Books published by University of California Press

"Jongwoo Jeremy Kim deftly examines queer (nonnormative) artists through new lenses, creating a narrative arc that interrelates the book's historically and formally eclectic range of off-center artists/subjects. Male Bodies Unmade fills gaps in the literature of the artists discussed and diversifies perspectives in the fields of both queer studies and art history."--Tirza True Latimer, author of Eccentric Modernisms: Making Differences in the History of American Art "Jongwoo Jeremy Kim--who in the early pages of this book styles himself as fierce critic, voyeur, and ventriloquist--provides keen insight into GWM (gay white male) aesthetics by interrogating the stakes of being-in-difference under visual and sexual hegemony. Witty and wise, Male Bodies Unmade is a gleaming example of queer critique's capacities to identify the points of pleasure and failure in our togethering."--Andy Campbell, author of Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives, and Contemporary Art "Jongwoo Jeremy Kim began to weave these thoughts into art history as part of a long, ongoing conversation with the bright mind of his teacher, friend, and ally, Linda Nochlin. Male Bodies Unmade now takes those threads into his own full scholarly investigation. The result of so much looking and being comes out from under the covers in the best of all possible ways."--Molly Nesbit, Professor of Art on the Mary Conover Mellon Chair, Vassar College "Male Bodies Unmade implicitly provides one way to decolonize art history and illustrates that Asian American art history can be written without exclusively focusing on Asian American author-subjects and their work."--Alpesh Patel, author of Productive Failure: Writing Queer Transnational South Asian Art Histories "In Male Bodies Unmade, Jongwoo Jeremy Kim helps us look anew at the art of queer artists whose work we thought we knew and understood. He's produced astute revisionist readings of Cocteau, Bacon, Hockney, and Gober, among others, and made their art vivid and relevant for our multicultural twenty-first century."--Kenneth E. Silver, Professor of Art History, New York University

"What Film Is Good For is a wonderfully ambitious and timely collection that takes the form, in a sense, of a questionnaire--one that importantly does not seek or need a singular response to the question it asks, as if film could only be good in one way or for one thing, or simply not at all. The diversity of responses collected here is itself a profound lesson in how capacious a moral claim need be if moral it truly is."--Brian Price, author of A Theory of Regret "Whether one agrees with the writers' propositions, the pleasure of thinking through the claims, pondering these questions of worth, value, profit, loss, the many 'good fors' as well as the occasional 'not good for, ' is a good, indeed, an excellence in itself, opening to a vast and valuable conversation."--Janet Staiger, author of Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema and Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception "Their volume bookended by two marvelous pieces by filmmakers (Mike Figgis and Radu Jude), Julian Hanich and Martin Rossouw have assembled a peerless group of contributors to explore a wide range of compelling questions about film ethics and the value(s) of spectatorship. The result is a foundational volume for Screen Studies."--Catherine Grant, founding author of Film Studies for Free

"Those for Whom the Lamp Shines is an outstanding and important contribution. It is the first sustained account of ethnic rhetoric as it rises in prevalence in late antique Egypt. With admirable sensitivity to the complexities of group conflict, Bantu lucidly charts the significant changes in ethnic reasoning about 'Egyptianness' in late antiquity."--Mary K. Farag, author of What Makes a Church Sacred? Legal and Ritual Perspectives from Late Antiquity

"Ibrahim Nasrallah has been a stellar producer of literature, particularly in relation to Palestine. Nora Parr, through this sophisticated and engaging study, shows the multifaceted nature of his literary project and his commitment to the literary construction of Palestinian nationhood. Parr's study is unparalleled in its systematic and deeply informed treatment of Nasrallah's fictional world. It should serve as an excellent guide to anyone interested in Arabic literature and Palestinian studies more specifically. This book is not only an insightful study of Nasrallah's literary output, but it also opens a vista on the enduring genius of the Palestinian novel and Nasrallah's place in its luminous journey."--Atef Alshaer, author of Poetry and Politics in the Modern Arab World "A compelling, sophisticated, and long overdue analysis of the works of the prolific but hitherto neglected Palestinian author Ibrahim Nasrallah. An outstanding achievement. Parr's exploration of Nasrallah's works offers the opportunity to reconsider and reinterpret many of the most dominant discourses and motifs in Palestinian culture."--Joseph R. Farag, Assistant Professor of Modern Arab Studies, University of Minnesota "Novel Palestine is a timely and significant intervention in our understanding of the Palestinian novel and identity. In her interrogation of the concept of the 'nation through the works of Ibrahim Nasrallah, ' Parr offers critical reflections on Nasrallah and his innovative contributions to the Palestinian novel and on the evolving Palestinian community and belonging at the turn of the twenty-first century. It is a must read for everyone interested in Palestine, identity, and literature."--Wen-chin Ouyang, author of Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel "Novel Palestine stakes a claim about the relation between Palestinian literary writing and the ways in which this writing figures the experience of being Palestinian in excess of the terms of the settler state and its linear, developmental, narrative, and critical forms. Parr shows that literature enables a thinking of Palestinian life beyond these terms, and in this she powerfully suggests the relevancy of language and aesthetic form in the ongoing resistance to settler colonization, the regime of the modern carceral state, and the modes of thought and life these sustain."--Jeffrey Sacks, Associate Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature/Arabic, University of California, Riverside "In her pioneering study of the curiously neglected Ibrahim Nasrallah, Parr shows how his epic Palestine Project expands the notion of a literary series to re-image not only Palestine, but the notion of the nation itself. A welcome demonstration of the power of writing to redefine the political domain."--Lyndsey Stonebridge, author of We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience "Parr's Novel Palestine is a welcome critical intervention and vitally important addition to Palestinian literary studies in its focus on the one of the foremost writers of the Palestinian epic, Ibrahim Nasrallah. It can be situated within a tradition of literary criticism charted by the leading efforts of authors such as Mary Layoun and Barbara Harlow."--Najat Rahman, author of In the Wake of the Poetic: Palestinian Artists after Darwish

"Breaks new ground in introducing analytic induction as an approach distinct from qualitative comparative analysis. Charles Ragin's writing is among the clearest, most accessible, and engaging that I know."--Peer C. Fiss, Jill and Frank Fertitta Chair in Business Administration and Professor of Management and Organization, University of Southern California "At a time when methodological debates are becoming increasingly mathematical, this intervention is both refreshingly nontechnical and unusually helpful for qualitative researchers in sociology and political science. Because of its clarity, brevity, and usability, qualitative researchers in the social sciences are going to want a copy of this book."--James Mahoney, Gordon Fulcher Professor in Decision-Making and Professor of Sociology and Political Science, Northwestern University

"In this provocative and deeply humane new book, sociologist Michaela Soyer dissects the stark differences in punishment systems between the United States and Germany through the experiences of incarcerated young men. The Price of Freedom deftly shows the relation between punishment, the welfare state, and diversity--and the difficult trade-offs ahead."--François Bonnet, author of The Upper Limit: How Low-Wage Work Defines Punishment and Welfare "In both Germany and the United States, racialized young men are far more likely to be imprisoned than their white peers--yet the societal responses to this fact have been profoundly different. Drawing on sensitive interviews and nuanced comparative ethnography, Soyer shows how these young men understand their place in their respective societies, the forces that led to their incarceration, and where they might go in the future. She thus reveals the hidden goals, understandings, and contradictions that shape both systems. The Price of Freedom sheds new light on the problem of mass incarceration while pointing to what the German and American justice systems might learn from each other."--Philip Kasinitz, coeditor of Growing Up Muslim in Europe and the United States "This innovative book breaks through the dulling sense of familiarity that focusing on only one society so easily engenders. By comparing young men's experiences with incarceration in Germany and the United States, Soyer invites us to view both criminal justice systems with fresh eyes and reveals the distinct ways in which marginalization and incarceration interact. American and German scholars alike have much to learn from Soyer's ambitious research."--Jan Doering, author of Us versus Them: Race, Crime, and Gentrification in Chicago Neighborhoods "In The Price of Freedom, Soyer provides a unique comparative analysis of incarceration in the United States and Germany. Her rich, in-depth qualitative analysis allows her to develop nuanced insights into processes of racial and ethnic marginalization and criminalization in the two countries and to develop explanations for what each country can learn from the other in terms of their treatment of racial and ethnic minorities. Soyer's book is an important read for social scientists and policymakers concerned with social inequality and incarceration."--Danielle Raudenbush, author of Health Care Off the Books: Poverty, Illness, and Strategies for Survival in Urban America "The Price of Freedom offers a much-needed comparative study of incarceration in two very different contexts, contrasting the quintessential mass incarceration nation of the United States with the more lenient German penal context. Through comparative ethnography and interviews, Soyer documents how such different contexts both produce prisons filled with the socially marginalized, and she elegantly links the conditions that bring marginalized men into prison to culturally conditioned explanations for their pathways to crime and imprisonment. This rare comparative work allows readers to see the much-studied but extreme US context through a new lens while offering lessons on how men interpret their histories through their cultural context. This book has much to offer prison scholars as well as those more generally interested in poverty, social marginalization, and comparative social theory."--Sara Wakefield, coauthor of Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality

"James Walvin's brilliant new book is more than a story about the fascinating legacy of a song written by an eighteenth-century English cleric that today has a unique status in American and indeed British life. It is also a story of cross-cultural translation and travel, of exploitation, adaptation, and commercial interests, and of the power of music-making in the service of humanistic freedom, regardless of faith, nation, or race."--Ben Carrington, author of Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora "A detailed and astonishing revelation of the forgotten history behind the seemingly familiar. Passionately written and meticulously researched."--David Olusoga, author of Black and British: A Short, Essential History "An illuminating history of the most resounding hymn in African American history. Born of the tortured soul of an English slaver, who found his faith and rejected slavery, 'Amazing Grace' became the soothing hymn that inspired millions. The enslaved cotton worker, the folk singer, the civil rights marcher, the gospel choir, the blues woman, and President Obama, all moved by the sweet sound of this beautiful, historic hymn."--Edward B. Rugemer, Professor of History and African American Studies, Yale University "This book tells the story of the Christian hymn 'Amazing Grace, ' from its creation by English former slave ship captain John Newton in 1772, through its popularization among performers and listeners in the United States, to its function today as a kind of anthem for healing in the US, Europe, and elsewhere in the world. The historical coverage as well as the range of subjects and musical scenes addressed is impressive."--Eric Porter, author of A People's History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport "A fun read that tracks 'Amazing Grace, ' a song that holds much meaningfulness across diverse swaths of society, across various genres and performance styles, and across the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries."--James Padilioni, author of To Ask Infinity Some Questions: San Martín de Porres and the Black Hagiographic Mysteries of Florida

"Beautifully organized through contrast and variation evocative of a musical composition, Fanfare for a City is a lively and engaging work of scholarship on music, urban space, and power. Jacek Blaszkiewicz convincingly traces how Baron Haussmann's individual taste in music shaped the tuning of Paris's urban design and policy, and conversely how Haussmannization had a lasting impact on musical spaces and tastes."--Aimée Boutin, author of City of Noise: Sound and Nineteenth-Century Paris "An important contribution to the literature on Baron Haussmann's famous reconfiguration of Paris during the Second Empire. Blaszkiewicz expertly maps musical life of the period onto the rapidly changing cityscape. In its move away from traditional methods and engagement with the burgeoning field of sound studies, this work offers a refreshing perspective on wider musical culture beyond the opera house, concert hall, and salon."--Steven Huebner, author of Les opéras de Verdi: Éléments d'un langage musico-dramatique "Fanfare for a City demonstrates in fascinating detail that the making of modern Paris in the nineteenth century was as much a matter of sound as of space. The book--highly readable, deeply informative--is a major contribution to a growing body of literature that recognizes sound as a fundamental cultural force."--Lawrence Kramer, author of Music and the Forms of Life "A sophisticated and rich exploration of the relationship between music and its urban environment, which sheds new light on little-studied musical phenomena, including street hawkers, as well as more familiar environments, such as world's fairs and cafés-concerts, all in the context of Haussmann's urban renewal project in Second Empire Paris."--Sarah Hibberd, author of French Grand Opera and the Historical Imagination "Deeply researched and engagingly written, Fanfare for a City has a great deal to teach us about the contested soundscapes of Second Empire Paris. A very impressive work."--Brian Hart, editor of The Symphonic Repertoire, Volume V: The Symphony in the Americas

"A sophisticated analysis of late Roman speeches of praise, this book demonstrates how Julian's fellow panegyrists, all of whom were members of the elite, engaged in a literary back-and forth that communicated their own demands and hopes to the emperor but also translated the emperor's intentions to those through whom he governed. The result is a series of lively, engaging snapshots of late Roman politics in action, as close to a look into the imperial mind as read by contemporaries as it is possible to get."--Susanna Elm, Sidney H. Ehrman Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley "The rhetorical outpourings of interested parties make for curious historical documents, and classical scholarship has not always been up to the challenge. Moysés Marcos's great achievement in this lively and rangy analysis of the Julianic moment is to show how high-profile panegyric could be, at once, commentary on and constitutive of imperial power play."--Roger Rees, St Andrews University, Scotland "This alert and erudite book demonstrates the powerful versatility of praise discourse as a means of political communication in the fourth century and sheds a vivid light on the emperor Julian and his entourage."--Laurent Pernot, member of the Institut de France and author of Epideictic Rhetoric "Emperors and Rhetoricians demonstrates the versatility of the panegyric as a medium of political and personal interests and offers valuable insights into communication between emperor and people in late antiquity. Marcos looks beyond the rhetoric of imperial praise to examine what was unspoken: self-promotion, insecurity, promises, and threats."--Catherine Ware, Lecturer in Classics, University College Cork, Ireland "The emperor Julian is unique in being both subject and author of imperial panegyric. Marcos has given us an invaluable and comprehensive account of Julianic panegyric, which shows just how central epideictic rhetoric was to the emperor's communicative agenda."--Alan J. Ross, Associate Professor of Classics, Ohio State University