Weekly Book List, January 8, 2016

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

Prefiguring Postblackness: Cultural Memory, Drama, and the African American Freedom Struggle of the 1960s by Carol Bunch Davis (University Press of Mississippi; 210 pages; $65). Traces tensions between depictions of the freedom struggle and ideas of blackness in five plays staged first between 1959 and 1969: Dutchman, A Raisin in the Sun, Wine in the Wilderness, The Great White Hope, and No Place to Be Somebody.

The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice, and the Rise of Black Politics in the 1970s by Kenneth Robert Janken (University of North Carolina Press; 246 pages; $30). Discusses the trial, conviction, and eventually overturned convictions of 10 activists on charges of arson and conspiracy in association with violence surrounding school desegregation in the North Carolina city in 1971.

AMERICAN STUDIES

Anti-Imperialist Modernism: Race and Transnational Radical Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War by Benjamin Balthaser (University of Michigan Press; 320 pages; $80). Explores networks of North-South solidarity through discussion of such phenomena as U.S. radical writers traveling to Cuba, and the Nez Perce anthropologist Archie Phinney traveling to the Soviet Union.

ANTHROPOLOGY

The Agendas of Tibetan Refugees: Survival Strategies of a Government-In-Exile in a World of Transnational Organizations by Thomas Kauffmann (Berghahn Books; 207 pages; $90). Examines reasons for Tibetan refugees’ success in attracting resources and support from the West; topics include the long-standing Western fascination with all things Tibetan, and the actions taken by the Central Tibetan Administration, or government in exile.

Class Work: Vocational Schools and China’s Urban Youth by T.E. Woronov (Stanford University Press; 185 pages; $85 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Uses two institutions in Nanjing to examine the role of vocational schools in the construction of a new urban working class.

Dilemmas of Difference: Indigenous Women and the Limits of Postcolonial Development Policy by Sarah A. Radcliffe (Duke University Press; 372 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Draws on fieldwork and postcolonial theory in a study of responses to development policies among Kichwa- and Tsachila-speaking women in Chimborazo Province.

Gypsy Economy: Romani Livelihoods and Notions of Worth in the 21st Century edited by Micol Brazzabeni, Manuela Ivone Cunha, and Martin Fotta (Berghahn Books; 263 pages; $90). Ethnographic writings that document the diversity of the Roma’s economic situation as tied to their social position in given societies; settings include Hungary, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Italy, Brazil, and Spain.

Negro Soy Yo: Hip Hop and Raced Citizenship in Neoliberal Cuba by Marc D. Perry (Duke University Press; 288 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Uses the lives and music of raperos to explore the racial dynamics of Cuba’s transition from revolutionary socialism to market capitalism.

Recovery’s Edge: An Ethnography of Mental Health Care and Moral Agency by Neely Laurenzo Myers (Vanderbilt University Press; 191 pages; $49.95 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). Discusses a clinic run, in part, by people in recovery themselves from mental illness.

Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba by Valerio Simoni (Berghahn Books; 266 pages; $95). Draws on fieldwork in Havana, the beach resort of Playas del Este, and the rural town of Vinales in a study of encounters between Cubans and foreign tourists.

Ultimate Ambiguities: Investigating Death and Liminality edited by Peter Berger and Justin Kroesen (Berghahn Books; 278 pages; $105). Writings by anthropologists and other scholars on such topics as Argentine mourning of state terror, suicide bombers’ preparations for paradise, and the body and soul between death and funeral in Archaic Greece.

Waterworlds: Anthropology in Fluid Environments edited by Kirsten Hastrup and Frida Hastrup (Berghahn Books; 308 pages; $110). Essays on the interplay of water and social life in the Andes, West Africa, Mauritania, Bengal, East Anglia, the High Arctic, Kiribati, and other settings.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Ancestral Mounds: Vitality and Volatility of Native America by Jay Miller (University of Nebraska Press; 232 pages; $55). Focuses on Oklahoma and the Southeast in a study of the significance, past and present, of earthen mounds in indigenous communities.

The Importance of British Material Culture to Historical Archaeologies of the Nineteenth Century edited by Alasdair Brooks (University of Nebraska Press; 369 pages; $90). Topics include ceramics made for export, the material culture of food, and coffins and other artifacts of funerary ritual.

The Maya of the Cochuah Region: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on the Northern Lowlands edited by Justine M. Shaw (University of New Mexico Press; 328 pages; $85). Presents research on more than 80 sites in the Northern Lowlands region of the Yucatan Peninsula; topics include caves as holy places.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Architecture in Play: Intimations of Modernism in Architectural Toys by Tamar Zinguer (University of Virginia Press; 272 pages; $49.50). A study of architectural toys in wood, stone, metal, and paper since the 19th century, including the Anchor Stone Building Blocks (1877) and the Erector Set (1911).

Art Rethought: The Social Practices of Art by Nicholas Wolterstorff (Oxford University Press; 331 pages; $50). Argues for a wider range in the way philosophers’ view our engagement with art, which has centered on disinterested aesthetic attention; discusses, for example, art created for social protest, veneration, or memorial.

Peripheral Vision: Bell Labs, the S-C 4020, and the Origins of Computer Art by Zabet Patterson (MIT Press; 133 pages; $28). Discusses a device originally produced by Stromberg-Carlson in 1959 and further developed by Bell Labs to become key to the production of computer art.

Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048 edited by Joasia Krysa and Jussi Parikka (MIT Press; 340 pages; $45). Writings on and about the Finnish artist, composer, filmmaker, media pioneer, and futurologist (b. 1941).

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Agamemnon by Aeschylus, translated by David Mulroy (University of Wisconsin Press; 134 pages; $12.95). Annotated verse translation of the first play in the Oresteia.

Ancient Rome and the Construction of Modern Homosexual Identities edited by Jennifer Ingleheart (Oxford University Press; 358 pages; $120). Topics include contrasting views of Greece and Rome in constructing the history of homosexuality.

Athenian Prostitution: The Business of Sex by Edward E. Cohen (Oxford University Press; 243 pages; $74). Offers an economic perspective on female and male prostitution in Athens in the fourth century BC, both slave and free.

Beyond Greek: The Beginnings of Latin Literature by Denis Feeney (Harvard University Press; 377 pages; $35). Examines the wider historical context of Latin’s emergence into literature between 240 and 140 BC with the performance in translation of Greek plays.

Echoing Hylas: A Study in Hellenistic and Roman Metapoetics by Mark Heerink (University of Wisconsin Press; 243 pages; $65). A study of how poets in antiquity, reflecting on their place in the literary tradition, drew on the story of Hylas, a boy who while seeking water for his companion Hercules is pulled into a spring by lovestruck nymphs and never seen again.

The Image of the Artist in Archaic and Classical Greece: Art, Poetry, and Subjectivity by Guy Hedreen (Cambridge University Press; 408 pages; $120). Topics include artistic subjectivity as reflected in vase painting as early as the sixth century BC and developed in the work of such poets as Archilochos and Hipponax.

CRIMINOLOGY

Deadly Injustice: Trayvon Martin, Race, and the Criminal Justice System edited by Devon Johnson, Patricia Y. Warren, and Amy Farrell (New York University Press; 354 pages; $89 hardcover, $28 paperback). Essays that use the 2012 killing of the unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his assailant to explore wider issues; topics include the dangers of racialized perceptions and thinking by law enforcement.

DANCE

Dramaturgy in Motion: At Work on Dance and Movement Performance by Katherine Profeta (University of Wisconsin Press; 263 pages; $26.95). Draws on the author’s work with the choreographer and visual artist Ralph Lemon in a study of five aspects of dramaturgy in dance.

ECONOMICS

Adam Smith: His Life, Thought, and Legacy edited by Ryan Patrick Hanley (Princeton University Press; 600 pages; $45). Essays on the 18th-century Scottish philosopher and political economist.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Beyond the Tragedy in Global Fisheries by D.G. Webster (MIT Press; 468 pages; $39). Draws on the concept of “responsive governance” in a study of cycles of effective and ineffective management of commercial fishing over time.

The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age by David S. Abraham (Yale University Press; 319 pages; $30). Examines environmental, geopolitical, and other aspects of the growing demand for rare metals as a key requirement of today’s technologies.

Emergent Ecologies by Eben Kirksey (Duke University Press; 304 pages; $94.95 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Combines perspectives from anthropology, biology, postmodern theory, art, and other realms to discuss interspecies mingling, including what opportunistically flourishes in unexpected places.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South by Paul S. Sutter (University of Georgia Press; 280 pages; $34.95). Uses Georgia’s Providence Canyon State Park to examine erosion in the South and the scenic results of environmental disaster.

FILM STUDIES

Albert Capellani: Pioneer of the Silent Screen by Christine Leteux (University Press of Kentucky; 192 pages; $40). English edition of a 2013 biography of the French director and screenwriter (1874-1931), who also worked for a time in the United States.

Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures: Film and the First Amendment by Jeremy Geltzer (University of Texas Press; 370 pages; $85 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Examines the history of movies that expanded personal rights and furthered free expression, both before and after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1952 decision on Rossellini’s Miracle.

Flickers of Film: Nostalgia in the Time of Digital Cinema by Jason Sperb (Rutgers University Press; 187 pages; $90 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Explores a nostalgia in Hollywood for film (as in celluloid) as well as other outmoded analog technologies.

The Possible South: Documentary Film and the Limitations of Biraciality by R. Bruce Brasell (University Press of Mississippi; 288 pages; $70). Explores problems with the presentation of a binary black and white South in such films as Tell about the South, bro•ken/ground, and Family Name.

“Wuthering Heights” on Film and Television: A Journey Across Time and Cultures by Valerie V. Hazette (Intellect Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 359 pages; $43). Includes discussion of British, French, Mexican, Japanese, and other screen versions of Emily Bronte’s work.

FOLKLORE

Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog, Adder’s Fork and Lizard’s Leg: The Lore and Mythology of Amphibians and Reptiles by Marty Crump (University of Chicago Press; 320 pages; $35). Combines folklore and natural history in an account of cultural associations with snakes, frogs, lizards, turtles, and the like.

GAY AND LESBIAN STUDIES

The Straight Line: How the Fringe Science of Ex-Gay Therapy Reoriented Sexuality by Tom Waidzunas (University of Minnesota Press; 321 pages; $94.50 hardcover, $27 paperback). Documents how the movement to alter sexual orientation has sought legitimacy by engaging with scientific institutions.

HISTORY

Beyond Rust: Metropolitan Pittsburgh and the Fate of Industrial America by Allen Dieterich-Ward (University of Pennsylvania Press; 347 pages; $39.95). A history of the Pittsburgh metropolitan region’s rise, fall, and rebirth.

The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims From North Africa to France by Ethan B. Katz (Harvard University Press; 465 pages; $35). Examines the varied interactions, and at times shared interests, of Jews and Muslims in France and French Africa from World War I to the present.

Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Early Chinese Bamboo-Slip Manuscripts by Sarah Allan (State University of New York Press; 372 pages; $95). Edition, translation, and study of Tang Yu zhi dao, Zi Gao, Rongchengshi, and Bao xun, four texts written in the regional script of Chu from the Warring States period (475-221 BC) that advocate meritocratic over hereditary rule.

Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawai’i by John Ryan Fischer (University of North Carolina Press; 280 pages; $39.95). Documents the environmental and other impacts of cattle raising in the two colonial settings in the early 19th century.

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire by Roger Crowley (Random House; 368 pages; $30). Traces the country’s rise to a period of maritime dominance with the discovery of a route to India around Africa.

Embezzlement and High Treason in Louis XIV’s France: The Trial of Nicolas Fouquet by Vincent J. Pitts (Johns Hopkins University Press; 224 pages; $44.95). Discusses the 1661 arrest and subsequent trial of France’s superintendent of finance, who after a successful three-year effort to exonerate himself, had his verdict overturned by the king and was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment in the Alps.

The Four Freedoms: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Evolution of an American Idea edited by Jeffrey A. Engel (Oxford University Press; 232 pages; $29.95). Essays on the changing meaning and legacy of the president’s rallying cry for the freedoms of speech, religion, and from want and fear.

From Loyalists to Loyal Citizens: The DePeyster Family of New York by Valerie H. McKito (State University of New York Press; 248 pages; $24.95). Traces the political transformation of one of the first families of New Amsterdam, who went from unapologetic Loyalists during the Revolution, to exiles in Canada and Britain after, to staunch American patriots by the War of 1812.

The Germans and the Holocaust: Popular Responses to the Persecution and Murder of the Jews edited by Susanna Schrafstetter and Alan E. Steinweis (Berghahn Books; 186 pages; $90). Draws on previously untapped sources in essays on how ordinary Germans responded to the persecution and mass killing of Jews between 1933 and 1945.

Heading South to Teach: The World of Susan Nye Hutchison, 1815-1845 by Kim Tolley (University of North Carolina Press; 278 pages; $29.95). Draws on the journals of a rural New York woman who migrated to North Carolina and Georgia to teach during the period known as the Second Great Awakening.

In His Own Words: Houston Hartsfield Holloway’s Slavery, Emancipation, and Ministry in Georgia edited by David E. Paterson (Mercer University Press; 247 pages; $35). Edition of the autobiography of the blacksmith turned preacher (1844-1917), who was born a slave in upcountry Georgia.

Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman Behind the Making of “On War” by Vanya Eftimova Bellinger (Oxford University Press; 298 pages; $29.95). Draws on newly discovered correspondence in a study of Marie von Clausewitz’s role in shaping the final form of her husband, Carl’s, masterwork, as well as shepherding it through posthumous publication, and ensuring his legacy.

Mining and Communities in Northern Canada: History, Politics, and Memory edited by Arn Keeling and John Sandlos (University of Calgary Press, distributed by Michigan State University Press; 400 pages; US$34.95). Combines archival and oral-historical approaches on the impact of mining on First Nations communities.

Music Theater and Popular Nationalism in Spain, 1880-1930 by Clinton D. Young (Louisiana State University Press; 272 pages; $45). Traces the unifying role played by the music, dance, and stories of the zarzuela.

Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America by David M. Krueger (University of Minnesota Press; 213 pages; $87.50 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Examines history pageants and other manifestations of popular belief in the Kensington Rune Stone, an inscribed slab that devotees believe was left behind by Scandinavian explorers in Minnesota in the 14th century.

One Nation Divided by Slavery: Remembering the American Revolution While Marching toward the Civil War by Michael F. Conlin (Kent State University Press; 280 pages; $39.95). Documents the “history wars” of the period, including competing views of the Founders as slaveholders.

Parables of Coercion: Conversion and Knowledge at the End of Islamic Spain by Seth Kimmel (University of Chicago Press; 239 pages; $40). Focuses on debates over the forced conversion of Spain’s Muslims in the 16th century and the later expulsion of those converts (Moriscos) and their descendants.

Paris at War, 1939-1944 by David Drake (Harvard University Press; 545 pages; $35). Examines everyday life in the city as France went to war, through the occupation, and with liberation.

Political Freud: A History by Eli Zaretsky (Columbia University Press; 228 pages; $35). Examines how psychoanalytic ideas have been employed in analyses of consumer capitalism, racism, anti-Semitism, and other phenomena.

Radical Inequalities: China’s Revolutionary Welfare State in Comparative Perspective by Nara Dillon (Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press; 332 pages; $49.95). Draws on newly available archival sources in a study of inequalities in the Chinese welfare state that were institutionalized as the system developed from the 1940s through the 1960s; links the phenomenon to the mismatch of models borrowed from Europe.

The Rise and Decline of an Iberian Bourgeoisie: Manresa in the Later Middle Ages, 1250-1500 by Jeff Fynn-Paul (Cambridge University Press; 369 pages; $120). A study of the Catalonian city that draws on the 1408 Liber Manifesti, a cadastral survey of more than 640 households.

Russia’s Sisters of Mercy and the Great War: More Than Binding Men’s Wounds by Laurie S. Stoff (University Press of Kansas; 384 pages; $34.95). Focuses on Russian nurses’ frontline experiences in World War I, as their work challenged conventions for women.

Sin City North: Sex, Drugs, and Citizenship in the Detroit-Windsor Borderland by Holly M. Karibo (University of North Carolina Press; 226 pages; $29.95). Explores issues of race, gender, labor, and citizenship through a study of the cross-border sex and heroin trade in the late 1940s and 1950s.

Southern Tufts: The Regional Origins and National Craze for Chenille Fashion by Ashley Callahan (University of Georgia Press; 224 pages; $39.95). Traces the rising popularity of the tufted textile, beginning with bedspreads linked to the Appalachian Craft Revival and extending nationwide into garments, especially bathrobes.

Speer: Hitler’s Architect by Martin Kitchen (Yale University Press; 442 pages; $37.50). A biography of Albert Speer (1905-81) that challenges the Nazi official’s denial of knowledge of Nazi crimes.

Tales From the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery From the Civil War Era by Tiya Miles (University of North Carolina Press; 154 pages; $24.95). Examines the representation of slavery in “ghost tours” conducted in plantation homes and cemeteries in the South.

Traces of Grand Peace: Classics and State Activism in Imperial China by Jaeyoon Song (Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press; 434 pages; $59.95). Focuses on commentaries by the reform-concilor Wang Anshi (1021-86) in a study of efforts to revise The Rituals of Zhou, an ancient Confucian classic that had stood as a blueprint for bureaucracy.

Women Prophets and Radical Protestantism in the British Atlantic World, 1640-1730 by Elizabeth Bouldin (Cambridge University Press; 216 pages; $99.99). Explores invocations of “chosenness” in a study of female Protestant prophecy from the English Civil War to the Great Awakening.

Women’s Views: The Narrative Stereograph in Nineteenth-Century America by Melody Davis (University of New Hampshire Press/University Press of New England; 247 pages; $40). Examines how changing societal views of women were reflected in the immersive visual experience of the 3-D device.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, Volume 8: New Beginnings, January 1885--December 1887 edited by Paul B. Israel and others (Johns Hopkins University Press; 1,032 pages; $115). Documents a period that sees the scientist and inventor newly widowed and includes the building of his famed West Orange, N.J., laboratory.

LAW

Enforcing the Equal Protection Clause: Congressional Power, Judicial Doctrine, and Constitutional Law by William D. Araiza (New York University Press; 304 pages; $60). Examines Congress’s enforcement power spelled out in the 14th Amendment with the Supreme Court’s claim of superiority in constitutional interpretation.

LINGUISTICS

Signed Language Interpretation and Translation Research edited by Brenda Nicodemus and Keith Cagle (Gallaudet University Press; 250 pages; $70). Research on such topics as how interpreter-mediated discourse affects perceptions of deaf professionals.

LITERATURE

Acts of Angry Writing: On Citizenship and Orientalism in Postcolonial India by Alessandra Marino (Wayne State University Press; 240 pages; $44.99). Examines autobiographical and other writings by the female activists and authors Mahasweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, and Sampat Pal.

Antosha and Levitasha: The Shared Lives and Art of Anton Chekhov and Isaac Levitan by Serge Gregory (Northern Illinois University Press; 248 pages; $39). Explores the friendship and shared aesthetic of the Russian writer and the Russian landscape painter.

Beckett’s Art of Mismaking by Leland de la Durantaye (Harvard University Press; 194 pages; $29.95). A study of the Irish-born writer’s artistic purpose in what he termed la malfacon creatrice volue or “willed creative mismaking.”

Bird Relics: Grief and Vitalism in Thoreau by Branka Arsic (Harvard University Press; 455 pages; $49.95). Uses such sources as Thoreau’s calendars, unpublished bird notebooks, and intellectual engagement with group of Harvard vitalists to describe how the writer, grieving the loss of his brother, came to see death as part of the generative nature of life.

The Body as Capital: Masculinities in Contemporary Latin American Fiction by Vinodh Venkatesh (University of Arizona Press; 184 pages; $24.95). Topics include commoditizing the male body in Sergio Ramirez’s Margarita, esta linda la mar.

Brazil and the Dialectic of Colonization by Alfredo Bosi, translated by Robert Patrick Newcomb (University of Illinois Press; 373 pages; $95 hardcover, $35 paperback). English translation of an influential 1992 Portuguese-language work on literary and other realms of Brazilian culture and history since the colonial period.

Carol Shields and the Writer-Critic by Brenda Beckman-Long (University of Toronto Press; 176 pages; US$65 hardcover, US$29.95 paperback). A study of the Canadian writer (1935-2003), who is best known for The Stone Diaries (1993); includes analysis of her six novels, criticism, and engagement with women’s life writing.

How Robert Frost Made Realism Matter by Jonathan N. Barron (University of Missouri Press; 336 pages; $60). Focuses on works published in popular magazines between 1894 and 1915.

The Hunt in Arabic Poetry: From Heroic to Lyric to Metapoetic by Jaroslav Stetkevych (University of Notre Dame Press; 304 pages; $34). Traces the changing nature of the hunt as a theme in Arabic poetry from the oral traditions of the pre-Islamic period through and beyond the courtly poetry of the Umayyad and Abassid caliphates to high Arabic modernism.

Insurgent Testimonies: Witnessing Colonial Trauma in Modern and Anglophone Literature by Nicole M. Rizzuto (Fordham University Press; 272 pages; $110 hardcover, $30 paperback). Focuses on writings by the Polish-born Joseph Conrad, Anglo-Irish Rebecca West, Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Jamaicans H.G. de Lisser and V.S. Reid.

Joyce’s Allmaziful Plurabilities: Polyvocal Explorations of “Finnegans Wake” edited by Kimberly J. Devlin and Christine Smedley (University Press of Florida; 336 pages; $74.95). Essays that apply game theory, ecocriticism, psychoanalysis, historicism, genetic studies, and other approaches to the 1939 novel.

The Lebanese Post-Civil-War Novel: Memory, Trauma, and Capital by Felix Lang (Palgrave Macmillan; 272 pages; $95). Writers discussed include Elias Khoury and Rashid al-Daif.

Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Science, Space, and Crime Fiction in France by Andrea Goulet (University of Pennsylvania Press; 312 pages; $65). Uses vertical and horizontal axes to explore changing depictions of violence, space, and nation in French crime writing from the 1860s to cyberpunk fiction.

Literature and Moral Theory by Nora Hamalainen (Bloomsbury Academic; 242 pages; $110). Considers how narrative literature has figured in discussions of moral philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition since the 1970s; topics include neo-Aristotelianism, moral particularism, and anti-theory.

Luxuriant Gems of the “Spring and Autumn": Attributed to Dong Zhongshu edited and translated by Sarah A. Queen and John S. Major (Columbia University Press; 681 pages; $65). First complete English translation of a key text of early Confucianism; attributes its authorship to a variety of authors, rather than the Han scholar and court official Dong Zhongshu (195-104 BC).

Maya Angelou: Adventurous Spirit by Linda Wagner-Martin (Bloomsbury Academic; 245 pages; $80 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). A biographical and critical study of the American writer (1928-2014).

Modernity’s Mist: British Romanticism and the Poetics of Anticipation by Emily Rohrbach (Fordham University Press; 185 pages; $85 hardcover, $28 paperback). Focuses on Keats, Austen, Byron, and Hazlitt in a study of what is termed the future-oriented poetics of Romanticism.

On the Edge of the Holocaust: The Shoah in Latin American Literature and Culture by Edna Aizenberg (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England; 182 pages; $40). Focuses on works by the Argentine, Brazilian, and Chilean writers Alberto Gerchunoff, Clarice Lispector, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriela Mistral, and Joao Guimaraes Rosa.

Reading C.S. Lewis: A Commentary by Wesley A. Kort (Oxford University Press; 299 pages; $29.95). Examines the English writer’s turn to religion in more than a dozen works.

Reading Junot Diaz by Christopher Gonzalez (University of Pittsburgh Press; 181 pages; $24.95). Focuses on Drown, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and This Is How You Lose Her in a study of the Dominican-American writer (b. 1968).

Refiguring Minds in Narrative Media by David Ciccoricco (University of Nebraska Press; 344 pages; $55). Draws on cognitive science to explore narrative in realms from print to digital fiction and story-driven video games.

Robert Lowell in Love by Jeffrey Meyers (University of Massachusetts Press; 288 pages; $34.95). A study of the charismatic poet’s relationships with the women in his life, including his mother, his three wives, nine of his lovers, and such friends, students, and fellow writers as Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath.

Secular Scriptures: Modern Theological Poetics in the Wake of Dante by William Franke (Ohio State University Press; 256 pages; $71.95). Explores literature as a form of secularized revelation through discussion of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Leopardi, Baudelaire, Dickinson, and Yeats, framed by considerations of Dante.

Timing Canada: The Shifting Politics of Time in Canadian Literary Culture by Paul Huebener (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 304 pages; US$100 hardcover, US$37.95 paperback). Draws on literary and other realms in a study of the cultural politics of time in Canada; authors discussed include Jeannette Armstrong, Joseph Boyden, Dionne Brand, Timothy Findley, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Gabrielle Roy.

The Tribe of Pyn: Literary Generations in the Postmodern Period by David Cowart (University of Michigan Press; 258 pages; $80 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Examines the generational inheritance of writers born in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and later, including Michael Dorris, Gloria Naylor, Richard Powers, Steve Erickson, and Jennifer Egan.

The Wallflower Avant-Garde: Modernism, Sexuality, and Queer Ekphrasis by Brian Glavey (Oxford University Press; 218 pages; $74). Combines queer theory, modernist aesthetics, and ekphrasis, or the literary imitation or description of art in a study of Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Richard Bruce Nugent, Frank O’Hara, and John Ashbery.

Wilde’s Women: How Oscar Wilde Was Shaped by the Women He Knew by Eleanor Fitzsimmons (Overlook Press; 372 pages; $32.50). Topics include the writer’s relationships with his mother, Jane; Florence Balcombe, an early love; his wife, Constance; and his niece, Dolly, who rivaled her uncle in flouting convention.

Words of Witness: Black Women’s Autobiography in the Post-Brown Era by Angela A. Ards (University of Wisconsin Press; 230 pages; $26.95). Analyzes works by such writers as June Jordan, Edwidge Danticat, Melba Beals, Rosemary Bray, and Eisa Davis.

Writing the South Seas: Imagining the Nanyang in Chinese and Southeast Asian Postcolonial Literature by Brian Bernards (University of Washington Press; 288 pages; $50). Examines Chinese-language literature on Chinese migration to Southeast Asia.

MATHEMATICS

Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius in the Enlightenment by Ronald S. Calinger (Princeton University Press; 669 pages; $55). Draws on more than 80 volumes of works and correspondence in a biography of the Swiss mathematician and physicist (1707-83).

MUSIC

Karaoke Idols: Popular Music and the Performance of Identity by Kevin Brown (Intellect Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 152 pages; $36). Offers an ethnographic perspective on the machine-enabled public singing; draws on two years of fieldwork in a bar near Denver.

Music City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and Newport by Jonathan R. Wynn (University of Chicago Press; 312 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). A work in the “sociology of occasions” that examines the impact of major annual music festivals in each city.

PHILOSOPHY

After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships edited by Elizabeth Brake (Oxford University Press; 247 pages; $99 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Essays on marriage by scholars in philosophy; topics include liberal neutrality and civil marriage, and polygamy, privacy, and equality.

Authenticity as Self-Transcendence: The Enduring Insights of Bernard Lonergan by Michael H. McCarthy (University of Notre Dame Press; 435 pages; $49). Essays on the Canadian philosopher and theologian.

Biopower: Foucault and Beyond edited by Vernon W. Cisney and Nicolae Morar (University of Chicago Press; 376 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Essays that examine, apply, transform, and extend the French philosopher’s concepts of biopower and biopolitics.

The Challenge of Surrealism: The Correspondence of Theodor W. Adorno and Elisabeth Lenk edited and translated by Susan H. Gillespie (University of Minnesota Press; 263 pages; $96 hardcover, $27.50 paperback). Translation of letters exchanged between Adorno and one of his politically active graduate students that sheds light on the Frankfurt School theorist’s views on Surrealism and its relationship to student uprisings in 1960s France and Germany.

Character: New Directions From Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology edited by Christian B. Miller and others (Oxford University Press; 704 pages; $74). Topics include challenges to ideas of character from neuroscience and situationism.

Division III of Heidegger’s “Being and Time": The Unanswered Question of Being edited by Lee Braver (MIT Press; 362 pages; $45). Essays that speculate on what might have been presented in the planned but unwritten division III of Being and Time; considers why Heidegger never published it.

Flower of the Desert: Giacomo Leopardi’s Poetic Ontology by Antonio Negri, translated by Timothy S. Murphy (State University of New York Press; 448 pages; $100). Translation of the Italian philosopher’s work on Leopardi that casts the 19th-century poet as a deeply materialist thinker.

Hegel’s Theory of Intelligibility by Rocio Zambrana (University of Chicago Press; 183 pages; $40). Focuses on Hegel’s Science of Logic as the highest point of the German philosopher’s modernism.

Janus’s Gaze: Essays on Carl Schmitt by Carlo Galli, edited by Adam Sitze, translated by Amanda Minervini (Duke University Press; 240 pages; $84.95 hardcover, $23.95 paperback). Translation of Italian essays on the German thinker; topics include Schmitt’s political theology, his relation to Leo Strauss, and his readings of Machiavelli and Spinoza.

Means, Ends, and Persons: The Meaning and Psychological Dimensions of Kant’s Humanity Formula by Robert Audi (Oxford University Press; 171 pages; $45). Develops an ethics of conduct.

Revivals of Antigone by William Robert (State University of New York Press; 101 pages; $65). Sets Sophocles’ tragedy in dialogue with Luce Irigaray and examines how his heroine is invoked in contemporary debates in ethics, religion, sexuality, and other realms.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism by John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart (Oxford University Press; 391 pages; $29.95). Focuses on the FBI, NSA, Homeland Security, and local police forces in a study of the effectiveness of daily following up on thousands of “ghost leads” in the war on terrorism.

The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World by Ho-fung Hung (Columbia University Press; 232 pages; $35). Combines historical, sociological, and political perspectives in a study of the origins and history of China’s capitalist boom and constraints on its power.

Fighting Monsters in the Abyss: The Second Administration of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez, 2006--2010 by Harvey F. Kline (University of Alabama Press; 256 pages; $54.95). Focuses on Uribe’s second administration in a study of his efforts to deal with Colombia’s long-running Marxist insurgency and implement judicial reforms.

Human Rights in American Foreign Policy: From the 1960s to the Soviet Collapse by Joe Renouard (University of Pennsylvania Press; 324 pages; $69.95). Examines both the benevolence and self-interested pragmatism that characterized human-rights policy during the period.

International Cooperation on WMD Nonproliferation edited by Jeffrey W. Knopf (University of Georgia Press; 333 pages; $64.95). Writings on the emergence of mechanisms and regimes for nonproliferation beyond the two core global agreements: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Local Party Organizations in the Twenty-First Century by Douglas D. Roscoe and Shannon Jenkins (State University of New York Press; 150 pages; $75). Uses data on more than 1,100 local parties in 48 states to examine the organizations’ role in American politics.

The Meaning of Citizenship edited by Richard Marback and Marc W. Kruman (Wayne State University Press; 382 pages; $34.99). Writings by historians, political scientists, and other scholars in citizenship studies; topics include the difficulties of defining citizenship in the early American republic, and labor migrant rights in contemporary Germany and Israel.

Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson (University of Chicago Press; 267 pages; $85 hardcover, $27.50 paperback). Draws on interview, survey, and other data in a study of the worldview, politics, and subculture of “peakists,” who are preoccupied with the notion of a coming social breakdown if oil production peaks then declines; discusses the phenomenon in relation to the growth of libertarianism in American political culture.

Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution: Shopping Malls and the First Amendment by Anthony Maniscalco (State University of New York Press; 288 pages; $85). Discusses Supreme Court decisions that have restricted freedom of expression in shopping malls and other public places.

Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing by Beth Simone Noveck (Harvard University Press; 352 pages; $29.95). Considers ways in which governing institutions can use technology to incorporate citizen expertise and creativity for the public interest.

POPULAR CULTURE

“Mad Men” Unzipped: Fans on Sex, Love, and the Sixties on TV by Karen E. Dill-Shackleford and others (University of Iowa Press; 183 pages; $22.50). Combines scholarly and personal perspectives in a study of fans of the acclaimed series from a media psychology perspective; topics include how the show was integrated into fans’ lives.

PSYCHOLOGY

The Mimetic Brain by Jean-Michel Oughourlian, translated by Trevor Cribben Merrill (Michigan State University Press; 228 pages; $24.95). Combines data from neuroscience with theories of Rene Girard to link psychoses and neuroses to the interactions of the brain’s capacity for reason, emotion, and mimesis.

Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences by William A. Richards (Columbia University Press; 244 pages; $29.95). Discusses psychedelics in psychotherapy as a vehicle for transformative mystical experiences.

RELIGION

Anti-Apollinarian Writings by St. Gregory of Nyssa, translated by Robin Orton (Catholic University of America Press; 288 pages; $39.95). First published English translation of the Antirrheticus, a treatise written by Gregory in the 380s against the teachings of Apolinarius of Laodicea; also attempts to reconstruct Apolinarius’s now-lost Apodeixis through Gregory’s quotes.

Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology edited by Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford University Press; 261 pages; $110). Essays on the medieval theologian’s reception of the Greek thinker in a relation to the Trinity, angels, soul and body, grace, justice, and other central theological domains; topics include God as pure act.

Astrology and Reformation by Robin B. Barnes (Oxford University Press; 389 pages; $74). Examines the interwoven worlds of astrology and evangelical faith in Germany between around 1480 and 1620.

Bede’s Temple: An Image and its Interpretation by Conor O’Brien (Oxford University Press; 242 pages; $110). Links ideas of unity to the imagery of the Jewish temple in the writings of the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon theologian; also examines the temple in relation to the community of Bede’s monastery at Wearmouth-Jarrow and its monks’ production of an illuminated Bible.

Deathpower: Buddhism’s Ritual Imagination in Cambodia by Erik W. Davis (Columbia University Press; 303 pages; $60). Draws on fieldwork among Buddhist monks in a study of how funeral rites in contemporary Cambodia provide a window onto wider understandings of the world.

The Invention of Satanism by Asbj√∏rn Dyrendal, James R. Lewis, and Jesper Aa. Petersen (Oxford University Press; 254 pages; $35). Examines the invention and reinvention of Satanism as a religious and philosophical movement, including Anton LaVey’s founding of the Church of Satan in 1966; draws on survey data with adherents.

Nature as Sacred Ground: A Metaphysics for Religious Naturalism by Donald A. Crosby (State University of New York Press; 188 pages; $75). Defends what is termed an inviolable sacredness of nature, inherent and sufficient in nature itself.

Neither Jew nor Greek: A Contested Identity by James D.G. Dunn (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing; 946 pages; $60). Completes a three-volume study of the early church; covers the period from the destruction of the temple in AD 70 through the second century.

Religion Among We the People: Conversations on Democracy and the Divine Good by Franklin I. Gamwell (State University of New York Press; 242 pages; $80). Defends a “metaphysical theism” in relation to democracy and religious freedom; develops an argument in imagined dialogue with such figures as Jefferson, Lincoln, Alfred North Whitehead, Reinhold Niebuhr, Iris Murdoch, and the contemporary scholars David Strauss and Jurgen Habermas.

Sacred Signs in Reformation Scotland: Interpreting Worship, 1488-1590 by Stephen Mark Holmes (Oxford University Press; 240 pages; $110). Draws on an analysis of networks of writers and book owners in a study of liturgical interpretation and religious reform; topics include the legacy of the “Aberdeen liturgists.”

The Theological Anthropology of Eustathius of Antioch by Sophie Cartwright (Oxford University Press; 283 pages; $110). Discusses the thought of the fourth-century Bishop in relation to the Arian controversy, the Constantinian revolution, and the legacy of Irenaeus and Origen.

Understanding the Consecrated Life in Canada: Critical Essays on Contemporary Trends edited by Jason Zuidema (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 400 pages; US$85). Includes essays on monastic life in both the Christian and Buddhist traditions.

A Year in White: Cultural Newcomers to Lukumi and Santeria in the United States by C. Lynn Carr (Rutgers University Press; 227 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Combines scholarly and personal perspectives in a study the 53-week initiation into the priesthood of the Afro-Cuban religious tradition.

Zorba the Buddha: Sex, Spirituality, and Capitalism in the Global Osho Movement by Hugh B. Urban (University of California Press; 250 pages; $65 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Combines ethnographic and archival perspectives in a study of the life, teachings, and movement of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (1931-1990), a controversial Indian guru known in his later years as Osho.

RHETORIC

Reframing the Subject: Postwar Instructional Film and Class-Conscious Literacies by Kelly Ritter (University of Pittsburgh Press; 353 pages; $28.95). Examines mental-hygiene films intended for classroom use in the late 1940s to mid-1950s as cultural artifacts of literacy practices and beliefs.

Rereading Appalachia: Literacy, Place, and Cultural Resistance edited by Sara Webb-Sunderhaus and Kim Donehower (University Press of Kentucky; 228 pages; $50). Essays that challenge stereotypes of the region through discussion of language and rhetoric.

SOCIAL WORK

In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption by Rhonda M. Roorda (Columbia University Press; 322 pages; $85 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Documents the experiences of black adoptees as well as professionals linked to transracial adoption.

SOCIOLOGY

Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth by Phaedra Daipha (University of Chicago Press; 271 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in a northeastern office of the National Weather Service in a study in the sociology of decision making.

Walking in Cities: Quotidian Mobility as Urban Theory, Method, and Practice edited by Evrick Brown and Timothy Shortell (Temple University Press; 292 pages; $89.50 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Essays on the interplay between walking in cities and racial, class, and other inequalities.

Walking on the Wild Side: Long-Distance Hiking on the Appalachian Trail by Kristi M. Fondren (Rutgers University Press; 176 pages; $80 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Draws on interviews with 46 hikers in a study of the motivation and subculture of those who attempt to “thru-hike” the entire 2,181-mile trail.

THEATER

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays: Transnationalism and Postdramatic Theatre by Mary Mazzilli (Bloomsbury Academic; 262 pages; $104). Focuses on plays by the Chinese Nobel Prize-winning writer, who has lived in voluntary exile in France since 1987.

URBAN STUDIES

Integrating the Inner City: The Promise and Perils of Mixed-Income Public Housing Transformation by Robert J. Chaskin and Mark L. Joseph (University of Chicago Press; 347 pages; $40). A study of the Chicago Plan for Transformation, initiated in 2000.

WOMEN’S STUDIES

Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia edited by Anshu Malhotra and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley (Duke University Press; 312 pages; $94.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Essays on women’s autobiographical writing from the region, broadly defined to include poetry, songs, religious writing, fiction, and other forms.

This Book Is an Action: Feminist Print Culture and Activist Aesthetics edited by Jaime Harker and Cecilia Konchar Farr (University of Illinois Press; 250 pages; $95 hardcover, $28 paperback). Writings on the print culture that emerged with the feminist movement of the late 1960s and beyond; topics include second wave book publishing, feminist newsletters, and the work of such writers as Anne Roiphe, Erica Jong, and Bertha Harris.

To Live Freely in This World: Sex Worker Activism in Africa by Chi Adanna Mgbako (New York University Press; 244 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). Draws on interviews with more than 160 sex-worker activists in Botswana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nambia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda.