Daywork

From the publisher: Jessica Fisher brings “the faraway close,” through ruthless yet tender interrogations of possibility and permanence. Set against the backdrop of the fallen empire of Rome, Daywork takes its title from the giornata—the name in fresco painting for the section of wet plaster that can be painted in a… Continue reading »

Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power and Putinism

From the publisher: In the two decades after the turn of the millennium, Vladimir Putin’s control over Russian politics and society grew at a steady pace. As the West liberalized its stance on sexuality and gender, Putin’s Russia moved in the opposite direction, remolding the performance of Russian citizenship according… Continue reading »

Islands in Deep Time: Ancient Landscapes Lost and Found

From the publisher: Hilltops surrounded by farmland in southern Wisconsin turn out to be the eroded remnants of an ancient archipelago. An island in the Yellow Sea where Korean tourists flock is the peak of a flooded mountain rising from a drowned continental shelf. From a mountaintop shrine to Genghis… Continue reading »

Remaking the World: Decolonization and the Cold War

From the publisher: Between 1945 and 1965, more than 50 nations declared their independence from colonial rule. At the height of the Cold War, the global process of decolonization complicated U.S.-Soviet relations, while Soviet and American interventionism transformed the decolonizing process. Remaking the World examines the connections between the… Continue reading »

Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship After State Violence

From the publisher: Moroccan Other-Archives investigates how histories of exclusion and silencing are written and rewritten in a postcolonial context that lacks organized and accessible archives. The book draws on cultural production concerning the “years of lead”—a period of authoritarianism and political violence between Morocco’s independence in 1956 and the… Continue reading »

Surface Relations: Queer Forms of Asian American Inscrutability

From the publisher:  In Surface Relations, Vivian L. Huang traces how Asian and Asian American artists have strategically reworked the pernicious stereotype of inscrutability as a dynamic antiracist, feminist and queer form of resistance. Following inscrutability in literature, visual culture and performance art since 1965, Huang articulates how Asian… Continue reading »