"In the Shadow of Diagnosis"

New from the University of Chicago Press: In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life by Regina Kunzel.

About the book, from the publisher:

A look at the history of psychiatry’s foundational impact on the lives of queer and gender-variant people.

In the mid-twentieth century, American psychiatrists proclaimed homosexuality a mental disorder, one that was treatable and amenable to cure. Drawing on a collection of previously unexamined case files from St. Elizabeths Hospital, In the Shadow of Diagnosis explores the encounter between psychiatry and queer and gender-variant people in the mid- to late-twentieth-century United States. It examines psychiatrists’ investments in understanding homosexuality as a dire psychiatric condition, a judgment that garnered them tremendous power and authority at a time that historians have characterized as psychiatry’s “golden age.” That stigmatizing diagnosis made a deep and lasting impact, too, on queer people, shaping gay life and politics in indelible ways. In the Shadow of Diagnosis helps us understand the adhesive and ongoing connection between queerness and sickness.

Regina Kunzel is the Larned Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University.

The Page 99 Test: Criminal Intimacy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Jerusalem through the Ages"

New from Oxford University Press: Jerusalem through the Ages: From Its Beginnings to the Crusades by Jodi Magness.

About the book, from the publisher:

A major new history of one of the world's holiest of cities, based on the most recent archaeological discoveries

First settled five thousand years ago by a mountain spring between the Mediterranean and Dead Sea, Jerusalem was named for the god (Shalem) that was worshipped there. When David reportedly conquered the city, ca. 1000 BCE, he transferred the Ark of the Covenant--and with it, the presence of the God of Israel--to this rocky outcrop. Here, David's son Solomon built a permanent house for the God of Israel called the first temple, and since then this spot has been known as the Temple Mount. After Babylonians destroyed Solomon's temple in 586 BCE, it was replaced by the second temple, which is the setting for many of the events described in the Gospel accounts. In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, leaving the Temple Mount in ruins. Two hundred and fifty years later, the emperor Constantine constructed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher around the spots where Jesus is believed to have been crucified and buried, and the church is now considered Jerusalem's holiest site by many Christians worldwide. In the late seventh century CE the focus shifted back to the Temple Mount, when an early Islamic ruler named `Abd al-Malek enshrined the rocky outcrop in a monument that is still iconic of the city today: the Dome of the Rock. In 1099 Crusaders conquered Jerusalem, and although their rule was brief rule they left a deep impact on the city. Today, much of the old city retains its medieval appearance.

For followers of the three Abrahamic faiths, Jerusalem is the place where the presence of the God of Israel dwells--the meeting point of heaven and earth and the locus of divine and human interaction. Jerusalem through the Ages by Jodi Magness explores how these beliefs came to be associated with the city by introducing readers to its complex and layered history, providing a broad yet detailed account, including the most recent archaeological discoveries. Each chapter focuses on a key moment of transition from Jerusalem's beginnings to the Crusades of the medieval period, enabling readers to experience the city's many transformations as it changed hands and populations-Jebusites, Israelites, Judahites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The book also includes a walking guide for visitors who wish to experience the city's many archaeological sites firsthand.

Visit Jodi Magness's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Creatures of Fashion"

New from the University of North Carolina Press: Creatures of Fashion: Animals, Global Markets, and the Transformation of Patagonia by John Soluri.

About the book, from the publisher:

Today, the mention of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego conjures images of idyllic landscapes untouched by globalization. Creatures of Fashion upends this, revealing how the exploitation of animals—terrestrial and marine, domesticated and wild, living and dead—was central to the region's transformation from Indigenous lands into the national territories of Argentina and Chile. Drawing on evidence from archives and digital repositories, John Soluri traces the circulation of furs and fibers to explore how the power of fashion stretched far beyond Europe's houses of haute couture to entangle the fates of Indigenous hunters, migrant workers, and textile manufacturers with those of fur seals, guanacos, and sheep at the "end of the world."

From the nineteenth-century rise of commercial hunting to twentieth-century sheep ranching to contemporary conservation-based tourism, Soluri's narrative explains how struggles for control over the production of commodities and the reproduction of animals drove the social and environmental changes that tied Patagonia to global markets, empires, and wildlife conservation movements. By exposing seams in national territories and global markets knit together by force, this book provides perspectives and analyses vital for understanding contemporary conflicts over mass consumption, the conservation of biodiversity, and struggles for environmental justice in Patagonia and beyond.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Subversion"

New from Oxford University Press: Subversion: From Covert Operations to Cyber Conflict by Lennart Maschmeyer.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Subversion, Lennart Maschmeyer provides a powerful new theory and analysis of an age-old concept. While a strategy of subversion offers great strategic promise in theory, it faces an underappreciated set of challenges that limit its strategic value in practice. Drawing from two major cases--the KGB's use of traditional subversion methods to crush the Prague Spring in 1968 and Russia's less successful use of cyberwarfare against Ukraine since 2014--Maschmeyer demonstrates both the benefits and weaknesses of the approach. While many believe that today's cyber-based subversion campaigns offer new strategic opportunities, they also come with their own challenges. Because of these disadvantages, cyber operations continue to fall short of expectations--most recently in the Russo-Ukrainian war. By showing that traditional subversion methods remain the more potent threat, Subversion forces us to reconsider our fears of the subversive potential of cyberwar.

Visit Lennart Maschmeyer's website.

Maschmeyer is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto and an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford. Lennart’s research examines the subversive nature of cyber power, focusing on its operational challenges and strategic limitations. In particular, he has studied the use of cyber operations in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict since 2014. As part of this research, Lennart is also investigating the effectiveness of social media disinformation as a subversive instrument. A second pillar of Lennart’s research agenda critically examines knowledge production processes in cybersecurity and resulting bias and distortions.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Devotion to the Administrative State"

New from Princeton University Press: Devotion to the Administrative State: Religion and Social Order in Egypt by Mona Oraby.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why the pursuit of state recognition by seemingly marginal religious groups in Egypt and elsewhere is a devotional practice

Over the past decade alone, religious communities around the world have demanded state recognition, exemption, accommodation, or protection. They make these appeals both in states with a declared religious identity and in states officially neutral toward religion. In this book, Mona Oraby argues that the pursuit of official recognition by religious minorities amounts to a devotional practice. Countering the prevailing views on secularism, Oraby contends that demands by seemingly marginal groups to have their religious differences recognized by the state in fact assure communal integrity and coherence over time. Making her case, she analyzes more than fifty years of administrative judicial trends, theological discourse, and minority claims-making practices, focusing on the activities of Coptic Orthodox Christians and Baháʼí in modern and contemporary Egypt.

Oraby documents the ways that devotion is expressed across a range of sites and sources, including in lawyers’ offices, administrative judicial verdicts, televised media and film, and invitation-only study sessions. She shows how Egypt’s religious minorities navigated the political and legal upheavals of the 2011 uprising and now persevere amid authoritarian repression. In a Muslim-majority state, they assert their status as Islam’s others, finding belonging by affirming their difference; and difference, Oraby argues, is the necessary foundation for collective life. Considering these activities in light of the global history of civil administration and adjudication, Oraby shows that the lengths to which these marginalized groups go to secure their status can help us to reimagine the relationship between law and religion.

Visit Mona Oraby's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Love and the Working Class"

New from Oxford University Press: Love and the Working Class: The Inner Worlds of Nineteenth Century Americans by Karen Lystra.

About the book, from the publisher:

Love and the Working Class is a unique look at the emotions of hard-living, nineteenth-century Americans who were often on the cusp of literacy. These laboring folk highly valued letters and, however difficult it was, wrote to stay connected to those they loved. This book displays the personal expression of factory hands, manual laborers, peddlers, coopers, carpenters, lumbermen, miners, tanners, haulers, tailors, seamstresses, laundresses, domestics, sharecroppers, independent farmers, and common soldiers and their wives. Entering the “anonymous corners” of these people's lives through letters, we can see their humor, grit, hope, heartache, and endurance, and grasp what they believed and felt about themselves, their kinfolk, and their friends.

As much as possible, these working-class Americans living in the nineteenth century speak to contemporary readers in their own words. Often armed with only a third or fourth grade education, they could read but had limited instruction in writing. Yet they sat down to compose a letter, often spurred by a range of experience including the Gold Rush, westward expansion, slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation, and what was arguably the most important event in nineteenth-century America, the Civil War. During the war, poor, undereducated soldiers and their families wrote letters in a quantity never before seen in American history.

Using letters written to parents, siblings, husbands, wives, friends, and potential mates between 1830 and 1880, Karen Lystra identifies the shared conceptions of love and practices of courtship and marriage within a racially diverse population of free working-class people born in America. Readers can listen to their voices as they flirt, act as intermediaries in hometown courtships, express non-romantic love to their mates, tease each other, and voice their hopes for the future. Through these personal letters, poor, minimally schooled Americans show us how they felt about love and how they created meaningful attachments in their uncertain lives.

--Marshal Zeringue

"I, Yantra"

New from State University of New York Press: I, Yantra: Exploring Self and Selflessness in Ancient Indian Robot Tales by Signe Cohen.

About the book, from the publisher:

What does it mean to be human? I, Yantra examines ancient Indian narratives about robots and mechanically constructed beings to explore how their Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist authors approached this question. Making translations of many of these texts available in English for the first time, author Signe Cohen argues that they shed considerable light on South Asian religious notions of humanity, self, and agency. She also documents connections between ancient and modern responses to the ethical problems of what precisely constitutes a sentient being and what rights such a being should have. Situated at the intersection of humanities and bioethics, this cross-disciplinary study will be of interest to scholars of South Asian languages and literature as well as specialists in religion and technology.

Signe Cohen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri. She is the author of Textual Criticism and Sacred Texts and Text and Authority in the Older Upaniṣads and the editor of The Upaniṣads: A Complete Guide.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Path of Desire"

New from the University of Chicago Press: The Path of Desire: Living Tantra in Northeast India by Hugh B. Urban.

About the book, from the publisher:

A provocative study of contemporary Tantra as a dynamic living tradition.

Tantra, one of the most important religious currents in South Asia, is often misrepresented as little more than ritualized sex. Through a mixture of ethnography and history, Hugh B. Urban reveals a dynamic living tradition behind the sensationalist stories. Urban shows that Tantric desire goes beyond the erotic, encompassing such quotidian experiences as childbearing and healing. He traces these holistic desires through a series of unique practices: institutional Tantra centered on gurus and esoteric rituals; public Tantra marked by performance and festival; folk Tantra focused on magic and personal well-being; and popular Tantra imagined in fiction, film, and digital media. The result is a provocative new description of Hindu Tantra that challenges us to approach religion as something always entwined with politics and culture, thoroughly entangled with ordinary needs and desires.

Hugh B. Urban is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at the Ohio State University. He is the author of numerous books including Secrecy: Silence, Power and Religion and Zorba the Buddha: Sex, Spirituality and Capitalism in the Global Osho Movement.

The Page 99 Test: Zorba the Buddha.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Strangers Within"

New from Princeton University Press: Strangers Within: The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Trading Elite by Francisco Bethencourt.

About the book, from the publisher:

A comprehensive study of the New Christian elite of Jewish origin—prominent traders, merchants, bankers and men of letters—between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries

In Strangers Within, Francisco Bethencourt provides the first comprehensive history of New Christians, the descendants of Jews forced to convert to Catholicism in late medieval Spain and Portugal. Bethencourt estimates that there were around 260,000 New Christians by 1500—more than half of Iberia’s urban population. The majority stayed in Iberia but a significant number moved throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, coastal Asia and the New World. They established Sephardic communities in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Amsterdam, Hamburg and London. Bethencourt focuses on the elite of bankers, financiers and merchants from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries and the crucial role of this group in global trade and financial services. He analyses their impact on religion (for example, Teresa de Ávila), legal and political thought (Las Casas), science (Amatus Lusitanus), philosophy (Spinoza) and literature (Enríquez Gomez).

Drawing on groundbreaking research in eighteen archives and library manuscript departments in six different countries, Bethencourt argues that the liminal position in which the New Christians found themselves explains their rise, economic prowess and cultural innovation. The New Christians created the first coherent legal case against the discrimination of a minority singled out for systematic judicial inquiry. Cumulative inquisitorial prosecution, coupled with structural changes in international trade, led to their decline and disappearance as a recognizable ethnicity by the mid-eighteenth century. Strangers Within tells an epic story of persecution, resistance and the making of Iberia through the oppression of one of the most powerful minorities in world history. Packed with genealogical information about families, their intercontinental networks, their power and their suffering, it is a landmark study.

--Marshl Zeringue

"China's Vulnerability Paradox"

New from Oxford University Press: China's Vulnerability Paradox: How the World's Largest Consumer Transformed Global Commodity Markets by Pascale Massot.

About the book, from the publisher:

China's Vulnerability Paradox explains the uneven transformations in global commodity markets resulting from China's contemporary, dramatic economic growth. At times, China displays vulnerabilities towards global commodity markets because of unequal positions of market power. Why is it that Chinese stakeholders are often unable to shape markets in their preferred direction? Why have some markets undergone fundamental changes while other similar ones did not? And how can we explain the uneven liberalization dynamics across markets? Through a series of case studies, Pascale Massot argues that the balance of market power between Chinese domestic and international market stakeholders explains their behavior as well as the likelihood of global institutional change. At a time of deepening US-China economic tensions, this book provides an alternative, granular understanding of the interacting dynamics between the political economy of Chinese and global markets.

Visit Pascale Massot's website.

Massot is an assistant professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.

She was a member and adviser to the co-chairs of the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs’ Indo-Pacific Advisory Committee. She has also served as the Senior Advisor for China and Asia to various Canadian Cabinet ministers, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, at different points between 2015 and 2021.

--Marshal Zeringue