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Image one: E-book titled Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales (2013) - synopsis: In new translations and with an introduction by Sibelan Forrester, Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales is a selection of tales that draws from the famous collection of Aleksandr Afanas’ev, but also includes some tales from the lesser-known nineteenth-century collection of Ivan Khudiakov. This new collection includes beloved classics such as “Vasilisa the Beautiful” and “The Frog Princess,” as well as a version of the tale that is the basis for the ballet “The Firebird.”
Image two: E-book titled The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque and the Gigantic in Renaissance Landscape Design (2015) - synopsis: Monsters, grotesque creatures, and giants were frequently depicted in Italian Renaissance landscape design, yet they have rarely been studied. In The Monster in the Garden, Luke Morgan argues that the monster is a key figure in Renaissance culture. Monsters were ciphers for contemporary anxieties about normative social life and identity. Drawing on sixteenth-century medical, legal, and scientific texts, as well as recent scholarship on monstrosity, abnormality, and difference in early modern Europe, he considers the garden within a broader framework of inquiry.
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Image one: E-book titled Dead Funny: The Humor of American Horror (2023) - synopsis: Horror films strive to make audiences scream, but they also garner plenty of laughs. In fact, there is a long tradition of horror directors who are fluent in humor, from James Whale to John Landis to Jordan Peele. So how might horror and humor overlap more than we would expect? Dead Funny locates humor as a key element in the American horror film, one that is not merely used for extraneous “comic relief” moments but often serves to underscore major themes, intensify suspense, and disorient viewers. Each chapter focuses on a different comic style or device, from the use of funny monsters and scary clowns in movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street to the physical humor and slapstick in movies ranging from The Evil Dead to Final Destination.
Image two: E-book titled Eaters of the Dead: Myths and Realities of Cannibal Monsters (2021) - synopsis: Spanning myth, history, and contemporary culture, a terrifying and illuminating excavation of the meaning of cannibalism. Every culture has monsters that eat us, and every culture repels in horror when we eat ourselves. From Grendel to medieval Scottish cannibal Sawney Bean, and from the Ghuls of ancient Persia to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, tales of being consumed are both universal and universally terrifying. In this book, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. explores the full range of monsters that eat the dead: ghouls, cannibals, wendigos, and other beings that feast on human flesh. Moving from myth through history to contemporary popular culture, Wetmore considers everything from ancient Greek myths of feeding humans to the gods, through sky burial in Tibet and Zoroastrianism, to actual cases of cannibalism in modern societies.
Image one: E-book titled Beyond the Night: Creatures of Life, Death, and the In-Between (2015) - synopsis: From Beowulf and Buffy, to Freddy Krueger and Frankenstein’s Monster, this collection highlights different aspects of the monstrous, and discusses various ways in which they can be read, discussed, and understood. What does the mother in Beowulf really represent? How can the character of Zoey Redbird really be understood? What is the importance of memories in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? And what should we make of Terry Pratchett’s undead creatures? And what role does the children-friendly vampire play? Beyond the Night offers a range of insights into these topics, as well as many more.
Image two: E-book titled The Vampire: A New History (2018) - synopsis: Published to mark the bicentenary of John Polidori’s publication of The Vampyre, Nick Groom’s detailed new account illuminates the complex history of the iconic creature. The vampire first came to public prominence in the early eighteenth century, when Enlightenment science collided with Eastern European folklore. Groom accordingly traces the vampire from its role as a monster embodying humankind’s fears, to that of an unlikely hero for the marginalized and excluded in the twenty-first century. Drawing on literary and artistic representations, as well as medical, forensic, empirical, and sociopolitical perspectives, this rich and eerie history presents the vampire as a strikingly complex being that has been used to express the traumas and contradictions of the human condition.
Image one: E-book titled Blood Will Tell: Vampires as Political Metaphors before World War I (2011) - synopsis: Blood Will Tell explores the ways in which writers, thinkers, and politicians used blood and vampire-related imagery to express social and cultural anxieties in the decades leading up to the First World War. Covering a wide variety of topics, including science, citizenship, gender, and anti-Semitism, Robinson demonstrates the ways in which rhetoric tied to blood and vampires permeated political discourse and transcended the disparate cultures of Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, forming a cohesive political and cultural metaphor.
Image two: E-book titled Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai (2008) - synopsis: Water sprites, mountain goblins, shape-shifting animals, and the monsters known as yôkai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape. This history of the strange and mysterious in Japan seeks out these creatures in folklore, encyclopedias, literature, art, science, games, manga, magazines, and movies, exploring their meanings in the Japanese cultural imagination and offering an abundance of valuable and, until now, understudied material. Michael Dylan Foster tracks yôkai over three centuries, from their appearance in seventeenth-century natural histories to their starring role in twentieth-century popular media.
Fiction:- Lock Every Door by Riley Sager- The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides- Artemis by Andy Weir- Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer- My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite- Vox by Christina Dalcher- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens- The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Nonfiction:- Little Weirds by Jenny Slate- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino- The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefevre, and Frederic Lemercier- Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater by Eric P. Nash- The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator by Timothy C. Winegard- Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life by Colin Ellard- Theories of International Politics and Zombies by Daniel W. Drezner- The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America by Karen Abbott
Image one: E-book titled The Female Crucifix: Images of St. Wilgefortis since the Middle Ages (2001) - synopsis: The legendary bearded female St. Wilgefortis, also known by a variety of other names including “Kummernis” and “Uncumber,” was the object of fervent veneration in areas of Western and Central Europe for almost half a millennium. Beginning in the fifteenth century, the legend of her dramatic transformation from a beautiful, privileged princess into a bearded, Christlike martyr on the cross inspired scores of paintings, sculptures, poems, prayers and shrines in her honor all across Europe. In spite of frequent opposition by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, her cult of veneration at one point nearly rivaled that of the Virgin Mary in some parts of Europe. In this informative and groundbreaking new book, Professor Ilse E. Friesen examines the phenomenon of St. Wilgefortis from an art historical perspective, tracing the origins of depictions of the saint from an early medieval Italian statue known as Volto Santo, or “holy face,” through the emergence of increasingly feminized crucifixes over the course of the subsequent centuries.
Image two: E-book titled Resistance Reimagined: Black Women's Critical Thought as Survival (2017) - synopsis: Resistance Reimagined highlights unconventional modes of black women's activism within a society that has spoken so much of freedom but has granted it so selectively. Regis Fox terms this gap between democratic promise and dispossession the “liberal problematic,” and in this book she shows how black women have disrupted it as a form of resistance. Looking closely at nineteenth- and twentieth-century writings by African American women that reimagine antebellum America, Fox introduces types of black activism that differ from common associations with militancy and maleness. In doing so, she confronts expectations about what African American literature can and should be.
Image one: E-book titled The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (2011) - synopsis: Nwando Achebe presents the fascinating history of an Igbo woman, Ahebi Ugbabe, who became king in colonial Nigeria. Ugbabe was exiled from Igboland, became a prostitute, traveled widely, and learned to speak many languages. She became a close companion of Nigerian Igala kings and the British officers who supported her claim to the office of headman, warrant chief, and later, king. In this unique biography, Achebe traces the roots of Ugbabe’s rise to fame and fortune. While providing critical perspectives on women, gender, sex and sexuality, and the colonial encounter, she also considers how it was possible for this woman to take on the office and responsibilities of a traditionally male role.
Image two: E-book titled Indigenous Women's Movements in Latin America: Gender and Ethnicity in Peru, Mexico, and Bolivia (2016) - synopsis: This book explores the political contexts and internal dynamics of indigenous movements, to show that they created different opportunities for women to organize and voice specific demands. This, in turn, led to various forms of organizational autonomy for women involved in indigenous movements. The trajectories vary from the creation of autonomous spaces within mixed-gender organizations to the creation of independent organizations.
Image one: E-book titled Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity (2014) - synopsis: Africa in Stereo analyzes how Africans have engaged with African American music and its representations in the long twentieth century (1890-2011) to offer a new cultural history attesting to pan-Africanism’s ongoing and open theoretical potential. Tsitsi Jaji argues that African American popular music appealed to continental Africans as a unit of cultural prestige, a site of pleasure, and most importantly, an expressive form already encoded with strategies of creative resistance to racial hegemony.
Image two: E-book titled Sacred Steel: Inside an African American Steel Guitar Tradition (2010) - synopsis: In this book, Robert L. Stone follows the sound of steel guitar into the music-driven Pentecostal worship of two related churches: the House of God and the Church of the Living God. A rare outsider who has gained the trust of members and musicians inside the church, Stone uses nearly two decades of research, interviews, and fieldwork to tell the story of a vibrant musical tradition that straddles sacred and secular contexts. Most often identified with country and western bands, steel guitar is almost unheard of in African American churches—except for the House of God and the Church of the Living God, where it has been part of worship since the 1930s.
Image one: E-book titled Vampires and Zombies: Transcultural Migrations and Transnational Interpretations (2016) - synopsis: The vampire, with roots in medieval European folklore, and the zombie, with origins in Afro-Caribbean mythology, have both undergone significant transformations in global culture, proliferating as deviant representatives of the zeitgeist. Among other topics, contributors discuss zombies in Thai films, vampire novels of Mexico, and undead avatars in horror videogames. This volume—with scholars from different national and cultural backgrounds—explores the transformations that the vampire and zombie figures undergo when they travel globally and through various media and cultures.
Image two: E-book titled Fear and Nature: Ecohorror Studies in the Anthropocene (2023) - synopsis: Ecohorror represents human fears about the natural world—killer plants and animals, catastrophic weather events, and disquieting encounters with the nonhuman. Its portrayals of animals, the environment, and even scientists build on popular conceptions of zoology, ecology, and the scientific process. Featuring new readings of the genre, Fear and Nature brings ecohorror texts and theories into conversation with other critical discourses. The chapters cover a variety of media forms, from literature and short fiction to manga, poetry, television, and film. The chronological range is equally varied, beginning in the nineteenth century with the work of Edgar Allan Poe and finishing in the twenty-first with Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro.
Image one: E-book titled Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai (2008) - synopsis: Water sprites, mountain goblins, shape-shifting animals, and the monsters known as yokai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape. This history of the strange and mysterious in Japan seeks out these creatures in folklore, encyclopedias, literature, art, science, games, manga, magazines, and movies, exploring their meanings in the Japanese cultural imagination and offering an abundance of valuable and understudied material.
Image two: E-book titled Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales (2013) - synopsis: Baba Yaga is an ambiguous and fascinating figure. She appears in traditional Russian folktales as a monstrous and hungry cannibal, or as a canny inquisitor of the adolescent hero or heroine of the tale. In new translations and with an introduction by Sibelan Forrester, Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales is a selection of tales that draws from the famous collections and other lesser-known 19th century tales. The preface and introduction place these tales in their traditional context with reference to Baba Yaga’s continuing presence in today’s culture.
Image one: E-book titled Poetry of Psychiatry: Essays on Early Twentieth-Century Russian Symbolist Culture (2014) - synopsis: A century ago the Symbolists in Moscow and St. Petersburg dreamed of a fundamental transformation of life in Russia. From their reading of signs in the heavens, these poets, philosophers, and mystics sensed that tsardom was on the threshold of an apocalyptic upheaval. The eventual collision between these dreams and tsarist reality generated enormous intellectual turbulence and the need for substitutes. Not least psychoanalysis came to the rescue of these stranded dreamers.
Image two: E-book titled American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation (2004) - synopsis: Written as a cultural weapon and a call to arms, Howl touched a raw nerve in Cold War America and has been controversial from the day it was first read aloud nearly fifty years ago. This first full critical and historical study of Howl brilliantly elucidates the nexus of politics and literature in which it was written and gives striking new portraits of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs.
Image one: E-book titled A Companion to Modern African Art (2013) - synopsis: Offering a wealth of perspectives on African modern and Modernist art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, this new Companion features essays by African, European, and North American authors who assess the work of individual artists as well as exploring broader themes such as discoveries of new technologies and globalization. A pioneering continent-based assessment of modern art and modernity across Africa includes original and previously unpublished fieldwork-based material.
Image two: E-book titled Modernist Art in Ethiopia (2019) - synopsis: If modernism initially came to Africa through colonial contact, what does Ethiopia’s inimitable historical condition—its independence save for five years under Italian occupation—mean for its own modernist tradition? In Modernist Art in Ethiopia—the first book-length study of the topic—Elizabeth W. Giorgis recognizes that her home country’s supposed singularity, particularly as it pertains to its history from 1900 to the present, cannot be conceived outside the broader colonial legacy. She uses the evolution of modernist art in Ethiopia to open up the intellectual, cultural, and political histories of it in a pan-African context.
Image one: Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns, 1206 to 1335 (2017) - synopsis: Explores the political, economic and religious role of women in the Mongol empire This book shows the development of women’s status in the Mongol Empire from its original homeland in Mongolia up to the end of the Ilkhanate of Iran in 1335. Taking a thematic approach, the chapters show a coherent progression of this development and contextualise the evolution of the role of women in medieval Mongol society.
Image two: E-book titled Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine (2014) - synopsis: This close look at Wonder Woman’s history portrays a complicated heroine who is more than just a female Superman with a golden lasso and bullet-deflecting bracelets. The original Wonder Woman was ahead of her time, advocating female superiority and the benefits of matriarchy in the 1940s. At the same time, her creator filled the comics with titillating bondage imagery, and Wonder Woman was tied up as often as she saved the world. In the 1950s, Wonder Woman begrudgingly continued her superheroic mission, wishing she could settle down with her boyfriend instead, all while continually hinting at hidden lesbian leanings. Exploring this lost history adds new dimensions to the world’s most beloved female character, and Wonder Woman Unbound delves into her comic book and its spin-offs as well as the myriad motivations of her creators to showcase the peculiar journey that led to Wonder Woman’s iconic status.
Image one: E-book titled Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan (2018) - synopsis: The overwhelming majority of tea practitioners in contemporary Japan are women, but there has been little discussion on their historical role in tea culture (chanoyu). In Cultivating Femininity, Rebecca Corbett writes women back into this history and shows how tea practice for women was understood, articulated, and promoted in the Edo (1603–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods. Viewing chanoyu from the lens of feminist and gender theory, she sheds new light on tea’s undeniable influence on the formation of modern understandings of femininity in Japan.
Image two: E-book titled The Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France (2018) - synopsis: The salon was of particular importance in mid- to late-seventeenth-century France, enabling aristocratic women to develop a philosophical culture that simultaneously reflected and opposed the dominant male philosophy. In The Suspicion of Virtue, John J. Conley, S. J., explores the moral philosophies developed by five women authors of that milieu: Madame de Sablé, Madame Deshoulières, Madame de la Sabliére, Mlle de la Vallière, and Madame de Maintenon. Through biography, extensive translation, commentary, and critical analysis, The Suspicion of Virtue presents the work of women who participated in the philosophical debates of the early modern period but who have been largely erased from the standard history of philosophy.
Image one: E-book titled Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America (2019) - synopsis: Futbolera is the first monograph on women’s sports in Latin America. Because sports evoke such passion, they are fertile ground for understanding the formation of social classes, national and racial identities, sexuality, and gender roles. Futbolera tells the stories of women athletes and fans as they navigated the pressures and possibilities within organized sports. This vibrant history also examines women’s sports through comparative case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, and others. Special attention is given to women’s sports during military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s as well as the feminist and democratic movements that followed.
Image two: E-book titled Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color in American Islam (2018) - synopsis: An exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. Muslim womanhood that centers the lived experience of women of color For author Sylvia Chan-Malik, Muslim womanhood is constructed through everyday and embodied acts of resistance, what she calls affective insurgency. In negotiating the histories of anti-Blackness, U.S. imperialism, and women’s rights of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Being Muslim explores how U.S. Muslim women's identities are expressions of Islam as both Black protest religion and universal faith tradition. Through archival images, cultural texts, popular media, and interviews, the author maps how communities of American Islam became sites of safety, support, spirituality, and social activism, and how women of color were central to their formation.
Image one: E-book titled Hair, Headwear, and Orthodox Jewish Women: Kallah's Choice (2014) - synopsis: Hair, Headwear, and Orthodox Jewish Women comments on hair covering based on an ethnographic study of the lives of Orthodox Jewish women in a small non-metropolitan synagogue. It brings the often overlooked stories of these women to the forefront and probes questions as to how their location in a small community affects their behavioral choices, particularly regarding the folk practice of hair covering. A kallah, or bride, makes the decision as to whether or not she will cover her hair after marriage. In doing so, she externally announces her religious affiliation, in particular her commitment to maintaining an Orthodox Jewish home.
Image two: E-book titled Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880 to 1930 (2018) - synopsis: The first study of the role of the newspaperwoman in American literary culture at the turn of the twentieth century, this book recaptures the imaginative exchange between real-life reporters like Nellie Bly and Ida B. Wells and fictional characters like Henrietta Stackpole, the lady-correspondent in Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady. It chronicles the exploits of a neglected group of American women writers and uncovers an alternative reporter-novelist tradition that runs counter to the more familiar story of gritty realism generated in male-dominated newsrooms.
Image one: E-book titled The First Fifteen: How Asian American Women Became Federal Judges (2021) - synopsis: In 1998, an Asian woman first joined the ranks of federal judges with lifetime appointments. It took ten years for the second Asian woman to be appointed. Since then, however, over a dozen more Asian women have received lifetime federal judicial appointments. This book tells the stories of the first fifteen. In the process, it recounts remarkable tales of Asian women overcoming adversity and achieving the American dream, despite being the daughters of a Chinese garment worker, Japanese Americans held in internment camps during World War II, Vietnamese refugees, and penniless Indian immigrants. In a candid series of interviews, these judges reflect upon the personal and professional experiences that led them to this distinguished position, as well as the nerve-wracking political process of being nominated and confirmed for an Article III judgeship.
Image two: Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (2014) - synopsis: Love and Liberation reads the autobiographical and biographical writings of one of the few Tibetan Buddhist women to record the story of her life. Sera Khandro Künzang Dekyong Chönyi Wangmo (also called Dewé Dorjé, 1892–1940) was extraordinary not only for achieving religious mastery as a Tibetan Buddhist visionary and guru to many lamas, monastics, and laity in the Golok region of eastern Tibet, but also for her candor. This book listens to Sera Khandro’s conversations with land deities, dakinis, bodhisattvas, lamas, and fellow religious community members whose voices interweave with her own to narrate what is a story of both love between Sera Khandro and her guru, Drimé Özer, and spiritual liberation.
Image one: E-book titled Disabled Bodies in Early Modern Spanish Literature: Prostitutes, Aging Women, and Saints (2018) - synopsis: This study explores a wide range of Spanish medical, regulatory, and moral discourses, illustrating how such texts inherit, reproduce, and propagate an amalgam of Western traditional concepts of female embodiment. It goes on to examine concrete representations of deviant female characters, focusing on the figures of syphilitic prostitutes and physically decayed aged women in literary texts such as Celestina, Lozana andaluza, and selected works by Cervantes and Quevedo. Finally, an analysis of the personal testimony of Teresa de Avila, a nun suffering neurological disorders, complements the discussion of early modern women’s disability.
Image two: E-book titled Nuclear Summer: The Clash of Communities at the Seneca Women's Peace Encampment (1992) - synopsis: When thousands of women gathered in 1983 to protest the stockpiling of nuclear weapons at a rural upstate New York military depot, the area was shaken by their actions. What so disturbed residents that they organized counterdemonstrations, wrote hundreds of letters to local newspapers, verbally and physically harassed the protestors, and nearly rioted to stop one of the protest marches? Louise Krasniewicz reconstructs the drama surrounding the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in Seneca County, New York, analyzing it as a clash both between and within communities. She shows how debates about gender and authority―including questions of morality, patriotism, women’s roles, and sexuality―came to overshadow arguments about the risks of living in a nuclear world.
Image one: E-book titled Farzana: The Woman Who Saved an Empire (2014) - synopsis: Amongst the riches of 19th century India, as the British fought their way across Mughal territory, an orphaned street-girl is brought to court to perform for the Emperor. That girl was Farzana, and she would become a courtesan, a leader of armies, a treasured defender of the last Mughal emperor and the head of one of the most legendary courts in history. In this book, Julia Keay weaves a story which spans the Indian continent and the end of a golden era in Indian history, the story of a nobody who became a teenage seductress and died one of the richest and most prominent woman of her age. Farzana rode into battle atop a stallion, though only 4.5 feet tall, and led an army which defended a sickly Mughal empire. She dabbled in witchcraft while gaining favour with the Pope, and died a favourite of the British Raj.
Image two: E-book titled SheMurenga: The Zimbabwe Women's Movement, 1995 to 2000 (2013) - synopsis: This book demonstrates the place of women’s movements during a defining period of contemporary Zimbabwe. The government of Robert Mugabe may have been as firmly in power in 2000 as it was in 1995, but the intervening years saw severe economic crisis, mass strikes and protests, the start of land occupations, intervention in the war in the DRC, and the rise of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Author Shereen Essof shows how Zimbabwean women crafted responses to these and other events, and aimed for a feminist agenda that would prioritize the interests of the rural and urban poor.
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Image two: E-book titled Horror in the Heartland: Strange and Gothic Tales from the Midwest (2017) - synopsis: In Horror in the Heartland, historian Keven McQueen offers a guided tour of terrible crimes and eccentric characters; haunted houses and murder-suicides; mad doctors, body snatchers, and pranks gone comically--and tragically--wrong. From tales of the booming grave-robbing industry of late 19th-century Indiana to the story of a Michigan physician who left his estate to his pet monkeys, McQueen investigates a spooky and twisted side of Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Exploring burial customs, unexplained deaths, ghost stories, premature burials, bizarre murders, peculiar wills and much more, this creepy collection reveals the region's untold stories and offers intriguing, if sometimes macabre, insights into human nature.
Image three: E-book titled Edo Kabuki in Transition: From the Worlds of the Samurai to the Vengeful Female Ghost (2016) - synopsis: Satoko Shimazaki revisits three centuries of kabuki theater, reframing it as a key player in the formation of an early modern urban identity in Edo Japan. Shimazaki argues that kabuki instilled a sense of shared history in the inhabitants of Edo (present-day Tokyo) by invoking “worlds,” or sekai, derived from earlier military tales, and overlaying them onto the present. She then analyzes the profound changes that took place in Edo kabuki toward the end of the early modern period, which witnessed the rise of a new type of character: the vengeful female ghost. Shimazaki’s bold reinterpretation of the history of kabuki centers on the popular ghost play Tōkaidō Yotsiya Kaidan (Ghost Story of Yotsuya in Takaido) by Tsuruya Nanboku IV. Drawing not only on kabuki scripts but also on a wide range of other sources, from theatrical ephemera and popular fiction to medical and religious texts, she sheds light on the development of the ubiquitous trope of the vengeful female ghost and its illumination of new themes at a time when the samurai world was losing its relevance.
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Image one: E-book titled Odd Couples: A History of Gay Marriage in Scandinavia (2011) - synopsis: Odd Couples is the first comprehensive history of registered partnership and gay marriage in Scandinavia. It traces the origins of laws which initially were extremely controversial-inside and outside the gay community-but have now gained broad popular and political support, as well as the positive effects and risks involved in state recognition of lesbian and gay couples. Through a comparison of how these laws have been received and practiced in all of the Scandinavian countries, including Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the author presents a nuanced study of a fascinating political process that began in the 1960s and continues to change the way we understand family, sexuality, and nation.
Image two: E-book titled Queer Festivals: Challenging Collective Identities in a Transnational Europe (2018) - synopsis: Through the study of festivals in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Copenhagen, and Oslo, Queer Festivals: Challenging Collective Identities in a Transnational Europe thoughtfully analyses the role of activist practices in the building of collective identities for social movement studies as well as the role of festivals as significant repertoires of collective action and sites of identitarian explorations in contemporary Europe.
Image one: E-book titled Queer Korea (2020) - synopsis: Since the end of the 19th century, the Korean people have faced successive waves of foreign domination, authoritarian regimes, forced dispersal, and divided development. Throughout these turbulent times, “queer” Koreans were ignored, minimized, and erased in narratives of their modern nation, East Asia, and the wider world. This interdisciplinary volume challenges such marginalization through critical analyses of non-normative sexuality and gender variance. Considering both personal and collective forces, the contributors recount a range of illuminating topics, from shamanic rituals during the colonial era and B-grade comedy films under Cold War dictatorship to female masculinity among today’s youth and transgender confrontations with the resident registration system.
Image two: E-book titled Everyday Revolutions: Remaking Gender, Sexuality, and Culture in 1970s Australia (2019) - synopsis: Everyday Revolutions brings together new research on the cultural and social impact of the feminist and sexual revolutions of the 1970s in Australia. Gay Liberation and Women’s Liberation movements erupted, challenging almost every aspect of Australian life. Everyday Revolutions is unique in its focus on the women’s and gay and lesbian movements’ cultural and social dimensions. It is a diverse and rich collection of essays that reminds us that women’s and gay liberation were revolutionary movements.
Image one: E-book titled The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies (2021) - synopsis: This encyclopedia takes an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to trans studies. Entries address a wide range of topics, from broad concepts, to specific subjects, to key historical figures, events, and organizations. Entries focus on diverse lives, identities, and contexts, including the experiences of trans people in different racial, religious, and sexual communities in the United States and the variety of ways that gender is expressed in other countries.
Image two: E-book titled Envisioning Global LGBT Rights: (Neo)colonialism, Neoliberalism, Resistance, and Hope (2018) - synopsis: Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights: (Neo)colonialism, Neoliberalism, Resistance and Hope is an outcome of a five-year international collaboration among partners that share a common legacy of British colonial laws that criminalize same-sex intimacy and gender identity/expression. The chapters are bursting with invaluable first hand insights from leading activists at the forefront of some of the most fiercely fought battlegrounds of contemporary sexual politics in India, the Caribbean, and Africa. As well, authors from Canada, Botswana, and Kenya examine key turning points in the advancement of SOGI issues at the United Nations, and provide critical insights on LGBT asylum in Canada. Authors also speak to a need to reorient and decolonize queer studies, and turn a critical gaze northwards from the Global South.
Image one: E-book titled Historical Dictionary of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movement (2013) - synopsis: Covers the history of lesbian and gay movement through a cross-referenced dictionary with entries on specific countries and regions, influential historical figures, laws that criminalized same-sex sexuality, various historical terms that have been used to refer to aspects of same-sex love, and contemporary events and legal decisions.
Image two: E-book titled Gender in Focus: Identities, Codes, Stereotypes, and Politics (2018) - synopsis: This book deals with the interplay between identities, codes, stereotypes and politics governing the various constructions and deconstructions of gender in several Western and non-Western societies (Germany, Italy, Serbia, Romania, Cameroon, Indonesia, Vietnam, and others). Readers are invited to discover the realm of gender studies and to reflect upon the transformative potentialities of globalization and inter-culturality.
Image one: E-book titled Queer Ancient Ways: A Decolonial Exploration (2018) - synopsis: In this radically unconventional work, Zairong Xiang investigates scholarly receptions of mythological figures in Babylonian and Nahua creation myths, exposing the ways they have consistently been gendered as feminine in a manner that is not supported, and in some cases actively discouraged, by the texts themselves. An exercise in decolonial learning-to-learn from non-Western and non-modern cosmologies, Xiang’s work uncovers a rich queer imaginary that has been all-but-lost to modern thought, in the process critically revealing the operations of modern/colonial systems of gender/sexuality and knowledge-formation that have functioned, from the Conquista de America in the sixteenth century to the present, to keep these systems in obscurity.
Image two: E-book titled Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth: Gender, Shamanism, and the Third Sex (2018) - synopsis: Ujarak, Iqallijuq, and Kupaaq were elders from the Inuit community on Igloolik Island in Nunavut. The three elders, among others, shared with Bernard Saladin d'Anglure the narratives which make up the heart of Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth. Through their words, and historical sources recorded by Franz Boas and Knud Rasmussen, Saladin d'Anglure examines the Inuit notion of personhood and its relationship to cosmology and mythology. Central to these stories are womb memories, narratives of birth and reincarnation, and the concept of the third sex—an intermediate identity between male and female. As explained through first-person accounts and traditional legends, myths, and folk tales, the presence of transgender individuals informs Inuit relationships to one another and to the world at large, transcending the dualities of male and female, human and animal, human and spirit.
Image one: E-book titled Creating and Sustaining Effective K-12 School Partnerships: Firsthand Accounts of Promising Practices (2019) - synopsis: This book is a compilation of manuscripts and studies that explore partnerships and strategies educators and educational leaders use to produce positive socio-educational outcomes for Black students in various contexts. Creating and Sustaining Effective K-12 School Partnerships: Firsthand Accounts of Promising Practices is unique because it illuminates examples of effective school-community partnerships that foster positive student outcomes. This book is intended as a practical text for committed educational leaders, at different professional points (e.g., practicing teachers, pre-service school counselors and teachers), who are eager to transform the current educational trajectory of Black children through interventions that show promise.
Image two: E-book titled Teaching ELLs across Content Areas: Issues and Strategies (2016) - synopsis: The book, Teaching ELLs across Content Areas: Issues and Strategies, is a unique, useful text written for K–12 teachers. This book is the culmination of the professional knowledge, expertise, and experience from the distinguished authors who represent the entire range of the content areas, including: language arts, science, mathematics, technology, arts, psychology, and Hispanic studies. This book provides the most needed information for K-12 teachers with issues and strategies that are important in content areas to help ELLs‘ success. Second, the book fills the gap related to teaching ELLs in content areas. There are some existing books with titles on teaching ELLs across content areas; yet, these books provide general information with fewer books that really address specific content topics. This book is unique because it has the dedicated chapters for specific content areas, e.g., Language Arts, Science, Math, Social Studies with issues and strategies in these respective contents as well as general information, e.g., L2 theories for teachers to know and work with ELLs. Third, each chapter begins with a scenario to catch the reader's attention, is followed by issues and strategies, and ends with a summary. A scenario begins with each chapter for teachers to get to know the ELLs with the content that focuses on the related information and teaching strategies.
Image one: E-book titled Romanesque Art (2016) - synopsis: In art history, the term ‘Romanesque art‘ distinguishes the period between the beginning of the 11th and the end of the 12th century. This era showed a great diversity of regional schools each with their own unique style. In architecture as well as in sculpture, Romanesque art is marked by raw forms. Through its rich iconography and captivating text, this work reclaims the importance of this art which is today often overshadowed by the later Gothic style.
Image two: E-book titled Developing a Sense of Place: The Role of the Arts in Regenerating Communities (2020) - synopsis: Developing a Sense of Place brings together new models and case studies, each drawn from a specific geographical or socio-cultural context. Selected for their lasting effect in their local community, the case studies explore new models for opening up the relationship between the university and its regional partners, explicitly connecting creative, critical, and theoretical approaches to civic development.
Image one: E-book titled Stone by Stone: Exploring Ancient Sites on the Canadian Plains (2015) - synopsis: In this revised and updated edition of her one-of-a-kind guidebook, author Liz Bryan explores archaeological sites that are accessible to today's inquisitive travelers and provides enough detailed information, striking photographs, maps, and illustrations to satisfy any armchair archaeologist. With riveting insight and clarity, Bryan presents the stone effigies, cairns, medicine wheels, buffalo jumps, rock art, and remains of settlements scattered across this vast prairie, creating an invaluable resource for anyone who wishes to navigate these ancient sites and understand their significance.
Image two: E-book titled Prose: Literary Terms and Concepts (2012) - synopsis: Narratives come in many forms, fall into many genres, and tell the stories of an endless assortment of characters. Despite recurring themes and conceits in works from around the world, each story—from biography to science fiction—is singular and designed to elicit a distinct emotional response from its readers. The rhetorical tools and literary styles that have helped reinvent the art and study of storytelling over time are surveyed in this captivating volume.
Image one: E-book titled Gothic Art (2016) - synopsis: Gothic art finds its roots in the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that evolved throughout Europe over more than 200 years. Leaving curved Roman forms behind, the architects started using flying buttresses and pointed arches to open up cathedrals to daylight. A period of great economic and social change, the Gothic era also saw the development of a new iconography celebrating the Holy Mary – in drastic contrast to the fearful themes of dark Roman times.
Image two: E-book titled Beowulf - synopsis: Written between the 8th and 11th centuries, Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic poem written in Old English. The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel’s mother attacks the hall and is then defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a tower on a headland in his memory.
Image one: E-book titled Leaves of Grass (1855) - synopsis: This collection of loosely connected poems represents the celebration of Walt Whitman’s philosophy of life and humanity and praises nature and the individual human’s role in it. Rather than focusing on religious or spiritual matters, Leaves of Grass focuses primarily on the body and the material world. With one exception, its poems do not rhyme or follow standard rules for meter and line length. Leaves of Grass is also notable for its discussion of delight in sensual pleasures during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral.
Image two: E-book titled Dreamtime Superhighway: Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange (2008) - synopsis: Dreamtime Superhighway presents a thorough and original contextualization of the rock art and archaeology of the Sydney Basin in Australia. By combining excavation results with rock art analysis it demonstrates that a true archaeology of rock art can provide insights into rock art image-making in people’s social and cultural lives.
Image one: Queen of Vaudeville: The Story of Eva Tanguay (2012) - synopsis: In her day, Eva Tanguay (1879-1947) was one of the most famous women in America. Widely known as the “I Don’t Care Girl”—named after a song she popularized and her independent, even brazen, persona—Tanguay established herself as a vaudeville and musical comedy star in 1901 with the New York City premiere of the show My Lady—and never looked back. Queen of Vaudeville is a dynamic portrait of a dazzling and unjustly forgotten show business star.
Image two: Women in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Lives and Culture (2012) - synopsis: This collection of essays examines the lives of women across Russia – from wealthy noblewomen in St. Petersburg to desperately poor peasants in Siberia – discussing their interaction with the church and the law, and their rich contribution to music, art, literature, and theatre. It shows how women struggled for greater autonomy and, both individually and collectively, developed a dynamic but often overlooked presence in Russia’s culture and society during the long nineteenth century (1800-1917).
Image one: E-book titled Wives and Wanderers in a New Guinea Highlands Society: Women's Lives in the Wahgi Valley (2022) - synopsis: Brings to the reader anthropologist Marie Reay’s field research from the 1950s and 1960s on women’s lives in the Wahgi Valley, Central Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Dramatically written, each chapter adds to the main story that Reay wanted to tell, contrasting young girls’ freedom to court and choose partners, with the constraints (and violence) they were to experience as married women. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of gender relations, anthropology and feminism, Melanesia and the Pacific. The material in this book, which Reay had written by 1965 but never published, remains startlingly contemporary and relevant.
Image two: E-book titled Women, Disability, and Culture (2020) - synopsis: Women and girls with disabilities find themselves constantly having to deal with multiple, intersectional discrimination due to both their gender and their disability, as well as social conditioning. Indeed, the intersection made up of factors such as race, ethnic origin, social background, cultural substrate, age, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, gender, disability, status as refugee or migrant and others besides, has a multiplying effect that increases discrimination yet further. This book seeks to focus attention on the condition of women with disabilities, offering points for reflection on the different, often invisible, cultural and social undertones that continue to feed into prejudicial stereotypes.
Image one: E-book titled Starring Red Wing!: The Incredible Career of Lilian M. St Cyr, the First Native American Film Star (2019) - synopsis: The epic biography Starring Red Wing! brings the exciting career, dedicated activism, and noteworthy legacy of Ho-Chunk actress Lilian Margaret St. Cyr vividly to life. Known to film audiences as “Princess Red Wing,” St. Cyr emerged as the most popular Native American actress in the pre-Hollywood and early studio-system era in the United States, befriending and working with icons such as Mary Pickford, Jewell Carmen, Tom Mix, Max Sennett, and William Selig.
Image two: E-book titled Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan: The Development of the Feminist Movement (2011) - synopsis: With chapters on public, private, and missionary schools for girls, their students, and teachers, on social and political groups women created, on female employment, and on women’s participation in print media, this book offers a new perspective on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese history. Women’s founding of and participation in conflicting discourses over the value of women in Meiji public life demonstrate that during this period active and vocal women were everywhere, that they did not meekly submit to the dictates of the government and intellectuals over what women could or should do, and that they were fully integrated in the production of Meiji culture.
Image one: E-Book titled Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (2016) - synopsis: In Oakland, California, in 1966, community college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton armed themselves, began patrolling the police, and promised to prevent police brutality. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement that called for full citizenship rights for blacks within the United States, the Black Panther Party rejected the legitimacy of the U.S. government and positioned itself as part of a global struggle against American imperialism. In the face of intense repression, the Party flourished, becoming the center of a revolutionary movement with offices in sixty-eight U.S. cities and powerful allies around the world. Black against Empire is the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. The authors analyze key political questions, such as why so many young black people across the country risked their lives for the revolution, why the Party grew most rapidly during the height of repression, and why allies abandoned the Party at its peak of influence.
Image two: E-Book titled Jah Kingdom: Rastafarians, Tanzania, and Pan-Africanism in the Age of Decolonization (2017) - synopsis: From its beginnings in 1930s Jamaica, the Rastafarian movement has become a global presence. While the existing studies of the Rastafarian movement have primarily focused on its cultural expression through reggae music, art, and iconography, Monique A. Bedasse argues that repatriation to Africa represents the most important vehicle of Rastafari's international growth. Shifting the scholarship on repatriation from Ethiopia to Tanzania, Bedasse foregrounds Rastafari’s enduring connection to black radical politics and establishes Tanzania as a critical site to explore gender, religion, race, citizenship, socialism, and nation. Based on previously undiscovered oral and written sources from Tanzania, Jamaica, England, the United States, and Trinidad, Bedasse uncovers a vast and varied transnational network--including Julius Nyerere, Michael Manley, and C. L. R James--revealing Rastafari’s entrenchment in the making of Pan-Africanism in the post-independence period.
Image one: E-book titled Japanese Demon Lore: Oni from Ancient Times to the Present (2010) - synopsis: Oni, ubiquitous supernatural figures in Japanese literature, lore, art, and religion, usually appear as demons or ogres, and they appear frequently in various arts and media, from Noh theater and picture scrolls to modern fiction and political propaganda. They remain common figures in popular Japanese anime, manga, and film and are becoming embedded in American and international popular culture through such media. Noriko Reider’s book is the first in English devoted to oni as she fully examines their cultural history, multifaceted roles, and complex significance as “others” to the Japanese.
Image two: E-book titled The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque and the Gigantic in Renaissance Landscape Design (2015) - synopsis: Monsters, grotesque creatures, and giants were frequently depicted in Italian Renaissance landscape design, yet they have rarely been studied. In The Monster in the Garden, Luke Morgan argues that the monster is a key figure in Renaissance culture that acts as a cipher for contemporary anxieties about normative social life and identity. Drawing on sixteenth-century medical, legal, and scientific texts, as well as recent scholarship on monstrosity, abnormality, and difference in early modern Europe, he develops a new conceptual model of Renaissance landscape design and argues that the presence of monsters was not incidental but an essential feature of the experience of gardens.
Image one: E-book titled Sites of Translation: What Multilinguals Can Teach Us about Digital Writing and Rhetoric (2018) - synopsis: Sites of Translation illustrates the intricate rhetorical work that multilingual communicators engage in as they translate information for their communities. Blending ethnographic and empirical methods from multiple disciplines, Laura Gonzales provides methodological examples of how linguistic diversity can be studied in practice, both in and outside the classroom, and provides insights into the rhetorical labor that is often unacknowledged and made invisible in multilingual communication.
Image two: E-book titled Memoirs of a Spanish Civil War Artist (2016) - synopsis: Fontserè’s Memoirs of a Spanish Civil War Artist masterfully combines autobiography and history through the eyes of one of the 20th century’s foremost Catalan graphic artists, known worldwide for his Republican propaganda posters. The book of Carles Fontserè’s memoirs is not only an excellent translation from Catalan to English, but one central to the history of Catalonia.
Image one: E-book titled The Woman Who Turned into a Jaguar and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico (2017) - synopsis: This book is an ambitious and wide-ranging social and cultural history of gender relations among indigenous peoples of New Spain, from the Spanish conquest through the first half of the eighteenth century. In this expansive account, Lisa Sousa focuses on four native groups in highland Mexico—the Nahua, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe—and traces cross-cultural similarities and differences in the roles and status attributed to women in pre-Hispanic and colonial Mesoamerica.
Image two: E-book titled Ceramics and the Spanish Conquest: Response and Continuity of Indigenous Pottery Technology in Central Mexico (2012) - synopsis: This work presents insights into the process of cultural continuity and change in the indigenous world by focusing on pottery technology in the Nahua (Aztec) region of Central Mexico. The late pre-colonial, early colonial, and present-day characteristics of this industry are explored in order to come to a renewed understanding of its long-term development.
Image one: E-book titled Literary Hispanophobia and Hispanophilia in Britain and the Low Countries, 1550-1850 (2020) - synopsis: Explores the protracted interest in Spain and its culture, and it exposes the co-existent ambiguity between scorn and fascination that characterizes Western historical perceptions, in particular in Britain and the Low Countries, two geographical spaces with a shared sense of historical connectedness and an overlapping, sometimes complicated, history with Spain.
Image two: E-book titled An Atlas and Survey of Latin American History (2019) - synopsis: Provides a comprehensive, accessible introduction to both the human and physical geography of Latin America and the social, cultural, political and economic events that have defined its history. Featuring 77 maps and accompanying text, the book provides topical overviews of the key developments and movements in Latin American history, ranging from the earliest human settlement to the present day.
Image one: E-book titled Understanding James Baldwin (2019) - synopsis: The Harlem-born son of a storefront preacher, James Baldwin died almost thirty years ago, but his spirit lives on in the eloquent and still-relevant musings of his novels, short stories, essays, and poems. What concerned him most—as a black man, as a gay man, as an American—were notions of isolation and disconnection at both the individual and communal level and a conviction that only in the transformative power of love could humanity find any hope of healing its spiritual and social wounds. In Understanding James Baldwin, Marc K. Dudley reveals Baldwin's career spanning the civil rights movement and beyond, writing about race, sexual identity, and gendered politics, while traveling the world to promote dialogue on those issues.
Image two: E-book titled S/he: Sex and Gender in Hispanic Cultures (2017) - synopsis: The main title, S/HE, is a nod to the arguably-gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun from the 1960s inclusive English-language movement in the United States, which was concurrent with equal rights movements in terms of race, ethnicity, sex and gender. This book focuses on sex and gender issues in the Hispanic worlds, paying homage to all who do not fit within the strict parameters of previous definitions by including broadened descriptions of identity, both biological and social, and by highlighting aspects of traditional and non-traditional lifestyles as portrayed in art and literature.
Image one: E-book titled Odd Couples: A History of Gay Marriage in Scandinavia (2011) - synopsis: Odd Couples is the first comprehensive history of registered partnership and gay marriage in Scandinavia. It traces the origins of laws which initially were extremely controversial-inside and outside the gay community-but have now gained broad popular and political support, as well as the positive effects and risks involved in state recognition of lesbian and gay couples. Through a comparison of how these laws have been received and practiced in all of the Scandinavian countries, including Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the author presents a nuanced study of a fascinating political process that began in the 1960s and continues to change the way we understand family, sexuality and nation.
Image two: E-book titled Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights: (Neo)colonialism, Neoliberalism, Resistance, and Hope (2018) - synopsis: Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights: (Neo)colonialism, Neoliberalism, Resistance and Hope is an outcome of a five-year international collaboration among partners that share a common legacy of British colonial laws that criminalize same-sex intimacy and gender identity/expression. The project sought to facilitate learning from each other and to create outcomes that would advance knowledge and social justice. The project was unique, combining research and writing with participatory documentary filmmaking. This visionary politics infuses the pages of the anthology.
Image one: E-book titled Derrida and Queer Theory (2017) - synopsis: This long-awaited volume of essays are compelling as they exuberantly take readers of Derrida to new, queerer heights and depths of understanding. Superbly edited and presented by Christian Hite, this book belongs in every collection of works on Derrida, deconstruction, or queer theory.
Image two: E-book titled Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth: Gender, Shamanism, and the Third Sex (2018) - synopsis: Ujarak, Iqallijuq, and Kupaaq were elders from the Inuit community on Igloolik Island in Nunavut. The three elders, among others, shared with Bernard Saladin d'Anglure the narratives which make up the heart of Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth. Through their words, and historical sources recorded by Franz Boas and Knud Rasmussen, Saladin d'Anglure examines the Inuit notion of personhood and its relationship to cosmology and mythology. Central to these stories are womb memories, narratives of birth and reincarnation, and the concept of the third sex—an intermediate identity between male and female.
Image one: E-Book titled Tulip in the Desert: A Selection of the Poetry of Muhammad Iqbal (1999) - synopsis: Muhammad Iqbal (1877 1938) is one of the pre-eminent writers of the Indian subcontinent and the attention he has received from writers, translators and critics in western as well as Islamic countries testifies to his stature as a world literary figure. In his translation of Iqbal s poetry, Mustansir Mir seeks to convey every level of meaning and mood in the poems, while making the text as readable and idiomatic as possible.
Image two: E-Book titled Arrival Cities: Migrating Artists and New Metropolitan Topographies in the 20th Century (2020) - synopsis: Exile and migration played a critical role in the diffusion and development of modernism around the globe yet have long remained largely understudied phenomena within art historiography. Focusing on the intersections of exile, artistic practice and urban space, this volume brings together contributions by international researchers committed to revising the historiography of modern art. It pays particular attention to metropolitan areas that were settled by migrant artists in the first half of the 20th century. These arrival cities developed into hubs of artistic activities and transcultural contact zones where ideas circulated, collaborations emerged, and concepts developed.
Image one: E-book titled Syria's Monuments: Their Survival and Destruction (2016) - synopsis: Syria's Monuments: Their Survival and Destruction examines the fate of the various monuments in Syria (including present-day Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine/Israel) from Late Antiquity to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. It examines travellers’ accounts, mainly from the 17th to 19th centuries, which describe religious buildings and housing in numbers and quality unknown elsewhere. The book charts the reasons why monuments lived or died, varying from earthquakes and desertification to neglect and re-use, and sets the political and social context for the Empire’s transformation toward a modern state, provoked by Western trade and example.
Image two: E-book titled Modern Architecture in Mexico City: History, Representation, and the Shaping of a Capital (2017) - synopsis: Mexico City became one of the centers of architectural modernism in the Americas in the first half of the twentieth century. Through an exploration of schools, a university campus, a government ministry, a workers' park, and houses for Diego Rivera and Luis Barragán, Kathryn O'Rourke offers a new interpretation of modern architecture in the Mexican capital, showing close links between design, evolving understandings of national architectural history, folk art, and social reform.
Image one: E-book titled Extraordinary Partnerships: How the Arts and Humanities are Transforming America (2020) - synopsis: This inspirative and hopeful collection demonstrates that the arts and humanities are entering a renaissance that stands to change the direction of our communities. Community leaders, artists, educators, scholars, and professionals from many fields show how they are creating responsible transformations through partnership in the arts and humanities. The diverse perspectives that come together in this book teach us how to perceive our lives and our disciplines through a broader context.
Image two: E-book titled The Yom Kippur Anthology (2018) - synopsis: Unequaled in-depth compilations of classic and contemporary writings, they have long guided rabbis, cantors, educators, and other readers seeking the origins, meanings, and varied celebrations of the Jewish festivals. Drawing on Jewish creativity from hundreds of sources—the Bible, postbiblical literature, Talmud, midrashim, prayers with commentaries, Hasidic tales, short stories, poems, liturgical music—and describing Yom Kippur observances in various lands and eras, The Yom Kippur Anthology vividly evokes the vitality of this holiday throughout history and its significance for the modern Jew.
Image one: E-book titled History and Literature: New Readings of Jewish Texts in Honor of Arnold J. Band (2020) - synopsis: Arnold Band ran the graduate program in modern Hebrew literature at UCLA. He insisted that understanding the texts required both close readings and an attention to historical context. Band also stressed the interrelationship between Hebrew and Yiddish works, as well as the importance of the impact of Western languages and the classical Jewish texts. Cutter and Jacobson present 38 essays chosen to honor his work by reflecting the range of his concerns.
Image two: E-book titled The Shaping of Persian Art: Collections of Interpretations of the Art of Islamic Iran and Central Asia (2013) - synopsis: Discusses how the impact of the Persian style is undeniably reflected in most aspects of the art and architecture of Islamic Central Asia and how this Perso-Central Asian connection was chiefly formed and articulated by the Euro-American movement of collecting and interpreting the art and material culture of the Persian Islamic world in modern times. This had an enormous impact on the formation of scholarship and connoisseurship in Persian art, for instance, with an attempt to define the characteristics of how the Islamic art of Iran and Central Asia should be viewed and displayed at museums, and how these subjects should be researched in academia.
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Six pieces of art by Yayoi Kusama
Image one: E-book titled The Sukkot and Simhat Torah Anthology (2018) - synopsis: The Sukkot and Simhat Torah Anthology offers new insight into the Festival of Ingathering, celebrating the harvest in the land of ancestors, and the Festival of Rejoicing in the Law, marking the new cycle of public Torah readings, by elucidating the two festivals’ background, historical development, and spiritual truths for Jews and humankind. Mining the Bible, postbiblical literature, Talmud, midrashim, prayers with commentaries, and Hasidic tales, the compendium also showcases humor, art, food, song, dance, essays, stories, and poems.
Image two: E-book titled The Arts and the Brain: Psychology and Physiology beyond Pleasure (2018) - synopsis: Combines the work of an excellent group of experts who explain evidence on the neural and biobehavioral science of the arts. Topics covered include the emergence of early art and the evolution of human culture, the interaction between cultural and biological evolutionary processes in generating artistic creation, the nature of the aesthetic experience of art, the arts as a multisensory experience, new insights from the neuroscience of dance, a systematic review of the biological impact of music, and more.
Image one: E-book titled Designing Motion: Automotive Designers, 1890-1990 (2016) - synopsis: For a long time, car design was considered to be anonymous, the designers stood in the shadow of the perception of the design, even though their designs can be found on the roads in millions. This richly illustrated book captures the origin of a profession and maps the development of car design based on a comprehensive introduction and the career biographies of over 200 selected designers who contributed to the design of cars and many different associated products in the USA, Europe, and Japan between 1900 and 2000.
Image two: E-book titled Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature (2010) - synopsis: Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature presents a broad perspective on the development and history of literature in modern China. It offers a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, literary and historical developments, trends, genres, and concepts that played a central role in the evolution of modern Chinese literature.
Image one: E-book titled Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Backgrounds Issues (2020) - synopsis: This book argues that women served as leaders in a number of synagogues during the Roman and Byzantine periods. The evidence for this consists of nineteen Greek and Latin inscriptions in which women bear the titles "head of the synagogue," "leader," "elder," "mother of the synagogue" and "priestess." These inscriptions range in date from 27 B.C.E. to perhaps the sixth century C.E. and in provenance from Italy to Asia Minor, Egypt and Palestine. While new discoveries make this a growing corpus of material, a number of the inscriptions have been known to scholars for some time.
Image two: E-book titled Rethinking Japanese Feminisms (2017) - synopsis: Rethinking Japanese Feminisms offers a broad overview of the great diversity of feminist thought and practice in Japan from the early twentieth century to the present. Drawing on methodologies and approaches from anthropology, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, and sociology, each chapter presents the results of research based on some combination of original archival research, careful textual analysis, ethnographic interviews, and participant observation.
Image one: E-book titled African American Women Chemists (2011) - synopsis: In this book, Jeannette Brown, an African American woman chemist herself, will present a wide-ranging historical introduction to the relatively new presence of African American women in the field of chemistry. It will detail their struggles to obtain an education and their efforts to succeed in a field in which there were few African American men, much less African American women. The book contains sketches of the lives of African America women chemists from the earliest pioneers up until the late 1960's when the Civil Rights Acts were passed and greater career opportunities began to emerge.
Image two: E-book titled Madame Wu Chien-Shiung: The First Lady of Physics Research (2013) - synopsis: Narrating the well-lived life of the “Chinese Madame Curie” — a recipient of the first Wolf Prize in Physics (1978), the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Princeton University, as well as the first female president of the American Physical Society — this book provides a comprehensive and honest account of the life of Dr. Wu Chien-Shiung, an outstanding and leading experimental physicist of the 20th century.
