Celebrating Women’s History Month

This week in North Philly Notes, we celebrate Women’s History Month with a selection of recent, forthcoming, and classic Women’s Studies titles. Take 20% off our Women’s Studies titles this month using the code TWHM23 at checkout! And view all of our Women’s Studies titles here.

New and recent titles

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

Every place has its quirky attributes, cultural reputation, and distinctive flair. But when we travel across America, do we also experience distinct gender norms and expectations? In his groundbreaking Gendered Places, William Scarborough examines metropolitan commuting zones to see how each region’s local culture reflects gender roles and gender equity.

Ethical Encounters: Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh, by Elora Halim Chowdhury

Ethical Encounters is an exploration of the intersection of feminism, human rights, and memory to illuminate how visual practices of recollecting violent legacies in Bangladeshi cinema can conjure a global cinematic imagination for the advancement of humanity. By examining contemporary, women-centered Muktijuddho cinema—features and documentaries that focus on the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971—Elora Chowdhury shows how these films imagine, disrupt, and reinscribe a gendered nationalist landscape of trauma, freedom, and agency.

Are You Two Sisters?: The Journey of a Lesbian Couple, by Susan Krieger

Are You Two Sisters? is Susan Krieger’s candid, revealing, and engrossing memoir about the intimacies of a lesbian couple. Krieger explores how she and her partner confront both the inner challenges of their relationship and the invisibility of lesbian identity in the larger world. Using a lively novelistic and autoethnographic approach that toggles back and forth in time, Krieger reflects on the evolution of her forty-year relationship.

Feminist Reflections on Childhood: A History and Call to Action, by Penny A. Weiss

In Feminist Reflections on Childhood, Penny Weiss rediscovers the radically feminist tradition of advocating for the liberatory treatment of youth. Weiss looks at both historical and contemporary feminists to understand what issues surrounding the inequality experienced by both women and children were important to the authors as feminist activists and thinkers. She uses the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Simone de Beauvoir to show early feminist arguments for the improved status and treatment of youth. Weiss also shows how Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a socialist feminist, and Emma Goldman, an anarchist feminist, differently understood and re-visioned children’s lives, as well as how children continue to show up on feminist agendas and in manifestos that demand better conditions for children’s lives.

Women’s Empowerment and Disempowerment in Brazil The Rise and Fall of President Dilma Rousseff, by Pedro A. G. dos Santos and Farida Jalalzai

In 2010, Dilma Rousseff was the first woman to be elected President in Brazil. She was re-elected in 2014 before being impeached in 2016 for breaking budget laws. Her popularity and controversy both energized and polarized the country. In Women’s Empowerment and Disempowerment in Brazil, dos Santos and Jalalzai examine Rousseff’s presidency and what it means for a woman to hold (and lose) the country’s highest power. The authors examine the ways Rousseff exercised dominant authority and enhanced women’s political empowerment. They also investigate the extent her gender played a role in the events of her presidency, including the political and economic crises and her ensuing impeachment.

Motherlands: How States Push Mothers Out of Employment, by Leah Ruppanner

In the absence of federal legislation, each state in the United States has its own policies regarding family leave, job protection for women, and childcare. No wonder working mothers encounter such a significant disparity when it comes to childcare resources in America! Whereas conservative states like Nebraska offer affordable, readily available, and high quality childcare, progressive states that advocate for women’s economic and political power, like California, have expensive childcare, shorter school days, and mothers who are more likely to work part-time or drop out of the labor market altogether to be available for their children. In Motherlands, Leah Ruppanner cogently argues that states should look to each other to fill their policy voids. 

Good Reasons to Run: Women and Political Candidacy, edited by Shauna L. Shames, Rachel I. Bernhard, Mirya R. Holman, and Dawn Langan Teele

After the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, a large cohort of women emerged to run for office. Their efforts changed the landscape of candidates and representation. However, women are still far less likely than men to seek elective office, and face biases and obstacles in campaigns. (Women running for Congress make twice as many phone calls as men to raise the same contributions.) The editors and contributors to Good Reasons to Run, a mix of scholars and practitioners, examine the reasons why women run—and do not run—for political office. They focus on the opportunities, policies, and structures that promote women’s candidacies. How do nonprofits help recruit and finance women as candidates? And what role does money play in women’s campaigns?

Forthcoming this Spring

Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors, edited by Sharon D. Wright Austin

Political Black Girl Magic explores black women’s experiences as mayors in American cities. The editor and contributors to this comprehensive volume examine black female mayoral campaigns and elections where race and gender are a factor—and where deracialized campaigns have garnered candidate support from white as well as Hispanic and Asian American voters. Chapters also consider how Black female mayors govern, from discussions of their pursuit of economic growth and how they use their power to enact positive reforms to the challenges they face that inhibit their abilities to cater to neglected communities.

Solidarity & Care: Domestic Worker Activism in New York City, by Alana Lee Glaser

The members of the Domestic Workers United (DWU) organization—immigrant women of color employed as nannies, caregivers, and housekeepers in New York City—formed to fight for dignity and respect and to “bring meaningful change” to their work. Alana Lee Glaser examines the process of how these domestic workers organized against precarity, isolation, and exploitation to help pass the 2010 New York State Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, the first labor law in the United States protecting in-home workers.

Classic Titles

Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America, by Jean Elson

The bitter and public court battle waged between Nina and James Walker of Newport, Rhode Island, from 1909 to 1916 created a sensation throughout the nation, with lurid accounts of their marital troubles fueling widespread gossip. The ordeal of this high-society couple, who wed as much for status as for love, is one of the prime examples of the growing trend of women seeking divorce during the early twentieth century. Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness—which takes its title from the charges Nina levied against James for his adultery (with the family governess) and extreme cruelty—recounts the protracted legal proceedings in juicy detail.

Fireweed: A Political Autobiography, by Gerda Lerner

In Fireweed, Gerda Lerner, a pioneer and leading scholar in women’s history, tells her story of moral courage and commitment to social change with a novelist’s skill and a historian’s command of context. Lerner’s memoir focuses on the formative experiences that made her an activist for social justice before her academic career began. Lerner insists that her decades of grassroots organizing largely account for the theoretical insights she was later able to bring to the development of women’s history.

Announcing the new issue of Kalfou

This week in North Philly Notes, we present the new issue of our journal, Kalfou.

Vol. 9 No. 2 (2022): Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies

Published: 2023-01-05

Symposium on The Race of Sound, by Nina Sun Eidsheim

• The Race of Sound, by Nina Sun Eidsheim: What Good Work Does and Why It Matters by George Lipsitz
  
• Making a Space for Epistemology and Aesthetics in Voice Studies by Marit J. MacArthur
  
• Listening to Listening: A Response to Nina Sun Eidsheim’s The Race of Sound by Ellie M. Hisama
  
• The Acousmatic Question and the Will to Datafy: Otter.ai, Low-Resource Languages, and the Politics of Machine Listening by Jonathan Sterne , Mehak Sawhney
  
• Listening Practice and History: Sound, Erasure by Nancy Yunhwa Rao
  
• Do Vibrations Make Decisions? by Brian Kane
  
• Hearing Timbre at the Crossroads by Landon Morrison
  
• Who Is Speaking? An Empirical Perspective on the Acousmatic Question by Jody Kreiman
  
• Exceeding the Visual, Eluding the Textual by Dorinne Kondo
  
• No Conclusions: Response to Symposium, August 16, 2021by Nina Sun Eidsheim, Daniel Walden

Feature Articles

• Mapping Complicities in Brahmin Supremacy to White Supremacy: An Unsettling of South Asia and South Asian America by sahiba
  
• Boxing Ring Entrances as Insubordinate Spaces: A Disruptive Oral Herstory by Rudy Mondragón
  
• “Did He Ever Hear of Egypt or Carthage?” Moses Roper’s Literary and Oratorical Activism in the British Isles by Hannah-Rose Murra
  
• A Different Way of Working: The Insurgent Sociology of Shana M. griffin by Nia Flowers, George Lipsitz

La Mesa Popular

• Unsettling Complicities: An Autoethnographic Mapping by sahiba

Mobilized 4 Movement

• The Grace of Black Folk: Notes on Ubuntu Democracy by Johari Jabir

Review

• Artificial Whiteness: Politics and Ideology in Artificial Intelligence, by Yarden Katz by Ethan Chang

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!

Temple University Press’s annual Holiday Book Sale

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase our annual Holiday Book Sale, being held through December 1 from 11:00 am – 2:00 pm at the Event Space in Charles Library, 1900 N. 13th Street in Philadelphia, PA.

Meet Ray Didinger, author of Finished Business and The Eagles Encyclopedia: Champions Edition December 1 from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm.

Gift Books and Philadelphia Interest Titles

Salut!: France Meets Philadelphia, by Lynn Miller and Therese Dolan

Salut! provides a magnifique history of Philadelphia seen through a particular cultural lens.

Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia, edited by Paul M. Farber and Ken Lum

Monument Lab energizes a civic dialogue about public art and history around what it means to be a Philadelphian.

Beethoven in Beijing: Stories from the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Historic Journey to China, by Jennifer Lin, with a foreword by Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin

A fabulous photo-rich oral history of a boundary-breaking series of concerts the orchestra performed under famed conductor Eugene Ormandy in China 50 years ago.

The Italian Legacy in Philadelphia: History, Culture, People, and Ideas, edited by Andrea Canepari and Judith Goode

Celebrates the history, impact, and legacy of this vibrant community, tracing four periods of key transformation in the city’s political, economic, and social structures.

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

The inspiring stories of 14 important Black Philadelphians in graphic novel form!

Real Philly History, Real Fast: Fascinating Facts and Interesting Oddities about the City’s Heroes and Historic Sites, by Jim Murphy

Philly history in bites that are as digestible as a soft pretzel with mustard!

Exploring Philly Nature: A Guide for All Four Seasons, by Bernard S. Brown, Illustrations by Samantha Wittchen

A handy guide to experiencing the flora and fauna in Philly, this compact illustrated volume contains 52 activities for discovering, observing, and learning more about the concrete jungle that is Philadelphia all year long!

Artists of Wyeth Country: Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth, and Andrew Wyeth, by W. Barksdale Maynard

An unauthorized and unbiased biographical portrait of Andrew Wyeth that includes six in-depth walking and driving tours that allow readers to visit the places the Wyeths and Pyle painted in Chadds Ford, PA.

The Mouse Who Played Football, by Brian Westbrook Sr, and Lesley Van Arsdall, with illustrations by Mr. Tom.

An inspiring story, based on Westbrook’s own experiences, that encourages young readers to believe in themselves and make their unique differences their strengths.

Do Right By Me: Learning to Raise Black Children in White Spaces, by Valerie I. Harrison and Kathryn Peach D’Angelo

Through lively and intimate back-and-forth exchanges, the authors share information, research, and resources that orient parents and other community members to the ways race and racism will affect a black child’s life—and despite that, how to raise and nurture healthy and happy children. 

The Magic of Children’s Gardens: Inspiring Through Creative Design, by Lolly Tai, with a Foreword by Jane L. Taylor

Landscape architect Lolly Tai provides the primary goals, concepts, and key considerations for designing outdoor spaces that are attractive and suitable for children, especially in urban environments.

The Real Philadelphia Book, Second Edition, by Jazz Bridge

A collection of more than 200 original jazz and blues compositions, arranged alphabetically by song title, showcasing work by generations of Philadelphia musicians.

Why Richard III?

This week in North Philly Notes, Jeffrey Wilson, author of Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity, writes about why the historical figure seems to be everywhere these days.

“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer,” Richard III beams at the start of Shakespeare’s play.

Summer 2022 really was Richard III’s “glorious summer,” with four major productions appearing all at once: Arthur Hughes for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon; Danai Gurira in the role at the Public Theater in New York; Colm Feore at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada; and The Lost King, a feature film starring Sally Hawkins.

Each production brought something new. Hughes was the first disabled actor to play Shakespeare’s most famous disabled character for the Royal Shakespeare Company, creating conversations about the relationships between disabled actors’ and disabled characters’ bodies. Gurira was the first Black woman to play Richard III on a major stage, sparking discussions about disability and intersectionality. Feore opened the Stratford Festival’s new Tom Patterson Theatre, harkening back to the festival’s first ever play—Richard III in 1953. And The Lost King commemorated the tenth anniversary of the discovery of Richard III’s skeleton on August 24, 2012, stirring controversy about the representation of academic work in mainstream media.

But why Richard III? Why is he always everywhere?

While mired in details of medieval English history, Shakespeare’s Richard III and its configuration of disability, villainy, and tragedy still speak to us in the twenty-first century with a surprising urgency. “Foremost among the standard-bearers of Disability Studies is Shakespeare’s Richard III,” noted leading disability scholar Tobin Siebers just before his death in 2015. Richard’s body was international front-page news when his skeleton was discovered. He’s in that echelon of Shakespearean characters—Shylock, Falstaff, Hamlet, Othello, Caliban—who have entire books written about them, like mine: Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity: Shakespeare and Disability History.

Richard III was Shakespeare’s second-most popular play in print during his lifetime and the most performed history play in both the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries. The four greatest Shakespearean actors of the past four centuries—Richard Burbage, David Garrick, Edmund Kean, Laurence Olivier—all played Richard before Hamlet.

The first Shakespeare play professionally staged in America? Richard III, in 1749. The first play performed by an African American acting company? Richard III, in 1821. Documentaries are made about the challenge and importance of Richard III, such as Looking for Richard (1996) and NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage (2014). The play inspired the recent Netflix hit House of Cards and drew comparisons to the rise of Donald Trump in the New York Times.

James Siemon, a recent editor of Shakespeare’s play, says that Richard III is Janus-faced, pointing from the early-modern age back to its medieval past but also forward to a modern future, “socially topical both to Shakespeare’s London, and, paradoxically, to subsequent social formations even today.” Disability historian Katherine Schaap Williams similarly notes, “Richard’s double-facing presence in the narrative of disability theory,” the character cited as evidence both for and against the presence of the modern understanding of “disability” in the early-modern age.

There’s always a multi-temporality with Richard. How is Richard III always so historical and so current? Why are issues related to medieval disability so relevant to modern life? Why is Shakespeare’s play so persistent? Why do we care so much about Richard III? What is the significance of his body—not only its meaning in Shakespeare’s text (what it signifies) but also its importance as a cultural touchstone in England and beyond (why it is significant)?

The question about cultural importance is connected to the one about textual meaning. Shakespeare wrote three plays about Richard. In the first, Richard’s enemies say his disability signifies his villainy, calling him a “heap of wrath, foul indigested lump, / As crooked in thy manners as thy shape.” In the second, Richard says his body is not the sign but the cause of his behavior: “Love forswore me in my mother’s womb.” In the third, Richard becomes what Sigmund Freud later called an “exception,” someone who has been slighted by nature, has suffered an unfair disadvantage, something he does not deserve and uses to excuse himself from the ethics that govern civil society. “I am determined to prove a villain,” he says with a giddy smile, but should we hear the “determined” in that line as I have been destined for villainy or as I have resolved myself to villainy?

A certain ambiguity in Shakespeare’s representation of Richard’s disability—which destabilized meaning by dramatizing different meanings being made, deferring meaning to different audiences interpreting disability from different perspectives—has created a flexible conceptual space with a huge gravitational pull: some of our most consequential theories of modern aesthetics, theology, philosophy, ethics, psychology, sociology, historiography, science, medicine, and politics have been brought into attempts to understand Richard’s body.

In a quintessentially Shakespearean exchange, the playwright’s dramatic mode, both tragic and ironic, calls upon some of life’s biggest questions (because it is tragic) but defers answers to the audience (because it is ironic), leaving Richard’s body open to interpretation in different ages embracing different attitudes toward stigma. The changing meaning of disability repeatedly recontextualized through shifting perspectives and circumstances in Shakespeare’s history plays has thus prompted and sustained more than four hundred years of changing interpretations of Richard, his body, his behavior, and his status as either the villain or the victim of Tudor history. The meaning of Richard’s disability changes with time, not only in the course of Shakespeare’s plays but also in the broader cultural history surrounding them.

An interpretation of Richard’s body is never just an interpretation of Richard’s body. When we interpret Richard’s disability, it interprets us in return. It brings us to declare our motives and commitments in our attempts to unfold, explain, condemn, justify, defend, and so forth. It catches something in our core and brings it to the surface through its configuration of abstract questions about reality and issues specific to our bodies. It brings us to consider how we would and should respond when, like Richard, we are born into a world that is totally confusing, deeply unsatisfying, or both.

Announcing Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies, Volume 9, Issue 1, Spring 2022

This week in North Philly Notes, we present the new issue of our journal, Kalfou.

Special Issue: “In These Uncertain Times, Pittsburgh”

Guest Editors: Leon Ford and Deanna Fracul

FEATURE ARTICLES

Introduction: In These Uncertain Times, Pittsburgh • Deanna Fracul and Leon Ford

Uncertainty, Discourse, and Democracy in John Edgar Wideman’s Writing, 1980s to Today • Leila Kamali

Call-and-Response in the City: Embodied Mercy in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone • Kathy Glass

Resisting Arrest: Race and Pittsburghers’ Struggles against Police Power from the 1840s through the 1950s • Elaine Frantz

Tomorrow Never Came • Jamaal Scott

Working Together for Health Equity: How a Multidisciplinary, Community-Engaged Partnership Reframed Our Understandings of Pittsburgh’s Maternal-Child Health Crisis • Cathleen J. Appelt, Andrew T. Simpson, Jessica A. Devido, Sarah Greenwald, and Brittany Urban

Pittsburgh, the Realest City: Shit Talk’n’, Storytell’n’, Social Livin’ • Jacqueline Roebuck Sakho

IDEAS, ART, AND ACTIVISM

TALKATIVE ANCESTORS

Derrick Bell on Living in Relation to Others

KEYWORDS

Frankstown Was the World with a Big W: Pittsburgh and Beyond, an Interview with John Edgar Wideman • Leila Kamali

LA MESA POPULAR

Black Lives and the Tree of Life • Emmai Alaquiva and Lauren Apter Bairnsfather

ART AND SOCIAL ACTION

East Pittsburgh: White Supremacy, Radical Relationships, and Chosen Family • Norman Conti

MOBILIZED 4 MOVEMENT

Where Have All the Black Revolutionaries Gone in Steel City? An Interview with Sala Udin • Tony Gaskew

TEACHING AND TRUTH

Redreaming Boundaries and Community Engagement: John Edgar Wideman and the Homewood Reading Series • Esohe Osai and Dan Kubis

Khalifa • Richard Khalifa Diggs, with postscript by Norman Conti

IN MEMORIAM

Memorial Quilt: Patchworked Remembrances of Those Stolen from Us • Mian Laubscher, Lauren Apter Bairnsfather, and Keith David Miles

REVIEW

A City Divided: Race, Fear, and the Law in Police Confrontations, by David A. Harris • Jesse S. G. Wozniak

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MOBILIZED 4 MOVEMENT

Scholar Collectives Advocating for Social Justice in Education • Lois A. Yamauchi, Joni B. Acuff, Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath, Bill Ayers, Margarita Berta-Ávila, Kari Kokka, Kevin Kumashiro, Therese Quinn, Colleen Rost-Banik, and Katherine Schultz

IN MEMORIAM

The People’s Artist: In Loving Memory of Eugene Eda Wade, 1939–2021 • Hannah Jeffery

REVIEW

Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration, by Ashley E. Lucas • Chinua Thelwell

Celebrating 14 notable Black Philadelphians of the Twentieth Century

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase BLAM! Black Lives Always Mattered, a graphic novel project coordinated by the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University and distributed by Temple University Press.

BLAM! Black Lives Always Mattered! Hidden African American Philadelphians of the Twentieth Century is a graphic novel that combines vivid illustrations and compelling text to create a groundbreaking, exciting, and accessible book. BLAM! highlights the lives of fourteen prominent African Americans.  They are: Julian Abele, Dr. Ethel Allen, Marian Anderson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Crystal Bird Fauset, Ruth Wright Hayre, Alain Locke, Walter Lomax, Frederick Massiah, Cecil B. Moore, John W. Mosley, Christopher Perry, Reverend Leon Sullivan, and Father Paul Washington.

With a Foreword by Lonnie G, Bunch, III, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, BLAM! contains an Introduction by the Curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Dr. Diane Turner, and the Collection’s Librarian, Aslaku Berhanu, as well as statements by the writer, Dr. Sheena C. Howard, Associate Professor of Rider University, and by Art Director, Eric Battle, a renowned artist and illustrator.  Published by the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, BLAM! was created through the efforts and input of many people. It is a striking and powerful graphic novel which has the potential to have great educational impact on students, teachers, administrators, and on all those who read it.

BLAM! can be used as an important teaching tool in and of itself, yet also can be utilized in combination with other educational methods by educators in their classrooms. At the end of the graphic novel, there are pages of Assignments and Activities for Students, as well as Ideas for Research Projects that individual students or a whole classroom of students can pursue. Moreover, many teachers will want to develop their own lesson plans and assignments around each chapter of this graphic novel. BLAM! will engage and excite students, setting them on a path to a deeper understanding of African American history. BLAM! also encourages its readers to use critical thinking and analytical skills. All levels of students, as well as the general public, can benefit from BLAM! For those students with limited reading abilities, the book will help them develop and strengthen literacy skills. All readers of BLAM! will be able to expand their ability to discover and continue to learn about African American history in terms of the lives and experiences of the individuals profiled in its pages. BLAM! also has the potential to inspire readers to learn about other individuals and ethnic groups who have been hidden from history. BLAM! will also pique the interest of readers to learn more about the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection and its vast holdings on African American history and culture. They will find added value in visiting the collection and accessing the materials.

In this time of systemic racism, discord, disharmony, and racial misunderstanding, there are now efforts underway and laws enacted in some states to suppress the teaching of the difficult racial history of the United States. BLAM! is able to serve as a beacon of enlightenment, casting a light on the struggles and triumphs of the fourteen, prominent African Americans of the last century that are profiled in the book.  In its beautifully illustrated pages one learns about how these individuals contributed greatly to their communities, to their nation, and in some cases to the world. These individuals, whose legacies continue now and into the future, serve as sterling examples for all readers of BLAM! Their stories will inspire generations to come.

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