The first day of fall classes is rapidly approaching at colleges and universities all over, so what better time to check out Penn Press's latest slate of new titles? Indeed, Sigal Ben-Porath's Free Speech On Campus will no doubt prove a must-read for academics of all stripes, while titles in anthropology, religious studies, literature, early American studies, and more will surely interest readers across the humanities and social sciences. Dig in!
Jump to: Featured Titles | Anthropology | Early American Studies | Literature and Cultural Studies | Modern U.S. History | Political Science and Human Rights | Religious Studies | University of Pennsylvania Museum Titles
To receive email announcements about new books—which include a 30% discount on all titles—sign up here.
FEATURED TITLES
|
"Free Speech on Campus makes a valuable contribution to a debate that has often been marred by confusion. In the campus context, Ben-Porath's argument that we may protect students from dignitary harm, but not from intellectual challenge, helps us to think clearly about the importance of not censoring speech on the basis of its intellectual content. Student activists, professors, and university administrators can all learn from reading this book."—Peter Singer, Princeton University In Free Speech on Campus, political philosopher Sigal Ben-Porath offers a useful framework for thinking about free-speech controversies surrounding trigger warnings, safe spaces, and speech that verges on hate. Everyone with a stake in campus debates will find something valuable in her illuminating discussion of these critical issues. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 136 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 |
|
"Warner Mifflin is a blessing. It brings the Quaker abolitionist from the historical shadows and into the blazing light of his moral courage and singular efforts to right the terrible wrongs of American slavery and racism. The story may be an old one, but Mifflin's is as important for our own times as it is for our understanding of the Revolutionary era."—Thomas P. Slaughter, author of The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition Writing in beautiful prose and marshalling fascinating evidence, Gary B. Nash constructs a convincing case that Warner Mifflin belongs in the Quaker antislavery pantheon with William Southeby, Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Anthony Benezet. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 352 pages | 6 x 9 | 15 illus. |
Free Speech on Campus
Warner Mifflin: Unflinching Quaker AbolitionistANTHROPOLOGY
|
"Theoretically informed (but never pompous), attractively and clearly written (but not overwritten), ethnographically grounded (but never boring), multi-sited and boundary-crossing, politically aware, engaged, and reflexive, Sara Shneiderman's ethnographic monograph makes a significant, indeed brilliant, intervention in Himalayan anthropology, one that is (or ought to be) just as relevant for specialists of India as it is for scholars of Nepal."—David Gellner, Pacific Affairs The first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, a marginalized community who migrate between Himalayan border zones, Rituals of Ethnicity explores Thangmi cultural worlds and regional political histories to offer a new explanation for the persistence of enduring ethnic identities despite the realities of mobile, hybrid lives. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 328 pages | 6 x 9 | 22 illus. |
EARLY AMERICAN STUDIES
|
"Drawing upon a remarkable archive of protests by the enslaved, Randy M. Browne thoroughly reimagines the politics of slavery. Listening intently to his sources, he carefully teases out the slaves' multifaceted struggle for survival in some of the most brutal conditions ever known. This illuminates the elemental nature of political striving, enhancing our understanding of the fundamental aspirations, strategies, and negotiations of a subjugated people who nevertheless continued to fight. These black lives matter to Browne—and to all of us—as much for what they tell us about humanity writ large as for how they compel us to rethink the world of Atlantic slavery from the inside out."—Vincent Brown, author of The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean depicts the human drama in which enslaved Africans struggled against their enslavers and environment, and one another. The book reorients Atlantic slavery studies by revealing how social relationships, cultural practices, and political strategies reflected an unrelenting fight to survive. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 288 pages | 6 x 9 | 11 illus. |
|
"Paul D. Naish's sensitive, lively, careful study takes two subjects we might think we know all about—the politics of slavery and U.S. visions of Latin America—and shows their unappreciated relationship. Our understanding of both topics are enhanced without making the fate of slavery or of U.S.-Latin-American relations inevitable. An eloquent, important book from a scholar who will be greatly missed."—David Waldstreicher, author of Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification In the thirty-five years before the Civil War, as it became increasingly difficult for those outside the world of politics to have frank and open discussions about slavery, Paul D. Naish argues that many Americans displaced their most provocative criticisms and darkest fears about the institution onto Latin America. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 304 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus. |
Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean
Slavery and Silence: Latin America and the U.S. Slave DebateLITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES
|
"The Labor of the Mind is the most subtle and innovative study of Enlightenment thought in decades. Taking conversations rather than printed texts as his starting point, and reaching back deeply into the seventeenth century, Anthony J. La Vopa shows how male-female friendships within an aristocratic culture produced both intellectual dynamism and anxieties about the feminization of the mind. La Vopa interweaves the ideas and conversational practices of such prominent writers as David Hume and Denis Diderot with those of lesser-known figures such as Poullain de la Barre and Suzanne Necker, offering fascinating insights about these thinkers as both human beings and as makers of our modern understandings of femininity and manliness."—Suzanne Marchard, Louisiana State University The Labor of the Mind plumbs the Enlightenment's social and cultural logic of conceiving the mind as manly; considers the textual representations of the manly mind; and examines the ways in which it was subverted or at least subtly questioned. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 360 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 |
The Labor of the Mind: Intellect and Gender in Enlightenment CulturesMODERN U.S. HISTORY
|
Winner of the 2017 American Historical Association Committee on LGBT History John Boswell Prize Finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies "Stewart-Winter traces alliances and counts votes like a veteran ward captain while also breathing humanity into his story with over thirty personally conducted oral histories. The result is a sweeping narrative that reperiodizes gay rights history, places queer activism at the center of urban political history, and provides a vivid portrait of the Chicagoans responsible for expanding gay rights in their city. . . . An essential book for scholars of sexuality, cities, freedom movements, and modern American politics."—American Historical Review Queer Clout weaves together activism and electoral politics to trace the gay movement's path since the 1950s in Chicago. Stewart-Winter stresses gay people's and African Americans' shared focus on police harassment, highlighting how black political leaders enabled white gays and lesbians to join an emerging liberal coalition in city hall. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 320 pages | 6 x 9 | 31 illus. |
POLITICAL SCIENCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
|
"A first-rate and necessary book. In compiling the analyses of northern and southern scholars across the social sciences, Unmaking the Global Sweatshop provides original insights into the global supply chain and innovative approaches to general questions of power relationships and workers' health and safety writ large."—Lance A. Compa, Cornell University Unmaking the Global Sweatshop gathers the work of leading anthropologists and ethnographers studying the global garment industry's impact on workers' well-being and examines the relationship between the politics of labor and initiatives to protect workers' health and safety. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 304 pages | 6 x 9 | 3 illus. |
|
"European Civil Society and Human Rights Advocacy offers valuable insights into the functioning of the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) and the interactions between civil society organizations and the FRA as well as a critical analysis of some of the major human rights problems within the European Union."—Manfred Nowak, University of Vienna Examining the interaction between hundreds of civil society organizations and the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, Markus Thiel explores the role and impact of transnational civil society in EU human rights advocacy through a political sociology perspective and reflects critically on the legitimacy of EU human rights norms. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 208 pages | 6 x 9 | 13 illus. |
Unmaking the Global Sweatshop: Health and Safety of the World's Garment Workers
European Civil Society and Human Rights AdvocacyRELIGIOUS STUDIES
|
"This is an enormously ambitious book, one that seeks to say something fundamental about the deep-rooted set of ideas and priorities that have fueled violent action over two millennia. . . . It is deeply imagined, enormously learned, and brings into conversation, with elegance and coherence, a series of analytical threads about the ideology of violence in the Western trajectory."—Reviews in History Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror examines the ways Christian theology has shaped centuries of violence from Christianity's first centuries up to our own day, through the crusades, the French Revolution, and more recent American wars. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 456 pages | 6 x 9 |
|
"Penn's book is a mighty achievement. In Envisioning Islam, scholars at last have a one-stop survey of some of the richest but most poorly understood Syriac sources for the early Islamic period, paired with clear-headed analysis and sober conclusions. . . . Penn's book succeeds in defamiliarizing the early history of Muslim-Christian relations and will undoubtedly set the stage for future research on the topic."—The Medieval Review The earliest and largest corpus of Christian writings on Islam was written in the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Envisioning Islam shows how these previously neglected texts problematize modern perceptions of an exclusively hostile Christian reaction to Islam and revolutionize our understanding of the early Islamic world. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 304 pages | 6 x 9 |
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
|
Agricultural Sustainability and Environmental Change at Ancient Gordion: Gordion Special Studies 8 This book publishes the results of 220 botanical samples from the 1993-2002 Gordion excavations directed by Mary Voigt. Together with Naomi Miller's 2010 volume (Gordion Special Studies 5), this book completes the publication of botanical samples from Voigt's excavations. The book aims to reconstruct agricultural decision making using archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from Gordion to describe environmental and agricultural changes at the site. John M. Marston argues that different political and economic systems implemented over time at Gordion resulted in patterns of agricultural decision making that were well adapted to the social setting of farmers in each period, but that these practices had divergent environmental impacts, with some regimes sponsoring sustainable agricultural practices and others leading to significant environmental change. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 224 pages | 8 1/2 x 11 | 11 color, 40 b/w illus. |
Book reviewers: To request a press copy of a Penn Press book, send your name, shipping address, and the title of your publication to glamm@upenn.edu.
Educators: To request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.
