University Press Roundup
Welcome to our weekly roundup of the best posts from the blogs of academic publishers! As always, if you particularly enjoy something or think that we missed an important post, please let us know in the comments.
Wednesday, August 28th, marked the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, a pivotal event in the Civil Rights Movement in the US highlighted by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Naturally, there were many excellent blog posts written on the March this week in honor of the occasion. From the Square, the NYU Press blog, has been running a series of posts on the March all week, and Cynthia Taylor’s post on the oft-forgotten strategic planners of the March, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin is especially fascinating in light of the constant media focus on Dr. King. The Harvard University Press Blog has an excerpt from Johnathan Rieder’s The Word of the Lord is Upon Me that discusses the brilliance of Dr. King’s speech in directing an “intimate black voice” at white Americans. The OUPblog has a post collecting images from the March and quotes about the events and impact of what happened in Washington DC that day. And, finally, the Penn Press Log has an excerpt from from Thomas F. Jackson’s examination of the media reaction to the March in 1963 (“Journalists most consistently reported the violence that did not happen”).
On a more modern note, this week the Princeton University Press Blog continued its excellent series on the “moral and political issues surrounding Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks.” Rahul Sagar and Gabriella Coleman each have new articles responding to points raised in the debate.
The US is considering intervening in the situation in Syria (CUP authors have offered words of caution), and in the interest of providing a full background of the ongoing uprising the University of Minnesota Press Blog has provided an excerpt from Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto’s essay “Syria,” which appears in Dispatches from the Arab Spring, and which shows the deep roots of the conflict.
At fifteeneightyfour, the blog of Cambridge University Press, Dr. Robin Hesketh has a guest post looking back at The Human Genome Project and the incredible successes that have resulted from the successful completion of the project ten years ago.
What were textbooks like back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? An Akronism, the blog of the University of Akron Press, has a post looking back at some texts that are somewhat less than essential to today’s students. Optical Projection: A Treatise on the Use of the Lantern in Exhibition and Scientific Demonstration is our favorite.
The new leader of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, made waves when he claimed he would “travel the road to ‘moderation.'” At the University of Virginia Press blog, R. K. Ramazani examines Rouhani’s speech and it’s potential meanings, and discusses the future of Iranian foreign policy.
Looking for a few tips to help deal with a child’s first year of college? The Chicago Blog has you covered! They’ve come up some “simple, real world-based advice to settle the nerves” of the parents of college students. For instance, “don’t remodel their room—yet.”
Fish that produce electric discharges are fascinating creatures, and it’s only in recent years that scientists have begun to truly understand the complex nature of the “electric sense.” At the JHU Press blog, William J. Turkel has a guest post in the JHU Wild Thing series discussing the slow process by which we have come to learn more about the electric worlds of fish.
Finally, as football season is just beginning in earnest, we’ll end with a Q&A with Dean Bartoli Smith on North Philly Notes, the blog of Temple University Press, about being a football fan, and about the difficulties of transferring his love of the Baltimore Colts to the new Baltimore Ravens.
Thanks again for reading this week’s roundup! Have a great weekend, and leave any thoughts in the comments!
