University of Michigan Press Blog

'When the Rainbow Goddess Wept' featured in Skokie, Illinois, cultural event

Beginning March 5th through March 9th, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, author of When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, will be featured in a series of readings and discussions in Skokie, Illinois' second annual Coming Together in Skokie event.
The celebration "highlights a different culture in [their] richly diverse community to build knowledge, awareness, and appreciation of different backgrounds and to weave [them] all more closely into the vibrant tapestry that is Skokie." Manguerra Brainard will speak about her novel and her experiences both in the Philippines and America. Information for the discussion dates can be found at the author's blog, Travels (and more) with Cecilia Brainard.

Set against the backdrop of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1941, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's brilliant novel weaves myth and legend together with the suffering and tragedies of the Filipino people. When nine-year-old Yvonne flees with her family into the jungle to join the resistance effort, she witnesses death and destruction on an almost unimaginable scale.

Terrance McKnight to honor Hazel Scott’s elegant and innovative music

Upon discovering the vast accomplishments of Hazel Scott, Terrance McKnight, host of “All Ears with Terrance McKnight,” is refocusing the spotlight on musical phenomenon Hazel Scott by paying tribute to her work on his WQXR program.

Scott's life is the subject of Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist, from Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC, by UM Press author Karen Chilton.

Recognizing her acceptance to Julliard at age 8, her marriage to Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and her national television show, McKnight plans to tell her story in an effort to re-captivate a listening audience; quoting the Yoruba tribe, “people are not dead until they are forgotten, they can live on through their music.”

On February 26^th at 10 p.m., McKnight will air a tribute to Scott; “Still Swinging, Still Classic: A Musical Biography of Pioneering Pianist Hazel Scott,” as a part of his Black History month programming on Classical 105.9 in New York. In an article by Clem Richardson in the New York Daily News, you can find a preview of the highlights McKnight will be discussing on the program and the story on how he came to discover her work through Chilton's book.

John Kenneth White, author of 'Barack Obama's America,' writes a BestThinking article on changes in America

John White, author of Barack Obama's America, recently expressed that the composition of the American vote is evolving.  In a recent political article for BestThinking, White observes that the American population is not what it used to be.  It is this change in the distribution of the population that is redesigning the majority vote. 

White observes that since the 1970s America has seen four social revolutions, the racial revolution, the family revolution, the gay rights revolution and the religious revolution.  Families are no longer only nuclear; religious identities are more encompassing; tolerance towards homosexuals is increasing; and eventually, "white" will no longer be the majority race. These revolutions have caused a change in social norms. This change is resulting in a redefinition of the population and causing a shift in the majority.  America is moving away from a conservative majority to a liberal one and from "Ronald Reagan's America" to Barack Obama's. 

Learn more about at our changing nation in John White's Barack Obama's America. 

Inside Higher Ed piece by 'Mad at School' author is on scholarly job hunt for those with mental disabilities

Margaret Price, author of Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life, recently had a piece in Inside Higher Ed on how difficult the academic job search process can be for those with mental disabilities and how it might become more accessible.

"If this system were revised to become more accessible for academics with mental disabilities, all members of the academic world would benefit," she wrote. "A few relatively simple changes would have dramatic impact."

The full article is available online.

Price has been in the news recently, with a story about her work appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education and a blog response of her own to discussions about mental disabilities in an academic setting.

'Mad At School' author responds to debate over mental disability on campus

This blog entry, written by Mad at School author Margaret Price, is the second of three posts on mental disabilities in the college setting. For the first post on the Chronicle of Higher Education story, please click here.

Killer Dichotomies: Ir/rational, Crazy/Sane, Dangerous/Not

There are a number of conversations about Mad at School going on now. I am happy to see all of them—even those that contain opinions I strongly disagree with—because at least we are now having this conversation.

Over the past week, I’ve been reading Benjamin Reiss’s "Campus Security and the Specter of Mental-Health Profiling," along with its comment stream; also comments on Facebook; and other conversations on listservs such as DS-HUM.

And while I am not a fan of dichotomies—those “killer dichotomies,” in Anne Berthoff’s wonderful phrase—I do think I am beginning to perceive a divide.

On one side are those who have some direct experience or knowledge of mental disability. These folks include clinical psychologists or mental-health administrators on campus. They include professors who live with major depression, or bipolar disorder—or some other lurid diagnosis—carefully, and in secret. They may include teachers who have walked a crying student to the campus mental-health center. This group includes those who have a loved one—a brother or sister, a child, a close friend—who experiences significant mental health distress.

These people, in my experience, understand that mental health, mental unhealth, and the torturous framework of diagnosis, money, and human rights that lurches along with these concepts, are vastly complicated. Empirical studies tell us that many of our students, many of our faculty colleagues, we ourselves, are mentally disabled in large numbers. This group is interested in finding ways to improve access to all kinds of spaces, including academe.

Students and faculty with mental disabilities find their privacy under fire; new book, Chronicle of Higher Education story cover the issue

Mental disability is a topic of fast-growing interest in all spheres of American culture, including popular, governmental, aesthetic, and academic. Margaret Price's Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life explores the contested boundaries between disability, illness, and mental illness in the setting of U.S. higher education. Scholar and disabilities activist Margaret Price asks: How might our education practices change if we understood disability to incorporate the disabled mind?

In an article published by The Chronicle of Higher Education, professor and author Benjamin Reiss writes, "Margaret Price makes clear in her book, Mad at School, influential voices are arguing that we should try to get around the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act regulations, which protect the privacy of student education records, in order to monitor and sequester potentially 'dangerous' students."

Author Dissects Middle East's Turko-Persian Future in Article

Mohammed Ayoob, author of The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World, continues to enlighten readers of the Middle East's political changes in an article published by Foreign Policy, in which the distinguished University professor argues that the "Middle East seems to be inexorably heading toward a Turko-Persian future."

In his book Faces of Political Islam, Ayoob offers a lucid, comprehensive examination of the true relationship between Islam and  global politics. Analysts and pundits from across the American political spectrum describe Islamic fundamentalism as one of the greatest threats to modern, Western-style democracy. Yet very few non-Muslims would be able to venture an accurate definition of political Islam. Ayoob thoroughly describes the myriad manifestations of this rising ideology and analyzes its impact on global relations.