Welcome to our weekly roundup of news from university presses! Once again, there is a lot to share this week from our fellow academic publishing houses and much to learn on What SUP at the social university presses. This week, we found conversations on the early stages of media literacy, gaming possibly the new way to resolve real-world problems, and endangerment of monarch butterflies. What did you read this week?
From the Square (NYU Press) looks further into an incident of a mother being blamed for her son slipping through a barrier at the Cincinnati Zoo. Yet, Linda C. Fentiman, a Professor at Pace University Law School argues that perhaps it should not be the mother to blame but possibly the lack of safety of adding sturdier barriers by the zoo so that visitors do not have close contact to animals. Fentiman explains how blaming mothers is an automatic instinctive when reacting to kind of situation and the notion that mothers have to “perfect.”
Temple University Press has the Editor, Renee Hobbs offer insight on her most recent book on the significance of learning from early 20th Century scholars were trying to understand media literacy. The diversity of media pre-internet were still expansive from media literacy books to VHS video tapes especially at the time when she visited offices of the Center for Media Literacy 20 years ago. From the Center’s archive, this gave Hobbs an idea of editing a book with today’s educators of remembering the “grandparents” of digital media.
John Hopkins University Press presents Karen Schrier on her opinion with gaming as a possibility to educate ourselves on how to solve the “wicked problems.” Problems such as trying to feed the world’s population, health care, and reducing poverty are all issues we can’t solve because of how we designed human society. Companies have started to see a lot of benefit of bringing people together through crowdsourcing to solve problems and gaming can be effective to gather a variety of people to play. Even though there is still a lot to learn and how we can take these platforms to perform effectively, hopefully someday we can design a game that provide us with World Peace.
University of Texas Press has author Stephanie Saucer write about her inspiration on her new book about the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF), she offers a creative mix of real and fictive events to a group that was written out of history. Starting out as the elusive Rebel Chicano Art Front, it became the RCAF from a mix up with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Saucer writes to expose the intense historical realities during the time of RCAF with various historical figures dead and live to give readers the ultimate experience.
Oxford University Press has the scoop for on how researchers are using drones and satellite photos to investigate illegal logging throughout the monarch butterfly reserve. The Oyamel firs and pines are shelter for the butterflies but are also cut-down for timber. Even though researchers do not have access to these areas, by comparing satellite images, they were able to discover where the logging occurred and how many monarchs may be affected.
Burning With Passion: Selected Poems from Catullus