Books published by Fordham University Press

For philosophers, the gift fascinates because it demands disinterested generosity. Yet anthropology offers another view. Reciprocity, rather than disinterestedness, Henaff shows, is central to ceremonial giving, alliance, and the social bond. From actual gift practices, Henaff develops an original and profound theory of symbolism, the social, and the relationship between self and other.

Welcoming Finitude provides a philosophical (i.e., phenomenological) examination of the experience of liturgy, based on the example of Orthodox Christian liturgy, as it manifests in terms of time, space, corporeality, senses, affect, and the interaction with other people. It thus uncovers some of the basic structures of religious ritual experience.

The novel, the literary adage has it, reflects a world abandoned by God. Yet the possibilities of novelistic form and literary exegesis exceed the secularizing tendencies of contemporary criticism. Showing how the Qur'an invites critical reading, this account of Arabophone and Francophone Maghrebi literature develops a Qur'anic model of narratology.

Aristotle Papanikolaou (Edited By) Aristotle Papanikolaou is Archbishop Demetrios Chair of Orthodox Theology and Culture and Professor of Theology at Fordham University.George E. Demacopoulos (Edited By) George E. Demacopoulos is Fr. John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies and Professor of Theology at Fordham University.

In Resisting Allegory, the leading Spenser critic of our time sums up a lifelong commitment to the theory and practice of textual interpretation. Central to this volume is an attention to the deployment of gender in conjunction with the Berger's notion of narrative complicity, all built on close attention to the text.

Whose Middle Ages? is an interdisciplinary collection of short, accessible essays intended for the nonspecialist reader and ideal for teaching at an undergraduate level. Each of twenty-two essays takes up an area where digging for meaning in the medieval past has brought something distorted back into the present: in our popular entertainment; in our news, our politics, and our propaganda; and in subtler ways that inform how we think about our histories, our countries, and ourselves. Each author looks to a history that has refused to remain past and uses the tools of the academy to read and re-read familiar stories, objects, symbols, and myths.Whose Middle Ages? gives nonspecialists access to the richness of our historical knowledge while debunking damaging misconceptions about the medieval past. Myths about the medieval period are especially beloved among the globally resurgent far right, from crusading emblems on the shields borne by alt-right demonstrators to the on-screen image of a purely white European populace defended from actors of color by Internet trolls. This collection attacks these myths directly by insisting that readers encounter the relics of the Middle Ages on their own terms.Each essay uses its author's academic research as a point of entry and takes care to explain how the author knows what she or he knows and what kinds of tools, bodies of evidence, and theoretical lenses allow scholars to write with certainty about elements of the past to a level of detail that might seem unattainable. By demystifying the methods of scholarly inquiry, Whose Middle Ages? serves as an antidote not only to the far right's errors of fact and interpretation but also to its assault on scholarship and expertise as valid means for the acquisition of knowledge.

This book investigates the religious identity and authority of Stephen Colbert and his character Stephen Colbert. By exploring Colbert's position as a lay catechist and televised comedian, this book examines how Catholicism shapes Colbert's experiences, and how Colbert and his persona nuance American Catholicism and the polarized American religious landscape.

"Queer Natures, Queer Mythologies collects in two parts the scholarly work-both published and unpublished-that Sam See had completed as of his death in 2013"--

This book examines how literature shapes understandings of nature and can therefore be both complicit in environmental harm and part of an environmentalist practice. The book devotes particular attention to formerly colonized regions (e.g. Africa and South Asia) in order to understand the relationships among imperialism, globalization, and environmental injustice.

Technologies of Critique elaborates a critical practice that eludes critique's capture by institutional and market logics. Building on Chile's history of dissident art and its entangling of politics and aesthetics, Thayer engages continental philosophical traditions, to help pinpoint the technologies and media through which art intervenes critically in socio-political life.

Radical Botany uncovers a speculative tradition that conjures new languages to grasp the life of plants in all its specificity and vigor. Plants complement and challenge notions of human life. The book traces the implications of the speculative mobilization of plants within literature and art for feminism, queer studies, and posthumanist thought.

Jacob Taubes radically changed our conceptions of Paul the apostle. Loland shows how we can approach Paul's letters with the distinctive perspective of this Jewish rabbi steeped in continental philosophy. The book emphasizes Paul's Jewishness as well as the political explosiveness of the apostle's revolutionary doctrine of the cross, which the author terms Pauline Ugliness.

What does it mean to be young, modern, and Muslim? Documenting everyday life in Lamu (Kenya), this book explores the mundane practices of behavior and speech that create moral personhood. In elaborating everyday practices of Islamic pluralism, the book shows how Muslim societies critically engage with change while sustaining a sense of integrity and morality.

The essays in this volume interrogate the problem of modern/colonial definitions of the human person and take up the struggle to decolonize such descriptions. Contributions engage work from various fields, including ethnic studies, religious studies, theology, queer theory, philosophy, and literary studies.

At a moment of renewed interest in Bergson's philosophy, this book, by a major figure in both French and African philosophy, gives an expanded idea of the political ramifications of Bergson's thought in a postcolonial context.

This interdisciplinary collection, featuring some of today's most prominent political theorists, sociologists, philosophers, and historians, challenges narratives of neoliberalism's demise. The book queries whether contemporary political ruptures-including the rise of far-right forces-will challenge, support, or extend the reach of market rule around the globe.