Books published by Fordham University Press

This volume examines the historical connections between the United States¿ Reconstruction and the country¿s emergence as a geopolitical power a few decades later. It shows how the processes at work during the postbellum decade variously foreshadowed, inhibited, and conditioned the development of the United States as an overseas empire and regional hegemon. In doing so, it links the diverse topics of abolition, diplomacy, Jim Crow, humanitarianism, and imperialism.In 1935, the great African American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois argued in his Black Reconstruction in America that these two historical moments were intimately related. In particular, Du Bois averred that the nation¿s betrayal of the South¿s fledgling interracial democracy in the 1870s put reactionaries in charge of a country on the verge of global power, with world-historical implications. Working with the same chronological and geographical parameters, the contributors here take up targeted case studies, tracing the biographical, ideological, and thematic linkages that stretch across the postbellum and imperial moments. With an Introduction, eleven chapters, and an Afterword, this volume offers multiple perspectives based on original primary source research. The resulting composite picture points to a host of countervailing continuities and changes. The contributors examine topics as diverse as diplomatic relations with Spain, the changing views of radical abolitionists, African American missionaries in the Caribbean, and the ambiguities of turn-of-the century political cartoons.Collectively, the volume unsettles familiar assumptions about how we should understand the late nineteenth-century United States, conventionally framed as the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. It also advances transnational approaches to understanding Americäs Reconstruction and the search for the ideological currents shaping American power abroad.

The book argues for deconstruction's ongoing relevance, showing how Jacques Derrida's deep engagement with Freud across the full trajectory of his work, in particular his engagement with Freud's notion of life and death drives, supplies the key way into Derrida's recasting of life as life death and, in turn, survival.

Techno-Magism: Media, Mediation, and the Cut of Romanticism explores how British Romantic literature abuts and is organized around both print and non-print media, both the print, pictorial art, and theater of that era as well as communicative technologies invented afterward, including photography, film, video, and digital screens.

However divergent their analyses may be in other ways, some prominent anti-capitalist critics have remained critical of contemporary debates over reparative justice for groups historically oppressed and marginalized on the basis of race, gender, sexual identity, sexual preference, and/or ability, arguing that the most these struggles can hope to produce is a more diversity-friendly capital. Meanwhile, scholars of gender and sexuality as well as race and ethnic studies maintain that, by elevating the socioeconomic above other logics of domination, anti-capitalist thought fails to acknowledge specific forms and experiences of subjugation.The thinkers and activists who appear in Totality Inside Out reject this divisive logic altogether. Instead, they aim for a more expansive analysis of our contemporary moment to uncover connected sites of political struggle over racial and economic justice, materialist feminist and queer critique, climate change, and aesthetic value. The re-imagined account of capitalist totality that appears in this volume illuminates the material interlinkages between discrepant social phenomena, forms of oppression, and group histories, offering multiple entry points for readers who are interested in exploring how capitalism shapes integral relations within the social whole.Contributors: Brent Ryan Bellamy, Sarah Brouillette, Sarika Chandra, Chris Chen,Joshua Clover, Tim Kreiner, Arthur Scarritt, Zoe Sutherland, Marina Vishmidt

However divergent their analyses may be in other ways, some prominent anti-capitalist critics have remained critical of contemporary debates over reparative justice for groups historically oppressed and marginalized on the basis of race, gender, sexual identity, sexual preference, and/or ability, arguing that the most these struggles can hope to produce is a more diversity-friendly capital. Meanwhile, scholars of gender and sexuality as well as race and ethnic studies maintain that, by elevating the socioeconomic above other logics of domination, anti-capitalist thought fails to acknowledge specific forms and experiences of subjugation.The thinkers and activists who appear in Totality Inside Out reject this divisive logic altogether. Instead, they aim for a more expansive analysis of our contemporary moment to uncover connected sites of political struggle over racial and economic justice, materialist feminist and queer critique, climate change, and aesthetic value. The re-imagined account of capitalist totality that appears in this volume illuminates the material interlinkages between discrepant social phenomena, forms of oppression, and group histories, offering multiple entry points for readers who are interested in exploring how capitalism shapes integral relations within the social whole.Contributors: Brent Ryan Bellamy, Sarah Brouillette, Sarika Chandra, Chris Chen,Joshua Clover, Tim Kreiner, Arthur Scarritt, Zoe Sutherland, Marina Vishmidt

A collection of poems that contemplate the bureaucracy of the mind through interior political cabinetsTaking its name from the banal, purgatorial space outside (but inside) a doctor¿s office, Well Waiting Room imagines the conversations we have with ourselves at this liminal site as an exchange between interior bureaucrats, each of whom governs a particular aspect of the psyche. The poems explore the dynamics of this political ministry, which includes the Cabinets of Desire, Indulgences, Self-Preservation, Ordinary Affairs, Ambivalence, Confrontations, and many others¿there¿s even a press secretary, a curator, and a general counsel. Like a cabinet of curiosity wrapped in red tape, the poems examine the compartmentalization of the mind and the confounding news of the day.Formally, the poems range from dramatic monologues to combative sonnets, quippy memos to voice-y prose blocks, incantatory interludes to dreamlike visual landscapes. Sometimes, the poems address a purely internal conflict: Why do we lie to ourselves, indulge in schadenfreude, repeat the same mistakes? Other times, the poetic lens points outward like a spear, confronting the external universe: social injustice, polar ice melt, the Trump administration, and other man-made disasters. But in both universes, the poems find joy: the first observation of gravitational waves, the otherworldly beauty of rare marine species, the discovery that you are your own best way out.For Schlaifer, the underlying question is an epistemological one, an ontological one, a theological one. Why are we here, how do we know things, and why does God¿so often¿seem to be working against us? In Schlaifer¿s bureaucratic vision of the mind, readers will see their own internal voices affectingly (and often humorously) reflected. The book traverses unknowable terrain in sturdy boots. It unearths not answers but better questions for our time.

This Reader presents translations of key passages from the Summa Halensis. This text was collaboratively authored mostly between 1236-45 by the founding members of the Franciscan school at the University of Paris, who sought to lay down their own distinctive intellectual tradition for the first time.

This Reader presents translations of key passages from the Summa Halensis. This text was collaboratively authored mostly between 1236-45 by the founding members of the Franciscan school at the University of Paris, who sought to lay down their own distinctive intellectual tradition for the first time.

Reconstruction is one of the most complex, overlooked, and misunderstood periods of American history. The thirteen essays in this volume address the multiple struggles to make good on President Abraham Lincoln¿s promise of a ¿new birth of freedom¿ in the years following the Civil War, as well as the counter-efforts including historiographical ones¿to undermine those struggles. The forms these struggles took varied enormously, extended geographically beyond the former Confederacy, influenced political and racial thought internationally, and remain open to contestation even today. The fight to establish and maintain meaningful freedoms for Americäs Black population led to the apparently concrete and permanent legal form of the three key Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as the revised state constitutions, but almost all of the latter were overturned by the end of the century, and even the former are not necessarily out of jeopardy. And it was not just the formerly enslaved who were gaining and losing freedoms. Struggles over freedom, citizenship, and rights can be seen in a variety of venues. At times, gaining one freedom might endanger another. How we remember Reconstruction and what we do with that memory continues to influence politics, especially the politics of race, in the contemporary United States. Offering analysis of educational and professional expansion, legal history, armed resistance, the fate of Black soldiers, international diplomacy post-1865 and much more, the essays collected here draw attention to some of the vital achievements of the Reconstruction period while reminding us that freedoms can be won, but they can also be lost.

Reconstruction is one of the most complex, overlooked, and misunderstood periods of American history. The thirteen essays in this volume address the multiple struggles to make good on President Abraham Lincoln¿s promise of a ¿new birth of freedom¿ in the years following the Civil War, as well as the counter-efforts including historiographical ones¿to undermine those struggles. The forms these struggles took varied enormously, extended geographically beyond the former Confederacy, influenced political and racial thought internationally, and remain open to contestation even today. The fight to establish and maintain meaningful freedoms for Americäs Black population led to the apparently concrete and permanent legal form of the three key Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as the revised state constitutions, but almost all of the latter were overturned by the end of the century, and even the former are not necessarily out of jeopardy. And it was not just the formerly enslaved who were gaining and losing freedoms. Struggles over freedom, citizenship, and rights can be seen in a variety of venues. At times, gaining one freedom might endanger another. How we remember Reconstruction and what we do with that memory continues to influence politics, especially the politics of race, in the contemporary United States. Offering analysis of educational and professional expansion, legal history, armed resistance, the fate of Black soldiers, international diplomacy post-1865 and much more, the essays collected here draw attention to some of the vital achievements of the Reconstruction period while reminding us that freedoms can be won, but they can also be lost.

In Political Theology on Edge, the discourse of political theology is seen as situated on an edge¿that is, on the edge of a world that is grappling with global warming, a brutal form of neoliberal capitalism, protests against racism and police brutality, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This edge is also a form of eschatology that forces us to imagine new ways of being religious and political in our cohabitation of a fragile and shared planet. Each of the essays in this volume attends to how climate change and our ecological crises intersect and interact with more traditional themes of political theology.While the tradition of political theology is often associated with philosophical responses to the work of Carl Schmitt¿and the critical attempts to disengage religion from his rightwing politics¿the contributors to this volume are informed by Schmitt but not limited to his perspectives. They engage and transform political theology from the standpoint of climate change, the politics of race, and non-Christian political theologies including Islam and Sikhism. Important themes include the Anthropocene, ecology, capitalism, sovereignty, Black Lives Matter, affect theory, continental philosophy, destruction, and suicide. This book features world renowned scholars and emerging voices that together open up the tradition of political theology to new ideas and new ways of thinking.Contributors: Gil Anidjar, Balbinder Singh Bhogal, J. Kameron Carter, William E. Connolly, Kelly Brown Douglas, Seth Gaiters, Lisa Gasson-Gardner, Winfred Goodwin, Lawrence Hillis, Mehmet Karabela, Michael Northcott, Austin Roberts, Noëlle Vahanian, Larry L. Welborn

From deconstruction to feminism to ecological thought, some of today's most influential thinkers consider the challenge that contingent life poses to the broad claims of ethics. In doing so, they reshape the most debated concepts of moral philosophy.

From deconstruction to feminism to ecological thought, some of today's most influential thinkers consider the challenge that contingent life poses to the broad claims of ethics. In doing so, they reshape the most debated concepts of moral philosophy.

Reading philosophy through the lens of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, Andrea Cavalletti shows why, for two centuries, major philosophers have come to think of vertigo as intrinsically part of philosophy itself. In doing so, Cavalletti brings out the vertiginous nature of identity.

Since publication of The Black Loyalist Directory in 1996, the primary component, The Book of Negroes, has become one of the most-cited of American Revolutionary primary sources. This new edition salutes The Book of Negroes by using the original title of this famous accounting of Black freedom. On the surface, The Book of Negroes is a laconic, ledger-style enumeration of 3,000 self-emancipated and free Blacks who departed as part of the British evacuation of Loyalists from New York City in the summer and fall of 1783 for Nova Scotia, England, Germany, and other parts of the world. Created under orders from Sir Guy Carleton (Lord Dorchester), Commander-in-Chief of British forces in North America, to placate an angry George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army (USA), who regarded the Black Loyalists as fugitive slaves, The Book of Negroes is, as Alan Gilbert has observed, a ¿roll of honor.¿

Living in Death descends into the ordinary life of people who execute hundreds every day, the same way others go to the office. Bringing philosophical sophistication to the ordinary, the book constitutes both an anthropology of mass killers and a challenge to the conditions that make genocide possible.

This book examines the proliferation of monumental Christian street art in a Muslim/Christian conflict to show how ephemeral phenomena are inherent to sociopolitical change.

This volume engages women¿s lifeworlds, practices, and experiences in relation to Orthodox Christianity in multiple, varied localities, discussing both contemporary and pre-1989 developments. It critically engages the pluralist and changing character of Orthodox forms of institutional and social life in relation to gender by using feminist epistemologies and drawing on original ethnographic research.

An electrifying feminist poetics combining language and visual collage to explore gender, landscape, taxidermy, and the idea of a ¿natural body¿An innovative book-length poem that delves into the intricacies of natural history dioramas, taxidermy, landscape, and women naturalists, Her Wilderness Will Be Her Manners is an experience of looking for ¿Woman¿s Work¿ in American natural history museums. Why, for instance, have the contributions of taxidermist and naturalist Martha Maxwell, the first person to create a ¿habitat group¿ display in the United States, and Delia Akeley, the wife of the ¿father of modern taxidermy,¿ been largely erased?Sarah Mangold mines language from natural history texts and taxidermy manuals from the 1800s to explore the perception and the reception of women in male-dominated scientific pursuits, as well as the doctrine of nature as pure, unpopulated, and outside historical and political time. A stunning work of visual and textual collage, Her Wilderness Will Be Her Manners creates a vibrant textual ecology that utilizes language as landscape while reshaping notions of nature and the natural.

Class Acts looks at two often neglected aspects of Derrida's work as a philosopher, his public lectures and his teaching, along with the question of the "speech act" that links them, that is, the question of what one is doing when one speaks in public in these ways.