Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames (University fo Minnesota Press, September 2017) by Stephanie Boluk, assistant professor of English and cinema and digital media, and Patrick LeMieux, assistant professor in cinema and digital media, delves into alternative histories of play and demonstrates how games extend beyond the screen, and how modders, mappers, streamers, spectators, analysts, and artists are changing the way we play.

Racial Worldmaking: The Power of Popular Fiction (Fordham University Press, 2017) by Mark Jerng, professor of English, looks at the writing of H.G. Wells, Margaret Mitchell, Samuel Delany, Philip K. Dick to rethink how scholars have addressed racial formation in relation to both African American and Asian American studies, as well as how scholars have addressed the relationships between literary representation and racial ideology.

Beyond Tordesillas: New Approaches to Comparative Luso-Hispanic Studies (Ohio State University Press, October 2017), co-edited by Robert Patrick Newcomb, associate professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese,  consolidates work being done on the connections between the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Aerial Aftermaths (Duke University Press, January 2018) Caren Kaplan, professor of American Studies, traces the history of aerial imagery and how aerial views operate as a form of world-making tied to the times and places of war, from England's surveys of Scotland following the defeat of the 1746 Jacobite rebellion to images taken in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. 

The World in the Long Twentieth Century: An Interpretive History (University of California Press, January 2018) by Edward Dickinson, professor of history, explores the political and economic upheavals, technological advances, and environmental transformations that have reshaped the world. 

Remainders: American Poetry at Nature's End (Stanford University Press, March 2018) by assistant professor of English Margaret Ronda is a literary history  of postwar American poetry that reflects on new dimensions of ecological crisis. These poems portray various forms of remainders that convey the ecological consequences of global economic development.

Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir (University of Florida Press, March 2018) by Halifu Osuamare, emeritus professor of African and African American Studies, is a professional dancer’s personal journey over four decades, across three continents, through defining moments in the story of black dance in America, and how dance has been a vital tool in the black struggle for recognition, justice, and self-empowerment.  

Hasidism: A New History (Princeton University Press, December 2017), by UC Davis College of Letters and Science's David Biale, the Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History, with David Assaf, Benjamin Brown, Uriel Gellman, Samuel Heilman, Moshe Rosman, Gadi Sagiv and Marcin Wodzinski. The first comprehensive history of Hasidism, this book demonstrates that, far from being a throwback to the Middle Ages, the pietistic movement is a product of modernity that forged its identity as a radical alternative to the secular world.

Coercion and Responsibility in Islam: A Study in Ethics and Law (Oxford University Press, 2017) by Mairaj Syed, associate professor of religious studies, explores how classical Muslim theologians and jurists from four intellectual traditions argue about the thorny issues that coercion raises about responsibility for one's action. 

Dancing in the Blood: Modern Dance and European Culture on the Eve of the First World War (Cambridge University Press, July 2017), by Edward Dickinson, professor and chair of the Department of History. The author uncovers connections between modern dance and changing gender relations and family dynamics, imperialism, racism and cultural exchanges with the wider non-European world, and new conceptions of selfhood.

Mythopoetic Cinema: On the Ruins of European Identity (Columbia University Press, 2017) by Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli, professor of cinema and digital media, gives a close reading of such films as Alexander Sokurov’s "Russian Ark" (2002) and Jean-Luc Godard’s "Notre Musique" (2004), and demonstrates the ways in which the filmmakers engage and evaluate the recent reconceptualization of Europe’s borders, mythic figures and identity paradoxes.

Jumping at Shadows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream (Nation Books, 2017) by Sasha Abramsky, a lecturer in the University Writing Program, sets out to uncover what things frighten us most: from terrorist attacks to illegal immigrants to the Zika virus, and posits why our fears are in many cases misplaced; how this hysteria is often based on issues of race, segregation, class and inequality; and how we cannot let it define us.

Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family (Columbia University Press, 2017), by Bruce D. Haynes, professor of sociology, with Syma Solovitch. This memoir tells Haynes’ family story—beginning with his grandparents, National Urban League co-founder George Edmund Haynes and children’s book author Elizabeth Ross Haynes.

God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America (Basic Books, 2017), by Louis Warren, W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of U.S. Western History. This book offers a startling new view of the religion known as the Ghost Dance, from its origins in the visions of a Northern Paiute named Wovoka to the Army's killing of more than 200 Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.

The Lima Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2017), edited by Charles Walker, professor of history, with Carlos Aguirre. Covering more than 500 years of history, culture, and politics, this volume captures the multiple viewpoints of the diverse peoples of Peru’s capital city. The volume traces Lima’s transformation from a pre-Columbian religious center, to the colonial “City of Kings,” to today's vibrant and deeply divided metropolis of almost ten million people.

Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917 (Cornell University Press, 2017), by Ian Campbell, assistant professor of history. Hoping to better govern the Kazak steppes, tsarist officials were desperate to obtain reliable information about an unfamiliar environment and population. Drawing on archival materials and a wide range of 19th-century periodicals in Russian and Kazak, Campbell tells how Kazaks at first used local knowledge to negotiate tsarist rule and later to resist it. 

The Exile’s Song” Édmond Dédé and the Unfinished Revolutions of the Atlantic World (Yale University Press, 2017) by Sally McKee, professor of history. In 1855, Dédé, a free black composer from New Orleans, emigrated to Paris. There he trained with France’s best classical musicians and went on to spend 36 years in Bordeaux leading the city’s most popular orchestras. Beginning with his birth in antebellum New Orleans in 1827 and ending with his death in Paris in 1901, Sally McKee vividly recounts the life of this extraordinary man.

Right Out of California: the 1930s and The Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism (New Press, 2017) by Kathryn S. Olmsted, professor and chair of the Department of History. Olmsted re-examines the labor disputes in Depression-era California that led California's businessmen and media to create a new style of politics with corporate funding, intelligence gathering, professional campaign consultants and alliances between religious and economic conservatives.

A sweeping history by Professor Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), was a finalist for a 2016 National Book Award. “All the time that I spent writing this book, I kept thinking about the 2.5 to 5 million Native Americans held in bondage whose voices were almost completely silenced and whose stories we have mostly chosen to forget,” said Reséndez.

Young people of South Asian, Afghan and Arab descent growing up in a post-9/11 world feel constantly under suspicion and surveillance. Their lives are the focus of the book The 9/11 Generation: Youth, Rights, and Solidarity in the War on Terror (New York University Press, 2016) by Sunaina Marr Maira, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Asian American Studies. The book has just been released to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

When alumnus Christopher Schaberg thought about potential contributors to the book and essay series he was creating, he went back to colleagues at UC Davis. So far his UC English doctoral classmates, John Garrison and Kara Thompson, along with English professor Scott Shershow, have written essays and books for the Object Lessons series (Bloomsbury). The series examines the life of ordinary objects we often take for granted. Writers observe the “object” from multiple angles—history, literature, philosophy, science. Anything is fair game and there are no set formats.

Science Self: A Social History of Estrogen, Testosterone, and Identity  (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016 ) by Bob Ostertag, a professor of cinema and digital media. Ostertag examines the development of estrogen and testosterone as pharmaceuticals. He situates this history alongside the story of an increasingly visible and political lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population. He argues that scholarship on the development of sex hormone chemicals does not take into account LGBT history and activism, nor has work in LGBT history fully considered the scientific research that has long attempted to declare a chemical essence of gender.

Tactical Performance: The Theory and Practice of Serious Play (Routledge, 2016) by Larry Bogad​​​​​, a professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, draws on his experience as a writer, performer and strategist to share effective nonviolent tactics. The book explores creative protest — pranksterism, subvertisement, cultural sabotage — looking at the possibilities for direct action and theatrical confrontation with the most powerful institutions in the world. In addition, a revised and expanded edition of his Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements (Routledge) looks at the satirical election campaign, such as Stephen Colbert’s run for President in 2012, and explores the purpose of such public political performances. 

Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings (Verso, 2016) is by Joshua Clover, English professor and award-winning poet. Clover theorizes the riot as the form of the coming insurrection in his new book. Examining uprisings in Baltimore, Ferguson, Oakland and other places he proposes that we are in an “age of riots” as the struggle of people versus state and capital has taken to the streets. From early wage demands to recent social justice campaigns pursued through occupations and blockades, Clover connects these protests to the upheavals of a sclerotic economy in a state of moral collapse.

The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge (The MIT Press, 2016), by Diana Davis, associate professor of history. Deserts are commonly imagined as barren, defiled, worthless places, wastelands in need of development. This book examines their environmental history to expose the myths and demonstrate the diversity of the world's drylands. 

After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (Harvard University Press, 2016), by Gregory Downs, associate professor of history. After Appomattox argues that the war did not end with Confederate capitulation in 1865. Instead, a second phase commenced which lasted until 1871. Using its war powers, the U.S. Army oversaw an ambitious occupation, stationing tens of thousands of troops in hundreds of outposts across the defeated South. This groundbreaking study of the post-surrender occupation makes clear that its purpose was to crush slavery and to create meaningful civil and political rights for freed people in the face of rebels’ bold resistance.

Humankind: How Biology and Geography Shape Human Diversity (Pegasus Books, 2016), by Alexander Harcourt, professor emeritus of anthropology. In this book, Harcourt explains how the expansion of the human species around the globe and our interaction with our environment explains much about why humans differ from one region of the world to another, not only biologically, but culturally.

Playing With Earth and Sky: Astronomy, Geography, and the Art of Marcel Duchamp (Dartmouth College Press, 2016) by James Housefield. Housefield, associate professor in the Department of Design, examines the the influences of astronomy, geography and aviation on artist Marcel Duchamp. One of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp transformed modern art by abandoning unique art objects. In the book, Housefield offers new interpretations of Duchamp’s work showing how environments of popular science, from museums to the modern planetarium, prepared paths for Duchamp’s art. 

Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain, edited by Hsuan L. Hsu (Broadview Editions, 2016). The two stories published together overflow with spectacular events: conjoined twins, babies exchanged in the cradle, cross-dressing, racial masquerade, duels and a murder mystery. Hsu, an associate professor of English, provides an introduction that traces the history of literary critics’ response to these works, from the confusion of Twain’s contemporaries to the keen interest of current scholars.

The Money Makers: How Roosevelt and Keynes Ended the Depression, Defeated Fascism, and Secured a Prosperous Peace by Eric Rauchway (Basic Books, 2015).  Rauchway, professor of history, provides an absorbing narrative showing how President Franklin Roosevelt and his advisors pulled the levers of monetary policy to save the domestic economy and propel the United States to unprecedented prosperity and superpower status.

The Legendary Detective: The Private Eye in Fact and Fiction (University of Chicago Press, 2015), by John Walton. A distinguished professor of sociology, Walton offers a sweeping history of the American private detective in reality and myth, from the earliest agencies to the hard-boiled heights of the 1930s and ’40s. Drawing on previously untapped archival accounts of actual detective work, Walton traces both the growth of major private detective agencies like Pinkerton, which became powerful bulwarks against social and labor unrest, and the motley, unglamorous work of small-time operatives.

The Audacious Ascetic: What Osama Bin Laden's Sound Archive Reveals About al-Qa'ida by Flagg Miller (Oxford University Press, 2015). Professor of religious studies, Miller uses Bin Laden’s recordings to detail how Islamic cultural, legal, theological and linguistic vocabularies shape militants’ understandings of al-Qa’ida.

The House of Twenty Thousand Books by Sasha Abramsky (New York Review Books, 2015). Sasha Abramsky, a continuing lecturer in the University Writing Program, examines the life of his grandfather Chimen Abramsky and his remarkable collection of books on Jewish life, history, communism and socialism. For more than 50 years Chimen and his wife, Miriam, hosted gatherings in their house of books that brought together many of the age’s greatest thinkers. Abramsky’s writing has appeared in The Nation, The American Prospect and The New Yorker online.

Landfalls by Naomi Williams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). Inspired by a map she purchased, Naomi Williams, a 2010 graduate of the College of Letters and Science masters in creative writing program, recreates an actual doomed 18th Century attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Each chapter is told from a different point of view and set in a different part of the world. It is the Davis resident’s first novel.

Winner of the 2016 Northern California Book Reviewers Recognition Award, California's Wild Edge: the Coast in Prints, Poetry, and History, by Tom Killion and Gary Snyder (Heyday Books), captures the beauty of the California coast from Mendocino south to Santa Monica through 80 color prints and illustrations by Killion and prose by Gary Snyder. Snyder is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, author, scholar, cultural critic and professor emeritus of UC Davis.

You Must Fight Them, by Maceo Montoya (University of New Mexico Press, 2015). In this novella a short, bookish half-Mexican doctoral student returns to his hometown of Woodland, California, and tries to reconnect with Lupita Valdez, the girl he worshipped in high school. First he must come to terms with her three hulking brothers and his own identity. Montoya is an assistant professor in the Department of Chicano Studies.

Bread from Stones: The Middle East & The Making of Modern Humanitarianism, by Keith David Watenpaugh (UC Press, 2015). Watenpaugh, an associate professor in religious studies, analyzes genocide and mass violence, human trafficking and the forced displacement of millions in the Eastern Mediterranean as the background for this exploration of humanitarianism’s role in the history of human rights.