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In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois brilliantly details the African American experience. Yet the renowned sociologist was also an astute chronicler of white people, particularly their racism. As Unveiling the Color Line demonstrates, Du Bois's trenchant analysis of whiteness and white supremacy began in his earliest work--his 1890 speech on Jefferson Davis--and continued in every major book he published in his more than sixty-year car...

During the two difficult decades immediately following the 1947 Indian Independence, a new, commercially successful print culture emerged that articulated alternatives to dominant national narratives. Through what Aakriti Mandhwani defines as middlebrow magazines-like Delhi Press's Saritåa-and the first paperbacks in Hindi-Hind Pocket Books-North Indian middle classes cultivated new reading practices that allowed them to reimagine what it mean...

During the two difficult decades immediately following the 1947 Indian Independence, a new, commercially successful print culture emerged that articulated alternatives to dominant national narratives. Through what Aakriti Mandhwani defines as middlebrow magazines-like Delhi Press's Saritåa-and the first paperbacks in Hindi-Hind Pocket Books-North Indian middle classes cultivated new reading practices that allowed them to reimagine what it mean...

In a food industry shaped by the abundance, cheapness, and convenience that giant corporations can offer, small-­scale ventures struggle to survive, as anthropologist Cathy Stanton discovered when she joined the effort to save a small food co-­op in a former mill town in western Massachusetts. On the margins of the dominant system, Stanton found herself reckoning with its deep racial and class inequities, and learning that making real change r...

When climate disasters like hurricanes, heatwaves, and tsunamis strike, they reveal the inequities of our social, political, and economic structures. They also lay bare the negative impacts of these structures on the health and safety of all people, and particularly socioeconomically vulnerable groups. With original contributions from scholars from a wide range of diverse fields-including environmental studies, public health, legal studies, ur...

While the Civil War raged on, many northern artists depicted everyday life rather than grand battles or landscapes of noble sacrifice. Amidst a conflict that was upending antebellum social norms, these artists created realistic scenes of mundane events, known as genre paintings. While many of the paintings seem merely to show everyday incidents, Vanessa Meikle Schulman argues that artists connected the visuals to larger concerns. With attentio...

Today, the field of architecture faces a reckoning. While there is no longer consensus on what defines an architectural work, theorists, historians, and practitioners are grappling with urgent issues--among them the impact of climate change, the dynamics of power and race in relation with the built environment, and the technological, practical, and ethical dimensions of architecture. As established practices, academic objectives, and professio...

Nineteenth-century New England was a hostile place for Catholics. In Massachusetts a mob torched a convent, in Maine a priest was tarred and feathered, and Rhode Island elected an anti-Catholic Know Nothing governor. "No Irish Need Apply" signs were common. Newport was different. It was a religiously diverse and tolerant city that welcomed Catholic French troops during the American Revolution. Later, as it became the favored summer retreat for...

While adult concern about gender in children's books has made recent headlines, this discussion is far from new. As Gregory M. Pfitzer reveals, the writers and editors at Bobbs-Merrill, the publisher of the Childhood of Famous Americans book series published between 1932 and 1958, thought carefully about how their books would influence the development of their male readers. These books emphasized inspiring tales over historical accuracy and we...

While adult concern about gender in children's books has made recent headlines, this discussion is far from new. As Gregory M. Pfitzer reveals, the writers and editors at Bobbs-Merrill, the publisher of the Childhood of Famous Americans book series published between 1932 and 1958, thought carefully about how their books would influence the development of their male readers. These books emphasized inspiring tales over historical accuracy and we...

Literary realism rose to prominence in postbellum America with bold and accurate depictions of the world. This style became more popular than sentimentality--an earlier form of writing often associated with women readers and high emotions, seemingly antithetical to realism. Literary scholar Faye Halpern challenges this apparent binary, finding elements of the sentimental in key realist texts. With a distinctively formal and narratological appr...

Since the 2002 implementation of No Child Left Behind, the American public education system has been fundamentally changed. Excessive testing, standardized curriculums, destructive demands on children, corporate-style evaluations, and top-down mandates have become the norm. In response, record numbers of demoralized educators have quit, and millions of students have been left educationally impoverished. This troubling transformation has been e...

Henry David Thoreau is best known today as a writer, naturalist, and social critic. He was also a schoolteacher, surveyor, and pencil-maker. In The Gospel According to This Moment, Unitarian minister Barry M. Andrews reveals how an idiosyncratic and unconventional religious faith was central to Thoreau's many-faceted life-a dimension that has been largely unexamined. Through close readings of his writings and a focus on his Unitarian upbringin...

New Yorkers generate millions of tons of trash annually, which, through the magic of infrastructure and one of the largest waste management systems in the world, disappears from city sidewalks each night. Under pressure from environmentalists, activists, policymakers, and industry, the New York City Department of Sanitation started exploring ways to divert organic material from the waste stream, and in 2013, launched its composting pilot progr...

Simultaneously transnational and local, poetry in the twenty-first century is produced across digital networks, shaped through local communities, and evaluated on a global scale. It might start on social media, where a video of a poet circulates and goes viral, gaining international attention without ever going through traditional modes of publication. In Networked Poetics, Susanna L. Sacks introduces readers to the southern African poetry sce...

Hailed as one of Boston's most beloved mayors and its longest serving, Thomas Menino (1942-2014) deftly managed the city's finances and transformed Boston into the hub of innovation that it is today. During his time in office, Boston embraced modern industrial growth and moved forward with noteworthy developments that altered neighborhoods, while also facing ongoing racial strife, challenges of unaffordable housing, and significant public unio...

Throughout the Progressive Era, reform literature became a central feature of the American literary landscape. Works like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper, " and Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives topped bestseller lists and jolted middle-class readers into action. While realism and social reform have a long-established relationship, prominent writers of the period such as Henry James, Edith Wha...

Simultaneously transnational and local, poetry in the twenty-first century is produced across digital networks, shaped through local communities, and evaluated on a global scale. It might start on social media, where a video of a poet circulates and goes viral, gaining international attention without ever going through traditional modes of publication. In Networked Poetics, Susanna L. Sacks introduces readers to the southern African poetry sce...

The collective social history of deaf people in America has yet to be written. While scholars have focused their attention on residential schools for the deaf, leaders in the deaf community, and prominent graduates of these institutions, the lives of "ordinary" deaf individuals have been largely overlooked. Employing the methods of social history, such as the use of digital history techniques and often-ignored sources like census records, Eric...

The collective social history of deaf people in America has yet to be written. While scholars have focused their attention on residential schools for the deaf, leaders in the deaf community, and prominent graduates of these institutions, the lives of "ordinary" deaf individuals have been largely overlooked. Employing the methods of social history, such as the use of digital history techniques and often-ignored sources like census records, Eric...