May 12, 2022

AAPI Heritage Month 2022 Reading List

Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! The following reading list highlights titles covering a broad array of Asian American and Pacific Islander histories and topics, ranging from immigration and politics, to the performing arts, and the impact of climate change on the AAPI community. Arise, Africa! Roar, China!: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth… Continue Reading AAPI Heritage Month 2022 Reading List

Categories Asian American Studies/Asian Studies/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies/Native American History/UNC Press News
May 11, 2022

Curator Conversations: Berkley Hudson on Mr. Pruitt’s Possum Town

Thanks to Curatorial for allowing us to reblog the following Q&A with Berkley Hudson that originally appeared on their website. Hudson describes how a recent exhibition of O.N. Pruitt’s photography, along with its companion book published by UNC Press in partnership with Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, O.N. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South,… Continue Reading Curator Conversations: Berkley Hudson on Mr. Pruitt’s Possum Town

Categories African American History/Photography/Southern/UNC Press News
May 10, 2022

Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination

Happy publication day to Glenda Gilmore’s Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination, a Ferris and Ferris Book. Romare Bearden (1911–1988), one of the most prolific, original, and acclaimed American artists of the twentieth century, richly depicted scenes and figures rooted in the American South and the Black experience. Bearden hailed from North Carolina but was forced to relocate to the… Continue Reading Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination

Categories African American History/Art / Architecture/Southern Studies/UNC Press News
May 9, 2022

UNC Press 100th Anniversary Celebration Remarks by John Sherer

On March 25th, UNC Press held its first in-person, public celebration of the anniversary of our centennial year at the Chapel Hill Public Library. The following is an edited version of the speech given by Spangler Family Director John Sherer that evening. I try to keep up on trends in university presses, so I do a lot of reading. I… Continue Reading UNC Press 100th Anniversary Celebration Remarks by John Sherer

Categories UNC Press News
May 6, 2022

2022 Latin American Studies Association Annual Meeting

UNC Press is excited to be exhibiting virtually at the 2022 LASA annual meeting! We hope you’ll stop by our virtual booth on our website to browse our recent titles, to learn more about our Envisioning Cuba, Latin America in Translation, and Latinx Histories Series, and to connect with editors Debbie Gershenowitz and Andreina Fernandez. And be sure to check… Continue Reading 2022 Latin American Studies Association Annual Meeting

Categories Latin American & Caribbean Studies/UNC Press News
May 5, 2022

Writing the History of Legal Abortion

The following is an excerpt from 2015’s Abortion after Roe by Johanna Schoen, recipient of the William H. Welch Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine. Schoen sheds light on the little-studied experience of performing and receiving abortion care from the 1970s–a period of optimism–to the rise of the antiabortion movement and the escalation of antiabortion tactics… Continue Reading Writing the History of Legal Abortion

Categories Gender Studies/Health / Medicine/Women's Studies
May 3, 2022

An Edible North Carolina History

Available today wherever ebooks and books are sold, Edible North Carolina: A Journey across a State of Flavor edited by Marcie Cohen Ferris shows how culinary excellence, entrepreneurship, and the struggle for racial justice converge in shaping food equity, not only for North Carolinians, but for all Americans. Starting with Vivian Howard, star of PBS’s A Chef’s Life, who wrote the… Continue Reading An Edible North Carolina History

Categories Food Studies/North Carolina/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
May 2, 2022

Glenda Gilmore Discusses “Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination”

The last of Spring 2022’s UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC Press’s ongoing Off the Shelf speaker series featured Glenda Gilmore discussing her new book, Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination: An Artist’s Reckoning with the South (on sale May 10, 2022). Watch the archived virtual discussion between Gilmore and Aaron Smithers, UNC-Chapel Hill Special Collections R&IS Librarian: In Romare… Continue Reading Glenda Gilmore Discusses “Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination”

Categories African American History/African American Studies/Art / Architecture/Cultural Studies
April 28, 2022

2022 Society for Military History Annual Meeting

UNC Press is excited to be exhibiting in-person at SMH 2022—we hope you’ll stop by booth 207 and say hello to Debbie Gershenowitz! And if you can’t join us in-person, please visit our virtual booth! Forthcoming The Whartons’ War: The Civil War Correspondence of General Gabriel C. Wharton and Anne Radford Wharton, 1863–1865 Edited by William C. Davis and Sue… Continue Reading 2022 Society for Military History Annual Meeting

Categories African American History/American History/Civil War/History/Military History/UNC Press News
April 27, 2022

Congratulations to 2022 Carnegie Fellows George Derek Musgrove and Monica M. White

Hearty congratulations to UNC Press authors Monica M. White, author of Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement, and George Derek Musgrove, co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital, both part of the 2022 cohort of Andrew Carnegie Fellows. About the Carnegie Fellows: The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program provides philanthropic support… Continue Reading Congratulations to 2022 Carnegie Fellows George Derek Musgrove and Monica M. White

Categories African American Studies/Environmental Studies/History
April 25, 2022

Detroit and Toxic Debt

Today marks eight years since the beginning of the ongoing Flint water contamination crisis. The following is an excerpt from Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit by Josiah Rector, officially on sale tomorrow wherever ebooks and books are sold. Between 2014 and 2019, the City of Detroit shut off water for over 141,000 residential accounts, denying more than… Continue Reading Detroit and Toxic Debt

Categories Environmental Studies/Political Science/Public Policy/UNC Press News
April 22, 2022

The Epic Political Battle Over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Happy Earth Day 2022 The following excerpt is taken from Finis Dunaway’s Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice, winner the 2022 Spur Award for Contemporary Nonfiction by the Western Writers of America. I don’t make a habit of going to funerals, especially for people I’ve never met. So I feel a… Continue Reading The Epic Political Battle Over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Categories American Studies/Environmental Studies/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies
April 21, 2022

From Unquestioned Obedience to Disintegrating Abeyance: Children’s Toys and U.S.’s Racial Order in the Late 19th Century

The following guest blog post by Mahshid Mayar, author of Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire, is an edited version of an essay originally published under the title “Verbs of Violence 19th-Century Jigsaw Puzzles, Otherness, and American Childhood” in the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, and is reproduced… Continue Reading From Unquestioned Obedience to Disintegrating Abeyance: Children’s Toys and U.S.’s Racial Order in the Late 19th Century

Categories American Studies/UNC Press News
April 20, 2022

In Memoriam: Lindley S. Butler

We are saddened by the news that Lindley S. Butler died April 12, 2022, after a period of declining health. UNC Press was able to provide Butler with advance copies of his final book, A History of North Carolina in the Proprietary Era, 1629-1729 (on sale 5/17/22), in recent weeks, and he was able to celebrate its arrival with his… Continue Reading In Memoriam: Lindley S. Butler

Categories American History/North Carolina
April 19, 2022

The Territories of Elaine Maisner

Executive editor Elaine Maisner retired earlier this month after 28 years working at UNC Press. The following guest blog post is by Laurent Dubois, John L. Nau III Bicentennial Professor in the History & Principles of Democracy and Director for Academic Affairs of the Democracy Initiative at the University of Virginia. Dubois is also the author of A Colony of… Continue Reading The Territories of Elaine Maisner

Categories Cuba/History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./UNC Press News
April 18, 2022

George Moses Horton, the Black Bard of North Carolina

Happy National Poetry Month! For our centennial year, we are highlighting iconic publications from our past, including today’s excerpted poem taken from The Black Bard of North Carolina: George Moses Horton and His Poetry, edited by Joan R. Sherman, which collects sixty-two of Horton’s poems. Enslaved from birth until the close of the Civil War, the self-taught Horton was the first… Continue Reading George Moses Horton, the Black Bard of North Carolina

Categories UNC Press News
April 18, 2022

Richard Strand’s Play, “Ben Butler”

The following is a guest blog post by Elizabeth D. Leonard, author of Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life. Benjamin Franklin Butler was one of the most important and controversial military and political leaders of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Remembered most often for his uncompromising administration of the Federal occupation of New Orleans during the war, Butler reemerges… Continue Reading Richard Strand’s Play, “Ben Butler”

Categories Biography / Autobiography/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History
April 14, 2022

Happy Endings: A Century of Inspiring Art and Scholarship at UNC Press

Guest blog post written on the occasion of UNC Press’s centennial year by Steve Estes, author of I Am a Man!: Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement, Ask and Tell: Gay and Lesbian Veterans Speak Out, Charleston in Black and White: Race and Power in the South after the Civil Rights Movement, and the forthcoming Surfing the South: The… Continue Reading Happy Endings: A Century of Inspiring Art and Scholarship at UNC Press

Categories History/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
April 13, 2022

How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World on the Union

The following is an excerpt taken from Bonds of War: How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World on the Union by David K. Thomson, which demonstrates how Europe, and ultimately all corners of the globe, grew deeply interdependent on American finance during, and in the immediate aftermath of, the American Civil War.  More than any other financial instrument, the… Continue Reading How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World on the Union

Categories American History/Civil War/History
April 12, 2022

UNC Libraries Off The Shelf: Author Talk with Anne Gray Fischer

Anne Gray Fischer recently discussed her new book, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification, as part of the UNC Libraries-UNC Press author speaker series, Off the Shelf. Watch the archived virtual conversation: Fischer is a historian of the twentieth-century United States. Her research and teaching explores histories of gender, sexuality, and race; law… Continue Reading UNC Libraries Off The Shelf: Author Talk with Anne Gray Fischer

Categories African American History/American History/History