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13
May 13

Segregated Soldiers Uses Southern University to Depict How Higher Education and Military Programs Advanced Civil Rights

In Segregated Soldiers, Marcus S. Cox investigates military training programs at historically black colleges and universities, and demonstrates their importance to the struggle for civil rights. Examining African Americans’ attitudes toward service in the armed forces, Cox focuses on the ways in which black higher education and Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs worked together to advance full citizenship rights for African Americans. Educators at black colleges supported military training as early as the late nineteenth century in hopes of improving the social, economic, and political state of black citizens. Their attitudes reflected the long-held belief of many African Americans who viewed military service as a path to equal rights.

Cox begins his narrative in the decades following the Civil War, when the movement to educate blacks became an essential element in the effort to offer equality to all African Americans. Using Southern University—one of the largest African American institutions of higher learning during the post–World War II era—as a case study, Cox shows how blacks’ interest in military training and service continued to rise steadily throughout the 1950s. Even in the 1960s and early 1970s, despite the growing unpopularity of the Vietnam War, the rise of black nationalism, and an expanding economy that offered African Americans enhanced economic opportunities, support for the military persisted among blacks because many believed that service in the armed forces represented the best way to advance themselves in a society in which racial discrimination flourished.

Unlike recent scholarship on historically black colleges and universities, Cox’s study moves beyond institutional histories to provide a detailed examination of broader social, political, and economic issues, and demonstrates why military training programs remained a vital part of the schools’ missions.

Marcus S. Cox is an associate professor of history at The Citadel Military College of South Carolina. Raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he earned a bachelor’s in marketing and a master’s in history from Southern University, a doctorate in African American history from Northwestern University, and a master’s in business administration from The Citadel.

May 13, 2013
264 pages / 5.5 x 8.5
978-0-8071-5176-1
Cloth $42.95, ebook available

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13
May 13

The Politics of Faith during the Civil War Reveals Political Motivations of Religious Leaders during the Civil War

“A thoughtful, deeply researched, and impressive history of the place of religion in nineteenth-century America.”—Aaron Sheehan-Dean, author of Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia

In The Politics of Faith during the Civil War, Timothy L. Wesley examines the engagement of both northern and southern preachers in politics during the American Civil War. Controversial ministers risked ostracism within the local community, censure from church leaders, and arrests by provost marshals or local police. In contested areas of the Upper Confederacy and border Union, ministers occasionally faced deadly violence for what they said or would not say from their pulpits.

The generation that fought the Civil War lived in arguably the most sacralized culture in the history of the United States. The participation of church members in the public arena meant that ministers wielded great authority. Wesley outlines the scope of that influence and considers, conversely, the feared outcomes of its abuse. The reticence of otherwise loyal ministers to bring politics into the pulpit often grew not out of partisan concerns but out of doctrinal, historical, and local factors.

The Politics of Faith during the Civil War sheds new light on the political motivations of home front clergymen during wartime, revealing how and why the Civil War stands as the nation’s first concerted campaign to check the ministry’s freedom of religious expression.

Timothy L. Wesley teaches history at Pennsylvania State University, where he is a fellow with the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center.

May 13, 2013
288 pages, 6 x 9
978-0-8071-5000-9
Cloth $45.00, ebook available

Poetry / Press Releases — Comments Off
13
May 13

Matt Rasmussen’s Debut Poetry Collection, Black Aperture, Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets

“Black Aperture addresses, with meticulous balance, a single event from multiple directions. Autobiographical, speculative, imaginal, at times bitterly comic, often lyrically surreal, Matt Rasmussen’s transformative poems look outward—they are built on the observable leaf, field, hand, bird, and act. But this book’s central task is the alchemizing of experience by language: the subject here is the suicide of a brother. What cannot be altered remains; yet by changing saying, seeing is also made wider, more openly porous. The liberations of tongue, word, and conception held in these poems restore the possibility-sense that’s as essential to us as oxygen, when a person stands in the chambers of unacceptable loss.”—Jane Hirshfield

In his moving debut collection, Matt Rasmussen faces the tragedy of his brother’s suicide, refusing to focus on the expected pathos, blurring the edge between grief and humor. In “Outgoing,” the speaker erases his brother’s answering machine message to save his family from “the shame of dead you / answering calls.” In other poems, once-ordinary objects become dreamlike. A buried light bulb blooms downward, “a flower / of smoldering filaments.” A refrigerator holds an evening landscape, “a tinfoil lake,” “vegetables / dying in the crisper.” Destructive and redemptive, Black Aperture opens to the complicated entanglements of mourning: damage and healing, sorrow and laughter, and torment balanced with moments of relief.

Matt Rasmussen’s poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, H_NGM_N, and at Poets.org. A founding coeditor of Birds LLC, a small, independent poetry press, he is a 2012–2013 McKnight Artist Fellow and teaches at Gustavus Adolphus College.

May 13, 2013
72 pages, 5.5 x 8.5
978-0-8071-5086-3
Paper $17.95
LSU Press Paperback Original

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13
May 13

The Architecture of LSU Details the Origins and Evolution of Louisiana State University’s Distinctive Campus

“J. Michael Desmond’s book is itself a monument to the architecture of LSU. It is a delightful and engrossing history that delves into the little-known facts about the unique buildings that make Louisiana State University distinctive.”—Charles E. Schwing, former president of the American Institute of Architects

When viewed from the technical vantage point of an architect, the discerning eye of an artist, or sociocultural perspective of a historian, the remarkable buildings of Louisiana State University reveal not only a legacy that goes back to the Renaissance but also a primer of architectural principles that guided the creation of one of the most unique academic environments in the United States.

In The Architecture of LSU, author, professor, and architect J. Michael Desmond traces the university’s development, including a wealth of photographs, plans, drawings, and maps that underscore the contributions of key historical figures and the genealogies of the campus’s architecture and planning. By meticulously detcailing the origins and evolution of LSU’s architectural core and exploring the fundamentals of American college campus design, Desmond shows the far-reaching rewards of public environments that integrate natural and constructed elements to meet both practical and aesthetic goals.

J. Michael Desmond has taught architectural history and design for twenty-five years. An architect, he earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his master’s degree of architecture in urban design from Harvard University, and his bachelor’s degree of architecture from LSU.

May 6, 2013
156 pages, 11 x 9 1/2, 25 color illus., 65 b&w illus., 150 line drawings
978-0-8071-4976-8
Cloth $59.95

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10
May 13

Internship opportunities at LSU Press

Digital acquisition and promotions intern – LSU Press/The Southern Review

The digital acquisition and promotions intern assists in generating awareness of LSU Press’s and The Southern Review’s award-winning publications through coordinating engaging and relevant online content. Candidates should have good communication and organizational skills, a strong understanding of social media platforms and the ability to professionally and coherently communicate timely information across multiple channels.
The time requirements and in-office hours for this internship are flexible, but applicants should be prepared to respond to inquiries on a daily basis (weekday). The total time required will not exceed 10 hours a week.
The internship is unpaid, but provides valuable experience for those students who want to demonstrate and improve their proficiency in online communication and audience engagement through social media. This is an opportunity to contribute to a viable online presence and several web-based promotional campaigns for LSU Press and The Southern Review, known nationwide for the quality of books and authors that they publish.
Please send resume and letter of intent to erolfs@lsu.edu

LSU Press marketing intern

The marketing intern assists in generating awareness and interest of LSU Press’s award-winning list of trade and academic books. Candidates should have strong communication and organizational skills, experience in customer service, and an interest in public relations, advertising, and sales. This six-month internship requires a minimum of two to three days a week for increments of three to four hours. Additional time can be earned off site. The internship is unpaid but hours are flexible and portions of the workload can be suited to interest. This position provides valuable experience in the rapidly changing world of publishing and grants interns access to industry and media contacts across the country. Please send resume and letter of intent to erolfs@lsu.edu

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06
May 13

Lee’s Army during the Overland Campaign: A Numerical Study Refutes Common Assumptions of Pivotal Civil War Battles

The initial confrontation between Union general Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Virginia during the Overland Campaign included the pivotal battles of Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. Yet this crucial engagement has only recently received the same degree of scrutiny as other Civil War battles. In Lee’s Army during the Overland Campaign, Alfred C. Young III makes a significant contribution to that study by providing for the first time accurate information regarding the Confederate side throughout the conflict.

While the strength and casualties in Grant’s army remain uncontested, historians know much less about Lee’s army because of poor record keeping by the Confederates as well as an inordinate number of missing or lost battle reports. The complexity of the Overland Campaign, which consisted of several smaller engagements in addition to the three main clashes, led to considerable historic uncertainty regarding Lee’s army. Significant doubts persist about the army’s capability at the commencement of the drive, the amount of reinforcements received, and the total of casualties sustained during the entire campaign and at each of the major battles.

The prevailing narrative depicts Confederates as outstripped nearly two to one and portrays Grant suffering losses at a rate nearly double that of Lee. Many Civil War scholars contend that the campaign proved a clear numerical victory for Lee but a tactical triumph for Grant. Young’s decade of research, however, contests that notion with new statistical data.

Through thorough analysis of information compiled from the National Archives and personal estates Young challenges common assumptions about the Overland Campaign, showing clearly that Lee’s army stood far larger in strength and size and suffered much higher casualties than previously believed.

Alfred C. Young III is an independent scholar living in Pennsylvania.

May 6, 2013
448 pages, 6 x 9, 40 maps
978-0-8071-5172-3
Cloth $39.95, ebook available

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06
May 13

W. Caleb McDaniel Reveals New Insight into Garrisonian Abolitionists

“W. Caleb McDaniel carefully captures the complex relationship between abolitionism and American democracy, but his research will also change the way we think about the tensions, both creative and destructive, wrought by international support for a national anti-slavery crusade.”—Richard Huzzey, author of Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain

Baton Rouge—In The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery, W. Caleb McDaniel sets forth a new interpretation of the Garrisonian abolitionists, stressing their deep ties to reformers and liberal thinkers in Great Britain and Europe. Between 1830 and 1870, American abolitionists led by Garrison developed extensive networks of friendship, correspondence, and intellectual exchange with a wide range of European reformers—Chartists, free trade advocates, Irish nationalists, and European revolutionaries. Garrison signaled the importance of these ties to his movement with the well-known cosmopolitan motto he printed on every issue of his famous newspaper, The Liberator: “Our Country is the World—Our Countrymen are All Mankind.” That motto serves as an impetus for McDaniel’s study, which shows that Garrison and his movement must be placed squarely within the context of transatlantic mid-nineteenth-century reform.

Garrisonians’ transatlantic activities reveal their deep patriotism, interest in using public opinion to affect American politics, and similarities to other antislavery groups. McDaniel argues for an image of Garrison’s band as politically savvy, intellectually sophisticated liberal reformers, all well informed about transatlantic debates regarding the problem of democracy.

W. Caleb McDaniel is assistant professor of history at Rice University.

May 6, 2013
360 pages, 6 x 9
978-0-8071-5018-4
Cloth $48.00s, ebook available
Slavery Studies

Journalism / Press Releases — Comments Off
02
May 13

New Book Highlights the Remarkable Individuals that Brought an Often-Overlooked Black Perspective to World Reporting

Though African Americans have served as foreign reporters for almost two centuries, their work remains virtually unstudied. In this seminal volume, Jinx Coleman Broussard traces the history of black participation in international newsgathering. Beginning in the mid-1800s with Frederick Douglass and Mary Ann Shadd Cary—the first black woman to edit a North American newspaper—African American Foreign Correspondents provides insight into how and why African Americans reported the experiences of blacks worldwide

In many ways, black correspondents upheld a tradition of filing objective stories on world events, yet some African American journalists in the mainstream media, like their predecessors in the black press, had a different mission and perspective. They adhered primarily to a civil rights agenda, grounded in advocacy, protest, and pride. Accordingly, some of these correspondents—not all of them professional journalists—worked to spur social reform in the United States and force policy changes that would eliminate oppression globally.

By examining how and why blacks reported information and perspectives from abroad, African American Foreign Correspondents contributes to a broader conversation about navigating racial, societal, and global problems, many of which we continue to contend with today.

Jinx Coleman Broussard teaches media history and public relations in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. She conducts research on the black press and is the author of Giving a Voice to the Voiceless: Four Pioneering Black Women Journalists.

June 7, 2013
280 pages, 6 x 9
978-0-8071-5054-2
Cloth, $45.00, ebook available

Guest Blogger / Sticky — Comments Off
02
May 13

Guest blogger: Mary Ann Sternberg

Mary Ann Sternberg

Did you know that the wall of the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto at St. Michael’s Church in Convent is built out of the residue left from burning sugarcane instead of constructed of rock? Every other Lourdes grotto is made of rock; why on earth would anyone use bagasse?

And maybe you’ve noticed a fenced-in forest in the middle of sugarcane fields near Vacherie that has an historic marker out front describing a fabulous garden?. Who was Valcour Aime, its owner? And how could that overgrown plot ever have been part of something grandly called Le Petit Versailles?

The grotto and the Valcour Aime Garden are just two of the subjects I’ve written write about in my newest book, River Road Rambler, a collection of fifteen essays/sketches about unique or underappreciated River Road sites, according to me. I took the liberty of compiling such a compendium after wandering the River Road for over twenty years. I’ve always gone armed with an ever-curious eye and a reliable sense of humor as they are both necessities in the field and I took notes, snapped photos, and talked to locals. And I got access to places that are private where most people can’t go.

I layered on this untold hours in libraries, museums and archives, looking for source documentation of the history and culture I’d found.

That said, I should admit that I’m not a professional historian. Rather, I’m a writer who likes the heft of history and the delight of culture as well as the challenges of exploration, research and connecting the dots. Despite not being a “real” historian, however, who doesn’t produce scholarly work, scholarly, I nevertheless hold myself accountable to the same standards of fact-gathering and interpretation that all good nonfiction requires. With River Road subjects, however, I have to allow myself to take a little license (always fully noted) because legend and lore abound there and are almost as much a part of the landscape as facts. And they do add such charm…

Of course, there are many more stories of unique and underappreciated places to be found along the River Road beyond the fifteen in Rambler. Look no farther than each plantation (including the ten open to the public) which has its own remarkable narrative or each small museum with a singular insight into a certain slice of this corridor or the many sites along the way that go undefined and beg for descriptors. So Rambler is just a taste.

But I wrote it so that readers (should I be lucky enough to attract a few) will get to know some of the places as I have seen them and, even better, may come to care about them.

So the grotto at St. Michael’s, which is both protected and used daily, is worth a visit whether you’re Catholic or not. And the Valcour Aime garden? It’s also protected but it’s private property; you’ll need me to show you around as an armchair traveler and if you love a good tale.

Now set out on your own adventure through an LSU Press book. Use the code 04TRAVEL at checkout for a 40% discount on select titles. (Sternberg titles not included.)

Poetry / Press Releases — Comments Off
22
Apr 13

The Glacier’s Wake Wins the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize

“Didden’s is a capacious voice, able at once to deliver both wit and wonder, canny insight and meditative mystery.”—Scott Cairns, author of Compass of Affection: Poems New and Selected

In her first poetry collection The Glacier’s Wake, Katy Didden attends to the large-scale tectonics of the natural world as she considers the sources and aftershocks of mortality, longing, and loss. A number of the poems in the collection are monologues in recurring voices—specifically those of a glacier, a sycamore, and a wasp—offering an inventive, prismatic approach to Didden’s ambitious subject matter. In The Glacier’s Wake, the scientific, the elegiac, and the fantastical intertwine in the service of considering our human place—constructive and destructive, powerful and impermanent—amidst the massive shiftings that are occurring endlessly all around us.

A Washington, D.C. native, Katy Didden holds degrees from Washington University, the University of Maryland, and the University of Missouri. Her poems have appeared widely in such publications as Best New Poets 2009, Crazyhorse, Ecotone, The Journal, Shenandoah, Smartish Pace, Image, The Kenyon Review, and Poetry. Former poetry editor for The Missouri Review, Didden currently lives in St. Louis, where she is a postdoctoral fellow at St. Louis University.

April 22, 2013
92 pages, 6 x 9
978-0-8071-5200-3
Paper $17.95
Distributed for Winthrop University and Pleiades Press

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