For Jeffrey Masten, the history of sexuality and the history of language are intimately related. In Queer Philologies, he studies particular terms that illuminate the history of sexuality in Shakespea
Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling explores the mutually generative relationship between post-Reformation religious life and London's commercial theaters. It explores the dynamic exchange between the imag
In Ensuring Poverty, Felicia Kornbluh and Gwendolyn Mink assess the gendered history of welfare reform. They foreground arguments advanced by feminists for a welfare policy that would respect single m
The decades following the end of World War II witnessed the establishment of a large and diverse German-American scholarly community studying modern German history. As West Germany's formerly deeply n
In the long nineteenth century, the specter of lost manuscripts loomed in the imagination of antiquarians, historians, and writers. Whether by war, fire, neglect, or the ravages of time itself, the co
William Livingston's American Revolution explores how New Jersey's first governor experienced the American Revolution and managed a state government on the war's front lines. A wartime bureaucrat, Liv
Dilip da Cunha integrates history, art, cultural studies, hydrology, and geography to tell the story of how rivers have been culturally constructed as lines that are granted special roles in defining
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the world's best-known and most translated documents. When it was presented to the United Nations General Assembly in December in 1948, Eleanor Roos
The postwar United States has experienced many forms of populist politics, none more consequential than that of the blue-collar white ethnics who brought figures like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump to
In Law and the Imagination in Medieval Wales, Robin Chapman Stacey explores the idea of law as a form of political fiction: a body of literature that blurs the lines generally drawn between the legal
In early fifteenth-century Prague, disagreements about religion came to be shouted in the streets and taught to the laity in the vernacular, giving rise to a new kind of public engagement that would p
Despite the remarkable achievements of free markets—their rapid spread around the world and success at generating economic growth—they tend to elicit anxiety. Creative destruction and destabilizing ch
On February 15, 2003, millions of people around the world demonstrated against the war that the United States, the United Kingdom, and their allies were planning to wage in Iraq. Despite this being th
A constant feature of Jewish culture in the medieval Mediterranean was the dedication of panegyric texts in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, and other languages dedicated to men of several ranks: scholars, commu
In The Captive Sea, Daniel Hershenzon explores the entangled histories of Muslim and Christian captives—and, by extension, of the Spanish Empire, Ottoman Algiers, and Morocco—in the seventeenth centur
Nestled between the Rocky Mountains to the west and the High Plains to the east, Denver, Colorado, is nicknamed the Mile High City because its official elevation is exactly one mile above sea level. O
In this sweeping saga that spans empires, peoples, and nations, M. Scott Heerman chronicles the long history of slavery in the heart of the continent and traces its many iterations through law and soc
In the wake of the New Deal, U.S. politics has been popularly imagined as an ongoing conflict between small-government conservatives and big-government liberals. In practice, narratives of left versus
Jamaica and Saint-Domingue were especially brutal but conspicuously successful eighteenth-century slave societies and imperial colonies. These plantation regimes were, to adopt a metaphor of the era,
Between 1780 and 1800, authors of imaginative literature in the new United States wanted to assert that their works, which bore obvious connections to anglophone literature on the far side of the Atla
In Singing in a Foreign Land, Karen A. Weisman examines the uneasy literary inheritance of British cultural and poetic norms by early nineteenth-century Anglo-Jewish authors. Focusing on a range of su
Although truth and reconciliation commissions are supposed to generate consensus and unity in the aftermath of political violence, Abena Ampofoa Asare identifies cacophony as the most valuable and ove
Early Christian theology posited a strict division between animals and humans. Nevertheless, animal figures abound in early Christian literature and art—from Augustine's renowned "wonder at the agilit
In Elf Queens and Holy Friars Richard Firth Green investigates an important aspect of medieval culture that has been largely ignored by modern literary scholarship: the omnipresent belief in fairyland
Struggles to define the soul of America roil the nation's politics. Debates over the roles of gays, lesbians, women, immigrants, racial and religious minorities, and disputes over reproductive and abo
The city of Hebron is important to Jewish, Islamic, and Christian traditions as home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the burial site of three biblical couples: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and
Suburban sprawl has been the prevailing feature—and double-edged sword—of metropolitan America's growth and development since 1945. The construction of homes, businesses, and highways that were signs
When the Thai state violently suppressed a massive prodemocracy protest in "Black May," 1992, it initiated an unprecedented period in Thailand. The military, shamed and chagrined, withdrew from politi
In late medieval and early modern Europe, definitions of blood in medical writing were slippery and changeable: blood was at once the red fluid in human veins, a humor, a substance governing crucial G
Terrorist groups with a shared enemy or ideology have ample reason to work together, even if they are primarily pursuing different causes. Although partnering with another terrorist organization has t
In Dynamics of Difference in Australia, Francesca Merlan examines relations between indigenous and nonindigenous people from the events of early exploration and colonial endeavors to the present day.
An anonymous book appeared in Venice in 1547 titled L'Alcorano di Macometto, and, according to the title page, it contained "the doctrine, life, customs, and laws [of Mohammed] . . . newly translated
When political theorists teach the history of political philosophy, they typically skip from the ancient Greeks and Cicero to Augustine in the fifth century and Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth, and t
In Communists and Their Victims, Roman David identifies and examines four classes of justice measures—retributive, reparatory, revelatory, and reconciliatory—to discover which, if any, rectified the l
In the wake of World War II, a number of institutions designed to promote a liberal global economic and geopolitical order were established—the International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement
The AIDS crisis of the 1980s looms large in recent histories of sexuality, medicine, and politics, and justly so—an unknown virus without a cure ravages an already persecuted minority, medical p
Historian Eric R. Schlereth places religious conflict at the center of early American political culture. He shows ordinary Americans—both faithful believers and Christianity's staunchest critics
In Frontier Country, Patrick Spero addresses one of the most important and controversial subjects in American history: the frontier. Countering the modern conception of the American frontier as an are
The last decade has been a transformative period in Kashmir, the hotly contested and densely militarized border territory located high in the Himalayan mountains between India and Pakistan. Suppressed
Race and the Making of American Political Science shows that changing scientific ideas about racial difference were central to the academic study of politics as it emerged in the United States. From t
