Searching for missing Temple University Press books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Cincinnati: Crucible of Nineteenth-Century Religious Pluralism

This week in North Philly Notes, Matthew Smith, author of The Spires Still Point to Heaven: Cincinnati’s Religious Landscape, 1788-1873, writes about the Queen City as a hub for religious and cultural life in the nineteenth century.

This book is the first monograph on the religious landscape of pre-Civil War Cincinnati, which was in many ways the representative city of antebellum America. Mark Twain infamously hoped to find himself there when the world ended, it being “always twenty years behind the times.” In its heyday, however, the Queen City was a hotspot in the development of the nation, embracing the future rather than awaiting the apocalypse. Before St. Louis and Chicago eclipsed it as the leading city of the Midwest, Cincinnati was a vibrant metropolis attracting curious travelers and utopian idealists from across the world in the wake of booming trade and economic migration. Although Cincinnati was first and foremost a commercial hub on the Ohio River, itinerant preachers, domestic missionaries, and social reformers shaped the cultural life of the city as much as the pork merchants, steamboat manufacturers, and artisans who founded its economy. Just as twenty-first century urbanists emphasize the “liveability” of modern cities, so too nineteenth-century boosters obsessed over the character of their communities, and religion was a big part of that obsession. One writer boasted in 1841, “that within one hundred years … Cincinnati will be the greatest city in America; and by the year of our lord two thousand, the greatest city in the world.”

Cincinnati never quite realized the full ambitions of its boosters, but nor was it the Midwestern backwater Mark Twain so slyly deprecated. Situated in the heart of the Ohio Valley, the Queen City drew heavily from its rich agricultural hinterlands, as well as the booming infrastructure of the Market Revolution, connecting it by road and canal to the great cities of the east. Such connections also brought religious influences, beginning with evangelical Protestant connections during the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century. In consequence, Cincinnati flourished as the western hub of the so-called “Benevolent Empire.” This network of voluntary religious societies sought to reform society by marshalling the energies of lay worshipers—men and women—as well as the more traditional leadership of the ordained clergy. The Queen City was soon home to societies promoting both foreign and domestic missions, the distribution of Bibles and religious tracts, the founding of Sunday Schools, promotion of temperance, and, of course, the abolition of slavery. Perhaps the central figure in this movement was New England preacher Lyman Beecher, who came to Cincinnati in 1832. Remembered today as the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Lyman Beecher was president of Lane Theological Seminary, a bastion for educating clergy to sow the gospel through the western frontier. The very prosperity that made Cincinnati a magnet for evangelical institutions, however, was also its Achilles’ heel. “We must educate! We must educate!” warned Beecher, “or we must perish by our own prosperity.”

The cultural dominance of Presbyterian evangelicals was ultimately short-lived. Cincinnati benefited tremendously from the arrival of Catholic immigrants from Germany and Ireland in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, though immigration stirred the darkest fears of local nativists, steeped in generations of anti-Catholicism. Beecher’s notorious 1835 polemic, A Plea for the West, warned against “floods of pauper emigrants” arriving from Europe. Many Cincinnatians shared Beecher’s concerns, while bloody outbursts of violent nativism occurred during the Know-Nothing nadir of the 1850s. But the story of Cincinnati contains seeds of hope as well as moments of despair, and dialogue shaped sectarian relations as much as conflict. Much of this dialogue was pragmatic and institutional, but no less valuable in helping Cincinnatians figure out their way to religious pluralism. Protestant philanthropy helped endow the city’s first Catholic churches, for example, encouraging valuable economic migration in the process. Many of Cincinnati’s Catholic schools educated generations of Protestant children, despite fierce competition between the public and parochial schools systems. And Cincinnati was also home to other forms of cultural and religious expression besides Christianity, including Reform Judaism, a progressive tradition that reflected Cincinnati’s diverse religious landscape.

These themes are further explicated in The Spires Still Point to Heaven, showing how nineteenth-century Cincinnati tested the boundaries of nativism, toleration, and freedom.

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.

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

Making a case for the “power” of theory

This week in North Philly Notes, Grant Farred, editor of Africana Studies: Theoretical Futures, writes about the precarity of Black life.

The precarity of Black life. In the U.S. we are reminded of this every day. At least that is how it seems. Police shootings are the worst of it, but not the whole truth of it by any means. In the Black diaspora at large, a similar situation obtains. Unseaworthy vessels sink and African migrants drown as they go in search of a better life in Europe. If they survive, new modes of hostility await them. The stranger is not welcome.

To think a theoretical future for Africana Studies under these conditions seems, if not pyrrhic, then Wordsworthian in tenor. It would be dissembling to suggest that Africana Studies: Theoretical Futures was not conceived against precisely this backdrop, one which recalls the Romantic poet’s lament. Wordsworth writes:

The world is too much with us; late and soon

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers

Against just such a world, where everything mitigates against Black life, Africana Studies: Theoretical Futures makes a case for the “power” of theory. That is because in this collection, theory is not understood as an abstraction or as a rarefied mode of thought. Instead, theory is mobilized in this collection as the work of imagining—of thinking for—a future for Global Black life where precarity is not the order of the day. Africana theory is providing, if not a blueprint, then a first sounding board for how combat the violence that so threatens Black life; a platform for not only resisting the onslaught against Black life, but for ensuring a future that can sustain and nurture Black life. Where Black life might even thrive.

The work of theory is thus to harness the “power” of Black thought in all its manifestations. This collection includes poetic reflection, philosophical contemplation, geo-political analysis and quasi-memoiristic recollection. The work that this collection assigns itself is to think for the futures of Black life. Futures rather than the singular future. That is, in order to create the conditions under which Black life might be sustainably lived there can be no one, single future that will speak to and address all Black needs. It is therefore necessary to think for the plurality of futures. To propose the logic of plurality rather than singularity is, a priori, to anticipate a series of new challenges in those futures. That is, the work of making a future(s) in which Black life can be sustained is, by its very nature, an incomplete project. Every new imagining of Black life, to say nothing of every new making of that life, will generate its own set of possibilities and difficulties.

It will thus always be necessary to develop new theoretical tools, to hone new philosophical skills, to produce new poetic insights, to imagine new geo-political formations and configurations, in order to sustain Black life. In this way Africana Studies: Theoretical Futures recognizes its historical location. It speaks out of, and for, a particular historical conjuncture. It understands its speaking as emerging out of the institutional facticity that is the 50^th anniversary of Africana Studies in the American academy.

Rather than being declarative, then, the book offers itself as an invitation. The invitation to think for new theoretical futures, to produce new modes for Black being, to create new poetic articulations. The future of Africana Studies as a discipline is charged with always addressing the challenges that confront Black life, which history has shown to always be a condition overwritten by precarity—a way of being in the world that has always been “too much with us.”

Because Black life in the present is lived as an existential threat, the effect of such precarity is to lend urgency to thinking for theoretical futures. If nothing else, however, Africana Studies: Theoretical Futures reveals the many modes, the multiple registers, the variegated disciplines, in which this thinking might take place. And in this multiplicity, this collection makes evident, there is the imaginings of how Black lives might be lived.

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Recommending a book that anticipated the 1619 project by more than 50 years

This week in North Philly Notes, William Cross, author of Black Identity Viewed from a Barber’s Chair, recommends a lost classic of African American writing. (That was alas, not published by Tempe University Press).

For those interested in the African American experience, I want to recommend Lerone Bennett, Jr’s generally overlooked masterpiece: Before the Mayflower, a History of the Negro in America 1619-1962. I read it, at a much younger age, and although at the time, my consciousness was evolving; it was, nevertheless, too limited to fully appreciate that Bennett—considered merely a historian who popularized history—evidenced what in fact was a level of historical consciousness the likes of DuBois, Herbert Guttman and others. 

As shown by the title, his book, published in 1966, anticipated the ongoing 1619 project by 56 years! Like the 1619 Project, Bennett’s narrative anchors the beginning of Africana within American history much sooner than is often argued. He links the accumulation of wealth from slavery that made it possible to capitalize the beginnings of industrialization in America as well as Europe. Bennett, much as anyone, captures in great detail, Abraham Lincoln’s tortured ambivalence and conflicting attitudes about race, Lincoln’s thoughts on the solution of the race problem through colonization, and the pressure put on Lincoln to sign the Emancipation proclamation. 

Bennett’s unique chapter on miscegenation interrogates the outrageous sexual lust and hypocrisy of the founding fathers that should be required reading in any contemporary history course. Most of the chapters are exciting to read because of his detailed, nuanced, elaborate, and telescopic narratives, as his words and phrases stimulate—within the mind of the reader—rich, colorful, dark as well brilliant images.  Time and again the writing creates in the mind of the reader, actions, verbal exchanges, and vivid descriptions that emote. Frankly, sections reflect the compositional style of an accomplished novelist. 

Ironically, he wrote to educate the average reader; but for those who are well informed, the book is an unexpected delight. Bennett helps one revisit familiar information and ideas and plays it back the way Miles Davis could transform a jazz standard. Given the disjuncture between how Bennett envisioned and narrated black history from what at the time was considered settled-history, the word that captures a great deal of the book is “daring.” 

History tends to favor “looking back” but Bennett’s narrative grounded the reader in the present, made it possible to understand the past in such a way as to make the future less surprising. Before the Mayflower is a hidden gem.

Celebrating National Library Week

This week, in North Philly Notes, in honor of National Library Week, we highlight Temple University Press’ Open Access books, journals, and collaborations

Labor Studies and Work From its start, Temple University Press has been known for publishing significant titles in labor studies. Given this long history, many of these titles have gone out of print. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Press, in collaboration with Temple University Libraries, reissued 32 outstanding labor studies books in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats and made them freely available online. Chosen by an advisory board of scholars, labor studies experts, publishers, and librarians, each book contains a new foreword by a prominent scholar, reflecting on the content and placing it in historical context.

The grant enabled us to reissue the eight-volume The Black Worker series.

Knowledge Unlatched makes scholarly content freely available to everyone and contributes to the further development of the Open Access infrastructure. KU’s online marketplace provides libraries and institutions worldwide with a central place to support OA collections and models from leading publishing houses and new OA initiative.

Read an interview with Press author Jennifer Fredette, whose book, Constructing Muslims in France was one of the first KU titles. 

One of the recent Press titles in the Knowledge Unlatched program is Islam, Justice, and Democracy, by Sabri Ciftci.

We publish the open access journal, Commonwealth: A Journal of Pennsylvania Politics and Policy, on behalf of the Pennsylvania Political Science Association. In 2021 Commonwealth published a special issue on women in Pennsylvania politics.