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Reference Collection

Indiana University Press is pleased to announce that it has added an important reference collection to IU Press Online. Four comprehensive encyclopedias enhance our expanding online library.

Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, winner of the American Historical Association’s 2006 Waldo G. Leland Prize and a 2007 Choice Outstanding Academic Title, is the result of an ambitious five-year project led by Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether and funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Henry Luce Foundation. Marshalling the talents of more than 150 scholars, it presents the most complete and up-to-date description and analysis of women and religion in North America. The encyclopedia features more than 145 substantial essays that enable major themes to be developed more fully than short entries would allow. The articles focus on institutions, movements, and ideas, while biographical sketches with a more personal and humanizing quality, recognize the women responsible for the gains made over the centuries.

Latinas in the United States, edited by Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sánchez-Korrol, is an exhaustive gathering of scholarship on Latinas and serves as an essential reference work. In more than 580 entries, the historical and cultural narratives of Latinas come to life. From mestizo settlement, pioneer life, and diasporic communities, the encyclopedia details the contributions of women as settlers, comadres, and landowners, as organizers and nuns. Scholars explore the experiences of Latinas during and after EuroAmerican colonization and conquest; the early-19th-century migration of Puerto Ricans and Cubans; 20th-century issues of migration, cultural tradition, labor, gender roles, community organization, and politics; and much more.

The American Midwest, edited by Richard Sisson, Christian Zacher, and Andrew Cayton, the first-ever encyclopedia of the region, seeks to embrace this large and diverse area, giving it a voice and helping to define its distinctive character. Organized by topic, it encourages readers to reflect upon the Midwest as a whole. Each section moves from the general to the specific, covering broad themes in longer introductory essays followed by shorter entries filling in the details. There are portraits of the region’s 12 states, followed by entries on society and culture, community and social life, economy and technology, and public life. The volume offers a wealth of information about the area’s surprising ethnic diversity—a vast array of foods, languages, styles, religions, and customs—plus well-informed essays on the Midwest’s history, culture and values, and conflicts.

 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume I: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA), a 2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title, is the first volume of a projected monumental 7-volume encyclopedia, the result of years of work by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  With Geoffrey P. Megargee as general editor, the encyclopedia will describe the universe of camps and ghettos—some 20,000 in all—that the Nazis and their allies operated, from Norway to North Africa and from France to Russia. For the first time, a single reference provides detailed information on each individual site. Volume I covers three groups of camps: the early camps that the Nazis established in the first year of Hitler's rule, the major SS concentration camps with their constellations of subcamps, and the special camps for Polish and German children and adolescents. Overview essays provide context for each category, while each camp entry provides basic information about the site's purpose; the prisoners, guards, working and living conditions; and key events in the camp's history. Material from personal testimonies helps convey the character of the site, while source citations provide a path to additional information.