Hermann Beck
History
Before the Holocaust: Antisemitic Violence and the Reaction of German Elites and Institutions during the Nazi Takeover (Oxford University Press)
Before the Holocaust examines antisemitic violence during the Nazi takeover, which has previously not been adequately recognized, as well as the reaction of German elites and institutions to this violence. Based on a plethora of newly discovered archival sources and documentary evidence, the first part concentrates on antisemitic violence—from boycotts, violent attacks, robbery, extortion, abductions, and humiliating “pillory marches”—to grievous bodily harm and murder. In the second part, the author analyses the reactions of those institutions that still had the capacity to protest Nazi attacks (the Protestant Church, the Catholic Church, the state bureaucracies, and Hitler's conservative coalition partner, the DNVP) and the mindset of the elites who led them, to determine their various responses to flagrant antisemitic abuses. Individual protests against violent attacks, boycotts, and Nazi legislative measures were already hazardous in March and April 1933 but established institutions in the German state and society were still able to voice their concerns and raise objections. By doing so, they might have stopped or at least postponed a radicalization that eventually led to the pogrom of November 1938 (Kristallnacht) and the Holocaust. But the elites remained silent. The book revises the standard assumptions among historians of Nazi Germany that physical violence against Jews only fully began in 1938 before escalating into the mass murder of the Holocaust.
Simon Evnine
Philosophy
A Certain Gesture: Evnine's Batman Meme Project and Its Parerga! (Tell it Slant Press)
An entirely original kind of work, A Certain Gesture takes the form of commentaries on memes made with the image of Batman slapping Robin. The commentaries are written as if they were not authored by the same person who made the memes, allowing the author to consider himself and his work from the outside. The book defies genre by mixing discussions of philosophy, psychoanalysis, Judaism, language, and representation with self-writing and auto-theory. These are juxtaposed like the items in a cabinet of curiosities or topics in an analytic patient’s free association. Both pre-modern and post-modern in its inspiration, it is cerebral, playful, social, and intensely personal. It contains philosophy, including original philosophical research, but also explores new ways of doing and thinking about philosophy.
David Kling
Religious Studies
The Bible in History: How the Texts Have Shaped the Times (Oxford University Press)
The Bible in History remains an essential examination of the symbiotic relationship between scripture and the social and cultural contexts shaping its interpretation. Kling traces the intriguing story of how specific biblical texts have at various times emerged to become the inspiration of movements that have changed the course of history. This revised and expanded second edition adds two new chapters. The first examines the text in Matthew 28:18-20 and considers the multitudinous interpretations before, during, and after the text emerged as the iconic "Great Commission" of missionary motivation in the modern period. The second assesses those biblical texts that encompass the divisive and ongoing issue of male homosexuality.
Steven Safren
Psychology
Transdiagnostic LGBTQ-Affirmative Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (Therapist Guide and Client Workbook, Oxford University Press)
LGBTQ individuals seek therapy at higher rates than the general population, but the mental health profession has historically lacked evidence-based guidance for supporting the unique presenting concerns of LGBTQ clients. This book changes that by presenting how-to guidance for delivering cognitive-behavioral therapy that directly responds to the distinct stressors facing LGBTQ individuals. LGBTQ-affirmative Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy teaches the principles and techniques that mental health practitioners can use to affirmatively respond to the distinct stressors that their LGBTQ clients often face. The book follows a clear step-by-step approach with nine modules, each of which teaches skills for enhancing LGBTQ clients' mental well-being by undoing the deep impact that early and ongoing LGBTQ-related stress can have on basic psychological processes. This Therapist Guide is intended to be accompanied by the Client Workbook, which contains accessible, step-by-step guidance and worksheets for clients to follow when participating in this treatment. This guide provides essential tools for helping therapists effectively and affirmatively respond to the unique needs of their LGBTQ clients.
Christina Civantos
Modern Languages & Literatures
Jamón and Halal: Lessons in Tolerance from Rural Andalucía (Amherst College Press)
Contemporary Spain reflects broader patterns of globalization and has been the site of tensions between nationalists and immigrants. This case study examines a rural town in Spain’s Andalucía to shed light on the workings of coexistence. The town of Órgiva’s diverse population includes hippies from across Europe, European converts to Sufi Islam, and immigrants from North Africa. Christina Civantos combines the analysis of written and visual cultural texts with oral narratives from residents. In this book, we see that although written and especially televisual narratives about the town highlight tolerance and multiculturalism, they mask tensions and power differentials. Toleration is an ongoing negotiation, and this book shows us how we can identify the points of contact that create robust, respect-based tolerance.
Patricia Engel
English/Creative Writing
The Faraway World (Simon and Schuster)
Engel, whose novel Infinite Country was a New York Times bestseller and a Reese’s Book Club pick, has written an exquisite collection of ten haunting, award-winning short stories set across the Americas and linked by themes of migration, sacrifice, and moral compromise. Two Colombian expats meet as strangers on the rainy streets of New York City, both burdened with traumatic pasts. In Cuba, a woman discovers her deceased brother’s bones have been stolen, and the love of her life returns from Ecuador for a one-night visit. A cash-strapped couple hustles in Miami, to life-altering ends. Intimate and panoramic, these stories bring to life the liminality of regret, the vibrancy of community, and the epic deeds and quiet moments of love.
Jessica Rosenberg
English
Botanical Poetics: Early Modern Plant Books and the Husbandry of Print (University of Pennsylvania Press)
During the middle years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the number of books published with titles that described themselves as flowers, gardens, or forests more than tripled. During those same years, English printers turned out scores of instructional manuals on gardening and husbandry, retailing useful knowledge to a growing class of literate landowners and pleasure gardeners. Both trends, Rosenberg shows, reflected a distinctive style of early modern plant-thinking, one that understood both plants and poems as composites of small pieces—slips or seeds to be recirculated by readers and planters. Botanical Poetics brings together studies of ecology, science, literary form, and the material text to explore how these developments transformed early modern conceptions of nature, poetic language, and the printed book. Drawing on little-studied titles in horticulture and popular print alongside poetry by Shakespeare, Spenser, and others, Rosenberg reveals how early modern print used a botanical idiom to anticipate histories of its own reading and reception, whether through replanting, uprooting, or fantasies of common property and proliferation. While our conventional narratives of English literary culture in this period see reading as an increasingly private practice, and literary production as more and more of an authorial domain, Botanical Poetics uncovers an alternate tradition: of commonplaces and common ground, of slips of herbs and poetry circulated, shared, and multiplied.
Ashli White
History
Revolutionary Things: Material Culture and Politics in the Late Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Yale University Press, 2023)
Historian Ashli White explores the circulation of material culture during the American, French, and Haitian revolutions, arguing that in the late eighteenth century, radical ideals were contested through objects as well as in texts. She considers how revolutionary things, as they moved throughout the Atlantic world, brought people into contact with these transformative political movements in visceral, multiple, and provocative ways.
