Month: June 2012

Girls and Dolls: A Note on Images from the Latest Issue of Girlhood Studies

One of Mandrona's dolls, made when she was 8.

Most of my work deals with text, so it was a bit of a treat when I opened up the files for the latest Girlhood Studies and found them chock full of images of dolls. This journal covers many themes related to the challenges and dangers facing girls all over the world – it’s always such a pleasure to work on but I was particularly excited to see an issue that also speaks to the creative and serious play of girlhood. Dolls, needless to say, are cultural artefacts and reflect the society that makes them as well as the girls who play with them: an American Girl doll capturing an immigrant Jewish girlhood essentially whitewashed of tenements and the memory of pogroms; nineteenth-century paper dolls embodying both moral tales and fashion plates; Barbie and her Dream House reflecting the dimensions of modern architecture. All three of these examples are mediated by commercial culture and present tensions between cultural constructs and individual play. Continue reading “Girls and Dolls: A Note on Images from the Latest Issue of Girlhood Studies” →

Get to Know Berghahn- Ben Parker

Get to Know Berghahn is a recurring interview feature that introduces the hardworking people behind the scenes at Berghahn. This week’s subject is Publicity and Marketing Executive Ben Parker.

1. How long have you been at Berghahn? What did you do before that?
I have been at Berghahn for almost 2 years, it will be my second anniversary here at the end of August. Before that I was at The History Press, based in Stroud.

2. What do you read when you aren’t reading Berghahn books?
Almost exclusively poetry. Mainly contemporary poets, but also people like Yeats and Eliot. I have also started to read my own work in public, at various Oxford venues, as can be seen in the photo.

3. What’s a skill or talent you have that no one at the office knows about?
In my spare time I write poetry, and have published in a number of UK magazines, but people in the office know about that because I drag them along to the readings I do! No one in the office has seen me climb though, and that is my hobby of choice after poetry.

4. Where would you want to live if you could move the Berghahn offices anywhere? Why?
I currently live on the same road as the Berghahn office, so if the office moved my commute would be significantly longer. That said, I’d be happy somewhere warmer and with some decent rocks to climb. The middle of England is not very good for either of those things.

5. What’s your favorite thing about working at Berghahn?
Because the office is quite small I feel that I know everyone here far more than I would at a larger company, which makes the atmosphere an enjoyable one to work in, and I have a real sense of involvement with the books we publish.

Hot Off the Presses- New Book Releases

European Foundations of the Welfare State, by Franz-Xavier Kaufmann, translated by John Veit-Wilson, foreword by Anthony B. Atkinson

Fortune and the Cursed, the Sliding Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination, by Katherine Swancutt

Investigating Srebrenica: Institutions, Facts, Responsibilities, edited by Isabelle Delpla, Xavier Bougarel, and Jean-Louis Fourn

Journeys into Madness: Mapping Mental Illness in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, edited by Gemma Blackshaw and Sabine Wieber

Learning from the Children: Childhood, Identity and Culture in a Changing World, edited by Jacqueline Waldren and Ignacy-Marek Kaminski

A Lover’s Quarrel with the Past: Romance, Representation, Reading, by Ranjan Ghosh

The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama: Religion, Gender and Media in Kinshasa, by Katrien Pype

Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes: An Anthropology of Everyday Religion, edited by Samuli Schielke and Liza Debevec

The Politics of Educational Reform in the Middle East: Self and Other in Textbooks and Curricula, edited by Samira Alayan and Achim Rohde, and Sarhan Dhouib

Revisiting Feminist Approaches to Art Therapy, edited by Susan Hogan

Advice from the Editors: Turning Your Dissertation into a Manuscript

A very good friend of mine will defend her dissertation next month. The progress of said dissertation has been a topic of many conversations, and I’ve been reminded of the long haul it is to write a book-length piece of scholarship: the work, the anxiety, the lulls in motivation followed by reinvigoration, meetings with advisors, revisions, time, energy, inspiration, loss of sleep, and sheer sweat. She even said at one point, “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.” And I am reminded of this most keenly when a prospective author submits a proposal that is clearly an unrevised dissertation and I must ask whether or not the text has been revised into a book. Whether the dissertation process for this author is part of the more recent or more distant past, a first-time author is not always ready to learn that the book publishing process (from manuscript to printed tome) is approximately one and a half to two years. Don’t put away your long-distance running shoes—ever. You will always need them as a scholar and a writer. And of the long publishing process, which goes much more quickly than it seems it will at the outset, where do you begin with the dissertation? Continue reading “Advice from the Editors: Turning Your Dissertation into a Manuscript” →

Win a Copy of Michael Haneke’s Cinema: The Ethics of the Image

As the Berghahn Books blog wraps up it’s third week of existence, we’re excited to announce our first contest. To be entered to win a copy of Michael Haneke’s Cinema: The Ethics of the Image by Catherine Wheatley, follow Berghahn Books on Facebook by 5 p.m. EST Monday. We’ll select a winner at random from our new followers.

The first English-language analysis of Michael Haneke’s work, Michael Haneke’s Cinema offers a critical analysis of the Austrian director’s first eight feature films. Drawing on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Stanley Cavell, Catherine Wheatley, introduces a new way of marrying film and moral philosophy, which explicitly examines the ethics of the film viewing experience. This critically acclaimed work was shortlisted for the Best Moving Image Book by the And/Or Book Awards and the 2009 Willy Haas and was the Sight and Sound Magazine Book of the Month  in September, 2009.

Event Announcement: Book Launch for Journeys into Madness: Mapping Mental Illness in the Austro-Hungarian Empire

The latest addition to Berghahn’s Austrian and Habsburg Studies series, Journeys into Madness, co-edited by Gemma Blackshaw and Sabine Wieber, launches at the Freud Museum London on 26 June 2012. The editors, along with many of the authors, will be there to talk to members of the public about the book, and advance copies will be available to purchase at the event. Gemma’s essay for the book considers the intriguing case of the ‘mad’ Austrian writer, Peter Altenberg. The book launch is combined with the UK première of her recent documentary film collaboration with award-winning artist and filmmaker David Bickerstaff, Peter Altenberg: The Little Pocket Mirror, which introduces the life and work of this troubled man to English-speaking audiences. To find out more information, and to book a place to attend the book launch and film screening see http://www.freud.org.uk/events/74694/altenberg-the-little-pocket-mirror/. Continue reading “Event Announcement: Book Launch for Journeys into Madness: Mapping Mental Illness in the Austro-Hungarian Empire” →

Get to Know Berghahn- Kyle Perry

Get to Know Berghahn is a recurring interview feature that introduces the hardworking people behind the scenes at Berghahn. This week’s subject is Journals Assistant Kyle Perry.

1. How long have you been at Berghahn? What did you do before that?
I’ve been at my current position for about four months, and before that I was an intern for two. I graduated in May of 2011 and my only job between Skidmore College and Berghahn Books was a brief summer working in the fashion industry. Suffice it to say, that wasn’t my true calling. I’m very happy to be working in the journals department here at Berghahn!

2. What do you read when you aren’t reading Berghahn books?
Normally I’d say fiction, but recently it’s been essay collections. Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan was so amazing it’s almost not fair, and I read Sloane Crosley’s two books, I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number? in about three days. I also love Zadie Smith, Colson Whitehead, Dan Chaon, and anything Dave Hill tweets.

3. What’s a skill or talent you have that no one at the office knows about?
I’m really good at Scrabble. I used to know all of the two-letter words, Q words without the U, and had a method of keeping track of the tiles so I always knew what was left in the bag. My mug is even Scrabble-related, but I guess at this point I’m just bragging.

4. Where would you want to live if you could move the Berghahn offices anywhere? Why?
It’s corny, but Brooklyn is where I want to live right now, so I’d stay put. Or maybe the Galápagos Islands. Less people. More penguins.

5. What’s your favorite thing about working at Berghahn?
The people! It’s such a great mix of personalities and everyone is so encouraging and helpful. I feel very lucky to have been welcomed into the Berghahn family.

I also love that the job helped me discover new roles in the publishing process I never would have expected to like. If you’d asked me a year ago if I’d want to get into marketing, I probably would have said no. Now, it’s something I’m extremely excited to continue learning.

Lastly, we work in DUMBO where food trucks apparently have the ability to multiply weekly. That’s wonderful, too.

Susan Hogan on Revisiting Her Groundbreaking Work on Feminist Art Therapy

Berghahn recently published Revisiting Feminists Approaches to Art Therapy, edited by Susan Hogan. It is both an update and an expansion of the earlier work Feminist Approaches to Art Therapy, first published in 1994. Here, Hogan addresses her reasons for revisiting her seminal work and explains why the topic is just as relevant today.

“Why do we need a book about women’s issues?” I am often still asked. Feminism is the principle of advocating social, political, and other rights of women as equal to those of men. It is necessarily interested in the question of equality. Creating a deep understanding of women’s conditions and women’s experience is one rationale for a volume specifically addressing this subject.

Another raison d’être of all my work in the field of art therapy is to challenge the reductive, and potentially damaging use of psychological ideas in art therapy practice. Continue reading “Susan Hogan on Revisiting Her Groundbreaking Work on Feminist Art Therapy” →

In the News: The University of Virginia President Controversy and the Changing US University

The forced resignation of University of Virginia President Terry Sullivan only two years into her tenure has felt like a major news story from the start for UVA alums like me. But what began as a local story about the university’s first female president beloved by students and faculty and forced out for opaque reasons by a board of visitors dominated by members of the state’s business community, quickly became a significant national story with multiple articles in the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, and countless blogs.

The inscrutability of the board’s motives has at once been the central driver of interest in the story and given rise to a few conspiracy theories. However, I’ve found the story to be easier to understand in light of insights gleaned from a recent issue of Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences (LATISS) on “Learning under Neoliberalism: Ethnographies of Governance in Higher Education“ (Subscription required). Continue reading “In the News: The University of Virginia President Controversy and the Changing US University” →