Stanford University Press Blog

6 New Summer Reads From SUP

A summer reading list for the intellectually curious.

 

A personal odyssey through history, a postmortem on the Arab uprising as it played out (and unraveled) in Egypt and Syria, and an exhaustively researched new look at the Carter administration are just a few of this year's summer picks for the ponderous. (Readers of a voracious disposition can check out last year's beach reads here). 

 

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The Latinos of Asia »
How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race

by ANTHONY CHRISTIAN OCAMPO

RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
sociologists, stereotype debunkers, and critical race theorists

Are Filipino Americans Asian, Latino, or something else entirely? Though classified by the U.S. Census as Asian, centuries of Spanish colonialism has left many Filipino-Americans feeling more Latino than Asian. “When it comes to the way we think about race, Filipinos are really hard to place,” says Anthony Christian Ocampo in an interview with NPR’s Renee Lamontagne. In his book The Latinos of Asia, Ocampo draws on survey analysis, in-depth interviews, and personal narrative to explore how the Filipino story is changing the way people negotiate race—particularly in cities like Los Angeles—shattering static, reductive categorizations of both Asian Americans and Latinos.

"Essential reading not only for the Filipino diaspora but for anyone who cares about the mysteries of racial identity"

—José Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder of Define American and #EmergingUS

 

The 85th California Book Awards

Stanford University Press receives the 2016 Notable Contribution to Publishing Prize.

James Karman accepts the 2016 Prize for Notable Contribution to Publishing from the Commonwealth Club of California.

Last night Professor James Karman and Stanford University Press were honored at the 85th Annual California Book Awards. The Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers—the third and final volume of which debuted last year—was recognized by the Commonwealth Club of California with their 2016 Notable Contribution to Publishing Prize.

The publication of the third installment of the letters of poet Robinson Jeffers dovetailed with the publication of a biography of the seminal Californian poet’s life and works, also written by Karman (and reviewed glowingly in The Wall Street Journal). Together they marked the culmination of a 15-year collaboration between the Chico-based author and professor and Stanford University Press. This comprehensive series of letters in tandem with Robinson Jeffers: Poet and Prophet unveil the hidden worlds of one of the most reclusive, controversial, and artistically divergent poets of the 20 century. His letters and Karman’s biography afford an intimate view not only into Jeffers’ own oeuvre, but to the literary culture of California writ large, during a tumultuous chapter in American history.

10 Years and 100 Books Ago

The Press celebrates the publication of its 100^th book in Middle East Studies.

 

To commemorate the publication of our 100th book in Middle East Studies we’re taking a look back on the first 10 years of our publishing program on the region. Celebrate the milestone with us—take 30% off our first 100 books in Middle East Studies between June 13 – 24! Browse the sale »

 

Ten years and 100 books ago, Kate Wahl started the Middle East Studies program at Stanford University Press—a list that, today, boasts a strong reputation in the field. But only a decade ago, the Middle East was scarcely represented in the Press’s publishing program, making cameos only at the intersections of other subject areas. Scholars writing on the Middle East who signed book contracts with the Press during the earlier stages of the Middle East Studies program passed on publishing with more established lists in the field, entrusting their work instead to a nascent program with a new vision for how to think and write about the region.

“I’m grateful to everyone who had a hand in launching our Middle East Studies program—for all the authors who trusted us with their projects, then and now,” says Wahl.

“I’m grateful to everyone who had a hand in launching our Middle East Studies program."

A decade after its debut the broad vision that contoured the list at its inception continues to guide the program, while the community around the books has grown in leaps and bounds. Over the years Wahl has brought together dedicated writers and thinkers who, working from varied disciplinary approaches, have explored a wide spectrum of social, political, and cultural concerns of the modern Middle East. They, along with an engaged network of readers, reviewers, and editorial board members (many of whom become authors themselves), have furnished the Press with a compelling collection of books in tight conversation with one another, the broader academic disciplines of which they are a part, and ever-shifting world events writ large.

Middle East Studies Index

The first 100 books in our Middle East Studies list, by the numbers.

This week, with the publication of Mostafa Miawi's The Ottoman Scramble for Africa, the Press formally marks the 100th publication in its Middle East Studies list—to commemorate we're taking a look back on the first 10 years of our publishing program on the region. Celebrate the milestone with us—take 30% off our first 100 books in Middle East Studies between June 13 - 24, learn more about the origins and spirit of the program with a few words from our editor-in-chief, and check out the Middle East Studies Index below—a few quick stats that encapsulate the breadth and quality of our first 100 books. 

 

2006:

The year the very first book in the list was published

   

With the help of Joel Beinin, Stanford professor and former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Wahl began the Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures series, in which Beinin’s book became the inaugural publication, not only of the series, but of the entire Middle East Studies list. Beinin continues to work as a series editor and has since published two other books with the Press—an edited collection and a Brief.

Zika and the Common Good

Who precisely is the “common good” that the public health sector purports to serve?

by KATHERINE A. MASON

The Zika-carrying Aedes Aegypti mosquito. Photo by James Gathany of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public domain.

It has been barely a year since the Ebola outbreak in West Africa released its grip on the frightened imaginations of the Global North, and already global health officials are in the midst of another viral panic. After spreading across the Pacific to Brazil and Puerto Rico, the mosquito-born Zika virus this summer is expected to continue its march to the mainland United States, where it will make landfall on the Gulf Coast. The message from global and American health authorities is the same as it was in 2003 with the appearance of SARS, in 2006 with H5N1 avian flu, and in 2014 with Ebola: Be very afraid.

“This could be a catastrophe to rival Hurricane Katrina or other recent miseries that disproportionately affect the poor,” writes Peter J. Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in a recent New York Times Op-Ed. “If I were a pregnant woman … in an impoverished neighborhood in a city like Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Biloxi, Miss., or Mobile, Ala., I would be nervous right now.” Of course, Hotez is none of the above. So are those women nervous? Will controlling Zika end up helping them? And would Hotez listen if the affected women thought it wouldn’t? As we enter another round of emergency epidemic control, these questions are critical to ask.

Public health professionals felt it was their duty to manage this threat carefully in order to serve the “common good.” But who made up the “common”?

What I have found from my own research is that even when a global disease response appears to be effective, unintended consequences can emerge that threaten to undermine, rather than support, the long-term health and well-being of vulnerable communities most affected by the disease in question. In the urban Chinese settings I studied during and after the SARS outbreak, China’s enormous population of rural-to-urban migrant workers was seen as a public health menace capable of spreading the same dangerous diseases that threatened it. In the wake of the 2003 outbreak, Chinese public health professionals felt it was their duty to manage this menace carefully in order to serve the “common good.” But who made up the “common”?

The “I” in History

My grandparents were victims of the major tragedies of the first half of the 20th century.

by IVAN JABLONKA

Identification records for Matès and Idesa Jablonka, June 1938. Sûreté générale du ministère de l'Intérieur, Archives nationales (France).

Being a historian does not preclude one from talking about one’s family, but it does offer the use of a unique vocabulary to describe it: the language of the social sciences. My attempt at a family biography is both a private and public reflection about the fate of my family and I speak about them not as if theirs was a unique, remarkable destiny, but rather as one that traversed, and was perhaps determined, by broader social forces.

If their life was short and tragic, it is because they were manipulated by one totalitarianism and destroyed by another, under the indifferent gaze of democracies.

My father's parents were born in Poland in the early 20th century. As officials in the local Communist Party, which was illegal at the time, they were sentenced to five years in prison. On their release, they migrated to France, without a visa, and settled in Paris in the late 1930s. A few years later, they were arrested and deported to Auschwitz where they were murdered. To summarize, we can say that they spent their entire lives in hiding: first in Poland, as communists; then in France, as illegal immigrants; and finally, under the Vichy regime, as Jews. Three clandestine lives, three absences from the world, until the ultimate one: their annihilation in the context of genocide. If their life was short and tragic, it is because they were manipulated by one totalitarianism and destroyed by another, under the indifferent gaze of democracies.

My book, A History of the Grandparents I Never Had, is a reflection on the fate of my family, but it is also an essay on the writing of history. Three methodological issues are close to my heart: the use of the "I"; the need for distance and reflexivity; and the relationship between history and memory.

 

 

Conservatism and the First Amendment

The Right’s views on free speech have evolved over the last 60 years—could Trump signal another shift?

by WAYNE BATCHIS

Podium for Donald Trump at a campaign rally, March 2016. Photo by Gage Skidmore. CC-BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

At risk of stating the obvious, now could not be a more pivotal time for conservatism in America. The political party that has long been synonymous with conservative values is about to nominate a presidential candidate who, to many of the most prominent, proud, and prolific adherents to the conservative brand, poses an existential threat. The great American tradition of free speech is also on bold if not squeamish display, as an unprecedented cacophony of schoolyard banter has seemed to replace dignified political discourse as the new normal in presidential contests. Ironically, the frontrunner who has brought such extraordinary color to the mainstream political lexicon and inspired his adversaries to do the same, has recently advocated “opening up” libel laws so they would be less protective of negative reporting on political candidates by major news outlets.

Now could not be a more pivotal time for conservatism in America.

In the not so distant past, conservative standard-bearers like National Review, would likely have agreed with Donald Trump. But earlier this year this fountainhead of conservatism instigated a sort of intellectual coup against the Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee, boldly pronouncing that it is “Against Trump” on its front cover. It has clearly taken a position on what vision of conservatism it supports, and it is decidedly not the approach promoted by the Republican frontrunner.

Back in the mid-century halcyon days of National Review, its position on one issue was crystal clear: Free speech without restraint was a menace. At the time, conservatism stood for a narrow First Amendment; mainstream conservatives supported a freedom of speech that could be significantly tempered by common sense and morality. As I explore in The Right’s First Amendment, in the early decades of the magazine’s publication—beginning roughly sixty years ago—the overwhelming majority of National Review opinion pieces on the First Amendment advocated increased restrictions on free speech. In other words, if an early edition of the National Review could somehow comment on the future events of 2016, it would not merely condemn the unusually tasteless verbal sparring that has broken out in the Republican primary contest as a moral abomination and a threat to traditional values, it likely would have also questioned the very right of speakers to traffic in such vulgarity, vicious invective and fighting words.

Coding Out Race

How colorblind courthouse language reconstructs racial division.

by NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEVE

A statue of blind justice in front of a federal United States Courthouse. Photo by Tim Evanson, 2012. CC-BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In the vernacular of court culture, defendants are identified by vulgarities: “scum,” “piece of shit,” “bad guys”—even “banana suits” (which refers to the jail jumper that defendants in custody must wear in court). One term predominates among these epithets. That term is “mopes,” used mostly to refer to defendants but sometimes used to describe professionals as well. The meaning inscribed in this term is central to the moral rubric applied to defendants by courtroom professionals.

The meaning inscribed in this term—"mope"—is central to the moral rubric applied to defendants.

Work ethic, competency, and motivation are central elements of court culture. Efficiency and speed of disposition provide daily evidence of the court professional’s work ethic. Not surprisingly, plea bargains rather than trials define this proverbial machine of efficient justice, and judges and prosecutors pride themselves on efficiency. Prosecutors specifically, when surveyed about the qualities and values inspiring “disrespect” in the Office of the State’s Attorney, overwhelmingly reported “laziness” in a fellow prosecutor as the worst quality—even worse than “incompetence.”

“Mope” is shorthand for a person who violates these values. Professionals find it difficult to regard a defendant as anything but a mope. By the professionals’ logic, if someone was motivated, hardworking, and competent, he or she would not be charged with a crime—especially one like dealing drugs, stealing, or other common nonviolent felony infractions that define the court docket. Thus these criminal charges signal not a type of criminal act but a type of racialized being.

Abortion Policy After Scalia

The Supreme Court's decision on a recent abortion-related case could be a game-changer.

by JOSHUA C. WILSON

"The Burden is Undue." Photo by Lorie Shaull, March 1 2016. CC-BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to issue dozens of opinions in the homestretch of its current term, the Court’s still vacant seat and the heightened national attention around the country’s political future, spurred by the presidential race, endow the coming weeks with particular significance. The persistence of the eight-member Court created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death three months ago and the Senate Republicans’ ongoing refusal to act on attempts to fill the seat have prompted widespread speculation as to the nature and the number of 4-4 decisions to be issued in the foreseeable future.

Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt is the most important abortion-related case to be heard by the Court since the early 1990s.

The Court’s unanimous mid-May decision to send the most recent Affordable Care Act contraception coverage case, Zubik v. Burwell, back to the lower courts without taking a substantive stance on it provides some insight into how a reduced high court functions, issuing rulings with limited immediate impact. It also presents a lens through which to predict the potential outcome of the Court’s other high-profile reproductive rights case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.

The Court’s treatment thus far of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt—a case concerning the constitutionality of Texas’s controversial 2013 abortion regulations—contests the means and ends of the incremental and indirect fight against abortion that has been waged in state legislatures and federal courts for decades. Texas’s laws targeting abortion providers are indicative of the broader trend in how battles over abortion are waged and won today. Whereas clinic-front activism and demonstrations once characterized the debate, today the most important disputes affecting present and future access to abortion are principally taking place out of public view, in state legislatures and courts.