Iran’s particular system of traditional Persian art music has been long treated as the product of an ever-evolving, ancient Persian culture. In Music of a Thousand Years, Ann E. Lucas argues that this music is a modern phenomenon indelibly tied to changing notions of Iran’s national history. Rather than considering a single Persian music history, Lucas demonstrates cultural dissimilarity and discontinuity over time, bringing to light two different notions of music-making in relation to premodern and modern musical norms. An important corrective to the history of Persian music, Music of a Thousand Years is the first work to align understandings of Middle Eastern music history with current understandings of the region’s political history.

“Ann E. Lucas very effectively combines historical analysis, ethnomusicology, and musicology to provide a broad, holistic explanation for complex, nuanced processes of change. Well written and highly original in its approach, this is a major contribution to the field.” KAMRAN SCOT AGHAIE, Associate Professor of Iranian History, University of Texas

“Music of a Thousand Years presents an innovative narrative of Persian music history and also provides important new perspectives on how to analyze the meaning of music and culture in historical perspective.” MOHSEN MOHAMMADI, Lecturer in Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles

“Lucas turns the standard history of Persian music on its head, proving it is not a story of the survival of an ancient tradition, but rather the story of the invention of tradition. Revisionist in the best sense of the word.” JAMES L. GELVIN, author of The Modern Middle East: A History

ANN E. LUCAS is Assistant Professor of ethnomusicology in the Department of Music at Boston College, where she also teaches in the Islamic Civilizations and Societies Program. She is recognized for her work on music historiography of the Middle East.

This boldly original book traces the evolution of documentary film and photography as they migrated onto digital platforms during the first decades of the twenty-first century. Kris Fallon examines the emergence of several key media forms—social networking and crowdsourcing, video games and virtual environments, big data and data visualization—and demonstrates the formative influence of political conflict and the documentary film tradition on their evolution and cultural integration. Focusing on particular moments of political rupture, Fallon argues that ideological rifts inspired the adoption and adaptation of newly available technologies to encourage social mobilization and political action, a function performed for much of the previous century by independent documentary film. Positioning documentary film and digital media side by side in the political sphere, Fallon asserts that “truth” now lies in a new set of media forms and discursive practices that implicitly shape the documentation of everything from widespread cultural spectacles like wars and presidential elections to more invisible or isolated phenomena like the Abu Ghraib torture scandal or the “fake news” debates of 2016.

“Looking at a unique and intriguing set of ‘hybrid media,’ Fallon convincingly makes a claim about a change in the form of new media, one linking politics, aesthetics, and technology.” ALEXANDRA JUHASZ, Brooklyn College, CUNY

“Where Truth Lies does the difficult and much-needed work of unpacking how the documentary impulse is shifting in the digital age, both through the profound influence of digital aesthetics and computational thinking and through the ways traditional documentary is infusing digital expression.” JENNIFER MALKOWSKI, author of Dying in Full Detail: Mortality and Digital Documentary

KRIS FALLON is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Digital Media at the University of California, Davis.

Renaissance Futurities considers the intersections between artistic rebirth, the new science, and European imperialism in the global early modern world. Charlene Villaseñor Black and Mari-Tere Álvarez reconsider the work of Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), prolific artist and inventor, and other polymaths such as philosopher Giulio “Delminio” Camillo (1480–1544), physician and naturalist Francisco Hernández de Toledo (1514–1587), and writer Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616). This concern with futurity is inspired by the Renaissance itself, a period defined by visions of the future, as well as by recent theorizing of temporality in Renaissance, queer, and ethnic studies. This transdisciplinary collection is at the cutting edge of the humanities, the sciences, and the arts with contributions in history, art history, literature, media studies, mathematics, and medicine.

“A superb provocation, asking us to reimagine the Renaissance in both space and time, resituating it at the crossroads of Europe and its early modern empires; of art, technology, and science; and of alternative pasts and futures.” TARA NUMMEDAL, author of Anna Zieglerin and the Lion’s Blood: Alchemy and End Times in Reformation Germany

“This volume approaches the field through the unique lens of futurity, bringing together an eclectic transdisciplinary group of scholars who focus on ingenuity and futuristic thinking in various Renaissance contexts.” PAULA DeVOS, Professor of History, San Diego State University

CHARLENE VILLASEÑOR BLACK is Professor of Art History and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. MARI-TERE ÁLVAREZ is Associate Director of the University of Southern California’s International Museum Institute.

What Is a Family? explores the histories of diverse households during the Tokugawa period in Japan (1603–1868). The households studied here differ in locale and in status—from samurai to outcaste, peasant to merchant—but what unites them is life within the social order of the Tokugawa shogunate. The circumstances and choices that made one household unlike another were framed, then as now, by prevailing laws, norms, and controls on resources. These factors led the majority to form stem families, which are a focus of this volume. The essays in this book draw on rich sources—population registers, legal documents, personal archives, and popular literature—to combine accounts of collective practices (such as the adoption of heirs) with intimate portraits of individual actors (such as a murderous wife). They highlight the variety and adaptability of households that, while shaped by a shared social order, do not conform to any stereotypical version of a Japanese family.

“Asking fresh questions—and taking up new kinds of evidence—What Is a Family? illuminates household dynamics that have simply not come into focus before. Alongside sturdy formulae for success, the authors find marked diversity, improvisation, and change over time. A lively and provocative collection.” KÄREN WIGEN, author of A Malleable Map: Geographies of Restoration in Central Japan, 1600–1912

“An engaging and eye-opening volume. From the spread of the stem family structure across multiple status groups, to the emotional bonds of adoption and marriage, to the gendering of family relations, What Is a Family? is essential reading for students of early modern and modern Japan.” KATE McDONALD, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara

MARY ELIZABETH BERRY is Professor of History Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period. MARCIA YONEMOTO is Professor of History at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her books include The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan.

A Philip E. Lilienthal Book in Asian Studies

There is a vast body of imaginal literature in Bengali that introduces fictional Sufi saints into the complex mythological world of Hindu gods and goddesses. Dating to the sixteenth century, the stories—pīr katha—are still widely read and performed today. The events that play out rival the fabulations of the Arabian Nights, which has led them to be dismissed as simplistic folktales, yet the work of these stories is profound: they provide fascinating insight into how Islam habituated itself into the cultural life of the Bangla-speaking world. In Witness to Marvels, Tony K. Stewart unearths the dazzling tales of Sufi saints to signal a bold new perspective on the subtle ways Islam assumed its distinctive form in Bengal.

“The tales that are the subject of Tony K. Stewart’s book depict a Bengal that is miraculously hybrid, innocent of the estrangements of the modern era. This is essential reading for everyone interested in precolonial South Asia.” AMITAV GHOSH, author of The Great Derangement

“This is a work of great erudition; the sophisticated analysis is testament to Stewart’s deep engagement with Bengal’s religious, cultural, and literary histories.” FARINA MIR, University of Michigan

“While inspiring readers to acquire fresh methodological and analytical tools for studying religion and region, history, and aesthetics, this triumph of a book also causes us to pause and marvel at the art of translation. This is nothing less than a standard-setter in the studies of South Asia, Islam, and literature.” SYED AKBAR HYDER, University of Texas at Austin

TONY K. STEWART is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities at Vanderbilt University and a specialist in the religions and literatures of early modern Bengal. His works include The Final Word: The Caitanya Caritamrta and the Grammar of Religious Tradition and Fabulous Females and Peerless Pīrs: Tales of Mad Adventure in Old Bengal.

Islamic Humanities, 2

Louder and Faster is a cultural study of the phenomenon of Asian American taiko, the thundering, athletic drumming tradition that originated in Japan. Immersed in the taiko scene for twenty years, Deborah Wong has witnessed cultural and demographic changes and the exponential growth and expansion of taiko, particularly in Southern California. Through her participatory ethnographic work, she reveals a complicated story embedded in memories of Japanese American incarceration and legacies of imperialism, Asian American identity and politics, a desire to be seen and heard, and the intersection of culture and global capitalism. Exploring the materialities of the drums, costumes, and bodies that make sound, analyzing the relationship of these to capitalist multiculturalism, and investigating the gender politics of taiko, Louder and Faster considers both the promises and pitfalls of music and performance as an antiracist practice. The result is a vivid glimpse of an Asian American presence that is both loud and fragile.

“Louder and Faster is a remarkable work of astounding breadth and originality. It is sure to become an instant classic.” SHAWN BENDER, author of Taiko Boom

“Illuminating how taiko is an instrument for Asian American community activism, this book provides a rare opportunity for readers to get inside a taiko player’s body and mind to experience her journey.” MASUMI IZUMI, author of The Rise and Fall of America’s Concentration Camp Law

“Deborah Wong’s new book is a model of the very best in ethnomusicological love and care. It forges many new directions built respectfully from, and with full acknowledgement of, fruitful directions forged by others.” SHERRIE TUCKER, author of Dance Floor Democracy

“A deeply moving account, Louder and Faster is a revelatory book.” GRACE WANG, author of Soundtracks of Asian America

DEBORAH WONG is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of Sounding the Center and Speak it Louder.

American Crossroads, 55

The Emergence of Modern Hinduism argues for the importance of regional, vernacular innovation in processes of Hindu modernization. Scholars usually trace the emergence of modern Hinduism to cosmopolitan reform movements, producing accounts that overemphasize the centrality of elite religion and the influence of Western ideas and models. In this study, the author considers religious change on the margins of colonialism by looking at an important local figure, the Tamil Shaiva poet and mystic Ramalinga Swami (1823–1874). Richard S. Weiss narrates a history of Hindu modernization that demonstrates the transformative role of Hindu ideas, models, and institutions, making this text essential for scholarly audiences of South Asian history, religious studies, Hindu studies, and South Asian studies.

“Offering a brilliant, detailed analysis of an extraordinary Tamil religious figure and intellectual, this book is a landmark intervention that is without a doubt one of the most important studies of Hinduism to be published in recent years.” SASCHA EBELING, author of Colonizing the Realm of Words: The Transformation of Tamil Literature in Nineteenth-Century South India

“In recovering the nineteenth-century poet–saint Vallalar, or Ramalinga Swamigal, for a global academic audience, Richard Weiss radically questions received wisdom regarding tradition and modernity and brings nineteenth-century South India into the mainstream of the history of Hinduism. The figure of Ramalingam emerging from Weiss’s absorbing study will not fail to fascinate the reader.” A. R. VENKATACHALAPATHY, author of The Province of the Book: Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamilnadu

RICHARD S. WEISS is Associate Professor of South Asian Religions at the Victoria University of Wellington. He is the author of Recipes for Immortality: Medicine, Religion, and Community in South India.

Want, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness: first recognized together in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, these are the focus of the Social Question. In 1942 William Beveridge called them the “giant evils” while diagnosing the crises produced by the emergence of industrial society. More recently, during the final quarter of the twentieth century, the global spread of neoliberal policies enlarged these crises so much that the Social Question has made a comeback.

This carefully curated volume maps the linked crises across regions and countries and identifies the renewed and intensified Social Question as a labor issue. It includes discussions of American exceptionalism, Chinese repression, Indian exclusion, South African colonialism, democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, and other phenomena. Evaluated here are the effects of capitalism, the impact of the scarcity of waged work, and the degree to which the dispossessed poor bear the brunt of the crisis. Both thorough and thoughtful, the book serves as collective effort to revive and reposition the Social Question, reconstructing its meaning and its politics in the world today.

“The global approach makes this book a highly innovative endeavor.” NICOLE MAYER-AHUJA, Director, Sociological Research Institute at the University of Göttingen

“Approaches a familiar debate on the social implications of globalization using a lens that is at once unique, suggestive, and innovative.” EDWARD WEBSTER, Professor Emeritus and Founder of the Society, Work and Development Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand

JAN BREMAN is Emeritus Professor at the University of Amsterdam and author of On Pauperism in Present and Past. KEVAN HARRIS is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran. CHING KWAN LEE is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of The Specter of Global China. MARCEL VAN DER LINDEN is Senior Fellow and former Director of Research at the International Institute of Social History and author of Workers of the World.

Multiculturalism in the British Commonwealth examines cultural diversity across the postwar Commonwealth, situating modern multiculturalism in its national, international, and historical contexts. Bringing together practitioners from across the humanities and social sciences to explore the legal, political, and philosophical issues involved, these essays address common questions: What is postwar multiculturalism? Why did it come about? How have social actors responded to it? In addition to chapters on Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand, this volume also covers India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore, and Trinidad, tracing the historical roots of contemporary dilemmas back to the intertwined legacies of imperialism and liberalism. In so doing, it demonstrates that multiculturalism has implications that stretch far beyond current formulations in public and academic discourse.

“This volume makes a significant contribution to the history and politics of crossnational multiculturalism within the English-speaking world. I expect this book to quickly become a principal text.” ANDREW FAGAN, author of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity

“Ashcroft and Bevir have put together an excellent collection of essays by a first-rate group of scholars. I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in the challenges posed by cultural and national identity to liberal democratic states.” PHIL PARVIN, author of Karl Popper

RICHARD T. ASHCROFT is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and in the International and Area Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. His research has been published in the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy and The Political Quarterly.

MARK BEVIR is Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Center for British Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also Professor of Governance at the United Nations University and a Distinguished Research Professor at Swansea University. He is the author of A Theory of Governance, The Making of British Socialism, and Democratic Governance.

Impersonations centers on an insular community of Smarta brahmin men from the Kuchipudi village in Telugu-speaking South India who don strī-vēṣam (woman’s guise) and impersonate female characters from Hindu religious narratives. Impersonation is not simply a gender performance limited to the Kuchipudi stage, but a practice of power that enables the construction of hegemonic brahmin masculinity in everyday village life. This book analyzes the practice of impersonation across a series of boundaries—village to urban to transnational, brahmin to non-brahmin, hegemonic to nonnormative—to explore the artifice of brahmin masculinity in contemporary South Indian dance.

“By charting the complex practices of masculinity through South Indian dance, Kamath deconstructs hegemonic brahmin masculinity and offers an intellectual tour de force that challenges Western epistemologies of gender.” STANLEY THANGARAJ, author of Desi Hoop Dreams: Pickup Basketball and the Making of Asian American Masculinity

“Beautifully crafted and presented, this book fills a lacuna in scholarship on the figure of the brahmin man in relation to his gender identity and makes a compelling contribution to the field of Indian dance historiography, which often overlooks the critical role the dancing male body.” VASUDHA NARAYANAN, Distinguished Professor of Religion, University of Florida

HARSHITA MRUTHINTI KAMATH is Visweswara Rao and Sita Koppaka Assistant Professor in Telugu Culture, Literature and History at Emory University.