New Releases: May 2025

MQUP is thrilled to introduce twelve new titles this month! Topics include studies in Montreal urbanism, democratic history through the lens of consumption, and anthropology in graphic illustration, among many others.

We also have new additions to the following series: McGill Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion, States, People and the History of Social Change, Studies on the History of Quebec/ Études d’histoire du Québec, La Collection Louis J. Robichaud/The Louis J. Robichaud Series, McGill Queen’s Studies in Ethnic History, Studies in Christianity and Judaism, and Rethinking Canada in the World.

Apparition Fever

Observing the Virgin Mary in Belgium 

By Tine Van Osselaer 

Apparition Fever examines a series of Marian apparitions that swept over Belgium in the 1930s and ’40s, tracing how knowledge of the apparitions was formed among bystanders, medical experts, and church authorities as they decided if the visionaries were worthy of belief.

Before We Disappear into Oblivion

San Francisco’s Russian Diaspora from Revolution to Cold War 

By Nina Bogdan 

The October 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent Civil War triggered a mass exodus from Russia to the American west coast. Before We Disappear into Oblivion examines the efforts of newly arrived Russians in San Francisco as they built communities and negotiated their acculturation into American society.

Dangers of Youth 

Age, Criminality, and Juvenile Justice Reform in Third Republic France

By Briony Nelson 

In 1912 French legislators established a distinct criminal justice system for juveniles, enshrining probation at its heart and decriminalizing offences committed by children under the age of thirteen. Dangers of Youth examines critical debates about juvenile liability and the appropriate treatment of young offenders.

Drink and Democracy

Alcohol and the Political Imaginary in Colonial Australia

By Matthew Allen 

Drink and Democracy traces the development of democratic ideas in a corner of the nineteenth-century British Empire through the history of drinking and temperance.

Future Generation Government 

How to Legislate for the Long Term 

By Nicholas Chesterley 

Our impact on future generations has never been greater, and the challenges we face are increasingly long-term. Future-Generation Government proposes ways that we can reward our governments for making durable policy decisions that anticipate future crises.

In the Land of the Lacandón

A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism

By Richard Ivan Jobs, Steven Van Wolputte, with Manuel Bolon Pale 

In the mid-1930s Bernard de Colmont ventured into the borderlands of Mexico to study the Lacandón people, considered to be the closest living relatives of the Maya. In the Land of the Lacandón transforms de Colmont’s narratives and images into a 1930s adventure comic, accompanied by a historical essay and a poem by Tsotsil writer Manuel Bolom Pale.

Montreal After Dark

Nighttime Regulation and the Pursuit of a Global City 

By Matthieu Caron 

Montreal After Dark elucidates how nighttime regulation became a central issue in Montreal during the second half of the twentieth century. Labour, dissent, sex, noise, and art, as well as sites of leisure and consumption, were reorganized to suit the desires of politicians who envisioned Montreal within a global network of cities.

Réinventer Montréal

Ambitions et revers de trois urbanistes des Trente Glorieuses

Par Frédéric Mercure-Jolette

Réinventer Montréal retrace les idées et les actions de trois urbanistes ayant œuvré à repenser le développement de Montréal dans les années 1960, soit Hans Blumenfeld, Jean-Claude La Haye et Claude Robillard à partir d’un examen de leurs archives personnelles et des plans et des documents d’urbanisme qu’ils ont réalisés.

Religious Inventions

Ancient Mediterranean Practice and the Study of Religion 

By William Arnal and Erin K. Vearncombe 

Ancient writings, including the Jewish and Christian Bibles, reflect lived human experiences rather than mere dogma. Religious Inventions investigates the social contexts of these writings, exploring how modern views on religion can illuminate ancient texts and challenge our understanding of both past and present beliefs.

Repenser l’Acadie dans le monde

Études comparées, études transnationales

Par Clint Bruce et Gregory M.W. Kennedy

Petite société francophone concentrée dans le Canada atlantique, l’Acadie renvoie tout autant à une multiplicité de réalités socioculturelles. Cet ouvrage présente une perspective indispensable pour comprendre la francophonie—surtout le dynamisme, la persévérance et la diversité du peuple acadien.

Standing Up to Big Nickel 

The Story of the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Strike, 1958

By Elizabeth Quinlan

In 1958, 14,000 miners and smeltermen in Sudbury, Ontario, downed their tools and struck against the International Nickel Company, a corporate titan of the mining industry. Standing Up to Big Nickel is the first comprehensive portrait of a pivotal strike by the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers.

The Higgs Years

Leading and Dividing New Brunswick

By Gabriel Arsenault 

Drawing on original data from the Polimeter, a non-partisan tool that measures whether politicians keep the promises they make, contributors assess Blaine Higgs and his Progressive Conservative Party’s record in New Brunswick.