A Word with Work Study Student Molly Estes
When I tell people that I work at the Syracuse University Press office, they usually assume that I work for a newspaper or something along those lines. However, I have found that book publishing is far more exacting, and interesting, than many people realize.
During my first year at Syracuse University, I have been unsure of where I want to take my studies. As a major in Communications and Rhetorical Studies, there is a broad spectrum of fields which I can narrow down. I have found working at the SU Press office rewarding and even enlightening to my future. Having put much consideration into pursuing a double major with Modern Languages, I have found interest in the translated texts that the SU Press has published.
While working with the Author Spotlight blog feature, I was fortunate enough to hear a firsthand account of what the translation process is like. Though I do not think book translation is the particular path I want to follow, I was reminded of the wide variety of opportunities that Modern Languages could offer. In fact, I was induced to research translation jobs at places such as hospitals, accounting firms, etc. This has made me very excited for my future years at Syracuse and I appreciate the opportunities of learning and enrichment that I’ve found at SU Press.
SU Press and AcademicPub Team to Provide Lower Cost Content
At Syracuse University, and most other universities, textbooks are not cheap and students often resort to other options before making the costly purchase. Syracuse University Press and Academic Pub are attacking the issue by teaming up to offer college textbooks at a more reasonable, student-friendly rate.
AcademicPub is a platform that offers customized print and digital academic material at a 60 percent discount. Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of SharBook Inc., the parent company of AcademicPub, states that the platform “allows faculty to just select the chapters, journal articles, web documents, links and lectures that they want to use in their course, and basically compile one textbook out of it, instead of assigning multiple text books for purchase.” The customization of course material into one book provides professors and students with a basic and affordable approach to academic learning. Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Michigan, Cambridge and Oxford University Press are among the other 50 universities and academic publishers that have joined forces with the higher-education technology platform. The program is available now for use on AcademicPub and will be accessible through SU Press within the next few weeks.
Syracuse University Press is excited to be part of AcademicPub and assist in extending the reach of academic content to large audiences at an affordable rate. The press is committed to serving scholars and scholarship and hopes this partnership will help preserve the history, literature and culture of scholarly work.
Newest Issue of Stone Canoe Released, Number 7
Are you a fan of arts, literature, and social commentary? Then you’re in luck because the Stone Canoe journal has released its newest issue, Number 7, filled with unique new content! This year’s publication features over 60 artists contributing to a collection of poetry, fiction, drama, nonfiction, interviews, review, and visual arts. Syracuse University Press is proud to distribute such a refined journal showcasing the work of writers and visual artists with a connection to Upstate New York.
Since its conception, Stone Canoe has expanded its range to include articles on technology, film, video, and music, while maintaining its traditional focus on poetry, short fiction and nonfiction, drama and visual arts. The annual journal is published each spring by University College of Syracuse University and edited by Robert Colley. Stone Canoe, Number 6, won the Gold Medal in the Anthology category of the IPPY Awards last June. Visit the Stone Canoe website for additional content, along with e-book versions of current and past issues.
Stone Canoe, Number 7 will be available for purchase at the Syracuse University Press website. See the photographs below for a sneak peek inside the newest edition!
Remembering Tracy Sugarman (1921-2013)
Beloved SU Press Author and Syracuse native Tracy Sugarman died Sunday, January 20 at the age of 91. Sugarman was known for his nationally recognized illustrations which appeared in hundreds of magazines and books, and was featured on PBS, ABC TV, NBC TV, and CBS TV. Along with his career as an illustrator, he also was a talented artist, scriptwriter, civil rights activist, producer, and author. He won numerous awards from the Society of Illustrators in New York and the Art Directors Club in Washington, D.C. and his entire collection of art from World War II was acquired by the U.S. Library of Congress.
With strong ties to the Syracuse region as a graduate of Nottingham High School and Syracuse University, Sugarman published two books with the 
Syracuse University Press. Drawing Conclusions: An Artist Discovers His America (2007) and We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns: The Kids Who Fought for Civil Rights in Mississippi (2009) are both powerful records of the nation’s past expressed through the artist’s own words and drawings. He is also the author of Stranger at the Gates: A Summer in Mississippi and My War: A Love Story in Letters and Drawings.
Tracy Sugarman will be remembered for his successful career and strong community presence. He was a resident of his neighborhood in Westport, Connecticut for 62 years and touched the hearts of many whom he surrounded. SU Press is saddened by the news and sends our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the distinguished artist.
Memorial service information will be announced in the spring.
SU Press “How-To” Series Announced!
Syracuse University Press has teamed with The Graduate School’s Future Professoriate Program (FPP) to provide a series of workshops and talks designed to shape academic authors. The February edition of The Graduate Student Newsletter announced the “How-To” series with a full list of the upcoming events. For more information on the FPP, visit their page on the Syracuse University website.
Full Newsletter available at http://www.syr.edu/gradschool/pdf/gs-newsletters/GS%20Newsletter%20Feb%202013.pdf.
Author Spotlight: K. Animashaun Ducre
Book: A Place We Call Home: Gender, Race, and Justice in Syracuse
K. Animashaun Ducre is a dedicate
d advocate for environmental justice with four years of Greenpeace experience working as a toxics campaigner. She received her PhD in environmental justice at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Currently, she is an assistant professor in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University. Her new SU Press book, A Place We Call Home: Gender, Race, and Justice in Syracuse was published this month and is a wonderful addition to the Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution series.
Tell us about your new book, A Place We Call Home.
“My book is part memoir/part research on Black women who lived in depressed urban environments and how they cope.”
Have you always had an interest for environmental justice? What led you to the field?
“I have always had an interest in social justice. As a child growing up in Washington DC and Maryland, my family and I were heavily involved in helping the homeless. Later, when I went to college, I worked on race relations during the height of the Rodney King beating and the acquittal of the officers involved. After graduation, my interest broadened to include both environmental rights and civil rights when I began to work for Greenpeace, an international environmental organization. My work with Greenpeace led to my scholarship and advocacy on environmental justice.”
What was the biggest challenge you encountered while writing this book?
“The biggest challenge in writing this book, aside from carving out time from my teaching and other faculty duties, was finding the courage to present my own voice. Most academic research relies upon a degree of objectivity and a presumption of distance between the researcher and the subject. However, the reader knows by the first few sentences of my book that my life and experience are a significant part of the narrative. Adopting a Black feminist perspective in my research and writing gave me the confidence to present my work in this manner. Writers like bell hooks and the late Audre Lorde were influential in my decision to present my work in this manner.”
What types of research did you conduct before writing this case study? How many years of research?
“I am versed in both quantitative and qualitative research. My dissertation, written in 2005 is based solely on spatial statistics. When I came to Syracuse, I relied upon the resources available in the Department of African American studies to hone my qualitative skills. We are the only department at Syracuse University to house our very own library (the Martin Luther King, Jr.) and specialist librarian, as well as operate our own visual and cultural arts center (the Community Folk Art Center). The Community Folk Art Center hosted the photography exhibition that arose from this research in 2007.”
What did you find most eye-opening about your research?
“I was surprised by how well the participants in the project were familiar with maps. In my experience, understanding maps presents a challenge.”
Describe your favorite experience while writing A Place We Call Home?
“I look forward to the presentation of the participants’ photos each during the project. Some of the photos are featured in the book. It was interesting to see each image and to listen to how each woman presented the photo. Often, the image was not enough to understand the concept – you had to hear each woman discuss the elements of the photo that appealed to her.”
What is the most beneficial aspect of your occupation?
“I like teaching. I like challenging my students to think critically about society. I also like research – asking questions and seeking answers. I have worked on different dimensions of environmental justice – from calculating the amount of air pollution with statistics, to browsing through old plantation records at an archive, to analyzing photographs by the women in this Photovoice project.”
What can we expect from you next?
“Speaking of old plantation records, I have accumulating information about a sugar plantation in Southern Louisiana that later was bought by a chemical manufacturer. I want to highlight this connection between plantation-to-plant and this particular site’s effect on the Black community that surrounds it. I think there are some interesting parallels between the oppression of slavery and the oppression of a polluting industry. I’m also working on edited volume that looks at environmental injustice and schooling – my chapter focuses on case studies where hazardous industry are located near elementary schools and we can do to prohibit this.”
For more information on K. Animashaun Ducre’s new book, A Place We Call Home, visit the Syracuse University Press website or attend her book talk on Thursday, February 7th at the Community Folk Art Center in Syracuse, NY. See the Events page for more details on this upcoming event.
SU Press Book Display at SU Bookstore
Stop into the SU Bookstore to view the special SU Press book display in honor of University Press Week, last week (November 11 – November 17). The display will remain up for the entire year.
Coming Together for Peace
October is a month for breast cancer awareness, football games, and fall festivities, but on the Syracuse University Campus- it’s a month for Peace. Syracuse University is holding a “Common Ground for Peace” symposium, sponsored by World Harmony Productions and One World Community Foundation, on Monday, October 8 and Tuesday, October 9. Dedicated to spreading the message of World Peace through critical discussion, the campus will be hosting His Holiness the Dalai Lama, various international thought leaders, as well as the One World concert at the Carrier Dome. The lineup of this “Once in a Lifetime” musical event includes scheduled performances by Dave Matthews, Swizz Beatz, Natasha Bedingfield, David Crosby, Counting Crows, Roberta Flack, Nelly Furtado, Andy Grammer, Engelbert Humperdinck, Emmanuel Jal, Angélique Kidjo, Liel Kolet, Cyndi Lauper, Andy Madadian, Matisyahu, Nas, Phillip Phillips, A.R. Rahman, Shani Rigsbee, David Sanborn, Joanne Shenandoah, TEAL-ONE97, Voices of Afghanistan and Bebe Winans.
Samuel Nappi, president of World Harmony Productions, explains, “After discussions with thought leaders throughout the world and with His Holiness, it became clear to me that a peace movement can only be realized when we engage the public in conversations about common ground and understanding.” Musician David Crosby, who will be performing at the concert, adds “This event has such important chemistry. His Holiness the Dalai Lama seeks peace and compassion for the whole human race, and the diversity of musicians and speakers on the panels is also important. Since Dave Matthews first appeared in the music world he has been trying to go for the high ground. He’s also a very powerful presence.” This collaborative celebration will unite the Syracuse community with many of today’s influential leaders in effort to spread the consciousness of peace.
Syracuse University Press has a Peace and Conflict Resolution series consisting of 50 titles. The newest book in the series titled A Place We Call Home: Gender, Race, and Justice in Syracuse by K. Animashaun Ducre, demonstrates how poor political and economic forces can create a landscape of abandoned housing within the Southside community. Ducre, through Photovoice methodology, spotlights the impact of this affliction upon the female residents who survive in these harsh environments. This poignant case study will be published next month and is available for pre-sale now. Visit the Syracuse University Press website for more Peace and Conflict Resolution titles.
Author Spotlight: Robert Bogdan
Book: Picturing Disability: Beggar, Freak, Citizen and Other Photographic Rhetoric
Currently a Distinguish
ed Professor of Emeritus of Social Science and Education at Syracuse University, Robert Bogdan is back with a new book revisiting his work on historical disability photographs. Well-known for his work in disability studies, he has won numerous awards for his writing, and received an honorary doctorate degree from Stockholm University. Bogdan is the author of Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit, Beauty and the Beast: Human-Animal Relations as Revealed in Real Photo Postcards, 1905–1935, Adirondack Vernacular: The Photography of Henry M. Beach, and Real Photo Postcard Guide: The People’s Photography. His latest book will be out this October.
Tell us about your upcoming book, Picturing Disability: Beggar, Freak, Citizen and Other Photographic Rhetoric?
“Picturing Disability looks at the various ways people with disabilities have been depicted in photographs. Each chapter looks at a different set of depictions produced for different reasons by different people. There are chapters on “freak show” souvenirs, begging solicitations, charity drives, art photography, clinical renderings, product advertising, institutional propaganda and muckraking, and photos found in family albums. There are over 250 illustrations that are integrated into the text.”
What made you want to revisit the topic of disability again, after having written about it in your book Freak Show?
“Since writing Freak Show I have pursed an interest in the history of photography and have collected historical images of people with disabilities. I have also visited many collections of antique photographs. In the back of my mind I was working on Picturing Disability for a long time. Disability Studies has always been an interest and I thought that Freak Show was only a start in looking at depictions of disability.”
Was the research involved in compiling this book similar or different to your previous research for your other books?
“It was similar in the sense that 
I hunted down multiple sources of old photographs and reviewed thousands of them in my research. Since I had been collecting images of people with disabilities for over twenty-five years and there were not many archives that had such images I relied more on my own collection than in previous work.”
What aspect of working on a book project do you enjoy the most? Do you follow the same process with every book or does each book project unfold in a different way?
“I love finding and examining images that open up new insights into what I am researching. In my last two books I follow more of less the same process. I study thousands of images and start sorting them according to categories that emerge by looking at how the images are the same and different. Then I begin refining the categories and writing about them. The categories get modified, merged, refined and elaborated upon.”
Why did you choose to put more of an emphasis and focus on who was behind the camera than the specific individuals in the photos?
“All photographs are taken under different circumstances and for different purposes by people with a variety of points of view. People interested depictions of people with disability seldom take that into account the picture takers. Most are interested in making judgments about whether the pictures are complimentary or slanderous, or are concerned with how the depictions fit into contemporary theory. I chose my approach because I thought it was missing and made sense to me.”
What do you enjoy most about studying photography and its impacts on culture?
“Thinking through the connection between the different ways photographers operated and how the pictures they took are related.”
What do you hope this book will accomplish or help with in current and future disability studies?
“I hope it will generate interest in disability studies and expand how people in this field approach the study of disability representation.”
The fall 2012 title, Picturing Disability: Beggar, Freak, Citizen and Other Photographic Rhetoric, by Robert Bogdan with Martin Elks and James Knoll is available for pre-sale now. Visit the Syracuse University Press website for more information.
“The stunning archive of images that Bogdan and his co-authors have amassed is a major contribution to the growing body of analysis of disability representation in photography. This book brings incisive, expert historical perspective to more familiar terrain and at the same time opens up important new avenues of exploration.”—Susan Schweik, University of California at Berkeley
Photo: Charles Tripp, ” The Armless Wonder,” 1885. Photograph by Eisenmann. Cabinet card, Bogdan Collection.
Collective Intelligence and Your e-Reader
By: Sylwia E. Dziedzic, Marketing Intern
For years, literature has been an exploration into the application of philosophical ideas and concepts. To some, reading provides an emotional escape into a virtual escapade. Others read to expand their imagination and use it as an aid for relaxation. But what if your interactivity patterns, such as the length of time spent on a particular page, content written in the margins, and words highlighted on your Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook, or iPad were monitored? Data and analytics have undoubtedly changed the way mobile apps and gaming consoles are constructed for consumers. Therefore, we must ask the question: are editors more likely to test their books digitally before releasing it in print to ensure their content will sell? And of its counterpart: do readers accept the intrusion between their private journey with the author and words on the screen?
Patrick Berry, Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric shared some of his thoughts:
“The increased use of digital books seems inevitable. My 12-year-old daughter is as comfortable with a Kindle as she is with a print book. But, the issue of privacy is an important one.
I’m especially interested in how digital books can help us rethink the boundaries of the book. What if books incorporated video or provided access to web-based content? I just completed a coauthored book-length multimodal project designed to document how people outside and within the United States take up digital literacies and fold them into the fabric of their daily lives. Transnational Literate Lives in Digital Times (coauthored with Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe) represents a first attempt at crafting a born-digital book http://ccdigitalpress.org/ebooks-and-projects/transnational“
With roughly 40 million e-readers and 65 million tablets in use in the U.S., according to analysts at Forrester Research, it can be difficult to correctly analyze how many users are aware of the monitoring process. We also still don’t know whether the process will help authors to generate more grasping content. We can only hope that this process won’t permanently change authors’ writing styles and the attachment they feel for their novels. Only time will tell.
Meet Our Marketing Intern: Sylwia Dziedzic
SU Press welcomes Sylwia Dziedzic as the newest Marketing Media Intern. As a Master’s student at the Syracuse University i-School, with a Bachelor’s degree in Information Management and Technology/Minor in Writing and Rhetorical Studies, Sylwia has acquired significant skills and experience applicable to the field of marketing. Prior to her time here at the Press, she interned at a local start-up company, BrandYourself.com and was a Marketing/Information Technology intern for the Institute for Veterans and Military families.
Along with her professional skills, Sylwia keeps busy with various organizations on campus such as the SU Polish Club, Outdoor Club and Women in Technology Group. With her media and blogging experience, she will be assisting the Press on a number of marketing projects including blog posts, author/staff interviews and theme brainstorming. Sylwia is a motivated individual with an optimistic attitude and we look forward to having her on our team this summer.
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