February 28, 2019

Lance Freeman on the History of the Ghetto in Black America

“Ghettos, which conjure up images of abandoned buildings, crime, and decay, would hardly seem to be something to celebrate in the original spirit of Woodson’s Negro History week. But whatever the popular stereotypes, ghettos were and continue to be more...

February 27, 2019

Jon N. Hale On The Mississippi Freedom Schools—An Ongoing Lesson in Justice Through Education

In today’s Black History month post, Jon N. Hale, author of The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement discusses the ongoing impact of Freedom Schools, which arose in the South as part of the Civil Rights Movement in the...

February 26, 2019

New Book Tuesday! Buying Gay, Media Persuasion in the Islamic State, New Authoritarianism And More!

Our list of new books is now available! Buying Gay How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement David K. Johnson Media Persuasion in the Islamic State Neil Krishan Aggarwal The Book of Lord Shang Apologetics of State Power in Early China,...

February 21, 2019

Book Excerpt! Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature, by Gayle Rogers

“By de-coupling their translational practices from the national literary traditions and imperial teleologies they were supposed to express and reflect, the writers analyzed in Incomparable Empires carved out creative spaces that radically reconfigured U.S. and Spanish literatures. Rogers’s brilliantly contextualized...

February 20, 2019

Gayle Rogers Recasts Langston Hughes as the Reporter-Translator of the Modern Black Experience

We’re continuing our celebration of Black History Month with this guest post by Gayle Rogers, author of Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature. In this post, he discusses complicated American author Langston Hughes’ dilemma in...

February 19, 2019

New Book Tuesday! Nonbinary, Scream, Doing Democracy Differently, And More!

Our list of new books is now available! Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity Edited by Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane University of Tokyo Press History of Art in Japan Tsuji Nobuo. Translated by Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere Barbara Budrich Publishers...

February 14, 2019

Book Excerpt! Eric Walrond: A Life in the Harlem Renaissance and the Transatlantic Caribbean, by James Davis (introduction)

“A great read, even for readers who do not know about the Harlem Renaissance and Eric Walrond. The book tells a fascinating and moving story of a literary talent’s demise, or what it takes to nurture and support the literary...

February 13, 2019

James Davis on the History of the Blackface Performance

This week we’re celebrating Black History Month with this guest post by James Davis, author of Eric Walrond: A Life in the Harlem Renaissance and the Transatlantic Caribbean.  In this post, he discusses the blackface performance. Enter our drawing for a chance to...

February 12, 2019

New Book Tuesday! Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret, A Year Without Winter, and more!

Our list of new books is now available! Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies Hunter Vaughan New in Paper! The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought Cemil Aydin...

February 11, 2019

In Memory of Joseph Buttigieg, Translator of the Complete Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci

  Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame “But to my mind his life’s work was as a Gramsci scholar; he was selflessly devoted to bringing into English the wide-ranging, influential, and absorbing writings of an extraordinary intellectual of the...

February 8, 2019

Book Excerpt! Poetry and Animals, by Onno Oerlemans (introduction)

“Oerlemans interrogates how poetry, as a specific form of writing, “reveals tendrils of meaning about animals that other kinds of writing and thinking do not.” His astonishing close readings of choice examples illuminate how poetry sustains a productive ambiguity and...

February 7, 2019

Marian Schwartz On Translating the Title of The Man Who Couldn’t Die

Today’s #TranslationThursday post comes to us from Marian Schwartz, who translated Olga Slavnikova’s The Man Who Couldn’t Die: The Tale of an Authentic Human Being. In this piece, Schwartz discusses the literary aspects she considered in translating the title from Russian to English. •  • ...