Press Notes: Cycling through Our Seasons

The months of December and January saw Ohio University Press gearing up for the coming year and putting the final touches on some 2009 projects. The first annual catalog of titles was sent out to book reviewers, librarians, bookstores, and professors, and meetings were held with sales representatives about our forthcoming list. A number of books published in 2009 were submitted to awards competitions before their end-of-the-year deadlines. And all the while, production and editorial departments continued to work with authors to keep existing projects on schedule. Soon we will be hearing, as with the chirping of migratory birds upon their return, about another crop of new books, these to be included in the 2011 catalog. So goes the seasonal rhythms of one university press.

Ohio University Press Titles Published and Promoted Since December:

Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland, 1914–1939, by Neal Pease. This is the first scholarly history of the close but complex political relationship of Poland with the Catholic Church during the interwar period.

Prophetic Politics: Emmanuel Levinas and the Sanctification of Suffering, by Philip J. Harold. The most recent addition to the Series in Contintental Thought, Prophetic Politics is an original interpretation of the political dimension of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought.

Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine, by James C. McCann. The first historical study of cooking and cuisine in Africa and the inaugural title in a new series, Africa in World History, which seeks to present cultural aspects of Africa to nonspecialists.

The Collected Novels of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Herbert Woodward Martin, Ronald Primeau, and Gene Andrew Jarrett. This book presents for the first time all four of Dunbar’s novels under one cover. Joining a previous OU Press title, The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar, readers now have another opportunity to encounter Dunbar’s prose and realize the complete scope of his literary talents.

The Land beyond the Mists: Essays In Identity & Authority in Precolonial Congo and Rwanda, by David Newbury. Penetrating deep into the past, moving beyond recent strife and beyond colonization, Newbury presents the only overall introduction to the history of this region of central Africa.

Barack Obama and African Diasporas: Dialogues and Dissensions, by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza. A collection of essays selected from The Zeleza Post blog. Zeleza’s critical engagement with Pan-African politics, geography, economics, race, and gender offer unique and sometimes provocative perspectives into recent events.

In recent weeks, Ohio University Press has learned of books and authors having received press from the following places:

Law Library Journal, Choice, bookWOMEN, Canadian Studies in Population, Civil War History, Book News, Slavic Review, New Books on Literature 19, Victorian Poetry, The Washington Post, The Midwest Book Review, The Baltimore Sun, American Literary Realism, Socialist Studies, The Historian, Story Circle Book Reviews, Studies in English Literature, Journal of the Early Republic, Alcohol and Drugs History Society, Poets & Writers, The Athens Messenger, The Athens News’s “Annual Manual,” The Professional Geographer, America: The National Catholic Weekly, Victorian Studies, International Oral History Association Newsletter, KPFA’s “Against the Grain,” Journal of Peace Research, Midwest Book Review, Wildlife Sciences, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Annales: Histoire, Sciences, Sociales, The American Journal of Legal History, National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Quiltmaker, Denver Post, Études internationales, Journal of Illinois History, St. Petersburg Times.

Jeff Kallet