Duke University Press Log

Tibetan poet in the news

 The Irish Times features a story about Woeser, one of Tibet's most famous poets, and her efforts to obtain a passport from the Chinese government.  Woeser, who is also a blogger/activist for Tibetan rights and critic of the Chinese government, is suing officials over their refusal to grant her a passport, which she first applied for in 2003. 

For more on Tibetan artists and their troubled relationship with the PRC, check out Lauran R. Hartley and Patricia Schiaffini-Vedani's new book, Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change, which is the first systematic and detailed overview of modern Tibetan literature. 

Maria Elena Buszek Quoted in LA Times

Maria Elena Buszek, author of Pin-Up Grrrls, is quoted in a Los Angeles Times article about artist Olivia De Berardinis. Buszek says that the subjects of De Berardinis's pin-up portraits "are very much in control, owning their own sexuality in a way that doesn't necessarily need the approval or context provided by a male viewer."

Swanee Hunt on Radovan Karadzic

Swanee Hunt, author of This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace, has an op-ed about Radovan Karadzic on The Huffington Post. Hunt, former U.S. Ambassador to Austria, is hopeful about the arrest: "While we can hope that less calculated motivators were at work, this arrest brings an important opportunity. The region can reorient itself toward the future rather than the past. The Balkan people can now move forward, unburdened by one of the chief architects of mass murder.There's farther to go, even in Bosnia. But the lessons reach far beyond, whether to Sudan, Iraq, Zimbabwe, or Colombia. Peace, healing, and prosperity go hand in hand with justice"

David Price Mentioned in Pravda

In an op-ed in Pravda (yes, that Pravda!) about the Pentagon's Human Terrain System, John Stanton gives a shout-out to David Price and his new book Anthropological Intelligence. Price's research on anthropologists during World War II should serve as a cautionary tale to those social scientists thinking of lending their expertise to the military today.

Books on the War in the Former Yugoslavia

Today alll the papers have more information on the arrest of Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic and the news has been the occasion to look back at the war and its aftermath. Duke has published several relevant titles if you're looking to expand your knowledge of those dark events. Former U.S. diplomat Louis D. Sell's Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia is a political biography of the now-deceased tyrant.In This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace, Swanee Hunt provides intimate portraits of 26 Bosnian women working to rebuild their country after the war. In The Body of War: Media, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Break-up of Yugoslavia, Dubravka Žarkov takes a more cultural studies kind of approach, analyzing the representations of female and male bodies in the Croatian and Serbian press in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s. With Muslim, Croatian, and Serbian journalists and historians as contributors, Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia elucidates the Balkan tragedy while directing attention toward the antiwar movement and the work of the independent media that have largely been ignored by the U.S. press. And Phillip Corwin's Dubious Mandate: A Memoir of the UN in Bosnia, Summer 1995, interweaves personal experiences of daily life in a war zone—supply shortages, human suffering, assassination attempts, corruption—with historical facts, as Corwin challenges commonly held views of the war with his own highly informed, discerning, and trenchant political commentary.

Review of Our Caribbean on Asia & Pacific Writers Network

Cathie Koa Dunsford has a fabulous review of Thomas Glave's Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles on the Asia and Pacific Writers Network site. Dunsford finds the book "ground-breaking," and writes, "You need to take time with this collection. It is a delicious gathering of voices, all different, but with interweaving themes. You cannot rush this experience. From the luscious, sexy racy prose to the cutting edge politics, every line has shape and depth and plays upon you long after the reading. This book will rock you, rock within you, like This Bridge Called My Back, edited by Cherie Moraga, did in the 1970’s”.

More on Disney's Dream Home

Sunday's Washington Post features a long article on Disneyland's new Dream Home. For more about how Disney has shaped our perceptions of what the future should be, see Davin Heckman's book A Small World: Smart Houses and the Dream of the Perfect Day and also his recent guest post on this blog.

Brian Edwards in Chicago Tribune

Brian Edwards, author of Morocco Bound: Disorienting America's Maghreb, from Casablanca to the Marrakech Express, had an op-ed in yesterday's Chicago Tribune. Edwards argues that regardless of whether American leaders are talking to Iranian leaders, ordinary Americans and Iranians are already engaging in dialogue. He writes, "When politicians and commentators ignore this reality, they are putting international politics back into the 20th Century. Meanwhile, Iran and the rest of us are well into the 21st."

NY Times on French Citizenship

Today's Times has an interesting piece on a woman denied French citizenship because she wears a veil. The Council of State deemed her insufficiently assimilated into French culture, even though her husband and children are French citizens. Later this year Duke will publish a translation of Patrick Weil's landmark history of French citizenship, How to Be French: Nationality in the Making since 1789. Weil was a member of France’s Governmental Advisory Council on Integration from 1996 to 2002, and a member of the Presidential Commission created by President Jacques Chirac on the “implementation of the principle of secularism within the French Republic” in 2003. Weil argues that France has changed its nationality laws more often and more significantly than any other modern democratic nation.and that gender inequities have been built into its citizenship process for centuries.

Jeremy Packer on Road Rage

Heading off in your car for your summer vacation, or just heading to work, do you need to be worried about road rage? Jeremy Packer, author of Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars, and Citizenship, says it's complicated. Check him out in our first Duke Press produced video.