University of Michigan Press Blog

Ellen Handler Spitz to speak on the Nature of Translation

by Phillip Witteveen July 21, 2014

On the first two days of August, the Austen Riggs Center will be hosting its annual Creativity Seminar. This year, Ellen Handler Spitz will be holding court, directing the conference, and bringing her experience as an aesthetician and student of psychoanalysis to a re-evaluation of the nature of translation. “Translation,” is the conference’s theme, and what for two days the attendees will be tweaking and re-adjusting their shared concept of. As an engine of description describing itself, the conference released a sound-byte, stating their intentions: “to stimulate our use of these ideas in our various clinical, educational, and other settings.” […]

10 Years of Keith Folse’s “Vocabulary Myths”

by Claudia Leo July 16, 2014

The first in a series of posts about this book’s influence on the field of ELT By Kelly Sippell, Executive Acquisitions Editor and ELT Manager, University of Michigan Press Since Vocabulary Myths by Keith Folse burst onto the ELT market in 2004, many cool things have happened. One consequence was the birth of a series of Myths books: First, Writing Myths in 2008 (Reid), followed by Listening Myths (Brown, 2011), Second Language Acquisition Myths (Brown and Larson-Hall, 2012), and most recently, Pronunciation Myths (Grant, 2014). (Three more are under contract.) People who are familiar with the series know that the […]

Election Hype: Robert Boatright in Washington Post, Vox

by Phillip Witteveen July 11, 2014

There’s a kind of new journalism going on in Vox, with its swerving grey imprimatur over sharp yellow rectangles. One of Vox’ ever-changing taglines makes you think about its name: “The smartest thinkers, the toughest questions.” Vox is a stress test of the upper limit of our most interesting conversationalists, for whatever has brought them to our attention: being threatened by North Korea for a comedy (Seth Rogen), being the most powerful man in the free world (Mr. President, your two minutes are up) or having a nifty point of view on pop music (one Bob Stanley, music journalist and author). […]

Daniel Stein Explores Jazz as Cold War Diplomacy

by Phillip Witteveen July 11, 2014

“Studies of the jazz tours sponsored by the American State Department have reconstructed moments of resistance,” begins Daniel Stein in a sentence that puts landing gear down on “largely unexplored territory.” That territory is in the Honalee of convening spaces where Cold War jazz, race relations and international relations intercede in tectonic symphony. Stein, whose work on Louis Armstrong has already coalesced at least once into Music is My Life, takes the space afforded to him in Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, to tease apart a lesser known fringe of his research interest. A marginal inclusion in either […]

APSA honors Lynda Powell with Virginia Gray Award

by Phillip Witteveen July 7, 2014

The American Political Science Association is a nerve center in a global network of political thought. One of its many functions – besides serving as a forum and publishing outlet – is to shelve into cogent, discernible legacies the strongest, most recent contributions to the field of political science. Which is to say: sponsoring awards. There are annual awards for entries in categories of paper, journal article, dissertation, and book – all for work in state policy. And then, there are awards for more “enduring contributions” in analysis of a broader, national political goings-on. Lynda Powell’s The Influence of Campaign Contributions […]

← Previous Entries