A few years ago I visited Italy with my family, sightseeing at the typical tourist destinations. The food scene was straight out of a movie: open air cafes lining the streets and fresh markets on every corner. When we traveled to a smaller town in the north, we noticed something we hadn’t seen in the metropolises: supermarkets. The stores could… Continue Reading Happy birthday, Supermarkets!
Until very recently, the term “feminist” was used by those on the right only as a negative descriptor of someone who would invariably be a political foe. Devoted feminists have struggled to set the word free from the negative connotations and reclaim the label as a source of pride, with mixed results, especially among younger generations of independent women whose… Continue Reading Feminism and the Republican Party: Equating Female with Feminist?
This weekend is Father’s Day (hope you didn’t forget!) and in honor of pops and grandpas everywhere, we have an interview with Judith Walzer Leavitt, author of Make Room for Daddy. Drawing from letters, journals and interviews with fathers, Leavitt investigates how the role of the father changed from the 1940s to the 1980s. Once banished to the waiting room,… Continue Reading Interview: Judith Walzer Leavitt
When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans is more than a book we’ve just published — it’s a multimedia project based on interviews with dozens of female military veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The book juxtaposes 48 photographs by Sascha Pflaeging with oral histories collected by Laura Browder to provide a dramatic portrait of… Continue Reading When Janey Comes Marching Home – Photo exhibit now in Arlington, Va.
Joe Biden recently announced some changes to Title IX policies to close a loophole opened up by the Bush administration in 2005. Glad to see Title IX taken seriously by this administration. There’s still a ways to go to bring full equality to women’s sports, however. Jennifer Etnier (author of Bring Your “A” Game: A Young Athlete’s Guide to Mental… Continue Reading Recovering lost ground on Title IX
It is night. A lone black woman walks through a cornfield in South Carolina. The stars wink above her. Crickets and cicadas grow quiet as she passes and then resume their orchestral humming, now punctuated by the sound of rustling leaves a little farther off. She moves toward an unpainted one-room building. When she gets there, she will have to… Continue Reading Septima Clark, Freedom’s Teacher
We write today in anticipation of Gerda Lerner’s 90th birthday, coming up Friday, April 30. Her students and colleagues and publishers who know her as the founder of her field all shout “Happy birthday!” But whether you know her by name or not, she has certainly shaped the world of ideas around you. And for that, as well as for… Continue Reading Gerda Lerner’s 90th
Since March is coming to an end, and April is going to be a busy month here on the Press Blog, this is going to be the last post in our series of books for National Women’s History Month. So far, we’ve covered some important books on topics like women at war, the role of books in the lives of… Continue Reading National Women’s History Month: Final Installment
The cover story for this week’s Independent Weekly (on newsstands in the Triangle from 3/24/10 to 3/30/10), discusses the victims of North Carolina’s 20th-century eugenics program and the current campaign for reparations to people (mostly poor black women) who were forcibly sterilized. As of March 1, 2010, the state has established an organization to finally bring justice for surviving victims.… Continue Reading The legacy of North Carolina’s eugenics program
As a continuation of our series of posts on National Women’s History Month, today’s post will be about an event from 99 years ago today–the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City. While horrific–146 workers, mostly poor Italian, German, and Jewish women between the ages of eight and twenty perished–the fire at Triangle Shirtwaist holds an important place in… Continue Reading The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: March 25, 1911
Two weeks ago, I blogged here about National Women’s History Month, making the first in a series of posts about new and recent books available from UNC Press focusing on the lives of women. That entry featured books that looked at the lives of American women in the Civil War and women returning from tours of Afghanistan and Iraq in… Continue Reading National Women’s History Month: By the Book
Today we celebrate the birthday of Lillian Wald (1867-1940), founder of Henry Street Settlement on New York’s Lower East Side as well as the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Wald was a second-generation German Jewish immigrant who developed close associations with Jewish New York even as she consistently dismissed claims that her work emerged from a fundamentally Jewish calling.… Continue Reading Happy birthday, Lillian Wald
We love it when new UNC Press books seem to be in conversation with other books of the moment. Take Patti Smith’s acclaimed new memoir, Just Kids (HarperCollins 2010), which offers an inside look at the punk pioneer’s artistic influences and collaborations, including Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Springsteen, Sam Shepard, and Fred “Sonic” Smith–all men. However, right there on… Continue Reading Louisa May Alcott and the Godmother of Punk
If you are familiar with the UNC Press Blog, you probably know that we know a thing or two about celebrating. If it has a national celebration day, week, or month, we probably have it marked on our calendars well in advance. Why else would we have a 1000-word post on the merits of National Chili Day, like we did… Continue Reading National Women’s History Month: Women at War
Hearty congratulations to multiple UNC Press authors who have recently been honored by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources for their outstanding work in North Carolina history and culture. Anna Hayes was awarded the Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction for Without Precedent: The Life of Susie Marshall Sharp. The award is given yearly by the North Carolina… Continue Reading North Carolina Award Winners
Whether you or someone you know is battling breast cancer, or you are just going about your daily routine, breast cancer awareness is hard to miss. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and it is nice to see support coming from everywhere–sidewalk signs to window displays to NFL football helmets–PINK is definitely the IT color this month, this year, anytime… Continue Reading Don’t Ignore the Signs about Breast Cancer Awareness
A guest post today from Laura Browder, author of Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America and the forthcoming (May 2010) When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans, which features photographs by Sascha Pflaeging. Let’s take a moment today to celebrate the 149th birthday of Annie Oakley. But let’s remember her not as just a great… Continue Reading Happy Birthday, Annie Oakley
With a title alluding to the complicated past of gender and sex, Mary P. Ryan’s Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men through American History gives us a thoughtful and thorough examination of the long debated battle over the differences between men and women. The question of how the dividing line between male and female is drawn—and repeatedly redrawn—over the… Continue Reading Mary P. Ryan discusses her book,”Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men Through American History on ROROTOKO
. . . but I won’t do that. So, maybe (?) you’ve never greeted your spouse at the door wearing nothing but Saran Wrap. But what would you do if you thought it would help your relationship? What would you expect your partner to do to keep you around? Kristin Celello, author of Making Marriage Work and a guest blogger… Continue Reading I would do aaaanything for you
New York, NY – Today! Tuesday 4/21 at 6 pm – Ann Marie Stock, author of On Location in Cuba: Street Filmmaking during Times of Transition (hot off the press!), will be speaking at the Havana Film Festival at the King Juan Carlos Center. Raleigh, NC – Wed., 4/22 at 11 am – Rob Christensen, author of The Paradox of… Continue Reading Upcoming events, 4/21 – 4/27
You must be logged in to post a comment.