Celebrating Women’s History Month

This week in North Philly Notes, we celebrate Women’s History Month. Use promo code TWHM22 for 30% off all our Women’s Studies titles. Sale ends March 31, 2022.

New Titles

Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration, by Rachel Schreiber, recounts the remarkable story of a Jewish activist who joined her incarcerated Japanese American husband and son in an American concentration camp.

Are You Two Sisters: The Journey of a Lesbian Couple, by Susan Krieger, authored by one of the most respected figures in the field of personal ethnographic narrative, this book serves as both a memoir and a sociological study, telling the story of one lesbian couple’s lifelong journey together.

From our Backlist:

Anna May Wong: Performing the Modern, by Shirley Jennifer Lim, shows how Anna May Wong’s work shaped racial modernity and made her one of the most significant actresses of the twentieth century.

The Cost of Being a Girl: Working Teens and the Origins of the Gender Wage Gap, by Yasemin Besen-Cassino, traces the origins of the gender wage gap to part-time teenage work, which sets up a dynamic that persists into adulthood.

Feminist Post-Liberalism, by Judith Baer, reconciles liberalism and feminist theory.

Feminist Reflections on Childhood: A History and Call to Action, by Penny A. Weiss, recovers a history of feminist thought and activism that demands greater voice and respect for young people.

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

Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America, by Jean Elson, a fascinating story of the troubled marriage and acrimonious divorce of Nina and James Walker elucidates early twentieth-century gender and family mores.

Motherlands: How States Push Mothers Out of Employment, by Leah Ruppanner challenges preconceived notions of the states that support working mothers.

Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara, edited by Linda Janet Holmes and Cheryl A. Wall, an anthology that celebrates the life and work of a major African American writer.

Their Day in the Sun: Women in the Manhattan Project, by Ruth H. Howes and Caroline C. Herzenberg, tells the hidden story of the contribution of women in the effort to develop the atomic bomb.

Undermining Intersectionality: The Perils of Powerblind Feminism, by Barbara Tomlinson, a sustained critique of the ways in which scholars have engaged with and deployed intersectionality.

Women Take Their Place in State Legislature: The Creation of Women’s Caucuses, by Anna Mitchell Mahoney, investigates the opportunities, resources, and frames that women utilize to create legislative caucuses.

Women’s Empowerment and Disempowerment in Brazil: The Rise and Fall of President Dilma Rousseff, by Pedro A.G. dos Santos and Farida Jalalzai, explains what the rise and fall of Brazil’s first and only female president can teach us about women’s empowerment.

Temple University Press’ NEH-Funded Open Access Labor Studies Titles Find New Readers Among Rutgers Students

This week in North Philly Notes, we interview Rutgers University Professor Will Brucher about Temple University Press’ NEH-funded Open Access Labor Titles.

In 2017, Temple University Press and Temple University Libraries received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to make a selection of the Press’s outstanding out-of-print labor studies titles freely available online as part of the Humanities Open Book Program. All 32 titles are now available on the Temple University Press website, where they can be read online or downloaded in EPUB, PDF, and MOBI formats. The titles are also available open access on JSTOR and Project MUSE.

To get a better sense of how these books are being used by new readers, Temple University Libraries’ Scholarly Communications Specialist Annie Johnson recently spoke with Rutgers University Assistant Teaching Professor William Brucher about how he has integrated the books into his own course curriculum.

First off, tell us a little bit about the class you are teaching this semester.

Labor and Employment History is an online graduate class in the Master of Labor and Employment Relations (MLER) program of the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) in New Brunswick, New Jersey. There are 28 students enrolled in the class. Some are full-time students who will pursue careers as labor relations and human resource professionals in the private and public sectors, work for state and federal agencies like the Department of Labor and OSHA, or work as organizers and representatives for labor unions. Some are part-time students who already work full-time jobs in those fields.

How you are using the Temple University Press open access labor studies and work books in your class?

I have used several of the books in my weekly reading assignments. For instance, I assigned primary source documents from The Black Worker, Volume 1, edited by Philip S. Foner and Ronald W. Lewis, for a unit on race and labor in the nineteenth century, and chapters from Alone in a Crowd: Women in the Trades Tell Their Stories, edited by Jean Reith Schroedel, for a unit on gender and labor in the 1960s and 1970s.

In addition, each student in the class must complete an 8- to 12-page research paper on a labor history topic. This year, I asked my students to choose their topic based on the books in the Temple University Press labor studies and work collection, because it is such an excellent (and free!) resource. 

How are students approaching the assignment? 

The students have completed their first drafts and will do peer reviews before turning in their final drafts at the end of the semester.

They’re using nearly every book in the collection. Several students are exploring topics in women’s labor history, using Alone in a Crowd, edited by Jean Reith Schroedel; A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike, edited by Joan M. Jensen and Sue Davidson; Labor Education for Women Workers, edited by Barbara Mayer Wertheimer; Sisterhood and Solidarity, edited by Joyce L. Kornbluh and Mary Frederickson; Mary Heaton Vorse by Dee Garrison; and Sisterhood Denied, by Dolores Janieweski. One student is writing a comparative paper on women clerical workers in the U.S. and the U.K. using Woman’s Place Is at the Typewriter, by Margery W. Davies, and Sameul Cohn’s The Process of Occupational Sex-Typing.  

Some students are writing about the experiences of Black workers using the volumes edited by Foner and Lewis. Others are writing about the difficulties encountered by unions in the second half of the twentieth century using The Crisis of American Labor, by Barbara S. Griffith and On Strike at Hormel, by Hardy Green. Another student is writing a paper on OSHA using Liberalism at Work, by Charles Noble, along with chapters from Alone in a Crowd and Workers’ Struggles, Past and Present, edited by James Green.  One student is writing about Philadelphia labor using Working People of Philadelphia, 1800-1850, by Bruce Laurie, and Philadelphia Communists, 1936-1956, by Paul Lyons and another is writing about Massachusetts labor using With Our Hands, by Mark Erlich and David Goldberg.

Can you talk about the importance of this collection?

There has been an explosion of impressive labor studies scholarship over the past 50 years published by university presses, including Temple. Unfortunately, much of that scholarship has gone out of print, and resides primarily on the shelves of university and college libraries, making it inaccessible to many. It is wonderful that Temple University Press and Libraries pursued an NEH grant to republish some of the Press’s out-of-print labor studies online and open-access, free and available for anyone to use. I will continue to use the collection in the classes I teach and in my own research. Other labor studies and labor education faculty I know from around the country are also excited about this collection and are using it in their work.

Anything else you’d like to share with us?

Thanks to the Temple University Press and Libraries staff for your hard work in making this collection freely available!

Meet Davarian Baldwin, co-editor of the Press’s Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series

This week, in North Philly Notes, a Q&A with Davarian Baldwin, the new editor for Temple University Press’ Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series.

You have written about migration and Black Urban Life. What drew you to that field of study within American studies?
I am the child of the Great Migration. I am the first generation in my family to be born in the north during the Second Great Migration. While many of my family stopped and settled in other cities like Chicago, my segment of the family kept moving on to a smaller town called Beloit, Wisconsin because I think, even though full of factories it, in some ways, reminded them more of their Mississippi home.

10-041 – Trinity – Davarian – Web Feature

Can you talk about the kinds of books you are looking to acquire for the Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series?
I would love to acquire books that make bold arguments while, if historical, work closely with less examined archives. I would love to see books that are both global and local in scope…books that feature the city as a crossroads for different people, ideas, and aspirations all deeply grounded within the details of their urban spaces. I want to see books that don’t look at the city as just the repository for social and historical experience, but understand the built environment as equally influential, as a central actor in the storyline…books that balance their attention on the structure of cities and the agency of human lives. For me, recent books that have some or all of these qualities include Beryl Satter’s Family Properties, Nathan D.B. Connolly’s A World More Concrete, and Andrew Needham’s Power Lines.

What book (or books) made you fall in love with reading and the power of words?
While I write and edit non-fiction academic work, I must be honest and say that fiction has always been my first love. In fact I make sure to read interesting and provocative fiction when I am writing more scholarly work. As a child the books were Beverly Cleary and alternative Star Wars fiction. As a teenager The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar, and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon changed my life. The book that has stayed with me and challenged me with its combination of searing social commentary and elegant and witty prose remains Ellison’s Invisible Man. I have built an entire course around this book and I find something new in that novel every time I teach the course. To be sure, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth was the next generation version of that book but added a decidedly more urban flavor to Ellison’s racial satire. I think in the more academic realm, W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk and C.L. R. James Beyond a Boundary have done the same thing for me.

What was the last great book you read?
I am a big fan of science fiction and mystery/police procedurals, especially when the genres are both in the same book…so that makes Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife definitely the last great book I read. For me it sort of offers the prose response to one of my favorite non-fiction urban studies; Mike Davis’ City of Quartz.

What one book would you recommend everyone read?
Again mystery books/procedurals are fabulous because the great ones have amazing social commentary about gender, race, social position, inequality and so many feature the city as a central character in the story. I would recommend everyone read Paco Ignacio Taibo’s Some Clouds.

What book did you find overrated or just disappointing?
Certainly not disappointing, but as a scholar of the Great Migration, I didn’t find anything new or exciting in The Warmth of Other Suns. Yet I certainly appreciated how its prose style made decades of scholarship more accessible to a much wider audience. On the fiction side, I found Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections a bit overrated. 

What book do you wish more people knew about?
Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper, is an unheralded master work, not just because of its inventive prose but because the ideas in the book are expressed in the paper quality, the typeset, and materials used in the making of the very book itself. I wish the publishing market would allow more books to reflect their ideas and themes in the construction of the actual book

What author(s), living or dead, would you be most interested in having over for dinner? WOW, I hate that I don’t cook! Not just because we share the same surname but certainly James Baldwin because of his courageousness, force of nature, ethical posture, faithfulness to everyday people, impatience with pettiness, and all qualities held with flare and wit. I think I would also want to hang out with Steig Larsson…what would it be like to push out a trilogy of prose in the face of your impending death? The courage that must take as a writer when one could easily curl up in a ball

What Temple University Press title could you not put down and why?
George Lipsitz’s Possessive Investments in Whiteness was certainly from a different time, a time when the mainstream took more seriously the idea that racial identity can in fact shape life chances and access to important resources etc. But while in the 1990’s a whole shelf of books came out in the form of memoirs or celebrations of whiteness, Lipsitz’s was a thoughtful essay so rich in archival depth demonstrating clearly how state power and private wealth have been so closely tethered to white racial identity. Here the idea that race is a social construction did not justify a dismissal of the concept but called for a more rigorous understanding of its social and hence lived power.

Meet Temple University Press’ new acquisitions editor, Ryan Mulligan

This week, in North Philly Notes, a Q&A with our new acquisitions editor, Ryan Mulligan.

You are acquiring books in sociology, criminology, and sports as well as regional titles. What is your affinity for these discipline?
I worked on sociology books in my previous position and found the discipline to be so vibrant and necessary. Sociology places the human faces we see into the contexts that shape them and make them the way they are. Conversely, it also puts real, complex, human faces on the contexts we make assumptions about. So much of academia is rightly concerned with showing the ways the real world resists our assumptions and heuristics, but sociology is extra important because assumptions and heuristics about people can be so dangerous.

This is a great moment to be getting into criminology, as there is so much skepticism and room for questions and answers in law and order today. Criminology has a close relationship with sociology. It has been mostly published by larger publishers and I’m excited about the opportunity to take a more targeted topical approach to specific subfields that merit a tighter focus but have broad implications.

Everyone who knows me knows I love sports and Philadelphia sports in particular. Everyone describes Philadelphia fans as passionate but we are also demanding and informed, which makes us a voracious readers and consumers of perspectives and information. In other words, it’s a great environment in which to be publishing sports books. Beyond my own fandom I’m also excited about the sports list as a publishing opportunity. So much of sports publishing has traditionally been nostalgic and I think there’s a real opportunity, especially for a university press, to publish books that are curious, socially engaged, forward looking, and concerned about how sports arrived at where they are and where they are going. I see so many outlets online serving a broadly interested and educated sports fan and think that shows a readership underserved by many of the sports books on the bookstore shelf.

I’ll especially look to continue Temple University Press’s strengths in urban sociology, criminology, labor studies, social movements, social stratification, and sexuality and gender studies.

What book (or books) made you fall in love with reading and the power of words?
I’m going to go to my childhood with E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. It was interesting, later on, to read White’s indispensable writing guide, The Elements of Style (with William Strunk, Jr.) and see him explicitly outline what had enlivened his writing for me as a child: a charming honesty and understated directness. Ray Bradbury deserves a shout-out, too.

What was the last great book you read? (Can be academic or not)
Just before starting work here on the sports list, I read The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, published last May, a book by two analytics-oriented baseball writers who had the opportunity to take over baseball operations for an independent league baseball team. They describe the victories, defeats, and culture clashes resulting from their attempt to put the strategic consensus of the SABR community in to the game plans of the all-too-real coaches and players that inhabit their would-be sandbox. It underscores how hard it still is to get everyone, whatever their view of baseball, to come to grips with their uncertainty, more than a decade after Moneyball.

What one book would you recommend everyone read?
As long as I’m talking about uncertainty and data, everyone should read Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise. The fun of it is reading well-told stories from several fields—weather, politics, economics, sports, earthquakes—on how the best prognosticators make the best predictions. Everyone can learn something about how the best in a field you don’t know find sense within the mountain of information available to them. But the message that I think should resonate for scholars and civilians like myself alike is how the most knowledgeable people are honest with themselves about what they don’t know

What book or author do you wish more people knew about?
Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy. This is an intervention in one of those debates where there are two cogent sides but neither approaches the crux of the problem: Leovy shows that whether we institute more policing or less policing, we would benefit from better policing.

What titles might we be surprised to discover on your bookshelf?
Learn to Surf, by James Maclaren. Not really the vibe I give off – maybe because I haven’t been very successful at it.

What author(s), living or dead, would you be most interested in meeting, or having over for dinner?
Shakespeare. There’s a Titus Andronicus joke to be made here, but I can’t quite work my way around to it.

What Temple University Press title could you not put down?
If declaring a favorite child is an unwise parenting strategy, choosing a favorite child among the many you just inherited seems doubly fraught, so I’m going to venture outside my own lists here at Temple and choose a great book on Temple’s backlist that I read as an undergrad philosophy student: The Philosophy of Alain Locke, edited by Leonard Harris. Locke’s philosophy provides background and context for the Harlem Renaissance and for so many pride movements to follow.

 

 

Temple University Press adds two new editors to the Asian American History and Culture series

This week in North Philly Notes, we announce the two new editors joining our Asian American History and Culture series.

Temple University Press is pleased to announce the addition of Rick Bonus, Associate Professor of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, and Shelley Sang-Hee Lee, Associate Professor of History and Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College, to the Asian American History and Culture series editorial team. They will be replacing editors Linda Trinh Võ and K. Scott Wong, who will be transitioning into editors emeriti roles.

Both Bonus and Lee have published books in the series with Temple University Press. Rick Bonus published Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity and the Cultural Politics of Space in 2000, and co-edited Contemporary Asian American Communities: Intersections and Divergences with outgoing AAHC editor, Võ. Shelley Sang-Hee Lee published Claiming the Oriental Gateway: Prewar Seattle and Japanese America with Temple in 2012. They join current series editor Cathy Schlund-Vials.

Schlund-Vials is enthusiastic about the new team. She observed, “Rick Bonus and Shelley Lee’s work has proved aspirational for me and the field. Both Bonus and Lee bring established reputations to the series. They are keen interlocutors, leading scholars, and dedicated practitioners. It is truly an honor to have them on board, and I am humbled to be in their midst.”

Shelley Lee says she is “looking forward to helping shape the series with my co-editors.” Her work will focus on “honoring the AAHC’s distinguished legacy and building on its strengths, while also searching out titles that represent exciting and important directions in Asian American history.”

Bonus is also excited to be part of the editorial team. He acknowledged, “Temple has been a pioneering intellectual force in Asian American Studies and continues to make possible new and emerging directions in the scholarship on Asian American Studies.”

He continued, “My vision for the press includes the perpetuation of the amazing work all my predecessors have accomplished. I hope to assist the press in treading new and emerging directions in Asian American Studies by strategically pursuing works that are directly or intersectionally conversant with fields like transnationalism, science and technology studies, cross-regional and cross-disciplinary studies, queer studies, and education and social work studies. All of these, I hope, will enable transformative insights into Asian American Studies and move forward Temple’s record in enhancing the field’s depth and breadth.”

Schlund-Vials reflected about the outgoing series editors, Linda Trinh Võ and K. Scott Wong as the torch was being passed. She said, “During their illustrious time as series editors, Võ and Wong consistently ushered projects that reflected the ever-growing, ever-expansive contours of Asian American Studies as provocative interdiscipline. Under their guidance, the series expanded its sights and sites to encompass the complexities of diaspora and dynamics of transnationalism. They were, quite frankly, ideal mentors for me as a new series editor: I benefitted greatly from their extensive knowledge of the field, their commitment to scholarly mentorship, and their willingness to see multiple possibilities. Their mark on the series is unquestionable, and they deserve much of the credit for the very high reputation Temple University Press has within Asian American Studies. I am certainly not alone in this assessment, as evidenced by the many awards given to books they shepherded throughout their tenure.”

About the Series

Temple University Press published the first two titles in the Asian American History and Culture series — Entry Denied, by series founder Sucheng Chan and Cane Fires, by Gary Okihiro — in the spring of 1991. There are now more than 70 titles in the series, which is edited by Sara Cohen.

Founded by Sucheng Chan in 1991, the Asian American History and Culture series has sponsored innovative scholarship that has redefined, expanded, and advanced the field of Asian American studies while strengthening its links to related areas of scholarly inquiry and engaged critique. Like the field from which it emerged, the series remains rooted in the social sciences and humanities, encompassing multiple regions, formations, communities, and identities. Extending the vision of founding editor Sucheng Chan and editors emeriti Michael Omi and David Palumbo-Liu, series editors Cathy Schlund-Vials, Rick Bonus and Shelley Sang-Hee Lee continue to develop a foundational collection that embodies a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to Asian American studies.

Temple University Press is having a Back-to-School SALE!

Ray Didinger on “Tommy and Me”

This week in North Philly Notes,  Ray Didinger, author of One Last Read and The New Eagles Encyclopedia, recounts bringing his play Tommy and Me, based on his life, to life on stage.

I didn’t know it was possible to have an experience that is both exhilarating and painful. But that’s what I was feeling Sunday night as Tommy and Me, my first—and probably last—stage play had its final performance at the Fringe Arts theatre.

It was exhilarating because the sellout crowd sent the play off with a standing ovation and afterwards people stayed around to say how much they enjoyed it. The story flashes back to the 1950s and ’60s and the career of Eagles great Tommy McDonald and dozens of people came up to me to relate their own memories of Franklin Field. Some still carried the ticket stubs in their wallets. Three bucks for a seat in the end zone. Yes, it was a long time ago.

The painful part was walking back into the empty theatre and seeing the crew dismantle the set. During the two-week run from August 3 through 14, I virtually lived in that theatre. It became my world and each night when the lights went down and the actors took the stage, I was transported back to my boyhood when I was the freckle-faced fan who wanted nothing more than to carry Tommy McDonald’s helmet as he walked to the practice field. It brought a lump to my throat every night. But on Sunday, seeing it stripped down and silent, reminded me it was, indeed, over.

I knew this night was coming. I knew there would be that moment when I had to let go and Tommy and Me would become a memory, but it did not lessen the sense of loss. We sat at the bar for a long time—the cast, the crew, the whole Theatre Exile team—and talked about the play and how it grew into something larger than we first imagined. All 12 performances were sell outs and each show ended with a standing ovation that seemed to grow louder each night. Tom Teti, the veteran actor who played Tommy McDonald, said, “This was a rare one.” The others at the bar nodded in agreement.

Once we left the theatre that night we would be going in different directions. Joe Canuso, the director, is going back to work on Rizzo, the play he successful staged last year and is reviving at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre in September. Matt Pfeiffer, the actor who played me as an adult, is headed to Naples, Florida, to direct a play. Ned Pryce, the actor who played the young Tommy McDonald, is already in rehearsal for a role with the Iron Age Theatre. Tom Teti is rejoining the team at People’s Light and Theatre in Malvern. Simon Kiley, who played the 10-year-old me, is getting ready to start sixth grade at Girard Academic Music Program. I would return to talking about the Eagles on WIP Sports Radio and Comcast Sports Net.

But for a little while longer, we were sharing the bond that was Tommy and Me, the play I wrote about my boyhood hero and our unlikely 40-year journey to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I had never written a play before and when I started I wasn’t at all sure it would ever be produced. But thanks to Joe Canuso, who believed in the project, and Bruce Graham, the superb Philadelphia playwright who helped in its development, we were able to bring Tommy and Me to life. To sit in the theatre each evening and hear the audience laugh, sometimes cry, boo any reference to the Dallas Cowboys and ultimately applaud at the final curtain was a thrill unlike anything I had experienced before. I know I’ll never forget it.

Each night ended with the cast returning to the stage to answer questions from the audience. The very first night, a woman stood up and said: “I’m not an Eagles fan. I don’t even like sports…” I thought, “Where is this going?” Then she said, “But this story really touched me.” Several theatre critics [reviews below] made the same point: it isn’t a football story. It is a story about a boy, his hero and dreams coming true. It is a story I always wanted to tell and that’s why on Sunday night it was hard to let go.

Read the DC Metro‘s review. 

Read the Broad Street Review‘s review

Read Philly.com‘s review

Read NewsWork‘s review

Read Philadelphia Magazine‘s review 

 

 

Ready or Not: Rio on the Eve of the Olympics

On the ground in Rio, Philip Evanson, co-author of Living in the Crossfire, reflects on what life is like as the games begin.

For the months leading up to the 2016 summer Olympics games, media reporting has been largely critical of Rio de Janeiro’s, and by extension Brazil’s ability to complete preparations for the mega sports event. This critical viewpoint was shared even by the Brazilian patrician press with perhaps A Folha de São Paulo taking the lead. A stream of reports from inside and outside Brazil focused on delays and mishaps. As late as July 1^st,  The New York Times published an article Brazilian journalist Vanessa Barbara about “Brazil’s Olympic Catastrophe.” The article took us into a world of chaos and uncertainties that seemed an inherent part of preparations for the Rio Olympics. Thomas Bach, the German president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said that Brazil was an example of a country that liked to wait until the final hour to complete a big task such as preparations for the Olympics. However, he remained optimistic and sure that the Brazilian hosts would get the job done in time for the opening ceremony August 5.

This was his view just the day after delegations of athletes from several countries, including Brazil itself, refused to occupy their assigned residences saying they were unfit for habitation. They entered apartments where pipes leaked, toilets might not flush, and electric wires were exposed. In fact, only 15 of 31 new high rise apartment buildings in the Olympic Village were ready to receive delegations as of Sunday, July 24 when they opened for occupancy. 630 workers were quickly hired to work around the clock to complete the work by Thursday. This was one more public relations disaster and not to be overcome so quickly. Ministry of Labor inspectors made an unexpected visit. They found that Brazilian labor law was being flouted. Workers had not been hired according to rules of formal sector employment. They were working longer hours than permitted, in one case 23 hours straight, and not enough time was allowed for meals. The Ministry fined the Rio Olympic committee nearly $100,000. Still the work was completed and delegation complaints then turned to praise.

Now in the early 21^st century, the port area in downtown Rio is once again a main target of urban renewal. Demolition of an old, dirty elevated freeway, remodeling older buildings and putting up new ones has dramatically changed the area, making it an inviting zone of high interest. For the residents of Rio and visitors, the important lures will be new museums and cultural centers. The Museum of Tomorrow is architecturally the most striking and important structure. Hailed by The Guardian on its inauguration in 2015 as one of the world’s most extraordinary contemporary buildings, it is dedicated to the idea of human and planetary sustainability.

My wife Regina and I decided to see changes in the port area and downtown Rio. We took a ride on the new light rail tramline that circulates between the bus station and the domestic Santos Dumont airport. We could see how in much of the area traversed, the planned renewal has largely been completed and ready to receive tens of thousands tourists who will come to the Olympics. There are Olympics connected projects in the area that are not strictly about sporting events. We got off at the stop on the newly christened Olympic Boulevard where Brazilian graffiti artist Eduardo Kobra is finishing an enormous multicolored mural “We are all one.” The mural celebrates the unity of the human race in five continents, and the search for peace. We wanted to see it, and to see him at work partly because we live in Philadelphia which is a leader in the outdoor mural movement and have become interested in this form of public art. Kobra’s mural is spread over a block long cinderblock wall and occupies about twice as many square feet as the world’s next largest mural. We watched him spray paint areas while standing on a hydraulic lift platform, but there were strong gusts of wind that must have made the work more difficult than usual. He was working from what seemed a color chart. We plan to return to watch again this remarkable work in progress. Kobra is hurrying to complete it by the official opening day of August 5.

We are now in the countdown phase to the opening ceremony—counted in days (now only 3 as this is being written), hours, minutes and seconds. An Olympic media slogan aims for social inclusion “Somos Todos Olímpicos,” or “We are all Olympians,” but a poll published on July 19 showed that 50% of the population was against the 2016 Rio Olympics, 40% in favor, and 10% did not know where they stood. 63% think Brazil will be worse for the Olympics. A certain lack of enthusiasm, even opposition to the games was obviously taken to heart by Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes whose emotional fever chart is always on display. In an interview on August 1^st with A Folha de São Paulo. the mayor lamented the fact that Brazilians were in a bad mood due to the hard times (three years of recession),  also the political crisis of impeaching a president, and the endless Operation Carwash investigations of corrupt practices in the highest places of politics and corporate business. He said to the contrary that Brazilians should feel good about the Olympics. Largely by themselves, Brazilians had been able to overcome all the problems and emergencies associated with the games and that similar problems occurred in other summer Olympic games. The IOC was grateful for the way we responded to contingencies, and surprised that Brazilians had such a low opinion of themselves. Paes called it “our complex of being a mongrel people.”As for critical local press reporting, including in A Folha de São Paulo, it had contaminated public opinion when times were so difficult, in effect, turned people against the Olympics. However, looking at Rio de Janeiro’s ongoing urban transformation as spurred by the Olympics, the mayor brightened. He was sure it would be “more profound” than what even had occurred in the famous Barcelona Olympics of 1992 when Barcelona consolidated its reputation as a great cosmopolitan city.

 

Uncanny experiences explained

This week in North Philly Notes, Dennis Waskul, author of Ghostly Encounters,  writes about what prompted him to write about his uncanny experience. 

Whether you are a believer or a skeptic one fact is undeniable: people continue to report uncanny experiences with something that they believe is, or might be, a ghost. Those experiences people have, how they interpret them, and the reasons people believe (or disbelieve) are undeniably real regardless of whether one has faith in the existence of ghosts or, equally, faith in contending that ghosts are a fanciful fiction. In short, ghosts exist as a social and cultural phenomenon, the focus of our research, and the socio-cultural reality of ghosts is entirely independent of the ontology of them. Thus, in Ghostly Encounters, Michele and I have maintained an agnostic perspective on those fundamentally unanswerable questions as we spoke to people who believe they have experienced a ghostly presence and visited places alleged to be haunted. Our focus throughout this book is on the experiences people report, how people arrive at the conclusion that they have encountered a ghostly presence, what those ghosts do to and for people, and the consequences thereof.

A wise sociologist, Gary Marx, once taught me to know the difference between a scholar and a fundamentalist. As Gary phrased it so succinctly, “the scholar starts with questions, not with answers.” Seen in this light, fundamentalists come in many guises, and only some of them are religious. Hence, as scholars, Michele and I sought to start with questions about the ghosts that people allegedly encounter, the unique ways that people interpret them, how those ghosts function in the lives of people, what those ghosts do to and for people. Starting with questions, instead of answers, is always at least a bit risky, and mainly because one does not know where those questions will lead, nor what experiences they might facilitate. Indeed, from beginning to end Ghostly Encounters was an incredible adventure for both Michele and I as it led us to people and places we never expected, in addition to understandings and surprising experiences that we did not anticipate. In the end, we sought to replicate that unforeseen experience for our readers with intimate and accessible forms of ethnographic writing that bring our readers inside of these lived experiences of ghostly encounters, within a highly unique organizational structure that assures unexpected surprises. While we hope our readers find the book both informative and enjoyable, above all we urge anyone interested to equally know the difference between a scholar and a fundamentalist—and to start with questions, not answers.

A Q&A with the authors of American Dunkirk

This week in North Philly Notes, we sat down with American Dunkirk co-authors James Kendra and Tricia Wachtendorf to talk about their new book on the boat evacuation from Manhattan that took place on 9/11.

Jim, you are a geographer by training, and Tricia, you are a sociologist. But you both also refer to yourselves as “disaster researchers.” What exactly is disaster research?

As social scientists, we are interested in how people, organizations, and communities think about and behave in disaster situations. How do people experience disaster in different ways? What do we perceive as risky, and why? What helps or hinders coordination, be it in preparing, responding, or recovering from disaster? And then it’s often working with other scientists, be it from engineering, atmospheric, or health science, to solve these problems in a more comprehensive way. Disaster research requires that kind of holistic approach. The Disaster Research Center, where we are fortunate to work, is also well known for quick response research. For over 50 years, its researchers have collected information in the immediate aftermath of disasters, information that often is otherwise forgotten or lost. This has led to critical insights that have improved our understanding of disaster events.

The boat evacuation on 9/11 is a fascinating story. What drew you to looking at this event?  

We had seen the power of improvised activities in our documentation of some other emergency response activities in New York City, such as the re-establishment of the Emergency Operations Center after the original at 7 World Trade Center had been destroyed. During that study, we began to hear about the boat evacuation. The fact that approximately 500,000 people could be evacuated by boat so successfully without any direct plan in place was amazing, but it was also an example – on a larger scale – of the kind of improvisations we had seen and continued to see in other disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina. And those improvisations extended beyond the boat evacuation, to the bus transport of people once they reached the Jersey shore, to setting up dinner cruise vessels to serve as respite centers for Ground Zero responders, to the retired fireboat John J. Harvey being pulled back into service for fire suppression. We quickly realized there was so much to learn. Plus Jim had been a merchant marine officer, so he was attuned to the aspects of maritime culture: such as the professional obligation to “get the job done” and their capacities for making do with limited equipment. We were grateful for the University of Delaware Research Foundation and National Science Foundation funding to support this extensive work. Over the years there have been a few accounts shared about the boat evacuation, but we still are mostly greeted with surprise when people learn about what transpired along the waterfront that day.

You talked to 100 people involved with various aspects of the boat evacuation and response. What were some of the key lessons you drew from your study?

The boat evacuation is one of many heartening moments throughout an otherwise tragic day, and much of that is grounded in the idea of community. In this case, it was the extended harbor community who were able to envision a role for themselves, who were able to draw on their extensive network within that community, who were open to new ideas that seemed to be working in the moment, and who were able to galvanize the latent resources on their boats, along the shoreline, and across the metropolitan area. But it’s not only the harbor community that can do that. As we’ve said elsewhere, successful disaster response involves ordinary people achieving the extraordinary, solving one problem at a time. What an important insight! Any one of us might not be able to do everything, and there are a lot of things we might not do well, but we can usually do something quite well.

Notable was the number of maritime workers who started out without a plan. They said, “We didn’t know what we were going to do.” But the mariners had a strong ethos of rescue they applied, even if it was a land-based emergency. They had technical and environmental knowledge, and experience working on the fly. But we also learned of a bartender who handed out chips and talked with people queuing up for boats on one of the piers. He saw a need: providing comfort in the form of food and conversation, and it was in his wheelhouse as a bartender to notice the need. We all have something in our wheelhouse.

Before 9/11, and to a much greater degree afterward, public officials and policymakers were emphasizing the need for “command and control.” But large-scale disasters are always characterized by emerging and unplanned activities that are better coordinated than controlled. It’s OK to strive to get a sense of the big picture, but we also have to recognize that no one will have that in the midst of an unfolding disaster. Responses that work involve people starting to put together their part of the picture, alongside other formal and informal responders. It’s a community effort, at its heart.

James Kendra is a Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration and Tricia Wachtendorf is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. They are the Directors of the Disaster Research Center.  Visit them online at americandunkirk.com.