Results by title

The last three decades of the twentieth century brought relentless waves of death squads, political kidnappings, and other traumas to the people of Guatemala. Many people fled the country to escape the violence. Yet, at the same moment, a popular movement for justice brought together unlikely bands of behind-the-scenes heroes, blurring ethnic, geographic, and even class lines.

The Quiet Revolutionaries is drawn from interviews conducted by Frank Afflitto in the early 1990s with more than eighty survivors of the state-sanctioned violence. Gathered under frequently life-threatening circumstances, the observations and recollections of these inspiring men and women form a unique perspective on collective efforts to produce change in politics, law, and public consciousness. Examined from a variety of perspectives, from sociological to historical, their stories form a rich ethnography. While it is still too soon to tell whether stable, long-term democracy will prevail in Guatemala, the successes of these fascinating individuals provide a unique understanding of revolutionary resistance.

A fundamentally revisionist approach that leaves behind the constructed social reality of a “sectarian” paradigm

Gwynned de Looijer reexamines the key hypotheses that have driven scholars’ understandings of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the archaeological site of Khirbet Qumran, and the textual descriptions of the Essenes. She demonstrates that foundational hypotheses regarding a sect at Qumran have heavily influenced the way the texts found in the surrounding caves are interpreted. De Looijer’s approach abandon’s those assumptions to illustrate that the Dead Sea Scrolls reflect a wider range of backgrounds reflecting the many diverse forms of Judaism that existed in the Second Temple period.

Features:

• In depth analysis of 4QMMT
• Reevaluation of the concept of dualism as it has been applied to Qumran texts
• Charts and tables illustrate complex theories, concepts, and connections

A significant new study of Rabbula and Christianity in Edessa

This volume makes available for the first time both the Syriac text and an English translation of every available original composition by Rabbula, the controversial bishop of Edessa (ca. 411–435 CE). It includes a new edition of the Life of Rabbula and other biographical traditions about him, including his conversion from paganism to Christianity. The texts collected in the volume are a valuable source for studying the reception history of biblical themes. In addition, the corpus offers insights into the beginnings of ecclesiastical legislation in the East, charitable work, pilgrimage, ascetic ideals, and church administration. Horn and Phenix examine Rabbula’s contribution to the Christological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries, including his influence on Cyril of Alexandria in his debate with Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Theodore of Mopsuestia.

Features

• A critical study of the theological, cultural, and historical development of Syriac Christianity
• Thorough historical, theological, and socio-cultural analysis provided for each text
• A previously unidentified Christian Palestinian Aramaic fragment

A close look at the emotional and intellectual world of writer John Dos Passos, who was at one time America’s leading modernist, that reveals the political and cultural rhythms of the twentieth century.

John Dos Passos (1896–1970) was a prolific writer—at once compulsive and enigmatic—who became famous in the 1930s as America’s leading literary modernist, only to be eclipsed in the second half of his life because of his own political and aesthetic choices. The Rage of John Dos Passos adopts a psychoanalytic perspective to comprehend the curious career of a man whom Jean-Paul Sartre described in 1938 as “the greatest writer of our time.” 

As a young man after World War I, Dos Passos wrote books that won him notoriety as an intemperate critic of American society. His Three Soldiers (1921) was called an insult to the army in which he had been enlisted. His impressionistic novel of New York City, Manhattan Transfer (1925), was dismissed as “spattered filth.” Then in the 1930s, three wildly creative and politically engaged novels written under the collective title U.S.A. truly made his name. Yet Dos Passos then abandoned his youthful radicalism to embrace strident anticommunism and the second Red Scare. 

The Rage of John Dos Passos examines the central strands of the author’s life, from infancy until death, and the full range of his writing, including his often-scorned late novels. Christopher Tomlins aims to fuse history, biography, and literary analysis in understanding Dos Passos and his times—and our own. 

Tracing how the “Great Replacement” narrative has shaped far-right extremism and propelled its dangerous political projects and acts of violence

The “Great Replacement” narrative, which imagines that historic white majorities are being intentionally replaced through immigration policies crafted by global elites, has effectively mobilized racist, nationalist, and nativist movements in the United States and Europe. The Rage of Replacement tracks how this narrative has shaped the politics and worldview of the far right, binding its various camps into a community of rage obsessed with nostalgia for a white-supremacist past.

Showing how the replacement narrative has found significant purchase in recent mainstream discourse through the rise of Trumpism, right-wing media figures like Tucker Carlson, and events such as 2017’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Michael Feola diagnoses the dangers this racist theory poses as it shapes the far-right imagination, expands through civil society, and deforms political culture. In particular, he tracks how the replacement narrative has given rise to malignant political strategies designed to “take back” the nation from its perceived enemies—by force if deemed necessary.

Identifying the Great Replacement narrative as a central force behind the rise and expansion of far-right extremism, Feola shows how it has motivated a variety of dangerous political projects in pursuit of illiberal, antidemocratic futures. From calls for the creation of segregated white ethnostates to extremist violence such as the mass shootings in Christchurch, El Paso, and Buffalo, The Rage of Replacement makes clear that replacement theory poses a dire threat to democracy and safety.

The Rain Gods’ Rebellion examines Nahua oral narratives to illuminate the cultural basis of the 1977–1984 rebellion against the local Hispanic elite in Huitzilan de Serdán, Mexico. Drawing from forty years of fieldwork in the region, James M. Taggart traces the sociopolitical role of Nahua rain gods—who took both human and divine forms—back hundreds of years and sheds new light on the connections between social experiences and the Nahua understanding of water and weather in stories. As Taggart shows, Nahua tales of the rain gods’ rebellion anticipated the actual 1977 land invasion in Huitzilan, in which some 200–300 Nahua were killed.

Providing a rare longitudinal look at the cultural basis of this grassroots insurgency, The Rain Gods’ Rebellion offers rare insight into the significance of oral history in forming Nahua collective memory and, by extension, culture. It will be of significance to scholars of Indigenous studies, anthropology, oral history, and violence studies, as well as linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists.

The Real Philadelphia Book, compiled by Jazz Bridge and editors David Dzubinski and Suzanne Cloud, is a collection of more than 200 original jazz and blues compositions. Arranged alphabetically by song title, the sheet music showcases work by generations of Philadelphia musicians. This volume, which is “what every aspiring jazz musician needs to know,” features tunes from Grammy Award-winners Jimmy Heath, Grover Washington, Jr., and Christian McBride, as well as legends such as Joey DeFrancesco, Ray Bryant, and Robin and Duane Eubanks. Also included are rare compositions by jazz greats Bobby Timmons, Hank Mobley, and Lee Morgan, in addition to music by local luminaries, Rhenda Fearrington, Monnette Sudler, and Kaylé Brecher.

The aim of The Real Philadelphia Book is to help the jazz community make deeper, stronger connections while also formally documenting much of the important music created in the Philadelphia metro area by both well- and lesser-known musicians.

Including an index of composers, The Real Philadelphia Bookwill enhance and add to the rich Philadelphia jazz and blues tradition and make the Philly jazz catalogue more easily available to musicians, jazz students and educators around the world.

Our era is defined by the model. From Victoria’s Secret and America’s Next Top Model to the snapshots we post on Facebook and Twitter, our culture is fixated on the pose, the state of existing simultaneously as artifice and the real thing.

In this bold view of contemporary culture, Wendy Steiner shows us the very meaning of the arts in the process of transformation. Her story begins at the turn of the last century, as the arts abandoned the representation of the world for a heady embrace of the abstract, the surreal, and the self-referential. Today though, this “separate sphere of the aesthetic” is indistinguishable from normal life. Media and images overwhelm us: we gingerly negotiate a real-virtual divide that we suspect no longer exists, craving contact with what J. M. Coetzee has called “the real real thing.” As the World Wide Web renders the lower-case world in ever-higher definition, the reality-based genres of memoir and documentary are displacing fiction, and novels and films are depicting the contemporary condition through model-protagonists who are half-human, half-image. Steiner shows the arts searching out a new ethical potential through this figure: by stressing the independent existence of the model, they welcome in the audience in all its unpredictability, redefining aesthetic experience as a real-world interaction with the promise of empathy, reciprocity, and egalitarian connection.

A masterly performance by a penetrating, inquisitive mind, The Real Real Thing is that rarest of books, one whose provocations and inspirations will inspire readers to take a new—and nuanced—look at the world around them.

Venezuela has become a huge source of hope and inspiration for the Left throughout the world. Some see it as a shining example of how to begin building a successful socialist state, but Western leaders see it as a dangerous enemy and accuse Chávez of being a dictator. This book reveals the truth by examining the country from the ground up.

Iain Bruce explores the political changes underway in Venezuela at the level of the lives of ordinary people. Through grassroots investigations and extended interviews, he explores a series of key transformations in Venezuela: a new social economy around a network of co-operatives; workplace democracy; popular education; radical agrarian reform; participatory budgets and community planning. The result is a clear picture of everyday life in Venezuela.

No other book on the country has this level of detail; it will be a key text for students of Latin American politics and social movements and of interest to anyone following the fortunes of the Bolivarian Revolution.

The first comprehensive history of the fabled Confederate battle cry from its origins and myths through its use in American popular culture.

No aspect of Civil War military lore has received less scholarly attention than the battle cry of the Southern soldier. In The Rebel Yell, Craig A. Warren brings together soldiers' memoirs, little-known articles, and recordings to create a fascinating and exhaustive exploration of the facts and myths about the “Southern screech.”

Through close readings of numerous accounts, Warren demonstrates that the Rebel yell was not a single, unchanging call, but rather it varied from place to place, evolved over time, and expressed nuanced shades of emotion. A multifunctional act, the flexible Rebel yell was immediately recognizable to friends and foes but acquired new forms and purposes as the epic struggle wore on. A Confederate regiment might deliver the yell in harrowing unison to taunt Union troops across the empty spaces of a battlefield. At other times, individual soldiers would call out solo or in call-and-response fashion to communicate with or secure the perimeters of their camps.

The Rebel yell could embody unity and valor, but could also become the voice of racism and hatred. Perhaps most surprising, The Rebel Yell reveals that from Reconstruction through the first half of the twentieth century, the Rebel yell—even more than the Confederate battle flag—served as the most prominent and potent symbol of white Southern defiance of Federal authority. With regard to the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Warren shows that the yell has served the needs of people the world over: soldiers and civilians, politicians and musicians, re-enactors and humorists, artists and businessmen. Warren dismantles popular assumptions about the Rebel yell as well as the notion that the yell was ever “lost to history.”

Both scholarly and accessible, The Rebel Yell contributes to our knowledge of Civil War history and public memory. It shows the centrality of voice and sound to any reckoning of Southern culture.

The collection of poems in The Reckoning of Jeanne d’Antietam circles the U.S. Civil War and the failed revolution of Reconstruction, and Matthew Moore makes incursions into the histories and beliefs of the era through architectures of sound, but also via ancillary histories and histories stacked upon histories—densely and visibly scrawled—like Anselm Kiefer's sculptures of lead books, melted and dripping with the texts of illegible songs. His poems include the figure of Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) and her voices; the explosion of the U.S. prison system and racial legal fictions amid the groundswell of mass terror in the wake of the U.S. Civil War; the politically poisoned poetic lineage that moves from Modernism, to New Criticism, and dead-ends in Southern Agrarianism; and the destructive colonial histories of the sugar and cotton industries.  

The Reckoning of Jeanne d’Antietam stands imbricated with the spell of language-the-testament; language as hard rhyme and difficult music, evanescence and violence; and the invocation of names and events at their meeting places in history. Moore’s poems stand against sentiment and pity, and against the consolation of that which cannot be consoled.