After a decadelong hiatus, African Americans once again began appearing regularly on television in the 1960s. Bill Cosby costarred on I Spy, Sammy Davis Jr. briefly hosted a variety show, and in 1968 Diahann Carroll debuted in the title role of Julia, the first television series to star an African American since the cancellation of Amos ’n’ Andy. Over the next ten years, shows with African American casts became more common; some, like Sanford and Son and Good Times, were hits with both black and white audiences. Yet many within the black community criticize these programs as perpetuating demeaning stereotypes and hampering the political progress made by African Americans. 

In Revolution Televised, Christine Acham offers a more complex reading of this period in African American television history, finding within these programs opposition to dominant white constructions of African American identity. She explores the intersection of popular television and race as witnessed from the documentary coverage of the civil rights and Black Power movements, the personal politics of Flip Wilson and Soul Train’s Don Cornelius, and the ways in which notorious X-rated comic Redd Foxx reinvented himself for prime time. 

Reflecting on both the potential of television to effect social change as well as its limitations, Acham concludes with analyses of Richard Pryor’s politically charged and short-lived sketch comedy show and the success of outspoken comic Chris Rock. Revolution Televised deftly illustrates how black television artists operated within the constraints of the television industry to resist and ultimately shape the mass media’s portrayal of African American life. 

Christine Acham is assistant professor in African American and African studies at the University of California, Davis.

The Black Power movement represented a key turning point in American politics. Disenchanted by the hollow progress of federal desegregation during the 1960s, many black citizens and leaders across the United States demanded meaningful self-determination. The popular movement they created was marked by a vigorous artistic renaissance, militant political action, and fierce ideological debate.

Exploring the major political and intellectual currents from the Black Power era to the present, Cedric Johnson reveals how black political life gradually conformed to liberal democratic capitalism and how the movement’s most radical aims—the rejection of white aesthetic standards, redefinition of black identity, solidarity with the Third World, and anticapitalist revolution—were gradually eclipsed by more moderate aspirations. Although Black Power activists transformed the face of American government, Johnson contends that the evolution of the movement as a form of ethnic politics restricted the struggle for social justice to the world of formal politics.

Johnson offers a compelling and theoretically sophisticated critique of the rhetoric and strategies that emerged in this period. Drawing on extensive archival research, he reinterprets the place of key intellectual figures, such as Harold Cruse and Amiri Baraka, and influential organizations, including the African Liberation Support Committee, the National Black Political Assembly, and the National Black Independent Political Party in postsegregation black politics, while at the same time identifying the contradictions of Black Power radicalism itself.

Documenting the historical retreat from radical, democratic struggle, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders ultimately calls for the renewal of popular struggle and class-conscious politics.

Cedric Johnson is assistant professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Rhyming Hope and History exposes the frayed relations between activism and social movement scholarship and examines the causes and consequences of this disconnect between theory and practice. Both scholars and activists explore solutions, weighing the promise and perils of engaged theory and the barriers to meaningful collaboration. This volume asserts that partnerships among scholars and activists benefit both academic inquiry and social change efforts. 

Contributors: Kevin M. Carragee, Suffolk U; Catherine Corrigall-Brown, U of California, Irvine; Myra Marx Ferree, U of Wisconsin, Madison; Richard Flacks, U of California, Santa Barbara; Adria D. Goodson; Richard Healy and Sandra Hinson, Grassroots Policy Project; David Meyer, U of California, Irvine; Cynthia Peters, Worker Education Program of the Service Employees International Union, Local 2020; Barbara Risman, North Carolina State U; Robert J. S. Ross, Clark U; Leila J. Rupp, U of California, Santa Barbara; Cassie Schwerner, Schott Foundation; Valerie Sperling, Clark U; David A. Snow, U of California, Irvine; Verta Taylor, U of California, Santa Barbara. 

David Croteau is formerly associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Virginia Commonwealth University. William Hoynes is professor of sociology and director of media studies at Vassar College. Charlotte Ryan is codirector of the Media Research and Action Project at Boston College. William A. Gamson is professor of sociology at Boston College.

Richard Eberhart - American Writers 55 was first published in 1966. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Richard Wright - American Writers 74 was first published in 1989. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

An updated edition of this measured, practical, and timely guide to LGBT rights and issues for educators and school officials

With ongoing battles over transgender rights, bullying cases in the news almost daily, and marriage equality only recently the law of the land, the information in The Right to Be Out could not be more timely or welcome. In an updated second edition that explores the altered legal terrain of LGBT rights for students and educators, Stuart Biegel offers expert guidance on the most challenging concerns in this fraught context. 

Taking up the pertinent questions likely to arise regarding curriculum and pedagogy in the classroom, school sports, and transgender issues, Biegel reviews the dramatic legal developments of the past decades, identifies the principles at work, and analyzes the policy considerations that result from these changes. Central to his work is an understanding of the social, political, and personal tensions regarding the nature and extent of the right to be out, which includes both the First Amendment right to express an identity and the Fourteenth Amendment right to be treated equally. Acknowledging that LGBT issues affect people of every sexual orientation and gender identity, Biegel provides a road map of viable strategies for school officials and educators. 

The Right to Be Out, informed by the latest research-based findings, advances the proposition that a safe and supportive educational environment, built upon shared values and geared toward a greater appreciation of our pluralistic society, can lead to a better world for everyone.

The Right to Play Oneself collects for the first time Thomas Waugh’s essays on the politics, history, and aesthetics of documentary film, written between 1974 and 2008. The title, inspired by Walter Benjamin’s and Joris Ivens’s manifestos of “committed” documentary from the 19 0s, reflects the book’s theme of the political potential of documentary for representing the democratic performance of citizens and artists.

Waugh analyzes an eclectic international selection of films and issues from the 1920s to the present day. The essays provide a transcultural focus, moving from documentaries of the industrialized societies of North America and Europe to those of 1980s India and addressing such canonical directors as Dziga Vertov, Emile de Antonio, Barbara Hammer, Rosa von Praunheim, and Anand Patwardhan. Woven through the volume is the relationship of the documentary with the history of the Left, including discussions of LGBT documentary pioneers and the firebrand collectives that changed the history of documentary, such as Challenge for Change and ACT UP’s Women’s Collective.

Together with the introduction by the author, Waugh’s essays advance a defiantly and persuasively personal point of view on the history and significance of documentary film.

Ring Lardner - American Writers 49 was first published in 1965. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Based on actual events from 1989 in International Falls, Minnesota, Riot tells the story of sixth-grader Bryan, whose family becomes stressed when nonunion labor “rats” are hired by the local paper mill, leaving his father, a union worker, angry and out of a job. Tension erupts into daily fights at school and nightly acts of vandalism with no solution in sight. Already torn between his parents’ opposing viewpoints on how to handle the escalating situation, Bryan’s growing feelings for the daughter of a nonunion worker only complicate matters.

Bryan tries to understand the turmoil affecting his home and his town, but it is becomes harder and harder to separate his friends from his enemies. And when he witnesses a violent act that implicates his father, he must wrestle with family loyalty and telling the truth.

The road to riches for the hero of this sweeping historical novel ends up being rockier than he initially expects. Norwegian immigrant Jonas Olsen arrives in late nineteenth-century Minneapolis with little money and less English. He quickly learns to reinvent himself—from laboring in sewer construction to building a successful dry goods business, from losing everything in a banking collapse to settling the Red River Valley. While an eminently likable character, Jonas can also be ruthless in his ambition to find success in America. 

The Rise of Jonas Olsen is at once an immigrant novel, business novel, political novel, and a western, offering a rich and panoramic view of Scandinavian immigrant life in the Upper Midwest. Wist combines realism and satire to depict the role Norwegian Americans played in the economic, political, and cultural life of the Upper Midwest. 

Originally published serially in the Norwegian-language newspaper the Decorah Posten in the 1920s, The Rise of Jonas Olsen illustrates an immigrant’s struggle to preserve his identity and heritage while striving to become fully accepted as an American. 

Johannes B. Wist (1864–1923) was a journalist and editor of the Decorah Posten from 1900 to 1923. 

Orm Øverland is professor of American literature at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the author of The Western Home: A Literary History of Norwegian America and Immigrant Minds, American Identities: Making the United States Home, 1870-1930. 

Todd W. Nichol is editor of the Norwegian-American Historical Association publication program. 

Published in cooperation with the Norwegian-American Historical Association.

Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800 was first published in 1976. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This volume presents an account of European expansion in Asia through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - the story of the rivalries of the East India companies and the growth of British maritime dominance which forged the Pax Britannica destined to keep Asia under European control until 1941. The author explains that it is called Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient because the few thousands of Europeans who built these empires thought of themselves primarily as merchants rather than as rulers.

The book consists of two parts, the first, narrative, the second, interpretive. The story of European commercial activity in the East is told in three chapters, the first ending with the Dutch conquest of Ceylon in 1656 and the reorganization and revival of the English East India Company as a permanent joint stock company under Oliver Cromwell's charter of 1657. The second chapter ends with the European peace settlement at Utrecht in 1713, and the third with the establishment of British preponderance in the East India trade at the close of the eighteenth century.

In the second part the author discusses the organization and structure of East India companies, the commodities in East India trade, the nature, growth, and development of the "country trade," and the relations between Europeans and Asians with some reference to the growth of European knowledge of Asia and the influence of the European presence in Asia on social history in both Asia and Europe.

Winner of the Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award 2017

Mohawk midwife Katsi Cook lives in Akwesasne, an indigenous community in upstate New York that is downwind and downstream from three Superfund sites. For years she witnessed elevated rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer in her town, ultimately drawing connections between environmental contamination and these maladies. When she brought her findings to environmental health researchers, Cook sparked the United States’ first large-scale community-based participatory research project.

In The River Is in Us, author Elizabeth Hoover takes us deep into this remarkable community that has partnered with scientists and developed grassroots programs to fight the contamination of its lands and reclaim its health and culture. Through in-depth research into archives, newspapers, and public meetings, as well as numerous interviews with community members and scientists, Hoover shows the exact efforts taken by Akwesasne’s massive research project and the grassroots efforts to preserve the Native culture and lands. She also documents how contaminants have altered tribal life, including changes to the Mohawk fishing culture and the rise of diabetes in Akwesasne.

Featuring community members such as farmers, health-care providers, area leaders, and environmental specialists, while rigorously evaluating the efficacy of tribal efforts to preserve its culture and protect its health, The River Is in Us offers important lessons for improving environmental health research and health care, plus detailed insights into the struggles and methods of indigenous groups. This moving, uplifting book is an essential read for anyone interested in Native Americans, social justice, and the pollutants contaminating our food, water, and bodies.

The River We Have Wrought is a landmark history of the upper Mississippi, from early European exploration through the completion of a navigable channel and a system of locks and dams in the mid-twentieth century. John Anfinson examines how politics has shaped the landscapes of the Upper Midwest and how taming the Mississippi River has affected economic sustainability, river ecology, and biological diversity.

Robert Frost - American Writers 2 was first published in 1959. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Robert Lowell - American Writers 92 was first published in 1970. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Robert Penn Warren - American Writers 44 was first published in 1964. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Roberto Michels' First Lectures in Political Sociology was first published in 1949. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

A number of papers on key ideas in the social sciences are made available to Americans for the first time in this book. Representative of Western European culture, Roberto Michels, author of the famous Political Parties and many other works, asks and gives answers to a number of questions basic to the further study of political behavior, socialeconomic institutions, and public law.

There parade before the reader of this volume the really great European contributors to social science of the last century: Saint-Simon, Karl Marx, Gabriel Tarde, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Max Weber, Werner Sombart, Georges Sorel, and many other critics and scholars. At every step the sociologist, the economist, the psychologist, and the political scientist — for Michels was all of these—intermingle and reinforce each other.

German born, Roberto Michels studied at Paris, Munich, Leipzig, Halle, and Turin, and taught successively in some of Europe's greatest universities. In 1927 he lectured in America at the University of Chicago and elsewhere.

Since the end of the Second World War—and particularly over the last decade—Japanese science fiction has strongly influenced global popular culture. Unlike American and British science fiction, its most popular examples have been visual—from Gojira (Godzilla) and Astro Boy in the 1950s and 1960s to the anime masterpieces Akira and Ghost in the Shell of the 1980s and 1990s—while little attention has been paid to a vibrant tradition of prose science fiction in Japan.

Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams remedies this neglect with a rich exploration of the genre that connects prose science fiction to contemporary anime. Bringing together Western scholars and leading Japanese critics, this groundbreaking work traces the beginnings, evolution, and future direction of science fiction in Japan, its major schools and authors, cultural origins and relationship to its Western counterparts, the role of the genre in the formation of Japan’s national and political identity, and its unique fan culture.

Covering a remarkable range of texts—from the 1930s fantastic detective fiction of Yumeno Kyûsaku to the cross-culturally produced and marketed film and video game franchise Final Fantasy—this book firmly establishes Japanese science fiction as a vital and exciting genre.

Contributors: Hiroki Azuma; Hiroko Chiba, DePauw U; Naoki Chiba; William O. Gardner, Swarthmore College; Mari Kotani; Livia Monnet, U of Montreal; Miri Nakamura, Stanford U; Susan Napier, Tufts U; Sharalyn Orbaugh, U of British Columbia; Tamaki Saitô; Thomas Schnellbächer, Berlin Free U.

Christopher Bolton is assistant professor of Japanese at Williams College.

Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. is professor of English at DePauw University.

Takayuki Tatsumi is professor of English at Keio University.

Tracing the connections between human-like robots and AI at the site of dehumanization and exploited labor

The word robot—introduced in Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R.—derives from rabota, the Czech word for servitude or forced labor. A century later, the play’s dystopian themes of dehumanization and exploited labor are being played out in factories, workplaces, and battlefields. In The Robotic Imaginary, Jennifer Rhee traces the provocative and productive connections of contemporary robots in technology, film, art, and literature. Centered around the twinned processes of anthropomorphization and dehumanization, she analyzes the coevolution of cultural and technological robots and artificial intelligence, arguing that it is through the conceptualization of the human and, more important, the dehumanized that these multiple spheres affect and transform each other.

Drawing on the writings of Alan Turing, Sara Ahmed, and Arlie Russell Hochschild; such films and novels as Her and The Stepford Wives; technologies like Kismet (the pioneering “emotional robot”); and contemporary drone art, this book explores anthropomorphic paradigms in robot design and imagery in ways that often challenge the very grounds on which those paradigms operate in robotics labs and industry. From disembodied, conversational AI and its entanglement with care labor; embodied mobile robots as they intersect with domestic labor; emotional robots impacting affective labor; and armed military drones and artistic responses to drone warfare, The Robotic Imaginary ultimately reveals how the human is made knowable through the design of and discourse on humanoid robots that are, paradoxically, dehumanized. 

A Romantic View of Poetry was first published in 1944. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Poetry is of the very essence of living. In this belief Joseph Warren Beach discusses the ways in which poet and reader create and live "a being more intense" and thereby fulfill the function of poetry. "Wherever there is life," says Beach, "there poetry is present potentially and in its rudiments . . . and poetry, as I conceive it, is the sovereign means we have of realizing the satisfaction which we take in living."

Against the background of the Romantic School, he develops a pattern for the understanding of poetry that applies to all schools and to all readers. Poetry of realization and release cannot be circumscribed. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley stand here as examples of the poetic artist. And every person who responds to the work of the poet shares with him the imaginative stimulus of poetic creation.

A Romantic View of Poetry consists of a series of lectures delivered by Mr. Beach at the Johns Hopkins University in 1941 on the Percy Turnball Memorial Foundation.

On one side are the policy makers, on the other, the movements and organizations that challenge public policy. Where and how the two meet is a critical juncture in the democratic process. Bringing together a distinguished group of scholars from several different disciplines in the social sciences, Routing the Opposition connects the substance and content of policies with the movements that create and respond to them. Local antidrug coalitions, the organic agriculture movement, worker's compensation reforms, veterans' programs, prison reform, immigrants' rights campaigns: these are some of the diverse areas in which the contributors to this volume examine the linkages between the practices, organization, and institutional logic of public policy and social movements. The authors engage such topics as the process of involving multiple stakeholders in policy making, the impact of overlapping social networks on policy and social movement development, and the influence of policy design on the increase or decline of civic involvement. Capturing both successes and failures, Routing the Opposition focuses on strategies and outcomes that both transform social movements and guide the development of public policy, revealing as well what happens when the very different organizational cultures of activists and public policy makers interact.

Rural Cuba was first published in 1950. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Impoverished people in a rich land—that is the paradox of Cuba described with thorough documentation by Lowry Nelson, passed professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. Professor Nelson studied rural Cuba's problems for a year during his appointment as rural sociologist for the U.S. Department of State.

With the cooperation of the Cuban government, Professor Nelson directed a series of detailed sociological surveys of representative rural districts. Data were gathered in these surveys on the family habits, agricultural methods, farm tenure, income, educational opportunities, social activities, and level of living of more than 700 rural Cuban families. This material is combined with historical background, census analyses, and on-the-spot observations for a comprehensive study that fills a gap in the available literature on the subject. The volume includes appendixes providing a description of the geography of the survey area and a verbatim sample report of a survey interviewer, together with a glossary of Spanish words, a bibliography, and tables.

In this book rural Cuba's problems are thoroughly discussed, present-day progress toward their solution is reported, and suggestions are offered for future agricultural policies that could help enrich the lives of Cuba's people.

Russia and Iran, 1780–1828 was first published in 1980. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Modern Russo-Iranian relations date from the late eighteenth century, when after several centuries of commercial and diplomatic contact, the two nations entered a period of extended warfare for possession of the Caucasian borderlands, disputed territory that eventually fell to Russia. In her history of that struggle, Muriel Atkin reasseses the motives of major figures on both sides and views the Iranians with more sympathy than Western and Russian historians have usually accorded them. Russia embarked on her course in the Caucasus for reasons connected with defense or trade, and with a longterm imperial goal based on uncritical acceptance of prevailing European doctrines of empire. The new dynasty in Iran, on the other hand, had to fend off Russian attack and secure the borderlands in order to justify its basic claim to power. In the end, the wars brought major disruption to the already unstable borderlands, and left Iran with a discredited government and a controversy over reforms and relations with the West that would continue to cause turmoil in subsequent generations.

Russia Under the Last Tsar was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The reign of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, from 1894 to 1917, constitutes a period of continuing controversy among historians. Interesting in its own right, it is also a time of great importance to an understanding of the cataclysmic events which followed in Russian history.

In this volume eight scholars contribute interpretive essays on some of the most significant forces and issues in Imperial Russia during the two decades before the revolutions. Professor Stavrou writes an introductory essay. The other essays and authors are: "on Interpreting the Fate of Imperial Russia" by Arthur Mendel, University of Michigan; "Russian Conservative Thought before the Revolution" by Robert F. Brynes, Indiana University; "Russian Radical Thought, 1894–1917" by Donald W. Treadgold, University of Washington; "Russian Constitutional Developments" by Thomas Riha, University of Colorado; "Problems of Industrialization in Russia" by Theodore Von Laue, Washington University; "Politics, Universities, and Science" by Alexander Vucinich, University of Illinois; "The Cultural Renaissance" by Gleb Struve, formerly of the University of California, Berkeley; and "Some Imperatives of Russian Foreign Policy" by Roderick E. McGrew, Temple University. The book is illustrated with photographs of some of the principal figures in the history of the period, and there are a bibliography and index.

As Professor Stavrou points out in his preface, the contributors did not consult with one another before preparing their respective essays, and the various approaches are refreshingly different in their assessments of the period. The book as a whole provides a panoramic view of the fascinating Russia of Nicholas and Alexandra. It will be interesting to general readers and especially useful as a textbook for courses in Russian or modern European history.

Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime was first published in 1978. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In this book, which is especially suitable for course use, eleven scholars examine one of the most important institutions of imperial Russia, the Orthodox church in the two centuries before the Russian revolution. The material is arranged in two sections, the first devoted to Orthodoxy's role in Russian social and cultural life and the second dealing with the church's relationship to the tsarist regime.

Ruthless Criticism was first published in 1993. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Ruthless Criticism offers perspectives and subjects largely outside traditional historiography. It broadens the concept of media history to include lesser-studied media, and offers alternative interpretations of traditional media.

This anthology of original research includes an array of scholarly and theoretical perspectives. Each addresses specific topic within a specific era. reflecting the diversity of U.S. mass media.

Solomon and McChesney begin by using critical theory and deconstruction to examine the meanings of print in the colonial era. Subsequent chapters study the media ecology of the antebellum press; the intense focus on profits of the post-Civil War mainstream press; gender images in the labor press; the diversity of political views within the working-class press; and the development of a commercial press in the black community.

The essays concerning the twentieth century focus on the rise of a culture industry and include studies on the origins of the broadcast ratings system and the commercial broadcast system and the commercial broadcast system, early television's portrayals of childhood, the televisions networks' close ties with the federal government, the government's key role in creating and developing the field of mass communication research, and teenage girls' popular culture from 1960–1968 as a formative influence on the feminist movement.