BiblioVault

Ottoman Izmir

The Rise of a Cosmopolitan Port, 1840-1880

Sibel Zandi-Sayek

University of Minnesota Press, 2011

Between 1840 and 1880, the Eastern Mediterranean port of Izmir (Smyrna) underwent unprecedented change. A modern harbor that welcomed international steamships and new railway lines that transported a cornucopia of products transformed the physical city. Migrants, seasonal workers, and transient sailors thronged into an already diverse metropolis, helping to double the population to 200,000. Simultaneously, Ottoman officials and enterprising citizens vied to control and reform the city’s administrative and legal institutions.

Ottoman Izmir examines how urban space, institutional structures, and everyday practices shaped one another in the thriving seaport of Izmir during a volatile period of growth. Sibel Zandi-Sayek investigates a variety of urban actors—Muslims and non-Muslims, Ottomans and Europeans, newcomers and native residents, merchants, investors, civil servants, and press reporters—who were actively engaged in restructuring the city. Concentrating on the workings of urban committees and on laws and policies that were written, rewritten, but never fully implemented, Zandi-Sayek exposes how modern interventions sought to impose clear-cut concepts of public and private, safety and danger, and hygiene on a city that previously had a wide range of customary regulations.

Ottoman Izmir shows how Izmir’s various stakeholders contested its built environment. In so doing, it offers a new view of the dynamics of urban modernization.

[more]

In Their Own Words

Letters from Norwegian Immigrants

Solveig. Zempel

University of Minnesota Press, 1991

For most Norwegians in the nineteenth century, America was a remote and exotic place until the first immigrants began to write home. Their letters were among the most valuable, accessible, and reliable sources of information about the new world and the journey to it. For many immigrants, writing letters home was their most cherished opportunity to communicate their thoughts and feelings in their native language. Through vivid translations of letters written to family and friends between 1870 and 1945, In Their Own Words traces the stories of nine Norwegian immigrants: farmer, fisherman, gold miner, politician, unmarried mother, housewife, businessman, railroad worker, contractor. Their common bond was the experience of immigration and acculturation, but their individual experiences were manifested in a wide variety of forms. Solveig Zempel has thoughtfully selected and translated letters rich in personal description and observation to present each writer's subjective view of historical events. Often focusing on the minutiae of daily life and the feelings of the individual immigrant, the letters form a complex, intimate, and colorful mosaic of the immigrant world. "Zempel has done us a service by choosing letters that are, first of all, of interest in themselves and, second, that must make us think again about the broad brush with which we habitually paint immigrant life." Scandinavian Studies "Zempel's letters cover a wide range of experiences from 1870 to 1945. In letters to family friends, nine immigrants ranging from a teacher to a railroad worker, an unmarried mother to a politician, recounted their experiences of immigration and community-building during a period of mass migration to this country. The letter writers corresponded from various regions, from both cities and farms about their successes in America; about such mundane matters as the weather, neighbors, and food; about their desire for Ibsen's new book or a visit home for Christmas. Such letters provide invaluable documentation of everyday life." The Annals of Iowa "Zempel has performed a valuable service for students of American immigration history. This is an eminently readable, entertaining and excellent book. Zempel uses the letters of nine Norwegian immigrants found in archives from St. Paul, Minnesota to Stavanger, Bergen, and Kristiansand, Norway, to superbly depict not only their singular experiences of living, working, marrying, and raising a family but to also convey their sadness, loneliness, joy and hope." Journal of the West "The variety and scope of the letters from America to Norway make for fascinating reading; they also provide informative insights into the minds and thoughts of new settlers on American soil. The reader will come away from this volume with a deepened awareness of the importance of 'America letters' in understanding the American experience. Readers will feel close to these writers, engaged as they are in private communications with family members and friends they left behind in the homeland." MELUS "The variety of occupations, backgrounds, and experiences described in the letters make the book a valuable contribution to the understanding of the Norwegian immigrant experience. The thread that weaves all of the letters together is the reaction of each immigrant to his or her new environment." Journal of American Ethnic History "These carefully selected letters are bountiful, alive, and touch upon historical events as well as the humdrum experiences of daily life. The insight gained from the accounts reveals valuable information about the new world." School Library Journal Solveig Zempel is chair of the Norwegian Department at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota

[more]

Red Lights

The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China

Tiantian Zheng

University of Minnesota Press, 2009

In China today, sex work cannot be untangled from the phenomenon of rural-urban migration, the entertainment industry, and state power. In Red Lights, Tiantian Zheng highlights the urban karaoke bar as the locus at which these three factors intersect and provides a rich account of the lives of karaoke hostesses—a career whose name disguises the sex work and minimizes the surprising influence these women often have as power brokers.

Zheng embarked on two years of intensely embedded ethnographic fieldwork in her birthplace, Dalian, a large northeastern Chinese seaport of over six million people. During this time, Zheng lived and worked with a group of hostesses in a karaoke bar, facing many of the same dangers that they did and forming strong, intimate bonds with them. The result is an especially engaging, moving story of young, rural women struggling to find meaning, develop a modern and autonomous identity, and, ultimately, survive within an oppressively patriarchal state system.

Moving from her case studies to broader theories of sex, gender, and power, Zheng connects a growth in capitalist entrepreneurialism to the emergence of an urban sex industry, brilliantly illuminating the ways in which hostesses, their clients, and the state are mutually created in postsocialist China.

[more]

Art for Daily Living

The Story of the Owatonna Art Education Project

Edwin Ziegfeld

University of Minnesota Press, 1944

Art for Daily Living was first published in 1944. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.Art education has faced two great crises in one decade–first the depression and now the war. Out of the chaos and destruction of the early 1930’s came a critical evaluation of educational practices, which challenged art as it was being taught in the schools. the Owatonna Art Education Project was developed to help evolve a sound art education program that could justify itself educationally and financially as an indispensable part of education.Believing that art plays an integral part in the life of every human being, the late Melvin E. Haggerty, dean of the College of Education and the University of Minnesota, obtained a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to develop a new approach to the teaching of art in the public schools–and approach based on the study of a typical Midwestern community and its use of art in everyday living.

[more]

After The Fire

A Writer Finds His Place

Paul Zimmer

University of Minnesota Press, 2002

Practicing Cooperation

Mutual Aid beyond Capitalism

Andrew Zitcer

University of Minnesota Press, 2021

A powerful new understanding of cooperation as an antidote to alienation and inequality

From the crises of racial inequity and capitalism that inspired the Black Lives Matter movement and the Green New Deal to the coronavirus pandemic, stories of mutual aid have shown that, though cooperation is variegated and ever changing, it is also a form of economic solidarity that can help weather contemporary social and economic crises. Addressing this theme, Practicing Cooperation delivers a trenchant and timely argument that the way to a more just and equitable society lies in the widespread adoption of cooperative practices. But what renders cooperation ethical, effective, and sustainable?

Providing a new conceptual framework for cooperation as a form of social practice, Practicing Cooperation describes and critiques three U.S.-based cooperatives: a pair of co-op grocers in Philadelphia, each adjusting to recent growth and renewal; a federation of two hundred low-cost community acupuncture clinics throughout the United States, banded together as a cooperative of practitioners and patients; and a collectively managed Philadelphia experimental dance company, founded in the early 1990s and still going strong. Through these case studies, Andrew Zitcer illuminates the range of activities that make contemporary cooperatives successful: dedicated practitioners, a commitment to inclusion, and ongoing critical reflection. In so doing he asserts that economic and social cooperation must be examined, critiqued, and implemented on multiple scales if it is to combat the pervasiveness of competitive individualism.

Practicing Cooperation is grounded in the voices of practitioners and the result is a clear-eyed look at the lived experience of cooperators from different parts of the economy and a guidebook for people on the potential of this way of life for the pursuit of justice and fairness.

[more]

Thicker Than Blood

How Racial Statistics Lie

Tukufu Zuberi

University of Minnesota Press, 2003

A clear explanation and provocative look at the impact of new technologies on world society. In our complex and multicultural society, racial identity is often as much a matter of family background, economic opportunity, and geographic location as it is determined by skin color or hair texture. And yet study after study is released and reported in the media regarding African American test scores, Asian American social mobility, and the white domination of our political institutions. In short, there is a fundamental disconnect between the nuanced understanding many people have of race and the ways it is studied and quantified by researchers. In this timely and hard-hitting volume, Tukufu Zuberi offers a concise account of the historical connections between the development of the idea of race and the birth of social statistics. Zuberi describes the ways race-differentiated data is misinterpreted in the social sciences and asks essential questions about the ways racial statistics are used: What is the value of knowing the income disparities or differences in crime and incarceration rates, differences in test scores, infant mortality rates, abortion frequencies, or choices of sexual partner between different racial groups? When these data are available, what should the principles be guiding their dissemination, interpretation, and analysis? How does the availability of this information shape public discourse, alter scientific research agendas, inform political decision making, and ultimately influence the very social meaning of racial difference? When statistics are interpreted in a racist manner, no matter how inadvertent the racism may be, the public is exposed to seemingly neutral information that in its effect is anything but neutral. Zuberi argues that statistical analysis can and must be deracialized, and that this deracialization is essential to the goal of achieving social justice for all. He concludes by putting forward a principle of racially conscious social justice, offering an incendiary and necessary correction to the inaccuracies that have plagued this topic at the center of American life. "Zuberi, who was named one of Philadelphia's 76 smartest people by Philadelphia Magazine, has written a brilliant new book, Thicker Than Blood. One of the most powerful claims of the book is that instead of being a fixed biological reality, race is instead a socially produced phenomenon. His point is to show just how vicious-especially through the use of statistics-the notion of race has been when it has been employed to protect the interest of those in power (whites), especially those who say that because race does not exist, racism is not real." Michael Eric Dyson in The Chicago Sun-Times "A call to action and, Zuberi hopes, a precursor to a conversation about the real meaning of race, ethnicity, and political power in America." Time Magazine "Tukufu Zuberi's critical assessment of the analysis of racial data in Thicker Than Blood is a tour de force. His discussion and evaluation of the use of racial statistics in historical and cross-cultural contexts is original and important. I strongly feel that all students and scholars in the social sciences should read this thoughtful book." William Julius Wilson Tukufu Zuberi is professor of sociology and director of the African Census Analysis Project at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (1995).

[more]

Oral Poetry

An Introduction

Paul Zumthor

University of Minnesota Press, 1990

Curiosity and Power

The Politics of Inquiry

Perry Zurn

University of Minnesota Press, 2021

A trailblazing exploration of the political stakes of curiosity

Curiosity is political. Who is curious, when, and how reflects the social values and power structures of a given society. In Curiosity and Power, Perry Zurn explores the political philosophy of curiosity, staking the groundbreaking claim that it is a social force—the heartbeat of political resistance and a critical factor in social justice. He argues that the very scaffolding of curiosity is the product of political architectures, and exploring these values and architectures is crucial if we are to better understand, and more ethically navigate, the struggle over inquiry in an unequal world.

Curiosity and Power explores curiosity through the lens of political philosophy—weaving in Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida in doing so—and the experience of political marginalization, demonstrating that curiosity is implicated equally in the maintenance of societies and in their transformation. Curiosity plays as central a role in establishing social institutions and fields of inquiry as it does in their deconstruction and in building new forms of political community. Understanding curiosity is critical to understanding politics, and understanding politics is critical to understanding curiosity.

Drawing not only on philosophy and political theory but also on feminist theory, race theory, disability studies, and trans studies, Curiosity and Power tracks curiosity in the structures of political marginalization and resistance—from the Civil Rights Movement to building better social relationships. Curiosity and Power insists that the power of curiosity be recognized and engaged responsibly.

[more]

Curiosity Studies

A New Ecology of Knowledge

Perry Zurn

University of Minnesota Press, 2020

The first English-language collection to establish curiosity studies as a unique field

From science and technology to business and education, curiosity is often taken for granted as an unquestioned good. And yet, few people can define curiosity. Curiosity Studies marshals scholars from more than a dozen fields not only to define curiosity but also to grapple with its ethics as well as its role in technological advancement and global citizenship. While intriguing research on curiosity has occurred in numerous disciplines for decades, no rigorously cross-disciplinary study has existed—until now.

Curiosity Studies stages an interdisciplinary conversation about what curiosity is and what resources it holds for human and ecological flourishing. These engaging essays are integrated into four clusters: scientific inquiry, educational practice, social relations, and transformative power. By exploring curiosity through the practice of scientific inquiry, the contours of human learning, the stakes of social difference, and the potential of radical imagination, these clusters focus and reinvigorate the study of this universal but slippery phenomenon: the desire to know.

Against the assumption that curiosity is neutral, this volume insists that curiosity has a history and a political import and requires precision to define and operationalize. As various fields deepen its analysis, a new ecosystem for knowledge production can flourish, driven by real-world problems and a commitment to solve them in collaboration. By paying particular attention to pedagogy throughout, Curiosity Studies equips us to live critically and creatively in what might be called our new Age of Curiosity.

Contributors: Danielle S. Bassett, U of Pennsylvania; Barbara M. Benedict, Trinity College; Susan Engel, Williams College; Ellen K. Feder, American U; Kristina T. Johnson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Narendra Keval; Christina León, Princeton U; Tyson Lewis, U of North Texas; Amy Marvin, U of Oregon; Hilary M. Schor, U of Southern California; Seeta Sistla, Hampshire College; Heather Anne Swanson, Aarhus U.

[more]

The End of Man

A Feminist Counterapocalypse

Joanna Zylinska

University of Minnesota Press, 2018

Debugging the Anthropocene’s insistence on apocalyptic tropes

Where the Anthropocene has become linked to an apocalyptic narrative, and where this narrative carries a widespread escapist belief that salvation will come from a supernatural elsewhere, Joanna Zylinska has a different take. The End of Man rethinks the prophecy of the end of humans, interrogating the rise in populism around the world and offering an ethical vision of a “feminist counterapocalypse,” which challenges many of the masculinist and technicist solutions to our planetary crises. The book is accompanied by a short photo-film, Exit Man, which ultimately asks: If unbridled progress is no longer an option, what kinds of coexistences and collaborations do we create in its aftermath?

Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

[more]