How and why war and military culture have a traumatic impact on families and memory.

Often perceived as unbridgeable, the boundaries that divide humanity from itself--whether national, gender, racial, political, or imperial--are rearticulated through friendship. Elora Halim Chowdhury and Liz Philipose edit a collection of essays that express the different ways women forge hospitality in deference to or defiance of the structures meant to keep them apart. Emerging out of postcolonial theory, the works discuss instances when the authors have negotiated friendship's complicated, conflicted, and contradictory terrain; offer fresh perspectives on feminists' invested, reluctant, and selective uses of the nation; reflect on how the arts contribute to conversations about feminism, dissent, resistance, and solidarity; and unpack the details of transnational dissident friendships. Contributors: Lori E. Amy, Azza Basarudin, Himika Bhattacharya, Kabita Chakma, Elora Halim Chowdhury, Laurie R. Cohen, Esha Niyogi De, Eglantina Gjermeni, Glen Hill, Alka Kurian, Meredith Madden, Angie Mejia, Chandra T. Mohanty, A. Wendy Nastasi, Nicole Nguyen, Liz Philipose, Anya Stanger, Shreerekha Subramanian, and Yuanfang Dai.

This book explores women’s militant activities in insurgent wars and seeks to understand what women ‘do’ in wars. In International Relations, inter-state conflict, anti-state armed insurgency and armed militancy are essentially seen as wars where collective violence (against civilians and security forces) is used to achieve political objectives. Extending the notion of war as ‘politics of injury' to the armed militancy in Indian administered Kashmir and the Tamil armed insurgency in Sri Lanka, this book explores how women participate in militant wars, and how that politics not only shapes the gendered understandings of women’s identities and bodies but is in turn shaped by them. The case studies discussed in the book offer new comparative insight into two different and most prevalent forms of insurgent wars today: religio-political and ethno-nationalist. Empirical analyses of women’s roles in the Sri Lankan Tamil militant group, the LTTE and the logistical, ideological support women provide to militant groups active in Indian administered Kashmir suggest that these insurgent wars have their own gender dynamics in recruitment and operational strategies. Thus, Women and Militant Wars provides an excellent insight into the gender politics of these insurgencies and women’s roles and experiences within them. This book will be of much interest to students and scholars of critical war and security studies, feminist international relations, gender studies, terrorism and political violence, South Asia studies and IR in general.

"Diplomacy Between the Wars" is a detailed inside story of diplomacy seen through the careers of five remarkable career diplomatists. Here is a unique and authentic picture of practical diplomacy and its effect during periods of international crisis which shaped the twentieth century. These were not the statesmen and politicians who dominated the international stage but practical diplomats with long experience, linguistic competence, deep knowledge of the local conditions, history, culture and of the people of the countries where they served. George Liebmann also brings acute political awareness to the subject. The achievements of these diplomats - often unsung during their careers and gleaned largely from history books - were considerable and a monument to practical, professional diplomacy.Lewis Einstein was influential in demonstrating the central role - and its control - of finance and credit in modern wars and urging massive US economic assistance to Europe and after World War II providing the intellectual underpinnings of the Marshall Plan; Sir Horace Rumbold's work was vital in avoiding war between Great Britain and Turkey and in warnings of the dangers of Hitler; Johann von Bernstorff opposed Germany's 'naval militarism', supported a negotiated end to the First World War and peaceful revision of the Treaty of Versailles; Count Carlo Sforza urged restraint on Italy's territorial ambitions and tolerance for former Fascists and Communists; and Ismet Inonu kept Turkey out of war, preserved her national interest at the Treaty of Lausanne and maintained friendship with the great powers. He worked for religious toleration and the limitation of dictatorship in Ataturk's secular Turkish Republic.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, Healing Memories analyzes the ways that Puerto Rican women authors use their literary works to challenge historical methodologies that have silenced the historical experiences of Puerto Rican women in the United States. Following Aurora Levins Morales's alternative historical methodology she calls “curandera history,” this work analyzes the literary work of authors, including Aurora Levins Morales, Nicholasa Mohr, Esmeralda Santiago, and Judith Ortiz Cofer, and the ways they create medicinal histories that not only document the experiences of migrant women but also heal the trauma of their erasure from mainstream national history. Each analytical chapter focuses on the various methods used by each author including using the literary space as an archive, reclaiming memory, and (re)writing cultural history, all through a feminist lens that centers the voices and experiences of Puerto Rican women.