Indiana University Press blog

Alpha’s Bet Is Not Over Yet: An Evening with Transition

Cross-posted from the IUP/Journals blog:

 
50th Anniversary Event at the New Museum, NYC

Thu, Dec 8, 2011, 7:00 PM, FREE 

Transition Magazine is a unique forum for fresh perspectives on global issues, literature and art, cultures and people, with an emphasis on Africa and the Diaspora. Founded in 1961, in Uganda, by the late Rajat Neogy, Transition’s current series carries on the original’s tough-minded, far-reaching criticism, both cultural and political. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, editors, and contributors will consider the potential of this radical Black periodical by reflecting on its past with an evening of readings and music.

For information on how to order a subscription to Transition, visit the IU Press page on JSTOR.

50 Years - Transition celebrates its storied history

Cross-posted from the IUP/Journals blog:

 
How is it possible to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a magazine that has spanned three countries, two continents, and several long stretches of silence? Transition 106 provides many answers. Rather than telling a seamless story about our journey from Africa to the Diaspora, we have called upon generations of remarkable contributors to define what the magazine has meant to them. The diversity of responses is astonishing: Henry Finder describes it as “the internationalization of the African mind,” and Ilan Stavans fancifully dubs it “the Jewish journal of blackness.” If there shall be “no birth without miscegination,” as our founder Rajat Neogy memorably declared, there shall be no remembrance without it either.

The other half of this celebratory issue is devoted to Uganda, Transition's birthplace. We return less to pay homage to our past than to imagine our future. Elizabeth Palchik Allen introduces exciting work from David Kaiza, Okello Ogwang, Richard Ssebaggala, and many others, all of whom explore their country’s “postcolonial identity” and call into question the easy coupling of those words.

Transition came into being in 1961, in the midst of independence movements and breaks with colonial rule across the African continent. What was needed then was a forum for intellectual debate and cultural exchange about this simultaneously ancient and emerging continent. A half-century later, this forum is still vital to our understanding of the richness and complexity of the African world, both within the continent’s borders and beyond. This has never been an easy journal to produce because the ideas contained in it are so fast-moving and so alive. But we look forward to the challenge for at least another fifty years and remain steadfast in carrying out its original mission: to provide a space for the exchange of all manner of thinking on the far-reaching African world.
—HENRY LOUIS GATES

Read more about Transition’s history here: http://dubois.fas.harvard.edu/transition-magazine

INSIDE THE ISSUE

Fifty Years • Transition celebrates its storied history  (Side A) 

Featuring

“A Literature Which Can Stand by Itself” 

A year after its launch in Uganda, Rajat Neogy’s Transition is already causing category confusion: “Could you tell us something about the racial composition of the writers who appear in this journal?” Our founding editor defends ambitious ambiguity.

 More than a Magazine

Paul Theroux takes us to Kampala, “small and green,” and between the pages of a “clumsily designed, poorly financed” magazine published by a boy barely a man. Soon enough, Chinua Achebe, Milton Obote, and the CIA are all involved.  

Spaces in Between

Henry Finder on Transition’s global ambulation.

Arrival

Long-time contributor Ilan Stavans credits Transition with setting him on the path towards cultural criticism. He calls Transition a “Jewish journal of blackness.” What? Let him explain.

Plus:
Wole Soyinka, Michael Adams, Jeffrey D. Brown, George Dillon Slater, Barbara Lapcek, F. Abiola Irele, Dayo Olopade, Michael C. Vazquez, Rene Belance translated by Adrianne M. LaFrance, Jack Hamilton, Onwubiko Agozino, Manning Marable, Tolu Ogunlesi, Nirvana Tanoukhi, Ali Mazrui

Reflections from Contemporary Uganda • A selection of writing, artwork, and photography (Side B)

Featuring

Yea, Let Us Also Praise Famous Men!

Many forces conspired to end Transition’s tumultuous tenure in Africa. But as Okello Ogwang reflects upon the incredible promise of the revolutionary period, he wonders whether or not the magazine’s relocation is yet another example of brain drain.

Settling the Buganda Question

This isn’t the first time Uganda’s most powerful precolonial monarchy has presided over our pages. Fifty years later, the question of its status in the modern-day state is far from settled. Frederick Golooba-Mutebi calls for a national conversation.

Straight Talk on the Gay Question in Uganda
The Western world roiled when a member of Uganda’s parliament proposed to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death, and now the bill is off the table (at least for now). Richard Ssebaggala gives us the inside story, while delivering some tough love to the current crop of gay rights activists in Uganda.

But Why, Father?

For half a century, the African Writers Series was the publisher of record when it came to African literature (whatever that means). But did the quality of the writing usually meet the mark? Or was Wole Soyinka right when he called the imprint an “orange ghetto”? Growing up in the shadow of the AWS, David Kaiza tells us why the next generation of writers is less concerned with salvaging black pride than with the craft of fiction itself.

Plus:
Elizabeth Palchik Allen, Susan Kiguli, Monica Arac de Nyeko, Angelo Izama, Rodney Muhumuza, Edward Echwalu, Doreen Baingana

TRANSITION 106 will be released in October. Subscribe NOW to begin your subscription with this important anniversary issue. Visit our website at http://jstor.org/r/iupress.

Print single issues may be ordered directly from IU Press by calling customer service at 812-855-8817 (toll-free USA) or 800-842-6796 (outside USA).

IU Press to publish new journal on black male studies

The subject of Black masculinity and the notion of what it means to be male in a gendered, heteronormative, capitalist society have become central to the study of intersectional relations in various academic disciplines. Though a small number of books have anthologized the various possibilities of discourses concerned with the Black male perspective, no journal until now has produced focused academic writing from a broad contributor pool on this topic.

Spectrum, the latest addition to the Indiana University Press Journals catalog, is a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary research journal whose articles focus on issues related to aspects of Black men’s experiences, including topics such as gender, masculinities, and race/ethnicity. Spectrum examines the social, political, economic, and historical factors that influence the life chances and experiences of African-descended males using disciplinary and interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives, empirical methods, theoretical analysis, and literary criticism.

“Indiana University Press is honored to partner with the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University to publish this important and timely new journal. Spectrum is an exciting addition to IUP’s strong list of journals and books that focus on the Black Diaspora,” said Janet Rabinowitch, Director of Indiana University Press.

Housed in the Department of African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University, the editorial board includes faculty from colleges across the country, with interests ranging from English and Sociology to Education Policy and Leadership.

Published semiannually beginning March 2012, Spectrum will be a space where advocacy and imagination meet in order to reveal a global, complex Black manhood from the dawning of modernity through the present time. The online version will also feature multimedia resources.

Journal Information—Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men
Editors: Judson L. Jeffries, Terrell L. Strayhorn
Frequency: Semi-annual
To order: call 1-800-842-6796 or visit the IUP/Journals website
For review copies & interview requests contact:
Linda Bannister, Marketing Manager, llbannis@indiana.edu, 812-855-9449

Submission inquiries can be sent to the office of H. Ike Okafor-Newsum, newsum2@humanities.osu.edu.

Black Camera receives honorable mention for best new journal

The Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) recently awarded Black Camera: An International Film Journal an “Honorable Mention” for Best New Journal 2010. The CELJ holds an annual competition for members who publish scholarly and literary journals. A panel of judges independently evaluates journals submitted in each category of the competition. According to the CELJ website, “a CELJ award or citation gives independent testimony to your journal’s quality and visibility.”

To read the rest of the post, visit the IUP/Journals blog.

The Trials and Tribulations of an Academic Editor

Recently I was asked as of when have I been serving as the academic editor of Nashim, and to be perfectly frank, this historian could not recall. More than five issues ago? Perhaps ten? I decided to look at the inside cover of all the issues on my bookshelf, only to discover I have been officially editing this journal as of the fifth issue.When the latest issue, no. 20, arrived at Schechter today, the calculation was, as they say, a "no brainer."

Nashim was created at the initiative of Deborah Greniman, a professional editor who was studying for her M.A. at the Schechter Institute in women's studies in the mid-1990s. In the early years, it was published annually, almost singlehandedly by Debbie. In 2001, the editorial board realized that the managing editor needed the help and support of an academic; thus, I officially came on board. Soon after, the journal made a major transition by signing a contract with Indiana University Press in 2003 which obligated us to produce two issues annually. Read the rest of the post on the IUP/Journals blog.

IUP/Journals transition from INscribe to JSTOR

Indiana University Press has partnered with JSTOR to make current and archival content from the Press's journals available on the JSTOR platform. Indiana University Press journals will no longer be accessible from INscribe, Indiana University Press's previous publishing platform.

As of January 1, 2011, JSTOR will be the primary platform for online access to 174 academic journals, including Indiana University Press/Journals, which are part of the Current Scholarship Program (CSP).

For more information, visit the IUP/Journals blog.

African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review editor discusses his vision for new journal

Our journals staff recently interviewed Abu Bakarr Bah about his vision for our newest journal, African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review (ACPR). Read the interview to see why Bah thinks the time is right for this journal.

Abu Bakarr Bah is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Northern Illinois University. His research focuses on issues of democracy, nation building, ethnicity, and the peace-making and peace-building role of the international community. He has a PhD from the New School for Social Research.

Special journal issue examines consumer capitalism, women, and the Islamic culture industry

Cross posted from the IU Press Journals blog:

Guest Edited by Banu Gökarıksel and Ellen McLarney

This special issue of the Journal of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies, examines the intersection of consumer capitalism, women, and the newly emergent “Islamic” culture industry. In this consumerist Islamic culture industry, a series of images, practices, knowledges, and commodities are marketed specifically to “Muslim women.” How does this industry, as well as the objects, meanings, and performances that circulate within it, shape the expression and constitution of femininity and piety? This issue addresses this question through the geographically wide-ranging research of an interdisciplinary group of scholars. The articles analyze advertisements of beauty products (Egypt), Muslim women’s new lifestyle magazines (the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Kuwait, and Indonesia), fashionable Islamic clothing catalogues (Turkey), and Muslim women’s literature translated into English.

The results reveal that the increasing mediation of contemporary Muslim femininities through market forces impacts women’s piety, identity, and belonging in complex ways. The Islamic culture industry uses—and creates—networks to circulate signifiers of Islamic identity while also reconfiguring Islamic practice according to the exigencies of the capitalist market and its power structures. This entails the fashioning of gendered Islamic subjectivities.

As Muslim women stake out their positions vis-à-vis consumer capitalism and the Islamic culture industry, they actively engage with given Islamic practice and knowledge as well as with modalities of capitalism. They often navigate between certain Orientalist stereotypes that marketed images sometimes challenge and sometimes reify. The continuing centrality of the veil epitomizes the simultaneous challenge to and reification of stereotypes, as it becomes a marker of agency, self-expression, and empowerment. At the same time, representations of self-determined, independent, and professional Muslim women conform to images of the ideal consumer. While the veiled images reinscribe Islamic norms and identifications by emphasizing particular ways of being Muslim for women, they also transform the very content and contours of Islamic piety and femininity. The essays in this issue also reveal how Muslim women’s bodies circulate in the market, turning into commodities themselves. Muslim women are not only targeted as a consumer niche, but their bodies constitute a territory on which capitalism stakes its claims.

Western theories of the development of capitalism traditionally assume that a new, secular rationality will take hold in society, undermining or limiting the role of religion. This issue, on the contrary, demonstrates the mutual capitalization of religion and the market. The points where they diverge—in the tensions and oppositions between capitalism and piety—cause anxiety about virtue traded for commercial value. Here we explore both the benefits and the costs of that mutual capitalization.

Special Issue JMEWS 6.3 will be available online and in print in August 2010.

Guest Edited by Banu Gökarıksel and Ellen McLarney

This special issue of the Journal of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies, examines the intersection of consumer capitalism, women, and the newly emergent “Islamic” culture industry. In this consumerist Islamic culture industry, a series of images, practices, knowledges, and commodities are marketed specifically to “Muslim women.” How does this industry, as well as the objects, meanings, and performances that circulate within it, shape the expression and constitution of femininity and piety? This issue addresses this question through the geographically wide-ranging research of an interdisciplinary group of scholars. The articles analyze advertisements of beauty products (Egypt), Muslim women’s new lifestyle magazines (the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Kuwait, and Indonesia), fashionable Islamic clothing catalogues (Turkey), and Muslim women’s literature translated into English.

The results reveal that the increasing mediation of contemporary Muslim femininities through market forces impacts women’s piety, identity, and belonging in complex ways. The Islamic culture industry uses—and creates—networks to circulate signifiers of Islamic identity while also reconfiguring Islamic practice according to the exigencies of the capitalist market and its power structures. This entails the fashioning of gendered Islamic subjectivities.

As Muslim women stake out their positions vis-à-vis consumer capitalism and the Islamic culture industry, they actively engage with given Islamic practice and knowledge as well as with modalities of capitalism. They often navigate between certain Orientalist stereotypes that marketed images sometimes challenge and sometimes reify. The continuing centrality of the veil epitomizes the simultaneous challenge to and reification of stereotypes, as it becomes a marker of agency, self-expression, and empowerment. At the same time, representations of self-determined, independent, and professional Muslim women conform to images of the ideal consumer. While the veiled images reinscribe Islamic norms and identifications by emphasizing particular ways of being Muslim for women, they also transform the very content and contours of Islamic piety and femininity. The essays in this issue also reveal how Muslim women’s bodies circulate in the market, turning into commodities themselves. Muslim women are not only targeted as a consumer niche, but their bodies constitute a territory on which capitalism stakes its claims.

Western theories of the development of capitalism traditionally assume that a new, secular rationality will take hold in society, undermining or limiting the role of religion. This issue, on the contrary, demonstrates the mutual capitalization of religion and the market. The points where they diverge—in the tensions and oppositions between capitalism and piety—cause anxiety about virtue traded for commercial value. Here we explore both the benefits and the costs of that mutual capitalization.

Special Issue JMEWS 6.3 will be available online and in print in August 2010.

IU Press to launch new journal: African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review

Cross-posted from the IU Press Journals blog:

Indiana University Press, in partnership with the Africa Peace and Conflict Network and the West African Research Association, will launch the African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review  (ACPR) in early 2011. It will be edited by Abu Bakarr Bah at Northern Illinois University, with the assistance of Associate Editors Mark Davidheiser (Nova Southeastern University) and Tricia Hepner (University of Tennessee), and published twice a year. Volume 1, number 1 will be available in early 2011. 

ACPR will be an interdisciplinary forum for creative and rigorous studies of conflict and peace in Africa and for discussions between scholars, practitioners, and public intellectuals in Africa, the United States, and other parts of the world. It will include a wide range of theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives on the causes of conflicts and peace processes including, among others, cultural practices relating to conflict resolution and peacebuilding, legal and political conflict preventative measures, and the intersection of international, regional, and local interests and conceptions of conflict and peace.

Read the entire post here.

IU Press launches electronic content initiative

We are pleased to announce the launch of IU Press Online, a robust electronic collection of more than 200 of some of our best books and 75 themed journal issues.

IU Press Online offers subscriptions and the option to purchase individual titles in five subject areas collections: African Studies, African American and Diaspora Studies; Jewish and Holocaust Studies; Philosophy; and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Books and journal issues will be added to these collections regularly, and during the course of the summer, we plan to add electronic content for our award-winning music and religious studies titles.

Features of IU Press online include:

• Fast downloads
• Page-specific URLs for easy book-marking, citing, and sharing on social bookmarking sites
• Accessibility from any web browser, and on handheld devices such as the iPhone
• Fully searchable documents
• A variety of online viewing options
• Built-in subscription-based RSS feeds for automatic updates when content is added

Janet Rabinowitch, Director of IU Press, emphasizes that IU Press Online broadens our connection to global scholarship. "By giving scholars, libraries, and the general reading public the opportunity to access and read IU Press books and journals online, IU Press Online takes an important step in advancing the Press's mission of extending the intellectual reach of Indiana University throughout the world."

Visit IU Press online at: http://iupressonline.iupress.org