Oxford University Press

A rich cultural history that considers the transformational aspects of the Civil War on American literature,    From Battlefields Rising vividly illustrates the significant changes the war wrought on the works of writers like Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, Hawthorne, and others; and charts how their works, in turn, challenged and shaped a national...

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What is mysticism? The question continues to be the subject of fierce debate. Some argue that all mystical experience is the same - it is an innate human ability - while others insist that the nature of mystical experience is highly conditioned by the cultural and religious background of the mystic. There is, however, no disagreement about the...

The story of the translation of the Bible in America begins with the King James Version. In fact, many Americans thought of the KJV as the foundational text of the Republic, rather than a cultural inheritance from Anglican Britain. In the nineteenth century, however, as new editions of the Greek New Testament appeared, scholars increasingly...

How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women's HealthBased on eight years of ethnographic observation, analysis of advertisements and breast cancer awareness campaigns, and hundreds of interviews with those affected by the disease, Pink Ribbon Blues examines the hidden costs of the pink ribbon as an industry. This book analyzes the social impact on...

The Cromwellian Protectorate was a period of innovation in poetry and drama, as well as constitutional debate. This new account of the period focuses on key cultural institutions - Parliament, an embassy to Sweden, Oxford University, Cromwell's state funeral - to examine this poetry's relationship with a culture in transformation and crisis....