We are very pleased to announce that another book indexed by Southwest Humanities has been published (Nov. 1, 2025): Sam Holley-Kline's In the Shadow of El Tajín: The Political Economy of Archaeology in Modern Mexico, in University of Nebraska Press's Confluencias series. In this important study, Holley-Kline offers a deeply textured account of the famous archaeological site of El Tajín in Veracruz, Mexico—moving beyond its ancient pyramids to examine its modern history as a site of labor, industry, and Indigenous life.

Another fantastic Duke University Press publication that we have recently indexed at Southwest Humanities is Jennifer Tyburczy's Queer Traffic: Sex, Panic, Free Trade is being published today (Oct. 28, 2025). In Queer Traffic, Tyburczy maps how queer, trans, and otherwise “dissident” sexual lives cross borders—both literally and metaphorically—in the era of NAFTA and its aftermath. She examines how policies, trade laws, and cultural norms have tried to regulate, repress, or pathologize sexual expression and exchange across the US–Mexico–Canada zone, and how people respond.

Another excellent work that we have recently indexed at Southwest Humanities is Lisa DiGiovanni's Militarized Masculinity in Spain and Chile: Remembering Violence through Film and Literature (University of Toronto Press, 2025). This incisive comparative study investigates how notions of masculinity shaped and sustained authoritarian power under Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, revealing how gendered ideals of strength, discipline, and aggression became essential to maintaining political repression and normalizing violence in both countries.

Another excellent new book that we have recently indexed at Southwest Humanities is Katherine Gerbner's essential monograph, Archival Irruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2025). In Archival Irruptions, Gerbner investigates how the colonial authorities in eighteenth-century Jamaica came to define, classify, and criminalize Obeah—a set of spiritual/healing practices among enslaved Africans and Maroons—as they responded to social unrest.

One of the most theoretically complex, intense, and far-reaching books we have ever indexed at Southwest Humanities is Jennifer Scappettone's new work, Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and resistance to Fascism (Columbia University Press, 2025), which is now available. Poetry After Barbarism investigates how writers, especially those displaced, stateless, or otherwise marginalized, develop what Scappettone calls “xenoglossic” poetics—poetry that emerges in between languages, beyond (or outside) established national tongues.

Another excellent book published by Duke University Press that has been indexed recently by Southwest Humanities, Leda Maria Martins's book Performances of Spiral Time (translated by Bruna Barros and Jess Oliveira) is now available. Published on September 30, 2025, in Performances of Spiral Time, Afro-Brazilian philosopher Leda Maria Martins proposes a different model of temporality—what she calls “spiral time”—drawing on African and African diasporic thought, embodied performance, oral tradition, ritual, sacredness, and memory.

The latest book indexed by Southwest Humanities to be published is Diana Jean S. Martinez’s Concrete Colonialism: Architecture, Urbanism, and the US Imperial Project in the Philippines (Duke University Press, 2025). This important and in-depth study (which was published on September 30, 2025) examines the central role that reinforced concrete played in U.S. colonial rule in the Philippines. Martinez shows that concrete was not just a building material, but a tool of imperial ambition.

Another excellent Duke University Press title that has been indexed by Southwest Humanities is Tana Gentic's Geographies of the Ear: The Cultural Politics of Sound in Barcelona, which was published on 19 September, 2025. In Geographies of the Ear, Gentic offers a perceptive study of how sound shapes the fabric of post-Franco Barcelona. She introduces the concept of “echoic memory” to trace how the city's auditory traces, from migrant and tourist accents to punk, drag performances, free-form radio, and anti-gentrification protests—carry the weight of colonial, political, and cultural histories moving from neighborhood to nation and beyond.

Another excellent book indexed by Southwest Humanities is Zophia Edwards's Fueling Development: How Black Radical Trade Unionism Transformed Trinidad and Tobago (Duke University Press, 2025). In this detailed and crucial study, Edwards offers a compelling reinterpretation of Trinidad and Tobago’s path to social and economic progress—especially surprising given its reliance on oil and gas and its colonial legacy. Through extensive archival research and a Black radical political economy perspective, she uncovers the vital role of what she terms “liberation unionism”—a working-class, multiracial, and inclusive labor movement deeply rooted in Pan-African, anti-imperial, and diasporic principles.

A book that we are very proud to have recently indexed at Southwest Humanities, Daniel Heller-Roazen's Far Calls: On Omens, Slips, and Epiphanies (Zone Books/Princeton University Press, 2025) is now available for purchase! In Far Calls, Heller-Roazen embarks on a captivating journey through the realm of "overhearing"—those fragile moments when speech slips, sounds echo in unintended ways, or meaning emerges through fragments rather than full statements.

Another highly-anticipated and important book that we have recently indexed at Southwest Humanities is Anne Garland Mahler's A Wide Net of Solidarity: Anti-Racism and Anti-Imperialism from the Americas to the Globe (Duke University Press, 2025), which was recently published. In A Wide Net of Solidarity, Mahler uncovers the remarkable history of the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas (LADLA), founded in Mexico City in 1925, as a pioneering transnational network of resistance.

An innovative and comprehensive study of early Latin American photographic image creation, Juanita Solano Roa's Negative Originals: Race and Early Photography in Colombia (Duke University Press, 2025), is another important book that has been recently indexed by Southwest Humanities. In Negative Originals, Solano Roa turns our attention to late nineteenth-century photographic studios in Medellín—particularly Fotografía Rodríguez and Benjamín de la Calle—to dissect how images constructed and perpetuated racial ideologies in Colombia.

Another illuminating study of sound and music that has recently been indexed by Southwest Humanities, Alejandro L. Madrid's The Archive and the Aural City: Sound, Knowledge, and the Politics of Listening was recently published (in August 2025) by Duke University Press. Madrid's far-ranging book traces a powerful new path in how we think about archives—not as silent repositories of visual or textual heritage, but as repositories of sound that were often never intended to be heard.

John Tutino's recently published, massive and detailed history of an understudied aspect of the Mexican Revolution, The Bajío Revolution: Remaking Capitalism, Community, and Patriarchy in Mexico, North America, and the World (Duke University Press, 2025), is one of more than a dozen Duke University Press titles that have been indexed recently by Southwest Humanities. In this exhaustive study, Tutino reveals how the insurgent movements in Mexico’s Bajío region from 1810 to 1820 fundamentally altered the trajectory of global capitalism.

Southwest Humanities is excited and proud to announce the recent publication (in August 2025) of another excellent Duke University Press title, As If!: Queer Criticism across Difference, by Chase Gregory. In As If!, Gregory delves into a distinctive, stylistically vibrant form of early queer criticism—a mode they term “as if!” writing. Originating in the fraught context of the AIDS crisis, this approach adopts a playful, campy stance to probe identity across categories like race, gender, and sexuality.

Another important and engaging title published by Duke University Press and indexed by Southwest Humanities is Beyond Sanctuary: The Humanism of a World in Motion, edited by Ananya Roy and Veronika Zablotsky. Published in August 2025, Beyond Sanctuary critically examines how Western liberal democracies respond to—and often fail—the promise of sanctuary that they outwardly present to racialized others. Far from offering genuine refuge, state mechanisms of asylum and humanitarianism frequently reinforce racial, colonial, and carceral systems.

María Irene Fornés in Context, edited by Brian Eugenio Herrera and Anne García-Romero (Cambridge University Press, 2025), is the first substantial scholarly collection dedicated to the life, artistry, and lasting influence of María Irene Fornés—a groundbreaking but often under-recognized figure in late twentieth-century American theater. It is also one of the many excellent scholarly titles that has recently been indexed by Southwest Humanities.

Another important and penetrating book that has been recently indexed by Southwest Humanities, Danielle Roper’s Hemispheric Blackface: Impersonation and Nationalist Fictions in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2025) has recently been published (May 2025). This pathbreaking study reorients the conversation around blackface performances by charting their recurrence not just in the U.S. but across the entire Americas. She explores how blackface persists in cultural rituals and entertainment in countries like Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Jamaica, Cuba, and regions like Miami.

Southwest Humanities is excited and very proud to announce that Jaleh Mansoor's newest book, Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction: A Counterhistory (Duke University Press, 2025), for which we recently compiled the index, was published in May 2025. In this highly anticipated work, Mansoor reimagines the story of modernist abstraction through a Marxist lens, revisiting how avant-garde art intersects with labor, capital, and the production of abstraction.

One of the more exciting books that we have had the opportunity to recently index at Southwest Humanities is Surrealism and Animation: Transnational Connections, 1920-Present, edited by Abigail Susik (Bloomsbury, 2025), which was published in May 2025. This edited collection is the first of its kind to thoroughly map the intersections between the surrealist movement and the world of animation, spanning diverse styles—from early trick films and Betty Boop to anime, Claymation, and 3D animation.

Natalie Roxburgh’s recently published study, The Politics of Disinterestedness in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Browning, Eliot, Wilde (Bloomsbury, 2025), is one of the dozens of books indexed by Southwest Humanities this year. Roxburgh’s book investigates how nineteenth-century writers grappled with the rise of market logic and its encroachment into every sphere of life, including artistic and moral domains. She revives the concept of…

Another excellent book that was indexed by Southwest Humanities this year is Ronda L. Brulotte's Mezcal in Oaxaca: A Craft Spirit for a Global Marketplace (University of Texas Press, 2025). In Mezcal in Oaxaca, Brulotte draws readers into a rich, ethnographic exploration of how mezcal—once dismissed as a rough, low-status drink—has ascended into the global “artisanal” spotlight. Through meticulous fieldwork, she charts how this traditional spirit has become a symbol of rural vitality and Indigenous cultural heritage, even as those very origins are commodified to satisfy the elite craving for “authenticity." Brulotte expertly contrasts the ideal of an artisanal economy with the messy realities faced by Oaxacan communities, highlighting the pressures of tourism, gentrification, exploitation of women and small-scale producers, and rising migration.

One of the more fascinating books that we have indexed at Southwest Humanities this year is Quinn Slobodian's Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right. In this book, Slobodian unveils how certain strands of right-wing thought didn’t emerge in opposition to neoliberalism—but rather evolved from within it. In the wake of Cold War triumphalism, some intellectuals reinterpreted Friedrich Hayek’s ideas about markets and human nature through a lens tinted by scientific racism, IQ determinism, and strict immigration controls.

One of the many very exciting titles that has been indexed by Southwest Humanities this year is Franck Billé's important and wide-ranging Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity, published by Duke University Press in May 2025. In this book, which investigates how bodies and territories have been connected to questions of state and imperial sovereignty, "Billé charts the evolution of cartographic practices and the role that political maps have played in transforming notions of territorial sovereignty," demonstrating lucidly "how states routinely and effectively mobilize corporeal narratives, such as framing territorial loss through metaphors of dismemberment and mutilation.