Bold Ideas, Essential Reading since 1936.
Rutgers University Press is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge for a wide range of readers. The Press reflects and extends the University’s core mission of research, instruction, and service. They enhance the work of their authors through exceptional publications that shape critical issues, spark debate, and enrich teaching. Core subjects include: film and media studies, sociology, anthropology, education, history, health, history of medicine, human rights, urban studies, criminal justice, Jewish studies, American studies, women's, gender, and sexuality studies, LGBTQ, Latino/a, Asian and African studies, as well as books about New York, New Jersey, and the region.
Rutgers also distributes books published by Bucknell University Press.
Showing 101-150 of 2,557 items.
Beaches, Bays, and Barrens
A Natural History of the Jersey Shore
Rutgers University Press
Biologist Eric G. Bolen introduces readers to the natural wonders of the Jersey Shore, taking them on a guided tour of its unique ecology and fascinating history. You’ll learn about everything from sand dunes to salt marshes, from blueberry patches to cranberry bogs, and from ship wrecks to shark attacks.
At the Glacier’s Edge
A Natural History of Long Island from the Narrows to Montauk Point
Rutgers University Press
Combining science writing, environmental history, and first-hand accounts from a longtime resident, At the Glacier’s Edge offers a unique narrative natural history of Long Island. It tells the story of how its habitats evolved, how humans radically degraded its landscape, and how community activists are restoring the land and preserving the species who depend on it.
Notes from Home
Edited by Jonna McKone
Rutgers University Press
This beautifully illustrated volume weaves together personal stories, photographs, drawings, poems of students who have experienced insecurity during childhood into a tapestry of memories about the meaning of home.
To Keep the Republic
Thinking, Talking, and Acting Like a Democratic Citizen
By Elizabeth C. Matto; Foreword by Governor Christine Todd Whitman
Rutgers University Press
American democracy has reached an inflection point. This book is a wake-up call about the heavy responsibilities that come with being a citizen in a participatory democracy. It describes the many ways that individuals can make a difference on both local and national levels—and explains why they matter.
The Cinema of Yakov Protazanov
Rutgers University Press
Yakov Protazanov was the most prolific Russian director of the silent era whose works enjoyed consistent popularity with audiences as he adapted to the Russian Revolution and, later, the transition to sound. This first career-length study in English argues that he pursued a unique artistic vision that reflected his ambivalent position within Soviet culture of the revolutionary era.
The Caravaggio Syndrome
A Novel
By Alessandro Giardino; Translated by Joyce Myerson and Alessandro Giardino; Foreword by Ara Merjian
Rutgers University Press
Headstrong art historian Leyla is expecting a baby with feckless computer technician Pablo. There’s only one problem: she can’t stand him. And one more problem: her student Michael wants Pablo for himself. But when the writings by utopian philosopher Tommaso Campanella unlocks the secret of a painting and a mystical gateway to 17th-century Naples, Leyla and Michael embark on a voyage of self-discovery in search of a new life.
Life, Brazen and Garish
A Tale of Three Women
Rutgers University Press
This fresh take on the epistolary novel tells the story of a family through the disparate perspectives of a teenage daughter writing in her diary, a mother composing letters, and a grandmother speaking into a recorder. In turns heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, it is a triumph of voice and style from one of Italy’s most renowned writers.
Creating the Hudson River Park
Environmental and Community Activism, Politics, and Greed
By Tom Fox
Rutgers University Press
Former Hudson River Park Conservancy president Tom Fox offers an insider’s look at the park’s expansion and the conflicts it has spawned among community activists, local politicians, and private developers. Explaining how the park’s current problems might be surmounted, he provides a model for future urban planners.
China's Left-Behind Children
Caretaking, Parenting, and Struggles
By Xiaojin Chen
Rutgers University Press
Paying special attention to the seventy million children left behind by internal migrants in rural China, this book investigates the role of parental migration and the left-behind status of their children in shaping family dynamics and the children’s general wellbeing, including school performance, delinquency, resilience, feelings of ambiguous loss, and other psychological problems.
Born of War in Colombia
Reproductive Violence and Memories of Absence
Rutgers University Press
Born of War in Colombia examines how a past-oriented and harm-centered model of transitional justice has converged with a restricted notion of gendered victimhood and the patriarchal politics of reproduction to render the bodies of people born of conflict-related sexual violence unintelligible to those seeking to understand and address the consequences of war in Colombia.
A Nation of Family and Friends?
Sport and the Leisure Cultures of British Asian Girls and Women
By Aarti Ratna
Rutgers University Press
In A Nation of Family and Friends sociologist Aarti Ratna interrogates sport and leisure cultures as a site of common culture. Ratna portrays and analyses the vagaries of British Asian-ness and examines the intersections of class, caste, age, generation, gender, and sexuality, providing a rich and critical exploration of British Asian women's sport and leisure choices, pleasures, and lived realities.
Politicizing Islam in Austria
The Far-Right Impact in the Twenty-First Century
By Farid Hafez and Reinhard Heinisch
Rutgers University Press
Politicizing Islam in Austria is a comprehensive examination of the influence of the far right on the Austrian political landscape and the impact its anti-Muslim agenda has had in a country whose longstanding state recognition of the Muslim community dates to as early as 1912.
Glory
The Gospel of Judas, A Novel
Rutgers University Press
In Glory, Judas Iscariot finally tells his side of the story. From his perspective, Jesus is the betrayer, while Judas himself brought humanity a chance at redemption. Through Judas’s searing tortured monologues, this late masterpiece from one of Italy’s greatest writers investigates deep questions about the nature of faith, rebellion, fate, and free will.
Messianic Zionism in the Digital Age
Jews, Noahides, and the Third Temple Imaginary
Rutgers University Press
In this groundbreaking ethnographic study of the transnational Third Temple and Children of Noah movements, Messianic Zionism in the Digital Age highlights the intimate effects of political theologies in motion, new forms of digital missionizing, and the birth of a new Judaic faith.
Making History Move
Five Principles of the Historical Film
By Kim Nelson
Rutgers University Press
Making History Move builds upon decades of scholarship investigating history in visual culture, proposing a methodology of five principles to analyze history in moving images in the digital age, charting a path to understand the form of history with the most significant impact on public perceptions of the past.
Funny Boy
The Richard Hunt Biography
Rutgers University Press
This biography tells the story of Muppet performer Richard Hunt, who created a colorful range of characters on The Muppet Show, Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock, and crammed an extraordinary career into only 40 years of life. Funny Boy is about a man who used humor, joy and resilience to adapt to life’s surprises while entertaining millions.
Christianity and Comics
Stories We Tell about Heaven and Hell
By Blair Davis
Rutgers University Press
This book presents an 80-year history of how the comics industry has drawn inspiration from biblical imagery, stories, and themes. Charting how comics have both reflected and influenced Americans’ changing attitudes towards religion, it includes underground comix, books from Christian publishers, and a vast array of DC, Marvel, and Dark Horse titles, from Hellboy to Preacher.
Born in the U.S.A.
Bruce Springsteen in American Life, 3rd edition, Revised and Expanded
By Jim Cullen
Rutgers University Press
Pioneering the field of Springsteen scholarship when it first appeared in 1997, Born in the U.S.A. remains one of the definitive studies of Springsteen’s work and its impact on American culture. This fully revised third edition addresses Springsteen’s evolving attitudes toward politics, religion, masculinity, and racial justice in the 21st century.
Queer Newark
Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community
Edited by Whitney Strub; Epilogue by Zenzele Isoke
Rutgers University Press
Queer Newark charts an alternate history of LGBTQ life in America where working-class people of color are the central actors. Uncovering the sites and people of Newark’s queer past in bars, discos, ballrooms, and churches, these essays reveal how violence, poverty, and homophobia could never suppress joy, resistance, love, and desire.
Queer Newark
Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community
Edited by Whitney Strub; Epilogue by Zenzele Isoke
Rutgers University Press
Queer Newark charts an alternate history of LGBTQ life in America where working-class people of color are the central actors. Uncovering the sites and people of Newark’s queer past in bars, discos, ballrooms, and churches, these essays reveal how violence, poverty, and homophobia could never suppress joy, resistance, love, and desire.
Korea Letters in the William Elliot Griffis Collection
An Annotated Selection
Rutgers University Press
The Korean materials in the Griffis Collection at Rutgers University consist of journals, correspondence, articles, maps, prints, photos, postcards, manuscripts, scrapbooks, and ephemera. These papers reflect Griffis's interests and activities in relation to Korea as a historian, scholar, and theologian. They provide a rare window into the turbulent period of late 19th and 20th century Korea, witnessed and evaluated by Griffis and early American missionaries in East Asia. The Korea Letters in the William Elliot Griffis Collection are divided into two parts: letters from missionaries and letters from Japanese and Korean political figures. Newly available and accessible through this collection, these letters develop a multifaceted history of early American missionaries in Korea, the Korean independence movement, and Griffis's views on Korean culture.
Destroy Them Gradually
Displacement as Atrocity
Rutgers University Press
Destroy Them Gradually reframes forced displacement as an annihilatory process, rather than as an event that precedes an atrocity. Displacement crimes are defined as the unique fusion of forced displacement with systemic deprivations of vital daily needs to destroy populations.
Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East, Revised and Expanded
By Carolyn Summers and Kate Brittenham
Rutgers University Press
In this fully revised second edition of the classic guide, mother and daughter landscape designers Carolyn Summers and Kate Brittenham draw upon the most recent research on sustainability to help you plant gardens that are both chic and eco-friendly. Both home gardeners and professionals will appreciate their detailed descriptions of indigenous plants that nurture native insects and birds.
Culinary Colonialism, Caribbean Cookbooks, and Recipes for National Independence
Rutgers University Press
Culinary Colonialism is the first book-length analysis of Caribbean cookbooks, tracing the multitude of ways they represent national identity, creolization, and working-class women’s food culture. Including full recipes from Cuban, Puerto Rican, Jamaican, Barbadian, Haitian, Dominican, and Antillean cookbooks, this groundbreaking work of scholarship doubles as a delicious cookbook.
The Politics of Potential
Global Health and Gendered Futures in South Africa
Rutgers University Press
In The Politics of Potential, physician-anthropologist Michelle Pentecost investigates The First 1000 Days, an early life intervention project that seeks to end child malnutrition in South Africa, the ways in which this program has been adopted, and how it impacts child-bearing women in South Africa in powerfully gendered and racialized ways.
Strictly Observant
Amish and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women Negotiating Media
Rutgers University Press
Strictly Observant presents a compelling ethnographic study of the complex dynamic between women in both the Pennsylvanian Old Order Amish and Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities and contemporary media technologies. These women exhibit a deep awareness of how to manage their usage of media as tools to increase their social and religious capital.
Reflections on the Pandemic
COVID and Social Crises in the Year Everything Changed
Edited by Teresa Politano
Rutgers University Press
Reflections on the Pandemic: COVID and Social Crises in the Year Everything Changed is a collection of essays, poems, and artwork that captures the raw energy and emotion of 2020 from the perspective of the Rutgers University community. This book, through its rich and imaginative storytelling at the intersection of scholarly expertise and personal narrative brings readers into the hearts and minds of not just the Rutgers community, but the world.
Reflections on the Pandemic
COVID and Social Crises in the Year Everything Changed
Edited by Teresa Politano
Rutgers University Press
Reflections on the Pandemic: COVID and Social Crises in the Year Everything Changed is a collection of essays, poems, and artwork that captures the raw energy and emotion of 2020 from the perspective of the Rutgers University community. This book, through its rich and imaginative storytelling at the intersection of scholarly expertise and personal narrative brings readers into the hearts and minds of not just the Rutgers community, but the world.
Happy Days
Images of the Pre-Sixties Past in Seventies America
Rutgers University Press
Happy Days investigates how 1970s popular culture was obsessed with America’s past, but offered radically different interpretations of the same historical events and icons. Looking at representations of 1950s teenagers, the noir detective, America’s bicentennial, and neo-slave narratives, Benjamin Alpers examines how American history provoked both nostalgia and deep soul searching.
Forbes Burnham
The Life and Times of the Comrade Leader
Rutgers University Press
As Premier of British Guiana, Forbes Burnham led the country to independence in 1966 and spent two decades as its head of state. This biography examines how he rose to power by combining nationalist rhetoric, socialist policies, and Pan-Africanist philosophies, leading to a rule that was frequently dictatorial and corrupt, yet also sometimes surprisingly progressive.
Checkbook Zionism
Philanthropy and Power in the Israel-Diaspora Relationship
By Eric Fleisch
Rutgers University Press
Through their approximately $2.5 billion in donations each year to Israel, American Jews have profoundly impacted the direction of Israeli society. Checkbook Zionism uncovers how tensions over potential influence have been mediated and offers a new paradigm for evaluating philanthropic power sharing today.
Being Human
Political Modernity and Hospitality in Kurdistan-Iraq
By Fazil Moradi
Rutgers University Press
Being Human: Political Modernity and Hospitality in Kurdistan-Iraq is a unique work of anthropological hospitality that draws on historical sources, eyewitness testimonies, perpetrator testimony, archival documents, trial records, artwork, novels, and poetry, to engage with one of political modernity’s acts of genocide in Iraq under the Iraqi Baʿth state.
Transpacific Cartographies
Narrating the Contemporary Chinese Diaspora in the United States
Rutgers University Press
Transpacific Cartographies examines how contemporary Chinese diasporic narratives address the existential loss of home for immigrant communities at a time of global precarity and amid rising Sino-US tensions. Melody Li argues that the characters in these stories create multilayered maps that transcend the territorial boundaries that make finding a home in foreign land a seemingly impossible task.
There She Goes Again
Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises
Rutgers University Press
There She Goes Again interrogates the representation of ostensibly powerful women in transmedia franchises, examining how presumed feminine traits—love, empathy, altruism, diplomacy—are alternately lauded and repudiated as possibilities for effecting long-lasting social change. By asking under what terms women protagonists are imagined, envisioned, embodied, and replicated in media, this book challenges how we should define—and whether we need—feminine forms of knowledge and power.
The Farm & Wilderness Summer Camps
Progressive Ideals in the Twentieth Century
By Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson
Rutgers University Press
The Farm & Wilderness Summer Camps explores how ideals considered progressive in the 1940s and 1950s had to be reconfigured to respond to shifts in culture and society as well as to new understanding of race and ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexual identity through a study of the popular Farm & Wilderness camps. To illustrate this change, Emily Abel and Margaret K. Nelson draw on over forty interviews with former campers, archival materials, and their own memories. This book tells a story of progressive ideals, crisis of leadership, childhood challenges, and social adaptation in the quintessential American summer camp.
Not Alone
LGB Teachers Organizations from 1970 to 1985
Rutgers University Press
Between 1970 and 1985, lesbian, gay, and bisexual educators (LGB) formed communities and began advocating for a place of openness and safety for LGB people in America's schools. They fought for protection and representation in the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers in New York, Los Angeles and Northern California.
China and the Internet
Using New Media for Development and Social Change
By Song Shi
Rutgers University Press
China and the Internet analyzes how Chinese activists, NGOs, and government offices have used the Internet to fight rural malnutrition, the digital divide, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other urgent problems affecting millions of people. It presents five theoretically-informed case studies of how new media have been used in interventions for development and social change, including how activists battled against COVID-19.
Between Care and Criminality
Marriage, Citizenship, and Family in Australian Social Welfare
Rutgers University Press
Between Care and Criminality examines Australian social welfare’s encounter with migration and marriage in an era of intensified border control. It offers an in-depth ethnographic account of how social welfare practitioners carry out a migrant-targeted social policy designed to prevent forced marriage in the aftermath of a 2013 law which criminalized the practice.
When Cowboys Come Home
Veterans, Authenticity, and Manhood in Post–World War II America
By Aaron George
Rutgers University Press
When Cowboys Come Home shows how World War II changed the ways men thought about their roles in American society. For three writers who served—James Jones, Stewart Stern, and Edward Field—the war taught that manhood didn’t have to be based on bravery and heroism, but could be defined by authenticity, sensitivity, and male camaraderie. Rebelling against the orthodoxies of their time, these veterans reimagined what roles a man could play and their work set the foundation for the revolutions of the sixties.
Watching While Black Rebooted!
The Television and Digitality of Black Audiences
Edited by Beretta E. Smith-Shomade; Foreword by Herman S. Gray
Rutgers University Press
Watching While Black Rebooted: The Television and Digitality of Black Audiences examines what watching while Black means within an expanded U.S. televisual landscape. In this edition, media scholars return to television and digital spaces (those spaces relying on television structure) to think anew about what engages and captures Black audiences and users and why it matters.
Watching While Black Rebooted!
The Television and Digitality of Black Audiences
Edited by Beretta E. Smith-Shomade; Foreword by Herman S. Gray
Rutgers University Press
Watching While Black Rebooted: The Television and Digitality of Black Audiences examines what watching while Black means within an expanded U.S. televisual landscape. In this edition, media scholars return to television and digital spaces (those spaces relying on television structure) to think anew about what engages and captures Black audiences and users and why it matters.
Trailer Park America
Reimagining Working-Class Communities
Rutgers University Press
Challenging the stereotype of trailer parks as magnets for stigmatized people, sociologist Leontina Hormel investigates how the closing of a mobile home park in rural northern Idaho led to community activism among its residents: single-mother households, veterans, recovering addicts, and people with disabilities who fought for their rights and dignity.
The Best Place
Addiction, Intervention, and Living and Dying Young in Vancouver
By Danya Fast
Rutgers University Press
The Best Place examines how overlapping housing, mental-health-and-addictions, and overdose crises, alongside their accompanying public health interventions, and the frenetic pace of urban renewal have shaped forms of life and death among young people who use drugs in the city of Vancouver, Canada.
Suffering Sappho!
Lesbian Camp in American Popular Culture
Rutgers University Press
Offering the first major consideration of lesbian camp in American popular culture, Suffering Sappho! examines a larger-than-life lesbian menace in mid-century media embodied in five queer icons—the sicko, the monster, the spinster, the Amazon, and the rebel. Across comics, fiction, television and movies of the era, Barbara Jane Brickman discovers evidence not just of campy sexual deviants but of troubling female performers, whose failures could be epic but whose subversive potential could inspire.
Self-Alteration
How People Change Themselves across Cultures
Edited by Jean-Paul Baldacchino and Christopher Houston
Rutgers University Press
Self-Alteration: How People Change Themselves across Cultures approaches the subject of the self and its becoming through the exploration of modes of its transformation, including through religious and spiritual traditions and innovations; embodied participation in therepeutic prorams like psychoanalysis and gendered care services; and through political activism or relationships with animals. The essays in this collection show that both minor and major modes of self-alteration exist in many places and times, and across very different modern societies.
Scratchin' and Survivin'
Hustle Economics and the Black Sitcoms of Tandem Productions
By Adrien Sebro
Rutgers University Press
Providing a critical history of Tandem Productions, the company behind nearly all the hit Black sitcoms of the 1970s, including Good Times, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, and Diff’rent Strokes, Adrien Sebro explores how their sitcom plots paralleled what was happening behind the scenes, as talented African-Americans devised strategies to gain creative agency and fair financial compensation.
New Israeli Horror
Local Cinema, Global Genre
Rutgers University Press
Before 2010, there were no Israeli horror films. The next decade saw a blossoming of the genre by young Israeli filmmakers. New Israeli Horror is the first book to tell their story. Through in-depth analysis, engaging storytelling, and interviews with the filmmakers, Olga Gershenson explores their films from inception to reception.
Forgotten Bodies
Imperialism, Chuukese Migration, and Stratified Reproduction in Guam
Rutgers University Press
Women from Chuuk, Federated States of Micronesia move to Guam, U.S. for several reasons, including access to better healthcare. Yet, they suffer disproportionately poor reproductive health outcomes in Guam. Forgotten Bodies illuminates how benign neglect, imperial citizenship, transnational migration, and gender inequities intersect, cohere, and compound to stratify Chuukese women’s reproductive health.
Bolsonarismo
The Global Origins and Future of Brazil’s Far Right
Rutgers University Press
Brazilian public intellectual Fernando Brancoli offers the first comprehensive exploration of Bolsonarismo, the far-right coalition that emerged in Brazil around former President Jair Bolsonaro in 2020. The book delves into how Bolsonarismo, as a far-right movement, developed its political orientation and impacted world politics, providing valuable insights into the rise of far-right groups and their influence on issues such as climate change, democracy, and human rights.
When Things Happen
A Novel
Rutgers University Press
Michele Campo is a speech pathologist living the high life in Naples. But when he begins to treat a poor foster child, he is forced to confront dark family secrets about his own rise from poverty. The award-winning When Things Happen tells a powerful story about memory, destiny, and class consciousness in one of Italy’s most divided cities.
Stay Informed
Subscribe nowRecent News