Awards

Alan Shapiro: Pulitzer Prize finalist

April 21, 2015
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Alan Shapiro: Pulitzer Prize finalist

Hearty congratulations to Alan Shapiro, whose collection of poems Reel to Reel was recently shortlisted for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Shapiro, who teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has published twelve volumes of poetry, and has previously been nominated for both the National Book Award and the Griffin Prize. The Pulitzer Prize citation commended Reel to Reel‘s “finely crafted poems with a composure that cannot conceal the troubled terrain they traverse.” The book, written with Shapiro’s recognizably graceful, abstracting, and subtle minimalism, was one of two finalists, along with Arthur Sze’s Compass Rose; Gregory Pardlo’s Digest won the award. From the jacket copy for Reel to Reel: Reel to Reel, Alan Shapiro’s twelfth collection of poetry, moves outward from the intimate spaces of family and romantic life to embrace not only the human realm of politics and culture but also the natural world, and even the outer spaces of the cosmos itself. In language richly nuanced yet accessible, these poems inhabit and explore fundamental questions of existence, such as time, mortality, consciousness, and matter. How did we get here? Why is there something rather than nothing? How do we live fully and lovingly as conscious creatures in an unconscious universe with no . . .

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2015 PROSE Awards

February 20, 2015
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2015 PROSE Awards

Now in their 39th year, the PROSE Awards honor “the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content in over 40 categories,” as determined by a jury of peer publishers, librarians, and medical professionals. As is the usual case with this kind of acknowledgement, we are honored and delighted to share several University of Chicago Press books that were singled-out in their respective categories as winners or runners-up for the 2015 PROSE Awards. *** Kurt Schwitters: Space, Image, Exile By Megan R. Luke Art History, Honorable Mention *** House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again By Atif Mian and Amir Sufi Economics, Honorable Mention *** American School Reform: What Works, What Fails, and Why By Joseph P. McDonald Winner, Education Practice *** The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools By Christopher A. Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski Winner, Education Theory *** Earth’s Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters By Martin J. S. Rudwick Honorable Mention, History of STM *** The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Bilingual Edition By Pier Paolo . . .

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House of Debt on FT’s shortlist for Business Book of the Year

September 24, 2014
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House of Debt on FT’s shortlist for Business Book of the Year

Congrats (!) to House of Debt authors Atif Mian and Amir Sufi for making the shortlist for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. Now in competition with five other titles from an initial offering of 300 nominations, House of Debt—and its story of the predatory lending practices behind the Great American Recession, the burden of consumer debt on fragile markets, and the need for government-bailed banks to share risk-taking rather than skirt blame—will find out its fate at the November 11th award ceremony. From the official announcement: “The provocative questions raised by this year’s titles have been addressed with originality, depth of research and lively writing.”  The award, now in its 10th edition, aims to find the book that provides “the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance and economics.” The judges—who include former winners Mohamed El-Erian and Steve Coll—also gave preference this year to books “whose influence is most likely to stand the test of time.” To read more about House of Debt, including a list of reviews and a link to the authors’ blog, click here. . . .

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2013 PROSE Awards

February 7, 2014
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2013 PROSE Awards

The PROSE Awards (or, the American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence) are unique to the scholarly and professional publishing communities—not only prestigious, but selected from “over 535 entries of books, reference works, journals,and electronic products in more than 40 categories,” juried by a community of peer publishers, librarians, and academics. In addition to offering congratulations to all the winners, we are delighted to point you toward those books from our own list that received either a PROSE Award or honorable mention for general excellence: Art Exhibitions Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North By Peter John Brownlee, Sarah Burns, Diane Dillon, Daniel Greene, and Scott Manning Stevens Biological Sciences (Honorable Mention) The Ornaments of Life: Coevolution and Conservation in the Tropics  By Theodore H. Fleming and W. John Kress Earth Sciences The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time By Lance Grande Education Education, Justice, and Democracy Edited by Danielle S. Allen and Rob Reich Environmental Science (Honorable Mention) Our Once and Future Planet: Restoring the World in the Climate Change Century  By Paddy Woodworth Literature (Honorable Mention) Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes By Roland Greene Music and . . .

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A Naked Singularity wins big with PEN

August 14, 2013
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A Naked Singularity wins big with PEN

Congratulations are due to UCP author, novelist, public defender, and, um, really nice dude/polymath Sergio De la Pava, who just took home the Robert W. Bingham Prize (a PEN Literary Award) for A Naked Singularity, a debut work that demonstrates “distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.” Along with the $25,000 kitty, De la Pava earns more than just renewed DIY bragging rights. From a write-up in the Wall Street Journal, which (for interested parties) engages with the book’s back story: Mr. De La Pava, reached on his way to a speaking engagement at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Scotland, said he intends to continue his legal case-load but was grateful to be recognized by an organization with a human-rights agenda. “What I do on a daily basis is very important to me,” he said. “ has a social-justice mission, so it’s even more meaningful.” Recently, De la Pava took to the stage at MOMA/PS 1’s Expo 1 New York, where he delivered a two-part talk on the legacy of Philip K. Dick and the future of the criminal justice system, a piece of Venn Diagram portraiture surrounding some of the larger issues at stake in A Naked Singularity. Check . . .

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2013 Laing Prize: Andreas Glaeser’s Political Epistemics

April 30, 2013
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2013 Laing Prize: Andreas Glaeser’s Political Epistemics

The Gordon J. Laing Prize is awarded annually by the University of Chicago Press to the faculty author, editor, or translator of a book published in the previous three years that brings the Press the greatest distinction. The varied expertise of past recipients has spanned the disciplines—from intellectual property wars and evolutionary theory to racial profiling and eighteenth-century Italian opera—and helped to generate an enviable listing of scholars that the University is lucky to call their own. On top of all that, this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Prize, first awarded to Bernard Weinberg in 1963 for A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. This year, the 2013 Laing Prize went to Andreas Glaeser, associate professor of soci0logy at the University, for Political Epistemics: The Secret Police, the Opposition, and the End of East German Socialism. Glaeser’s book considers socialist East Germany’s unexpected self-dissolution in 1989, building on extensive in-depth interviews with former secret police officers and the dissidents they tried to control, among other resources, to offer an epistemic account of socialism’s failure that differs markedly from existing explanations. Included below are some snapshots from the recent Laing Prize reception taken by our editorial director . . .

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2012 PROSE Awards

February 11, 2013
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2012 PROSE Awards

The 2012 PROSE Awards, announced February 7, 2013, “annually recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content in over 40 categories.” Since 1976, the Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) have bestowed the awards on deserving recipients—and among them, we’re delighted to see several University of Chicago Press books acknowledged. Congrats to all the winners and honorable mentions! *** The awards for History of Science, Medicine, and Technology featured a clean sweep by Chicago, led by Daniela Bleichmar’s Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment, which traces both the little-known history of scientific expeditions in the Hispanic Enlightenment and the history of visual evidence in both science and administration in the early modern Spanish empire. An Honorable Mention was awarded to Sachiko Kusukawa’s Picturing the Book of Nature: Image, Text, and Argument in Sixteenth-Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany, a consideration of the works three early modern learned authors who dealt with botany and anatomy—Leonhart Fuchs, Conrad Gessner, and Andreas Vesalius—and how their illustrations were integral to producing a visual argument for the scientific study of nature. A . . .

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MLA 2013: A pair of Scaglione Prizes

January 10, 2013
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MLA 2013: A pair of Scaglione Prizes

Larry F. Norman and Frédérique Aït-Touati (photograph by Alan Thomas) Following the rush of scholarly meetings and conferences in the wake of the new year, belated congratulations are due to UCP authors Larry F. Norman and Frédérique Aït-Touati, for garnering the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prizes in French and Francophone studies and comparative literary studies (respectively), from the Modern Language Association. The Scaglione Prize is “awarded annually for an outstanding scholarly work in its field—a literary or linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work, or a critical biography—written by a member of the association.” Norman, professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and in the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago, was commended for The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France, cited by the prize committee as follows: A deep interest in the view one culture holds of another animates The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France; Larry F. Norman lucidly examines the divide posited in seventeenth-century France between antiquity and modernity. The writers and thinkers who espoused connection to ancient culture were, paradoxically, those who divested themselves of unquestioned adherence to textual tradition; they argued not for the unassailable authority of the past, . . .

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David Ferry: National Book Award winner

November 15, 2012
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David Ferry: National Book Award winner

Where did you go to, when you went away? It is as if you step by step were going Someplace elsewhere into some other range Of speaking, that I had no gift for speaking, Knowing nothing of the language of that place To which you went with naked foot at night Into the wilderness there elsewhere in the bed, Elsewhere somewhere in the house beyond my seeking. I have been so dislanguaged by what happened I cannot speak the words that somewhere you Maybe were speaking to others where you went. Maybe they talk together where they are, Restlessly wandering, along the shore, Waiting for a way to cross the river. —”That Now are Wild and Do Not Remember,” from Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations In 1983, the Phoenix Poets series published its inaugural volume—Strangers: A Book of Poems, by longtime Wellesley College professor David Ferry. Strangers was Ferry’s second book of his own poems; his first published work was a study on Wordsworth (The Limits of Mortality, 1959), soon followed by his debut collectionOn the Way to the Island (1960). What had Ferry been doing the past two decades? And what sort of risk might be associated with launching . . .

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Jennifer Scappettone | | Amelia Rosselli

May 31, 2012
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Jennifer Scappettone | | Amelia Rosselli

(Image copyright: Dino Ignani) From Locomotrix: Selected Poetry and Prose of Amelia Rosselli, A Bilingual Edition Edited and Translated by Jennifer Scappettone _________________________________________________________________________________________ Da Palermo ’63 (1963) Poesia dedicata a Spatola Il mare ha delle punte bianche ch’io non conosco e il tempo, che bravo si dimena bravo nelle mie braccia, corrompo docilmente— e sottile si lamenta per i dolori al ginocchio a me toccàti. Senza livore io ti ricordo un immenso giorno di gioia ma tu dimentichi la vera sapienza. Se la notte è una veraconda scematura io rivorrei giocare con le belle dolci signore che t’insegnavano che il dare o il vero, non è vero. Sentendo morire la dolce tirannia io ti richiamo sirena volenterosa—ma il viso disfatto di un chiaro prevedere altre colpe e docili obbedienze mi promuove cretine speranze. Gravi disgrazie sollecitano. Il vero è una morte intera.                    *** From Palermo ’63 (1963) Poem dedicated to Spatola The sea has white points that I don’t know and tempo, so good it wags good in my embrace, I corrupt sweetly— and slight it laments the aches at the knee touched to me. Without spite I remind you of an immense day of joy but you forget . . .

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