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. (And look back at our University Press Roundup Manifesto to see why we do this post every Friday.)

March Madness is already in full swing, and while it may be too late to submit your bracket for this year’s tournament, a post on using math in making bracket picks by Liana Valentino on the Princeton University Press Blog is great tournament reading regardless.

Speaking of March Madness, at From the Square, the blog of NYU Press, Stanley I. Thangaraj contemplates what the NCAA Tournament, our tendency to celebrate both athletes and coaches, and the structure of the NCAA as an organization tell us about American society in general.

Tuesday, March 17, was, of course, St. Patrick’s Day. At the UNC Press Blog, Cian T. McMahon discusses the phenomenon of Irish transnationalism and how St. Patrick’s Day is observed around the world.

“[D]o the dead victims of atrocity have human rights?” At the Stanford University Press Blog, Adam Rosenblatt explains how this complex question led him to see the tension between theory and practice in the human rights field in a whole new light.

Following the terrible Ebola outbreak in western Africa in late 2013 and early 2014, “[t]he U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimate[d] that earlier intervention could have prevented the disease’s spread, leaving fewer than 5,000 people dead.” At the JHU Press Blog, Sara E. Davies looks in detail at the performance of the World Health Organization (WHO) in responding to the crisis.

At the OUPblog, Michael Newton examines the interesting mix of terrifying and saccharine stories present in the fairy tale genre. As the editor of an anthology of Victorian fairy tales, he notes that that mix was as present in the nineteenth century as it is today.

Rice is one of the most popular and widely eaten foods in the world. Fifteeneightyfour, the blog of Cambridge University Press, has a great post up about the long history of rice planting and eating around the world.

What is Carnaval, and what does it mean to the city of Rio de Janeiro? In a guest post at North Philly Notes, the blog of Temple University Press, Philip Evanson digs into the celebration and culture of the famous celebration.

At Island Press Field Notes, Ann Kinzig and Emil H. Frankel make the case that we need to improve our infrastructure, and, perhaps more importantly, that any new infrastructure construction must be done with the knowledge that “[s]hocks and surprises are coming, and we need to build systems that can weather them.”

Finally, at the University of Minnesota Press blog, Karen Babine discusses whether Minnesota should be talked about as being in the Midwest or the North. Along the way, she also delves into how the ways that we talk about place and group areas together matter.

Thanks for reading! As always, we hope that you enjoyed the links. Please let us know what you think in the comments!