University of Pittsburgh Press
The University of Pittsburgh Press is a publisher with distinguished lists in a wide range of scholarly and cultural fields. They publish books for general readers, scholars, and students. The Press focuses on selected academic areas: Latin American studies, Russian and East European studies, Central Asian studies, composition and literacy studies, environmental studies, urban studies, the history of architecture and the built environment, and the history and philosophy of science, technology, and medicine. Their books about Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania include history, art, architecture, photography, biography, fiction, and guidebooks.
Their renowned Pitt Poetry Series represents many of the finest poets active today, as reflected in the many prestigious awards their work has garnered over the past four decades. In addition, the Press is home to the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and, in rotation with other university presses, the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. They sponsor the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize, which recognises the finest collective works of short fiction available in an international competition.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 80
ISBN: 9780822958130
Pub Date: 09 Mar 2003
Description:
Song of Thieves delves into issues of racial identity and politics, the immigrant experience, and the search for "home" and family histories. In this follow-up to her award-winning debut collection, The Water Between Us, Shara McCallum artfully draws from the language and imagery of her Caribbean background to play a haunting and soulful tune.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 360
ISBN: 9780822958154
Pub Date: 02 Mar 2003
Series: Drue Heinz Literature Prize
Description:
The Drue Heinz Literature Prize was established in 1980 to encourage and support the writing and reading of short fiction. Over the past twenty years judges such as Robert Penn Warren, Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Alice McDermott, and Frank Conroy have selected the best collections from the hundreds submitted annually by up-and-coming writers.20 represents the best of the best—one story from each of the prize-winning volumes.
Chosen by acclaimed author John Edgar Wideman, the selections cover a broad range of inventive and original characters, settings, and emotions, charting the evolution of the short story over the past two decades. One of the most prestigious awards of its kind, the Drue Heinz Literature Prize has helped launch the careers of a score of previously "undiscovered" writers, many of whom have gone on to great critical success. Past Winners of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize: David Bosworth, Robley Wilson, Jonathan Penner, Randall Silvis, W. D. Wetherell, Rick DeMarinis, Ellen Hunnicutt, Reginald McKnight, Maya Sonenberg, Rick Hillis, Elizabeth Graver, Jane McCafferty, Stewart O’Nan, Jennifer Cornell, Geoffrey Becker, Edith Pearlman, Katherine Vaz, Barbara Croft, Lucy Honig, Adria Bernardi.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 328
ISBN: 9780822957959
Pub Date: 23 Feb 2003
Description:
Since the late 1980s, the neglect of experiment by philosophers and historians of science has been replaced by a keen interest in the subject. In this volume, a number of prominent philosophers of experiment directly address basic theoretical questions, develop existing philosophical accounts, and offer novel perspectives on the subject, rather than rely exclusively on historical cases of experimental practice.Each essay examines one or more of six interconnected themes that run throughout the collection: the philosophical implications of actively and intentionally interfering with the material world while conducting experiments; issues of interpretation regarding causality; the link between science and technology; the role of theory in experimentation involving material and causal intervention; the impact of modeling and computer simulation on experimentation; and the philosophical implications of the design, operation, and use of scientific instruments.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 112
ISBN: 9780822957973
Pub Date: 12 Feb 2003
Description:
Written in the spaces between otherness and brotherhood, Otherhood combines traditional lyricism with experimentalism, passionate engagement with cold-eyed investigation, and personal details with a depersonalized distance to create a new poetic synthesis.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9780822957935
Pub Date: 26 Jan 2003
Description:
Edited and with an Afterword by David St. JohnWhen Larry Levis died suddenly in 1996, Philip Levine wrote that he had years earlier recognized Levis as \u201cthe most gifted and determined young poet I have ever had the good fortune to have in one of my classes. .
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9780822957942
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2002
Description:
A Geopolitics of Academic Writing critiques current scholarly publishing practices, exposing the inequalities in the way academic knowledge is constructed and legitimized. As a periphery scholar now working in (and writing from) the center, Suresh Canagarajah is uniquely situated to demonstrate how and why contributions from Third World scholars are too often relegated to the perimeter of academic discourse. He examines three broad conventions governing academic writing: textual concerns (matters of languages, style, tone, and structure), social customs (the rituals governing the interactions of members of the academic community), and publishing practices (from submission protocols to photocopying and postage requirements).
Canagarajah argues that the dominance of Western conventions in scholarly communication leads directly to the marginalization or appropriation of the knowledge of Third World communities.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 72
ISBN: 9780822957874
Pub Date: 24 Nov 2002
Description:
Winner of the 2001 Cave Canem PrizeSelected by Marilyn NelsonFinalist, 2003 Paterson Poetry Prize"Imagine Leda black—" begins Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s exciting new collection of poems. Mixing vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, she gives voice to silenced women past and present.In Van Clief-Stefanon’s powerful voice, last night’s angry words "puffed / into the dark room like steam / punching through the thick surface / of cooking grits.
" She remembers a child’s innocence "lost / in the house where I learned the red rug / against my chest, my knees / my tongue, . . . ." Black Swan is filled with pain, loss, hope, and the promise of salvation.
Flatlanders and Ridgerunners
Folktales from the Mountains of Northern Pennsylvania
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780822953456
Pub Date: 21 Nov 2002
Description:
Excerpt from Flatlanders and Ridgerunners: Out-Riddling the Judge Back in Prohibition my uncle made moonshine. His name was Moses Kenny and his whiskey--they called it “White Mule” was the best in the county. Well, the feds got after him and finally they arrested him.
Took him to a federal judge down in Philadelphia. Now, the judge liked a good time and thought he’d have a little fun with this hick from the mountains. When Uncle came into court, he said, “are you the Moses who can make the sun dark?” Moses looked at him and said slowly, “Nope, your honor. But I am the Moses who can make the moon shine.” The judge let him go.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780822961949
Pub Date: 17 Nov 2002
Description:
Selectivity and Discord addresses the fundamental question of whether there are grounds for belief in experimental results. Specifically, Allan Franklin is concerned with two problems in the use of experimental results in science: selectivity of data or analysis procedures and the resolution of discordant results.By means of detailed case studies of episodes from the history of modern physics, Franklin shows how these problems can be—and are—solved in the normal practice of science and, therefore, that experimental results may be legitimately used as a basis for scientific knowledge.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9780822962441
Pub Date: 03 Nov 2002
Series: Drue Heinz Literature Prize
Description:
Winner of the 2002 Drue Heinz Literature PrizeSelected by Elizabeth HardwickIt is difficult to see what lurks beneath the surface of a muddy river, an alligator-infested lake, or a John Blair short story. The deep currents that drive a demure, devout, church-going woman to shoot her husband; the ripple effect of a midnight rendezvous at church youth camp that goes slightly—then horribly—askew; the sinkholes that can swallow Porsche dealerships—or marriages; what is dredged up in American Standard cannot easily be forgotten.Set mostly in central Florida, Blair’s stories are filled with people living lives of disquieting longing and stubborn isolation.
For them, this is the American standard, as ubiquitous and undistinguished as vitreous china bathroom fixtures.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9780822957928
Pub Date: 20 Oct 2002
Description:
Singing the City is an eloquent tribute to a way of life largely disappearing in America, using Pittsburgh as a lens. Graham is not blind to the damage industry has done—both to people and to the environment, but she shows us that there is also a rich human story that has gone largely untold, one that reveals, in all its ambiguities, the place of the industrial landscape in the heart. Singing the City is a celebration of a landscape that through most of its history has been unabashedly industrial.
Convinced that industrial landscapes are too little understood and appreciated, Graham set out to investigate the city\u2019s landscape, past and present, and to learn the lessons she sensed were there about living a good life. The result, told in both her voice and the distinctive voices of the people she meets, is a powerful contribution to the literature of place. Graham begins by showing the city as an outgrowth of its geography and its geology—the factors that led to its becoming an industrial place. She describes the human investment in the area: the floods of immigrants who came to work in the mills in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, their struggles within the domains of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. She evokes the superhuman aura of making steel by taking the reader to still functioning mills and uncovers for us a richness of tradition in ethnic neighborhoods that survives to this day.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 96
ISBN: 9780822957898
Pub Date: 06 Oct 2002
Description:
Rouge Pulp explores notions of body and beauty, birth and death, in a contemporary America driven by its contradictions: material plenty and spiritual lack. Dorothy Barresi writes about strippers, hair salons, cancer, good credit ratings, cockfights, childbirth, maternal love, war. Her poems take the world’s brutal vitality as their music, and they refuse to despair.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9780822957850
Pub Date: 29 Sep 2002
Description:
Although the relationship between elected officials and appointed executives has often been viewed as a struggle between master and servant—with disagreements as to which individuals occupy which roles—Poul Erik Mouritzen\u2019s and James Svara\u2019s comparison of city governments in fourteen countries reveals more interdependence and shared influence than conflict over control.Mouritzen and Svara bring local government to the forefront, emphasizing the sophisticated level of city management in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Their findings lead to a revision of the general view concerning the boundaries of public administration.
Leadership at the Apex illustrates in practical ways how the democratic control of government and professional administration can coexist without undermining the logic or integrity of each other.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 96
ISBN: 9780822957867
Pub Date: 25 Sep 2002
Description:
Winner of the 2001 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry PrizeRunner-up, Society of Midland Authors 2002 Poetry PrizeGabriel Gudding’s poems not only defend against the pretense and vanity of war, violence, and religion, but also against the vanity of poetry itself. These poems sometimes nestle in the lowest regions of the body, and depict invective, donnybrooks, chase scenes, and the abuse of animals, as well as the indignities and bumblings of the besotted, the lustful, the annoyed, and the stupid.In short, Gudding seeks to reclaim the lowbrow.
Dangerous, edgy, and dark, this is an innovative writer unafraid to attack the unremitting high seriousness of so much poetry, laughing with his readers as he twists the elegiac lyric "I" into a pompous little clown.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780822957737
Pub Date: 22 Sep 2002
Description:
Summer afternoons at Forbes Field, playoff Sundays with the Steelers, winter nights at the Igloo cheering for Mario and the Penguins: Pittsburgh Sports captures all that and more. With stories from sports fans, historians, and former athletes, Pittsburgh Sports mixes personal experiences with team histories to capture the full range of what it means to be a sports fan—in Pittsburgh, or, by extension, anywhere.A book that can be read cover-to-cover, or in bits and pieces, Pittsburgh Sports includes chapters on the ill-fated Pittsburgh Pipers, who won the American Basketball Association\u2019s first championship, then folded four years later; the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays, perennial Negro League powerhouses; Johnny Unitas, Joe Namath, Jim Kelly, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, and other legends of western Pennsylvania high school football; boxing\u2019s illustrious past in the Iron City; football reminiscences by a former Steelers punter; and the ups and downs of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
ISBN: 9780822959502
Pub Date: 15 Sep 2002
Description:
Using firsthand, personal accounts, and focusing on the experiences of women, Katherine R. Jolluck relates and examines the experiences of thousands of civilians deported to the USSR following the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland in 1939.Upon arrival in remote areas of the Soviet Union, they were deposited in prisons, labor camps, special settlements, and collective farms, and subjected to tremendous hardships and oppressive conditions.
In 1942, some 115,000 Polish citizens—only a portion of those initially exiled from their homeland—were evacuated to Iran. There they were asked to complete extensive questionnaires about their experiences.Having read and reviewed hundreds of these documents, Jolluck reveals not only the harsh treatment these women experienced, but also how they maintained their identities as respectable women and patriotic Poles. She finds that for those exiled, the ways in which they strove to recreate home in a foreign and hostile environment became a key means of their survival.Both a harrowing account of brutality and suffering and a clear analysis of civilian experiences in wartime, Exile and Identity expands the history of war far beyond the military battlefield.
