Books published by Lexington Books

The German philosopher Karl Jaspers was moved by the possibilities of global understanding throughout his life and penetrated it more deeply than any other thinker before him. Anton Hügli argues that Jaspers' petition to not proclaim a new doctrine,-but to continue thinking along the path taken by the great philosophers of the past,-is itself an expression of his unconditional will to communicate. The limits of communication that Jaspers shows us are not accidental psychological and sociological obstacles to understanding, but limits that we humans encounter as humans: we want to communicate what cannot be communicated. Instead of an understanding based on a truth that can be understood by all, there is a struggle between the powers of faith. How we can communicate with one another and work for peace and unity in the world? This ultimate question requires a twofold clarification: on the one hand, of the nature of the objects that have always been considered inexpressible, the human's individual existence and God as the ultimate One, and on the other hand, of the faculty in us that allows us to think things that cannot be thought.

To tackle the paucity of adequate housing in the Muslim World, Strategic Rebuilding and Affordable Housing in the Muslim World brings together a cohort of essays that deal with the the latest approaches, policy discussions, attendant research methodologies and recommendations. The volume's multidisciplinary contributors- academics, practitioners, architects, planners, researchers, urbanists, economists-offer valuable insights and critical analysis on strategic rebuilding of affordable and adequate housing, as well as the continuous improvement of living conditions. Each chapter broadens our understanding of the 'house' as a source of stability and security for individuals or families because one's house is the center of emotional life, with its ability to provide serenity, safety, and self-worth. Therefore, weaving the many aspects of this argument together the contributors of this volume purport a point of view that is carefully well-thought-out to expand the focus from just addressing individual and family needs to looking at the wider community benefits. Furthermore, adequate housing will increasingly become the focus of re-settlement, urban renewal and re-investment, primarily to deal with the homeless conditions that already exist-the influx of refugees and internally displaced people (IDP's) as the result of natural disasters (earthquakes and floods) and the collateral damage caused by war.

Edward FitzGerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Revisited: The Wine, the Vine, and the Rose examines an overlooked masterpiece which was a phenomenon in its day. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), sold millions of copies between its first publication in 1859 and World War II, becoming one of the best-selling books of all time, only to disappear from the public eye until the age of the Internet revived interest in the work. Russell Brickey synthesizes scholarship and close reading in the first monograph dedicated to the Rubáiyát, taking into account the original poetry of Omar Khayyám (1038-1141), a polyglot who lived in medieval Persia, and the western poetic tradition that informed FitzGerald's creative palimpsest. These include the Song of Solomon, 17th century Cavalier Poetry, the Sonnet Sequence, and the poems of Alfred Tennyson, William Wordsworth, and others. This book looks at the offshoots of Omar Khayyám and Edward FitzGerald's poetic brotherhood, the pulp-novels, movies, and poems their poem inspired.

History is storytelling. History is the selection of facts, placed in a specific order, to result in a specific conclusion. It's the choice of facts, the prioritization of facts, and the ignoring of facts, that creates the narrative of history -- the narrative of the American story. The American story is the creation of specific historical events and the meanings that have been applied to them. Since America is defined by ideas and not ethnicity, it matters what narratives of America that Americans accept, support, and defend. White Narratives Matter: The Whitewashing of the American Story and How Racial Narratives Explain the Development of Trumpism uses original speeches and writings of politicians and other social leaders, from Thomas Jefferson to Tucker Carlson to explore how the White social conservative worldviewnarrative of American history developed over the past two centuries. White Narratives Matter explores how this process of fact selection, prioritization, and development of White social conservative rhetoric of the American story has defined American politics and policies, which culminated in the rise of Donald Trump and Trumpism within the American political landscape.

Evil in the Christian Fantasy of C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling: From the White Witch to the Dark Mark argues that The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter series are essential reading for anyone committed to understanding the cultural constructions of evil in twentieth-century Europe, and the strategies of resistance available to different types of readers in response to those evils. This book also suggests that while the construction of evil in both series can and should be approached through a secular lens, it cannot be fully understood without a complementary understanding of religious transcendence. Sarah Fiona Winters explores the tension between theological evil on the one hand, and naturalist and politico-historical representations of evil on the other; and the tension within both the explicitly religious and the apparently secular between dualism, the belief that good and evil both exist and are locked in combat, and the belief in orthodox Christianity that evil is nothing. She examines the developments in theories about evil that arose from the experience of the Second World War, particularly those of Hannah Arendt and Stanley Milgram in 1963, arguing that Lewis presented obedience as a strategy against evil because he wrote before their work while Rowling presents disobedience as a strategy against evil as she wrote after their work.

In this book, Luigi Manca and Alessandra Manca examine the use of utopian imagery in magazine advertisements from the 1970s through the early 2020s. Positing that these advertisements reflect the public's unbridled desires, rather than reality itself, the authors argue that these idealistic reflections can lead the public to be unable or unwilling to recognize real threats to democracy, social justice, and the environment. They extend this analysis to argue that political moderates have long underestimated the ability of mass media and charismatic, radical politicians to tap into the utopian dreams of millions of disillusioned-and predominantly white-Americans to leverage these dreams in order to further their own political agendas. Ultimately, this cumulative study spanning decades of advertisement history portrays a consumer utopia shaped almost exclusively by unrestrained consumer desire.

This edited volume focuses on slow media, an approach that fosters intentional and thoughtful engagement with media of all forms. Contributors explore our individual and community relations with analog and digital media by critiquing current power structures underpinning contemporary media sensibilities, processes, and technologies. Through these critiques, the authors pose crucial questions surrounding how to slow down and be intentional within the landscape of accelerated media technology innovation and ubiquity. Building on existing media studies theory, the essays in this volume explore case studies of the intersections between analog and digital media, share insights from personal slow media projects, and propose useful methods for ethical and thoughtful media practices for both producers and audiences. Ultimately, this volume prompts readers to contemplate and reconsider the role of media technologies in contemporary life.

Like its predecessor, Eternal Putin?: Confronting Navalny, the Pandemic, Sanctions, and War with Ukraine (Lexington, 2023), Vladimir Putin's Version of 'War and Peace': The Battle for the Russian Home Front, 2022-24 is a chronological and descriptive account of almost all facets of Russian life during a very short period of time; i.e. from the onset of Russia's war on Ukraine in February 2022 to its presidential election in March 2024. Its strength lies in its wealth of detail on Russia's home front. To set the stage, the first chapters cover the course of war primarily focused on the consequences of the war for Russians at home. The ripple effects follow in chapters on Russia's politics, its economy, human and civil rights, and the Kremlin's international relationships. Among the subjects featured in sub-sections are the 'foreign agent' frenzy, pressure against the LGBT community, schools as incubators of young 'patriots', healthcare, the environment, the media, Russia's new diaspora in exile, the Russian Orthodox Church's role, war crimes, and international sport. Putin as vozhd (leader) is the subject of one chapter. Russia's forced and chosen pivot to the East for political and economic allies are also examined. Above all, this book highlights the Russian government's attempts to create a loyal citizenry. Nowhere else is the battle for the home front covered so thoroughly.

In this book, Deborah Geis offers a new approach to the evolving genre of culinary films that center on the acts of eating and cooking through close analyses of ten different films. These films range from the classics, like Big Night (1996) and Babette's Feast (1987) to later box-office hits, like Chef (2014) and to films that deserve a second look, like East Side Sushi (2014), Burnt (2015), and Mid-August Lunch (2008). Throughout these analyses, the book focuses on tropes including the "big dinner" as it connects to intercultural and transcultural communities; the self-destructive perfectionism of the obsessive chef; and the craft of cooking in relation to aging and mortality. Geis invites readers and viewers to experience food-driven narrative films with an appetite for appreciating the visual ingredients and the ways in which they construct pleasure through the act of looking as a vicarious approach to consuming the actual food. Drawing on the work of film theorist Christian Metz, Geis ultimately poses a new paradigm for watching and understanding culinary cinema as a significant - and constantly-evolving - genre that comes with its own conventions and contemporary filmmakers who seek to expand and transform those conventions in surprising ways.

Arguing that January 6th was just the tip of the iceberg, this book reveals the full impact of white Christian nationalism on the United States. Flowers explores how white Christian nationalism has infused its agenda in social, cultural, legislative, and political aspects of life in an effort to move the United States toward becoming an authoritarian theocratic white ethnostate. Part of the larger far-right enterprise, white Christian nationalism is unique in the way in which it pulls a variety of far-right ideologies together. These ideologies include anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, antisemitism, authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, ethnonationalism, male supremacy, racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Understanding the way these ideologies complement each other and are perpetuated is the only route to resist them.

For women, the conundrum of modernity and tradition is an on-going puzzle of what aspects of modernity to appropriate and what aspects of tradition to retain in their everyday lives. Tracing the emergence of this conundrum in the nationalist debates on colonial modernity, Modernity, Tradition, and Indian Women argues that the everyday lives in contemporary times is animated by both the civilizational meta-narratives and the constitutional meta-narratives that keeps alive this conundrum of modernity and tradition. While societal gender scripts socialize women in families based on cultural ideologies, individuals struggle to expand their zones of freedom by rescripting their personal gender scripts in the direction of modernity. Rescripting a life of more freedom depends upon the changes in dispositions that cultural ideologies have for long instilled in men and women. Drawing evidence from marriage norms and partner choice in diverse contexts, religiosity, clothing and consumption, this book explores the ways in which women selectively appropriate aspects of modernity even while retaining traditions in their lives.

The Mathematical Mind of F. M. Dostoevsky: Imaginary Numbers, Non-Euclidean Geometry, and Infinity reconstructs the curriculum and readings that F. M. Dostoevsky encountered during his studies and connects such sources to the mathematical references and themes in his published works. Prior to becoming a man of letters, Dostoevsky studied at the Main Engineering School in St. Petersburg from 1838 to 1843. After he was arrested, submitted to mock execution by firing squad, and sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia for his involvement in the revolutionary Petrashevsky Circle in 1849, most of his books and journals from the period of his education were confiscated, and destroyed by the Third Section of the Russian Secret Police. Although most scholars discount the legacy of his engineering studies, the literary aesthetics of his works communicate an acute awareness of mathematical principles and debates. This book unearths subtexts in works by Dostoevsky, communicating veins of mathematical thought that evolved throughout Classical Antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution.

Television's Second Golden Age: Politics and International Relations in the Era of HBO and Streaming TV examines the foremost series in the Second Golden Age of Television (1999-present), in terms of the political themes, theories, and issues expressed in major television genres. By using The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, House of Cards, Battlestar Galactica, and Game of Thrones. Joel R. Campbell explains the nature of the Second Golden Age. He clarifies how the rise of quality television through premium cable television channels and later streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon have made it possible for television properties with deeper drama, long story arcs, and concentration on political and social issues. Each chapter analyzes a specific television series that aired or streamed since 1999, in terms constructivist political theory.

Racial discrimination in America has deep historical roots that persist to this day, leading to disparities in areas like police shootings, high incarceration rates, and unlawful, tragic deaths Understanding these roots is crucial to addressing the ongoing challenges in achieving racial equality and healing from racial trauma. From Discrimination to Inclusion: A Journey of Transforming and Embracing Diversity by Ruth Chu-Lien Chao examines various forms of racism, including individual, internalized, interpersonal, and institutional racism, to provide a better understanding of the detrimental consequences they have in BIPOC communities. Seeking a way forward, Chao develops strategies to address racism through anti-racism exercises, collaboration among individuals from diverse racial backgrounds, and racial inclusion by promoting empathy, diversity, and equal opportunities. This book also explores the importance of empathy and openness toward racial inclusion and how this can be cultivated through education and policy implementation. By integrating strategies that encourage us to both challenge racism and address the traumatic responses that they evoke, this book advocates for a society where diversity is celebrated, and racism is actively addressed. Promoting racial inclusion is a collective effort that requires ongoing commitment and action at both individual and systemic levels.

In this book, Mark Ward Sr. draws on a combination of ethnographic, autoethnographic, and sociolinguistic research to identify and analyze white evangelicals' distinctive speech code from a perspective rooted deeply in both communication studies and the evangelical community. Ward posits that the Bible, positioned as the one dominant symbol that unifies all meaning, leads to the widespread adoption of the language of literalism driving evangelical identity, patriarchy, anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, and Christian nationalism. This, he argues, divides the world into a cosmic war between secular humanism and an all-encompassing "biblical worldview." Ward's positionality as both an ethnographer of religious communication who has observed white evangelical culture for two decades and also as a self-identified evangelical for four decades makes him uniquely qualified to casting an insider's critical yet balanced eye on conservative white Christian culture. This book will complement existing scholarship within anthropology and sociology-where evangelicalism has been studied in conjunction with the rise of the Religious Right-and will contribute unique insights from the religious communication subdiscipline.

Through historical and current cultural abjection of the "animal" and the "bad queer," Queer and Animal Provocations: Homonormativity, Animal Exploitation, and Sexual Violence provides insight into the relationship between queer people and animals to show how homonormative aspirations of "good queers" can unwittingly further entrench animal abuse. To uncover this connection, this book travels through notions of queer citizenship, animal justice, colonial constructs of the human, and queer movements for liberation. Jessica Ison explores encounters between the discourse of queer liberation and animal abjection, through the use of advertisements, corporate sponsors, media articles, laws, activist movements, and lobbying efforts, to discover how the struggles for acceptable queer identity are entwined with entrenching animal exploitation. This book disentangles the exploitation of animals from queer liberation, arguing for scholars and activists to take action in future struggles through solidarity and mutual support within the abolition of cages and systems of injustice.

Institutional Epistemology and Extreme Inequality: Knowledge and Governance in a Non-ideal World provides an account of the fundamental design of an institutional system that can reliably solve problems, learn, and attain knowledge. Reconciling non-ideal system-oriented epistemic democracy and liberalism, Marko-Luka Zub¿i¿ develops a unified theory of institutional epistemology. From Deweyan experimentalism and Hayekian epistemic institutionalism to open democracy and pluralist liberalism of New Diversity Theory, Zub¿i¿ integrates insights from pragmatism, studies of division of cognitive labor and collective search under complexity, governance studies, and critical social epistemology. Institutional Epistemology and Extreme Inequality also provides a new, decisive epistemological argument that protection against extreme economic inequalities is a condition of epistemic reliability of an institutional system. Thus, Zub¿i¿ shows that-along with constitutional liberties, self-governance, open markets, and polycentricity-freedom from poverty and limits on private wealth are the institutional devices we collectively and individually need to reliably solve difficult problems and attain knowledge.

Political Humour and Zimbabwean Identity on Social Media Platforms by Mbongeni Jonny Msimanga studies Zimbabwean digital political communication to investigate how political satire constructs, critiques, contests, mediates, and negotiates national identity. Focusing on Bustop and Magamba TV, two YouTube channels that specialise in satiric political skits, this book demonstrates what it means to be a Zimbabwean, and who or what authorises such belonging. Msimanga traces contestations of Zimbabwe's national identity since independence in 1980, refracted by the Gukurahundi genocide, questioning national sovereignty and national security, the fast-track land reform programme, and human rights abuses perpetrated by the incumbent ZANU-PF government. This book provides a conceptual framework that deploys a context-sensitive understanding of satire relevant to the global south and to Zimbabwe. Msimanga concludes that Magamba and Bustop TV are successful in utilising opportunities inherent in the inflection point and crossroads facing Zimbabwe to open and amplify new spaces for contesting, negotiating, and critiquing what it means to belong to the national project.

In The Contemporary Fantastic: Reimagining Reality in French Fiction, Amanda Vredenburgh identifies a contemporary shift in the use of fantastic modalities in French fiction, no longer dominated by the desire to escape the disappointments of reality nor the reader's hesitation about the reality of the novel's events, but by its innovative confrontation with the real. What could bizarre, uncanny, or supernatural literary representations have to tell us about very urgent, real issues like the environmental crisis, racism, migration, and the formation of egalitarian communities? Through close readings of a selection of novels by Marie Darrieussecq, Marie NDiaye, and Antoine Volodine, Vredenburgh argues that the ability to blur boundaries gives the fantastic both an emancipatory and reparative function in its engagement with contemporary political issues. These authors complicate categories such as human/nonhuman, French/foreign, inclusion/exclusion, and individual/community and shift the focus to the experiential and affective dimensions of these issues, ultimately allowing us to better think and feel with those that are excluded. Vredenburgh concludes that this use of the fantastic has a specific ethical stance, which encourages a community-based approach founded on compassion and inclusion.

The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents: Religion and Police Surveillance in the USSR explores the covert world of secret police surveillance within the Soviet Union, delving into lesser-known grassroots religious life and the collusion of religious communities with the Soviet secret police. These case studies come from Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan, and Russia, spanning from the Central Black-Earth region to the Bashkir and Udmurt regions. This book reconstructs the stories of insider agents, focusing on the entanglements and ambiguities of collaboration and secret police surveillance in the Soviet era. These are the stories of the resilience and creative agency of religious believers in times when their faith in God was considered a legal offense. These issues are addressed through an in-depth analysis of previously untapped archival sources from the Soviet secret police archives and eyewitness testimonies.

Korean Nuclear Diaspora: Redress Movements of Korean Atomic-bomb Victims in Japan comprehensively explores the history of Korean victims of the 1945 atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Following the bombings and Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule, these Korean atomic-bomb victims dispersed across Japan, South Korea, and North Korea, and have often been left without any relief or redress for decades. Focusing on those Korean victims living in Japan, the author thoroughly examines how they have struggled to achieve recognition and support. Based on intensive fieldwork, archival research, and interviews with key figures from the Korean redress movement, this book analyzes how their movements have been significantly affected and constrained by the Cold War, unresolved colonial relations between Korea and Japan, nationalistic tensions between North Korea, South Korea, and Japan, and the national division both in the Korean Peninsula and within the Korean community in Japan. Despite these difficulties, the redress movements of Korean nuclear victims in Japan were sustained by their unique ideal of national "unification" and joint efforts with Korean and Japanese citizens, the history of which can deconstruct the mainstream narratives of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Toxic nostalgia is not a new phenomenon, and instances of an undying past refusing to perish and plaguing the present, can be found throughout history. However, examined in Toxic Nostalgia on Screen, in the early years of the new millennium, it has acquired further meaning and not just applies to a dangerous longing for the past, but a way of being in the present world. Here in our modern time, undead memory is not just a remembrance of the past that is visited upon the present with negative implications, but the embodiment of monstrous imagined histories and ideologies that dictate the way we live today so that tomorrow is not the future, but a never-ending return to the past.

Defending the view that Karl Jaspers' concept of irrationality (Widervernunft) is better able to account for pathological patterns of individual and collective thinking, Karl Jaspers' Theory of Irrationality: From Delusions to Worldviews argues that irrationality is incorrigibility, a blockage of reason as the will to communication. Highlighting the importance of freedom and creativity at the heart of reason (Vernunft), Daniel Adsett analyzes examples of delusional thought through a Jaspersian lens. He shows that irrationality arises when we hold to certain attitudes with an incorrigible conviction and refuse to genuinely consider the possibility that we might need to revise or change our beliefs. In presenting these arguments, Adsett offers a novel contribution to contemporary debates about the character of reason while rehabilitating an often neglected aspect of Jaspers' thought.

Shifting Production to Southeast Asia: Electronics Transnational Corporations Moving to Vietnam since the 2000s explores how a labor-intensive industry has been expanded from the 'World Factory' - China to developing Southeast Asia under the changing dynamics in the global and regional production networks, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tension, by using the case study of the production relocations of the consumer electronics manufacturing industry to Vietnam. David Yuen Tung Chan and Chun Yang explore the changing trade and investment patterns as well as the transformations of the electronics production networks and the changing roles and functions of China, Vietnam and other Asian countries, the relocations of firms and the strategic coupling with Vietnam, as well as the impacts of the post-pandemic dynamics. The shifting electronics production from China to Vietnam, which increased since the mid-2000s, is not a simple expansion led by the conventional lead firms from the 'North' solely to cut costs, but it is a rather complicated and multiscale process that has been simultaneously driven by various tiers of firms and levels of governments from different origins out of various dynamics at different spatial scales.

Edited by Eric M. Bridges, Sheila Smith McKoy, and LaJuan Simpson-Wilkey, The Wisdom of Ifá: An Ancient Paradigm for the 21st Century and Beyond explores Yoruba spirituality and the complex ways in which the acknowledgement of Ifá as a wisdom source can be used to address the needs of humanity in the twenty-first century and beyond. Through rituals and practices that honor nature's rhythms, the contributors explore how Ifá guides us towards sustainable coexistence with our environment, recognizing that our well-being is intricately linked to the health of the planet. The contributors also show how, in the realm of environmental stewardship, Ifá offers a holistic worldview that recognizes the interconnectedness of all life forms. This book offers discussions on environmentalism, gender, and politics that connect across the bounds of time, through the history, mythology, and lived realities of the tradition. As an ancient wisdom tradition that has enriched West African cultures, Ifá offers a roadmap for modern civilization to charter new paths for humanity and the challenges that we face.

Jewish Women Science Fiction Writers Create Future Females: Gender, Temporality-and Yentas, the fourth volume in Marleen S. Barr's Future Females critical feminist science fiction anthology series, is the first essay collection devoted to Jewish women science fiction writers. The anthology forges new alliances across disciplinary boundaries-feminist theory, science fiction, and Jewish Studies-by forming a scholarly force, consisting of established critical voices and cutting-edge, fresh perspectives. Acknowledging the growing cultural popularity of science fiction, Barr's goal is to showcase new vistas for exploring gender through Jewish women's science fiction visions. It is time for Jewish women science fiction writers to receive the focused critical examination they deserve.

A Critical Companion to David Lynch builds on the vast debate of one of the most discussed and researched directors of the present era, with commercial and critical success across multiple mediums and genres. This edited volume provides a wide-ranging exploration of Lynch's films, practices, and collaborations, with nineteen original chapters examining themes including narrativity, aesthetics, artistry, sound, experimentation, metafiction, and patriarchy from the disciplinary perspectives of film studies, art studies, gender studies, literary studies, and philosophy. Lynch's entire thought-provoking oeuvre, spanning over fifty years, will be examined, including his shorts and films, animations, TV series, paintings, and commercials.

This collection specifically and solely focuses on Young Adult literature texts where cancer plays a prominent role, including widely-read texts like John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, Nicholas Sparks' A Walk to Remember, and Jesse Andrews' Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. The chapters present a variety of arguments, each developing a novel investigation into how these stories explore the effects cancer has on a person, a family, or on a relationship. As scientific studies continue to devlop new understandings of the biology behind cancer, and new sociological studies continue to uncover how a cancer diagnosis impacts the fabric of our culture(s), these collected essays continue to investigate how authors have woven cancer into the stories we write for young people. A number of distinct avenues are taken here, arguing for new approaches in crafting narrative, deeper appreciation for family support networks (or their absence), and what literary criticism can uncover when applied to cancer narratives.

In Pedagogies of the Enfleshed: Critical Communication Pedagogy Otherwise, Lore LeMaster proffers a historic account of the rise of education and, in turn, communication studies as a distinct field of study. In doing so, the author reconsiders communication's disciplinary origins with less of an emphasis on the mythos of the Ancient Greeks and, more accurately, relocates them within the historic context of U.S. settler colonial development and ever-expanding empire. LeMaster argues that the point of critical communication pedagogy otherwise isn't to instill critical sensibilities into our teaching, but to instead draw on lived experiences as grounds for more effective uses of communication to intervene in oppressive relations across (in)formal pedagogical contexts and in service of liberatory change. Where critical communication pedagogy calls for reform, critical communication pedagogy otherwise labors in service of liberation within the long arc of revolutionary change, beginning from y/our vantage as educators-as-learners. This is especially crucial, LeMaster posits, in the face of critical ongoing issues, including economic recessions, growing climate collapse, escalating fascisms, amassing white nationalisms, and U.S.-funded genocides, all amid an active pandemic. Ultimately, this book makes a compelling case for the need of new critical communication pedagogy tools or, at minimum, approaches to communication pedagogy that support critical worldmaking efforts beyond recognition and with resource support at the local level.

Precarious Domesticity and the British Novel: Space, Gender, and Empire investigates the ways domesticity shapes and threatens female characters in British fiction from the 1750s to the 1850s. Going far beyond the well-trod ground of the marriage plot, women writers in this period explored complicated issues such as sexual abuse, grief, and the way coverture and inheritance laws challenged women's survival. The author argues that women writers used the novel as a space where they could confront anxieties about the precarity of domesticity and the implicit threat of homelessness many women of the middle ranks faced. Precarious Domesticity explores the way female characters subvert these dynamics by reordering domestic space to enact ingenious and creative resistances to their marginalization in Jane Collier, Sarah Scott, Frances Burney, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charlotte Brontë. The author also explores the implications of British imperialism's impact on domestic ideology, both in the consumer products imported into England and the wealth derived from plantation slavery and global trade made possible by enslaved labor.