The Tharu of lowland Nepal are a group of culturally and linguistically diverse people who, only a few generations ago, would not have acknowledged each other as belonging to the same ethnic group. Today the Tharu are actively redefining themselves as a single ethnic group in Nepal's multiethnic polity. In Many Tongues, One People, Arjun Guneratne argues that shared cultural symbols—including religion, language, and common myths of descent—are not a necessary condition for the existence of a shared sense of peoplehood. The many diverse and distinct socio-cultural groups sharing the name "Tharu" have been brought together, Guneratne asserts, by a common relationship to the state and a shared experience of dispossession and exploitation that transcends their cultural differences. Tharu identity, the author shows, has developed in opposition to the activities of a modernizing, centralizing state and through interaction with other ethnic groups that have immigrated to the Tarai region where the Tharu live.This book"s claims have wide implications for the study of ethnic identity and are applicable far beyond Nepal. The emergence of the category of Native American, for example, may be considered an analogous case because that ethnic identity, like the Tharu, subsumes people of different cultural origin, and has been defined both through the state and against it.

Stories of the Deep South from a woman's point of view, depicting the changing relationships between black and white people, the impact of the civil rights movement, and the emergence of the New South.

A “fascinating” (The Economist) dive into the world of linguistics that is “part travelogue, part science lesson, part intellectual investigation…an entertaining, informative survey of some of the most fascinating polyglots of our time” (The New York Times Book Review). In Babel No More, Michael Erard, “a monolingual with benefits,” sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like the nineteenth-century Italian cardinal Joseph Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages, as well as those of living language-superlearners such as Alexander Arguelles, a modern-day polyglot who knows dozens of languages and shows Erard the tricks of the trade to give him a dark glimpse into the life of obsessive language acquisition. With his ambitious examination of what language is, where it lives in the brain, and the cultural implications of polyglots’ pursuits, Erard explores the upper limits of our ability to learn and use languages and illuminates the intellectual potential in everyone. How do some people escape the curse of Babel—and what might the gods have demanded of them in return?

This book draws on extensive fieldwork among Muslims in Nepal to examine the local and global factors that shape contemporary Muslim identity and the emerging Islamic revival movement based in the Kathmandu valley. Nepal's Muslims are active participants in the larger global movement of Sunni revival as well as in Nepal's own local politics of representation. The book traces how these two worlds are lived and brought together in the context of Nepal's transition to secularism, and explores Muslim struggles for self-definition and belonging against a backdrop of historical marginalization and an unprecedented episode of anti-Muslim violence in 2004. Through the voices and experiences of Muslims themselves, the book examines Nepal’s most influential Islamic organizations for what they reveal about contemporary movements of revival among religious minorities on the margins--both geographic and social--of the so-called Islamic world. It reveals that Islamic revival is both a complex response to the challenges faced by modern minority communities in this historically Hindu kingdom and a movement to cultivate new modes of thought and piety among Nepal’s Muslims.

This book is a unique storehouse of surprising, thought provoking, fascinating and useful facts about human speech and the written word.

The history of Franciscan parishes in the United States mirrors the social, religious and cultural shifts brought about by repeated waves of immigrants to the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This study offers a glimpse into the struggles of Franciscan priests, sisters, and laity attempting to live out their faith amidst the challenges of the time: religious bigotry, racial and ethnic strife, and cultural and religious challenges. The Franciscan experience provides an important element in the tapestry of the American experience. Readers of this work will learn about the Franciscan priest who persuaded his fellow Polish immigrants to engage in an ill-fated settlement experiment in Texas. They will learn about Franciscan efforts to evangelize Native Americans, the Menominee at Keshena, Wisconsin, utilizing catechetical material in the natives' language. Readers will become acquainted with one of the first Italian churches in New York City, St. Anthony of Padua, where a multiethnic parish gave rise to disputes over leadership in the community. In Los Angeles, the parish of St. Lawrence of Brindisi is highlighted, providing an exploration of ministry to an impoverished community located near the epicenter of the 1965 Watts riots. And readers will be transported to the serene setting of rural northern Ohio where a Marian shrine has been the site of dozens of claimed miraculous healings. While the portraits of fourteen Franciscan parishes contained in this work are diverse - geographically, ethnically, and chronologically - they collectively witness to the distinctiveness of the Franciscan charism of embracing poverty, fostering community, offering reconciliation, and serving those on society's margins. Their story is part of the American story.

Two award-winning and bestselling novelists--and authors of "This Scepter'd Isle"--collaborate once again for another enticing new fantasy set in pre-Elizabethan England.