University of Wisconsin Press Blog

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.

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.

Book Club Discussion Guide – Heavy Marching: The Civil War Letters of Lute Moseley, 22nd Wisconsin

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. Frank and forthright, he was remarkably articulate, insightful, and thoughtful, whether describing mundane activities or the nearly unfathomable death of President Lincoln. These 125 letters, published for the first time in the forthcoming book 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 will be published June 27, 2023, with a foreword by Robert Lucius Moseley. Sara has developed the following discussion guide for book clubs who wish to read and discuss the collection.

What were the primary motivations for Lute Moseley and fellow soldiers to enlist in military service during the Civil War? How do these motivations compare and contrast with military enlistments today?

What do the tone and content of Lute’s letters reveal about his relationship with his mother and father? And with his younger brother?

How do the letters reveal Lute’s ethics and values? Religious beliefs?

Lute’s feelings about the African Americans he encounters are candidly expressed in several letters. How do these attitudes evolve throughout his three years of experience in the war? What signs do you see that might illustrate a growing understanding and compassion?

In many letters, Lute describes strong bonds and camaraderie among fellow soldiers, as well as feelings of irritation and petty jealousies. He also judges the behavior of his comrades and superior officers, sometimes with high praise, sometimes with harsh criticism. What do these judgments say about Lute’s own character and personality?

How did the incompetence and bitter conflicts between officers of the Wisconsin 22nd Volunteer Regiment impact the enlisted men? Can you think of examples from your own experience in the workplace or other situations where inadequate leadership affected morale and performance of the entire organization?

How might the letters of a Civil War soldier writing to his mother and father differ from those that were written to wives? Or letters written for the purpose of publication? How do you think they might differ from reports by military officers and public officials?

Despite being only nineteen at the time of his enlistment, Lute displays an ability for keen observation, vivid description, and honest reflection in his letters. What aspects of his education and background might contribute to such expressive writing?

Lute describes a scene of fraternization—even friendliness—with the “Johnny Rebs.” Yet in most accounts they are evil enemies to be destroyed, and he celebrates that destruction. How would a soldier learn to manage such contradictory experiences and emotions?

When Lute describes stealing hay from a horse to make himself a bed, he describes deep guilt. Yet he has witnessed and participated in so much human suffering. Does this seem like a strange reaction? Can you recall a time when a lesser incident—the “last straw”—has been the one to bring you down?

In April 1963 Lute writes, “I have written twice since I got back to America.” The Confederate states have become a foreign country. Lute’s impressions of “Dixie” range from harsh to amusing. What are some of the stereotypes about the North and South that still exist today?

What did you learn from Lute Moseley’s letters that you found most surprising? Revealing? Disturbing?

Can you draw comparisons or contrasts between the deep divisions that led to the Civil War with the current political environment? Do you feel optimistic about the prospects of healing these divisions and of finding common ground that will enable us to solve the economic, social, and environmental challenges facing our nation today?

Ecological Restoration editor Steven Handel awarded LaGasse Medal

Steven Handel, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolution, and editor of Ecological Restoration was recently awarded the LaGasse medal by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). This award “Recognizes notable contributions by individuals to the management and conservancy of natural resources and/or public landscapes.”

The LaGasse Medal is the highest honor the ASLA can award to a non-landscape architect professional. It represents the significant achievements Dr. Handel has made in nearly 40 years working in this field. With this award, Handel joins esteemed recipients including former Secretaries of the Interior Sally Jewell, and Bruce Babbitt. Handel’s medal will be given to him this Fall at the ASLA annual meeting.

The University of Wisconsin Press had the honor of interviewing Dr. Handel about his award. The transcription can be found below:

Congratulations on winning the prestigious LaGasse Medal! Can you tell me how you felt when you first learned about this recognition and what it means to you?

Steven Handel:
Well, I was called by the person who nominated me, and I was surprised, and I was really thrilled. It’s a national honor that only goes to one person in the United States each year, and I was just astonished. I worked very hard for a long time and most of the work of an academic is private. You know, you sit in your office, or in the field working and to realize that a huge professional organization gave me their highest honor for natural resources. I just was like a light went on in a dark room.

It was just wonderful and the people I work with, the landscape architects and so on were also just thrilled for me and said some very nice things. My son asked: “Is this the capstone of your career?” I said, well, I don’t know about that, but it certainly makes me feel that these last 20 years of work and designing public landscapes was appreciated, and I’m grateful for that.

The LaGasse Medal is awarded to individuals who have made significant contributions to the management and conservancy of natural resources and public landscapes. Could you elaborate on the contributions you were recognized for and what impact you believe these projects have had on the field as a whole?

Steven Handel:
That’s right. The nomination said I did 5 things that were worthy of this honor. One is I that I’ve managed the Rutgers Forest, which is an uncut primeval forest, one of the few left in the eastern US, and I helped save that from deer pressure and invasives, so formally helping a national natural landmark.

I’ve done writing, of course, for your journal Ecological Restoration, and also in the scientific literature on restoration, and bringing back natural biodiversity. I’ve done that for many years, many people read that, and I hope, respond to it.

A third, I’ve trained students, both undergraduate and graduate students, over 20 PhD’s and master students, over the years in restoration ecology. I’ve helped train the next generation, and I’ve lectured not only at Rutgers, but also at Harvard University in their Graduate School of Design, which is the biggest landscape architecture program in America. They invited me to give a required course to all their students. I did that for four years about using ecological principles in landscape design, and I hope that’s had an impression.

Finally, was helping to design public parks. I’ve worked with several leading landscape architecture companies to tweak or modify their designs to make them more ecological, more diverse, and more sustainable, and that’s been very interesting for me. Most of my life I worked with scientists, but here I was working with a very different profession of designers and landscape architects, so it’s a transdisciplinary collaboration. It’s so interesting to me that many of these people really listen to what I have to say and make their designs more biodiverse, and I hopefully more sustainable in a changing world.

What motivated you to pursue a career in the restoration of native plant communities and sustainability? Did you always have an interest in restoration work, or did your interest develop over time?

Steven Handel:
There was an actual moment where I decided I’d better look into this. I had spent about 20 years studying plant populations, how they spread, how they reproduce, pollination, seed dispersal and had a fine time.

That was sort of straight scientific population biology work, and one day I took my class out on a field trip and we went to an old landfill in New Jersey. It had been 25 years since they stopped dumping garbage there and at the top of the landfill were just a few weeds. Every textbook in biology says after 25 years of abandonment, you should get ecological succession. It should be perennial wildflowers and shrubs and young trees, and that did not happen on this landfill, and I said, why not? How is it possible to restore these 20 acres into a natural landscape? So I got a grant and we started doing some experiments there to find out why hadn’t it developed into a natural community.

That started this whole part of my career. We learned what some of the problems were and about four years later I got a call from a landscape architecture company. A big one. They said: “We’re doing a project and an old landfill. We heard you study landfills. Can you help us?” I started collaborating with them, and the next thing you know, I won the LaGasse Medal 20 years later.

Could you share some of the challenges or obstacles you encountered along your journey and how you overcame them?

Steven Handel:
Yes, so many people are interested in nature in the city greening American cities. But it’s hard, you know, cities are not Yellowstone National Park. They have many, many stresses and all those stresses have to be addressed using ecological scientific principles. Cities are hot because of traffic and buildings, and cities have fragmented landscapes, so each little bit of green land is surrounded by asphalt, not by other forests. Cities have a lot of invasive species, crummy soil because of past land uses, and each of these constraints has to be overcome to bring back biodiversity and healthy landscapes. Healthy for us, not just for birds and butterflies.

So we started learning what the constraints were, and what kinds of plants and what kind of protocols or processes to use. We had to bring back biodiversity, not what was there 400 years ago. Rather a biodiversity that could survive current stresses, in a climate which is changing rapidly, getting hotter and drier. So, it’s been very interesting as a study of applied ecology.

What are the problems? Well ecological links have to be used to address those problems, and you know, I have to work with landscape architects because they are the only ones with a license to do blueprints. I can’t do a blueprint, and also, they deal with all the other needs of a landscape: where people have to walk, where to put the restrooms, where to put the athletic fields, and I work on the spaces around that.

How can we make maximize ecological health? And my award is for trying to get landscape architects to do that, to add some ecological feature to every project they work on.

As a recipient of the LaGasse Medal, you join an esteemed group of individuals (including a former Secretary of the Interior) who have made significant contributions to the field. How does it feel to be recognized alongside such renowned figures?

Steven Handel:
A few of them even, including Bruce Babbitt, who was Secretary of the Interior for President Clinton. So, it’s amazing to read the list of names. Well, first I’ll say I think it’s an important recognition for my field more so than for me. The idea that ecology can play an important role in landscape design and that restoration ecology can partner with the design field. So, I think it’s a way of getting my field better seen, and I hope it will make more ecologists work with the design professions, architecture, and city planning.

For me personally, it just feels that people have appreciated all this hard work I’ve done. I once told your journal manager, Toni Gunnison, I work 50 to 60 hours a week, and I sometimes wonder if anybody even sees that. And so, I felt that it justified all that hard work after all these years.

The LaGasse Medal is a testament to your dedication and commitment to the restoration field. How do you envision the future of the field, and what are some of the emerging trends or challenges that you believe will shape it?

Steven Handel:
Well, that’s a good question. I think nationally people are finally getting to see the immediate impacts of climate change. I mean this horrible, polluted air that’s come down from the big forest fires in Canada, the rising sea levels at all of our coasts, the increased storms which are also part of climate change. People are desperate for solutions with these public problems. Restoration ecology and adding green solutions to the infrastructure are ways to help, so I’m hoping that people will see that ecological science is part of the solution for a healthier, more economically sustainable future for our country.

I completely agree. And the world?

Steven Handel:
One country at a time, my boy. Well, you know, just last week I got a call from a guy who’s a professor at Stockholm University in Sweden and he asked if I could come to Stockholm in September to help them in in a similar project. So, you know there is one international program that’s starting, and even the United Nations has gotten interested. They’re doing something now. They called this the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and are trying to get other countries to realize adding back green solutions and natural solutions as part of protection. It’s for people, not just for butterflies and birds, and I stress that whenever I talk to a government group. By having healthy, sustainable infrastructure, it makes human health better, less asthma, less mental health stresses, and so on.

Lastly, what advice would you give to aspiring professionals in your field who hope to make similar significant contributions to the field?

Steven Handel:
Oh that’s good. I would say to my ecology colleagues and students: reach out to other disciplines. Science is fascinating, wonderful and makes great advances, but to make a better world, we have to reach out to other professions like landscape architects.

The old days of silos with each of us is in our own professional island, has to end, and the only way we’re really going to succeed to improve our country is for people with science backgrounds to work with public policy and the design communities. And they will welcome you.

One of my jobs at Harvard was to build links between biology and landscape architecture, and I think I succeeded a bit. Those kinds of academic and training links have to occur. I tell my ecology graduate students, get to know people in the design professions because you have so much to offer them.

And I think that is starting now nationally. I hope the LaGasse Medal is a recognition of that, and that we’ll get other landscape architects to think about working more closely with ecologists. There are some 15,000 members of the American Society of Landscape Architects and they all will get the news release about this medal and I hope it will make them think to reach out to a local university or ecology group to have them partner in new landscape designs.

Call for editor-in-chief, Native Plants Journal

Native Plants Journal (NPJ) has recently announced they are accepting applications for a new editor-in-chief. The journal, which was founded in 2000 as a collaborative effort between the USDA Forest Service and the University of Idaho, aims to provide a forum for practical information on planting and growing native North American plants for conservation, restoration, landscaping, and other related purposes.

The new editor-in-chief will have a range of responsibilities, including overseeing the editorial process; managing the peer review process; representing the journal at conferences and events; working with authors, reviewers, associate editors, and the managing editor to ensure timely and high-quality publication of articles; developing and implementing editorial policies; and collaborating with the University of Wisconsin Press to ensure efficient production and distribution of each issue.

To be considered for this role, candidates should have knowledge of the academic peer review process, experience in reviewing papers for academic journals, and hold an academic post in a relevant field such as ecology, botany, horticulture, conservation biology, or other plant-related field. Consideration will be given to those in relevant industries who have published papers and understand the value of sharing and expanding knowledge. Interested candidates must submit a CV that includes previous editorial experience in a relevant field, as well as a cover letter that outlines why they would be a good fit for the role and their vision for the future of the journal.

The deadline for applications is June 30th. More information can be found at https://npj.uwpress.org /call-for-editor

The position of editor-in-chief of NPJ presents a unique opportunity for individuals with relevant experience and a passion for the conservation and restoration of North American native plants. The selected candidate will have the chance to shape the future of the journal and make a significant contribution to the field.

University of Wisconsin Press offers free journal access to select countries through Project MUSE

The University of Wisconsin Press Journals Division has taken a significant step in making academic content more accessible to libraries in economically disadvantaged countries. By offering all content at no charge to select countries, this initiative recognizes the unique needs of these libraries and their users.

This program is offered through Project MUSE, a digital platform that provides access to scholarly books and journals from reputable publishers. MUSE has been actively working to bridge the knowledge gap between economically disadvantaged countries and the rest of the world by implementing initiatives like pricing tiers and partnerships with organizations like the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications.

The country list for this program will be updated each year based on the Wold Bank World Development Indicators. The 2023 list includes:

Burkina Faso
Burundi
Central African Republic
Chad
Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo
Eritrea
Gambia
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Liberia
Madagascar
Mali
Niger
Somalia
South Sudan
Sudan
Togo
Yemen

These efforts can go a long way in providing individuals in these countries with the tools and information they need to succeed. By making academic content more accessible, we can help bridge the knowledge gap and promote a more equitable world. We hope that other publishers and organizations will follow suit and take similar steps to make their content more widely available to those who need it most.

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.

“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 editor in chief 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 between March 15 and August 1, 2023; all submissions will be reviewed by the Press and series advisors. A short list of finalists will be chosen in August 2023, 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 editor in chief Nathan MacBrien, at macbrien@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 nearly 1,500 titles and over 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.

Call for Proposals

First Annual Luso-Brazilian Review
Emerging Scholars Article Incubator

Application Deadline: April 15, 2023

The Luso-Brazilian Review invites applications for the first annual Emerging Scholars Article Incubator program. In the spirit of the LBR’s founders, who in the first issue promised to “encourage publication by younger [scholars],” the article incubator will provide support each year for one advanced graduate student or recent PhD to develop an article-length essay with the hope of preparing it for publication in the LBR. The selected scholar will hold a workshop at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (this year’s workshop will be held via Zoom) during which they will receive developmental feedback from the journal’s History and Social Science editors as well as other invited campus faculty who specialize in Lusophone and other relevant fields. If the awardee is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, they will receive a $1,000 stipend. After the workshop, the author will be invited to revise the article and submit for publication through the regular peer review process of the LBR. This process does not guarantee publication. Questions may be addressed to Marc Hertzman and Jerry Dávila at the following email: LBRarticleIncubator@gmail.com.

Guidelines and Materials:

Applicant must be a graduate student or have been awarded their Ph.D. no earlier than December 2019;
All application materials and the article manuscript must be submitted in English;
Applicants must submit the following:
- C.V.
- Short writing sample (limit 5,000 words). The sample does not need to be related to the proposed article and should simply illustrate the author’s writing abilities
- 250-word cover page, including
  - A clear description of the article, its primary argument(s), contributions to the literature, and source base.
  - A clear indication of the current state of the article (conceptualized, outlined, fully drafted, etc.) and a timeline for completing a polished draft by August 15, 2023.

Timeline:

Application materials due April 15, 2023 (11:59pm Central Time)
Awardee announced by May 15, 2023
Draft of full, polished article for workshop due August 15, 2023
Workshop: September 2023
Revised article submitted to the LBR by November 30, 2023

ANNOUNCING THE RESULTS OF THE WISCONSIN POETRY PRIZE COMPETITION

Out of more than 850 entrants, Tacey M. Atsitty has been selected as the winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and Michael Dhyne has been named the winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Each will receive $1,500, and their collections will be published this fall by the University of Wisconsin Press. In addition, Nick Lantz has been named winner of the Four Lakes Poetry Prize, and his collection will be published next spring. The University of Wisconsin Press will also publish finalist collections by Daniel Khalastchi, Lisa Fay Coutley, and Saúl Hernández next spring.

Eduardo C. Corral served as this year’s contest judge. Corral is the author of Guillotine, longlisted for the National Book Award, and Slow Lightning, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. He’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. He teaches in the MFA program at North Carolina State University.

Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné (Navajo), is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle People). The recipient of numerous prizes and fellowships, Atsitty is an inaugural Indigenous Nations Poets fellow and holds degrees from Brigham Young University and the Institute of American Indian Arts as well as an MFA from Cornell University. The author of Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press), Atsitty has also published work in POETRY, EPOCH, Kenyon Review Online, Poem-A-Day: Academy of American Poets, The Hopkins Review, Shenandoan, High Country News, Hairstreak Butterfly Review, Literature and Belief, Leavings, and other publications. She is the director of the Navajo Film Festival, a member of the Advisory Board for BYU’s Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, and a board member for Lightscatter Press. Atsitty is a PhD student in creative writing at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where she lives with her husband.

About the Brittingham-winning volume, James Kimbrell, author of Smote, says, “As formally seductive as it is subversive, Tacey Atsitty’s (AT) Wrist is a poetry of deep longing and praise, of loss and the courage of resilience. Anchored in an intimate vision of connectedness, her syntax works its way beyond thought’s limit, setting its hook in the terrain of memory and dream. This is a book I will return to for what no other poet I know delivers with such daring and vulnerability, a poetry wherein time, body, and the natural world are presented as a singularity otherwise known as love.”

Michael Dhyne, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize, was born and raised in California. He received an MFA from the University of Virginia, where he was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize. His poetry has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, The Spectacle, and elsewhere. His work has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Community of Writers, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. He lives in Oakland and is pursuing a master’s degree in social welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. Afterlife is his first book.

About the Felix Pollak–winning volume, Debra Nystrom says, “Michael Dhyne’s Afterlife is heartbreaking and brilliant in its delicacy and its depths, and in the many ways it reaches from interior drama to range far out into the wider world. These poems carry the powerful and particular effects of a singular experience of early loss, even while they look intently at the changes that follow, and the possibilities they contain for understanding how to continue forward. The spell cast by this book ties our adult ways of moving through our lives to the primitive child-need for magic and reassurance: the longing we all know for order amid the terrors of random events, and the search, in the welter of our days, for the place or person or state of mind in which self can feel held.”

Nick Lantz is the author of four previous books of poetry, including You, Beast (winner of the Brittingham Prize) and The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors’ House (winner of the Felix Pollak Prize). His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, the Gettysburg Review, the Southern Review, and other journals, as well as in the Best American Poetry anthology. His poetry has received several awards, including the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writer Award, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches in the MFA program at Sam Houston State University and lives in Huntsville, Texas, with his wife and cats.

Lantz’s earlier work has been reviewed in venues like NPR and Booklist. About a previous volume, Tess Taylor said on NPR’s All Things Considered, “Lantz has a knack for turning the battered material of daily life into something off-kilter, newly felt.” About another volume, Judith Kitchen wrote in the Georgia Review, “Lantz kindles his own imagination, luxuriates in speculative reverie, and indulges in rhetorical maneuvers that are openly innovative. . . . Again and again Lantz’s poems make moves that surprise, and illuminate.”

Daniel Khalastchi is an Iraqi Jewish American. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, he is the author of three previous books of poetry—Manoleria (Tupelo Press), Tradition (McSweeney’s), and American Parables (University of Wisconsin Press, winner of the Brittingham Prize). His work has appeared in numerous publications, including American Poetry Review, The Believer Logger, Colorado Review, Granta, The Iowa Review, the Jewish Book Council’s Paper Brigade, and Best American Experimental Writing. A recent visiting assistant professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he currently lives in Iowa City, where he directs the University of Iowa’s Magid Center for Writing. He is the cofounder and managing editor of Rescue Press. The Story of Your Obstinate Survival is his fourth book.

“Like a new angel of history, The Story of Your Obstinate Survival arrives with its wings heavy with live fish and doorknobs, shovels and bone cake, faith and desire. Khalastchi has turned the poem into a long, beautiful wail, soft and brilliant enough for even Babel and Kafka and Singer to hear. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out Khalastchi feeds each poem by hand, and brushes nightly their wings. With as much abandon as with hope, these poems sway on the edge of a miracle,” says Sabrina Orah Mark.

Lisa Fay Coutley is the author of tether (Black Lawrence Press); Errata (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition; In the Carnival of Breathing (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition; and Small Girl: Micromemoirs (Harbor Editions); and the editor of the grief anthology In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (Black Lawrence Press). She is the recipient of an NEA Literature Fellowship; an Academy of American Poets Larry Levis Memorial Poetry Prize, chosen by Dana Levin; and a Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz. Recent prose and poetry appears in Barrelhouse, Brevity, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, and North American Review. She is an associate professor of poetry and creative nonfiction in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the chapbook series editor at Black Lawrence Press.

Trey Moody says, “Part elegy to the Anthropocene, part case study of internet-era loneliness, the metaphorical relationships woven throughout HOST’s poignant, timely, and necessary poems are many: mother host to son, woman host to patriarchy, flower host to human pleasure, earth host to people’s waste. Among these layered threats to the body and the planet, there’s a plea for repair, for reclamation, as one speaker asks, ‘did you hear me / agree to be an island?’ Here we have a poet at the height of her craft, skillfully rendering the essential dispatches we all need to hear.”

Saúl Hernández is a queer writer from San Antonio, Texas, who was raised by undocumented parents. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. He’s the winner of a Pleiades Prufer Poetry Prize, judged by Joy Priest; and a Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize, chosen by Victoria Chang. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Hernández’s work is forthcoming or featured in Pleiades, Frontier Poetry, Poet Lore, Foglifter Journal, Oyster River Pages, Cherry Tree, and elsewhere.

“In How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, Saúl Hernández stitches together torn scraps of myth and faith, displacement and violence, love and the queer body into a rich quilt, a gorgeous poetic coming-of-age story that is both universal and his alone. This is a moving and special book, one to read, to gift to friends, to reread,” says Jesse Lee Kercheval, coeditor of the Wisconsin Poetry Series and author of I Want To Tell You.

Submissions for the next competition will be accepted between July 15 and September 15, 2023.