Five Questions with D. Vance Smith, author of “The Arts of Dying”

March 23, 2020
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Five Questions with D. Vance Smith, author of “The Arts of Dying”

How do we talk about one of life’s most persistently hard to describe events: death? Poets, musicians, playwrights, philosophers, theologians, and artists have tried to describe death for centuries, but this question still puzzles us today. With his new book, The Arts of Dying: Literature and Finitude in Medieval England, D. Vance Smith goes back to consider the ways that medieval people thought and wrote about death. We talked with Vance about the book, how people in the Middle Ages thought about dying, the problems of language when it comes to death, and how ideas about death and dying are presented now. He also touches on the particular relevance of these questions today as we face the tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic. How do you come to this subject? Was there a particular piece of literature that sparked your interest? I wrote a book a while ago (The Book of the Incipit) about the many ways medieval people thought about beginnings and shaped them in literature, and I started thinking about endings and what Foucault called the “analytic of finitude” then. Dying is the ultimate ending, and I found the intellectual and emotional challenge of writing about it important, but . . .

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Chicago Distribution Center Temporarily Closed

March 21, 2020
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In response to the Illinois Stay-at-Home Order and with the greatest concern for the health and welfare of our staff and the greater community, we have decided to temporarily close the Chicago Distribution Center (CDC) effective Monday, March 23. The CDC will remain closed for the duration that the Stay-at-Home order is in effect, until April 7 or longer if required.  Though print book orders for our titles are delayed, all e-books published by the University of Chicago Press are available and on sale at 30% off using code EBOOK30 at checkout through our website.  In the last two weeks, many members of the Press staff have worked to ensure that parts of our business can continue unimpeded in case of a shutdown, including increased use of print-on-demand resources and increased availability of e-books. We are also considering relationships with other suppliers that would allow a portion of orders to be filled if they cannot be filled at the CDC. We will continue to work on all of these efforts.  Meanwhile, we recognize that this has been a challenging time for many in the publishing industry, including our partners at many booksellers around the country. You can still continue to order our books and those of our distributed client publishers directly from many independent bookstores through their websites and indiebound.org as well as through major online retailers.  . . .

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Thank You to the Phenomenal Women Who Continue to Inspire Us

March 19, 2020
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Thank You to the Phenomenal Women Who Continue to Inspire Us

In honor of Women’s History Month, we want to celebrate the power of women helping women and the incredible community that results when we support and mentor each other along the way. We invited several recent authors to share their stories and to offer thanks to the phenomenal women who have been inspirations and friends in their careers. Thank you to all of the awesome women in publishing and academia who have paved the way. We don’t say thanks nearly enough for the work you do for all of us. . . .

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Expanded E-Book Access and Virtual Bookfairs

March 18, 2020
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As many of us transition to a remote teaching and working environment in response to COVID-19, we are trying to respond as quickly as possible to ensure that you continue to have access to the books that you need. We are a community of readers, and books should be one thing we can all rely on in this unprecedented time of uncertainty. We’re working with many partners in e-book delivery to ensure that students have access to coursebooks. Many providers are also offering free access for online learning for qualifying schools during the pandemic. Your institution may qualify. Here is a current list of our partner initiatives, which we will continue to update: Expanded access to e-books for course use ProQuest (library): Immediate upgrades for all purchased e-books at a library to unlimited concurrent multi-user status through mid-June. VitalSource (e-textbook): Free access to e-books for students who are finishing the semester at verified 2-4yr schools that have moved to online courses through May 25th. RedShelf (e-textbook): Free access to e-books for students who are finishing the semester at schools that have moved to online courses through May 25th. UPSO (library): Gratis trial access to all of UPSO + all Oxford platforms . . .

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5 Questions for Ellen Prager, author of “Dangerous Earth: What We Wish We Knew about Volcanoes, Hurricanes, Climate Change, Earthquakes, and More”

March 3, 2020
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As news of earthquake swarms in Puerto Rico, bushfires in Australia, volcanic eruptions in New Zealand, and the calamitous impacts of climate change fills the headlines, it would seem easy to despair, to feel that the Earth is somehow out to get us. In Dangerous Earth, marine scientist and brilliant science communicator Ellen Prager cuts through the noise of fear and misunderstanding that surrounds disasters—both natural and unnatural. Drawing on the latest science, highlighting the questions and characters that push this research forward, and celebrating the hope that ongoing discoveries give for our future, Dangerous Earth is far from a gloomy end-of-days geoscience treatise. It is an exhilarating tour of some of the most awesome forces on our planet—many tragic, yet nonetheless awe-inspiring—and an illuminating journey through the undiscovered, unresolved, and in some cases unimagined mysteries that continue to inspire the world’s leading scientists: the “wish-we-knews” that ignite both our curiosity and global change. We sent Prager a few questions recently to learn more about her motivations for writing the book. How did you wind up in your field, and what do you love about it? As a child, I loved nature and was particularly fond of Jacque Cousteau specials . . .

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Six Questions with Abigail Gillman, author of “A History of German Jewish Bible Translation”

February 25, 2020
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Between 1780 and 1937, Jews in Germany produced numerous new translations of the Hebrew Bible into German. Intended for Jews who were trilingual, reading Yiddish, Hebrew, and German, these translations gave Jews access to their scripture without Christian intervention, and they also helped showcase the Hebrew Bible as a work of literature and the foundational text of modern Jewish identity. In A History of German Jewish Bible Translation, Abigail Gillman examines the history of these translations as a larger cultural project. Your book discusses the remarkable history of the Hebrew Bible’s translations into German. Why were these new translations so important to the Jewish community, and what innovations did each new wave of translation offer? German Jewish rabbis and intellectuals produced works of philosophy, fiction, and poetry, as well as exegetical texts, sermons, essays, and textbooks. They also saw that a translation of the Hebrew Bible into German could accomplish a number of important goals.  In most cases, they followed models from Christian society. But Jewish translators maintained that their projects were continuous with the tradition of transmitting and interpreting the Torah going all the back to Moses. They also affiliated translation to the discourse of exegesis, which is the . . .

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An Unflinching Excerpt from ‘The Torture Letters’ by Laurence Ralph

February 20, 2020
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This week on the blog, we're highlighting one of our most timely and important new releases—The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence . . .

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When Should You Say, “I Love You”?: An Excerpt from “The Arc of Love”

February 13, 2020
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This Valentine’s Day, we turn to Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, author of The Arc of Love: How Our Romantic Lives Change Over Time, for a little romance advice. In the book, he provides an in-depth, philosophical account of the experiences that arise in early, intense love—sexual passion, novelty, change—as well as the benefits of cultivating long-term, profound love—stability, development, calmness. Ben-Ze’ev analyzes the core of emotions many experience in early love and the challenges they encounter, and he offers pointers for weathering these challenges. Read on for an excerpt. “The regret of my life is that I have not said ‘I love you’ often enough.” Yoko Ono A common dilemma about romantic timing is the question of when to utter the expression “I love you.” Hearing a partner say “I love you” for the first time is often one of the highlights of a romantic relationship. However, people tend to be uncertain as to when to declare their love and whether to be the first to do so or to wait until the other has given an indication of feeling the same way. Is there an optimal time to reveal your feelings? Does timing make no difference, or all the difference? When Should You . . .

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A Political Playlist Just in Time for the Presidential Primaries

February 2, 2020
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We know that many of you will be turning your attention to the Iowa Caucus on February 3rd as the 2020 Presidental Primaries get underway. And if you’re like us, you’re going to need a distraction from the stress and uncertainty of it all–and we have just the ticket! Peter La Chapelle, author of I’d Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music, has put together the ultimate playlist, which captures the deep bonds between country music and American politics since the very beginning. Long before the United States had presidents from the world of movies and reality TV, we had scores of politicians with connections to country music from the nineteenth-century rise of fiddler-politicians to more recent figures like Pappy O’Daniel, Roy Acuff, and Rob Quist. These performers and politicians both rode and resisted cultural waves: some advocated for the poor and dispossessed, and others voiced religious and racial anger, but they all walked the line between exploiting their celebrity and righteously taking on the world. While putting together this playlist, Peter has tried to use songs by the original artists themselves, but in cases where those weren’t available, he first tried to find a . . .

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5 Questions for Sonali Chakravarti, author of “Radical Enfranchisement in the Jury Room and Public Life”

January 13, 2020
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Summoned for jury duty? In her new book, Radical Enfranchisement in the Jury Room and Public Life, Sonali Chakravarti seeks to change the way Americans think about their participation in the judicial process, arguing that juries as an institution provide an important site for democratic action by citizens. We sent Chakravarti a few questions recently to learn more about her motivations for writing the book. First, for those who haven’t yet encountered the book, could you describe the key problems you saw with the process of jury duty in the United States that led you to write about this? In the 2018 film Can you Ever Forgive Me?, Melissa McCarthy plays author Lee Heller, a biographer who has fallen on hard times. To make ends meet, she begins forging letters of literary luminaries such as Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker. She has a good run but is eventually arrested for fraud, found guilty, and sentenced to house arrest. The film ends with a quip about how when she is called for jury duty she responds, “I’m a convicted felon and am therefore unable to serve. Who said crime doesn’t pay?” The fact that evading jury duty can be the basis . . .

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