Category: Media

The Space Review on ‘Discovering Mars’

Posted on by Abby Mogollon

April 19, 2022

Discovering Mars provides a broad history of the Red Planet. The online journal The Space Review recently published a review of the new book:

“Earlier this month, NASA marked the first anniversary of the successful landing of the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars. Since that landing the rover has explored part of the floor of Jezero Crater, collecting several samples intended to be returned to Earth on future missions, and is heading towards the remains of a river delta. The Ingenuity helicopter, a technology demonstration that NASA planned to fly up to five times last spring just completed its 20th flight, having become an aerial scout for the rover.

Perseverance is the latest in a long line of NASA missions to the planet, which itself in an extension of terrestrial studies of the planet dating back millennia. That long arc of observations of the Red Planet is the subject of Discovering Mars, a thorough history of how our understanding of the planet has changed over time.” Read more.

NiemanLab Interviews Christopher Chávez on Future of NPR and ‘Sound of Exclusion’

Posted on by Mari Herreras

February 23, 2022

NiemanLab’s Hanaa’ Tameez recently interviewed University of Arizona Press author Christopher Chávez on his new book, Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public.

From the interview:

The American public looks different now. When we look at the world, demographically, we’re changing. We’re becoming much more diverse in really beautiful and interesting ways. There are all kinds of important stories to tell. During my research, I found that some of the policing [over what can be on NPR] comes from executives and broadcast-level producers, news directors who make small choices. But some of the policing comes from audience members themselves. Some people would react negatively when they heard somebody speaking in an accent, for example, or when a lot of time was spent on a Latinx-oriented story.

Consumers are very vocal, and in today’s digital environment, that feedback can be given to institutions immediately. And it can be swift and severe. That often came up and it was really profound in terms of the range of stories in Los Angeles, where I grew up. L.A. is a predominantly Latinx city. The radio station KPCC’s motto is “We speak Angeleno,” but it’s really speaking in English, speaking without an accent, excluding people that are primarily Spanish-dominant, not telling their stories, and just not showing the breadth of the reality that I know there to be in Los Angeles.

Read the entire interview here.

New Books Network Podcast Features Christopher Chávez on ‘Sound of Exclusion’

Posted on by Mari Herreras

February 21, 2022

Susan Liebell of the New Books Network recently interview University of Arizona Press author Christopher Chávez on his new book, The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public.

How is power enacted in everyday broadcast practices? National Public Radio has a “rhetoric of impartiality” but this obscures the ideological work done by the network.” In The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public (The University of Arizona Press, 2021), Dr. Christopher Chavez interrogates how NPR determines what it means to be American and what is deemed American news. NPR’s original mandate included engaging listeners in civic discourses and representing the diversity of the nation. Yet Chavez argues that NPR has created a “white public space” that pushes Latinx listeners to the periphery. As a result, NPR promotes the cultural logic that Latinx identity is separate from national identity – hindering Latinx participation in civic discourses. But Chavez maintains that the shared act of listening might facilitate the ways in which Latinx listeners negotiate and resist norms of what it means to belong, also known as sonic citizenship. He writes that through the act of listening, “… those without sustained access to political power might imagine alternative political possibilities in which they are included.”

Listen to the podcast here.

Miriam Davidson’s New Op-Ed in Progressive Calls for Protections of Mexican Journalists

Posted on by Mari Herreras

February 15, 2022

The Progressive Magazine recently published a new op-ed by University of Arizona Press author Miriam Davidson, calling for the Mexican government to protect Mexican journalists. Mexico continues to rank as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for the press.

Davidson’s new book, The Beloved Border: Humanity and Hope in a Contested Land, shares the history of sanctuary and argues that this social movement and others that have originated on the border are vanguards of larger global movements against the mistreatment of migrant workers and refugees, police brutality, and other abuses of human and natural rights. She gives concrete examples of positive ways in which border people are promoting local culture and cross-border solidarity through health care, commerce, food, art, and music.

From the op-ed:

Not only is the Mexican government failing to protect journalists, it has been using spyware to monitor their activities, watchdog groups have determined. Some of the surveilled reporters have later turned up dead.

In response to this situation, some Mexican reporters have gone into exile in other countries. A few have applied for asylum in the U.S., though most are denied, even after receiving death threats. 

But there’s only so much they can do. In Mexico, as in the United States, politicians enjoy fomenting public distrust of the press. The media are a suspect class. Yet reporters in both countries perform an essential service in keeping the public informed.

AMLO needs to do more. He must stand up for a free press by putting attention and resources toward actually protecting people, preventing attacks and combatting official corruption. With those words and deeds, he can help end the scourge of journalist murders.

Read the entire op-ed here.

Abalone Mountain Press Podcast on ‘Diné Reader’

Posted on by Mari Herreras

February 3, 2022

Abalone Mountain Press Podcast interviewed Esther Belin, co-editor of The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature, published by the University of Arizona Press. Also interviewed were Byron Aspaas, Nia Francisco and Laura Tohe. Together they discussed what it is like growing up on the Navajo Reservation, writing poems in Navajo, and hopes for The Diné Reader.

Listen to the podcast here.

Author Esther G. Belin talks ‘Diné Reader’ on Native America Calling Radio Program

Posted on by Mari Herreras

December 22, 2022

Tara Gatewood, producer and host of Native America Calling, recently interviewed Diné multimedia artist and writer Esther G. Belin about The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature.

Belin is one of four editors of this powerful new anthology of Navajo literature with a range of contributors including Shonto Begay, Sherwin Bitsui, Luci Tapahonso, Laura Tohe, and many others.

Listen to the interview here.

Watch: Tsim Schneider Introduces the Archaeology of Refuge and Recourse

Posted on by Savannah Hicks

October 8, 2021

The Archaeology of Refuge and Recourse explores the dual practices of refuge and recourse among Indigenous peoples of California. From the eighteenth to the twentieth century, Indigenous Coast Miwok communities in California persisted throughout multiple waves of colonial intrusion. But to what ends?

Applying theories of place and landscape, social memory, and mobility to the analysis of six archaeological sites, Tsim D. Schneider argues for a new direction in the archaeology of colonialism. This book offers insight about the critical and ongoing relationships Indigenous people maintained to their homelands despite colonization and systematic destruction of their cultural sites.

Watch Tsim Schneider introduce his new book below.

Tsim D. Schneider is a citizen of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His archaeological and historical research investigates the lives and decision making of Indigenous peoples contending with colonialism. Schneider is co-editor of Indigenous Landscapes and Spanish Missions: New Perspectives from Archaeology and Ethnohistory, and his research appears in such high-caliber journals as American Anthropologist, American Antiquity, and American Indian Quarterly.

Podcast Features Sara Sue Hoklotubbe on ‘Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch’

Posted on by Mari Herreras

September 3, 2021

On The Joys of Binge Reading podcast, Jenny Wheeler recently interviewed University of Arizona Press author Sara Sue Hoklotubbe on writing and her book, Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch, the fourth in Hoklotubbe’s Sadie Walela mystery series.

“She recounts how a book that started out being about how women got a bad rap in banking turned into a bank robbery mystery. And she recalls the day she got stopped at Heathrow for having an American Indian name, believe it or not.”

Listen to the podcast here.

Stephen Pyne on Arizona’s Fire Problem in Az Republic

Posted on by Abby Mogollon

July 12, 2021

In a special opinion piece for the Arizona Republic Stephen Pyne writes that Fires in the West–and the world, for that matter, is not a problem solved with a once-and-done project:

“Places that historically had fire are having more and nastier outbreaks. Places without routine fire are experiencing it. An equal reality is that we need more landscape fire to dampen fuels and enhance ecological integrity. All in all, too much bad fire, too little good.”

Read the Op Ed

***

Stephen J. Pyne is an emeritus professor at Arizona State University. Best known for his research into the history of fire, he is the author of Between Two Fires and To The Last Smoke, along with several other works on fire. He has also written a suite of studies that orbit around the concept of three ages of discovery: The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica; How the Canyon Became Grand; Voyager: Exploration, Space, and the Third Great Age of Discovery; and The Great Ages of Discovery.

Listen: Carwil Bjork-James Featured on Media Indigena Podcast

Posted on by Savannah Hicks

April 20, 2021

University of Arizona Press author Carwil Bjork-James was recently featured on a Media Indigena podcast episode entitled “Bolivia for Beginners.”

Imagine what it would be like to live in a country where roughly half the population is Indigenous, said to be the highest such proportion in all of South America. Imagine too that, for over a decade, your president was himself Indigenous. Well, in Bolivia, that’s been the reality—and a fascinating one at that. A reality we delve into further with a special guest who’s written extensively about the ways in which Indigenous-led social movements have dramatically and fundamentally altered the mainstream political landscape.

Joining host/producer Rick Harp are roundtable regular Brock Pitawanakwat, Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies at York University, and Carwil Bjork-James, author of The Sovereign Street: Making Revolution in Urban Bolivia.

Listen to the podcast here.

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