Indiana University Press blog

Transition editors to give talk at Harvard Book Store

Guest editors Laurent Dubios and Kaiama L. Glover will discuss the IUP journal Transition this Friday, May 3 at 7:30 p.m. at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, MA. The editors, along with Gina Athena Ulysse and other guests, will read from the 111th issue titled "New Narratives of Haiti." For more information, visit the Harvard Book Store's website.

You're gonna flip for the digital flip versions of our catalogs!

OK, so I'm a little late to the "make-a-cool-digital-flip-version-of-your-catalog" party, but I've finally arrived with our first issue using Issuu. Check out our fall 2013 books and journals catalogs, and tell us what you think!

Fall 2013 books catalog

Open publication - Free publishing - More academic

Fall 2013 journals catalog

Open publication - Free publishing - More humanities

Reading selections for Black History Month: Part 3, IU Press journals

In the final installment of our Black History Month series, we focus on journals published by IU Press to further your understanding of African American and African studies.

Spectrum: A New Journal on Black Masculinities

We recently partnered with the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University to publish this important and timely new journal. Spectrum covers both historic and current issues faced by Black men, and recognizes, documents, and features the positive and unique features and iterations of Black manhood and masculinities, as well as the various roles that they play globally in society.

Read more or subscribe to this journal.

Transition 109

Many of the artists featured in Transition 109 "Persona" make their livings making themselves up. For these performance artists, persona shades into personality, and their theatrics don’t seem so different from the daily wardrobe decisions of metalheads in Botswana, or, at the other end of the spectrum, the highly tuned persona, personality, and apotheosis of personhood that is Oprah herself. As Ms. Winfrey might say, you are your hardest role yet. The craft of the self is unmasked in this issue, revealing the sleight of hand at play in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s famous words: “We wear the mask.” There’s a special ring to it in the African diaspora.

Read more or subscribe to this journal.

Black Camera 4.1 Close-up: Precious

Guest edited by Suzette Spencer

In Volume 4, number 1, of Black Camera, the “Close-Up” section is devoted to a critical assessment of and about the film Precious and the novel Push by Sapphire (upon which Precious is based.) Precious has garnered several accolades, notably Oscars (2010) for acting and screenwriting and numerous distinctions for directing.

Spencer has collected essays that pivot between and extend beyond the formal frames of both the film and the novel and that stage intertextual and comparative dialogues with related works of film, literature, visual culture, photography, or theory. Together, the essays and commentaries take up an assemblage of distinctively theorized formations and gendered subjectivities, at once historical and contemporary.

Read more or subscribe to this journal.

African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review (ACPR) Volume 2 Issue 2

Special Issue: West African Research Association Peace Initiative Conference in Sierra Leone (2010) and Cape Verde (2011)

Guest edited by Steven Howard

The articles in this issue of African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review were selected from those presented at two conferences sponsored by the West African Research Association (WARA). West Africa, the setting for both conferences, is the site of religious diversity if not conflict, in every country of the region and most of its corners. The papers published here try to examine the capacity that communities across the continent have for peace and reconciliation. In particular, the papers examine the way religious institutions foster reconciliation and peacebuilding and the critical role of media in consolidating peace.

Read more or subscribe to this journal.

Research in African Literatures Vol. 43, No. 4, Winter 2012

Special Issue: Measuring Time: Karin Barber and the Study of Everyday Africa

Guest edited by Onookome Okome and Stephanie Newell

This special issue of Research in African Literatures celebrates Karin Barber, a scholar who is marked by, to quote Okpewho, an intellectual attitude committed to exploring an idea until a “solid book on it” comes forth. Indeed, Barber’s “efforts are primarily beholden to intellectual history and a larger life of the mind”. This special issue is dedicated to reexamining one of the finest and most influential essays she has published to date, “Popular Arts in Africa” (1987), and to considering the current scholarly field of African popular arts.

Read more or subscribe to this journal.

Other journals of interest:

Africa Today is at the forefront in publishing Africanist, reform-minded research. Read more

Meridians provides a forum for the finest scholarship and creative work by and about women of color in US and international contexts. Read more

IU Press to publish new journal: Teaching and Learning Inquiry

Cross-posted from the IUP/Journals blog:

Indiana University Press will publish Teaching and Learning Inquiry, the official publication of the International Society of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL). Published twice a year beginning in March 2013, it will include insightful research, theory, commentary, and other scholarly works that document or facilitate investigations of teaching and learning in higher education. TLI values quality and variety in its vision of the scholarship of teaching and learning.  

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a growing movement in post-secondary education. SoTL is scholarly inquiry into student learning that advances the practice of teaching by making research findings public. ISSOTL has cultivated a strong international and interdisciplinary community, primarily through the quality of its annual conferences.

TLI’s Editorial Board features representation from ISSOTL's international regions (US, Canada, Australasia, and Europe), the entire career spectrum (from student to retiree, and all between), a breadth of disciplines and professions, a variety of institutional types, and women and men. TLI promises to offer the best and most groundbreaking work on and in the scholarship of teaching and learning.  

TLI editors, Nancy Chick (Vanderbilt University—Center for Teaching) and Gary Poole (University of British Columbia—School of Population and Public Health), bring strong, complementary SoTL backgrounds to the journal that with Nancy's experience in the humanities (literary studies) and Gary's experience  in the social sciences (psychology).  

TLI will strive to push boundaries and expand the field by introducing a wider range of genres and perspectives. TLI editor Nancy Chick says, “We plan to do this without compromising well-established criteria that would be expected across the disciplines. We will be creative, thoughtful, artistic, and scientific. This sounds ambitious, but it is just what SoTL needs within the covers of one leading journal.”

In addition, TLI invites nontraditional genres of SoTL publication. Along with essays, projects will also be represented in poems, dialogues, and other creative products.

The journal will regularly feature articles documenting SoTL projects, theoretical assertions, literature syntheses, or reports on the field; dialogues responding to previous issues; innovative but systematic reflections through creative products; and reviews of books, external articles, web resources, or conferences.

Questions regarding submissions may be directed to TLI@vanderbilt.edu

Subscribe now and don't miss the first issue. Visit www.jstor.org/r/iupress

IU Press to publish new journal on black masculinities

Cross-posted from the IUP/Journals blog:

Excerpted from the Introduction to Spectrum 1.1, delivers October 2012.

It is our hope, first and foremost, that information contained in this journal will prompt scholars and others to think creatively about Black males and their place in America and around the globe. Furthermore, we trust that the material presented will be used by its readers to help reduce, if not eliminate, the economic, political, and social disparities that act as barriers to Black male progress, all too often hindering, if not preventing, them from securing the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness referenced in our nation’s most sacrosanct documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Constitution.

Finally, because we believe that, despite the hurdles placed before Black males, often times with the expressed purpose of consigning them to an inferior place on the world stage; Black men possess a tremendous amount of agency. In keeping with this perspective, readers can expect Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men to not only bring to the fore those issues with which Black men struggle, be they historically or currently, but to recognize, document, and feature prominently the positive and unique features and iterations of Black manhood, masculinities, as well as the various roles that they play globally in society. We introduce this new volume to you and look forward to many future editions.

An Introduction Declaring … Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, Terrell L. Strayhorn & Judson Jeffries

ARTICLES

I Should Get Married Early: Culturally Appropriate Comprehensive Sex Education and the Racialization of Somali Masculinity, Jesse Mills

E. Franklin Frazier: Revisited, Vernon J. Williams, Jr.

Womanizing Richard Wright: Constructing the Black Feminine in The Outsider, Floyd W. Hayes, III

Establishing Priorities for Student-Athletes: Balancing Academics and Sports, Leon McDougle, MD, MPH & Quinn Capers, IV

The Effects of Culturally Responsive Mentoring on the High School to College Matriculation of Urban African American Males, Anthony B. Mitchell & James B. Stewart.

Creating Conditions of Mattering to Enhance Persistence for Black Men at an Historically Black University, Robert T. Palmer & Dina C. Maramba

A Good Black Manhood is Hard to Find: Toward a More Transgressive Reading Practice, Jeffrey Q. McCune

Narrating Muslim Masculinities: The Fruit of Islam and the Quest for Black Redemption, Zain Abdullah

Col. Herbert L. Brewer and the United States Marine Corps: A Man of many Firsts, Judson Jeffries

BOOK REVIEWS

Masculinity in the Black Imagination: Politics of Communicating Race and Manhood, edited by Ronald L. Jackson and Mark C. Hopson, Marjorie L. Dorimé-Williams

Black Empire: The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914-1962, Michelle Ann Stephens, Lloyd D. McCarthy

Black Masculinity and Sexual Politics, Anthony Lemelle, Fred McCall & Cameron J. Harris

Don't miss the first issue, subscribe now.

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.