Faculty Bookshelf

How Politicians Polarize: Political Representation in an Age of Negative Partisanship
The University of Chicago Press, March 2025

Mia Costa, Department of Government

Costa illuminates how the political ecosystem rewards negative representation and how this affects the quality of American democracy.

 

 

 

The Woman Question in Jewish Studies
Princeton University Press, February 2025

Susannah Heschel, Jewish Studies Program, and Sarah Imhoff

Heschel and Imhoff take a critical look at the difficulties women face in the field of Jewish studies, drawing on quantitative data, personal stories, and the gendered history of the field.

 

 

 

 

The Dressing Room: Backstage Lives and American Film
Rutgers University Press, January 2025

Desirée Garcia, Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies

In the only book-length study of the dressing room, Garcia explores how these spaces are dynamic realms in which a diverse cast of performers are made and exposed. 

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

The Cambridge History of The Vietnam War, Volume 1: Origins
Cambridge University Press, January 2025

Edward Miller (editor), Department of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages

The first volume presents the scholarship that has flourished since the 1990s to situate the war and its origins within longer chronologies and larger interpretative perspectives.
 

 

 

 

A Measure Short of War: A Brief History of Great Power Subversion
Oxford University Press, January 2025

William Wohlforth, Department of Government, and Jill Kastner

Wohlforth and Kastner provide a unique transhistorical perspective on a topic that regularly emerges as a serious problem in world politics.

 

 

 

Hard Neighbors: The Scotch-Irish Invasion of Native America and the Making of an American Identity
Oxford University Press, December 2024

Colin Calloway, Department of History and Department of Native American Studies and Indigenous Studies

Calloway provides an intricate portrayal of early American settlers who, through collusion and bloody conflict, acted as the tip of the spear of white colonial expansion into Native American lands.

Wall Street Journal Review

 

 

The Politics of Melodrama: The Cultural and Political Lives of Ihsan Abdel Kouddous and Gamal Abdel Nasser
Stanford University Press, December 2024

Jonathan Smolin, Middle Eastern Studies Program

Smolin frames the work of Kouddous as an entirely new model of Arabic fiction as dissent—contesting the fate of the 1952 revolution, condemning Nasser's betrayal of democracy, and grappling with depths of guilt at what Egypt had become.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon
Duke University Press, November 2024

Maron Greenleaf, Department of Anthropology

Greenleaf explores how the market forces threatening rainforests worldwide can be marshaled to help protect them.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

Free Imagination: The Deep Roots of Creativity, Freedom and Meaning in the Human Brain and Mind
Oxford University Press, October 2024

Peter Tse, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Tse argues that the brain's capacity to imagine is the fundamental basis of human free will.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

Ancient African Religions: A History
Oxford University Press, September 2024

Robert Baum, Department of African and African American Studies

Combining archaeological and linguistic sources, Baum provides the most comprehensive study of the earliest history of African religions.

 

 

 

 

Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism
W.W. Norton & Company, September 2024

Brooke Harrington, Department of Sociology

Harrington reveals how the offshore finance system works, as well as how it degrades democracy, the economy, and the public goods on which we all depend.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

A Neurophilosophy of Libertarian Free Will
Oxford University Press, May 2024

Peter Tse, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Tse offers a neuroscientific defense of the reality of free will and explores philosophical issues considering the latest data and theories of neuroscience.

 

 

 

 

L'ABC di Alberto Manzi, Maestro Degli Italiani
Anicia Edizioni, April 2024

Tania Convertini, Department of French and Italian

Through an alphabet of ideas, values, inspirations, and suggestions, Convertini offers an agile path to discovering educator Alberto Manzi's pedagogical and humanistic approach.
 

 

 

 

 

Common Boundaries: The Theory and Practice of Environmental Property
Agenda Publishing, April 2024

Michael Cox, Department of Environmental Studies

Cox examines environmental property rights across cultures and communities. 

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

 

Water on Fire: A Memoir of War
Other Press, April 2024

Tarek El-Ariss, Middle Eastern Studies Program

El-Ariss revisits his childhood in war-torn Lebanon and his family's global history, coming to terms with trauma and desire.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

Against Extraction: Indigenous Modernism in the Twin Cities
Duke University Press, April 2024

Matt Hooley, Department of Native American and Indigenous Studies

Hooley traces a modern tradition of Ojibwe invention in Minneapolis and St. Paul from the mid-19th century to the present through the lens of anticolonialism.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

A Politics of Melancholia: From Plato to Arendt
Princeton University Press, March 2024

George Edmondson, Department of English and Creative Writing, and Klaus Mladek, Department of German Studies

Edmondson and Mladek explore why melancholia is a vital form of social critique and a catalyst for political renewal.

Arts and Sciences Q&A
 

 

 

Messianic Zionism in the Digital Age: Jews, Noahides, and the Third Temple Imaginary
Rutgers University Press, March 2024

Rachel Feldman, Department of Religion

Through ethnographic research across continents, Feldman details how Third Temple visions have gained considerable momentum and political support in Israel and abroad.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

Mortevivum: Photography and the Politics of the Visual
MIT Press, February 2024

Kimberly Juanita Brown, Department of English and Creative Writing

Brown details how documentary photography and the cultural legacy of empire have come together to produce the understanding that blackness and suffering—and death—are inextricable. 

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

The Digital and Its Discontents
University of Minnesota Press, February 2024

Aden Evens, Department of English and Creative Writing

Interweaving technical and philosophical concepts, Evens analyzes universal technological principles to show that they encourage certain ways of thinking while making others more challenging or impossible. 

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

The Incarcerated Modern: Prisons and Public Life in Iran
Stanford University Press, February 2024

Golnar Nikpour, Department of History

Nikpour traces the transformation of Iran from a decentralized empire with few imprisoned persons at the turn of the twentieth century into a modern nation-state with over a quarter million prisoners today.

 

 

 

Sounds As They Are: The Unwritten Music in Classical Recordings
Oxford University Press, January 2024

Richard Beaudoin, Department of Music

Beaudoin pioneers a field of inquiry called inclusive track analysis, which recognizes often-overlooked sounds made by the bodies of performers and their recording equipment as music.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

One Soul We Divided: A Critical Edition of the Diary of Michael Field
Princeton University Press, January 2024

Carolyn Dever (editor), Department of English and Creative Writing

Dever presents the first book-length selection from the unpublished diary of the late-Victorian writer "Michael Field"—the pen name of two female coauthors and romantic partners.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

Myth and Menagerie: Seeing Lions in the Nineteenth Century
Yale University Press, January 2024

Katie Hornstein, Department of Art History

Illuminating the lives of individual lions against the backdrop of colonial expansion, Hornstein constructs a theoretical framework for acknowledging a history in which both humans and animals had a stake.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner
Eerdmans Publishing, November 2023

Ralph H. Craig III, Department of Religion

Craig traces Tina Turner's journey from the Black Baptist church to Buddhism and situates her at the vanguard of large-scale movements in religion and pop culture.

 

 

 

 

 

Settler Indigeneity in the West Bank
McGill-Queen's University Press, November 2023

Rachel Feldman (co-editor), Department of Religion

This new edited volume explores what Israeli settlers mean when they say they are indigenous; how settler indigeneity is felt, performed, and mediated; and what the implications of indigeneity claims are on the international stage. 

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

The Necessity of Exile: Essays From a Distance
Ayin Press, November 2023

Shaul Magid, Jewish Studies Program 

The celebrated scholar and rabbi reclaims exile as a positive stance for constructive Jewish engagement with Israel|Palestine, antisemitism, and diaspora. 

 

 

 

 

 

Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea
Hachette Book Group, November 2023

Darrin McMahon, Department of History

McMahon traces equality's global origins and spread from the dawn of humanity through the Enlightenment to today.

Washington Post Review

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

False Starts: The Segregated Lives of Preschoolers
NYU Press, November 2023

Casey Stockstill, Department of Sociology

Drawing on a two-year observational study, Stockstill details the racial and class divides between Head Start and private pre-K classrooms for children and their families.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

Territorializing Manchuria: The Transnational Frontier and Literatures of East Asia
Harvard University Asia Center, November 2023

Miya Xie, Department of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages

Through the theoretical lens of literary territorialization, Xie reconceptualizes modern Manchuria as a critical site for making and unmaking national literatures in East Asia.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America
Oxford University Press, October 2023

Leslie Butler, Department of History

Combining intellectual, political and cultural history, Butler examines how wide-ranging discussions about self-government and the so-called woman question developed in published opinion from the 1830s through the 1890s.

 

 

 

Social Voices: The Cultural Politics of Singers Around the Globe
University of Illinois Press, September 2023

Levi Gibbs (editor), Department of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages

Designed as a textbook for advanced undergraduate students, this collection brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars of anthropology, sociology, literature, music, ethnomusicology, and performance studies to engage with issues of race, gender, ethnicity, and class.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

Families on the Edge
MIT Press, August 2023

Elizabeth Carpenter-Song '01, Department of Anthropology

In this ethnographic portrait of families in rural and small-town New England, Carpenter-Song draws on a decade of research to chart the struggles of a cohort of families she met in a Vermont family shelter in 2009 as they contend with housing insecurity, mental illness, and substance use. 

Vermont Public Interview

 

 

The Dawn of a Mindful Universe
HarperCollins Publishers, August 2023

Marcelo Gleiser, Department of Physics and Astronomy

Award-winning astronomer and physicist Gleiser issues an urgent call for the recognition of the preciousness of life using reason and curiosity—the foundations of science—to study, nurture, and ultimately preserve humanity as we face the existential crisis of climate change.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

Science Review

 

Anti-Racist Community Engagement
Stylus Publishing, August 2023

Roopika Risam (co-editor), Department of Film and Media Studies, Comparative Literature Program

The authors showcase anti-racist community-engaged traditions that BIPOC academics and community members have created through more than a century of collaboration across university and community. 

Arts and Sciences Q&A 

 

 

Prophetic Leadership and Visionary Hope
University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2023

Barbara Will (editor), Department of English and Creative Writing

This volume of essays by leading scholars of Black studies, religious studies, and social justice history examines Cornel West's classic 1993 book Race Matters and the future of racial understanding and healing in American society today.

 

 

 

 

The Birth of Computer Vision
University of Minnesota Press, April 2023

James E. Dobson, Department of English and Creative Writing

What happens when we train computers to see the world, when we know they will be influenced by the biases and assumptions of the people who created them? Dobson takes readers back to the Cold War-era scientists who taught computers how to see.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

The Shared World
Northwestern University Press, April 2023

Vievee Francis, Department of English and Creative Writing

In her latest poetry collection, Francis imagines the ideas, ideals, and spaces of the Black woman. The book delves into inherited memories and restrictions between families, lovers, and strangers and the perception and inconvenient truth of Black woman as mother—with or without child.

 

 

 

Eli and the Octopus
Harvard University Press, April 2023

Matt Garcia, Department of History

In June of 1970, rabbi-turned-businessman Eli Black took the helm of a multinational agricultural company with hopes to improve the world. Garcia chronicles his tragic quest to merge business with social responsibility. 

Arts and Sciences Q&A

Wall Street Journal Review

 

 

Disturbing Development in the Jim Crow South
University of Georgia Press, March 2023

Mona Domosh, Department of Geography

Domosh documents how Black government employees practiced rural improvement in ways that sustained southern Black farmers' lives and livelihoods in the early decades of the 20th century, resisting the white supremacy that characterized the Jim Crow South.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

Playing Oppression
MIT Press, March 2023

Mary Flanagan, Department of Film and Media Studies

Flanagan and co-author Mikael Jakobsson apply the incisive frameworks of postcolonial theory to a broad historical survey of board games to show how these seemingly benign entertainments reinforce the logic of imperialism—and why the future of play depends on reckoning with it.

MIT News Story

 

 

Seneca, The Literary Philosopher
Cambridge University Press, March 2023

Margaret Graver, Department of Classics

After detailing Seneca's positions on scholarship, value, and human psychology, Graver explores the Roman Stoic's use of genre, humor, and style as vehicles for philosophical writing.

 

 

 

 

The Undertow
W.W. Norton & Company, March 2023

Jeff Sharlet, Department of English and Creative Writing

In this critically acclaimed guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Sharlet explores how, over the last decade, social division has morphed into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.

New York Times Review

 

 

#You Know You're Black in France When...
MIT Press, February 2023

Trica Keaton, Departments of African and African American Studies

In everyday life, France is anything but raceblind. In this interdisciplinary study, Keaton illuminates how b/Black (racialized/politicized) French people distinctly expose and refuse what she calls "raceblind republicanism." 

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self (second edition)
Princeton University Press, January 2023

Susan Brison, Department of Philosophy

In this critically acclaimed personal narrative, Brison tells the story of her recovery from a violent assault and offers an illuminating philosophical exploration of trauma. This paperback edition includes a new preface by the author.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

Power and Persuasion in Cicero's Philosophy
Cambridge University Press, January 2023

Margaret Graver (co-editor), Department of Classics

New studies by leading scholars in Roman philosophy investigate Cicero's views on the motives of political agents and the morality of political arguments as well as his use of emotion, self-correction, and even fiction in intellectual inquiry.

 

 

 

 

Institutions Under Siege
Cambridge University Press, December 2022

John Campbell, Department of Sociology

Campbell examines Trump's attack on the "deep state" through the lens of institutional change theory and demonstrates how he capitalized on distinct leadership tactics to inspire, make deals with, and threaten people to get what he wanted. 

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

Dante's Gluttons
Amsterdam University Press, November 2022

Danielle Callegari, Department of French and Italian

For medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri, the consumption of food is not a frivolity, but a crux of life, and gluttony is the abdication of civic and spiritual responsibility and a danger to both the individual body and soul, as well as the greater collective. Callegari explores how Dante expresses the social, political, and cultural values of his time through food. 

 

 

 

The Enchanted Boot
Wayne State University Press, November 2022

Nancy Canepa, Department of French and Italian

This comprehensive collection of Italian tales in English encourages a revisitation of the fairy-tale canon in light of some of the most fascinating material that has often been excluded from it.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

The Best American Essays
HarperCollins Publishers, November 2022

Alexander Chee (editor), Department of English and Creative Writing

Under Chee's leadership, the iconic essay collection features the most diverse lineup of authors and publications in the history of the series.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

 

Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad
Penguin Random House, October 2022

Mathew Delmont, Department of History

This acclaimed book about Black Americans' heroism during the war and experience of racism won a 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a national juried prize for literature that confronts racism.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

New York Times Review

 

 

Still No Word from You
Catapult, October 2022

Peter Orner, Department of English and Creative Writing

This award-winning nonfiction collection weaves personal memories with reflections on why we read and write. Orner's take on literature alternates with his own true stories of loss, love, despair, and hope.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

New York Times Review

 

 

Gods, Goddesses, and the Women Who Serve Them
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., September 2022

Susan Ackerman, Department of Religion

Drawing on three decades researching underexamined aspects of the Hebrew Bible pertaining to women, Ackerman describes the worship of goddesses in ancient Israel, the roles women played as priests and prophets, the cultic significance of queen mothers, and the Hebrew Bible's accounts of women's religious lives.

 

 

 

Passion Plays
University of North Carolina Press, September 2022

Randall Balmer, Department of Religion

From baseball to basketball and football to ice hockey, Balmer explores the origins and histories of big-time sports from the late 19th century to the present, with anecdotes and insights into their ties to religious life. 

Arts and Sciences Q&A

The Guardian Review

 

 

A Dream Defaulted
Harvard Education Press, August 2022

Jason Houle, Department of Sociology

Co-authors Houle and Fenaba Addo explore how the student loan crisis disproportionately affects Black borrowers and why rising student debt is both a cause and consequence of social inequality in the United States.

Arts and Sciences Q&A

 

 

 

Embodied Economies
Rutgers University Press, May 2022

Israel Reyes, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

In the neoliberal economy of the United States, the discourse of white nationalism compels upwardly mobile Latinx Caribbean immigrants to trade in their ties to ethnic and linguistic communities to assimilate to the dominant culture. Reyes terms this phenomenon "transcultural capital" and explores this process in the contemporary fiction and theater of the Latinx Caribbean diaspora.

 

 

 

Women and the Religion of Ancient Israel
Yale University Press, April 2022

Susan Ackerman, Department of Religion

In this comprehensive account of ancient Israelite women's religious lives and experiences, Ackerman examines their household shrines, regional sanctuaries, national temples, rituals, and their special roles in religious settings.

 

 

 

 

Chains of Love and Beauty
Princeton University Press, April 2022

Carolyn Dever, Department of English and Creative Writing

Dever makes the case that a monumental diary by an aunt and niece who published poetry together as "Michael Field"—and who were prolific writers as well as partners for decades—is one of the great unknown works of late-Victorian and early modernist literature.

London Review of Books Review

 

 

 

Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media
University of Illinois Press, April 2022

Reighan Gillam, Department of Latin American, Latino & Caribbean Studies

Gillam examines the alternative and activist Black media and the people creating it in today's Brazil. She looks at a cross-section of media to show the ways Afro-Brazilians artists contribute to the fight to change how Brazilian media depicts Black people.

 

 

 

 

Voices From Beyond
University of Virginia Press, April 2022

Scott Sanders, Department of French and Italian

In the early 18th century, how voice related to body became a major subject of scientific and cultural interest. This interdisciplinary and transnational study examines the diversity of thought about vocal materialtiy and its roles in philosophical and literary works from that period.

 

 

 

 

Media of the Masses
Stanford University Press, April 2022

Andrew Simon, Department of History

Audiocassette technology gave ordinary individuals an opening to challenge state-controlled Egyptian media. At the intersection of social history, cultural anthropology, and media and sound studies, the book ultimately shows how the most ordinary things may yield the most surprising insights.

Los Angeles Review of Books Review

 

 

 

Economy and Modern Christian Thought
Brill, March 2022

Devin Singh, Department of Religion

Singh presents key features of the engagement of Christian theology, ethics, and related disciplines with the market and economic concerns. The book contends that economy and Christian thought have long been interconnected and recounts why this matters for engaging the economy ethically and theologically. 

 

 

 

 

Holy Digital Grail
Stanford University Press, March 2022

Michelle Warren, Comparative Literature Program

Medieval books have been through a lot: singed by fire, mottled by mold, eaten by insects, annotated by readers, cut into fragments, or damaged through well-intentioned preservation efforts. This is the story of one such manuscript—an Arthurian romance with textual origins in 12-century England now diffused across the 21st-century internet. 

 

 

 

Nationalisms in International Politics
Princeton University Press, February 2022

Kathleen Powers, Department of Government

With nationalism on the rise around the world, many worry that nationalistic attitudes could lead to a surge in deadly conflict. Powers examines how different forms of nationalism shape foreign policy attitudes and raises important questions about whether transnational identities increase support for cooperation or undermine it.