Books published by Rutgers University Press

This work probes the differences between the biographies of men and women, stereotypes about women's lives and roles, and what is private and public. It looks at issues of authorial stance, and the problems of writing biography for achieving women - who were also wives.

This collection of 13 comparative and interdisciplinary essays explores the cross-cultural dynamics of African-based religious systems in the Caribbean. The contributors analyze the nature and liturgies of Vodou, Santeria, Obeah, Quimbois and Gaga as they form a cultural matrix in the region.

In this study of Haitian women's literature, the author explores their history, traditions, stories and tales. The authors' unwillingness to subordinate to narratives of national autonomy, issues of race, class, colour, caste and sexuality are central to the fiction.

This anthology of Zora Neale Hurston's work includes ""Sweat"" and ""The Gilded Six-Bits"". The volume also includes the 1934 essay ""Characteristics of Negro-Expression"", with excerpts from her autobiography ""Dust Tracks on the Road"" - with critical commentary.

Naturalist Joanna Burger invites the reader to join in with her as she investigates the wildlife along the Jersey coastline. Among the creatures covered are the fish communities, the herring gulls and shorebirds, various types of crab, hawks and monarch butterflies, and the snowy owl in winter.

This anthology addresses orientalism in film from pre-cinema fascinations with Egyptian culture through the "Whole New World" of Aladdin. Essays utilize such areas as cultural studies and genre criticism, and among the films discussed are "Lawrence of Arabia", "Indochine" and "The Sheik".

This text examines the claims and counterclaims of scientists, manufacturers, retailers, politicians and consumers from the discovery of vitamins in the early 20th-century. It reveals the issues that have propelled the industry, and the ambivalence of Americans towards the authority of science.

A celebration of strong, committed women who helped to build the American labour movement. Through the stories of eleven women from a range of backgrounds, we experience the hardships and accomplishments of thousands of other union women activists through the period spanning the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, the McCarthy era, the civil rights movement, and the women's movement.

Sandino's Daughters, Margaret Randall's conversations with Nicaraguan women in their struggle against the dictator Somoza in 1979, brought the lives of a group of extraordinary female revolutionaries to the American and world public. The book remains a landmark. Now, a decade later, Randall returns to interview many of the same women and others.

This work seeks to expose the myths about mental illness and the way it is distorted by the American media. The author argues that inaccuracies about mental illness in newspapers, magazines, movies and books make it clear that this is not merely stereotyping, but rather a pervasive ignorance.

This fabulous anthology is sure to be a core text for history of medicine and social science classes in colleges across the country. In order to demonstrate how medical research has influenced Western cultural perspectives, the editors have collected original works from 61 different authors around nine major themes.

Originally published in 1980, this book recounts the wonderful early years of the Newark Bears after millionaire beer baron Jacob Ruppert, owner of the New York Yankees, purchased the team from the newspaper publisher Paul Block in 1931. Mayer traces the Bears' exciting first five seasons under Ruppert and the building of a farm system that eventually produced the great Yankee dynasty. These colorful early seasons were sprinkled with some of the great names of the American pastime: Ed Barrow, Paul Kritchell, Al Mamaux, Red Rolfe, Babe Ruth, Shag Shaughnessey, Bob Shawkey, and George Weiss. The Bears' finest hour, however, came in 1937 with a team that many experts consider the greatest in the history of the minor leagues. This book captures all the thrilling moments of that memorable season - action-packed spring training at Sebring, Florida, the day-to-day excitement of the pennant race, the vivid play-by-play action of the semifinal playoff against the Syracuse Chiefs, the final playoff against the Baltimore Orioles, and finally, the spellbinding, unforgettable Little World Series against the powerful Columbus Red Birds. This book is packed with photos and colorful profiles of Babe Dahlgren, Atley Donald, Joe Gordon, Charley Keller, George McQuinn, manager Oscar Vitt, and the rest of the great Newark players.

This selection of unusual stories challenges the commonly held belief that science fiction is a twentieth century phenomenon, or that it began with Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Here are tales of marvellous inventions, automata, biological and psychological experiments, utopias, extra-sensory perception and time and space travel.

i?1/2Tell Me a Riddlei?1/2 renders an unforgettable portrait of a working class couple when the gender determined differences in their experiences of poverty and familial life give rise to bitter conflict after almost four decades of marriage. As she dies from cancer, Eva, the protagonist, recollects a revolutionary past that both critiques and offers hope for the present.

Joyce Carol Oates's prize-winning story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"" takes up troubling subjects that continue to occupy her in her fiction. This casebook includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of Oates's life, an authoritative text of the story, ten critical essays, and a bibliography

Drawing on anthropology, history, sociology, ethnic studies, and women's studies, this volume explores the role of race in a variety of cultural and historical contexts. The contributors show how racial ideologies intersect with gender, class, nation and sexuality in the formation of complex social identities and hierarchies. The essays address such topics as race and Egyptian nationalism, the construction of “whiteness” in the United States, and the transformation of racial categories in post-colonial Haiti. They demonstrate how social elites and members of subordinated groups construct and rework racial meanings and identities within the context of global political, economic, and cultural change. Race provides a comprehensive and empirically grounded survey of contemporary theoretical approaches to studying the complex interplay of race, power, and identity.

In the first forty years of the twentieth century, over one million Mexican immigrants moved to the US, attracted by farm work in California. Camille Guerin-Gonzales tells the story of their migration, their years here, and of the 1930s repatriation program - one of the largest mass removal operations ever sanctioned by the US government.

At the turn of the century, short stories by - and often about - "New Women" flooded the pages English and American magazines. This daring new fiction shocked Victorian critics, who denounced the authors as "literary degenerates" or "erotomaniacs". This collection brings together twenty of the most original and important stories from this period.

Yellow Woman stories, always female-centred and from the Yellow Woman's point of view, portray a figure who is adventurous, strong, and often alienated from her own people. Ambiguous and unsettling, Leslie Marmon Silko's "Yellow Woman" explores one woman's desires and changes - her need to open herself to a richer sensuality.

Lynn Chancer advances the provocative thesis that sadomasochism is far more prevalent in contemporary societies like the United States than we realize. According to Chancer, sexual sadomasochism is only the best-known manifestation of what is actually a much more broadly based social phenomenon. Moving from personal relationships to interactions in school, the workplace, and other institutions, Chancer uses a variety of examples that are linked by a recurrent pattern of behavior. She goes beyond the predominantly individualistic and psychological explanations generally associated with sadomasochism (including those popularized in the "how to" literature of the recent Women Who Love Too Much genre) toward a more sociological interpretation. Chancer suggests that the structure of societies organized along male-dominated and capitalistic lines reflects and perpetuates a sadomasochistic social psychology, creating a culture steeped in everyday experiences of dominance and subordination. In the first part of the book, Chancer discusses the prevalence of sadomasochistic cultural imagery in contemporary America and examines sadomasochism through several perspectives. She develops a set of definitional traits both through existential analysis of an instance of S/M sex and by incorporating a number of Hegelian and psychoanalytic concepts. In the second part of the book, she places sadomasochism in a broader context by exploring whether and how it appears in the workplace and how it relates to gender and race.

The Diamonds are a Chicago Street gang whose members are second-generation Puerto Rican youths. For Felix Padilla, the young men who join the Diamonds have made a logical choice. The gang is an alternative and dependable route to emotional support, self-respect, material goods, and upward mobility. Although Padilla shares the same ethnic background as the gang members and also grew up in a Chicago barrio, gaining the trust of the Diamonds was not easy. Eventually, however, he was able to get close enough to the members to interview and observe them. In his book, he shows us his decision to join the Diamonds, but does not paint a romanticized picture.

This revised edition (originally published in 1959) of the famous biography of Columbus by his son Ferdinand was published to coincide with the Columbus quincentenary celebrations. Benjamin Keen's introduction traces the changing assessments of Columbus and his Discovery over almost five centuries.