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: Hardback
Pages: 248
ISBN: 9780822942139
Pub Date: 06 Jul 2003
Description:
While other artists moved to New York or Paris, painter Samuel Rosenberg (1896-1972) never left the city he called home. From the age of twelve, when he took his first art class at a settlement house in Pittsburgh's Hill District, through a vigorous career that spanned six decades, Rosenberg was challenged by the complex city whose artistic legacy he did much to shape. In Pittsburgh, Rosenberg created more than five hundred paintings, engaged with the dynamic progress of American painting in the twentieth century, and inspired generations of students.
This book is the first full study of his work and influence.The constancyof Rosenberg's career was change. He began as a portraitist (1915-1930), influenced by Velazquez, Rembrandt, Matisse, and later, Picasso. In the 1930s, however, Rosenberg turned to portray the city around him. Inspired by the steep hills, densely polluted atmosphere, crooked houses, and layered immigrant populations with intersecting poverties, he created emotional urban landscapes that ensured Pittsburgh's place in the American regionalist art movement. Rosenberg's focus was the Hill District, where he lived as a young man. In poignant, socially conscious paintings, he traced the transitions of this gritty, multiethnic neighborhood through the Great Depression and Pittsburgh's early experiments in urban renewal. "Yes, I know there are artists in town who sneer at Pittsburgh, who want to go to Venice and paint canals," Rosenberg told a reporter. "But the artist who dislikes the town should . . . stay here and put his hate into pictures of the Pittsburgh scene. In doing so, he would have something to say." In the 1940s, responding to the horrors of World War II, Rosenberg's subjects became more universal and allegorical. In paintings such as Israel (1945), his most reproduced work, haunting human figures do not allow viewers to remain indifferent to the world situation. Here he began experiments with abstraction and the quality of light, a search he would continue for the rest of his life. From 1949 until his death in 1972, Rosenberg developed his own form of abstract expressionism, translating emotion with color, but without entirely abandoning representation. Using sequential layers of translucent color and transparent glazes, Rosenberg was able to achieve a penetrating, shimmering effect in his work. His paintings from this period are reminiscent of stained glass windows in that they seem to emit light rather than reflect it. Samuel Rosenberg's paintings were exhibited widely, from the World's Fair (1939) to the nation's preeminent museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He had twenty-six solo exhibitions during his lifetime, and he was accepted into the prestigious Carnegie International in 1920, 1925, and every subsequent exhibition from 1933 to 1967. But it is possible that Rosenberg's most enduring legacy is his teaching. For more than forty years he taught drawing and painting at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), where his students included Philip Pearlstein, Mel Bochner, and Andy Warhol-whom Rosenberg saved from expulsion in 1947. He chaired the art department at the Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College). He directed art programs and taught for decades at two community art schools: the Irene Kaufmann Settlement in the Hill District and the Isaac Seder Educational Center for the Young Men's and Women's Hebrew Association, which merged in 1961. A revered and devoted master teacher, he awakened several generations of Pittsburgh artists to the "adventure," as he called it, of art. Samuel Rosenberg: Portrait of a Painter accompanies the first major retrospective of his work since 1960. In a thorough and carefully researched essay, accompanying eighty-two color and fifty black-and-white reproductions, curator Barbara L. Jones tells the story of Rosenberg's life, his evolving artistic vision, and his teaching legacy. She also provides biographical, exhibition, and award chronologies, along with a complete catalog of paintings and preparatory sketches. Lively sidebars by regional historians Barbara Burstin, Eric Davin, and Laurence Glasco, and by artist and former student Bennard Perlman, give social and cultural context, recreating the Pittsburgh in which this remarkable artist lived and worked.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780822958215
Pub Date: 01 Jul 2003
Description:
During World War I, fear that a network of German spies was operating on American soil justified the rapid growth of federal intelligence agencies. When that threat proved illusory, these agencies, staffed heavily by corporate managers and anti-union private detectives, targeted antiwar and radical labor groups, particularly the Socialist party and the Industrial Workers of the World.Seeing Reds, based largely on case files from the Bureau of Investigation, Military Intelligence Division, and Office of Naval Intelligence, describes this formative period of federal domestic spying in the Pittsburgh region.
McCormick traces the activities of L. M. Wendell, a Bureau of Investigation \u201cspecial employee\u201d who infiltrated the IWW\u2019s Pittsburgh recruiting branch and the inner circle of anarchist agitator and lawyer Jacob Margolis. Wendell and other Pittsbugh based agents spied on radical organizations from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Camp Lee, Virginia, intervened in the steel and coal strikes of 1919, and carried out the Palmer raids aimed at mass deportation of members of the Union of Russian Workers and the New Communist Party.McCormick\u2019s detailed history uses extensive research to add to our understanding of the security state, cold war ideology, labor and immigration history, and the rise of the authoritarian American Left, as well as the career paths of figures as diverse as J. Edgar Hoover and William Z. Foster.
Knowing Stephanie
Format: Hardback
Pages: 144
ISBN: 9780822942122
Pub Date: 04 May 2003
Description:
Stephanie Byram was an active, athletic young woman entering the prime of her life. She held dreams of earning her doctorate, pursing a career, falling in love, and starting a family. A doctor's visit, shortly after her thirtieth birthday, changed everything.
She had been concerned about a painful, swollen right breast, and tests confirmed the presence of a tumor. Stephanie was diagnosed with highly aggressive, highly malignant breast cancer-Stage IIIb infiltrative ductal carcinoma-and within two months she underwent a double mastectomy. Doctors gave her a 50 percent chance of surviving five years. Despite this prognosis, Stephanie looked to the future, and refused to be deterred by the obstacles thrown suddenly into her path. Though she was rarely cancer-free and suffered recurrences that were progressively more invasive and damaging to her body, over the course of the next eight years she would live a life of her choosing. Stephanie fell in love, married, and bought a home. She earned her Ph.D., and even found the time and energy to revise her dissertation topic to how women make medical decisions after they have been diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses. She traveled to London, Tibet, and Hawaii; went on safari in Zambia and Botswana, rang in the millennium atop the Great Barrier Reef; hiked the grueling, thirty-five-mile Inca trail to Machu Picchu on her honeymoon, just weeks after a devastating recurrence; and visited the Grand Canyon before her death in June 2001. Stephanie came to appreciate the details and experiences found in a typical day. Learning to live in the moment, she found joy while playing with her cats, tending her garden, observing the birds jostling at the feeder, walking in the park by moonlight, laughing with friends. And running. Always an avid runner, Stephanie placed even greater importance on the sport following her diagnosis. She vowed to be the first person to run in each Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, and would eventually run in thirty out of sixty-one events. To help publicize this uncommon feat, she approached Charlee Brodsky about taking some photographs for inclusion in a press packet. What eventually evolved was much more. As their working relationship grew, so did their bond. Stephanie was Brodsky's subject, but they became collaborators and closer friends. They developed art exhibitions, a video, and often gave lectures, presentations, and inspirational talks to groups across the country. And, now, together they have created this book. Knowing Stephanie combines Brodsky's photographs and Stephanie's dialogue, which along with Jennifer Matesa's biographical essay, "Reconstructing a Life," paints a complete and compelling portrait of an extraordinary woman. For Stephanie, this project was an opportunity to visualize herself-her life and her body-differently. According to Brodsky, "She was able to transform her profound disappointment with the cards she was dealt into a life that was about living." In so doing, Stephanie has provided a treasure for us all.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 264
ISBN: 9780822961291
Pub Date: 14 Apr 2003
Description:
Finalist, PEN Center USA Literary Awards, Research NonfictionRich in oil and strategically located between Russia and China, Kazakhstan is one of the most economically and geopolitically important of the so-called Newly Independent States that emerged after the USSR's collapse. Yet little is known in the West about the region's turbulent history under Soviet rule, particularly how the regime asserted colonial dominion over the Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities.Grappling directly with the issue of Soviet colonialism, Curative Powers offers an in-depth exploration of this dramatic, bloody, and transformative era in Kazakhstan's history.
Paula Michaels reconstructs the Soviet government's use of medical and public health policies to change the society, politics, and culture of its outlying regions. At first glance the Soviets' drive to modernize medicine in Kazakhstan seems an altruistic effort to improve quality of life. Yet, as Michaels reveals, beneath the surface lies a story of power, legitimacy, and control. The Communist regime used biomedicine to reshape the function, self-perception, and practices of both doctors and patients, just as it did through education, the arts, the military, the family, and other institutions.Paying particular attention to the Kazakhs' ethnomedical customs, Soviet authorities designed public health initiatives to teach the local populace that their traditional medical practices were backward, even dangerous, and that they themselves were dirty and diseased. Through poster art, newsreels, public speeches, and other forms of propaganda, Communist authorities used the power of language to demonstrate Soviet might and undermine the power of local ethnomedical practitioners, while moving the region toward what the Soviet state defined as civilization and political enlightenment.As Michaels demonstrates, Kazakhs responded in unexpected ways to the institutionalization of this new pan-Soviet culture. Ethnomedical customs surreptitiously lived on, despite direct, sometimes violent, attacks by state authorities. While Communist officials hoped to exterminate all remnants of traditional healing practices, Michaels points to evidence that suggests the Kazakhs continued to rely on ethnomedicine even as they were utilizing the services of biomedical doctors, nurses, and midwives. The picture that ultimately emerges is much different from what the Soviets must have imagined. The disparate medical systems were not in open conflict, but instead both indigenous and alien practices worked side by side, becoming integrated into daily life.Combining colonial and postcolonial theory with intensive archival and ethnographic research, Curative Powers offers a detailed view of Soviet medical initiatives and their underlying political and social implications and impact on Kazakh society. Michaels also endeavors to link biomedical policies and practices to broader questions of pan-Soviet identity formation and colonial control in the non-Russian periphery.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780822957980
Pub Date: 13 Apr 2003
Description:
Sin puertas visibles is a fully bilingual anthology that features emerging women poets whose work provides a taste of the adventurous new spirit infusing Mexican literature. All eleven poets represented have had at least one book published in Mexico, yet none of their work has been translated into English until now.Featuring the work of: Cristina Rivera-Garza, Carla Faesler, Ang\u00e9lica Tornero, Ana Bel\u00e9n L\u00f3pez, Silvia Eugenia Castillero, M\u00f3nica Nepote, Dana Gelinas, Mar\u00eda Rivera, Ofelia P\u00e9rez Sep\u00falveda, Dorantes, and Laura Sol\u00f3zano.
Mexico poesses one of Latin America's most important poetic traditions, but its depth and range are virtually unknown to readers north of the border. Reflecting the diversity and complexity f contemporary mexican poetry, the poems presented here are by turns meditative and explosive, sensuous and inventive, ironic and tender--in short, they are subversive, provocative, and bold.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 80
ISBN: 9780822958161
Pub Date: 06 Apr 2003
Description:
The poems in The Starry Messenger explore the many facets of Galileo Galilei's life and times--his troubled childhood, his appetites and love affairs, his early scientific discoveries, his famed exploration of the heavens, his house arrest, his blindness. Emphasizing Galileo's independent nature and his affection for his mistress and daughter, George Keithley provides one of the most personal portraits of the astronomer ever written. In the process, he depicts the sensuous world of religion, magic, and science that was seventheenth-century Florence, Padua, Venice, Ostia, and Rome.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 128
ISBN: 9780822958147
Pub Date: 16 Mar 2003
Description:
Long for This World features the best of Ronald Wallace's work from his previous collections of poetry--Plums, Stones, Kisses & Hooks , Tunes for Bears to Dance To, People and Dog in the Sun, The Makings of Happiness, Time's Fancy and The Uses of Adversity--along with a generous selection of twenty-six new poems. If Wallace's recent poems sometimes seem darker and deeper, more meditative and complex, less sanguine about the tragedies of daily life, they never sacrifice the comic sense, the synthesis of technical skill and strong emotion, and the sensory immediacy that have become his hallmarks.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9780822958246
Pub Date: 16 Mar 2003
Description:
Spring training, a time when every team is in first place, is an American tradition dating back to the early years of the twentieth century. William Zinsser vividly brings to life the unique, once-a-year relationship between Bradenton, Florida, and its adopted team, the Pittsburgh Pirates.In 1988 the Pirates were an unproven yet promising bunch with high hopes of competing for the National League pennant.
Given rare access to players, management, scouts and umpires, Zinsser sought to discover how a team prepares for the longest season in professional sports.As valid today as it was when first published, Spring Training reveals how the fundamentals of baseball are taught and learned. The author has added a new introduction and postscript, which includes a lengthy interview with manager Jim Leyland about the lessons that can be learned from losing.
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.
