BiblioVault

Across the Color Line: Reporting 25 Years in Black Cincinnati
Mark Curnutte
University of Cincinnati Press, 2019
Library of Congress F499.C59 | Dewey Decimal 305.896073077178

Across the Color Line: Reporting 25 Years in Black Cincinnati presents newspaper reporter Mark Curnutte’s stories published in The Cincinnati Enquirer over a twenty-five-year period beginning in 1993. With hard-won insights gained from years of community reporting, Curnutte describes experiences of African-Americans living in Cincinnati through individual and neighborhood profiles, explorations of community institutions, historical perspectives, and issue stories. The anthology tells a sweeping narrative of a city suffering and maturing through turn-of-the-century racial growing pains and increased racial sophistication and diversity. These stories are complimented by excerpts from Curnutte’s personal journal, providing his reflection on his role as a white man and reporter making the intentional decision to work and live across the color line.

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American Values, Religious Voices: 100 Days. 100 Letters
Andrea L. Weiss and Lisa M. Weinberger
University of Cincinnati Press, 2018
Library of Congress BL2525.A547 2018 | Dewey Decimal 200.973

In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, many Americans questioned how to respond to the results and the deep divisions in our country exposed by the campaign. Many people of faith turned to their religious communities for guidance and support. Many looked for ways to take action. In November 2016, biblical scholar Andrea L. Weiss and graphic designer Lisa M. Weinberger teamed up to create an innovative response: a national nonpartisan campaign that used letters and social media to highlight core American values connected to our diverse religious traditions.

American Values, Religious Voices: 100 Days, 100 Letters is a collection of letters written by some of America’s most accomplished and thoughtful scholars of religion during the first 100 days of the Trump presidency. While the letters are addressed to the president, vice president, and members of the 115th Congress and Trump administration, they speak to a broad audience of Americans looking for wisdom and encouragement at this tumultuous time in our nation’s history.

This unique volume assembles the 100 letters, plus four new supplemental essays and many of the graphic illustrations that enhanced the campaign.

Published near the midway point of the Trump presidency, this book showcases a wide range of ancient sacred texts that pertain to our most pressing contemporary issues. At a time of great division in our country, this post-election project models how people of different backgrounds can listen to and learn from one another. The letters offer insight and inspiration, reminding us of the enduring values that make our nation great.

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Community-Academic Partnerships for Early Childhood Health
Edited by Farrah Jacquez and Lina Svedin
University of Cincinnati Press, 2019
Library of Congress RJ61 | Dewey Decimal 618.92

Community-Academic Partnerships for Early Childhood Health is the first volume in the Interdisciplinary Community-Engaged Research for Health series. In this first volume, series editors Farrah Jacquez and Lina Svedin have invited academics around the country who participated in the first cohort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJ) prestigious, innovative Interdisciplinary Research Leaders (IRL) program to share results from their efforts. These three-person teams composed of two researchers and one community partner used applied research to create measurable change in healthcare and health outcomes for young children. Spanning disciplines from public health, psychology, policy, economics, medicine, nutrition and geography, academics teamed up with community partners, including medical practitioners, nonprofit leaders, and policymakers to create action and community benefit through research, intervention, and policy development. From research on the nonmedical needs of women in the Mississippi Delta, WIC programs in Puerto Rico, and children’s advocacy in Cincinnati, Ohio, the contributors describe seven cases depicting valuable stepping stones for academic and community partners to collaborate and create a culture of health in the United States.

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Creating Culture through Health Leadership
Edited by Lina Svedin
University of Cincinnati Press, 2020
Library of Congress RA427.8 | Dewey Decimal 362.1

The challenges to health, wellness, and health equity in the United States are massive. No matter what side of the discussion health care leaders are on, insufficient mental health care, adverse childhood experiences, substance use disorders, high infant mortality rate, and declining life expectancy for women are issues that leadership can rally around. The second volume in the Interdisciplinary Community-Engaged Research for Health series explores hands-on approaches that leaders can take in their community. Creating Culture through Health Leadership focuses on the practitioner’s view of community engagement and how health care leaders can build a culture of health through community-grown solutions. Volume editor Lina Svedin invites contributors from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Leaders program to share transformative leadership skills that advance health and equity for all. Svedin’s contributors span the fields of business, technology, architecture, education, urban farming, and the arts, and represent subject matter experts, mentors, and coaches in the private, public, nonprofit, and social sectors. The volume is a collection of innovative, engaging case studies that illuminate how health care administrators and managers can collaborate to lead change within their organization, in their regional system, and throughout the nation.

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Critical Curriculum: The Impact of Service Learning in Higher Education
Michael Sharp
University of Cincinnati Press, 2020

The University of Cincinnati's most distinguished and respected colleges are busy tearing down walls and breaking out of their "silos;" these colleges "get it"—they understand that students who cross borders, students who work and train cooperatively and collaboratively, learn more and are better prepared for employment after they leave the university.

The goal of this book is to further break higher education out of its silo. It is believed that a university that nurtures symbiotic partnerships between students, faculty, and the greater community in which the university is rooted, is stronger for it.

This book highlights the complex evolution of the University of Cincinnati's Service Learning program, particularly as the program is connected to the historic Cooperative Education movement in Cincinnati (Coop program founded in 1906). This action-oriented book employs narrative inquiry and document interrogation to solicit lived experiences and stories from a variety of both campus and community stakeholders, which were then analyzed through the theory of structuration. Through detailing key watershed moments that have underscored the program’s evolution, the book reveals important additions to theory, which have implications for other service learning programs, for the field of education leadership, and for literature pertaining to campus-community organizing.

Throughout the book, the reader will encounter several types of fresh acts in the narrative, defined as something new being developed that shifts the institutional structure in some way. It is concluded that these fresh acts, continually informed by the underpinnings of Collective Impact, have positive implications for the role that higher education plays toward the community’s greater good. It is hoped that this book will strengthened the existing pool of research focused on the social structuration of campus-community connections in higher education, including how leaders may foster collaborative experiences and broadened subjectivities for all relevant stakeholders.

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Culture as Judicial Evidence: Expert Testimony in Latin America
Edited by Leila Rodriguez
University of Cincinnati Press, 2020
Library of Congress KG514.C85 2019 | Dewey Decimal 346.8067

In Latin America, as early as 1975 testimony given under oath by anthropologists has been applied in the civil law systems in a number of Latin American countries. Called peritajes antropológicos culturales, this testimony can come in the form of written affidavits and/or oral testimony. These experts build bridges of intercultural dialogue, which overcome language and cultural barriers that have historically limited equal access to justice for indigenous and ethnic people all over the word.

Culture as Judicial Evidence in Latin America summarizes the current state of this work in six countries: Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay, and lays out the challenges and dilemmas involved in the creation and use of cultural expert testimony. Organized into three sections, the book advances a framework for the use of cultural evidence, and presents readers with nine case studies based on trials in six individual countries. These countries have implemented legal reform, constitutional amendments and the adoption of international legislation to create the legal frameworks that enable this new form of legal evidence to be admissible in Latin American courts. The contributing authors are cultural anthropologists with vast experience researching the impact of cultural expert witness testimony. A forward-looking final section examines the dilemmas and challenges of this work that remain to be solved.

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Designing in Class Activities to Promote Equity and Inclusion: Strategies for Teaching
Edited by Rita Kumar
University of Cincinnati Press, 2020
Library of Congress LC191.94.E78 2021 | Dewey Decimal 378.73

According to recent research by scholar Lauren Musu-Gillette, college enrollment of traditional-aged students has increased notably in the past twenty years, with significant increases in the number of African-American and Hispanic males and Hispanic females. These enrollment trends speak to the changing demographics typically found in higher education classrooms. With these changing demographics, every student’s experience should be equally validated in the higher educational setting. Unfortunately, higher educational institutions can embody broader societal biases, with unequal practices often ingrained in certain traditions or processes of the institution.

Faculty across disciplines want to provide equitable and inclusive classrooms to support all students, but they are often overwhelmed by the breadth of content they must cover, leaving little time to address equity and inclusion in their teaching. Equity and inclusion need not be seen as extra work, but as important objectives that guide curriculum development. This book provides strategies to create a more purposeful, intentional curriculum that addresses equity and inclusion across disciplines without compromising content. Bringing together practical lesson plans and instructional options that faculty can use and adapt to deliver content in a way that is mindful of inclusion and equity, this book further extends the practical application of social justice principles.

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Digital Community Engagement: Partnering Communities with the Academy
Edited by Rebecca Wingo, Jason Heppler, and Paul Schadewald
University of Cincinnati Press, 2020
Library of Congress HM851 | Dewey Decimal 303.4833

How have university scholars across a variety of disciplines navigated the co-creative and collaborative relationships involving community partners? How has the addition of digital components changed the way information can be communicated to the intended audience? Through digital projects, traditional academic silos have given way to community-based partnerships which open research, storytelling, and curation to wide array of contributors from civic engagement professionals, librarians, archivists, technology personnel, local citizens, and academics. The collaborative process may push your comfort zone and make you grapple with your roll of storytelling but as the authors of the last chapter say, “You can’t make ketchup without smashing a few tomatoes.”

Digital projects can empower communities through collaboration and create new primary sources, collapse barriers, and spark new dialogue. Digital Community Engagement “lifts the hood” and presents nine examples of digital collaborations from constructing a public response to police violence, to creating digital stories of homelessness, to young activists united around local people in the Deep South to build a grassroots movement for social change.

Wingo, Heppler and Schadewald bring together cutting-edge campus-community partnerships with a focus on digital projects. The case studies, authored by academics and their community partners, explore models for digital community engagement that leverage new media through reciprocal partnerships. The contributions to this volume stand at the crossroads of digital humanities, public history, and community

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Exploring the Architecture of Place in America’s Farmers Markets
Kathryn Clarke Albright
University of Cincinnati Press, 2020
Library of Congress NA9068.A43 2020 | Dewey Decimal 720.103

Exploring the Architecture of Place in America's Farmers Markets explores the elusive architectural states of these beloved community-gathering places. From classic market buildings such as Findlay Market in Cincinnati, to open-air pavilions in Durham North Carolina and pop-up canopy markets in Staunton, Virginia, the country currently has over 8,700 seasonal and year-round farmers markets.

Architect, teacher, and founder of the Friends of the Farmers Market, Katheryn Clarke Albright combines historically informed architectural observation with interview material and images drawn from conversations with farmers, vendors, market managers and shoppers.

Using eight scales of interaction and interface, Albright presents in-depth case studies to demonstrate how architectural elements and spatial conditions foster social and economic exchange between vendors, shoppers, and the community at large. Albright looks ahead to an emerging typology—the mobile market—bringing local farmers and healthy foods to underserved neighborhoods.

The impact farmers markets make on their local communities inspires place-making, improves the local economy, and preserves rural livelihoods. Developed organically and distinctively out of the space they occupy, these markets create and revitalize communities as rich as the produce they sell.

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From the Temple of Zeus to the Hyperloop: University of Cincinnati Stories
Edited by Greg Hand
University of Cincinnati Press, 2018
Library of Congress LD983.F46 2018 | Dewey Decimal 378.77178

As the University of Cincinnati celebrates its bicentennial, students, faculty, staff, and alumni look back on the university’s remarkable past and its progression as a pioneer in higher education. From the Temple of Zeus to the Hyperloop: University of Cincinnati Stories reflects the breadth and diversity of the University of Cincinnati over its rich and eventful history, emphasizing just what makes UC’s history so special and inspiring—its stories.

Former Ohio Governor Bob Taft remembers his law school days in a building named for his great-grandfather. Broadway star Faith Prince recalls her musical theater start at UC’s College-Conservatory of Music. More than thirty-five contributors provide their own unique perceptions of this extraordinary urban university. Some are well-known names like Taft and Prince, while others are current students and alumni whose education and futures were profoundly shaped by memorable experiences connected to UC. Clark Beck recounts the struggles he initially faced upon coming to UC and offers readers an inspiring story of perseverance and tenacity. Sid Thatham gives a captivating tale of his move from India and the home base he made in Cincinnati with UC graduate students. Other contributors celebrate the relationships, such as that between the strong-willed duo of Jack Rouse and Helen Laird, that give UC its storied past.

In From the Temple of Zeus to the Hyperloop, anyone can find a person, whether it be the trailblazing Lucy Braun or the celebrated Carl Blegen, or a place, be it the changing landscape of Ludlow Avenue or the new frontier for the DAAP College, to which he or she can relate. Such figures, places, and stories present a sampling of the UC experience. From the Temple of Zeus to the Hyperloop offers readers an inside look at the many lives that have influenced UC and the opportunity to envision how their own stories can be a part of its future.

Just as Hand titles his introduction, “a dedicated crew of bearcats assembled this book,” the University of Cincinnati and its story continue to be a community effort, deeply intertwined with the lives of the people who have made up the university and its two-hundred years.

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Future of Work: Designing the Creative Space of Tomorrow
University of Cincinnati School of Architecture and Design
University of Cincinnati Press, 2019

"Hide Me, O Surrounding Verdure": Identity and Resistance in the Dutch Guianas, 1763-1823
David Jamison
University of Cincinnati Press, 2019

"Hide Me, O Surrounding Verdure" describes the many ways that African peoples enslaved by the Dutch colonial regime in Suriname and Guyana struggled for personal autonomy and social mobility. By manipulating identity categories and utilizing grassroots communication networks, Dutch slaves resisted colonial oppression; sometimes by rejecting forms of Western cultural imperialism, and often by outright escaping its confines to construct autonomous spaces in the refuge of the natural world.

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In Service to the City: A History of the University of Cincinnati
David Stradling
University of Cincinnati Press, 2018
Library of Congress LD983.S87 2018 | Dewey Decimal 378.77178

With roots reaching back to 1819, the University of Cincinnati has long been at the frontier of higher education in the Ohio Valley. While it has aspired to fulfill its mission to serve the public good, some residents, particularly those living near campus, have wondered how university decisions benefited the city at large. Long a municipal university, UC struggled to serve a broad diverse population, even as Cincinnati itself struggled in the late twentieth century. Through it all, the university has maintained its importance to the city and its alumni.

In Service to the City: A History of the University of Cincinnati, the first history of the university written in over fifty years, explores the evolving, complex relationship between UC and the city of Cincinnati. In Service to the City casts an unvarnished lens on the details of student demographics, faculty research, curricular changes, and athletic controversy to challenges associated with campus architecture and planning, neighborhood relations, regional and national consequences of urban decline, and the roles of municipal, state, and federal governments within American higher education.

Urban, environmental historian David Stradling traces UC’s story through starts and stops, growth and contraction. In the 1870s the institution began its transformation into a comprehensive, municipal university located in America’s thriving heartland. Expansion continued through mergers with Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and Cincinnati Medical College, among others. In 1977, University President Warren Bennis and Governor Jim Rhodes signed papers ending UC’s municipal status while securing its future as part of the state university system of Ohio.

UC maintains its strong relationship with Cincinnati, pioneering countless community and regionally oriented programs, from its expanding co-op education system, the first in the nation, to the Niehoff Urban Studio. Stradling describes the social and political activism of UC students and faculty—front and center in the civil rights and women’s rights movements, as well as the public health and environmental movements. Often they struggled to change the culture within their own institution, which at times appeared conservative or reactionary.

Drawing on archival research, Stradling recounts in lively prose and through dozens of illustrations, two-hundred years of UC history, setting the story in the context of changes within higher education in the United States.
With the cost of higher education on the minds of legislators and the public, questions first posed by Daniel Drake in 1819 upon the founding of Cincinnati College remain relevant. Who should the college serve? What and how should students learn? How can we pay for it? In Service to the City encourages readers to consider how the University of Cincinnati—with a history so entwined with its city—can balance its urban-serving tradition with its aspiration to be a leader global research university.

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Into the Nest: Futures of Affordable Housing
Edited by the University of Cincinnati School of Architecture and Interior Design
University of Cincinnati Press, 2019

Access to affordable housing is one of the most pressing issues facing cities worldwide, as populations grow and real estate prices rise. But the question of what we mean by the term “affordable housing” is far from clear. Designers shy away from the concept, intimidated by the possibility of cheap materials or fast-paced designs, even as potential homeowners are drawn to the promise of elegance and beauty within a tight budget. Into the Nest brings together seventeen architecture students at the University of Cincinnati/DAAP to collaborate with NEWST, a not-for-profit developer that wanted to address the problem of affordable housing in the neighborhood of Northside Cincinnati. Together, they matched up demographic research combined with multiple design iterations to help move toward a definition of affordable housing that works for everyone and points a way toward future design and development.

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Jim Crow Sociology: The Black and Southern Roots of American Sociology
Earl Wright
University of Cincinnati Press, 2020
Library of Congress HM477.U6W753 2020 | Dewey Decimal 301.0973

Jim Crow Sociology: The Black and Southern Roots of American Sociology is an extraordinary new volume that examines the origin, development, and significance of Black Sociology through the accomplishments of early African American sociologists at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) such as Atlanta University, Tuskegee Institute, Fisk University, and Howard University. Black Sociology is a concept that weaponizes the discipline for that which is “right and good” and prioritizes scholar-activist inspired research directed at impacting real world conditions of African Americans.

Guided by this approach, this book debunks the idea that the sociology practiced by early African Americans does not exemplify scholarly excellence. Instead, Earl Wright demonstrates that Tuskegee Institute, under the leadership of Booker T. Washington, established the first applied program of rural sociology. Fisk University, first under the guidance of George Edmund Haynes then Charles S. Johnson, developed one of the earliest and most impactful programs of applied urban sociology. Wright extends our understanding of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Atlanta Sociological Laboratory with an articulation of the contributions of women to the first American school of sociology. Jim Crow Sociology forces contemporary scholars to grapple with who are and who are not included in the disciplinary canon. Specifically, this book forces us to ask why early African American sociologists and HBCUs are not canonized. What makes this book most consequential is that it provides evidence supporting the proposition that sociology began in earnest in the United States as a Black and southern enterprise.

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Leaving a Legacy: Lessons from the Writings of Daniel Drake
Philip Diller
University of Cincinnati Press, 2019
Library of Congress R119.D55 2019 | Dewey Decimal 808.06661

In the midst of a fast-paced profession, it is increasingly a challenge to pause and reflect on where a person’s life is heading. All can feel overwhelming. In these moments, when nothing seems stable, it can be instructive to pause and study individuals from previous generations who lived fully and left a lasting legacy. To find valuable lessons and perspective on the present, author Dr. Phillip Diller has often turned to man, citizen, writer, educator, and physician, Dr. Daniel Drake, who lived from 1785-1852.

Leaving a Legacy: Lessons from the Writings of Daniel Drake is a selective collection of excerpts from the vast writings from the nineteenth-century doctor and medical pioneer Daniel Drake. From Drake’s life, documented here in his own words from excerpts of lectures, personal journal entries, presentations, speeches, books, and letters to his children, readers learn about the scope of his accomplishments in medicine, contributions to his community, and dedication to his family. Diller goes beyond biography to contextualize Drake’s life choices and what made him a role model for today’s physicians. Diller selected one hundred and eighty thematically arranged excerpts, which he paired with original reflection questions to guide the reader through thought-provoking prompts. In doing so, Diller presents the lessons from Drake’s remarkable life and work as a guide for others who wish to build an enduring legacy.

Designed to appeal to early and mid-career professionals, particularly those in the medical field, Drake and Diller offer readers a way to enhance life with small actions that can leave a legacy in any community—professional or personal. Documented previously as a man whose life was remarkable for the breadth and depth of his professional accomplishments, Drake’s countless contributions are showcased here to demonstrate the impact he truly had in his time and for generations to come. Engaging with Drake and Diller’s thoughtful and principled voices provides a lasting perspective for those trying to find their purpose in the present.

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Let’s Be Boldly Bearcat
Kimberlee Dobbs
University of Cincinnati Press, 2019

In Let’s Be Boldly Bearcat, the University of Cincinnati bearcat mascot takes young readers on a visual tour of the University of Cincinnati’s campus, pausing at each of the fourteen colleges and regional campuses, to highlight flagship university programs and activities. Readers are invited to answer reflection questions found at the end of the book and to draw pictures to share their ideas about how they would help, teach, build, and keep healthy. A child friendly campus map and a Bearcat coloring activity page complete the book, making this an ideal gift for Cincinnati alumni to share with their young friends and family.

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Maria Longworth Storer: From Music and Art to Popes and Presidents
Constance J. Moore and Nancy M. Broermann
University of Cincinnati Press, 2019
Library of Congress E748.S884M66 2018 | Dewey Decimal 738.092

While the adage may go, “Behind every great man is a great woman,” the story of Maria Longworth Storer necessitates a new adage—at the front of every great city is a great woman. After being shunted into the biographies and history books of other people, Longworth Storer is now finally given center stage on the one hundred and seventieth anniversary of her birth.

Maria Longworth Storer: From Music and Art to Popes and Presidents is the most comprehensive biography of this one of a kind Cincinnatian. Known as the founder of the first female-run manufacturing company in the United States, Rookwood Pottery, Longworth Storer was passionate about women’s rights, her city, and issues of poverty and the arts. She owned Rookwood pottery for nine years, and then transferred ownership after earning recognition at the Exhibition of American Art Industry in Philadelphia and receiving a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Aside from her success with Rookwood, Longworth Storer was central to making the Queen City the major cultural landmark it is today. Although the rest of her life was no less remarkable as the wife of notorious diplomat Bellamy Storer, later embroiled in the famous Roosevelt-Storer scandal, little has been written about her contributions and exploits in diplomatic relations and her powerful influence on turn-of-the-twentieth-century political leaders.

Featuring new archival research, and never before seen photos of the Storer family, authors Constance J. Moore and Nancy M. Broermann have compiled a portrait of Maria Longworth Storer that is rich in detail, fitting to both the wide, often eclectic, breadth of Longworth Storer’s projects, and to the depth of her impact on leaders from Washington D.C. to Europe.

Moving through major moments in both American and Cincinnati history, and intersecting with significant historical figures including Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, Moore and Broermann expose the broader historical narrative of Longworth Storer’s life without letting her unique spirit and individual accomplishments become overshadowed by them.

Through thoughtful, balanced narrative, readers get to know a remarkable woman whose fascinating and dramatic life as a political figure, women’s rights advocate, and patron of the arts has had a long lasting legacy on the Queen City and the Shaping of our nation’s diplomatic policies.

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Rethinking America's Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection
Edited by Tim Gruenewald
University of Cincinnati Press, 2019
Library of Congress N6538.N5R48 2018 | Dewey Decimal 700.8996073

While visitors to art and history museums may be there to simply enjoy the curated objects, the question of what is included (and excluded) in these collections and who has the power over this process echoes the struggle for inclusion that is so central to the African American experience. Since its inception, the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection® has played an important role in this struggle, seeking out objects that give voice to previously excluded experiences, and providing an alternative to the limits of institutional collections.

Among the first scholarly books dedicated to a private African American collection, Rethinking America’s Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection both chronicles the reach of this important cultural collection and contributes to its project by sharing selected objects and stories with a broader audience. Essays range in subject from iconic African American artists, such as Loïs Mailou Jones and Beauford Delaney, to important historical figures such as Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King, to individuals whose experiences might be lost to history but for the found objects that preserve their stories. Rethinking America’s Past demonstrates how the African American story, from slavery through the present, is represented and can be actively remembered through the act of collecting.

Rethinking America’s Past will appeal to audiences interested in African American history as well as art history, but its real power is in linking the two, showing how important collections are in constructing and repairing historical narratives, and how in the words of editor Tim Gruenewald, “Collecting overlooked aspects of our past and sharing such collections enables a deeper understanding of the present moment, and facilitates a more inclusive and just future.”

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See No Evil: New Zealand’s Betrayal of the People of West Papua
Maire Leadbeater
University of Cincinnati Press, 2018
Library of Congress DU744.5.L43 2018 | Dewey Decimal 995.103

See No Evil issues a challenge to New Zealanders. The book begins by relating the little-known history of West Papua, but its focus is on the impact of New Zealand’s foreign policy on the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants. In the 1950s New Zealand supported self-determination for the former Dutch colony, but in 1962 opted to back Indonesia as it took over the territory. Delving deep into historical government archives, many of them obtained under the Official Information Act, this meticulously researched book uncovers the untold story of New Zealand’s unprincipled and often hypocritical diplomacy. The consequences of repressive Indonesian rule have been tragic for the West Papuan people, who are experiencing ‘slow genocide’. West Papua remains largely closed to foreign journalists, but its story is now beginning to be heard. A growing number of Pacific Island nations are calling for change, but so far New Zealand has opted for caution and collusion to preserve a ‘business as usual’ relationship with Indonesia.

See No Evil is a shocking account by one of New Zealand’s most respected authors on peace and Pacific issues, issuing a powerful call for a just and permanent solution – self-determination – for the people of West Papua.

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Social Media, Social Justice and the Political Economy of Online Networks
Jeffrey Layne Blevins and James Jaehoon Lee
University of Cincinnati Press, 2021

While social network analyses often demonstrate the usefulness of social media networks to affective publics and otherwise marginalized social justice groups, this book explores the domination and manipulation of social networks by more powerful political groups. Jeffrey Layne Blevins and James Lee look at the ways in which social media conversations about race turn politically charged, and in many cases, ugly. Studies show that social media is an important venue for news and political information, while focusing national attention on racially involved issues. Perhaps less understood, however, is the effective quality of this discourse, and its connection to popular politics, especially when Twitter trolls and social media mobs go on the attack.

Taking on prominent case studies from the past few years, including the Ferguson protests and the Black Lives Matter movement, the 2016 presidential election, and the rise of fake news, this volume presents data visualization sets alongside careful scholarly analysis. The resulting volume provides new insight into social media, legacy news, and social justice.

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The Speaking Stone: Stories Cemeteries Tell
Michael Griffith
University of Cincinnati Press, 2021
Library of Congress F499.C562G75 2021 | Dewey Decimal 977.17800222

The Speaking Stone: Stories Cemeteries Tell is a literary love letter to the joys of wandering graveyards. While working on a novel, author and longtime Cincinnati resident Michael Griffith starts visiting Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum, the nation’s third-largest cemetery. Soon he’s taking almost daily jaunts, following curiosity and accident wherever they lead. The result is this fascinating collection of essays that emerge from chance encounters with an interesting headstone, odd epitaph, unusual name, or quirk of memory. Researching obituaries, newspaper clippings, and family legacies, Griffith uncovers stories of race, feminism, art, and death.

Rather than sticking to the cemetery’s most famous, or infamous, graves, Griffith stays true to the principle of ramble and incidental discovery. The result is an eclectic group of subjects, ranging from well-known figures like the feminist icon and freethinker Fanny Wright to those much less celebrated— a spiritual medium, a temperance advocate, a young heiress who died under mysterious circumstances. Nearly ninety photos add dimension and often an element of playfulness.

The Speaking Stone examines what endures and what does not, reflecting on the vanity and poignancy of our attempt to leave monuments that last. In doing so, it beautifully weaves connections born out of the storyteller’s inquisitive mind.

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Surveying in Early America: The Point of Beginning, An Illustrated History
Dan Patterson and Clinton Terry
University of Cincinnati Press, 2020
Library of Congress TA521.P35 2020 | Dewey Decimal 526.9097309033

Living history is one of the most popular, and accessible ways for people of all ages to step back in time. From Colonial Williamsburg, to Mount Vernon, to signs along roadways identifying George Washington stopping points, living history continues to be an accessible way to learn about cultural, historical and political practice in early America.

In Surveying Early America: The Point of Beginning, An Illustrated History, award-winning photographer Dan Patterson and American historian Clinton Terry vividly and succinctly unpack the profession of surveying during the eighteenth century. Over 100 full color photographs exclusively shot for the book depict authentic and historically accurate reproductions of techniques and tools through the use of American reenactors from the Department of Geographer, which provide an interpretive look at surveying as a primary means to building the American nation.

Through the lens of Patterson’s camera and Terry’s narrative, readers see what Washington saw as he learned his trade, explored the vast American wilderness, and occasionally laid personal claim to great expanses of land. Readers are visually and intellectually immersed in the historically accurate details of the surveying practices of George Washington, Virginia’s first surveyor and his team.

Step-by-step, readers learn how early America, in particular the east to the Ohio River Valley was initially divided and documented. Terry characterizes both the profession and methods of land measurement and surveying in British colonial North America—techniques that did not substantially change until the invention of GPS technology 200 years later. Along the way Terry details the various tools of the trade early surveyors used.

Photographer Dan Patterson, working with the Department of the Geographer, restages Washington’s actual expeditions during his time with the Geographers to the Army, the technical staff department consisting of American and French soldiers, whose work in the field supported the Continental Army. Patterson brilliantly displays the processes and instruments Washington used 260 years ago.

Together Ohio based photographer and author team up to create a single story, expanding the understanding of primary source material for general readers and those with a passion for early American history.

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Surviving the Americas: Garifuna Persistence from Nicaragua to New York City
Serena Cosgrove, José Idiáquez, Leonard Joseph Bent, and Andrew Gorvetzian
University of Cincinnati Press, 2020
Library of Congress F1505.2.C3C67 2020 | Dewey Decimal 305.8969720747

The Garifuna are a Central American, Afro-Indigenous people descended from shipwrecked West Africans and local Indigenous groups on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. For over two centuries, the Garifuna have experienced oppression, exile, and continued diaspora that has stretched their communities to Honduras, Belize, and beyond. However, little has been written about the experiences of the Garifuna in Nicaragua, a community of about 5,000 who live primarily on the Caribbean coast of the country.

In Surviving the Americas, Serena Cosgrove, José Idiáquez, Leonard Joseph Bent, and Andrew Gorvetzian shed light on what it means to be Garifuna today, particularly in Nicaragua. Their research includes over nine months of fieldwork in Garifuna communities in the Pearl Lagoon on the southern Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and in New York City. The resulting ethnography illustrates the unique social issues of the Nicaraguan Garifuna and how their culture, traditions, and reverence for their ancestors continues to persist.

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These Oppressions Won’t Cease: An Anthology of the Political Thought of the Cape Khoesan, 1777-1879
Robert Ross
University of Cincinnati Press, 2018
Library of Congress DT1768.K56R67 2018 | Dewey Decimal 968.7004961

The Khoesan were the first people in Africa to undergo the rigors of European colonization. By the early nineteenth century, they had largely been brought under colonial rule, dispossessed of their land and stock, and forced to work as laborers for farmers of European descent. Nevertheless, a portion of them were able to regain a degree of freedom and maintain their independence by taking refuge in the mission stations of the Western and Eastern Cape, most notably in the Kat River valley. Through petitions, speeches at meetings, letters to the newspapers and correspondence between themselves, the Cape Khoesan articulated a continuous critique of the oppressions of colonialism, always stressing the need for equality before the law, as well as their opposition to attempts to limit their freedom of movement through vagrancy legislation and related measures. This was accompanied by a well-grounded distrust of the British settlers in the Eastern Cape and a concomitant hope, rarely realized, in the benevolence of the British government in London. Comprising 98 texts, These Oppressions Won’t Cease – was an utterance expressed by Willem Uithaalder, commander of Khoe rebel forces in the war of 1850-53 – contains the essential documents of Khoesan political thought in the nineteenth century.

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