Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theater, and Film in the McCarthy Era examines the experiences of seven prominent women of stage and screen whose lives and careers were damaged by the McCarthy-era "witch hunts" for Communists and Communist sympathizers in the entertainment industry: Judy Holliday, Anne Revere, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Margaret Webster, Mady Christians, and Kim Hunter. The effects on women of the anti-Communist crusades that swept the nation between 1947 and 1962 have been largely overlooked by cultural critics and historians, who have instead f.

"Though branded as pornography for its graphic language and explicit sexuality, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is far more than a work that tested American censorship laws. In this riveting book, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Tropic of Cancer's initial U.S. release, Frederick Turner investigates Miller's unconventional novel, its tumultuous publishing history, and its unique place in American letters. Written in the slums of a foreign city by a man who was an utter literary failure in his homeland, Tropic of Cancer was published in 1934 by a pornographer in Paris, but soon banned in the United States. Not until 1961, when Grove Press triumphed over the censors, did Miller's book appear in American bookstores. Turner argues that Tropic of Cancer is "lawless, violent, colorful, misogynistic, anarchical, bigoted, and shaped by the same forces that shaped the nation." Further, the novel draws on more than two centuries of New World history, folklore, and popular culture in ways never attempted before. How Henry Miller, outcast and renegade, came to understand what literary dynamite he had within him, how he learned to sound his "war whoop" over the roofs of the world, is the subject of Turner's revelatory study."-- "How Henry Miller, renegade and failed writer, came to understand what literary dynamite he had in him and, drawing on two centuries of New World history, folklore, and popular culture, sent his "war whoop" out over the roofs of the world"--

"With rich illustrations and evocative narrative, McAuliffe portrays Paris during the fabulous 1920s, when art and architecture, music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and behavior all took dramatically new forms"--Provided by publisher

A sobering study of the troubled African nation, both pre- and post-genocide, and its uncertain future The brutal civil war between Hutu and Tutsi factions in Rwanda ended in 1994 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front came to power and embarked on an ambitious social, political, and economic project to remake the devastated central-east African nation. Susan Thomson, who witnessed the hostilities firsthand, has written a provocative modern history of the country, its rulers, and its people, covering the years prior to, during, and following the genocidal conflict. Thomson's hard-hitting analysis explores the key political events that led to the ascendance of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and its leader, President Paul Kagame. This important and controversial study examines the country's transition from war to reconciliation from the perspective of ordinary Rwandan citizens, Tutsi and Hutu alike, and raises serious questions about the stability of the current peace, the methods and motivations of the ruling regime and its troubling ties to the past, and the likelihood of a genocide-free future.

In Ethics after Idealism, Rey Chow explores once again the issue of cultural otherness that has been central to her work. She argues that at a time when cultural identity has become imbricated with the way we read our many "others," what must be examined critically is no longer identity politics per se but the idealism - especially in the sense of idealizing otherness - that lies at the heart of identity politics. Recognizing the necessity for a critique of idealism constitutes for Chow an ethics in the postcolonial, postmodern age. In particular, she uses "ethics" to designate the act of making decisions - in this context, decisions of reading - that may not immediately conform with prevalent social mores of idealizing our others but that, nonetheless, enables such others to emerge in their full complexities. Chow discusses an array of source materials whose affinities are as surprising as their appearances are heterologous. The readings she offers involve various cultural forms - fiction, film, popular music, poetry, and critical essays - and address a wide range of cultural topics, such as pedagogy, multiculturalism, fascism, sexuality, miscegenation, community, fantasy, governance, nostalgia, and postcoloniality.

In Russia, food has a hugely important role in political, symbolic, and practical terms. In this illuminating history of Russian food in the modern age, Catriona Kelly - a leading cultural historian and keen amateur cook - reflects on this and an environment where what you eat (and drink) indicates how patriotic you are. Kelly argues that an expectation of 'feeding' is embedded in attitudes to the state as provider, and that rationing systems have traditionally replicated and even enforced social hierarchies. The book looks at how Russian food is intimately connected with family and friends, and was an important source of delight even in the Soviet period, when official culinary provision and practices ostensibly sought to promote nutrition above all, and food was often short. Russian Food since 1800 traces these complex and contradictory associations. It also examines various shifts in diet and cuisine over the last three centuries, including the ways in which old traditions such as pickling and jam-making sit alongside wider world influences from the vast imperial hinterland in the Baltic, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, as well as Western Europe and America.