Sasha Ambramsky (University Writing Program) 

Jumping at Shadows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream by Sasha Abramsky, a lecturer in the University Writing Program, sets out to uncover what things frighten us most: from terrorist attacks to illegal immigrants to the Zika virus, and posits why our fears are in many cases misplaced.

Kathy Stuart (Department of History)

In Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern German: Crime, Sin and Salvation, Kathy Stuart shows how "suicide by proxy" became a major societal problem after 1650. Desiring to die repentantly at the hands of divinely-instituted government, perpetrators hoped to escape eternal damnation that befell direct suicides. Stuart shows how this crime emerged as an unintended consequence of aggressive social disciplining campaigns by confessional states. Paradoxically, suicide by proxy exposed the limits of early modern state power, as governments struggled unsuccessfully to suppress the tactic.

Jenny Kaminer (Department of Russian)

Haunted Dreams: Fantasies of Adolescence in Post-Soviet Culture by Jenny Kaminer, associate professor of Russian, is the first in-depth study of the representation of post-Soviet adolescence in fiction, film and drama. The book maps how the adolescent hero has become a locus for multiple anxieties throughout the tumultuous years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Michael Dylan Foster (Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures) and Shinonome Kijin 

Monsters, spirits, fantastic beings, and supernatural creatures haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yōkai, they appear in many forms, from tengu to shape-shifting kitsune foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Popular today in most Japanese media, many yōkai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories. The Book of Yōkai invites readers to examine how people create, transmit, and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them. 

In clear and accessible language, Professor of Japanese Michael Dylan Foster unpacks the cultural and historical contexts of yōkai, interpreting their varied meanings and introducing people who have pursued them through the ages.

Brenda Deen Schildgen (Department of Comparative Literature) 

Dante and Violence: Domestic, Civic, Cosmic by Distinguished Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature Brenda Deen Schildgen is an examination of violence in the domestic, communal and cosmic spheres in Dante Alighieri's literary works. Primarily focused on Dante’s representation of his contemporary reality, it demonstrates that the punishments and rewards in Dante’s heaven and hell may be a direct appeal to his readers to recognize the crimes that pervade their world.

Adam Zientek (Department of History) 

A Thirst for Wine and War explores the French army’s emotional and behavioral conditioning of soldiers through the distribution of a mind-altering drug that was later hailed as one of the army’s “fathers of victory.” The daily wine ration arose from an unexpected set of factors including the demoralization of trench warfare, the wine industry’s fear of losing its main consumers and medical consensus about the benefits of wine drinking.

Drawing on a range of archives, personal narratives and trench journals, Associate Professor Adam Derek Zientek shows how the French army’s intoxication of its soldiers constituted a unique exercise of bio-power deployed on a mass scale.

Alan Klima (Department of Anthropology) 

Written in a literary style of storytelling, Ethnography #9 by Professor of Anthropology  Alan Klima examines moneylending, gambling, funeral casinos and the consultation of spirits and mediums to predict winning lottery numbers. 

Ethnography #9 was a winner of the 2020 Gregory Bateson Prize presented by the Society for Cultural Anthropology.

Frances E. Dolan (Department of English)

A gripping exploration of 17th-Century accounts of domestic murder in fact and fiction, Dangerous Familiars is the first to ask why. In it, Frances E. Dolan examines stories ranging from the profoundly disturbing to the comically macabre: of husband murder, wife murder, infanticide and witchcraft. She surveys trial transcripts, confessions, and scaffold speeches, as well as pamphlets, ballads, popular plays based on notorious crimes, and such well-known works as The Tempest, Othello, Macbeth, and The Winter's Tale. 

Frances E. Dolan (Department of English)

Marriage is often described as a melding of two people into one. But what — or who —must be lost, fragmented or buried in that process? We have inherited a model of marriage so flawed, Dolan contends, that its logical consequence is conflict. In an era when marriage remains hotly contested, this book draws our attention to one of the histories that bears on the present, a history in which marriage promises both intimate connection and fierce conflict, both companionship and competition.

Michael Dylan Foster, a professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, has been researching yōkai, the mythical creatures of Japan, for years. Now he's hosting a mini-series about them. 

Psychology Ph.D. student Zachary Oakland, a military veteran, is developing a new understanding of social anxiety. What drives him, he said, is a need to understand post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a debilitating condition that many veterans bring home.