UW Press statement of solidarity

The University of Wisconsin Press unequivocally states that Black Lives Matter. We stand in solidarity with Black, Indigenous, and all people of color, and join our voices in condemning the violent deaths of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony Robinson, and countless others at the hands of the police or vigilantes.

BIPOC leaders are again shining a bright light on the injustices of our state and our institutions. The violence against and murder of Black people occurs within the context of centuries-long racism, and more recently, amid a pandemic that is killing a disproportionate number of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people.

We recognize that our own history includes many of the racist and white supremacist behaviors we reject. In academic publishing generally, and at UW Press, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) are underrepresented in all areas: leadership, staff, authors, peer reviewers, and editors. As an organization, we acknowledge this and will seek to address it in all our processes and procedures. We are committed to using our platform to engage and amplify more BIPOC voices. True dedication to the Wisconsin Idea means embodying the principle that scholarship produced at the university should be available to and reflect the needs of everyone in the state.

Individually and collectively, we commit to listening and acting. We continue to educate ourselves on the cultural pervasiveness of white supremacy and our own internalized racism. We take responsibility for and are working to dismantle structures of inequality and replace them with sustained systems of support for BIPOC within ourselves, our communities, and our workplace.

To our BIPOC authors, vendors, colleagues, family, and neighbors: We see you and we hear you. We acknowledge your grief and righteous anger.

We can and will do better.

The University of Wisconsin Press Celebrates National Poetry Month

The University of Wisconsin Press is proud to publish at least seven poetry collections each year as part of the Wisconsin Poetry Series. In celebration of National Poetry Month, all in-stock Wisconsin Poetry Series titles are on sale for 30% off with discount code NPM2024UWISC. We invite you to browse the Wisconsin Poetry Series titles and learn more about the series at this link. You can also follow along on social media as we highlight many must-read collections throughout the month!

The Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry, along with the Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation, are awarded annually; each winner receives a monetary prize and publication of their work in the Wisconsin Poetry Series. Winners are selected by a guest judge following an initial screening process conducted by coeditors Sean Bishop and Jesse Lee Kercheval in conjunction with the Creative Writing Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The series also publishes collections by a handful of exceptional finalists and, often, a winner of the Four Lakes Prize in Poetry. The next submissions period will open this summer.

SUBMISSION PERIOD NOW OPEN FOR GEORGE L. MOSSE FIRST BOOK PRIZE

The University of Wisconsin Press and the George L. Mosse Program in History are pleased to announce that the submission period is now open for this year’s Mosse First Book Prize.

The prize was established in 2020 to honor Mosse’s commitment to scholarship and to mentoring new generations of historians. Winning books are published as part of the George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas, and the recipient receives a $5,000 prize, payable in two installments. An honorable mention winner may also be selected to receive a $1,000 prize and publication.

The inaugural winner of the Mosse First Book Prize, awarded in 2022, is Kathryn L. Brackney; her book, Surreal Geographies: A New History of Holocaust Consciousness, will be published this August. The latest winner is Paula Antonella Oppermann, whose book is scheduled for publication in 2025.

“George L. Mosse shaped our understanding of National Socialism, völkisch ideology, the intersectionality of antifeminism and antisemitism, fascist images of masculinity, and fascist culture. He emphasized that beyond focusing on fascist leaders, we need to investigate what fascism meant for everyday life experiences of average citizens and enthusiastic followers,” Oppermann says. “I tried to follow his approaches in my book, in which I investigate the history and ideology of Latvia’s most prominent fascist party, the Pērkonkrusts (Thunder Cross). Being given the opportunity to publish my very first book in a series honoring Mosse’s work and life is a privilege and honor.”

“George L. Mosse was a prolific and innovative scholar who significantly enriched our understanding of multiple aspects of European history: cultural symbolism and intellectual history, fascism and gender, Jewish and LGBTQ+ history. He was also a legendary mentor to aspiring scholars,” says series advisor David Sorkin. “This prize perpetuates George’s dual legacy of scholarship and mentorship by rewarding the next generation of historians with the opportunity to publish an outstanding monograph with the University of Wisconsin Press.”

The prize is open to original, previously unpublished monographs of historical scholarship in English (whether written in English or translated), and aims to support and engage early-career scholars writing on topics related to the history of European culture, sexuality, or ideas.

According to UW Press acquisitions editor Nathan MacBrien, “This is an opportunity for UW Press to acknowledge the innovative work of an early career scholar and for the selected author to publish a book that will reach a broad audience of scholars and students.”

Proposals will be accepted through August 1, 2024; all submissions will be reviewed by the Press and series advisors. A short list of finalists will be chosen in October 2024, and those manuscripts will be read by a jury of expert readers, who will select the winning project. The winner will be announced after successful peer review of the manuscript and final approval for publication by the Press.

Entrants should begin by sending a proposal to UW Press acquisitions assistant Tristian Lee, at tristian.lee@wisc.edu. The subject line should contain “Mosse First Book Prize” as well as the author’s last name and a keyword. Please do not send the complete manuscript until requested to do so. Proposals should follow the guidelines detailed at https://uwpress.wisc.edu/proposal.html and should include the following elements:

  • the scope and rationale for the book and its main contributions, 
  • how the work fits with the Mosse Series, 
  • the audience and market for the book, 
  • the manuscript’s word count, 
  • an annotated table of contents, 
  • two sample chapters (ideally an introductory chapter and one interior chapter), and 
  • a curriculum vitae. 

Please note whether the book is under consideration elsewhere at the time of prize submission; work submitted for consideration must not be under contract elsewhere and should be complete at the time of submission.

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press is a not-for-profit publisher of books and journals. With more than 1,500 titles and more than 8,000 peer-reviewed articles in print, its mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea by publishing work of distinction that serves the people of Wisconsin and the world.

About the George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas

The Mosse series promotes the vibrant international collaboration and community that historian George L. Mosse created during his lifetime by publishing major innovative works by outstanding scholars in European cultural and intellectual history.

About George L. Mosse

A legendary scholar, teacher, and mentor, Mosse (1918–1999) joined the Department of History at UW–Madison in 1955. He was an early leader in the study of modern European culture, fascism, and the history of sexuality and masculinity. In 1965 Mosse was honored for his exceptional teaching by being named UW’s first John C. Bascom Professor. He remained famous among students and colleagues for his popular and engaging lectures, which were often standing-room only. A Jewish refugee from prewar Germany, Mosse was appointed a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1969 and spent the final decades of his career traveling frequently between Madison and Jerusalem.

The University of Wisconsin Press Celebrates Women’s History Month

The University of Wisconsin Press is proud to publish books and journals that engage with women’s history and experiences. In celebration of Women’s History Month, the following titles will be offered at a discount all month long, with discount code WHM2024UWISC. We invite you to click on the hyperlinks below to browse titles across genres—from history to political science to memoir as well as fiction and poetry by and/or about women. You can also follow along on social media as we highlight some of the must-read books included here.

Nonfiction

Holding the World Together: African Women in Changing Perspective, edited by Nwando Achebe and Claire C. Robertson

Muslim Women in Postcolonial Kenya: Leadership, Representation, and Social Change, by Ousseina D. Alidou

Silenced Resistance: Women, Dictatorships, and Genderwashing in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea, by Joanna Allan

I Am Evelyn Amony: Reclaiming My Life from the Lord’s Resistance Army, by Evelyn Amony, edited with an introduction by Erin Baines

Words of Witness: Black Women’s Autobiography in the Post-Brown Era, by Angela A. Ards

A Brave and Lovely Woman: Mamah Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright, by Mark Borthwick

Congo’s Dancers: Women and Work in Kinshasa, by Lesley Nicole Braun

Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe before 1800, edited by Lynn Matluck Brooks

African Women Writing Resistance: An Anthology of Contemporary Voices, edited by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez, Pauline Dongala, Omotayo Jolaosho, and Anne Serafin

Genocide Lives in Us: Women, Memory, and Silence in Rwanda, by Jennie E. Burnet

Such Anxious Hours: Wisconsin Women’s Voices from the Civil War, edited by Jo Ann Daly Carr

A Quiet Corner of the War: The Civil War Letters of Gilbert and Esther Claflin, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, 1862–1863, by Gilbert Claflin and Esther Claflin, edited by Judy Cook, with a foreword by Keith S. Bohannon

To Offer Compassion: A History of the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, by Doris Andrea Dirks and Patricia A. Relf

Women in Roman Republican Drama, edited by Dorota Dutsch, Sharon L. James, and David Konstan

Conjoined Twins in Black and White: The Lives of Millie-Christine McKoy and Daisy and Violet Hilton, edited by Linda Frost

Innocence and Victimhood: Gender, Nation, and Women’s Activism in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina, by Elissa Helms

Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories, by Jean M. Humez

Shaping Tradition: Women’s Roles in Ceremonial Rituals of the Agwagune, by David Uru Iyam

​​Practical Audacity: Black Women and International Human Rights, by Stanlie M. James

From the Womb to the Body Politic: Raising the Nation in Enlightenment Russia, by Anna Kuxhausen

Romaine Brooks: A Life, by Cassandra Langer

Amazons of the Huk Rebellion: Gender, Sex, and Revolution in the Philippines, by Vina A. Lanzona

A Cinema of Obsession: The Life and Work of Mai Zetterling, by Mariah Larsson

Gender Nonconformity, Race, and Sexuality: Charting the Connections, edited by Toni Lester

Citizen Countess: Sofia Panina and the Fate of Revolutionary Russia, by Adele Lindenmeyr

Equals in Learning and Piety: Muslim Women Scholars in Nigeria and North America, by Beverly Mack

Whispers of Cruel Wrongs: The Correspondence of Louisa Jacobs and Her Circle, 1879–1911, by Edited by Mary Maillard

​​As Told by Herself: Women’s Childhood Autobiography, 1845–1969, by Lorna Martens

Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia, by Katharine E. McGregor

Elusive Justice: Women, Land Rights, and Colombia’s Transition to Peace, by Donny Meertens

The Best Weapon for Peace: Maria Montessori, Education, and Children’s Rights, by Erica Moretti

Slave Trade and Abolition: Gender, Commerce, and Economic Transition in Luanda, by Vanessa S. Oliveira

Lorine Niedecker: A Poet’s Life, by Margot Peters

Beyond the Flesh: Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius, and the Symbolist Sublimation of Sex, by Jenifer Presto

A Mysterious Life and Calling: From Slavery to Ministry in South Carolina, by Reverend Mrs. Charlotte S. Riley, edited and with an introduction by Crystal J. Lucky, with a foreword by Joycelyn K. Moody

Strong-Minded Woman: The Story of Lavinia Goodell, Wisconsin’s First Female Lawyer, by Mary Lahr Schier

Spirit Wives and Church Mothers: Marriage, Survival, and Healing in Central Mozambique, by Christy Schuetze

Sister: An African American Life in Search of Justice, by Sylvia Bell White and Jody LePage

Laughter and Civility: The Theater of Emma Gad, by Lynn R. Wilkinson

Memoir

The Toni Morrison Book Club, by Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, and Piper Kendrix Williams

Daytime Stars: A Poet’s Memoir of the Revolution, the Siege of Leningrad, and the Thaw, by Olga Berggolts, translated and edited by Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, with a foreword by Katharine Hodgson

Farm Girl: A Wisconsin Memoir, by Beuna Coburn Carlson

With the Lapps in the High Mountains: A Woman among the Sami, 1907–1908, by Emilie Demant Hatt, edited and translated by Barbara Sjoholm, with a foreword by Hugh Beach

Self-Made Woman: A Memoir, by Denise Chanterelle DuBois

Coming Out Swiss: In Search of Heidi, Chocolate, and My Other Life, by Anne Hermann

Across America by Bicycle: Alice and Bobbi’s Summer on Wheels, by Alice Honeywell and Bobbi Montgomery

Plain: A Memoir of Mennonite Girlhood, by Mary Alice Hostetter

The Blind Masseuse: A Traveler’s Memoir from Costa Rica to Cambodia, by Alden Jones

Space: A Memoir, by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Daughter in Retrograde: A Memoir, by Courtney Kersten

Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White, by Joan Steinau Lester

The Only Way Through Is Out, by Suzette Mullen

Fiction

Women Lovers, or The Third Woman, by Natalie Clifford Barney, edited and translated by Chelsea Ray, with an introduction by Melanie C. Hawthorne

A Thin Bright Line, by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

Lava Falls, by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

Catina’s Haircut: A Novel in Stories, by Paola Corso

The Dead of Achill Island, by Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden (and the rest of their Nora Barnes and Toby Sandler Mystery series)

Still True, by Maggie Ginsberg

Half, by Sharon Harrigan

Dot & Ralfie, by Amy Hoffman

The Off Season, by Amy Hoffman

Minus One, by Doris Iarovici

Underground Women, by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Cravings, by Garnett Kilberg Cohen

Imagine Your Life Like This, by Sarah Layden

The Lost Archive, by Lynn C. Miller

The Book of Joshua, by Jennifer Anne Moses

All about Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color, edited by Jina Ortiz and Rochelle Spencer, with a foreword by Helena María Viramontes

The Summers, by Ronya Othmann, translated by Gary Schmidt

Unswerving, by Barbara Ridley

Death Casts a Shadow, by Patricia Skalka (and the seven previous volumes in her Door County mystery series)

Starvation Shore, by Laura Waterman

The Art of the Break, by Mary Wimmer

Across the Great Lake, by Lee Zacharias

Poetry

How the End First Showed, by D. M. Aderibigbe

(At) Wrist, by Tacey M. Atsitty

Shopping, or The End of Time, by Emily Bludworth de Barrios

Thunderhead, by Emily Rose Cole

Host, by Lisa Fay Coutley

Dear Terror, Dear Splendor, by Melissa Crowe

My Favorite Tyrants, by Joanne Diaz

Alien Miss, by Carlina Duan

Psalms, by Julia Fiedorczuk, translated by Bill Johnston

Gloss, by Rebecca Hazelton

Queen in Blue, by Ambalila Hemsell

Perigee, by Diane Kerr

Conditions of the Wounded, by Anna Leigh Knowles

Ganbatte, by Sarah Kortemeier

The Explosive Expert’s Wife, by Shara Lessley 

Radium Girl, by Celeste Lipkes

Season of the Second Thought, by Lynn Powell

The Book of Hulga, by Rita Mae Reese, with illustrations by Julie Franki

Why Can’t It Be Tenderness, by Michelle Brittan Rosado

As If a Song Could Save You, by Betsy Sholl

House of Sparrows, by Betsy Sholl

Otherwise Unseeable, by Betsy Sholl

The Sleeve Waves, by Angela Sorby 

If the House, by Molly Spencer

Hive, by Christina Stoddard

Girl’s Guide to Leaving, by Laura Villareal

The Apollonia Poems, by Judith Vollmer

The Sound Boat, by Judith Vollmer

The Blue Hour, by Jennifer Whitaker

American Sex Tape™, by Jameka Williams

ANNOUNCING THE RESULTS OF THE WISCONSIN POETRY PRIZE COMPETITION

Out of nearly 1,000 entrants, Caitlin Roach has been selected as the winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and Eduardo Martínez-Leyva has been named the winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Additionally, Peter Covino has been selected as the winner of the second annual Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation, for his translation of Dario Bellezza’s work. Each will receive $1,500, and their collections will be published this fall by the University of Wisconsin Press.

In addition, Emily Bludworth de Barrios has been named winner of the Four Lakes Prize in Poetry, and her collection will be published next spring, alongside finalist collections by Hedgie Choi, Caroline M. Mar, and Felicia Zamora.

Amaud Jamaul Johnson served as this year’s judge for the Brittingham and Felix Pollak prizes. Born and raised in Compton, California, he is the author of three poetry collections, Red Summer, Darktown Follies, and Imperial Liquor. He is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford, MacDowell Fellow, and Cave Canem Fellow, and his honors include the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Dorset Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, New York Times Magazine, Lit Hub, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. He is currently the Knight Family Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford University. His most recent collection, Imperial Liquor, was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2021 UNT Rilke Prize.

Geoffrey Brock served as the judge for this year’s Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation. He is the author of three books of poems, the editor of The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry, and the translator of various books of poetry, prose, and comics, most recently Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Allegria, which received ALTA’s National Translation Award for Poetry. His other awards include the Raiziss/de Palchi Book Prize, the MLA Lois Roth Award, the PEN Center USA Translation Prize, and Poetry magazine’s John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Cullman Center, the NEA, and the Academy of American Poets. He teaches in the University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing & Translation, where he is the founding editor of the Arkansas International.

Caitlin Roach’s collection, Surveille, has been awarded the Brittingham Prize in Poetry. Roach is a queer poet from Southern California. A three-time National Poetry Series finalist, her poems have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Tin House, jubilat, The Iowa Review, Poetry Daily, Colorado Review, and Best New Poets (2023, 2021, and 2017), among others. She earned an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and their two sons.

Eduardo Martínez-Leyva’s collection, Cowboy Park, has been awarded the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Martínez-Leyva was born in El Paso, Texas, to Mexican immigrants. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Boston Review, The Adroit Journal, Frontier Poetry, The Hopkins Review, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from CantoMundo, the Frost Place, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Lambda Literary Foundation, along with a teaching fellowship from Columbia University, where he earned his MFA. He was the writer-in-residence at St. Alban’s School for Boys in Washington, DC, and teaches and resides in New York City.

Peter Covino’s translation of What Sex Is Death: Selected Poems of Dario Bellezza has been awarded the Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation. Covino’s translation work has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Richmond American International University of London, Rome Programme. After a fourteen-year career as a social worker in the fields of AIDS services and foster care, Covino is an associate professor of English in the PhD Program at the University of Rhode Island, specializing in contemporary poetry, translation, and ethnic studies. He is also a well-published scholar, poet, editor, and author, with works that include a coedited essay collection on Italian American literature and the prize-winning poetry books The Right Place to Jump and Cut Off the Ears of Winter (2007 PEN-American Osterweil Award). Covino is the founding editor and faculty advisor of the Ocean State Review, and since 1998 a founding editor-trustee of the nonprofit press Barrow Street Inc.

Dario Bellezza (1944–96) was Italy’s first openly gay, major prize-winning poet-novelist-playwright, who died a premature death of AIDS-related complications. Over the course of a twenty-five-year career, he publishedmore than twenty books, including eight full-length poetry collections, eight novels, two plays, translations from the French, and nonfiction. Twentieth-century Italian and American literary luminaries Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia, Elsa Morante, Gregory Corso, and Allen Ginsberg, among others, championed his work. Significantly, Bellezza’s literary career extends two decades beyond Pasolini’s death, and he embraced his identity as an out gay man in an era of increased polemicizing of gay rights and harsh opposition by the Vatican. The sheer variety of forms, from epigram to brash love-lyric to sustained political narrative, coupled with the fervor of Bellezza’s voice make a compelling argument for his lasting importance among the best poets of the second half of the twentieth century.

Emily Bludworth de Barrios’s collection Rich Wife has been awarded the Four Lakes Prize in Poetry. Bludworth de Barrios is a poet whose previous book, Shopping, or The End of Time, received the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Harvard Review, Copper Nickel, The Poetry Review, and Oxford Poetry. She received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and also holds degrees from Goldsmiths College and the College of William & Mary. She was raised in Houston, Cairo, and Caracas, and now lives in both Houston, Texas, and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.

Hedgie Choi, author of the collection Salvage, received her MFA in poetry from the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin and her MFA in fiction from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Her poetry can be found in Poetry, Catapult, West Branch, and elsewhere. Her fiction can be found in Noon, American Short Fiction, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. She cotranslated Hysteria by Kim Yideum, which won the 2020 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize and the 2020 National Translation Award. Her translation of Pillar of Books by Moon Bo Young was published by Black Ocean in 2021.

Caroline M. Mar, author of the collection Water Guest, is the great-granddaughter of a railroad laborer and the author of Special Education and the chapbook Dream of the Lake. A high school health educator in her hometown of San Francisco, she is getting to know her new home of Oakland. Mar is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, an alumna of VONA, and a member of Rabble Collective. She has been granted residencies at Storyknife, Ragdale, and Hedgebrook, among others. 

Felicia Zamora’s collection Interstitial Archaeology will be released next spring. Zamora is the author of six books of poetry, including Quotient; I Always Carry My Bones, winner of the 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize and the 2022 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; Body of Render, Benjamin Saltman Award winner; and Of Form & Gather, Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize winner. She won the 2022 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize from The Georgia Review, a 2022 Tin House Next Book Residency, and a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2022, Boston Review, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Guernica, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Orion, Poetry Magazine, The Nation, West Branch, and others. She is an associate professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati and a poetry editor for the Colorado Review.

Submissions for the next competition will be accepted between July 15 and September 15, 2024. 

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press is a not-for-profit publisher of books and journals. With more than 1,500 titles and 8,000 peer-reviewed articles in print, its mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea by publishing work of distinction that serves the people of Wisconsin and the world. 

For more information on the Wisconsin Poetry Prizes, please visit https://uwpress.wisc.edu/series/wi-poetry.html.

The University of Wisconsin Press celebrates Black History Month

The University of Wisconsin Press is proud to publish books and journals that engage with Black history, culture, and experiences. In celebration of Black History Month, the following titles will be offered at a discount all month long, with discount code BHM2024UWISC. We invite you to click on the hyperlinks below to browse our titles across genres, from narratives by enslaved Americans to works of anthropology, from history to poetry and fiction. You can also follow along on social media as we highlight some of the must-read books included here. 

How the End First Showed by D. M. Aderibigbe

Words of Witness: Black Women’s Autobiography in the Post-Brown Era by Angela A. Ards

Afro-American Poetics: Revisions of Harlem and the Black Aesthetic by Houston A. Baker Jr.

The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, and Piper Kendrix Williams

The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb: An American Slave by Henry Bibb, with a new introduction by Charles J. Heglar

The Blind African Slave: Or Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace by Jeffrey Brace, as told to Benjamin F. Prentiss, Esq., edited and with an introduction by Kari J. Winter

Grace Engine by Joshua Burton

Kaiso! Writings by and about Katherine Dunham edited  by VèVè A. Clark and Sara E. Johnson

Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America by Frederick Cooper, Allen F. Isaacman, Florencia C. Mallon, William Roseberry, and Steve J. Stern

Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association by E. David Cronon, foreword by John Hope Franklin

The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census by Philip D. Curtin

Livin’ the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet by Frank Marshall Davis, edited and with an introduction by John Edgar Tidwell

Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz

Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States by Carl Degler

Against a Sharp White Background: Infrastructures of African American Print edited by Brigitte Fielder and Jonathan Senchyne

Living Black: Social Life in an African American Neighborhood by Mark S. Fleisher

Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Ante-bellum Slave Narratives by Frances Smith Foster

Conjoined Twins in Black and White: The Lives of Millie-Christine McKoy and Daisy and Violet Hilton edited by Linda Frost

Transforming Ethnographic Knowledge edited by Rebecca Hardin and Kamari Maxine Clarke

Cubans in Angola: South-South Cooperation and Transfer of Knowledge, 1976–1991 by Christine Hatzky

Race in America: The Struggle for Equality edited by Herbert Hill and James E. Jones Jr.

Black Labor and the American Legal System: Race, Work, and the Law by Herbert Hill

Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories by Jean M. Humez

Practical Audacity: Black Women and International Human Rights by Stanlie James

Understanding and Teaching American Slavery edited by Bethany Jay and Cynthia Lynn Lyerly, foreword by Ira Berlin

Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement edited by Hasan Kwame Jeffries

Last Seen by Jacqueline Jones LaMon

Reading African American Autobiography: Twenty-First-Century Contexts and Criticism edited by Eric D. Lamore

Gender Nonconformity, Race, and Sexuality: Charting the Connections edited by Toni Lester

Early African Entertainments Abroad: From the Hottentot Venus to Africa’s First Olympians by Bernth Lindfors

Equals in Learning and Piety: Muslim Women Scholars in Nigeria and North America by Beverly Mack

Whispers of Cruel Wrongs: The Correspondence of Louisa Jacobs and Her Circle, 1879–1911 edited by Mary Maillard

Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 by Joseph C. Miller

Meet Me Halfway by Jennifer Morales

Fagen: An African American Renegade in the Philippine-American War by Michael Morey

For Labor, Race, and Liberty: George Edwin Taylor, His Historic Run for the White House, and the Making of Independent Black Politics by Bruce L. Mouser

A Black Gambler’s World of Liquor, Vice, and Presidential Politics: William Thomas Scott of Illinois, 1839–1917 by Bruce L. Mouser

Òrìṣà Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yorùbá Religious Culture by Jacob K. Olupona and Terry Rey

All about Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color edited by Jina Ortiz and Rochelle Spencer

A Summer Up North: Henry Aaron and the Legend of Eau Claire Baseball by Jerry Poling

Caribbean Autobiography: Cultural Identity and Self-Representation by Sandra Pouchet Paquet

After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South by Hortense Powdermaker, with a new introduction by Brackette P. Williams and Drexel Woodson

Ulysses in Black: Ralph Ellison, Classicism, and African American Literature by Patrice D. Rankine

A Mysterious Life and Calling: From Slavery to Ministry in South Carolina by Reverend Mrs. Charlotte S. Riley, edited and with an introduction by Crystal J. Lucky, foreword by Joycelyn K. Moody

Fugitive Texts: Slave Narratives in Antebellum Print Culture, by Michaël Roy, translated by Susan Pickford

A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said by Omar Ibn Said, translated by Ala Alryyes

When Whites Riot: Writing Race and Violence in American and South African Cultures by Sheila Smith McKoy

Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South by Michael Tadman

Slavery and Race in American Popular Culture by William L. Van Deburg

Sister: An African American Life in Search of Justice by Sylvia Bell White and Jody LePage

American Sex TapeTM by Jameka Williams

University of Wisconsin Press Welcomes Scandinavian Studies to Catalog

The University of Wisconsin Press is delighted to announce the addition of the prestigious academic journal Scandinavian Studies to its catalog. This exciting collaboration underscores the University of Wisconsin Press’s commitment to supporting scholarly research and fostering intellectual discourse across various disciplines.

Scandinavian Studies, a leading interdisciplinary journal in the study of the Nordic region, has been at the forefront of academic research and publication for over a century. First published in 1911, it serves as a vital platform for scholars and researchers to explore and showcase scholarship in the fields of Nordic history, literature, linguistics, art, folklore, and culture.

The inclusion of Scandinavian Studies in the University of Wisconsin Press catalog further enhances the esteemed lineup of scholarly journals offered by the press. By expanding its academic offerings, the Press continues to establish itself as a hub for exceptional research and scholarly discourse.

“We are very excited to welcome Scandinavian Studies to our journals publishing program. In addition to the prestige it brings to our program, it will also increase the synergy with our books publishing program, which has a well-established Scandinavian studies list, and a Nordic World series co-published with Aarhus University Press.” – Toni Gunnison, the University of Wisconsin Press Journals manager

Under the editorship of Dean Krouk, professor at the University of Wisconsin’s Scandinavian Studies program, as well as an international editorial board comprised of scholars in the field, Scandinavian Studies consistently publishes groundbreaking research, thought-provoking articles, and critical reviews that contribute to the collective understanding of Scandinavian culture, history, and society. By joining forces with the University of Wisconsin Press, the journal is set to expand its reach, connect with a broader academic audience, and engage in dynamic scholarly conversations.

“I am truly excited about partnering with the University of Wisconsin Press, which will allow Scandinavian Studies to reach a wider audience and further enrich the international academic discourse in our field. The journal will continue to publish original scholarship and research that explores and analyzes Nordic cultures, literature, histories, and societies.” – Dean Krouk

The University of Wisconsin Press is eager to embark on this exciting collaboration and looks forward to contributing to the growth and distribution of knowledge through the publication of Scandinavian Studies.

More information about the journal, as well as current and previous issues can be found on https://sca.uwpress.org/

UW Press announces new book series: Women and Gender in Africa

The University of Wisconsin Press is pleased to announce the launch of a new book series, Women and Gender in Africa, edited by Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué and Aili Mari Tripp. The series seeks to publish innovative book-length works, based on original research, primarily in the areas of history, politics, and cultural studies.

Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué, associate professor of African cultural studies and history at UW–Madison, says, “I am thrilled to highlight the works of innovative scholars who bring fresh perspectives on issues of gender and women in Africa. We are especially excited to focus on scholarship that transcends traditional scholarly frameworks by defying disciplinary boundaries and geographical constraints, exploring diverse methods, and spanning the vast expanse of the African continent.”

The series welcomes submissions that address questions and debates of broad theoretical, empirical, and methodological significance of interest to a wide readership, including manuscripts that demonstrate the comparative implications of women’s experiences across and beyond the African continent. The editors are especially interested in such topics as women and religion, sexuality, LGBTQI+ concerns, human rights, migration, health, the family, the environment, law, conflict resolution, race and ethnicity, women’s movements and feminism, and globalization. Projects addressing agency are particularly welcome, including authority, political and spiritual leadership, economic activity, and forms of knowledge and healing. The series welcomes manuscripts that incorporate discussions of literature and popular culture, representation and identity construction, and testimony and life writing.

For Aili Mari Tripp, Vilas Research Professor of Political Science at UW–Madison, the series is an opportunity “to give visibility to the growing body of first-rate research in Africa and beyond that focuses on women’s agency and challenges in a wide variety of social science and humanities fields.”

The series advisory board includes Ousseina Alidou (Rutgers University, USA), Nwando Achebe (Michigan State University, USA), Naminata Diabate (Cornell University, USA), Ainehi Edoro (University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA), Marc Epprecht (Queens University, Canada), Shireen Hassim (Carleton University, Canada), Dorothy Hodgson (Brandeis University, USA), Stanlie James (Arizona State University, USA), Alice Kang (University of Nebraska–Lincoln, USA), Siphokazi Magadla (Rhodes University, South Africa), Fatima Sadiqi (Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Morocco), Laura Ann Twagira (Wesleyan University, USA), and Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso (Brandeis University, USA).

Editor in chief Nathan MacBrien adds, “The University of Wisconsin Press has long had a commitment to publishing scholarship on Africa, and in particular writing on women’s lived experience in Africa. This new series provides inspiration for us, and the disciplines, to both broaden and deepen our commitments by giving space to imaginative work from new generations of scholars in Africa and across the world.”

Manuscripts will be selected based on significance of the topic, quality of scholarship, clarity and style of presentation, list balance, and marketability. For more information about submission, please contact Nathan MacBrien, editor in chief, at macbrien@wisc.edu. For other inquiries, please contact the series editors, Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué (jmougou@wisc.edu) and Aili Mari Tripp (atripp@wisc.edu).

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press is a not-for-profit publisher of books and journals. With more than 1,500 titles and 8,000 peer-reviewed articles in print, its mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea by publishing work of distinction that serves the people of Wisconsin and the world.

Guest Post: Breathing the Dust of History

Today we’re pleased to share a guest post from Sara DeLuca, editor of Heavy Marching. During the Civil War, Lute Moseley, a member of Wisconsin’s 22nd Volunteer Infantry, wrote detailed missives to his family in Beloit about his wartime experiences. These 125 letters, published for the first time in Heavy Marching, provide a uniquely candid and vivid view of this tumultuous period in US history. In the early 2000s, Esther Moseley enlisted the help of Sara DeLuca, a Wisconsin-based writer, to transcribe, annotate, and edit the letters written by her husband’s grandfather. Over the past few years, Sara has worked on the book, with the permission of Moseley’s descendants; the resulting volume was published June 27, 2023, with a foreword by Robert Lucius Moseley. Today, Sara shares an essay and poem she wrote about this experience. 

The pandemic that altered so many lives around the globe, beginning in 2020 and continuing for longer than we ever expected, held me close to home, searching for creative work that would fill my days. I remembered the box of Civil War letters that had been shared with me by a friend named Esther Moseley, when we were both living near Atlanta, Georgia. The letters had been written by her husband’s grandfather, Lucius Moseley, during his service with the 22nd Wisconsin Volunteer Regiment, 1862–65. Esther had asked me to help her transcribe and edit the letters for possible publication. Unfortunately, she died soon after we began our collaboration and I abandoned the project for nearly fifteen years. When I moved back to Wisconsin, the letters moved with me.

Early in 2021, after I had cleaned out all my closets and run out of productive household tasks, I contacted Esther Moseley’s family and received permission to continue working with their ancestor’s writings. Transcribing, curating, researching, annotating, editing, editing, editing, absorbed my time for more than two years. Early in the process I submitted a proposal and sample pages to the University of Wisconsin Press; an encouraging response helped keep me motivated.

My working title for the book was Ever Dear Home, a salutation that Lucius (“Lute”) Moseley often used when addressing his beloved family in Beloit, Wisconsin. Ultimately, the title was changed to Heavy Marching: The Civil War Letters of Lute Moseley, 22nd Wisconsin. The 22nd Wisconsin certainly did some heavy marching—2,400 miles on foot, much of that through extremely difficult terrain and challenging conditions, described in startling detail by the young soldier.

As editor of this remarkable first-person history, I did some heavy marching too, though most of that was accomplished in the safety and comfort of my own dear home. This poem describes my journey, which has been more rewarding than words can express. 

Ever Dear Home . . .						
		
That is how my young soldier begins so many Civil War letters
to his father, mother, brother, grandmother, back home in Beloit, Wisconsin.
I have become that grandmother, loving, hoping, 
praying for Lucius Moseley to survive the long exhausting marches,
battles at Thompson’s Station, Stones River, Peach Tree Creek, 
the Siege of Atlanta, fighting and foraging across Georgia and the Carolinas,
near starvation in Richmond’s Libby Prison, torments from dysentery, scurvy,
from rats and flies and fleas, snipers and bushwhackers.
From the stench of death.

Should God allow me to live, he writes, I will come home
and do my best to make your old age happy.
I want to know this battle-hardened boy who is marching into manhood, 
who can shoot rebel soldiers, so like himself, take their weapons, bury the bodies
and celebrate, yet burn with remorse for stealing hay from an emaciated mule
so he can make himself a bed. I need to bring him back, unscarred. I will listen
intently, learn what he has to teach me. This is kinship with another soul,
across time and space.

I suffer from exquisite maladies. I am choking on the dust of history, 
burning with archive fever.  I am tossing sleeplessly, dreaming fitfully, 
excavating, reanimating a long-dead body, searching for a pulse, finding
only a portion of his life, while feeling like a thief, knowing
that too much belongs to time
and I can never make him whole.

Don E Dumond

Remembering Dr. Don E. Dumond, upon his passing

Dr. Don E. Dumond of Eugene, Oregon, passed away June 8, 2023, at the age of 94. Born in 1929 in Childress, Texas, Dr. Dumond (or Dr. D, as he was known to friends, students, and colleagues) was a leading figure of American archaeology, working in Alaska and Latin America after retiring from the Air Force as a captain. He was an anthropology professor at the University of Oregon from 1962-1994 and the director of the Museum of Natural History (now the Museum of Natural and Cultural History) from 1982-1996.

Dumond’s lifelong pursuit of knowledge led to a career as a leading American archaeologist. His work in Alaska began in 1960, while earning his Ph.D. Cressman offered Dumond a project determining the size of salmon runs on the Alaska Peninsula prior to 1880, for which there was no written record. He went on to receive a National Science Foundation grant between 1963-65 for the work, after which he became a professor of anthropology at the University of Oregon while also teaching in the Honors College. Among other accolades, Dumond was an elected Fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America, an elected member and chair of the nominations committee for the American Anthropological Association, an appointed delegate to the Permanent Council of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, an appointed member of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Archaeologists within the American Anthropological Association, and an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1998, the Alaska Anthropological Association presented Dumond with a Career Achievement Award, and in 2008, they again honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. After retirement, Dumond received the highest honors possible from both museums on his campus: the Director’s Lifetime Achievement Award from MNCH and the Gertrude Bass Warner Award from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

Dr. Dumond met his beloved wife Carol while both were visiting Mexico in 1950. They were married for 65 years until her death in 2015. His work lives on in the museum he built, the work he accomplished, and the lives he touched.

Dr. Dumond’s extensive bibliography and a dialogue can be found in a special edition of Arctic Anthropology honoring his work in the field: https://aa.uwpress.org/content/47/2

Submissions now open for the Wisconsin Poetry Prizes!

The Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry and the Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation are now open for submissions! Please apply by September 15. Our $1,500 prizes for original poetry collections in English will be judged by Amaud Jamaul Johnson this year, and our translation prize will be judged by Geoffrey Brock. More details about this year’s judges and our manuscript requirements can be found below. Winners will be chosen by February 15, 2024, and will be published by the University of Wisconsin Press the following fall. Up to four other finalists may also be selected by the series editors to be published by the University of Wisconsin Press in the spring of 2025.

The Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry

The Brittingham and Pollak Prizes are open to any book-length poetry manuscript in English that has not yet been published as a full collection. Before visiting our Submittable page (click here), please assemble a single pdf, including a title page, a table of contents, your poems, and (optionally) an acknowledgments page listing any magazines or journals where the submitted poems may have first appeared. Your name and contact info should not appear anywhere in the document or in the pdf file name. Manuscripts should be fifty to ninety pages in length on 8.5″ x 11″ pdf pages.

Simultaneous submissions are permitted, as long as the author agrees to withdraw the manuscript through Submittable if it is accepted elsewhere. If you have any questions, please first consult our FAQ. If you don’t find your answer, query series editors Sean Bishop and Jesse Lee Kercheval at poetryseries@english.wisc.edu.

The Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation

Translators or original authors are invited to submit a book-length manuscript, including all poems in both their original language and their English translation, for the second annual Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation. The translations submitted must be previously unpublished in book form. Simultaneous submissions are permitted, as long as the applicant withdraws the manuscript if it is accepted elsewhere. The winning manuscript will be awarded $1,500 and will be published by the University of Wisconsin Press in the fall of 2024, alongside the winners of our annual Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry. Submissions will remain open until September 15, 2023, through Submittable (click here).

Applicants are asked to confirm they hold the rights to their translations, including any necessary permissions from the original publisher or poet for publication, before preparing a manuscript in pdf format, including the following:

  • A simple title page, which should include the names of the original author(s) and translator(s).
  • A table of contents, with accurate page numbers indicated.
  • 75 to 150 pages of poetry, including all poems in both their original language and translated into English, with numbered pages.
  • A biography page, including 50- to 250-word bios for each author and translator.
  • A project description that addresses the book’s historical, cultural, and/or artistic significance.
  • An acknowledgments page (optional, if any translations are previously published).

About This Year’s Judges

Amaud Jamaul Johnson will judge the Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry. Born and raised in Compton, California, he is the author of three poetry collections, Red Summer (2006), Darktown Follies (2013), and Imperial Liquor (2020). He is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford, MacDowell Fellow, and Cave Canem Fellow, and his honors include the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Dorset Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, the New York Times Magazine, Kenyon Review, Callaloo, Lit Hub, Narrative Magazine, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, the Southern Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. He is currently the Knight Family Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford University. Previously, he served as the Halls Bascom Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Arthur M. and Fanny M. Dole Professor of English at Pomona College. His most recent collection, Imperial Liquor, was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2021 UNT Rilke Prize.

Geoffrey Brock will judge this year’s Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation. He is the author of three books of poems, the editor of The FSG Book of 20th-Century Italian Poetry, and the translator of various books of poetry, prose, and comics, most recently Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Allegria, which received ALTA’s National Translation Award for Poetry. His other awards include the Raiziss/de Palchi Book Prize, the MLA Lois Roth Award, the PEN Center USA Translation Prize, and Poetry magazine’s John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Cullman Center, the NEA, and the Academy of American Poets. He teaches in the University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing & Translation, where he is the founding editor of the Arkansas International.

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press is a not-for-profit publisher of books and journals. With more than  1,500 titles and 8,000 peer-reviewed articles in print, its mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea by publishing work of distinction that serves the people of Wisconsin and the world. 

For more information on the Wisconsin Poetry Prizes, please visit https://uwpress.wisc.edu/series/wi-poetry.html.