nineteenth century and beyond. A compelling adventure in intellectual history, this study uncovers the foundations of Germany's fascination with myth and its enduring cultural legacy.

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"Permission to Laugh" explores the work of three generations of German artists who, beginning in the 1960s, turned to jokes and wit in an effort to confront complex questions regarding German politics and history. Gregory H. Williams highlights six of them - Martin Kippenberger, Isa Genzken, Rosemarie Trockel, Albert Oehlen, Georg Herold, and Werner Buttner - who came of age in the mid-1970s in the art scenes of West Berlin, Cologne, and Hamburg. Williams argues that each employed a distinctive brand of humor that responded to the period of political apathy that followed a decade of intense political ferment in West Germany. Situating these artists between the politically motivated art of 1960s West Germany and the trends that followed German unification in 1990, Williams describes how they no longer heeded calls for a brighter future, turning to jokes, anecdotes, and linguistic play in their work instead of overt political messages. He reveals that behind these practices is a profound loss of faith in the belief that art has the force to promulgate political change, and humor enabled artists to register this changed perspective while still supporting isolated instances of critical social commentary. Providing a much-needed examination of the development of postmodernism in Germany, "Permission to Laugh" will appeal to scholars, curators, and critics invested in modern and contemporary German art, as well as fans of these internationally renowned artists.

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In the West, monastic ideals and scholastic pursuits are complementary; monks are popularly imagined copying classics, preserving learning through the Middle Ages, and establishing the first universities. But this dual identity is not without its contradictions. While monasticism emphasizes the virtues of poverty, chastity, and humility, the scholar, by contrast, requires expensive infrastructure—a library, a workplace, and the means of disseminating his work. In The Monk and the Book, Megan Hale Williams argues that Saint Jerome was the first to represent biblical study as a mode of asceticism appropriate for an inhabitant of a Christian monastery, thus pioneering the enduring linkage of monastic identities and institutions with scholarship. Revisiting Jerome with the analytical tools of recent cultural history—including the work of Bourdieu, Foucault, and Roger Chartier—Williams proposes new interpretations that remove obstacles to understanding the life and legacy of the saint. Examining issues such as the construction of Jerome’s literary persona, the form and contents of his library, and the intellectual framework of his commentaries, Williams shows that Jerome’s textual and exegetical work on the Hebrew scriptures helped to construct a new culture of learning. This fusion of the identities of scholar and monk, Williams shows, continues to reverberate in the culture of the modern university. "[Williams] has written a fascinating study, which provides a series of striking insights into the career of one of the most colorful and influential figures in Christian antiquity. Jerome's Latin Bible would become the foundational text for the intellectual development of the West, providing words for the deepest aspirations and most intensely held convictions of an entire civilization. Williams's book does much to illumine the circumstances in which that fundamental text was produced, and reminds us that great ideas, like great people, have particular origins, and their own complex settings."—Eamon Duffy, New York Review of Books

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On college campuses and in high school halls, being white means being boring. Since whiteness is the mainstream, white kids lack a cultural identity that's exotic or worth flaunting. To remedy this, countless white youths across the country are now joining more outre subcultures like the Black- and Puerto Rican- dominated hip-hop scene, the glamorously morose goth community, or an evangelical Christian organization whose members reject campus partying. Amy C. Wilkins' intimate ethnography of these three subcultures reveals a complex tug-of-war between the demands of race, class, and gender in which transgressing in one realm often means conforming to expectations in another. Subcultures help young people, especially women, navigate these connecting territories by offering them different sexual strategies: wannabes cross racial lines, goths break taboos by becoming involved with multiple partners, and Christians forego romance to develop their bond with God. Avoiding sanctimonious hysteria over youth gone astray, Wilkins meets these kids on their own terms, and the result is a perceptive and provocative portrait of the structure of young lives.

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In the wake of ever-changing family values, how have the stances of evangelical and mainline Protestant churches toward marriage and parenting influenced the husbands and fathers that fill their pews? To answer that question this work examines the ideologies produced by Protestant churches since the 1950s. According to W. Bradford Wilcox there are fundamental differences between the family ideologies offered by evangelical and mainline churches. But these do not translate into large differences in family behavior between evangelical and mainline Protestant men who are married with children. Mainline Protestant men, he contends, are "new men" who take a more egalitarian approach to the division of household labor than their conservative peers and a more involved approach to parenting than men with no religious affiliation. Evangelical Protestant men, meanwhile, are "soft patriarchs" - not as authoritarian as some would expect and given to being more emotional and dedicated to their wives and children than both their mainline and secular counterparts. Thus, Wilcox contends that religion domesticates men in ways that make them more responsive to the aspirations and needs of their immediate families.

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White extends his theory of law as constitutive rhetoric, asking how one may criticize the legal culture and the texts within it. "A fascinating study of the language of the law...This book is to be highly recommended: certainly, for those who find the time to read it, it will broaden the mind, and give lawyers a new insight into their role."--New Law Journal

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How does a so-called bad neighborhood go about changing its reputation? Is it simply a matter of improving material conditions or picking the savviest marketing strategy? What kind of role can or should the arts play in that process? Does gentrification always entail a betrayal of a neighborhood's roots? Tackling these questions and offering a fresh take on the dynamics of urban revitalization, "The Philadelphia Barrio" examines one neighborhood's fight to erase the stigma of devastation. Frederick F. Wherry shows how, in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Centro de Oro, entrepreneurs and community leaders forged connections between local businesses and cultural institutions to rebrand a place once nicknamed the Badlands. Artists and performers negotiated with government organizations and national foundations, Wherry reveals, and took to local galleries, stages, storefronts, and street parades in a concerted, canny effort to reanimate the spirit of their neighborhood. Complicating our notions of neighborhood change by exploring the ways the process is driven by local residents, "The Philadelphia Barrio" presents a nuanced look at how city dwellers can make commercial interests serve the local culture, rather than exploit it.

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According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery - for many of them, West's efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In "Ethnographic Sorcery", West explores the fascinating issues provoked by this equation. A key theme of West's research into sorcery is that one sorcerer's claims can be challenged or reversed by other sorcerers. After West's attempt to construct a metaphorical interpretation of Muedan assertions that the lions prowling their villages are fabricated by sorcerers is disputed by his Muedan research collaborators, West realizes that ethnography and sorcery indeed have much in common. Rather than abandoning ethnography, West draws inspiration from this connection, arguing that anthropologists, along with the people they study, can scarcely avoid interpreting the world they inhabit, and that we are all, inescapably, ethnographic sorcerers.

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During the past fifteen years, one of the most vexing issues facing fledgling transitional democracies around the world--from South Africa to Eastern Europe, from Cambodia to Bosnia--has been what to do about the still-toxic security apparatuses left over from the previous regime. In this now-classic and profoundly influential study, the New Yorker's Lawrence Weschler probes these dilemmas across two gripping narratives (set in Brazil and Uruguay, among the first places to face such concerns), true-life thrillers in which torture victims, faced with the paralysis of the new regime, themselves band together to settle accounts with their former tormentors. "Disturbing and often enthralling."--New York Times Book Review "Extraordinarily moving...Weschler writes brilliantly."--Newsday "Implausible, intricate and dazzling."--Times Literary Supplement "As Weschler's interviewees told their tales, I paced agitatedly, choked back tears...Weschler narrates these two episodes with skill and tact...An inspiring book."--George Scialabba, Los Angeles Weekly

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This text introduces an approach for mastering the concepts of vectors and vector analysis which not only brings together many loose ends of the traditional treatment, but also leads directly into the practical use of vectors in general curvilinear co-ordinates. It separates those relationships which are topologically invariant from those which are not. Based on the essentially geometric nature of the subject, this approach builds consistently on students' prior knowledge and geometrical intuition. Written in an informal and personal style, this text provides a guide for any student of vector analysis. Clear line drawings illustrate key points in the text, and problem sets as well as physical examples are provided.

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Song for Thom GunnThere is no east or westin the wood you fear and seek,stumbling past a gate of mossand what you would not take.And what you thought you had(the Here that is no rest)you make from it an aidto form no east, no west.No east. No west. No needfor given map or bell,vehicle, screen, or speed.Forget the house, forget the hill.Taking its title from a set of writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, From the Book of Giants retunes the signal broadcast from these ancient fragments, transmitting a new sound in the shape of a Roman drain cover, in imitations of Dante and Martial, in the voice of a cricket and the hard-boiled American photographer Weegee, in elegies both public and personal, and in poems that range from the social speech of letters to the gnomic language of riddles. Out of poetry’s “complex of complaint and praise,” Joshua Weiner discovers, in one poem, his own complicity in Empire during his son’s baseball game at the White House. In another, an embroidered parrot sings a hermetic nursery rhyme to an infant after 9/11.

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This work attempts to see the satis - the Hindu custom of women sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands - through Hindu eyes, providing an experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia. Based on 15 years of fieldwork in northern India, where the state-banned practice of satis re-emerged in the 1970s, as well as textual analysis, Catherine Weinberger-Thomas constructs a radically new interpretation of satis. She shows that their self-immolation transcends gender, caste and class, region and history, representing for the Hindus a path to immortality.

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When you start a new job, you learn how things are done in the company, and you learn how they are complained about too. Unpopular Culture considers why people complain about their work culture and what impact those complaints have on their organizations. John Weeks based his study on long-term observations of the British Armstrong Bank in the United Kingdom. Not one person at this organization, he found, from the CEO down to the junior clerks, had anything good to say about its corporate culture. And yet, despite all the griping—and despite high-profile efforts at culture change—the way things were done never seemed fundamentally to alter. The organization was restructured, jobs redefined, and processes redesigned, but the complaining remained the same.As Weeks demonstrates, this is because the everyday standards of behavior that regulate complaints curtail their effectiveness. Embarrass someone by complaining in a way that is too public or too pointed, and you will find your social standing diminished. Complain too loudly or too long, and your coworkers might see you as contrary. On the other hand, complain too little and you may be seen as too stiff or just too strange to be trusted. The rituals of complaint, Weeks shows, have powerful social functions.

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In this text, S. Craig Watkins examines two of the important developments in the recent history of black cinema - the ascendancy of Spike Lee and the proliferation of "ghettocentric films". The work explores a distinct contradiction in American society - at the same time that black youth have become the targets of a fierce racial backlash, their popular expressive cultures have become highly visible and commercially viable.

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Explorer, scientist, writer, and humanist, Alexander von Humboldt was the most famous intellectual of the age that began with Napoleon and ended with Darwin. With "Cosmos", the book that crowned his career, Humboldt offered to the world his vision of humans and nature as integrated halves of a single whole. In it, Humboldt espoused the idea that, while the universe of nature exists apart from human purpose, its beauty and order, the very idea of the whole it composes, are human achievements: cosmos comes into being in the dance of world and mind, subject and object, science and poetry. Laura Dassow Walls here traces Humboldt's ideas for "Cosmos" to his 1799 journey to the Americas, where he first experienced the diversity of nature and of the world's people - and envisioned a new cosmopolitanism that would link ideas, disciplines, and nations into a global web of knowledge and cultures. In reclaiming Humboldt's transcultural and transdisciplinary project, Walls situates America in a lively and contested field of ideas, actions, and interests, and reaches beyond to a new worldview that integrates the natural and social sciences, the arts, and the humanities.

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The purpose of this book, now in its third edition, is to introduce the morphology of vertebrates in a context that emphasizes a comparison of structire and of the function of structural units. The comparative method involves the analysis of the history of structure in both developmental and evolutionary frameworks. The nature of adaptation is the key to this analysis. Adaptation of a species to its environment, as revealed by its structure, function, and reproductive success, is the product of mutation and natural selection–the process of evolution. The evolution of structure and function, then, is the theme of this book which presents, system by system, the evolution of structure and function of vertebrates. Each chapter presents the major evolutionary trends of an organ system, with instructions for laboratory exploration of these trends included so the student can integrate concept with example.

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Often depicted as deviant or pathological by public health researchers, psychoanalysts, and sexologists, male-with-male sex and sex work is, in fact, an increasingly mainstream pursuit. Based on a qualitative investigation of the practices involved in male-for-male - or m4m - Internet escorting, "Touching Encounters" is the first book to explicitly address how masculinity and sexuality shape male commercial sex in this era of Internet communications. By looking closely at the sex and work of male escorts, Kevin Walby tries to reconcile the two extremes of m4m sex - the stereotypical idea of a quick cash transaction and the tendency toward friendship and mutuality. In doing so, Walby draws on the work of Foucault to make visible the play of power in these physical and commercial relations between men. At once a contribution to the sociology of work and a much-needed critical engagement with queer theory, "Touching Encounters" responds to calls from across the social sciences to connect Foucault with sociologies of sex, sexuality, and intimacy. Walby does this and more, tying this sexual practice back to society at large.

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Canon formation: ". . . the traditional dream of ambitious critics. A canon is commonly seen as what other people, once powerful, have made and what should now be opened up, demystified, or eliminated altogether." So writes editor Robert von Hallberg in his introduction. This collection of essays articulates how canons are constructed and examines the ways in which academic canons influence literary thought and instruction. Presenting a wide range of canonical interpretation, the volume includes essays on such themes as Native American literature and the canon, the ideology of canon formation, the history of American poetry anthologies, undoing the canonical economy, the making of the modernist canon, and canon and power in the Hebrew scriptures.

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"The Bird is Her ReasonThere are some bodies that emergeinto desire as a godrises from the sea, emotion andmemory hang like dripping clothes - thiswant is likeentering that heated redon the mouth of a Delacroix lion,stalwart, always that redwhich makesmy teeth ache and my skin feela hand that has never touched me,the tree groaning outside becomesa man who knocks on my bedroom window,edge of red on gold fur,the horse, the wildflip of its head, the rake of clawsacross its back, the unfocussed,swallowed eye.""Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream" is a book haunted by the afterlife of medieval theology and literature yet grounded in distinctly modern quandaries of desire. Connie Voisine's female speakers reverberate with notes of Marie de France's tragic heroines, but whereas Marie's poems are places where women's longings quickly bloom and die in captivity - in towers and dungeons - Voisine uses narrative to suspend the movement of storytelling. For Voisine, poems are occasions for philosophical wanderings, extended lyrics that revolve around the binding and unbinding of desire, with lonely speakers struggling with the impetus of wanting as well as the necessity of a love affair's end. With fluency, intelligence, and deeply felt emotional acuity, "Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream" navigates the heady intersection of obsessive love and searing loss.

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"Intimate Friends" explores the fascinating history of the erotic friendships of educated English and American women over the 150-year period leading up to the 1928 publication of Radclyffe Hall's landmark novel, "The Well of Loneliness". Distinguished scholar Martha Vicinus explores all-female communities, liaisons between younger and older women, the female rake, and even mother-daughter affection. Women, she reveals, drew upon a rich religious vocabulary to describe elusive and complex erotic feelings. Drawing upon diaries, letters, and other archival sources, Vicinus brings to life a variety of well-known and historically less recognized women, ranging from the predatory Ann Lister (who documented her sexual activities in code), to Mary Benson (the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury), to the coterie of wealthy Anglo-American lesbians living in Paris. In vivid and colorful prose, "Intimate Friends" offers a remarkable picture of women navigating the uncharted territory of same-sex desire.

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For generations, fans and critics have characterized classic American radio drama as a "theater of the mind". This book examines that characterization by recasting the radio play as an aesthetic object within its unique historical context. In "Theater of the Mind", Neil Verma applies an array of critical methods to more than six thousand recordings to produce a vivid new account of radio drama from the Depression to the Cold War. In this sweeping exploration of dramatic conventions, Verma investigates legendary dramas by the likes of Norman Corwin, Lucille Fletcher, and Wyllis Cooper on key programs ranging from The Columbia Workshop, The Mercury Theatre on the Air, and Cavalcade of America to Lights Out!, Suspense, and Dragnet to reveal how these programs promoted and evolved a series of models of the imagination. With close readings of individual sound effects and charts of broad trends among formats, Verma not only gives us a new account of the most flourishing form of genre fiction in the mid-twentieth century but also presents a powerful case for the central place of the aesthetics of sound in the history of modern experience.

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