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Animated illustration of a book and cityscape within a snow globe with letters falling like snow.
Illustration by Michelle Kondrich.

Books

Shake Up Your Winter Reading

By Michelle Bryant December 11, 2020 facebook twitter email

Book cover for "The Starting Line: Latina/o Children, Texas Schools, and National Debates on Early Education."

The Starting Line: Latina/o Children, Texas Schools, and National Debates on Early Education
University of Texas Press, Dec. 2020
By Robert Crosnoe, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and professor, Department of Sociology and Population Research Center

This book captures the sights, sounds and voices of daily life in multiple preschools to shed light on the educational challenges and opportunities of the growing low-income Latino/a population. It uses Texas as a bellwether to better understand and inform the state of early education in the U.S.


Book cover for "Imperial Science: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire."

Imperial Science: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire 
Cambridge University Press, Jan. 2021
By Bruce J. Hunt, associate professor, Department of History

In the second half of the 19th century, British firms and engineers laid a global network of undersea telegraph cables that for the first time linked up virtually the entire world. This “Victorian internet” had enormous effects, not least on electrical science.


Book cover for "Psyche and Soul in America: The Spiritual Odyssey of Rollo May."

Psyche and Soul in America: The Spiritual Odyssey of Rollo May
Oxford University Press, Feb. 2021
By Robert H. Abzug,  founding director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies and professor emeritus, Department of History

In post-World War II America and especially during the 1960s and 1970s, Rollo May’s bestselling books profoundly addressed a widely felt anxiety concerning personal emptiness amid a culture in crisis. A psychotherapist by trade, he charted psychological paths to individuality, intimacy and community enriched by the arts, philosophy and spiritual quest.


Book cover for "The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance."

The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance
University of California Press, Feb. 2021
By Celeste Vaughan Curington (North Carolina State University), Jennifer Hickes Lundquist (University of Massachusetts Amherst); and Ken-Hou Lin, associate professor, Department of Sociology and Population Research Center

The Dating Divide is a fascinating look at how a contemporary conflux of individualization, consumerism and the proliferation of digital technologies has given rise to a unique form of gendered racism in the era of swiping right — or left. This compelling study uses data to show the racial biases at play in digital dating spaces.


Book cover for "Atmospheric Noise: The Indefinite Urbanism of Los Angeles."

Atmospheric Noise: The Indefinite Urbanism of Los Angeles
Duke University Press, Feb. 2021
By Marina Peterson, associate professor, Department of Anthropology

Exploring spaces shaped by noise around Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Peterson shows how noise is a way of attuning toward the atmospheric: through noise we learn to listen to the sky and imagine the permeability of bodies and matter, sensing and conceiving that which is diffuse, indefinite, vague and unformed. 


Book cover for "Identities in Flux: Race, Migration, and Citizenship in Brazil."

Identities in Flux: Race, Migration, and Citizenship in Brazil
SUNY Press, Feb. 2021
By Niyi Afolabi, professor, African and African Diaspora Studies Department

Identities in Flux examines iconic Afro-Brazilian figures and theorizes how they have been appropriated to either support or contest a utopian vision of multiculturalism. Afolabi argues that the identities of these figures are not fixed, but rather inhabit a fluid terrain of ideological and political struggle in Brazil.


Book cover for "The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant’s Dialectic."

The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant’s Dialectic
Oxford University Press, Feb. 2021 (UK); April 2021 (US)
By Ian Proops, professor, Department of Philosophy

This book argues that “critique,” for Kant, is not merely negative in conception; it also has a positive, investigatory — even optimistic — goal. Like a metaphysical prospector, Kant subjects the “ore” of pure rationalist metaphysics to the “fire assay” of critique in the hope of recovering a nugget of gold.

Filed Under: Book List, Books Tagged With: African and African Diaspora Studies Department, College of Liberal Arts, Department of Anthropology, Department of History, Department of Philosophy, Department of Sociology, Population Research Center, Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies

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