Once iconic American symbols, tobacco farms are gradually disappearing. It is difficult for many people to lament the loss of a crop that has come to symbolize addiction, disease, and corporate deception; yet, in Kentucky, the plant has played an important role in economic development and prosperity. Burley tobacco—a light, air-cured variety used in cigarette production—has long been the Commonwealth's largest cash crop and an important aspect of regional identity, along with bourbon, blue...

In the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, the US saw a growing awareness of representational politics following the civil rights, women's, gay and lesbian, antiwar, and environmental justice movements, and, like most fields, folklore became increasingly cognizant of these cultural and political shifts. The Soul of a Folklorist chronicles the growing pains folklorists felt as the field engaged in these new and different ways of thinking about expressive culture, inequality, and political repre...

The Power of Direct Selling.Direct selling is not an industry per se nor is it merely a go-to-market business model and channel to reach consumers. It is bigger than any of this – direct selling is people. The ability for people with entrepreneurial spirit to build a successful business, whether it be from the ground up or by representing a company’s product, is at the heart of direct selling and it is people who made (and continue to make) direct selling the succe...

Contributions by Sheila Bock, Olivia Caldeira, Claudia Chiang-Frost, Cynthia Cox, Ann K. Ferrell, Kate Parker Horigan, Stewart Jobrack, Eleanor Paynter, James Phelan, Susan Ritchie, Martha C. Sims, Jasmine Stork, Sydney K. Varajon, and Jason WhiteselIn Narrative Knows No Boundaries: Exploring the Claims and Limits of Telling, the contributors examine uses of clearly recognizable narratives, as well as narratives that are implied, assumed, or even absent because they are un...

Between the Psyche and the Social is the first collection of its kind to offer original, interdisciplinary essays on questions of social subjectivity. Contributors engage the disciplines of feminism, psychoanalytic theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, film theory, literary criticism, and philosophy to transform the psychoanalytic study of social oppression. The book considers such questions as, How can psychoanalysis and critical social theory engage and transform one anothe...

Religion and Society in Early Modern England is a thorough sourcebook covering interplay between religion, politics, society, and popular culture in the Tudor and Stuart periods.It covers the crucial topics of the Reformation through narratives, reports, literary works, orthodox and unorthodox religious writing, institutional church documents, and parliamentary proceedings. Helpful introductions put each of the sources in context and make this an accessible student text.