Bookmarks

Books from A&S faculty
bookmarks

ANDREW LYNCH MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES Spanish in Miami (Routledge). In Spanish in Miami, Lynch approaches the city's sociolinguistic situation from language ideological and critical cultural perspectives, combining extensive survey data with two decades of observations, interviews, and conversations with Spanish speakers from all sectors of the city. Tracing the advent of post-modernity in sociolinguistic terms, separate chapters analyze the changing ideological representation of Spanish in mass media during the late 20th century, its paradoxical (dis)continuity in the city’s social life, the political and economic dimensions of the Miami/Havana divide, the boundaries of language through the perceptual lens of Anglicisms, and the potential of South Florida—as part of the Caribbean—to inform our understanding of the highly complex present and future of Spanish in the United States.

LAURA GIANNETTI PROFESSOR EMERITA MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES Food Culture and Literary Imagination in Early Modern Italy (Amsterdam University Press). As the long 16th century ended, new positive ideas of gusto/taste opened a rich counter vision of food and taste where material practice, sensory perceptions, and imagination contended with traditional social values, morality, and dietetic/medial discourse. Exploring the complex and evocative ways the early modern Italian culture of food was imagined in the literature of the time, this book reveals that while a moral and disciplinary vision tried to control the discourse on food and eating in medical and dietetic treaties of the 16th century and prescriptive literature, a wide range of literary works contributed to a revolution in eating and taste.

JAFARI ALLEN ANTHROPOLOGY There’s a Disco Ball Between Us (Duke Press). In There’s a Disco Ball Between Us, Allen offers a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intellectual history of what he calls “Black gay habits of mind.” In conversational and lyrical language, Allen locates this sensibility as it emerged from radical Black lesbian activism and writing during the long 1980s. He traverses multiple temporalities and locations, drawing on research and fieldwork conducted across the globe, from Nairobi, London, and Paris to Toronto, Miami, and Trinidad and Tobago. In these locations and archives, Allen traces the genealogies of Black gay politics and cultures in the visual art, poetry, film, Black feminist theory, historiography, and activism of thinkers and artists such as Audre Lorde, Marsha P. Johnson, Essex Hemphill, Colin Robinson, Marlon Riggs, Pat Parker, and Joseph Beam. Throughout, Allen renarrates Black queer history while cultivating a Black gay method of thinking and writing. In so doing, he speaks to the urgent contemporary struggles for social justice while calling on Black studies to pursue scholarship, art, and policy derived from the lived experience and fantasies of Black people throughout the world.

CALLA HUMMEL POLITICAL SCIENCE Why Informal Workers Organize (Oxford University Press). Informal workers make up over two billion workers or about 50 percent of the global workforce. Surprisingly, scholars know little about informal workers’ political or civil society participation. An informal worker is anyone who holds a job and who does not pay taxes on taxable earnings, does not hold a license for their work when one is required, or is not part of a mandatory social security system. For decades researchers argued that informal workers rarely organized or participated in civil society and politics. However, millions of informal workers around the world start and join unions. In countries like Bolivia, informal workers such as street vendors, fortunetellers, witches, clowns, gravestone cleaners, sex workers, domestic workers, and shoe shiners come together in powerful unions. In South Africa, South Korea, and India, national informal worker organizations represent millions of citizens. The data in this book find that informal workers organize in nearly every country for which data exists but to varying degrees. This raises a related question: Why do informal workers organize in some places more than others? The reality of informal work described in this book and supported by surveys in 60 countries, over 150 interviews with informal workers in Bolivia and Brazil, ethnographic data from multiple cities, and administrative data upends the conventional wisdom on the informal sector.

ROBIN BACHIN HISTORY Engaging Place, Engaging Practices: Urban History and Campus-Community Partnerships (Temple University Press). Colleges and universities in urban centers have often leveraged their locales to appeal to students while also taking a more active role in addressing local challenges. They embrace civic engagement, support service learning, tailor courses to local needs, and even provide university-community collaborations such as lab schools and innovation hubs. The editors and contributors to this volume address topic ranging from historical injustices to affordable housing, land use, climate change planning, and the emergence of digital humanities. These case studies reveal the intricate components of a city’s history and how they provide context and promote a sense of cultural belonging. This timely book appreciates and emphasizes the critical role universities must play as intentional—and humble—partners in addressing the past, present, and future challenges facing cities through democratic community engagement.

SHOURASENI SEN ROY GEOGRAPHY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Social Morphology, Human Welfare, and Sustainability (Springer). This volume discusses a broad range of human welfare problems associated with and stemming from social issues, natural resource deficiencies, environmental hazards, vulnerability to climate change, and sustainability challenges. The chapters form a framework centered around the concept of social morphology, i.e., the role of humans in shaping society, and associated human-nature interactions, which inform the ability to achieve sustainable welfare and well-being. The book will be of interest to students, researchers, policymakers, environmentalists, NGOs, and social scientists.

AMISHI JHA PSYCHOLOGY Peak Mind (Harper One). Jha has dedicated her life’s work to understanding the science of attention at every level—from brain imaging studies in a lab to field testing soldiers, athletes, students, and firefighters. Her mission has been to scientifically determine how we can harness the full power of our attention to better meet all that life demands. Jha guides the reader through research, debunking common assumptions, and offering new insights into where presence and purpose really come from. Peak Mind shares easy-to-adapt flexible 12-minute-a-day exercises to lift the mental fog, declutter the mind, and strengthen focus so that you can experience more of your life.

JENNIFER FERRISS-HILL CLASSICS Roman Satire (Brill). Between the second century BCE and the second century CE, four ancient poets writing in Latin—Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal—invented and reinvented the genre of Roman verse Satire by wrestling with such questions as: how to create an artistic canon and insert oneself into it; how to establish oneself as a worthy successor to one’s predecessors while making one’s own mark; and how to police a genre’s boundaries to allow entry to some but not others, all while engaging in mordant critique of a shifting socio-political environment. In this volume for Brill’s Research Perspectives line, Ferriss-Hill provides an overview of and introduction to Roman Satire, framed via recent and emerging scholarly approaches to the genre and with particular reference to the themes of literary ambition, self-fashioning, and poetic afterlife. 

PETER SCHMITT ENGLISH Pan Am Ferry Tales: A World War II Aviation Memoir (McFarland & Company, Inc.). Schmitt has edited and written the introduction for his late father’s (W. Gordon Schmitt) Pan Am Ferry Tales: A World War II Aviation Memoir. During World War II, an eccentric band of barnstormers, stunt flyers, and commercial pilots joined military recruits to form the Pan American Air Ferries. This engaging, often amusing, memoir recounts the close calls and indelible characters the author encountered as navigator for the PAAF, which shuttled aircraft and materials to the Allied war effort, from Miami to Brazil, Africa, the Middle East and beyond.