New Releases: March

MQUP is thrilled to introduce nine new titles this month, from politics and philosophy, to the history of English protest songs. We have new additions to the  McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Ideas series, McGill-Queen’s Studies in Protest, Power, and Resistance series, and the States, People, and the History of Social Change series.

An Exceptional Dialogue, 1925–1948

Nicolas Berdyaev and Jacques Maritain

By Bernard Hubert, Edited by Ana Siljak, Translated by C. Jon Delogu

In 1925 the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev formed a friendship with the French philosopher Jacques Maritain. Their endeavours shaped the European philosophical world by promoting the essential dignity and rights of human beings. An Exceptional Dialogue, 1925–1948 translates their correspondence into English for the first time.

Home and the World in Slovak Writing

A Small Nation’s Literature in Context

Edited by Katarina Gephardt, Charles Sabatos and Ivana Taranenková

Home and the World in Slovak Writing brings Slovak literature out of isolation and tells the story of how a nation’s literature can survive and thrive despite a small domestic audience and limited circulation in English translation.

Our Subversive Voice

The History and Politics of English Protest Songs, 1600–2020

By John Street, Oskar Cox Jensen, Alan Finlayson, Angela McShane and Matthew Worley

Our Subversive Voice establishes the protest song as a mode of political communication. Covering five centuries in England’s history, from street ballads and art song to grime, hymns, music hall, and punk, this book explores the causes that protest songs adopt, the conditions that give rise to them, and the institutions that have suppressed them.

Listen to this playlist of English protest songs while you read: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/36m4fqMnIMoC3AQzkkx3OT

Quebec’s Eastern Townships and the World

A Region and Its Global Connections

Edited by Cheryl Gosselin, Andrew C. Holman and Christopher Kirkey

Quebec’s Eastern Townships and the World reveals a region with its own gravity, sense of being, and worldly connections, marked not by its insularity but by its long history as a central meeting ground. Contributors explore Indigenous land use, regional mobility, linguistic diversity, economic production, and culture in myriad forms.

Securing the Continental Skies

The Development of North American Air Defence Co-operation, 1945–1958

By Matthew Trudgen

Securing the Continental Skies uses post–Cold War access to archival sources to explore North American air defence in the 1940s and 1950s, challenging assumptions of the golden age of Canadian foreign relations and offering a new assessment of military co-operation between Canada and the United States.

States Without People

Revolt and Defeat in the Middle East

By Billie Jeanne Brownlee and Maziyar Ghiabi

States without People argues that the major consequence of the failed revolts and civil wars in the Middle East has been the emergence of a culture of the right.

Struggles for Self-Rule

Beyond State–Society Relations

By Filippo Sabetti

Drawing on case studies in Italian history, Struggles for Self-Rule asks, do the centralizing tendencies of modern politics sap the self-organizing powers of individuals and communities, and what, if anything, can be done about it?

The Translating Subject

By Melissa Tanti

The Translating Subject explores how queer women writers use multilingual strategies to create intimacy with the unknown and enable ethical engagement across social, cultural, and linguistic differences.

To Detain or to Punish

Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750–1840

By Kiran Mehta

Challenging traditional ideas about who and what prisons were for and how they operated, To Detain or to Punish offers a radical reappraisal of London’s prison system between 1750 and 1840.