The Legacies of Public-Sector Employment in the Civil Rights Movement
For decades, civil rights activists fought against employment discrimination and for a greater role for African Americans in municipal decision-making. As their influence in city halls across the country increased, activists took advantage of the Great Society-and the government jobs it created on the local level-to advance their goals. A New ......
The romance novel has the strange distinction of being the most popular but least respected of literary genres. While it remains consistently dominant in bookstores and on best-seller lists, it is also widely dismissed by the critical community. Scholars have alleged that romance novels help create subservient readers, who are largely women, by ......
A Musical View of the Universe is a study of the relationships between spoken myth and musical ritual in a native Brazilian community, the Carib-speaking Kalpalo of the Upper Xingu Basin. The book focuses on the meanings created and expressed through performance of artistic processes in which sound symbols provide a unifying interpretive matrix. ......
Toward the end of her life, Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) made a surprising disclosure. Instead of the critically lauded The Country of the Pointed Firs, Jewett declared her "best story" to be A Marsh Island (1885), a little-known novel. Why? One reason is that it demonstrates Jewett's range. Known primarily for her vignettes, Jewett accomplished ......
The Bible shaped nearly every aspect of Jewish life in the ancient world, from activities as obvious as attending synagogue to those which have lost their scriptural resonance in modernity, such as drinking water and uttering one's last words. And within a scriptural universe, no work exerted more force than the Psalter, the most cherished text ......
On the great influence of a valiant lord: "The companions, who see that good warriors are honored by the great lords for their prowess, become more determined to attain this level of prowess." On the lady who sees her knight honored: "All of this makes the noble lady rejoice greatly within herself at the fact that she has set her mind and heart ......
Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity
A Home Away from Home examines the significance of Caribbean American mutual aid societies and benevolent associations to the immigrant experience, particularly their implications for the formation of a Pan-Caribbean American identity and Black diasporic politics. At the turn of the twentieth century, New York City exploded with the establishment ......
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship ......