Monthly Archives: October 2019

Celebrate Open Access Week 2019 with UW Press and Libraries

From October 21st to 27th, the University of Washington Press will be highlighting its open-access publications and partnerships as part of International Open Access Week.

UW Press and Libraries Collaborate on Open-Access Books

Thanks to a new partnership between UW Press and Libraries and a grant from the Kenneth S. and Faye G. Allen Library Endowment Transformation Fund, many books in the press’s long-standing and award-winning series Studies on Ethnic Groups in China (SEGC) are now openly available.

UW Libraries’ support for the initiative is part of its larger commitment to open and emerging forms of scholarship. Betsy Wilson, Vice Provost for Digital Initiatives and Dean of University Libraries, explained that “the UW Libraries’ strategic plan prioritizes the advancement of research for the public good. We are living this commitment by investing in infrastructure and developing publishing resources to support open-access scholarship in all forms. Our staff are constantly working to expand support for all UW authors who publish openly and to assist students and faculty in navigating open-access opportunities.”

Edited by UW professor of anthropology Stevan Harrell, SEGC presents research from a wide variety of disciplines on ethnic groups and ethnic relations in China. Anthropologists, historians, geographers, political scientists, and literary scholars have contributed works on minority ethnic groups from various regions of China, as well as on the majority Han and their relationships with other groups. Works are both historical and contemporary and cover topics ranging from identity, local relations, folk literature, and religion to medicine, governance, education, and economic development.

“I’m delighted that UW Press has selected Studies on Ethnic Groups in China as its first book series to go online in open-access format,” said Harrell. “This makes our books available to a wider public. In addition, using the Manifold platform gives authors, editors, and readers the opportunity to publish supplementary material, make comments, and see some of our authors’ gorgeous photographs in full color.”

Manifold is a new publishing platform developed by the University of Minnesota Press, CUNY GC Digital Scholarship Lab, and Cast Iron Coding and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In addition, SEGC books will be hosted on several other platforms including the UW Libraries ResearchWorks, JSTOR, MUSE Open, HathiTrust, and OAPEN.

UW Press Director Nicole Mitchell commented on the project’s early success: “We’ve been pleased to see that readers have accessed the open editions from at least 105 countries so far, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. We’re grateful for the support of the Allen Transformation Fund and fortunate that in launching our first open-access books, we’ve been able to draw on services like JSTOR and Project MUSE that have built strong global networks for scholarship, as well as the work of colleagues at Minnesota and other university presses involved in developing new infrastructure, processes, and standards for open-access monograph publishing.”

What Is International OA Week?

This year’s OA Week theme, “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge,” builds on the groundwork laid by last year’s focus, “Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge,” which highlighted the importance of making a central commitment to equity as we develop new systems for sharing knowledge.

The Allen Transformation Fund grant, awarded to “facilitate the transition towards open publishing models,” promotes equitable access not only by making the SEGC books available to readers across the globe, but also by enabling all authors in the series to make their books openly available regardless of their institutional affiliations or resources.

In addition, UW Libraries works with providers like Manifold to address the accessibility of open-access tools for all users. Working collaboratively with UW Libraries and UW Accessible IT, the Manifold team significantly improved accessibility features in the platform, helping to ensure open access for all.

OA Week on Campus

UW Libraries is hosting special events and information sessions during Open Access Week. This year’s theme, “Open for Whom?,” invites us to consider equity in open access.

Accessibility Pop-Up Tables – Explore your favorite websites using assistive technologies to better understand the everyday experiences of disabled members of our community.

Tuesday, Oct. 22, noon–2:00 p.m. outside the HUB if the weather is good, inside the HUB if the weather is bad
Wednesday, Oct. 23, noon–2:00 p.m. in the Allen Library Research Commons

Copyright and Creative Commons Licenses – If you need photos, music, or other media for a project and are unsure about copyright restrictions, join us for this one-hour primer. Learn how the Creative Commons helps creators share and use media.

Tuesday, Oct. 22, 3:00–4:00 p.m. in the Allen Library Research Commons
Wednesday, Oct. 23, 3:00–4:00 p.m. in the Allen Library Research Commons

Open Media – This Guide to Open Resources will connect you with media you can use without charge.

Open Educational Resources (OER) – See this Guide to OER to learn how to find and create open textbooks and courses.

Open Access at UW Press – Finally, be sure to check out the open editions of SEGC books as well as the Digital Projects page of the UW Press website for more information about the press’s open-access work.

Lil Nas X is in Good Company: Cowboys Have Always Been Black and Gay

Country rapper Lil Nas X had a monumental summer. His hit song, “Old Town Road,” broke records with 19 weeks atop the Billboard’s Hot 100 list. A stunning victory for an African American singer in a music genre that has been persistently imagined as white, even as the music industry hotly debated whether or not the song should be considered country. While riding his groundswell of support, he also came out as gay in a series of tweets. His fans widely celebrated this revelation while the media heralded the news as groundbreaking.

In an era when the nation is divided along political and geographical lines, Lil Nas X’s desire to leverage his stardom into expanding the increasingly narrow definition of the cowboy deserves a deeper look. As I demonstrate in my book Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the America West, the cowboy has always been a contested figure in the American imagination and many groups of people have claimed cowboy identities despite being written out of the popular narrative. For many, the cowboy has always been black and gay.

Working cowhands in the 19^th century were often working-class men of color. Influenced by the mounted herding traditions of Mexican vaqueros, American cowboy culture emerged along the cattle trails of former slave states. Enslaved and free black men, alongside Native, Creole, and Mexican people, made up a significant portion of the cattle industry both before and after the Civil War.

These were not solitary heroic figures—they were wage laborers in a rapidly industrializing country. They spent much of their time forming long-lasting relationships with other men whom they depended on for safety and companionship. They worked seasonally in sparsely populated areas in order to drive meat on the hoof towards industrial centers, but they also spent a great deal of time in the West’s rapidly expanding cities.

These classed and racialized realities of working cowboys were present in early versions of western performance, even as the figure of the cowboy steadily became whitewashed by Jim Crow segregation and mythologized in dime novels, Wild West shows, and early rodeo. Black cowboys, whether popular individuals like Bill Pickett, a respected African American rodeo cowboy, or entire black communities, like Boley, Oklahoma, carved out places for themselves in western performance. Feeding an ever growing number of black riding associations and rodeo circuits, like the Anahuac Saltgrass Cowboys Association and the Bill Pickett Invitational, the Boley rodeo helped inspire black cowboys across the country. Likewise, white women, many of them first generation Americans, competed in bronc riding and trick riding in mainstream rodeos in the early twentieth century and formed the Girls Rodeo Association in the 1940s.

During the Cold War, the idea that a cowboy was and had always been a white, heterosexual man solidified in the American imagination. Still, many groups of people, from civic leaders in Oakland to incarcerated people in Texas, used cowboy performance to assert their belonging in the nation. Some of these groups, like the International Gay Rodeo Association, explicitly used the language of civil rights to urge for the reimagining of the cowboy icon. Officially formed in 1985 after a decade of successful gay rodeos in Reno, Nevada, this association tapped into the cowboy craze of Reagan’s America. Gay cloggers, line dancers, two steppers, and rodeoers worked to create spaces where many men and women who had fled rural places in fear could find a connection to the lifeways of their childhoods. Today the association still struggles to normalize the existence of queer cowboys, despite thriving for nearly forty-five years.

Lil Nas X has handled backlash from homophobic fans well. He explained that he understood the consequences of his decision to come out, stating “I know the people who listen to [‘Old Town Road’] the most, they’re not accepting of homosexuality.” Yet as this young man is inundated with both praise and vitriol, told that he is either destined to be forgotten or represents the future, he should not be made to feel alone—the history of the cowboy is the history of black, gay cowboys.

Rebecca Scofield is assistant professor of American history at the University of Idaho and author of Outriders.

If you are attending the 2019 Western History Association conference in Las Vegas, please join us for a special book signing at the University of Washington Press booth (No. 30) on Friday, October 18th at 3 p.m.

Beyond the Kingdome: Jack Christiansen’s Impact on the Northwest Built Environment

I am thrilled to see the publication of Sculpture on a Grand Scale: Jack Christiansen’s Thin Shell Modernism. Nearly ten years in the making, this book project has taken me to countless locations across the state to visit projects, and to conferences across the world to share Jack Christiansen’s legacy. But the real significance of this book resides right here in the Pacific Northwest.

Christiansen was a classic Northwest individual – loving all things connected to nature (hiking, mountaineering, boating), family, and building innovation. The balance he attained between professional and personal lives was remarkable, and the impact he left on the built environment of Seattle was profound. Anyone interested in the recent history of the Pacific Northwest, and the drivers of change, will find something exciting in this text.

Sculpture on a Grand Scale shows how Christiansen was intrinsically linked to several essential eras of Northwest life and the buildings he helped design still surround those of us who live here. Christiansen designed for the post-war population boom – schools, churches and residences. He designed for Boeing, becoming part of the constant drive for invention and improvement. He designed for the paradigm-shifting 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. Christiansen’s impact continued into the 1970s, playing a key role in realizing the Seattle Kingdome and ushering in a new era of Seattle sports.

B-52 Airplane Hanger for the Boeing Aircraft Company, Moses Lake, WA. Designed by Naramore, Bain, Brady and Johanson and Jack Christiansen. Complete with Jack Christiansen outfront, 1957. Courtesy of MKA Slide Archives.

As its image now graces the cover of the book, the Kingdome is certainly Christiansen’s most impactful work. Most people who lived in Seattle prior to the 2000s have personal memories of the massive concrete stadium. Some memories are of wonderful concerts, football games and the 1995 Mariners playoff run. Those who grew up during that time recall the spacious interior filled with fans from all over the region. Other memories are less pleasant, recalling the cold, grey exterior and the Kingdome’s imposing form over the surrounding neighborhood. Debate over the Kingdome’s legacy still goes on in the comments section of any recent news article.

Christiansen’s life – and his work leading up to the Kingdome – offers an overlooked perspective. The Kingdome was the culmination of many years of work in thin shell concrete – where geometry and structure were intertwined in the creation of space. When King County needed a multi-use, cost- efficient structure, Christiansen dedicated his work to making a stadium possible and saving taxpayer dollars. His design innovations for the Kingdome were not flashy or frivolous, they were responsible and austere. In the high-cost, high-inflation times of the early 1970s, this was innovation that was needed.

The implosion of the Seattle Kingdome. March 26, 2000. Courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives.

The demolition of the Kingdome offers another chance for reflection on a chapter of Seattle life. By the 2000s, the grim economic fortunes were long gone – replaced by a booming technology industry and the Kingdome had become a relic of the earlier time. Christiansen’s idea that buildings should be designed to last 1000 years was no match for the rising economic ambitions of professional sports.

As things in Seattle continue to change, Christiansen’s work is finding new resonances. The book not only describes his late work – like the Bainbridge Island Grandstand – but also the preservation efforts underway to ensure his extant work is celebrated as heritage, as a part of Seattle’s past. New efforts in research are re-visiting some of Christiansen’s design methods, as an interest in material efficiency.

The accompanying exhibit in Gould Hall Gallery (open until December 6^th) further brings Christiansen’s work to light. The exhibit shows models, original design documents, and Christiansen’s writings. With an entire room dedicated to the Kingdome, the exhibit includes early design strategies, Kingdome newsletters, a video of the Kingdome construction, memorabilia and a scale model of the structure.

U.S. Science Pavilion, Seattle, WA. Designed by Minoru Yamasaki and Jack Christiansen. Complete, 1962. Courtesy of MKA Slide Archives.

The book is a celebration of architecture, engineering and design. Readers may recognize the rounded roof of the Greenlake Pool, or the soaring arches of the Pacific Science Center. The work may inspire exploration into more of Christiansen’s work – like the Bridge over the north fork of the Snoqualmie River. I hope readers will be left with a better understanding of not just Christiansen’s work, but an expanded perspective of the built environment of the Pacific Northwest.

Tyler S. Sprague is assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington and serves on the boards of the Construction History Society of America and the Western Washington chapter of Docomomo. His new book Sculpture on a Grand Scale was made possible by the generous support of the Michael J. Repass Fund for Northwest Writers.

To hear more from Tyler S. Sprague, join us at the University Bookstore on Thursday, October 10th at 6 p.m. for a special event and book signing!