Marjorie Levine-Clark
The Ohio State University Press, 2004
Peter Hitchcock
Duke University Press, 0
Contributors. Robert Barsky, Rachel Falconer, Maroussia Hadjukowski-Ahmed, Ken Hirschkop, Peter Hitchcock, Michael Holquist, Vitaly Makhlin, Nikolai Pan’kov, Brian Poole, David Shepherd, Galin Tihanov, Anthony Wall
Elizabeth Lawrence
Duke University Press, 2007
Lawrence exchanged plants and gardening tips with everyone from southern “farm ladies” trading bulbs in garden bulletins to prominent regional gardeners. She corresponded with nursery owners, everyday backyard gardeners, and literary luminaries such as Katharine White and Eudora Welty. Her books, including A Southern Garden, The Little Bulbs, and Gardens in Winter, inspired several generations of gardeners in the South and beyond.
The columns in this volume cover specific plants, such as sweet peas, hellebores, peonies, and the bamboo growing outside her living-room window, as well as broader topics including the usefulness of vines, the importance of daily pruning, and organic gardening. Like all of Lawrence’s writing, these columns are peppered with references to conversations with neighbors and quotations from poetry, mythology, and correspondence. They brim with knowledge gained from a lifetime of experimenting in her gardens, from her visits to other gardens, and from her extensive reading.
Lawrence once wrote, “Dirty fingernails are not the only requirement for growing plants. One must be as willing to study as to dig, for a knowledge of plants is acquired as much from books as from experience.” As inspiring today as when they first appeared in the Charlotte Observer, the columns collected in Beautiful at All Seasons showcase not only Lawrence’s vast knowledge but also her intimate, conversational writing style and her lifelong celebration of gardens and gardening.
Sally Banes; Edited and with an introduction by Andrea Harris
University of Wisconsin Press, 2007
Alan Wilson
University College London, 2022

C. L. R. James
Duke University Press, 1993
Adam Jones
Ohio University Press, 2002
Throughout the 1980s, Barricada, the official daily newspaper of the ruling Sandinista Front, played the standard role of a party organ, seeking the mobilize the Nicaraguan public to support the revolutionary agenda. Beyond the Barricades, however, reveals a story that is both more intriguing and much more complex. Even during this period of sweeping transformation and outside military siege, another, more professional agenda also motivated Barricada’s journalists and editors.
When the Sandinistas unexpectedly fell from power in the 1990 elections, Barricada gained a substantial degree of autonomy that allowed it to explore a more balanced and nuanced journalism “in the national interest.” This new orientation, however, ran afoul of more orthodox party leaders, who gradually gained the upper hand in the bitter internal struggle that wracked the Sandinista Front in the early 1990s. The paper closed its doors in January 1998.
Adam Jones’s outstanding study offers an unprecedented behin-the-scenes looks at Barricada’s two decades of evolution and dissolution. It also presents an intimate portrait of a key revolutionary institution and the memorable individuals who were a part of it.
Betsy Krebs
Rutgers University Press, 2006
Each year tens of thousands of teenagers are released from the foster care system in the United States without high school degrees or strong family relationships. Two to four years after discharge, half of these young people still do not have either a high school diploma or equivalency degree, and fewer than ten percent enter college. Nearly a third end up on public assistance within fifteen months, and eventually more than a third will be arrested or convicted of a crime.
In this richly detailed and often surprising exploration of the foster care system, Betsy Krebs and Paul Pitcoff argue that the existing structure sets kids up to fail by inadequately preparing them for adult life. Foster care programs traditionally emphasize goals of reuniting children with family or placing children into adoptive homes. But neither of these outcomes is likely for adolescents. Krebs and Pitcoff contend that the primary goal of foster care for teenagers should be rigorous preparation for a fully productive adult life and that the standard life skills curriculum is woefully inadequate for this purpose.
The authors, who together cofounded the Youth Advocacy Center in New York City, draw on their fifteen years of experience working with teens and the foster care system to introduce new ways to teach teens to be responsible for themselves and to identify and develop their potential. They also explore what sorts of resources-legal, financial, and human-will need to come from inside and outside the system to more fully humanize the practice of foster care. Ultimately, Krebs and Pitcoff argue that change must involve the participation of caring communities of volunteers who want to see disadvantaged youth succeed as well as developing methods to empower teens to take control of their lives.
Bringing together a series of inspiring, real-life accounts, Beyond the Foster Care System introduces readers to a number of dynamic young people who have participated in the Youth Advocacy Center's programs and who have gone on to apply these lessons to other areas of life. Their stories demonstrate that more successful alternatives to the standard way of providing foster care are not only imaginable, but possible. With the practical improvements Krebs and Pitcoff outline, teens can learn the skills of effective self-advocacy, become better prepared for the transition to full independence, and avoid becoming the statistics that foster care has so often produced in the past.
Jay Cole
West Virginia University Press, 2019
How well do we really know Pearl S. Buck? Many think of Buck solely as the Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Good Earth, the novel that explained China to Americans in the 1930s. But Buck was more than a novelist and interpreter of China. As the essays in Beyond The Good Earth show, she possessed other passions and projects, some of which are just now coming into focus.
Who knew, for example, that Buck imagined and helped define multiculturalism long before it became a widely known concept? Or that she founded an adoption agency to locate homes for biracial children from Asia? Indeed, few are aware that she advocated successfully for a genocide convention after World War II and was ahead of her time in envisioning a place for human rights in American foreign policy. Buck’s literary works, often dismissed as simple portrayals of Chinese life, carried a surprising degree of innovation as she experimented with the styles and strategies of modernist artists.
In Beyond The Good Earth, scholars and writers from the United States and China explore these and other often overlooked topics from the life of Pearl S. Buck, positioning her career in the context of recent scholarship on transnational humanitarian activism, women’s rights activism, and civil rights activism.
Alan Balboni
University of Nevada Press, 2006
When Beyond the Mafia first appeared in 1996 it was hailed as a significant contribution to the history of Las Vegas and of ethnic minorities in America. Author Alan Balboni traces the history of Italians in Las Vegas from the founding of the city in 1905, recording their activities in the fledgling settlement. As Las Vegas grew, Italian Americans participated in every aspect of the city’s society and economy, including construction, retail establishments, hotels, and—after the statewide legalization of gambling in 1931—the casino industry. Basing his research on well over a hundred interviews, as well as the records of Italian American organizations, public agencies, and other sources, Balboni has produced a sparkling and thoroughly documented account of the history of one of Las Vegas’s most progressive and productive ethnic minorities. This new paperback edition includes an afterword by the author that brings the story of Las Vegas’s Italian Americans up to the present.
Jane Lazarre
Duke University Press, 1997
C. L .R. James
Duke University Press, 2013
Named one of the Top 50 Sports Books of All Time by Sports Illustrated
"Beyond a Boundary . . . should find its place on the team with Izaak Walton, Ivan Turgenev, A. J. Liebling, and Ernest Hemingway."—Derek Walcott, The New York Times Book Review
"As a player, James the writer was able to see in cricket a metaphor for art and politics, the collective experience providing a focus for group effort and individual performance. . . . [In] his scintillating memoir of his life in cricket, Beyond a Boundary (1963), James devoted some of his finest pages to this theme."—Edward Said, The Washington Post
"A work of double reverence—for the resilient, elegant ritualism of cricket and for the black people of the world."—Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker
"Beyond a Boundary is a book of remarkable richness and force, which vastly expands our understanding of sports as an element of popular culture in the Western and colonial world."—Mark Naison, The Nation
"Everything James has done has had the mark of originality, of his own flexible, sensitive, and deeply cultured intelligence. He conveys not a rigid doctrine but a delight and curiosity in all the manifestations of life, and the clue to everything lies in his proper appreciation of the game of cricket."—E. P. Thompson, author of The Making of the English Working Class
"Beyond a Boundary is . . . first and foremost an autobiography of a living legend—probably the greatest social theorist of our times."—Manning Marable, Journal of Sport & Social Issues
"The great triumph of Beyond a Boundary is its ability to rise above genre and in its very form explore the complex nature of colonial West Indian society."—Caryl Phillips, The New Republic
Muhammad Haji Salleh
Ohio University Press, 1994
A collections of 70 poems from one of Malaya’s leading poets, that depict longing, loneliness, modernization, and insights in Malaysian culture.
Edited by Gesa E. Kirsch and Liz Rohan Foreword by Lucille M. Schultz
Southern Illinois University Press, 2008
This collection of highly readable essays reveals that research is not restricted to library archives. When researchers pursue information and perspectives from sources beyond the archives—from existing people and places— they are often rewarded with unexpected discoveries that enrich their research and their lives.
Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process presents narratives that demystify and illuminate the research process by showing how personal experiences, family history, and scholarly research intersect. Editors Gesa E. Kirsch and Liz Rohan emphasize how important it is for researchers to tap into their passions, pursuing research subjects that attract their attention with creativity and intuition without limiting themselves to traditional archival sources and research methods.
Eighteen contributors from a number of disciplines detail inspiring research opportunities that led to recently published works, while offering insights on such topics as starting and finishing research projects, using a wide range of types of sources and methods, and taking advantage of unexpected leads, chance encounters and simple clues. In addition, the narratives trace the importance of place in archival research, the parallels between the lives of research subjects and researchers, and explore archives as sites that resurrect personal, cultural, and historical memory.
Beyond the Archives sheds light on the creative, joyful, and serendipitous nature of research, addressing what attracts researchers to their subjects, as well as what inspires them to produce the most thorough, complete, and engaged scholarly work. This timely and essential volume supplements traditional-method textbooks and effectively models concrete practices of retrieving and synthesizing information by professional researchers.
Edited by W. Anthony Sheppard
University of Illinois Press, 2024
The most successful bandleader of the 1920s, Paul Whiteman was an entertainment icon who played a major role in the mainstreaming of jazz. Whiteman and his band premiered Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Duke Ellington acknowledged his achievements. His astonishing ear for talent vaulted a who’s who of artists toward prominence. But Whiteman’s oversized presence eclipsed Black jazz musicians while his middlebrow music prompted later generations to jettison him from jazz history.
W. Anthony Sheppard’s collection of essays confronts the racial implications of Whiteman’s career. The contributors explore Whiteman’s broad impact on popular culture, tracking his work and influence in American marketing, animated films, the Black press, Hollywood, and the music publication industry, and following him behind the scenes with arrangers, into grand concert halls, across the Atlantic, into the courtroom, and on television.
Multifaceted and cutting-edge, Beyond the Bandstand explores the racial politics and artistic questions surrounding a controversial figure in popular music.
Contributors: Ryan Raul Bañagale, Stephanie Doktor, John Howland, Katherine M. Leo, Sarah Caissie Provost, W. Anthony Sheppard, Catherine Tackley, Elijah Wald, and Christi Jay Wells
Jack Whalen
Temple University Press, 1990
Chad F. Emmett
University of Chicago Press, 1994
David W. Blight
University of Massachusetts Press, 2002
Selina S. Makana
Ohio University Press, 0
Beyond the Battlefield offers a critical reappraisal of Angola’s nationalist history by centering the experiences and political agency of women during the country’s transition from Portuguese colonial rule to independence. Challenging dominant masculinist narratives that equate anticolonial resistance with armed combat, this study introduces maternalist nationalism as a theoretical framework to illuminate how women engaged in nation building through often-overlooked forms of labor and activism.
While men were largely visible on the battlefield, women fought a parallel struggle on the home front—mobilizing care work, reproductive labor, and political engagement in ways that were essential to the liberation movement and the postindependence state. Drawing on archival sources and women’s testimonies, Makana explores how patriotic motherhood—a concept defined as the fusion of nationalist politics with gendered expectations of women’s roles—enabled women to see themselves as vital contributors to the nation’s future.
This study contributes to scholarship in African history, gender studies, and postcolonial theory by offering a nuanced account of the intersections among militarism, nationalism, and gender. It invites readers to reconsider the frameworks through which political subjectivity and historical memory are constructed. Beyond the Battlefield is an essential resource for scholars and students interested in the gendered dimensions of colonialism, war, and state formation in modern Africa.
Deborah Ascher Barnstone
University of Michigan Press, 2016
by Yoshito Kuromiya edited by ArthurA.Hansen
University Press of Colorado, 2022
Edited by Timothy B. Powell
Rutgers University Press, 1999
"Beyond the Binary offers a coherently presented collection of uniformly strong essays that speak to what is perhaps the most widely discussed, contested and conflicted topic in the study of US culture. It joins the growing body of work that seeks to move beyond identity politics and racial essentialism to formulate racial identity as a more complex series of social, cultural and political gestures." -Priscilla Wald, author of Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form and Constituting Americans
Cultural studies have reached a theoretical impasse. As scholars continue to topple the previously entrenched concept of Eurocentrism, this field has fragmented into works covering many separate cultural enclaves. In the first wave of this "post-Eurocentric" scholarship, a binary model ensued, using the designations of "Self" and "Other:" i.e., black/white, gay/straight. This model, however, also has found disfavor. As a result, recent scholarship has focused on a single group studied in isolation.
What is needed is a new critical phase of reconstruction that will bring discussion of these disparate cultural enclaves back into a more organized, critical sphere. Researchers must have the necessary conceptual tools so they can study the ways in which cultures overlap, intersect, or else violently conflict with one another.
Beyond the Binary: Reconstructing Cultural Identity in a Multicultural Context addresses this theoretical impasse by proposing new critical models that fully engage the dilemmas posed by multiculturalism. Rather than becoming entangled in the polarizing rhetoric of the culture wars, these essays are firmly grounded in the lived perplexities of specific historical moments. One piece, for example, considers the cultural identity of "freaks" exhibited in P. T. Barnum's circus, the contested place of hemophiliacs within Queer Nation, and "white" working-class musicians who proudly proclaim themselves to be "black lesbians."
Beyond the Binary is meant to be read in its entirety as a many-voiced narrative dedicated to bringing the divisions within cultural studies back into contact with one another. By doing so, Powell ushers in a new era of multicultural analysis that recognizes the historical existence of racism, yet also acknowledges the dynamic fluidity of cultural identity.
Lisa B. Thompson
University of Illinois Press, 2012
Gregory J. Kaliss
University of Illinois Press, 2023
Benjamin M. Han
Rutgers University Press, 2020
Edited by Susan Kepecs, L. Antonio Curet, and Gabino La Rosa Corzo
University of Alabama Press, 2011
An important collection of essays and scholarship by Cuban archaeologists about precontact human settlement on the island.
An important and timely collection of essays that greatly expands knowledge of the human settlement of Cuba and the activities of its indigenous peoples. The collection is a testament to the tenacity of Cuban and US scholars determined to dismantle the political and economic barriers that have impeded collaborative archaeological scholarship in Cuba. Despite economic and political challenges that have limited the pursuit of archaeological research in Cuba, these essays show that Cuban archaeology has made valuable contributions to understanding the cultural processes that have shaped life in the Caribbean in both prehispanic and historic periods and added significantly to our understanding of past Cuban peoples.
The collection, one of only a few studies of Cuban archaeology published in English in the United States, includes essays by both Cuban and US scholars that highlight trends in Cuban archaeology. It recognizes the past pioneers of joint Cuban-US archaeological projects and pays homage to those researchers, including Betty Meggers and Lourdes Dominguez, who sustained scholarly contact across the Florida Straits despite geopolitical roadblocks.
Margaret Lock and Judith Farquhar, eds.
Duke University Press, 2007
Beyond the Body Proper includes nine sections conceptually organized around themes such as everyday life, sex and gender, and science. Each section is preceded by interpretive commentary by the volume’s editors. Within the collection are articles and book excerpts focused on bodies using tools and participating in rituals, on bodies walking and eating, and on the female circumcision controversy, as well as pieces on medical classifications, spirit possession, the commodification of body parts, in vitro fertilization, and an artist/anatomist’s “plastination” of cadavers for display. Materialist, phenomenological, and feminist perspectives on embodiment appear along with writings on interpretations of pain and the changing meanings of sexual intercourse. Essays on these topics and many others challenge Eurocentric assumptions about the body as they speak to each other and to the most influential contemporary trends in the human sciences.
With selections by: Henry Abelove, Walter Benjamin, Janice Boddy, John Boswell, Judith Butler, Caroline Walker Bynum, Stuart Cosgrove, Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze, Alice Domurat Dreger, Barbara Duden, Friedrich Engels, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Judith Farquhar, Marcel Granet, Felix Guattari, Ian Hacking, Robert Hertz, Patricia Leyland Kaufert, Arthur Kleinman, Shigehisa Kuriyama, Jean Langford, Bruno Latour, Margaret Lock, Emily Martin, Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nancy K. Miller, Lisa Jean Moore, John D. O’Neil, Aihwa Ong, Mariella Pandolfi, Susan Pedersen, Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Rayna Rapp, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Kristofer Schipper, Matthew Schmidt, Peter Stallybrass, Michael Taussig, Charis Thompson, E.P. Thompson, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Victor Turner, Terence Turner, Jose van Dijck, Keith Wailoo, Brad Weiss, Allon White

William Kerwin
University of Massachusetts Press, 2005
Edited by Christopher L. Pallas and Elizabeth A. Bloodgood
University of Alabama Press, 2022
From Networks to Scales: Rethinking Advocacy Power in Global Politics.
Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink introduced the boomerang theory in their 1998 book, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. It remains one of the first broadly applicable theories for why groups of NGOs and interested individuals form transnational advocacy networks. Since its publication, however, the empirical conditions that prompted their theory have changed. The types of actors involved in transnational advocacy have diversified. Northern NGOs have lost power and influence and have been restricted in their access to southern states. Southern NGOs have developed the capacity to undertake advocacy on their own and often built closer relationships with their own governments. The architecture of global governance has likewise changed, providing new avenues of access and influence for southern voices.
In Beyond the Boomerang: From Transnational Advocacy Networks to Transcalar Advocacy in International Politics, editors Christopher L. Pallas and Elizabeth A. Bloodgood offer cutting-edge scholarship that synthesizes a new theoretical framework to develop a coherent, integrated picture of the current dynamics in global advocacy. This new theory of transcalar advocacy focuses on advocacy activities and policy impacts that transcend different levels or scales of political action. In transcalar advocacy, all NGOs–northern and southern–are treated as strategic actors, choosing the targets, scales of advocacy, and partnerships that best suit their capacities and goals. The case studies in the volume develop the empirical grounding of this theory using data from Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia, with several chapters featuring cross-national comparison. The chapters highlight the wide variety of actors involved in advocacy work, including NGOs, social movements, international institutions, governments, and businesses. Contributors use both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and bring to bear insights from political science, international relations, and sociology. The case studies also include diverse issue areas, from women’s rights to environmental protection, sustainable agriculture, health policy, and democracy promotion.
Cindy Reese and Merrill Reese
Temple University Press, 2027
Merrill Reese is the longest tenured radio play-by-play announcer in the history of the NFL. He has been with the Philadelphia Eagles since 1977, covering the team’s players, coaches, and owners in locker rooms, on the sidelines, and on road trips.
Beyond the Booth is a heartfelt history of the Eagles as recounted by Reese in conversation with the interviewer who knows him best—his wife, Cindy. Reese shares his memories and recollections of the team from the Dick Vermeil years through the Nick Sirianni era. (Spoiler alert: he was no Chip Kelly fan.) Cindy draws out her husband’s observations on the authenticity of the team’s personalities and leaders and how they make it successful. Merrill also describes his relationships with his broadcast colleagues and players, including Jalen Hurts.
With her insider perspective, Cindy knows what to ask for Merrill to share his thoughts on his connection with the fans and success as a broadcaster, such as how performing in TV commercials as a child helped him develop his keen memorization skills. (She uses flashcards to test Merrill on players.)
Reese’s passion for the game, shared by his wife, is infectious. Beyond the Booth will excite every Eagles fan.
Gay W. Seidman
Russell Sage Foundation, 2007

Penny Van Esterik
Rutgers University Press, 1989
Lynette Ford
Parkhurst Brothers, Inc., 2014
Rebecca A. Adelman
University of Massachusetts Press, 2014
edited by John R. Logan and Todd Swanstrom
Temple University Press, 1991
This book challenges the notion that there is a single, global process of economic restructuring to which cities must submit. The studies in this volume compare urban development in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, demonstrating that there is significant variety in urban economic restructuring. The contributors emphasize that the economic forces transforming cities from industrial concentrations to postindustrial service centers do not exist apart from politics: all nation-states are heavily involved in the restructuring process.
Contributors: Pierre Clavel, Susan Fainstein, Richard Child Hill, Nancy Kleniewski, Harvey L. Molotch, Michael Parkinson, Edmond Preteceille, Saskia Sassen, H. V. Savitch, John Walton, and the editors.
Matsumoto, Noriko
Rutgers University Press, 2018
By Felipe Correa
University of Texas Press, 2016
During the last decade, the South American continent has seen a strong push for transnational integration, initiated by the former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who (with the endorsement of eleven other nations) spearheaded the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA), a comprehensive energy, transport, and communications network. The most aggressive transcontinental integration project ever planned for South America, the initiative systematically deploys ten east-west infrastructural corridors, enhancing economic development but raising important questions about the polarizing effect of pitting regional needs against the colossal processes of resource extraction. Providing much-needed historical contextualization to IIRSA’s agenda, Beyond the City ties together a series of spatial models and offers a survey of regional strategies in five case studies of often overlooked sites built outside the traditional South American urban constructs.
Implementing the term “resource extraction urbanism,” the architect and urbanist Felipe Correa takes us from Brazil’s nineteenth-century regional capital city of Belo Horizonte to the experimental, circular, “temporary” city of Vila Piloto in Três Lagoas. In Chile, he surveys the mining town of María Elena. In Venezuela, he explores petrochemical encampments at Judibana and El Tablazo, as well as new industrial frontiers at Ciudad Guayana. The result is both a cautionary tale, bringing to light a history of societies that were “inscribed” and administered, and a perceptive examination of the agency of architecture and urban planning in shaping South American lives.
Merton M. Sealts, Jr.
University of Missouri Press, 1996
Merton M. Sealts, Jr., a long-respected scholar and teacher of Emerson and Melville, has written, "I shall never tire of such writers, nor absorb all that they have to teach." This new collection of Sealts's essays reflects his many years of classroom experience and ongoing scholarship since his retirement in 1982. Most of these essays were originally delivered as public lectures before diverse audiences beyond the classroom; others first appeared in study pamphlets and as chapters of books.
These lucid essays, though varied in subject, have the commonality of an emphasis on teaching. The first essay, entitled "Emerson as Teacher," demonstrates how Emerson "provoked and inspired and educated his students--and his students' students."
In the most recently written essays Sealts deals with four of Emerson's contemporaries--Whitman, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Melville--who responded variously to Emerson's teachings. A common thread among these four essays is each author's distinctive use of first-person narration.
Teachers of literature at every level will greatly benefit from these highly readable discussions, which illustrate practical strategies for reading and teaching literary works. Included in the appendixes are questions for the study of Melville's Bartleby, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd, Sailor, which are also treated in individual essays.
Kate A. Baldwin
Duke University Press, 2002
Regoli
St. Augustine's Press, 2023

Rebekah Farrugia
Intellect Books, 2012
Simone Raudino and Patricia Sohn, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2022
This volume offers a nuanced picture with specific instances of religion and politics in Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu contexts, broadly presenting the phenomenon of religion and politics via country and thematic case studies. Qualitative, quantitative, material, philosophical, and theological analyses draw upon social theory to show how (and why) religion matters deeply in each time and place.
The authors and contributors demonstrate that religion is a significant force that drives societies and polities around the world, and that a radical change in the Western understanding of value-driven global politics is needed. Beyond the Death of God offers new, local voices to Western audiences—through essays that suggest the need for an appreciation of Divinity as a quintessence holding a significant place in the hearts, minds, social orders, and political organization of polities around the world.
Herbert Kitschelt and Staf Hellemans
Duke University Press, 1990
Brian D. Bunk
University of Illinois Press, 2025
Played by both migrants and native-born Americans, soccer created communities across the United States. Brian D. Bunk ranges from Pawtucket to Honolulu as he illuminates the deep and diverse origins of the American sport.
Soccer took root as immigration, urbanization, and industrialization triggered immense changes across society. Matches built local pride as teams battled rival neighborhoods and towns. Teammates and supporters shared meals, raised money for fallen players, and attended each other’s weddings and funerals. If sometimes damaged by economic depression or shattered by war, clubs often bounced back to provide a steadying, resilient force in their towns. Bunk follows the story from the 1880s through World War I by profiling the struggles and joys of players while also tracing the overlooked impact of people of African, Chinese, Hawaiian, Jewish, and Filipino descent on American soccer culture.
Engaging and rich in detail, Beyond the Field draws on extensive original research to expand our idea of the people and places that formed the American game.
Jenifer Presto
University of Wisconsin Press, 2008
Elise R. Morrison
University of Michigan Press, 2026
Beyond the Fourth Wall of War sheds light on forms of embodied performance that emerge in the aftermath of structural violence—war, displacement, and militarism—as individual bodies and bodies politic are shaped by communal disorders. As Elise R. Morrison argues that theater that addresses audiences directly by breaking the so-called “fourth wall”—which allows spectators to see but not interact with the events onstage—can offer embodied frameworks for reckoning with war trauma that move beyond traditions of illusionism and spectatorial distance.
Grounded in performance studies, this interdisciplinary study also draws deeply from digital media studies, peace studies, neuroscientific research in embodied cognition and trauma, and drama therapy. Through a comparative analysis of somatic, interactive methodologies in contemporary trauma-informed therapies, Morrison reveals the capacity of theatrical performance to model “somatic witnessing” and kinesthetic empathy and to cultivate communal practices of repair in response to state-sanctioned violence. Underlying this work is a broader inquiry into war’s performative nature, as participatory theater uniquely reorients spectatorship toward rehearsing “performative ethics” in representational and militarized “theaters of war.” Beyond the Fourth Wall of War makes novel interventions into discourses of contemporary warfare by extending the lens of trauma beyond the battlefield to civilian publics who observe conflict from a distance, yet remain entangled in its machinery.
David S. Brown
University of Chicago Press, 2009
As the world went to war in 1941, Time magazine founder Henry Luce coined a term for what was rapidly becoming the establishment view of America’s role in the world: the twentieth century, he argued, was the American Century. Many of the nation’s most eminent historians—nearly all of them from the East Coast—agreed with this vision and its endorsement of the vigorous use of power and persuasion to direct world affairs. But an important concentration of midwestern historians actively dissented. With Beyond the Frontier, David S. Brown tells their little-known story of opposition.
Raised in a cultural landscape that combined agrarian provincialism with reform-minded progressivism, these historians—among them Charles Beard, William Appleman Williams, and Christopher Lasch—argued strenuously against the imperial presidencies, interventionist foreign policies, and Keynesian capitalism that swiftly shaped cold war America. Casting a skeptical eye on the burgeoning military-industrial complex and its domestic counterpart, the welfare state, they warned that both components of the liberal internationalist vision jeopardized the individualistic, republican ethos that had long lain at the heart of American democracy.
Drawing on interviews, personal papers, and correspondence of the imoprtant players in the debate, Brown has written a fascinating follow-up to his critically acclaimed biography of Richard Hofstadter. Illuminating key ideas that link midwestern writers from Frederick Jackson Turner all the way to William Cronon and Thomas Frank, Beyond the Frontier is intellectual history at its best: grounded in real lives and focused on issues that remain salient—and unresolved—even today.
Gill Steel, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 2019
Martha H. Patterson
University of Illinois Press, 2005
Challenging monolithic images of the New Woman as white, well-educated, and politically progressive, this study focuses on important regional, ethnic, and sociopolitical differences in the use of the New Woman trope at the turn of the twentieth century. Using Charles Dana Gibson's "Gibson Girls" as a point of departure, Martha H. Patterson explores how writers such as Pauline Hopkins, Margaret Murray Washington, Sui Sin Far, Mary Johnston, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, and Willa Cather challenged and redeployed the New Woman image in light of other “new” conceptions: the "New Negro Woman," the "New Ethics," the "New South," and the "New China."
As she appears in these writers' works, the New Woman both promises and threatens to effect sociopolitical change as a consumer, an instigator of evolutionary and economic development, and (for writers of color) an icon of successful assimilation into dominant Anglo-American culture. Examining a diverse array of cultural products, Patterson shows how the seemingly celebratory term of the New Woman becomes a trope not only of progressive reform, consumer power, transgressive femininity, modern energy, and modern cure, but also of racial and ethnic taxonomies, social Darwinist struggle, imperialist ambition, assimilationist pressures, and modern decay.
Edited by Eleanor Ty
The Ohio State University Press, 2022