Harvard University Press Publicity Blog

"Falling out of one's role with art"

That's the title of a new interview with Samuel Weber, author of Benjamin's -abilities, published in Issue 4 of the journal Parrhesia.

Attention Brooklynites

Catch HUP author Philip Kasinitz (Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age, co-published with the Russell Sage Foundation) speaking about his work on second-generation immigrants at the Brooklyn Public Library's Dweck Center (directions) this Saturday, May 10, at 4pm.

Tibet and the torch

Superbly insightful commentary on the Olympic torch relay fracas from Geremie Barmé, author of The Forbidden City, the latest offering in HUP's Wonders of the World Series. Barmé, an expert in 20th century Chinese intellectual and cultural history, puts the protests and the Chinese reaction to them in context with a level of detail you just won't get from the newspapers.

"A shattering of tradition"

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (2nd version)" (1935-36, unpublished in this form during Benjamin's lifetime):

"One might focus these aspects of the artwork in the concept of the aura, and go on to say: what withers in the age of the technological reproducibility of the work of art is the latter’s aura. This process is symptomatic; its significance extends far beyond the realm of art. It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced. These two processes lead to a massive upheaval in the domain of objects handed down from the past—a shattering of tradition which is the reverse side of the present crisis and renewal of humanity. Both processes are intimately related to the mass movements of our day."

The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media is available now from HUP.

Above: Drawing of Benjamin by Ralph Steadman, 2006.

Evelyn Ch'ien on Junot Diaz

Evelyn Ch'ien interviews Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) for the latest issue of Granta. Ch'ien, one of the first critics to address Diaz's work, is the author of Weird English (in which she devoted a chapter to Diaz's short story collection Drown) and the forthcoming The Edges of Language: Contours of Emotion in a Post-Symbolic Age.

Heard about town

"Kate Jackson is one of those special God-struck individuals with a consuming passion for snakes. She is not alone in this passion, but it is a rare phenomenon to have the passion combined with a dedication to rigorous scientific inquiry."

That from George Zug of the Smithsonian Institution, introducing Jackson on Sunday at the National Museum of Natural History. Jackson's book Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo is out now from HUP.

Rethink the 70s

Do it, say Bruce Schulman and Julian Zelizer, co-editors of Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, in a new op-ed piece for our friends at the History News Network.

Buy our books, says Esquire

We publish great books. But don't take our word for it--take Esquire's. From their latest "75 Things Every Man Should Master" feature:

No. 29--Understand quantum physics well enough that he can accept that a quarter might, at some point, pass straight through the table when dropped.

Sometimes the laws of physics aren't laws at all. Read The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone, by Kenneth W. Ford.

We agree wholeheartedly. More on Ford's book here at the main HUP site.

To be a friend of China

At a time when many focus on how to combat China's rise as a world power, there are others who wonder what it might mean for us to enjoy a cooperative relationship with the newly ascendant nation. Among them is Lindsay Waters, HUP's Executive Editor for the Humanities, who for ten years has been traveling to China to forge links with those Chinese scholars who truly have their fingers on the pulse of the transformations shaking their country. The Boston Globe's "Brainiac" blog interviewed Waters on his efforts, and why being a "friend of China" does not mean giving the Chinese government a pass on the human rights issues that shock many here in the West.

Making America Conservative in the 1970s

The standard explanation for the rise of conservatism in the US is the "backlash theory," which posits a hard-right turn among important segments of the American electorate in response to the sudden liberalization of American culture that took place during the 1960s. But a new book edited by Bruce Schulman and Julian Zelizer shows us that it's not quite as simple as all that. In Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, a select group of top scholars make the case that it's the 1970s, not the 60s, that is the crucial decade for the rise of conservatism. Essays like Bethany E. Moreton's "Make Payroll, Not War," Alice O'Connor's "Financing the Counterrevolution," and Jeremi Suri's "Détente and Its Discontents" show us in detail how the forces of conservatism responded to the events of the day and rose to the top of American politics. Popmatters calls Rightward Bound "a highly important and useful study, and one that offers scholars a new way of grasping conservatism." If you want to go a little deeper than the backlash theory, Rightward Bound is the place to start.