Cultural Studies
The Press has published a broad range of studies on both American and non-European cultures that have garnered scholarly acclaim and fostered a profound respect for the varieties of human culture.
Non-European Cultures
Two important books that illuminate the religious practices of
non-European cultures are Michael Taussig's The Devil and Commodity
Fetishism in South America (1980) and Annemarie Schimmel's Mystical
Dimensions of Islam (1975). Taussig's "brilliant piece of erudition"
holds important implications for students of peasant societies everywhere.
Its analysis of peasant responses to the intrusion of capitalism
challenged the prevailing interpretations of Marxists and structural
anthropologists.
Schimmel's Mystical Dimensions of Islam is the most translated book on the Press's list. In it, the world authority on Islamic mysticism uses historical and literary analysis to examine Islamic Sufism from its beginnings through the nineteenth century.
Cultures of North America
Press publications about Native American cultures have ranged from
illustrated archeological accounts to historical studies of the Cherokee
nation. In Town Creek Indian Mound: A Native American Legacy
(1995), Joffre Coe and contributors survey in both text and photographs
one of the few surviving earthen mounds built by early Native Americans in
North America. Coe directed the excavations at Town Creek from it
inception as a WPA program in 1937 until his retirement in 1987.
William G. McLoughlin's After the Trail of Tears: The Cherokees' Struggle for Sovereignty, 1839-1880 (1993) traces the social, cultural, and political history of the Cherokee Nation following its removal to what is now Oklahoma. McLoughlin recounts the Cherokee's struggle to govern themselves as a separate nation within the borders of the United States, a struggle they finally lost in 1880 when Congress transformed their lands into a federally administered territory.
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