“Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe examines how gender identities were reconfigured in a Bulgarian Muslim community following the demise of Communism and an influx of international aid from the Islamic world. Kristen Ghodsee conducted extensive ethnographic research among a small population of Pomaks, Slavic Muslims living in the remote mountains of southern Bulgaria. After Communism fell in 1989, Muslim minorities in Bulgaria sought to rediscover their faith after decades of state-imposed atheism. But instead of returning to their traditionally heterodox roots, isolated groups of Pomaks embraced a distinctly foreign type of Islam, which swept into their communities on the back of Saudi-financed international aid to Balkan Muslims, and which these Pomaks believe to be a more correct interpretation of their religion.
Ghodsee explores how gender relations among the Pomaks had to be renegotiated after the collapse of both Communism and the region’s state-subsidized lead and zinc mines. She shows how mosques have replaced the mines as the primary site for jobless and underemployed men to express their masculinity, and how Muslim women have encouraged this as a way to combat alcoholism and domestic violence. Ghodsee demonstrates how women’s embrace of this new form of Islam has led them to adopt more conservative family roles, and how the Pomaks’ new religion remains deeply influenced by Bulgaria’s Marxist-Leninist legacy, with its calls for morality, social justice, and human solidarity.”
Earlier this week, Maurizio Viroli was invited to speak at the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. We arranged this event months and months ago, but recent events being what they are, this talk suddenly took on greater importance. Watch the video here to listen to Maurizio discuss Berlusconi’s Italy and the ideas that he further develops in his PUP book, The Liberty of Servants, about Berlusconi operating a pseudo-Royal Court of courtiers eager to please in return for economic and political favors.
“In order to give recognition to new scholarly publications that make significant contributions to the study of religion, the American Academy of Religion offers Awards for Excellence. These awards honor works of distinctive originality, intelligence, creativity and importance; books that affect decisively how religion is examined, understood, and interpreted.”
FACT: “During the 1971-72 school year, girls comprised just 7 percent of all participants in high school sports; in 2006-2007, they totaled 41 percent. From 1971, when three women completed the second New York City Marathon, the number of female finishers soared to 11, 715 in 2003. Roughly a third of the racers in New York for the annual event were now women.”
The 1970s looks at an iconic decade when the cultural left and economic right came to the fore in American society and the world at large. While many have seen the 1970s as simply a period of failures epitomized by Watergate, inflation, the oil crisis, global unrest, and disillusionment with military efforts in Vietnam, Thomas Borstelmann creates a new framework for understanding the period and its legacy. He demonstrates how the 1970s increased social inclusiveness and, at the same time, encouraged commitments to the free market and wariness of government. As a result, American culture and much of the rest of the world became more—and less—equal.
Borstelmann explores how the 1970s forged the contours of contemporary America. Military, political, and economic crises undercut citizens’ confidence in government. Free market enthusiasm led to lower taxes, a volunteer army, individual 401(k) retirement plans, free agency in sports, deregulated airlines, and expansions in gambling and pornography. At the same time, the movement for civil rights grew, promoting changes for women, gays, immigrants, and the disabled. And developments were not limited to the United States. Many countries gave up colonial and racial hierarchies to develop a new formal commitment to human rights, while economic deregulation spread to other parts of the world, from Chile and the United Kingdom to China.
Get ready to moonwalk. This video revealing the secrets of manakin mating rituals is amazing! Want to know something else that’s amazing? This forthcoming book from Guy Kirwan and Graeme Green on (you probably guessed it): Cotingas and Manakins!
by Sarah Caldwell | Filed in: Books - Publishing | 8:18am EST
The greatly anticipated Princeton Shorts Series is now available for purchase via all major eBook retailers. Check out PUP’s swanky new webpage for the series. Congratulations to everyone involved with producing this trailblazing new venture in digital publishing!
Happy Pub Date to Michael Dirda and On Conan Doyle, the third installment of PUP’s ‘Writers on Writers’ series! Two great new Q&A’s with our very own Mystery Man have just appeared in the Seattle Timesand Encyclopaedia Britannica. Exactly one month from today is the premiere of the new RDJ/Jude Law Sherlock Holmes film, “A Game of Shadows.” Paging Professor Moriarty!
Our PUP Europe week ended with attending a wonderful celebration of Clutag Press, a small independent publisher of poetry established by our Advisory Board member Andrew McNeillie. Clutag has published Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill; and at t the Bodleian Library in Oxford a group of celebrated poets, including Tom Paulin and the former poet laureate Andrew Motion, read from work which had originally appeared in Clutag in honour of its tenth anniversary.
A passionate lifelong fan of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda is a member of The Baker Street Irregulars—the most famous and romantic of all Sherlockian groups. Combining memoir and appreciation, On Conan Doyle is a highly engaging personal introduction to Holmes’s creator, as well as a rare insider’s account of the curiously delightful activities and playful scholarship of The Baker Street Irregulars.
Because Arthur Conan Doyle wrote far more than the mysteries involving Holmes, this book also introduces readers to the author’s lesser-known but fascinating writings in an astounding range of other genres. A prolific professional writer, Conan Doyle was among the most important Victorian masters of the supernatural short story, an early practitioner of science fiction, a major exponent of historical fiction, a charming essayist and memoirist, and an outspoken public figure who attacked racial injustice in the Congo, campaigned for more liberal divorce laws, and defended wrongly convicted prisoners. He also wrote novels about both domestic life and contemporary events (including one set in the Middle East during an Islamic uprising), as well as a history of World War I, and, in his final years, controversial tracts in defense of spiritualism.
On Conan Doyle describes all of these achievements and activities, uniquely combining skillful criticism with the story of Dirda’s deep and enduring affection for Conan Doyle and his work. This is a book for everyone who already loves Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and the world of 221B Baker Street, or for anyone who would like to know more about them, but it is also a much-needed celebration of Arthur Conan Doyle’s genius for every kind of storytelling.
Mammals Monday is back! Tune in every week for a screenshot from our exciting new app, Mammals of North America. The app, available for Android and iPhone, is an essential field guide to the land and marine mammals of the USA and Canada.
This week’s featured mammal is the balaenoptera musculus, also known as the Blue Whale. Blue whales are a protected species, and can be found in the Gulf of Maine, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and off the coast of Southern California.
Fun fact: Blue whales can live to be over 80 years old!
A new book by historian Olivier Zunz, Philanthropy in America, takes an engaging look at the development of philanthropy in the United States during the twentieth-century. Ira Katznelson of Columbia University writes:
This beautifully crafted book, by master historian Olivier Zunz, transforms our understanding of American civil society. Zunz compellingly traces the often auspicious, yet sometimes troublesome relationships that bind government to philanthropy, money to responsibility, and charitable decisions to social reform and democratic performance. Anyone interested in U.S. politics and society will want to engage with this riveting narrative.
This book will be the focus of a panel discussion on November 16th, featuring author Olivier Zunz; John Tyler of the Kauffman Foundation; Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow Michael Edwards; and Bard College Professor Ellen Lagemann. Hudson Institute’s William Schambra will moderate the discussion. Lunch will be served.
Featuring commentary and interviews from Princeton University Press authors, the PUP Blog is a highly respected, timely and indispensable source for learning, understanding and reflection.
Kristen Ghodsee’s “Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria” has won the 2011 John D. Bell Memorial Book Prize from the Bulgarian Studies Association. This award is established for the most outstanding recent scholarly book within any area of Bulgarian studies.
