Bucknell University Press

Since 1976, February has been designated as Black History Month in the United States (as well as other countries, like Canada and the UK). The month was chosen due to the fact that it coincides with the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, two important abolitionists. Far from just celebrating the end of slavery, Black History Month emphasizes the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans and black culture. It is a recognition of the significant leaders, activists, moments, and achievements related to black history.

The Griot Project Book Series, published in conjunction with Bucknell’s Griot Institute for Africana Studies, produces books related to black history, focusing on scholarly monographs and creative works devoted to the interdisciplinary exploration of the aesthetic, artistic, and cultural products and intellectual currents of historical and contemporary African America and of the African diaspora, using narrative as a thematic and theoretical framework for the selection and execution of its projects.

Please find below a list of some recent Griot publications, as well as other BUP books relevant to Black History Month.

1.) In Media Res: Race, Identity, and Pop Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Edited by James Braxton Peterson)

In Media Res is a manifold collection that reflects the intersectional qualities of university programming in the twenty-first century. Taking race, gender, and popular culture as its central thematic subjects, the volume collects academic essays, speeches, poems, and creative works that critically engage a wide range of issues, including American imperialism, racial and gender discrimination, the globalization of culture, and the limitations of our new multimedia world. This diverse assortment of works by scholars, activists, and artists models the complex ways that we must engage university students, faculty, staff, and administration in a moment where so many of us are confounded by the “in medias res” nature of our interface with the world in the current moment. Featuring contributions from Imani Perry, Michael Eric Dyson, Suheir Hammad, John Jennings, and Adam Mansbach, In Media Res is a primer for academic inquiry into popular culture; American studies; critical media literacy; women, gender, and sexuality studies; and Africana studies.

2.) Venus of Khala-Kanti (By Angèle Kingué)

Venus of Khala-Kanti is a tale of life-altering loss and mystical recovery. Set in an imaginary West African village that becomes a charming cul-de-sac, the unintended consequence of a national roadwork project gone awry, the story follows characters drawn with humor, irony, and empathy. The heart of the story beats with the laughter and tears of three women. Having faced incredible hardship, they come together to build their lives anew, armed with the age-old spirit of human resilience, understanding, and tenderness. Tapping into the very soil of Khala-Kanti, Bella, Assumta, and Clarisse construct spaces, both internal and external, where they and others can rejuvenate their bodies, minds, and spirits. They build the Good Hope Center, which embraces both the physical and the mystical landscape of the story. The Center fuels the restoration and growth of the village’s inhabitants, and offers sanctuary for those who visit and those who stay.

3.) Postracial America?: An Interdisciplinary Study (Edited by Vincent L. Stephens and Anthony Stewart)

The concept of a “postracial” America—the dream of a nation beyond race—has attracted much attention over the course of the presidency of Barack Obama, suggesting that this idea is peculiar to the contemporary moment alone. Postracial America?: An Interdisciplinary Study attempts to broaden the application of this idea by situating it in contexts that demonstrate how the idea of the postracial has been with America since its founding and will continue to be long after the Obama administration’s term ends. The chapters in this volume explore the idea of the postracial in the United States through a variety of critical lenses, including film studies; literature; aesthetics and conceptual thinking; politics; media representations; race in relation to gender, identity, and sexuality; and personal experiences. Through this diverse interdisciplinary exploration, this collection skeptically weighs the implications of holding up a postracial culture as an admirable goal for the United States.

4.) Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella (By Frieda Ekotto)

Don’t Whisper Too Much was the first work of fiction by an African writer to present love stories between African women in a positive light. Bona Mbella is the second. In presenting the emotional and romantic lives of gay, African women, Ekotto comments upon larger issues that affect these women, including Africa as a post-colonial space, the circulation of knowledge, and the question of who writes history. In recounting the beauty and complexity of relationships between women who love women, Ekotto inscribes these stories within African history, both past and present. Don’t Whisper Too Much follows young village girl Ada’s quest to write her story on her own terms, outside of heteronormative history. Bona Mbella focuses upon the life of a young woman from a poor neighborhood in an African megalopolis. And “Panè,” a love story, brings the many themes from Don’t Whisper Too Much and Bona Mbella together as it explores how emotional and sexual connections between women have the power to transform, even in the face of great humiliation and suffering. Each story in the collection addresses how female sexuality is often marked by violence, and yet is also a place for emotional connection, pleasure, and agency.

5.) Uniting Blacks in a Raceless Nation (By Miguel Arnedo-Gómez)

The Cuban writer Nicolás Guillén has traditionally been considered a poet of mestizaje, a term that, whilst denoting racial mixture, also refers to a homogenizing nationalist discourse that proclaims the harmonious nature of Cuban identity. Yet, many aspects of Guillén’s work enhance black Cuban and Afro-Cuban identities. Miguel Arnedo-Gómez explores this paradox in Guillén’s pre-Cuban Revolution writings, placing them alongside contemporaneous intellectual discourses that feigned adherence to the homogenizing ideology whilst upholding black interests. On the basis of links with these and other 1930s Cuban discourses, Arnedo-Gómez shows Guillén’s work to contain a message of black unity aimed at the black middle classes. Furthermore, against a tendency to seek a single authorial consciousness—be it mulatto or based on a North American construction of blackness—Guillén’s prose and poetry are also characterized as a struggle for a viable identity in a socio-culturally heterogeneous society.

Read the latest reviews for Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen by Jocelyn Harris:

“Harris shows the inherent political nature of Austen’s satire by smartly linking her with the Hogarthian tradition of caricature. . . . Harris’s monograph ultimately leaves us with two questions, one explicit and one implicit: What if Austen’s lost correspondence was political rather than personal? And what would Austen think of celebrated figures today?”
-Melissa Rampelli, Holy Family University

“Harris’s thoroughness and detailed and intriguing analysis are exceptional. . . . Her sleuth work is incredible. . . . The twenty-first century student of Jane Austen will never read her in the same way.”
-Sylvia Kasey Marks, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer, March 2019 (33.1)

“Harris’ book offers a fascinating study of Austen’s engagement with the cult of celebrity of her time.”
-Jennifer Golightly, Colorado College, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, Winter 2016 (31.2)

“Jocelyn Harris in this careful, enthusiastic and learned book shows how Jane Austen achieves vision through observation and creates a new and distinctive world from a recognisable world.”
-Tony Voss, Jane Austen Society of Australia

“Burney scholars will find Jocelyn Harris’s latest book Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen an enriching read…Considering the fact that Frances Burney and other members of the Burney family feature prominently in [Austen’s] allusions, [Harris’] book, by extension, sheds new light on the cultural influence of the Burneys on their contemporaries…the book gives shape to an Austen who was an avid and grateful consumer of the latest gossip, scandals and satirical prints about those from whom she was never far removed: famous writers, intellectuals and actresses, big naval figures, the royal family. With a keen eye for detail, Harris exposes the subtle connections between the unrestrained, public laughter surrounding such figures and the more restricted, oblique laughter in the novels, thereby deepening our understanding of Austen’s skill for satire in the process.”
-Elles Smallegoor; Burney Letter, The Burney Society, Spring 2018 (24.1)

“Harris’s impressive new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen (2017), builds on the work of her pioneering 1989 study, deepening our sense of what Austen may have been up to in crafting her novels… For readers willing to engage with the possible, and to consider links that do not, at first glance, seem probable, Harris’s well-written, deeply researched, and timely book has a great deal to offer… Harris’s arguments are highly illuminating. For years to come, readers and critics will be weighing the massive number of new insights in this book, troubling through their implications for our future readings of Austen, politics, history, and popular culture.”
-Devoney Looser, Arizona State University; The Review of English Studies, New Series, 1–3

“Harris is well established as a guide to the wider thought-world of the author…In her latest book her expertise and questing curiosity are brought to bear on a set of themes that have not generally been associated with Austen.”
-Emma Clery, University of Southampton; Times Literary Supplement (February 2018)

“New Zealand academic Jocelyn Harris’s excellent Satire, Celebrity and Politics in Jane Austen published early this year shows what a keen political observer Austen was, and how her interest in the celebrities of the day, such as actress Dorothea Jordan and Sara Baartman (an African woman with very large buttocks who was exhibited in English freak shows as “the Hottentot Venus”), influenced and inspired characters in Austen’s fiction.”
-Susannah Fullerton; The Australian (July 2017)

“[T]his is a wonderfully rich and convincing presentation of much new material. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.
–CHOICE

“This book is an enjoyable one for anyone who has read Austen’s novels or watched productions of them on television…. Jocelyn Harris is an excellent writer. For an academic study, the usual jargon and allusions to various post-modern theories are happily absent in this book. It is packed with detail and citations. It’s is valuable for Cook enthusiasts because of its chapter on Molesworth Phillips, and the broader considerations surrounding the death of Captain Cook.”
–Cook’s Log

“Satire, Celebrity, and Politics is unfailingly fascinating in its dissection of Jane Austen, the satirist, and the text is enhanced by a well-chosen selection of contemporary portraits and gloriously scurrilous cartoons. The ‘stories behind the stories’ always make for an interesting read and Harris has produced a book that will be read with great pleasure by academics and devoted readers alike.”
–Jane Austen’s Regency World

“Jocelyn Harris’ book, which reflects on the ways in which Jane Austen’s work may have been influenced by what she knew about certain celebrities of her time, is a pleasant and accessible read…I would emphasize the thorough research into the socio-historical context that has gone into this book, and which makes it of interest to anyone who would like to know more of current events during Austen’s lifetime.”
-Rita J. Dashwood; The Jane Austen Society (Spring 2018)

In 2011, Barack Obama made a Presidential Proclamation that designated the month of June as National Caribbean American Heritage Month in the United States.  To commemorate this time when we celebrate the history and culture of Caribbean Americans, the Bucknell University Press is showcasing a few of our books that cover Caribbean topics.

Many of these selections are a part of our Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory series, edited by Anibal González, Professor of Spanish at Yale University. The aim of the series is to provide a forum for the best criticism on Latin American literature in a wide range of critical approaches, with an emphasis on works that productively combine scholarship with theory. We have also included a title from our general collection that covers national identities across the Americas, a memoir of Puerto Rican writer Rosario Ferré, and an edition of the Bucknell Review (1941-2004) that is is devoted to analyses of Caribbean cultural identities.

Celebrate the beginning of summer and National Caribbean American Heritage Month with the spirit of Caribbean culture captured in these books. Follow the links in the list below for more information on each title.

From Amazons to Zombies: Monsters in Latin America (2016)
By Persephone Braham
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Confluence Narratives: Ethnicity, History, and Nation-Making in the Americas (2016)
By Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta

Macho Ethics: Masculinity and Self-Representation in Latino-Caribbean Narrative (2015)
By Jason Cortés
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Memoir (2015)
By Rosario Ferré
Translated by: Suzanne Hintz & Benigno Trigo

Transatlantic Travels in Nineteenth-Century Latin America: European Women Pilgrims (2013)
By Adriana Méndez Rodenas
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Voices Out of Africa in Twentieth-Century Spanish Caribbean Literature (2009)
By Julia Cuervo Hewitt
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Out of Bounds: Islands and the Demarcation of Identity in the Hispanic Caribbean (2008)
By Dara Goldman
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Caribbean Cultural Identities (2001)
Edited by Glyne Griffith
Bucknell Review (44.2)

The Bucknell University Press Stories of the Susquehanna Valley series, edited by Katherine Faull and Alfred Siewers, has inspired a series of documentary projects funded by Bucknell, with one film produced by WVIA and several others produced by Bucknell students.  The book series itself seeks to develop interdisciplinary and multimedia approaches to the concept of region, place, and ethics in environmental studies. As Faull explains, “The Stories of the Susquehanna Book Series with the Bucknell University Press provides a traditional print format for scholarly research that focuses on the interconnectedness of people and place in the Susquehanna Watershed.”  While including a range of disciplines, from sciences and social sciences to literature and philosophy, the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley book series articulates narratives of an eco-region that played a formative, if often hidden, role in the early American republic, and which today provides potential models for more environmentally sustainable approaches to human community.  The editors of the series are also involved in the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley series of documentary projects.  According to Faull, “Where the documentary projects, both those that are student-produced and the WVIA-Bucknell collaborative undertakings, explore these stories in a public-facing genre, the book series attracts scholarship of the highest caliber on the Susquehanna that further informs and deepens the subject matter of the video productions.”

Faull was involved in the production of a film in the series entitled Peoples of the Susquehanna, which examines the history, culture, and traditions of the Native Americans of the river watershed.  The trailer can be viewed on pbs.org or the full film watched here with a WVIA Passport membership.  According to Siewers, “The recent WVIA-TV hour-length documentary Peoples of the Susquehanna was based on the first book in the [Bucknell University Press] series [Native Americans in the Susquehanna River Valley, Past and Present by David J. Minderhout] and connects with an upcoming volume.”  He explains, “The half-hour documentaries Utopian Dreams and Coopers and Conservation are likewise related to a planned volume.” Three of the documentaries are student-produced under Siewers’ guidance and are entitled Utopian Dreams, The Coopers and Conservation at the Headwaters of the Susquehanna, and The Churches of Coal Country.  The first in the series, Utopian Dreams, focuses on two 18th-century river communities and their diverging visions of society, and can be viewed for free on pbs.org.  The second film, The Coopers and Conservation at the Headwaters of the Susquehanna, examines the literary and conservation legacy of 19th-century authors James Fenimore Cooper and his daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper. Key figures in American nature writing, the Coopers and their work helped to establish an early ethic of environmental stewardship at the Susquehanna River’s headwaters in Cooperstown, NY. This film has just been recently finished and is scheduled to broadcast on Thursday, May 31^st at 8pm with encores on Friday, June 1st at 2pm and Sunday, June 3rd at 1pm.  The Churches of Coal Country, the third in the student-produced series, is currently under production and will examine Slavic immigrant communities in Mount Carmel, PA.  It will cover similar themes found in another book from the series called Coal Dust on Your Feet: The Rise, Decline, and Restoration of an Anthracite Mining Town by Janet MacGaffey.

As Siewers explains, “Books and documentaries are two methods of exploring the region and highlighting its cultures in our series.”  Both Siewers and Faull are dedicated to highlighting the historical and cultural significance of the Susquehanna corridor.  According to Siewers, the book and documentary projects are focused on “developing digital story maps and other materials related to the rich landscape layers of culture and natural history in what some geologists consider to be America’s oldest river watershed.”  From books to films, the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley projects convey themes of interconnectedness across communities along the river and celebrate the shared environment through creative and informational perspectives.

Update: The Coopers and Conservation at the Headwaters of the Susquehanna can now be viewed online for free here.

Happy Birthday to Beverly Cleary! Author of the beloved Quimby sister stories, Cleary, born on April 12^th, 1916, celebrates her 102^nd birthday today! Inspired by her own experiences in the world around her, Cleary first started writing to create the books that she longed to read but could never find on library shelves. Most of her stories take place in the Grant Park neighborhood of northeast Portland, Oregon, where she was raised. Today she is a celebrated author of children’s and young adult fiction, with more than 90 million books sold worldwide since her first book, Henry Huggins, was published in 1950. Perhaps her most popular books revolve around the sisters Beezus and Ramona Quimby—the first, entitled Beezus and Ramona, published in 1955. Since then, the books have even inspired a movie adaption, Ramona and Beezus, released in 2010. More than half a century since the publication of Beverly Cleary’s first book, her stories remain popular with readers of all ages, passed down from generation to generation. Childhood favorites of my own experience were Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. First published in 1930, this too became a series to span generations. My own mother shared them with me, and from these books I learned to love reading. At age 102, I am sure that Beverly Cleary has provided that same experience for girls and boys alike whose parents became enchanted by Cleary’s charming humor and memorable characters.

http://www.beverlycleary.com/

Jocelyn Harris’ 2017 book with Bucknell University Press, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, has recently caught the attention of Times Literary Supplement (TLS). A special segment, entitled “What Jane Saw: Exploring Austen’s creative hinterland and recoverable influences,” features some of the highlights of Harris’ book and its contributions to Jane Austen scholarship. The article is written by Emma Clery, a specialist of the cultural history surrounding Jane Austen and Professor of English at the University of Southampton. In Satire, Celebrity, and Politics, Clery explains, Jocelyn Harris’ “expertise and questing curiosity are brought to bear on a set of themes that have not generally been associated with Austen.” She goes on to summarize Harris’ main points, giving readers of TLS a glimpse into the book which highlights Jane Austen’s position as a satirist, her character inspirations in the form of celebrities, and how these elements contributed to an underlying commentary on politics within Austen’s novels. While Harris explores these topics in Satire, Celebrity, and Politics, Clery also gives mention to her previous publications (Jane Austen’s Art of Allusion and A Revolution Beyond Expression: Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”), all of which have made Harris “well established as a guide to the wider thought-world of the author.” To read the full article, see the February 9, 2018 edition of TLS, or subscribe to their database.

To order Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen visit www.rowman.com or call 1-800-462-6420.  Prices are $110 for cloth (978-1-61148-839-5) and $104 for eBook (978-1-61148-843-2).