Welcome to the Zombie Apocalypse

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood, by Dr. Terry Rey, our latest title published by North Broad Press, a joint open access imprint of Temple University Libraries and Temple University Press.

 

North Broad Press,has published a new textbook. Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood, by Dr. Terry Rey.

Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood explores the intellectual and cultural histories of two highly influential and essentially religious ideas, that of the zombie and that of the apocalypse. The former is a modern idea rooted in Haitian Vodou and its popular African and European religious antecedents, while the latter is an ancient one rooted in Zoroastrianism and the Bible and widely expanded in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and is arguably one of the most influential ideas in world history. Today the merger of the zombie and the apocalypse has pervaded popular culture, with the zombie surpassing the vampire and Frankenstein as the most prolific monster in popular American consciousness.

Drawing on biblical studies, African studies, Caribbean studies, and the sociology and history of religion, Parts I (Holy Land) and II (Haiti) explore the religious origins of these ideas. Part III (Hollywood) uses aspects of cultural studies, literary analysis, critical race theory, and cinema studies to document the (primarily) American obsession with the zombie and the zombie apocalypse.

The apocalypse and the zombie have been momentous intellectual, historical, and cultural realities and social forces in both very ancient and very recent human history and culture. As such, Zombie Apocalypse provides a focused analysis of certain fundamental aspects of human existence. It challenges readers to cultivate their critical thinking skills while learning about two of the most compelling notions in human religious history and the impact they continue to have. 

Terry Rey is Professor and Undergraduate Chair of the Department of Religion at Temple University, where he specializes in the anthropology and history of African and African diasporic religions. His current research projects focus on violence and religion in Central African and Haitian history. Rey developed the Temple course “Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood,” which he began teaching in spring 2020. 

Presenting Temple University Press’ Spring 2024 Catalog

This week in North Philly Notes, we present Temple University Press’ Spring 2024 catalog.

Below are our forthcoming books, arranged alphabetically by title. You can also view the catalog online here.

Adoption Memoirs: Inside Stories, by Marianne Novy

Bringing together birthmothers’, adoptees’, and adoptive parents’ portrayals of their experiences in memoirs

Beyond Left, Right, and Center: The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity in Contemporary Germany, by Christina Xydias

Debunks our assumptions about ideology and women’s representation in democracies

Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape: Deep Roots, Continuing Legacy, by Amy Jane Cohen

Philadelphia’s Black history as seen through historical markers, monuments, murals, and more

Carceral Entanglements: Gendered Public Memories of Japanese American World War II Incarceration, by Wendi Yamashita

Critiques how Japanese American public memorializations unintentionally participate in maintaining and justifying a neoliberal racial order

Crossing Great Divides: City and Country in Environmental and Political Disorder, by John D. Fairfield

Forging a path forward toward modes of production and ways of life, less dependent on despoliation and manic consumption, that will be genuinely sustaining

Crossing the Border to India: Youth, Migration, and Masculinities in Nepal, by Jeevan R. Sharma

How the changing political economy of rural Nepal informs the desire and agency of young male migrants who seek work in cities

Death Penalty in Decline?: The Fight against Capital Punishment in the Decades since Furman v. Georgia, Edited by Austin Sarat

Examines how the politics of capital punishment have changed in America since 1972 and the current prospects for abolition

Democracy’s Hidden Heroes: Fitting Policy to People and Place, by David C. Campbell

Turning deeply rooted governance dilemmas into practical policy results

Disability, the Environment, and Colonialism, Edited by Tatiana Konrad

Explores discourses related to gender, race, imperialism, and climate across the colonial era

Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production, by Linh Thủy Nguyễn

How American children of Vietnamese refugees connect and express their experiences of racialization using the tropes of family, war, and grief

Faith and Community: How Engagement Strengthens Members, Places of Worship, and Society, by Rebecca A. Glazier

Showing how community engagement can build stronger congregations and improve democracy

Female Body Image and Beauty Politics in Contemporary Indian Literature and Culture, Edited by Srirupa Chatterjee and Shweta Rao Garg

Initiates a much-neglected and much-needed discussion of the politics of Indian women’s body image and self-identity

From South Central to Southside: Gang Transnationalism, Masculinity, and Disorganized Violence in Belize City, by Adam Baird

How longstanding socio-economic vulnerability in Belize City created fertile grounds for embedding deported Bloods and Crips from Los Angeles

The Improviser’s Classroom: Pedagogies for Cocreative Worldmaking, Edited by Daniel Fischlin and Mark Lomanno

Exploring improvisation as a fundamental practice for teaching and learning

Play to Submission: Gaming Capitalism in a Tech Firm, by Tongyu Wu

A critical exploration into the gamification in modern workplaces as a means of control

Designing a comprehensive resource for community-engagement professionals

This week in North Philly Notes, Elizabeth Tryon, coauthor (with Haley Madden and Cory Sprinkel) of Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships, writes about the challenges and rewards of integrating community engagement into higher education.

Looking in the rear-view mirror, it’s overwhelming to try to process the impact of events of the last four years. A global pandemic disproportionately affected minoritized communities in a climate of vitriolic hatred and intolerance encouraged by the former president. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, national protests created overdue heightened awareness of systemic racism. In a short time span, so much of the country’s dialogue shifted that it is mind-boggling to catalog the ramifications, good and bad. The learning curve was steep, especially for community engagement (CE) under lockdown, but universities pivoted more quickly in response to the COVID-19 closure than thought possible for such behemoth institutions. It was gratifying, in our campus Zoom world in the late summer and fall of 2020, to see conversations about equity take center stage. Some academics seemed to have been living a cloistered existence, unaware that inequity and systemic racism persist in the neoliberal construct of academia. Now folks were gamely attempting to wake up and contribute to rectifying some inequities. The gates of the ivory tower seemed to crack open and we heard a new willingness to listen and try new things.

These issues were not new in the context of academic CE. For many, many years we had been hearing from off-campus partners that our institutions didn’t do enough to prepare students in CE coursework (some of it required to graduate) before unleashing them on the unsuspecting populace. And that even with the best intentions, students sometimes interacted with community members in ways that caused harm. At our university a large community-based study, overseen by Professor Randy Stoecker in 2006, categorized those issues using a grounded-theory method. These findings were so extensive that our team published a book with Temple in 2009 called The Unheard Voices. This work led us to plead with administrators to institute policies to improve CE. These calls had largely gone unheeded, and 10 years after the Voices study, a community follow-up showed that not much had changed except that partners were becoming choosier about agreeing to projects and they still needed us to shoulder the burden of student training. (One told us, “Tell your students to stop bringing their white nonsense!”) Higher ed has a moral responsibility to behave better both inside the campus boundaries and especially beyond if universities continue to send students into the community under their auspices.

While the issues chronicled in Voices included everything from students not showing up at their sites to the vagaries of the academic calendar, over the next decade packed rooms for every workshop or conference presentation our team led with words like “cultural humility” in the title pointed to the overarching problem. Once all the available extra chairs were dragged in, people sat on floors or windowsills or hovered in doorways. Instructors kept saying, “I’m not equipped to teach these topics. I need the tools to do a better job of not only ensuring my students do no harm, but also ensuring the CE project is more than a break-even exercise for my community partners.”

During those years we were lucky to have some very skilled student interns who had extensive training in intergroup/intercultural dialogue as well as lived experience and wisdom. They knew how to meet students at their level as they worked toward more equitable partnerships and helped us develop workshop curriculum. This led to the creation of a CE Preparation staff role in 2019, filled by Cory Sprinkel, also a skilled dialogue facilitator, and we embarked on formalizing our student trainings for wider dissemination.

Our new handbook, Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships, is designed to be a comprehensive resource for use by community-engaged professionals to prepare students for more equitable relationships with community members as they conduct course projects or research. It is structured into three broad sections that loosely mirror a companion set of open-access online modules that instructors can assign: an introductory overview and literature review; essential concepts, including student motivations, identity, privilege, power and oppression, and cultural humility; and additional contexts and considerations that drill down even deeper. We used a developmental approach so instructors can go from simpler to more complex understandings. Every chapter starts with discussion and theory and then moves to specific strategies and classroom activities. The book ends with appendices of activities and resources we have collected over the years.

We could only write from the perspective of a predominantly white institution in a medium-sized city, and our BIPOC faculty/staff colleagues, while very supportive, were too committed to join us as coauthors. So, we solicited short vignettes from small private and large urban campuses, community colleges, HBCUs, and minority-serving institutions. We received contributions from a diverse group of 22 colleagues about a plethora of related issues, including valuable contributions from students. It was a real pleasure to work with all of these contributors and my co-authors and I are excited to see this handbook reach CE professionals that have been looking for resources to help them prepare students for equitable partnership building.

University Press Week Blog Tour: #SPEAKUP

It’s University Press Week and the Blog Tour is back! This year’s theme is #SPEAKUP. Today’s theme is What Does It Mean to #SPEAKUP at your Press? 

Today’s entries shine a spotlight on new or backlist projects that exemplify the ways the SpeakUP theme intersects with a Press’ mission, practices, acquisitions/marketing/production strategies, etc.

Click on links to Presses to read their entries.
(Note: Some Press have not provided links or descriptions of content as of time of publication)

Yale University Press

University of Notre Dame Press
Greg Bourke, author of Gay, Catholic, and American, writes about choosing to publish his book with University of Notre Dame Press.

Columbia University Press
In this interview, Howard University’s Dr. Amy Yeboah Quarkume and Columbia University’s Dr. Frank Guridy #SpeakUP about The Black Lives in the Diaspora series and its mission to uplift voices of Black scholars and authors who have often been marginalized by providing a platform for their research and perspectives.

Leuven University Press
Guest post by a press Acquisitions Editor.

University of Nebraska Press
Guest post, by UNP Director.

University of Chicago Press
Interview with Laura Mamor, author of Sexualing Cancer, a book that SpeaksUP about the intersections of politics, gender, and public health

McGill-Queen’s University Press
#SpeakUP Reading list

University of Amsterdam Press

Purdue University Press
Purdue University Press has a long history of publishig in Jewish, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies.

Harvard Education Press
Executive director Jess Fiorillo writes about HEP’s mission and our books that that “speak up” against problems in education

Bristol University Press
Alison Shaw on BUPs history and mission.

Duke University Press
Curated reading lists with free content.

University Press of Kentucky
Frank X Walker, the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate, is an artist, writer, and educator who has published eleven collections of poetry. A founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, Walker speaks to the importance of books by the University Press of Kentucky.

Johns Hopkins University Press

The University of the West Indies Press
Empowering our authors as Dara Wilkenson Bobb is with her marketing strategy for Gods of Bruising.

Cornell University Press

SUNY Press
#SpeakUP Reading List

University of Manitoba Press
Highlighting ways our recent titles have spoken up.

NYU Press
Author Jeffrey S. Gurock explains how sports hero Marty Glickman spoke out against anti-semitism.

Announcing the new issue of KALFOU

This week in North Philly Notes, we announce a special issue of Kalfou focused on Insubordinate Spaces [Kalfou Vol. 10, No. 1 (2023)]. 

“Insubordinate Space”: Special Issue

• Insubordinate Space: Contents
  •  PDF

Feature Articles

• “Buffalo Soldiers . . . It’s Time to Refuse to Ride”: Indigenous Resistance, Third World Radicalism, and Tyree Scott’s Black Radical Political Education Michael Schulze-Oechtering Castañeda
  •  PDF
• The Limits of Labor Solidarity: Competing Organizing Ideologies of Filipino and Alaska Native Salmon Industry Workers, 1928–1946 Jessica S. Jiang
  •  PDF
• Black on Both Sides: Internationalism in the Struggle for México Negro Danny Widener
  •  PDF

Talkative Ancestors

• Clyde Woods on Social Triage
  •  PDF

Keywords

• Insubordinate Space Felice Blake
  •  PDF

La Mesa Popular

• My Brother’s Words: A Conversation with Robert “Faruq” Wideman Leila Kamali
  •  PDF

Art and Social Action

• Notes on Art and the Abolitionist Imagination Ken Ehrlich
  •  PDF

Teaching and Truth

• Mapping Race and Urban EcologiesCollaborative Engagements with Critical Geography, Urban Studies, and Digital Humanities Sigma Colón, Chloe Thomas, Marelis Alvarez
  •  PDF

What Is Solidarity?

This week in North Philly Notes, Alana Lee Glaser, author of Solidarity & Care, writes about how her days as a labor activist informed her new book.

What is solidarity? What do we—as members of a society—owe one another? How might we effectively uphold and institutionalize our mutual obligations? These questions have animated my own activism and scholarship since I was an undergraduate student turned labor activist two decades ago. More recently, these same questions motivated me to write a book for undergraduate students that I hope might inspire them to solidarity action themselves.

During my first year as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I, along with ten or so other students, staged a sit-in in the Chancellor’s historic South Building office on UNC’s central campus to protest the sweatshop labor behind the manufacture of the university’s licensed apparel. Months earlier, on a lark, I had attended a small meeting of anti-sweatshop activists. Over the course of those few months, I had what I now recognize as a full-scale world-view revolution. I entered college with an esteem for volunteerism and letter-writing campaigns (both of which I continue to endorse) and before my first year ended, I was a self-proclaimed labor activist and student radical.  To contextualize, let me add that this all occurred in 1998, before historical hindsight would allow me to place my consciousness within broader anti-neoliberal globalization movements that united “Teamsters and turtles” in Seattle and countless others in global mass demonstrations against the anti-labor, free-trade policies of the World Trade Organization, IMF, and World Bank. Virtually all my subsequent endeavors have built upon the foundational experiences of student-labor solidarity that took place throughout my undergraduate career, leading me to Domestic Workers United, the organization of immigrant women domestic worker activists that is the subject of my book, Solidarity & Care.

Solidarity & Care addresses these questions of solidarity, mutual aide, and activism through an accessible ethnographic description of Domestic Workers United’s decade-long fight to establish workplace protections in New York and the ramifications of this legislation in the ten years since it passed. Historically, U.S. labor laws have excluded care work performed in the home—housekeeping, childcare, and elder care—from labor law protections, leaving the women who work in this highly personalized, low-wage sector vulnerable to wage theft, harassment, abrupt termination, and abuse. In summer 2010, New York State passed the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, the nation’s first-ever legislation granting formal protections to in-home workers.

Solidarity & Care chronicles the laboring lives and activist endeavors of immigrant women care workers across New York’s five boroughs, as they manage the implications of the new law in their workplaces, transnational communities, and political organizations. The introduction of the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights hasn’t attenuated many of the issues with which childcare providers, housecleaners, and home health aides contend on a regular basis—frequent termination, employer inconsideration, long hours, dismally low pay, mistreatment, and lack of control over their own labor. Solidarity & Care describes how care work positions exemplify increasing worker insecurity across industries—wrought by neoliberal economic policy and employer efforts to reduce wages and eliminate worker benefits through overseas outsourcing where possible and through casualization, deskilling, and fragmentation here in the United States. In this way, the book invites undergraduate students, many already working in low waged labor sectors themselves, to contextualize their own labor and to consider their experiences and interests in common with domestic workers.

By foregrounding the activist successes and setbacks of primarily Caribbean, Latina, and African women care workers, Solidarity & Care showcases how intersectional labor organizing and solidarity can effectively protect workers in this and other industries. It centers the voices and experiences of immigrant women workers through their oral histories, vibrant accounts of their roles in protest actions, and their own analyses of the overlapping oppressions they face as women of color, immigrants, and low-wage workers in New York City. Just as I was drawn to understand the historic and political circumstances during which I protested sweatshops by “sitting-in” as a an undergraduate, my hope is that Solidarity & Care will be an approachable invitation to undergraduates, and even the broader public, to reflect on their own political-economic position and to stand in solidarity with immigrant women workers, like the members of Domestic Workers United, and workers across the U.S. labor movement.

Basketball books for March Madness

This week in North Philly Notes, to celebrate March Madness, we provide an elite eight bracket of books about basketball.

James Naismith: The Man Who Invented Basketball, by Rob Rains with Hellen Carpenter; Foreword by Roy Williams

It seems unlikely that James Naismith, who grew up playing “Duck on the Rock” in the rural community of Almonte, Canada, would invent one of America’s most popular sports. But Rob Rains and Hellen Carpenter’s fascinating, in-depth biography James Naismith: The Man Who Invented Basketball shows how this young man—who wanted to be a medical doctor, or if not that, a minister (in fact, he was both)—came to create a game that has endured for over a century.

The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama, by Alexander Wolff

While basketball didn’t take up residence in the White House in January 2009, the game nonetheless played an outsized role in forming the man who did. In The Audacity of Hoop, celebrated sportswriter Alexander Wolff examines Barack Obama, the person and president, by the light of basketball. This game helped Obama explore his identity, keep a cool head, impress his future wife, and define himself as a candidate.

The SPHAS: The Life and Times of Basketball’s Greatest Jewish Team, by Doug Stark; Foreword by Lynn Sherr

Founded in 1918, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association’s basketball team, known as the SPHAS, was a top squad in the American Basketball League-capturing seven championships in thirteen seasons-until it disbanded in 1959. In The SPHAS, the first book to chronicle the history of this team and its numerous achievements, Douglas Stark uses rare and noteworthy images of players and memorabilia as well as interviews and anecdotes to recall how players like Inky Lautman, Cy Kaselman, and Shikey Gotthoffer fought racial stereotypes of weakness and inferiority while spreading the game’s popularity. The SPHAS is an inspiring and heartfelt tale of the team on and off the court.

Homecourt:  The True Story of the Best Basketball Team You’ve Never Heard Of, by Larry Needle; Foreword by Harlem Globetrotters Legend “Curly” Neal

Louis Klotz—nicknamed “Red” for his shiny red hair—may have been one of the smallest kids in his grade in South Philadelphia in 1933, but he always knew that he wanted to play basketball for the SPHAS, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association basketball team. Red’s journey, which started in the “cages” of South Philly, led to playing for Villanova, and for the SPHAS, where he won an American Basketball League championship. Ultimately, he played and coached for the Washington Generals against the legendary Harlem Globetrotters for decades. In Homecourt: The True Story of the Best Basketball Team You’ve Never Heard Of, Larry Needle provides a biography of Red Klotz for young readers.

The Mogul: Eddie Gottlieb, Philadelphia Sports Legend and Pro Basketball Pioneer, by Rich Westcott

Russian-Jewish immigrant Eddie Gottlieb was one of the most powerful non-playing sports figures in Philadelphia from the 1920s until his death in 1979. A master promoter, Gottlieb—dubbed the “Mogul” for his business acumen—was influential in both basketball and baseball circles, as well as a colorful figure in his own right. Drawing upon dozens of interviews and archival sources, and featuring more than fifty photographs, The Mogul vividly portrays Eddie Gottlieb’s pivotal role in both Philadelphia’s and America’s sports history.

Outside the Paint: When Basketball Ruled at the Chinese Playground, by Kathleen Yep

Outside the Paint takes readers back to the Chinese Playground of San Francisco in the 1930s and 1940s, the only public outdoor space in Chinatown. It was a place where young Chinese American men and women developed a new approach to the game of basketball—with fast breaks, intricate passing and aggressive defense—that was ahead of its time. Outside the Paint chronicles the efforts of these highly accomplished athletes who developed a unique playing style that capitalized on their physical attributes, challenged the prevailing racial hierarchy, and enabled them, for a time, to leave the confines of their segregated world. As they learned to dribble, shoot, and steal, they made basketball a source of individual achievement and Chinese American community pride.

Ball Don’t Lie!: Myth, Genealogy, and Invention in the Cultures of Basketball, by Yago Colás

Pro basketball player Rasheed Wallace often exclaimed the pragmatic truth ” Ball don’t lie!” during a game, as a protest against a referee’s bad calls. But the slogan, which originated in pickup games, brings the reality of a racialized urban playground into mainstream American popular culture. In Ball Don’t Lie!, Yago Colás traces the various forms of power at work in the intersections between basketball, culture, and society from the game’s invention to the present day. Ball Don’t Lie! shows that basketball cannot be reduced to a single, fixed or timeless essence but instead is a continually evolving exhibition of physical culture that flexibly adapts to and sparks changes in American society.

Wheelchair Warrior: Gangs, Disability and Basketball, by Melvin Juette and Ronald J. Berger

Melvin Juette has said that becoming paralyzed in a gang-related shooting was “both the worst and best thing that happened” to him. The incident, he believes, surely spared the then sixteen- year-old African American from prison and/or an early death. It transformed him in other ways, too. He attended college and made wheelchair basketball his passion—ultimately becoming a star athlete and playing on the U.S. National Wheelchair Basketball Team. In Wheelchair Warrior, Juette’s poignant memoir is bracketed by sociologist Ronald Berger’s thoughtful introduction and conclusion, which places this narrative of race, class, masculinity and identity into proper sociological context. While Juette’s story never gives in to despair, it does challenge the idea of the “supercrip.”

Searching for missing Temple University Press books

This week in North Philly Notes, Will Forrest, the Press’s Editorial Assistant and Rights and Contracts Coordinator, blogs about finding the titles missing from the Press library.

.

When I first interviewed for the rights and contracts intern position at the Press during my senior year at Temple, I was struck by the shelves of books that lined the conference room walls. Ashley Petrucci, my then supervisor, explained it was a library of the Press’s titles. I asked if it contained every book the Press had published and was told that we were missing a few from our early years of existence. This surprised me, and occasionally I would think of those gaps, wondering just what might be missing.

One year later, I found myself in the same role that Ashley held then, and the library gaps were still there. I asked our director, Mary Rose Muccie, if I could try to track down and obtain copies of the  missing backlist titles, and she gave me the thumbs up.  I was then faced with determining how many, and what, books were missing. Since these books were primarily published in the 1970s, there are fewer digital records and means of searching for lost books. So, I got creative.

I searched the Library of Congress’s website for a listing of all the Temple books they had a record of. I searched WorldCat, a resource for finding books hosted in libraries worldwide, and I also looked through our author contract files to see which projects were signed during the period. I ran all of this against the actual books that we had in our library, and over time began to develop a master list.

Until I did the research, no one knew how many books were missing. My initial estimate was approximately fifteen. Most of us didn’t think it would be higher than twenty. It turned out, not counting the few titles that we had digitized and made available  open access through an NEH grant, we were missing thirty-eight titles! This was significantly higher than any of us expected. I began to search for them on used-book sites and was able to find reasonably priced copies in good condition to add to our shelves.

There are still one or two books that I have yet to track down, but I now know what they are. It felt great to finally complete the Temple University Press library.   Together the physical books covey our history, who we are, and what we do as a university press.

Here is a small selection of titles that we added to our library.

From Streetcar to Superhighway: American City Planners and Urban Transportation, 1900-1940, by Mark S. Foster (1981): This is a forty-year-old book that we could put out this year and it wouldn’t look out of place on our current urban studies list. From Streetcar to Superhighway looks at urban planning at the dawn of the 20th century, when passenger rail and trolley systems were booming and the automobile had just been invented, and the challenges that planners faced along with growing car ownership. A recent Temple book that comes to mind is Amy Finstein’s Modern Mobility Aloft, exploring how the building of early highways in cities changed their architectural as well as social and material landscapes.

Broadcasting and Democracy in West Germany, by Arthur Williams (1976): This is one of the titles I was most excited to find. It is part of our International and Comparative Broadcasting series of the 1970s, a series unlike any other at the time, which examined radio and television all across the globe, as well as its intersections with politics and society. The book is a fascinating look at Cold War-era broadcasting and an early work of the then-new field of media studies.

Every Need Supplied: Mutual Aid and Christian Community in the Free Churches, 1525-1675, edited by Donald F. Durnbaugh (1974): This is one of the most striking early books we received (with a great dustjacket). Collecting primary documents from the communities of Free Churches that were part of the Radical Reformation during the Renaissance era, this was part of an early Temple series devoted entirely to study of the Free Church of this period. Temple has always had strong religious studies titles, but this book’s focus on community and mutual aid has more currency than one might expect from one of its age.

Genocide in Paraguay, edited by Richard Arens (1976): This pioneering look at the then ongoing genocide of the Aché people in Paraguay was one of Temple’s first books in Latin American studies as well as genocide studies. It collects essays by anthropologists and scholars about both Paraguay and the topic of genocide at large. It also includes one of the most widely recognizable contributors to a Temple book: Elie Wiesel, who compares the events in Paraguay to his own experiences with the Nazi Holocaust.

Black Testimony: Voices of Britain’s West Indians, by Thomas J. Cottle (1978): This book is one of Temple’s first ethnographies as well as an early book in Latin American and postcolonial studies. Drawing on interviews from more than twenty Black Britons, the book describes the hardships and obstacles that immigrants from Jamacia and other West Indian colonies faced after emigrating to Britain.

Street Names of Philadelphia, by Robert I. Alotta (1975): This might be my favorite of the missing books, and the title I was the most surprised to find was missing. Street Names of Philadelphia is an alphabetical reference guide to nearly every named street in Philadelphia and a description of why the street is named as such. It’s to the best of my knowledge the only book of its kind and a classic example of a Press Philadelphia regional title. Also, it may have inspired Bruce Springsteen’s famous song (as of yet unconfirmed).

Better City Government: Innovation in American Urban Politics, 1850-1937, by Kenneth Fox (1977): This is another title that we could put out next season and nobody would bat an eye. Better City Government looks at urban political development from the 1850s to the New Deal era and draws lessons about the limitations of reform-minded individuals and the most effective ways to enact change. This book would be right at home alongside our Political Lessons from American Cities series edited by Richardson Dilworth.

Gritty Cities, edited by Mary Procter and Bill Matuszeski (1978): I had to talk about this one. Aside from the fact that it  has the word “gritty” in the title decades before the Philadelphia Flyers debuted their beloved mascot, this is a fascinating look at twelve mid-sized industrial Rust Belt towns and their architecture right as manufacturing was beginning to fade away in the Northeast. It combines history with walking-tour commentary and great photographs. It is very much a time capsule of its era, and a great book for those interested in the last gasp of manufacturing in the United States.

Temple University Press’s Annual Holiday Give and Get

This week in North Philly Notes, the staff at Temple University Press close out 2022 by suggesting the Temple University Press books they would give along with some non-Temple University Press titles they hope to receive and read this holiday season. 

Mary Rose Muccie, Director

Give: For better or worse, athletes are looked up to and can serve as role models, especially for young people.  David Steele’s It Was Always a Choice: Picking Up the Baton of Athlete Activism provides examples of and inspiration for today’s athletes and those who admire them to stand up against political, social, and racial injustice and is a book I’d give to several people on my list. 

Get: Years ago, I assigned freelance indexers to and edited indexes for medical and nursing reference and textbooks. Indexing software was just taking off and it was both an exciting and challenging time to be an indexer.  Our conversations as they wrote detailed indexes gave me a window into how to analyze content and think like a reader to create a map of a book.  It’s truly a craft, one that Dennis Duncan pays homage to in Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure From Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age. I hope to get it and travel back to those days. 

Karen Baker, Associate Director, Financial Manager

Give: I would give The Mouse Who Played Football by Brian Westbrook Sr. and Lesley Van Arsdall to my grandson, because you are never too young to start reading!

Get: I would like to receive Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah, because I really like his comedy and I think his back-story would be interesting.

Aaron Javsicas, Editor-in-Chief

Give: Beethoven in Beijing: Stories from the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Historic Journey to China, by Jennifer Lin. I’ve never published a book quite like this. It offers a unique blend of oral history, photography, and reportage to tell a fascinating story at the intersection of culture and international relations, a global tale yet also one of particular relevance to Philadelphians. It’s an elegant, beautifully designed, and highly giftable book. 

Get: One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America, by Gene Weingarten. Generally I don’t go for gimmicks, and yes, this concept — ask strangers to choose a random day from a hat, and then write about it — could certainly be described as a gimmick. But it sounds like Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Gene Weingarten really made it work. The day is Sunday, December 28, 1986. Let’s see… I was probably baking a cake in my new Easy-Bake oven. Will have to check the index to see if that event made it in. 

Shaun Vigil, Editor

Give: The opportunity to publish memoir is a particular joy of my list, and this year I had the pleasure of working with George Uba on his provocative, poetic, and deeply moving Water Thicker Than Blood: A Memoir of a Post-Internment Childhood. Uba’s is a rare book that simultaneously offers vital scholarship and an emotionally resonant narrative. I’ll certainly be sharing it with others this season and many others into the future. 

Get: In keeping with the memoir theme, I’m looking forward to reading through Margo Price’s Maybe We’ll Make It: A Memoir while taking some time away from my desk this holiday. Musicians’ memoirs are a particular interest of mine, and Price has been a mainstay on my turntable since I came across her first album. The fact that it is published by a fellow university press makes it all the more exciting!

Ryan Mulligan, Editor

Give: Passing for Perfect, by erin Khuê Ninh. Have you seen that book trailer? 

Get: Trust, by Hernan Diaz- Give me a book where the “great men” view of history is only one of several unreliable perspectives and I can bounce them off each other and I’m intrigued

Will Forrest, Rights and Contracts Coordinator/Editorial Assistant

Give: Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity. This is a fascinating look at Shakespeare’s classic play through the lens of disability studies and how perceptions of Richard’s disability have changed over the centuries. My favorite part of the book is the extensive research into historical productions of the play, looking at how actors over the years have interpreted the character and reimagined it for themselves.

Get: I would love to get Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers on Stage by Robert Bader. This book looks at the history of the Marx Brothers’s time on the vaudeville circuit, before they made any of their classic movies. I love old American theatre history and I love the Marx Brothers, so this book is right up my alley!

Ann-Marie Anderson, Marketing Director

I would give a copy of The Real Philadelphia Book by Jazz Bridge to every musician friend to experience “all that jazz” from the more than 200 compositions by Philadelphia musicians.

Continuing on my theme of amassing not just cookbooks with recipes, I hope to get Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen, which has been described by Publishers Weekly as one of the Top 10 Cooking & Food Books for Fall 2022.

Irene Imperio, Advertising and Promotions Manager

Give: Exploring Philly Nature, a fun book for getting outside no matter the season, love the tips to engage children onsite and references for the curious investigators. 

Get: The Murder of Mr. Wickham as I love a Jane Austen/mystery combo!

Kate Nichols, Art Manager

Give: Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia, edited by Paul M. Farber and Ken Lum. Published in 2019, Monument Lab is the product of a “prescient” and massive undertaking, which examines Philadelphia’s existing and future public monuments. The book includes written contributions from scholars and artists, as well as photographs, documents, and a range of proposals from the city’s citizens. Temple Univerity Press is now beginning work on a companion edition that will address sites across the United States.

Get: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. The book makes the case that anyone can learn basic drawing—it is not about talent. With illustrations and side quotes throughout, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain serves as a guide to learning/practicing drawing, and advocates its importance in visual perception and experiencing the world around us.

Ashley Petrucci, Senior Production Editor

Give: My Soul’s Been Psychedelicized, by Larry Magid and Robert Huber. I’ve been a bit on a music kick lately and also have friends who’d be interested in seeing some of the stunning photographs/posters from old Electric Factory shows.

Get: I’m just collecting Free Library of Philadelphia loans on my iPad to read over break, including The Two Towers, The Return of the King, Little Women, The Brothers Karamazov, Frankenstein, and Sapiens. I’m also finishing up The Feminine Mystique. It’s a bit of a daunting list for 10 days, but I’m ready!

Faith Ryan, Production Assistant

Give: The Health of the Commonwealth, by James Higgins, because I think it offers a very useful historical perspective on surviving epidemics in Pennsylvania. It’s a slim volume, but it covers a lot of ground and is chock-full of fascinating details (I especially liked all the information about women’s medical colleges in the 1800s).

Get: Ian Urbina’s The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier. It’s been recommended to me by multiple family members, and despite my interest, I just haven’t gotten around to picking up a copy since it came out in 2019. But if it fell into my lap on Christmas morning, I know I’d spend all break tearing through it.

Alicia Pucci, Scholarly Communications Associate

Give: I’m giving my one friend (and fellow Tyler School of Art alum) Color Me…Cherry & White as the perfect Temple memento. 

Get: The Winterthur Garden Guide, by Linda Eirhart. Plants make me happy and I’m always on the look-out for garden ideas and design inspiration. So, even though I currently live in a second-floor apartment where my only access to the outside is a small balcony, one can dream and live vicariously through the colorful pages of this book.

Gary Kramer, Publicity Manager

Give: I’m giving my spouse (the politico in the family) a copy of Reforming Philadelphia, 1682-2022, because it provides a short but comprehensive history of the city we love.

Get: Life As It Is, by Nelson Rodrigues. I just heard about this author, who is famous in Brazil but practically unknown in the U.S. This is a collection of his stories, and I am a huge fan of short stories and Latin American literature, so all my Venn Diagrams overlap! 

Jenny Pierce, Head of Research, Education and Outreach Services at Temple University’s Health Sciences Libraries at just loves to give and give and give.

One friend who loves trivia is getting Real Philly History, Real Fast.  His partner is getting Beethoven in Beijing because he likes the orchestra and travel.

A little girl I know is getting A is for Art Museum and my nephew, who comes from an Eagles mad family, is getting The Mouse Who Played Football.

And I am giving Exploring Philly Nature to a family I know with two small kids who love the outdoors.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND BEST WISHES (AND BOOKS) FOR 2023!

University Press Week: What author is #NextUP

It’s University Press Week and the Blog Tour is back! This year’s theme is Next. Today’s theme is What author is #NextUP?

Celebrating first-time authors, Luis Felipe Mantilla, blogs about publishing his first book,
How Political Parties Mobilize Religion: Lessons from Mexico and Turkey, with Temple University Press in June 2021

How Political Parties Mobilize Religion began as a doctoral dissertation that I had set aside for a few years to work on other projects. As tenure drew near, I returned to the book project with some trepidation. I knew the project had important merits–the case selection was good and the core insights about religious parties were original and important–but I also knew it needed a lot of work. I wrote a proposal that emphasized the manuscript’s strengths and treated its weaknesses as arguments for why the book would be different and better than the dissertation. However, despite putting on a brave face, I knew I would need support and encouragement from my future editors.

When I approached a few other presses with the project, I got positive feedback but not the kind of commitment and enthusiasm that I needed to jumpstart the project and keep it going. Some editors seemed very excited about turning my manuscript into different book on the same topic. I felt uncertain and rather discouraged.

A longtime friend and colleague suggested I reach out to Temple, specifically because of its series Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics. Encountering Paul Djupe, the series editor, was a breath of fresh air. He immediately grasped the potential contributions of the book and quickly became a mentor and advocate. His critical suggestions were always targeted and constructive: he was able to identify specific weak spots in a way that helped me to address them without undermining the valuable components of the broader project.

Aaron Javsicas, the press editor, was also consistently supportive, and his practical insights helped ensure that the book stayed on track without making me feel stressed about the process. He was adroit in dealing with several potentially tricky issues. For example, he was the first to suggest a version of book’s current title–the previous version was a bland compromise I had never liked but settled on for lack of an alternative–and he was immediately supportive when I tweaked it to better fit the core argument.

I was regularly impressed with Temple’s ability to get top-tier reviewers at various stages of the project. The feedback from anonymous reviewers was remarkable in its thoroughness and quality, and many of their ideas played a central role in the revised case studies and the final chapters of the book. The last set of reviewers, whose comments are now on the back cover, are preeminent scholars whose approval meant a great deal for a junior scholar like me.

The last stages of book production, from reading proofs to crafting a cover, could easily have been overwhelming. Instead, thanks to Paul and Aaron’s encouragement and the support of the rest of the staff at Temple, it became an opportunity to look back and gain a real appreciation for a project that had taken almost a decade to complete. I particularly appreciated their patience as I suggested changes to the cover design.

Finally, Temple has done a remarkable job of keeping in touch with me after publication. Publicity manager Gary Kramer’s newsletters have alerted to me reviews of my work in a variety of journals, many of which I would have otherwise missed. It has also provided a sense of community and continuity, which, given my experience with Temple, I sincerely appreciate.

From my first encounter with Temple to the present day, the press has done a wonderful job of making me feel like a valued contributor rather than a number on a list or a demanding client. As a first-time author, it was a remarkable experience and one for which I am profoundly grateful.