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Gutenberg-e

Welcome to Gutenberg-e, a program of the American Historical Association and Columbia University Press.
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Columbia University Press is pleased to announce that Gutenberg-e is now an open access site. These award winning monographs, coordinated with the American Historical Association, afford emerging scholars new possibilities for online publications, weaving traditional narrative with digitized primary sources, including maps, photographs, and oral histories. The American Council of Learned Societies also carry Gutenberg-e titles on their Humanities E-Book platform.

Recent Releases

Between Winds and Clouds: the Making of Yunnan (Second Century BCE-Twentieth Century CE)

Bin Yang

Yang distinguishes himself with a global perspective on a Chinese frontier with a long term approach. The book examines the transformation of Yunnan, an ethnic and frontier province sandwiched by Tibet, mainland Southeast Asia, and southwest China, from a non Chinese culture into part of China during a period of over 2,000 years. Unlike existing scholarship which only emphasizes Chinese imperial efforts, the book has fit Yunnan in a broad world that was participated in by Southeast Asia, Tibet, the Indian Ocean, the modern European World-system, and East Asia, and demonstrated that both local, Chinese, and international forces interplayed in this long-term transformation.

Societies, Religion, and History: Central East Tanzanians and the World They Created, c. 200 BCE to 1800 CE

by Rhonda M. Gonzales

Gonzales uses historical linguistics to build the framework upon which she interweaves the findings of cutting edge-archaeologists as well as documented ethnographic sources taken since the late 19th century among such people as the Kaguru, Zaramo, and Gogo. Because the Swahili Coast is such a well-known region, this book is important in its own right, but it also is a part of an emerging body of new perspectives on the history of a large region of Africa that has been of worldwide significance since the early first millennium CE.

Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier

by Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

Hanifi focuses on trade, literacy, and state building in locating para-colonial Afghanistan in the contexts of imperial and capitalist histories. Connecting Histories is the first monograph-length treatment of the economy and society of nineteenth-century Afghanistan and the first sustained consideration of British Indian colonialism's formative impact on the country. The monograph engages a number of issues of comparative appeal, including the power of printed texts and the expansion of the bureaucratic infrastructure in Afghanistan, state-sponsored industrialization and commodity monopolization, and the important roles of minority and indigenous nomadic communities in a multi-ethnic state. In detailing the political economy of this trans-national frontier zone, Hanifi draws on an impressive blend of archival, narrative, and oral historical sources.

Mitchell

Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa

by Laura J. Mitchell

Based on a decade of research, Belongings describes the contours of conflict among Dutch East India Company officials, settlers, indigenous Khoisan, and Indian-Ocean slaves. It intricately details the ways in which settlers themselves-rather than Company policy or an imperial army-brought a distant frontier first into a colonial orbit, then gradually under colonial control.

Lindgren

Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany

by Erika Lauren Lindgren

Lindgren compares "Sister-Books," the literature written in the female Dominican monasteries, with the material culture of the women's surroundings. She examines the ways in which spirituality becomes culturally constructed and the roles of physicality in religious behavior. She develops a holistic view of the intersection between materiality and spirituality in female monasteries.

Unparalleled

Pursuit of an 'Unparalleled Opportunity': The American YMCA and Prisoner of War Diplomacy among the Central Power Nations during World War I, 1914-1923

by Kenneth Steuer

Comprehensively researched, this analysis sheds fresh light on both the general subject of WWI prisoners of war, and the role of one of the world's first NGOs, the YMCA. The author is particularly successful in demonstrating the Y's role in the increasingly chaotic conditions of East Europe, and merits credit as well for his insight into the synergy of Christian witness and secular tough-mindedness that informed the best of the Y's people.

Arms

Arms and the Woman: Just Warriors and Greek Feminist Identity

by Margaret Poulos

Poulos explores the intersections of militarism, nationalism, and feminism, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She argues that the essentially ambiguous nationalist imagery of a woman warrior has not been entirely efficient in the women's emancipation agenda. The result is "an ambitious, interesting, and successful dissertation."

From Heads of Household to Heads of State: The Preaccession Households of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, 1516–1558

by J. L. McIntosh

This study seeks to answer the question: if Tudor England was a patriarchal society, then how did two women—Mary and Elizabeth Tudor—consecutively succeed to the throne? In From Heads of Household to Heads of State: The Preaccession Households of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, 1516–1558, J. L. McIntosh argues that Mary and Elizabeth established themselves as credible authority figures before their accessions by heading their own independent households.

Miss Yourlovin: GIs, Gender, and Domesticity during World War II

Miss Yourlovin: GIs, Gender, and Domesticity during World War II

by Ann Elizabeth Pfau

What do shared beliefs about and behavior toward women tell us about the generation of men who served in the U.S. Army during World War II? This question drives Ann Pfau’s study of wartime gender roles. Focusing on five categories of real and imaginary women, Pfau uncovers conflicts of obligation and desire. These conflicts, although seldom directly articulated, were never far from the surface of soldiers' thoughts and beliefs about women, family, and home. By looking beneath the surface, we gain a deeper understanding of the nature of wartime military service and of the domestic yearning that sparked the postwar marriage and baby booms.

'Trivial Complaints:' The Role of Privacy in Domestic Violence Law and Activism in the U.S.

"Trivial Complaints:" The Role of Privacy in Domestic Violence Law and Activism in the U.S.

by Kirsten S. Rambo

In "Trivial Complaints:" The Role of Privacy in Domestic Violence Law and Activism in the U.S., Kirsten S. Rambo examines the history of domestic violence law and activism in the U.S., particularly as this history has been affected by privacy. Legal and cultural concepts of privacy have historically influenced the ways in which this society has understood domestic violence. Rambo explores the relationship between privacy and domestic violence through an analysis of domestic violence litigation that is historically situated.

Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro

Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro

by Robert Kirkbride

The studioli of the ducal palaces at Urbino and Gubbio, Italy, demonstrate architecture's capacity to transact between the mental and physical realms of human experience. In Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro, Robert Kirkbride investigates the position of the studioli in the Western tradition of the memory arts, an approach not previously considered. Drawing on the densely layered imagery in the studioli and text sources readily available to the Urbino court, he examines how architecture equipped the late quattrocento mind with a bridge between the mathematical arts, which lend themselves to mechanical pursuits, and the art of rhetoric, a discipline central to memory and eloquence.

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood

by Jennifer E. Langdon

In the summer of 1947, Crossfire, a controversial thriller exposing American anti-Semitism, became a critical and box-office hit, and RKO producer Adrian Scott was at the pinnacle of his career. Within several months, however, he was infamous as a member of the Hollywood Ten, blacklisted for his refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. In Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood, Jennifer E. Langdon reconstructs the production and reception of Scott's major films to explore the political and creative challenges faced by Hollywood radicals in the studio system and to reassess the relationship between film noir, antifascism and anticommunism, and the politics of Americanism.

Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico

Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico

by Sherry Fields

In Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico, Sherry Fields explores the cultures of health and illness in colonial Mexico as illuminated by popular beliefs and practices following the encounter of indigenous and European medical traditions. Her use of ex-votos as sources is especially interesting.

Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna

Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna

by Maria Rentetzi

Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna is "a complex, creative, and fascinating study" of women in Vienna working as independent researchers. She includes documentary research, material culture and built environment analysis, and oral histories to examine the culture of women in the unique positions of radioactivity researchers during the early twentieth century.

"Make It Yourself": Home Sewing, Gender, and Culture, 1890–1930

"Make It Yourself": Home Sewing, Gender, and Culture, 1890–1930

by Sarah A. Gordon

In "Make It Yourself": Home Sewing, Gender, and Culture, 1890–1930, Sarah A. Gordon uses home sewing to examine domestic labor, marketing practices, changing standards of femininity, and understandings of class, gender and race. As industrialization made ready-made garments increasingly available, many women, out of necessity or choice, continued to make their own clothing. In doing so, women used a customary female skill both as a means of supporting traditional ideas and as a tool of personal agency. The shifting meanings of sewing became a contested space where businesses promoted sewing machines as tools for maintaining domestic harmony; women interpreted patterns to suit—or flout—definitions of appropriate appearances; and girls were taught to sew in ways that reflected beliefs about class, race, and region. Gordon uses established as well as more unusual source materials, including dresses, sewing workbooks and paper dolls, to argue that home sewing is a unique vehicle for understanding larger changes in American culture.

Manhood in the Age of Aquarius: Masculinity in Two Countercultural Communities, 1965-83

Manhood in the Age of Aquarius: Masculinity in Two Countercultural Communities, 1965-83

by Timothy Hodgdon

This is a study "full of rich interpretation" that explores the diverse forms of masculinity found in counter cultural radicalism. Hodgdon argues that conceptions of masculinity developed along two main lines: anarchism and mysticism. These are explored by examining the communities of the Diggers of San Francisco, and The Farm in Tennessee.

How Taiwan Became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han Colonization in the Seventeenth Century

How Taiwan Became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han Colonization in the Seventeenth Century

by Tonio Andrade

The incorporation of Taiwan into the early modern European colonial trading networks, and its subsequent incorporation into the Chinese empire, are topics almost completely unexplored in Western language scholarship. This superb monograph not only opens them up but does so in an exciting way by exploring the complex interactions between the European trade diasporas and existing patterns of Asian migration and trade. The author is well acquainted with recent and current debates on the critical transformation taking place in the global economy during the late 16th and 17th centuries, and imaginatively covers a broad range of issues. He argues convincingly, and in wonderfully rich detail, that it was Dutch protection that made possible the slow Chinese colonization of Taiwan-and ultimately its incorporation into China. Andrade brilliantly reminds us of how important the brief episode of European occupation was to the future development of Taiwan, including the birth of its sugar industry.
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Advocating The Man: Masculinity, Organized Labor and the Market Revolution in New York,
			1800-1840

Advocating The Man: Masculinity, Organized Labor, and the Household in New York, 1800-1840

by Joshua R. Greenberg

In his "thorough, and imaginative exploration" of the relationship between masculinity and the young labor movement in the Jacksonian era, Greenberg examines diverse sources, such as plays, debates about birth control and comic valentines. He argues that domestic issues and concerns guided workplace and political reactions to the new industrial economy.

The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe

The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe

by Sarah Lowengard

Seldom does any monograph attempt to be comparative, in this case to cross the Channel and to say new and interesting things about the scientific culture found in both England and France. By using color, as a practice as well as a branch of optical theory, the author manages to weave material culture along with abstract science—again an integration seldom found in a first work.



Other Titles

“I Saw a Nightmare…” Doing Violence to Memory: The Soweto Uprising, June 16, 1976
by Helena Pohlandt-McCormick

"The Slender Thread"
Irish Women on the Southern Avalon, 1750-1860
Willeen Keough

"A Tender Age":
Cultural Anxieties over the Child in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
William F. MacLehose

A Field of Honor
Writers, Court Culture, and Public Theatre in French Literary Life
Gregory S. Brown

A European Anabasis
Western European Volunteers in the German Army and SS, 1940-1945
Kenneth W. Estes

The Door of the Seas and Key to the Universe
Indian Politics and the Imperial Rivalry in the Darien, 1640-1750
Ignacio Gallup-Diaz

Binding Memories
Women as Makers and Tellers of History in Magude, Mozambique
Heidi Gengenbach

The Romance of China
Excursions to China in U.S. Culture: 1776-1876
John Rogers Haddad

Like Wheat to the Miller
Community, Convivencia, and the Construction of Morisco Identity in Sixteenth-Century Aragon
Mary Halavais

The Genesis of Napoleonic Propaganda
1796-1799
Wayne Hanley

Community and Public Culture
The Marwaris in Calcutta, c. 1897-1997
Anne Hardgrove

Escogidas Plantas
Nuns and Beatas in Mexico City, 1531-1601
Jacqueline Holler

Colonial Lists/Indian Power
Identity Politics in Nineteenth Century Telugu-Speaking India
Michael Katten

Stalin and the Spanish Civil War
Daniel Kowalsky

"The Infantry cannot do with a gun less"
The Place of the Artillery in the BEF, 1914-1918
Sanders Marble

Sumner Welles, Postwar Planning, and the Quest for a New World Order
1937-1943
Christopher D. O'Sullivan