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BOOKS
Select recent books by Buffett Center affiliates
2012
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Africans to Spanish America: Expanding the Diaspora
Sherwin K. Bryant, African American Studies, Rachel Sarah O'Toole, and Ben Vinson, editors
(University of Illinois Press 2012)
In their edited collection, Bryant and his colleagues expand the diaspora framework to include Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Cuba, exploring the connections and disjunctures between colonial Latin America and the African diaspora in the Spanish empires. |
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After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Douglas Foster, Medill
(Liveright 2012)
Foster traces South Africa's post-apartheid arc, from its celebrated beginnings under "Madiba" to Thabo Mbeki's tumultuous rule to the ferocious battle between Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. He tells this story not only from the viewpoint of the emerging black elite but also from the perspectives of ordinary citizens, including an HIV-infected teenager living outside Johannesburg and a homeless orphan in Cape Town. |
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Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan
Amy Stanley, History
(University of California Press 2012)
Stanley traces the social history of early modern Japan's sex trade from the seventeenth-century city to the nineteenth-century countryside. She describes how the work of "selling women" transformed communities across Japan. |
2011
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Reclaiming Justice: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Local Courts
John Hagan, Sociology, et al
(Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Reclaiming Justice provides a comprehensive view of how people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, and Serbia view and evaluate the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It examines perceptions about the ICTY and the decisions reached by its local courts, raising issues about international justice more broadly. |
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International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice
Ian Hurd, Political Science
(Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Hurd explains how leading international organizations both shape and are shaped by international politics. He examines three themes: the legal obligations that give international organizations their powers; the mechanisms that elicit compliance by their member states; and the practices of enforcement in the organization. |
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The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of our Religious Uncertainty
Christopher Lane, English
(Yale University Press, 2011)
The Victorian era was the first great 'Age of Doubt' and a critical moment in the history of Western ideas. Lane develops in-depth portraits of the scientific, literary, and intellectual icons from the era, demonstrating how they succeeded in turning doubt from a religious sin into an ethical necessity. |
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Racial Experiments in Cuban Literature and Ethnography
Emily Maguire, Spanish and Portuguese
(University of Florida Press 2011)
Maguire examines how a cadre of writers reimagined the nation and re-valorized Afro-Cuban culture through a textual production that incorporated elements of the ethnographic with the literary. Singling out the work of Lydia Cabrera as emblematic of the experimentation with genre that characterized the age, Maguire constructs a series of counterpoints that place Cabrera's work in dialogue with that of her Cuban contemporaries—including Fernando Ortiz, Nicolás Guillén, and Alejo Carpentier. |
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A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 1: The Artisanal Era, 1897–1941
Hamid Naficy, Communication Studies
(Duke University Press, 2011)
The first of what will be four volumes on Iranian cinema analyzes the early years of Iranian cinema, when an artisanal cinema industry sponsored by the ruling shahs and other elites emerged. |
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A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 2: The Industrializing Years, 1941-1978
Hamid Naficy, Communication Studies
(Duke University Press, 2011)
The second volume covers Mohammad Reza Shah's rule (1941-1978), when Iranian cinema flourished and became industrialized. The state was instrumental in building the infrastructures of the cinema and television industries. It funded and censored much of the new-wave cinema, which grew bolder in its criticism of state authoritarianism during this period. |
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Bewitching Russian Opera: The Tsarina from State to Stage
Inna Naroditskaya, Music
(Oxford University Press, 2011)
The author investigates the musical lives of four female monarchs who ruled Russia for most of the eighteenth century, Catherine I, Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine the Great, uncovering the connections between the tsarinas' personal creative aspirations and contemporary musical-theatrical practices, and the political and state affairs conducted during their reigns. |
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Warfare in Independent Africa
William Reno, Political Science
(Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Reno surveys the history of armed conflict in Africa since decolonization and independence, and offers a comprehensive analysis of their causes and character. He traces the evolution of warfare from anti-colonial and anti-apartheid campaigns to more complex, multi-dimensional conflicts, providing a new perspective on violence on the continent. |
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All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals
David Scheffer, Law
(Princeton University Press, 2012)
All the Missing Souls provides an insider's account of the international gamble to prosecute those responsible for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and to redress some of the bloodiest human rights atrocities of our time. Scheffer analyzes the successes and failures of the international community in holding individuals accountable for their actions. |
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Islamic Law in Action: Authority, Discretion, and Everyday Experiences in Mamluk Egypt
Kristen Stilt, Law
(Oxford University Press, 2011)
Stilt focuses on the actions of a particular practitioner of Islamic law, the muhtasib, whose vast jurisdiction included all public behavior. In analyzing the actions taken by the muhtasib during the Mamluk period (1250-1517), Stilt demonstrates that legal doctrine and the policy demands of the sultan influenced the daily practice of Islamic law. |
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Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950
Helen Tilley, History
(University of Chicago Press 2011)
Tropical Africa was one of the last regions of the world to experience formal European colonialism, a process that coincided with the advent of a range of new scientific specialties and research methods. Tilley shows the thorny relationship between imperialism and the role of scientific expertise—environmental, medical, racial, and anthropological—in the colonization of British Africa. |
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Oligarchy
Jeffrey Winters, Political Science
(Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Winters uses case studies dating from 2300 BCE to identify different types of oligarchs. While all oligarchs are defined by their wealth and united in their desire to protect it, variations in the type of threat elicit different responses, which in turn yield four types of oligarchy: warring, ruling, sultanistic, and civil. |
2010
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News at Work: Imitation in an Age of Information Abundance
Pablo J. Boczkowski, Communication Studies
(University of Chicago Press, 2010)
Boczkowski explains why, despite an ever-increasing access to news media, the diversity of the news that is available has decreased. The author compares two newspapers from Buenos Aires with similar outlets in the United States to understand the evolution of the supply and demand of the news in the contemporary (information) era. |
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Ideographic Modernism: China, Writing, Media
Christopher Bush, French & Italian
(Oxford University Press, 2010)
Bush offers a reconstructed history of the ideograph and its role during the modernist period. He puts forth a new argument about the meaning and function of the ideograph and reveals that China has been more present in Western modernism than previously thought. |
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Money and Credit: A Sociological Approach
Bruce G. Carruthers, Sociology, et al.
(Cambridge University Press, 2010)
Published at the height of the global financial crisis, this book offers a sociological perspective on money and credit. The editors consider the social meaning of money and credit at the individual and corporate levels, and draw conclusions about how both will continue to drive the future of the economy. |
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Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West
Clare Cavanagh, Slavic Languages and Literatures
(Yale University Press, 2010)
Cavanagh offers a comparative study of modern poetry from both sides of the Iron Curtain. In so doing, she offers several correctives to the conventional understanding of the role of lyric poetry in totalitarian states such as Russia and Poland. |
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Organizing Bronze Age Societies: The Mediterranean, Central Europe, and Scandanavia Compared
Timothy Earle, Anthropology, et al
(Cambridge University Press, 2010)
Organizing Bronze Age Societies offers a comparative study of household, economy, and settlement in three micro-regions of Europe during the Bronze Age. Earle utilizes new evidence acquired over years of extensive fieldwork to provide a deeper understanding of the social and economic complexity of familial and social organization. |
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Globalizing American Studies
Brian Edwards, English, et al.
(University of Chicago Press, 2010)
This edited volume puts forth a set of essays that develop a more globalized approach to American studies. The authors offer several examples of the international circulation of American culture throughout history and develop a new standard for the discipline’s transnational aspirations. |
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The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies
Peter Hayes, History, et al.
(Oxford University Press, 2010)
This multi-disciplinary work examines the rapidly emerging field of Holocaust Studies, considering in turn the enabling conditions, the primary protagonists, the sites of the Holocaust, how it has been studied and interpreted, and its after effects. |
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Imagination Without Borders: Feminist Artist Tomiyama Taeko and Social Responsibility
Laura Hein, History, et al.
(University of Michigan East Asia Center Press, 2010) |
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Berbers and Others: Beyond Tribe and Nation in the Maghrib
Katherine Hoffman, Anthropology, et al.
(Indiana University Press, 2010)
This edited volume sheds light on contemporary forms of social and political activism in the Northern African region of the Maghrib. Using a multidisciplinary approach, Berbers and Others examines how Berber groups have peacefully sought for recognition in the areas of the arts, politics, education, and national memory. |
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Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Political Science, et al.
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
The edited volume considers the potentially divisive relationship between political authorities and religion by exploring how the varieties of secularism provide different spaces for religion in the public sphere. Comparative Secularisms brings together a wide range of scholars to study secularisms in France, India, Turkey, and the United States. |
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Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance
D. Soyini Madison, Performance Studies
(Cambridge University Press, 2010) |
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Colonialism and Postcolonial Development:
Spanish America in Comparative Perspective
James Mahoney, Political Science
(Cambridge University Press, 2010) |
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Living with the Dragon: How the American Public Views the Rise of China
Benjamin Page, Political Science, et al.
(Columbia University Press, 2010)
The authors find that most Americans favor peaceful engagement with China. They favor free trade with the country and believe that the United States should balance Chinese power rather than attempt to challenge it via military action on issues such as the defense of Taiwan. |
2009
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Until the Last Man Comes Home POWs, MIAs, and the Unending Vietnam War
Michael J. Allen, History
(University of North Carolina Press, 2009) |
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The European Court’s Political Power: Selected Essays
Karen J. Alter, Political Science
(Oxford University Press, 2009) |
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Bankrupt: Global Lawmaking and Systemic Financial Crisis
Bruce G. Carruthers, Sociology, et al.
(Stanford University Press, 2009)
The authors develop a theory of legal change by examining the different reactions of China, Indonesia, and Korea to international pressures to implement comprehensive corporate bankruptcy laws in the wake of the global economic crises of the 1990s. They find that the tensions between global and national actors produced considerable variation with respect to implementation. |
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The Andes Imagined Indigenismo, Society, and Modernity
Jorge Coronado, Spanish & Portuguese
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009) |
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Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power
James Mahoney, Political Science and Sociology, et al.
(Cambridge University Press, 2009)
This edited volume offers an explanation of incremental institutional change and then applies the theory to several different cases, including in the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The project grew out of a conference organized by the Buffett Center’s Comparative-Historical Social Science working group. |
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The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, History
(Yale University Press, 2009)
Petrovsky-Shtern explains the emergence of a Ukrainian-Jewish literary tradition by examining the poetry and prose of five writers of Jewish descent between the late 19th and late 20th centuries. Their own experiences with marginality as Jews made them sympathetic to the Ukrainian community’s national cause, leading them to integrate their Jewish concerns into their Ukrainian-language writings. |
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The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective
Monica Prasad, Sociology, et al.
(Cambridge University Press, 2009)
Offering a survey of the new fiscal sociology, the authors argue that the dynamics of taxation have much to illuminate about the nature of modern societies. They examine the origins, persistence, and consequences of taxation, finding important connections between taxes and macrohistorical phenomena such as wars, religion, and gender regimes. |
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Narratives of Catastrophe: Boris Diop, ben Jelloun, Khatibi
Nasrin Qader, French & Italian
(Fordham University Press, 2009) |
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The Quality of Democracy in Eastern Europe: Public Preferences and Policy Reforms
Andrew Roberts, Political Science
(Cambridge University Press, 2009) |
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Global TV: New Media and the Cold War, 1946-69
James Schwoch, Communication Studies
(University of Illinois Press, 2009) |
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Contracting States Sovereign Transfers in International Relations
Hendrik Spruyt, Political Science, et al.
(Princeton University Press, 2009) |
2008
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Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment
Risa Brooks, Political Science
(Princeton University Press, 2008) |
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New Landscapes of Inequality: Neoliberalism and the Erosion of American Democracy
Micaela di Leonardo, Anthropology, et al.
(Santa Fe: School of Advanced Research Press, 2008) |
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A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro
Brodwyn Fischer, History
(Stanford University Press, 2008) |
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Tree of Liberty: Cultural Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World
Doris L. Garraway, French & Italian, et al.
(University of Virginia Press, 2008) |
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Darfur and the Crime of Genocide
John Hagan, Sociology, et al.
(Cambridge University Press, 2008) |
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Youth and the City in the Global South
Karen Tranberg Hansen, Anthropology, et al.
(Indiana University Press, 2008) |
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The UN Security Council and the Politics of International Authority
Ian Hurd, Political Science, et al.
(Routledge, 2008) |
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A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It
Stephen Kinzer, Political Science
(Wiley, 2008) |
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European Union and the Deconstruction of the Rhineland Frontier
Michael Loriaux, Political Science
(Cambridge University Press, 2008) |
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Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation
Victor C. Shih, Political Science
(Cambridge University Press, 2008) |
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The Time of the Crime: Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis, Italian Film
Domietta Torlasco, French & Italian
(Stanford University Press, 2008) |
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The Balkans in World History
Andrew Wachtel, Slavic Languages and Literatures
(Oxford University Press, 2008) |
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Benjamin’s –abilities
Samuel Weber, German
(Harvard University Press, 2008) |
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