Social Sciences Media Studies

In this book, Katherine Angel surveys medical and psychoanalytic understandings of female desire, from Freud to Kinsey to present-day science; MeToo-era debates over consent, assault, and feminism; and popular culture, TV, and film to challenge our assumptions about female desire. Why, she asks, do we expect desire to be easily understood? In contrast to the endless exhortation to know what we want, Angel proposes that sex can be a conversation, requiring insight, interaction, and mutual vulnerability.

Hoodoo is a bold spiritual tradition that helps enhance your wellbeing and solve everyday problems. This practical, do-it-yourself guide shows you how to use spells, rites, recipes, mojos, and curios to enrich your life and be ready for whatever comes your way. 365 Days of Hoodoo, by renowned Hoodoo author Stephanie Rose Bird, starts by providing the basics of Hoodoo, and then gradually builds your knowledge day after day.

In today's relentless media landscape, podcasters, influencers, and viral social media posts shape worldviews with speed and emotion. Algorithms amplify outrage for engagement, turning attention into profit while echo chambers deepen divides.

This audiobook will help you deepen your connection to the natural world as you explore the magical, mystical world of the faerie folk.

In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what's essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively.

Women make over 80% of healthcare decisions in the U.S., yet only 4% of all medical research and development is focused on women's health issues. From periods and childbirth to menopause, female pain has been normalized, as society shrugs and says "Welcome to being a woman," instead of coming up with better solutions. But it doesn't have to be this way. In The Vagina Business, award-winning journalist Marina Gerner, Ph.D. takes an eye-opening look at the innovators challenging the status quo to deliver the healthcare solutions women need.

Legal scholar and architect Sara C. Bronin examines how zoning became such a prevailing force and reveals its impact. Outdated zoning codes have maintained racial segregation, prioritized cars over people, and enabled great ecological harm. But, as Bronin argues, once we recognize the power of zoning, we can harness it to create the communities we desire, and deserve. Drawing on her own experience leading the overhaul of Hartford's zoning code and exploring the efforts of activists and city planners across the country, Bronin shows how new codes are reshaping our cities.

In 2014, on the side of a Los Angeles freeway, a One Direction fan erected a shrine in the spot where, a few hours earlier, Harry Styles had vomited. “It’s interesting for sure,” Styles said later, adding, “a little niche, maybe.” But what seemed niche to Styles was actually an irreverent signpost to an unfathomably large, interconnected, and influential multiverse: stan culture. In this book, Kaitlyn Tiffany, a staff writer at the Atlantic and proud superfan herself, guides us through the nebulous online world of fans, stans, and boybands.

On April 23, 1984, in a packed press conference room in Washington, DC, the secretary of health and human services declared “The probable cause of AIDS has been found.” By the next day, “probable” had fallen away, and the novel retrovirus later named HIV became forever lodged in global consciousness as “the AIDS virus.” Celia Farber, then an intrepid young reporter for SPIN magazine, was the only journalist to question the official narrative and dig into the science of AIDS.

The Alchemist's Handbook has long been an essential contribution to the study of alchemy since its first publication in 1960. It still stands as a groundbreaking work presenting in clear, concise language a practical manual of working knowledge that was formerly handed down under oath of secrecy. The scope of alchemical work is to provide both a means to synthesize all the other sciences and the necessary training of the intellectual and spiritual faculties. This edition includes a new foreword by Robert Allen Bartlett, author of Real Alchemy.

Forged in the stress of early motherhood, The Mother Artist explores the fraught yet generative ties between caregiving and creative practice. As a young mother working at a museum, essayist Catherine Ricketts began asking questions about the making of motherhood and the making of art. Now, with incantatory prose and an intuitive gaze, she twines intimate meditations on parenthood with studies of the work and lives of painters, writers, dancers, musicians, and other creatives.

Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences but also from our cultures. Wisdom Sits in Places, the first sustained study of places and place explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of people, the Western Apache in Arizona. For more than 30 years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names.

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals plays a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures? In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler answers that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power.

The Western museum is a battleground—a terrain of ideological, political, and economic contestation. Almost everyone today wants to rethink the museum, but how many have the audacity to question the idea of the universal museum itself? In A Programme of Absolute Disorder, Françoise Vergès puts the museum in its place. Exploring the Louvre's history, she uncovers the context in which the universal museum emerged: as a product of colonialism, and of Europe's self-appointed claim to be the guardian of global heritage.

The winter solstice, the day the "sun stands still," marks the longest night and the shortest day of the year, and it comes either on December 20th or 21st. Celebrations honoring the winter solstice as a moment of transition and renewal date back thousands of years and occur among many peoples on every continent. The Return of the Light makes an ideal companion for everyone who carries on this tradition, no matter what their faith.

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America's first prominent transsexual, narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives. Their erasure from trans history masks the ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-19th century to present-day anti-Black and anti-trans legislation and violence.

The mysterious civilizations of Lemuria and Atlantis become reality as Shirley Andrews, the author of Atlantis: Insights From a Lost Civilization combines details from scholars, scientists and the respected psychic Edgar Cayce.

As women seek to cultivate an understanding of their lives, a mythological model can provide a tool for self-discovery and realizing individual potential. The Circle of Nine presents nine archetypes that represent different, but equally important, aspects of the feminine psyche. They portray both the life of the individual and the story of woman as a whole - a circle of ever-changing patterns that is a source of wisdom and inspiration.

Popularized by Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey features narrative stages along which a person matures and transforms. But where heroes transform is just as important as what they do to get there. Holly Bellebuono shows you how the location of each hero's journey step is intimately tied to the challenges faced, setting the tone for the entire adventure.

Conspiratorial thinking, mis- and disinformation, and anti-intellectualism are at dangerous levels. With traditional media on the way out, social media algorithms siloing users into personal echo chambers, and generative AI muddying the waters, it's getting harder and harder to tell news from nonsense. Our ability to think critically about the world around us is being undermined by these forces and many others, which are being used to sow confusion, disrupt democracy, damage the environment, and degrade social well-being.