new books - welcome to wesleyan university - … · 2017-09-12 · steve morse, former boston globe...

New Books Spring / Summer 2017

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Setting the StageWhat We Do, How We Do It, and Whydavid hays

The life and work of a stage designer who worked with Kazan and Balanchine

David Hays, elected to the Theater Hall of Fame in 2014, created an exciting and successful career designing scenery and lighting for plays and musicals on Broadway, in London, and in Japan. Told with passion and wit, this book takes readers behind the scenes of the theater world to show how a stage designer collaborates with directors and producers to create great works of theater and dance. A designer who collaborated with the great directors of his time shares anecdotes that integrate technical insight with life lessons.

“Anyone, and I do mean anyone—actors, designers, writers, people in love with the art form—will find so much in this accessible, smart, and delightful book about the ‘magic’ of the theatre.” Joel Grey

“Thank God for David Hays. A true gentleman of the arts—and boy, is he funny in this book. He opens up the vault of his brilliant mind and heart and allows us to share with him great memories of the Golden Age of the arts. This book is full of his fascinating life and great contributions to scenic designs; his stories have great wit, style, and his heart and soul touched mine.” Chita Rivera

“Rejoice, theater, opera, and ballet fans! As you read this indefatigable ‘Theater Hall of Famer’s’ wonder-full memories, you will be eavesdropping on giants of twentieth-century theater for whom the ‘Envision and Design Award’–winning sets earn accolades. You will also marvel at the fact that for fifty years, the only sleep he ever needed was one short nap on top of a stepladder.” Peter Walker

david hays has taught at New York University, Columbia,Boston University, and Harvard. He is the coauthor with his son, Daniel, of the New York Times bestseller My Old Man and the Sea. He lives in Chester, Connecticut.

June192 pp., 4 illus., 6 x 9"

Cloth, $26.95 • 978-0-8195-7721-4 ($37.00 CAD) Ebook, $21.99 • 978-0-8195-7722-1

performing arts / memoir

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Wesleyan University Press

Cloth, $30.00 · 978-0-8195-7372-8 Ebook, $23.99 · 978-0-8195-7373-5

also of interest

The Lives of Robert RyanJ.R . JON ES


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I Got a SongA History of the Newport Folk Festivalrick massimo

The first book-length history of an essential American music festival

The first-ever book exclusively devoted to the history of the Newport Folk Festival, I Got a Song documents the trajectory of an American musical institution that began more than a half-century ago and continues to influence our understanding of folk music today. Rick Massimo’s research is complemented by extensive interviews with the people who were there: the festival’s producers, some of its biggest stars, and people who huddled in the fields to witness historic moments like Bob Dylan’s famous electric performance in 1965. As folk music has evolved over the decades, the Newport Folk Festival has once again become a gathering point for young performers and fans. I Got a Song tells the stories of generations of American folk music enthusiasts.

“The Newport Folk Festival has been at the center of all sorts of changes in American life for more than fifty years, and Rick Massimo tells it all. It is a story that needs to be told in this fragmented, divided time, and we owe Massimo a debt of gratitude for telling it so well.” Jim Rooney, former Newport board member, record

producer, and author of In It for the Long Run

“This entertaining book is not just a history of the Newport Folk Festival but of folk music itself and how it has evolved from the ironclad acoustic era of Pete Seeger to the more rocking singer-songwriters of today.” Steve Morse, former Boston Globe music critic

“Rick Massimo’s I Got a Song is an entertaining historical account of the Newport Folk Festival (and peripherally the Newport Jazz Festival) that will certainly appeal to the folk music aficionado. Academics may find the quick-paced interviews of particular interest more for what they say about the fallibility of memory and history as mythology than as unassailable first-person narratives.” Thomas Gruning, author of Millennium Folk

rick massimo covered the Newport Folk Festival for nineyears for the Providence Journal. He lives with his wife in Washington, D.C.

May248 pp., 20 illus., 6 x 9"

Unjacketed cloth, $80.00 s • 978-0-8195-7702-3 ($121.00 CAD) Paper, $24.95 • 978-0-8195-7703-0 ($34.00 CAD) Ebook, $19.99 • 978-0-8195-7704-7

music / history / american studies

Music / Interview


Paper, $27.95 · 978-0-8195-7464-0 Ebook, $21.99 · 978-0-8195-7465-7

also of interest

Producing CountryThe Inside Story of the Great RecordingsMICHAEL JARRETT



June120 pp., 8 illus., 7 x 8W"

Cloth, $24.95 • 978-0-8195-7687-3 ($34.00 CAD) Ebook, $19.99 • 978-0-8195-7688-0

The Lazarus Poemskamau brathwaite

This new book by the great Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite is characteristically sui generis, vatic, and strange, exhibiting ornery bravura. The work examines a major theme appropriate to a poet in the late stages of his career: that of the afterlife. Central to the book is a series of poems outlining the speaker’s (the poet’s) experiences with what he calls “Cultural Lynching.” These poems speak of appropriation, theft, isolation, and exploitation, all within a context of an American hegemony that intensifies the racial politics and ageism underlying the events described. Filled with longing, rage, nostalgia, impotence, wisdom, and love, this book is moving in every sense of the word.

“The book is an intimate, mystical lens to gaze across time periods and literary modes and frames.” Joyelle McSweeney, author of Dead Youth,

or, The Leaks

kamau brathwaite is an internationallycelebrated poet, performer, and cultural theorist. He has won numerous awards, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. A retired professor of comparative literature at New York University, Brathwaite now lives in CowPastor, Barbados.

A mystical masterwork

March192 pp., 6 x 9"


poetry

Wesleyan Poetry

Planetary NoiseSelected Poetry of Erín Moureerín moureedited by shannon maguire

Planetary Noise gathers four decades of poetry from a celebrated Canadian poet and translator who has persistently reconfigured the linguistic and material relations of English. Moure’s poems and networked sequences are hybrid and often polylingual; they work with contradiction, paradox, and verbal detritus to create new conditions for thought and pleasure. This collection features an extensive introduction to Moure’s poetry by scholar Shannon Maguire, an afterword on translation by the poet, and a section of poetry translated by Moure.

“Across more than three decades Erín Moure’s writing has stunned readers with its singular originality.” Norma Cole, author of Where Shadows Will

erín moure is a Canadian poet and translatorbased in Montreal. She is author of 18 books of poetry, a book of essays on poetics, and translator or cotranslator of 16 books of poetry. shannon maguire is the author of two collections of poetry,fur(l) parachute and Myrmurs. She holds an MFA and is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Extraordinary retrospective spanning forty years

poetry / caribbean studies

Wesleyan Poetry



February

88 pp., 6 x 9"

Cloth, $24.95 • 978-0-8195-7711-5 ($34.00 CAD) Ebook, $19.99 • 978-0-8195-7713-9

poetry / african american studies

Wesleyan Poetry

In the Language of My Captorshane mccrae

Acclaimed poet Shane McCrae’s latest collection is a book about freedom told through stories of captivity. Historical persona poems and a prose memoir at the center of the book address the illusory freedom of both black and white Americans. In the book’s three sequences, McCrae explores the role mass entertainment plays in oppression, he confronts the myth that freedom can be based upon the power to dominate others, and, in poems about the mixed-race child adopted by Jefferson Davis in the last year of the Civil War, he interrogates the infrequently examined connections between racism and love.

“Shane McCrae has created a masterful hybrid that at once revels in the lyric and mocks its failures. The part I can’t quite put into words is how much this book means to me.” francine harris

shane mccrae is the author of four books ofpoetry including The Animal Too Big to Kill, Mule, Forgiveness Forgiveness, and Blood. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio.

Poems about captivity, escape, and the possibility of freedom

March

112 pp., 7 x 9"

Cloth, $24.95 • 978-0-8195-7719-1 ($34.00 CAD) Ebook, $19.99 • 978-0-8195-7720-7

poetry

Wesleyan Poetry

Trophic Cascadecamille t. dungy

In this fourth book in a series of award-winning survival narratives, written in a time of massive environmental degradation, violence, and abuse of power, Dungy confronts the world in which we all must survive. The poems find a delicate balance between conflicting loci of attention. Dwelling between vibrancy and its opposite, Dungy writes in a single poem about a mother, a daughter, Smokin’ Joe Frazier, brittle stars, giant boulders, and a dead blue whale. These poems are written in the face of despair to hold a commitment to hope.

“Earthly and visionary, a soulful reckoning for our twenty-first century, held in focus through echoes of the past and future, but always firmly rooted in now. Each poem is a bridge in the music of a language that we believe and trust, that heals.” Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Pleasure Dome

“Dungy’s poems manifest an uneasy self-perception, but—or I should say, and—their source is strength and love. The combination makes Trophic Cascade urgent and necessary.”

Joy Katz, author of All You Do Is Perceive

camille t. dungy is the editor of Black Nature:Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and the author of three prize winning poetry collections. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Poems about birth, death, and ecosystems of nature and power



February112 pp., 31 illus., 7V x 9W"

Paper, $14.95 • 978-0-8195-7735-1 ($20.00 CAD) Ebook, $11.99 • 978-0-8195-7736-8

black studY / poetry

Because When God Is Too BusyHaïti, me, & THE WORLDgina athena ulysse

Because When God Is Too Busy: Haïti, me, & THE WORLD is a lyrically vivid meditative journey that is unapologetic in its determination to name, embrace, and reclaim a revolutionary Blackness that has been historically stigmatized and denied. Crafting experiments with “ethnographic collectibles” of word, performative sounds, and imagery to blur genres and the lines between the geopolitical and the personal, this collection is a testament to postcolonial inheritances.

gina athena ulysse is professor of anthropologyat Wesleyan University. Born in Pétion-Ville, Haïti, she has lived in the United States for more than thirty years. Her creative works include spoken word, performance art, and installation pieces. She is the author of Downtown Ladies and Why Haïti Needs New Narratives.

A poetic journey through silence, rebellious rage, love, and the sacred

July288 pp., 43 illus., 6 x 9"

Cloth, $29.95 • 978-0-8195-7726-9 ($41.00 CAD) Ebook, $23.99 • 978-0-8195-7728-3

fiction & literature / science fiction

Early Classics of Science Fiction

Robur the Conquerorjules verneedited by arthur b. evans translated by alex kirstukas

By turns an impassioned argument for aviation, a wild proto-steampunk adventure, and a jubilant celebration of the dream of flight, Robur the Conqueror ranks among Jules Verne’s most iconic and influential works. This book, the first complete English translation of Verne’s 1886 novel, includes an insightful introduction, explanatory chapter notes, never-before-published glimpses of Verne’s original manuscript, and all of the first-edition illustrations by Léon Benett.

“[A] very important work and an integral piece of the Jules Verne corpus.” Peter Schulman, translator of Verne’s The

Secret of Wilhelm Storitz

jules verne (1828–1905) was the first authorto popularize the literary genre that has become known as science fiction. alex kirstukas haspublished several academic studies on Verne and is a trustee of the North American Jules Verne Society. arthur b. evans is an emeritus professorof French at DePauw University, managing editor of Science Fiction Studies, and general editor of Wesleyan’s Early Classics of Science Fiction book series.

First complete English translation of Jules Verne’s classic novel of flight

“A compelling discovery . . . the chants, the rituals, the alive & agony, always the marassa three-line repetition, w/in a work grounded in the catastrophic and triumphant births of Haiti . . . a one more wonderful vision of the formation of complex modernity.”

KAMAU BRATHWAITE, author of Born To Slo w Horses



March216 pp., 2 illus., 6 x 9"

Unjacketed cloth, $75.00 x • 978-0-8195-7715-3 ($103.00 CAD) Paper, $22.95 • 978-0-8195-7716-0 ($31.00 CAD) Ebook, $18.99 • 978-0-8195-7717-7

science fiction / literary studies

Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre Systemjohn rieder

In Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System, John Rieder asks literary scholars to consider what shape literary history takes when based on a historical, rather than formalist, genre theory. Rieder starts from the premise that science fiction and other genres usually associated with so-called genre fiction comprise a system of genres entirely distinct from the preexisting classical and academic genre system that includes the epic, tragedy, comedy, and more. Rieder asserts that literary studies cannot be adequately conceptualized without taking into account the tensions between these two genre systems.

“Rieder is always a lucid and engaging writer, and this book is no exception.” Mark Bould, University of the West of

England, Bristol

john rieder is professor of English at theUniversity of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. For the last fifteen years he has researched science fiction, contributing essays to Extrapolation, Science Fiction Studies, and other venues. He currently serves as a coeditor of Extrapolation.

A fresh approach to the history and shape of science fiction

February272 pp., 7 illus., 6 x 9"

Unjacketed cloth, $80.00 x • 978-0-8195-7667-5 ($110.00 CAD) Paper, $24.95 • 978-0-8195-7668-2 ($34.00 CAD) Ebook, $19.99 • 978-0-8195-7669-9

science fiction / china / literary studies

Early Classics of Science Fiction

Celestial EmpireThe Emergence of Chinese Science Fictionnathaniel isaacson

Challenging assumptions about the genre’s Western origins, Nathaniel Isaacson traces the development of science fiction in China. Through careful examination of a wide range of visual and print media Isaacson makes a case for understanding Chinese science fiction as a product of colonial modernity. Celestial Empire explores the relationship between science fiction and Orientalist discourse, and in doing so it offers an innovative approach to the study of both vernacular writing in twentieth-century China and science fiction in a global context.

“Isaacson’s book is a landmark in the studies of science fiction.” Mingwei Song, author of Young China

nathaniel isaacson is an assistant professor ofmodern Chinese literature at North Carolina State University. A translator and author, his essays on Chinese science fiction have appeared in numerous journals.

How colonialism profoundly influenced the emergence of Chinese science fiction



March336 pp., 23 illus., 6 x 9"


Theorizing Sound Writingdeborah kapchan

The study of listening—aurality—and its relation to writing is the subject of this eclectic edited volume. Theorizing Sound Writing explores the relationship between sound, theory, language, and inscription. This volume contains an impressive lineup of scholars who write about sound in their ongoing work, while also making an intervention into the ethics of academic knowledge, one in which listening is the first step not only in translating sound into words but also compassionate scholarship.

“Having come of age, Sound Studies can no longer pretend that writing about sound and experiencing sound belong to different orders of knowledge. The essays in this collection—performative, resonant, sonorous—show that sound, listening, and inscription have far more in common than is usually assumed. Theorizing Sound Writing takes Sound Studies to the next level.” Veit Erlmann, author of Reason and

Resonance

deborah kapchan is associate professor ofperformance studies at New York University. A Guggenheim fellow, she is the author of Gender on the Market and Traveling Spirit Masters, as well as numerous articles on sound, narrative, and poetics.

An eclectic and experimental exploration of sound from the vantage point of writing

April328 pp., 6 x 9"


music

Music / Interview

Magic City NightsBirmingham’s Rock ’n’ Roll Yearsandre millard

This exploration of rock ’n’ roll music and culture in Birmingham, Alabama, is based on oral histories and interviews with area musicians, fans, and popular music industry professionals. Collected over twenty years, these stories describe the coming of age of rock ’n’ roll from the 1950s through the 1990s. Magic City Nights provides an insider’s view of the dramatic changes in the business and status of popular music from the era of the vacuum tube to twenty-first-century digital technology. These collective memories offer a unique perspective on the impact of Birmingham’s music culture in one of the most conservative and racially divided cities in the country.

“With a wealth of recollections and insights from the musicians themselves, Magic City Nights is an engaging work that uncovers an important part of American musical history.” Charles L. Hughes, author of Country Soul

andre millard is a historian of popular cultureand professor of history at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He is the author of America on Record, The Electric Guitar, and Beatlemania.

An oral history of rock ’n’ roll music and culture in Birmingham, Alabama

music / critical theory

Music/Culture

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May384 pp., 122 color maps, 7 illus., 5V x 8V"

Paper, $30.00 • 978-0-8195-7714-6 ($41.00 CAD)

hiking / connecticut

Connecticut Walk BookThe Complete Guide to Connecticut’s Blue-Blazed Hiking Trailsconnecticut forest and park association

Lace up your boots and experience some of the best hiking in New England! The Connecticut Forest and Park Association (CFPA) maintains over 825 miles of Blue-Blazed Trails in Connecticut. The twentieth edition of the Connecticut Walk Book is a comprehensive guide to these trails, including detailed, full-color maps, mileage/destination tables, and a lay-flat design for ease of use. The Connecticut Walk Book also offers descriptions of the hikes with trip-planning essentials.

“There are more than 825 miles of Blue-Blazed Trails across Connecticut. The Connecticut Walk Book is a handy way for newcomers and old-timers alike to explore the state by making their own loop trails or out-and-back paths. Don’t go into the natural world without it.” Peter Marteka, Hartford Courant staff writer/

nature columnist

the connecticut forest and park association (CFPA) is the first private, nonprofit,member-based organization established in Connecticut, and the founder and maintainer of over 825 miles of Blue-Blazed Hiking Trails.

new and revised 20th edition

The ultimate guide to Connecticut’s extensive public trails system

June308 pp., 5V x 8"

Paper, $14.95 • 978-0-8195-7740-5 ($20.00 CAD) Ebook, $11.99 • 978-0-8195-7538-8

colonial history / legal history

The Driftless Connecticut Series Garnet Books

The Case of the Piglet’s PaternityTrials from the New Haven Colony, 1639–1663jon c. blue

Judges in the short-lived New Haven Colony presided over a remarkable series of trials ranging from murder and bestiality to drunken sailors, frisky couples, faulty shoes, and shipwrecks. The cases were reported in an unusually vivid manner, allowing readers to witness the twists and turns of fortune as the participants battled with life and liberty at stake. When the records were eventually published in the 1850s, they were both difficult to read and heavily edited to delete sexual matters. Rendered here in modernized English and with insightful commentary by eminent Judge Jon C. Blue, the New Haven trials allow readers to immerse themselves in the exciting legal battles of America’s earliest days. The Case of the Piglet’s Paternity assembles thirty-three of the most significant and intriguing trials of the period. It is sure to be of interest to readers in law and legal history, and for less litigious readers, Blue offers a worm’s eye view of the full spectrum of early colonial society—political leaders and religious dissidents, farmhands and apprentices, women and children.

jon c. blue is a judge of the Connecticut SuperiorCourt.

now in paperback

A vivid series of trials from America’s earliest days

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wesleyan.edu/wespress

____ Setting the Stage, by David Hays

____ I Got a Song, by Rick Massimo

____ The Lazarus Poems, by Kamau Brathwaite

____ Planetary Noise, poetry by Erín Moure

____ In The Language of My Captor, poetry by Shane McCrae

____ Trophic Cascade, poetry by Camille T. Dungy

____ Because When God Is Too Busy, poetry by Gina Athena Ulysse

____ Robur the Conqurer, by Jules Verne, edited by Arthur B. Evans

____ Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System,

by John Rieder

____ Celestial Empire, by Nathaniel Isaacson

____ Theorizing Sound Writing, by Deborah Kapchan

____ Magic City Nights, by Andre Millard

____ Connecticut Walk Book, by Connecticut Forest and Park

Association

____ The Case of Piglet’s Paternity, by Jon C. Blue (new in paper)

If you are not a book reviewer, book award administrator, or foreign publisher, and would like to make an advanced purchase of one of these titles, or request an academic examination copy, please check our web site at wesleyan.edu/wespress for more information, or call our distributor, University Press of New England, at 800-421-1561. To be added to our emailing list for announcements of new books as they become available, please email Jaclyn Wilson at [email protected].

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new books - welcome to wesleyan university - … · 2017-09-12 · steve morse, former boston globe...

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