In exploring the intersections of memory, migration, and subjectivity, this book attempts to understand how Iraqi migrant women negotiate identity in diaspora.

For almost two decades before Canada officially adopted multiculturalism in 1971, a large network of women and their allies in Toronto were promoting pluralism as a city- and nation-building project. Before Official Multiculturalism assesses women as liberal pluralist advocates and activists, critically examining the key roles they played as community organizers, frontline social workers, and promoters of ethnic festivals. The book explores women’s community-based activism in support of a liberal pluralist vision of multiculturalism through an analysis of the International Institute of Metropolitan Toronto, a postwar agency that sought to integrate newcomers into the mainstream and promote cultural diversity. Drawing on the rich records of the Institute, as well as the massive International Institutes collection in Minnesota, the book situates Toronto within its Canadian and North American contexts and addresses the flawed mandate to integrate immigrants and refugees into an increasingly diverse city. Before Official Multiculturalism engages with national and international debates to provide a critical analysis of women’s pluralism in Canada.

Sex – who was having it, who shouldn’t have it, and who was supposed to be having it but wasn’t – was a major concern to social authorities in the immediate postwar era. Though they are often remembered with nostalgia as a sexually simpler time, the 1950s and early 1960s were incredibly sexually productive years. Sex and the Married Girl examines how two interrelated and dominant groups in Canada – medical professionals and church leaders – used married heterosexual female sexuality as a lever to rebuild the Canadian family and the state itself. Using embodied historical methodologies, the book examines not only discourses around sex but also how those discourses could influence the actual experience of sex for married women. Heather Stanley draws upon extensive oral life histories of women who lived, married, and had sex during this liminal social period to demonstrate that this was a time of simultaneous sexual and gender quiescence and change.

Our bodies have a story to tell. The Embodied Path weaves inspiring and ordinary body stories together with discussion questions, writing prompts, and breath and body practices to help anyone interested in creating more capacity for compassion for themselves and others by doing the internal work to contend with trauma and privilege.

Using an in-depth ethnographic study and interviews, Home and Sense of Belonging among Iraqi Kurds in the UK explores how Iraqi Kurds living in the UK conceptualise their sense of home and belonging and analyzes the differences in generational and gendered perspectives within Kurdish communities.

Based on epigraphic and other material evidence as well as more traditional literary sources and critical review of the extensive relevant scholarship, this book presents a comprehensive and innovative reconstruction of the rise of Islam as a religion and imperial polity. It reassesses the development of the imperial monotheism of the New Rome, and considers the history of the Arabs as an integral part of Late Antiquity, including Arab ethnogenesis and the emergence of what was to become Muslim monotheism, comparable with the emergence of other monotheisms from polytheistic systems. Topics discussed include the emergence and development of the Muhammadan polity and its new cultic deity and associated ritual, the constitution of the Muslim canon, and the development of early Islam as an imperial religion. Intended principally for scholars of Late Antiquity, Islamic studies and the history of religions, the book opens up many novel directions for future research.

This timely and important book introduces readers to the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the United States - Latinos - and their diverse conditions of departure and reception. A central theme of the book is the tension between the fact that Latino categories are most often assigned from above, and how those defined as Latino seek to make sense of and enliven a shared notion of identity from below. Providing a sophisticated introduction to emerging theoretical trends and social formations specific to Latino immigrants, chapters are structured around the topics of Latinidad or the idea of a pan-ethnic Latino identity, pathways to citizenship, cultural citizenship, labor, gender, transnationalism, and globalization. Specific areas of focus include the 2006 marches of the immigrant rights movement and the rise in neoliberal nativism (including both state-sponsored restrictions such as Arizona’s SB1070 and the hate crimes associated with Minutemen vigilantism). The book is a valuable contribution to immigration courses in sociology, history, ethnic studies, American Studies, and Latino Studies. It is one of the first, and certainly the most accessible, to fully take into account the plurality of experiences, identities, and national origins constituting the Latino category.