Books Books Press imprint: 2592 books
Stigmas of the Tamil Stage
An Ethnography of Special Drama Artists in South India
Language: English
Release Date: April 11, 2005
A study of the lives of popular theater artists, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage is the first in-depth analysis of Special Drama, a genre of performance unique to the southernmost Indian state of Tamilnadu. Held in towns and villages throughout the region, Special Drama performances last from 10 p.m. until...
Maturing Masculinities
Aging, Chronic Illness, and Viagra in Mexico
Language: English
Release Date: July 5, 2013
Maturing Masculinities is a nuanced exploration of how older men in urban Mexico incorporate aging, chronic illness, changing social relationships, and decreasing erectile function into their conceptions of themselves as men. It is based on interviews that Emily A. Wentzell conducted with more than...
Jungle Laboratories
Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill
Language: English
Release Date: December 23, 2009
In the 1940s chemists discovered that barbasco, a wild yam indigenous to Mexico, could be used to mass-produce synthetic steroid hormones. Barbasco spurred the development of new drugs, including cortisone and the first viable oral contraceptives, and positioned Mexico as a major player in the global...
by Lawrence Grossberg
Language: English
Release Date: November 25, 2010
Language: English
Release Date: November 25, 2010
Lawrence Grossberg is one of the leading figures in cultural studies internationally. In Cultural Studies in the Future Tense, he offers a powerful critique of the present state of cultural studies and, more broadly, of the intellectual left, especially in the Anglo-American academy. He develops a...
Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold
Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1953–1968
Language: English
Release Date: March 25, 2004
The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Tingler, the Mole People—they stalked and oozed into audiences’ minds during the era that followed Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein and preceded terrors like Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street) and Chucky (Child’s Play). Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold...
Production Culture
Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television
Language: English
Release Date: March 25, 2008
In Production Culture, John Thornton Caldwell investigates the cultural practices and belief systems of Los Angeles–based film and video production workers: not only those in prestigious positions such as producers and directors but also many “below-the-line” laborers, including gaffers, editors,...
Games of Property
Law, Race, Gender, and Faulkner's Go Down, Moses
Language: English
Release Date: July 7, 2003
In Games of Property, distinguished critic Thadious M. Davis provides a dazzling new interpretation of William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses. Davis argues that in its unrelenting attention to issues related to the ownership of land and people, Go Down, Moses ranks among Faulkner’s finest and most...
Bloody Lies
A CSI Scandal in the Heartland
Language: English
Release Date: June 19, 2014
The remote farming community of Murdock, Nebraska, seemed to be the least likely setting for one of the heartland’s most ruthless and bloody double murders in decades. In fact, the little town had gone more than a century without a single homicide. But on the night of Easter 2006, Wayne and Sharmon...
Erotic Innocence
The Culture of Child Molesting
Language: English
Release Date: May 19, 1998
In Erotic Innocence James R. Kincaid explores contemporary America’s preoccupation with stories about the sexual abuse of children. Claiming that our culture has yet to come to terms with the bungled legacy of Victorian sexuality, Kincaid examines how children and images of youth are idealized,...
Autonomy
The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism
Language: English
Release Date: February 28, 2019
In Autonomy Nicholas Brown theorizes the historical and theoretical argument for art's autonomy from its acknowledged character as a commodity. Refusing the position that the distinction between art and the commodity has collapsed, Brown demonstrates how art can, in confronting its material determinations,...
Incognegro
A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid
Language: English
Release Date: November 5, 2015
In 1995, a South African journalist informed Frank Wilderson, one of only two American members of the African National Congress (ANC), that President Nelson Mandela considered him "a threat to national security." Wilderson was asked to comment. Incognegro is that "comment." It...
Reconstituting the American Renaissance
Emerson, Whitman, and the Politics of Representation
Language: English
Release Date: July 18, 2003
Challenging the standard periodization of American literary history, Reconstituting the American Renaissance reinterprets the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman and the relationship of these two authors to each other. Jay Grossman argues that issues of political representation—involving...
by Rafael Campo
Language: English
Release Date: January 23, 2002
Language: English
Release Date: January 23, 2002
In Landscape with Human Figure, his fourth and most compelling collection of poetry, Rafael Campo confirms his status as one of America’s most important poets. Like his predecessor William Carlos Williams, who was also a physician, Campo plumbs the depths of our capacity for empathy. Campo writes...
The Dialectics of Our America
Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and Literary History
Language: English
Release Date: October 31, 1991
Joining the current debates in American literary history, José David Saldívar offers a challenging new perspective on what constitutes not only the canon in American literature, but also the notion of America itself. His aim is the articulation of a fresh, transgeographical conception of American...