Columbia University Press Blog - Publishing a universe of knowledge for readers worldwide

July 6, 2009

The African Diaspora as a Perspective on the World — A Post by Patrick Manning

The following post by Patrick Manning, author of The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture, originally appeared on the History News Network. When I agreed in 1990 to write a history of the African diaspora, I found it an exciting...

July 2, 2009

Stephen Cohen on GRITtv with Laura Flanders

With Obama’s scheduled trip to Russia next week, talk has once again turned to the future of U.S.-Russian relations. In his interview with Laura Flanders on GRITtv, Stephen Cohen, author of Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the...

July 2, 2009

Kindle & The Future of Print Journalism — A Post by Ted Striphas

The following post is from Ted Striphas, author of The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control. The post originally appeared on his blog The Late Age of Print. As someone who writes about the future...

July 1, 2009

“Green Dam” as a Case of Online Activism in China

The following is a post by Guobin Yang, author of The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online. According to a directive first issued by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on May 19, 2009, July 1...

July 1, 2009

Celebrate the Fourth with Hubert Harrison

The coming Fourth of July weekend will no doubt offer up the familiar American images of cookouts and fireworks as well as tributes to former presidents and the founders of the country. However, for those interested in more obscure but...

June 30, 2009

Shakespeare in China

In his new book Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange, Alexander Huang examines “the transnational imaginary of China in Shakespearean performance and Shakespeare’s place in Chinese cultural history from the first Opium War in 1839 to our times.” Huang...

June 29, 2009

Human Trafficking Report / Siddharth Kara

Earlier this month, the State Department released its annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which assesses more than 170 countries on what efforts their governments are taking to stop human trafficking. The release of the report was reported on the Foreign...

June 25, 2009

Guobin Yang on Online Activism in China and Iran

In a recent article on Yale Global Online, Guobin Yang, author of the recently published The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online, examines the similarities and differences among Internet activists in Iran and China. While Iranian protesters...

June 24, 2009

Iran: This Is Not a Revolution, by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

In an essay for the Monthly Review Web site MRZine, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, author of Iran in World Politics: The Question of the Islamic Republic, argues that what we are witnessing in Iran is not a revolution so much as a...

June 23, 2009

Richard Bulliet on Iran

Prominent Middle Eastern historian Richard Bulliet, author of the just-published Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History, recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on the crisis in Iran. In the op-ed,...

June 22, 2009

Interview with Charles Hirschkind, Author of The Ethical Soundscape

In The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (now available in paper), Charles Hirschkind explores how a popular Islamic media form—the cassette sermon—has profoundly transformed the political geography of the Middle East over the last three decades. The following...