Disentangling: The Geographies of Digital Disconnection
Oxford University Press, July 2021
Edited by Paul C. Adams, Professor, Department of Geography and the Environment, and André Jansson, Karlstad University
After the rapid rise of digital networking in the 2000s and 2010s, we are now seeing a rise of interest in how people can disentangle their lives from the increasingly pervasive networks of digital communications. This edited volume contributes to the turn toward digital disconnection research by bringing together an interdisciplinary group of authors with expertise in various forms and philosophies of disentangling. By “disentangling” we mean disconnection not just from media but from a digitalized world, a world in which places and landscapes are increasingly structured around digital connectivity.
Routledge Handbook of Media Geographies
Routledge, November 2021
Edited by Paul C. Adams, Professor, Department of Geography and the Environment, and Barney Warf, University of Kansas
This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of media geography, focusing on a range of different media viewed through the lenses of human geography and media theory. It addresses the spatial practices and processes associated with both old and new media, considering “media” not just as technologies and infrastructures, but also as networks, systems, and assemblages of things that come together to enable communication in the real world.
In Defense of My People
Arte Público Press, University of Houston, November 2021
By Alonso S Perales, translated by Emilio Zamora, Professor, Department of History
In 1927, when his letters to two Texas governors about the assassination of Mexican Americans in police custody in South Texas were ignored, Alonso S. Perales wrote to President Coolidge, asking for the Justice Department to conduct an official investigation into their deaths.
Originally published in Spanish in 1936 and 1937, In Defense of My People contains articles, letters, and speeches written by one of the most influential civil rights activists of the early twentieth century. A must-read for anyone interested in the Latino community’s fight for rights, dignity and respect.
Information and Democracy: Public Policy in the News
Cambridge University Press, January 2022
By Christopher Wlezien, Professor, Department of Government, and Stuart N. Soroka, University of California, Los Angeles
It is vital in representative democracies that citizens have access to reliable information about what is happening in government policy so that they can form meaningful preferences and hold politicians accountable. Yet much research and conventional wisdom questions whether the necessary information is available, consumed, and understood. This study is the first large-scale empirical investigation into the frequency and reliability of media coverage in five policy domains, and it provides tools that can be exported to other areas in the US and elsewhere.
The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality
University of Texas Press, January 2022
By Martha Menchaca, Professor, Department of Anthropology
A historical overview of Mexican Americans’ social and economic experiences in Texas, told through the lens of their fight for civil rights, from the Spanish period to the present.
For hundreds of years, Mexican Americans in Texas have fought against political oppression and exclusion—in courtrooms, in schools, at the ballot box, and beyond. Through a detailed exploration of this long battle for equality, Martha Menchaca illuminates critical moments of both struggle and triumph in the Mexican American experience.
Directions for Pedagogical Construction Grammar: Learning and Teaching (with) Constructions
De Gruyter Mouton, February 2022
Edited by Hans C. Boas, Professor and Chair, Department of Germanic Studies
How can insights from Construction Grammar (CxG) be applied to foreign language learning (FLL) and foreign language teaching (FLT)? This volume explores several aspects of Pedagogical Construction Grammar, with a specific look at issues relevant to second language acquisition, FLL, and FLT. The contributions in this volume discuss a wide range of constructions, as well as different resources, methodologies, and data used to learn constructions in the language classroom.
Nothing: A Philosophical History
Oxford University Press, February 2022
By Roy Sorensen, Professor, Department of Philosophy
Creation stories try to explain how everything originates from nothing, but they leave something out. Nothing also has a history. This book aims to tell it. Books about nothing go back for billions of years. So say astronomers who conjecture that civilizations formed soon after the universe cooled to form stars and planets. What did the antennas of these historians miss that might be captured in this book? The hominid side of nothing.
How and How Not to Be Happy
Regnery Gateway, March 2022
By J. Budziszewski, Professor, Department of Government and Department of Philosophy
The West is facing a happiness crisis. Today, less than a quarter of American adults rate themselves as very happy—a record low. False views of happiness abound, and the explosion in “happiness studies” has done little to dispel them. Why is true happiness so elusive, and why is it so hard to define? How and How Not to Be Happy draws on decades of study to dispel the myths and wishful thinking that blind people from uncovering lasting fulfillment.
Betting on the Farm: Institutional Change in Japanese Agriculture
Cornell University Press, March 2022
By Patricia L. Maclachlan, Professor, Department of Government, and Kay Shimzu, University of Pittsburgh
Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA), a nationwide network of farm cooperatives, is under increasing pressure to expand farmer incomes by adapting coop strategies to changing market incentives. Some coops have adapted more successfully than others. In Betting on the Farm, Patricia L. Maclachlan and Kay Shimizu attribute these differences to three sets of local variables: resource endowments and product-specific market conditions, coop leadership, and the organization of farmer-members behind new coop strategies.
Ingredients of Change: The History and Culture of Food in Modern Bulgaria
Cornell University Press, April 2022
By Mary Neuburger, Professor, Department of History
An exploration of modern Bulgaria’s foodways from the Ottoman era to the present, outlining how Bulgarians domesticated and adapted diverse local, regional, and global foods and techniques, and how the nation’s culinary topography has been continually reshaped by the imperial legacies of the Ottomans, Habsburgs, Russians, and Soviets, as well as by the ingenuity of its own people. Changes in Bulgarian cooking and cuisine, Neuburger shows, were driven less by nationalism than by the circulation of powerful food narratives, along with peoples, goods, technologies, and politics.
Imagining Antiquity in Islamic Societies
University of Chicago Press, April 2022
By Stephennie Mulder, Associate Professor, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
The tragic destruction of cultural heritage performed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq is often superficially explained as an attempt to stamp out idolatry or as a fundamentalist desire to revive and enforce a return to a purified monotheism. However, this is not the full picture. This book explores the diverse ways Muslims have engaged with the material legacies of ancient and pre-Islamic societies, as well as how Islam’s heritage has been framed and experienced over time.
The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics
Cambridge University Press, May 2022
By Eric L. McDaniel, Associate Professor, Department of Government, Irfan Nooruddin, Georgetown University, and Allyson F. Shortle, University of Oklahoma
What is causing the American public to move more openly into alt-right terrain? What explains the uptick in anti-immigrant hysteria, isolationism, and an increasing willingness to support alternatives to democratic governance? The Everyday Crusade provides an answer, pointing to American Religious Exceptionalism (ARE), a widely held religious nationalist ideology steeped in myth about the nation’s original purpose. The book offers a critical touchstone for better understanding American national identity and the exclusionary ideologies that have plagued the nation since its inception.
Confluence and Conflict: Reading Transwar Japanese Literature and Thought
Harvard East Asian Monographs, May 2022
By Brian Hurley, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies
Writers and intellectuals in modern Japan have long forged dialogues across the boundaries separating the spheres of literature and thought. This book explores some of their most provocative connections in the volatile years of the 1920s to the 1950s, revealing unexpected intersections of literature, ideas, and politics in a global transwar context.