By Joshua Bennett, visiting professor of literature
A celebration of voices outside the dominant cultural narrative, who boldly embraced an array of styles and forms and redefined what - and whom - the mainstream would include, Bennett's book illuminates the profound influence spoken word has had everywhere melodious words are heard, from Broadway to academia, from the podiums of political protest to cafés, schools, and rooms full of strangers all across the world.
University of Chicago · 2022 By Manduhai Buyandelger, professor of anthropology
This book traces how the complicated, contradictory paths to political representation that women in Mongolia must walk mirror those the world over. Buyandelger shows how successful women candidates use strategies of self-polishing to cultivate charisma and a reputation for being oyunlag, or intellectual. By tracing the complicated, contradictory paths to representation that women in Mongolia must walk, "A Thousand Steps to Parliament" holds a mirror up to democracies the world over, revealing an urgent need to grapple with the encroaching effects of neoliberalism in our global political systems.
Duke University Press · 2023 By Michael M. J. Fischer, professor of anthropology and of science and technology studies
In this book, Fischer calls for a new anthropology of the arts that attends to the materialities and technologies of the world as it exists today. He examines the work of key Southeast and East Asian artists within the crucibles of unequal access, geopolitics, reverberating past traumas, and emergent socialities. Throughout Indonesia, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, Fischer argues that these artists' theoretical discourses should be privileged over those of the curators, historians, critics, and other gatekeepers who protect and claim art worlds for themselves.
McGill-Queen's University Press · 2023 By Mary C. Fuller, professor of literature
Around 1600, the English geographer and cleric Richard Hakluyt sought to honor his nation by publishing a compilation of every document he could find relating to its voyages and trade beyond the boundaries of Europe. Fuller traces the history of the book's compilation and gives order and meaning to its famously diverse contents: from Sierra Leone to Iceland, from Spanish narratives of New Mexico to French accounts of the Saint Lawrence and Portuguese accounts of China.
By Mikael Jakobsson, lecturer in comparative media studies, and Mary Flanagan
In "Playing Oppression," Jakobsson and Flanagan apply incisive frameworks of postcolonial theory to a broad historical survey of board games to show how seemingly benign entertainments reinforce the logic of imperialism. The work deftly analyzes this insidious violence and proposes a path forward with board games that challenge colonialist thinking and embrace a much broader cultural imagination.
Edited by Wyn Kelley, senior lecturer of literature, and Christopher Ohge
Building on the success of the first Blackwell "Companion to Herman Melville," and offering a variety of tools for reading, writing, and teaching Melville, "A New Companion to Herman Melville" delivers an insightful examination of Melville for the 21st century. Editors Kelley and Ohge create a framework that reflects a pluralistic model for humanities teaching and research offering critical, technological, and aesthetic practices that can be employed to read Melville in exciting and revelatory ways.
Cambridge University Press · 2023 By Noah L. Nathan, professor of political science
The formal state often appears absent in the rural periphery in developing countries. Yet these states are not as weak as many believe. In a multi-method study of historical development in Ghana, Nathan rethinks the process of state-building in hinterlands, demonstrating how even seemingly absent states still change the underlying nature of their societies, with implications for better understanding the governance challenges that these regions face.
Duke University Press · 2023 Edited by Heather Paxson, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and head of MIT Anthropology
"Eating beside Ourselves" examines eating as a site of transfer and transformation across bodies and selves. The contributors show that by turning organic substance into food, acts of eating create interconnected food webs organized by relative conditions of edibility through which eaters may in turn become eaten.
Edinburgh University Press · 2022 By Nasser Rabbat, professor of architecture
Although al-Maqrizi is recognized as the most influential historian of premodern Egypt, he has never received the probing historical treatment warranted by his standing and scholarly output. This book fills that gap. Arranged in three sections, it tells al-Maqrizi's life story; weaves it with historiographical, textual, and methodological analysis of his oeuvre; and reconstructs the afterlife of the author and his work down to the present.
By Kieran Setiya, professor of philosophy
There is no cure for the human condition: Life is hard. But Setiya believes philosophy can help. He offers a map for navigating rough terrain, from personal trauma to the injustice and absurdity of the world. In this profound and personal book, he shows how the tools of philosophy can help us find our way. Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy as well as fiction, history, memoir, film, comedy, social science, and stories from Setiya's own experience, "Life Is Hard" is a book for this moment - a work of solace and compassion.
By Steven Simon, Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow in the Center for International Studies
The culmination of almost 40 years at the highest levels of policymaking and scholarship, "Grand Delusion" offers a comprehensive and deeply informed account of U.S. engagement in the Middle East. This story, while episodically impressive, was too often tragic and at times dishonorable. As we enter a new era in foreign policy, this is an essential book, a cautionary history that illuminates American's propensity for self-deception and misadventure at a moment when the nation is redefining its engagement with a world in crisis.
Duke University Press · 2022 By Bettina Stoetzer, associate professor of anthropology
In "Ruderal City," Stoetzer traces relationships among people, plants, and animals in contemporary Berlin as they make their lives in the ruins of European nationalism and capitalism. She develops the notion of the ruderal - originally an ecological designation for the unruly life that inhabits inhospitable environments such as rubble, roadsides, train tracks, and sidewalk cracks - to theorize Berlin as a "ruderal city."
By Larry Susskind, the Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning; Justice Williams Tillman; and Nicolas Parra Herrera
Concerned about the role of the courts, particularly judges, in guaranteeing justice, and impressed with the success of Canadian courts that are using judicial dispute resolution (JDR), the authors describe similar efforts in other parts of the world where the use of JDR helps parties resolve their differences in a timely way. The judges who use this practice mediate rather than adjudicate; they do not decide who is right or wrong but assist the parties in resolving their differences and mending their relationships. The authors can tell this unique story after being granted exclusive access to the parties, judges, and records in nine carefully selected cases.
Columbia University Press · 2023 By Catherine J. Turco, associate professor of management
In this book, Turco explores the history, impact, and future of street-level markets through her own experience visiting the iconic Cambridge, Massachusetts, neighborhood as a young girl, living there as a university student, and later advocating for the community as a resident.