Dana Lee Baker

How can society best respond to people with atypical neurological development? Should we concentrate on providing medical care, or on ensuring civil rights? Addressing these questions, Dana Lee Baker offers a provocative analysis of the ways that intersecting agendas—prevention, civil rights, providing specialized care, and celebrating disability culture—compete to make disability  More >

Gennifer Furst

Gennifer Furst provides the first comprehensive look at prison-based animal programs, an innovative  approach to rehabilitation that draws on the benefits of human-animal interactions. Analyzing a national survey of these programs and also presenting in-depth case studies, Furst pinpoints the mechanisms that transform prisoners’ lives and reduce the chances of recidivism. The result  More >

Nandini Deo and Duncan McDuie-Ra

Nandini Deo and Duncan McDuie-Ra explore India's vibrant civil society sector, focusing on the ways that it actually operates "on the ground." Offering an insightful analysis, they identify what influences the relative success or failure of various movements; and the tools that activists use to overcome obstacles; the traps that often derail efforts to frame, politicize, and  More >

Eric A. Goldman

From the early Yiddish silent movies, to the innovative Soviet-supported productions of the 1920s, to the Golden Age of the 1930s, to the present revival of the genre, Eric Goldman traces the history of Yiddish cinema and the people who shaped its development. Goldman viewed scores of films (some of them considered lost) and combed archives in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the United  More >

Tony Evans

Tony Evans critically investigates the theory and practice of human rights in the current global order. Evans covers a range of contentious debates as he considers critiques of the prevailing conceptions of human rights. He then explores the changing global context of human rights issues, the nature and status of human rights within that context, and recent institutional responses. With its  More >

James S. Lai

Where are Asian Americans gaining political power in the United States today? And how? Looking beyond traditional conceptions of immigrant political behavior in "gateway" cities, James Lai comprehensively analyzes how Asian Americans are not only winning elected office, but also sustaining representation, in places as diverse as California, Texas, Wisconsin, and Maryland. Lai's  More >

Noel Foster

Why did a clique of Mauritanian officers risk their lives to overthrow the autocrat they had served for twenty years, only to cede power to an elected civilian? And having won acclaim for their commitment to a process of democratic transition, why did most of these officers join a year later to overthrow the newly elected president? Had the international community been fooled by a military  More >

Andreas Tsolakis

In 2005, two decades after President Victor Paz Estenssoro's New Economic Policy heralded the beginning of a profound transformation for Bolivia, violence had become endemic in the country, the economy was weak, and political corruption was flourishing. Evo Morales was elected to the presidency in a climate of intense social conflict and disorder, promising to deconstruct the entire political  More >

Kateryna Pishchikova

Considerable material and human resources are devoted to building democratic institutions around the world. Why, then, do assistance programs fail to meet their proclaimed goals? And why aren't these programs changed or abandoned when they fail? Using US assistance to women's NGOs in postcommunist Ukraine as a case study, Kateryna Pishchikova shows why democracy promotion programs have a  More >

Cameron D. Lippard and Charles A. Gallagher, editors

How has the dramatic influx of Latino populations in the US South challenged and changed traditional conceptions of race? Are barriers facing Latinos the same as those confronted by African Americans? The authors of Being Brown in Dixie use the Latino experience of living and working in the South to explore the shifting complexities of race relations. Systematically considering such central issues  More >