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We stopped, and we heard the biggest racket you ever heard up in the house.

“What’s the matter, son?”

“Why, Maw and Paw are up there fightin’.”

“Who is your Paw, son?”

“Well, that’s what they are fightin’ over.”

Brimming with ballads, stories, riddles, tall tales, and great good humor, My Curious and Jocular Heroes pays homage to four people who guided and inspired Loyal Jones’s own study of Appalachian culture. His sharp-eyed portraits introduce a new generation to Bascom Lunsford, the pioneer behind the “memory collections” of song and story at Columbia University and the Library of Congress; the Sorbonne-educated collector and performer Josiah H. Combs; Cratis D. Williams, the legendary father of Appalachian studies; and the folklorist and master storyteller Leonard W. Roberts. Throughout, Jones highlights the tales, songs, jokes, and other collected nuggets that define the breadth of each man’s research and repertoire.

Henry David Thoreau was a twenty-year-old scholarship student at Harvard when he met Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1837. Emerson, fourteen years Thoreau's senior and independently wealthy, had recently shaken the intellectual world of New England with the publication of Nature. Despite the disparity in their circumstances, Thoreau and Emerson quickly formed a close relationship that lasted until Thoreau's death at the age of forty-four. This book tells the story of their friendship. Harmon Smith emphasizes their personal bond, but also shows how their relationship affected their thought and writing, and was in turn influenced by their careers.

Without Emerson's interest and support, it is unlikely that Thoreau could have expended the energy on writing that enabled him to achieve greatness. By inviting Thoreau into his home to live during two different periods in the 1840s, Emerson effectively made Thoreau “one of the family.” He provided him with work, lent him money, and allowed him to build a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond. Emerson also broadened Thoreau's horizon immeasurably by introducing him to an ever-widening circle of friends and colleagues.

Although the bond between Thoreau and Emerson was strong, their needs were often greatly at variance. While this led to a prolonged period of estrangement between them, they were ultimately able to reconcile their differences. Many years after Thoreau died, Emerson could look back over his long life and say that Henry had been his best friend. Since the thoughts and feelings of the two men are so well documented in their journals and letters, Smith is able to trace the pattern of their emotional involvement in great detail. What emerges is both a remarkable portrait of their relationship and an intimate look at the nature of friendship itself.

Genderqueer and nonbinary people of color often experience increased marginalization, belonging to an ethnic group that seldom recognizes their gender identity and a queer community that subscribes to white norms. Yet for this very reason, they have a lot to teach about how racial, sexual, and gender identities intersect. Their experiences of challenging social boundaries demonstrate how queer communities can become more inclusive and how the recognition of nonbinary genders can be an anti-racist practice. 
 
My Race is My Gender is the first anthology by nonbinary writers of color to include photography and visual portraits, centering their everyday experiences of negotiating intersectional identities. While informed by queer theory and critical race theory, the authors share their personal stories in accessible language. Bringing together Black, Indigenous, Latine, and Asian perspectives, its six contributors present an intergenerational look at what it means to belong to marginalized queer communities in the U.S. and feel solidarity with a global majority at the same time. They also provide useful insights into how genderqueer and nonbinary activism can both energize and be fueled by such racial justice movements as Black Lives Matter. 

Selected as an "Editors Choice" by the Chicago Tribune

Lennard J. Davis grew up as the hearing child of deaf parents. In this candid, affecting, and often funny memoir, he recalls the joys and confusions of this special world, especially his complex and sometimes difficult relationships with his working-class Jewish immigrant parents. Gracefully slipping through memory, regret, longing, and redemption, My Sense of Silence is an eloquent remembrance of human ties and human failings.

Seven women raise a child together while redefining their place in society at the beginning of the Women’s Movement in Denmark in the 1970s


On New Year’s Eve in Copenhagen in 1972, seven women had a child together: one gave birth and six others attended. They had met a year earlier at a feminist women’s camp on a small island and now, with about twenty other women’s liberationists, they occupied three dilapidated apartment buildings in the center of Copenhagen. One became the country’s first Women’s House, the nerve center of the Women’s Movement in Denmark, and the other two were women-only communal living spaces that were Pernille Ipsen’s first home. In this intimate portrait of life during the exhilarating early days of women’s liberation in Scandinavia and dramatic social change around the globe, she tells the stories of these seven women, her seven mothers.

Recounting her mothers’ history—from the passions and beliefs they shared to the political divisions over sexual identity that ultimately split them apart—Ipsen captures the individuality of each of her mothers as well as the common experiences that drew them together. As she deftly reflects the practical and emotional realities of her mothers’ women-centered life, Ipsen presents an engrossing picture of intersecting lives that, half a century ago, raised questions we still grapple with today: What is a family? Who is a woman? And who gets to decide? 

A chronicle of gender, sexuality, and feminism as it was constructed, contested, and lived, My Seven Mothers is an eye-opening account of the challenges and possibilities connected with liberation and radical social change during the 1970s. In this time of fierce struggles over family, sexuality, and child-rearing, it reminds us that new worlds are always possible.

There are 27 million slaves living in the world today—more than at any time in history. Three hundred thousand of them are impoverished children in Haiti, who "stay with" families as unpaid and uneducated domestic workers, subject to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. This practice, known locally as restavek ("staying with"), is so widespread that one in ten Haitian children is caught up in this form of slavery.

Jean-Robert Cadet was a restavek in Haiti from the late 1950s until the early 1970s. He told the harrowing story of his youth in Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American—a landmark book that exposed ongoing child slavery in Haiti. Now in My Stone of Hope, Cadet continues his story from his early attempts to adjust to freedom in American society to his current life mission of eliminating child slavery through advocacy and education. As he recounts his own struggles to surmount the psychological wounds of slavery, Cadet puts a human face on the suffering that hundreds of thousands of Haitians still endure daily. He also builds a convincing case that child slavery is not just one among many problems that Haiti faces as the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. Rather, he argues that the systematic abuse of so many of its children is Haiti's fundamental problem, because it creates damaged adults who seem incapable of governing the country justly or managing its economy productively.

For everyone concerned about the fate of Haiti, the welfare of children, and the freedom of people around the globe, My Stone of Hope sounds an irresistible call to action.

An interdisciplinary collection for scholars and students interested in the connections between myth and scripture

In this collection scholars suggest that using “myth” creates a framework within which to set biblical writings in both cultural and literary comparative contexts. Reading biblical accounts alongside the religious narratives of other ancient civilizations reveals what is commonplace and shared among them. The fruit of such work widens and enriches our understanding of the nature and character of biblical texts, and the results provide fresh evidence for how biblical writings became “scripture.”

Features:

• Essays that explore how myth sheds light on the emergence of scripture
• Examples drawn from the Ancient Near East, Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Greco-Roman world
• Articles by experts from a range of disciplines

An accessible introduction to the role of myth historically and in popular culture.

Myth: A Handbook by William G. Doty is a foundational and wide-ranging exploration of myth as one of humanity’s most enduring and powerful forms of expression. Designed for students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences, this authoritative volume offers both a comprehensive introduction to myth studies and a sophisticated framework for interpreting myth in diverse cultural contexts.

Doty approaches myth not as a static body of ancient stories, but as a dynamic and evolving system of meaning—one that reflects the values, beliefs, and psychological structures of the societies that produce and preserve it. Drawing from a rich interdisciplinary base that includes anthropology, literary criticism, psychology, religious studies, and cultural theory, the book examines how myths operate symbolically, structurally, and socially. Readers are guided through major theoretical approaches to myth, from classical interpretations to modern critical frameworks, enabling them to engage thoughtfully with myth as both narrative and cultural artifact.

One of the book’s central strengths is its emphasis on methodology. Rather than presenting myth as a fixed subject, Doty equips readers with analytical tools to interpret myths across different traditions and historical periods. He explores how myths encode meaning through symbols and archetypes, how they reinforce or challenge cultural norms, and how they adapt over time to address shifting social realities. By emphasizing interpretation over simple retelling, Doty transforms myth from a collection of stories into a living field of inquiry.

The handbook also addresses key questions that continue to resonate in contemporary scholarship: What distinguishes myth from legend or folklore? How do myths shape identity—individual, communal, and national? In what ways do myths persist in modern literature, film, and popular culture? Through clear explanations and carefully structured discussions, Doty demonstrates that myth remains deeply relevant, not only in understanding ancient civilizations but also in analyzing modern narratives and cultural expressions.

Accessible yet intellectually rigorous, Myth: A Handbook has become a widely respected resource in university classrooms, providing students with the conceptual grounding needed to engage critically with mythological material. At the same time, its clarity and breadth make it valuable for general readers interested in the deeper meanings behind the stories that have shaped human thought across time and place.

Ultimately, Doty’s work reveals that myth is not confined to the past—it is an essential framework through which humans interpret experience, construct meaning, and understand their place in the world. This handbook stands as an indispensable guide to that process, illuminating the enduring significance of myth in both ancient traditions and contemporary life.
 

This new edition of William Doty's critically acclaimed study provides a comprehensive guidebook to the many schools of interpretation in this burgeoning field

William Doty's popular text has been hailed as the most comprehensive work of its kind. Extensively rewritten and completely restructured, the new edition provides further depth and perspective and is even more accessible to students of myth. It includes expanded coverage of postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives, the Gernet Center, mythic iconography, neo-Jungian approaches, and cultural studies, and it summarizes what is new in the study of Greek myth, iconography, French classical scholarship, and ritual studies. It also features a comprehensive index of names and topics, a glossary, an up-to-date annotated bibliography, and a guide to myth on the Internet.

Presenting all major myth theorists from antiquity to the present, Mythography is an encyclopedic work that offers a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of myth. By reflecting the dramatic increase in interest in myth among both scholars and general readers since publication of the first edition, it remains a key study of modern approaches to myth and
an essential guide to the wealth of mythographic research available today.