Honoring Ann-Marie Anderson

This week in North Philly Notes, we pay tribute to Marketing Director Ann-Marie Anderson, who is retiring from Temple University Press at the end of the month.

Temple University Press Marketing Director Ann-Marie Anderson, is retiring January 31, after a decades-long career at the Press..

Ann-Marie has been an inspiring member of the press during her tenure. She championed many of the Press’s best-selling and beloved titles. Her efforts promoting Deborah Willis’s books—The Black Female Body (coauthored with Carla Williams), the NAACP Award-winning Envisioning Emancipation (coauthored with Barbara Krauthamer), as well as Black Venus 2010—were labors of love and among her favorite and proudest achievements. (She has long wanted The Black Female Body to come back in print and could supplement her retirement by selling her copy of the book, which fetches $450 on Amazon).

She also enthusiastically supported Tasting Freedom, Daniel Biddle and Murray Dubin’s book about Octavius Catto, and attended the 2017 unveiling of the Catto statue, Philadelphia’s first statue of an African American.

Despite being from New York, Ann-Marie was particularly excited to promote Philadelphia-based books. From Larry Kane’s memoir, to three Mural Arts titles; from Forklore,the Press’s first cookbook, to  P Is for Philadelphia, the Press’s first children’s book, she appreciated the history, art, and culture of her adopted city. Ann-Marie spearheaded the development and publication of Color Me…. Cherry & White, the Press’s first coloring book, which featured images from Temple University, an institution that, despite thinking she would spend only a few years at, proved hard to leave.  

Like any committed marketing director, Ann-Marie loved books that sold in huge quantities, which meant anything written by Ray Didinger. She also once sold 10,000 copies of AFSCME’s Philadelphia Story to a local union, which may have been her single largest sale.

Ann-Marie enjoyed working with all Press authors, ranging from Molefi Kete Asante on his landmark books The Afrocentric Idea and African Intellectual Heritage (coedited with Abu S. Abarry), to Judge James P. Gray and his book Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What Can We Do About It. She delayed her retirement because of the numerous interesting books she was keen to read and market, most notably the forthcoming The Collected Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee.

Other career highlights included campaigns for Harilyn Rousso’s Don’t Call Me Inspirational, Lori Peek’s Behind the Backlash, Patricia Hill Collins’s From Black Power to Hip Hop and On Intellectual Activism, as well as the American Literatures Initiatives series, which included titles such as This Is All I Choose to Tell, by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, and Unbought and Unbossed, by Trimiko Melancon.

Ann-Marie’s passion for books and strong connections with book buyers, bookstores, and area organizations helped her effectively promote titles such as The Great Gardens of Philadelphia; two books on the Philadelphia institution that is The Mummers; two Philadelphia Orchestra titles; Monument Lab, on Philadelphia’s public art installation; a book on Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square, as well as books about the Electric Factory, Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City, and a book on weather, coauthored by a Franklin Institute scientist and a local TV weatherman, among many others.

Ann-Marie also met many heroes and legends during her career, from Olympic gold medalist Tommie Smith, coauthor of Silent Gesture, to Lindy hoppers Norma Miller (coauthor of Swingin’ at the Savoy) and Frankie Manning (coauthor of his eponymous memoir). A music aficionado, one of her absolute favorite projects was Jimmy Heath’s memoir, I Walked with Giants, and her experiences with Heath at signings or performances in New York and Philadelphia are among her most cherished memories.

Temple University Press staff members can say they Walked with a Giant working alongside Ann-Marie, who leaves big shoes to fill. We wish her well on her future endeavors, which include, cooking, singing (not signing, as a colleague might mistype), and amassing and reading her vast collection of African American literature.

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Announcing Temple University Press’ Spring 2023 catalog

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase our titles forthcoming this Spring.

All-American Massacre: The Tragic Role of American Culture and Society in Mass Shootings, edited by Eric Madfis and Adam Lankford, looks beyond guns and mental illness to the deeper causes of mass shootings.

Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race, by Nico Slate, is a White historian’s heartbreaking quest to make sense of the death of his mixed-race older brother.

Clean Air and Good Jobs: U.S. Labor and the Struggle for Climate Justice, by Todd E. Vachon, examines the growing participation by labor activists, leaders, and unions in the fight to address climate change, jobs, and justice.

The Collected Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee, edited by Ruth Maxey, collects all 35 of Bharati Mukherjee’s sophisticated short stories—some never before published—in one volume.

The Compassionate Court?: Support, Surveillance, and Survival in Prostitution Diversion Programs, by Corey S. Shdaimah, Chrysanthi S. Leon, and Shelly A. Wiechelt, shines a light on women who surveil and are surveilled in U.S. prostitution diversion programs within punishing economic, social, and carceral systems.

Disability Services in Higher Education: An Insider’s Guide, by Kirsten T. Behling, Eileen H. Bellemore, Lisa B. Bibeau, Andrew S. Cioffi, and Bridget A. McNamee, provides a blueprint for disability service providers on how institutions can and must support students with disabilities.

Gender and Violence against Political Actors, edited by Elin Bjarnegård and Pär Zetterberg, is an interdisciplinary, global examination of political violence through a gendered lens.

The History of Temple University Japan: An Experiment in International Education, by Richard Joslyn and Bruce Stronach, shows how Temple University successfully established an innovative international branch campus in Japan that endured against the odds.

The Impact of College Diversity: Struggles and Successes at Age 30, by Elizabeth Aries, reveals the benefits of learning from peer diversity during college and the effect that has on graduates’ lives.

Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs, by Jonathan Graubart, presents a compelling diagnosis of the long-reigning pathologies and practices of Zionism and a prescription for reforming Jewish self-determination.

The Many Geographies of Urban Renewal: New Perspectives on the Housing Act of 1949, edited by Douglas R. Appler, reveals crucial yet previously unexplored facets of the American federal urban renewal program.

“Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender”: Taxpayers’ Associations, Pocketbook Politics, and the Law during the Great Depression, by Linda Upham-Bornstein, traces the history and lasting impact of the taxpayers’ association movement of the 1930s.

The NFL Off-Camera: An A–Z Guide to the League’s Most Memorable Players and Personalities, by Bob Angelo, provides insider stories of gridiron grit, heroism, and tragedy—as well as egos run amok.

One Last Read: The Collected Works of the World’s Slowest Sportswriter, by Ray Didinger, new in paperback, features essays from Philadelphia’s most beloved sportswriter—and a new afterword.

Philadelphia, Corrupt and Consenting: A City’s Struggle against an Epithet, by Brett H. Mandel, shows how corruption in Philadelphia harms the city, why it endures, and what can be done to move toward a better future.

Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors, edited by Sharon D. Wright Austin, examines the crucial role that Black women have carried out in the cities they govern.

Preserving the Vanishing City: Historic Preservation amid Urban Decline in Cleveland, Ohio, by Stephanie Ryberg-Webster, exploring historic preservation in Cleveland, Ohio during the 1970s and early 1980s, when the city’s urban decline escalated.

Regional Governance and the Politics of Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area, by Paul G. Lewis and Nicholas J. Marantz, provides a cautionary lesson about the dangers of fragmented local authority and the need for an empowered regional institution to address housing crises.

Solidarity & Care: Domestic Worker Activism in New York City, by Alana Lee Glaser, shows how intersectional labor organizing and solidarity can effectively protect workers in the domestic work sector and other industries.

Talk about Sex: How Sex Ed Battles Helped Ignite the Right, by Janice M. Irvine, is a 20th Anniversary edition of the classic book that shows how the American right wing used sex education to build a political movement and regulate sexuality by controlling sexual speech.

Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide, by Alexandre Baril, proposes a radical reconceptualization of suicide and assisted suicide by theorizing suicidism—the oppression of suicidal people.

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!

Examining care injustices

This week in North Philly Notes, Akemi Nishida, author of Just Care, writes about care as an analytical framework to understand the contemporary United States

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we were forced to recognize what was at the stake in the political debates on public healthcare programs such as Medicaid, the overstretched nature of the care labor force, and our own vulnerabilities. We also witnessed continuous fights for social justice including Black Lives Matter and Asian Americans against hate crimes, as well as the development of mutual aid networks to survive together.

Just Care suggests care as a lens to understand these phenomena—and incorporates care as not only an object of study but also an analytical framework. The book examines care injustices where people—whether they are situated as care workers, care receivers, or both—deteriorate under the name of care, when care is used as a mechanism to enhance the political economy and neglect the well-being of those situated as care workers and care receivers. It also addresses care justice, or just care, which occurs when people feel cared for affirmatively and when care is used as a foundation for more-just world building.

Just Care is based on research conducted at the request of disability communities to reveal how the public care services they receive are increasingly becoming money-centered, while they demand these services to be human-centered. Also, as a disabled person, my own experiences of receiving and providing care informed my work.

Just Care considers the experiences of care workers and care receivers under the Medicaid long-term care programs, queer disabled people who participate in community-based care collectives to interdependently support each other, and disabled and sick people of color who engage in bed activism to fight for social change from their bedspaces. By being in conversation with and witnessing care routines, the multiplicity of care became particularly noticeable—it is turned into a mechanism of social oppression and control while simultaneously being a tool with which marginalized communities activate, engage in, and sustain social justice fights.

Here are some key points from the book:

• When scholars and activists work to dismantle injustices surrounding care activities, they often approach them by looking into solely the labor exploitation care workers experience or the lack of adequate care recipients endure. Instead, Just Care engages in relational analysis to think through how these circumstances are intertwined and mutually witnessed and experienced, as care workers and receivers spend the majority of their daily lives side by side.
• An example of relational analysis is my tracing of the parallels between the histories of welfare programs for single mothers and families in need, (neo)colonialism and labor migration, and public healthcare programs like Medicaid, from the perspectives of critical race, transnational feminist, and disability studies.
• This analysis shows that in addition to differences in degrees and kinds of care people individually need, intersecting oppressions including racism, neocolonialism, patriarchy, and ableism shape who is currently pressured to take up caring responsibilities and how their own care needs or disabling conditions are quickly neglected. Such oppressions also make us think of disabled people exclusively as recipients of care and rarely acknowledge their caring contributions to society, let alone how the public healthcare services they receive are rarely adequate and can function to surveil them.
• Care services for disabled people are primarily planned by centering financial benefits for the care industrial complex and budget suppressions for governments and are not based on disabled people’s needs and preferences.
• This focus on financial benefits means that well-being of care workers and care recipients become secondary concerns. This leads them to experience mutual debilitation, rather than the presumed idea that one group thrives on the back of the other.
• Some care workers and care recipients under such debilitating public healthcare services develop interdependent relationships to help one another, in the middle of care-based oppression they experience, by transgressing the strict roles given to them.
• Disabled people have started care collectives to practice interdependence and based on their insistence that everyone needs care and can provide care. Engaging in interdependence in the middle of a society that values individualist independence is destined to be full of challenges. One challenge they faced is material (to physically meet all the care needs emerging within the group), and another is affective (to make sure conflicts within the group will not affect quality of care).
• Disabled and sick people engage in social change from their bedspaces, or “bed activism.” Bed activism entails critiquing of intersecting oppressions that manifest in bedspaces and offering visions for a more just world by centering the wisdom of sick and disabled people that emerges from their bedspaces.
• Bed activism can happen actively, for example, when bed dwellers engage in social change by writing a blog post. It also happens in inactive moments, for example, when they rest in their beds while going through depression, pain, or fatigue. Even those moments inform bed activists about their relationships with their bodies and minds or the social conditions that restrict them to their beds.

We all need care and are capable of caring for others in various ways. When we start from this foundational understanding, how can we each engage in just care or more-just world making through care? Just Care points the way to answering this question.

Images from the recent American Political Science Association meeting

This week in North Philly Notes we showcase the authors who stopped by the Temple University Booth at the recent American Political Science Association meeting to pose with their books.

Temple University Press’s booth

Sara Rinfret, editor of Who Really Makes Environmental Policy?: Creating and Implementing Environmental Rules and Regulations. This book provides a clear understanding of regulatory policy and rulemaking processes, and their centrality in U.S. environmental policymaking.

Shamira Gelbman, author of The Civil Rights Lobby: The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Second Reconstruction. This book investigates how minority group, labor, religious, and other organizations worked together to lobby for civil rights reform during the 1950s and ’60s.

Luis Felipe Mantilla, author of How Political Parties Mobilize Religion: Lessons from Mexico and Turkey, which analyzes the evolution of Catholic and Sunni Muslim parties to study religious political mobilization in comparative perspective.

Rachel Bernhard (left) and Mirya Holman (right), coeditors of Good Reasons to Run: Women and Political Candidacy, which examines how and why women run for office.

Paul Djupe, coeditor of The Evangelical Crackup?: The Future of the Evangelical-Republican Coalition, which explains evangelicalism’s relationship to the party system.

Djupe is also the editor of the Press’ Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics series.

Amanda Friesen and Paul Djupe, are coeditors of the forthcoming An Epidemic among My People: Religion, Politics, and COVID-19 in the United States, which asks, Did religion make the pandemic worse or help keep it contained?

Richardson Dilworth, author of the forthcoming Reforming Philadelphia, 1682-2022, a short but comprehensive political history of the city, from its founding in 1682 to the present day. Dilworth is also the editor of the Press’ Political Lessons from American Cities series.

Listen Up! Temple University Press Podcast, Episode 6: Billy Brown on Exploring Philly Nature

This week in North Philly Notes, we debut the latest episode of the Temple University Press Podcast. Host Sam Cohn interviews author Bernard “Billy” Brown about his book, Exploring Philly Nature: A Guide for All Four Seasons, which provides a handy guide for all ages to Philly’s urban plants, animals, fungi, and—yes—even slime molds.

The Temple University Press Podcast is where you can hear about all the books you’ll want to read next.

Click here to listen

The Temple University Press Podcast is available wherever you find your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Overcast, among other outlets.

About this episode

Bernard “Billy” Brown is a nature writer and urban herper—that’s someone who recreationally seeks out reptiles and amphibians. In this episode, he talks with podcaster Sam Cohn about his new book, Exploring Philly Nature, a guide to experiencing the flora and fauna in Philly.

This compact illustrated volume contains 52 activities from birding, (squirrel) fishing, and basement bug-hunting to joining a frog call survey and visiting a mussel hatchery. Brown encourages kids (as well as their parents) to connect with the natural world close to home. Each entry contains information on where and when to participate, what you will need (even if it is only patience), and tips on clubs and organizations to contact for access.

The city and its environs contain a multitude of species from the lichen that grows on gravestones or trees to nocturnal animals like opossums, bats, and raccoons. Exploring Philly Nature is designed to get readers eager to discover, observe, and learn more about the concrete jungle that is Philadelphia.

Temple University Press’ Fall 2022 Catalog

This week in North Philly Notes, we announce our forthcoming Fall 2022 titles.

Are All Politics Nationalized?: Evidence from the 2020 Campaigns in Pennsylvania, Edited by Stephen K. Medvic, Matthew M. Schousen, and Berwood A. Yost

Do local concerns still play a significant role in campaigns up and down the ballot?

Beauty and Brutality: Manila and Its Global Discontents, Edited by Martin F. Manalansan IV, Robert Diaz, and Roland B. Tolentino
Diverse perspectives on Manila that suggest the city’s exhilarating sights and sounds broaden how Philippine histories are defined and understood

BLAM! Black Lives Always Mattered!: Hidden African American Philadelphia of the Twentieth Century, by the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection

The historic accomplishments of 14 notable Black Philadelphians from the twentieth-century—in graphic novel form

Blue-State Republican: How Larry Hogan Won Where Republicans Lose and Lessons for a Future GOP, by Mileah K. Kromer

What the story of Maryland’s two-term Republican governor can teach us about winning elections

Bringing the Civic Back In: Zane L. Miller and American Urban History, Edited by Larry Bennett, John D. Fairfield, and Patricia Mooney-Melvin

A critical appraisal of the career of Zane L. Miller, one of the founders of the new urban history

Cultures Colliding: American Missionaries, Chinese Resistance, and the Rise of Modern Institutions in China, John R. Haddad

Why American missionaries started building schools, colleges, medical schools, hospitals, and YMCA chapters in China before 1900

Divide & Conquer: Race, Gangs, Identity, and Conflict, by Robert D. Weide

Argues that contemporary identity politics divides gang members and their communities across racial lines

Engaging Place, Engaging Practices: Urban History and Campus-Community Partnerships, Edited by Robin F. Bachin and Amy L. Howard

How public history can be a catalyst for stronger relationships between universities and their communities

An Epidemic among My People: Religion, Politics, and COVID-19 in the United States, Edited by Paul A. Djupe and Amanda Friesen

Did religion make the pandemic worse or help keep it contained?

Gendered Places: The Landscape of Local Gender Norms across the United States, by William J. Scarborough

Reveals how distinct cultural environments shape the patterns of gender inequality

A Good Place to Do Business: The Politics of Downtown Renewal since 1945, by Roger Biles and Mark H. Rose

How six industrial cities in the American Rust Belt reacted to deindustrialization in the years after World War II

Justice Outsourced: The Therapeutic Jurisprudence Implications of Judicial Decision-Making by Nonjudicial Officers, Edited by Michael L. Perlin and Kelly Frailing

Examines the hidden use of nonjudicial officers in the criminal justice system

Memory Passages: Holocaust Memorials in the United States and Germany, by Natasha Goldman

Now in Paperback—Considers Holocaust memorials in the United States and Germany, postwar to the present

The Mouse Who Played Football, Written by Brian Westbrook Sr. and Lesley Van Arsdall; Illustrated by Mr. Tom

Who would ever think that a mouse could play football?

Never Ask “Why”: Football Players’ Fight for Freedom in the NFL, By Ed Garvey; Edited by Chuck Cascio

An inside look at the struggles Ed Garvey faced in bringing true professionalism to football players

The Real Philadelphia Book 2nd Edition, by Jazz Bridge

An anthology of compositions by popular Philadelphia jazz and blues artists accessible for every musician

Reforming Philadelphia, 1682⁠–⁠2022, by Richardson Dilworth

A short but comprehensive political history of the city, from its founding in 1682 to the present day

Refugee Lifeworlds: The Afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia, by Y-Dang Troeung

Explores key works that have emerged out of the Cambodian refugee archive

A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service, by Leth Oun with Joe Samuel Starnes

The remarkable story of Leth Oun, from overcoming tragedy and forced labor in Cambodia to realizing dreams he never could have imagined in America

Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity: Shakespeare and Disability History, by Jeffrey R. Wilson

How is Richard III always both so historical and so current?

The Rise and Fall of America’s Concentration Camp Law: Civil Liberties Debates from the Internment to McCarthyism and the Radical 1960s, by Masumi Izumi

Now in Paperback—Dissecting the complex relationship among race, national security, and civil liberties in “the age of American concentration camps”

The Spires Still Point to Heaven: Cincinnati’s Religious Landscape, 1788–1873, by Matthew Smith 

How nineteenth-century Cincinnati tested the boundaries of nativism, toleration, and freedom

Teaching Fear: How We Learn to Fear Crime and Why It Matters, Nicole E. Rader

How rules about safety and the fear of crime are learned and crystalized into crime myths— especially for women

Toward a Framework for Vietnamese American Studies: History, Community, and Memory, Edited by Linda Ho Peché, Alex-Thai Dinh Vo, and Tuong Vu

A multi-disciplinary examination of Vietnamese American history and experience

Understanding Crime and Place: A Methods Handbook, Edited by Elizabeth R. Groff and Cory P. Haberman

A hands-on introduction to the fundamental techniques and methods used for understanding geography of crime

Going snake hunting in Philly—and finding snails

This week in North Philly Notes, urban herper Billy Brown, author of Exploring Philadelphia Nature, recounts his adventures in the concrete jungle and how enjoying the beauty of the natural world can be full of delights and surprises.

I couldn’t find a brown snake (Storeria dekayi) right away, and it was starting to stress me out. The railroad embankment by the Northeast Water Pollution Control Plant looked perfect: waist-high mugwort and other weeds with the usual assortment of trash that gets dumped in out-of-mind corners of the city. I was planning to return later in the day with a group that had signed up for a nature-themed bike ride. My M.O. for guiding nature excursions is to capture common critters like brown snakes (small, tan, harmless snakes that eat worms and slugs) along the route ahead of time. If the participants don’t manage to find anything themselves, at least I can show them the one I found and then release it. Brown snakes are the most widespread and abundant snake in urban Philadelphia, easily found in gardens, vacant lots, cemeteries—basically anywhere you’ve got more than a couple square yards of vegetation. Everywhere, that was, except where I needed to find them that morning.

I waded through the weeds and lifted everything I could find—old boards, chunks of concrete, parts of furniture. What I was finding, instead of brown snakes, were beautiful yellow and brown snails.

I didn’t recognize them. As far as their shape, there were as basic a snail as you could imagine: a round spiral shell about as wide as a quarter, but what dazzled me was their patterns. No one was like another. Some were plain brown. Others were yellow with one or more dark stripes following the spiral of the shell all the way in.

Eventually, I did find a brown snake under part of a discarded file cabinet and tucked it into a jar for later, but I made a mental note to look up the snails.

It turns out they were grove snails (a.k.a. brown lipped snails or Cepaea nemoralis), a European species that humans have spread to North America. iNaturalist records show they are not uncommon in Philadelphia, yet, somehow I had missed them. Had I just simply not crossed paths with them before? Or, had I ignored them when they weren’t what I was looking for?

The grove snails were a hit for the cyclists and a great launching point for discussing the nature of waste spaces. Too often we ignore weedy railroad embankments as sites to connect with nature the way we might in proper parks. With a little attention, though, they can become outdoor classrooms as well as places to enjoy the beauty of the natural world.

Learning about the natural world can be stimulating in a purely intellectual or academic sense, but it can also open doors to visceral experience. You learn about a new creature, like the grove snail, and you feel something special when you find it. The world isn’t just a background to the routines of your life. It becomes a little more joyful, a little more wonderful, little by little, snail by snail.

A couple years later, I dragged my daughter along on a trip to check out some five-lined skinks that had been reported on an old stone wall in a park in Northeast Philadelphia. Although five-lined skinks are native to the area, these days they seem to only live in old, overgrown industrial sites along the Delaware River. My daughter was not thrilled to be there as her dad did something boring. I told her it would just take a minute to look for the lizards.

We didn’t find any skinks, but grove snails were everywhere. We found them in damp crevices between the stones or under rocks at the base of the wall, and each one was new and beautiful in its own way. We spent much longer than the promised minute, but I wasn’t complaining.

Celebrating Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase our Asian American Studies titles for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Readers can get 30% these books with the code TAAAS22 at checkout through our shopping cart.

Passing for Perfect: College Impostors and Other Model Minorities, by erin Khuê Ninh, asks, How does it feel to be model minority—and why would that drive one to live a lie? “As an Asian American daughter of immigrants, reading Passing for Perfect, I felt my life understood. erin Khuê Ninh has explained our plight—the mad scramble for refuge, the guilt over our parents’ sacrifices, and our trust that education will save us. This book will give us strength against the attackers who blame us for what’s wrong with America. We shall overcome violence with knowledge.”—Maxine Hong Kingston Read more here

Model Machines: A History of the Asian as Automaton, by Long T. Bui, presents a study of the stereotype and representation of Asians as robotic machines through history. “In this powerful and indispensable historiography, Long Bui puts to rest any lingering doubt about the pernicious pervasiveness of the model machine myth that has long cast Asians as technologized nonhumans in American cultural and economic histories…. Bui provides rigorous analyses of the implications and damages of the myth as well as bold provocations for interventions and change.”—Betsy Huang, Associate Professor of English and Dean of the College at Clark University Read more here

Pedagogies of WoundednessIllness, Memoir, and the Ends of the Model Minority, by James Kyung-Jin Lee considers what happens when illness betrays Asian American fantasies of indefinite progress? “In this powerful and indispensable hist“James Kyung-Jin Lee’s Pedagogies of Woundedness is a poignant and moving work of criticism about illness and mortality. Beginning with a remarkable connection between the seeming invulnerability of Asian Americans as a model minority and their prevalence in the medical profession, Lee proceeds to explore the many ways that Asian Americans have written about bodies, health, and death. One comes away from his insights wiser and braver about what we all must face.”—Viet Thanh Nguyen, University Professor at the University of Southern California, and author of Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War Read more here

CULTURAL STUDIES

Asian American Connective Action in the Age of Social Media: Civic Engagement, Contested Issues, and Emerging Identities, by James S. Lai, examines how social media has changed the way Asian Americans participate in politics. “Lai’s timely book provides a nuanced analysis of the ideological and other divisions among Asian Americans, scrupulously refusing to homogenize or essentialize them.”—Claire Jean Kim, Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine Read more here

Ethical Encounters: Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh, by Elora Halim Chowdhury, illuminates how visual practices of recollecting violent legacies in Bangladeshi cinema can generate possibilities for gender justice. “This book enables a timely understanding of contemporary Bangladesh through the cinematic lens of 1971.”—Nayanika Mookherjee, Professor of Political Anthropology at Durham University, UK Read more here

Giving Back: Filipino America and the Politics of Diaspora Giving, by L. Joyce Zapanta Mariano, explores transnational giving practices as political projects that shape the Filipino diaspora. “Giving Back is a compelling ethnography about the politics of diaspora giving, tying the personal, the family, the community, the state, and the global in a critical stroke of brilliance, empathy, and alternative visions of philanthropy and volunteerism in the lives of Filipinos in America….Mariano’s critical examination of the politics of diaspora giving is a must-read for Filipinos and anyone participating in transnational philanthropy.”—Pacific Historical Review Read more here

Reencounters: On the Korean War and Diasporic Memory Critique, by Crystal Mun-hye Baik, examines the insidious ramifications of the un-ended Korean War through an interdisciplinary archive of diasporic memory works.  “Crystal Baik’s Reencounters offers a vital archive of desire, violence, silence, and decolonial possibility while crafting a much-needed critical framework for thinking and feeling through the diasporic memory work of contemporary Korean/American artists and cultural producers.”—Eleana Kim, University of California, Irvine Read more here

BIOGRAPHY

Prisoner of Wars: A Hmong Fighter Pilot’s Story of Escaping Death and Confronting Life, by Chia Youyee Vang, with Pao Yang, Retired Captain, U.S. Secret War in Laos, recounts the life of Pao Yang, whose experiences defy conventional accounts of the Vietnam War. “It is rare to read personal accounts from those who fought as surrogate soldiers of the American Armed Forces in Laos and to hear about the experiences of our T-28 pilots, because so many of them were killed during the war. Vang did a wonderful job of capturing the experiences of Pao Yang, one of the Hmong T-28 pilots who was shot down and captured by the communists. I will definitely use this book as a requirement for my Introduction to Hmong History class.”—Lee Pao Xiong, Director and Professor of the Center for Hmong and East Asian Studies, Concordia University Read more here

Water Thicker Than Blood: A Memoir of a Post-Internment Childhood, by George Uba, is an evocative yet unsparing examination of the damaging effects of post-internment ideologies of acceptance and belonging experienced by a Japanese American family. “This is a lovely addition to the rich literature somehow created out of a moment in history where an entire generation of Japanese Americans had every dream they’d ever had taken from them, all at once.”—Cynthia Kadohata, Newbery Medal– and National Book Award–winning author of Kira-Kira and The Thing about Luck Read more here

Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration, by Rachel Schreiber, recounts the remarkable story of a Jewish activist who joined her incarcerated Japanese American husband and son in an American concentration camp.   “Rachel Schreiber, an expert on Jewish women labor activists, presents a highly useful biographical sketch of an important figure in Elaine Black Yoneda. Avoiding the extremes of mythologizing or demonizing her subject, she offers a balanced account that historians specializing in women’s history, labor history, and Japanese American history will heartily welcome to the scholarly works in these areas of inquiry.“—Brian Hayashi, Professor of History at Kent State University Read more here

LITERARY STUDIES

Warring Genealogies: Race, Kinship, and the Korean War, by Joo Ok Kim, examines the racial legacies of the Korean War through Chicano/a cultural production and U.S. archives of white supremacy. “Crucially, Kim’s juxtaposition and brilliant analysis of unlikely archival materials and cultural texts make an original and exceedingly important contribution to our understandings of the links between the Korean War and U.S. racial, carceral, and settler colonial formations. This is a rigorous and impressive interdisciplinary cultural study.”—Jodi Kim, Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside Read more here

Q & A: Voices from Queer Asian North America, Edited by Martin F. Manalansan IV, Alice Y. Hom, and Kale Bantigue Fajardo, Preface by David L. Eng, offers a vibrant array of scholarly and personal essays, poetry, and visual art that broaden ideas and experiences about contemporary LGBTQ Asian North America “[T]hese voices from queer Asian North America attest to the brilliance, fierceness, and raucous pleasures of queer diasporic world-making, theorizing, and cultural production. A landmark achievement.”—Gayatri Gopinath, Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and Director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University Read more here

Ocean Passages: Navigating Pacific Islander and Asian American Literatures, by Erin Suzuki, compares and contrasts the diverse experiences of Asian and Pacific Islander subjectivities across a shared sea. “Ocean Passages demonstrates how transpacific studies can evolve and continue to be a generative framing for counterhegemonic, decolonial research across disciplines.” —Lateral Read more here

Unsettled Solidarities: Asian and Indigenous Cross-Representations in the Américas, by Quynh Nhu Le, illuminates the intersecting logics of settler colonialism and racialization through analysis of contemporary Asian and Indigenous crossings in the Américas. Association for Asian American Studies’ Humanities and Cultural Studies: Literary Studies Book Award, 2021 Read more here

Graphic Migrations: Precarity and Gender in India and the Diaspora, by Kavita Daiya, examines “what remains” in migration stories surrounding the 1947 Partition of India. “Daiya’swide scholarly purview ranges across literature, cinema, graphic novels, and the creative arts, as she assembles a rich archive of contemporary reflection and critical relevance.”— Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University Read more here

Following Artists into Orphaned Space

This week in North Philly Notes, Mrill Ingram, author of Loving Orphaned Space, writes about providing a new vision for the ignored and abused spaces around us.

Recently I had the opportunity to launch my new book, Loving Orphaned Space, the art and science of belonging to Earth, at a Madison, Wisconsin based community arts organization called Art + Literature Laboratory. I was really pleased to be able to celebrate the book at a center dedicated to expanding community participation and access to the arts. The book is rooted in research I pursued on art-science collaboration, which revealed to me a new perspective on how we sideline the arts as an optional, even leisure pursuit. I’ve learned how the arts can assist all of us in navigating the everyday and imagining and enacting a better future. It’s also provided a powerful new perspective for my writing on the environment. Because so many of us don’t experience the power art can play, we often don’t recognize what we are missing. Sharing that insight was one of the reasons I wrote my book.

Following artists around is likely to pull a person out of their comfort zone. It certainly has done so for me. For example, in my writing, I am compelled to center emotional impulses and images I might have previously sidelined. The roots of this book lie in what began as a very personal preoccupation with the scattered bits of open space so many of us are surrounded by, much of it dedicated to infrastructure and often abused. Why did I care about these spaces? Why did I want to know more about each one of them? By following artists (literally) as they venture into such spaces, occupying them in a variety of ways, my personal, individual feelings expanded into something more social, that involved feelings of belonging and connectedness, respect, and responsibility, as well as delight and surprise. Wow! All that in a street terrace!

In the book I describe the energy and the politics of keeping infrastructure spaces such as drainages, stormwater basins, abandoned gas stations, right of ways, so policed and “empty.” It is an active process, an “orphaning” that quite literally, disappears space by keeping ecological and social relationships simple. This takes physical effort – I’m talking about fencing, channelizing, lighting, herbiciding, and cementing. Brownfields are orphaned by the toxicity of pollutants they are storing. I want us to think about what this purposeful disciplining of space costs us. I’m also talking about a psychic erasure. We literally do not recognize this space as Earth. Our culture normalizes so much land as a commodity, something anonymous, bought and sold, and with infinite possible futures but no history.

Open space is an enormous amount of territory, representing some 25% to over 40% of land in many cities. This is true around the world, as cities expand, and shrink, at different rates than their populations shift. In the wake of the pandemic, this kind of territory is being increasingly seen as a “solution” to problems like polluted stormwater, flooding, urban heat islands, lack of green space in neighborhoods. But I think there’s more here. I see these as spaces of struggle. Their distribution is deeply influenced by histories of racism and discrimination. Through my work with artists, I came to understand such spaces as portals through which people like me, our privilege revealed by how easily we disappear all this space, can catch a glimpse of important history and relationships and recognize potential for action.

I share stories of artists who’ve helped me to see this disappeared space in new ways, but also present a general framework to help us appreciate the work of art in building new connections and producing new results. I argue that the arts, by engaging with science and technologies of infrastructure in new ways, can transform those processes, shifting the purpose and the outcomes of technical endeavors for new benefits and ends, including ways to address inequities. In the book, I describe discoveries in phytoremediation, a process by which plants help dismantle soil pollutants, produced by a Chicago based artist, and a new model for capturing dirty water running off roofs and parking lots. I also celebrate ways in which artists build unconventional relationships, including with nonhuman beings, that can free us up to realize new projects and to experience and feel in new ways. I write about this kind of expansive and emergent relationship building as artists’ “diplomacy,” a term inspired by Isabelle Stengers.

It took me a while to put many of these pieces together in a way that felt coherent enough to deserve a book. In some ways the process of “loving” orphaned space is just beginning for me. I see them anew every day. In preparing for the talk at the book launch, for example, I looked at an image of open space distribution in St. Paul, Minnesota. For the first time, I put together the lack of open space in what is a very open city, with the I-90 corridor, which, when built in the 1960s, obliterated parts of a thriving predominantly Black neighborhood. Many businesses were lost and 1 in every 8 Black households in Minneapolis lost a home. The neighborhood lives on, still rich, but adjacent to a thundering expressway with the health threats, disconnectedness, and loss of property values that freeways bring.

This kind of recognition is the opening of the orphaned space portal. To venture in, and to occupy, involves many skills I learned from artists. They are certainly not the only ones doing this work, nor should they be. But for me, they’ve enabled me to shift my perspective on the land around me. They’ve provided me with examples of how careful listening, telling stories, and building relationships inside and out, can connect humans to each other and to other beings in new ways that transcend notions of a functioning system and enter the realm of loving.