Explore the latest titles in JSTOR’s Path to Open program

A Place in Common: Rethinking the History of Early Detroit
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Authors: Karen L. Marrero; Andrew Sturtevant
Author Affiliation: Wayne State University; University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire
Discipline: History

Description:
At the turn of the eighteenth century, Indigenous nations designated Detroit as a “common bowl” and a crucial nexus where they shared resources, made compromises, and coexisted. As the century unfolded, Detroit continued as a polyglot community in the face of expanding Euro-American settlement. The region became a highly charged space where the rituals of political negotiation grew in importance alongside a constant threat of violence.

Ball in My Hands: Essays on Black Athletes, Race, and American Culture
Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
Author: David K. Wiggins
Discipline: African American Studies

Description:
Intended for the Sport and Popular Culture series, this is a collection of previously published essays from scholar David Wiggins all centered around the history of black athletes. Essays include an exploration of black athletes during segregation, racism and Olympic athletes, and a look at contemporary black athletes, including the late Kobe Bryant. Wiggins includes a new introduction to the work and will be securing a foreword from Damion Thomas, curator for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Courts Unmasked: Civil Legal System Reform and COVID-19
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Author: Alyx Mark
Discipline: Political Science

Description:
Mark uses the COVID-19 pandemic as the vehicle for analyzing the realities of power and process in state civil courts and what this might mean for the future of civil justice reform.

Farmers’ Protest: What Compelled India’s Farmers to Strike
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing
Author: Namita Waikar
Discipline: Asian Studies

Description:
Under colonial rule in India in 1917, Mohandas K Gandhi led a satyagraha alongside local farmers in Bihar, resulting in what would become the non-violent movement for India’s independence. More than a century later, one of the largest non-violent farmers’ protests in recent world history took place in New Delhi. The unrest began in Punjab and Haryana in June 2020 and reached India’s capital city in November 2020. By January 2021 hundreds of thousands of farmers and farm labourers demonstrated against three draconian farm laws passed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The farmers’ protest continued until the Indian Government finally relented and withdrew the laws. Most people living in towns and cities in India today have been cut off from their rural roots. They know little about how their food reaches them from farm to table. They know even less about the lives of the farmers and farm labourers who produce this food. Farmers’ Protest tries to bridge this gap as it narrates why Indian farmers were compelled to resist, and how they are the first responders to the challenges created by climate change.

Radicalized Conservatism in Israel: The One-State Ideology and Democratic Decay
Publisher: Leiden University Press
Author: Mateo I. Cohen
Author Affiliation: Leiden University
Discipline: Political Science

Description:
Right-wing ideology is a dominant force in Israel today. Between 2009 and 2021, and again since 2023, Likud-led governments headed by Benjamin Netanyahu consolidated their vision for the country’s identity and its place in the Middle East. ‘Radicalized Conservatism in Israel’ presents this vision’s ideological roots, policy components, and political implications, based on hundreds of primary sources representing the Israeli right’s political elite and its intellectual backings. By using the tools of argument analysis, it exposes a distinct right-wing vision of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that spearheads the Israeli government’s actions, obscuring radical aspirations behind common-sense center-right conservative values.

Slavery and Religious Conversion in Portugal’s Indian Empire, 1500-1700
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Author: Stephanie Hassell
Author Affiliation: Clemson University
Discipline: History

Description:
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, enslaved Africans and Asians were crucial to expanding the Portuguese Catholic empire. The Crown and Church mandated their conversion, expanding the Christian population and securing anti-Muslim allies. Inquisition records from Goa highlight the complex dynamics of conversion, slavery, and imperial ambitions.

Specters of War: The Battle of Mourning in Postconflict Central America
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Author: Ignacio Sarmiento
Author Affiliation: California State University
Discipline: Latin American Studies

Description:
Specters of War explores mourning practices in postwar Central America, particularly in El Salvador and Guatemala. Sarmiento delves into the intricate dynamics of grieving through an interdisciplinary lens, analyzing expressions of mourning in literature, theater, and sites of memory. At the heart of this analysis is the contention over who has the right to mourn, how mourning is performed, and who is included in this process. Mourning is a battleground where different societal factions vie for the possibility of grieving the dead.

Speculation and the Darwinian Method in British Romance Fiction, 1859-1914
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Author: Kate Holterhoff
Author Affiliation: Georgia Institute of Technology
Discipline: British Studies

Description:
Following the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, in which Charles Darwin acknowledged arriving at his thesis by allowing himself “to speculate on the subject” of species transmutation, many romance fiction writers embraced, criticized, and promoted acts of speculating characterized as scientific.

The Classic of Poetry: Ancient China’s Songbook
Publisher: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
Author: Edward L. Shaughnessy
Author Affiliation: University of Chicago
Discipline: Language & Literature

Description:
The Classic of Poetry (Shi jing), also known as the “Mao Poetry” (Mao Shi), is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry and one of the most important texts of ancient China. As a fountainhead of the Chinese literary tradition, it has endured over two and a half millennia of continuous readership. In this volume, eminent sinologist Edward L. Shaughnessy presents a complete English translation of the 305 discrete poems from the Classic of Poetry, divided into the Feng “Airs,” Ya “Odes,” and Song “Hymns.” Combining the received text with newly unearthed manuscript discoveries, Shaughnessy offers a modern, authoritative interpretation that departs from the dated translations of earlier scholars. His masterful rendering encapsulates the essence of this poetic treasury, reflecting the diverse aspects of life, love, nature, and ritual in ancient China.

The Documented Child: Migration, Personhood, and Citizenship in Twenty-First-Century U.S. Latinx Children’s Literature
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Author: Maya Socolovsky
Author Affiliation: University of North Carolina
Discipline: Language & Literature

Description:
Immigration is at once a personal, immediate, and urgent issue that plays a central role in the United States’ perception of itself. In The Documented Child, scholar Maya Socolovsky demonstrates how the portrayal of Latinx children has shifted over the first two decades of the twenty-first century in literary texts aimed at children and young adults and looks at how these shifts map onto broader changes in immigration policy and discourse.

The Open Door to Hidden Paganism: Abraham Rogerius’s Account of South Indian Hinduism (1651): Critical Introduction, Dutch Text, and Annotated English Translation
Publisher: Leiden University Press
Author: Benjamin Leathley
Author Affiliation: Università di Bologna; Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona
Discipline: Asian Studies

Description:
This book presents the first-ever English translation of ‘The Open Door to Hidden Paganism’, one of the earliest and most detailed studies of South Indian Hinduism. Written in 1651 by Abraham Rogerius, a Dutch East India Company clergyman and missionary, it offers an unexpectedly balanced account of the customs and traditions of the South Indian Brahmans. This made it a cornerstone of early European Indology. In addition to the Dutch original, this edition includes a full English translation, along with the extensive footnotes provided by an anonymous Dutch editor who contextualised Rogerius’s account for a seventeenth-century audience. Text and footnotes together uncover a so-far hidden religious and philosophical conversation of global dimension. Equipped with a rich introduction and detailed endnotes, this comprehensive edition of The Open Door dives into the fascinating intersection of missionary agendas, ethnography, and antiquarianism that created this unique work.

The Rise of Necro/Narco Citizenship: Belonging and Dying in the Southwest North American Region
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Author: Carlos G Vélez-Ibáñez
Author Affiliation: Arizona State University
Discipline: Peace & Conflict Studies

Description:
The Rise of Necro/Narco Citizenship offers a comprehensive exploration of the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural forces shaping the Southwest North American Region. Written by Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez, this work introduces the innovative concept of necro/narco citizenship, shedding light on how violence, militarization, and socioeconomic disruptions create unique forms of existence and identity on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trans Narrators: First-Person Form and the Gendered Body in Contemporary Literature
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Author: Chiara Pellegrini
Discipline: Language & Literature

Description:
Trans Narrators examines a range of trans-authored novels, short stories and autobiographical narratives published after 2015 and develops a new methodology at the intersection of trans studies and narrative studies.

Under the Campus, the Land: Anishinaabe Futuring, Colonial Non-Memory, and the Origin of the University of Michigan
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Author: Andrew Herscher
Discipline: History

Description:
Under the Campus, the Land is the first work of scholarship that investigates the participation of the University of Michigan in colonial settlement, Native unsettlement, and Native negotiation with the preceding. As such, Under the Campus, the Land is also the first historical study of the participation of a U.S. university in the seizure and settlement of Native land and Native resistance to settler colonialism.

Walled: Barriers, Migration, and Resistance in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Authors: Andréanne Bissonnette and Élisabeth Vallet
Author Affiliation: Western Washington University
Discipline: Political Science

Description:
Thirty years after the first mile of border walls was constructed in the San Diego–Tijuana region, this volume invites readers to reflect on how the border has evolved and what durable impacts came from these initial fourteen miles of border walls—and the 1,940 miles constructed since.