African-american christianity

Eight leading scholars have joined forces to give us the most comprehensive book to date on the history of African-American religion from the slavery period to the present.Beginning with Albert Raboteau's essay on the importance of the story of Exodus among African-American Christians and conclud...

Pindar

Between feminism and labor

"Equal pay for equal work" has long been a forceful slogan of the feminist and labor movements. Now, however, as the American economy depends more and more on "women's work," it has become clear that this objective does not benefit the majority of women, who are employed in sex-segregated jobs. I...

Karok myths

Karok Myths serves as an invaluable companion to Yurok Myths, offering a profound glimpse into the folklore of the Karok people as collected by renowned anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Edward Gifford. These two collections, spanning decades, were translated from the Karok language into English...

From grammar to politics

Alessandro Duranti explores the way traditional oratory in a Samoan village is shaped by the needs of the political process and shows how language insulates ceremonial speakers from the perils of everyday confrontation. He proposes a "moral flow hypothesis" in discourse, to describe a grammar tha...

Party politics in the age of caesar

The advice given to Cicero by his astute, campaign-conscious brother to prepare him for the consular elections of 64 B.C., has a curiously modern ring: "Avoid taking a definite stand on great public issues either in the Senate or before the people. Bend your energies towards making friends of key...

Five films by frederick wiseman

Frederick Wiseman is among America’s foremost documentary filmmakers. The recipient of many awards, including three Emmys, Wiseman has made more than thirty feature-length documentaries during a career that has spanned five decades. Together, these films provide a fascinating chronicle of America...

Montaigne

Friedrich considers the Montaigne of the Essays on of the first "moralists" in the French sense of the term, recording with anthropological fervor and in fresh, informal language the full spectrum of human thought and commerce as he saw it. Philippe Desan, who introduces this fine translation, co...

Loyola's acts

Loyola's Acts: The Rhetoric of the Self offers a nuanced exploration of Iñigo López de Loyola's pivotal spiritual transformation and its rhetorical framing within the Christian tradition. Far from being a straightforward autobiography, the text, titled Acta, is positioned as a work of epideictic ...

The gaiety of language

Above the clouds

This latest work from Japanese-born anthropologist Takie Sugiyama Lebra is the first ethnographic study of the modern Japanese aristocracy. Established as a class at the beginning of the Meiji period, the kazoku ranked directly below the emperor and his family. Officially dissolved in 1947, this ...

When a jew dies

Samuel Heilman's eloquent account of the traditional customs that are put into practice when a Jewish person dies provides both an informative anthropological perspective on Jewish rites of mourning and a moving chronicle of the loss of his own father. This unique narrative crosses and recrosses ...

Thrown among strangers

Every California schoolchild's first interaction with history begins with the missions and Indians. It is the pastoralist image, of course, and it is a lasting one. Children in elementary school hear how Father Serra and the priests brought civilization to the groveling, lizard- and acorn-eating ...