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Perhaps no other work of secular poetry was as widely read in Tudor England as the historical verse tragedy collection A Mirror for Magistrates. For over sixty years (1559–1621), this compendium of tragic monologues presented in the voices of fallen political figures from England's past remained almost constantly in print, offering both exemplary warnings to English rulers and inspiring models for literary authors, including Spenser and Shakespeare.

In a striking departure from previous scholarship, Scott Lucas shows that modern critics have misconstrued the purpose of the tragic verse narratives of the Mirror, approaching them primarily as uncontroversial meditations on abstract political and philosophical doctrines. Lucas revises this view, revealing many of the Mirror tragedies to be works topically applicable in form and politically contentious in nature.

Lucas returns the earliest poems of A Mirror for Magistrates to the troubled context of their production, the tumultuous reign of the Catholic Queen Mary (1553–1558). As Protestants suffering from the traumatic collapse of King Edward VI's "godly" rule (1547–1553) and from the current policies of Mary's government, the Mirror authors radically reshaped their poems' historical sources in order to craft emotionally moving narratives designed to provide models for interpreting the political failures of Edward VI's reign and to offer urgent warnings to Marian magistrates.

Lucas's study also reveals how, in later poems, the Mirror authors issued oblique appeals to Queen Elizabeth's officers, boldly demanding that they allow the realm of "the literary" to stand as an unfettered discursive arena of public controversy. Lucas thus provides a provocative new approach to this seminal but long-misunderstood collection, one that restores the Mirror to its rightful place as one of the greatest works of sixteenth-century English political literature.

As a lifelong radical and political activist, Ronald Aronson accepted an invitation to lecture in South Africa only after two years of deliberation. "Stay Out of Politics," which begins with the moral questions that Aronson confronted in his decision to go, is a reaffirmation of the necessity for majority rule and the abolition of apartheid. Amidst the pressure of widespread talk of an academic boycott of South Africa, Aronson decided to lecture there as a contribution to the struggle for majority rule. He decided to become mobilized as a philosopher and activist by engaging in the effort close at hand rather than settling for a distant and comfortable protest by avoidance.

Along with his visa, Aronson was given the following warning by a consular officer: "Stay out of politics!" Believing that philosophy not only has a role to play but that it can, and must, involve itself in the vital social and political issues of our time, Aronson equally discovered that in South Africa politics is everywhere and inescapable. The lectures Aronson delivered focused on the meaning of progress and hope, on the threat—and experience—of disaster today, and on our responsibility to join the struggle for a humane and rational world. Two of the most provocative lectures are included here, the first a discussion of the Holocaust that has direct and intentional applications to the current situation in South Africa. The second lecture, in memory of the assassinated political philosopher Richard Turner, is a sketch of Aronson's philosophy of hope as seen from within the South African context.

Despite the limitations of teaching under possible surveillance in a revolutionary situation, Aronson witnessed the social reality of apartheid and heard the voices of its victims. Aronson's love for the South African people motivated him to write this powerful account. He presents a lecturer's tour of South Africa: the experiences that both confirmed his belief in the urgent need for majority rule but also revealed the complexities of the society that seeks to continue apartheid through all reforms; and his philosopher's reflections upon returning to the United States on the irrationality of apartheid and the ambiguities of the struggle to end it.

"Stay Out of Politics" is not only a powerful encounter with South Africa today, it is a provocative statement about philosophy—its nature, its tasks, its duty to understand and change the world in which we live.

The status of the Sunni Ulama (religious scholars) in modern times has attracted renewed academic interest, in light of their assertiveness regarding moral and sociopolitical issues on the Arab-Muslim agenda. This has led to a reassessment of the narrative of historians and social scientists, who usually depicted the Ulama as marginal players in comparison with the new lay Islamists, and certainly with the Shia Ulama. The Sunni 'Ulama'’s vitality is undoubtedly related to the continuing Islamic resurgence, which since the 1970s has forced the political elites to rely increasingly on the religious establishment in order to neutralize the Islamist challenge, thus allowing the Ulama greater freedom of activity.

Hatina’s study returns to an earlier period and shows that such vitality has its roots in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Hatina traces the diverse Ulama reactions to this period of accelerated state building and national cohesion.

The concept of “un-Americanism,” so vital to the HUAC crusade of the 1940s and 1950s, was resoundingly revived in the emotional rhetoric that followed the September 11th terrorist attacks. Today’s political and cultural climate makes it more crucial than ever to come to terms with the consequences of this earlier period of repression and with the contested claims of Americanism that it generated.

            “Un-American” Hollywood  reopens the intense critical debate on the blacklist era and on the aesthetic and political work of the Hollywood Left. In a series of fresh case studies focusing on contexts of production and reception, the contributors offer exciting and original perspectives on the role of progressive politics within a capitalist media industry.

            Original essays scrutinize the work of individual practitioners, such as Robert Rossen, Joseph Losey, Jules Dassin, and Edward Dmytryk, and examine key films, including The Robe, Christ in Concrete, The House I Live In, The Lawless, The Naked City, The Prowler, Body and Soul, and FTA.

A long-overdue analysis of how Black lesbians have asserted their lived experience through creative practice, pushing back against heteropatriarchal systems that deny them visibility.

“We Must Document Ourselves Now” examines the essential but oft-ignored importance of Black lesbian literature and film in queer literary and film histories, arguing that Black lesbian cultural texts reflect creators’ lived experiences and resist the heteropatriarchal systems that deny Black lesbians visibility in popular culture. Stephanie Andrea Allen contends that these texts have three goals: to lay bare the experiences of Black lesbians in a raced, gendered, classed, and homophobic society; to challenge the notion that claiming Black lesbian identity is marginal or forbidden; and to take care of Black lesbians by bearing witness to their experiences through creative practice.

Insisting that Black feminist creative practice is an integral form of self and community care, Allen weaves analysis of cultural output spanning key sociocultural moments from 1974 to 2020 with interviews with Black lesbian cultural workers. “We Must Document Ourselves Now” examines the Black Arts / Black Power movement, the “boom” in lesbian and gay publishing, the so-called golden era of Black film, and twenty-first-century visual media to demonstrate how representations of Black lesbians, or lack thereof, were vital to constructing a cultural canon that focused on illuminating Black lesbian experiences in the United States.