Duke University Press Log

Editor Reynolds Smith Retires

Yesterday was longtime Executive Editor J. Reynolds Smith's last day here at Duke Press. He joined the Press in 1976 as a copy editor and since then has become one of the public faces of the Press. He aided in the transformation of Duke Press from a stodgy publisher of such tomes as Politics of Canadian Airport Development to the cutting-edge producer of critical theory and cultural studies that we are now. Reynolds has worked with hundreds of authors over the years, and many of them have fond remembrances of their collaborations with him. We collected a few such remembrances in a series of video tributes. Be sure to view all three videos to catch such luminaries as Ariel Dorfman, Walter Mignolo, and Priscilla Wald talk about working with such a great editor.

Reynolds's colleagues at Duke Press gathered for a party last week to send him off. There was great food and drink organized by the Books Editorial department and tributes from current and former co-workers. Here are a few pictures from the bittersweet event.

Reynolds's longtime assistant Sharon Parks Torian presents him with years of post-it notes.

 

Delicious food!

Lee Willoughby-Harris, who has been at the Press nearly as long as Reynolds, shows off the t-shirt for the 1980s era Duke Press softball team, named the Purple Pros by Reynolds.

Reynolds and Ken Surin, Duke professor and author of Freedom Not Yet.

Jackson's The Palm at the End of the Mind Reviewed in TLS

Michael Jackson's latest book, The Palm at the End of the Mind: Relatedness, Religiosity, and the Real, is reviewed in an essay on the philosophy of religion in the December 11 issue of the Times Literary Supplement. Reviewer Jonathan Benthall writes, "Michael Jackson’s sixty-one short essays, based on his experiences in disparate geographical settings, are designed to speak to each reader individually like a sophisticated musical composition, rather than advancing a linear argument." He continues, "Jackson’s case that ‘history, religion, spirituality, culture are shop-worn terms,’ and should be replaced by ‘the image of life at the edge of language, a shoreline on which the sea washes ceaselessly,’ is given substance by his own literary skill. And it is possible to glimpse here the makings of a shared ‘religious’ sensibility that may be fitfully emerging to unite different peoples and traditions, in ways influenced by, but not entirely decreed by, the gods of the marketplace."

Guest Post: SAQ guest editor on "What’s Left of the Left? The View from Sudan”

Introducing the importance of Abdel Khaliq Mahgoub’s writings in the context of Sudan’s history of strife, guest editor Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf presents “What’s Left of the Left? The View from Sudan,” the latest issue of the South Atlantic Quarterly. Download Abdel Khaliq Mahgoub's "By Virtue of Marxism, Your Honor" free.

All eyes are now on Sudan following the arrest warrant issued for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1593, concerning alleged war crimes in Darfur. The UN Security Council referred the case to Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, after the investigation of Sudan’s own special prosecutor had not led to war crimes prosecutions, suggesting the failure of institutions of justice within the country. Events of this magnitude are to be expected given the systematic nature of the repressive regime, which is notorious for its pervasive political violence, death, and displacement. Beneath the surface of Islamist political dominance and traditionalist politics lies a little-known Sudanese intellectual life, including Sudanese Marxists’ contributions to discourses on modernity, democracy, human rights, and justice, as exemplified in the writings of the late Abdel Khaliq Mahgoub. Reading Mahgoub with the benefit of hindsight reveals a direct relevance to current politics in his native country. Today, as the Sudan experiences litigious political predicaments, we pause to ponder the enormous difference that a distinctive body of progressive thought, like Mahgoub’s—had it been attended to—might have made to preclude the unsolvable dilemmas suffocating Sudan today.

Tim Lawrence Interviews and Excerpts

You can get a taste of Tim Lawrence's new biography of musician and composer Arthur Russell by reading two recent interviews and excerpts. Resident Advisor features the story of the making of Russell's most famous track, Is It All Over My Face? And The Arts Desk runs an interview with Lawrence as well as an extract from the introduction. Oh, and if you want to buy the book in Italy, you can get a free t-shirt!

Duke Authors at American Anthropological Association's Annual Meeting

Last week's American Anthropological Association annual meeting in Philadelphia was very exciting for Duke Press. Not only did we get to participate at the book exhibit and meet up with our authors, but we also had the book launch for S. Ann Dunham's Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia. There was a presidential session for the book, and we also had a reception that included Nancy I. Cooper, Alice G. Dewey, and Maya Soetoro-Ng.

 

A view of all the amazing books at our booth!

 

At the Dunham reception.

 

Dunham's daughter and President Obama's sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, signs copies of her mother's book.

 

Selling copies of Dunham's book.

 

One of our staffers, Helena Knox, at the Dunham reception.

 

Another one of our staffers, Emma Boyer, takes a glance at Dunham's Surviving against the Odds.

Sverker Finnstrom, Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda (2008)

 

David A. B. Murray, editor of Homophobias: Lust and Loathing across Time and Space (2009)

Thanks to our Books Marketing Intern, Brittany Miller, for taking these pics!

 

Thomas F. Carter, The Quality of Home Runs: The Passion, Politics, and Language of Cuban Baseball (2008)

 

Enrique Mayer, Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform (2009)

Thanks to our Exhibits Manager, Helena Knox, for these two photos!

Lawrence Reviewed in Oxford American

This month the Oxford American reviews Tim Lawrence's Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992. The biography picks up where 2008's documentary Wild Combination left off, says the reviewer, "providing the most fascinating recount of the unfairly condemned-to-obscurity experimental musician." The review concludes, "Russell’s unprecedented genre-merging deserves this kind of exploration, and Lawrence approaches with a delicacy and direct intimacy reminiscent of the music itself."

Two Great Interviews

Listen to two great interviews with our authors. Maya Soetoro-Ng, daughter of S. Ann Dunham and sister of President Barack Obama, was interviewed this weekend by NPR's Guy Raz. She talks about her mother's book, Surviving against the Odds, about growing up in Indonesia and accompanying her mother on research trips, and about what their mother might have thought about her son becoming President. And on the BBC show Thinking Allowed, you can hear Karen Ho talk about her anthropological research in a very different locale: Wall Street. Ho took a job at Banker's Trust for a year and interviewed dozens of investment bankers for her book Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street.

Deborah Paredez talks about Selenidad

Check out our latest YouTube video! In her new book, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (2009), Deborah Paredez looks at the Latina performer, Selena, and her place in American culture at the turn of the 21st century.

Relationship with Military Debated at Anthro Meeting

The relationship between the military and social scientists is a recurring debate at the American Anthropology Association annual meeting now. Once again a commission has released a report on the Human Terrain System (HTS), a Pentagon program that embeds anthropologists or sociologists with military units abroad. The New York Times says, "The report cited insufficient training to prepare scholars for work in the field, concern about confidentiality and obtaining informed consent from the local population, and the possibility that collected research could be used to select military targets." Inside Higher Ed interviews David Price, one of the primary authors of the report as well as of two books from Duke: Threatening Anthropology and Anthropological Intelligence. Price does not believe that changes the Pentagon has suggested for the program will improve it: "To the extent to which it relies on misshapen forms of fieldwork, which is really the core of what it’s doing, it cannot be salvaged," he said. Price also discusses the HTS program in a Counterpunch article this week. He writes, "The notion of using anthropologists and other social scientists to gather information, probe and soothe the feelings of those living in these environments, increasingly monitored and controlled by machines, strikes me as an anthropological abomination. Given what we know anthropologically about the complexities of how culture works, it also seems doomed to failure."

Dunham Launch Today

Everyone at the Press is excited for the big launch of S. Ann Dunham's Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia today. Dunham, the mother of President Obama, submitted her dissertation on metal workers in Java in 1992 and died before she she could get it published. Now, fourteen years after her death, we are proud to be bringing her important work to the public. The book is being launched today at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. At noon there will be a press conference about the book and Dunham's work. Editors Alice Dewey and Nancy Cooper, Duke Press Editorial Director Ken Wissoker, University of Hawaii's Geoffery White, and Dunham's daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng will attend. The press conference is followed by a special Presidential Session on Dunham and her work. And later in the evening, Duke Press and the AAA host a reception and book signing. Of course the book will be on sale at Duke's booth in the exhibit hall throughout the conference. To read more about the book, check out this great Chronicle of Higher Education piece which includes interviews with Soetoro-Ng and Wissoker (subscription required) or this Publishers Weekly article.