Duke University Press Log

The "Lost City" of Machu Picchu

On July 24th, 1911, American archaeologist Hiram Bingham and the Yale Peruvian Expedition team followed an eleven year old boy to the ruins of Machu Picchu. The expedition sensationalized the area and opened the floodgates of tourism in Peru. Today, tourists, adventurers, and academic enthusiasts from all over the world still flock to Machu Picchu. In honor of this wonder, sample several articles from two journals, Ethnohistory and Hispanic American History Review.

In “Collecting a ‘Lost City’ for Science: Huaquero Vision and the Yale Peruvian Expedition to Machu Picchu, 1911, 1912, and 1914–15,” Amy Cox Hall delves deeper into the rediscovery of Machu Picchu. She examines the practices and collecting technologies of the expedition to suggest that the objects accumulated as well as the practices used in accumulating helped fashion Machu Picchu into a “lost city” that was “scientifically discovered” by Bingham. Read an excerpt:

Although popular myth associates Hiram Bingham and his global unveiling of Machu Picchu in 1911 with archaeology, Bingham was trained as a historian and “had little interest in stratigraphy” or other methodologies associated with modern archaeological research. Instead, what was practiced on the three forays of the Yale Peruvian Expedition (YPE) to Machu Picchu is better characterized as a late antiquarianism-inspired collecting spree—or, less generously, strategic “grave robbing."

In this article I suggest that the expedition’s practices and technologies helped mythologize Machu Picchu into a “lost city.” ̈ It was initially imagined by Bingham as the lost Inca city of Vilcapampa, and the expedition team’s collecting practices and the frame of science, as well as the types of artifacts collected, helped materialize Machu Picchu as both a vestige of the Inca race and a “scientific discovery.” The collecting practices combined prospecting with the notion that science had a sovereign claim on those objects that might contribute to the accumulation of its knowledge. Rather than representing a nation’s or empire’s sovereign claim over a territory and its history, the expedition relied on the universal virtue and sovereignty of science to make its objects collectible.

Read more of “Collecting a ‘Lost City’ for Science” here.

In “Tourism, Environment, and Development on the Inca Trail,” Keely Maxwell explores how tourism has shaped Latin America by constructing touristic landscapes and impacting environmental problem solving. He utilizes written records and interviews to document the environmental history of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Read an excerpt:

Thousands of kilometers of former Inca roads span the Andes. One 40-kilometer section has become a new type of Andean pathway, a tourist trail hiked by 54,000 foreign visitors in 2008 alone. Tourism has emerged as a potent political economic force in twentieth-century Latin America, with concomitant environmental impacts. Yet despite the importance of tourism in the region, there are few scholarly investigations of its history, particularly its environmental history. Research has centered on how tourism developed as a leisure activity linked to modernity and capitalist industrialization, on the social construction of tourism destinations, and on social relations of hosts to guests. In Latin America, tourism histories have focused geographically on the Caribbean and Mexico and thematically on “sun and sand” or on cultural heritage tourism. The Inca Trail is part of the Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary, created in 1981 and designated a World Heritage Site for natural and cultural heritage in 1983. It is a premiere tourist destination and the center of controversy over environmental impacts, and so it provides a critical case for examining the environmental history of Latin American tourism.

Read more of “Tourism, Environment, and Development on the Inca Trail” here.

Duke University Press at the Canadian Library Association Meeting

In May we attended the Canadian Library Association Conference for the first time in Victoria, British Columbia. Attending this meeting was a great way for us to reach out to our Canadian customers and learn more about what we can do to make their jobs easier.

The University of Victoria Library Tour

In addition to exhibiting and attending panels, we were able to tour two academic libraries—the University of Victoria and Camosun College Libraries—to learn more about recent library renovations at both schools. We even noticed some of our journals in the stacks!

We've always found it beneficial to engage in current conversations about important topics such as accessibility, open access content, and what new scholarship we can offer our customers like the recent launch of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly.

Camosun College Campus

We look forward to meeting more of our customers! The next library conferences we will be attending are the International Federation of Library Association annual meeting and the Frankfurt Book Fair. 

 

 

Library Meetings: Bigger than Small Talk

Our Library Relations team: (L to R) Kendall, Beth, and Kim

Our Library Relations team travels to conferences around the globe, including the United Kingdom Serials Group Annual Conference (UKSG), the International Federation of Library Associations Annual Conference (IFLA), and the Frankfurt Book Fair. If you come across a Duke University Press booth in your travels, we hope that you'll come say hello.

Kim Steinle, Library Relations and Sales Manager

"One of the nicest things about library conferences is the opportunity to finally meet a librarian in person after years of e-mails. Face-to-face conversations about usage reporting or budget constraints can be so productive. The frank exchange of information helps us be as responsive as possible to librarians' concerns." Kim's next meetings are North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) and IFLA.

Beth Hoskins, Library Relations Coordinator

"I'm always struck by how easily small talk leads to big ideas at library meetings. I remember chatting with a librarian who was frustrated by all of the time she spent sorting through massive site licenses. As a result, we trimmed our e-collection site licenses down to two pages. It was great to learn about a specific way that we could lighten a burden for our customers."

Kendall McKenzie, Data and Project Specialist

"Conferences give me the chance to absorb the library culture. We love to learn about librarians’ challenges, successes, new trends, and what they want most out of their content. It’s exciting to have these conversations in person and really witness their energy." Kendall's next meeting is UKSG.

UKSG

If you'll be attending UKSG, please look for Kendall and Leslie Eager at Stand 74. Leslie is returning for her second UKSG and Kendall is looking forward to attending for the first time. 

We'd love to see you while we're in the UK. If we can meet either at the conference or on a campus visit, please contact us!

Celebrate Mardi Gras with our Journals

Maybe Mardi Gras isn't celebrated in your city, but who says you can't get into the spirit? Duke University Press has published many journal articles on Mardi Gras, and we've made these two freely available for the holiday—so don your beads and mask, cut a slice of king cake, and dive into these articles.*

"Spenser and Milton at Mardi Gras: English Literature, American Cultural Capital, and the Reformation of New Orleans Carnival" by Richard Rambuss in boundary 2 (27:2)

Read an excerpt:

Milton may be far from mind when one now thinks of or, better, experiences what is advertised as the world's greatest free party. Yet, as we have begun to consider, a rather detailed, even learned usage of literature—particularly English Renaissance and classical literature—played a structuring role in Comus's endeavor to appropriate and dignify the residual Latin traditions of Carnival. Propounding a caste status for its founders that was then more an aspiration than an actuality, a commemorative booklet issue by the Mistick Krewe in 1947 thus explains that 'as the members of Comus were socially important this meant that their celebration of Mardi Gras was orderly, educational and cultural.' (pages 49-50)

For more of "Spenser and Milton at Mardi Gras," click here.

 

"Mardi Gras Tourism and the Construction of Sydney as an International Gay and Lesbian City" by Kevin Markwell in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (8:1-2)

Read an excerpt:

Mardi Gras attracts many domestic and international tourists to Sydney during February, and their numbers peak just prior to the parade and party at the end of the festival. The festival, parade, and party are major events on Australia’s tourism calendar. There is a strong representation from countries such as the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and France, as well as increasing numbers of tourists from Southeast Asia, and Mardi Gras packages are advertised in the gay and lesbian press in European and North American countries. While approximately 15 percent of the eighty events at the festival are free, many of the most popular ones require tickets... Full participation in the festival is an expensive undertaking, especially when coupled with the costs of outfits; body treatments such as waxing, tanning, gym training, hairstyling, and party drugs; and, for tourists, accommodation and transportation costs. Many people are willing, however, to spend large sums because Mardi Gras becomes for them the major yearly event that helps define their gay or lesbian identity. (page 84)

For more of "Mardi Gras Tourism," click here.

 

Don't forget to check out Matt Sakakeeny's new book Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans while you're on your Mardi Gras kick!

 

*If you're in a location that really celebrates Mardi Gras, don't be concerned. You can still read these articles through the end of the month. Recover from your festivities and then get to reading.

Duke University Press goes to Singapore

In August, Library Relations Manager Kim Steinle traveled to Singapore for this year's International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). The congress had over 3,500 delegates from 120 countries including Ghana, Thailand, Lithuania, Russia, Indonesia, and Cameroon. Kim was able to meet several of our customers from Southeast Asia and Australia--subscribers that we usually don’t get to see face to face--as well as make several site visits.

Librarians Kanok-on Sakdadate and Pimpan Paiboonwangchroen from the National Library of Thailand visiting our booth.

Editorial Director Ken Wissoker also traveled to Singapore to speak at the International Summit of the Book. The theme of the summit this year was "A Book By Any Other Name" and focused on the meaning and future of the book from an Asian and global perspective. The panels brought together the library leaders, authors, and publishers from all over the world.

We are always so excited to have our content in new places! IFLA and the International Summit of the Book were great places to meet librarians and customers from all over the world in one place.

 

Thanks to Kim for sharing her photos!

 

 

Ruth Behar Events this Spring in San Francisco and Florida

Traveling Heavy is a deeply moving, unconventional memoir by the master storyteller and cultural anthropologist Ruth Behar. Through evocative stories, she portrays her life as an immigrant child and later, as an adult woman who loves to travel but is terrified of boarding a plane. With an open heart, she writes about her Yiddish-Sephardic-Cuban-American family, as well as the strangers who show her kindness as she makes her way through the world. Watch the book trailer.

 

Nilo Cruz, author of Anna in the Tropics and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, has said "Ruth Behar takes us deep into geographies she has charted, transcending anthropological reportage and finding the poetry that is there not only in the places she has mapped but also in history. She has written an observant and surprisingly compassionate book, full of warmth. I enjoyed reading every page; it is full of wisdom and devastating sincerity."

May 7, 2013

7:00 p.m.

Jewish Community Library

1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA

May 8, 2013

7:00 p.m.

Modern Times Bookstore Collective

2919 24th Street, San Francisco, CA

May 9, 2013

7:00 p.m.

The Emerald Tablet

80 Fresno Street, San Francisco, CA

May 20, 2013

8:00 p.m.

Books & Books

265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, FL

 

A listing of all DUP author events is also available on our Google Calendar.

Watch the trailer:

 

 

A Visit to the Home of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle

Jocelyn Dawson, the assistant manager of our Journals Marketing department, recently visited the home of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle in London and shares an account of her trip below. The Press has published over 10,000 of the Carlyles’ letters and maintains a Carlyle Twitter feed.

During a recent visit to London, I visited the home of Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle and his wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle.  Now maintained by the National Trust, from 1834 to 1881 the Chelsea row home housed two nineteenth-century literary luminaries who still loom large in our world here at Duke University Press, where we continue to publish the Carlyles' letters.  

My interest in seeing the home stemmed not from intellectual interest in nineteenth century literary history nor the work of the man who wrote Frederick the Great. Rather, I wanted to see the house because of how charmed I’ve become by the turns of phrase in letters that I’ve read in my time at the Press: Thomas’s curmudgeonly complaints about “indifferent tea” and “transient biliary businesses,” his habit of denouncing people (including Voltaire) as “blackguards,” and Jane’s emphatic descriptions of favorite writers and of everyday Victorian life (“The evening I spent as I spend too many, at an odious tea party”).  The Carlyles revealed by the letters are a far cry from the somber monument to Thomas etched in stone at the front of their home on Cheyne Row.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The exterior of the Carlyle home in Chelsea on a gray London day. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The home that the Carlyles moved into in 1834 was number 5 Cheyne Row, but was later changed to number 24. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carlyle called the home “on the whole a most massive, roomy, sufficient old house with places, for example, to hang, say, three dozen hats or cloaks.” Today a visitor will find it a fitting place to remember the lives of two people who influenced the greatest artists and thinkers of their day--work we hope lives on through the publication of their letters.

 

Is Travel from the US to Cuba About to Get Easier?

The New York Times reports today that the Obama administration plans to lift some restrictions on Americans' ability to travel to Cuba. Academic, religious, and cultural groups may soon be able to travel directly to Cuba to facilitate "people-to-people" cultural exchange. If you plan to take advantage of the loosened restrictions, you'll want to read The Cuba Reader before you go. It's the perfect guide to the history, culture, and politics of the island. A reviewer in the Miami Herald said, "What The Cuba Reader does extraordinarily well is to reveal the nuances and complexity of the Cuban experience. All shades of politics are here, and they infuse Cuban dance, music, film and religion." The book is edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff. And look for The Havana Reader sometime in the next couple of years!

Books on Traffic

In honor of the year's busiest travel week, NPR is doing a series on traffic safety, which inspired us to think about several recent Duke Press books nominally about the subject. Enda Duffy's The Speed Handbook: Velocity, Pleasure, Modernism returns to the early days of the automobile to examine how the experience of speed has always been political and how it has affected nearly all aspects of modern culture. Speed became the quintessential way for individuals to experience modernity, to feel modernity in their bones, particularly when that speed resulted in actual broken bones! Jeremy Packer looks at automobile safety in American culture in his book Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars, and Citizenship.  Packer analyzes how driving has been understood by experts, imagined by citizens, regulated by traffic laws, governed through education and propaganda, and represented in films, television, magazines, and newspapers. Packer, a motorcyclist himself, has an especially interesting chapter on how the motorcycle went from being seen as a cheap, easy mode of transport to a risky machine driven by outlaws. And finally, we have a new book out about the development of the anti-lock braking system (ABS). Ann Johnson's Hitting the Brakes: Engineering Design and the Production of Knowledge uses the development of ABS as a case study for examining the process of engineering design in which knowledge communities come together to produce new products and knowledge. Think about the rather tortured path from design to implementation as you stomp your own anti-lock brakes in traffic this week.

Charters on WPR's "Here on Earth"

Samuel Charters was interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio's "Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders" program on May 28, 2009. Listen to the interview here. Samuel Charters, one of the very first musicologists to study Afro-American music, has summed up his life's work in A Language of Song, which details his journey to Africa and to find Africa-influenced music in the United States, Brazil, and the Carribean.