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Appealing to Justice

Kitty Calavita

Having gained unique access to California prisoners and corrections officials and to thousands of prisoners’ written grievances and institutional responses, Kitty Calavita and Valerie Jenness take us inside one of the most significant, yet largely invisible, institutions in the United States. Drawing on sometimes startlingly candid interviews with prisoners and prison staff, as well as on official records, the authors walk us through the byzantine grievance process, which begins with prisoners filing claims and ends after four levels of review, with corrections officials usually denying requests for remedies. <I>Appealing to Justice</I> is both an unprecedented study of disputing in an extremely asymmetrical setting and a rare glimpse of daily life inside this most closed of institutions. Quoting extensively from their interviews with prisoners and officials, the authors give voice to those who are almost never heard from. These voices unsettle conventional wisdoms within the sociological literature—for example, about the reluctance of vulnerable and/or stigmatized populations to name injuries and file claims, and about the relentlessly adversarial subjectivities of prisoners and correctional officials—and they do so with striking poignancy. Ultimately, <I>Appealing to Justice</I> reveals a system fraught with impediments and dilemmas, which delivers neither justice, nor efficiency, nor constitutional conditions of confinement.

Islam after Communism

Adeeb Khalid

How do Muslims relate to Islam in societies that experienced seventy years of Soviet rule? How did the utopian Bolshevik project of remaking the world by extirpating religion from it affect Central Asia? Adeeb Khalid combines insights from the study of both Islam and Soviet history to answer these questions. Arguing that the sustained Soviet assault on Islam destroyed patterns of Islamic learning and thoroughly de-Islamized public life, Khalid demonstrates that Islam became synonymous with tradition and was subordinated to powerful ethnonational identities that crystallized during the Soviet period. He shows how this legacy endures today and how, for the vast majority of the population, a return to Islam means the recovery of traditions destroyed under Communism.<br><br><i>Islam after Communism</i> reasons that the fear of a rampant radical Islam that dominates both Western thought and many of Central Asia’s governments should be tempered with an understanding of the politics of antiterrorism, which allows governments to justify their own authoritarian policies by casting all opposition as extremist. Placing the Central Asian experience in the broad comparative perspective of the history of modern Islam, Khalid argues against essentialist views of Islam and Muslims and provides a nuanced and well-informed discussion of the forces at work in this crucial region.

Immigrant America

Alejandro Portes

This revised, updated, and expanded fourth edition of <I>Immigrant America: A Portrait</I> provides readers with a comprehensive and current overview of immigration to the United States in a single volume.<BR /><BR /> Updated with the latest available data, <I>Immigrant America</I> explores the economic, political, spatial, and linguistic aspects of immigration; the role of religion in the acculturation and social integration of foreign minorities; and the adaptation process for the second generation. This revised edition includes new chapters on theories of migration and on the history of U.S.-bound migration from the late nineteenth century to the present, offering an updated and expanded concluding chapter on immigration and public policy.

Cheap on Crime

Prof. Hadar Aviram

After forty years of increasing prison construction and incarceration rates, winds of change are blowing through the American correctional system. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the unsustainability of the incarceration project, thereby empowering policy makers to reform punishment through fiscal prudence and austerity. In <I>Cheap on Crime, </I>Hadar Aviram draws on years of archival and journalistic research and builds on social history and economics literature to show the powerful impact of recession-era discourse on the death penalty, the war on drugs, incarceration practices, prison health care, and other aspects of the American correctional landscape.

Ecology of Freshwater and Estuarine Wetlands

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This second edition of this important and authoritative survey provides students and researchers with up-to-date and accessible information about the ecology of freshwater and estuarine wetlands.<BR /><BR /> Prominent scholars help students understand both general concepts of different wetland types as well as complex topics related to these dynamic physical environments. Careful syntheses review wetland soils, hydrology, and geomorphology; abiotic constraints for wetland plants and animals; microbial ecology and biogeochemistry; development of wetland plant communities; wetland animal ecology; and carbon dynamics and ecosystem processes. In addition, contributors document wetland regulation, policy, and assessment in the US and provide a clear roadmap for adaptive management and restoration of wetlands. New material also includes an expanded review of the consequences for wetlands in a changing global environment.<BR /><BR /> Ideally suited for wetlands ecology courses, <I>Ecology of Freshwater and Estuarine Wetlands, Second Edition</I>, includes updated content, enhanced images (many in color), and innovative pedagogical elements that guide students and interested readers through the current state of our wetlands.

Three Kingdoms

Guanzhong Luo

Updated with a new foreword by Moss Roberts for this fifteenth anniversary edition, <i>Three Kingdoms</i> tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220), when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms. Writing some twelve hundred years later, the Ming author Luo Guanzhong drew on histories, dramas, and poems portraying the crisis to fashion a sophisticated, compelling narrative that has become the Chinese national epic. This abridged edition captures the novel's intimate and unsparing view of how power is wielded, how diplomacy is conducted, and how wars are planned and fought. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this Ming dynasty masterpiece continues to be widely influential in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam and remains a great work of world literature.

Rome and Environs

Filippo Coarelli

This superb guide brings the work of Filippo Coarelli, one of the most widely published and well-known scholars of Roman topography, archeology and art, to a broad English-language audience. Conveniently organized by walking tours and illustrated throughout with clear maps, drawings, and plans, <i>Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide</i> covers all of the major, and an unparalleled number of minor, ancient sites in the city, and, unlike most other guides of Rome, includes major and many minor sites within easy reach of the city, such as Ostia Antica, Palestrina, Tivoli, and the many areas of interest along the ancient Roman roads. An essential resource for tourists interested in a deeper understanding of Rome's classical remains, it is also the ideal book for students and scholars approaching the ancient history of one of the world's most fascinating cities.<br> <br> • Covers all the major sites including the Capitoline, the Roman Forum, the Imperial Fora, the Palatine Hill, the Valley of the Colosseum, the Esquiline, the Caelian, the Quirinal, and the Campus Martius.<br> • Discusses important clusters of sites-one on the area surrounding Circus Maximus and the other in the vicinity of the Trastevere, including the Aventine and the Vatican.<br> • Covers the history and development of the city walls and aqueducts.<br> • Follows major highways leading outside of the city to important and fascinating sites in the periphery of Rome.<br> • Features 189 maps, drawings, and diagrams, and an appendix on building materials and techniques.<br> • Includes an updated and expanded bibliography for students and scholars of Ancient Rome.

The Homeric Hymns

Diane J. Rayor

The <i>Homeric Hymns</i> have survived for two and a half millennia because of their captivating stories, beautiful language, and religious significance. Well before the advent of writing in Greece, they were performed by traveling bards at religious events, competitions, banquets, and festivals. These thirty-four poems invoking and celebrating the gods of ancient Greece raise questions that humanity still struggles with—questions about our place among others and in the world.<br> <br> Known as «Homeric» because they were composed in the same meter, dialect, and style as Homer’s <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>, these hymns were created to be sung aloud. In this superb translation by Diane J. Rayor, which deftly combines accuracy and poetry, the ancient music of the hymns comes alive for the modern reader. Here is the birth of Apollo, god of prophecy, healing, and music and founder of Delphi, the most famous oracular shrine in ancient Greece. Here is Zeus, inflicting upon Aphrodite her own mighty power to cause gods to mate with humans, and here is Demeter rescuing her daughter Persephone from the underworld and initiating the rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries.<br> <br> This updated edition incorporates twenty-eight new lines in the first <i>Hymn to Dionysos</i>, along with expanded notes, a new preface, and an enhanced bibliography. With her introduction and notes, Rayor places the hymns in their historical and aesthetic context, providing the information needed to read, interpret, and fully appreciate these literary windows on an ancient world. As introductions to the Greek gods, entrancing stories, exquisite poetry, and early literary records of key religious rituals and sites, the <i>Homeric Hymns</i> should be read by any student of mythology, classical literature, ancient religion, women in antiquity, or the Greek language.

The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter

Albie Sachs

On April 7, 1988, Albie Sachs, an activist South African lawyer and a leading member of the ANC, was car-bombed in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, by agents of South Africa’s security forces. His right arm was blown off, and he lost sight in one eye. This intimate and moving account of his recovery traces the gradual recuperation of his broken body and his triumphant reentry into the world, where his dream of soft vengeance was realized with the achievement of democracy in South Africa. This book captures the spirit of a remarkable man: his enormous optimism, his commitment to social justice, and his joyous wonder at the life that surrounds him. A new preface and epilogue reflect on the making of Abby Ginzberg’s documentary film titled <I>Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa.</I> (For information about the film, see www.softvengeancefilm.org.)

Transmedia Frictions

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Editors Marsha Kinder and Tara McPherson present an authoritative collection of essays on the continuing debates over medium specificity and the politics of the digital arts. Comparing the term «transmedia» with «transnational,» they show that the movement beyond specific media or nations does not invalidate those entities but makes us look more closely at the cultural specificity of each combination. In two parts, the book stages debates across essays, creating dialogues that give different narrative accounts of what is historically and ideologically at stake in medium specificity and digital politics. Each part includes a substantive introduction by one of the editors.<BR /><BR /> Part 1 examines precursors, contemporary theorists, and artists who are protagonists in this discursive drama, focusing on how the transmedia frictions and continuities between old and new forms can be read most productively: N. Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich redefine medium specificity, Edward Branigan and Yuri Tsivian explore nondigital precursors, Steve Anderson and Stephen Mamber assess contemporary archival histories, and Grahame Weinbren and Caroline Bassett defend the open-ended mobility of newly emergent media.<BR /><BR /> In part 2, trios of essays address various ideologies of the digital: John Hess and Patricia R. Zimmerman, Herman Gray, and David Wade Crane redraw contours of race, space, and the margins; Eric Gordon, Cristina Venegas, and John T. Caldwell unearth database cities, portable homelands, and virtual fieldwork; and Mark B.N. Hansen, Holly Willis, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Guillermo Gómez-Peña examine interactive bodies transformed by shock, gender, and color.<BR /><BR /> An invaluable reference work in the field of visual media studies, <I>Transmedia Frictions</I> provides sound historical perspective on the social and political aspects of the interactive digital arts, demonstrating that they are never neutral or innocent.