Focusing on the cultural and philosophic conflation between the "oriental" and the "ornamental," Ornamentalism offers an original and sustained theory about Asiatic femininity in western culture. This study pushes our vocabulary about the woman of color...

"Like Tosca, Charles Henri Ford has lived for art and love...a masterpiece"---Edmund White

Through a series of provocative readings of theatre theory and feminist performance Diamond demonstrates the continuing force of feminism and mimesis in critical thinking today.

`No work on the subject of listening is as erudite, thoughtful, wide-ranging, and readable as Sinister Resonance. Toop's previous books revealed the astonishing breadth of his musical tastes and the immensity of his sonic world. Here he extends his...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “It’s undeniably thrilling to find words for our strangest feelings…Koenig casts light into lonely corners of human experience…An enchanting book. “ —The Washington Post A truly original book in every sense of the word, The...

A robust defense of a poetic geniusAbū Tammām (d. 231 or 232/845 or 846) is one of the most celebrated poets in the Arabic language. Born in Syria to Greek Christian parents, he converted to Islam and quickly made his name as one of the premier Arabic...

A curious figure stalks the pages of a distinct subset of mass-market romance novels, aptly called “desert romances.” Animalistic yet sensitive, dark and attractive, the desert prince or sheikh emanates manliness and raw, sexual power. In the years since...

"The claim 'I'm straight' is the psychosexual analogue of 'The check is in the mail': if you need to say it, your credit or creditability is already in doubt." So begins Paul Morrison's dazzling polemic, which takes as its point of departure Foucault's...

A set of reflections on British society and culture, this volume falls into two principal parts. The first consists of a pair of essays published in New Left Review in the sixties; “Origins of the Present Crisis,” which suggested a general schema for the...

In an attempt to bridge the gap between theory and practice in postmodern studies, the essays that make up this volume illuminate some of the issues central to this provocative analytic approach. These works apply theory to practical subjects and, in the...

Mark Twain is one of our most accessible cultural icons, a figure familiar to virtually every American and renowned internationally. But he was not always as we know him today. Mark Twain began life as a loose gathering of postures, attitudes, and voices...

Winner, 2021 Ray and Pat Browne Edited Collection Award, given by the Popular Culture AssociationHow popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political changeOne cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world...

With the advent of the human genome, cloning, stem-cell research and many other developments in the way we think of the body, disability studies provides an entirely new way of thinking about the body in its relation to politics, the environment, the...

The grievous loss of Stanley Crouch, one of America’s most renowned intellectuals, is underscored by the posthumous appearance of these remarkable essays.With Stanley Crouch’s untimely death in 2020, American literature lost “a critic without peer”...

A PBS NewsHour Best Book of the Year A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year in Nonfiction A brilliant scholar imparts the lessons bequeathed by the Black community and its remarkable artists and thinkers. Farah Jasmine Griffin has taken to her heart...

"Astute and consistently surprising critic" (NPR) Olivia Laing investigates the body and its discontents through the great freedom movements of the twentieth century.The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant...

The romance between Mabel Loomis Todd and Austin Dickinson, the brother of the poet Emily Dickinson, is portrayed in a selection of letters

A collection of essays by the author of The Broken Cord explores a diverse range of topics, including children's rights, native American issues, multicultural scholarship, literature, and international affairs. 35,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo...

Reimagines the American 19th century through a sweeping interdisciplinary engagement with oceans, genres, and timeEmergent Worlds re-locates nineteenth-century America from the land to the oceans and seas that surrounded it. Edward Sugden argues that...