Books published by Rutgers University Press

A nurse inserts an I.V. A personal care attendant helps a quadriplegic bathe and get dressed. A nanny reads a bedtime story to soothe a child to sleep. Every day, workers like these provide critical support to some of the most vulnerable members of our society. Caring on the Clock provides a wealth of insight into these workers, who take care of our most fundamental needs, often at risk to their own economic and physical well-being. Caring on the Clock is the first book to bring together cutting-edge research on a wide range of paid care occupations, and to place the various fields within a comprehensive and comparative framework across occupational boundaries. The book includes twenty-two original essays by leading researchers across a range of disciplines-including sociology, psychology, social work, and public health. They examine the history of the paid care sector in America, reveal why paid-care work can be both personally fulfilling but also make workers vulnerable to burnout, emotional fatigue, physical injuries, and wage exploitation. Finally, the editors outline many innovative ideas for reform, including top-down and grassroots efforts to improve recognition, remuneration, and mobility for care workers. As America faces a series of challenges to providing care for its citizens, including the many aging baby boomers, this volume offers a wealth of information and insight for policymakers, scholars, advocates, and the general public.

18th-century natural historians created a peculiar but durable vision of nature, embodying the sexual and racial tensions of that era. Plants were found to reproduce sexually, and great apes were just becoming known. This text uncovers the ways in which assumptions about sex, and race have shaped scientific explanations of nature.

Dirt and Disease is a social, cultural, and medical history of the polio epidemic in the United States. Naomi Rogers focuses on the early years from 1900 to 1920, and continues the story to the present. She explores how scientists, physicians, patients, and their families explained the appearance and spread of polio and how they tried to cope with it. Rogers frames this study of polio within a set of larger questions about health and disease in twentieth-century American culture.

An analysis of the development, use and expansion of the victimization defence strategy - the ""abuse excuse"". It takes the use of this, particularly during the 1970s and early 1980s, as an indicator of broad social change in cultural understandings of victimization, responsibility and womanhood.

Is it possible to simultaneously belong to and be exiled from a community? Arguing that it's possible, especially for women who have been subjects of colonial empires, the author uncovers the ways that the female body becomes a site of both oppression and resistance. She reveals common political and feminist alliances across geographic boundaries.

What attracts girls to male-dominated youth subcultures like the punk movement? How do girls reconcile a subcultural identity that is deliberately coded masculine with the demands of femininity? This work is an insider's view of the ways punk girls resist gender roles and create strong identities.

A collection of 19 stories that span Hisaye Yamamoto's 40-year career. Yamamoto's themes include the cultural conflicts between the first generation, the Issei, and their children, the Nisei; coping with prejudice; and the World War II Internment of Japanese Americans.

Neurofeedback is a drug-free therapeutic technique used by licensed therapists in North America to treat a range of conditions from attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders to epilepsy, stroke, anxiety, migraine, and depression. This title describes how this procedure works.

Whether presented as exotic fantasy, a strategic location during World War II, or a site combining postwar leisure with military culture, Hawaii and the South Pacific figure prominently in the US national imagination. Hollywood's Hawaii is the first full-length study of the film industry's intense engagement with the Pacific region from 1898 to the present.

Introduces generations of women who worked behind the scenes in the film industry - from the employees' wives who hand-coloured the Edison Company's films frame-by-frame, to the female immigrants who toiled in MGM's backrooms to produce costumes. Challenging the dismissive characterization of these women as menial workers, Erin Hill shows how their labour was essential to the industry.

Introduces American audiences to the judicial arm of the Council of Europe - a group distinct from the European Union, and much larger - whose mission is centered on interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights. The council routinely confronts nations over their most culturally sensitive, hot-button issues.

Brings critical insights to the reality of porn and what it can tell us about ourselves sexually, culturally, and economically. Divided into two sections, this book covers important debates on the topic and traces the evolution of pornographic film, including comparing its development to that of Hollywood cinema.

A book on miscarriage for the woman who has lost at least one pregnancy. Approaching the topic from a reporter's perspective, it takes us on a journey into the laboratories and clinics of researchers at the front, weaving together their findings with portraits of families who have had difficulty bringing a baby to term.

Analyzes the different ways in which organized religion provides immigrants with an arena for mobilization, civic participation, and solidarity. This book explores topics including how non-Western religious groups such as the Vietnamese Caodai are striving for community recognition and addressing problems such as racism, economic issues, and more.

Demonstrates the wealth of desires woven into the fabric of European history: desires about empire and nation, about self and other, about plenty and dearth. By documenting the diverse meanings of pornography, contributors show how that sexuality became central to the individual, to the nation, and to the transnational character of modern society.