New England Women Writers, Secularity, and the Federalist Politics of Church and State
Oxford University Press, March 2021
By Gretchen Murphy, professor, Department of English and Center for Women’s and Gender Studies
Murphy argues that beginning with the early republic and extending through the 19th century, Federalist women adapted that party’s ideals and fears by promoting privatized Christianity with public purpose. Their project is shown to complicate received historical narratives of separation of church and state illuminating problems of democracy and belief in post-secular America.
The Souvenir Museum: Stories
Ecco, April 2021
By Elizabeth McCracken, professor, Department of English
In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured and fortified. Twelve stories about travel, arguments, bodies of water, parenthood, childhood, and marriage, which have been published or are forthcoming in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and other places.
The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature
University of Arizona Press, April 2021
By Esther G. Belin, Jeff Berglund, Connie Jacobs and Anthony K. Webster, professor, Department of Anthropology
This anthology showcases the breadth, depth and diversity of Diné creative artists and their poetry, fiction and nonfiction prose. Bringing together writers who offer perspectives spanning generations, the collected works display a rich variety of themes including home and history; economic and environmental inequalities; and contemporary concerns about identity, historical trauma and loss of language.
Iran in Motion: Mobility, Space, and the Trans-Iranian Railway
Stanford University Press, April 2021
By Mikiya Koyagi, assistant professor, Department of Middle Eastern Studies
This book traces imaginations and practices of mobility by weaving together individual encounters with the Trans-Iranian Railway. These various encounters demonstrate how rail infrastructure simultaneously brought provinces closer to Tehran while also pulling them away, thereby reshaping local, national, and transnational experiences of space among mobile individuals.
When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault
Little, Brown Spark [Hachette], April 2021
By David M. Buss, professor, Department of Psychology
This book reveals the hidden roots of sexual conflict — roots that originated over deep evolutionary time — which characterize our sexual psychology. Providing novel insights into our minds and behaviors, When Men Behave Badly presents a unifying new theory of sexual conflict, and offers practical advice for women and men seeking to avoid it.
The Language of Political Incorporation: Chinese Migrants in Europe
Temple University Press, April 2021
By Amy H. Liu, associate professor, Department of Government
This book examines the linguistic diversity of Chinese migrant networks in Europe, finding institutional trust and civic engagement depend not on national identity, but on the network’s linguistic diversity — namely, whether the operating language is a migrant’s mother tongue or a lingua franca.
Burmese: A Cultural Approach
Hong Kong University Press, May 2021
By Ward Keeler, professor, Department of Anthropology; and Allen Lyan
Appropriate for use by students at varying levels of competence, Burmese: A Cultural Approach provides a thorough and systematic introduction to the Burmese writing system in Part One and a series of true-to-life conversations in Part Two. The book is enhanced by audio files recorded by native speakers.
Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on the History of the Border
University of Texas Press, June 2021
Co-edited by Sonia Hernández, associate professor, Department of History at Texas A&M; and John Morán González, director of the Center for Mexican American Studies and professor, Department of English
Reverberations of Racial Violence gathers 14 essays by leading borderlands historians about a sinister chapter in American history from 1910-1920. Hundreds, if not thousands, of ethnic Mexicans were killed along the Texas-Mexico border by law enforcement, and particularly by the Texas Rangers. These essays chronicle state violence and the civil rights activism that arose against it.
The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance
University of Washington Press, June 2021
By Karma R. Chávez, chair and associate professor, Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies
The Borders of AIDS demonstrates how calls to quarantine people living with AIDS proliferated in the early years of the pandemic and how failure to impose a quarantine for HIV-positive citizens morphed into the successful enactment of a complete ban on HIV-positive migrants — which lasted more than 20 years. It also documents how queer and HIV-positive people resisted.
Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile
University of California Press, June 2021
By Joshua Frens-String, assistant professor, Department of History
Hungry for Revolution tells the story of how struggles over food fueled the rise and fall of Chile’s Popular Unity revolution (1970-73) and one of Latin America’s most expansive social welfare states. Reconstructing ties among workers, consumers, scientists, and the state, it explores how Chileans across generations sought to center food security as a right of citizenship.
Constructions in Contact 2: Language change, multilingual practices, and additional language acquisition
John Benjamins (Amsterdam/Philadelphia), June 2021
By Hans C. Boas, professor, Department of Germanic Studies; and Steffen Höder, professor of Scandinavian Linguistics at the University of Kiel
This book presents new constructional research on a wide range of language contact scenarios including Afrikaans, American Sign Language, English, French, Malayalam, Norwegian, Spanish, Welsh, as well as contact scenarios that involve typologically different languages.
Practical Thought: Essays on Reason, Intuition, and Action
Oxford University Press, Aug. 2021
By Jonathan Dancy, professor, Department of Philosophy
Practical Thought: Essays on Reasons, Intuition, and Action presents a selection of Dancy’s most important philosophical essays since the late 1970s, focusing on the central themes of his work: metaethics, moral metaphysics, the theory of motivation, and the British Intuitionists. The 24 essays in this book chart his intellectual journey.
Embracing Uncertainty: Future Jazz, That 13th Century Buddhist Monk, and the Invention of Cultures
Sumeru Press, Aug. 2021
By John Traphagan, professor, Department of Religious Studies and Human Dimensions of Organizations
An anthropological memoir of the author’s experiences in Japan and other places to explore ideas of uncertainty and undifferentiation as they relate to ethics and culture. The book threads a discussion of jazz improvisation as metaphor for the human experience and the ongoing process of change that is the world.
Vagueness and the Evolution of Consciousness: Through the Looking Glass
Oxford University Press, Aug. 2021
By Michael Tye, professor, Department of Philosophy
Either consciousness arose in living beings suddenly, like a light switch turning on, or it appeared gradually as life itself did. Unfortunately, both alternatives face deep problems. The solution to these problems lies in the realization, strange as it may be, that a key element of consciousness itself was always here, as a fundamental feature of micro-reality.
Fashioning Spanish Cinema: Costume, Identity, and Stardom
University of Toronto Press, Aug. 2021
By Jorge Pérez, chair and professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Fashioning Spanish Cinema examines the intersections between fashion, costume design and Spanish cinema. Focusing on examples in which film costumes engage broader issues of identity, this book explores the links between costume analysis and fashion studies, the history of dress, celebrity studies, and gender and feminist studies.