Celebrating Women’s History Month

Posted on March 2, 2022 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we celebrate Women’s History Month. Use promo code TWHM22 for 30% off all our Women’s Studies titles. Sale ends March 31, 2022.

New Titles

Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration, by Rachel Schreiber, recounts the remarkable story of a Jewish activist who joined her incarcerated Japanese American husband and son in an American concentration camp.

Are You Two Sisters: The Journey of a Lesbian Couple, by Susan Krieger, authored by one of the most respected figures in the field of personal ethnographic narrative, this book serves as both a memoir and a sociological study, telling the story of one lesbian couple’s lifelong journey together.

From our Backlist:

Anna May Wong: Performing the Modern, by Shirley Jennifer Lim, shows how Anna May Wong’s work shaped racial modernity and made her one of the most significant actresses of the twentieth century.

The Cost of Being a Girl: Working Teens and the Origins of the Gender Wage Gap, by Yasemin Besen-Cassino, traces the origins of the gender wage gap to part-time teenage work, which sets up a dynamic that persists into adulthood.

Feminist Post-Liberalism, by Judith Baer, reconciles liberalism and feminist theory.

Feminist Reflections on Childhood: A History and Call to Action, by Penny A. Weiss, recovers a history of feminist thought and activism that demands greater voice and respect for young people.

Good Reasons to Run: Women and Political Candidacy, edited by Shauna L. Shames, Rachel I. Bernhard, Mirya R. Holman, and Dawn Langan Teele, how and why women run for office.

Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America, by Jean Elson, a fascinating story of the troubled marriage and acrimonious divorce of Nina and James Walker elucidates early twentieth-century gender and family mores.

Motherlands: How States Push Mothers Out of Employment, by Leah Ruppanner challenges preconceived notions of the states that support working mothers.

Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara, edited by Linda Janet Holmes and Cheryl A. Wall, an anthology that celebrates the life and work of a major African American writer.

Their Day in the Sun: Women in the Manhattan Project, by Ruth H. Howes and Caroline C. Herzenberg, tells the hidden story of the contribution of women in the effort to develop the atomic bomb.

Undermining Intersectionality: The Perils of Powerblind Feminism, by Barbara Tomlinson, a sustained critique of the ways in which scholars have engaged with and deployed intersectionality.

Women Take Their Place in State Legislature: The Creation of Women’s Caucuses, by Anna Mitchell Mahoney, investigates the opportunities, resources, and frames that women utilize to create legislative caucuses.

Women’s Empowerment and Disempowerment in Brazil: The Rise and Fall of President Dilma Rousseff, by Pedro A.G. dos Santos and Farida Jalalzai, explains what the rise and fall of Brazil’s first and only female president can teach us about women’s empowerment.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, Anthropology, art, asian american studies, Asian Studies, civil rights, cultural studies, Disability Studies, drama, economics/business, Education, environment, ethics, gender studies, health, History, immigration, Jewish, Labor Studies, Latin American studies, latinos, law & criminology, LGBT studies, literature, Mass Media and Communications, Philadelphia, philosophy, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, Religion, sexuality, sociology, transnational politics, Urban Studies, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Celebrating Temple University Press Books at the Urban Affairs Association conference

Posted on April 24, 2019 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we spotlight our new Urban Studies titles, which will be on display at the Urban Affairs Association conference, April 24-27 in Los Angeles, CA.

On April 25, at 3:30 pm, Latino Mayors, edited by Marion Orr and Domingo Morel, will be the subject of a panel discussion.

On April 26, at 2:05 pm, Alan Curtis, co-editor of Healing Our Divided Society, will participate in a presentation entitled, The Kerner Commission 50 Years Later. 

Temple University Press titles in Urban Studies for 2018-2019

Architectures of Revolt: The Cinematic City circa 1968, edited by Mark Shiel
Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the worldwide mass protest movements of 1968—against war, imperialism, racism, poverty, misogyny, and homophobia—the exciting anthology Architectures of Revolt explores the degree to which the real events of political revolt in the urban landscape in 1968 drove change in the attitudes and practices of filmmakers and architects alike.

Constructing the Patriarchal City: Gender and the Built Environments of London, Dublin, Toronto, and Chicago, 1870s into the 1940s, by Maureen A. Flanagan
Constructing the Patriarchal City compares the ideas and activities of men and women in four English-speaking cities that shared similar ideological, professional, and political contexts. Historian Maureen Flanagan investigates how ideas about gender shaped
the patriarchal city as men used their expertise in architecture, engineering, and planning to fashion a built environment for male economic enterprise and to confine women in the private home. Women consistently challenged men to produce a more
equitable social infrastructure that included housing that would keep people inside the city, public toilets for women as well as men, housing for single, working women, and public spaces that were open and safe for all residents.

Contested Image: Defining Philadelphia for the Twenty-First Century, by Laura M. Holzman
Laura Holzman investigates the negotiations and spirited debates that affected the city of Philadelphia’s identity and its public image. She considers how the region’s cultural resources reshaped the city’s reputation as well as delves into discussions about official efforts to boost local spirit. In tracking these “contested images,” Holzman illuminates the messy process of public envisioning of place and the ways in which public dialogue informs public meaning of both cities themselves and the objects of urban identity.

Courting the Community: Legitimacy and Punishment in a Community Court, by
Christine Zozula
Courting the Community is a fascinating ethnography that goes behind the scenes to explore how quality-of-life discourses are translated into court practices that marry therapeutic and rehabilitative ideas. Christine Zozula shows how residents and businesses participate in meting out justice—such as through community service, treatment, or other sanctions—making it more emotional, less detached, and more legitimate in the eyes of stakeholders. She also examines both “impact panels,” in which offenders, residents, and business owners meet to discuss how quality-of-life crimes negatively impact the neighborhood, as well as strategic neighborhood outreach efforts to update residents on cases and gauge their concerns.

Daily Labors: Marketing Identity and Bodies on a New York City Street Corner, by Carolyn Pinedo-Turnovsky
Daily Labors reveals how ideologies about race, gender, nation, and legal status operate on the corner and the vulnerabilities, discrimination, and exploitation workers face in this labor market. Pinedo-Turnovsky shows how workers market themselves to conform to employers’ preconceptions of a “good worker” and how this performance paradoxically leads to a more precarious workplace experience. Ultimately, she sheds light on belonging, community, and what a “good day laborer” for these workers really is.

Democratizing Urban Development: Community Organizations for Housing across the United States and Brazil, by Maureen M. Donaghy
Rising housing costs put secure and decent housing in central urban neighborhoods in peril. How do civil society organizations (CSOs) effectively demand accountability from the state to address the needs of low-income residents? In her groundbreaking book, Democratizing Urban Development, Maureen Donaghy charts the constraints and potential opportunities facing these community organizations. She assesses the various strategies CSOs engage to influence officials and ensure access to affordable housing through policies, programs, and institutions.

Ecohumanism and the Ecological Culture: The Educational Legacy of Lewis
Mumford and Ian McHarg, by William J. Cohen, With a Foreword by
Frederick R. Steiner
Lewis Mumford, one of the most respected public intellectuals of the twentieth century, speaking at a conference on the future environments of North America, said, “In order to
secure human survival we must transition from a technological culture to an ecological culture.” In Ecohumanism and the Ecological Culture, William Cohen shows how  Mumford’s conception of an educational philosophy was enacted by Mumford’s
mentee, Ian McHarg, the renowned landscape architect and regional planner at the University of Pennsylvania. McHarg advanced a new way to achieve an ecological culture through an educational curriculum based on fusing ecohumanism to the planning and design disciplines.

Healing Our Divided Society: Investing in America Fifty Years after the Kerner Report, edited by Fred Harris and Alan Curtis
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice, 2018

In Healing Our Divided Society, Fred Harris, the last surviving member of the Kerner Commission, along with Eisenhower Foundation CEO Alan Curtis, re-examine fifty years later the work still necessary towards the goals set forth in The Kerner Report. This timely volume unites the interests of minorities and white working- and middle-class Americans to propose a strategy to reduce poverty, inequality, and racial injustice. Reflecting on America’s urban climate today, this new report sets forth evidence-based
policies concerning employment, education, housing, neighborhood development, and criminal justice based on what has been proven to work—and not work.

Latino Mayors:  Political Change in the Postindustrial City, edited by Marion Orr and Domingo Morel
As recently as the early 1960s, Latinos were almost totally excluded from city politics. This makes the rise of Latino mayors in the past three decades a remarkable American story—one that explains ethnic succession, changing urban demography, and political contexts. The vibrant collection Latino Mayors features case studies of eleven Latino mayors in six American cities: San Antonio, Los Angeles, Denver, Hartford, Miami, and Providence.

Painting Publics: Transnational Legal Graffiti Scenes as Spaces for Encounter, by
Caitlin Frances Bruce
Public art is a form of communication that enables spaces for encounters across difference. These encounters may be routine, repeated, or rare, but all take place in urban spaces infused with emotion, creativity, and experimentation. In Painting Publics,
Caitlin Bruce explores how various legal graffiti scenes across the United States, Mexico, and Europe provide diverse ways for artists to navigate their changing relationships with publics, institutions, and commercial entities.

Filed under: american studies, Anthropology, art, civil rights, cultural studies, environment, gender studies, History, immigration, Labor Studies, Latin American studies, latinos, law & criminology, Mass Media and Communications, Philadelphia, philosophy, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology, Urban Studies, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Exploring the nuances of race and racialization in the United States

Posted on July 26, 2017 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Diana Pan, author of Incidental Racialization writes about race, inequality, and professional socialization of Asian Americans and Latinos in law school.

Mention “race” in a conversation, and two things often come to mind: the history and current social experiences of black Americans, and the image of poor, urban communities. With regard to the first imagery, common topics might include the black Civil Rights Movement (there were in fact, other race-based civil rights movements as well), residential segregation, Black Lives Matter, and a host of topics perhaps learned in high school classrooms, or gleaned from mainstream media. Rarely do we consider how race matters for nonwhite racialized groups whose histories are not represented in standard curricula, and who are rendered invisible in conversations about race in America. Further, many Americans assume that if nonwhite individuals enter mainstream professions and interact with more white Americans, race would no longer be a heightened concern. The experiences of nonwhite Americans, across the socioeconomic spectrum, do not support this assumption.

Incidental Racialization engages the nuances of race and racialization in the United States. The purpose of this book is to:

  • explore how race matters in professional socialization
  • give voice to those racialized groups – Asian Americans and Latinos – who are often underrepresented in discourse on racial inequality
  • complicate understandings of inequalities that are sustained among elites.

I contend that we, as a society, cannot truly understand inequalities if we do not interrogate how they differ within and between social strata. Studying “up” (i.e. elites) then provides an opportunity to disrupt the “one size fits all” trope of economic success diminishing racial inequality. It also permits a lens to understand the various ways that racialization happens alongside professional socialization.

Incidental Racialization_smPerhaps not surprising, but certainly revealing, law school rank appears to influence how students talk about their racialized experiences. While students at the two law schools studied shared stories of race-based discrimination, or race-based interactions, the rhetoric used was different. For example, students from the lower-ranked law school frequently recount particular discrete treatment that made them feel like second class citizens or racial “others.” Yet, these lower-tier law students provide excuses for this same treatment. In a way, they appeared to rationalize race-based experiences in law school. This differed from the narrative provided by students at the elite law school. They were more affirmative about race-based discrimination, and recounted their experiences in the context of institutionalized cultures and norms. Privilege, in the relative prestige of the law school attended, seems to equip nonwhite law students with stratified language to convey and navigate their own racialization.

Studying social inequalities can take many forms, and Incidental Racialization demonstrates just one axis of intersection. The next step is to understand how racialization translates into the world of work. In other words, how does race matter for lawyers? In what ways is racialization sustained? And, what are the implications? Perhaps of note are the findings in a recently released report, A Portrait of Asian Americans in the Law, that while Asian Americans are the largest nonwhite group in major law firms, they have the highest attrition rates, and attain partnership at the lowest rate. There is a clear leak in the pipeline, and the question begs: how might racialization be a part of the problem?

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, asian american studies, Asian Studies, civil rights, cultural studies, Education, ethics, gender studies, immigration, Labor Studies, Latin American studies, latinos, law & criminology, Mass Media and Communications, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Terrorizing Latina/o Immigrants

Posted on October 28, 2015 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Anna Sampaio, author of Terrorizing Latina/o Immigrants, writes about sanctuary cities and immigration enforcement policies that continue to discriminate against foreigners.

Congress is once again embroiled in a debate about security and safety that trades on racialized fears of Latina/o immigrants, constructing them as criminal threats ready to take advantage of the generosity of “sanctuary cities” and calling upon an army of local law enforcement to aid in their restriction, detention and removal. In addition to being wholly manufactured, these debates around security and threatening foreigners plays to the worst instances of racism and allows for an entire population to be summarily targeted without justification. Moreover, the new legislation banning so-called “sanctuary cities” extends a pattern of restriction and punishment aimed at Latina/o immigrants to cities, states, and local governments that refuse to conform – locations such as San Francisco that have the audacity to uphold constitutional protections, due process, and the safety of all its residents.

Lost in the conservative fervor surrounding the new sanctuary city legislation is the volume of existing legislation, policies, departmental directives, programs, initiatives, task forces, databases, regional and local associations, vigilante groups along with a myriad of federal, state, and local departments devoted almost entirely to targeting, scrutinizing, restricting, encumbering, detaining and ultimately removing the population of immigrants at the center of the sanctuary city debate. In other words, immigration politics and policy has been steadily reorganized and restructured over the past 25 years into a system centered disproportionately around restriction and enforcement.

Terrorizing Latina_o Immigrants_smBeginning in the early 1990s, with the shift in enforcement strategies emphasizing “concentrated enforcement” along the U.S.-Mexico border – restrictionists in Congress buoyed by anti-immigrant hysteria dedicated unprecedented resources and money to targeting, detaining and removing undocumented immigrants. This included large scale increases in border patrol agents and increased time spent on border control activities, installation of fencing and physical barriers, and use of advanced surveillance equipment such as sensors and video equipment, infrared night-vision devices, forward–looking infrared systems, and drones. By 1996, efforts to deter undocumented immigrants through programs such as Operation Gatekeeper had effectively militarized the border while worksite raids resurfaced across the country. Moreover, the budget for INS doubled between 1993-1997, from $400 million to $800 million.

This dedication of unprecedented resources, time, and money toward restricting largely Mexican immigrants was succeeded by an era of enforcement, fed by a host of anti-immigrant legislation in the late 1990s that was accelerated in the era of security after 9/11. Anti-immigrant legislation proliferated in the late 1990s most notably with the passage of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). Together, these laws increased scrutiny of immigrants, increased penalties for unlawful presence, severely restrained judicial review and due process, facilitated increased detentions and deportations, and created a system to expand immigration enforcement by deputizing local law enforcement as immigration agents. This union of local and federal immigration agents facilitated through the creation of 287 (g) agreements “permitting designated officers to perform immigration law enforcement functions,” eroded the standards for separation between these law enforcement agencies enabling increasing entanglements such as Operation Return to Sender, the Secure Communities Program, fusion centers, the proliferation of Fugitive Operation teams carrying out large scale raids and round-ups.  Despite evidence of widespread racial profiling, insufficient oversight from the federal government, inadequate training, and incidents of abuse designed in some cases to “purge towns and cities of ‘unwelcome’ immigrants…resulting in the harassment of citizens and isolation of the Hispanic community” these collaborations between federal immigration enforcement agents and local law enforcement only proliferated after 9/11 as did the targeting and terrorizing of Latina/o immigrants.

Thus, between 2001-2009 over 2000 immigration related bills were introduced into Congress with the vast preponderance of those signed into law restricting immigrants and the most common and consistent restrictions resulting from expansions of  law enforcement scrutiny made possible through the empowerment (or extension of capacity) of local and state level law enforcement to execute greater levels of investigation, review, apprehension, and/or cooperation on immigration matters.

After 9/11 this process of deputizing local law enforcement to act as immigration agents, gained renewed vigor as additional memoranda of understanding were crafted between federal agencies and local law enforcement, and state and local personnel were granted security clearances required to access secured information in federal databases. With the creation of the Secured Communities Program in 2008 state, local and even tribal law enforcement agents had become thoroughly intertwined with federal immigration enforcement and consequently the number of immigrant detentions and deportations skyrocketed. Constructed as threats to national security, immigrants were now exposed to arrest and in several cases extended detention for even minor infractions of local ordinances, and increasing deportation. Between 1999 and 2007, immigrant detentions increased by 78%; more importantly, many of those deported committed no actual crimes or only minor infractions that were elevated to deportable offenses within the changes in legislation.

Latina/o immigrants overwhelmingly bore the brunt of this system of security and enforcement as they constituted the largest percentage of foreign born persons but equally because the new legislation and policies rested on the manipulation of racialized fears of this population as foreign and threatening. This despite the fact that among the millions of Latina/o immigrants apprehended, detained and/or deported in this era of security, and despite claims to increasing public safety, no evidence of terrorist activity or threats to homeland security has been found among those apprehended. Moreover, despite Trump’s description of Mexican immigrants specifically as “criminals and rapists” the reality is that immigration has become increasingly feminized and costs of a system focused on enforcement, detention and deportation has been felt in additional women, parents, and children being incarcerated or separated.

Thus, as Congress and individual states once again debate enforcement and greater security against alleged criminal threats posed by Latina/o immigrants we are well served to remember the billions of federal, state and local dollars, time and resources already spent on scrutinizing, restricting, detaining and removing a population that poses no actual threat. In particular, the extension of immigration enforcement to local police and sheriff officers has not increased public safety or security, has not rooted out terrorist associations or abated homeland security risks, but has succeed in terrorizing a population already made vulnerable by the current immigration system. Moreover, heightened scrutiny has generated increasing numbers of detentions, (including indefinite detentions), deportations, raids in immigrant communities, criminalization of legitimate expressive activity, denial of basic services, rising fees, and persistent harassment at the hands of multiple law enforcement agents, with few if any sources of support or respite.  In short, the only interests served by the new legislation banning sanctuary cities are lawmakers looking to whip up racialized hysteria among their constituents in an election year, or enforcement institutions who stand to make millions more in further detention of immigrants.

Filed under: american studies, civil rights, ethics, immigration, latinos, law & criminology, Mass Media and Communications, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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