Lorri Hagman, UW Press Executive Editor, Retires: Q&A

The University of Washington Press announces the retirement of longtime executive editor Lorri Hagman, whose last day in the office will be Friday, May 19.

Lorri has acquired books in Asian studies, anthropology, and environmental studies for UW Press since 1994. She began her publishing career as a student assistant at the press in 1977 while completing graduate work in Asian studies at the University of Washington. From 1980 to 1994, she worked for the marketing team part-time as the press’s publicity manager while also freelance editing scholarly books for other presses, including Princeton University Press, the Princeton Art Museum, and The Feminist Press. She specialized in books on China, which required Chinese language skills rare among editors in the US.

In 1994 Lorri became a full-time editor at UW Press. She was promoted to acquisitions editor in 2003, to senior editor in 2006, and to executive editor in 2008, when she also led the acquisitions team.

Her graduate training in China studies has enabled her to cultivate relationships with a network of leading scholars at universities around the world who have become UW Press authors, peer reviewers, and series editors. Many of her books have received competitive, merit-based support from scholarly associations and foundations, such as the Luce Foundation, Association for Asian Studies, College Art Association, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Korea Foundation, Geiss-Hsu Foundation, and Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies. The books she sponsors routinely receive top awards from scholarly associations and are favorably reviewed in the major scholarly journals in their fields.

Lorri has also handled or launched a number of acclaimed series at the press, including Culture, Place, and Nature; Studies on Ethnic Groups in China; Asian Law; Classics of Chinese Thought; Gandharan Buddhist Texts; Critical Dialogues in Southeast Asian Studies; Korean Studies of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies; Global South Asia; and Taiwan and the World.

Many of her books have emphasized social justice and environmental issues of ongoing national and international concern. Her work in Asian studies has included books on historical and contemporary East, South, and Southeast Asia that present the voices of Asian scholars; highlight traditionally underrepresented groups, such as women and minority ethnic communities; and correct biased Euro-American views. This last point remains especially important today as inaccurate and sometimes racist views of Asians and Asian Americans perpetuate injustice.

In an exchange over email, Lorri shared more about her remarkable career, including how she got her start in scholarly publishing, opportunities and challenges for acquiring editors, and some of the many memorable book projects she’s worked on over the years. The good news is that Lorri has agreed to continue lending her expertise at the press on select projects and we very much look forward to continuing to work with her.

What led you to pursue a career in academic publishing?

As a new graduate student in China studies at the UW in the late 1970s, I serendipitously landed a student assistant job as receptionist at UW Press. I considered it a dream job, as I had already read and admired some of the press’s publications in Asian studies and was thrilled to be able to communicate with authors and to see first-hand how manuscripts become books and how books then make their way to readers. I soon transitioned to a permanent position in marketing and also began doing freelance copyediting and indexing for other presses. My core interest was more on the editorial side of publishing, and in the mid-1990s I was able to move to the editorial department, where I began acquiring manuscripts.

What do you look for when deciding whether to move forward with a book project? How do you approach the development of a manuscript with an author?

When I learn about a new project, I first consider whether it has a subject that is inherently interesting and timely, appears to make a valuable contribution to its field, is written engagingly, and has an identifiable market. If that market is one in which our press has established channels, I evaluate samples and discuss the project with our in-house acquisitions team. As a project moves forward, I try to meet with the author in person (at an annual scholarly conference, for example), and for a volume that will be in a formal series, I confer with the academic series editor to ensure that we have similar goals. As I guide the author through the stages of peer review, revision, and preparation for copyediting, I urge the author to always keep in mind a diverse, multidisciplinary audience.

You’ve worked on an incredible number of books, many of which are award-winning and continue to find a wide readership. Can you share a few of the most memorable book projects you’ve worked on?

My favorite will always be Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang’s translation of the three-volume set of Ming dynasty (1368–1644) vernacular short stories by Feng Menglong, which began with Stories Old and New, a set of forty stories that resulted in an 825-page volume. Working on it wasn’t like work at all—immersing myself in the stories was like time-traveling back to seventeenth-century China. I’m confident that the three-volume set (which also includes Stories to Awaken the World and Stories to Caution the World) will have what publishers call a “long tail” of sales, remaining in print over decades, as new generations of readers discover Chinese literary classics.

A milestone translation of another sort is that of early China’s first narrative history, Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan左傳: Commentary on the “Spring and Autumn Annals,“ the work of a team of scholars: Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Li, and David Schaberg. Zuo Tradition, which was completed circa 300 BCE, is one of the core Chinese classical texts and was in need of a modern translation. Our 2,243-page publication is packaged as a three-volume boxed set and features facing pages of Chinese and English text, with extensive annotation and indexes. I first corresponded with the translators in 2003—after they had already worked together on it for a decade—and the book was finally published in 2016. At every stage the work was enormously complex, but the result was worth our investment, as the book won the Association for Asian Studies’ Hanan Book Prize for translation and, like the Ming stories mentioned above, should satisfy readers for at least a century—another long tail.

As you can see, I’m drawn to translations. I think reading translated literature is the best way of learning about other cultures, as it enables the reader to experience another place as an insider. If everyone read a translated novel each year, we would have a more harmonious world!

The glut of unreliable information circulating today makes peer-reviewed, properly documented publications more essential than ever, and scholars need help disseminating their work. Editors will always play a critical role in the cycle of knowledge production, albeit often an invisible one.
Lorri Hagman

My favorite subjects include plants, animals, and food, among which an especially successful monograph is Jinghong Zhang’s Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic. This was another project that felt more like a vacation than work, as I traveled vicariously across mountainsides of tea plants in Southwest China, visited tea farmers and processors, and observed consumers in high-end Hong Kong teahouses. The author is also a filmmaker, and videos related to the book can be viewed via the book’s webpage, under “Links.” Her cinematographic skills, including sensory emphasis and a well-paced narrative, make this an enjoyable read. We had fun marketing this one, giving away packaged bags of puer tea that were stapled inside cards folded to open like little books, with the Puer Tea book cover on the front. The book won the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) Book Prize and is assigned as an undergraduate text.

So much of your work as an acquiring editor is focused on the future. What are some upcoming books you’re excited to have out in the world over the next couple of years?

Thank you for noticing that! Often, what others see of acquiring editors’ work is just the tip of the iceberg—the books that are already in production and scheduled for publication in the next season. Behind the scenes, there are hundreds of e-files with projects in all stages of development, some of which will go on to become successful books, and others that will fade away. I can’t mention authors and titles of works that haven’t been formally accepted and scheduled for publication, but topics of intriguing projects in various stages of development include bicycle culture in Mumbai; Tlingit cultural revival in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park; wine production in Tibetan communities; contemporary funerary practices in Singapore; resistance in Guatemala and Mexico to corporate agriculture’s attempts to control maize production; and the growing demand in China for locally sourced food.

Your academic background is in Asian studies, and you’ve been instrumental in establishing UW Press as an authoritative publisher in the field. How would you describe the relationship between an acquiring editor, with their own areas of scholarly expertise, and their publisher? How do you balance the tension between finding books that sell and developing worthwhile academic books?

Acquiring editors seek to maintain a balance between projects that come to them recommended by trusted experts, direct submissions by authors, and projects that the editor has herself sought out as part of a strategy to develop a formal series or informal list areas. We monitor and balance different measurements of success, such as copies sold per year, net income, subventions received, prizes won, reviews published in influential journals, and assignment in college classes. Some specialized monographs have modest sales, although their contribution to scholarship is substantial and their findings inform the content of later books that have a wider audience. As a nonprofit, self-sustaining publisher, UW Press looks for book projects whose sales will recover the cost of publication, but we recognize that the success of different books must be evaluated in different ways.

What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen within scholarly publishing? Are there ways you’ve adapted as an editor?

Over the last few decades, average sales per title have steadily declined, as have the number of independent bookstores and the percentage of library budgets dedicated to books (as opposed to journals, online databases, etc.), while the number of books published annually has increased. This adds up to ever-increasing competition among new books for media attention, shelf space, and consumer dollars. E-book sales have increased, but most of the expense of publishing is in developing it to the stage of publication and in other overhead, not in the cost of printing physical books, so publishing e-books doesn’t help much to recover the cost of a book’s publication. I’ve become more strict about controlling the length of manuscripts, both for economy throughout the publication process and for readability. On the bright side, a remarkable trend over the last decade or so is the growing interest of Chinese publishers in translating our monographs about China into Chinese. We’ve even had bidding wars for some titles, and foreign rights sales are becoming an increasingly valuable income stream.

What opportunities do you see for new editors in the field?

The glut of unreliable information circulating today makes peer-reviewed, properly documented publications more essential than ever, and scholars need help disseminating their work. Editors will always play a critical role in the cycle of knowledge production, albeit often an invisible one. As longtime UW Press managing editor Julidta Tarver used to say, “Good editing is conspicuous only by its absence.” Intellectually curious, detail-oriented, judicious people (i.e., editors) are needed to identify and develop manuscripts that address contemporary issues and make use of resources in new ways. Digital humanities, Open Access publication, and accessibility for visually impaired readers are a few areas of rapid development that are of relevance to editors.

From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California: Q&A with Kaitlin Reed, author of Settler Cannabis

In anticipation of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) 2023 conference, taking place in Toronto from May 11 to 13, we caught up with Kaitlin Reed, author of Settler Cannabis, over email.

The newest book in our Indigenous Confluences series, Settler Cannabis offers a groundbreaking analysis of the environmental consequences of cannabis cultivation in California that foregrounds Indigenous voices, experiences, and histories. Below, Reed shares about the ongoing effects of resource rushing in the state and how this history can inform the path toward an alternative future, one that starts with the return of land to Indigenous stewardship and rejects the commodification and control of nature for profit.

As part of the Summer Reading Sale, enjoy 40% off and free domestic shipping on all books when you order on our website. Use promo code WARM23 at checkout. The sale ends June 16, 2023.

Can you tell us about your background and how your research for Settler Cannabis took shape?

It was never my plan to write a book about cannabis. Thinking back, my scholarly entanglements with cannabis began within the first few days of my freshmen year of college. Gathered in the hallway of our dorm building, my cohort and I exchanged introductions and pleasantries. I shared that I was a member of the Yurok Tribe in northwestern California—as soon as the word “Humboldt” left my lips, eyes lit up. I pondered: How had this commodified plant relative made its way over three thousand miles from Yurok ancestral territory to the Eastern Seaboard? And who was really paying the price? These questions would take a backseat for the next few years.

In 2014, I was an inexperienced intern working for the Yurok Tribe Environmental Program (now referred to as the Yurok Tribe Environmental Department). One July morning, I was drinking coffee at my desk. I opened my inbox to see a Los Angeles Times article that had been forwarded to all Yurok tribal employees. The headline read: “Massive Raid to Help Yurok Tribe Combat Illegal Pot Grows.” This has come to be known as Operation Yurok. While I sat safely in my office, other tribal members and employees, accompanied by dozens of law enforcement officers clad in camouflage and carrying assault rifles, made their way upriver. Their goal that morning was to eradicate cannabis cultivation and document the resulting environmental damages, both within and beyond the boundary of the Yurok Indian Reservation.

The health of ecosystems is directly connected to the vitality of Indigenous peoples.
Kaitlin Reed

That summer, and several summers to follow, the Yurok Tribe was under siege from illicit trespass cultivation. Illegal and unregulated water diversions were running our streams dry. Chemical pollution and human waste dramatically degraded our water quality. Our wildlife were intentionally and accidentally poisoned. Our traditional gatherers and basketweavers faced threats, physical violence, and intimidation from cannabis cultivators. And yet, all the while, the experiences of California Indian people were largely left out from mainstream cannabis discourse. For me, it became very important to document the ecological and cultural impacts of cannabis cultivation for Indigenous peoples not as a new phenomenon but as a continuation of settler-colonial resource extraction.

Can you share a brief overview of resource rushing in California and describe how this history connects to cannabis cultivation in the state today?

The book aims to connect the historical and ecological dots from the gold rush to the green rush. I argue that resource rushing, or the “rush” mentality, is a violent settler-colonial pattern of resource extraction that must be repeatedly played out—first gold, then timber, then fish, and now cannabis. While it may have started with gold, resource rushing did not end with gold. Resource rushing in California has always been less about the specific resource/relative in question and more about access and control over lands and the ability to assert ecological managerial authority. The real gold is not gold, after all, but the land itself. In Northern California a pattern of resource rushing has left a toxic legacy that shapes the historic context of emerging industries in the state. From the widespread use of mercury during the gold rush and its disproportionate impact on Indigenous fishing communities to the aerial spraying of atrazine over Yurok forests as late as 2013, the use of toxics within settler resource rushing has negatively impacted tribal peoples since invasion. California Indians have watched this pattern play out over and over again.

How does settler-colonial violence against the landscape correlate to violence on Indigenous bodies and cultures?

We are a part of the land, and the land is us. We mean that quite literally. When a group of people live in the same place for thousands of years, our ancestors become the soil, they become the Earth. The gifts we receive from Creator—Salmon, Elk, and Acorns—nourish us and become part of our bodies. In caring for the land, gathering the plants, dancing for the Salmon, we engage in an ancient relationship with our land bases, rooted in a connection and reciprocity that has developed over millennia. Additionally, the health of ecosystems is directly connected to the vitality of Indigenous peoples. For example, Yurok elders have said that as long as our River is sick, our people will never be healthy. This includes the Salmon people swimming upriver to spawn, the Tree people dependent on the marine nutrients their Salmon relatives will deliver to the forest, and, of course, the neediest of the bunch, the human people. Our health and vitality are tied to the health and vitality of our landscapes. If the River is sick, everything that depends upon the River will not flourish.

Is sustainable cannabis production possible? What might that look like?

While working on this book project, I received several invitations to speak at academic gatherings. This question comes up a lot. I tell these folks what I tell my students: here in California, our land was stolen only 170 years ago. Before that, our ecosystems thrived. The Salmon runs were so huge, our elders say you could walk across the River on their backs. To us, 170 years is not very long ago. For a people who have been here for tens of thousands of years—and, by the way, some argue over 100,000 years—170 years is a blink, a flash. So, my sustainable vision of cannabis production, then, is not focused on preserving folks’ ability to continue to cultivate for-profit cannabis.

As a result of the legacy of the settler state’s toxic relationship with lands and waters, coupled with the impacts of climate change, our River systems are reaching their breaking points. Our Rivers are choked and contaminated, yet more is demanded from them every day. Our River systems need time to heal, to recover. Demanding water allocations for yet another industry is like asking your relative, still in the intensive care unit recovering from a heart attack, to help you move your furniture. This is not to say that the cannabis industry, specifically, is the cause of this problem. Rather, it is a worldview that considers our water systems as resources to be plundered for export-based agriculture and other industries. My sustainable vision is land return. Decolonization. Ecologically speaking, I argue this is the only path forward. We need to operate within a framework of radical relationality that rejects the commodification and control of nature for wealth accumulation.

Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) is assistant professor of Native American studies at Humboldt State University.

Discover More Books in the Indigenous Confluences Series

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Living Wisdom from Coast Salish Elders: Excerpts from Jesintel by Children of the Setting Sun Productions

Jesintel gathers the cultural teachings of nineteen Coast Salish elders for new generations. Collaboration is at the heart of this work by Native-owned and -operated Children of the Setting Sun Productions, who came together with their community to honor the boundless relations of Coast Salish people and their territories.

Jesintel—”to learn and grow together”—characterizes the spirit of the book, which includes photographs and interviews that share powerful experiences and stories. In the excerpts below, elders reflect on identity, education, and the importance of storytelling. Throughout the book, they offer their perspectives on language revitalization, Coast Salish family values and naming practices, salmon, sovereignty, and canoe racing. They also reveal traumatic memories, including of their boarding school experiences and the epidemics that ravished their communities.

Those featured here as well as other participating elders will be honored at the book launch on April 17, 4:30–6:30 pm, at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House. Find more information about upcoming events below.

Elaine Grinell (Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe) on the Importance of Storytelling

I learned storytelling at a young age, but I didn’t utilize it. I thought that was just for me. I thought that was just mine. And I didn’t learn until, oh, I was probably twenty-four or twenty-five when I realized that this was for me to give to someone else too—my whole family, you know. These things seep out. They just seep. Actually, I don’t know whether you realize how much you really do know until pretty late in life, and that it’s important, that I better stick with that, I’m good at that, I’d better continue.

Elaine shares stories at her home in S’Klallam [Photo by Beau Garreau]

I started in the Port Angeles school district, and now I have carried our stories and songs to Africa, Prague, Bangkok, Japan, and Alaska, way out on Saint Lawrence Island. Africa was fun. I got along really well with the people. They were really interested in Indians. They just really liked the Native Americans. They had thought we were extinct and they were quite surprised when one of us turned up at their hut.

Grandpa Prince would build a fire in the cast-iron woodstove, and those stoves have leaks in them. They’re just little openings and cracks, and the firelight would flicker through. So the three of us—Grandma, Grandpa, and me—would sit there, and he would peel apples, and that flame would hit his face, and it would just flicker, and Grandma would flicker. And I’d watch them, and he would tell stories. I was just, ah . . . mesmerized, totally taken in, and I thought, I have to remember.

Nolan Charles (Musqueam Indian Band) on Salish Identity

Language—it gives you your identity. It’s one. And it’s the resources. Like, we look at the Salish Sea. “Is that our soup bowl? The sea urchins, the octopus, the salmon, the halibut—all those things that we draw from the Salish Sea that sustain us?”

Those nourish us, but it’s also the things like the cedar tree that we use to build our canoes, to build our longhouses. We fashion mats and hats and clothing from cedar and from bulrushes from the mouths of the rivers. Those also provide us with clothing and mats and things like that. It’s all part and parcel. But language is probably the key that gives you your identity, connecting all of these. It will help our little ones prepare themselves for the next battle.

Virginia Cross (Muckleshoot Tribe) on Education

I went to the University of Puget Sound and then got a master’s degree in education at the University of Washington in curriculum and instruction. I started the Virginia Cross Program when I was with the Auburn School District in the 1980s, and it has grown. It’s now known as the Virginia Cross Native American Education Center. When I started the program, we had a lot of kids who had dropped out of school, and we designed the program to serve the cultural, social, and academic needs of teenagers who weren’t in school. The program now supports students from over seventy tribes across a range of areas that are all connected. It’s important for our tribal students and future leaders to learn and share their culture as part of their education. It’s important to share this with non-tribal students and neighboring community members.

Virginia is most proud that the Muckleshoot people have come “from nothing” and overcome “struggle and uncertainty.” [Photo by Beau Garreau]

I have a lot of hope for the new legislation requiring Washington State public schools to offer a Native Education curriculum. We helped. Our lobbyists worked really hard on that. When it was signed, we went to the signing ceremony. If the public schools follow through and teach what they’re supposed to be teaching—the history of how tribal sovereignty came to be, treaty rights, Native science, opportunities to learn our traditional languages, opportunities to participate in traditional practices—then I think that our kids will have an easier time than we did at school. I worked for the Auburn School District for over twenty years, so I know very well the kinds of history books they approve and are distributed into our school system. Nothing has to do with tribal history or the plants you might gather. They don’t mention anything about Muckleshoot tribe or hardly any Indian tribe. They don’t recognize that we have our own constitution and bylaws—they only study the US Constitution. They also celebrated holidays that we don’t honor—Columbus Day, now Indigenous Peoples’ Day. I don’t think they have treated our kids well for their special needs.

I’m thinking back to when I was in school. I graduated in 1957, and at that time I was the only Muckleshoot graduate. My sister two years before me was the only Muckleshoot graduate. We would start in kindergarten with ten or fifteen tribal people, and by the time we were out of the eighth or ninth grade, they would all be gone. It just didn’t serve our kids or our people well.

I think there was just so much prejudice. There were very few of us who were in high school at that time, probably not more than ten of us in the whole school of thousands of kids. Our dad wanted us to be in school, that’s why we were there.

I think it’s the education department that has really progressed, mostly because that’s where our primary interest has been. We now have a tribal school and a Lushootseed language program with a program director, where we teach and qualify five full-time language teachers every year, who then go out to teach. And now we have hired another five more. Hopefully we’ll end up with everybody speaking Lushootseed language. And hopefully this work will continue.

Upcoming Events

April 17, 4:30–6:30 pm, Book Launch at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House (UW Seattle): The program will feature selected readings from Jesintel and an evocative drumming ceremony honoring elders in attendance whose narratives are presented in the book: Steve and Gwen Point, Gene Harry, Nolan Charles, Elaine Grinell, Virginia Cross, Nancy Shippentower, and Jewell James. Books will be available for purchase from the University Book Store.

April 28, 7:00–8:00 pm, Village Books (Bellingham): Join Darrell Hillaire, executive director of Children of the Setting Sun Productions, and editors of the book for a reading and book signing in the Village Books Readings Gallery. This event is part of the Nature of Writing series, a partnership between Village Books and the North Cascades Institute.

New and Award-Winning in Asian American Studies for AAAS 2023

We look forward to connecting with everyone at the 2023 Association for Asian American Studies conference in Long Beach, California from April 6–8.

Browse new and forthcoming books in Asian American Studies by visiting our virtual exhibit. We are pleased to offer AAAS members a 30% discount on all orders. If placing an order through our website, you can take advantage of the conference discount with promo code WAAAS23 at checkout now through May 31, 2023.

2023 AAAS Award Winner

We are thrilled that the Association for Asian American Studies has awarded Eric C. Wat an Outstanding Achievement in History for Love Your Asian Body: AIDS Activism in Los Angeles.

In this community memoir, Wats connects the deeply personal with the uncompromisingly political by telling the stories of more than thirty Asian American AIDS activists. For many, the AIDS epidemic sparked the beginning of their continued work to build multiracial coalitions and confront broader systemic inequities. Detailing the intertwined realities of race and sexuality in AIDS activism, Love Your Asian Body offers a vital portrait of a movement founded on joy.

A brilliant, gorgeous, and nuanced rendering of queer Asian American activism in the 1980s and 1990s. This is the book I have been waiting for all my life.
—Anthony Christian Ocampo, author of The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race

This book is an inspiring work that deserves to be read as it is an integral piece towards understanding the queer Asian American struggle for sexual liberation and health equity.
—International Examiner

Discover New and Notable Books

Browse all Asian American Studies titles here.

Between the Tides in Washington and Oregon: Q&A with Ryan P. Kelly, Terrie Klinger and John J. Meyer

A spectacular variety of life flourishes between the ebb and flow of high and low tide. Between the Tides in Washington and Oregon uncovers the hidden workings of the natural world of the shoreline. Richly illustrated and accessibly written, the guide illuminates the scientific forces that shape the diversity of life at beaches and tidepools.

Ryan P. Kelly is associate professor in the University of Washington’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. Terrie Klinger is professor in the UW’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. John J. Meyer is Senior Director for Marketing and Communications for the UW’s College of the Environment.

Can you tell us a bit about Between the Tides in Washington and Oregon and what motivated you to write the book? How does it differ from other coastal guides?

Terrie Klinger: This book is about the wonder of the intertidal environment, why it is unlike any other on Earth, and the seaweeds and animals that have evolved to live in such a place. We wanted to share that wonder with others who might not be marine scientists. The title evokes Ed Ricketts’s Between Pacific Tides. Published in 1939, Ricketts’s book is widely held to be the classic in the field. We wanted to honor that book and the lasting influence it has had on each of us.

John J. Meyer: The Pacific Northwest is brimming with so much incredible life and beauty between the tides—the diversity of marine invertebrates and seaweeds is just stunning. We wanted to shine a light on these special places, which many folks don’t discover unless they just happen to be at a good rocky beach on a good low tide. A little planning can unlock a world you never knew was there!

Ryan P. Kelly: This book is an attempt to tell people why the species at the shore are where they are, rather than simply being another guide about what one might find there. It’s about ecology, about process. That’s pretty unusual in a book for non-specialists.

There’s a degree of order to the apparent messiness of life along the shore, and uncovering the hidden rules that result in that order is really exciting.
Ryan P. Kelly

What are the main themes of the book and how are they brought to life?

Kelly: We wanted to show, rather than tell. While the themes are those that you might find in a course on marine ecology, we tried to bring those to life by highlighting examples that the reader might run across during a visit to particular places. That was the power of using individual places along the coast as a way to illustrate processes that happen in many other places as well.

Klinger: Intertidal habitats and the species that occupy them are our focus. Habitats determine who can live where, and once occupied, the residents in turn shape their habitats—like your neighbors shape your neighborhood. We try to shed some light on these complexities.

Meyer: To support showing not telling, this book is filled with many photos that are more than just pretty pictures; they are meant to visually bring the vignettes we write about to life.

Who is this book for and how would you recommend readers approach it?

Kelly: The book is for everyone! Mostly non-scientists, but the kinds of curious, outdoorsy people that might find themselves at the shore. We ended up with a lot of text at the beginning that bears reading straight through, but the geographically specific chapters are meant to be read in bits, perhaps as the reader is headed out on a road trip.

Klinger: Nearly anyone who likes to stroll along on the beach, stumble across slick rocks, and explore out-of-the way places along the Washington and Oregon coasts might find something of interest in this book. Readers can jump around to find fun facts and satisfy their curiosity or read from cover to cover for a consistent narrative. My friend Jane, who just celebrated her hundredth birthday, read all the place-based chapters before diving into the first two chapters.

Meyer: This book is meant for people who love to discover new things. So much of what’s living in the intertidal looks and behaves like nothing else, it’s almost like discovering organisms from another planet here on Earth.

Surfgrass (*Phyllospadix* sp.) grows alongside subtidal kelp (*Laminaria setchellii*) at Ecola State Park in Oregon.

Which location or site in the book is your favorite to visit and why?

Meyer: Second Beach in Olympic National Park is a favorite. I discovered it nearly thirty years ago while on a road trip and have gone camping there every summer since. I always couple my visit with a good low tide for some excellent tidepooling, which is backdropped against a spectacularly beautiful location.

Kelly: I just fell in love with Ecola State Park in Oregon during a research trip, and I’ve been back since. What a beautiful place.

Klinger: The rocky sites are my clear favorites. They’re chock-full of interesting species arranged in ways that beg for investigation and explanation.

What’s your favorite species profiled in the book? Are there any fun facts that you’d like to share?

Kelly: I did my PhD on chitons, and so I suppose I can’t resist a good chiton. Tonicella lineata, the lined chiton, is probably the most beautiful thing you’re likely to see on the outer coast.

Meyer: A friend of mine introduced me to the sea palm, Postelsia palmaeformis, years ago, and it’s been a favorite ever since. Watching hundreds of them getting bowled over by crashing waves and then pop back up is one of my favorite things to see.

Klinger: There are some fun facts for sure—for instance, the story about the horse stuck in a sea of foam—and I have a ton of favorite species. One favorite is the air-breathing sea slug called Onchidella—I’m always excited to find one.

The sea palm (*Postelsia palmaeformis*) grows among mussels and barnacles on wave-swept shores.

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

Klinger: I might hope readers deepen their curiosity about life in the intertidal and the puzzling complexity of nature all around us.

Kelly: A sense of wonder, really. But also a sense that there are answers to questions like “why is this snail here, but not over there?” There’s a degree of order to the apparent messiness of life along the shore, and uncovering the hidden rules that result in that order is really exciting.

Meyer: I think once you understand something a bit more, you care about it a bit more. I hope readers walk away indeed with a sense of wonder that also translates to stewardship.

Upcoming Events

April 11, 6:00 pm at the University Book Store: Learn more about the intertidal zone at an author talk with Terrie Klinger and Ryan P. Kelly. Register for this free event here.

May 13, 11:00 am–4:00 pm, at Friday Harbor Laboratories Open House: The San Juan Island marine biology field station of the UW College of the Environment, Friday Harbor Labs, invites the community to their annual Open House. Guests may meander about the campus and experience touch tanks, science demonstrations, seaweed pressing, and a science speaker series that will include a talk with Terrie Klinger. Visit the FHL news and events page and stay tuned for more details!

UW Press at ASEH 2023

We are looking forward to connecting with everyone at the American Society for Environmental History Annual Conference, taking place in Boston, March 22-26. We are pleased to offer ASEH members a 30% discount on all orders. Stop by our booth at Exhibit Space 12 to meet our editors, browse our latest releases, and learn about forthcoming titles. Visit our virtual exhibit for more details.

For those not attending, or when placing an order through our website, you can take advantage of the conference discount through April 30, 2023 with code WASEH23 at checkout.

Book Signing with James Morton Turner, author of Charged

Thursday, March 23, 3:00-3:30 PM

Visit our exhibit space for a signing with James Morton Turner, author of Charged, “an eminently readable, elegantly precise treatise on the topic of batteries” (Science).

Turner unpacks the history of batteries to explore why solving “the battery problem” is critical to a clean energy transition. As climate activists focus on what a clean energy future will create—sustainability, resiliency, and climate justice—the history of batteries offers a sharp reminder of what building that future will consume: lithium, graphite, nickel, and other specialized materials. With new insight on the consequences for people and communities on the frontlines, Turner draws on the past for crucial lessons that will help us build a just and clean energy future, from the ground up.

Discover New and Notable Books

Visit our virtual exhibit to learn more about new and forthcoming books in environmental history.

Learn About Our Relevant Series

Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books explore human relationships with natural environments in all their variety and complexity. They seek to cast new light on the ways that natural systems affect human communities, the ways that people affect the environments of which they are a part, and the ways that different cultural conceptions of nature profoundly shape our sense of the world around us.

The Outdoors: Recreation, Environment, and Culture critically examines the dynamic social and political questions connected to outdoor experiences. While outdoor recreation provides a means to interact with nature and experience solitude or adventure, it also raises issues such as the dispossession of Indigenous lands, the exclusivity of recreational cultures, and the environmental impact of outdoor practices. This series aims to explore these tensions and the landscapes that have come to embody them.

UW Press at AAS 2023

If you’re attending the annual Association for Asian Studies conference this week in Boston, be sure to visit UW Press at Booth 415 for a 30% discount on new and notable books—from a pathbreaking study on a celebrated site of Buddhist art to an examination of wood and woodlands in Asian history. You can take advantage of our conference discount by entering code WAAS23 at checkout now through April 14.

2023 AAS Award Winners

Bei Shan Tang Monograph Prize

We are thrilled that two of our books received an inaugural Bei Shan Tang Monograph Prize, established to honor outstanding and innovative sole-authored monographs on Chinese art history.

Winner: What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming by Aurelia Campbell. This book has also received an Honorable Mention for the Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.

Honorable Mention: A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing by Rachel Silberstein. This book was also awarded the 2021 Millia Davenport Publication Award, sponsored by the Costume Society of America.

Discover New and Notable Books

Learn more about these and other Asian studies titles in our virtual exhibit.

Experiencing the Mogao Caves: Excerpt from Spatial Dunhuang by Wu Hung

Constructed over a millennium from the fourth to fourteenth centuries CE near Dunhuang, an ancient border town along the Silk Road in northwest China, the Mogao Caves comprise the largest, most continuously created, and best-preserved treasure trove of Buddhist art in the world.

Previous overviews of the art of Dunhuang have traced the caves’ unilinear history. In the newly released Spatial Dunhuang, renowned Chinese art historian Wu Hung examines the caves from the perspective of space, treating them as physical and historical sites that can be approached, entered, and understood sensually. The book includes more than 100 photographs as well as diagrams that further illustrate the actual experience of the people who built and used the Mogao Caves. Here, we feature an excerpt and share a look inside the book.

The scholarship of an era must have new materials and new questions. Utilizing these materials to explore questions gives rise to new trends in the scholarship of the time. Scholars who can participate in these trends are said to be yuliu (“entering the currents,” to borrow a phrase from Buddhism). Scholars who cannot participate in these trends are said to be buyuliu (“not entering the currents”). This is a constant principle in academic history past and present. It is not something that cloistered scholars would be able to comprehend.
—Chen Yinke, “Chen Yuan Dunhuang jieyu lu xu”

Written nearly a century ago, Chen Yinke’s words can still be considered a “constant principle in academic history past and present,” but they require us to rethink the relationship between “materials” and “questions” in academic research.¹ It must be noted that, when we invoke this passage now, “the time” no longer refers to 1930, when he wrote that text; it is the present, ninety years later. In the intervening time, Dunhuangology, or Dunhuang studies (Dunhuang xue), has grown from an obscure sideline into a broad field of knowledge, and the art history of Dunhuang has matured out of virtually nothing into a distinct branch of scholarly research.²

When Chen wrote that passage, scholars around the world had just recognized the historical value of the hidden manuscripts discovered in the Library Cave at Dunhuang. People saw only the tip of a vast iceberg, the rest of which was still waiting to be explored and understood. The state of Dunhuang studies is decidedly different today. Most of the Dunhuang manuscripts held in institutions all over the world have been reproduced and published, and the beautiful sculptures and wall paintings of the Mogao Caves have been repeatedly presented in massive, gorgeous catalogs. Without leaving the house, people can now use the internet to enter the virtual caves that the Dunhuang Research Academy has replicated with 3-D technologies. Are these still “new materials”? My answer would be both yes and no; the key is whether there are new questions leading us to explore the unknown dimensions of this data. Chen’s idea that “the scholarship of an era must have new materials and new questions” should thus be reinterpreted: whereas the newly discovered Dunhuang manuscripts and artworks led to new research questions a century ago, today new questions compel us to re-excavate these materials. Without research there would be no new questions, but if there were no new questions, any materials, even if previously unknown, could only support the existing view.

When people visit the Mogao Caves, the place they see is certainly not arranged in chronological order. Rather, caves of disparate sizes are laid out unevenly and often overlap, transforming a one-kilometer-long cliff face into a magnificent yet disorienting honeycomb.
Wu Hung

In this book, I have chosen to re-excavate materials related to the art of Dunhuang through the perspective of space, in the hope that this perspective will help reveal new layers of meaning for these materials. I say this because, although there are countless overviews of the art of Dunhuang, the framework is generally temporal. Guided by the dynasties of China’s past, these accounts present a linear history of the Mogao Caves and the other cave complexes at Dunhuang. Of course, this is an effective, and one might say indispensable, method. But we should also note that its foundation is history, not art; the latter encompasses the synchronic presence of architecture, sculpture, and painting in actual space, not diachronic events and biographies in a history book. When people visit the Mogao Caves, the place they see is certainly not arranged in chronological order. Rather, caves of disparate sizes are laid out unevenly and often overlap, transforming a one-kilometer-long cliff face into a magnificent yet disorienting honeycomb. This “undigested” spatial experience is what conventional art historical narratives want to overcome: by classifying and dating heterogeneous caves according to content and style, and then reorganizing them into a linear historical progression, conventional art history creates a neat sequence out of the Mogao Caves. This sequence exists only in texts, however. Having “absorbed” the tangible yet chaotic caves into an orderly chronological development, this sequence supplants the actual place and hinders perceptions and explorations of space.

In an essay on the relationship between time and space, the psychologist and art theorist Rudolf Arnheim wrote: “The time dimension possesses no sensory medium of its own,” but space “is directly embodied in the visual world.”³ In this sense, this book’s proposition to reinvestigate the art of Dunhuang from a spatial perspective entails two basic methods. First, we will take the caves as they actually are as the focus of sustained art historical investigation and elucidation. Second, we will attempt to understand the caves’ historical meaning beginning with visitors’ experiences. These two methods fuse with and complement each other in the concept of space, because space is humanity’s perception of the objective world, rather than the objective world itself. As Arnheim defined it: “What we call Space, then, is the perceptual system that controls the relations between independent object systems.”⁴ With regard to the Mogao Caves, this perceptual system transforms the caves into features such as dimensions, shapes, directions, distances, proportions, areas, borders, and centers. It also connects the appearances of the caves seen from different distances into the continuous experience of space—from the mountain range on the horizon, to the cliff face covered in caves, to the thousands of deities emerging from the darkness inside the caves. The instruments used to sense space are, first, the body and, then, the eye. Reinvestigating the artistic materials of Dunhuang from the perspective of space requires activating the body’s key role. When recently discussing how to look at a work of sculpture, the art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote: “Clear your mind. Let your body tell you what’s happening. Then your mind may start up again, pondering the work’s significance.”⁵ This provides an appropriate explanation of this volume’s title—Spatial Dunhuang: Experiencing the Mogao Caves.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
2. Zhao Shengliang, Dunhuang shiku yishu jianshi, 37–41.
3. Arnheim, “A Stricture on Space and Time,” 653.
4. Arnheim, “A Stricture on Space and Time,” 649.
5. Schjeldahl, “Richard Serra Will Jolt You Awake,” 74–75.

Wu Hung is Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Chinese Art History at the University of Chicago. He is the author of fifteen books and anthologies, including Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture and Contemporary Chinese Art: A History.

Spotlight on UW Press Interns

Every year, the University of Washington Press offers paid internships to UW students interested in pursuing careers in publishing. Students work in departments throughout the press, gaining on-the-job experience and receiving mentorship from publishing professionals. As part of UW Libraries Student Employee Appreciation Week, we invite you to meet our current group of book-loving interns below. We asked them to share what excites them about publishing, how they contribute to the work of the press, and (of course) their favorite UW Press book.

If you’re a current UW student interested in learning more about a position at UW Press, we would love to hear from you. Write to us at uwapress@uw.edu.

Acquisitions

C Mouhibian, Sophomore in History

I help prepare manuscripts from proposal to launch! This includes corresponding with the author to receive all the images, text, and anything else that would be included in the final project.

I’ve always been a big nerd about books and obsessed over certain authors and small publishers. It interested me to find out what the process behind the scenes was like, all the steps a book goes through to find its way on a shelf. I’ve learned so much about the publishing process, which has really illuminated what a career in books could look like to me. I hope this experience will prepare me for future positions in presses and libraries, which is where I see myself working in the future!

Favorite UW Press book: I’ve been meaning to read Feminista Frequencies. I found it cool that it focuses on such an analog form of technology like radio and how that was specifically a tool to build community across distance.

Ishita Shahi, Graduate student in Digital Media

Every day is new learning at UW Press. I say this especially because we receive thoroughly researched and diverse book proposals that are distinctive in one way or the other. It is inspiring to see the commitment and hard work put in by authors from all areas of work.

Publications serve as an integral platform to empower issues/stories and to help those voices proliferate or even help inflict conversations around them. And ultimately, I want to support the ferry that enables all of us to better understand the world through diverse perspectives.

Favorite UW Press book: I am looking forward to reading The Tibetan Nun Mingyur Peldrön: A Woman of Power and Privilege.

Business

Cam Che, Junior in Finance, Information Systems, and Accounting for Business Professionals

Publishing interests me because it provides access to and connects information and ideas with people worldwide. Information is powerful, and publishing is one of the tools to empower, share, and link people together. Publishing, to me, means fueling people with knowledge and education.

Some of my responsibilities include working with administrative records, expenses, revenues, and royalties and providing support to the Business Manager and the department as a whole. Other duties include accounting and data entry, data management, managing digital and physical files, and assisting with ongoing projects in the business area. My experience at the press has improved the transferable skill set that will help me easily transition into my future career plan.

Favorite UW Press book: Great question! I cannot choose between The $16 Taco by Pascale Joassart-Marcelli and Contemporary Asian American Activism edited by Diane C. Fujino and Robyn Magalit Rodriguez.

Marketing

Zoe Kackman, Sophomore in Art

I was interested to learn about what goes on behind the scenes of publishing, specifically the marketing aspects. I am still fairly new to the press, but I am already learning a lot about organization and collaborative work. I’m very interested in social media and the publicity side of publishing, so I think my experience in this role will be a good baseline for my future career.

Favorite UW Press book: I’m really interested in Settler Cannabis [forthcoming in May]! I feel like it will be a new perspective of Indigenous history that I’ve never heard before.

Civil Rights under the Northern Lights: Excerpt from Black Lives in Alaska

Black Lives in Alaska: A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest maps the trials and challenges African Americans have encountered in the forty-ninth state. The earliest arrivals, many of whom worked as whalers, prospectors, and service members, did not always stay long. Others put down roots and lived full lives in Alaska. These Black individuals fought for greater inclusion and helped establish Alaska’s modern civic institutions, contributing to the political and social life of the state even as they endured racism and fought injustice.

The excerpt below touches on Alaska’s history of race relations and civil rights. This history reminds the reader that the currents of discrimination and its responses—self-activity, activism, and perseverance—are American stories that might be explored in the unlikeliest of places. Even as it reveals the specific context of the state’s complex history, Alaska’s Black history encompasses the themes of the larger nationwide freedom struggle and enriches the history of people of African descent in North America. —Ian C. Hartman

Black Lives in Alaska: A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest by Ian C. Hartman and David Reamer

In the summer of 1962, African Americans and other area activists joined together to picket Carrs, Alaska’s largest grocery store chain. Clarence Coleman, branch president of the Anchorage NAACP, wrote to Roy Wilkins at the national office in New York City: “The first picket line in the history of the Anchorage NAACP began its task of protesting the hiring policies of Carrs Food Center here in Anchorage today 31 July 10 am Alaska Standard Time.”¹ Coleman’s statement was not quite true. Five years earlier, Joseph M. Jackson and James E. Owens organized area workers and set up a picket outside of the Local 341 Laborers and Hod Carrier Union Hall. They and others sought an inclusive union for African American and Alaska Native workers and called for greater transparency in promotion guidelines. Owens stated that direct action “was the only way we’re going to get equality.”²

The picket of Carrs in Anchorage’s Fairview neighborhood was a watershed moment in the history of civil rights in Alaska. Many in the Black community took issue with the grocery store’s apparent refusal to hire African Americans to work in any capacity beyond sanitation and other so-called menial, low-level jobs. In one correspondence Bernard J. Carr Sr., an owner of the grocery store chain, conceded he had “two Negro employees,” a garbage collector and a janitor. But he continued, “The time is not right to hire a Negro checker.” Activist Pat Berkley recollected, “They [Carrs] didn’t want to hire any Blacks. And of course, Pop Carr…wasn’t to hire any Blacks because he had hired one [who] became very friendly with a white girl that worked there, so that was the end of that.”³ Still, the NAACP suggested the grocer benefited from a base of African American patrons and, as such, should hire and promote a few as employees. At its Fairview store, over 30 percent of the clientele was Black, yet not a single African American worked in management or any position that interfaced with the public.⁴

In response, men and women took to the picket line outside of Carrs to raise awareness. Though she was seven months pregnant, Anchorage resident and activist Pat Berkley helped organize the picket and led the women to march on the line during the day; the men walked in the evening. Cars and pedestrians “booed and laughed at [us],” Berkley remembered.⁵ Despite some negative reaction, the picket seemingly worked; owners agreed to hire a more diverse workforce. Organizer Joseph Kline summarized the terms of the agreement: Carrs grocery would “hire one person immediately. The second within thirty days and the third sixty days after the first.” These positions were supposed to include a clerk, cashier, or grocery checkers, all of which afforded a greater possibility for advancement than the menial positions that the picketers accused Carrs of reserving for Black workers.⁶

Unfortunately, Carrs failed to hire three African Americans within the agreed-upon sixty days, but the NAACP kept up its pressure, and the grocery store eventually complied. Richard Watts was the first man Carrs hired as a result of the picket. He became the first African American bagger at the store and stayed with the grocer for over forty-five years. In accordance with what the activists envisioned, Watts did not remain a bagger for long. He ascended the chain of management; by the end of a long and distinguished career, Watts had become a district manager and participated in the local business community as a member of the board of directors for the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce.⁷

The picket of Carrs in Anchorage’s Fairview neighborhood was a watershed moment in the history of civil rights in Alaska.

The Carrs boycott anticipated more extensive changes in Fairview that had come about by the middle of the 1960s. During this decade the neighborhood emerged as a center of activism and civic engagement in Anchorage. Its reputation as one of Anchorage’s most diverse communities only grew, as did the fear that city leadership might continue to neglect the needs of its residents. After the redevelopment and so-called urban renewal of Eastchester Flats, roughly the southern tier of Fairview, men and women on the community council grew more determined to ensure the existing neighborhood would not be left out as Anchorage leadership plotted new recreational outlets for residents. Olivia Holland, Ben Humphries, and John Parks, all active on the neighborhood council, led an effort to set aside land for a park and later spearheaded an effort to deliver public transportation throughout Anchorage. These efforts took considerable effort but would yield tangible results for the residents of Fairview in the decades to follow.⁸

Beyond the Carrs boycott in Fairview, activists protested and organized against mistreatment and discrimination elsewhere during the early and mid-1960s. In Anchorage and Fairbanks, residents established employment workshops to organize letter writing campaigns and rallies and to reach out to area businesses to connect minority job candidates with desirable employment. The workshops in Anchorage organized pickets at Caribou-Wards and Woolworths; one woman in Anchorage, Lillian Morris, took a lead role in the Woolworths pickets and led the area employment workshop. Fairbanks activists also organized a picket of Woolworths in their hometown. The efforts paid off, at least to some extent. Sears, Roebuck and Company agreed to interview and hire qualified African American, Native, Filipinx, and Mexican applicants. The Spenard Caribou-Wards hired two Black salesclerks and agreed to file and retain applications for a longer period, a concession to the employment workshop. The Anchorage Woolworths hired a Black employee for the first time. These efforts did not approach the level of equity that the Employment Workshop ultimately desired, but they represented a small measure of progress.⁹

Ian C. Hartman is associate professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

David Reamer is a public historian and journalist who writes for the Anchorage Daily News.

Notes

¹ Clarence V. Coleman to Roy Wilkins via Western Union Telegram, August 1, 1962, Papers of the NAACP, Part 27: Selected Branch Files, 1956–1965, Series D: The West, ed. John H. Bracey Jr., Sharon Harley, and August Meier. Available on microfilm at the Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage.

² For reference to the picket on the Local 341 Laborers and Hod Carrier Union, see Papers of the NAACP, Supplement to Part 13, the NAACP and Labor, 1956–1965, edited by John H. Bracey Jr. and August Meier (folder 14), available on microfilm at the University of Alaska Anchorage. For additional reference, see Meier Randall Keenan, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Vintage, 2000), 284.

³ Charlie Mae “Pat” Berkley, interview by Bruce Melzer, c. 1982–1983, Bruce Melzer oral history interviews, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage.

⁴ NAACP News Letter, Papers of the NAACP, Part 27: Selected Branch Files, 1956–1965, Series D: The West, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage.

⁵ Charlie Mae “Pat” Berkley, interview by Bruce Melzer, c. 1982–1983.

⁶ Joseph H. Kline Jr. to Roy Wilkins, March 3, 1963. Papers of the NAACP, Part 27: Selected Branch Files, available on microfilm at the Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage.

⁷ For a brief report on Richard Watts’s career at Carrs, see Christine Kim, “Carrs’ First Black Worker Recalls His Rise through the Ranks,” February 19, 2010 on KTUU. For the announcement of Watts on the board of directors for the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, see “Anchorage Chamber’s 2013–14 Board of Directors Announced,” Alaska Dispatch News, September 12, 2013.

⁸ “City officials tour Fairview neighborhood park,” Anchorage Times, August 2, 1967, 1.

⁹ Dianne Anderson, “Protest Group Gets Results, With and Without Picketing,” Anchorage Daily Times, August 13, 1968, 3.