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Daily Life and Demographics in Ancient Japan
William Wayne Farris
University of Michigan Press, 2009
For centuries, scholars have wondered what daily life was like for the common people of Japan, especially for long bygone eras such as the ancient age (700–1150). Using the discipline of historical demography, William Wayne Farris shows that for most of this era, Japan’s overall population hardly grew at all, hovering around six million for almost five hundred years.
The reasons for the stable population were complex. Most importantly, Japan was caught up in an East Asian pandemic that killed both aristocrat and commoner in countless numbers every generation. These epidemics of smallpox, measles, mumps, and dysentery decimated the adult population, resulting in wide-ranging social and economic turmoil. Famine recurred about once every three years, leaving large proportions of the populace malnourished or dead. Ecological degradation of central Japan led to an increased incidence of drought and soil erosion. And war led soldiers to murder innocent bystanders in droves.
Under these harsh conditions, agriculture suffered from high rates of field abandonment and poor technological development. Both farming and industry shifted increasingly to labor-saving technologies. With workers at a premium, wages rose. Traders shifted from the use of money to barter. Cities disappeared. The family was an amorphous entity, with women holding high status in a labor-short economy. Broken families and an appallingly high rate of infant mortality were also part of kinship patterns. The average family lived in a cold, drafty dwelling susceptible to fire, wore clothing made of scratchy hemp, consumed meals just barely adequate in the best of times, and suffered from a lack of sanitary conditions that increased the likelihood of disease outbreak. While life was harsh for almost all people from 700 to 1150, these experiences represented investments in human capital that would bear fruit during the medieval epoch (1150–1600).
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Dameronia
The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron
Paul Combs
University of Michigan Press, 2013

Dameronia is the first authoritative biography of Tadd Dameron, an important and widely influential figure in jazz history as one of the most significant composers and arrangers of jazz, swing, bebop, and big band. He arranged for names like Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Jimmie Lunceford, and Dizzy Gillespie and played with Bull Moose Jackson and Benny Golson. This book sets out to clarify Dameron's place in the development of jazz in the post–World War II era. It also attempts to shed light on the tragedy of his retreat from the center of jazz activity in the 1950s. By tracing Dameron's career, one finds that until 1958, when he was incarcerated for drug related offenses, he was at the forefront of developments in jazz, sometimes anticipating trends that would not develop fully for several years. Dameron was also an important influence on several high-profile musicians, including Miles Davis, Benny Golson, and Frank Foster. Dameron was a very private man, and while in some aspects of his life he will probably remain an enigma, this book manages to give an intimate portrait of his life at a couple of key stages: the height of his career in 1949 and the brief but productive period between his release from prison and his death.

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Dances with Sheep
The Quest for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki
Matthew Carl Strecher
University of Michigan Press, 2002
As a spokesman for disaffected youth of the post-1960s, Murakami Haruki has become one of the most important voices in contemporary Japanese literature, and he has gained a following in the United States through translations of his works. In Dances with Sheep, Matthew Strecher examines Murakami’s fiction—and, to a lesser extent, his nonfiction—for its most prevalent structures and themes. Strecher also delves into the paradoxes in Murakami’s writings that confront critics and casual readers alike. Murakami writes of “serious” themes yet expresses them in a relatively uncomplicated style that appeals to high school students as well as scholars; and his fictional work appears to celebrate the pastiche of postmodern expression, yet he rejects the effects of the postmodern on contemporary culture as dangerous.
Strecher’s methodology is both historical and cultural as he utilizes four distinct yet interwoven approaches to analyze Murakami’s major works: the writer’s “formulaic” structure with serious themes; his play with magical realism; the intense psychological underpinnings of his literary landscape; and his critique of language and its capacity to represent realities, past and present. Dances with Sheep links each of these approaches with Murakami’s critical focus on the fate of individual identity in contemporary Japan. The result is that the simplicity of the Murakami hero, marked by lethargy and nostalgia, emerges as emblematic of contemporary humankind, bereft of identity, direction, and meaning. Murakami’s fiction is reconstructed in Dances with Sheep as a warning against the dehumanizing effects of late-model capitalism, the homogenization of the marketplace, and the elimination of effective counterculture in Japan.
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Dancing at the Devil's Party
Essays on Poetry, Politics, and the Erotic
Alicia Suskin Ostriker
University of Michigan Press, 2000
This volume of essays celebrates poetry that aims to change the world, whether through engagement with political issues, reimagining the meanings of love, recasting our relationship with nature; or through new relationships with our spiritual traditions. Alicia Ostriker's opening essay, defining the difference between poetry and propaganda, surveys the artistic accomplishments of the women's poetry movement. Succeeding essays explore the meaning of politics, love, and the spiritual life in the work of Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, Sharon Olds, Maxine Kumin, Lucille Clifton, and Allen Ginsberg.
In her work, Ostriker can be controversial, as when she attacks the academic establishment for rejecting the erotic dimension of poetry, or when she meditates on the significance of the black poet Lucille Clifton to herself as a reader, or when she argues that Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"--famous as the primary poem of the Beat Generation--is also a profoundly Jewish poem. Yet her writing is always lively and readable, free of academic jargon, inviting the reader to enjoy a wide range of poetic styles and experiences.
Ostriker's criticism, like her poetry, is both feminist and deeply humane. These essays on American poetry will appeal to students of poetry, scholars of American literature, and anyone who enjoys the work of the poets discussed in the book.
Alicia Ostriker is the author of nine books of poetry, including The Imaginary Lover, which won the William Carlos Williams Award and The Crack in Everything, which was a National Book award finalist in 1996, and which received the Paterson Prize in 1997 and the San Fransisco State Poetry Center Award in 1998. She is Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University.
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Dancing on the Fault Lines of History
Selected Essays
Susan Manning
University of Michigan Press, 2025
Dancing on the Fault Lines of History collects essential essays by Susan Manning, one of the founders of critical dance studies, recounting her career writing and rewriting the history of modern dance. Three sets of keywords—gender and sexuality, whiteness and Blackness, nationality and globalization—illuminate modern dance histories from multiple angles, coming together in varied combinations, shifting positions from foreground to background. Among the many artists discussed are Isadora Duncan, Vaslav Nijinsky, Ted Shawn, Helen Tamiris, Katherine Dunham, José Limón, Pina Bausch, Reggie Wilson, and Nelisiwe Xaba. Calling for a comparative and transnational historiography, Manning ends with an extended case study of Mary Wigman’s multidimensional exchange with artists from Indonesia, India, China, Korea, and Japan. 
 
Like the artists at the center of her research, Manning’s writing dances on the fault lines of history. Her introduction and annotations to the essays reflect on how and why these keywords became central to her research, revealing the autobiographical resonances of her scholarship as she confronts the cultural politics of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
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Dancing with the Modernist City
Metropolitan Dance Texts around 1900
Wesley Lim
University of Michigan Press, 2024
As the 20th century dawned, authors, artists, and filmmakers flocked to cities like Paris and Berlin for a chance to experience a bustling urban life and engage with other artists and intellectuals. Among them were German-speaking authors and filmmakers such as Harry Graf Kessler, Rainer Maria Rilke, August Endell, Alfred Döblin, Else Lasker-Schüler, Segundo de Chomón, and the brothers Max and Emil Skladanowsky. In their writing and artistic work from that period, they depicted the perpetual influx of stimuli caused by urban life—including hordes of pedestrians, bustling traffic, and a barrage of advertisements—as well as how these encounters repeatedly paralleled their experiences of watching early twentieth-century dance performances by Loïe Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, and Vaslav Nijinsky. The convergence these writers and filmmakers saw between the unexpected encounters during their urban strolls and experimental dance performances led to writings that interwove the two motifs.

Drawing on cultural, literary, dance, performance, and queer studies, Dancing with the Modernist City analyzes an array of material from 1896 to 1914—essays, novels, short stories, poetry, newspaper articles, photographs, posters, drawings, and early film. It argues that these writers and artists created a genre called the metropolitan dance text, which depicts dancing figures not on a traditional stage, but with the streets, advertising pillars, theaters, cafes, squares, and even hospitals of an urban setting. Breaking away from the historically male, heteronormative view, this posthumanist mode of writing highlights the visual and episodic unexpectedness of urban encounters. These literary depictions question traditional conceptualizations of space and performance by making the protagonist and the reader feel like they embody the dancer and the movement. In doing so, they upset the conventional depictions of performance and urban spaces in ways paralleling modern dance.
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Dancing with the Modernist City
Metropolitan Dance Texts around 1900
Wesley Lim
University of Michigan Press, 2024
As the 20th century dawned, authors, artists, and filmmakers flocked to cities like Paris and Berlin for a chance to experience a bustling urban life and engage with other artists and intellectuals. Among them were German-speaking authors and filmmakers such as Harry Graf Kessler, Rainer Maria Rilke, August Endell, Alfred Döblin, Else Lasker-Schüler, Segundo de Chomón, and the brothers Max and Emil Skladanowsky. In their writing and artistic work from that period, they depicted the perpetual influx of stimuli caused by urban life—including hordes of pedestrians, bustling traffic, and a barrage of advertisements—as well as how these encounters repeatedly paralleled their experiences of watching early twentieth-century dance performances by Loïe Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, and Vaslav Nijinsky. The convergence these writers and filmmakers saw between the unexpected encounters during their urban strolls and experimental dance performances led to writings that interwove the two motifs.

Drawing on cultural, literary, dance, performance, and queer studies, Dancing with the Modernist City analyzes an array of material from 1896 to 1914—essays, novels, short stories, poetry, newspaper articles, photographs, posters, drawings, and early film. It argues that these writers and artists created a genre called the metropolitan dance text, which depicts dancing figures not on a traditional stage, but with the streets, advertising pillars, theaters, cafes, squares, and even hospitals of an urban setting. Breaking away from the historically male, heteronormative view, this posthumanist mode of writing highlights the visual and episodic unexpectedness of urban encounters. These literary depictions question traditional conceptualizations of space and performance by making the protagonist and the reader feel like they embody the dancer and the movement. In doing so, they upset the conventional depictions of performance and urban spaces in ways paralleling modern dance.
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The Dangerous Class
The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat
Clyde W. Barrow
University of Michigan Press, 2020
Marx and Engels’ concept of the “lumpenproletariat,” or underclass (an anglicized, politically neutral term), appears in The Communist Manifesto and other writings. It refers to “the dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society,” whose lowly status made its residents potential tools of the capitalists against the working class. Surprisingly, no one has made a substantial study of the lumpenproletariat in Marxist thought until now. Clyde Barrow argues that recent discussions about the downward spiral of the American white working class (“its main problem is that it is not working”) have reactivated the concept of the lumpenproletariat, despite long held belief that it is a term so ill-defined as not to be theoretical. Using techniques from etymology, lexicology, and translation, Barrow brings analytical coherence to the concept of the lumpenproletariat, revealing it to be an inherent component of Marx and Engels’ analysis of the historical origins of capitalism. However, a proletariat that is destined to decay into an underclass may pose insurmountable obstacles to a theory of revolutionary agency in post-industrial capitalism. Barrow thus updates historical discussions of the lumpenproletariat in the context of contemporary American politics and suggests that all post-industrial capitalist societies now confront the choice between communism and dystopia.
 
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The Danish Voter
Democratic Ideals and Challenges
Rune Stubager, Kasper M. Hansen, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, and Richard Nadeau
University of Michigan Press, 2021
For many international experts, politicians, and commentators, Denmark stands out as an ideal society with a well-functioning welfare state, low levels of corruption, and a high degree of social and political stability. Like other countries, however, Denmark faces challenges brought on by overall societal changes—particularly the challenges of maintaining a prosperous economy and from the growing number of immigrants with different ethnic and religious backgrounds that have left their mark on Danish society over the past 50 years. But how have Danish voters reacted to these challenges?

The authors of The Danish Voter investigate a series of interesting questions concerning voters’ reactions to these macrosocial challenges and how their reactions affect the foundations for the ideal. Indeed, due to an electoral system open to new influences, the Danish case is an important test case for theories about political development of contemporary Western societies.
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Dante's Aesthetics of Being
Warren Ginsberg
University of Michigan Press, 1999
"I am one who, when love inspires me, takes note . . ." --Dante
Despite the absence of tracts about beauty and art, aesthetic issues did command the attention of people in the Middle Ages. Whenever poets or philosophers turned their thoughts to the order of the heavens, whenever they delighted in music or art, they contemplated how the pleasure they took in the artistry of the universe was related to the God who created it. For Dante, aesthetics was the discourse of being and could not be narrowly defined. The aesthetic became the domain in which he considered not only form and proportion, but questions of love, identity, and perfection of the self.
Warren Ginsberg expertly guides us through Dante's work. He distinguishes between early texts such as the Vita Nuova, in which the aesthetic offers only a form of knowledge between sensation and reason, and the Comedy, in which the aesthetic is transformed into a language of existence. Among other subjects, Dante's Aesthetics of Being treats poeticism, literary history, language theory, the relation of philosophy to poetry, and of course, aesthetics. Its readers will include not only experts in Dante and medievalists in general, but literary critics of all periods. Indeed, anyone interested in poetic theory, the philosophy of beauty, or interdisciplinary studies will profit from reading Ginsberg's thoughtful offering.
Warren Ginsberg is Professor of English, University at Albany, State University of New York. He is author of The Cast of Character: The Representation of Personality in Ancient and Medieval Literature and editor of two Middle English poems, Wynnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages.
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Dante's Epistle to Cangrande
Robert Hollander
University of Michigan Press, 1994
Dante's epistle to Can Grande de la Scala seemingly provides keys to the Divine Comedy; hence it has posed awkward problems for many students of the poet. On one hand, those who discount "authorial intention" are confronted with Dante's own reading of his poem, an apparently explicit statement of his intentions. On the other, the epistle offers information on how to interpret the poem's allegorical elements, which are at odds with modern sensibilities.

In Dante's Epistle to Cangrande Robert Hollander commandingly marshals new evidence to demonstrate that the epistle should be considered authentically Dantean. He further provides enlightening discussion of the nature of tragedy and comedy in the Divine Comedy. The author draws authoritatively on the extensive array of medieval and modern commentaries stored in electronic form by the Dartmouth Dante Project, of which he is the director.

Dante's Epistle to Cangrande makes a signal contribution to Dante studies. Naturally of interest to students of Dante's work, it will also be important reading for those concerned with literary critical questions such as authorial intent, programmatic statements, and allegorical interpretations of literature.
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Dark Matter
Invisibility in Drama, Theater, and Performance
Andrew Sofer
University of Michigan Press, 2013

Dark Matter maps the invisible dimension of theater whose effects are felt everywhere in performance. Examining phenomena such as hallucination, offstage character, offstage action, sexuality, masking, technology, and trauma, Andrew Sofer engagingly illuminates the invisible in different periods of postclassical western theater and drama. He reveals how the invisible continually structures and focuses an audience’s theatrical experience, whether it’s black magic in Doctor Faustus, offstage sex in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, masked women in The Rover, self-consuming bodies in Suddenly Last Summer, or surveillance technology in The Archbishop’s Ceiling. Each discussion pinpoints new and striking facets of drama and performance that escape sight. Taken together, Sofer’s lively case studies illuminate how dark matter is woven into the very fabric of theatrical representation. Written in an accessible style and grounded in theater studies but interdisciplinary by design, Dark Matter will appeal to theater and performance scholars, literary critics, students, and theater practitioners, particularly playwrights and directors.

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The Darker Side of the Renaissance
Literacy, Territoriality, & Colonization, 2nd Edition
Walter D. Mignolo
University of Michigan Press, 2003
The Darker Side of the Renaissance weaves together literature, semiotics, history, historiography, cartography, and cultural theory to examine the role of language in the colonization of the New World. Exploring the many connections among writing, social organization, and political control, including how alphabetic writing is linked with the exercise of power, Walter D. Mignolo claims that European forms of literacy were at the heart of New World colonization. It has long been acknowledged that Amerindians were at a disadvantage in facing European invaders because native cultures did not employ the same kind of texts (hence "knowledge") that the Europeans valued. Yet no one but Mignolo has so thoroughly examined either the process or the implications of conquest and destruction through language. The book continues to challenge commonplace understandings of New World history and to stimulate new colonial and postcolonial scholarship.
Walter D. Mignolo is Professor in the Department of Romance Studies and the Program in Literature, Duke University.
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The Darker Side of the Renaissance
Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization
Walter D. Mignolo
University of Michigan Press, 1995
Winner of the Modern Language Association's Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize.
The Darker Side of the Renaissance weaves together literature, semiotics, history, historiography, cartography, geography, and cultural theory to examine the role of language in the colonization of the New World.
Walter D. Mignolo locates the privileging of European forms of literacy at the heart of New World colonization. He examines how alphabetic writing is linked with the exercise of power, what role "the book" has played in colonial relations, and the many connections between writing, social organization, and political control. It has long been acknowledged that Amerindians were at a disadvantage in facing European invaders because native cultures did not employ the same kind of texts (hence "knowledge") that were validated by the Europeans. Yet no study until this one has so thoroughly analyzed either the process or the implications of conquest and destruction through sign systems.
Starting with the contrasts between Amerindian and European writing systems, Mignolo moves through such topics as the development of Spanish grammar, the different understandings of the book as object and text, principles of genre in history-writing, and an analysis of linguistic descriptions and mapping techniques in relation to the construction of territoriality and understandings of cultural space.
The Darker Side of the Renaissance will significantly challenge commonplace understandings of New World history. More importantly, it will continue to stimulate and provide models for new colonial and post-colonial scholarship.
". . . a contribution to Renaissance studies of the first order. The field will have to reckon with it for years to come, for it will unquestionably become the point of departure for discussion not only on the foundations and achievements of the Renaissance but also on the effects and influences on colonized cultures." -- Journal of Hispanic/ Latino Theology
Walter D. Mignolo is Professor in the Department of Romance Studies and the Program in Literature, Duke University.
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Data on the Abnormal Hemoglobins and Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Deficiency in Human Populations, 1967–1973
Frank B. Livingstone
University of Michigan Press, 1973
In this work, author Frank B. Livingstone has collected and interpreted data on abnormal hemoglobins and G6PD deficiency in humans around the globe. He reports on blood abnormalities by continent and ethnicity and relates these findings to the historic and prehistoric movements of populations.
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The Daughter's Dilemma
Family Process and the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Novel
Paula Marantz Cohen
University of Michigan Press, 1993
The Daughter's Dilemma breaks new ground in literary studies through its application of family systems theory to the analysis of nineteenth-century domestic novels. Cohen argues for structural correspondences between families and novels: as systems seeking closure, they are governed by certain analogous laws. She argues further that the father-daughter dyad is the pivotal structure by which the nuclear family and the domestic novel were able to define themselves as closed systems. The study treats novels by Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, and Henry James and places them in the context of the writers' individual family experiences. Drawing on recent work in literary and feminist criticism, anthropology, history, and psychoanalysis, as well as family systems theory, Cohen seeks to critique the limitations of these theoretical models even as she employs them to illuminate the texts under discussion. The study's approach leads to insights about the contemporary family and about the present state of literature and literary criticism. Cohen concludes by suggesting that the modern period marked the demise of an ideology favoring closed systems. The result has been both a nostalgia for those systems and a redefinition of experience and relationship as open and subject to endless interpretation. Such an ideological reformulation helps explain the present insistence by literary theorists on the inescapability of the text and the "reality" of representation.
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The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil
Barry Ames
University of Michigan Press, 2002
Many countries have experimented with different electoral rules in order either to increase involvement in the political system or make it easier to form stable governments. Barry Ames explores this important topic in one of the world's most populous and important democracies, Brazil. This book locates one of the sources of Brazil's "crisis of governance" in the nation's unique electoral system, a system that produces a multiplicity of weak parties and individualistic, pork-oriented politicians with little accountability to citizens. It explains the government's difficulties in adopting innovative policies by examining electoral rules, cabinet formation, executive-legislative conflict, party discipline and legislative negotiation.
The book combines extensive use of new sources of data, ranging from historical and demographic analysis in focused comparisons of individual states to unique sources of data for the exploration of legislative politics. The discussion of party discipline in the Chamber of Deputies is the first multivariate model of party cooperation or defection in Latin America that includes measures of such important phenomena as constituency effects, pork-barrel receipts, ideology, electoral insecurity, and intention to seek reelection. With a unique data set and a sophisticated application of rational choice theory, Barry Ames demonstrates the effect of different electoral rules for election to Brazil's legislature.
The readership of this book includes anyone wanting to understand the crisis of democratic politics in Brazil. The book will be especially useful to scholars and students in the areas of comparative politics, Latin American politics, electoral analysis, and legislative studies.
Barry Ames is the Andrew Mellon Professor of Comparative Politics and Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.
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Deadly Dust
Silicosis and the On-Going Struggle to Protect Workers' Health
David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz
University of Michigan Press, 2006
During the Depression, silicosis, an industrial lung disease, emerged as a national social crisis. Experts estimated that hundreds of thousands of workers were at risk of disease, disability, and death by inhaling silica in mines, foundries, and quarries. By the 1950s, however, silicosis was nearly forgotten by the media and health professionals. Asking what makes a health threat a public issue, David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz examine how a culture defines disease and how disease itself is understood at different moments in history. They also explore the interlocking relationships of public health, labor, business, and government to discuss who should assume responsibility for occupational disease.
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“If there is a paradigmatic tale of occupational health . . . Deadly Dust is it.”
—James L. Weeks, Science

“Rosner and Markowitz have produced a carefully crafted history of the rise and fall of this occupational disease, focusing especially on the political forces behind changing disease definitions. . . Deadly Dust comes as a fresh breeze into one of the more stuffy and too often ignored alleys of medical history.”
—Robert N. Proctor, The Journal of the American Medical Association

“A thought-provoking, densely referenced, uncompromising history. . . Like all good history, it challenges our basic assumptions about how the world is ordered and offers both factual information and a conceptual framework for rethinking what we ‘know’.”
—Rosemary K. Sokas, The New England Journal of Medicine
Back Cover continued
Deadly Dust raises an important methodological problem that has long gone underarticulated in medical historical circles: how can social historians of medicine offer political or economic explanations for the scientific efforts of their professional subjects without losing a grip on the biological aspects of disease?”
—Christopher Sellers, The Journal of the History of Medicine

"A sophisticated understanding of how class and conflict shape social, economic, political, and intellectual change underlies this first attempt at a history of occupational health spanning the twentieth century."
—Claudia Clark, The Journal of American History%; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"
"This volume is well worth reading as a significant contribution to American social history."
—Charles O. Jackson, The American Historical Review

David Rosner is Distinguished Professor of History and Sociomedical Sciences, and Director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health, Columbia University.

Gerald Markowitz is Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York.
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Dean Worcester's Fantasy Islands
Photography, Film, and the Colonial Philippines
Mark Rice
University of Michigan Press, 2014

Dean Worcester’s Fantasy Islands brings to life one of the most significant (but under examined) figures in the history of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines. Upon the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Worcester, a scientist who had traveled twice to the Philippines on zoological expeditions, established himself as one of America’s leading experts on the Philippines. Over a fourteen-year career as a member of the U.S. colonial regime, Worcester devoted much of his time and energy to traveling among and photographing non-Christian minority groups in the Philippines. He amassed an archive of several thousand photographs taken by him or by government photographers. Worcester deployed those photographs in books, magazine articles, and lectures to promote his belief that the United States should maintain control of the Philippines for decades to come. While many historians have examined American colonial photography in the Philippines, this book is the first lengthy treatment of Worcester’s role in shaping American perceptions of the Philippines in the early twentieth century.

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Dear Wizard
The Letters of Nicholas Delbanco and Jon Manchip White
edited by Nicholas Delbanco
University of Michigan Press, 2014
Dear Wizard is a carefully selected, highly crafted gathering of letters from over three decades of correspondence between authors Nicholas Delbanco and Jon Manchip White. This correspondence, in part a contest to outdo one another with exotic and outlandish letterhead, ranges in tone from carefree to grave and covers topics as diverse as the art and practice of writing, the state of the writer’s profession, and age, illness, love, and loss.
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Death and Life in the Tenth Century
Eleanor Shipley Duckett
University of Michigan Press, 1989
A vivid portrait of political and cultural life in the 10th century
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Death by Philosophy
The Biographical Tradition in the Life and Death of the Archaic Philosophers Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus
Ava Chitwood
University of Michigan Press, 2004

How does one die by philosophy? In Diogenes Laertius, philosophers jump into volcanoes, bury themselves in dung, get eaten by dogs, hang themselves, drown, and vanish into thin air -- sometimes all in a single lifetime. But what happens when we look beyond the fantastic and absurd to examine the particular ways that the philosophers' lives and deaths are recounted?
Ava Chitwood's reexamination of Diogenes Laertius's philosophical biographies opens a new window on the intellectual culture and context in which the work of philosophers like Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus was read, received, and transmitted. Chitwood's analysis also suggests a methodology for understanding the interplay between biography and philosophy and for evaluating biographical sources.
While Chitwood's approach combines the disciplines of classical philology and philosophy, Death by Philosophy is not intended solely for the specialist. This investigation offers the modern reader a fascinating, fresh, and entertaining view of the ancient literary and philosophical world.
Ava Chitwood is Assistant Professor of Classics, at the University of South Florida.
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Death to the Death of Poetry
Essays, Reviews, Notes, Interviews
Donald Hall
University of Michigan Press, 1994

Donald Hall believes that American poetry, at the present moment, thrives both in quality and in leadership. In his latest collection of essays, reviews, and interviews, Hall counters the increasingly publicized view that poetry has an ever-diminishing importance in contemporary American culture. He resents the endlessly repeated cliché that finds poetry unpopular and losing popularity. Thus: Death to the Death of Poetry.

Throughout the pages of this latest offering in the Poets on Poetry series, Hall returns again and again to the theme of poetry's health, and offers essays praising contemporary poets, who serve as examples of poetry's thriving condition. In addition, Death to the Death of Poetry collects interviews in which Hall discusses the work of poetry--revisions, standards, the psychology and sociology of the poet's life.

The collection will be warmly received by Donald Hall's large readership, enhanced in 1993 by publication of two exemplary volumes: The Museum of Clear Ideas, his eleventh book of poetry; and his essay Life Work, which brought him both new and returning readers.

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Debating Oaxaca Archaeology
Edited by Joyce Marcus
University of Michigan Press, 1990
The essays in this collection examine a variety of topics within Oaxacan archaeology, from settlement and land use to scale and complexity. They are based on papers presented at the 1987 meeting of the Northeast Mesoamericanists Society, held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia.
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Decency and Difference
Humanity and the Global Challenge of Identity Politics
Steven C. Roach
University of Michigan Press, 2019

Decency remains one of the most prevalent yet least understood terms in today’s political discourse. In evoking respect, kindness, courage, integrity, reason, and tolerance, it has long expressed an unquestioned duty and belief in promoting and protecting the dignity of all persons. Today this unquestioned belief is in crisis. Tribalism and identity politics have both hindered and threatened its moral stability and efficacy. Still, many continue to undertheorize its political character by isolating it from the effects of identity politics. Decency and Difference argues that decency is a primary source of the political tension that has long shaped the struggles for power, identity, and justice in the global arena. It distinguishes among basic, conservative, and liberal strands of decency to critically examine the many conflicting and competing applications of decency in global politics. Together these different strands reflect a long and uneven evolution from the British and American empires to a global network of justice. This powerful book exposes the gaps of decency and the disparate ways it is practiced, thus addressing the global challenge of configuring a diverse political ethic of decency.

 

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Decentering Advocacy in English Language Teaching
Global Perspectives and Local Practices
Kate Mastruserio Reynolds, Grazzia Maria Mendoza Chirinos, Debra Suarez, Okon Effiong, and Georgios Kormpas
University of Michigan Press, 2024
Advocacy has been an important part of English language teaching, teacher training, and the experiences of individual students. By bringing together ELT advocates that represent diverse continents and countries, Decentering Advocacy in English Language Teaching highlights global efforts in advocacy as it provides an overview of best practices for English language teaching and learning. 

In each chapter, an ELT advocate describes the need for their project, the steps they took, the challenges they faced in their particular context, the parameters they needed to work within, and how they worked within these constraints to achieve their goals. These stories offer insight into classroom and school focused efforts as well as social projects, and touch upon contexts in which educators may feel that they cannot engage in overt advocacy movements. With chapters focused on Africa, East Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, the volume contributors identify patterns based on what has worked well transculturally and in sociopolitically constrained contexts to develop effective principles and practices. By bringing many different advocacy efforts and the latest advocacy research together, Decentering Advocacy in English Language Teaching identifies recognizable standards that can take the onus off of individual advocates to reinvent the wheel.
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Decentralization and Popular Democracy
Governance from Below in Bolivia
Jean-Paul Faguet
University of Michigan Press, 2013

Bolivia decentralized in an effort to deepen democracy, improve public services, and make government more accountable. Unlike many countries, Bolivia succeeded. Over the past generation, public investment shifted dramatically toward primary services and resource distribution became far more equitable, partly due to the creation of new local governments. Many municipalities responded to decentralization with transparent, accountable government, yet others suffered ineptitude, corruption, or both. Why? Jean-Paul Faguet combines broad econometric data with deep qualitative evidence to investigate the social underpinnings of governance. He shows how the interaction of civic groups and business interests determines the quality of local decision making.

In order to understand decentralization, Faguet argues, we must understand governance from the ground up. Drawing on his findings, he offers an evaluation of the potential benefits of decentralization and recommendations for structuring successful reform.

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Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa
Kristen Kao and Ellen M. Lust, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2025
While many scholars, policymakers, and development practitioners view decentralization as a way to increase participation, strengthen political representation, and improve social welfare, little is known about the experiences of communities in the context of decentralization – particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. This volume directs our attention toward the ways in which decentralization is “lived locally” by citizens of the MENA region, underscoring the simultaneous influences of individual-level factors (e.g., gender, education) and local context (e.g., development levels, electoral institutions) on governance processes and outcomes. 

A group of international scholars brings together methodologically diverse, original research in Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia to expand the literature on decentralization. Following a preface by Moulay Hicham, the empirical chapters are arranged into three thematic sections focused on subnational variations in the relationships between central and local actors, citizen engagement with state and non-state institutions, and the extent to which representatives reflect their local communities. Together, these chapters provide important insights into governance, participation, and representation in the MENA and open new questions for furthering the study of governance and local development. Only by unpacking perspectives and governance experiences at the micro-level can we understand how decentralization policies affect citizens’ everyday lives.
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Decisiveness and Fear of Disorder
Political Decision-Making in Times of Crisis
Julius Maximilian Rogenhofer
University of Michigan Press, 2024
Decisiveness and Fear of Disorder examines how democratic representatives make decisions in crisis situations. By analyzing parliamentary asylum debates from Germany’s Asylum Compromise in 1992-1993 and the 2015-2016 refugee crisis, Julius Rogenhofer identifies representatives’ ability to project decisiveness as a crucial determinant for whether the rights and demands of irregular migrants were adequately considered in democratic decision-making. Both crisis situations showcase an emotive dimension to the parliamentary meaning-making process. As politicians confront fears of social and political disorder, they focus on appearing decisive in the eyes of the public and fellow representatives, even at the expense of human rights considerations and inclusive deliberation processes. 

Rogenhofer shows how his theoretical approach allows us to reinterpret a range of crisis situations beyond the irregular migration context, including democracies’ initial responses to Covid-19, the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, and United States climate politics. These additional case studies help position concerns with decisiveness amid the challenges that populism and technocracy increasingly pose to representative democracies.
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Deckhand
Life on Freighters of the Great Lakes
Nelson "Mickey" Haydamacker with Alan D. Millar
University of Michigan Press, 2009

Long before popular television shows such as Dirty Jobs and The Deadliest Catch, everyday men and women---the unsung heroes of the job world---toiled in important but mostly anonymous jobs. One of those jobs was deckhand on the ore boats.

With numerous photographs and engaging stories, Deckhand offers an insider's view of both the mundane and the intriguing duties performed by deckhands on these gritty cargo vessels. Boisterous port saloons, monster ice jams, near drownings, and the daily drudgery of soogeying---cleaning dirt and grime off the ships---are just a few of the experiences Mickey Haydamacker had as a young deckhand working on freighters of the Great Lakes in the early 1960s. Haydamacker sailed five Interlake Steamship Company boats, from the modern Elton Hoyt 2nd to the ancient coal-powered Colonel James Pickands with its backbreaking tarp-covered hatches.

Deckhand will appeal to shipping buffs and to anyone interested in Great Lakes shipping and maritime history as it chronicles the adventures of living on the lakes from the seldom-seen view of a deckhand.

Mickey Haydamacker spent his youth as a deckhand sailing on the freighters of the Great Lakes. During the 1962 and '63 seasons Nelson sailed five different Interlake Steamship Company ore boats. He later went on to become an arson expert with the Michigan State Police, retiring with the rank of Detective Sergeant.

Alan D. Millar, to whom Haydamacker related his tale of deckhanding, spent his career as a gift store owner and often wrote copy for local newspaper, TV, and radio.

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The Decline of Comity in Congress
Eric M. Uslaner
University of Michigan Press, 1996
Why do members of Congress resort to name-calling? In this provocative book, Eric M. Uslaner proposes that Congress is mirroring the increased incivility of American society. He points to five core values—American exceptionalism, enlightened individualism, egalitarianism, science as social engineering, and religion—that have been eroded since the 1960s. The author argues that a lack of trust permeates members of Congress to the point that they would rather seek control than compromise. This, Uslaner contends, is the real cause of gridlock in Washington. The Decline in Comity in Congress demonstrates why institutional reform will not correct this problem and why Americans need to change before their government can.
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Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum
Katrin Sieg
University of Michigan Press, 2021

Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum examines efforts by European museums to investigate colonialism as part of an unprocessed past, confront its presence, and urge repair. A flurry of exhibitions and the overhaul of numerous large museums in the last decade signal that an emergent colonial memory culture is now reaching broader publics. Exhibitions pose the question of what Europeans owe to those they colonized.

Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum shows how museums can help visitors mourn historic violence and identify the contemporary agents, beneficiaries, victims, survivors, and resisters of colonial presence. At the same time, the book treats the museum as part of the racialized power relations that activists, academics, and artists have long protested against. This book asks whether museums have made the dream of activists, academics, and artists to build equitable futures more acceptable and more durable—or whether in packaging that dream for general audiences they curtail it. Confronting colonial violence, this book argues, pushes Europeans to face the histories of racism and urges them to envision antiracism at the global scale.

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The Deeds of Count Roger of Calabria and Sicily and of His Brother Duke Robert Guisc
Kenneth Baxter Wolf
University of Michigan Press, 2005

Geoffrey Malaterra's Deeds of Count Roger is the most important extant account of the Norman conquest of Muslim Silicy (1061-91). This volume includes a translation of the Latin original as well as an introduction, notes, and maps.

The Deeds of Count Roger fills a gap in the primary literature pertaining to the earliest phase of Latin Christian expansion at the expense of Islam, since the Norman conquests in Sicily were more or less contemporary with the First Crusade and the beginnings of the Spanish Reconquista. The account also illustrates the complexity of medieval historical writing, with Malaterra on the one hand praising the Normans for their military achievements and on the other subtly criticising the "lust for domination" that inspired them.

Kenneth Baxter Wolf is Professor of History at Pomona College.

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Deep
Real Life with Spinal Cord Injury
Marcy Epstein and Travar Pettway, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2010

"This project fits into the larger picture of excellence that we wish to accomplish in all dimensions of our health system: groundbreaking and dedicated research, compassionate clinical care, progressive education, and a welcoming environment that includes community with people with disabilities. In Deep, the writers and editors of this book realize this mission with accuracy and clarity."
---Denise G. Tate, Director of Research at the University of Michigan Model Spinal Cord Injury Care System

People with spinal cord injuries experience life beyond their medical and rehabilitative journeys, but these stories are rarely told. Deep: Real Life with Spinal Cord Injury includes the stories of ten men and women whose lives have been transformed by spinal cord injury. Each essay challenges the stereotypes and misconceptions about SCI---with topics ranging from faith to humility to sex and manhood---offering a multitude of voices that weave together to create a better understanding of the diversity of disability and the uniqueness of those individuals whose lives are changed but not defined by their injuries. Life with SCI can be traumatic and ecstatic, uncharted and thrilling, but it always entails a journey beyond previous expectations. This volume captures this sea change, exploring the profound depths of SCI experience.

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Defacing Power
The Aesthetics of Insecurity in Global Politics
Brent J. Steele
University of Michigan Press, 2012

"Combining a rich and varied set of theoretical insights with a subtle analysis of the politics of American foreign policy, Defacing Power marks an important contribution toward understanding the power of identity in world politics. Engagingly written and rigorously argued, Steele's challenging analysis is incisive, important, and rewarding."
---Michael C. Williams, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa

"Brent Steele's marvelous excavation of the aesthetic dimensions of power is strikingly irreverent, inasmuch as he displays no commitment to ex ante disciplinary or substantive constraints in his quest to disclose those moments of creative action so often overlooked by theories and theorists wedded to the grandiose and the transhistorical. Steele samples and remixes a myriad of sources, arranging them so as to produce a transgressively insightful account of how 'work on the Self,' often condemned as self-indulgent by prior generations of intellectuals, might just point in the direction of a more sustainably secure world."
---Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, School of International Service, American University

"Defacing Power successfully integrates work from Dewey to Morgenthau to Foucault, as well as a wide range of contemporary international relations scholars, in its genealogy of power conceptualizations and characteristics. This book is theoretically sophisticated and serious. It should be of interest to students of international politics, international theory, social theory, and foreign policy."
---Cecelia Lynch, Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies, University of California, Irvine

Defacing Power investigates how nation-states create self-images in part through aesthetics and how these images can be manipulated to challenge those states' power. Although states have long employed media, such as radio, television, and film, for their own image-making purposes, counterpower agents have also seized upon new telecommunications technologies. Most recently, the Internet has emerged as contested territory where states and other actors wage a battle of words and images.

Moving beyond theory, Brent Steele illustrates his provocative argument about the vulnerability of power with examples from recent history: the My Lai Massacre and the Tet Offensive, September 11 and the al-Qaeda communiqués, the atrocities at Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, and the U.S. response to the Asian tsunami of December 2004. He demonstrates how a nation-state---even one as powerful as the United States---comes to feel threatened not only by other nation-states or terrorist organizations but also by unexpected events that challenge its self-constructed image of security. At the same time, Steele shows that as each generation uses available media to create and re-create a national identity, technological innovations allow for the shifting, upheaval, and expansion of the cultural structure of a nation.

Brent J. Steele is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas.

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"Defects"
Engendering the Modern Body
Helen Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2000
"Defects" brings together essays on the emergence of the concept of monstrosity in the eighteenth century and the ways it paralleled the emergence of notions of sexual difference. Women, declared a mid-eighteenth-century vindication, have been regarded since Aristotle as deformed amphibious things, "neither more or less than Monsters" (Beauty's Triumph 1758). This alliance of monstrosity with misogyny, along with the definition of sexual difference as aberration, is the starting point for this volume's investigation of monstrosity's cultural work in the eighteenth century and its simultaneous mapping and troubling of the range of differences.
This collection investigates the conceptual and geographical mapping of early modern and Enlightenment ideas of monstrosity onto a range of differences that contested established categories. The essays consider the representations and material dimensions of phenomena as diverse as femininity and disfigurement, the material imagination and monstrous birth, ugliness as an aesthetic category, deafness and theories of sign language, and the exotic, racialized deformed. Collectively, they demonstrate that the emergence of sexual difference is inextricably intertwined with the emergence of a category of the human that is imagined and deformed, monstrous, and ugly. Contributors include Barbara Benedict, Jill Campbell, Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, Lennard Davis, Helen Deutsch, Robert Jones, Cora Kaplan, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Felicity Nussbaum, Stephen Pender, and Joel Reed.
Helen Deutsch is Professor of English, University of California at Los Angeles. Her most recent book is Resemblance and Disgrace: Alexander Pope and the Deformation of Culture. Felicity Nussbaum is Professor of English, University of California at Los Angeles. Her most recent book is Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narrative.
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Defending Diversity
Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan
Patricia Gurin, Jeffrey S. Lehman, and Earl Lewis, with Eric L. Dey, Gerald Gurin, and Sylvia Hurtado
University of Michigan Press, 2004

Even as lawsuits challenging its admissions policies made their way through the courts, the University of Michigan carried the torch for affirmative action in higher education.
In June 2003, the Supreme Court vindicated UM's position on affirmative action when it ruled that race may be used as a factor for universities in their admissions programs, thus confirming what the UM had argued all along: diversity in the classroom translates to a beneficial and wide-ranging social value. With the green light given to the law school's admissions policies, Defending Diversity validates the positive benefits gained by students in a diverse educational setting.
Written by prominent University of Michigan faculty, Defending Diversity is a timely response to the court's ruling. Providing factual background, historical setting, and the psychosocial implications of affirmative action, the book illuminates the many benefits of a diverse higher educational setting -- including preparing students to be full participants in a pluralistic democracy -- and demonstrates why affirmative action is necessary to achieve that diversity.
Defending Diversity is a significant contribution to the ongoing discussion on affirmative action in higher education. Perhaps more important, it is a valuable record of the history, events, arguments, and issues surrounding the original lawsuits and the Supreme Court's subsequent ruling, and helps reclaim the debate from those forces opposed to affirmative action.
Patricia Gurin is Professor Emerita, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan. Jeffrey S. Lehman, former Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, is President of Cornell University. Earl Lewis is Dean of Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan.
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Defending the Holy Land
A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security and Foreign Policy
Zeev Maoz
University of Michigan Press, 2008
Defending the Holy Land is the most comprehensive analysis to date of Israel's national security and foreign policy, from the inception of the State of Israel to the present. Author Zeev Maoz's unique double perspective, as both an expert on the Israeli security establishment and esteemed scholar of Mideast politics, enables him to describe in harrowing detail the tragic recklessness and self-made traps that pervade the history of Israeli security operations and foreign policy.

Most of the wars in which Israel was involved, Maoz shows, were entirely avoidable, the result of deliberate Israeli aggression, flawed decision-making, and misguided conflict management strategies. None, with the possible exception of the 1948 War of Independence, were what Israelis call "wars of necessity." They were all wars of choice-or, worse, folly.

Demonstrating that Israel's national security policy rested on the shaky pairing of a trigger-happy approach to the use of force with a hesitant and reactive peace diplomacy, Defending the Holy Land recounts in minute-by-minute detail how the ascendancy of Israel's security establishment over its foreign policy apparatus led to unnecessary wars and missed opportunites for peace.

A scathing and brilliant revisionist history, Defending the Holy Land calls for sweeping reform of Israel's foreign policy and national security establishments. This book will fundamentally transform the way readers think about Israel's troubled history.
Zeev Maoz is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. He is the former head of the Graduate School of Government and Policy and of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, as well as the former academic director of the M.A. Program at the Israeli Defense Forces' National Defense College.
Cover photograph: Israel, Jerusalem, Western Wall and The Dome of The Rock. Courtesy of Corbis.
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Defensive Internationalism
Providing Public Goods in an Uncertain World
Davis B. Bobrow and Mark A. Boyer
University of Michigan Press, 2005
"The authors' carefully crafted analysis will influence thought and the policy debate on the tradeoff between unilateralism and multilateralism for decades to come."
-Todd Sandler, Robert R. and Katheryn A. Dockson Professor of International Relations & Economics, University of Southern California

"Boyer and Bobrow's well-written, data-rich analysis of such pressing issues as development assistance, debt management, UN peacekeeping, and environmental protection makes Defensive Internationalism a highly original and provocative contribution to the study of global governance."
-Yale H. Ferguson, Co-Director, Center for Global Change and Governance, Rutgers University

In this pathbreaking study, authors Davis B. Bobrow and Mark A. Boyer argue for "muted optimism" about the future of international cooperation. Leaders of a growing movement that integrates constructivism into traditional international studies concepts and methods, Bobrow and Boyer analyze four key international issues: development cooperation, debt management, peacekeeping operations, and environmental affairs. Their approach integrates elements of public goods theory, identity theory, new institutionalism, and rational choice. Defensive Internationalism is a well-written, creative and coherent synthesis of ideas that have up to now been considered irreconcilable. It is appropriate for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in international relations, conflict studies, and political economy, and promises to become a foundational work in its field.

Davis B. Bobrow is Professor of Public and International Affairs and Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh.

Mark A. Boyer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut.

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Defining Dominion
The Discourses of Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern France and Germany
Gerhild Scholz Williams
University of Michigan Press, 1999
In this intriguing volume, Gerhild Scholz Williams explores the roles of magic and demonology in France and Germany in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She guides the reader through a variety of texts--many of them popular and influential in their day--to illuminate how magic came to shape people's perceptions of a changing world. This comprehensive study looks at magic as an intellectual and cultural language, as an attempt to explain the world, and as a means to control and confine women, whose propensity for satanic dalliance threatened not just their own souls but the health of the larger society.
". . . Williams has done an exemplary job of analyzing the intersection of the discourses of magic (as related to women and witchcraft), discovery, and religious diversity/dissidence to explain how the confluence of these discourses eventually 'determined who occupied society's center and who was forced to move to, or remain at, its margins.' . . . Gerhild Scholz Williams is no dilettante grazing in the greener pastures of other disciplines. She has been laboring assiduously in these neighboring fields for years now, and it is breathtaking to see how all of her disparate projects have come together so elegantly articulated in this one volume." --Susan L. Cocalis, German Studies Review
Gerhild Scholz Williams is Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Washington University, St. Louis.
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Defusing Democracy
Central Bank Autonomy and the Transition from Authoritarian Rule
Delia M. Boylan
University of Michigan Press, 2001
Many of today's new democracies are constrained by institutional forms designed by previous authoritarian rulers. In this timely and provocative study, Delia M. Boylan traces the emergence of these vestigial governance structures to strategic behavior by outgoing elites seeking to protect their interests from the vicissitudes of democratic rule.
One important outgrowth of this political insulation strategy--and the empirical centerpiece of Boylan's analysis--is the existence of new, highly independent central banks in countries throughout the developing world. This represents a striking transformation, for not only does central bank autonomy remove a key aspect of economic decision making from democratic control; in practice it has also kept many of the would-be expansionist governments that hold power today from overturning the neoliberal policies favored by authoritarian predecessors.
To illustrate these points, Defusing Democracy takes a fresh look at two transitional polities in Latin America--Chile and Mexico--where variation in the proximity of the democratic "threat" correspondingly yielded different levels of central bank autonomy.
Boylan concludes by extending her analysis to institutional contexts beyond Latin America and to insulation strategies other than central bank autonomy. Defusing Democracy will be of interest to anyone--political scientists, economists, and policymakers alike--concerned about the genesis and consolidation of democracy around the globe.
Delia M. Boylan is Assistant Professor, Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
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Dehexing Sex
Russian Womanhood During and After Glasnost
Helena Goscilo
University of Michigan Press, 1996
Glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union revolutionized Russian society. What effects, however, did they have on the status, role, and image of women in Russian culture? Examining the past turbulent decade of transition to "democracy" and a market economy, Dehexing Sex traces the ways in which Russia's concept of womanhood both changed and remained the same, taking into account dominant ideologies and social philosophies, sociopolitical organizations, women's writings, literary criticism, film, and popular cultural forms such as pornography.
The lively, engaging chapters of this book examine texts by contemporary women writers in the context of the political, social, economic, biological, psychological, and aesthetic transformations that helped define them. Goscilo reveals that the Russian cultural revolution has reshaped the female image in varied and often contradictory ways. While increased interaction with the West fostered gender awareness, it also introduced imported Western sexist practices--especially the exploitation of female bodies--formerly proscribed by a puritanical censorship. Popular magazines, newspapers, and television propagated the image of woman as mother, ornament, and sexual object, even as women's fiction conceived of womanhood in complex psychological terms that undermined the gender stereotypes which had ruled Soviet thinking for more than 70 years.
With the aid of feminist and cultural theory, Dehexing Sex investigates the overt and internalized misogyny that combined with the genuinely liberalizing forces unleashed by Gorbachev's policy of glasnost and perestroika. It exposes Russia's repressive romance with womanhood as a metaphor for nationhood and explores Russian women's ironic recasting of national mythologies.
"Impressive . . . an important contribution to Russian studies and to women's studies. The author is an outstanding scholar, an energetic and original thinker, and her writing sparkles with imagination and wit." --Stephanie Sandler, Amherst College
Helena Goscilo is Associate Professor and Chair of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh.
[more]

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Delegating Responsibility
International Cooperation on Migration in the European Union
Nicholas R. Micinski
University of Michigan Press, 2022

Delegating Responsibility explores the politics of migration in the European Union and explains how the EU responded to the 2015–17 refugee crisis. Based on 86 interviews and fieldwork in Greece and Italy, Nicholas R. Micinski proposes a new theory of international cooperation on international migration. States approach migration policies in many ways—such as coordination, collaboration, subcontracting, and unilateralism—but which policy they choose is based on capacity and on credible partners on the ground. Micinski traces the fifty-year evolution of EU migration management, like border security and asylum policies, and shows how EU officials used “crises” as political leverage to further Europeanize migration governance. In two in-depth case studies, he explains how Italy and Greece responded to the most recent refugee crisis. He concludes with a discussion of policy recommendations regarding contemporary as well as long-term aspirations for migration management in the EU.

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Delightfulee
The Life and Music of Lee Morgan
Jeffery S. McMillan
University of Michigan Press, 2008

One of the most individual stylists of his time, trumpeter Lee Morgan began his professional career in Philadelphia at age fifteen. At eighteen, after a short stint with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Morgan joined Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra, where he stayed until the group disbanded in 1958. A return to Blakey brought Morgan new opportunities, including his first successful attempts at composition. But however much his time with Blakey helped to advance his playing and writing, his boss's and his bandmates' destructive drug habits exerted just as strong an influence. Within three years, Morgan would be back home in Philadelphia, strung out on heroin and penniless.

Morgan's return to music in the early to mid-sixties witnessed a tremendous evolution in his playing. Formerly a virtuoso in the model of his idol, Clifford Brown, Morgan brought to his critically acclaimed Blue Note records of the era an emotionally charged, muscular tone, full of poise and control. But it was with the record Sidewinder, recorded in 1963, that Morgan found his greatest fame and commercial success, due to the infectious groove of the title tune. By the time of his death, at thirty-three---murdered in a New York City club by his girlfriend during a gig---Morgan had begun a new phase of his career, experimenting with freer-forms of musical expression.

Jeff McMillan's Delightfulee is the first biography to seriously examine Morgan's vast contributions to jazz, both as a performer and as a composer. Thanks to exclusive access to Lee Morgan's now-deceased brother, McMillan is also able to provide unparalleled insight into Morgan's personal and family life

Jeff McMillan received his master's degree from the Jazz History and Research program at Rutgers-Newark in 2000 and currently works as an archivist for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

[more]

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Demanding Choices
Opinion, Voting, and Direct Democracy
Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan
University of Michigan Press, 2000
Referenda on important public policy questions have come to play a central role in policy making in many states. Referenda, or ballot propositions, have resulted in limits on taxation and limits on the number of terms of elected officials, and have dealt with bilingual education, campaign finances, and affirmative action, in states all over the country.
Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan present a searching and original examination of how voters make decisions in direct referenda. The authors ask if voters have some information about the issue easily at their disposal and if they make choices that seem sensible given their interests and the information they have. Looking at the way voters respond to different kinds of questions, the authors suggest that while direct democracy has its failings, the flaws do not necessarily lie with citizens being "duped," nor with voters approving propositions they do not want or do not understand at some basic level.
As cynicism about government has increased many have sought to take policy questions out of the hands of elected officials and put the questions directly before the voters for decision. And yet many are skeptical about the ability of voters to make intelligent decisions about complex policy issues. This important book demonstrates that voters are capable of responding thoughtfully to referenda questions.
This book will appeal to students of contemporary American politics and electoral politics.
Shaun Bowler is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California at Irvine. Todd Donovan is Associate Professor of Political Science, Western Washington University.
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Democracy and Deliberation
The Law and Politics of Sex Offender Legislation
Cary Federman
University of Michigan Press, 2021
Sex offender laws include residency restrictions, registration and notification requirements, and post-conviction civil commitment. These laws and regulations impose serious restrictions on the movements of convicted sex offenders. This is controversial because these laws and regulations occur after the sex offender has completed his time in prison. These laws and regulations are intended to have both a deterrent and therapeutic effect. Residency restrictions seek to prevent sex offenders from recommitting their crimes and civil commitment provides psychological services while incarcerated in a forensic facility. Most works on this subject are deeply critical of these laws.

Cary Federman takes a more sympathetic approach to sex offender legislation. He focuses on the deliberative intentions of legislators, exploring the limits of judicial review and the rights of interested parties to influence lawmaking. Leaders of these interested parties are usually the parents of children who have been sexually violated and murdered. Critics of sex offender legislation tend to focus on the convicted parties, arguing that their rights have been violated. Democracy and Deliberation asserts that these laws are expressions of the deliberative intentions of lawmakers concerned about public safety—they are thus constitutional, if not always wise.
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Democracy and Imperialism
Irving Babbitt and Warlike Democracies
William S. Smith
University of Michigan Press, 2019

Following costly U.S. engagement in two wars in the Middle East, questions about the appropriateness of American military interventions dominate foreign policy debates. Is an interventionist foreign policy compatible with the American constitutional tradition?

This book examines critic Irving Babbitt’s (1865–1933) unique contribution to understanding the quality of foreign policy leadership in a democracy. Babbitt explored how a democratic nation’s foreign policy is a product of the moral and cultural tendencies of the nation’s leaders, arguing that the substitution of expansive, sentimental Romanticism for the religious and ethical traditions of the West would lead to imperialism.

The United States’ move away from the restraint and order of sound constitutionalism to involve itself in the affairs of other nations will inevitably cause a clash with the “civilizational” regions that have emerged in recent decades. Democracy and Imperialism uses the question of soul types to address issues of foreign policy leadership, and discusses the leadership qualities that are necessary for sound foreign policy.

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Democracy and Institutions
The Life Work of Arend Lijphart
Markus M. L. Crepaz, Thomas A. Koelble, and David Wilsford, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2000
Institutions are the channels of political power. This volume explores Arend Lijphart's life work--the design of political institutions. All the contributors to this volume share the fundamental insight that the design of political institutions matters in how democracies work.
The essays in this volume offer both theoretical insights into the context and implications of Lijphart's ideas and empirical exploration of the ideas. Two chapters by Thomas Koelble and Andrew Reynolds examine and apply Lijphart's insights to South Africa, while another study by Jack Nagel explores the fascinating institutional changes taking place in New Zealand. Essays by Bernard Grofman and Rein Taagepera examine Lijphart's work from a theoretical perspective and place Lijphart's work in the wider neo-institutionalist school of thought. Milton Esman applies the principle of power-sharing to mobilized communities, not only in democratic societies but also to those which are governed by authoritarian rule. Bingham Powell offers an empirical approach to the crucial question of the connection between political institutions and responsiveness of policy-makers. Markus M. L. Crepaz and Vicki Birchfield argue that in this age of globalization, countries with consensual political institutions will not only systematically refract the pressures of globalization but will be able to absorb the domestic consequences of globalization more successfully than majoritarian countries. Finally, Arend Lijphart responds to the arguments made in these essays, extending and adding novel concepts and insights to his conceptual framework.
The book will be of interest to political scientists, lawyers, and sociologists who study institutions, the impact of electoral systems, and constitutional design. In addition, those who study "globalization" will be attracted by the relevance of domestic political institutions and their refractory effects as the tides of globalization wash against the domestic shores.
Markus M. L. Crepaz is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Georgia. Thomas A. Koelble is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Miami. David Wilsford is President and Professor, the Institute for American Universities.
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Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits
Alexander Baturo
University of Michigan Press, 2014

A national constitution or other statute typically specifies restrictions on executive power, often including a limit to the number of terms the chief executive may hold office. In recent decades, however, some presidents of newly established democracies have extended their tenure by various semilegal means, thereby raising the specter—and in some cases creating the reality—of dictatorship.

Alexander Baturo tracks adherence to and defiance of presidential term limits in all types of regimes (not only democratic regimes) around the world since 1960. Drawing on original data collection and fieldwork to investigate the factors that encourage playing by or manipulating the rules, he asks what is at stake for the chief executive if he relinquishes office. Baturo finds that the income-generating capacity of political office in states where rent-seeking is prevalent, as well as concerns over future immunity and status, determines whether or not an executive attempts to retain power beyond the mandated period. Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits will appeal to scholars of democratization and executive power and also to political theorists.

[more]

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Democracy, Electoral Systems, and Judicial Empowerment in Developing Countries
Vineeta Yadav and Bumba Mukherjee
University of Michigan Press, 2014
The power granted to the courts, both in a nation’s constitution and in practice, reveals much about the willingness of the legislative and executive branches to accept restraints on their own powers. For this reason, an independent judiciary is considered an indication of a nation’s level of democracy. Vineeta Yadav and Bumba Mukherjee use a data set covering 159 developing countries, along with comparative case studies of Brazil and Indonesia, to identify the political conditions under which de jure independence is established. They find that the willingness of political elites to grant the courts authority to review the actions of the other branches of government depends on the capacity of the legislature and expectations regarding the judiciary’s assertiveness.

Moving next to de facto independence, Yadav and Mukherjee bring together data from 103 democracies in the developing world, complemented by case studies of Brazil, India, and Indonesia. Honing in on the effects of electoral institutions, the authors find that, when faced with short time horizons, governments that operate in personal vote electoral systems are likely to increase de facto judicial independence whereas governments in party-centered systems are likely to reduce it.

[more]

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Democracy, Governance, and Growth
Stephen Knack, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 2003
For many decades, underdevelopment in much of the world was blamed variously on capital deficits, exploitation by rich nations, and market-distorting economic policies. The chapters in this volume provide much of the evidence underpinning a growing consensus among development and growth economists that successful economic development depends more fundamentally on the way societies are organized and governed. They argue that "good governance" is a prerequisite to sustained increases in living standards.
The difference between developmental success and failure in this view has little to do with natural resource availability, climate, aid, or developed nations' policies. Rather, it is largely a function of whether incentives within a given society steer wealth-maximizing individuals toward producing new wealth or toward diverting it from others. The chapters, seminal essays written by Mancur Olson and his IRIS Center colleagues, provide theoretical and/or empirical underpinnings for the emerging consensus that differences in the way governments and societies are organized have enormous implications for the structure of incentives faced by politicians, bureaucrats, investors, and workers, which in turn determines the level of a nation's material well-being.
Overall this volume applies tools and concepts from the "New Institutional Economics" to some of the major issues in economic development. It will be of interest to scholars and students of various disciplines--including political science, law, and sociology as well as economics--interested in the determinants of economic development and global economic change. The book will also be of interest to many aid practitioners, particularly those working in anticorruption and public sector reform issues.
Stephen Knack is Senior Research Economist, Development Research Group, the World Bank.
[more]

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Democracy Moving
Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past
Ariel Nereson
University of Michigan Press, 2022
On the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, renowned choreographer and director Bill T. Jones developed three tributes: Serenade/The Proposition100 Migrations, and Fondly Do We Hope . . . Fervently Do We Pray. These widely acclaimed dance works incorporated video and audio text from Lincoln’s writings as they examined key moments in his life and his enduring legacy. Democracy Moving explores how these works provided both an occasion and a method by which democracy and history might be reconceived through movement, positioning dance as a form of both history and historiography.
 
The project addresses how different communities choose to commemorate historical figures, events, and places through art—whether performance, oratory, song, statuary, or portraiture—and in particular, Black US American counter-memorial practices that address histories of slavery. Advancing the theory of oscillation as Black aesthetic praxis, author Ariel Nereson celebrates Bill T. Jones as a public intellectual whose practice has contributed to the project of understanding America’s relationship to its troubled past. The book features materials from Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company’s largely unexplored archive, interviews with artists, and photos that document this critical stage of Jones’s career as it explores how aesthetics, as ideas in action, can imagine more just and equitable social formations.
[more]

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Democracy without Associations
Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India
Pradeep K. Chhibber
University of Michigan Press, 2001
India's party system has undergone a profound transformation over the last decade. The Congress Party, a catch-all party that brought independence in 1947 and governed India for much of the period since then, no longer dominates the electoral scene. Political parties which draw support from particular caste and religious groups are now more powerful than ever before. Democracy Without Associations explains why religious and caste-based political parties come to dominate the electoral landscape in 1990s India and why catch-all parties have declined. Arguing that political parties and state policy can make some social divisions more salient than others and also determine how these divisions affect the political system, the author offers an explanation for the relationship between electoral competition and the politicization of social differences in India. He notes that the relationship between social cleavages and the party system is not axiomatic and that political parties can influence the links they have to social cleavages. The argument developed for India is also used to account for emergence of class-based parties in Spain and the electoral success of a religious party in Algeria.
Democracy Without Associations will interest scholars and students of Indian politics, and party politics, as well as those interested in the impact of social divisions on the political system.
Pradeep K. Chhibber is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Associate Director, Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan.
[more]

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Democracy's Meanings
How the Public Understands Democracy and Why It Matters
Nicholas T. Davis, Keith Gåddie, and Kirby Goidel
University of Michigan Press, 2022

Democracy’s Meanings challenges conventional wisdom regarding how the public thinks about and evaluates democracy. Mining both political theory and more than 75 years of public opinion data, the book argues that Americans think about democracy in ways that go beyond voting or elected representation. Instead, citizens have rich and substantive views about the material conditions that democracy should produce, which draw from their beliefs about equality, fairness, and justice.

The authors construct a typology of views about democracy. Procedural views of democracy take a minimalistic quality. While voting and fair treatment are important to this vision of democracy, ideas about equality are mostly limited to civil liberties. In contrast, social views of democracy incorporate both civil and economic equality; according to people with these views, democracy ought to meet the basic social and material needs of citizens. Complementing these two groups are moderate and indifferent views about democracy. While moderate views sit somewhere in between procedural and social perspectives regarding the role of democracy in producing social and economic equality, indifferent views of democracy involve disaffection toward it. For a small group of apathetic citizens, democracy is an ambiguous and ill-defined concept.

[more]

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Democracy's News
A Primer on Journalism for Citizens Who Care about Democracy
G. Michael Killenberg and Rob Anderson
University of Michigan Press, 2023

Since the Founding, America’s faith in a democratic republic has depended on citizens who could be trusted to be communicators. Vigorous talk about equality, rights, and collaboration fueled the revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution with its amendments. In a republic, the people set the terms for their lives not individually, but in community. The genius of keeping it alive exists in how everyday citizens talk and listen, write and read, for a common good. Dialogue and deliberation—rather than an accumulation of individual preferences—sustains a republic, yet a diminished and scarred institution of journalism jeopardizes citizens’ access to shared and truthful information. A disturbing “what’s in it for me?” attitude has taken over many citizens, and a creeping, autocratic sense of dismissive accusation too often characterizes the political style of elected officials.

The basic fuel for democracy is the willingness of informed citizens to take each other seriously as they talk about political choices. Once we begin to clam up, build walls, and dismiss each other, we unravel the threads tying us to the Founders’ vision of a republic. A free press and free speech become meaningless if not supported by sustained listening to multiple positions. There are those who profit by dividing citizens into two camps: a comfortable “us” versus a scary “them.” They make their case with accusations and often with lies. They warp the very meaning of communication, hoping citizens never truly discover each other’s humanity. Democracy’s News discusses today’s problems of public communication in the context of history, law, and interpersonal life. News should not be something to dread, mistrust, or shun. Aided by reliable, factual journalism, citizens can develop a community-based knowledge to cope with social issues great and small. They come to treat neighbors and strangers as more than stereotypes or opponents. They become collaborators with whom to identify and sustain a working republic where news, citizenship, and public discourse merge.

[more]

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Democracy's Promise
Immigrants and American Civic Institutions
Janelle S. Wong
University of Michigan Press, 2006

Given the massive demographic changes in the United States during the past few decades, understanding the place of immigrants in the public sphere has never been more critical. Democracy's Promise examines both the challenges and opportunities posed to American civic institutions by the presence of increasing numbers of immigrants. Author Janelle Wong argues that the low levels of political participation among contemporary immigrants are not due to apathy or preoccupation with their homeland, but to the inability of American political parties and advocacy organizations to mobilize immigrant voters. Wong's rich study of Chinese and Mexican immigrants in New York and Los Angeles complements traditional studies of political behavior and civic institutions while offering a nuanced examination of immigrants' political activity.

Democracy's Promise will appeal to a broad spectrum of social scientists and ethnic studies scholars who study or teach immigration, racial and ethnic politics, political participation, civic engagement, and American political institutions. In addition, it will appeal to community organizers and party activists who are interested in issues of race and ethnicity, immigration, political participation, and political mobilization.

Janelle Wong is Assistant Professor of Political Science and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

"As political parties (perhaps) decline in the United States, as civic organizations (perhaps) move away from direct participatory politics, and as the number of immigrants certainly increases--what will link new Americans to the political realm? Janelle Wong answers this important question clearly, with elegance, nuance, rich description, and galvanizing provocativeness. Her evidence is compelling and her sense of urgency about the need for parties to look beyond short-term interests even more so."
--Jennifer L. Hochschild, Harvard University

"Wong draws on the Latino and Asian immigrant experience, with specific examples from the Chinese and Mexican communities of New York and Los Angeles, to show how the political parties have largely failed to organize these groups and why labor unions and immigrant advocacy organizations have stepped in to take their place. Far from 'disuniting' America, she clearly shows that bringing these groups into the political fray is central to the project of renewing American democracy."
--John Mollenkopf, CUNY Graduate Center

"A scathing critique of the role of parties in the mobilization of new immigrants and an invaluable analysis of alternative pathways of mobilization through community organizations."
--Michael Jones-Correa, Cornell University

"By employing multiple empirical methods, including in-depth interviews and sophisticated survey analyses, Janelle Wong provides a compelling account of the political activities and allegiances of America's Asian and Latino immigrants that challenges much conventional wisdom. Often the political parties are failing to reach out to these groups, and often immigrants remain concerned about their home countries; but they are nonetheless increasingly active in American politics, in ways that may do much to shape the course of American political development in the 21st century. Democracy's Promise is a major contribution to our understanding of this crucial dimension of American politics."
--Rogers M. Smith, University of Pennsylvania

"Democracy's Promise challenges political parties to reexamine their priorities for mobilizing new voters, and identifies the critical role civic institutions play in invigorating participation among immigrant citizens. Wong's analysis is at once precise and expansive; illuminating the contours of Latino and Asian American political incorporation and provoking thoughtful debate on inclusion in democratic theory."
--Jane Junn, Rutgers University
[more]

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Democratic Laboratories
Policy Diffusion among the American States
Andrew Karch
University of Michigan Press, 2010

"Observers have long marveled at the spread of ideas and policies from state to state in American democracy. But why and how do politicians, professionals, and citizens in one state take inspiration from national policy debates and imitate, resist, and rework legislative models from other states? For the first time in this important new book, Andrew Karch analyzes in depth the process of policy 'diffusion' across the states, offering a nuanced and powerful framework to explain one of the most important and recurrent features of U.S. politics."
---Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, Harvard University

"Karch does two things with remarkable skill. First, he makes sense of the copious literature on policy diffusion and extends that literature in a very fruitful way. Second, he conducts the most thorough and methodologically sound empirical study of policy diffusion to date, using both qualitative and quantitative analysis. This book is so well written and thoughtful that it will likely stimulate a whole new wave of study of state policy and its diffusion."
---Chris Mooney, editor of State Politics and Policy Quarterly

"Democratic Laboratories goes beyond standard 'diffusion of innovation' approaches to analyze the complex interaction of interstate and intrastate political forces that shapes policy change. The book is a major contribution to the study of American federalism---and a very good read."
---Kent Weaver, Brookings Institution

"Andrew Karch has something new and important to say about the states as laboratories of democracies. In his masterful account we learn about the actual process of diffusion of recent health and welfare policy reforms. "

---Virginia Gray, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

"Democratic Laboratories is the seminal work on policy diffusion among the American states. Rigorously designed and well written, it is the new starting place for anyone interested in this important topic. The findings are copious and loaded with insights into the future of this valuable research."

---Harrell Rodgers, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Houston

Andrew Karch is Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.

[more]

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Democratic Peace
A Political Biography
Piki Ish-Shalom
University of Michigan Press, 2015

The Democratic Peace Thesis holds that democracies rarely make war on other democracies. Political scientists have advanced numerous theories attempting to identify precisely which elements of democracy promote this mutual peace, often hoping that Democratic Peace could be the final and ultimate antidote to war. However, as the theories were taken up by political figures, the immediate outcomes were war and the perpetuation of hostilities.

Political theorist Piki Ish-Shalom sketches the origins and early academic development of the Democratic Peace Thesis. He then focuses on the ways in which various Democratic Peace Theories were used by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both to shape and to justify U.S. foreign policy, particularly the U.S. stance on the Israeli-Palestinian situation and the War in Iraq. In the conclusion, Ish-Shalom boldly confronts the question of how much responsibility theoreticians must bear for the political uses—and misuses—of their ideas.

[more]

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Democratization by Institutions
Argentina's Transition Years in Comparative Perspective
Leslie E. Anderson
University of Michigan Press, 2016
In this pioneering study of democratization in Argentina, Leslie Anderson challenges Robert Putnam’s thesis that democracy requires high levels of social capital. She demonstrates in Democratization by Institutions that formal institutions (e.g., the executive, the legislature, the courts) can serve not only as operational parts within democracy but as the driving force toward democracy.

As Anderson astutely observes, the American founders debated the merits of the institutions they were creating. Examining how, and how well, Argentina’s American-style institutional structure functions, she considers the advantages and risks of the separation of powers, checks and balances, legislative policymaking, and strong presidential power. During the democratic transition, the Argentinian state has used institutions to address immediate policy challenges in ways responsive to citizens and thereby to provide a supportive environment in which social capital can develop.

By highlighting the role that institutions can play in leading a nation out of authoritarianism, even when social capital is low, Anderson begins a new conversation about the possibilities of democratization. Democratization by Institutions has much to say not only to Latin Americanists and scholars of democratization but also to those interested in the U.S. constitutional structure and its application in other parts of the world.

[more]

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Democratizing Communist Militaries
The Cases of the Czech and Russian Armed Forces
Marybeth Peterson Ulrich
University of Michigan Press, 2000
Military support for democratically elected governments in the states emerging from communism in eastern Europe and elsewhere is critically important to the survival of the new democracies. We have seen the military overthrow civilian governments in many states in Latin America and Africa. What can be done to promote support for democratic government in transitional states?
In a groundbreaking study, Marybeth Peterson Ulrich explores the attitudes of the leaders of the armed forces in Russia and the Czech Republic toward the new democratic governments and suggests ways in which we might encourage the development of politically neutral militaries in these states. Building on the work of Samuel Huntington and others on the relationship between the military and the state, the author suggests that norms of military professionalism must change if the armies in countries making a transition from communist rule are to become strong supporters of the democratic state. The Czech Republic and Russia are interesting cases, because they have had very different experiences in the transition; they have different geopolitical goals; and they experienced different military-civilian relationships during the Soviet period. The author also explores American and NATO programs to promote democratization in these militaries and suggests changes in the programs.
Marybeth Peterson Ulrich is Associate Professor of Government, U.S. Army War College.
[more]

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The Demography of the Semai Senoi
Alan G. Fix
University of Michigan Press, 1977
During 1968 and 1969, Alan G. Fix conducted an anthropological and genetic study among the Semai Senoi of Malaysia. His goal was to measure the amount of genetic exchange between local populations and document the effects of that exchange. This work combines results from that study with data from a 1965 census of aborigines and an expanded analysis.
[more]

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Denise Levertov
Selected Criticism
Edited with an Introduction by Albert Gelpi
University of Michigan Press, 1993
Illuminating reflections on the achievements of poet Denise Levertov
[more]

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Deployed
How Reservists Bear the Burden of Iraq
Michael Musheno and Susan M. Ross
University of Michigan Press, 2008

"Deployed is an important and deeply moving book. Here, in this story, the heroic tradition of the American citizen-soldier lives on."
---Andrew J. Bacevich, Professor, Boston University, and author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War

"Whatever your feelings about Iraq, Deployed is an important and compelling work that illuminates the real human cost of the war, and gives voice to those compelled to fight it."
---Ken Wells, Senior Editor, Condé Nast Portfolio

"Currently, there are few to no books dealing with the sociology of Iraq, and even fewer have empirical data on the experiences of American soldiers. More important, this work provides a strong and needed voice for soldiers---their words are compelling, rich, and moving."
---Morten Ender, Professor of Sociology, United States Military Academy at West Point

"This is a unique book that weaves historical, ethnographic, and organizational approaches for a study of Iraq-War military reservists. . . . the authors' findings challenge the pervading wisdom on reservists' motivations for service; the chemistry between family, reserve duty, and relations with regular military; and the effect that service in Iraq had on them."
---Jerry Lembcke, Associate Professor of Sociology, Holy Cross College

What is it like to be one of the citizen-soldiers summoned to duty in Iraq and Afghanistan? The events of 9/11 were a call to arms for many reservists, as shock, anger, and fear propelled large numbers to volunteer for the opportunity to serve their country in the Middle East. Even the most patriotic, however, had not expected that the wars would last so long or that the Army Reserve would supply so much of the manpower.

Using the soldiers' own voices, Deployed draws upon the life stories of members of an Army Reserve MP Company, who were called to extraordinary service after September 11. The book explores how and why they joined the Army Reserve, how they dealt with the seismic changes in their lives during and after deployment, the evolution of their relationships inside and outside their military unit, and their perspectives on the U.S. Army.

Musheno and Ross uncover five pathways that led these citizens to join the reserves, showing how basic needs and cultural idioms combined to stimulate enlistments. Whatever path led to enlistment, the authors find that citizen-soldiers fall into three distinct categories: adaptive reservists who adjust quickly to the huge changes in their lives abroad and at home, struggling reservists whose troubles are more a product of homegrown circumstances than experiences specific to serving in a war zone, and reservists who are dismissive of military life while they live it and oppose the war even as they fight it. Perhaps most important, Deployed challenges the prevailing stereotype of returning soldiers as war-damaged citizens.

Jacket photograph: AP Photo/Hutchinson News, Travis Morisse.

[more]

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The Derecognition of States
Gëzim Visoka
University of Michigan Press, 2024
Although a great deal is known about the recognition of states, less is known about the practice of derecognition of states, namely why and how states withdraw the recognition of other contested and partially recognized states. The Derecognition of States offers a global and comparative outlook of this unexplored diplomatic practice. Using original empirical research, it addresses the complex processes, justifications, and consequences of state derecognition. In particular, it provides unique insights into five aspirant states facing withdrawal of recognition: Taiwan, Western Sahara, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Kosovo. 

Gëzim Visoka argues that state derecognition is a highly controversial and unstable practice that has less to do with the unfulfillment of the conditions of statehood by the claimant than with the advancement of the self-interest of the former base state and derecognizing state. The derecognition of states is not a rule; rather, it is an exception in international diplomacy, driven by political expediency and is incompatible with original rationales for granting recognition. Yet, the derecognition of states is far more important than previously recognized in shaping the reversal dynamics of secession and state creation and in influencing regional peace, geopolitical rivalries, and the international order. By analyzing the withdrawal of recognition, the book offers a window into the reversal politics of unbecoming a sovereign state and how the arbitrary beginning and the end of diplomatic relations between states take place.
[more]

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The Deregulatory Moment?
A Comparative Perspective on Changing Campaign Finance Laws
Robert G. Boatright, editor
University of Michigan Press, 2015
For those who assume that increased regulation of political spending is inevitable in democratic nations, recent developments in U.S. campaign finance law appear puzzling. Is deregulation, exemplified by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, a harbinger of things to come elsewhere or further evidence that the United States remains an anomaly?

In this volume, experts on the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Germany, Sweden, France, and several other European nations explore what deregulation means in the context of political campaigns and demonstrate how such comparisons can inform the study of campaign finance in the U.S. Whereas the contributors do not settle on any single theory of change in campaign finance law or any single perspective on the relationship between changes seen in the U.S. and those in other nations over the past decade, they do concur that the U.S. is rapidly retreating from the types of regulations that defined campaign finance law in most democratic nations during the latter decades of the twentieth century. By tracing and analyzing the recent history of regulation, the contributors shed light on many pressing topics, including the relationship between public opinion and campaign finance law, the role of scandals in inspiring reform, and the changing incentives of political parties, interest groups, and the courts.

[more]

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The Desert Fathers
Helen Waddell
University of Michigan Press, 1956
The words of the 4th-century monastics who founded the Desert Rule
[more]

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Destination Detroit
Discourses on the Refugee in a Post-Industrial City
Rashmi Luthra
University of Michigan Press, 2024
Deindustrializing and revitalizing cities in the United States are at a particular crossroads when it comes to the contest over refugees. Do refugees represent opportunity or danger? These cities are in desperate need to stem population and resource loss. However, they are also dealing with local communities that are feeling internally displaced by economic and technological flux. Few U.S. locations provide a more vivid case study of this fight than Metro Detroit, where competing interest groups are waging war over the meaning of the figure of the refugee. This book dives deeply into the discourse on refugees that various institutions in Metro Detroit are producing. The way in which local institutions talk about refugees gives us vital clues as to how they are negotiating competing pressures and how the city overall is negotiating competing imperatives. Indeed, the way various groups talk about refugees in Metro Detroit gives us a crucial glimpse into how U.S. cities are defining and redefining themselves today. The figure of the refugee becomes a slate on which groups with varied interests write their stories, aspirations, and fears. Consequently, we can figure out from local refugee discourses the ongoing question of what it means to be a Metro Detroiter now—and by extension, what it means to be a revitalizing U.S. city at this time.
[more]

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"Destined to Fail"
Carl Seashore’s World of Eugenics, Psychology, Education, and Music
Julia Eklund Koza
University of Michigan Press, 2021

A little-known fact about the prominent US psychologist and educator Carl E. Seashore (1866–1949) is that he was deeply involved in the American eugenics movement. He was among the US academics to support eugenics long before German Nazis embraced it. A titan in a host of disciplines and a proponent of radical education reform, Seashore used his positional power to promote a constellation of education reforms consistent with central precepts of eugenics. Many of these reforms, including tracking, gifted and talented programs, and high-stakes standardized testing, were adopted and remain standard practice in the United States today. He promulgated the idea that musical talent is biologically inheritable, and he developed the first standardized tests of musical talent; these tests were used by early-twentieth-century researchers in their attempts to determine whether there are race differences in musical talent. Seashore’s ideas and work profoundly shaped music education’s research trajectory, as well as enduring “commonsense” beliefs about musical ability. An intersectional analysis, “Destined to Fail” focuses on the relationship between eugenics and Seashore’s views on ability, race, and gender. Koza concludes that Seashore promoted eugenics and its companion, euthenics, because he was a true believer. She also discusses the longstanding silences surrounding Seashore’s participation in eugenics. As a diagnosis and critique of the present, “Destined to Fail” identifies resemblances and connections between past and present that illustrate the continuing influence of eugenics—and the systems of reasoning that made early-twentieth-century eugenics imaginable and seem reasonable—on education discourse and practice today. It maps out discursive, citational, and funding connections between eugenicists of the early twentieth-century and contemporary White supremacists; this mapping leads to some of Donald Trump’s supporters and appointees.

[more]

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Detroit Country Music
Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies
Craig Maki with Keith Cady
University of Michigan Press, 2013

The richness of Detroit’s music history has by now been well established. We know all about Motown, the MC5, and Iggy and the Stooges. We also know about the important part the Motor City has played in the history of jazz. But there are stories about the music of Detroit that remain untold. One of the lesser known but nonetheless fascinating histories is contained within Detroit’s country music roots. At last, Craig Maki and Keith Cady bring to light Detroit’s most important country and western and bluegrass stars, such as Chief Redbird, the York Brothers, and Roy Hall. Beyond the individuals, Maki and Cady also map out the labels, radio programs, and performance venues that sustained Detroit’s vibrant country and bluegrass music scene. In the process, Detroit Country Music examines how and why the city’s growth in the early twentieth century, particularly the southern migration tied to the auto industry, led to this vibrant roots music scene.

This is the first book—the first resource of any kind—to tell the story of Detroit’s contributions to country music. Craig Maki and Keith Cady have spent two decades collecting music and images, and visiting veteran musicians to amass more than seventy interviews about country music in Detroit. Just as astounding as the book’s revelations are the photographs, most of which have never been published before. Detroit Country Music will be essential reading for music historians, record collectors, roots music fans, and Detroit music aficionados.

[more]

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Detroit Is No Dry Bones
The Eternal City of the Industrial Age
Camilo José Vergara
University of Michigan Press, 2016
Over the past 25 years, award-winning ethnographer and photographer Camilo José Vergara has traveled annually to Detroit to document not only the city’s precipitous decline but also how its residents have survived. From the 1970s through the 1990s, changes in Detroit were almost all for the worse, as the fabric of the city was erased through neglect and abandonment. But over the last decade, Detroit has seen the beginnings of a positive transformation, and the photography in Detroit Is No Dry Bones provides unique documentation of the revival and its urbanistic possibilities. Beyond the fate of the city’s buildings themselves, Vergara’s camera has consistently sought to capture the distinct culture of this largely African American city. The photographs in this book, for example, are organized in part around the way people have re-used and re-purposed structures from the past. Vergara is unique in his documentation of local churches that have re-occupied old bank buildings and other impressive structures from the past and turned them into something unexpectedly powerful architecturally as well as spiritually.

[more]

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The Detroit Tigers Reader
Tom Stanton, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 2005
The Detroit Tigers Reader celebrates the great moments and personalities of the city's rich baseball history.

The story of the Tigers---like the story of Detroit itself---is one of resilience and endurance. For baseball fans it's also an intensely personal one: Detroit Tigers baseball has flowed through the veins of generations of families.

The essays, articles, and letters in The Detroit Tigers Reader capture those stories and the essence of the Tigers' spirit, tracing the history of the team from its first game on April 25, 1901, up through the arrival of "Pudge" Rodriguez in 2004. With contributions from some of the greatest sportswriters and athletes, as well as local journalists and fans, The Detroit Tigers Reader charts the highs and lows of one of the most extraordinary and celebrated teams in baseball history.

Includes contributions from

Mitch Albom
Dave Anderson
Joseph Durso
Joe Falls
Hank Greenberg
Ernie Harwell
Al Kaline
Mike Lupica
Grantland Rice
Damon Runyon
Babe Ruth
Neal Shine
[more]

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Detroit's First American Decade
1796 to 1805
F. Clever Bald
University of Michigan Press, 1948
Detroit’s first decade of American occupation is sometimes neglected by historians. Detroit was a frontier village, far from the seat of the national government and the populous cities of the eastern seaboard. This book is intended to bridge the historical gap between the British regime and the establishment of Michigan Territory. Its basic theme is the slow development of American institutions and influence in a community that was essentially French but contained also a strong British element. Organized chronologically, the book opens with the occupation of Fort Lernoult by American troops and the proclamation of Wayne County, Northwest Territory, in 1796; it closes with the arrival at Detroit of the Governor and the other officers of the newly established Michigan Territory in 1805—the same year the town was completely destroyed by fire, prompting a new beginning for Detroit on a far grander scale.
[more]

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Developing Information Literacy Skills
A Guide to Finding, Evaluating, and Citing Sources
Janine Carlock
University of Michigan Press, 2020
Developing Information Literacy Skills provides guidance and practice in the skills needed to find and use valid and appropriate sources for a research project. Anyone who does academic research at any level can benefit from ways to improve their information literacy skills.

This text has been structured around the six critical elements of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, contextualizing these elements by fitting them into the research and writing process. The book focuses on providing students with the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills needed to: (1) identify the conversation that exists around a topic, (2) clarify their own perspective on that topic, and (3) efficiently and effectively read and evaluate what others have said that can inform their perspective and research.  The critical-thinking and problem-solving skills practiced here are good preparation for what students will encounter in their academic and professional lives. 

As an experienced writing instructor, the author has evaluated the final written products of hundreds of students who were trained through one-shot workshops and first-year introductory courses. She has applied that knowledge to create the tasks in this book so that students have the skills to successfully find, evaluate, and use sources and then produce a paper that incorporates valid research responsibly and effectively. 

 
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Developing States, Shaping Citizenship
Service Delivery and Political Participation in Zambia
Erin Accampo Hern
University of Michigan Press, 2019
At the nexus of political science, development studies, and public policy, Developing States, Shaping Citizenship analyzes an overlooked driver of political behavior: citizens’ past experience with the government through service provision. Using evidence from Zambia, this book demonstrates that the quality of citizens’ interactions with the government through service provision sends them important signals about what they can hope to gain from political action. These interactions influence not only formal political behaviors like voting, but also collective behavior, political engagement, and subversive behaviors like tax evasion. Lack of capacity for service delivery not only undermines economic growth and human development, but also citizens’ confidence in the responsiveness of the political system. Absent this confidence, citizens are much less likely to participate in democratic processes, express their preferences, or comply with state revenue collection. Economic development and political development in low-capacity states, Hern argues, are concurrent processes.
 
Erin Accampo Hern draws on original data from an original large-N survey, interviews, Afrobarometer data, and archival materials collected over 12 months in Zambia. The theory underlying this book’s framework is that of policy feedback, which argues that policies, once in place, influence the subsequent political participation of the affected population. This theory has predominantly been applied to advanced industrial democracies, and this book is the first explicit effort to adapt the theory to the developing country context.
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Developing Writers in Higher Education
A Longitudinal Study
Anne Ruggles Gere, editor
University of Michigan Press, 2019
For undergraduates following any course of study, it is essential to develop the ability to write effectively. Yet the processes by which students become more capable and ready to meet the challenges of writing for employers, the wider public, and their own purposes remain largely invisible. Developing Writers in Higher Education shows how learning to write for various purposes in multiple disciplines leads college students to new levels of competence.

This volume draws on an in-depth study of the writing and experiences of 169 University of Michigan undergraduates, using statistical analysis of 322 surveys, qualitative analysis of 131 interviews, use of corpus linguistics on 94 electronic portfolios and 2,406 pieces of student writing, and case studies of individual students to trace the multiple paths taken by student writers. Topics include student writers’ interaction with feedback; perceptions of genre; the role of disciplinary writing; generality and certainty in student writing; students’ concepts of voice and style; students’ understanding of multimodal and digital writing; high school’s influence on college writers; and writing development after college. The digital edition offers samples of student writing, electronic portfolios produced by student writers, transcripts of interviews with students, and explanations of some of the analysis conducted by the contributors.

This is an important book for researchers and graduate students in multiple fields. Those in writing studies get an overview of other longitudinal studies as well as key questions currently circulating. For linguists, it demonstrates how corpus linguistics can inform writing studies. Scholars in higher education will gain a new perspective on college student development. The book also adds to current understandings of sociocultural theories of literacy and offers prospective teachers insights into how students learn to write. Finally, for high school teachers, this volume will answer questions about college writing.

Companion Website
Click here to access the Developing Writers project and its findings at
the interactive companion website.

Project Data
Access the data from the project through this tutorial.
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Development in Multiple Dimensions
Social Power and Regional Policy in India
Alexander Lee
University of Michigan Press, 2019
Why do some states provide infrastructure and social services to their citizens, and others do not? In Development in Multiple Dimensions, Alexander Lee examines the origins of success and failure in the public services of developing countries. Comparing states within India, this study examines how elites either control, or are shut out of, policy decisions and how the interests of these elites influence public policy. He shows that social inequalities are not single but multiple, creating groups of competing elites with divergent policy interests. Since the power of these elites varies, states do not necessarily focus on the same priorities: some focus on infrastructure, others on social services, and still others on both or neither. The author develops his ideas through quantitative comparisons and case studies focusing on four northern Indian states: Gujarat, West Bengal, Bihar, and Himachal Pradesh, each of which represents different types of political economy and has a different set of powerful caste groups. The evidence indicates that regional variation in India is a consequence of social differences, and the impact of these differences on carefully considered distributional strategies, rather than differences in ideology, geography, or institutions.
[more]

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The Development of Arab-American Identity
Ernest McCarus, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 1994
What do Arab-Americans think of traditional American values? How do they perceive their treatment as new immigrants? Have they been seriously alienated from the dominant culture? The Development of Arab-American Identity offers an account of the Arab-American experience from the early immigration to the present day. After the historical background has been set, the essays in this book deal with the struggle for religious, political, cultural, and social identity, all of which involve coping with unconscious and conscious stereotyping and marginalization of Arabs and Arab-Americans.
[more]

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The Development of Political Institutions
Power, Legitimacy, Democracy
Federico Ferrara
University of Michigan Press, 2022

While the literature on “new institutionalism” explains the stability of institutional arrangements within countries and the divergence of paths of institutional development between countries, Federico Ferrara takes a “historical institutionalist” approach to theorize dynamic processes of institutional reproduction, institutional decay, and institutional change in explaining the development of political institutions. Ferrara synthesizes “power-based” or “power-distributional” explanations and “ideas-based” “legitimation explanations.” He specifies the psychological “microfoundations” of processes of institutional development, drawing heavily from the findings of experimental psychology to ensure that the explanation is grounded in clear and realistic assumptions regarding human motivation, cognition, and behavior. Aside from being of interest to scholars and graduate students in political science and other social-scientific disciplines whose research concentrates on the genesis of political institutions, their evolution over time, and their impact on the stability of political order and the quality of governance, the book will be required reading in graduate courses and seminars in comparative politics where the study of institutions and their development ranks among the subfield’s most important subjects.

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Development Theory and the Economics of Growth
Jaime Ros
University of Michigan Press, 2000
Why are some countries richer than others? Why do some economies grow so much faster than others do? Do economies tend to converge at similar levels of per capita income? Or is catching up simply impossible? These questions have vast implications for human welfare. After a period of lack of interest in growth theory, they are back on the research agenda of mainstream economics. They have also been at the heart of development economics since its inception some decades ago. This book endeavors to answer such questions by blending classical contributions to development theory with recent developments in the economics of growth.
The unifying theme is that early theoretical insights and accumulated empirical knowledge of development economics have much to offer to research in the theory and empirics of economic growth. With the help of a number of recent contributions, the ideas and insights of the classical literature in development economics can be given simple and rigorous formulations. Together, they amount to an approach to growth theory that can overcome the long-recognized empirical shortcomings of neoclassical growth economics, while being free from the objections that can be raised against the new brand of endogenous growth theory.
In addition to an original thesis on the contribution that early development theory can make to the research program of modern growth economics, the book provides professional and research economists and graduate students with an evaluation of the strengths and limitations of the different strands of inquiry in the modern economics of growth. In addition it presents findings on comparative growth performance across countries.
Jaime Ros is Professor of Economics and Faculty Fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute of International Studies, University of Notre Dame.
[more]

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Developmental Programming for Infants and Young Children
Volume 1. Assessment and Application
D. Sue Schafer and Martha S. Moersch, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 1981

Developmental Programming for Infants and Young Children: Volume 1 provides detailed instructions for the use of Volume 2: Early Intervention Developmental Profile, including administration and evaluation techniques, scoring and interpretation of results, validity and reliability of findings, and complete item descriptions. To be used with children functioning in the 0-to-36-month developmental age range. Volume 1 includes the scoring sheet (Volume 2).

Developmental Programming for Infants and Young Children

In Five Volumes

Developmental Programming for Infants and Young Children has proven to be an invaluable tool for teachers, therapists, and other professionals who assess and facilitate the development of children functioning primarily in the 0-to-60 month range. The authors address six areas of development: perceptual/fine motor, cognition, language, social/emotional, self-care, and gross motor. Volumes 1, 2, and 3 are designed for use with children functioning in the 0-to-36-month developmental age range, while Volumes 4 and 5 extend assessment and programming guidelines to 5-year (preschool) levels.

Carefully designed and tested by the University of Michigan's Institute for the Study of Mental Retardation and Related Disabilities, all volumes bridge the gap between assessment and program implementation.

[more]

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Developmental Programming for Infants and Young Children
Volume 3. Stimulation Activities
D. Sue Schafer and Martha S. Moersch, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 1981

Developmental Programming for Infants and Young Children: Volume 3 provides a reservoir of ideas for carrying out planned program objectives. Each developmental area contains sequenced develop mental behaviors that would be expected in a normal child, with adaptations for specific handicapping conditions noted. This volume describes ways to handle, stimulate, and interact with a young child functioning in the developmental age range 0-to-36 months. It can be used by parents for at-home activities.

This volume is available as a set in combination with Volumes 1 and 2.

Developmental Programming for Infants and Young Children

In Five Volumes

Developmental Programming for Infants and Young Children has proven to be an invaluable tool for teachers, therapists, and other professionals who assess and facilitate the development of children functioning primarily in the 0-to-60 month range. The authors address six areas of development: perceptual/fine motor, cognition, language, social/emotional, self-care, and gross motor. Volumes 1, 2, and 3 are designed for use with children functioning in the 0-to-36-month developmental age range, while Volumes 4 and 5 extend assessment and programming guidelines to 5-year (preschool) levels.

Carefully designed and tested by the University of Michigan's Institute for the Study of Mental Retardation and Related Disabilities, all volumes bridge the gap between assessment and program implementation.

[more]

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Devils and Rebels
The Making of Hawthorne's Damned Politics
Larry J. Reynolds
University of Michigan Press, 2010

"An outstanding combination of literary interpretation and cultural and historical context that will be an important addition to the critical literature on Hawthorne."
---Nina Baym, University of Illinois

"It is difficult to imagine a more timely book than Devils and Rebels. Examining the role of the public intellectual and writer during a time of political conflict and war, Reynolds takes up his charges with great precision and historical finesse. What particularly distinguishes this book is its attention to the ways in which one of this country's most important authors struggled to resist the waves of political extremism and patriotic hysteria that swept around him."
---Jeffrey Steele, University of Wisconsin—Madison

Widely condemned even in his own time, Nathaniel Hawthorne's views on abolitionism and slavery are today frequently characterized by scholars as morally reprehensible. Devils and Rebels explores the historical and biographical record to reveal striking evidence of the author's true political values---values grounded in pacifism and resistant to the kind of binary thinking that could lead to violence and war.

The book offers fresh readings of not only Hawthorne's four major romances but also some of his less familiar works like "Legends of the Province House," The Whole History of Grandfather's Chair, Journal of an African Cruiser, The Life of Franklin Pierce, and "Septimius Felton." Reynolds argues that Hawthorne---whether in his politics or his art---drew upon racialized imagery from America's past revolution and war on witchcraft to create a politics of quiet imagination, alert to the ways in which New England righteousness could become totalitarian by imposing its narrow view of the world on others.

Meticulously researched and cogently argued, this groundbreaking work demonstrates the need to examine perspectives and values from beyond the New England region when studying the literary history of the American Renaissance and illuminates the difficulties faced by public intellectuals during times of political strife---an issue as relevant today as it was some one hundred and fifty years ago.

Larry J. Reynolds is Thomas Franklin Mayo Professor of Liberal Arts and Professor of English at Texas A&M University. His previous books include A Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne, National Imaginaries, American Identities: The Cultural Work of American Iconography, and European Revolutions and the American Literary Renaissance as well as an edition of the European writings of Margaret Fuller.

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Devotions
Upon Emergent Occasions, Together with Death's Duel
John Donne
University of Michigan Press, 1959
Donne's reflections on body and soul
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Diagnosing America
Anthropology and Public Engagement
Shepard Forman, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 1995
For years, anthropology has brought the lives and beliefs of "exotic" peoples to audiences in the West. Diagnosing America: Anthropology and Public Engagement reveals the power of anthropological description and analysis when applied to social, economic, and political problems in the contemporary United States and demonstrates the urgent need for this work.
Debunking the notion of anthropology as a "value-free" science, the authors argue forcefully for an anthropology expressly committed to cultural pluralism and democratic participation.
At the same time, individual essays demonstrate the applicability of standard anthropological methods to the study of contemporary U.S. society and culture as they investigate contested values, community politics, middle-class economics, and workplace culture or describe the psychophysiological stress effects of exclusion on African- Americans and the coping mechanisms of Mexican-Americans along the border.
Diagnosing America and the challenging "Statement to the Profession" that concludes it call for anthropologists to reach beyond the parochialism of their own discipline and to engage history, economics, sociology, and the policy sciences. It will be of interest to scholars in each of these fields who are concerned with the study and resolution of contemporary social problems in the United States and to students of American culture in this country and abroad.
Shepard Forman is Director of the International Affairs Program of the Ford Foundation and a former Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
[more]

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Dialectical Imaginaries
Materialist Approaches to U.S. Latino/a Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism
Marcial González and Carlos Gallego, editors
University of Michigan Press, 2018
Dialectical Imaginaries brings together essays that analyze the effects of class conflict and capitalist ideology on contemporary works of U.S. Latino/a literature. The editors argue that recent global events have compelled contemporary scholars to reexamine traditional interpretive models that center on identity politics and an ethics of multiculturalism. The volume seeks to demonstrate that materialist methodologies have a greater critical reach than other methods, and that Latino/a literary criticism should be more attuned to interpretive approaches that draw on Marxism and other globalizing social theories. The contributors analyze a wide range of literary works in fiction, poetry, drama, and memoir by writers including Rudolfo Anaya, Gloria Anzaldúa, Daniel Borzutzky, Angie Cruz, Sergio de la Pava, Mónica de la Torre, Sergio Elizondo, Juan Felipe Herrera, Rolando Hinojosa, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Óscar Martínez, Cherríe Moraga, Urayoán Noel, Emma Pérez, Pedro Pietri, Miguel Piñero, Ernesto Quiñónez, Ronald Ruiz, Hector Tobar, Rodrigo Toscano, Alfredo Véa, Helena María Viramontes, and others.
[more]

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Diaphanous Bodies
Ability, Disability, and Modernist Irish Literature
Jeremy Colangelo
University of Michigan Press, 2021

Diaphanous Bodies: Ability, Disability, and Modernist Irish Literature examines ability, as a category of embodiment and embodied experience, and in the process opens up a new area of inquiry in the growing field of literary disability studies. It argues that the construction of ability arises through a process of exclusion and forgetting, in which the depiction of sensory information and epistemological judgment subtly (or sometimes un-subtly) elide the fact of embodied subjectivity. The result is what Colangelo calls “the myth of the diaphanous abled body,” a fiction that holds that an abled body is one which does not participate in or situate experience.  The diaphanous abled body underwrites the myth that abled and disabled constitute two distinct categories of being rather than points on a constantly shifting continuum.

In any system of marginalization, the dominant identity always sets itself up as epistemologically and experientially superior to whichever group it separates itself from. Indeed, the norm is always most powerful when it is understood as an empty category or a view from nowhere. Diaphanous Bodies explores the phantom body that underwrites the artificial dichotomy between abled and disabled, upon which the representation of embodied experience depends.

 

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Diary of a Poem
Andrew Hudgins
University of Michigan Press, 2011

Praise for Andrew Hudgins

"Hudgins . . . [is] one of the few poets of the American South who can be both solemn and sidesplitting in a single poem."
---Publishers Weekly

"Andrew Hudgins is a natural storyteller . . . The surface[s]  of Hudgins's poems---their quirky economy, the sheer music of his prosody---are so right because he goes so deep."
---Washington Post

A volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which collects critical works by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation.

Andrew Hudgins's Diary of a Poem is an engaging collection of essays that offers pleasure and profit to its readers. The title essay discusses the author's amusing travails as he attempts to write an ode about intestines, while other pieces explore the poetry of James Agee, Donald Justice, Allen Tate, and other poets, as well as the musician Johnny Winter, who is the subject of a rollicking segment about rock 'n' roll. More seriously, Hudgins writes with lively good humor about his tomato garden, the unread books piled up precipitously around his bed, and the emotional problems that led to an embarrassingly intimate, yet funny encounter with his father-in-law.

Diary of a Poem is lively, charming, often humorous, and a pleasurable read for the general reader and the poetry specialist alike.


Author photo by Jo McCulty

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Dictator
The Evolution of the Roman Dictatorship
Mark B. Wilson
University of Michigan Press, 2021

Roman consuls were routinely trained by background and experience to handle the usual problems of a twelve-month turn in office.  But what if a crisis arose that wasn’t best met by whoever happened to be in office that year? The Romans had a mechanism for that: the dictatorship, an alternative emergency executive post that granted total, unanswerable power to that man who was best suited to resolve the crisis and then stand down, restoring normality. This office was so useful and effective that it was invoked at least 85 times across three centuries against every kind of serious problem, from conspiracies and insurgencies to the repelling of invaders to propitiation of the gods.

In Dictator: The Evolution of the Roman Dictatorship, Mark B. Wilson makes the first detailed and comprehensive examination of the role and evolution of the dictatorship as an integral element of the Roman Republic. Each stage of a dictatorship—need, call, choice, invocation, mandate, imperium, answerability, colleague, and renunciation—is explored, with examples and case studies illustrating the dictators’ rigorous adherence to a set of core principles, or, in rare cases of deviation, showing how exceptions tended to demonstrate the rule as vividly as instances. Wilson also charts the flexibility of the dictatorship as it adapted to the needs of the Republic, reshaping its role in relation to the consuls, the senate, and the people.

The routine use of the dictatorship is only part of the story. The abandonment and disuse of the dictatorship for 120 years, its revival under Sulla, and its appropriation and transformation under Caesar are all examined in detail, with attention paid to what the dictatorship meant to the Romans of the late Republic, alternative means of crisis resolution in contrast with the dictatorship, and the groundwork laid in those last two centuries for that which was to come. Dictator provides a new basis for discussion and debate relating to the Roman dictatorship, Roman crisis management, and the systems and institutions of the Roman Republic.

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The Dictator's Dilemma at the Ballot Box
Electoral Manipulation, Economic Maneuvering, and Political Order in Autocracies
Masaaki Higashijima
University of Michigan Press, 2022

Contrary to our stereotypical views, dictators often introduce elections in which they refrain from employing blatant electoral fraud. Why do electoral reforms happen in autocracies? Do these elections destabilize autocratic rule? The Dictator’s Dilemma at the Ballot Box argues that strong autocrats who can garner popular support become less dependent on coercive electioneering strategies. When autocrats fail to design elections properly, elections backfire in the form of coups, protests, and the opposition’s stunning election victories. The book’s theoretical implications are tested on a battery of cross-national analyses with newly collected data on autocratic elections and in-depth comparative case studies of the two Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

[more]

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Dietary Reconstruction at Chalcatzingo
A Formative Period Site in Morelos, Mexico
Margaret J. Schoeninger
University of Michigan Press, 2019
In this work, Margaret Schoeninger investigates the use of bone strontium levels in archaeologists’ reconstruction of diet in prehistoric and recent human populations.
[more]

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A Digest of the Krasnyi Arkhiv--Red Archives
Volumes 31-106
Compiled and annotated by Leona W. Eisele under the direction of Andrei A. Lobanov-Rostovsky
University of Michigan Press, 1955
A Digest of the Krasnyi Arkhiv—Red Archives—Volumes 31–106 furnishes a description, in English, of the archival documents (official and private) published from 1928 through 1941 by the Central Archive Department of the USSR in the Russian journal Krasnyi Arkhiv. This historical journal, whose contents illuminate the social, scientific, political, economic, and cultural development of Russia from the seventeenth century to the present time, exists, in whole or in part, in only seventeen libraries in the United States. The Digest will, therefore, serve not only as a guide to the journal, which is its prime purpose, but will in itself be a source of information to students of Russian history and Russian culture, to government workers, and to librarians. The present book contains a full index to Volumes 31–106 and supplies in the Appendix a list of the articles described in the Digest for Volumes 1–30, which was published by the Cleveland Public Library in 1947.
[more]

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Digging for Gold
Papers on Archaeology for Profit
Edited by William K. Macdonald
University of Michigan Press, 2019
Editor William K. Macdonald presents several essays on contract archaeology, or archaeological work done by companies or agencies on sites that typically are about to be destroyed by construction. Thomas J. Riley reports on contract archaeology and the academic world; James E. Fitting writes from the perspective of a state archaeologist; Macdonald and Alex H. Townsend report on problems in corporate archaeology; Townsend writes about how contracts are acquired; and Steven A. LeBlanc reports on the need for regions to have an overall research design and to follow best practices in hiring, technological improvements, and storage.
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Digital Rhetoric
Theory, Method, Practice
Douglas Eyman
University of Michigan Press, 2015
What is “digital rhetoric”? This book aims to answer that question by looking at a number of interrelated histories, as well as evaluating a wide range of methods and practices from fields in the humanities, social sciences, and information sciences to determine what might constitute the work and the world of digital rhetoric. The advent of digital and networked communication technologies prompts renewed interest in basic questions such as What counts as a text? and Can traditional rhetoric operate in digital spheres or will it need to be revised? Or will we need to invent new rhetorical practices altogether?

Through examples and consideration of digital rhetoric theories, methods for both researching and making in digital rhetoric fields, and examples of digital rhetoric pedagogy, scholarship, and public performance, this book delivers a broad overview of digital rhetoric. In addition, Douglas Eyman provides historical context by investigating the histories and boundaries that arise from mapping this emerging field and by focusing on the theories that have been taken up and revised by digital rhetoric scholars and practitioners. Both traditional and new methods are examined for the tools they provide that can be used to both study digital rhetoric and to potentially make new forms that draw on digital rhetoric for their persuasive power.

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Digital Rubbish
A Natural History of Electronics
Jennifer Gabrys
University of Michigan Press, 2013

This is a study of the material life of information and its devices; of electronic waste in its physical and electronic incarnations; a cultural and material mapping of the spaces where electronics in the form of both hardware and information accumulate, break down, or are stowed away. Electronic waste occurs not just in the form of discarded computers but also as a scatter of information devices, software, and systems that are rendered obsolete and fail. Where other studies have addressed "digital" technology through a focus on its immateriality or virtual qualities, Gabrys traces the material, spatial, cultural, and political infrastructures that enable the emergence and dissolution of these technologies. In the course of her book, she explores five interrelated "spaces" where electronics fall apart: from Silicon Valley to Nasdaq, from containers bound for China to museums and archives that preserve obsolete electronics as cultural artifacts, to the landfill as material repository. All together, these sites stack up into a sedimentary record that forms the "natural history" of this study.

Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics describes the materiality of electronics from a unique perspective, examining the multiple forms of waste that electronics create as evidence of the resources, labor, and imaginaries that are bundled into these machines. By drawing on the material analysis developed by Walter Benjamin, this natural history method allows for an inquiry into electronics that focuses neither on technological progression nor on great inventors but rather considers the ways in which electronic technologies fail and decay. Ranging across studies of media and technology, as well as environments, geography, and design, Jennifer Gabrys pulls together the far-reaching material and cultural processes that enable the making and breaking of these technologies.

Jennifer Gabrys is Senior Lecturer in Design and Convener of the Masters in Design and Environment in the Department of Design, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Jacket image: Computer dump ©iStockphoto/Lya_Cattel.

digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.

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Digital Samaritans
Rhetorical Delivery and Engagement in the Digital Humanities
Jim Ridolfo
University of Michigan Press, 2015
Digital Samaritans explores rhetorical delivery and cultural sovereignty in the digital humanities. The exigence for the book is rooted in a practical digital humanities project based on the digitization of manuscripts in diaspora for the Samaritan community, the smallest religious/ethnic group of 770 Samaritans split between Mount Gerizim in the Palestinian Authority and in Holon, Israel. Based on interviews with members of the Samaritan community and archival research, Digital Samaritans explores what some Samaritans want from their diaspora of manuscripts, and how their rhetorical goals and objectives relate to the contemporary existential and rhetorical situation of the Samaritans as a living, breathing people. 

How does the circulation of Samaritan manuscripts, especially in digital environments, relate to their rhetorical circumstances and future goals and objectives to communicate their unique cultural history and religious identity to their neighbors and the world? Digital Samaritans takes up these questions and more as it presents a case for collaboration and engaged scholarship situated at the intersection of rhetorical studies and the digital humanities.
 

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Digital Tools in Urban Schools
Mediating a Remix of Learning
Jabari Mahiri
University of Michigan Press, 2011

"Today there is massive interest in how digital tools and popular culture are transforming learning out of school and lots of dismay at how digitally lost our schools are. Jabari Mahiri works his usual magic and here shows us how to cross this divide in a solidly grounded and beautifully written book."
---James Paul Gee, Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Arizona State University

"Digital Tools in Urban Schools is a profoundly sobering yet inspiring depiction of the potential for committed educators to change the lives of urban youth, with the assistance of a new set of technical capabilities."
---Mimi Ito, Professor in Residence and MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning, Departments of Informatics and Anthropology, University of California, Irvine

"An uplifting book that addresses a critical gap in existing literature by providing rich and important insights into ways teachers, administrators, and members of the wider community can work together with students previously alienated---even excluded---from formal education to enhance classroom learning with appropriate digital tools and achieve inspiring results under challenging circumstances."
---Colin Lankshear, James Cook University, and Michele Knobel, Montclair State University

Digital Tools in Urban Schools demonstrates significant ways in which high school teachers in the complex educational setting of an urban public high school in northern California extended their own professional learning to revitalize learning in their classrooms. Through a novel research collaboration between a university and this public school, these teachers were supported and guided in developing the skills necessary to take greater advantage of new media and new information sources to increase student learning while making connections to their relevant experiences and interests. Jabari Mahiri draws on extensive qualitative data---including blogs, podcasts, and other digital media---to document, describe, and analyze how the learning of both students and teachers was dramatically transformed as they utilized digital media in their classrooms. Digital Tools in Urban Schools will interest instructional leaders and participants in teacher preparation and professional development programs, education and social science researchers and scholars, graduate and undergraduate programs and classes emphasizing literacy and learning, and those focused on urban education issues and conditions.

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Dignity
Lower Income Women Tell of Their Lives and Struggles
Fran Leeper Buss
University of Michigan Press, 1985
Dignity brings together the stories of ten lower income American women whose backgrounds vary, but who share a struggle for survival and a quest for dignity in the face of hardship. Young or old, urban or rural, welfare recipient or union activist, each relates her life story with rich detail, poignant humor, and remarkable courage.
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The Dilemma of Compliance
Political Parties and Post-Election Disputes
Svitlana Chernykh
University of Michigan Press, 2024
Over the past twenty years, the causes and consequences of post-election disputes have become one of the most compelling topics of research in political science. Between 2012 and 2022, political parties challenged the results of more than 25 percent of elections. When democratic transitions are dependent on the willingness of participants to accept defeat, political parties can undermine election-based democracy by rejecting the outcome. As the world enters the fourth decade since the start of the third wave of democratization, the question of whether election losers will comply or reject election outcomes is more and more pressing. The Dilemma of Compliance analyzes this phenomenon at the level of political parties, raising three important questions: Why do some political parties refuse to comply with election results? What determines the strategies they use to contest the outcomes? What consequences do post-election disputes have for the political parties that initiate them? 

To answer these questions, this book draws on an original dataset of post-election responses encompassing over 300 political parties, which participated in 270 elections held in twenty-two countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union over a period of more than two decades. In doing so, it offers a new theoretical framework for studying electoral compliance in comparative perspective and advances research on democratic transition, democracy promotion, post-election protests, and party politics.
[more]

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Dining in a Classical Context
William J. Slater, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 1991
An investigation of the role of the feast as a cultural focus for the classical world
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Directing Beckett
Lois Oppenheim
University of Michigan Press, 1997
In Directing Beckett, Lois Oppenheim presents interviews and essays with twenty-two prominent international directors of Samuel Beckett's work, many of whom worked closely with Beckett, assisting him with his productions or acting under his direction before directing his work themselves. Here they speak openly of their experiences of working with him, and comment on various productions that, in taking great liberties with his work, have raised a number of fascinating legal and aesthetic questions.
In exploring this key figure in the history of theater, Oppenheim's interviews--with such directors as JoAnne Akalaitis, Edward Albee, Herbert Blau, Joseph Chaikin, and Carey Perloff--also address many of the complexities of the director's role, such as the meaning of directorial integrity and fidelity to the playwright's vision--an issue of particular relevance to a playwright whose exactitude, with respect to stage directions, is well documented. Additional highlights include photographs from many of the productions; the unpublished text of a lecture by the late Alan Schneider, Beckett's most accomplished American director; and an interview with the late Roger Blin, the very first director of Beckett's work.
"Directing Beckett is a rare thing--a book both pleasant to read and useful to have . . . it is like listening to the ideal panel, everyone who should be there there and all at their articulate best." --Toby Silverman Zinman, Theatre Journal
"Anyone intending to direct or act in a work by Beckett, or to write about his work, must read this book." --Choice
Lois Oppenheim is Professor of French, Montclair State University
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