LSU Press publishes the works of a host of talented scholars and poets. Each month, we take a moment to recognize the impact these authors and their works are having on communities nearby and around the world.
LSU Press is pleased to announce that it is the recipient of a CARES Act Stabilization Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The NEH created these emergency grants for the short-term relief of nonprofit institutions and organizations in the humanities affected by COVID-19. Less than 14% of qualified applicants received the grants. Read about how we are using the funds to continue our mission here.
Poetry
The Academy of American Poets named Margaret Gibson, Poet Laureate of Connecticut and author of numerous poetry collections with LSU Press, one of its 2020 Poets Laureate Fellows and recipient of a civic poetry program grant. Gibson plans to host eco-themed poetry readings and workshops in designated “green” cafés and select natural settings in her state throughout the coming year. You can see the full list of recipients of this important new award here.
The Academy of American Poets also selected Marilyn Nelson, whose collection The Homeplace was a finalist for the National Book Award, to serve as a guest editor for Poem-a-Day. This daily poetry series will feature Nelson’s choice of works by contemporary Black poets from August 3 through August 14. Follow the Academy on Facebook or Twitter (@poetsorg) to see Nelson’s selections.
Scholarly
In 1982, Washington Post reporter Pete Earley interviewed a young Tulsan named Scott Ellsworth, whose book Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 had just been published. More than thirty-five years later, with interest in the Tulsa Race Riots once again part of the national conversation, Earley reposted his interview with Ellsworth. Read his in-depth article—in which he calls Death in a Promised Land “a useful reminder of America’s tradition of race discrimination at a time when the nation clearly would rather ignore such unpleasant matters”—here.
The recent removal of a statue of John McDonogh from New Orleans’ Duncan Plaza prompted renewed interest in racial inequities in New Orleans’ public education system. WWNO reporter Aubri Juhasz called on Walter C. Stern, author of Race and Education in New Orleans: Creating the Segregated City, 1764–1960, to provide context on McDonogh’s legacy in the Crescent City’s public schools. You can read (and listen to) the full interview here.
Book Riot featured Sarah Glosson’s Performing Jane: A Cultural History of Jane Austen Fandom in a recent roundup of new nonfiction books. See all of the educational-but-also-fun releases in the roundup here.
Amber Roessner, author of Jimmy Carter and the Birth of the Marathon Media Campaign, joined Will Mari, host of the podcast Journalism History, to talk about how Jimmy Carter continues to affect political campaigns, including those of candidates in the upcoming presidential election. Listen to (or read) the full interview here.
Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez, author of Treason on Trial: The United States v. Jefferson Davis, stopped by the set of Jonathan Van Ness’s podcast Getting Curious (pre–social distancing) to talk about the many reasons the architects of the Confederacy were not held legally responsible for starting the American Civil War. Listen here (note: this podcast contains some salty language).
The latest issue of the Journal of Southern History, the official journal of the Southern Historical Association, includes reviews of three LSU Press titles. In the first, James Sanders Day discusses Michael S. Frawley’s revisionist study Industrial Development and Manufacturing in the Antebellum Gulf South: A Reevaluation. “Asserting that southern industry was well developed before the American Civil War,” starts Day, “Frawley contends that historians who compare northern and southern industry miss the mark.” You can read more of the review here.
Next, Kevin M. Modestino wrote an astute review of Katharine A. Burnett’s Cavaliers and Economists: Global Capitalism and the Development of Southern Literature, 1820–1860. “Building on recent economic histories of slavery and the American South, Burnett corrects a major flaw in standard accounts of southern literature,” says Modestino. “Rather than see antebellum southern literature as merely a first draft of the Lost Cause pastoralism that dominated romantic depictions after the Civil War, Burnett convincingly argues that . . . early southern literature had an eye to both a romantic pastoral past and the modernizing industrial future.” Read an excerpt of the review here.
Finally, Jennifer M. Black reviewed Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr.’s study of Civil War advertising, Marketing the Blue and Gray: Newspaper Advertising and the American Civil War. She points to the significance of Kreiser’s work for future studies: “In arguing that advertisements helped facilitate the expression of political identities through consumption, the book maps important paths for future research and thus merits a wide readership among historians studying the nineteenth-century United States.” Read the full review here.
In his review of Wind, Waves, and Warriors: Battling the Surf at Normandy, Tarawa, and Inchon, New York Military Affairs Symposium editor A. A. Nofi called Thomas M. Mitchell’s work “an invaluable read for anyone seriously interested in World War II, Korea, or amphibious operations.” Order your copy of Mitchell’s book here.
Niels Eichhorn, editor of H-CivWar, interviewed Adam H. Petty about his new book, The Battle of the Wilderness in Myth and Memory. Petty talks about his many years of work on the book, beginning with his interest in the Battle of Mine Run as a young scholar and his emphasis on the environmental aspect of the Wilderness campaigns. You can read the entire interview here.
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