Why Clean Air AND Good Jobs

This week in North Philly Notes, Todd E. Vachon, author of Clean Air and Good Jobs, writes about the double whammy of climate change and income inequality.

In 1989, at the age of 13, I learned two valuable lessons. The first was the importance of unions for building and supporting the middle class, and the second was that burning fossil fuels was warming the planet and would one day have serious consequences for life on Earth. The first was learned through personal experience, the second in a classroom.  

At the time, my family owned a small business—a general store and gas station—in a small town in Eastern Connecticut. Due to market forces, including the rise of corporate chain stores, my parent’s business was struggling. By 1989 we were facing bankruptcy. Fortuitously, there was a rising demand for skilled construction workers at the time. Through his friend network in the volunteer fire department, my father was able to join the local carpenter’s union and immediately began working in the industry—including at several local power plants. Within a year of his becoming a union carpenter, our family experienced a transition from being working poor to being middle class. We had health insurance, I got glasses and braces, and my dad built our family home—the home I now bring my children to visit as he enjoys his retirement thanks to the union pension. 

Around the same time that we were experiencing that economic hardship in the late 1980s, NASA climate scientist James Hansen explained to Congress, and the world, that the heat-trapping gases emitted by the burning of fossil fuels were pushing global temperatures higher. Hansen’s remarks marked the official opening of “the age of climate change.” The following school year I learned about “The Greenhouse Effect” in science class and my mind was opened to the possibility that human activity was changing the planet, and not in a good way. In the 34 years since Hansen’s testimony, the scientific community has affirmed that climate change is a serious cause for concern. Extreme weather events, including hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and droughts have become more frequent, more intense, and longer in duration. Yet, annual greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow and are 44% higher in 2022 than they were in 1989. 

During the same period, private sector unionization in the United States declined from 14% of workers in 1989 to just 6% in 2022. As a result, income inequality has soared as much as greenhouse gas emissions, with the top 1% now taking home 16% of all income while the middle class share of income has declined from 62% to 43% in the past four decades. Major causes of union decline include outsourcing of manufacturing, eroding employment in highly unionized industries, and rabid anti-unionism on the part of employers taking advantage of weak labor law protections for workers. Today, many of the remaining good private sector union jobs are in the energy sector—especially fossil fuels—while many of the new renewable energy and green economy jobs are not unionized and attempts to do so face an uphill battle against hostile employers. This has led many blue-collar unionized workers in the U.S. to adopt a “jobs vs the environment” perspective, fighting to save good jobs in fossil fuel-related industries by resisting measures to decarbonize the economy that threaten to replace the existing good jobs with new lower wage jobs that offer few benefits.  

As the son of a union carpenter and a former carpenter myself, but also the father of three young children growing up in a steadily warming world, I struggled with this dilemma: How can we ensure our kids, and their generation can afford to make a living with good jobs and benefits, like my father did, and also have a planet that will support that living? Grappling with this question led to my spending 10 years participating in the nascent labor-climate movement as an activist and a researcher. It is those experiences and the findings from that research that make up Clean Air and Good Jobs. 

One thing I learned doing this work is that the zero-sum mindset of having to choose between good jobs or having a livable climate is rooted in the deeply ingrained ideology of neoliberalism—the dominant governing philosophy of our time. At the core of neoliberalism is the belief that unregulated free markets create the best outcomes for all and that there should be little to no role for government in the economy. The narrative that addressing climate change must inevitably lead to a further decline in good jobs does not consider the vast array of public policy instruments which could be used to ensure that a green economy is also an equitable economy. It instead only benefits those that would profit from the exploitation of both workers and the environment. Overcoming this barrier, I contend, will require a powerful alliance of labor and communities working together, demanding clean air and good jobs.

Clean Air and Good Jobs documents the efforts of some of the organizations and activists that are working to build such a movement to ensure a fair and just transition away from fossil fuels and toward a more sustainable and equitable future. This, I believe, is the struggle of our time, and the whole of future humanity is counting on us to do the right thing.  

Announcing the inaugural recipient of the Zane L. Miller Book Development Award

John Tilghman, Associate Professor and Interim Department Chair of History and Political Science at Tuskegee University, has been named the inaugural recipient of the Temple University Press (TUP) Zane L. Miller Book Development Award for his proposed book, currently titled Jim Crow from the Harbor: Black Freedom Struggle and Downtown Baltimore. He will receive $2,500 to fund the development of his urban studies-focused book manuscript.

When presenting Tilghman with the award, the committee noted that his book “provides new perspectives on downtown development, African American history, Baltimore history, and the complexities of class in urban America.”

The prize, named in honor of the late founding editor of TUP’s Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series, is designed to advance the careers of scholars from underrepresented communities who have limited access to financial resources for book development. It also honors Miller, a renowned scholar of urban history and a devoted, tireless mentor to less-experienced fellow authors seeking to navigate the book development and publication process. 

David Stradling, coeditor of the Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series said, “Dr. Tilghman’s work revises the story of the white growth machine’s late 20^th century efforts to protect downtown Baltimore through segregation, redevelopment, and displacement by putting Black voices and Black activism at the center of the story. In Tilghman’s telling, Black home buyers remake Baltimore’s central city neighborhoods, Black shoppers force the desegregation of downtown stores, and Black activists reshape Baltimore politics. Ultimately, efforts to create an all-white citadel in the central city can only crumble.”  

Upon receiving the award, Tilghman said, “Winning the Zane L. Miller Book Development Award is a tremendous honor. I would like to thank the editors at Temple University Press, and particularly Dr. David Stradling and Dr. Davarian Baldwin, for helping me make this proposed book more insightful and impactful.”

Jim Crow from the Harbor examines Baltimore’s downtown redevelopment of the Charles Center and Inner Harbor-Harborplace through the lens of the city’s civil rights movement, with particular attention paid to how these initiatives succeeded in producing a glitzy façade of a revitalized downtown American city while severely constraining the lives of its Black residents.

Tilghman explores the origins and importance of urban tensions between the Black community and downtown interests after the Second Great Migration and during the postwar Civil Rights and Black Power era, the implementation of urban development projects, and anti-freeway and affirmative action campaigns. The author’s research uncovers how a public-private partnership—a coalition of real estate agents, businesspeople, city politicians, and housing developers— worked to exacerbate racial and class segregation and destroy Black communities by expanding the downtown beyond the central business district.

The Zane L. Miller Book Development Award is given annually.

For submission information, please visit https://tupress.temple.edu/webpages/zane-miller-award.

Brotherly Love

This week in North Philly Notes, Nico Slate, author of Brothers, writes about his brother’s death and Philadelphia.

In 1994, my older brother was the victim of a racially-charged attack. A White man smashed a beer bottle into his face, crushing his right eye. I used to call it a hate crime but the truth is more complicated. On July 4, 2003, my brother died in a car crash he might have avoided if he still had both of his eyes. About ten years ago, I began investigating my brother’s death and its relationship to the night he lost his eye. I decided to write a book, Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race,

Neither my brother nor I ever lived in Philadelphia. He was attacked in Los Angeles, the city in which we were born and in which he lived most of his life. In 1960, my brother’s father, a Nigerian man named Chukwudi Osakwe, came to study at the renowned HBCU, Lincoln University, located not far from Philadelphia. In Brothers, I describe how Chukwudi played on the soccer team, was elected president of his freshmen class, and was known as “the new African with the fancy British accent.” I wish my brother and I had visited Lincoln together. He and I were in Philadelphia together only once—during a cross-country trip that occurred just a few years after he lost his eye. In my book, I describe how that trip revealed many of the challenges my brother faced after losing his eye—not just how to cope with his disability, but how to respond to the fact that he was now seen by others as disabled. I also discuss the way we were treated as a mixed-race family as we drove through different regions of the country.

While I chose not to write about our brief time in Philadelphia, I could have described our touristy decision to visit the Liberty Bell. I could have expounded on the cliché of “brotherly love,” a cliché that always meant more to me than it should have given that I spent so little time in the city. Even as kids in LA, my brother and I knew that Philadelphia was not an urban utopia that embodied its moniker. Like the Liberty Bell, that cracked symbol of a deeply-flawed freedom, a freedom that was not extended to the hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans at the time of independence, the idea of a “city of brotherly love” is more a dream than a reality.

But my brother was a dreamer, like his father, and I still find hope in the promise of brotherly love, the promise of the love my brother shared for me. This is one of the reasons I wrote Brothers.

No More Consenting to Corruption in Philadelphia

This week in North Philly Notes, Brett Mandel, author of Philadelphia, Corrupt and Consenting, offers ideas about how to overcome the perils of public corruption.

Philadelphia is weeks away from an election that will help set a new direction for local government. Change is badly needed, given the unsatisfying state of the city. Candidates for mayor and for other offices are talking a lot about poverty, gun violence, and lack of economic opportunity. They should also be talking about public corruption, which underlies so many of Philadelphia’s problems. Today, corruption is consented to—through action and inaction by so many in our hyper-connected town—and it costs so much to run a city so poorly. To move Philadelphia into a better future, we must change a culture of corruption and implement key anticorruption reforms so we can best address the city’s challenges.

What is public corruption? It is when officials put their own private gain before the public good, abuse their public authority to advance private agendas, and pervert the work of public entities by excluding the public from official decision-making processes in order to favor private interests. Corruption increases the price of government services and reduces resources that could be used to address our many challenges. Corruption also imposes further costs in denying opportunity for those who deserve It, trampling on the values of fairness and equity, and threatening the health and safety of residents. 

Philadelphia, Corrupt and Consenting details the city’s history of corruption and show how it threatens our future. The book recounts the story of the city’s most important corruption investigation so far this century. It discusses the roots, effects, and reasons for corruption’s persistence, places our current issues into perspective, and offers recommendations to make positive change. Every candidate for office should read the book, review its recommendations, and tell voters what they will do to stop consenting to the corruption that holds Philadelphia back.

To make change for the better, we must understand certain things.

• We need to learn to recognize corruption when we see it. We are on the lookout for overt shakedowns or passing envelopes of cash to bribe seekers, but Philadelphia corruption generally consists of officials doing favors for friends and subverting the work of government to benefit special interests
• Arguing about whether corruption in Philadelphia is worse or better than it previously was is counterproductive; asserting that today’s corruption is different from that of the past does not reduce its cost or blunt its other damaging effects today
• Norms, laws, and accepted standards change; what was once an everyday practice can become stigmatized, even demonized, so we cannot count on the legal system to solve these problems
• We cannot leave the fight against corruption up to a few reform actors or a single reform moment; each of us needs to want our city to function systematically and properly for everyone more than we want to know someone who can get something done for us — and we cannot stop the fight after any small victory is won

We need a mayor and other elected officials who will confront our culture of corruption and embrace an anticorruption honor code for themselves and those they hire—to not only not engage in corruption acts, but to report instances of corruption they see. Ultimately, it is not enough to change rules or laws and we must all stop enabling corruptors with our silent consent. The defining characteristic of Philadelphia corruption is its collegiality. We are all so closely connected to each other, which makes us reluctant to call out bad behavior by anyone who is “one of us.” 

If we cannot stand against those who engage in corrupt activities because too many ties bind us together, then we need to organize a different “us” to oppose corruption. An anticorruption movement or slate of candidates, or even a formal local anticorruption political party could build a movement so we can split from those who do wrong by the city—and those who try to play both sides. If we refuse to consent to more corruption, we can create the thriving city that Philadelphians deserve.

Brett Mandel is a writer, consultant, and former city official active in reform politics in Philadelphia.

Basketball books for March Madness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Searching for missing Temple University Press books

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

.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

---

Teaching Fear

This week in North Philly Notes, Nicole Rader, author of Teaching Fear explains how parents’ fear of crime influences how they (think they) protect their children.

Parents who watch the news regularly see images of kidnapping and homicide victims and hear about school and mass shootings. Most recently, parents were bombarded with images of four young college students at the University of Idaho who were brutally murdered while sleeping.  These horrific and fear-producing crimes make parents think twice about sending their children to school, activities outside the home, or anywhere. Parents teach kids how to protect themselves from crime when they are away from home and provide a variety of lessons about stranger danger. Studies have found that up to 70% of parents are afraid of crime for their children. A recent Gallup poll study found that one in three parents recently said that they were worried about their children being a victim of a school shooting. Fear of crime is high on the list of things parents worry about for their children.

Parents may be surprised to hear that most of their fears for their children are based on myths passed down from generation to generation and reinforced by the media. These myths emphasize a fear of strangers, a fear for young, white girls, and a belief that if one tries hard enough, victimization can be prevented.

Most parents are surprised to learn that strangers rarely hurt children. When children are victimized, they are typically victimized by a family member. 

Parents are also surprised to hear that children are rarely kidnapped, and a known offender typically takes those children who are kidnapped.

Finally, research has found that school shootings are sporadic and that children are actually safer at school than almost anywhere else, including the home.  

In other words, the reality of crimes against children looks quite different from what most parents have been taught to believe about crime and victimization. What this means for parents is that they often worry about the wrong types of crimes, people, and locations of crimes happening to their children. Crime myths, then, fuel fears of strangers, fears of kidnapping, fears of school shootings, and fears of public spaces, but, ultimately, when children are kidnapped or hurt by others, it is almost always a known person in a private location (like a home). 

Parents operating with misinformation make choices on keeping children safe by taking a litany of precautions that will have little payoff in protecting children from crime. Because of fears related to stranger danger, parents avoid public locations, restrict children from being alone outside (even in the front yard), track children on their phones, and expect constant communication with their children when they are unsupervised. This exhaustive list becomes the gold standard for protecting our children. 

What this list does not include are actionable items parents can take to arm their children with accurate knowledge about crime and victimization.  The conversations with children about how to talk to others if someone they know hurts them or how to seek help when they know about friends who are being hurt by loved ones are lacking by most parents. These conversations seem harder to most parents than talking about stranger danger.  

Teaching Fear examines where parents learn crime myths—from socialization agents like parents to school, and the media—and how these agents influence what parents teach their own children. I spent 20 years researching fear of crime and safety precautions, and did a deep dive into other research, public policy, and public opinion on crime to not only outline the problem of how we teach fear to children today, but also provides parents with the tools to “teach fear better.”