Considering silk as a major force of cross-cultural interaction, this book examines the integration of silk production and consumption into various cultures in the pre-modern world. Silk has long been a global commodity that, because of its exceptional qualities, high value and relative portability, came to be traded over very long distances. Similarly, the silk industry - from sericulture to the weaving of cloth - was one of the most important fields of production in the medieval and early modern world. The production and consumption of silks spread from China to Japan and Korea and travelled westward as far as India, Persia and theByzantine Empire, Europe, Africa and the Americas. As contributors to this book demonstrate, in this process of diffusion silk fostered technological innovation and allowed new forms of organization of labour to emerge. Its consumption constantly reshaped social hierarchies, gender roles, aesthetic and visual cultures,as well as rituals and representations of power. Threads of Global Desire is the first attempt at considering a global history of silk in the pre-modern era. The book examines the role of silk production and use in various cultures and its relation to everyday and regulatory practices. It considers silk as a major force of cross cultural interaction through technological exchange and trade in finished and semi-finished goods. Silks mediated design and a taste for luxuries and were part of gifting practices in diplomatic and private contexts. Silk manufacturing also fostered thecirculation of skilled craftsmen, connecting different centres and regions across continents and linking the countryside to urban production. DAGMAR SCHAEFER is Director of Department 3 'Artefacts, Action, and Knowledge'at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and Professor h.c. of the History of Technology at the Technical University, Berlin. GIORGIO RIELLO is Professor of Global History and Culture at the University of Warwick. He has published extensively on the history of material culture and trade in early modern Europe and Asia and in particular on textiles and fashion. LUCA MOLA is Professor of Early Modern Europe: History of the Renaissance and the Mediterranean in a World Perspective at the European University Institute in Fiesole. Contributors: JOSE L. GASCH-TOMAS, SURAIYA FAROQHI, KAROLINA HUTKOVA, FUJITA KAYOKO, BEN MARSH, RUDOLPHMATTHEE, LESLEY ELLIS MILLER, DAVID MITCHELL, LUCA MOLA, LISA MONNAS, AMANDA PHILLIPS, GIORGIO RIELLO, DAGMAR SCHAEFER, ANGELA SHENG

“Seventy years of a car-only approach—not car-centric, it’s car-only—is actually not just non-driver hostile, it’s driver hostile. No one benefits.” —Beth Osborne, Director, Transportation for America The car-only approach in transportation planning and engineering has led to the construction of roadways that have torn apart and devalued communities, especially Black and Brown communities. Forging a new path to repair this damage requires a community solutions-based approach to planning, designing, and building our roadways. When Lynn Peterson began working as a transportation engineer, she was taught to evaluate roadway projects based only on metrics related to driver safety, allowable speed for the highest number of cars, project schedule, and budget. Involving the community and collaborating with peers were never part of the discussion. Today, Peterson is a recognized leader in transportation planning and engineering, known for her approach that is rooted in racial equity, guided by a process of community engagement, and includes collaboration with other professionals. In Roadways for People, Lynn Peterson draws from her personal experience and interviews with leaders in the field to showcase new possibilities within transportation engineering and planning. She incorporated a community-solutions based approach in her work at Metro, TriMet, and while running the Washington State Department of Transportation, where she played an instrumental role in the largest transportation bill in that state’s history. The community solutions-based approach moves away from the narrow standards of traditional transportation design and focuses instead on a process that involves consistent feedback, learning loops, and meaningful and regular community engagement. This approach seeks to address the transportation needs of the most historically marginalized members of the community. Roadways for People is written to empower professionals and policymakers to create transportation solutions that serve people rather than cars. Examples across the U.S.—from Portland, Oregon to Baltimore, Maryland—show what is possible with a community-centered approach. As traditional highway expansions are put on pause around the country, professionals and policymakers have an opportunity to move forward with a better approach. Peterson shows them how.

Complicating perspectives on diversity in video games Gamers have been troublemakers as long as games have existed. As our popular understanding of "gamer" shifts beyond its historical construction as a white, straight, adolescent, cisgender male, the troubles that emerge both confirm and challenge our understanding of identity politics. In Gamer Trouble, Amanda Phillips excavates the turbulent relationships between surface and depth in contemporary gaming culture, taking readers under the hood of the mechanisms of video games in order to understand the ways that difference gets baked into its technological, ludic, ideological, and social systems. By centering the insights of queer and women of color feminisms in readings of online harassment campaigns, industry animation practices, and popular video games like Portal and Mass Effect, Phillips adds essential analytical tools to our conversations about video games. She embraces the trouble that attends disciplinary crossroads, linking the violent hate speech of trolls and the representational practices marginalizing people of color, women, and queers in entertainment media to the dehumanizing logic undergirding computation and the optimization strategies of gameplay. From the microcosmic level of electricity and flicks of a thumb to the grand stages of identity politics and global capitalism, wherever gamers find themselves, gamer trouble follows. As reinvigorated forms of racism, sexism, and homophobia thrive in games and gaming communities, Phillips follows the lead of those who have been making good trouble all along, agitating for a better world.

Complicating perspectives on diversity in video games Gamers have been troublemakers as long as games have existed. As our popular understanding of "gamer" shifts beyond its historical construction as a white, straight, adolescent, cisgender male, the troubles that emerge both confirm and challenge our understanding of identity politics. In Gamer Trouble, Amanda Phillips excavates the turbulent relationships between surface and depth in contemporary gaming culture, taking readers under the hood of the mechanisms of video games in order to understand the ways that difference gets baked into its technological, ludic, ideological, and social systems. By centering the insights of queer and women of color feminisms in readings of online harassment campaigns, industry animation practices, and popular video games like Portal and Mass Effect, Phillips adds essential analytical tools to our conversations about video games. She embraces the trouble that attends disciplinary crossroads, linking the violent hate speech of trolls and the representational practices marginalizing people of color, women, and queers in entertainment media to the dehumanizing logic undergirding computation and the optimization strategies of gameplay. From the microcosmic level of electricity and flicks of a thumb to the grand stages of identity politics and global capitalism, wherever gamers find themselves, gamer trouble follows. As reinvigorated forms of racism, sexism, and homophobia thrive in games and gaming communities, Phillips follows the lead of those who have been making good trouble all along, agitating for a better world.

Textiles were the second-most-traded commodity in all of world history, preceded only by grain. In the Ottoman Empire in particular, the sale and exchange of silks, cottons, and woolens generated an immense amount of revenue and touched every level of society, from rural women tending silkworms to pashas flaunting layers of watered camlet to merchants traveling to Mecca and beyond. Sea Change offers the first comprehensive history of the Ottoman textile sector, arguing that the trade's enduring success resulted from its openness to expertise and objects from far-flung locations. Amanda Phillips skillfully marries art history with social and economic history, integrating formal analysis of various textiles into wider discussions of how trade, technology, and migration impacted the production and consumption of textiles in the Mediterranean from around 1400 to 1800. Surveying a vast network of textile topographies that stretched from India to Italy and from Egypt to Iran, Sea Change illuminates often neglected aspects of material culture, showcasing the objects' ability to tell new kinds of stories.