McMaster scholars in humanities and social sciences have been busy this year, writing on topics as varied as German history, Islamic feminism and dementia. If you’re looking for an insightful read this season (or have a reader on your gift list) take a look at the books below. 

Anthropology 

Thailand’s Far South: Engaging the Difficult Realities in a Recurring Conflict

Kee Howe Yong (University of Toronto Press)

In Thailand’s Far South, Kee Howe Yong sheds light on the Malay Muslims in Thailand’s far south. The book focuses on the relationship between the construction of minorities – and thus majority – and issues of engaging with the difficulties of their realities: loss, violence, history, memory, livelihood, fear and paranoia, and political formations.

Communication Studies and Media Arts 

Adversarial Islamic Feminism: Islam and Feminism within the Western-Islamic Public Sphere

Dilyana Mincheva (Amsterdam University Press) 

This book explores the adversarial world of feminist activism by Muslim women within highly mediated environments (social media, screenwriting, documentary filmmaking, YouTube), focusing on agency, bodily integrity, and familial obligations. It highlights how adversarial Islamic feminism uses social media to spread intersectional feminist messages, creating virtual communities that both support and challenge these ideas.

English and Cultural Studies 

Grandfather of the Treaties: Finding our Future Through the Wampum Covenant

Daniel Coleman (Wolsak and Wynn)

In Grandfather of the Treaties Coleman introduces the founding Wampum covenants that the earliest European settlers made with the Haudenosaunee nation and shows how returning to these covenants, and the ways they were made, could heal our society.

West of West Indian: Poems

Linzey Corridon (Mawenzi House)

West of West Indian constructs the Queer Caribbean experience as simultaneously individual and collective, embracing the language that continues to unsettle queer life. It collects a distinctly queer Vincentian Canadian account of love and autonomy, and while it represents a written journey into queer pain, it is also an exhibition of pleasure flowing through the bodies and minds of its many subjects. 

Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy

Henry Giroux and Anthony R. DiMaggio (Bloomsbury)

This book, which interrogates rising fascism in America, spotlights the major facets of fascism that increasingly characterize contemporary US politics, in relation to political authoritarianism, the rise of anti-intellectualism, the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories, the glorification of political street violence and state violence, rising white supremacy, and the militarization of US political discourse.  

What the World Might Look Like: Decolonial Stories of Resilience and Refusal

Susie O’Brien (McGill-Queen’s University Press) 

Stories of resilience share an attachment to a mythologized past thought to hold clues for navigating a future that is understood to be full of danger. These stories also uphold values of settler colonialism and white supremacy. What the World Might Look Like examines the way resilience thinking has come to dominate the settler-colonial imagination and explores alternative approaches to resilience writing that instead offer decolonial models of thought.

Margaret Watkins: Life & Work

Mary O’ Connor (Art Canada Institute)

Hamilton, Ontario-born Margaret Watkins (1884–1969) was a pioneering rebel who changed early twentieth-century photography, but until recently, the details of her fascinating life and groundbreaking practice were all but lost to history. As Mary O’Connor reveals in Margaret Watkins: Life & Work, the artist had a remarkable career that earned Watkins accolades for her work and influenced a generation of North American photographers.

Global Peace and Social Justice 

From the Enlightenment to Black Lives Matter: Tracing the Impacts of Racial Trauma in Black Communities from the Colonial Era to the Present

Ingrid Waldron (Emerald Publishing)

From the Enlightenment to Black Lives Matter: Tracing the Impacts of Racial Trauma in Black Communities from the Colonial Era to the Present draws on anti-colonial theory to examine how the legacy of racial trauma in Black communities has shaped understandings of Black life, Black trauma and Black responses to trauma within psychiatry and other mental health professions.

Health, Aging and Society 

How to Live Well with Dementia: Expert Help for People Living with Dementia and their Family, Friends and Care Partners

Anthea Innes, Megan E. O’Connell, Carmel Geoghegan and Phyllis Fehr (Routledge)

Written by researchers and authors with lived experience of dementia, this book is a primer for anyone impacted by the disease. It offers practical tips and advice for anyone living with the illness, their carers, and family members.

History 

Documentation from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions

Bonny Ibhawoh and Proscovia Svärd, eds. (Routledge)

Documentation from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions highlights the need for post-conflict societies to have access to – and to use – Truth Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs’) documentation to achieve reconciliation and to work towards a democratic society. Including international contributions from a range of disciplines, the volume discusses the challenges that surround TRCs’ documentation.

Women, Gender, and History Education

Kristina Llewellyn, Marie-Hélène Brunet and Rose Fine-Meyer, eds. (Springer)

The aim of this edited collection is threefold: to offer a historical analysis of women and gender in K-12 teaching and learning of history; to provide an examination of women and gender in relation to contemporary pedagogy, curriculum, and resources in K-12 history education and teacher education; and, to explore the future of history education when informed by intersectional feminism and gender theory.

Nazi Germany: Society, Culture, and Politics

Pamela Swett and Jonathan Wiesen (Bloomsbury)

Nazi Germany unravels the complexities of the daily lives of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders in the ‘Third Reich’, and it also places events in Germany from 1933 to 1945 in a transnational context. It also prompts readers to think about not only the historical debates but also the ethical questions that attend the study of this period.

Indigenous Studies 

Restoring Relations Through Stories: From Dinétah to Denedeh

Renae Watchman (University of Regina Press)

Watchman explores stories — oral, literary and visual — from land-based Diné and Dene storytellers. Watchman examines the power of story to forge ancestral and kinship ties between the Diné and Dene across time and space through re-storying.

Labour Studies 

Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics

Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage (UBC Press)

Coming at a time of frequent industrial action, this timely book examines how the largest union representing Canadian autoworkers switched tactics in its dealing with politicians, switching from an activist to transactional stance. It reveals the inner workings of unions and the debates that impact working-class politics. 

Master of Public Policy program 

The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians

Vass Bednar and Denise Hearn (Sutherland House)

As more and more of the Canadian economy is dominated by a handful of huge companies that control what we buy, how we work, and which other businesses can or can’t thrive, The Big Fix teaches readers how to think about competition and how markets are made, and shows how the country can achieve a more innovative, productive, and livable economy for all Canadians.

Philosophy 

Bertrand Russell, Feminism, and Women Philosophers in his Circle

Alexander Klein and Landon Elkind, eds. (Springer)

Bertrand Russell is a founder of analytic philosophy, and has also been called a feminist due to his public, decades-long advocacy for women’s rights and equality of the sexes. But his private behavior towards wives and sexual partners, and his apparently dismissive (occasionally public) responses to some women philosophers, raises the question of what sort of feminist (or chauvinist) Russell actually was.

Political Science/Wilson College 

History Has Made Us Friends: Reassessing the Special Relationship between Canada and the United States

Donald Abelson and Stephen Brooks, eds. (McGill-Queens University Press)

History Has Made Us Friends illuminates the nature and dynamics of Canada-US relations, examining their history, attributed meaning, and conceptualization. Contributors consider many angles and perspectives, including the impact of geopolitical change, to determine whether the relationship warrants the moniker “special.” 

Putting Women Up: Gender Equality and Politics in Myanmar

Netina Tan and Meredith L. Wilson (ISEAS Publishing)

During Myanmar’s brief experiment with democracy, why did some women run for office, and not others? Tan co-authors this book which examines internal politics of nine political parties in Myanmar and both men’s and women’s attitudes towards and experiences of political leadership.

Sociology 

Sex in Canada: The Who, Why, When, and How of Getting Down Up North

Tina Fetner (University of Chicago Press)

Sex in Canada pulls the covers off Canadians’ sex lives, examining what we do, how often, and with whom. It reveals Canadians’ sexual behaviour using a one-of-a-kind social science survey of Canadian adults. It gives us a glimpse into our bedrooms, breaking through myths about our sexuality with frank talk, solid data, and a sense of humour.