Temple University Press’ Annual Holiday Give and Get

Posted on December 17, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, the staff at Temple University Press close out 2025 by suggesting the Temple University Press books they would give along with some non-Temple University Press titles they hope to receive and read this holiday season. 

Mary Rose Muccie, Director

Give: John Shjarback’s Chasing Change in Camden: Police Reform in One of America’s Most Violent Cities to my friend Stephanie, who recently retired after decades working in the Camden County Police Department. She was instrumental in managing Camden’s transition from city to county policing. 

Get: I’d love to receive two books that appeared on several “Best of 2025” lists: What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan, and A Marriage at Sea, by Sophie Elmhirst. The first intrigues me—a scholar in a post-apocalyptic future searching for a lost poem from what he sees as the halcyon days of the mid 2010s—and the second sounds like exactly the kind of narrative nonfiction that sucks me in.

Karen Baker, Associate Director, Financial Manager

Give: Brandon Graham’s BG’s ABCs: Tackling Football and Life. I have 2 grandsons under the age of 4 who would love this book.

Get: Gordon Ramsay Quick and Delicious. I need new recipe ideas that won’t take forever to make.

Aaron Javsicas, Editor-in-Chief

Give: One thing many people like to do in December is dream of their favorite warm weather activities. For Philadelphians, outdoor music has to be near the top of the list. Jack McCarthy’s A Century of Music Under the Stars: A History of the Mann Center for the Performing Arts and Robin Hood Dell is a beautifully produced and illustrated, highly giftable book, ideal for everyone on your list who loves music, the outdoors, and our great city.

Get: How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World, by Deb Chachra. Does infrastructure actually still work? I hope so. As the book’s marketing copy notes, many of these engineering marvels “would have been unimaginable a century ago.” Now, however, it seems we take infrastructure for granted to such an extent that we often don’t bother to think about it at all. 

Ryan Mulligan, Senior Editor

Give: Jane McManus’ The Fast Track: Inside the Surging Business of Women’s Sports. This book takes readers inside the leagues and broadcasters to show how women’s sports is finally getting a chance to find its huge audiences and, more tellingly, what’s been holding it back to this point.

Get: Dennard Dale’s How to Dodge a Cannonball, A satirical historical novel about the American dream sounds up my alley.

Shaun Vigil, Editor

Give: This season, I’ll certainly find myself wrapping copies of Averill Earls’s Love in the Lav: A Social Biography of Same-Sex Desire in Ireland, 1922–1972. In it, Dr. Earls blends thoughtful research with social biography to tell a compelling, narratively rich series of stories that truly bridges the gap between rigorous scholarship and an engaging, accessible style representative of the absolute best in public history.

Get: As has been chronicled in this very blog, I’m a lifelong metalhead and avid reader of musician memoirs. Given this year’s passing of the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne, I’m hoping to receive his final volume, Last Rites.

Stephen Bassett Gluckman, Editorial Assistant and Rights and Contracts Coordinator

Give: Worlds at the End: Los Angeles, Infrastructure, and the Apocalyptic Imagination, by Pacharee Sudhinaraset, is a fascinating, if unsettling, book that revises how we see infrastructure’s hand in underpinning colonial life. Reading apocalypse and “end times” through Indigenous, Black, Asian American, and Latinx literatures, Sudhinaraset challenges the reader’s understanding of both cities and catastrophe and the role of material foundations in the shaping and maintenance of power.

Get: As I am on a post-dissertation John Le Carré kick, I would like to receive Willem Frederik Hermans’s The Darkroom of Damocles, which he may or may not have ripped off when he wrote The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

Steven Fino, Graduate Editorial Assistant 

Give: In my continued effort to get all of my friends and family to care about my dissertation, I would give “Beyond the Law”: The Politics of Ending the Death Penalty for Sodomy in Britain, by Charles Upchurch. The book is about the law well before the period in which I am primarily working, but it provides an important context to the issues of criminality that I am talking about.

Get: I hope to receive Open, Heaven, by Seán Hewitt, which touches on a number of the themes I am constantly returning to in literature, and is influenced by one of my favorites, Maurice by EM Forster. 

Ashley Petrucci, Senior Production Editor
Give: Even though I’ve given some of the Eagles fans in my life The Eagles Encyclopedia: Champions Edition, I think I’ll have to supplement that with the new Champions II edition that just came out this year! There’s so much new information in this edition, such as many new profiles, stories, photos, and the chapter on the most recent Super Bowl, that it could be its own standalone book, so I don’t think they’ll mind an “Eagles round two,” so to speak!

Get: This year I’m pivoting and going more visual—I have the Fullmetal Alchemist manga boxset on my Christmas wishlist. I don’t think it’s going to happen for me, but a girl can dream!

Faith Ryan, Production Assistant

Give: I would give Amy Jane Cohen’s Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape:Deep Roots, Continuing Legacy. I read it earlier this year and I really appreciated how Cohen gave just as much space to the stories of lesser-known Philadelphians as to those who went on to become nationally famous figures. There’s so much to learn here, even if you’ve lived in Philadelphia for years. By the time I finished the book, I ended up with a long list of people I’d like to read more about!

Get: I would love to get Women Changing Cities: Global Stories of Urban Transformationby Melissa and Chris Bruntlett. I love reading books about city planning, especially when they focus on the ways we can improve our cities for everyone, and I’m intrigued by how this book is bringing women’s efforts to the forefront as it explores cities all over the world.

Irene Imperio, Senior Manager, Advertising and Promotions

Give: Forgotten Philadelphia: Lost Architecture of the Quaker City, by Thomas H. Keels. As we celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary, what a great reminder of our city’s beginnings! 

Get: The next installment of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series: The Impossible Fortune.

Gary Kramer, Assistant Director, Sales and Publicity

Give: As a cinephile, I will be gifting Reel Freedom: Black Film Culture in Early Twentieth-Century New York City, by Alyssa Lopez. Not only does this book spotlight the fascinating, underknown history of African American film culture in early 20th century New York, it also won a Choice Outstanding Academic Title this year. (So proud of Alyssa!)

Get: The Silver Book: A Novel, by Olivia Laing. After an author asked me to secure an endorsement for his book from Laing (who graciously declined) I found out why: she is busy promoting her new book, a queer romantic thriller that unfolds against the backdrop of Cinecittà. I can’t wait to read it. However, I might have to. I become quite obsessed with the series Heated Rivalry. Having already read four of the books in the series a few years back, I can see I will spend my holiday reading the two volumes I missed: Heated Rivalry and Game Changer.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, civil rights, cultural studies, Education, environment, ethics, gender studies, health, History, Jewish, Labor Studies, law & criminology, LGBT studies, literature, Mass Media and Communications, Music, Philadelphia, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sexuality, sociology, sports, Urban Studies, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Banned Book Week

Posted on October 8, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, in honor of Banned Book Week, we repost our entry from earlier this year when six Temple University Press titles were banned from the Naval Academy’s Nimitz library.

On January 20, President Trump signed an executive order eliminating all “illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government.” Federal departments moved quickly, canceling programs and services, shuttering departments, removing vast amounts of content from websites, and rewriting history.

As the Pentagon moved to comply, libraries at the military service academies were directed to remove books related to DEI from their shelves. The Naval Academy was the first to act, removing 381 books from the Nimitz Library on March 31 and April 1. The Guardian reported that Army and Air Force officials directed academy staff to compile lists of books for removal.  

Included among the books removed from the Nimitz shelves were the frequently banned How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi, and Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe. And in a stark testament to where the president and his administration may be headed, Maya Angelou’s seminal I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was pulled, but Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf remains on the library shelves.

It was a surprise—or maybe not—to find these six Temple University Press books on the list.

When these authors were informed about their books being banned, many asked the question on everyone’s mind: Why? Are these Temple University Press titles that controversial, or did an AI bot snag them because their titles, descriptions, or subject categories contained one or more of the hundreds of words flagged as subversive?

It would be interesting to know what if any Temple University Press titles remain on the Naval Academy Library’s shelves. Did they have copies of George Lipsitz’ other title, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, or Just Who Loses?, Samuel Rounfield Lucas’ second volume in his Theorizing Discrimination trilogy? What about the recent book in our Sexuality Studies series, Talk about Sex, by Janice Irvine, which shows how the American right wing used sex education to build a political movement and regulate sexuality by controlling sexual speech. And how about a copy of the NAACP Award-winning Envisioning Emancipation, by Deborah Willis and Barbara Krauthamer, which uses photos and text to reflect on Black Americans and the end of slavery? Our list is full of potential targets, including Prison Masculinities, edited by Don Sabo, Terry Kupers, and Willie London, which years ago was banned by the entire state of Texas prison system.

Themes of racial and social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion run throughout the Press’ list. We’re proud that our titles are being challenged and banned by an administration intent on rewriting history and creating a present and future that doesn’t include equal treatment for all. The authors of these banned books and many others speak to and about things the government doesn’t want to be discussed. The Press is honored to support that conversation.

Below are reactions and responses from the Temple University Press authors whose books were banned.

“I’m confused and dazed and sad and proud. Confused and dazed that my work could be so threatening. Sad because it has been censored. Proud, in rather a perverse way, to be one of the authors identified as frightening by the most risible government in modern American history”—Toby Miller, author of Sportsex

“Having my book—my ideas—censored is a direct and personal reminder that especially for higher education, there will be no strategy of negotiation and conciliation that will succeed under this regime. All that’s left is to resist and organize.”—Thomas Kim, author of The Racial Logic of Politics

“I have to laugh at the vain efforts of petty bureaucrats who think they can keep ideas from people who look for or need them. You think you can keep what is written from those who you are interesting in those ideas by suppressing them? Forget it. You bring such writings to the attention of those who look for it, and who will find it. And read it. That is the big one. So much is printed, and many don’t read it until some powerless administrator calls attention to it. And then they will read it. And all you administrators can do with your money is hire a therapist to give you excuses for your unethical behavior.“—Steve Martinot, author of The Machinery of Whiteness

“I am proud to be on a list of authors of banned books that includes Martin Luther King, Jr. and Maya Angelou. As the poet Blas de Otero observed about being censored by the Franco dictatorship in Spain, ‘They don’t let people see what I write, because I write what I see.’ Dictators throughout history have banned and burned books that invite readers to think for themselves rather than merely follow the orders issued by those in power. Book bans are confessions of weakness, of the inability of those doing the banning to refute arguments they do not like. This exercise in censorship indicates that the Naval Academy has so little faith in the intelligence—and so much fear of the fragility—of its students and faculty that it has to shield them from books that simply reveal that racism exists. This sends the midshipmen off to careers where they will be ill equipped to understand and command the troops they lead or the civilian populations they encounter. As the elders in Haiti say, breaking the thermometer will not cure the fever. The history of banning books bodes ill for the banners. Such acts almost always increase rather than decrease demand for the banned books. They also provoke authors to write more works that expose and critique the corruptions of the powerful. Like the many headed hydra of mythology, cutting off one head only enables more to grow in its place.”—George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place

“The United States, my native land, has long articulated powerful ideals of freedom, liberty, justice, human rights, and equal opportunity, and through time, sweat, tears, and blood, has haltingly journeyed toward realizing those ideals for everyone–wealthy and poor, of whatever sex, race, religion, nationality, or predicament. Thus, I am disappointed and sad that the stewards of the U.S. now seem committed to destroying that progress and erasing signposts of it, for as they deny U.S. history and undo U.S. progress, they simultaneously deny the triumph and undo the promise—and worldwide hope–of America. Their banning of my book, Theorizing Discrimination in an Era of Contested Prejudice, is one small act of many in their erasure project. But I do not feel erased. For I was but one of many channels for the expression of fundamental ideals of human freedom, and the continuation of those ideals is the point. Thus, while they can certainly ban an object–paper, ink, thread, and glue–I take joy in the knowledge that no one has or ever can have sufficient power to ban or otherwise extinguish the spirit and fundamental ideals that provided the book’s force, effect, and inspiration.”—Samuel Roundfield Lucas, author of Theorizing Discrimination in an Era of Contested Prejudice

“The U.S. Naval Academy’s decision to remove my book, along with almost 400 others, from its library’s shelves is disheartening and small-minded. No books should be removed from library shelves for political or censorship reasons, and certainly not at the college level. Our naval officers should be exposed to a wide range of viewpoints and historical interpretations before they lead our soldiers and represent our country. My book, Men’s College Athletics and the Politics of Racial Equality, analyzes five case studies of college sports integration from 1915 through the early 1970s. It explores how people used sports to discuss issues of equality, freedom, citizenship, and community. While the book calls attention to unsolved issues related to race, it also celebrates progress on and off the field. Learning about the past—including the history of desegregation in college sports, and the ways that athletes, fans, media commentators, and university administrators responded to changes in racial norms and ideas of masculinity—will help make our leaders more informed and better attuned to a wide range of issues in American life.

“One of the truly great things about the service academies is that they bring in students from all over the country, and from all different walks of life. There is an emphasis on learning from one another, of the benefits that come from hearing a variety of perspectives. The decision to remove these books from the USNA library strikes hard against the ideals of our military and our nation at large. Our military leaders should be modeling intellectual curiosity and a thoughtful engagement with the past. Reading more books, not less, is the way to achieve those goals.”—Gregory Kaliss, author of Men’s College Athletics and the Politics of Racial Equality

To the students of U.S. military academies: if you are reading this, we will be happy to send you a copy of one of these banned books for your personal library upon request.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, asian american studies, Asian Studies, civil rights, cultural studies, Education, ethics, gender studies, History, immigration, Labor Studies, law & criminology, LGBT studies, literature, Mass Media and Communications, philosophy, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sexuality, sociology, sports, Urban Studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Meet Steven Fino

Posted on September 3, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we get to know the Press’ new Graduate Editorial Assistant, Steven Fino.

In 2022, Temple University Press and Temple University’s Department of Graduate Affairs, working with the English department, created the Graduate Editorial Assistant (GEA) position. We had two goals: the GEA would assist the editors and occasionally other Press departments with key tasks, and he or she would have an opportunity to explore scholarly publishing as an alternative career path and get hands-on experience to support a possible future position in publishing. 

Our newest GEA, Steven Fino, just started at the Press. He graduated from Temple in 2015 with a degree in secondary English education and is currently a PhD candidate in English. His dissertation, entitled “Queering the Bildungsroman,” looks at works of gay and lesbian fiction from the late 19th through the early 20th centuries, such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde; E.M Forster’s Maurice; and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.

We interviewed Steven to welcome him to the Press and get to know him better.

What prompted you to work at the Press? How does the GEA position align with your goals?
I wanted to make sure I completed my degree having some experience that wasn’t focused on teaching. I know I want to do something connected to academia in the long run, and publishing seemed like an excellent fit for me. When the head of the graduate English program recommended the position to me, I immediately applied.

What observations do you have about academic publishing as a graduate student
As someone who works broadly in queer studies, one thing I am very aware of is the heightened sense of criticism and pushback against the field at the moment, not just in the ones that I am particularly interested in reading but anything I can see myself writing as well.

Are there any books on Temple’s list that dovetail with your work as a grad student?
There are a bunch that overlap with what I work on, namely “Beyond the Law“ by Charles Upchurch and Love in the Lav by Averill Earls. Making Modern Love by Lisa Z. Sigel, in particular, is one that looks like it will be incredibly useful for my dissertation. Public City/Public Sex, by Andrew Israel Ross, is also of interest; there tends to be a massive overlap between the gay writers of London and Paris.

What Temple book are you interested in reading (if your time allows)?
One that does not directly fit with my field but interests me quite a bit is City of Sisterly and Brotherly Love, by Marc Stein. I know that Philadelphia was home to the first organized gay rights protests in the U.S. with the Annual Reminders at Independence Hall from 1965 to 1969 and would love to know more about the history of the queer community of my city. 

What authors (Temple or otherwise) are particularly meaningful for you and why?
Limiting myself to scholarly writers, there are two that immediately come to mind: José Esteban Muñoz and Paul Baker. Reading Muñoz, specifically Cruising Utopia, during my exams gave me a strong sense of the type of thinking I want to be doing. And  Paul Baker, who has written for both academic and general audiences, specifically with his book Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britan’s Secret Gay Language, showed me the type of book I want to write.

If we’re looking at literature as a whole, this is a random assortment but the ones that had the biggest impact on me are Bernardine Evaristo, E.M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jamie O’Neill, author of my favorite novel, At Swim, Two Boys, Christopher Marlowe, Salman Rushdie, William Shakespeare, Zadie Smith, Sarah Waters, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf.

What kind of reader were you like as a child? 
When I was about 8, I really started reading for fun, which meant basically anything I was interested in. My mother was thrilled and said I could have as many books from the store as I would like. She then quickly had to put limits on the amount she would allow me to buy given the speed at which I could go through books for that age group. 

Is there a book you thought was overrated? 
This is not really a book I would call overrated, as I can’t ignore the impact it had on literature, but the book I am the most bitter about is Ulysses by James Joyce. When I was making my reading list for my exams, I tried not including it and was told by my committee chair that I needed to have it. Since that book in particular was brought up, I was certain there would be a question about Ulysses on the exam, so I spent more time on that book than anything else – reading it twice as well as multiple companion books. Day of the exam, I get my questions and immediately see that not a single one had anything to do with Ulysses.  

Is there a book you think folks should know but don’t?
The one book in my field I tell everyone to read is Maurice by E.M. Forster, which is the novel at the center of my dissertation. Just the existence of the novel is incredible, being way ahead of its time in how it approaches the issue of M/M romance and the fact that it ends happily. I never get tired of talking about this book.

If you hosted a dinner party, what three authors, living or dead, would you invite and why? 
Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and Lytton Strachey. Essentially, I just want to hang out with the Bloomsbury Group for a bit. 

What is something we should know about you outside your Temple experience?
Off the top of my head, I am just a big fan of storytelling regardless of the medium in which it is told (novels, movies, stage productions, audio drama, comics, etc.) I am the go-to baker of my friend group and have a habit of bringing baked goods to the workplace. I also live with my cat, whose full title is Her Royal Highness Lady Macbeth, Queen of Scotland and Empress of the Couch. Long may she reign. 

Filed under: american studies, Education, gender studies, History, LGBT studies, literature, Mass Media and Communications, Philadelphia, sexuality, sociology, Urban Studies, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Temple University Press’ Annual Holiday Give and Get

Posted on December 18, 2024 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, the staff at Temple University Press close out 2024 by suggesting the Temple University Press books they would give along with some non-Temple University Press titles they hope to receive and read this holiday season. 

Mary Rose Muccie, Director
Give: I’d give Tongyu Wu’s Play to Submission to a friend who worked in, and escaped from, the tech industry. It’s a terrific study of an unnamed tech company’s use of gaming to undermine and exploit employees and the impact it has within and beyond the workplace.

Get: (Is now the time to admit that I didn’t follow through on last year’s vow to read The Nix?) After seeing New York Times and NPR reviews of, and its inclusion on a few “notable titles” lists, this year I’d like to get The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore. I was a fan of her earlier book, Long Bright River, and can see spending time over the holidays with this one.

Karen Baker, Associate Director, Financial Manager
Give: Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape, by Amy Cohen. I know so many people who would appreciate the wealth of information packed in this book, and it is written so well that it is both easy and enjoyable to read.

Get: Gray Malin: Dogs: Photographs. I am an animal lover, and this book just caught my eye. I mean, who doesn’t want to see pictures of dogs?

Aaron Javsicas, Editor-in-Chief
Give: Building Ghosts: Past Lives and Lost Places in a Changing City, by Molly Lester and photographer Michael Bixler. This is a completely unique project in subject matter and format, identifying the traces of demolished row homes and other attached buildings as portals to the personal histories of everyday people and businesses that inhabited those structures. This project represents another key entrant in the Press’s developing library of books that make Philadelphia’s living history visible and meaningful to readers today. Other relevant recent titles in this vein include Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City (which, like Building Ghosts, connects the Press to the important work of Hidden City Philadelphia), and our recent and forthcoming projects with Monument Lab.

Get: To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, by Benjamin Nathans. The publisher describes it as, “A gripping history of the Soviet dissident movement, which hastened the end of the USSR—and still provides a model of opposition in Putin’s Russia.” Many of us could use some moral support in our continued pursuit of hopeless causes (my family has a long tradition of supporting such efforts), and this book feels especially relevant at the moment in a number of ways, even beyond Russia.

Ryan Mulligan, Editor
Give: The Big Story, by David Grzybowski. Come for Philadelphia’s most recognizable characters talking about their work, workplaces, and colleagues, stay to get a look at how news stations differentiate themselves from the competition in the modern media landscape. 

Get: James by Percival Everett. Mark Twain needs the favor this book loans him of raising him up a peg and taking him down a peg at the same time.

Shaun Vigil, Editor
Give: While it’s always difficult to choose just one title, I’ll certainly be gifting James T. Sears’ Queering Rehoboth Beach: Beyond the Boardwalk to a number of friends this year. In this book, Sears offers not only an incredibly in-depth, thoughtful history spanning across generations, but also presents a work of scholarship that never loses its grounding in narrative while fleshing out the lived experiences of the individuals and town it focuses upon.

Get: While my personal reading list has been a bit backlogged this year, one volume I’m looking forward to finally reading during some holiday downtime is Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two. The first volume has stayed with me since its debut, and I can’t wait to see how the journey concludes.

Stephen Bassett Gluckman, Graduate Editorial Assistant
Give: Norbert Wiley’s Inner Speech and the Dialogical Self offers a thoughtful exploration of internal dialogue, examining how self-conversations shape our thoughts and identity. Treating the idea of an internal conversation seriously, Wiley’s book is a great read for anyone who experience racing thoughts or finds themselves frequently “talking to themselves.”

Get: I’ve been intrigued by Ed Park’s Same Bed Different Dreams, a sprawling alternate history of the Korean War that has been compared to Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. Park’s novel weaves together multiple narratives, imagining a world where the Korean Provisional Government didn’t dissolve after WWII. Praised as both funny and deeply complex, it’s a book I’d be thrilled to receive this season.

Ashley Petrucci, Senior Production Editor
Give: I would give John Fairfield’s Crossing Great Divides, as the concerns with environmentalism were relevant at the time of publication earlier this year but have become increasingly more so as we’ve approached the current moment, where environmental threats abound. I particularly believe the discussion about environmentalism from a rural vs. urban perspective is important.

Get: I plan on continuing to re-read the Redwall series over break and would welcome copies of any other than the handful of books from the series I already own. Sometimes, we just need a light series from childhood to get us through!

Faith Ryan, Production Assistant
Give: I would love to give out copies of Digital Girlhoods by Katherine A. Phelps. This book takes a close look at a group whose opinions and concerns are usually ignored—tween girls—and studies the ways they use and interact with social media, and how being constantly online can help and harm girls’ social lives and self-esteem in various ways. As successive generations become more and more entwined with social media at younger and younger ages, I think it’s very important to study its effects, especially on children.

Get: I would love to get Robert A. Caro’s The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. I read Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York earlier this year, and it’s now one of my all-time favorite books. I’ve never read a biography of Johnson before, so I’m very curious to learn more about him beyond the bullet points, and to see how Caro tackles him as a subject, as well as American politics through the decades, over such a long span (four volumes and counting!).

Irene Imperio, Senior Manager, Advertising and Promotions
Give: Digital Girlhoods, by Katherine A. Phelps to my girl mom friends. Here’s hoping that we decode and understand the next generation!

Get: Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series. I need to catch up before the next installment!!

Gary Kramer, Assistant Director, Sales and Publicity
Give: William Gee Wong’s Sons of Chinatown. This memoir, a true labor of love, chronicles Bill’s life and work as a writer—as well his father’s experiences—in America. (n.b., father/son stories are my Kryptonite; so too are stories of writers and journalists.) The book, which is full of emotional moments, moved me deeply. Early on in Sons of Chinatown, Bill is told by his Chinese cousins that he had “youthlim,” or “had heart.” Bill writes with a lot of heart. It’s what makes Sons of Chinatown so endearing.

Get: If I get either Allan Hollinghurst’s novel, Our Evenings, or André Aciman’s memoir, Roman Year, I would likely ignore the stack of unread books on my nightstand to devour them. 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND BEST WISHES FOR 2025 FROM TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS!

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

Snug and Wide Open

Posted on June 26, 2024 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Marilyn Sanders Mobley, author of Toni Morrison and the Geopoetics of Place, Race, and Be/longing, writes about the spaces Toni Morrison created for her readers.

Reading Toni Morrison was never easy, and I think to a certain extent, she liked it like that. She wanted her readers to take their time, savor the word here, a phrase there, and think about what else was being said. Over the years, I have encountered readers, students, and even colleagues who relished that very arduous feature of her books while others simply closed her novels after a few pages and abandoned the effort. I wrote Toni Morrison and the Geopoetics of Race, Place, and Be/longing for the ones who did not give up and for those who could be persuaded to try again. I wanted to encourage readers to appreciate her statement from her 1993 Nobel Lecture that “word-work is sublime.” I knew it was worth the effort to stay inside the pages of a Morrison novel, so that they could discover what Baby Suggs meant when she told the enslaved community in Beloved—that “the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine.” I knew it was worth the effort because Morrison had a heart for readers, and she brought a brilliant mind to the cultural work she identified as leaving “spaces for the reader” to come into the text.

The word-work she referenced was not only for the readers, but for herself as a writer. She even acknowledged in 1996, in a lecture at the “Race Matters” conference at Princeton University, that she had given herself a new task for the novel she was working on at the time. She wanted to see if she could write in such a way as to reveal that race simultaneously matters and that it does not matter. She was not in denial of her identity as a Black woman, nor was she encouraging anyone else to do so, but she wanted to imagine a space beyond white supremacy, racism, sexism, and the ongoing marginalization of all kinds. Having identified the very function of racism as early as 1975 as a “distraction,” she imagined a space where on any given night, a Black woman could walk down the road and nothing and no one for miles around would consider her to be prey. To her way of thinking, that would be a new definition of home, a space that was both “snug and wide open.” When I heard those words that day, I got goose bumps for two reasons. First, I realized Professor Morrison had just given us a sneak preview of her forthcoming novel.  When the novel Paradise appeared in 1998, I experienced the joy of seeing the words “snug and wide open” again in the context of a complicated story at the intersection of race and gender, where Morrison withheld information even as she methodically and strategically doled it out.

Three years later in 2001, in my role as president of the Toni Morrison Society, I helped organize her 70th birthday party at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. It was a grand 500-person black-tie affair, but when Morrison came to the microphone to thank everyone for the tributes, the accolades, and the sheer fellowship of readers and writers, she used the occasion not just to express gratitude, but also to tell us what she had been doing all along with her shift from editing to writing. She confessed her earliest goal was selfish—to write the book she wanted to read that had not yet been written—The Bluest Eye. She added that she discovered over time that she also wanted readers, and then reviewers. And later she realized she wanted something else–scholarship—that is, a group of readers who would engage in the cultural work of literary criticism, to take her to task, to illuminate what even she may not have seen, and to share those insights with others. I don’t know whether anyone else in that gilded dining hall felt as I did that glorious night, but I recall thinking, “Okay, I have my assignment.” My task as a reader/scholar/critic is to read and reread her work, walk alongside other readers to illuminate what I can, and encourage them to discover what others may never have seen in her work.

Though I experienced numerous personal and professional setbacks and detours away from this project, when I announced my retirement and went on sabbatical in 2019, I did not find the earlier version of the manuscript for this book until the night Morrison died. I wept at the news that this author/teacher/public intellectual/woman, who had become, not just “a friend of my mind” (as her character Paul D said of Sethe in Beloved) but a friend in my lived life, had joined the ancestors. I knew immediately, that I had better get back to work on my book. The cultural work of helping readers navigate the spaces of her writing was waiting and I was more eager than ever to begin again. I wanted to move beyond the whatof her writing to the how of it, in the hopes that readers would join me in reading and rereading her work to discover just how sublime word-work in her hands had been and could be each time we returned to her words.

Shifting to the spaces of her writing to focus more on the how without abandoning the what of her novels was a challenge, but that challenge led me to discover four stylistic patterns I refer to as her geopoetics in my book. Walking alongside Toni Morrison’s readers after 40 years of reading, teaching, analyzing, and interpreting her work is still worth the effort, “quiet as its kept,” to quote the opening lines of the novel that began the whole journey. From Lorain, Ohio to Paris, France and all the other spaces in between where she took her brilliant, layered, textured writing and imagination to readers all over the world, she gave us narratives that were radical enough to create new memories and meaning beyond our wildest dreams. More than that, by tapping into both our storied past and other ways of imagining our future, she gave us a bold, unapologetic new sense of freedom beyond what others said was possible.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, cultural studies, Education, gender studies, literature, Mass Media and Communications, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

A Q&A with Faith Ryan, Temple University Press’ new Production Assistant

Posted on August 24, 2022 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we get to learn more about Temple University Press’s new production assistant, Faith Ryan. Faith comes to Temple after having worked most recently as an Associate Project Manager at Vista Higher Learning in Boston. She received her BA in Writing, Literature, & Publishing from Emerson College in May of 2016.

 

What were your past publishing jobs?

During college and for a while after graduating, I worked as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader, reviewing Wiley journals and books for Delta Education. Most recently, I was an Associate Project Manager at Vista Higher Learning, a world languages textbook publisher based in Boston. Over my four years at Vista, I managed countless Spanish and French textbooks (elementary through collegiate level) and did support work on a few German and Italian titles.

What book(s) are you currently reading?

Currently, I am reading The Empire of Gold, by S. A. Chakraborty, and We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State, by Kai Strittmatter.

What’s the last great book you read?

Yerba Buena, by Nina LaCour. It’s a wonderful read. I can’t remember the last time I read a book with such clear and realistic characterizations. No part of the book felt contrived, as is typical of romances, and I was impressed by how honest and moving I found the characters’ struggles.

What book made the greatest impact on you?

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick. I picked it up way back in high school and I still think about it to this day. It’s an incredible piece of reporting, and is the standard against which I judge every other nonfiction book I read.

Which writers do you love (or hate) the most?

Geraldine Brooks and Tracy Chevalier are both longtime favorites of mine. I love nothing more than to disappear into a slow, well-written historical novel, and they’re some of the best in the business as far as I’m concerned. Year of Wonders, Girl with a Pearl Earring, and The Last Runaway are my favorites from them.

When and how do you read?

I read constantly: mornings, evenings, lunchtime. Sometimes I’ll read all day on the weekends if it’s a particularly good book and I don’t have anything on the schedule. Mostly I read physical books, either ones I’ve purchased or borrowed through the library, though sometimes I’ll listen to audiobooks if I’m traveling.

What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

I have to go with Sam Anderson’s Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis. Despite never having set foot in the state of Oklahoma and having zero interest in basketball (a major through line of the book), I loved Boom Town. The book is just as wild and winding as its subtitle—and very entertaining.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine?

This is a bit of an impossible question, as heroic characters don’t interest me much… But I’ll go with Belle from Beauty and the Beast if only because I, too, would love to read all day and be gifted my own personal library.

What Temple University Press book has particular meaning to you?

Yasemin Besen-Cassino’s The Cost of Being a Girl: Working Teens and the Origins of the Gender Wage Gap. Like all working women in America, I’m very aware of the pay disparity between men and women. And like most adults, I mostly think of it in terms of its deleterious effect on adult women—but of course this issue affects teenage girls as well. As Besen-Cassino’s book lays out, the long-lasting consequences are not only financial but psychological as well.

What Temple University Press book would you recommend to someone?

I would recommend Miriam Frank’s Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America. LGBTQ+ people have always been at the forefront of battles for social change, and of course the history of unions is no different. I think it’s important all working people know how their rights came to be, especially as queer figures aren’t often highlighted in traditional histories.

What book will you read next?

Next, I am planning to read We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, by Fintan O’Toole. I heard him speak when I was volunteering at the Free Library several months ago and he gave an absolutely brilliant talk. I’ve since read a few of his New Yorker articles and I love his style. I’ve been looking forward to sitting down with his book for a long while now.

What three writers would you invite to a dinner party?

Usually I’m more interested in a writer’s creations than the authors themselves (real people tend to disappoint), but there is one writer I could listen to talk about both their books and their life for dinner, dessert, and drinks after: R. F. Kuang, author of The Poppy War series and Babel. Her ability to churn out one fantastic book after another while simultaneously completing degrees at places like Oxford and Cambridge is a mystery to me. I’d love to have her talk my ear off for an evening.

Filed under: american studies, cultural studies, economics/business, gender studies, Labor Studies, LGBT studies, sociology, Urban Studies, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Celebrating Independent Bookstore Day

Posted on April 27, 2018 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Temple University Press celebrates Independent Bookstore Day, Saturday, April 28.  Join the Party! Visit one of these participating area bookstores:

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What is Independent Bookstore Day?

Independent Bookstore Day is a one-day national party that takes place at indie bookstores across the country on the last Saturday in April.  Every store is unique and independent, and every party is different. But in addition to authors, live music, cupcakes, scavenger hunts, kids events, art tables, readings, barbecues, contests, and other fun stuff, there are exclusive books and literary items that you can only get on that day. Not before. Not after. Not online.

Why are we celebrating independent bookstores?

Independent bookstores are not just stores, they’re community centers and local anchors run by passionate readers. They are entire universes of ideas that contain the possibility of real serendipity. They are lively performance spaces and quiet places where aimless perusal is a day well spent.

In a world of tweets and algorithms and pageless digital downloads, bookstores are not a dying anachronism.  They are living, breathing organisms that continue to grow and expand. In fact, there are more of them this year than there were last year. And they are at your service.

Filed under: american studies, economics/business, Education, Mass Media and Communications, sociology | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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