Ranging from the mid-19th century to the present, and from Edinburgh to Plymouth, this powerful collection explores the significance of locality in queer space and experiences in modern British history. The chapters cover a broad range of themes from migration, movement and multiculturalism; the distinctive queer social and political scenes of different cities; and the ways in which places have been reimagined through locally led community history projects. The book challenges traditional LGBTQ histories which have tended to conceive of queer experience in the UK as a comprising a homogeneous, national narrative. Edited by leading historians, the book foregrounds the voices of LGBTQ-identified people by looking at a range of letters, diaries, TV interviews and oral testimonies. It provides a unique and fascinating account of queer experiences in Britain and how they have been shaped through different localities.

Threads of the Unfolding Web is essential reading for scholars, students and the general reader interested in Javanese history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Little is known about the history of Java in this period, which witnessed the beginnings of major global economic, political, cultural and religious change. It was a time when Java saw the decline of the once powerful eastern Javanese kingdom of Majapahit, the rise of Muslim kingdoms on Java's northern coast and the arrival of the first Europeans in the person of the Portuguese Tome Pires in Java's cosmopolitan ports. "Stuart Robson's expert English translation of the Tantu Panggelaran gives his readers ready access to this important work, which provides insight into how the author and his contemporary Javanese readers imagined the realities of the world in which they lived. We learn how they conceived the creation of this world and understood the relationship between the gods and men. Importantly, we learn also how they conceived a history of the foundation and spread of Bhairava Sivaite hermitages, shrines and temples. The work traces the history of this network from its origins in the vicinity of the Dieng plateau and the northern plains of Batang and Pekalongan to its subsequent expansion to the Tengger and Hyang Massifs of eastern Java. Hadi Sidomulyo's impressive commentary, an amalgam of textual analysis and the survey of archaeological sites, is a model for the way in which further research of this sort might be conducted and underlines the urgent need for further archaeological surveys and the future excavation of archaeological sites." -- Professor Emeritus Peter Worsley, Indonesian Studies, University of Sydney "Ever since the dissertation of Th. Pigeaud was published in 1926, the Tantu Panggelaran has both intrigued and perplexed scholars of the cultural history of Java. Despite Pigeaud's translation and copious notes much remained uncertain and his comments were not easily accessible except to readers of Dutch. Now, the publication of Threads of the Unfolding Web has breathed new life into studies of this rare exemplar of the literature of the "period of transition" in sixteenth century Java. This collaborative volume combines the skills of Stuart Robson, a senior in the field of translation from Old Javanese, and Hadi Sidomulyo, whose deep interest in the early history of Java combines attention to the inscriptional record with field work using GPS technology to locate and describe archaeological remains spread throughout Java. As a result you have before you a volume that illustrates the close linkages between a literary text describing the mythical foundations of the Saiva ascetic communities of the Javanese Rsi order and the geophysical coordinates of these communities as far as they can be traced today. This combination represents a giant leap forward for studies of the Tantu Panggelaran. We owe the authors a debt of gratitude for the years of work that lay behind the completion of this important volume."-- Thomas M. Hunter, Lecturer in South-Southeast Asian Studies, University of British Columbia

In Mei 1693 monster Lourens Vijselaar en Daniël Silleman in Nederland aan op die VOC-skip die Gouden Buys. Nog voordat die kus van Suidelike Afrika op die horison verskyn, het byna die hele bemanning van 190 reeds gesterf aan skeurbuik en ander siektes. Slegs Daniël Silleman sou uiteindelik weer sy vaderland sien. Hy vertel dan sy Ongeluckig, of droevigh verhaal aan sy Enkhuizense uitgewer, Van Straaten, wat dit in 1695 as boek publiseer.

Ná driehonderd jaar kon daar in argiewe en museums nog heelwat tasbare bewyse opgespoor word om die oorspronklike verhaal mee aan te vul en die rampspoedige reis van die Gouden Buys vir die hedendaagse leser verder tot lewe te wek. Die teks van die eerste druk is vir hierdie uitgawe in Afrikaans vertaal en voorsien van aanvullings, woordverklarings, aantekeninge en illustrasies.

In die daaropvolgende hoofstukke word beskryf wat ná die ramp met die skip en sy kosbare vrag gebeur het.

In and out of the Maasai Steppe looks at the Maasai women in the Maasai Steppe of Tanzania. The book explores their current plight - threatened by climate change - in the light of colonial history and post-independence history of land seizures. The book documents the struggles of a group of women to develop new livelihood income through their traditional beadwork. Voices of the women are shared as they talk about how it feels to share their husband with many co-wives, and the book examines gender, their beliefs, social hierarchy, social changes and in particular the interface between the Maasai and colonials.

A deeply reported, insightful, and literary account of humankind’s battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines—in the vein of Medical Apartheid and Killing the Black Body.

Epidemic diseases enter the world by chance, but they become catastrophic by human design.

With clear-eyed research and lush prose, A History of the World in Six Plagues shows that throughout history, outbreaks of disease have been exacerbated by and gone on to further expand the racial, economic, and sociopolitical divides we allow to fester in times of good health.

Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme’s examination of humanity’s disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease. Based on in-depth research and cultural analysis, Bonhomme explores Cholera, HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu, Sleeping Sickness, Ebola, and COVID-19 amidst the backdrop of unequal public policy. But much more than a remarkable history, A History of the World in Six Plaguesis also a rising call for change.

Explores the influence of Kabbalah in shaping America's religious identity In 1688, a leading Quaker thinker and activist in what is now New Jersey penned a letter to one of his closest disciples concerning Kabbalah, or what he called the mystical theology of the Jews. Around that same time, one of the leading Puritan ministers developed a messianic theology based in part on the mystical conversion of the Jews. This led to the actual conversion of a Jew in Boston a few decades later, an event that directly produced the first kabbalistic book conceived of and published in America. That book was read by an eventual president of Yale College, who went on to engage in a deep study of Kabbalah that would prod him to involve the likes of Benjamin Franklin, and to give a public oration at Yale in 1781 calling for an infusion of Kabbalah and Jewish thought into the Protestant colleges of America. Kabbalah and the Founding of America traces the influence of Kabbalah on early Christian Americans. It offers a new picture of Jewish-Christian intellectual exchange in pre-Revolutionary America, and illuminates how Kabbalah helped to shape early American religious sensibilities. The volume demonstrates that key figures, including the well-known Puritan ministers Cotton Mather and Increase Mather and Yale University President Ezra Stiles, developed theological ideas that were deeply influenced by Kabbalah. Some of them set out to create a more universal Kabbalah, developing their ideas during a crucial time of national myth building, laying down precedents for developing notions of American exceptionalism. This book illustrates how, through fascinating and often surprising events, this unlikely inter-religious influence helped shape the United States and American identity.

This innovative book examines how African Americans in the South made sense of the devastating loss of life unleashed by the Civil War and emancipation. During and after the war, African Americans died in vast numbers from battle, disease, and racial violence. While freedom was a momentous event for the formerly enslaved, it was also deadly. Through an investigation into how African Americans reacted to and coped with the passing away of loved ones and community members, Ashley Towle argues that freedpeople gave credence to their free status through their experiences with mortality. African Americans harnessed the power of death in a variety of arenas, including within the walls of national and private civilian cemeteries, in applications for widows' pensions, in the pulpits of black churches, around seance tables, on the witness stand at congressional hearings, and in the columns of African American newspapers. In the process of mourning the demise of kith and kin, black people reconstituted their families, forged communal bonds, and staked claims to citizenship, civil rights, and racial justice from the federal government. In a society upended by civil war and emancipation, death was political.