This week in North Philly Notes, Austin Sarat, editor of Death Penalty in Decline?, considers how attitudes about capital punishment have changed over the decades since Furman v. Georgia. I have been studying America’s death penalty for almost 50 years. When I started doing so it seemed almost unimaginable that this country could, or would, ever give up its apparent love affair with capital punishment. In 1972, the United States Supreme Court brought a temporary halt to capital punishment in Furman v. Georgia. Four years later, however, the Court approved new procedures for deciding on d ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, Srirupa Chatterjee and Shweta Rao Garg, coeditors of Female Body Image and Beauty Politics in Contemporary Indian Literature and Culture, write about their awareness that the beauty ideal is a societal construct. “I have read that Indian women bleach their skin to appear lighter. Is that true?”  “You should reduce a bit, else no one will marry you!” When asked, we invoke colonialism, colorism, and a caste bias to explain the light-skin preference in India. But we may not confess that perhaps some of us bleached our skin as teenagers or had even used the h ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, we honor the independent bookstores that support Temple University Press. Please visit them on April 27 for Independent Bookstore Day! Harriet’s Bookshop, 258 E. Girard Avenue in Philadelphia, PA, celebrates women authors, women artists, and women activists. While you’re there, grab a copy of BLAM! Black Lives Always Mattered. Headhouse Books, 619 South 2nd Street, in Philadelphia, PA, was founded in 2005 on the belief that no community is complete without the inspiration and exchange of ideas that only a locally-owned, independent bookstore can provide. Shop ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, David Campbell, author of Democracy’s Hidden Heroes, writes about the cultures of the bureaucratic and communal worlds. It’s a little intimidating to have your book published on the same day that Taylor Swift’s new album drops. Even if everyone reading this blog rushes out to buy my book, Democracy’s Hidden Heroes, it will be hard to keep up in the sales competition! But Taylor and I share something in common. We both use small, everyday stories to tell a larger story worth hearing. While the particular stories can stand on their own, it is their accumulation ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, William Gee Wong, author of Sons of Chinatown, writes about his father’s immigration. My father used partially fraudulent papers to legally enter the United States more than a century ago. In Oakland, California, where he landed in its cozy, tight-knit Chinatown, he operated an illegal business, selling lottery tickets, to survive the Great Depression. Because he broke some laws, was he “vermin” who “poisoned the blood” of America? Or was he more an innocent, naïve outsider who wanted to be an insider in the fabled American Dream and who left a legacy of four ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood, by Dr. Terry Rey, our latest title published by North Broad Press, a joint open access imprint of Temple University Libraries and Temple University Press.   North Broad Press,has published a new textbook. Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood, by Dr. Terry Rey. Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood explores the intellectual and cultural histories of two highly influential and essentially religious ideas, that of the zombie and that of the apocalypse. The former is a modern i ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, Linh Thủy Nguyễn, author of Displacing Kinship, write about family history in the aftermath of the Vietnam war. I have a clear memory of the day that, at 18, I realized that my parents were refugees from the Vietnam War. Struggling to order more rice at a Chinese restaurant, confusing the waiter as I spoke mixed Chinese (mom) and Vietnamese (dad), my sister laid out the details. She had for several years been taking college courses about the history of the region and the war. It sounds like a ridiculous thing, to be so detached from family and national history ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase titles for Women’s History Month. Use promo code TWHM24 for 25% off all our Women’s Studies titles. (Sale ends April 1, 2024.) Gendered Places: The Landscape of Local Gender Norms across the United States, by William J. Scarborough, reveals how distinct cultural environments shape the patterns of gender inequality Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors, edited by Sharon D. Wright Austin, examines the crucial role that Black women have carried out in the cities they govern Solidarity & Car ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, Amy Jane Cohen, author of Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape, writes about Philadelphia’s African American experience. When Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week in 1926, he was not advocating for Black history to be the focus of only seven days of the year. In his view, “Negro History Week is the week set aside by the Association for the Study of Negro Life & History for the purpose of emphasizing what has already been learned about the Negro during the year.” Unfortunately, Woodson’s vision did not come to fruition. Even when expand ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, Bill Ecenbarger, author of Work, Fight, and Play Ball, writes about the safe shelter leagues of WWI. I’m almost certain there’s a baseball gene that my father passed on to me and I gave to my son and two grandsons. I can’t remember ever not knowing about baseball, and so it was almost inevitable that I Growing up in the New York City area in the 1950s, there were three teams, the Dodgers, the Giants, and the Yankees, and the existence of three competitive Major League teams within 10 miles or so of each other resulted heated rivalries among adults and children ..read more