In this pioneering study, historian Andreana Prichard presents an intimate history of a single mission organization, the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), told through the rich personal stories of a group of female African lay evangelists. Founded by British Anglican missionaries in the 1860s, the UMCA worked among refugees from the Indian Ocean slave trade on Zanzibar and among disparate communities on the adjacent Tanzanian mainland. Prichard illustrates how the mission’s unique theology and the demographics of its adherents produced cohorts of African Christian women who, in the face of linguistic and cultural dissimilarity, used the daily performance of a certain set of “civilized” Christian values and affective relationships to evangelize to new inquirers. The UMCA’s “sisters in spirit” ultimately forged a united spiritual community that spanned discontiguous mission stations across Tanzania and Zanzibar, incorporated diverse ethnolinguistic communities, and transcended generations. Focusing on the emotional and personal dimensions of their lives and on the relationships of affective spirituality that grew up among them, Prichard tells stories that are vital to our understanding of Tanzanian history, the history of religion and Christian missions in Africa, the development of cultural nationalisms, and the intellectual histories of African women.

This book fills a significant gap in the scholarship on the Mexican Revolution by providing a detailed history of the northeastern state of Coahuila from the late Portifirian era to 1920. It evaluates the social, political, and economic developments that contributed to revolutionary activity within Coahuila, and that helped shape the revolutionary movements led by Francisco I. Madero and Venustiano Carranza. Pasztor explores the role played by the extensive Coahuila-Texas border in the financing of the Mexican Revolution and she addresses the revolution's immediate outcomes through a study of the reforms introduced during the governorships of Carranza and Gustavo Espinosa Mireles.

This book explores "The Rock: Layered in MSU Tradition" as a landmark of Michigan State University and a symbol of the Spartan Spirit. In addition to a year's worth of pictures to browse, taken almost every day, the book highlights several core themes of MSU as they have been expressed through the Rock, representing the breadth of the Spartan Experience. --website

"In Coffin Honey, poet Todd Davis explores the many violences we do to each other and to the other living beings with whom we share the planet"--

René Girard shows that all desires are contagious—and the desire to be thin is no exception. In this compelling new book, Girard ties the anorexia epidemic to what he calls mimetic desire: a desire imitated from a model. Girard has long argued that, far from being spontaneous, our most intimate desires are copied from what we see around us. In a culture obsessed with thinness, the rise of eating disorders should be no surprise. When everyone is trying to slim down, Girard asks, how can we convince anorexic patients to have a healthy outlook on eating? Mixing theoretical sophistication with irreverent common sense, Girard denounces a “culture of anorexia” and takes apart the competitive impulse that fuels the game of conspicuous non-consumption. He shows that showing off a slim physique is not enough—the real aim is to be skinnier than one’s rivals. In the race to lose the most weight, the winners are bound to be thinner and thinner. Taken to extremes, this tendency to escalation can only lead to tragic results. Featuring a foreword by neuropsychiatrist Jean-Michel Oughourlian and an introductory essay by anthropologist Mark R. Anspach, the volume concludes with an illuminating conversation between René Girard, Mark R. Anspach, and Laurence Tacou.