ISSI Books

Mexican Workers and the Making of Arizona

Luis F.B. Plascencia
Gloria H. Cuadraz
2019

By: Luis F.B. Plascencia and Gloria H. Cuadraz

Mexican Workers and the Making of Arizona centers on the production of an elastic supply of labor, revealing how this long-standing approach to the building of Arizona has obscured important power relations, including the state’s favorable treatment of corporations vis-à-vis workers. Building on recent scholarship about Chicanas/os and others, the volume insightfully describes how U.S. industries such as railroads, mining, and agriculture have fostered the recruitment of...

The Activist Academic: Engaged Scholarship for Resistance, Hope and Social Change

Colette Cann
Eric Demeulenaere
2020

By: Colette Cann and Eric Demeulenaere

The Activist Academic serves as a guide for merging activism into academia. Following the journey of two academics, the book offers stories, frameworks and methods for how scholars can marry their academic selves, involved in scholarship, teaching and service, with their activist commitments to justice, while navigating the lived realities of raising families and navigating office politics. This volume invites academics across disciplines to enter into a dialogue about how to take knowledge to the...

Essential Dads: The Inequalities and Politics of Fathering

Jennifer M. Randles
2020

By: Jennifer M. Randles

In Essential Dads, sociologist Jennifer Randles shares the stories of more than 60 marginalized men as they sought to become more engaged parents through a government-supported “responsible” fatherhood program. Dads’ experiences serve as a unique window into long-standing controversies about the importance of fathering, its connection to inequality, and the state’s role in shaping men’s parenting. With a compassionate and hopeful voice, Randles proposes a more equitable political agenda for fatherhood, one...

The Spatial Contract: A new politics of provision for an urbanized planet

Alex Schafran
Stephen Hall
Matthew Noah Smith
2020

By: Alex Schafran, Matthew Noah Smith and Stephen Hall

Housing. Water. Energy. Transport. Food. Education. Health care. These are the core systems which make human life possible in the 21st century. Few of us are truly self-sufficient - we rely on the systems built into our cities and towns of all shapes and sizes in order to survive, let alone thrive. Despite how important these systems are, and how much we rely on them, contemporary politics and mainstream economics in most of the world largely ignore these core systems...

Teaching about Gender Diversity: Teacher-Tested Lesson Plans for K-12 Classrooms

Susan Woolley
Lee Airton
2020

By: Susan Woolley and Lee Airton

Teaching about Gender Diversity is an edited collection of teacher-tested interdisciplinary lesson plans that provides K–12 teachers with the tools to implement gender-inclusive practices into their curriculum and talk to their students about gender and sex. Divided into three sections dedicated to the elementary, middle, and secondary grade levels, this practical resource provides lessons for a variety of subject areas, including English language arts, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), and...

We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States

Leisy J. Abrego
Genevieve Negron-Gonzales
2020

By: Leisy J. Abrego and Genevieve Negron-Gonzales

The widely recognized “Dreamer narrative” celebrates the educational and economic achievements of undocumented youth to justify a path to citizenship. While a well-intentioned, strategic tactic to garner political support of undocumented youth, it has promoted the idea that access to citizenship and rights should be granted only to a select group of “deserving” immigrants. The contributors to We Are Not Dreamers—themselves currently or formerly undocumented—poignantly counter the Dreamer...

Divided by the Wall: Progressive and Conservative Immigration Politics at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Emine Fidan Elcioglu
2020

By: Emine Fidan Elcioglu

The construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border—whether to build it or not—has become a hot-button issue in contemporary America. A recent impasse over funding a wall caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, sharpening partisan divisions across the nation. In the Arizona borderlands, groups of predominantly white American citizens have been mobilizing for decades—some help undocumented immigrants bypass governmental detection, while others help law enforcement agents to apprehend immigrants. Activists...

Hawai'i Is My Haven: Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific

Nitasha Tamar Sharma
2021

By: Nitasha Tamar Sharma

Patricia Zavella experienced firsthand the trials and judgments imposed on a working professional mother of color: her own commitment to academia was questioned during her pregnancy, as she was shamed for having children "too young." And when she finally achieved her professorship, she felt out of place as one of the few female faculty members with children. These experiences sparked Zavella’s interest in the movement for reproductive justice. In this book, she draws on five years of ethnographic research to explore...

The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color Through Social Activism

Patricia Zavella
2020

By: Patricia Zavella

These experiences sparked Zavella’s interest in the movement for reproductive justice. In this book, she draws on five years of ethnographic research to explore collaborations among women of color engaged in reproductive justice activism. While there are numerous organizations focused on reproductive justice, most are racially specific, such as the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum and Black Women for Wellness. Yet Zavella reveals that many of these organizations have built coalitions among themselves, sharing...

Cartographic Memory: Social Movement Activism and the Production of Space

Juan Herrera
2022

By: Juan Herrera

In Cartographic Memory, Juan Herrera maps 1960s Chicano movement activism in the Latinx neighborhood of Fruitvale in Oakland, California, showing how activists there constructed a politics forged through productions of space. From Chicano-inspired street murals to the architecture of restaurants and shops, Herrera shows how Fruitvale’s communities and spaces serve as a palpable, living record of movement politics and achievements. Drawing on oral histories with Chicano activists, ethnography, and archival research, Herrera analyzes how...