In the seventeenth-century English Atlantic, religious beliefs and practices played a central role in creating racial identity. English Protestantism provided a vocabulary and structure to describe and maintain boundaries between insider and outsider. In this path-breaking study, Heather Miyano Kopelson peels back the layers of conflicting definitions of bodies and competing practices of faith in the puritan Atlantic, demonstrating how the categories of “white,” “black,” and “Indian” developed alongside religious boundaries between “Christian” and “heathen” and between “Catholic” and “Protestant.” Faithful Bodies focuses on three communities of Protestant dissent in the Atlantic World: Bermuda, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. In this “puritan Atlantic,” religion determined insider and outsider status: at times Africans and Natives could belong as long as they embraced the Protestant faith, while Irish Catholics and English Quakers remained suspect. Colonists’ interactions with indigenous peoples of the Americas and with West Central Africans shaped their understandings of human difference and its acceptable boundaries. Prayer, religious instruction, sexual behavior, and other public and private acts became markers of whether or not blacks and Indians were sinning Christians or godless heathens. As slavery became law, transgressing people of color counted less and less as sinners in English puritans’ eyes, even as some of them made Christianity an integral part of their communities. As Kopelson shows, this transformation proceeded unevenly but inexorably during the long seventeenth century.

Ancestry magazine focuses on genealogy for today’s family historian, with tips for using Ancestry.com, advice from family history experts, and success stories from genealogists across the globe. Regular features include “Found!” by Megan Smolenyak, reader-submitted heritage recipes, Howard Wolinsky’s tech-driven “NextGen,” feature articles, a timeline, how-to tips for Family Tree Maker, and insider insight to new tools and records at Ancestry.com. Ancestry magazine is published 6 times yearly by Ancestry Inc., parent company of Ancestry.com.

“[An] utterly fascinating reading of the multiple uses and meanings of mirrors among European Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans.” —Journal of Social History What did it mean, Rebecca K. Shrum asks, for people—long-accustomed to associating reflective surfaces with ritual and magic—to became as familiar with how they looked as they were with the appearance of other people? Fragmentary histories tantalize us with how early Americans—people of Native, European, and African descent—interacted with mirrors. Shrum argues that mirrors became objects through which white men asserted their claims to modernity, emphasizing mirrors as fulcrums of truth that enabled them to know and master themselves and their world. In claiming that mirrors revealed and substantiated their own enlightenment and rationality, white men sought to differentiate how they used mirrors from not only white women but also from Native Americans and African Americans, who had long claimed ownership of and the right to determine the meaning of mirrors for themselves. Mirrors thus played an important role in the construction of early American racial and gender hierarchies. Drawing from archival research, as well as archaeological studies, probate inventories, trade records, and visual sources, Shrum also assesses extant mirrors in museum collections through a material culture lens. Focusing on how mirrors were acquired in America and by whom, as well as the profound influence mirrors had, both individually and collectively, on the groups that embraced them, In the Looking Glass is a piece of innovative textual and visual scholarship. “A superb reflection of the many meanings held by an object usually taken for granted. Highly recommended.” —Choice

Bouchercon Lifetime Achievement Award winner Ralph McInerny's Irish Alibi is a great addition to this stellar series, in which the past, no matter how distant, is never forgotten and always poised to rise again. With the Fighting Irish set to square off against Georgia Tech, Roger Knight, the rotund professor of Catholic studies, and his brother Philip, a semi-retired P.I., know that Notre Dame fans will be out in force. The faithful swear that on game day the entire campus comes alive to cheer on the football team, and they don't have to look any further than Touchdown Jesus or Fair Catch Corby, a statue of a Civil War chaplain who seems to be signaling another pass completion, for proof, misguided as it may be. But this year, this friendly and sometimes heated North-South rivalry turns downright hostile when Notre Dame's ties to the Union during the Civil War are dug up, and two students, brothers and Southern gentlemen, are spurred to defend their honor with a prank nearly 150 years after the fact. While they both admit to being the culprit, only one of them could've actually committed the vandalism. But which one? By stretching one alibi over two people, they may dodge expulsion. But then they become suspects in a seemingly unrelated murder case that the Knights must solve, or else getting thrown out will be the least of the boys' problems.

Countering dominant narratives of conflict through attention to memory and trauma This volume presents approaches to the archaeology of war that move beyond the forensic analysis of battlefields, fortifications, and other sites of conflict to consider the historical memory, commemoration, and social experience of war. Leading scholars offer critical insights that challenge the dominant narratives about landscapes of war from throughout the history of North American settler colonialism. Grounded in the empirical study of fields of conflict, these essays extend their scope to include a commitment to engaging local Indigenous and other descendant communities and to illustrating how public memories of war are actively and politically constructed. Contributors examine conflicts including the battle of Chikasha, King Philip’s War, the 1694 battle at Guadalupe Mesa, the Rogue River War, the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862, and a World War II battle on the island of Saipan. Studies also investigate the site of the Schenectady Massacre of 1690 and colonial posts staffed by Black soldiers. Chapters discuss how prevailing narratives often minimized the complexity of these conflicts, smoothed over the contradictions and genocidal violence of colonialism, and erased the diversity of the participants. This volume demonstrates that the collaborative practice of conflict archaeology has the potential to reveal the larger meanings, erased voices, and lingering traumas of war. A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

Tough times and the unsolved murders of anyone with ties to the Deveres---a family of wealthy parish patrons---back Father Dowling up against a wall in his struggle to save his church from the chopping block. With too many churches and not enough people to fill them, the Archdiocese has to make some cuts, and many of them, including the proposed closing of St. Hilary's, are dangerously close to the bone. Father Dowling rushes to drum up support from church officials and parishioners, including the Deveres, who don't want to see the stained glass windows they donated go anywhere other than the church they were meant for, but they can hardly be of help when those closest to them start turning up dead. Church politics, long-kept family secrets, and a determined killer come together to put St. Hilary's---a church that countless characters and devoted readers have come to love---and its parishioners in peril in Stained Glass, the latest in Ralph McInerny's treasured mystery series.

An inexplicable campus murder puts Notre Dame professor Roger Knight and private investigator brother, Philip, to the test.

With rivalries rekindled and the brothers Knight digging into the university's past, Sham Rock, the latest in Ralph McInerny's well-loved mystery series, is as witty and charming as ever. The University of Notre Dame relies on Roger Knight, the rotund professor of Catholic Studies, and his brother Philip, a semiretired PI, to investigate certain delicate situations that could put the school in a bad light. Students, faculty, and alumni, like David Williams, are all fair game. Having been a successful financial adviser until recently, David has returned to campus to renege on a pledged donation to the university's ethics program. While he's there, one of his former classmates sends a letter confessing to the murder and a secret burial of one of their closest friends, a student who had gone missing decades before and was never found. As students, David, Patrick, and Timothy made up the "Trinity," an irreverent nickname for three close friends and fierce rivals---be it for on-campus prestige or the affections of a beautiful St. Mary's student from across the road. Ready to help the school put the whole sordid tragedy behind them, Roger and Philip set about the sad task of unearthing Timothy's body, only to find that they have a much bigger mystery with which to contend.