The Gendered Self: LGBTQ+ Narratives in Global Media, Volume II

Edited by Tamanna M. Shah, Ohio University and Sonali Jha, Ohio University

'The Gendered Self: LGBTQ+ Narratives in Global Media, Volume II' challenges the restrictive frameworks that have long defined gender and sexuality. Moving beyond simplistic dichotomies, this volume explores how LGBTQ+ identities are shaped, represented, and contested across diverse cultural, historical, and political contexts. Through case studies from Turkey, the United States, China, and India, contributors reveal the lived complexities of queer experience. Chapters trace transgender journeys of identity transformation, dissect the weaponization of queer bodies in moral panics, and analyze the digital self-representations of Chinese gay men. Others investigate how Indian OTT platforms and Malayalam cinema expand space for queer narratives, while historical accounts of activists like Paula Grossman illustrate the fraught relationship between representation, activism, and backlash. Across these explorations, the volume highlights how media, politics, and cultural traditions simultaneously affirm and erase queer lives. It uncovers the deep roots of erasure in mythology and religion, while also showing how digital platforms and popular culture create new opportunities for resistance and recognition. This collection insists that the “gendered self” must be understood as fluid, intersectional, and culturally situated, pushing readers to reimagine identity beyond binaries and toward broader visions of inclusion and justice.

Colonial Stockholm Syndrome

Navigating Identity, Loyalty, and Resistance in Puerto Rico

Denise Zubizarreta

'Colonial Stockholm Syndrome: Navigating Identity, Loyalty, and Resistance in Puerto Rico” by Denise Zubizarreta offers a critical examination of Puerto Rico’s enduring colonial legacy under both Spanish and American rule. This book explores the profound psychological and sociopolitical effects of centuries of colonization on Puerto Rican identity, illuminating how the island’s people have been conditioned to navigate complex loyalties and resistances in the face of systemic oppression. Through the innovative framework of Colonial Stockholm Syndrome, Zubizarreta analyzes how Puerto Ricans have historically reconciled their dual loyalties—first to the Spanish Empire and later to the United States—while confronting the ongoing challenges of inequality and dependency. The narrative delves into pivotal moments in Puerto Rican history, from the Spanish colonial era and the struggle for autonomy, to the American occupation beginning in 1898, and the current debates surrounding statehood and independence. Positioned within the broader discourse on colonialism and postcolonial studies, this work stands out for its unique approach to understanding Puerto Rico’s complex colonial history. By integrating historical analysis, personal narratives, and critical theory, Zubizarreta provides a comprehensive and accessible exploration of how colonial power dynamics continue to shape Puerto Rico’s national identity and political future. This book is an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and professionals in Latin American and Caribbean studies, political science, history, and cultural studies. It serves as a key reference for understanding the psychological and cultural dimensions of colonization, making it suitable for classroom adoption, academic research, and broader discussions on decolonization, identity, and resistance. 'Colonial Stockholm Syndrome: Navigating Identity, Loyalty, and Resistance in Puerto Rico' is an essential contribution to the literature on colonialism and its enduring impacts, offering new insights into one of the oldest colonies in the modern world.

Men and Masculinities in the Global South

A Southern Perspective

Edited by José Loureiro, Candido Mendes University

'Men and Masculinities in the Global South: A Southern Perspective' is a pioneering collection that places Southern voices, practices, and contexts at the centre of global masculinities research. For too long, the field of Men and Masculinities Studies (MMS) has been shaped by theories generated in the Global North. This volume responds by foregrounding scholarship rooted in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and other Southern regions, showing that the Global South is not a periphery but a vibrant source of theoretical innovation and critical practice. Organised in two parts, the book moves from thematic analyses to regionally grounded case studies. Part I examines key issues such as the history of MMS in the North and South, male healthcare, violence, activism, music, and literature. Part II highlights the lived realities of masculinities (geography of masculinities) across Chile, India, Madagascar, Mozambique, Zambia, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam, among other locations, illustrating how local histories and political economies shape gendered experiences in diverse ways. Contributors engage both with established frameworks – such as Raewyn Connell’s Southern Theory, among others – and with fresh conceptual tools that expand comparative and transnational research. Equally distinctive is the book’s collaborative method. Emerging from an open call for chapters, it fosters an “invisible college” of scholars, activists, and practitioner-researchers working across disciplines, languages, and borders. This approach not only diversifies the field but also strengthens South–South and South–North exchanges in MMS. Accessible and rigorous, this collection will serve undergraduate and postgraduate students in Gender Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Development, and Public Health. It is equally relevant for NGOs, educators, policymakers, and professionals engaged in gender justice, health, and violence prevention. As a reference text, teaching aid, and catalyst for new scholarship, 'Men and Masculinities in the Global South' affirms the South as an indispensable site of knowledge production and a driver of global debates on gender and social change.

Manet’s Ironic Duplicity: Hamlet, Baudelaire, and Masculinity

James H. Rubin, Stony Brook, State University of New York

The painter Edouard Manet (1832-1883) was a central figure for momentous and lasting changes in the realm of art that still resound today. His art speaks directly to the philosophical issues and political conflicts of his own time and is therefore deeply embedded in the development of modernity. 'Manet’s Ironic Duplicity' focuses on that situation and the historically conscious artist’s sometimes ambivalent struggle for authenticity. Rather than another full chronological monograph, the book is an interdisciplinary study organized around key concepts. It reframes the major, and sometimes disparate issues in Manet scholarship by focusing on a never-before-considered overriding theme—duplicity—which itself is multiple in its manifestations and variants, hence 'duplicities'. Reversing the usual narrative, this study deconstructs and enlightens the myth of the heroic artist struggling for individual and original vision by revealing how so much of Manet’s creativity and irony was prompted by frustrations due to repressive politics, censorship, and challenges to his sense of self. A key aspect of the latter was his masculinity. Although Manet’s association with the ideas of the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire is well known, never has Baudelaire’s essay 'On the Essence of Laughter and the Comic in the Visual Arts' been brought to bear on the concept of irony in Manet’s work. Given Baudelaire’s rapprochement between actors and artists, as well as Manet’s familiarity with the theatrical milieu, the book focuses on Manet’s two little-studied representations of 'Hamlet' as both the starting and end point of its analysis. It then concludes with a re-reading of the painter’s illustrated letters to women as a dissimulation of his final, fatal illness in order to maintain his masculine honor.

Redacción académica en la carrera de literatura

Manual de escritura para estudiantes de letras y futuros críticos literarios

Alan Estefan Gutiérrez, Purdue University

Este es uno de los pocos manuales en español enfocados, de principio a fin, en la escritura sobre literatura a nivel universitario, si no es que quizá el único, hasta el momento de su publicación. Influido por el movimiento Writing in the Disciplines (WID), plantea que la escritura sobre literatura es distinta a la de otras carreras, incluso de las humanísticas (p. ej., historia o filosofía), por lo que un estudiante de literatura necesita familiarizarse con las prácticas propias de su campo. Escrito en un lenguaje claro, expone en detalle los temas que un estudiante debe conocer para escribir crítica literaria en español: desde ortografía y gramática hasta los géneros más comunes que los profesores piden en clase, pasando por procesos de escritura, tipos de evidencia en la crítica literaria y los usos y lineamientos del formato MLA en español. Su tesis básica es simple: para escribir en los estudios literarios, debemos leer, pensar y escribir como críticos literarios. Compuesto por trece capítulos, el libro está diseñado para acompañar al estudiante en todo momento de sus estudios: desde los primeros semestres de la licenciatura hasta la tesis doctoral, si es que decide convertirse en académico profesional. El manual está pensado para estudiantes de distintos niveles (pregrado y posgrado), tanto hablantes nativos como no nativos. Parte del hecho de que existen diversos manuales de teoría literaria que enseñan distintos enfoques para leer literatura, pero pocos enseñan a escribir sobre literatura en español. Con una perspectiva interdisciplinaria, este libro explora el punto de convergencia de tres actividades interrelacionadas —la escritura, la lectura y la crítica literaria— para producir textos. Además, argumenta que nuestras emociones —como la ansiedad o el bloqueo del escritor— influyen en nuestra habilidad para escribir, por lo que ofrece estrategias generales para lidiar con ellas y con la procrastinación. Todo esto con el fin de compartir con los estudiantes del siglo XXI el mayor número posible de herramientas para escribir en los fascinantes pero exigentes estudios literarios y hacerlo con éxito.

Developing Deans: Transforming Academic Leadership

Edited by L. Lynn Vidler, University of Colorado Colorado Springs

'Developing Deans: Transforming Academic Leadership' brings a fresh perspective to the development of higher education deans. Recent books on the deanship focus on ‘becoming’ or ‘being’ a dean, focusing the responsibility of the deanship ‘on the individual’. That is, if you want to become a dean or be an effective dean, this is what ‘you’ must do. This new volume places the onus of developing deans squarely on higher education itself. We know that, in the future, we will need new deans. We also know that we want those deans to be tenured full professors. What are we doing to develop new, effective deans and how might we do that ‘intentionally’ and effectively? This edited volume includes empirical research, case studies and first-person narratives aimed at highlighting methods and practices designed to develop fundamental leadership skills for university deans who create inclusive, collaborative and cross-functional organizational cultures. Practitioners, researchers and scholars address questions such as: How do deans learn to lead effectively? Is this the optimal developmental path? How might we scale leadership development as a practice across higher education? The volume is divided into an introduction plus three sections, with several chapters per section. Section One features approaches that focus on the development of department chairs as a preparation for dean-level leadership. Section Two focuses on opportunities and experiences at the campus level used in strategic ways to intentionally develop future deans. Section Three supplements the first two sections with practical suggestions for individuals who are interested in preparing themselves for a deanship. 'Developing Deans' may serve as a reference for anyone hoping to design or improve a leadership development program on their campus, including current presidents, chancellors, associate vice chancellors, provosts, deans and prospective deans. Other readers may include leadership professionals, researchers, consultants and leaders both inside and outside higher education.

Manet’s Ironic Duplicity: Hamlet, Baudelaire, and Masculinity

James H. Rubin, Stony Brook, State University of New York

The painter Edouard Manet (1832-1883) was a central figure for momentous and lasting changes in the realm of art that still resound today. His art speaks directly to the philosophical issues and political conflicts of his own time and is therefore deeply embedded in the development of modernity. 'Manet’s Ironic Duplicity' focuses on that situation and the historically conscious artist’s sometimes ambivalent struggle for authenticity. Rather than another full chronological monograph, the book is an interdisciplinary study organized around key concepts. It reframes the major, and sometimes disparate issues in Manet scholarship by focusing on a never-before-considered overriding theme—duplicity—which itself is multiple in its manifestations and variants, hence 'duplicities'. Reversing the usual narrative, this study deconstructs and enlightens the myth of the heroic artist struggling for individual and original vision by revealing how so much of Manet’s creativity and irony was prompted by frustrations due to repressive politics, censorship, and challenges to his sense of self. A key aspect of the latter was his masculinity. Although Manet’s association with the ideas of the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire is well known, never has Baudelaire’s essay 'On the Essence of Laughter and the Comic in the Visual Arts' been brought to bear on the concept of irony in Manet’s work. Given Baudelaire’s rapprochement between actors and artists, as well as Manet’s familiarity with the theatrical milieu, the book focuses on Manet’s two little-studied representations of 'Hamlet' as both the starting and end point of its analysis. It then concludes with a re-reading of the painter’s illustrated letters to women as a dissimulation of his final, fatal illness in order to maintain his masculine honor.

Social Resilience

Critical Responses to Challenges and Change

Edited by Sara Kauko, Lund University, Sweden et al.

'Social Resilience: Critical Responses to Change and Challenges' is an edited volume intended for researchers and post-graduate students interested in studying social resilience from a multi-disciplinary, social scientific perspective. The volume consists of eight chapters that explore the concept from diverse disciplinary angles employing different theoretical and methodological approaches. Representing the fields of psychology, anthropology, social work, sociology of law, and legal studies, the authors discuss how social resilience manifests in different circumstances and contexts and what it means both in theory and practice. Thematically, these discussions concern migration, sexual minority experiences, environmental and economic crises, and the relationality and processuality of the concept as both an analytical tool and a unit of analysis in and of itself. Most research on social resilience follows the socio-ecological systems paradigm that defines (social) resilience as an ‘adaptive capacity’ to cope with and overcome adversities. While some chapters in this book adhere to this, others advocate for a more process-oriented and dynamic approach, focusing not so much on how people build resilience but rather how people act across time and space and in relation to others when facing disruptions to normalcy or outstanding crises. Here, the volume offers a tacit critique of the neoliberal model of conceptualizing resilience as a normative concept; an ideal way to be, and explains what research on resilience might look like if it instead centers on our continuous being.

#MenAreTrash. #AmINext? #SayHerName

Feminist Rage, Digital Activism and Gendered Violence in Southern Africa

Kutlwano B. L. Mokgwathi, University of the Western Cape, South Africa

This book explores gender-based violence in Southern Africa, specifically focusing on male violence against women, children, and the LGBTQ+ community. It examines how women in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, particularly in South Africa, utilize media technologies to mobilize, organize, raise political awareness, and amplify protests. Key to this discussion are hashtags such as #MenAreTrash, #AmINext, and #SayHerName, which shed light on various forms of violence, including intimate partner violence, community violence, and state violence. The book situates these practices within the historical contexts of colonialism and apartheid, framing violence as a communicative act that shapes everyday life in the region. It further links the practices of digital activism to broader traditions of social movements and feminist struggles. In agreement with African feminists, it posits that feminism on the continent is an action-oriented practice that arises from women’s collective efforts toward liberation. This viewpoint lays the groundwork for understanding digital Black feminism in Southern Africa as part of a larger trajectory of cyberfeminism and Black feminist theory. By utilizing the term Africana, the book stresses the connections between Africa and the African diaspora, emphasizing the significance of transnational linkages in ongoing struggles for liberation. The book explores the persistence of male violence and proposes practical solutions aimed at guiding policy development and promoting societal reform. As such, it represents a significant contribution to feminist scholarship and enriches the body of feminist literature from the SADC region by incorporating the advancements in media technologies in the pursuit of social justice.

Baquaqua: Una voz desde las profundidades de la diáspora africana y la resistencia a la esclavitud

Edición bilingüe de la biografía de Baquaqua

Carmen J. Jiménez, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua

'Baquaqua: una voz desde las profundidades de la diáspora africana y la resistencia a la esclavitud,' edición bilingüe de la biografía de Baquaqua brings to life the extraordinary testimony of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, an enslaved African man whose life spanned multiple continents and systems of bondage. Born in present-day Benin, Baquaqua was abducted into slavery in Africa, sold in Brazil, and later transported to the United States, where he eventually secured his freedom and dictated his autobiography in 1854. His narrative offers a rare, first-person account of slavery as a global system connecting Africa, Latin America, and North America. This bilingual Spanish–English edition is the first Spanish translation of Baquaqua’s autobiography, filling a significant gap in Spanish-language scholarship on slave narratives. Unlike Caribbean-centered accounts such as Mary Prince’s narrative, Baquaqua’s life story uniquely documents enslavement across three continents and highlights African agency, Islamic identity, resistance, and survival within the Atlantic world. With a scholarly introduction in Spanish, this edition is designed for classroom adoption and research in African diaspora studies, Afro-Latin American and Brazilian history, Atlantic world history, Black studies, Islamic studies, and comparative literature. At the same time, Baquaqua’s clear, personal narrative makes the text accessible to undergraduate and secondary students, as well as to general readers interested in slavery, freedom, and historical memory. This volume serves as a vital teaching, research, and reference tool that humanizes the global dimensions of enslavement and foregrounds a voice long absent from Spanish-language discourse. Baquaqua: una voz desde las profundidades de la diáspora africana y la resistencia a la esclavitud, edición bilingüe de la biografía de Baquaqua da vida al extraordinario testimonio de Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, un hombre africano esclavizado cuya vida abarcó múltiples continentes y sistemas de esclavitud. Nacido en lo que hoy es Benín, Baquaqua fue secuestrado y llevado a la esclavitud en África, vendido en Brasil y posteriormente trasladado a Estados Unidos, donde finalmente obtuvo su libertad y dictó su autobiografía en 1854. Su narrativa ofrece un raro testimonio en primera persona sobre la esclavitud como un sistema global que conecta África, América Latina y América del Norte. Esta edición bilingüe español–inglés es la primera traducción al español de la autobiografía de Baquaqua, cubriendo una laguna significativa en los estudios en español sobre relatos de esclavos. A diferencia de los testimonios centrados en el Caribe, como la narrativa de Mary Prince, la historia de vida de Baquaqua documenta de manera única la esclavitud a lo largo de tres continentes y resalta la agencia africana, la identidad islámica, la resistencia y la supervivencia dentro del mundo atlántico. Con una introducción académica en español, esta edición está pensada para su adopción en el aula y para la investigación en estudios sobre la diáspora africana, historia afro-latinoamericana y brasileña, historia del mundo atlántico, estudios sobre personas negras, estudios islámicos y literatura comparada. Al mismo tiempo, la narrativa clara y personal de Baquaqua hace que el texto sea accesible para estudiantes universitarios y de secundaria, así como para lectores generales interesados en la esclavitud, la libertad y la memoria histórica. Este volumen constituye una herramienta fundamental de enseñanza, investigación y referencia que humaniza las dimensiones globales de la esclavitud y da voz a una perspectiva largamente ausente en el discurso en español.

The Analog Revisited

Questioning the Technical Image in a Digital Age

Edited by renée c. hoogland, Wayne State University

This collection of essays explores the complexities of the photographic image in the wake of the digital turn. While the digital image has, in effect, effaced the necessity for a pre-existing “reality,” the presumed indexical function of the photographic image has by no means disappeared—technical images continue to organize, if not generate, our shifting modes of perception. How do we reconsider analog photographs, given that they can and are likely to show up on a variety of digital platforms? How do we re-view technical images that make the invisible visible, given that current imaging technologies generate new visualities as such? How does the digital force us to reconceptualize the analog? Individual chapters engage with a range of technical images approached from various critical and/or theoretical perspectives. One focuses on composite photographic portraits in eugenics and in contemporary art through Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of facility. Another assumes a pedagogical approach that pursues the photographic as a metaphor for knowledge practices through staging embodied encounters with digital living. Another explores the work of the artwork through a study of contemporary art photography by means of object-oriented ontology and new aesthetic realism. Yet another presents an infographic genealogy that tracks the technical image across a modernist telematic media-verse. One chapter offers a critical exploration of a silent film hero through her various analog and digital incarnations. Another explores a Lacanian-inspired perspective on the consequences of the shift from analog to digital for the subjects in front of the camera, the posers. One chapter focuses on the analog Anthropocene through an investigation of an Italian film factory and its material and human legacies. A final contribution investigates the relationship between photography and disaster through a discussion of a triple disaster—the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident that occurred in Japan in 2011.

Re-Evaluations in Feminism and Contemporary Art

Volume 1

Edited by Katy Deepwell

It could be said all new research contains a “re-evaluation” of past work but these two volumes attempt a re-evaluation of feminist research in contemporary art as it has developed over the last 50 years in relation to different local/global dynamics and/or about certain artists, artworks or exhibitions. Feminism(s) aim was to interrogate existing histories and provide significant corrections to what constitutes “history”. The two volumes explore some of the ways feminism(s)’ challenges have changed museums’ curatorial practices, critical writing and art history and how feminism itself has been transformed over time and its presence in many locations. Feminism’s absence from the stories told today about the recent past and present of contemporary art represents a starting point for these essays to explore the different strategies that have been attempted in cultural and political terms and to offer fresh assessments. Their re-evaluation of artists, artworks and exhibitions goes beyond questions of reputation or recognition, to embrace questions about identifying issues in feminist research, engaging in collective work and re-examining the personal in relation to politics/aesthetics. These volumes include different voices and perspectives on feminism and contemporary art from many parts of the world by academics, critics, artists, curators and researchers. Volume 1 has three sections that each address local and transnational issues in interpretations of feminism and amongst exhibiting artists through considering local/global dynamics and/or national frameworks (section 1); feminist cultural politics within exhibitions and writing exhibition histories (section 2) and within histories of conflicts in different local/national situations (section 3). The writers come from North Macedonia, UK, Iran, USA, China, Poland, Austria, The Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Latin America and Latvia – and their work engages work undertaken in Japan, Thailand, France, Vietnam, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil.

Send Us Out

The Church on Mission through Hospitality

Kathy Hulin, Trinity Anglican Seminary

People who are faithful and committed to their church often have a longing for others to feel the same way. They have a palpable hope for the church to be full and a desire for others to be spiritually enriched by God. 'Send Us Out: The Church on Mission through Hospitality' connects the reader with that desire for the church to be a vibrant, hospitable, and growing body of believers in Christ. The reader will be taken on a journey to consider those who have not fallen in love with the church and to grow awareness and compassion for connecting with them as God does with humankind. Inspired by texts such as 'Incarnational Ministry' by Samuel Wells and 'Surprise the World' by Michael Frost, 'Send Us Out' stirs passions for mission and evangelism through presence and intentionality, learning how to be with strangers. The journey includes a practical theology that clergy and laity alike can incorporate into daily living. The practical nature of 'Send Us Out' teaches a spiritual understanding of Christian hospitality through language, biblical study, ministry examples and models, reflection, and action. Readers may wish to form study groups for sharing in the end-of-chapter activities and discussions. The church will be strengthened in a call for each member to be sent out, revealing God as Host to a world learning to be reconciled as guests.

Passionate aging

A tender revolt

Guido Cuyvers, Thomas More University College, Belgium

In a world where people are living longer and healthier lives, 'Passionate Aging' offers a fresh, empowering perspective on what it means to grow older. This engaging and insightful book explores the opportunities, challenges, and responsibilities of aging, aiming to dispel stereotypes and inspire both individuals and society to reimagine the later stages of life. Through a mix of research, practical advice, and personal narratives, the book serves as a guide for making the most of our extended years.

Cultural Politics of Childhood and Youth

Global Perspectives

Edited by Chandrabali Dutta, Hiralal Mazumdar Memorial College For Women, Kolkata, India and Lefranc Joseph, The State University of Haiti, Haiti

This work offers a comprehensive exploration of how childhood and youth are understood within contemporary social theory, emphasizing the major intellectual shifts that have transformed these fields over the past three decades. Moving beyond traditional developmental perspectives that portrayed children as passive recipients of socialization and youth as a brief transition to adulthood, the text draws on the “new social studies of childhood” and critical youth studies to argue that both childhood and youth are socially constructed categories. Rather than universal or biologically fixed stages, they are shaped by historical contexts, institutional arrangements, and unequal power relations. Central to the analysis is the concept of cultural politics, which highlights how meanings, identities, and representations of children and young people are produced, circulated, and contested. The work demonstrates how media narratives, state policies, educational systems, and global market forces frame childhood and youth in contradictory ways—at times idealizing them as innocent and hopeful, and at other times depicting them as deviant, risky, or problematic. Such representations are shown to reflect broader ideologies of nationhood, gender, modernity, and economic productivity. The text further underscores the importance of intersectionality, explaining how class, caste, race, gender, sexuality, disability, language, and nationality intersect to shape diverse and unequal experiences of growing up. It also examines the impact of globalization, neoliberal economic restructuring, migration, and digital technologies in reshaping young lives, generating both new opportunities and new vulnerabilities. Importantly, the work foregrounds agency, emphasizing that children and youth actively negotiate, reinterpret, and sometimes resist structural constraints in everyday contexts. By integrating insights from sociology, education, psychology, and cultural studies, the volume advances an interdisciplinary, decolonial, and context-sensitive framework for understanding the complex realities of childhood and youth in contemporary societies.

Millie Gone to Brazil

Femicide and migration in early 20th century Barbados - Brazil

Elaine P. Rocha, The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados

'Millie Gone to Brazil' is the title of one of the most popular folk songs in Barbados. Written in the early 20th century by an unknown author, the song has travelled with Barbadian migrants to Cuba, the United States of America, Canada and England. It tells the story of a young woman – Millie – killed by her lover, who claimed that she had left Barbados to go to Brazil. This book focuses on the killings of Millicent Gittens, murdered in Barbados in 1916 and of Christine Minggs, a Barbadian immigrant murdered in Brazil in 1924. As a backdrop to those crimes, it depicts the poverty and marginality among Black populations during the post-abolition period in Barbados and Brazil, emphasizing the low status of black women and their vulnerabilities. To understand the vulnerability of Black Barbadian women. At the turn of the 20th century, economic, social and political exclusion drove thousands of people to emigrate from the small islands of the Caribbean in search of a better life. Black immigrants, although much necessary labor force, faced discrimination and limited opportunities to improve their lives, for women, life was harder. Who speaks on behalf of the dead women? In criminal processes, they are the victim, the corpse, not a person. 'Millie Gone to Brazil' sheds some light on the anonymous lives of Black people from lower classes in Barbados and examines a not well-known migration path of West Indians to the rainforest region of Brazil. Women and men struggled to make a life in Barbados and in Brazil, working, loving, building families, facing conflicts. Some survived, some perished. Scraps of their stories were registered in the pages of newspapers, in police reports, in criminal processes, and in popular songs. Some of those stories are narrated in this book.

The Spirit of Marronage

Expressions of Afrikan Indigenous Self-Determination

Edited by Diana J. Fox, Bridgewater State University et al.

'The Spirit of Marronage: Expressions of Afrikan Indigenous Self-Determination' chronicles the rise of the United Maroon Indigenous Peoples (UMIP), a global movement rooted in the spiritual and political legacies of Afrikan-descended Indigenous communities. Interweaving scholarly discussions, critical personal narrative, poetry, visual art, and Indigenous curricula, the book explores sovereignty through land-based relations, communal governance, and sacred practices. It documents pivotal Maroon gatherings and outlines UMIP’s six founding pillars: Kpaale (Diasporic Citizenship and Spirituality), Mbongi (Learning Together), Uhuru (Freedom and Reparations), Gayap (Sovereignty through Food, Land, and Water), Ujima (Collective Responsibility), and Livity (Living Maroon Values). Serving as both an archive for Maroons and a guide for Indigenous Peoples reclaiming culture, it calls for shifts in academic engagement toward authentic allyship—centering Indigenous knowledges to transform relationships from transactional to reciprocal, and analyses from removed to restorative. A vital resource for educators, researchers, and activists pursuing ecological and social justice.

Dying for the Dawn

Martyrs, Narratives and Social Change in 20th Century Latin America

Edited by Marisol Lopez-Menendez, Universidad Iberoamericana-Mexico City, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia-DEH, México

In a century stained by revolution, dictatorship, and neoliberal violence, ordinary men and women became extraordinary witnesses—dying so that others might live free. From the bullet-riddled Cristero battlefields of Mexico to the bloodied streets where Óscar Romero fell, from Chico Mendes’s Amazonian stand to the unmarked graves of Chile’s forgotten priests and the deadly migrant trails of today’s Via Crucis—this collection rewrites the meaning of martyrdom for our time. Edited by Marisol Lopez-Menendez, 'Dying for the Dawn' brings together leading scholars to reveal how martyrial stories are not relics of the past but living weapons: shaping politics, igniting social movements, redefining gender and memory, and challenging the very border between faith and resistance. Here you’ll meet worker-martyrs, children saints, environmental prophets, disappeared priests, and the “neo-liberal martyrs” dying at the hands of borders and cartels—figures whose deaths still fuel protests, pilgrimages, and demands for justice across Latin America and its diaspora. Blending riveting history, sharp sociology, and unflinching cultural analysis, this is the book that finally connects the dots between ancient sacrifice and today’s struggles for human rights, migration justice, and democratic dignity. Perfect for readers of liberation theology, Latin American history, religious studies, and anyone who believes that courage can outlast bullets.

Not by Leviathan alone

An exercise in post-nation-state worlding

Madina Tlostanova, Linköping University, Sweden

The book is an open-ended, meta-critical reflection on the discrepancy between the nation-state as an institution and contemporary and future (geo)political, social, enviro-climatic, technological and onto-epistemic challenges, written primarily from the position of the systematically excluded from the identification frameworks of the nation-state. Epistemically, the work stems from the decolonial and indigenous critique of coloniality of knowledge and from feminist skepticism towards objectivist, rationalist thinking modes. The author invites the readers to imagine other possible ways of political organization that would contribute to extending life on Earth, and the paths to their implementation. Without aiming at an exhaustive overview of the existing opinions on this vast topic or offering a single correct recipe for the emerging post-state political development, the book experiments instead with various tools, stimulating the readers to relearn how to imagine politically. The established methods, such as thinking together and arguing with authors from different areas and disciplines - from postcolonial studies, decolonial feminist positions to indigenous and libertarian anarchist stances, from critical environmental humanities to techno-fix pseudo-solutions and neo-imperial geopolitical accounts, are intertwined with engaging conversations with political/social/cultural activists, artists and thinkers and with experimental speculative fiction using creative writing as a mode of inquiry. Through its co-creative interactive style, this trans- and post-disciplinary work invites the audience to engage in praxis beyond the actual reading of the book. The book can be used in undergraduate and graduate elective courses in migration studies, critical security studies, human geography, decolonial and postcolonial studies, environmental humanities. It will be of interest to social, political and cultural activists, artists and writers and to broader audiences concerned with the question of whether and how it is possible to live politically beyond the nation-state, without sliding into (neo)imperial, totalitarian or corporate specters.

Cultural differences in conceptualization of loss and grief as expressed by Americans and Poles

Kamila Midor

How do people put into words the experience of losing someone they love? This book offers a systematic, cross-cultural linguistic analysis of how loss and grief are conceptualized in American and Polish contexts, revealing both shared human patterns and culturally specific ways of expressing and processing bereavement. Drawing on qualitative data from nearly eighty participants who had lost a loved one to five years before participating in the study, the study examines the metaphors and conceptual blends through which individuals articulate their experiences of grief. Using the frameworks of conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual integration theory, the book identifies recurrent conceptual structures—such as absence, emptiness, pain, inanimate physical object, and journey—that speakers draw on to make sense of profound emotional disruption. While many of these schemas appear across both cultural groups, the analysis reveals important differences in their subtypes, linguistic realizations, and cultural meanings. Notably, some patterns challenge the dominant view of grief as exclusively negative, including personifications such as grief as a guest in American narratives and grief as a teacher in the Polish data. The book fills a significant interdisciplinary gap between linguistic research on metaphor and psychological scholarship on grief. It is the first work to develop empirically grounded conceptual models of loss and grief for American and Polish speakers based on qualitative linguistic data, offering a novel, culturally sensitive perspective on bereavement. Accessible yet theoretically rigorous, the book will be valuable as a research reference, a methodological model for qualitative metaphor analysis, and a resource for classroom use. It will appeal to scholars and students in cognitive linguistics, cultural studies, psycholinguistics, and cross-cultural communication, as well as to psychologists, therapists, counselors, social workers, and others working professionally with grief and loss.