Duke University Press Log

William Eggleston to Judge 2010 First Book Prize in Photography

The Center for Documentary Studies has announced that internationally renowned color photographer William Eggleston will be the next judge for the prestigious CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography.

"William Eggleston brings to the First Book Prize his singular vision on the ordinary, his democratic view of the everyday," said Tom Rankin, director of the Center for Documentary Studies. "We could have no one better to locate the next great American photography book than him, no one more acute in seeing the brilliant fibers of the ever-present."

The biennial Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography competition is open to American photographers of any age who have never published a book-length work and who use their cameras for creative exploration, whether it be of places, people, or communities; of the natural or social world; of beauty at large or the lack of it; of objective or subjective realities. The prize honors work that is visually compelling, that bears witness, and that has integrity of purpose.

The winning photographer receives a grant of $3,000, publication of a book of photography, and inclusion in a website devoted to presenting the work of winners of the prize. The judge also writes the introduction for the book, which is published by Duke University Press in association with CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies. Previous winners are Jennette Williams, Danny Wilcox Frazier, Steven B. Smith, and Larry Schwarm.

Submissions for the 2010 competition will be accepted from June 15 to September 8, 2010.

Image: Cover of William Eggleston's 2 1/4, Twin Palms Publishers, 2008

Two Events Honor Eve Sedgwick

There are two events honoring Eve Sedgwick today. If you're in Durham, head over to the Richard White Auditorium on East Campus for "After Eve," a lecture and roundtable featuring Lauren Berlant (author of The Female Complaint and The Queen of America Goes to Washington City), Tyler Curtain (who has a forthcoming book with Duke and wrote the introduction to Baltimore Portraits), Maurice Wallace (author of Constructing the Black Masculine), and Robyn Wiegman (author of American Anatomies and editor of Women's Studies on Its Own). If you're in New York City instead, you can attend the two-day conference "Spanking and Poetry" at the CUNY Graduate Center. The conference features many fascinating panels on Eve's work and influence and concludes with a keynote address by Michael Moon and Jonathan Goldberg, who, along with Michèle Aina Barale, edited Series Q with Sedgwick. Moon is the author of A Small Boy and Others and Goldberg wrote Willa Cather and Others and edited Queering the Renaissance. It's great to see so many Duke University Press authors honoring Eve Sedgwick, who was such an important influence on the Press itself, on scholarship, and in many lives.

Public Space and the Legacy of Racism in Johannesburg

Today's New York Times has an interesting article about the difficulties getting a bus system set up in Johannesburg. Much of the city's poorer black population lives in the outer suburbs of the sprawling metropolis and for decades has had to rely on private minibus taxis to get them to jobs in the city center and wealthy close-in neighborhoods. The 2010 World Cup was supposed to finally bring reliable bus service from Soweto to Sandton, but lingering racism and "not in my backyard" activism by wealthy suburbanites has complicated things. The article mentions a number of geographical curiosities about Johannesburg, such as how a wasteland of mine dumps, factories, and vacant land still separates black from white neighborhoods. Duke Press recently published Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, a collection of essays about the teeming megacity and this coming fall we'll publish a new book that specifically addresses how the lingering effects of Apartheid continue to shape the city's geography. Look for City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg by Martin J. Murray next December. And for more general background on the spread of megacities in the Global South, check out the collection edited by Andreas Huyssen, Other Cities, Other Worlds: Urban Imaginaries in a Globalizing Age and AbdouMaliq Simone's For the City Yet to Come: Changing African Life in Four Cities.

Ariel Dorfman to deliver the Eighth Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture

World-acclaimed Chilean-American author, human rights activist and distinguished professor of Literature and Latin-American Studies at Duke University, Ariel Dorfman, will present the Eighth Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture at Johannesburg’s Linder Auditorium on July 31, 2010.
        The author of many novels, plays, poems, essays and films will speak on the theme “Memory and Justice” at the 2010 Annual Lecture. Dorfman's books with Duke University Press are: The Empire's Old Clothes, In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land, and Some Write to the Future.
    “We are thrilled to have a speaker of the stature of Ariel Dorfman,” says Achmat Dangor, Chief Executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation. “His life and work speaks to what we at the Nelson Mandela Foundation are doing through our Centre of Memory and Dialogue.”
    Previous Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture speakers are: Nobel Peace Laureates Professor Muhammad Yunus, Professor Wangari Maathai, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Kofi Anan, former presidents Bill Clinton and Thabo Mbeki, and President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Ariel Dorfman’s biography is available as a downloadable PDF.

ASLO and Duke University Press partner to launch Limnology and Oceanography: Fluids and Environments; journal issues call for papers

Duke University Press and the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) partnered to launch the journal Limnology and Oceanography: Fluids and Environments. The journal, which will explore the link between fluid dynamics and aquatic system processes and will be offered in an online-only format, begins publication in late 2010.

Edited by Josef Daniel Ackerman at the University of Guelph, Limnology and Oceanography: Fluids and Environments will feature interdisciplinary limnology and oceanography research focusing on the interactions of fluid. To accommodate dynamic observations and model development, the journal will allow appendixes and supporting online materials such as databases and videos.

“We’re looking forward to partnering with an academic publisher for Limnology and Oceanography: Fluids and Environments,” says Carlos Duarte, ASLO president. “As a publisher of forty journals available electronically, Duke University Press brings significant expertise to our new online journal, as well as a shared mission to advance scholarship in the growing field of limnology and oceanography.” 

Congratulations to Duke Press Designers

Designers Amy Ruth Buchanan and Cherie Westmoreland have been recognized by the 2010 AAUP Book, Jacket, and Journal Show for their work on three of Duke University Press's 2009 titles. Amy Ruth Buchanan was recognized in the Scholarly Typographic category for her design of Mira Schor's A Decade of Negative Thinking and for Kathryn Bond Stockton's The Queer Child, or, Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century. Cherie Westmoreland's design for Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia was recognized in the category of Trade Typographic. Congratulations to Amy Ruth and Cherie and three cheers for all our excellent designers.

Exciting Times for Readers and Publishers

Here at Duke Press we are midway through a five year planning process and have been spending this month breaking up into small groups that combine books and journals staff and talking about the future of publishing. That future looks both exhilarating and daunting. Over at the Huffington Post, Jason Pinter posits that we might be living through the most exciting time for book lovers. He wants to get beyond the doom and gloom of "print is dead," and instead celebrate the worldwide success of books by Stieg Larsson, the expansion of e-books, the ability of readers to connect online, and the popularity of movie adaptations of books. His optimism sounds a lot like that of Jim Collins, author of Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture, which we'll publish in June. Collins, a Professor of Film and TV at Notre Dame, describes how a once solitary and print-based experience has become an exuberantly social activity, enjoyed as much on the screen as on the page. Book reading, he claims, has not become obsolete; it has become integrated into popular visual media.

Photo by Brittany Miller.

Roberto M. Dainotto Wins Laura Shannon Prize

Congratulations to Roberto M. Dainotto on winning the Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies for his book Europe (In Theory). The jury statement praised the book: "Europe (In Theory) presents an admirable synthesis of the critical and theoretical literature on the history of the idea or theory of Europe and offers a critical perspective on the question. Forceful, biting, compelling reading." Dainotto is professor of Romance Studies and the Literature Program at Duke University. The Laura Shannon Prize is awarded annually by Notre Dame's Nanovic Institute for European Studies to the author of the best book in European studies that transcends a focus on any one country, state, or people to stimulate new ways of thinking about contemporary Europe as a whole.

Roundup of Weekend Coverage

Some diverse media coverage of Duke Press books this weekend. First up, a very nice profile of Thomas Glave, editor of Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, in FootNotes. D. Kevin McNeir says, "In one word, Glave is—brilliant." McNeir writes, "Our Caribbean is a unique analysis of how same-gender loving and longing intersects with religion, family, race and class all within the Caribbean context and how ostracism and alienation become the common factor and obstacle that stands in the way of true equality and freedom for far too many men and women."

Meanwhile, in California, Arnold J. Bauer did a reading at the Colusa Business and Visitors Center, and the Colusa Sun-Herald reported on the event. They quote an area librarian praising Bauer's new book The Search for the Codex Cardona. "Catherine Bernard, president of the Friends of the Colusa County Library, said she was fascinated by Bauer's book, which is a mystery that touches on the curious — and often illegal — workings of the rare books and manuscripts trade. 'I wasn't really interested in Mexican history,' Bernard said. 'I'm very Euro-centric. But the book had me booking my flight to Mexico City.'"

And over at the literary blog Beatrice, there's a nice excerpt from Fred Moten's new book of poetry, B Jenkins. Ron Hogan posts Moten's poem "Njeeri Wa Thiong’o."

Carlyle Letters Online Volumes 33-35 Now Available

Duke University Press is pleased to announce that volumes 33 through 35 of the Carlyle Letters Online are now available.

The Carlyle Letters Online is a digital archive that hosts over 10,000 of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle’s letters. The collection is searchable by date, recipient, subject, and volume. With the help of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Delmas Foundation, the Carlyle Letters Online is available at no charge to institutions and individuals.

This collection is regarded as one of the finest and most comprehensive literary archives about the nineteenth century. The Carlyles’ correspondents include Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

To access the Carlyle Letters Online, please visit carlyleletters.dukejournals.org.