How wheat growing, milling, and baking shaped the people and culture of North Texas. In the national imaginary, America's amber fields of grain lie in the country's center, but for more than a century, they also grew across one pocket of the South: North Texas. From the 1840s to the 1970s, the state's agriculture, dominated in lore by cotton in ......
A new history of Brazil told through the lens of the often-overlooked interior regions. In colonial Brazil, observers frequently complained that Portuguese settlers appeared content to remain "clinging to the coastline, like crabs." From their perspective, the vast Brazilian interior seemed like an untapped expanse waiting to be explored and ......
Reframing the study of Indigenous visual culture, this volume explores how images and objects generate affect and relation in non-Western contexts, foregrounding alternative modes of material engagement and meaning-making
Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul
A revision of the history of modern sports in late Ottoman Istanbul, showing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews created a shared sports culture that was simultaneously global, imperial, and local. The history of sports in Turkey is deeply contested. Over the decades, journalists, pundits, non-professional historians, and everyday people have ......
The story of the Star Film Ranch and its pioneering crew, who created the first "authentic" Westerns filmed in Texas. In 1910, the MEliEs Star Film Company of Manhattan set up a moving-picture studio outside San Antonio, the first in Texas. Determined to make the most authentic Westerns possible, the company filmed there for a little over a ......
A History of the Latin American Political Thriller
An exploration of the political thriller genre and its context in Latin American politics and entertainment. For the past five decades, a distinctive type of political thriller has been steadily developing in Latin America. Precarious Secrets is a panoramic overview of the genre in the hands of renowned writers and filmmakers from Argentina, ......
Morality and Social Violence Among the Precolonial Maya
An exploration of war, violence, and sacrifice in precolonial Maya culture and its importance in religious practices. As the Gods Kill delivers new insights into warfare, weaponry, violence, and human sacrifice among the ancient Maya. While attending to the particularity of a singular historical context, anthropologist and archaeologist Andrew ......
Before they were written down, the poems attributed to Homer were performed orally, usually by rhapsodes (singers/reciters) who might have traveled from city to city or enjoyed a position in a wealthy household. Even after the Iliad and the Odyssey were committed to writing, rhapsodes performed the poems at festivals, often competing against each ......