This is an in-depth look at the biomedical, socio-cultural, economic, legal and political, and educational vulnerabilities faced by the population that is most vulnerable to the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS: African women.

This e-only volume expands and updates the original 4-volume Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World (2011), offering a wide range of new entries and new multimedia content. The entries reflect such developments as the Arab Spring that brought women's issues in the Islamic world into sharp relief, the domination of female athletes among medal winners at the London 2012 Olympics, nine more women joining the ranks of democratically elected heads of state, and much more. The 475 articles in this e-only update (accompanied by photos and video clips) supplement the themes established in the original edition, providing a vibrant collection of entries dealing with contemporary women's issues around the world.

Given that women and girls carry the heaviest burdens of the African HIV pandemic, their lived experiences should be the starting point for any pedagogy of prevention. In light of this claim, Risky Marriage: HIV and Intimate Relationships in Tanzania uses qualitative fieldwork with HIV positive women living in Mwanza, Tanzania to ask why marriage is an HIV risk factor. By beginning with women’s experience as a hermeneutical lens, this book seeks to establish a creative space where African women can imagine new alternatives to HIV prevention that would promote human flourishing and abundant life in African communities. The aim of this book is to listen faithfully to the lived experiences of HIV positive women and ask how their experiences can help us re-imagine Christian conceptions of marriage, sexual ethics, and health in an HIV positive world. By drawing on the unwritten texts of women’s lives, this study proposes alternative pedagogies for faith-based prevention methods and contributes to the wider interdisciplinary and theo-ethical discourse on HIV prevention and women’s health. At the same time, it makes local impact of equal importance as women in East African communities are invited to think creatively about ways to end the HIV pandemic. For more information and comments from the author, watch a trailer for the book here: http://vimeo.com/semafilms/riskymarriage

Contemporary Theological Approaches to Sexuality provides a much-needed overview of the state of scholarship on Christian theological reflection on sexuality and sexual theology. Critically, it also intervenes in the cultural debate over sexuality by privileging feminist, queer, and other counter-normative perspectives. Comprising twenty-three chapters by a team of international contributors this volume is divided into four parts: • Normativity and transgression • Bodies • Economies and violence • Divinity. Within these sections central issues, debates and problems are examined, including consideration of the complexities of Christian theology in regard to contemporary sexuality debates. Contemporary Theological Approaches to Sexuality is essential reading for students and researchers in the field of religion, sexuality, and Christianity.

If, in fact, “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her [step]mother forty whacks,” why (from a representational standpoint) did her stepmother deserve it? If older gay men in Internet chat rooms regularly provide much-needed acceptance and advice to younger gay males during the coming-out process, how is it that they continually reinforce racist ideologies and powerless subjectivities while doing so? What sorts of media images are commonly presented of individuals and groups that are regarded as being deviant in society, and whose interests do they ultimately serve? The answers to these important questions and many others are provided in the pages of Mediated Deviance and Social Otherness: Interrogating Influential Representations, which explores provocative representations of deviance in various media forms—including books, films, musical offerings, news accounts, television programs, and Internet sites—and their substantial cultural, political, and social consequences for the lived realities of individuals of different backgrounds and lifestyles. The eye-opening chapters of this book enable readers to more fully realize the regularity with which media representations continuously contribute, in powerful ways, to the formation and perpetuation of influential social constructions of deviance and otherness as they pertain to delinquents, criminals, and individuals of all ages, classes, genders, races, sexual orientations, and health/(dis)ability statuses. "Mediated Deviance and Social Otherness: Interrogating Influential Representations is a thought-provoking anthology that offers fresh insight and new approaches to critically analyzing social constructions of deviancy across a variety of media forms. While scholars have long examined the relationship between media and deviancy, this collection of essays features a range of theoretical perspectives through which to investigate deviancy and its various interpretations in original ways. In the process, it deepens our understanding of how deviancy has been constructed across time and in differing social/cultural milieus. The essays in this anthology reflect the diverse disciplines of their contributing scholars. At the same time, the anthology does not waver from its clear focus on deviancy, lending it substantial coherence and readability. The book is expertly structured and edited. Each of the essays draws inspiration from a refreshing variety of sources and fields of study. The anthology is accordingly divided into six distinct yet related sections that mark its coherence and readability. Simultaneously, the essays within each section are quite different from one another, allowing the reader to make thought-provoking connections between representations of deviancy both within sections and among them. Mediated Deviance and Social Otherness: Interrogating Influential Representations is an important text. Considering the growth of new media forms, its investigation of both old and new media in relation to social constructions of deviancy represents a timely and topical contribution to the field of media and cultural studies. Given its breadth and scope, the anthology represents a highly significant scholarly contribution that will greatly benefit scholars, students, and interested individuals of all levels. It offers eye-opening insights to anyone with an interest in cultural studies, disease and disability studies, film and television studies, LGBT studies, criminal justice, sociology, and related fields." Brief Reviewer Bio: Metasebia Woldemariam, Ph.D., is an associate professor of communication and media studies at Plymouth State University who specializes in media representations of deviancy and otherness. "Mediated Deviance and Social Otherness: Interrogating Influential Representations is an erudite collection offering critical and cultural analysis of media representations within various media forms, including journalism, film, documentary, television, fiction, music, and the Internet. The book is divided into six sections that highlight the categories of deviance and otherness the contributors emphasize: (1) Age; (2) Crime and Criminals; (3) Disease and Disability; (4) Gender, Race, and Class; (5) Sexual Orientation; and (6) “Other” Forms of Deviance, which include masochism, carnival “spectaculars,” and cultures of violence. While some chapters feature links to topics common to media studies, such as the Motion Picture Production Code, what is powerful about the collection is how varied the interpretive standpoints of the contributors are. An example of one such unique interpretive perspective comes from Linda K. Fuller, whose chapter examines the sexual-political aspects of African AIDS-related films based on her work in West Africa “with a sexologist collating and critiquing appropriate media for Life Skills.” This interpretive variety inspires novel examination of media representations through the originality of varied genres of analysis: the collection offers analysis of classic as well as popular literature, popular as well as veiled news media, award-winning as well as obscure television series, and outlaw country music as well as rap music. Because “media” is so broadly interpreted within the collection, readers are encouraged to view mass media as a crucial cultural landscape for meaning making. Each contributor offers a timely perspective about past or contemporary society through the analysis of unique media genres and artifacts, or even through analysis of representations in multiple media forms. For example, Annette Holba examines multiple forms of the media representations of a less emphasized person in the Lizzie Borden case, Borden’s stepmother. Editor Kylo-Patrick R. Hart’s own contribution examines multiple media representations of the visible physical signs of AIDS before focusing on their representation in two particularly noteworthy film melodramas. Rather than focusing on stereotypical categories of deviance and otherness, the contributors focus on less commonly acknowledged representations or challenge commonly acknowledged understandings of media. This is evident through Christopher J. Pérez’s ethnographic observation of instant messages from Gay.com participants, which dispels the notion that such online communities allow for positive expressions of gay identity. Through its broad interpretation of media, the collection offers an ample array of less commonly acknowledged media genres, as evident in Margaret Weigel’s class analysis of the electric-bulb advertising sign “spectaculars” in Manhattan from 1892 to 1917; Wendy Korwin’s visual analysis of a set of four image plates used within prescriptive literature; and Amanda Klein’s cinematic comparison of portrayed deviance in the 1950s juvenile delinquency teenpic and the 1990s ghetto action film. Incorporated also are unique perspectives on traditional news media representations, as in Thomas Grochowski’s interpretation of celebrity defendant perspectives of O.J. Simpson. Occasionally, common themes thread particular chapters together, allowing opportunities to understand how critics view the same or similar media differently. For example, David Sealy and Georges-Claude Guilbert as well as Valentin Locoge offer analysis of the HBO television series OZ. Additionally, contemporary moral dilemmas and societal issues are covered as they appear in various media representations, as when Barbara Barnett’s discussion of journalistic representations of maternal infanticide and perfection appear alongside Robert Goff’s analysis of the textured view of abortion provided by the film Vera Drake. Hart’s collection is important to expanding the scholarly understanding of media representations because it provokes thinking about what makes media mean so much to humans in particular social, cultural, historical, and even technological contexts. The issue of the detrimental effects of “shared notions of deviance and social otherness” is evident in chapters that highlight original perspectives useful for either scholarly analysis or challenging, graduate-level classroom discussions. Also, because the collection includes literary analysis, it could serve well those with interest in literary criticism." ELESHA RUMINSKI, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania with experience teaching mass communication, film studies, and visual communication.

Inspired by a conference held at Northeastern University on the topic of Women, War, and Violence, editors Robin M. Chandler, Lihua Wang, and Linda K. Fuller bring together research and real-life stories from twenty-one international contributors who document gender involvement from victims to valiant in wartime and activism.

This text provides a unique examination of The Christian Science Monitor, a highly respected, venerable news publication that has survived over a century of changes and challenges. The Christian Science Monitor is one of the world's leading journalistic publications, having won multiple Pulitzer prizes for its reporting. CSM is innovative and forward-thinking as well—it was one of the first newspapers to provide an online copy of its daily reporting in 1996, well before the popularization of the Internet. But just like other publications, The Christian Science Monitor will need to continue to reinvent itself in order to stay relevant and solvent in the face of plummeting readership numbers, corporate takeovers, and a widespread assumption that all of today's news sources are biased and inaccurate. This book provides a thorough discussion of CSM's treatment of sensitive topics like terrorism, international crises, gender issues, and sexual orientation. The paper's attitudes toward ethnicity, ethics, economics, philosophy, and racism are also profiled. The conclusion provides readers with an opportunity to draw upon their new knowledge of The Christian Science Monitor's past to project its direction for the future.

This comprehensive reference book addresses the unique challenges facing many African nations as poor infrastructure and economics continue to obstruct access to advanced treatments and AIDS care training. It takes into account the context of settings with limited resources. Information on how to best utilize existing resources and prioritize scaling-up of infrastructure is a critical aspect of this book for those working in HIV/AIDS-related fields in Africa.

The congruencies between psychology and law are explored in this collection of learning objectives, exercises, and reference material that addresses the intersection of these two disciplines. In addition to practical topics such as crime and policing, the detection of deception and truthfulness, dangerousness and the risk of violence, and the employment of the psychologist as expert witness, it also discusses modern moral issues such as the role and treatment of child witnesses in legal proceedings, investigative psychology and psychological profiling, and the use of insanity and diminished capacity defenses.