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Greetings!
 We're happy to debut our Fall/Winter 2010 catalog this month and, with it, all new trailers from six of our upcoming titles! June also offers some great events, including the chance to hear Aldona Jonaitis talk about her new book, written with Aaron Glass, The Totem Pole. Don't miss her talk on June 1 at 7 p.m. at the Burke Museum.Also, we have a late-breaking addition to the May schedule: Alvin Ziontz, author of A Lawyer in Indian Country, will be reading at Elliott Bay Books on May 26 at 7 p.m. All the best, Rachael remann@u.washington.edu  |
Frances McCue and Mary Randlett
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|  The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs: Revisiting the Northwest Towns of Richard Hugo
Richard Hugo visited places and wrote about them. He wrote about towns:
White Center and La Push in Washington; Wallace and Cataldo in Idaho;
Milltown, Philipsburg, and Butte in Montana. Often his visits lasted
little more than an afternoon, and his knowledge of the towns was
confined to what he heard in bars and diners. From these snippets, he
crafted poems. His attention to the actual places could be scant, but
Hugo's poems resonate more deeply than travelogues or feature stories;
they capture the torque between temperament and terrain that is so
vital in any consideration of place. The poems bring alive some hidden
aspect to each town and play off the traditional myths that an
easterner might have of the West: that it is a place of restoration and
healing, a spa where people from the East come to recover from
ailments; that it is a place to reinvent oneself, a region of wide
open, unpolluted country still to settle. Hugo steers us, as readers,
to eye level. How we settle into and take on qualities of the tracts of
earth that we occupy -- this is Hugo's inquiry.
Part travelogue,
part memoir, part literary scholarship, The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs traces the journey of Frances McCue and photographer Mary
Randlett to the towns that inspired many of Richard Hugo's poems.
Returning forty years after Hugo visited these places, and bringing
with her a deep knowledge of Hugo and her own poetic sensibility, McCue
maps Hugo's poems back onto the places that triggered them. Together
with twenty-three poems by Hugo, McCue's essays and Randlett's
photographs offer a fresh view of Hugo's Northwest.
Frances
McCue is a writer and poet living in Seattle, where she is
writer-in-residence at the University of Washington's Undergraduate
Honors Program. She was the founding director of Richard Hugo House
from 1996 to 2006. McCue is the author of The Stenographer's Breakfast,
winner of the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. Mary Randlett is
a Northwest photographer noted for her portraits of artists and
writers. Mary Randlett Landscapes celebrates her photographs of the
natural world.
To look inside the project, see their book trailer.
Join Frances and Mary on
Tuesday, June 1 at 7 p.m. at Village Books, BellinghamSaturday, June 5 at 7 p.m. at Looking Glass Bookstore, Portland, ORSunday, June 6 at 4 p.m. at Powell's
on Hawthorne, Portland, ORWednesday, June 9 at 3:30 p.m. at Horizon House, with Elliott Bay Book Co.Wednesday, June 9 at 7 p.m. at University Bookstore |
Aldona Jonaitis
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| The Totem Pole: An Intercultural History
 The Northwest Coast totem pole captivates the imagination. From the
first descriptions of these tall carved monuments, totem poles have
become central icons of the Northwest Coast region and symbols of its
Native inhabitants. Although many of those who gaze at these carvings
assume that they are ancient artifacts, the so-called totem pole is a
relatively recent artistic development, one that has become immensely
important to Northwest Coast people and has simultaneously gained a
common place in popular culture from fashion to the funny pages.
The Totem Pole reconstructs the intercultural history of the art form in
its myriad manifestations from the eighteenth century to the present.
Aldona Jonaitis and Aaron Glass analyze the totem pole's continual
transformation since Europeans first arrived on the scene, investigate
its various functions in different contexts, and address the significant
influence of colonialism on the proliferation and distribution of
carved poles. The authors also describe their theories on the
development of the art form: its spread from the Northwest Coast to
world's fairs and global theme parks; its integration with the history
of tourism and its transformation into a signifier of place; the role of
governments, museums, and anthropologists in collecting and restoring
poles; and the part that these carvings have continuously played in
Native struggles for control of their cultures and their lands.
Short
essays by scholars and artists, including Robert Davidson, Bill Holm,
Richard Hunt, Nathan Jackson, Vickie Jensen, Andrea Laforet, Susan
Point, Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Lyle Wilson, and Robin Wright, provide
specific case studies of many of the topics discussed, directly
illustrating the various relationships that people have with the totem
pole.
Aldona Jonaitis is director emerita of the University of
Alaska Museum of the North and professor at the University of Alaska
Fairbanks. An art historian who has published widely on Native American
art, she is the author of Art of the Northwest Coast, among other titles. Aaron
Glass is an assistant professor at the Bard Graduate Center in New York
City, where he teaches anthropology of art, museums, and material
culture.
Watch the
book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV0rPn2F6lk
Join Aldona on
Tuesday, June 1 at 7 p.m. at the Burke Museum, with University Bookstore
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Marsha Weisiger
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|  Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country
Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country offers a fresh interpretation of
the history of Navajo (Diné) pastoralism. The dramatic reduction of
livestock on the Navajo Reservation in the 1930s -- when hundreds of
thousands of sheep, goats, and horses were killed -- was an ambitious
attempt by the federal government to eliminate overgrazing on an arid
landscape and to better the lives of the people who lived there.
Instead, the policy was a disaster, resulting in the loss of livelihood
for Navajos -- especially women, the primary owners and tenders of the
animals -- without significant improvement of the grazing lands.
Environmental historian
Marsha Weisiger examines the factors that led to the poor condition of
the range and explains how the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Navajos,
and climate change contributed to it. Using archival sources and oral
accounts, she describes the importance of land and stock animals in
Navajo culture. By positioning women at the center of the story, she
demonstrates the place they hold as significant actors in Native
American and environmental history.
Marsha L. Weisiger is associate professor of history at New Mexico State University.
Join Marsha on
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