AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES
Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in North America edited by Jennifer Brier, Jim Downs, and Jennifer L. Morgan (University of Illinois Press; 316 pages; $95 hardcover, $30 paperback). Essays on such topics as representations of women’s sexuality in 20th-century black print culture.
ANTHROPOLOGY
Bodies of Truth: Law, Memory, and Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa by Rita Kesselring (Stanford University Press; 256 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). An ethnographic study of the victims support group Khulumani and lawsuits filed in the United States against multinational corporations for complicity with the abuses of apartheid-era security forces.
Costly and Cute: Helpless Infants and Human Evolution edited by Wenda R. Trevathan and Karen R. Rosenberg (SAR Press/University of New Mexico Press; 324 pages; $49.95). Writings on how the helplessness of the human infant at and beyond birth has figured in our evolutionary, social, and cultural adaptations.
Molas: Dress, Identity, Culture by Diana Marks (University of New Mexico Press; 280 pages; $50). Examines the history of the distinctive blouses made and worn by Kuna women in Panama.
Reluctant Intimacies: Japanese Eldercare in Indonesian Hands by Beata Switek (Berghahn Books; 226 pages; $90). Discusses Indonesian men and women who arrived in Japan in 2008 as part of an Economic Partnership Agreement to work as caregivers for the elderly; topics include the extensive media coverage they received.
ARCHAEOLOGY
Archaeologies of Slavery and Freedom in the Caribbean: Exploring the Spaces in Between edited by Lynsey A. Bates, John M. Chenoweth, and James A. Delle (University Press of Florida; 358 pages; $89.95). Archaeological research on such topics as poor whites, free blacks, relations between slaves on neighboring plantations, and other phenomena that belie the usual binaries of plantation society; draws on data from Dominica, St. Lucia, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Barbados, Nevis, Montserrat, and the British Virgin Islands.
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
On Art and Painting: Vicente Carducho and Baroque Spain edited by Jean Andrews, Jeremy Roe, and Oliver Noble Wood (University of Wales Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 386 pages; $130). Essays by scholars in Britain, Spain, Germany, and the United States on Dialogues on Painting, a treatise published in 1633 by the Florence-born Spanish painter and art theorist; topics include Carducho’s ideas about religious art.
CLASSICAL STUDIES
The Gentle, Jealous God: Reading Euripides’ “Bacchae” in English by Simon Perris (Bloomsbury Academic; 237 pages; $114). Examines the English language translation and reception of the Greek tragedy since the early 20th century; topics include versions by Gilbert Murray, H.D., Derek Mahon, Colin Teevan, and David Greig.
COMMUNICATION
Mad Men, Death and the American Dream by Elisabeth Bronfen (Diaphanes, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 214 pages; $20). Topics include how the acclaimed series’ seeming time capsule of the past conveys the concerns of the present.
The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age edited by Darin Barney and others (University of Minnesota Press; 304 pages; $94.50 hardcover, $27 paperback). Essays on such topics as the meaning of participatory democracy in Occupy Wall Street, and new media and the Arab Spring.
The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media by Ryan M. Milner (MIT Press; 262 pages; $32). Explores formal and social aspects of Internet memes, including their structuring in what are termed five logics: multimodality, reappropriation, resonance, collectivism, and spread.
CULTURAL STUDIES
Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene by Donna J. Haraway (Duke University Press; 296 pages; $94.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). New and previously published essays on phenomena in what is termed not the Anthropocene, but the Chthulucene, representing the “tentacular” links between human and nonhuman in the current epoch.
ECONOMICS
Derivatives and the Wealth of Societies edited by Benjamin Lee and Randy Martin (University of Chicago Press; 308 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Offers anthropological, Marxist, and other social perspectives on derivative finance.
FILM STUDIES
Directed by God: Jewishness in Contemporary Israeli Film and Television by Yaron Peleg (University of Texas Press; 173 pages; $85 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Pays particular attention to images of Orthodox Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and highly religious Zionists, such as commonly found in the settler movement.
Fast Forward: The Future(s) of the Cinematic Arts by Holly Willis (Wallflower Press, distributed by Columbia University Press; 192 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Topics include hybrid forms such as “live cinema,” combining performance and moving images.
She Could Be Chaplin! The Comedic Brilliance of Alice Howell by Anthony Slide (University Press of Mississippi; 144 pages; $26). A study of the actress (1886-1961) that pays particular attention to her skills in silent comedy.
HISTORY
AEthelred the Unready by Levi Roach (Yale University Press; 369 pages; $40). A revisionist study of the Anglo-Saxon king (circa 968-1016) that finds him less unready or ill-counseled than ill-fated; examines how religious concerns, including notions of imminent apocalypse, motivated his actions.
Anarchism in Korea: Independence, Transnationalism, and the Question of National Development, 1919-1984 by Dongyoun Hwang (State University of New York Press; 292 pages; $80). Examines the history of anarchism in Korea in a wider East Asian context; asserts its importance beyond a nationalist ideology and explores changes and continuities in the movement after 1945.
Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s by Mark Naison and Bob Gumbs (Fordham University Press; 193 pages; $90 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Documents the lives of 17 black men and women in the borough before the decline of the late 1960s; focuses on the Morrisiana section of the South Bronx.
Charting an American Republic: The Origins and Writing of the Federalist Papers by Jude M. Pfister (McFarland & Company; 258 pages; $35). Challenges the minor role often accorded John Jay in the Papers.
Globalizing Borderlands Studies in Europe and North America edited by John W.I. Lee and Michael North (University of Nebraska Press; 271 pages; $60). Interdisciplinary essays on borderlands from ancient times to the present; topics include the transborder economy of medieval Cistercian monasteries in the southern Baltic Sea region.
Great Strategic Rivalries: From the Classical World to the Cold War edited by James Lacey (Oxford University Press; 662 pages; $45). Topics include Athens and Sparta, Rome and Carthage, the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs, and the United States and Russia.
Greeks, Romans, Germans: How the Nazis Usurped Europe’s Classical Past by Johann Chapoutot (University of California Press; 505 pages; $85 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Discusses the Nazis’ appropriation of classical antiquity---annexing the Greeks and Romans to the Nordic race---in oratory, film, architecture, spectacles, and other realms.
Hosea Stout: Lawman, Legislator, Mormon Defender by Stephen L. Prince (Utah State University Press; 379 pages; $29.95). Traces the controversial life of a key figure in Mormon history from the 1830s through the 1880s, including service as the first attorney general for the Utah territory.
In the Name of the Great Work: Stalin’s Plan for the Transformation of Nature and Its Impact in Eastern Europe edited by Doubravka Olsakova (Berghahn Books; 311 pages; $120). Focuses on Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in essays on Eastern European efforts to implement Stalin’s 1948 vision of innovation in agriculture, energy, and other realms.
Migrations in the German Lands, 1500-2000 edited by Jason Coy, Jared Poley, and Alexander Schunka (Berghahn Books; 257 pages; $110). Essays by German and American scholars on migration to Germany, including that of vagrants, laborers, refugees, and exiles; topics include the Huguenots, Polish seasonal workers before World War I, and Jewish postwar remigration.
Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1890s by Charles Musser (University of California Press; 274 pages; $85 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Examines uses of film, the stereopticon, and other “emergent” media in four presidential campaigns of the 1890s, including the rematch between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland in 1892 and the contest between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan in 1896.
Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World by Zara Anishanslin (Yale University Press; 421 pages; $45). Explores the material culture of the 18th-century British Atlantic world through a study of four people linked to a 1746 painting: the New England artist, the merchant’s wife depicted, a London weaver, and a London silk designer.
Wendell Phillips: Social Justice and the Power of the Past edited by A J Aiserithe and Donald Yacovone (Louisiana State University Press; 370 pages; $55). Essays on the Boston-born aristocrat turned radical abolitionist, who gave away most of his wealth by the time of his death, in 1884.
The Winchester: The Gun That Built an American Dynasty by Laura Trevelyan (Yale University Press; 242 pages; $28). Examines the familial and business history of the firearms company, started by Oliver Winchester, and grounded in the success of a repeating rifle said to have “won the West.”
LAW
Impact: How Law Affects Behavior by Lawrence M. Friedman (Harvard University Press; 315 pages; $35). Examines the factors that influence how and whether laws and regulations shape behavior, including such motivations as conscience, peer pressure, and rewards and punishments; draws on research across social-science and other disciplines.
LITERATURE
Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century by Nazera Sadiq Wright (University of Illinois Press; 272 pages; $95 hardcover, $28 paperback). Topics include how literary depictions of black girls were used to explore issues of domesticity, femininity, and proper conduct.
Colum McCann’s Intertexts: Books Talk to One Another by Bertrand Cardin (Cork University Press, distributed by Stylus Publishing; 256 pages; $45). Discusses the Irish writer’s work from Fishing the Sloe-black River (1994) to Thirteen Ways of Looking (2015) in terms of his dialogue with other texts.
The Development of Chinese Martial Arts Fiction: A History of Wuxia Literature by Chen Pingyuan, translated by Victor Peterson (Cambridge University Press; 274 pages; $99.99). Examines the evolution, aesthetics, and politics of the genre through the present.
Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church by Richard Firth Green (University of Pennsylvania Press; 285 pages; $55). Examines the depiction of fairies and fairyland in medieval romance and the medieval church’s demonization of such beliefs.
Joyce’s Dante: Exile, Memory, and Community by James Robinson (Cambridge University Press; 242 pages; $99.99). Examines how Joyce’s response to the Italian poet in works from Portrait to Finnegans Wake reflects the Irish writer’s view of exile and community.
A Listening Wind: Native Literature From the Southeast edited by Marcia Haag (University of Nebraska Press; 327 pages; $70). Translations, with commentary, of writings from the language groups of the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Yuchi, Cherokee, Koasati, Houma, Catawba, and Atakapa peoples.
The Social Life of Literature in Revolutionary Cuba: Narrative, Identity, and Well-being edited by Par Kumaraswami (Palgrave Macmillan; 222 pages; $95). Considers the varied ways literature works in Cuban society, including as both a vehicle and self-differentiation.
Song of Myself: With a Complete Commentary by Ed Folsom and Crhistopher Merrill (University of Iowa Press; 193 pages; $24.95). Offers a 52-section commentary on Walt Whitman’s famed poem.
The Weight of a World of Feeling: Reviews and Essays by Elizabeth Bowen edited by Allan Hepburn (Northwestern University Press; 456 pages; $120 hardcover, $49.95 paperback). Edition of critical writings by the Irish writer, who began reviewing books in 1935, shortly after the publication of her fifth novel.
With Rake in Hand: Memoirs of a Yiddish Poet by Joseph Rolnik, translated by Gerald Marcus (Syracuse University Press; 312 pages; $65 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Translation of the unconventionally structured memoir of a Belorussian-born New York poet (1879-1955), who was linked to Di Yunge, an avant-garde Yiddish literary group of the early 20th century.
MEDICINE
Ebola’s Message: Public Health and Medicine in the Twenty-First Century edited by Nicholas G. Evans, Tara C. Smith, and Maimuna S. Majumder (MIT Press; 267 pages; $45). Essays that examine scientific, political, and ethical aspects of the 2013-16 outbreak, centered in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone; topics include decision-making on experimental vaccines and treatments.
MUSIC
Good Vibrations: Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in Critical Perspective edited by Philip Lambert (University of Michigan Press; 302 pages; $80). Essays on the full range of the group’s music, from hits to the projected, but unrealized Smile album.
Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination by Jack Hamilton (Harvard University Press; 340 pages; $29.95). A study of how rock and roll came to be perceived as the province of white musicians.
Schumann’s Virtuosity: Criticism, Composition, and Performance in Nineteenth-Century Germany by Alexander Stefaniak (Indiana University Press; 296 pages; $46). Draws on previously untapped sources in a study of how Schumann, as composer and critic, shaped German ideas of virtuosity.
PHILOSOPHY
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