This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Association for University Presses’ annual University Press Week, and member presses are celebrating how we have evolved over the past decade. The story of UW Press’s evolution can be seen through the following ten books published in the last ten years.
No-No Boy (2014. First edition published in 1979)
By John Okada. Foreword by Ruth Ozeki
Initially ignored and quickly forgotten, John Okada’s powerful novel reached a broad audience only after its republication in the late 1970s by a group of activists intent on proving the existence of an Asian American body of literature. Since then, it has remained central in discussions of Asian American literature and resistance on campus and off, and is one of the press’s all-time bestsellers.
The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States (2013)
By Mark Fiege. Foreword by William Cronon.
Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the radical premise that nothing in the nation’s past can be considered apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. He demonstrates how environmental history permeates the breadth of the United States, including in unexpected places such as the Salem witch trials, racial segregation, and the modern women’s movement.
Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form, 50th Anniversary Edition (2014)
By Bill Holm
Through his careful studies of hundreds of artworks, Bill Holm developed a description of and terminology for the visual language used by northern Northwest Coast artists to illustrate inherited crests and tell family stories. His book has become a foundational reference work and study guide for contemporary Native carvers, painters, and weavers looking to draw upon or reinterpret the traditional work of their ancestors.
America Is in the Heart: A Personal History, Second Edition (2014)
By Carlos Bulosan
Carlos Bulosan’s fictionalized autobiography of his journey from the Philippines to Seattle to California reveals the brutal reality of oppression, racism, poverty, and violence experienced by Filipino American migrant workers in the twentieth century. Following UW Press’s reissue of the book in 1973 and against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, it became a critical text in the emerging field of ethnic studies. A masterful, searing critique of US imperialism, America Is in the Heart illuminates the human costs to US exploitation and global capitalism and asks readers to consider whether it’s possible for America to live up to its promise.
Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place, Second Edition (2017)
By Coll Thrush. Foreword by William Cronon
Native Seattle transformed historical understandings of Pacific Northwest urban spaces by centering the region’s Coast Salish peoples in this revealing urban history. Thrush’s research not only restores the foundational stories of Native people within Seattle’s deeper history, but also identifies the processes used to actively relegate Indigenous people to a remote past rather than acknowledging and representing their continued dynamic shaping of the history of cities beyond the Northwest.
Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan: Commentary on the “Spring and Autumn Annals” Volume 3 (2017)
Translated by Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Li, and David Schaberg
These three volumes make China’s earliest narrative history available for scholars of the ancient world in an unabridged, extensively annotated translation. The authoritative edition for teaching, research, and citation, it offers facing pages of Chinese and English that enable it to serve the needs of a wide range of researchers.
Flora of the Pacific Northwest: An Illustrated Manual, Second Edition (2018)
By C. Leo Hitchcock and Arthur Cronquist
The first edition of Flora was quickly established as the bible of botanists and gardeners in the region, who used it in the field and in the classroom for a half-century. The second edition, revised by David E. Giblin, Ben S. Legler, Peter F. Zika, and Richard G. Olmstead, incorporates extensive changes in plant nomenclature, taxa new to science, and documentation of new native and nonnative species in the Pacific Northwest, but follows the same now-standard structure.
Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics (2018)
Edited by Lynn Fujiwara and Shireen Roshanravan
This collection, featuring work by both senior and rising scholars, brings together groundbreaking essays that speak to the relationship between Asian American feminisms, feminist of color work, and transnational feminist scholarship. Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics provides a deep conceptual intervention into the theoretical underpinnings of Asian American studies; ethnic studies; women’s, gender, and sexual studies; as well as cultural studies in general.
We Are Dancing for You: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women’s Coming-of-Age Ceremonies (2018)
By Cutcha Risling Baldy
This courageously personal book about the Hupa revitalization of the Flower Dance challenges anthropological theories about menstruation, gender, and coming-of-age; and addresses gender inequality and gender violence within Native communities. In addition to being widely used in college classes, We are Dancing for You has been distributed to American Indian youth centers, Native rehabilitation programs, correctional facilities, and Tribal libraries across the state of California through the Native Women’s Collective, the nonprofit cofounded by Dr. Risling Baldy.
Artisans in Early Imperial China (paperback published in 2021)
By Anthony J. Barbieri-Low
Taking readers inside the private workshops, crowded marketplaces, and great palaces, temples, and tombs of early China, Barbieri-Low explores the lives and working conditions of artisans, meticulously documenting their role in early Chinese society and the economy. First published in 2007, winner of top prizes from the Association for Asian Studies, American Historical Association, College Art Association, and the International Convention of Asia Scholars, and now back in print, Artisans in Early Imperial China will appeal to anyone interested in Chinese history, as well as to scholars of comparative social history, labor history, and Asian art history.
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