Folklore and the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Contemporary Society
Whispers in the Echo Chamber: Folklore and the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Contemporary Society makes the case that conspiracy theories are fundamentally a folklore genre, akin to and often involving other belief narratives like rumor and legend. The editors and contributors show that studying conspiracy theories using the tools of folkloristics ......
The Politics and Practice of Kenya's HIV-Prevention NGOs
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are ubiquitous in the Global South. Often international in origin, many attempt to assist local efforts to improve the lives of people often living in or near poverty. Yet their external origins often cloud their ability to impact health or quality of life, regardless of whether volunteers are local or foreign. ......
Anyone working with wildlife must be concerned with its habitat--its identification, measurement, and analysis. Wildlife-Habitat Relationships goes beyond introductory wildlife biology texts and specialized studies of single species to provide a broad but advanced understanding of habitat relationships applicable to all terrestrial species. It ......
As a child, AJ Romriell strove to obey his Mormon leaders' every rule. If he was faithful enough, he was taught, God would remove temptations. But at nineteen, returning home early from his mission after admitting his attraction to men, he was forced to make a decision: either stay the course or work to accept himself fully and risk losing family, ......
Adherents to the ""zar"" cult in northern Sudan encounter spirits that are parallels of historically relevant figures in the known human world. Those possessed, usually women, meet aliens who speak about issues confronting a village such as the increasing influence of formal Islam or encroaching Western economic domination. By manifesting spirits ......
How have we gained knowledge about women in the ancient Roman Republic? Roman historians were uniformly male, as were most historians of ancient Rome until quite recently. In the historiography handed down to us by Enlightenment-era scholars, women generally played marginal and often sexualized roles, relegated to the footnotes by historians who ......
Fraternization, Espionage, and Punishment in the Soviet Union During World War II
For two years during World War II, Nazi forces occupied large swaths of the western Soviet Union. In response to devastating losses on a contested front, Stalin first permitted and then encouraged women to join the Red Army and the resistance. Simultaneously, female civilians in occupied territory found themselves in an untenable position: they ......
Women, Autobiography, Theory is the first comprehensive guide to the burgeoning field of women's autobiography, drawing into one volume the most significant theoretical discussions on women's life writing of the last two decades. The authoritative introduction by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson surveys writing about women's lives from the women's ......
A History of the Lower Tchiri Valley in Malawi, 1859-1960
Peasants in southern Africa have too often been portrayed as technologically backward, chronically underemployed, and politically passive. Such views, says Elias Mandala in this finely particularized study of the lower Tchiri Valley in Malawi, partake more of myth than reality. Peasants are first and foremost laborers, he points out, who spend ......
