New This Week: October 21
It’s a big publication day at UNC Press, with seven compelling new titles making their debut. This week’s diverse lineup spans gender and sexuality studies, Southern history, sociology, American studies, labor history—and even fiction. We’re especially excited to launch the first three books in our new Radical Souths series, which reclaims and reprints some of the most revolutionary works of twentieth-century Southern literature.
Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside by Justin Randolph
Justice, Power, and Politics Series
How American police power shaped fights for Black freedom
“This powerful history of policing in the rural South reveals the origins of law enforcement as white control of Black mobility and freedom. Amid today’s calls for police reform and abolition, this book reminds us why history matters.”—Françoise N. Hamlin, author of Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta After World War II
“Randolph has written a landmark history of Jim Crow policing and the Black freedom struggle in Mississippi.”—Jason Morgan Ward, author of Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century
From Vice to Nice: Midwestern Politics and the Gentrification of AIDS by René Esparza
Gentrification: the unexpected consequence of AIDS
“With clear and graceful prose, Esparza delivers a forceful critique of the politics of sexual freedom and bodily autonomy in Minneapolis. A fresh contribution to queer studies and urban history.”—Jonathan Bell, editor of Beyond the Politics of the Closet: Gay Rights and the American State since the 1970s
“A necessary retelling of the AIDS crisis that illustrates how political leaders and urban developers in 1970s–90s Minneapolis criminalized and racialized the sick and the dying for the sake of future profit. A masterful analysis.”—Lisa Marie Cacho, author of Complex Innocence: Defending Defiant Victims of Police Killings
The Case for Rural America by J. Tom Mueller
How to save rural America
“An impressive analysis of what ails rural America and what can save it. It’s clear J. Tom Mueller is invested in rural places and people and his advocacy transcends mere policy suggestions. A much-needed intervention.”—Justin Farrell, Yale University
Painful Forms: Aesthetic Violence in American Literature and Art, 1945–2001 by Anna Ioanes
Unsettling art unsettles our normalization of violence
“Ioanes stages a dialogue between literary texts and artwork to produce rich insights into the relationship between violence, aesthetics, and American art and literature of the late twentieth century. A significant contribution.”—Stephanie Li, Duke University
“An inventive and convincing argument for the necessity of studying and understanding the aesthetics and aesthetic politics of violence. Illuminating.”—Georgina Colby, University of Westminster
Sex and the Office, Second Edition: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire by Julie Berebitsky with a foreword by Katherine Turk and an afterword by Katherine Parkin
A new edition of a vital work on sex, gender, and power in the workplace illuminates pressing issues of our time: #MeToo, COVID-19, and the Trump presidencies
“Berebitsky’s nuanced, compelling study illuminates the history of sex, gender, work, and power. As Turk’s foreword to the second edition makes clear, it is more essential now than ever.”—Deborah Dinner, Cornell Law School
“Stories make history come alive, and Julie Berebitsky’s deeply researched and nuanced study of sex and the modern office is chock-full of them. A thought-provoking and timely intervention.” —Susan Ware, author of Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote
Gathering Storm: A Story of the Black Belt by Myra Page (1897–1993) with a foreword by Michael P. Bibler
A noted book of labor, race, and resistance, back in print
“Gathering Storm is a useful, even powerful place for contemporary readers to reacquaint (or newly acquaint) themselves with what we mean when we refer to the proletariat tradition. Reading the novel against the backdrop of today’s dizzying political confusion, the miasmatic furor of the populist right and the siloed certitudes of the progressive left, I felt a compelling clarity in the openly ideological structures clearly visible and firmly in place behind Page’s fictive prose. I’m delighted it is back in print.”—Ed Pavlić, author of Call It in the Air: Poems
Clenched Fists, Burning Crosses: A Novel by Cris South with an afterword by Jaime Harker
“Cris South draws on firsthand experience in Clenched Fists, Burning Crosses to reveal how women’s relationships to one another shaped the unfolding of now-historical events. This intimate vantage on the interaction of women in a particular time and place makes for a compelling novel even apart from its historical interest. However, by gazing on domestic, sexual, and political violence and how they intertwined in a small but consequential community, South connects that community to women everywhere. An important work finally widely available.”—Tara Powell, University of South Carolina
The Bitterweed Path: A Rediscovered Novel by Thomas Hal Phillips (1922–2007) with a foreword by John Howard and an afterword by Harry Thomas Jr.
An unconventional but undeniable story of love and family between men
“A remarkable rediscovery and moving, subtle, skillful work of fiction. John Howard’s excellent introduction to the book, placing it in historical context, further adds to the importance of this publishing event.”—Martin Duberman, author of Stonewall
“Lyrical, sexy, and fascinating—a haunting work of art from a time and psychological place that is illuminating to revisit in light of where the world is today.”—Howard Cruse, author of Stuck Rubber Baby
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