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.

Books for the Inauguration

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase a half dozen of our political science titles in honor of the inauguration.

We recommend Good Reasons to Run, edited by Shauna L. Shames, Rachel I. Bernhard, Mirya R. Holman, and Dawn Langan Teele, about women and political candidacy, because Kamala Harris became the first female vice president.

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?

We recommend The Great Migration and the Democratic Party, by Keneshia Grant, because it shows the political impact of Black migration on politics. (Grant focuses on three northern cities from 1915 to 1965)

The Great Migration and the Democratic Party frames the Great Migration as an important economic and social event that also had serious political consequences. Keneshia Grant created one of the first listings of Black elected officials that classifies them based on their status as participants in the Great Migration. She also describes some of the policy/political concerns of the migrants. Grant lays the groundwork for ways of thinking about the contemporary impact of Black migration on American politics.

We recommend We Decide! by Michael Menser for its investigation of and insights regarding participatory democracy.

We Decide! draws on liberal, feminist, anarchist, and environmental justice philosophies as well as in-depth case studies of Spanish factory workers, Japanese housewives, and Brazilian socialists to show that participatory democracy actually works. Menser concludes his study by presenting a reconstructed version of the state that is shaped not by corporations but by inclusive communities driven by municipal workers, elected officials, and ordinary citizens working together. In this era of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, the participatory democracy proposed in We Decide! is more significant than ever.

We recommend Democratic Theorizing from the Margins, by Marla Brettschneider, for its clear account of the lessons and theories of democratic culture

Democratic Theorizing from the Margins lays out the basic parameters of diversity-based politics as a still emerging form of democratic theory. Students, activists, and scholars engage in diversity politics on the ground, but generally remain unable to conceptualize a broad understanding of how “politics from the margins”—that is, political thinking and action that comes from groups often left on the outside of mainstream organizing and action—operate effectively in different contexts and environments. Brettschneider offers concrete lessons from many movements to see what they tell us about a new sort of democratic politics. She also addresses traditional democratic theories and draws on the myriad discerning practices employed by marginalized groups in their political activism to enhance the critical capacities of potential movements committed both to social change and democratic action.

We recommend Rude Democracy, by Susan Herbst, about how civility and incivility are strategic weapons on the state of American democracy, given how polarized our country has become.

Democracy is, by its very nature, often rude. But there are limits to how uncivil we should be. In the 2010 edition of Rude Democracy, Susan Herbst explored the ways we discuss public policy, how we treat each other as we do, and how we can create a more civil national culture. She used the examples of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama to illustrate her case. She also examined how young people come to form their own attitudes about civility and political argument. In a new preface for this 2020 paperback edition, the author connects her book to our current highly contentious politics and what it means for the future of democratic argument.

And we encourage readers to look for our forthcoming (in March) title, Furthering Fair Housing, edited by Justin P. Steil, Nicholas F. Kelly, Lawrence J. Vale, and Maia S. Woluchem. This book analyzes federal policy to advance racial equity in housing and neighborhoods.

Furthering Fair Housing analyzes multiple dimensions of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, which was the most significant federal effort to increase equality of access to place-based resources and opportunities, such as high-performing schools or access to jobs, since the 1968 Fair Housing Act. The editors and contributors to this volume identify failures of past efforts to increase housing choice, explore how the AFFH Rule was crafted, measure the initial effects of the rule before its rescission, and examine its interaction with other contemporary housing issues, such as affordability, gentrification, anti-displacement, and zoning policies.

Election books

This week in North Philly Notes, in anticipation of the upcoming election, we showcase titles on political campaigns and voting.

The Great Migration and the Democratic Party: Black Voters and the realignment of American Politics in the 20^th Century, by Keneshia N. Grant
Examines the political impact of Black migration on politics in three northern cities, 1914-1965

Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics, by Susan Herbst
How American politics can become more civil and amenable to public policy situations, while still allowing for effective argument

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

Gender Differences in Public Opinion: Values and Political Consequences, by Mary-Kate Lizotte
Explores the gender gap in public opinion through a values lens

Philadelphia Battlefields: Disruptive Campaigns and Upset Elections in a Changing City, by John Kromer
How upstart political candidates achieved spectacular successes over Philadelphia’s entrenched political establishment

Navigating Gendered Terrain: Stereotypes and Strategies in Political Campaigns, by Kelly Dittmar
Explores how candidates and campaign professionals navigate the gendered terrain of political campaigns

Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns, by Charlton D, Mcllwain, and Stephen M. Caliendo
Why, when, and how often candidates use race appeals, and how the electorate responds

On the Stump: Campaign Oratory and Democracy in the United States, Britain, and Australia, by Sean Scalmer
The story of how the “stump speech” was created, diffused, and helped to shape the modern democracies of the Anglo-American world

Latino Mayors: Political Change in the Postindustrial City, edited by Marion Orr and Domingo Morel
The first book to examine the rise of Latino mayors in the United States

Campaign Advertising and American Democracy, by Michael M Franz, Paul Freedman, Ken Goldstein, and Travis N Ridout
Surprising findings about the positive effects of political advertising

Choices and Changes: Interest Groups in the Electoral Process, by Michael M. Franz
The most comprehensive book about interest groups in recent American politics

Why Veterans Run: Military Service in American Presidential Elections, 1789-2016, by Jeremy M. Teigen
Why more than half of American presidential candidates have been military veterans—and why it matters

Imagining attending the OAH conference

This week in North Philly Notes, we surveyed a handful of Temple University Press authors who might have attended the cancelled Organization of American Historians conference.

Ira Harkavy, John Puckett, and Joann Weeks, three of the co-authors of Knowledge for Social Change, reflected, Some of us remember our co-author and dear deceased colleague Lee Benson’s powerful controversial 1981 keynote paper at the OAH on “History as Advocacy,” in which he called on historians to abandon value-free history and social science and to study and write history to change the world for the better. That argument is at the center of Knowledge for Social Change, which argues for and proposes concrete means to radically transform research universities to function as democratic, civic, and community-engaged institutions.

Shirley Jennifer Lim, author of Anna May Wong: Performing the Modern observed, I was looking forward to attending the OAH, catching up with friends and colleagues, and presenting at my panel “Racial Rogues of Hollywood,” with Anthony Mora and Ernesto Chavez.

In addition, I am honored that my book was a finalist for the OAH’s Mary Nickliss Award, especially since March is Women’s History Month. (From the Prize Chair: The Committee was extremely impressed by the book’s extraordinary research, eloquence, originality, timeliness, and depth of analysis; undoubtedly Anna May Wong will have a substantial impact on the field of women’s and gender history and we commend Professor Lim for this tremendous accomplishment.)

 

Howard Lune, author of the forthcoming Transnational Nationalism and Collective Identity among the American Irish, opined, All things considered, I’d rather not be attending a conference right now. But, as a sociologist writing on socio-historical topics, I need a certain amount of engagement with American historians to keep me from making any serious errors. I find the dialogue between the two fields to be necessary to our shared areas of interest, which is why I am disappointed to miss out on the OAH meeting.

In researching and writing Transnational Nationalism, I periodically emerged from my archives and photocopies to run my thoughts by actual historians. In this work I am looking at the continuity of certain ideas about collective identity, nationalism, power, and citizenship among the Irish from 1791 to 1921. My particular focus is on the transnational dimension—the back and forth between the Irish in the U.S. and those in Ireland—from an organizational perspective. I find that the emergent vision of twentieth century Irish independence was both rooted in 18^th century Irish activism and nurtured in abeyance through American organizing during times of repression. All of that was supported by the historical records left by the organizations in question. But my constant fear was that I remained unaware of key historical events or crucial moments that threw all of this into question. I remain grateful to the several scholars who looked at early drafts or just sat around with me talking about Irish identity while the work was in progress. Hopefully I will have a chance before too long to take this conversation to a more public level.

Masumi Izumi, author of The Rise and Fall of America’s Concentration Camp Law,  was keen to present her paper entitled, “Keepers of Concentration Camps?: Federal Agents who Administered Japanese Americans during World War II” She writes:
The wartime mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is generally perceived as wrongful exclusion and detention of American citizens based on racial prejudice. While the racist nature of this historical incident is unquestionable, I scrutinized the implications of Japanese American (JA) incarceration in the light of the wartime/emergency executive power regarding American civil liberties in my book, The Rise and Fall of America’s Concentration Camp Law. I found out that the JA internment heavily affected the postwar debates on civil liberties and anti-communist security measures. To continue my investigation, I was going to focus at the OAH annual meeting on the Federal agents who administered Japanese Americans in the camps during World War II. My paper particularly focuses on the directors of the War Relocation Authority, Milton Eisenhower and Dillon Myer, and contextualize their choices in the light of the agricultural policies utilizing theories such as settler colonialism and racial liberalism.

Ryan Pettengill, author of the forthcoming Communists and Community, offers these thoughts: One of the biggest reasons I wrote this book was to further the conversation as to what unions and other working-class organizations do. Throughout the book, I try to establish the concept that debates involving equality, civil rights, and a higher standard of living took place in a community setting; they took place through a public forum. Now, more than ever, the study of history is proving to be critical to the preservation of our democracy. I have always found the Organization of American Historians conference to be a wonderful convergence of academics, students, as well as members of the general public with an interest in an examination of the past. The feedback I have received at conferences has proved essential in the revisions of papers that later ended up in scholarly journals but more importantly, conversations involving how working people have advocated for themselves and pursued equality is a timely debate. To that end, I am deeply sorry to not be able to attend the conference this year.

Meanwhile, Richard Juliani, author of Little Italy in the Great War reflected on writing his book. 

Several people have already asked me why I wrote this book.  I prefer to see the question as why I had to write this book.  The answer is complicated.

First, years ago, when I was working on my doctoral dissertation on The Social Organization of Immigration: The Italians of Philadelphia, I spent much time in interviewing elderly Italians about their life in America.  One of the questions that I usually asked them was why they had chosen to come. Much to my surprise, a few of them had included—among other reasons—that they did not want to serve a compulsory military obligation in the Italian army. But they also often went on to say that they ended up serving as an American soldier on the Western Front during World War I. In later years, I often thought about that answer as I continued in my research and writing to explore Italian immigrant experience.

Much more recently, while I was trying to put my most recent book into a broader perspective, I found myself thinking about those comments again. I realized that those men went into the war as Italians, often unable to even speak English, but by coming back to Philadelphia as veterans of the American army, they returned as Italian Americans. But if they had been changed as individuals, their “Home Front” in Little Italy, by its involvement in the war, had also been altered from a colony of Italian immigrants to an Italian American community. What gives it scholarly significance is the fact that when we study assimilation, we often refer to an abstract but somewhat vague process to explain individual and collective transformation, while my study was really focusing on a specific mechanism that served as a concrete pivot for that outcome.

One last point: while I was growing up, I often heard my father talk about his experiences as a veteran of the Italian army during that war. By becoming a part of my own intellectual formation, it enabled me to connect my personal and profession life in later years.

And this is what this book is about.

Don’t Take Your Local Newspaper for Granted

This week in North Philly Notes, Mary Lou Nemanic, author of Metro Dailies in the Age of Multimedia Journalism, writes about the importance of the daily newspaper. 

I’m endlessly troubled by the politicization of the news media and their demonization as the public enemy rather than as the providers of information that is vital to our democracy. Whenever I hear the news media trashed, the 1787 words of Thomas Jefferson come to mind:

“The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

I couldn’t agree more. Newspapers today are comprised of individuals who provide us with a critical public service. They should be appreciated for this, not denigrated because the exposure of the facts conflicts with a political agenda.  I wrote Metro Dailies in the Age of Multimedia Journalism to emphasize this point and to make people aware of what profiteering corporations are doing to local newspapers across the country. We need to appreciate the public service our news media provide in speaking truth to power and in illuminating the issues and concerns that are significant in our lives.

The COVID-19 (corona virus) pandemic is a good example of this. While I often go to the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s website for breaking news and I regularly get email summaries of major stories, the newspaper is where I go for in-depth information on international, national, regional, and local levels. There are infographics that show the spread of the pandemic, information on school and business closings and information on the Mayo Clinic fast-tracking a vaccine. There are resources for people who have questions and there are stories with experts who debunk popular social media myths about the disease.

Studies show people prefer long reads utilizing print rather than online platforms, and that newspapers—not online sources—provide readers with most of the original reporting available. And that includes investigations of political corruption and of major community issues, such as COVID-19. Yet, a rather alarming statistic unearthed by the Pew Research Center in 2018 indicates that more than 70% of Americans believe their local news outlets are faring well financially.

However, that means few are aware of what I witnessed in the six years of my study—that major metro newspaper staffs have shrunk from more than 100 to as few as 30 under the ownership of profiteering corporations. Of the five case studies in my book, three newsrooms were stripped to the bare bones. My hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, suffered this fate at the hands of Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that made double digit profits as the staff was laid off or offered buyouts until it was reduced to approximately 45 people. This tiny staff is responsible for both a newspaper and a website covering a city of more than 300,000 people.

Dave Orrick, a union representative and state government and politics reporter at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, is even trying to broker a deal to get local investors to buy the newspaper from Alden. Alden typically buys distressed companies, harvests them for substantial profits, and then sells off the remains. No individual or group has stepped up yet to buy the St. Paul paper, but Orrick hasn’t given up hope. His dedication to his newspaper and to journalism in these troubled times is truly impressive.

My appreciation for the free press dates back to my days at the University of Minnesota where I majored in journalism. The Journalism School there instilled in me a great respect for the free flow of information. As an undergrad, I had a chance to work for the student newspaper, The Minnesota Daily, the fourth largest daily newspaper in the state and a champion of the free press. In a lot of ways, Metro Dailies, is a book in defense of the free press at a time when its credibility is constantly under assault. I urge people to protect their local newspapers from profiteering ownership and to realize that is in our best interest for newspapers to survive and continue to be watchdogs over government and disseminators of essential information so vital to our democracy.

How state governments touch on nearly every aspect of public policy

This week in North Philly Notes, Michelle Atherton, co-editor of Pennsylvania Politics and Policy, writes about what states do and how much power they have within modern politics and policy.

In the midst of the modern 24/7 news cycle, and the focus on the tweet of the moment from our president, it’s easy to forget that politics in our federal system runs much deeper than the national level. Americans in general are woefully unaware of what states do and how much power they have within modern politics and policy. Statewide and local elections have much lower voter turnout than presidential years, as if the composition of state legislatures and governors’ offices barely matters compared to who occupies the White House. Many would argue these governing bodies matter even more to the lives of the average citizen, as state governments touch nearly every aspect of public policy.

Republicans in control in Washington, DC did not manage to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but it was originally up to the states to create their own healthcare exchanges, and whether to expand Medicaid. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in 2017 lowered federal taxes for most individuals—and especially corporations—but it also capped the state and local tax (SALT) deduction at $10,000, greatly effecting the calculus of state and local governments’ approaches to maintaining revenues.

Pennsylvania, for example, is one of the states most highly dependent upon property taxes for the support of public schools, collected locally, as opposed to relying on state taxes. Will the wealthy Philadelphia suburbs revolt come November’s general election as higher income households lose thousands of dollars in tax deductions? Perhaps the results will strengthen the case among many voters for doing away with the property tax altogether as a source of funding for public schools in the Commonwealth.

This issue and many others are explored in the first publication of Pennsylvania Politics and Policy: A Commonwealth Reader. Further topics include:

• What would it mean for Pennsylvania to adopt direct democracy such as the citizen-initiated referendum and recall like other states? Would politicians be more responsive and less prone to corruption?
• Why doesn’t the state of Pennsylvania place a severance tax on natural gas production? Every other state does. Alaskans each receive a dividend from fossil fuel extraction, yet Pennsylvania’s legislature refuses to move the issue forward even in the face of severe budget woes.
• Why doesn’t the state fund education based on the number of students in schools? Every other state in the nation bases funding on real student counts. In Pennsylvania, the politics of party and leadership control in the legislature dictates funding.
• Why does Pennsylvania not tax any form of retirement income, one of just a handful of states to do so? And, what does the rapid aging of the state mean for the bottom line of funding services both for the elderly and younger individuals and families?
• Why did it take so long to be able to buy wine and beer at the local supermarket? Pennsylvania took a unique approach to policing vice.

Another election for the governor, the entire House, and half the Senate of Pennsylvania is just around the corner. Here’s hoping Pennsylvanians find their way to the polling place to vote in proportion to the gravity of the election’s policy implications.

 

Temple University Press Titles the Organization of American Historians Conference

This week in North Philly Notes, we highlight the books and authors at the Organization for American Historians Conference, April 12-14 in Sacramento, CA.

Visit us at Booth #210!
Titles on Display include:

Healing Our Divided Society: Investing in America Fifty Years after the Kerner Report, edited by Fred Harris and Alan Curtis.

This timely volume unites the interests of minorities and white working- and middle-class Americans to propose a strategy to reduce poverty, inequality, and racial injustice. Reflecting on America’s urban climate today, this new report sets forth evidence-based policies concerning employment, education, housing, neighborhood development, and criminal justice based on what has been proven to work-and not work.

“A Road to Peace and Freedom”:  The International Workers Order and the Struggle for Economic Justice and Civil Rights, 1930-1954, by Robert M. Zecker

Mining extensive primary sources, Robert Zecker gives voice to the workers in “A Road to Peace and Freedom.” He describes the International Workers Order’s economic goals, commitment to racial justice, and activism, from lobbying to end segregation and lynching in America to defeating fascism abroad. Zecker also illustrates the panoply of entertainment, sports, and educational activities designed to cultivate the minds and bodies of members.

Against the Deportation Terror: Organizing for Immigrant Rights in the Twentieth Century, by Rachel Ida Buff

Despite being characterized as a “nation of immigrants,” the United States has seen a long history of immigrant rights struggles. In her timely book Against the Deportation Terror, Rachel Ida Buff uncovers this multiracial history. She traces the story of the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born (ACPFB) from its origins in the 1930s through repression during the early Cold War, to engagement with “new” Latinx and Caribbean immigrants in the 1970s and early 1980s. By tracing the work of the ACPFB and its allies over half a century, Against the Deportation Terror provides important historical precedent for contemporary immigrant rights organizing. Its lessons continue to resonate today.

On the Stump: Campaign Oratory and Democracy in the United States, Britain, and Australia, by Sean Scalmer

“Stumping,” or making political speeches in favor of a candidate, cause, or campaign has been around since before the 1800s, when speechmaking was frequently portrayed as delivered from the base of a tree. The practice, which has been strongly associated with the American frontier, British agitators, and colonial Australia, remains an effective component of contemporary democratic politics. In his engaging book On the Stump, Sean Scalmer provides the first comprehensive, transnational history of the “stump speech.” He traces the development and transformation of campaign oratory, as well as how national elections and public life and culture have been shaped by debate over the past century.

Sinking Chicago: Climate Change and the Remaking of a Flood-Prone Environment, by Harold L. Platt

In Sinking Chicago, Harold Platt shows how people responded to climate change in one American city over a hundred-and-fifty-year period. During a long dry spell before 1945, city residents lost sight of the connections between land use, flood control, and water quality. Then, a combination of suburban sprawl and a wet period of extreme weather events created damaging runoff surges that sank Chicago and contaminated drinking supplies with raw sewage. Chicagoans had to learn how to remake a city built on a prairie wetland. Sinking Chicago lays out a roadmap to future planning outcomes.

Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in “The Best Location in the Nation,” by J. Mark Souther

Souther explores Cleveland’s downtown revitalization efforts, its neighborhood renewal and restoration projects, and its fight against deindustrialization. He shows how the city reshaped its image when it was bolstered by sports team victories. But Cleveland was not always on the upswing. Souther places the city’s history in the postwar context when the city and metropolitan area were divided by uneven growth. In the 1970s, the city-suburb division was wider than ever.  Believing in Cleveland recounts the long, difficult history of a city that entered the postwar period as America’s sixth largest, then lost ground during a period of robust national growth.

Constructing the Patriarchal City: Gender and the Built Environments of London, Dublin, Toronto and Chicago, 1870s into the 1940s, by Maureen A. Flanagan

Constructing the Patriarchal City compares the ideas and activities of men and women in four English-speaking cities that shared similar ideological, professional, and political contexts. Historian Maureen Flanagan investigates how ideas about gender shaped the patriarchal city as men used their expertise in architecture, engineering, and planning to fashion a built environment for male economic enterprise and to confine women in the private home. Women consistently challenged men to produce a more equitable social infrastructure that included housing that would keep people inside the city, public toilets for women as well as men, housing for single, working women, and public spaces that were open and safe for all residents.

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Books to read in conjunction with the DNC

This week in North Philly Notes, in honor of the DNC, we showcase titles that relate to campaigns and elections.

Navigating Gendered Terrain: Stereotypes and Strategy in Political Campaigns by Kelly Dittmar

From the presidential level down, men and women who run for political office confront different electoral realities. Here Kelly Dittmar investigates not only how gender influences the campaign strategy and behavior of candidates today but also how candidates’ strategic and tactical decisions can influence the gendered nature of campaign institutions. Navigating Gendered Terrain addresses how gender is used to shape the way campaigns are waged by influencing insider perceptions of and decisions about effective campaign messages, images, and tactics within party and political contexts.

Rude Democracy:  Civility and Incivility in American Politics by Susan Herbst

Democracy is, by its very nature, often rude. But there are limits to how uncivil we should be. In this timely and important book, Susan Herbst explores how we discuss public policy, how we treat each other as we do, and how we can create a more civil national culture. Herbst contends that Americans must recognize the bad habits and trends we have developed, use new media for more effective debate, and develop a tougher and more strategic political skin. Rude Democracy outlines a plan for moving forward to create a more civil climate for American politics.

Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns by Charlton D. McIlwain and Stephen M. Caliendo

In our evolving American political culture, whites and blacks continue to respond very differently to race-based messages and the candidates who use them. Race Appeal examines the use and influence such appeals have on voters in elections for federal office in which one candidate is a member of a minority group. Charlton McIlwain and Stephen Caliendo use various analysis methods to examine candidates who play the race card in political advertisements. They offer a compelling analysis of the construction of verbal and visual racial appeals and how the news media covers campaigns involving candidates of color.

The Racial Logic of Politics: Asian Americans and Party Competition by Thomas P. Kim

Thomas Kim shows how racism is embedded in America’s two-party political system by examining the institutional barriers that Asian Americans face in the electoral and legislative processes. According to Kim, political party leaders recognize that Asian Americans are tagged with “ethnic markers” that label them as immutably “foreign,” and as such, parties cannot afford to be too closely associated with (racialized) Asian Americans, demonstrating how the political logic of two-party competition actually works against Asian American political interests.

Campaign Advertising and American Democracy by Michael M. Franz, Paul B. Freedman, Kenneth M. Goldstein and Travis N. Ridout

It has been estimated that more than three million political ads were televised leading up to the elections of 2004. More than $800,000,000 was spent on TV ads in the race for the White House alone and Presidential candidates, along with their party and interest group allies, broadcast over a million ads—more than twice the number aired before the 2000 elections. What were the consequences of this barrage of advertising? Were viewers turned off by political advertising to the extent that it dissuaded them from voting, as some critics suggest? Did they feel more connected to political issues and the political system or were they alienated? These are the questions this book answers, based on a unique, robust, and extensive database dedicated to political advertising.

Choices and Changes:  Interest Groups in the Electoral Process by Michael M. Franz

Choices and Changes is the most comprehensive examination to date of the impact of interest groups on recent American electoral politics. Richly informed, theoretically and empirically, it is the first book to explain the emergence of aggressive interest group electioneering tactics in the mid-1990s—including “soft money” contributions, issue ads, and “527s” (IRS-classified political organizations). The book substantially advances our understanding of the significance of interest groups in U.S. politics.

Public Financing in American Elections, edited by Costas Panagopoulos

Reformers argue that public financing of campaigns will help rescue American democracy from the corruptive influence of money in elections. Public Financing in American Elections evaluates this claim in an effort to remove the guesswork from the discussion about public finance. Featuring some of the most senior scholars in political science and electoral studies, this book provides an up-to-date treatment of research and thinking about public campaign finance reforms. Exploring proposals at the local, state, and federal levels, the contributors provide a comprehensive overview of public financing initiatives in the United States and an examination of their impact. Also included are focused analyses of various existing public programs.

Mandates, Parties, and Votes: How Elections Shape the Future by James H. Fowler and Oleg Smirnov

Most research on two-party elections has considered the outcome as a single, dichotomous event: either one or the other party wins. In this groundbreaking book, James Fowler and Oleg Smirnov investigate not just who wins, but by how much, and they marshal compelling evidence that mandates—in the form of margin of victory—matter. Using theoretical models, computer simulation, carefully designed experiments, and empirical data, the authors show that after an election the policy positions of both parties move in the direction preferred by the winning party—and they move even more if the victory is large. In addition, Fowler and Smirnov not only show that the divergence between the policy positions of the parties is greatest when the previous election was close, but also that policy positions are further influenced by electoral volatility and ideological polarization.

And forthcoming in September….

The Gendered Executive: A Comparative Analysis of Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Chief Executives edited by Janet M. Martin and MaryAnne Borrelli

Excluded from the ranks of elite executive decision-makers for generations, women are now exercising power as chiefs of government and chiefs of state. As of April 2016, 112 women in 73 countries have served as presidents or prime ministers.  The Gendered Executive is a critical examination of national executives, focusing on matters of identity, representation, and power. The editors and contributors to this volume address the impact of female executives through political mobilization and participation, policy- and decision-making, and institutional change. Other topics include party nomination processes, the intersectionality of race and gender, and women-centered U.S. foreign policy in southern Africa. In addition, case studies from Chile, India, Portugal, and the United States are presented, as are cross-national comparisons of women leaders in Latin America.

 

Taking a “Rashomon” approach to studying Pacific Rim politics

In this blog entry, Christian Collet, co-editor (with Pei-te Lien) of The Transnational Politics of Asian Americans, describes his approach to understanding contemporary dynamics of racial and ethnic politics.

Gaining perspective is perhaps the biggest challenge of writing — trying to find a point in time and a place in space in which one has enough clarity, confidence and judgment to articulate an idea.  As Akira Kurosawa’s brilliant Rashomon reminds us, even the simplest of events can have completely different meanings.  “Facts” are often dependent, literally, on where one is sitting.

I draw upon the experience of living in Saigon and near Little Saigon in Orange County, and the questions I have asked myself as an American political scientist living in the Asian Pacific, as a way to introduce the challenges of understanding the contemporary dynamics of racial and ethnic politics.  Pei-te Lien and I designed The Transnational Politics of Asian Americans not only to exorcise our own nagging questions, but to inspire others, particularly in political science, to think more about these problems of method – and how we can come to grips with the excitement and uncertainty of globalization.  Our concern is to not only shed light on the “foreign acts” we see in the news, but to put them in perspective – and bring students closer to them through perspectives that they may have yet to experience.

The challenge, as we describe in the introductory chapter, comes not just from being able to perceive transnational politics, but to capture it accurately and, once contained, to interpret its significance – to think about why it matters and the role it may be playing in Asian American incorporation.  That the volume attempts to marry 20th century history to 21st century anthropology, area studies to ethnic studies, surveys to participant observation should, if nothing else, convey our sense that politics is, in essence, a dynamic, Rashomon-like puzzle. Democracy in the Pacific Rim, we believe, may be open to many interpretations, but Asian Americans remain central players in the unfolding drama.

For more information about The Transnational Politics of Asian Americans, visit http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1980_reg.html