University Press Roundup

Welcome to our weekly roundup of the best articles 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. (Unfortunate note: while we were researching and writing this post, Typepad blogs were not loading, so we weren’t able to include them in the roundup this week.)

April is National Poetry Month, and many university press blogs have been putting up poetry posts in honor of the occasion. This week, the JHU Press Blog posted Daniel Anderson’s “Easter Sundays,” along with a quick explanation of the poem written by Anderson. Wake: Up to Poetry, the blog of Wake Forest University Press, continued their Poem of the Day series, including “Hotel,” by Medbh McGuckian.

At fifteeneightyfour, the blog of Cambridge University Press, Shaun Lovejoy argues that new studies have shown that the IPCC report is right that it is “extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” Lovejoy rejects the idea that the warming climate is caused by natural temperature fluctuations, and explains the methods used in the new study.

The MIT Press Blog ran a fascinating interview with Fox Harrell this week in which Harrell discusses his use of the cognitive science term “phantasm” (“a combination of imagery (mental or sensory) and ideas”) and argues that the media can create and use cultural phantasms, phantasms based on a shared worldview, to both oppress and empower.

One of the most famous clashes between proponents of creationism and evolution was the 1925 Scopes trial, in which John Scopes, a teacher in Tennessee, was accused of having taught evolution in a state-funded school. At the UNC Press Blog, Angie Maxwell looks back at the trial and argues that many of the same battles that were fought in the Scopes trial are still being fought today.

The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park is one of the most popular ecological success stories. Writing at IP Field Notes, Cristina Eisenberg claims that what we’ve learned from that episode and from Aldo Leopold’s game surveys of the 1940s is that ecological systems are unbelievably complex, and that acting quickly to preserve any and all species we can, including large predators, is hugely important to the health of our ecosystems.

The University of Minnesota Press Blog is continuing it’s series of posts on the ASA’s academic boycott of Israel. This week, Steven Salaita argues that the boycott is careful to distinguish between Israeli institutions and individuals, so as to avoid limiting the academic freedom of any Israeli scholar while still advocating for the rights of Palestinian scholars.

Annette Lu Hsiu-lien is a Taiwanese politician, Vice President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 2000 to 2008, who has led “drives for gender equality, human rights, political reform, Taiwan’s independence, and, currently, environmental protection.” This week, the University of Washington Press Blog posted an excerpt from Lu’s memoir, My Fight For a New Taiwan, in which she discusses her journey from a military courtroom to her election as Vice President.

The role of lexicographers in the evolution of languages is one that is often overlooked, but one that can often be of crucial importance. At the OUPblog, Anatoly Liberman looks at one such overlooked figure: Henry Bradley, a head of of the OED in the early twentieth century. In particular, Liberman is interested in Bradley’s views on Simplified Spelling, whose proponents argued that phonetic spelling should be adopted for English.

Salvador, capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia, is a city that is highly dependent on tourism. As Erica Lorraine Williams claims in a Q&A at the University of Illinois Press Blog, sex tourism is “woven into the fabric of cultural tourism” in Salvador. In the lead-up to the World Cup in Brazil this summer, Williams believes that sex trafficking and sex tourism will become major issues for Salvador.

Thanks again for reading this week’s roundup! Have a great weekend, and leave any thoughts in the comments!