In recognition of day #4 of UP Week, two staff members tell you what it’s really like to be part of the small but dedicated team that makes up the Bucknell University Press.

Working for the Bucknell University Press has been one of my favorite parts of my college experience. We’re a small press, which means that I’ve had the opportunity to see so many parts of the process of scholarly publishing. I’ve written contracts, interviewed authors, and helped make acquisition decisions. Of course, not all of my friends entirely understand what I do. Three years in, I still have to explain to my fellow students that no, I do not work for the university newspaper; the BUP is a real press that publishes scholarly monographs. They’re usually surprised to hear Bucknell even has a university press like we do. The BUP is truly one of our campus’s hidden gems.

–Nate Freed ’21, Bucknell University Press Presidential Fellow

I originally came Bucknell for a position as the Museum Fellow at the Samek Art Museum. I had previously worked in museums and other visual arts organizations so I was new to the publishing world when I started at Bucknell University Press. I am a lifelong book lover, so it has been great to see the publishing process from start to finish. One of my favorite parts of the job is getting to look over manuscripts. I check them for formatting issues and make notes of things that authors need to correct or sometimes I correct issues myself. Once a manuscript is ready to move forward in the publishing process, getting to assign them ISBNs is exciting as well.

–Emily Owen, M.A., Bucknell University Press Editorial Assistant

Guest blog post by BUP author Tim Wenzell in recognition of University Press Week 2019

As humanism has evolved over the centuries, it has maintained and nurtured itself through empathy—having it, expressing it, and passing it on. In the humanities and literature, passing it on through the written word, through poetry, fiction, and non-fiction has functioned as a way of inducing action through reading and thinking:

*Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the appalling working conditions in the meat-packing industry. His description of rotten and contaminated meat, and the dehumanizing treatment of immigrants, shocked the public, all the way up the ladder to President Teddy Roosevelt, and led to the busting of the beef trusts and new federal food safety laws.

*Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath as a means of communicating the flawed system of growing and distribution (refusal of crop rotation crucial to the soil for profit = Dust Bowl) present in 1930s America. Political and activist movements focusing on the plight of migrant workers arose from this increased awareness from reading this important novel. Steinbeck stated that he wrote the novel with the express intention of shaming those in power responsible for the misery of the Great Depression. Steinbeck said, ”I’ve done my damndest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags.”

*Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring and the environmental movement exploded across American consciousness, turned the light on environmental destruction for the sake of profit, and paid attention to chemicals and poison being dumped into the air and water. It was a book to which Senator Gruening remarked, “Every once in a while in the history of mankind, a book has appeared which has substantially altered the course of history.”

But can books alter history today in the same manner, or at least in the same large increments, that they did in the past? With so many books to read now, and so many ways to read them, is there not enough time left to think and act? More specifically, in the wake of Rachel Carson over half a century ago, how can we, as stewards of an environment that is rapidly collapsing on us, accomplish the task of getting the public to read, think, act?

Silent Spring was a wake-up call and frightening for sure. But do we, as would-be stewards of the environment, need to frighten in order to get the public to act? While climate change and its implications can clearly frighten, and we have been saturated by this from climatologists and ecologists, from social media to academic presses, is fear enough in the 21^st century to alter the course of history? While action is being taken to combat climate change, attention paid to these concerns has been diluted and supplanted by other threats and spectacles that take up more room in the news than a changing planet, fueling more localized fears of economic downturn, of mass shootings, of illegal immigration, among others. Because of these distractions, climate change loses its rightful place as Number One imminent threat to humanity.

This is the direction to which humanism must now gravitate: empathy toward the non-human, through an understanding that the non-human informs the human. Instead of relying solely on climatologists and ecologists delivering facts (and with them fear), another approach might be working to increase empathy. Instead of attempting to provoke thinking and action through fear of a planet turning against us by our own design, humanists are uniquely positioned to influence thought and action by teaching, writing about, and reading writers who focus on the natural world. In so doing, our students and readers may come to a more organic understanding of what is being lost. Humanists can make readers lovers of diverse cultures, but through attention to the literatures and landscapes of those cultures, rather than through fearmongering.

This was the purpose of writing and editing Woven Shades of Green: An Anthology of Irish Nature Literature (Bucknell University Press, 2019). Ireland is one small country on the planet, no bigger than the state of Maine, but culturally and historically it is much larger than that—and geographically, too, as one of the most naturally diverse and beautiful countries on the planet. Its geography has had an outsized influence on Irish culture, especially its literature. The anthology moves through time and nature to see, from a humanistic perspective, the relationship between Irish culture and the natural world, presenting a chronicle of voices from the early Irish monks in a forested Ireland to the voices of modern poets and naturalists who speak across a rapidly changing landscape of urban sprawl. All speak from a love of the natural world; this thread unites these writers as a culture and a people. Finally, a collection like this can inspire efforts toward the preservation of Ireland’s natural world; indeed, the anthology closes with a list of environmental organizations in Ireland.

As stewards of the environment, we need to provide more attention to nature literature everywhere, because it is everywhere. As a humanist, writing a book about nature literature that pertains to a particular geography is a way to zone in on environmental issues within that geography by displaying its cultural artifacts together in one place, chapter by chapter through time, as a testament to the living, breathing power of that natural world. Perhaps reading about the natural world will inspire action, fueled by empathy and a love of nature, rather than by fear. This direction in humanism is framed and defined by the non-human, by geography and change. The history and stories of humanity, told from particular landscapes in flux and in danger of disappearing, are vital. Without those particular landscapes, there is no humanism because there is no humanity.

Tim Wenzell

Associate Professor

Department of Humanities

Virginia Union University

Read posts from other presses in honor of UP Week 2019:

Oregon State University Press: http://osupress.oregonstate.edu/blog

University of Minnesota Press: http://uminnpressblog.com

University Press of Mississippi: https://www.upress.state.ms.us/News

Harvard University Press: https://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/

University of Toronto Press: https://utorontopress.com/ca/blog

Please join us in welcoming Suzanne E. Guiod as the next Director of the Bucknell University Press. She succeeds Greg Clingham, who retired in December, and will assume the directorship in May.

Pamelia Dailey, M.A.
Managing Editor
Bucknell University Press
Lewisburg, PA 17837
570-577-3674
www.bucknell.edu/universitypress

Reading and book signing with Sascha Feinstein

Monday, October 23, 6 p.m.
Barnes & Noble at Bucknell University
400 Market St., Lewisburg, PA

Sascha Feinstein will read from his latest memoir, Wreckage: My Father’s Legacy of Art & Junk, published by Bucknell University Press (2017).

This event is free and open to the public.

Co-sponsored by Bucknell University Press, the Department of English, and the Humanities Center.

Get your discounted copy now using code “UP30AUTH17” when you order at www.rowman.com.

Poetry Reading
7 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 19
Bucknell Hall

Lecture on Social Justice
7 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 20
Gallery Theater, 3rd floor, EL

Co-sponsored by Bucknell University Press, Stadler Center for Poetry, Bucknell Humanities Center, Office of Global & Off Campus Education, and University Lectureship Committee

Antjie Krog

Anna Elizabeth (Antjie) Krog’s iconic status as one of South Africa’s most popular, critically acclaimed, and politically courageous poets began when she was eighteen with her first collection Daughter of Jephta (1970). In the decades since this explosive debut, Krog’s many works—both poetry and prose—have received almost every award available in her country for poetry, translation and non-fiction, among them the esteemed Hertzog Prize for Lady Anne (1989) and for Synapse (2014), the Olive Schreiner Prize and the Alan Paton Prize for Country of My Skull (1998), and the Vita Poetry Award for Down to my Last Skin (2000). Internationally she has been awarded the Stockholm Award from the Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture as well as the Open Society Prize from the Central European University (previous winners of which were Jürgen Habermas and Vaclav Havel). Since 2004 Antjie Krog has been an extraordinary Professor of Literature and Philosophy at the University of the Western Cape. Bucknell University Press is proud to be the publisher of the first English translation of Antjie Krog’s Lady Anne: A Chronicle in Verse (2017).

Additional appearances

During her visit to the USA in fall 2017 Antjie Krog will also be reading and speaking at the following venues:

Monday, Sept. 18: Penn State University, State College. Comparative Literature Lunch, 12:30 pm. Contact: Jonathan Eburne, jpe11@psu.edu or Rosemary Jolly, rjj14@psu.edu

Monday, Sept. 25: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelpia. Discussion with Latitudes Research forum and Germanic Languages group. Contact: Rita Barnard, rita.barnard66@gmail.com

Tuesday, Sept. 26: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Reading at Kelly Writers House. Contact: Rita Barnard, rita.barnard66@gmail.com

Thursday, Sept. 28: Library of Congress. Washington DC. Reading and Discussion, 12 pm. Contact: Laverne Mattye Page, mpag@loc.gov

Monday, October 2: Barnard College, New York. Contact: Yvette Christianse, ychristi@barnard.edu

The winners of the 2016-17 Book Collecting Prize sponsored by Bucknell University Press and Library & IT are:

1st place ($500 prize): Alana Jajko, “The Act of Finding”
Runners up ($250 prize): Jessica Khin, “My Journey Across Seas and Pages” & Adam Walker, “An Essay on the Library of A. Walker”

The Prize is made possible by the generous support of Mr. Thomas Whitehead ’63, who will present the winners with their awards Thursday, April 13, at 5 p.m. in the Traditional Reading Room, Bertrand Library. A lecture by Alberto Manguel, Director of the National Library of Argentina, will follow the presentation. Both events are free and open to the public.