University Press Week 2015 Blog Tour Roundup, Day 4

The 2015 University Press Week blog tour is off to a great start, with more presses participating than ever before! As in previous years, a theme is selected for each weekday and various university presses sign up to post on the theme of their choice (catch up with our earlier roundups: days one and two and day three). Today’s theme is one that has been popular each year on the UP Week blog tour: #TBT (Throwback Thursday)!

Over at the University of Chicago blog, we get a punctuated history of publishing from UChicago Press, starting with its days as a printer in 1890 and leaping to its digital revolution in 1991, the year the PDF was established!

The University of Manitoba Press grounds its #tbt in place, that is the Canadian prairies north of the Dakotas. Their office searched through file cabinets and cupboards to produce snapshots of first books published in their series–Iceland, Native History, Studies in Immigration and Culture, among others. They also uncovered an unsearchable title, from their Publications of the Algonquian Text Society series: wâskahikaniwiyiniw-âcimowina Stories of the House People, edited and translated by Freda Ahenakew.

How have academic journal covers evolved through the years? University of Toronto gives us something old and something new.

Duke University Press blog similarly highlights its most surprising journal issue covers from the past several years. Highlights include Social Atlantic Quarterly’s “Racial Americana” issue as well as Transgender Studies Quarterly’s “Tranimalities” issue.

University of Texas Press spotlights photographer Mark Cohen’s street images on their blog, harkening to a time before Instagram. Author of Frame, Cohen shares six short written pieces about his iconic street photographs taken and developed in 1970s Pennsylvania.

University of Minnesota Press features a massive, detailed timeline of Publishers and their founding dates in infographic form. Fun fact: We, Columbia University Press, share our birth year of 1893 with University of California and Northwestern.

Project Muse, founded in 1995, includes a year by year roundup of university press digital content on its blog. Useful for gaining a quick view of significant journal articles and books.

The University Press of Kansas blog checks in to the significance of this day in 1999 when “President Bill Clinton signed a sweeping measure knocking down Depression-era barriers and allowing banks, investment firms and insurance companies to sell each other’s product.” They tie it to a forthcoming UPK book by Patrick Maney Bill Clinton: New Gilded Age President.

Lastly, Fordham University Press shares a fascinating post on subway history by Joseph Raskin, author of The Routes Not Taken, on New York City’s unbuilt subway system. Were there ever plans for an uptown crosstown subway or more subway lines in Brooklyn? Look at the post to find out. Raskin gives an erudite overview of why subway plans were ended–the reasons range from budgetary issues, the Great Depression, to political factors. Also, did you know? The G line was originally proposed as an elevated line in the 1870s!