Books from LAS

“A Continuous State of War: Empire Building and Race Making in the Civil War–Era Gulf South,” by Maria Angela Diaz, history, offers an original and valuable analysis of the complicated ways in which race, movement, and geopolitics intersected to shape the history of the Gulf and the United States’ understandings of empire during the Civil War era. (University of Georgia Press)

“Arab Brazil: Fictions of Ternary Orientalism,” by Waïl S. Hassan, comparative literature, highlights the representation of Arab and Muslim immigrants in Brazilian literature and popular culture since the early 20th century, revealing anxieties and contradictions in the country’s ideologies of national identity. (Oxford University Press)

“Bribed with Our Own Money: Federal Abuse of American Indian Funds in the Termination Era,” by Dave Beck, history, recounts how the U.S. government coerced American Indian nations to accept termination of their political relationship with the United States. (University of Nebraska Press)

“Enlightenment Anthropology: Defining Humanity in an Era of Colonialism,” by Carl Niekerk, Germanic languages and literatures, probes the origins of modern anthropology in the European Enlightenment, foregrounding how the knowledge transfer between an international array of natural historians and public intellectuals shaped the emerging discipline and its central debates. (Penn State University Press)

“Inka Bird Idiom,” by Claudia Brosseder, history, shows how the diverse fowl of the Amazon, the eastern Andean foothills, and the highlands shaped Inka politics, launched wars, and initiated peace. (University of Pittsburgh Press)

“Reader, I” by Corey Van Landingham, English, contains poems of a speaker who is in her first years of a marriage as she courts and eschews nuptial myths and finds a role for herself in marriage, in history, and in something beyond the self. (Sarabande Books)

“Reparations and Reparatory Justice,” co-edited by Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, history and African American studies, contains works that chronicle the historical movement for reparations both in the United States and around the world for people of African descent. (University of Illinois Press)

“Same Old Song: The Enduring Past in Popular Music,” by John Paul Meyers, African American studies, examines the widespread sampling of music from decades-old R&B tracks, sold-out anniversary tours by aging musicians, retrospective box sets of vintage recordings, museum exhibits, and performances by current pop stars invoking music and images of the past.
(University Press of Mississippi)

“Demystifying the Academic Research Enterprise: Becoming a Successful Scholar in a Complex and Competitive Environment,” by Kelvin Droegemeier, professor of atmospheric sciences, informs scholars on how to achieve early career productivity and contribute to the development of the academic research enterprise. (The MIT Press)

“Dynamics Of Marginality: Liminal Characters and Marginal Groups in Neronian and Flavian Literature,” edited by Antony Augoustakis, professor of classics, Konstantinos Arampapaslis (MA, 14; PhD, ’19, classics), Stephen Froedge, and Clayton Schroer investigates marginalized groups' experience in the Neronian and Flavian periods looking at history and literature. (De Gruyter)

“Food Power Politics, The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement,” by Bobby J. Smith II, professor of African American studies, explores how one of life’s basic necessities—food—was manipulated to maintain power structures—and how African American communities responded. (University of North Carolina Press)

“Medina by the Bay: Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival,” by Maryam Kashani, professor of gender and women’s studies and Asian American studies, examines how multiracial Muslim communities in the San Francisco Bay area forge alternate ways of surviving and flourishing in the face of colonial racial capitalism. (Duke University Press)

“Neobugarrón: Heteroflexibility, Neoliberalism, and Latin/o American Sexual Practice,” by Ramón Soto-Crespo, professor of English, chronicles the cultural modifications of bugarrón, a distinct male-male sexual practice in Latin/o America and the Caribbean, during the 20th and 21st centuries. (The Ohio State University Press)

“Nobody’s fool,” by Daniel Simons, professor of psychology, and Christopher Chabris, looks at how fraudsters tend to exploit the common habits of thought and decision-making that make us susceptible to their fabrications. (Basic Books)

“Rooting for Plants: The Unstoppable Charles S. Parker, Black Botanist and Collector,” by Janice Harrington, professor of English, details the life of pioneering Black botanist Charles S. Parker in the form of a children’s biography. (Calkins Creek)

“The Black Coptic Church: Race and Imagination in a New Religion,” by Leonard Cornell McKinnis II, professor of religion and African American studies, provides an illuminating look at the diverse world of Black religious life in North America, focusing particularly outside of mainstream Christian churches. (New York University Press)

“Rendered Obsolete: The afterlife of whaling in the petroleum age,” by Jamie Jones, professor of English, examines the influence of a dying industry during the massive energy transition from the organic fuel sources of the 19th century, including whale oil and wood, to the extraction of fossil fuels. (University of North Carolina Press)

“Revenge of the Microbes: How Bacterial Resistance is Undermining the Antibiotic Miracle (Second edition),” by Brenda Wilson, professor of microbiology, and Brian T. Ho, follows up on the initial edition’s description of the threat of antibiotic resistance. They review our current arsenal against infectious diseases and the various ways pathogens evade or overcome them. (Wiley)

“On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus,” by Eric Calderwood, professor of Spanish and Portuguese, traces the role of al-Andalus, a legendary place pre-dating Spain and Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula, in music and in debates about Arab and Berber identities, Arab and Muslim feminisms, the politics of Palestine and Israel, and immigration and multiculturalism in Europe. (Harvard University Press)

“Unsettling,” by Gilberto Rosas, professor of Latino/ Latina studies and anthropology, draws on poignant stories and compelling testimonies from workers in immigrant justice organizations, federal public defenders, immigration attorneys, and human rights activists to document the cruelties and indignities inflicted on border crossers and examine white nationalism in the United States. (Johns Hopkins University Press)

“Hong Kong Media and Asia’s Cold War,” by Po-Shek Fu, professor of history, explores the war between Communist China, Nationalist Taiwan, and the United States and its relation to Hong Kong cinema and media. It presents the first systematic study of Hong Kong’s cultural cold war. (Oxford University Press)

“The Intimate State: How Emotional Life Became Political in Welfare-State Britain,” by Teri Chettiar, professor of history, offers a history of the social science and politics surrounding sex, love, and family in post-1945 Britain. It uncovers how emotional intimacy became a central tenet of political stability for British mental health professionals and social reformers. (Oxford University Press)

“Faith in Exposure: Privacy and Secularism in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” by Justine Murison, professor of English, shows how, over the course of the 19th century, our culture’s understanding of privacy both underpinned thinking about sexual and reproductive rights but also undermined them in the name of religious freedom. (University of Pennsylvania Press)

“People of the Ecotone: Environment and Indigenous Power at the Center of Early America,” by Robert Morrissey, professor of history, weaves together a history of Native peoples with a history of an ecotone to tell a new story about the roots of the Fox Wars, among the most transformative and misunderstood events of early American history. (University of Washington Press)

“Quantitative Social Science: An Introduction in tidyverse,” by Kosuke Imai and Nora Webb Williams, a professor of political science, is a practical introduction to data analysis and statistics in the social sciences and allied fields, including business, economics, education, political science, psychology, sociology, public policy, and data science. (Princeton University Press)

“Rare Stuff,” by Brett Ashley Kaplan, professor of comparative and world literature, takes readers on a multilayered, mysterious journey through a series of interlocking clues. An intriguing search for a missing person moves through real and magically real universes in New York, Chicago, and glass houses under the sea constructed by Yiddish-speaking whales desperate to save our endangered planet. (Spuyten Duyvil)

“Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith: Aḥmad Lobbo, the Tārīkh al-fattāsh and the Making of an Islamic State in West Africa,” by Mauro Nobili, professor of history, examines and challenges existing theories on the Tārīkh al-fattāsh, arguing that much of what we have presumed about  this important source for the history of pre-colonial West Africa is deeply flawed. Making extensive use of previously unpublished Arabic sources, Nobili demonstrates that  the chronicle was in fact written in the 19th century  by a Fulani scholar. (Cambridge University Press)

“Hatred of Sex,” by Tim Dean, James M. Benson Professor of English, and Oliver Davis, professor of French studies at the University of Warwick, links Jacques Rancière’s political philosophy of the constitutive disorder of democracy with Jean Laplanche’s identification of a fundamental perturbation at the heart of human sexuality. Sex is hated as well as desired, the authors contend, because sexual intensity impedes coherent selfhood and undermines identity. (University of Nebraska Press)

“Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900–1950s,” by Natalie Lira, professor of Latina/Latino studies, reveals how political concerns over Mexican immigration—particularly ideas about the low intelligence, deviant sexuality, and inherent criminality of the “Mexican race”—shaped decisions regarding the reproductive future of Mexican-origin patients. The book documents the ways Mexican-origin people sought creative resistance to institutional control and offers insight into how race, disability, and social deviance have been used to justify confinement and reproductive constraint. (University of California Press)

“Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens,” by Corey Van Landingham, professor of English, considers the way that the absence of touch—in acts of war via the drone, in acts of love via the sext, in aesthetics itself— abstracts the human body, transforming it into a proxy for the real. “What love poem / could be written when men can no longer / look up?” this book asks, always in a state of flux between doubt and belief. These poems attempt to make bodies concrete and dangerous, immediate and addressable, once again. (Tupelo Press)

“Natural Disasters” by Stephen Marshak, professor emeritus of geology; Robert Rauber, professor of atmospheric sciences; and Neil Johnson, an instructor of geosciences at Virginia Tech University, offers students examples of the devastating impact that geologic and atmospheric disasters have on communities. Through vibrant and detailed visuals, engaging writing, and extended case studies, the book helps explain the science behind these catastrophes and the societal factors that shape our responses. (W.W. Norton)

“Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin,” by Eugene Avrutin, professor of history, analyzes a wide range of printed and visual sources in the first serious attempt to understand the history of racism over a span of 150 years. An examination of the complexities of racism, the panoramic book asks powerful questions about inequality and privilege, denigration and belonging, power and policy, and the complex historical links between race, whiteness, and geography. (Bloomsbury)

“Trickster Academy,” by Jenny L. Davis, professor of anthropology and American Indian studies, is a collection of poems that explore being Native in academia—from land acknowledgement statements, to mascots, to the histories of using Native American remains in anthropology. Jenny L. Davis’ collection brings humor and uncomfortable realities together in order to challenge the academy and discuss the experience of being Indigenous in university classrooms and campuses. (The University of Arizona Press)

"A Social View on the Chinese Language," by Jerome Packard, professor emeritus of East Asian languages and cultures and linguistics, is intended to be a linguistic introduction to the Chinese language for the general reader and can be used in beginning-level Chinese linguistics courses. It is different from other Chinese linguistics surveys because it offers a view into linguistic phenomena that are also related to human behavior and society. (Peter Lang International Publishers)

"Casting a Giant Shadow," edited by Rachel S. Harris, professor of comparative and world literature, and Dan Chyutin, is a collection of articles that embraces the notion of transnationalism to consider the limits of what is “Israeli” within Israeli cinema. It offers a new understanding of how cinema has operated artistically and structurally in terms of funding, distribution, and reception. This volume uses the idea of transnationalism to challenge the concept of a singular definition of Israeli cinema. (Indiana University Press)

Composed in the first century CE, "Silius Italicus’ Punica: Rome’s War with Hannibal," translated by Antony Augoustakis, professor of classics, and Neil Bernstein, tells the story of the Second Punic War between Rome and Hannibal’s Carthage (218-202 BCE). It is not only a crucial text for students of Flavian literature, but also an important source for anyone studying early Imperial perspectives on the Roman Republic. (Routledge)

"The Corporate Terminologist," by Kara Warburton, lecturer in translation and interpreting studies, is the first monograph that addresses the principles and methods for managing terminology in content production environments that are both demanding and multilingual, such as those found in global companies and institutions. It describes the needs of large corporations and how those needs demand a new, pragmatic approach to terminology management. (John Benjamins Publishing Company)

"The Gilded Edge," by Catherine Prendergast, professor of English, tells the story of a young poet, a real estate developer, and his wife through the lens of the two women involved in the love triangle, and it shows the challenges Prendergast faced while researching the details of their lives in a society dominated by men. (Penguin Random House)

"Turbulent Streams: An Environmental History of Japan’s Rivers, 1600–1930," by Roderick Wilson, professor of history, describes how the rivers of Japan are both hydrologically and historically dynamic. Neither a story of technological progress nor environmental decline, this history introduces the concept of environmental relations as a category of historical analysis both to explore these fluvial interactions and reveal under-appreciated dimensions of Japanese history. (Brill)

"A German Barber-Surgeon in the Atlantic Slave Trade," co-authored by Craig Koslofsky, history, documents the young German barber-surgeon Johann Peter Oettinger’s journey across the Atlantic, his work as a surgeon, his role in the purchase and branding of enslaved Africans, and his experiences in France and the Netherlands. (Cambridge University Press)

"Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times," co-edited by Antoinette Burton, history and director of the Humanities Research Institute, analyzes 26 animals—domestic, feral, predatory, and mythical—whose relationship to imperial authorities and settler colonists reveals how the presumed racial supremacy of Europeans underwrote the history of Western imperialism. (Duke University Press)

"Arrian the Historian: Writing the Greek Past in the Roman Empire," by Daniel Leon, classics, examines the works of Arrian of Nicomedia to show how Roman Empire-era Greek historians responded to their sophistic peers’ claims of authority and played a crucial role in theorizing the past at a time when knowledge of history was central to defining Greek cultural identity. (University of Texas Press)

"Deviant and Useful Citizens," by Mariselle Meléndez, Spanish and Portuguese, explores the conditions of women and perceptions of the female body in the eighteenth century throughout the Viceroyalty of Peru. Meléndez introduces the reader to a female rebel, Micaela Bastidas, whose brutal punishment became a particularly harsh example of state response to women who challenged the system. (Vanderbilt University Press)

"For Land and Liberty: Black Struggles in Rural Brazil," by Merle Bowen, African American studies, is a comparative study of the history and contemporary circumstances concerning Brazil's quilombos (African-descent rural communities) and their inhabitants, the quilombolas. The book examines the disposition of quilombola claims to land as a site of contestation over citizenship and its meanings for Afro-descendants, as well as their connections to the broader fight against racism. (Cambridge University Press)

"Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital," by Cara Finnegan, communication, ventures from a newly discovered daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams to Barack Obama’s selfies to tell the stories of how presidents have participated in the medium’s transformative moments. As she shows, technological developments not only changed photography but introduced new visual values that influence how we judge an image. (University of Illinois Press)

"The Discovery of Cosmic Voids," by Laird Thompson, professor emeritus of astronomy, tells how the first 3D maps of galaxies were created. Using non-mathematical language, Thompson introduces the standard model of cosmology before explaining how and why ideas about cosmic voids evolved, referencing the original maps, reproduced within. (Cambridge University Press)

"Unassailable Ideas: How Unwritten Rules and Social Media Shape Discourse in American Higher Education," co-authored by Illana Redstone, sociology, explores and sheds new light on the interaction of social media with campus climate, offers an extensive set of case studies illustrating the ways in which academic discourse is constrained, and provides a constructive set of recommendations to move us forward and tangible steps for improving the climate for free inquiry at universities. (Oxford University Press)

"What Though the Field Be Lost," by Christopher Kempf, English, uses poetry and the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg to engage ongoing issues involving race, regional identity, and the ethics of memory. Kempf reveals the overlapping planes of historical past and public present, integrating archival material—language from monuments,  soldiers’ letters, eyewitness accounts of the battle—with reflection on present-day social and political unrest. (Louisiana State University Press)

"Catastrophic Thinking," by David Sepkoski, history, examines the instances of hurricanes, wildfires, the COVID-19 pandemic, that the world is experiencing through the lens of the Darwin to Anthropocene age views on extinction. He also examines what could have led humanity to this point of a global health outbreak and natural disasters. (University of Chicago Press)

"Counterlife: Slavery after Resistance and Social Death," by Christopher Freeburg, English, explores through the works of artist Radcliffe Bailey, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, author Edward Jones, and African American spirituals and media, an existence of the Black community that extends beyond the effects of slavery and the overarching idea of freedom. (Duke University Press)

"Plato: Menexenus," by David Sansone, classics, analyzes the work of Plato. Sansone provides guidance on grammatical and historical matters, while allowing the student to appreciate Plato's mastery of Greek prose style and critique of democratic ideology. (Cambridge University Press)

"Politics for Everybody: Reading Hannah Arendt in Uncertain Times," by Ned O’Gorman, communication, reflects on the work of political theorist Hannah Arendt as he encourages readers to engage in politics beyond their personal reservations. He dissects the difference between genuine politics and the distorted forms that can hinder a person’s desire to become involved with politics. (University of Chicago Press)

"The Lost World of Socialists at Europe's Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s-1920s," by Maria Todorova, history, examines the "ideological bogeyman" of socialism by recollecting the work of the early socialists. Through the use of a myriad of sources, she contemplates the reasoning for the rise of the early socialist movement, who the followers of the movement tended to be, and the appeal of Marxist socialism to these followers. (Bloomsbury)

"Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the Twenty-First Century," by Naomi Paik, Asian American studies, examines the actions taken by President Donald Trump concerning immigration policies and the barriers to immigration which closely resemble the actions and behavior toward immigration that are ingrained in society. She explores the history of immigration in America to reflect on these barriers, which exist in both the past and the present. (University of California Press)

"Disruptive Situations: Fractal Orientalism and Queer Strategies in Beirut," by Ghassan Moussawi, gender and women’s studies, examines how Beirut’s LGBTQ community contends with "the situation", or struggles that they encounter in their daily lives, including violence and war. Moussawi also criticizes the concept of fractal orientalism, which is utilized to take into account the relationship that exists between Beirut and the LGBTQ community. (Temple University Press)

“¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues,” by Adrian Burgos Jr., history, reflects on the ambient influence that baseball has had in Latino/a culture and for immigrants from Latin America acclimating to the United States. The book is written in English and Spanish, and includes personal accounts of the significant role that the Latino/a community played in Major League Baseball during the post-segregation era. (Smithsonian Scholarly Press)

"Laudato Si’ and the Environment" edited by Robert McKim, religion, asks how religion can take a role in addressing environmental crises, and features essays from scholars of different disciplines and cultural and religious perspectives. (Routledge & CRC Press)

The way ancient Greeks thought about the natural environment and their relationship to it is relevant to how we respond to environmental crises today. In "Other Natures," Clara Bosak-Schroeder, classics, looks at how the ethnographies written by ancient Greeks reveal how they explored ideas about consumption and their use of natural resources. (University of California Press)

"Réalités pseudonymes," by Julie Gaillard, French, explores the question of reality through the lens of the proper name and its referential mechanisms in French literature and arts at the turn of the 21st century. Gaillard analyzes the works of thinkers who question the referential transparency of the proper name to question the fabric of reality and show how it can be transformed. (Brill Press)

"Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith: Ahmad Lobbo, the Tarikh al-fattash and the making of an Islamic State in West Africa," by Mauro Nobili, history, breaks down the historical knowledge of the chronicle Tarikh al-fattash, the problematic and altered aspects that have been historically misinterpreted, and how it is an important piece in the evolution of Arabic historical literature in the region. (Cambridge University Press)

Between 1931 and 2000, India’s popular cinema steadily overcame Hollywood domination. Bollywood became nothing less than a global cultural juggernaut, but it’s merely one part of the country’s prolific, multilingual cinema. "Unruly Cinema," by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, comparative literature and religion, examines the complex series of events that allowed the entire Indian film industry to defy attempts to control, reform, and refine it in the 20th century and beyond. (University of Illinois Press)

"Victims of the Book: Reading and Masculinity in Fin-de-Siècle France," by François Proulx, French and Italian, uncovers a long-neglected but once widespread subgenre: the fin-de-siècle novel of formation in France. Novels about and geared toward adolescent male readers were imbued with a deep worry over young Frenchmen’s masculinity. (University of Toronto Press)

"Black Bourgeois: Class and Sex in the Flesh," by Candice Jenkins, English and African American studies, reminds us that the conflicted relation of the black subject to privilege is not, solely, a recent phenomenon. (University of Minnesota Press)

"Fides in Flavian Literature," edited by Antony Augoustakis, classics, explores the ideology of “good faith” (fides) during the time of the emperors Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian (69-96 CE), the new imperial dynasty that gained power in the wake of the civil wars of the period. (University of Toronto Press)

"Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices," by Toby Beauchamp, gender and women's studies, demonstrates how the enforcement of gender conformity is linked to state surveillance practices that identify threats based on racial, gender, national, and ableist categories of difference. (Duke University Press)

"Hitler’s First Hundred Days," by Peter Fritzsche, history, provides an unsettling and illuminating history of how Germany’s fractured republic gave way to the Third Reich, from the formation of the Nazi party to the rise of Hitler. (Basic Books)

"Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship," by Hans Henrich Hock, linguistics, and Brian Joseph, provides answers to questions such as "Why does language change?" and "What are Americans and English 'one people divided by a common language'?" in a straightforward way, aimed at the non-specialist. (De Gruyter Mouton)

"Making Global MBAs: The Culture of Business and the Business of Culture" by Andrew Orta, anthropology, studies the culture of contemporary business education—in particular, the MBA degree—and how it’s been shaped by the modern global economy. (University of California Press)

"Ricanness: Enduring Time in Anticolonial Performance," by Sandra Ruiz, Latina/ Latino studies and English, argues that Ricanness—a continual performance of bodily endurance against U.S. colonialism through different measures of time—uncovers what’s at stake politically for the often unwanted, anticolonial, racialized, and sexualized enduring body. (New York University Press)

"Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance," by Jenny Davis, anthropology, offers the first booklength ethnography of language revitalization in a U.S. tribe removed from its homelands. (University of Arizona Press)