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Books > Humanities > History > History of other lands
This book introduces the policies surrounding legal gender
recognition of trans people in Kazakhstan. Generally, the research
in this sphere focuses on medical professions, described as
gatekeepers or judges deciding who fit the prescriptions of being a
woman or a man, and on trans people themselves, who are often
portrayed as victims. However, this process is more complex than
only describing the interaction of these two groups or by labelling
them either as gatekeepers or victims. The project provides a
critical approach and attempts to expand our understanding of the
process, the dynamics and the actors involved. This study will be
of interest to scholars of contemporary Kazakhstan, and of feminism
and LGBTQ activism more generally.
The Indus civilization flourished for half a millennium from about
2600 to 1900 BC, when it mysteriously declined and vanished from
view. It remained invisible for almost four thousand years, until
its ruins were discovered in the 1920s by British and Indian
archaeologists. Today, after almost a century of excavation, it is
regarded as the beginning of Indian civilization and possibly the
origin of Hinduism. The Indus: Lost Civilizations is an accessible
introduction to every significant aspect of an extraordinary and
tantalizing 'lost' civilization, which combined artistic
excellence, technological sophistication and economic vigour with
social egalitarianism, political freedom and religious moderation.
The book also discusses the vital legacy of the Indus civilization
in India and Pakistan today.
Distorted Descent examines a social phenomenon that has taken off
in the twenty-first century: otherwise white, French descendant
settlers in Canada shifting into a self-defined 'Indigenous'
identity. This study is not about individuals who have been
dispossessed by colonial policies, or the multi-generational
efforts to reconnect that occur in response. Rather, it is about
white, French-descendant people discovering an Indigenous ancestor
born 300 to 375 years ago through genealogy and using that ancestor
as the sole basis for an eventual shift into an 'Indigenous'
identity today. After setting out the most common genealogical
practices that facilitate race shifting, Leroux examines two of the
most prominent self-identified 'Indigenous' organizations currently
operating in Quebec. Both organizations have their origins in
committed opposition to Indigenous land and territorial
negotiations, and both encourage the use of suspect genealogical
practices. Distorted Descent brings to light to how these claims to
an 'Indigenous' identity are then used politically to oppose
actual, living Indigenous peoples, exposing along the way the
shifting politics of whiteness, white settler colonialism, and
white supremacy.
How an obscure Puritan sermon came to be seen as a founding
document of American identity and exceptionalism "For we must
consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill," John Winthrop
warned his fellow Puritans at New England's founding in 1630. More
than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into
a timeless celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop's
long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American
identity and exceptionalism? In As a City on a Hill, leading
American intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers tells the surprising
story of one of the most celebrated documents in the canon of the
American idea. In doing so, he brings to life the ideas Winthrop's
text carried in its own time and the sharply different yearnings
that have been attributed to it since. As a City on a Hill shows
how much more malleable, more saturated with vulnerability, and
less distinctly American Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity"
was than the document that twentieth-century Americans invented.
Across almost four centuries, Rodgers traces striking shifts in the
meaning of Winthrop's words-from Winthrop's own anxious reckoning
with the scrutiny of the world, through Abraham Lincoln's haunting
reference to this "almost chosen people," to the "city on a hill"
that African Americans hoped to construct in Liberia, to the era of
Donald Trump. As a City on a Hill reveals the circuitous,
unexpected ways Winthrop's words came to lodge in American
consciousness. At the same time, the book offers a probing
reflection on how nationalism encourages the invention of
"timeless" texts to straighten out the crooked realities of the
past.
This book provides an arresting interpretation of the history of
Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific from the earliest
settlements to the present. Usually viewed in isolation, these
societies are covered here in a single account, in which the
authors show how the peoples of the region constructed their own
identities and influenced those of their neighbours.
By broadening the focus to the regional level, this volume develops
analyses - of economic, social and political history - which
transcend
national boundaries. The result is a compelling work which both
describes the aspirations of European settlers and reveals how the
dispossessed and marginalized indigenous peoples negotiated their
own lives as best they could. The authors demonstrate that these
stories are not separate but rather strands of a single history.
In 1906, from the ice fields northwest of Greenland, Commander
Robert E. Peary spotted an unknown land in the distance. He called
it "Crocker Land". Scientists and explorers agreed that Peary had
found a new continent. Several years later, two of his disciples,
George Borup and Donald MacMillan-with the sponsorship of the
American Museum of Natural History-assembled a team to investigate.
They pitched their two-year mission as a scientific tour de force
to fill in the last blank space on the globe. But the Crocker Land
Expedition became a five-year ordeal that endured a fatal boating
accident, a drunken captain, a shipwreck, marooned rescue parties,
disease, dissension and a crewman-turned-murderer. Based on a trove
of unpublished letters, diaries and field notes, A Wretched and
Precarious Situation is a harrowing adventure.
This is a major, single-volume introduction to the whole of Ancient
Greek History. It covers the period from the Golden Age of Knossos
and Mycenae to the incorporation of Greece into the Roman empire in
the second century BC. The book combines narrative and
socio-economic history to cover all regions of Greece, including
territories on the edge of the Greek and Hellenistic worlds, as
well as the traditional centres such as Athens and Sparta.
"A History of Ancient Greece" provides students with an
accessible history of the region, combining accounts of the major
events with in-depth analyses of the underlying issues. The book is
designed explicitly for student use and contains numerous pedagogic
features including summaries of key issues, balanced accounts of
controversial points, useful discussions of Greek institutions,
chronologies and a glossary.
Written during the First World War, this book describes Romania's
role in World War I during the critical years of 1916 and 1917. The
book analyzes the situation of the Romanians living within the
borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time and the causes
for Romania's entry into the war. The author then discusses
Romania's contribution to the war effort during 1916 and the first
half of 1917. An important record of events for historians
interested in the First World War on the Eastern Front, it includes
several essential historical documents that illustrate the author's
account of the events of the time. The book also has a preface by
Albert Thomas, French minister of Armaments and War Production at
that time, and Maurice Muret. It is a valuable first-hand account
of Romania's involvement in World War I. The author, Nicolae
Petrescu-Comnene was an important Romanian diplomat of the interwar
period. He served as ambassador to Switzerland, Germany, and the
Vatican, as well as a delegate at the League of Nations, before
becoming foreign minister from 1938 to 1939. He authored numerous
studies on history, law, and politics.
More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of
websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere
between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought
willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M.
Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would
have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself.
Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly
understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations
helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin
shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers
largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a
significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a
rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights
and other realms. Levin also investigates the roles that African
Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including
personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that
regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march,
and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even
long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other
writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers,
an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs
counter to history.
Parisian Pauline Guyot (1805-1886), who wrote under the nom de
plume Camille Lebrun, published many novels, translations,
collections of tales, and articles in French magazines of her day.
Yet she has largely been forgotten by contemporary literary critics
and readers. Among her works is a hitherto-untranslated 1845 French
novel, Amitie et devouement, ou Trois mois a la Louisiane, or
Friendship and Devotion, or Three Months in Louisiana, a
moralizing, educational travelogue meant for a young adult
readership of the time. Lebrun's novel is one of the few
perspectives we have by a mid-nineteenth-century French woman
writer on the matters of slavery, abolition, race relations, and
white supremacy in France's former Louisiana colony. E. Joe Johnson
and Robin Anita White have recovered this work, providing a
translation, an accessible introduction, extensive endnote
annotations, and period illustrations. After a short preface meant
to educate young readers about the geography, culture, and history
of the southern reaches of the Louisiana Purchase, the novel tells
the tale of two teenaged, orphaned Americans, Hortense Melvil and
Valentine Arnold. The two young women, who characterize one another
as "sisters," have spent the majority of their lives in a Parisian
boarding school and return to Louisiana to begin their adult lives.
Almost immediately upon arrival in New Orleans, their close
friendship faces existential threats: grave illness in the form of
yellow fever, the prospect of marriage separating the two, and
powerful discrimination in the form of racial prejudice and
segregation.
While armies have seized enemy records and rare texts as booty
throughout history, it was only during World War II that an
unlikely band of librarians, archivists, and scholars traveled
abroad to collect books and documents to aid the military cause.
Galvanized by the events of war into acquiring and preserving the
written word, as well as providing critical information for
intelligence purposes, these American civilians set off on missions
to gather foreign publications and information across Europe. They
journeyed to neutral cities in search of enemy texts, followed a
step behind advancing armies to capture records, and seized Nazi
works from bookstores and schools. When the war ended, they found
looted collections hidden in cellars and caves. Their mission was
to document, exploit, preserve, and restitute these works, and
even, in the case of Nazi literature, to destroy them. In this
fascinating account, cultural historian Kathy Peiss reveals how
book and document collecting became part of the new apparatus of
intelligence and national security, military planning, and postwar
reconstruction. Focusing on the ordinary Americans who carried out
these missions, she shows how they made decisions on the ground to
acquire sources that would be useful in the war zone as well as on
the home front. These collecting missions also boosted the postwar
ambitions of American research libraries, offering a chance for
them to become great international repositories of scientific
reports, literature, and historical sources. Not only did their
wartime work have lasting implications for academic institutions,
foreign-policy making, and national security, it also led to the
development of today's essential information science tools.
Illuminating the growing global power of the United States in the
realms of intelligence and cultural heritage, Peiss tells the story
of the men and women who went to Europe to collect and protect
books and information and in doing so enriches the debates over the
use of data in times of both war and peace.
Mardi Gras Indians explores how sacred and secular expressions of
Carnival throughout the African diaspora came together in a
gumbo-sized melting pot to birth one of the most unique traditions
celebrating African culture, Indigenous peoples, and Black
Americans. Williams ties together the fragments of the ancient
traditions with the expressed experiences of the contemporary. From
the sangamentos of the Kongolese and the calumets of the various
tribes of the lower Mississippi River valley to one-on-one
interviews with today's Black masking tribe members, this book
highlights the spirit of resistance and rebellion upon which this
culture was built.
This fourth Rural Sociological Society decennial volume provides
advanced policy scholarship on rural North America during the
2010's, closely reflecting upon the increasingly global nature of
social, cultural, and economic forces and the impact of neoliberal
ideology upon policy, politics, and power in rural areas. The
chapters in this volume represent the expertise of an influential
group of scholars in rural sociology and related social sciences.
Its five sections address the changing structure of North American
agriculture, natural resources and the environment, demographics,
diversity, and quality of life in rural communities.
WBAA: 100 Years as the Voice of Purdue documents the fascinating
history of WBAA, Indiana's first radio station founded at Purdue
University in West Lafayette, Indiana, on April 4, 1922. Richly
illustrated with more than 150 photos, the book chronicles the
station's evolution over the years, while highlighting the staff,
students, and volunteers significant to WBAA's success. WBAA began
as a lab experiment conducted by Purdue electrical engineering
students in 1910. Later, the station became a vital method for
Purdue's Cooperative Extension Service to broadcast the knowledge
of the university, particularly agricultural news, to the people of
the state. From the 1960s to 1980s, WBAA aired Purdue basketball
and football games, with station manager John DeCamp as the "Voice
of the Boilermakers." In 1971, WBAA became a member station of
National Public Radio (NPR), offering popular programming such as
All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Listeners tuned into
WBAA to hear classical, jazz, and international music, along with
in-depth news reporting. Mayors and Purdue presidents aired weekly
programs. WBAA gave a voice to arts and community organizations.
Read about the invention of the first all-electronic television by
pioneering Purdue scientist Roscoe George; WBAA's long-running
School of the Air educational program deemed the "invisible
textbook"; and the Midwest Program on Airborne Television
Instruction (MPATI), an airplane that transmitted videos to schools
while flying over six Midwestern states in the 1960s. Famous WBAA
alumni include NBC sportscaster Chris Schenkel, comedian Durward
Kirby, Today Show newscaster Lew Wood, Indiana State Representative
Sheila Klinker, actress Karen Black, and actor George Peppard,
among others. From the vacuum tube era to the digital age, this
thoroughly researched book brings to light the intriguing
backstories of the esteemed one hundred-year history of WBAA.
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