May 27, 2021

Asian and American/Asian or American: Predicament and Possibilities of Being an Asian American

By Vishakha N. Desai

The first time I personally identified with the term Asian American was in 1993, when I had the opportunity to organize the first major exhibition of Asian American art exploring the issues of multicultural identities at the Asia Society, Asia/America:...

May 20, 2021

Announcing the Columbia University Press Fall 2021 Catalog

 Dear Readers, As we cautiously look forward to emerging from the pandemic, the books announced in this season’s catalog help us take stock of what we have learned and provide guidance on what might be next. The Wuhan Lockdown...

May 13, 2021

Q&A: Minae Mizumura on An I-Novel

Minae Mizumura is one of Japan’s most respected novelists. Published in 1995, her An I-Novel— a semi-autobiographical work that takes place over the course of a single day in the 1980s—radically broke with Japanese literary tradition. In this Q&A, Mizumura...

May 12, 2021

Eight or Nine Things to Know About Universities and Their Media

By Reinhold Martin

Ever since Pliny the Elder included a table of contents in his thirty-seven-volume Natural History as a shortcut for Vespasian Caesar, to whom that work was dedicated, the device has proved invaluable to readers with even less time on their...

May 9, 2021

Now More Than Ever, We Must Listen to Mothers’ Plight

By Shani Orgad

A variety of data shows that COVID-19 has had a catastrophic effect on women’s employment, and that it has been particularly punitive for mothers’ paid labor. Millions of mothers, in the United States and elsewhere, have been forced to cut...

May 5, 2021

Q&A: Robert Radin on Teaching English to Refugees

Robert Radin is the director of citizenship and immigration services at a prominent social-service agency in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in various publications and has been recognized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Essays. In...

May 1, 2021

Columbia University Press Honors Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month

Columbia University Press has published in the fields of Asian humanities and social sciences for many decades. Our list had its start in the late 1950s as part of a joint effort with Columbia University’s Department of East Asian Languages...

April 23, 2021

Jennifer Clark on Uneven Innovation and Receiving the Urban Affairs Association Best Book Award

When I heard the news that Uneven Innovation: The Work of Smart Cities had won the 2021 Urban Affairs Association Best Book Award I reflected on how much the book complements UAA’s own goals and mission as an interdisciplinary organization,...

April 22, 2021

“You Aren’t the Center, but the Radius”

Irina Shevelenko on Maria Stepanova’s Kireevsky, with translations by Eugene Ostashevsky

“The chill of having no place […] is the only thing that gives poetry a chance not to participate in the parade of general achievements, not to wind up as a passkey that opens the doors for a third-party, external...

April 21, 2021

Q&A: Aaron Passell on Preserving Neighborhoods

Preserving Neighborhoods: How Urban Policy and Community Strategy Shape Baltimore and Brooklyn offers a close examination of the different ways that community activists and local governments in Baltimore and Brooklyn use historic preservation as a way of controlling neighborhood change....

April 20, 2021

Browse Our UAA 2021 Virtual Exhibit Booth with Lowell Frye

Hello, and welcome to Columbia University Press’s virtual booth for the 2021 Urban Affairs Association Annual Meeting! My name is Lowell Frye and I’m an associate editor here at the press, acquiring books in urban studies. This is the second...

April 14, 2021

Race and the History of Capitalism

By Destin Jenkins and Justin C. Leroy

In 1983, Cedric J. Robinson popularized the term “racial capitalism,” referring to the way that the violent dispossessions inherent to capital accumulation operate by creating, leveraging, and intensifying racial distinctions. But he did not invent the term. It first cohered...