This Week’s New Books: Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians plus 5 paperback releases

Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana

Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians offers a distinctive and original reading of racialization in early America. Focusing on cultural cross-dressing from a wide range of sources, Sophie White shows that material culture—especially dress—was central to discourses about race, as colonization was built on encounters mediated by appearance.

Now in Paperback

The Past in Pieces: Belonging in the New Cyprus

Rebecca Bryant

224 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus.

Cloth 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4260-7 | $45.00 | £29.50

Paper Dec 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2231-9 | $24.95 | £16.50

A volume in the Contemporary Ethnography series

By examining oral history collected during two years of fieldwork, anthropologist Rebecca Bryant investigates why the 2003 opening of the ceasefire line dividing Cyprus has not led the country any closer to reunification, and how in many ways it has driven the two communities of the island farther apart.

Now in Paperback

The Modern Moves West: California Artists and Democratic Culture in the Twentieth Century

Richard Cándida Smith

264 pages | 6 x 9 | 35 illus.

Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4188-4 | $39.95 | £26.00

Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2221-0 | $24.95 | £16.50

A volume in the Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America series

Exploring the transformation of California into a center for contemporary art through the twentieth century, this book dramatically illustrates the paths California artists took toward a more diverse and inclusive culture.

Now in Paperback

Zamumo’s Gifts: Indian-European Exchange in the Colonial Southeast

Joseph M. Hall, Jr.

248 pages | 6 x 9 | 12 illus.

Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4179-2 | $37.50 | £24.50

Paper Dec 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2223-4 | $22.50 | £15.00

A volume in the Early American Studies series

Zamumo’s Gifts traces the evolution of Indian-European exchange, from gift giving as a diplomatic tool to the trade of commodities that bound colonists and Natives in commercial relations.

Now in Paperback

Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India

Kalyani Devaki Menon

232 pages | 6 x 9 | 4 illus.

Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4196-9 | $49.95 | £32.50

Paper Jan 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2234-0 | $24.95 | £16.50

A volume in the Ethnography of Political Violence series

This ethnography analyzes the popularity of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India through examining the everyday acts of women activists, finding that women’s ability to recruit individuals from a variety of backgrounds and the movement’s willingness to accommodate a multiplicity of positions are central to understanding its expansionary power.

Now in Paperback

El Salvador in the Aftermath of Peace: Crime, Uncertainty, and the Transition to Democracy

Ellen Moodie

304 pages | 6 x 9

Cloth 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4228-7 | $55.00 | £36.00

Paper Jan 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2235-7 | $24.95 | £16.50

A volume in the Ethnography of Political Violence series

After El Salvador’s brutal civil war ended in 1992, crime rates shot up. People began to speak of the peace as “worse than the war.” This study examines how narratives of post-conflict violence, told by ordinary people, offered ways of coping with uncertainty during a stunted transition to democracy.

Now in Paperback

Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of State-Building

Edited by Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly

312 pages | 6 x 9 | 8 illus.

Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4213-3 | $45.00 | £29.50

Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2237-1 | $24.95 | £16.50

Ebook 2011 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0589-3 | $24.95 | £16.50

This volume examines political, ethnic, and personal trust and betrayals in modern times from Mozambique to the Taiwan Straits, from the former Eastern Bloc to the West Bank, revealing that treachery is a constant and essential part of the processes through which social and political order is reproduced.

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Saunders Robinson.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.