Indiana University Press Journals Weblog

How Women Wrote History in the Early Modern Era

Devoney Looser will present an invited lecture, "Catharine Macaulay in Context" at the conference Comment les femmes écrivent l’histoire à l’époque moderne (XVI-XVIIIe siècles) (How Women Wrote History in the Early Modern Era, 16th-18th Centuries), to be held June 6th at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Université de Paris III.  The conference is the first of two planned colloquia, reflecting on the relative invisibility of women historians in the early modern era. The conference sets out to investigate the extent to which history writing was a masculine bastion, as has been previously assumed. Looser's paper looks at the ways women historians were discussed and labeled after Catharine Macaulay (1731-1791) became widely known as the "celebrated female historian" in the 1760s. 

Looser is the author of British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820 (2000), Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750-1850 (2008), and is the co-editor of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies. 

 

IU Press Director Chosen as a Top Woman in Publishing

Janet Rabinowitch, Director of Indiana University Press since 2004, has been chosen by Book Business magazine as one of the top women in publishing for 2009.  Rabinowitch has been at the Press since 1975, first as sponsoring editor and senior sponsoring editor and then as editorial director.  She was named interim director in 2003.

During her 34 years at the Press, Rabinowitch has acquired more than 500 titles and has become one of the most distinguished editors in the field of Russian and Eastern European studies. In addition, she has established internationally respected lists in Jewish and Holocaust studies, African studies, Middle Eastern studies, and continental philosophy. Many of her books have won prestigious awards, including the Vucinich Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, the Herskovits Award from the African Studies Association, the National Jewish Book Award, the Austrian Cultural Institute Prize, and the Koret Jewish Book Award. In addition, her books have been honored by the American Library Association as Choice Outstanding Academic books and as selections of the History, Reader’s Subscription, and Jewish Book clubs.

Rabinowitch is the fourth director and the first woman to head the Press. She has a BA in French from Wellesley College and a PhD in Russian studies from Georgetown University. 

IU Press/Journals to Maintain FY 2009 Prices

In recognition of the economic stresses confronting libraries, academic departments, and individuals, the Journals Division at IU Press will not raise subscription prices during fiscal year 2010. “These are tough economic times for all of us,” says Kathryn Caras, the journals publisher at the Press. “We have always been conservative in our pricing model so that we can maximize the distribution of the scholarship we publish. Although we had scheduled price increases for fiscal year 2010, we have decided to maintain last year’s pricing out of consideration for our readers.”

The Press currently publishes 29 of the leading journals in the humanities and social sciences, law, and natural sciences, and recently added Black Camera: An International Film Journal (The New Series), edited by Michael T. Martin, the Director of the IU Black Film Center/Archives, to its list. 

For a complete list of the serials published by IU Press, please visit http://inscribe.iupress.org or contact Linda Bannister, Marketing Manager, at 1-812-955-9449.  

Table of Contents for First Issue of Black Camera

In partnership with the Indiana University Black Film Center/Archive (BFCA), IU Press/Journals will publish Black Camera, An International Film Journal (The New Series), edited by Michael T. Martin, beginning in the fall of 2009. 

Black Camera is devoted to the study and documentation of the black cinematic experience and is the only scholarly film journal of its kind in the United States. Published twice a year, it features essays and interviews that engage film in social as well as political context and in relation to historical and economic forces that bear on the reception, distribution, and production of film in local, regional, national, and transnational settings and environments.

Below is a preliminary table of contents for the premier issue of Black Camera, The New Series, including some of the articles being considered.

Editor’s Notes

Africa

Cinemas of the Maghreb by Roy Armes
Film & Trauma: Africa Speaks to Itself Through Truth & Reconciliation Films by Keyan Tomaselli and Martin Mhando
Trash and a New Approach to Cinema Engage by Kenneth Harrow

Caribbean

Caribbean Cinematic Creolite by Gilberto Blasini
The Emergence of Caribbean Feature Films by Keith Warner and Bruce Paddington
Moussa Sene Absa on finding Waru in Barbados by Jane Bryce

At Home (United States)

An article by either Terri Francis or Sheril Antonio
An interview with Charles Burnett by Michael Martin

Out of the Archive: Challenges and Opportunities for New Scholarly Access from Old Media Collections by David Rowntree
Reviews
Archival News
Professional Notes
Contributors
Poster Gallery

Volume 1, number 1 will be published in November 2009.  To subscribe, click here.

Global Constitutionalism

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 16.2: Special Issue

Symposium: Global Constitutionalism, Process and Substance; Kandersteg, Switzerland, January 17-20, 2008

From the introduction by Anne Peters and Klaus Armingeon:

Toward a Research Agenda of Global Constitutionalism

"The academic objectives of the contributions to this issue are to identify the constitutional predispositions and indices in the international system, to rationally structure the current constitutional chaos, to measure and explain constitutionalization beyond the nation-state, and to encourage reflection on how the process of global constitutionalization might be broadened and intensified, and, in doing so, to help vindicate claims for an even more constitutionalized world order. We are also interested in the question whether constitutions beyond the nation-state are effective and democratic, and whether the effectiveness and democratic legitimacy of international constitutional law can be improved."

IJGLS, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, is a joint publication of Indiana University Press and the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Print subscription orders should be directed to the journal at the Maurer School of Law, 211 South Indiana Avenue, Bloomington, Indiana 47405; 812.855.8717; ijgls@indiana.edu. Orders for online subscriptions should be directed to the Indiana University Press/Journals at INscribe; http://inscribe.iupress.org or 1.800.842.6796.

Sexuality in Jewish Contexts

NASHIM 17: Special Issue

Sexuality in Jewish Contexts

From the introduction by Tova Hartman

"For many feminist women and men, religion continues to be a place they not only return to for comfort, but also continually and substantively revisit, with passion and rigor. Once it might have been possible to take for granted that religion is inherently oppressive in its patriarchal hierarchies; but if it were exclusively oppressive, more people, and certainly more feminists, would have made a clean break. Instead, we have Muslim academics like Fadwa El Guindi claiming the veil as tool of feminist liberation. In my own research, I have heard women express a wide range of feelings about the traditional Jewish woman’s menstrual rites, from enthusiasm, to indifference, to contempt—some times all voiced by the same woman! And I have watched gay men and women, who readily acknowledge that their sexuality is delegitimized within traditional Judaism, converting to much higher levels of observance, in some cases becoming Orthodox.

What binds these people – what binds all of us – to remain within this seemingly endless conversation?
One reason for the tenacity with which feminism and religion have held onto each other, is that, on the one hand, sexuality is an embodied experience that cannot ultimately be relegated to theoretical analysis. At the same time, religion itself, while always open to criticism, proves curiously (or naturally) resistant to ultimate dismissal. The analyses of sexual cultures undertaken by the writers in this issue demonstrate in different ways that, to borrow a phrase from Judith Butler, it is “bodies that matter” as much as the more abstract formulations of sexual ideology. Each author adds richly to our sense of what can be included within the protean field of sexuality and feminism, and expands the range of implications that jump, like sparks, out of the friction between theoretical models and the sense people make of their daily lives." 

Special Issue Price $19.95

To subscribe call us at 800.842.6796 or visit us online.

Jewish Women and Philanthropy

Jewish Women and Philanthropy

A Nashim Conference

On July 16, 2009 the first conference sponsored by the academic journal Nashim will be held at Tulane University in New Orleans.

This unique, one-day conference brings together academics, philanthropists and professionals to assess the past, present and future of Jewish women in philanthropy.

Jewish philanthropy has its roots in tikkun olam, a communal obligation to ensure social justice in our world. Jewish women have always played a critical role in tzedakah, but their contributions have often been neglected.

Proceedings will be featured in a special issue of the academic journal Nashim. Scholars will present their insights on the topic, and attendees will join in for a spirited roundtable discussion on just what it means to be a Jewish woman in today's economy.

Among the confirmed conference speakers are:

Sylvia Barack Fishman
Chair, Department of Near East and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University, Director of HBI

Susan M. Chambré
Professor of Sociology, Baruch College

Barbara Dobkin
Founder of Ma’yan, the Jewish Women’s Project and Jewish Women Professionals and the Jewish Community

Shifra Bronznick
Founder of Bronznick & Co., LLC, and founding President of Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community

Gail T. Reimer
Founding director of the Jewish Women’s Archive

Brenda Brasher
Visiting Professor, Tulane University, Sociology Department

Bioethics require a global perspective

New from IJFAB
International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Vol. 2.1

TRANSNATIONAL DIALOGUES

Guest Editors:
Arleen Salles, PhD, Centro de Investigationes Filosóficas, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Constance Perry, PhD, Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA

Increasingly, the problems of bioethics require a global perspective. Issues such as the migration of care workers, trafficking in prostitution or egg donation, or the use of economically and socially vulnerable populations in medical practice and research require a transnational and multidisciplinary analysis that focuses on the central role of women’s experience in these practices.

Transnational Dialogues stages a series of dialogues across national borders that explore the effects of social and economic inequity on health policy and health care. These articles and responses demonstrate how health policy or economics in one country may have serious consequences for and raise serious ethical issues in another. The issue’s authors, who span the global North and South, consistently place ethical issues in health care in their social, political, and economic context, while paying attention to the global effects of local policies. The issue not only includes detailed analysis of ethical issues in egg donation/commerce, the globally increasing rate of C-sections, or the use of age assessment techniques on rape victims, it also challenges the reader’s moral imagination by focusing on the link between health and justice in a global horizon.

To order a single issue or a subscription to IJFAB visit our website at http://inscribe.iupress.org.