Fordham University Press

A rare documentation of a Jewish American serviceman in the war.Writing Against Infamy presents a personal account of the Second World War through the correspondence of Harold Kirson, a Jewish American soldier and ambulance driver in Patton’s Third Army. Drawn from an archive of more than 600 letters, the collection chronicles the rhythms of his wartime life: evacuating wounded soldiers, securing daily necessities, maintaining relationships, navigating Jewish identity and belonging, and grappling with the moral complexity of war and its aftermath. The letters trace his journey from the United States to the United Kingdom and across Europe, where he supported combat troops by transporting the wounded from clearing stations to evacuation hospitals. After V-E Day, as a part of the Army of Occupation, he continued public health work, moving soldiers, former prisoners of war, Holocaust survivors, and displaced persons across occupied zones. The narrative unfolds gradually, mirroring how war was lived – day by day. It spans the mundane and the extraordinary, engaging humor and levity, often revealing moments of grace amid grim circumstances. For Kirson, writing becomes a means to record observations, make sense of experience, and sustain perseverance. By 1945, as his thoughts turn toward difficult questions of retribution, responsibility, and the limits of compassion, the end of the war offers no clear resolution but only a drawn-out and uncertain transition. His final letters, marked by speculation, convey a measured hope of returning home.Beautifully written and blending wit with thoughtful reflection, the letters are accompanied by an introduction and notes that provide personal and cultural context to enrich the reading experience.

A remarkable interrogation of the corporeality of the divine undertaken by a renowned philosopher/theologianDoes God appear "in flesh and bones," that is to say, "made of flesh and bones"? Or is the resur­rected Christ’s appearance simply "in person"? These questions, which might appear inconsequential at first sight, obsessed the Fathers of the church and medieval scholars, but are neglected nowadays. Perhaps we no longer dare to ask them to ourselves. The Flesh of God attempts to return to what Paul Ricoeur calls a "second naïveté," analyzing important questions concerning the Resurrection and trying to face head-on the problem of the embodiment of the divine.This book retraces a philosophical triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday) but also highlights the crucial and neglected topic of Holy Saturday. It emphasizes that Christianity can no longer sustain itself by forgetting the organic and disregarding the soul. Far from getting bogged down in questions of boundaries, or erecting barriers, we come back in the book to find­ing out how we can "cross the Rubicon" between philosophy and theology. The confrontation of these disciplines and their different fields can revitalize thought and faith, for those who feel the importance of sharing it.

Confronting racism, sexism, and clericalism in Catholic life and inviting real conversion and justiceIn The Wounded Church, theologian Annie Selak argues that the Catholic Church must confront its own injuries in order to credibly be the Church. Using a feminist framework, she develops a new ecclesiology around three wounds, racism, sexism, and clericalism, that actively harm the Body of Christ and distort its witness. Attentive to history, pastoral practice, and lived experience, Selak shows how each wound is both inflicted by the Church and borne within the Church. She offers the resurrected body of Jesus, scarred yet no longer bleeding, as a guiding metaphor for ecclesial renewal, a body that does not deny its wounds but is transformed through them. Drawing on Karl Rahner, she grounds hope in the reign of God while insisting on concrete institutional and spiritual conversion. Written for students and scholars, ministers and lay leaders, The Wounded Church uncovers overlooked histories tied to racism, sexism, and the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and proposes clear theological principles for reform. The result is a constructive, pastorally engaged vision that tells the truth about harm and imagines credible paths toward change, accountability, and justice.

Dive into the electrifying tale of a Brooklyn-born patriot turned radical activist, in an era when America was torn by its ideological extremesIn the shadow of recent turmoil, Join the Conspiracy transports readers to a pivotal moment of division and dissent in American history: the late 1960s. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and a nation grappling with internal conflict, this compelling narrative follows the life of George Demmerle, a factory worker whose political odyssey encapsulates the era’s tumultuous spirit. From his roots as a concerned citizen wary of his country’s leftward tilt, Demmerle’s journey takes a dramatic turn as he delves into the heart of radical activism. Participating in iconic protests from the March on Washington to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Demmerle’s story is a whirlwind of political fervor, embodying the struggle against what was perceived as imperialist war and racial injustice. His transformation is marked by alliances with key figures of the time, including Abbie Hoffman, and an eventual leadership role within an East Coast Black Panther affiliate. Yet, beneath his radical veneer lies a secret: Demmerle is an FBI informant. Join the Conspiracy reveals Demmerle’s complex role in a society at war with itself, where his deepening involvement with the radical left and a bombing collective forces him to confront his loyalties. The narrative, enriched by a rare trove of period documents, candid photos taken from inside the radical movement, and underground art—more than a hundred of which are included in the book—not only charts Demmerle’s saga but also reflects the broader story of a nation struggling to find its moral compass amidst chaos. As Demmerle navigates the dangerous waters of political extremism, readers are invited to ponder the price of ideology, the nature of loyalty, and the fine line between activism and betrayal. This book is not just a recounting of historical events but a vibrant portrait of a man and a move­ment that sought to reshape America.

In the aftermath of the global mass protests of the 2010s, democratic theorists have shown renewed interest in conceptualizing popular mobilization and "the people." A series of provocative works have theorized assembled crowds in the streets as sources of democratic authority, legitimacy, and sovereignty. These insightful accounts nevertheless often remain detached from the full range of the situated experiences of protesters. Inappropriable Force brings the concrete, on-the-ground practices of Turkey’s 2013 Gezi Uprising into the foreground of theoretical reflection,asking what people gathered in the streets shared, desired, or refused, and what their public experimentations with politics, language, and aesthetics made possible. Working from the empirical particularities of Gezi to political theory, the book theorizes protest as a political meaning-making enterprise that reconfigures everyday regimes of sense, speech, and engagement. Drawing on Gezi’s archives and engaging democratic and critical theorists such as Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Ranciere, Joan Copjec, and René Girard, the book identifies a surplus in protest irreducible to the categories of popular sovereignty, authorization, or legitimation. This surplus – an inappropriable force – can only be experienced in practice, through collective action. Not predicated on unified will or hegemonic claims to peoplehood, it unfolds in plural modes of thinking, sociality, affect, creativity, and imagination that emerge when people assemble out of doors. Adopting a practice-oriented and deparochializing approach, Inappropriable Force treats the political activities and cultural artifacts of the Gezi protests as texts of political theory in their own right. In doing so, it conceptualizes popular protest as a generative reservoir of political meaning and critical insight.

An innovative historical analysis that draws upon performance and theatre studies to stage the ruination and demise of the eighteenth-century Mexican Jesuits Inventories of Ruin dramatizes the ruination of the Mexican Province of the Society of Jesus as their power and influence waned over a period of approximately fifty years in the eighteenth-century Spanish Atlantic world. To tell the story of the arrest, migration, and ultimate dissolution of this powerful organization of missionary men, three sets of "inventories" are juxtaposed. The first is composed by notaries, who record the objects left behind by the Jesuits at a college in Puebla de Los Angeles when they were arrested on June 25, 1767. The second is an "inventory of the self," a conversion narrative composed by a Swedish convert who encounters the Jesuit refugees while shipboard on the Mediterranean Sea. The last is an inventory of the dead written by an exiled ex-Jesuit in Bologna, Italy, whose necrology memorializes the life and death of his brethren from the now defunct Mexican province. Inventories of Ruin is about the ruination and disappearance of Jesuit ways of being that counters Jesuit historiography’s framing of this period as a moment of "suppression." At the same time, Inventories of Ruin is about how this story of ruination appears in the archives. The book studies the epistemological drama of inventorying, as writers labor to uproot religious power, to locate and secure a religious self, and to capture religious histories. What weighs upon these texts is a sense of anxiety because the question of what will be found animates authors whose literary exertions appear as historiographical struggles to have a say over what appears and what vanishes before leaving the stage, or before pushing others toward the exit.

Cinema before the World investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a case study in world cinema – the 1896-1897 voyage of one of the Lumiere Brothers camera operators, Alexandre Promio, across North Africa and the Middle East. The book shows how the sites in these early films are not simply backdrops, but integral to film form and its global history. Connecting a series of filmic principles (framing, tracking shots, close-ups) to the sites where they are made visible (a rooftop in Algiers, a train station and the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem), Allan unsettles a familiar narrative of imperial vision. In the interplay of local history and global media, he highlights tensions between ethnography, observation, and visual capture, revealing how the Lumiere Brothers films persist as living archives. The book evokes a formative moment when cinema stood before the world – both as a technological marvel and as a medium that shaped how space and time were perceived. Tracing a journey from Algeria to Egypt and Palestine, and moving across media from lithography to photography and panoramas, Allan shows how in the hands of later filmmakers, such as Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and the Syrian collective Abounaddara, the Lumiere films continue to enrich and inform visions of what cinema – and the world – can be. Cinema before the World offers a critical historical intervention in the global story of the cinematograph and a visionary method for film scholarship grounded in transnational analysis across languages, regions, and media.

Hart Crane’s modernist masterpiece The Bridge has steadily grown in stature since its 1930 publication. Once dismissed by influential critics as a noble failure, a view that hardened into conventional wisdom, it is now widely regarded as one of the major achievements of twentieth-century American poetry. The poem unites mythology and modernity to reckon with the promises, kept and broken, of American experience. The Bridge is challenging in the best sense, exacting and ultimately rewarding. Beloved yet often misunderstood, it threads indirect and finely grained allusions through period-specific references to 1920s life that can elude contemporary readers. Crane’s elaborate compound metaphors braid disparate sources, making the poem’s movement at times hard to track. Its topical and geographic markers call not only for identification but for explanation. Without specialized knowledge, much of it not readily available even online, many passages remain opaque. Until now, there was no single, convenient resource to help readers unlock Crane’s vision. This book is that guide. Its detailed, far-reaching annotations make The Bridge fully accessible, whether you are a scholar, a student, or a devoted reader of poetry.

An intimate archive emptied and overwritten by a fear of words, a book of mingled fatesThe poems of Our Prediction are lifted from a folder of sketchy reports recalling the strange neutrality of the ancient chorus. And this intimate archive exposes a fear of language concealed at the root of poetry, delivering a book in which doubt, shame, and dread overtake poetry’s stereotypical love affair with words, a book that crosses over into the exclusion zone of stupidity and never returns. Breeding and scavenging without scruple or restraint, the "bare life" of these unauthorized poems invariably confuses reading and writing. Listening becomes the business of speaking, of saying we but not asking who. And in its crooked way, the crooked text may begin to sound like a campfire oath of senseless plots and garbled refrains. For the listener soon will be surrounded by an accident of voices – a cassandrian short cut – exposing the particulars of not-yet-being.

A groundbreaking investigation of how representations of Orthodox Christian saints serve as means of resistance amid cultural and political domination On the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, repeatedly conquered and colonized, Orthodox Christians have long struggled for political self-determination, agricultural sustainability, and spiri­tual wholeness. Saint George Liberator illuminates the intimate interplay of Christian theology and Mediterranean politics through the lens of St. George: the martyred soldier of pre-Constantinian Christianity, the liberator of captives and protector of the downtrodden, the dragonslayer of medieval legend. A saint beloved by Christians and Muslims alike, St. George’s representations across many different media are upheld as means of resistance and hope in contexts of domina­tion and suffering. The book offers a profound and original reading of Orthodox hagiography, demonstrating how hagiography is not only an art form of historical significance but also a vibrant, living theology of liberation amid struggles to be whole and free. Saint George Liberator is interdisciplinary in its methodology and scope, deepening its vivid ethnographic narration through conversation with sociological theory and the historical theology that has shaped Orthodox Christian society and consciousness over the course of centuries. Enmeshed in the multicultural complexity of the Ottoman and British Empires, modern Cyprus offers a case study of how colonized and colonizing populations may turn to the same religious repertoires for understanding themselves and one another, telling opposing stories with shared symbols and claiming the means of interpretation as a path of cultural resistance. As a case study in interreligious imagination and the political power of vernacular theology, the book speaks of psychosocial dynamics that far exceed their enactment in Cyprus. It shows that Christian saints, mediated diversely in material and intellectual culture, may not only propose magnetic alternatives to the world as it is but also directly aid in forming Christian publics for liberative politics in the present.

The multi-century event of enslavement and colonialism changed the cultural and political imagination of the Atlantic world. We still live and work in the horizon of that event. It was an event that placed a violent Manichean structure of antiblackness at the foundation of our shared world. What kinds of life are possible in nihilistic, antiblack worlds of social death? Is it possible to imagine life outside the reach of those worlds? What decolonial methods help us understand that form of life in relation to expressive cultures of resistance and refusal? At the Margins of Nihilism develops a theoretical frame through a comparative reading of Jacques Derrida and Orlando Patterson. Reading between deconstruction and social death, Drabinski describes a notion of life as interstitial, situated outside the play of life and death in systems of antiblackness. This notion of life has broad epistemological, existential, and ontological implications. Drawing from a diverse set of sources including Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Gloria Anzaldúa, and others, At the Margins of Nihilism shows how the nihilisms of Richard Wright, Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin, and contemporary afropessimism operate as a closed system. Each system is opened by vernacular forms of life and practices of refusal. Those forms and practices speak to the power and significance of life that persists across centuries of antiblack culture, social life, and political hegemony.

A visionary look at Central Park’s creation as an urban success story inspiring bold climate actionClimate change is the existential crisis of our time. With extreme heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes, and floods displacing millions, many wonder: What can I do? Ten Thousand Central Parks challenges the despair of inaction, using the history of Central Park as an unlikely yet urgent environmental parable. Created in the years immediately before, during, and after the Civil War, Central Park is a radical experiment in urban renewal, transforming a chaotic and polluted terrain into an 843-acre refuge. More than a scenic landmark, it was a visionary public project that provided jobs, green space, and a lasting environmental legacy. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the park was America’s first large-scale public works project, undertaken at a time of national crisis and built almost entirely by immigrants. Its creation offers a powerful lesson: Even in turbulent times, cities can be reimagined, and large-scale ecological transformations are possible. With over half of the world’s population living in cities today, predicted soon to reach nearly 70%, urban green spaces are more crucial than ever. Morris argues that Central Park is not just an artifact of the past but a model for the future. Its 18,000 trees sequester nearly a million pounds of carbon dioxide annually, proving that ambitious, nature-based solutions can improve the quality of life while addressing environmental challenges. Written with urgency and optimism, Ten Thousand Central Parks offers a fresh perspective on the climate crisis, rejecting doom in favor of possibility. We need projects on the scale of Central Park— thousands of them—to meet today’s environmental challenges. This book—a boundary-crossing work of narrative nonfiction—is an invitation to think big, act boldly, and embrace radical hope.

A bold, trailblazing investigation into soteriology, approached by way of Girardian mimetic theory and Eastern Orthodox theological reflectionRedemption: A Mimetic Soteriology brings French literary critic René Girard’s mimetic theory of human behavior together with a breadth of Christian approaches to redemption through the Cross. Girard’s mimetic understanding of sacrifice is drawn upon to illuminate biblical narratives about redemption as well as the theologies of Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, and Gregory of Nyssa. Nicholas Roumas shows by these readings that redemption can be understood as a reconfigura­tion of symbolic values with profound consequences for human relations and social organization. Redemption thus serves theologians as a basis for a new practical dogmatics. This exploration is a breath of fresh air in Orthodox theology, utilizing patristic and scriptural sources outside the framework of the predominant "neo-Patristic synthesis" and introducing an entirely new modern paradigm onto the Orthodox scene. For theologians of other traditions, Redemption contributes to the library of Girardian theologies its first Eastern Orthodox install­ment. For Girardians, it provides critique and refinement of many of Girard’s most nuanced views and gives due attention to overlooked and controversial aspects of his thought. For the lay reader, the book provides an accessible entry into the spirituality of the Cross through a lens that is both modern and traditional. Redemption provides a revitalizing infusion into contemporary Orthodox theological discourse. Its ideas will impact theology in the Orthodox Church and beyond for decades to come and are the basis for a paradigm shift in our understanding of redemption and its practical consequences. The lay reader and professional theologian alike will find novelty and utility in its ideas.

Contemporary debate on cosmopolitanism routinely refers to Immanuel Kant as its intellectual origin. A group of Chinese and German-speaking thinkers in the early twentieth century, however, used classical Chinese philosophy as an alternative intellectual genealogy to reimagine ethics, politics, society, and modernity for the entire world. Their engagement with Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism broadens the scope of global intellectual history to include a non-European origin of concepts and ideas. Due to the differences in their local crises, the Chinese and the European stories are often narrated in separate national and cultural contexts. Bridging the critical divide between China and the West, The Quest for Liberation examines the thinkers’ shared interest in Chinese philosophy and their common effort to envision a world culture other than Western modernity. Breaking with the common logic of either studying the reception and adaptation of Western ideas in the East or critiquing the misrepresentation of the East in the West, Zhang’s book emphasizes entanglements between Chinese and European thinkers and highlights their quest for liberation in a globalizing world. Their visions of an ontological commons for everyone help us imagine a better world community in our time of global crises, beyond the clash of civilizations. This book is available from the publisher on an open access basis.

"Fighter-Writer" reports from major battles in the Pacific highlight what America’s Marines endured in World War IIDouglass K. Daniel presents a fascinating trove of previously classified material withheld from the public because of government and public relations concerns at the time, including tactical details that could inadvertently aid the enemy, battlefield gore that could disturb readers, and the gamut of issues of taste. Navy censors in the field and editors at Marine Corps headquarters in Washington were also on alert for any material that could negatively affect the Corps itself or the overall war effort. Soul-searching stories that questioned the nature of war were rejected lest they sow doubt stateside about the cause for which so many lives were being lost. Behind the bylines was a new breed of storytellers. Considered "fighter-writers," Marine combat correspondents, or CCs, carried typewriters as well as weapons. The Marine Corps Division of Public Relations recruited them from America’s newsrooms to join the fight that stretched from Guadalcanal and the bloody assault on Tarawa to the black sands of Iwo Jima and the dense jungles of Okinawa. Their approved work appeared in civilian newspapers, magazines, and other national and local media. This collection also highlights the unique efforts of the CCs and the public relations officers who commanded them. While they were assigned to report and write, they were Marines first. They eagerly put aside their notebooks to take up arms against the enemy as needed. Many were wounded in battle, and more than a dozen were killed, giving their lives to get the story behind the most significant conflict in human history.

A prize-winning historian details his intellectual and political evolution Written by the author of the landmark book The Wages of Whiteness and one of the key figures in the critical study of race and racism in America, An Ordinary White is the life story of the historian and radical American writer, David Roediger. With wry wit and keen observation, Roediger chronicles his intellectual and political evolution from growing up in his southern Midwest sundown town to becoming a leading figure in working-class history and Whiteness studies. A latecomer to the New Left, a longtime figure in the Chicago Surrealist Group, and part of the collective reviving of the Charles Kerr Company—the world's oldest socialist publisher—Roediger captures events and characters absent from standard histories of the left as well as such icons of resistance as Studs Terkel, Noel Ignatiev, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, and C. L. R. James. A direct response to the venom, effectiveness, and durability of white nationalist attacks on Critical Race Theory, this memoir describes Roediger's youth as "ordinary," both in its unfolding in a lower-middle-class family of southern Illinois workers and in the depth of white racism he was taught. He considers himself "saved" by social movements of his time, including those of labor, against empire, and, above all, the Black Freedom struggle. Public education, dissenting currents in Catholicism, knowledge of the importance of good union jobs, and generative impulses in sports and music helped make his salvation stick. Roediger's knowledge of white advantage came from his personal everyday experiences, but among people ordinary enough to guard against the mistaken notion that poor and working-class whites are uniquely the culprits of white nationalism. Importantly he argues against the characterization of them as intractably racist or incapable of understanding the advantages of whiteness. A teacher in state universities for forty years, Roediger has tirelessly fought against their being hollowed out by corporate values and austerity. In An Ordinary White, he writes movingly of these experiences and what we have lost in our institutions whose soaring rhetoric outstrips any ability to defend education or racial justice.