The Nature of Empire: Modern Imperialism and the Roots of the Anthropocene

The Nature of Empire exposes the central role of modern imperialism in the development of contemporary environmentalism and environmental science. It builds this case through an investigation of five major modern empires: Britain, France, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan. This book offers readers a global environmental history of modern imperialism that actively engages Western-based […]

The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War

The Devil’s Own Purgatory is the first complete history of the Union navy’s Mississippi Squadron, a fleet that prowled the Mississippi River and its tributaries during the American Civil War. The squadron battered Confederate forts, participated in combined operations with the army, obliterated the Confederate fleet, protected Union supply lines, fought a river-based counterinsurgency war, […]

Earthborn Democracy: A Political Theory of Entangled Life

This book offers a new vision of ecological and participatory democratic life for a time of crisis. Identifying myth and ritual as key resources for contemporary politics, Earthborn Democracy excavates practices and narratives that illustrate the interdependence necessary to inspire ecological renewal. It tells stories of multispecies agency and egalitarian political organization across history, from […]

Profitable Offices: Corruption, Anticorruption, and the Formation of Venezuela’s Neopatrimonial State, 1908-1948

During the crucial period of its formation, the opposing forces of corruption and anticorruption shaped Venezuela’s new national state and its relationship with society. National strongman Juan Vicente Gómez, who ruled from 1908 to 1935, fastened control over key areas of the economy, extracted wealth from the Venezuelan people, and distributed resources to favorites. Utilizing […]

Cinema under National Reconstruction: State Censorship and South Korea’s Cold War Film Culture

Cinema under National Reconstruction calls for a revisionist understanding of state film censorship during successive Cold War military regimes in South Korea (1961–1988). Drawing upon primary documents from the Korean Film Archive’s digitized database and framing South Korean film censorship from a transnational perspective, Hye Seung Chung makes the case that, while political oppression/repression existed […]

Latino Colorado: The Struggle for Equality in the Centennial State

Mexican Americans and other Latinos make up more than 22 percent of Colorado’s population, play a vital role in its major economic sectors, and are becoming a political force to be reckoned with. Yet most official histories of the state mention them only in passing. Latino Colorado fills this gap in the literature by examining […]

Infinite Repertoire: On Dance and Urban Possibility in Postsocialist Guinea

In Guinea’s capital city of Conakry, dance is everywhere. Most neighborhoods boast at least one dance troupe, and members of those troupes animate the city’s major rites of passage and social events. Guinea’s socialist state (1958-84) used staged African dance or “ballet” strategically as a political tool, in part by tapping into indigenous conceptualizations of […]

Prison Agriculture Lab

Founded in 2019, the Prison Agriculture Lab is a collaborative space for inquiry and action that links innovative research, science translation and storytelling, and public engagement committed to challenging inequities in the criminal punishment system in the United States. Prison agriculture is not only important as a practice that is central to the development and […]

The Intensification and Reorientation of Sunni Jihad Ideology in the Crusader Period

The Intensification and Reorientation of Sunni Jihad Ideology in the Crusader Period examines the important role of Ibn ʿAsakir (1105–1176), including his “Forty Hadiths for Inciting Jihad,” in the promotion of a renewed jihad ideology in twelfth-century Damascus as part of sultan Nūr al-Din’s (d. 1174) agenda to revivify Sunnism and fight, under the banner […]

Muslim Sources of the Crusader Period: An Anthology

Drawn from greater Syria, northern Mesopotamia, and Egypt, the sources in this anthology—many of which are translated into English for the first time here—provide eyewitness and contemporary historical accounts of what unfolded in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. Despite their importance, the Muslim sources remain relatively marginal […]