The troubles of the cotemporary moment in history can be interpreted many different ways. Indeed, there has been no shortage of analysis and commentary on events like the attacks of September 11th, the Great Recession, the Arab Spring, the election of Donald Trump and the global pandemic. This book, however, argues that the most insightful […]
Contradictory to its core, the sitcom—an ostensibly conservative, tranquilizing genre—has a long track record in the United States of tackling controversial subjects with a fearlessness not often found in other types of programming. But the sitcom also conceals as much as it reveals, masking the rationale for socially deviant or deleterious behavior behind figures of […]
Authors Goldstein, Baer, Daum and Fine skillfully blend doctrinal and political developments to document and explain the evolution of women’s rights and the law as well as the dynamics and dissension among feminist activists. Building on three previous editions, this book combines updated material on constitutional law, sex and gender discrimination, and women’s reproductive rights, […]
While the growing attention to trans rights and the development of trans-specific interest groups suggest that the time is right for a trans rights movement akin to prior civil rights movements, The Politics of Right Sex explores the limitations of rights-based mobilization and litigation for advancing the interests of trans communities. Synthesizing critical theory, transgender […]
“Why do conservatives hate comedy? Why is there no right-wing Jon Stewart?” These sorts of questions launch a million tweets, a thousand op-eds, and more than a few scholarly analyses. That’s Not Funny argues that it is both an intellectual and politically strategic mistake to assume that comedy has a liberal bias. Matt Sienkiewicz and […]
Some of theater’s most powerful works in the past thirty years fall into the category of “verbatim theater,” socially engaged performances whose texts rely on word-for-word testimony. Performances such as Fires in the Mirror and The Laramie Project have at their best demonstrated how to hold hard conversations about explosive subjects in a liberal democracy. […]
In the antebellum United States, formerly enslaved men and women who told their stories and advocated for abolition helped establish a new genre with widely recognized tropes: the slave narrative. This book investigates how enslaved black Africans conceived of themselves and their stories before the War of American Independence and the genre’s development in the […]
This collection examines the continuities and changes that have set the Dominican political system apart from its Latin American counterparts over the last couple of decades. Whereas traditional political parties have lost support throughout Latin America and electoral systems have devolved into illiberal democracies, Dominican democracy remains flawed but vibrant with a popular embrace of […]
The international boundary between the United States and Mexico spans more than 1,900 miles. Along much of this international border, water is what separates one country from the other. Border Water provides a historical account of the development of governance related to transboundary and border water resources between the United States and Mexico in the […]
Realism, or Legalism, was once a significant influence in classical Chinese philosophy, later eclipsed by Confucianism. Its ideas, however, remain alive and powerful. Realists propose dealing with real-world problems using real-world instruments, such as incentives, rewards, institutions, and punishments. Adventures in Chinese Realism updates Chinese Realism to explain contemporary political and philosophical issues in a […]
