The Starting Line: Latina/o Children, Texas Schools, and National Debates on Early Education
University of Texas Press, Dec. 2020
By Robert Crosnoe, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and professor, Department of Sociology and Population Research Center
This book captures the sights, sounds and voices of daily life in multiple preschools to shed light on the educational challenges and opportunities of the growing low-income Latino/a population. It uses Texas as a bellwether to better understand and inform the state of early education in the U.S.
Imperial Science: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire
Cambridge University Press, Jan. 2021
By Bruce J. Hunt, associate professor, Department of History
In the second half of the 19th century, British firms and engineers laid a global network of undersea telegraph cables that for the first time linked up virtually the entire world. This “Victorian internet” had enormous effects, not least on electrical science.
Psyche and Soul in America: The Spiritual Odyssey of Rollo May
Oxford University Press, Feb. 2021
By Robert H. Abzug, founding director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies and professor emeritus, Department of History
In post-World War II America and especially during the 1960s and 1970s, Rollo May’s bestselling books profoundly addressed a widely felt anxiety concerning personal emptiness amid a culture in crisis. A psychotherapist by trade, he charted psychological paths to individuality, intimacy and community enriched by the arts, philosophy and spiritual quest.
The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance
University of California Press, Feb. 2021
By Celeste Vaughan Curington (North Carolina State University), Jennifer Hickes Lundquist (University of Massachusetts Amherst); and Ken-Hou Lin, associate professor, Department of Sociology and Population Research Center
The Dating Divide is a fascinating look at how a contemporary conflux of individualization, consumerism and the proliferation of digital technologies has given rise to a unique form of gendered racism in the era of swiping right — or left. This compelling study uses data to show the racial biases at play in digital dating spaces.
Atmospheric Noise: The Indefinite Urbanism of Los Angeles
Duke University Press, Feb. 2021
By Marina Peterson, associate professor, Department of Anthropology
Exploring spaces shaped by noise around Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Peterson shows how noise is a way of attuning toward the atmospheric: through noise we learn to listen to the sky and imagine the permeability of bodies and matter, sensing and conceiving that which is diffuse, indefinite, vague and unformed.
Identities in Flux: Race, Migration, and Citizenship in Brazil
SUNY Press, Feb. 2021
By Niyi Afolabi, professor, African and African Diaspora Studies Department
Identities in Flux examines iconic Afro-Brazilian figures and theorizes how they have been appropriated to either support or contest a utopian vision of multiculturalism. Afolabi argues that the identities of these figures are not fixed, but rather inhabit a fluid terrain of ideological and political struggle in Brazil.
The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant’s Dialectic
Oxford University Press, Feb. 2021 (UK); April 2021 (US)
By Ian Proops, professor, Department of Philosophy
This book argues that “critique,” for Kant, is not merely negative in conception; it also has a positive, investigatory — even optimistic — goal. Like a metaphysical prospector, Kant subjects the “ore” of pure rationalist metaphysics to the “fire assay” of critique in the hope of recovering a nugget of gold.
Assault on Democracy: Communism, Fascism, and Authoritarianism During the Interwar Years
Cambridge University Press, Feb. 2021
By Kurt Weyland, professor, Department of Government
This book examines how fears of Communism arising from the Russian Revolution prompted a right-wing backlash that overthrew democracy in many European and some Latin American countries during the interwar years, and why this reactionary groundswell brought fascism to Italy and Germany while imposing conservative authoritarianism in other countries.
The Appearance of Corruption: Testing the Supreme Court’s Assumptions about Campaign Finance Reform
Oxford University Press, Feb. 2021
By Daron R. Shaw and Brian E. Roberts, professors, Department of Government; and Mijeong Baek, senior researcher at the Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles
The Appearance of Corruption analyzes the connections that the Supreme Court made between campaign finance regulations and voters’ behavior. Drawing from original survey data and experiments, the authors confront the question of what happens when the Supreme Court is wrong —and when the foundation of over 40 years of jurisprudence is simply not true.