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53069 results in American studies

Page 1 of 2654

Shaping a Peaceful World
  • The United States and Post-conflict Diplomacy since 1789
  • Edited by Kelly M. McFarland, Andrew L. Johns, Brian C. Etheridge
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2026
    Print publication:
    30 November 2026
  • The United States has fought wars throughout its history. But how has it attempted to shape a peaceful world in the wake of these conflicts? This volume explores the long US history of post-conflict diplomacy – from the early republic, through the aftermath of World War II, to recent global engagements. Through richly detailed essays, it examines how power, race, and individual agency shaped US efforts to rebuild relationships after war. Moving beyond simplistic narratives, the book reveals the complexity of forging peace and its unintended consequences. It highlights pivotal moments when alliances were born, rivalries transformed, and non-governmental actors influenced outcomes as much as statesmen. Essential for scholars, policymakers, and readers seeking insight into how past strategies inform present decisions, this work reframes America's diplomatic legacy and offers lessons for future interventions. Bold, comparative, and deeply researched, it illuminates the challenges – and possibilities – of building peace after conflict.

Even in the Lawless Seas
  • Legal Imagination and Oceanic History in the World of Herman Melville
  • Matthew Crow
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2026
    Print publication:
    30 November 2026

Camp Ford's Civil War
  • Captivity, Community, and Nature in the Dark Corner of the Confederacy
  • Matthew M. Stith
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2026
    Print publication:
    31 October 2026

The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Cold War
  • Edited by Art Redding
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2026
    Print publication:
    31 October 2026

Democracy Speaks
  • School Boards, Public Discourse, and the Fight to Be Heard
  • Jonathan E. Collins
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2026
    Print publication:
    31 October 2026
  • School board meetings have become the battleground for some of the most contentious political battles in the United States, but their importance extends beyond current hot-button issues. In Democracy Speaks, Jonathan E. Collins offers a groundbreaking exploration of how local school boards shape public voice, democratic accountability, and educational equity. Collins presents the importance of public discourse at school board meetings as central to effective school board governance, and more broadly shows how everyday civic spaces like school board meetings can either deepen or erode trust in government. The book also develops a new theoretical lens for thinking about democratic accountability in this setting - 'deliberative culture' - to trace how discursive norms can result in impactful school reform. At a time when public education is caught in political crossfire, this book offers a hopeful, research-driven framework for reimagining school governance as a site of meaningful public engagement.

The Color of Social Security
  • Race, Retirement, Disability, and Disparity
  • Jon C. Dubin
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2026
    Print publication:
    31 October 2026

Cooking for the Quarters
  • Enslaved Women and the Labor of Care in the Antebellum South
  • Emily West
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2026
    Print publication:
    31 October 2026
  • Women who prepared food for the enslaved, rather than enslavers, have been neglected in historical scholarship. Their labor within the quarters has been marginalized, belittled, and even ignored, because it fell within the remit of gendered care and nurture. In this book, Emily West illustrates how these mostly older women performed vital roles in slaveholding sites, as their enslavers increasingly tried to regulate food distribution, preparation, and consumption. Enslavers attempted to impose highly efficient, communal food regimes to minimize waste and time lost from work elsewhere. They routinely tasked older women with the feeding and care of infants, but also deployed them to prepare food for children and enslaved adults to eat collectively. Conversely, in the relative privacy of the quarters, where enslaved people preferred to eat, cooking became both a form of gendered exploitation, and an expression of love, empowerment, and pleasure.

A Queer Guide to Saving American Democracy
  • R. K. Maril
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026

Religion, Writing, and the Shaping of the Classic Maya World
  • Mallory E. Matsumoto
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026
  • The Classic Maya civilization (250–925 CE) in Mesoamerica innovated a hieroglyphic script that was written and read by people spread across hundreds of square kilometers and dozens of autonomous kingdoms over the course of more than a millennium. Yet, unlike other regions of the ancient world where writing was independently invented, the Maya area was never politically unified. In Religion, Writing, and the Shaping of the Classic Maya World, Mallory E. Matsumoto draws on hieroglyphic texts, imagery, and archaeological finds to reconstruct interactions through which the Classic Maya exchanged knowledge about their hieroglyphic script and how to use it. She argues that religion and ritual practice were central contexts for maintaining a coherent, mutually intelligible writing system in the absence of political centralization. The Classic Maya case challenges long-standing assumptions about the social forces underlying the origins of early writing. It also reveals religion's potential to shape human culture and technology. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

White Knuckling
  • Holding On in America's Racialized Political Economy
  • Tess Wise
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026
  • In White Knuckling, Tess Wise combines political economy, political development, and ethnography to develop a theory of systemic racism as a political process. Using a Racialized Political Economy (RPE) lens, she links institutions, material conditions, culture, and contestation to demonstrate how systemic racism both benefits and harms white middle-class families. Drawing on interviews with families and bankruptcy court records, she follows individuals under economic strain and experiencing 'white knuckling' as they work through debt to explore how financialization turns hardship into revenue. She reveals that the promised rehabilitation often fails, operating as hidden public-private welfare that can preserve some assets while entrenching precarity. Tracing scripts of deservingness and responsibility, Wise demonstrates how racism in political economy helps and hurts white middle-class Americans, blinding them to their racial privilege and undermining the mechanisms that would lead to race and class solidarity.

Energy and Economy in American Literature
  • Alan Ackerman
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026

The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of New Orleans
  • Edited by T. R. Johnson, Matthew Paul Smith
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026
  • This Cambridge Companion offers a rich range of contexts for studying the literary histories of New Orleans. Some of the essays offer a deep focus on the significance of iconic figures such as Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, and Kate Chopin. Other essays detail long traditions of writing not widely known beyond the city but that complicate our understanding of American literary history in new ways, as in the chapters on queer writers or Mardi Gras or the Asian presence in the city's literary imagination or how deadly nineteenth-century epidemics continue to shape the ways the world has come to read the city as a capital of Gothic horror fiction. These fresh perspectives on one of the most storied cities in the world are an essential resource for those who seek to piece together their own understanding of New Orleans as an historic and living flashpoint in the global literary imagination.

Metaphysical Revolutions in the Ancient Andes
  • Ritual, Persons, and Power from 1500 BC until the Conquest
  • Darryl Wilkinson
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    01 September 2027

Taming the Careerists
  • The Politics of Foreign Policy Implementation
  • Minju Kim
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • Over two million bureaucrats serve in the US federal government under various employment contracts. Minju Kim's Taming the Careerists asks how the design of those contracts – specifically, the features that strengthen or weaken job protections – shapes the behavior of bureaucrats and, in turn, American foreign policy. While past studies identify tools that help the president control the bureaucracy, Kim demonstrates that the president can additionally control the behavior of bureaucrats by weakening job protections, which makes bureaucrats more accountable to presidential preferences. The book shows that bureaucrats adjust how they implement policy based on the structure of their job protections, and that weakening these protections can unintentionally disrupt the stability of foreign economic policy. Drawing on administrative data, policy memos, interviews, and computational text analysis, Kim reveals the trade-off between accountability and stability, shedding light on the personnel management rules that quietly sustain the daily work of America's foreign policy bureaucracy.

Constitutional Law in Contemporary America
  • Institutions, Politics, and Processes
  • Volume 1, 3rd edition
  • David Schultz, John R. Vile, Michelle D. Deardorff
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • Students are challenged to stay ahead in today's ever-changing political environment. This third edition comprehensive and accessible casebook, designed specifically for undergraduates, integrates both the political science and legal perspectives of American constitutional law. Covering developments from the constitution's drafting through to the presidency of Donald Trump, the book balances doctrinal analysis with historical and political context. Key updates include expanded discussions of judicial review, judicial power, nationwide injunctions, and the elimination of Chevron deference in administrative law. New material addresses Native American sovereignty, congressional investigatory powers, presidential authority and criminal liability, and the evolving balance of power in foreign affairs and war powers. Additional coverage explores presidential and congressional budget authority, impeachment, and state power within the federal system. The text examines pressing contemporary issues such as public health, property rights, substantive due process, and eminent domain, providing students with the essential tools to critically analyze constitutional law.

The Cambridge Companion to Martin Amis
  • Edited by Gavin Keulks
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026

Reckoning the Racial Reckoning
  • From Backlash to Accountability after George Floyd
  • David Dante Troutt
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    06 August 2026
  • The demise of the 'racial reckoning' that followed George Floyd's death in 2020 occurred without definition, scrutiny or attempts to revive it. In this compelling new book, David Dante Troutt explores the 'what,' 'so what' and 'now what' of this period when much of the US sidelined the pandemic to confront racial inequality. It details how a rare focus on embedded racism shifted toward awareness, leaving deep disparities in wealth, health and policing unaddressed, and how this was overpowered by an enduring conservative backlash. Troutt unpacks how legal doctrine favored colorblindness over inequality, and examines government policies that created segregated zones of racial bargaining in health and wealth. The book also exposes deterrence-proof policing rules and explains the problems and promises of DEI. Reckoning the Racial Reckoning argues that democratic struggles over local resources are essential for creating justice and well-being for Black American communities, and ultimately for all Americans.

Destabilized
  • Why White Americans Accept Racist Political Rhetoric
  • Leah Christiani
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • In recent years, the United States has witnessed a resurgence in mainstream acceptance of overt, racist rhetoric from politicians. This increased tolerance arises despite previous evidence suggesting that white Americans reject racist appeals when they are explicit. Destabilized examines this shift and points to a perception of threat to white dominance as the root cause. The book finds that when white Americans feel their dominance in the racial hierarchy is unstable, their prejudice activates, and they seek to 'restabilize' the racial hierarchy by accepting negative, explicit racial appeals. Analyses of survey experiments, observational survey data, and political media demonstrate this phenomenon. Finding that this link exists among both white Republicans and white Democrats, Destabilized speaks broadly to the nature of whiteness as a racial identity rooted in the desire for dominance.

The Cambridge History of War and Society in America
  • Edited by Andrew J. Huebner, Jennifer D. Keene
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • This volume provides the most expansive interrogation to date of the field of war and society, offering a magisterial overview of the American experience of war from the colonial era to the War on Terror. It brings together leading scholars to examine how societies go to war, experience it, and invest it with meaning. Those ideas unfold across three thematic sections entitled 'War Times,' 'War Societies,' and 'War Meanings.' The essays scrutinize the symbiotic relationship between warfare and the armed forces on one side, and broader trends in political, social, cultural, and economic life on the other. They consider the radiating impact of war on individuals, communities, culture, and politics – and conversely, the projection of social patterns onto the military and wartime life. Across three sections, thirty chapters, and a roundtable discussion, the volume illuminates the questions, methodologies, and sources that exemplify war and society scholarship at its very best.

William Burroughs in Context
  • Edited by Oliver Harris, Davis Schneiderman, Alex Wermer-Colan
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • William Burroughs in Context offers the most comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of the iconic author to date and it captures the immense scope of Burroughs' radical vision and cultural influence. Moving far beyond the Beat Generation, this volume brings together 35 original essays that reframe Burroughs through his many identities: novelist, multimedia artist, queer visionary, drug theorist, and cultural provocateur. By organizing contributions around themes like space-time travel, technology, environmentalism, and creative collaboration, the book presents Burroughs as a uniquely situated figure at the crossroads of literature, science, philosophy, and pop culture. The contributors-drawn from leading voices in literary studies, media theory, cultural history, and the arts-offer readers fresh insights into both familiar and underexplored dimensions of Burroughs' oeuvre. An essential resource for scholars and fans alike, this landmark volume positions Burroughs as a central figure in understanding 20th-century counterculture and its ongoing 21st-century legacy

Page 1 of 2654