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For critics, fans, and scholars of drama and film, the laugh has traditionally been tied to comedy, indicating and expressing mirth, witty relief, joyous celebration, or arch and sarcastic parody. But

Brian Evans blends memoir and history to draw a vivid picture of China and its cultural outreach over the past three decades. His historical and sociological insights as student, scholar, and administ

By turns joyous and adventurous, melancholy and nostalgic, Michelle Smith’s debut collection of poems showcases a wide-ranging fascination with places, people, and story. Smith’s limpid and humane han

The African Cuban poet Nancy Morejon set out at a young age to explore the beauty and complexities of the life around and within her. Themes of social and political concern, loyalty, friendship and fa

The Broken Spell: Indian Storytelling and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu is a monograph on the rise and fall in popularity of "romances" (qissah)&

Craving Supernatural Creatures: German Fairy-Tale Figures in American Pop Culture analyzes supernatural creatures in order to demonstrate how German fairy tales treat difference, alterity, and Otherness with terror, distance, and negativity, whereas contemporary North American popular culture adaptations navigate diversity by humanizing and redeeming such figures. This trend of transformation reflects a greater tolerance of other marginalized groups (in regard to race, ethnicity, ability, age, gender, sexual orientation, social class, religion, etc.) and acceptance of diversity in society today. The fairy-tale adaptations examined here are more than just twists on old stories—they serve as the looking glasses of significant cultural trends, customs, and social challenges. Whereas the fairy-tale adaptations that Claudia Schwabe analyzes suggest that Otherness can and should be fully embraced, they also highlight the gap that still exists between the represent

The Desk on the Sea begins four years after American poet Jonathan Johnson spread his mother’s ashes in her beloved Lake Superior and moved with his wife and young da

The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson is the first collection of newspaper articles and fiction written by Miriam Michelson (1870–1942), best-selling

Night Manual is a survival guide for life—all the messy, wonderful, grieving, and self-doubting parts of life. David Hornibrook’s debut poetry collection is a b

Of Lisa Lenzo’s first collection, Charles Baxter wrote: "Lenzo’s stories have a strong pulse of feeling and a sly intelligence, and her angels, children, and lovers have an eerie

The Arab-Israeli conflict has become a touchstone of international politics and a flash point on college campuses. And yet, how do faculty teach such a contentious topic in class? Taught not

Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States analyzes the changing construction of race and ethnicity in the United States through the lens of contemporary Jewish i

Not long after stumbling into Mason County, Natalie Ruth Joynton finds herself the owner of four acres, a big red barn, and a white farmhouse set among the picturesque rolling hills of Northe

Ragged Anthem displays the same inimitable voice and unflinching gaze that made Chris Dombrowski a Poetry Foundation bestseller and silver medal winner of Foreword

Birth of the Binge: Serial TV and the End of Leisure describes and details serial television and "binge watching," the exceedingly popular form of contem

Teaching Fairy Tales edited by Nancy L. Canepa brings together scholars who have contributed to the field of fairy-tale studies since its origins. This collection offers information on materials, critical approaches and ideas, and pedagogical resources for the teaching of fairy tales in one comprehensive source that will further help bring fairy-tale studies into the academic mainstream.The volume begins by posing some of the big questions that stand at the forefront of fairy-tale studies: How should we define the fairy tale? What is the "classic" fairy tale? Does it make sense to talk about a fairy-tale canon? The first chapter includes close readings of tales and their variants, in order to show how fairy tales aren’t simple, moralizing, and/or static narratives. The second chapter focuses on essential moments and documents in fairy-tale history, investigating how we gain unique perspectives on cultural history through reading fairy tale

In nineteenth-century Britain, the spectacular and highly profitable theatrical form known as "pantomime" was part of a shared cultural repertoire and a significant medium for the transmissio

Following World War II, the world had to confront the unmournable specters of those who had been erased socially and historically. Cinematic Cryptonymies: The Absent Body in Postwar

In the twenty-five linked short stories in his collection, I Got to Keep Moving, celebrated Detroit author Bill Harris vividly and deftly describes the inner and outer live

1968 and Global Cinema addresses a notable gap in film studies. Although scholarship exists on the late 1950s and 1960s New Wave films, research that puts cinemas on 1968 i

Visceral and brimming with vitality, the poems in Premonitions reverberate with the voice of a woman on a secluded farm, confronting her emotional and physical isolation. D

Available now for the first time in English, Doctor Levitin is a modern classic in Jewish literature. A major work of late twentieth-century Russian and Jewish literature s

Concrete Boxes: Mizrahi Women on Israel’s Periphery offers an intimate, textured, and rich depiction of contemporary life in one marginalized development town in the

Eli’s Story: A Twentieth-Century Jewish Life is first and foremost a biography. Its subject is Eli G. Rochelson, MD (1907–1984), author Meri-

The Films of Jess Franco looks at the work of Jesús "Jess" Franco (1930–2013), one of the most prolific and madly inventive filmmakers in the history of cinema.

Archive material from the London Yiddish press, songbooks, and satirical writing offers a window into an untold cultural life of the Yiddish East End. Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immig

Firmly rooted in the dramatic landscapes and histories of Michigan, Field Recordings uses American folk music as a lens to investigate themes of personal origin, family, ar

"I feel like I can’t tell one story about a giant mustard penis because it’s not about a mustard penis only, but about all of these incidents together, in context, and through tim

Harry Bertoia, Sculptor is devoted to the life and work of a twentieth-century Italian-born American artist whose important commissions are located in twenty-five American

Aaron Berman takes a moderate and measured approach to one of the most emotional issues in American Jewish historiography, namely, the response of American Jews to Nazism and the exterminatio

On Jewish Folklore spans a half-century of scholarly inquiry by the noted anthropologist and biblical scholar Raphael Patai. He essays collected in this volume, some of whi

Originally published in 1919, The Iron Hunter is the autobiography of one of Michigan's most influential and flamboyant historical figures: the reporter, publisher, explorer, po

The first appearance of Jews in Poland and their adventures during their early years of settlement in the country are concealed in undocumented shadows of history. What survived are legends o

Landsmanshaftn, associations of immigrants from the same hometown, became the most popular form of organization among Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the United States in the late 19th and early

Ivan H. Walton was a pioneering folklorist who collected the songs and stories of aging sailors living along the shores of the Great Lakes in the 1930s. His collection is unique in the annals

In United States Jewry, 1776–1985, the dean of American Jewish historians, Jacob Rader Marcus, unfolds the history of Jewish immigration, segregation, and integration

It was Maurice Sugar, labor activist and lawyer for the United Auto Workers, who played a key role in guiding the newly-formed union through the treacherous legal terrain obstructing its deve

The reemergence of a united Germany as a dominant power in Europe has increased even more it's importance as a major political ally and trade partner of the United States, despite the mis

Between 1977 and 1992, practically all Ethiopian Jews migrated to Israel. This mass move followed the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia and its ensuing economic and political upheavals, compounded by the br

Between 1800 and 1880 approximately 6500 Dutch Jews immigrated to the United States to join the hundreds who had come during the colonial era. Although they numbered less than one-tenth of a