Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Freedom’s Journal receives Honorable Mention

              Freedom’s Journal: The First African-American Newspaper, by Jacqueline Bacon, received an Honorable Mention from the 2007 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. This award commends works published in a given year which extend our understanding of the root causes of bigotry and the range of options we as humans have in constructing alternative ways to share power. For more information about Freedom's Journal, please visit our website http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com/ISBN/0739118935.

RLPG’s CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles

We are proud to announce that the following titles have been chosen as 2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles. Congratulations to the authors and editors!

Rowman & Littlefield

Gay Marriage and Democracy: Equality for All  by R. Claire Snyder

Elite Foundations of Liberal Democracy by John Higley and Michael Burton

Contemporary Ethnic Geographies in America  edited by Ines M. Miyares and Christopher A. Airriess

Shades of Difference: A History of Ethnicity in America by Richard Rees

Queers in Court: Gay Rights Law and Public Policy by Susan Gluck Mezey

Message Control: How News Is Made on the Presidential Campaign Trail by Elizabeth A. Skewes

AltaMira Press

Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions by Timothy R. Pauketat

Lexington Books

Queer Voices from Japan: First Person Narratives from Japan's Sexual Minorities edited by Mark McLelland, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker

Mark Dewalt Receives Bank of America Endowed Professorship

ROCK HILL, S.C.-Winthrop University recently selected Mark Dewalt as a recipient of the Bank of America Endowed Professorship for the Richard W. Riley College of Education.

He will use the endowed professorship to continue the next phase of his already 20-year research project of Amish education in the United States and Canada. During the professorship, which is renewable for up to three years, Dewalt will begin his next book on Amish Education, and write articles on Amish Mennonite Schools and the 1972 Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder which ruled that Amish children do not have to attend school after eighth grade. In addition, he will design two symposium courses for the Winthrop honors program.

University leaders chose Dewalt because of his continuous record of excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. "Mark is well respected as a teacher, scholar and contributor to the life of the university. His research is well grounded and addresses a unique area of education in North America," said Patricia Graham, Dean of the Richard W. Riley College of Education.

The Winthrop professor of education grew up in Pennsylvania near an Amish community and has traveled to dozens of communities stretching from New York to Iowa to observe Amish schools. He used the information as the basis for his latest book, Amish Education in the United States and Canada, which portrays the culture and history of the one-room schoolhouses of the Amish community. National and local media turned to Dewalt in the fall of 2006 to explain the Amish culture in the wake of a horrific shooting in an Amish schoolhouse near Nickel Mines,Pa.

Dewalt will be the second recipient of the Bank of America Endowed Professorship, which supports teaching and research for an outstanding faculty member in education. Winthrop's first recipient was Marshall G. Jones, who studied how those familiar with and those unfamiliar with digital technologies learn differently.

Planning the Past receives Honorable Mention

Planning the Past: Heritage Tourism and Post-Colonial Politics at Port Royal by Anita M. Waters, received an Honorable Mention from the Caribbean Studies Association’s 2007 Gordon K. & Sybil Lewis Award. This award honors two distinguished Caribbeanists, in commemoration of the sad physical loss but continuing memory and legacy of Sybil Lewis as well as Gordon K. Lewis.

Aging Parents, Aging Children is a Gold Award Winner in the 16th annual National Mature Media Awards Program

Aging Parents, Aging Children: How to Stay Sane and Survive by Miriam Aronson and Marcella Bakur Weiner received a Gold Award in Media/Book category in the 16th annual National Mature Media Awards Program. This program is presented by the Mature Market Resource Center. Nearly 1,000 entries were judged by a distinguished panel of mature market experts from across the United States for overall excellence of design, content, creativity, and relevance to the senior market.
Congratulations to the authors and to all involved in producing this wonderful book!

RLPG Sweeps Design Awards

The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group swept the Commercial Publishers Illustrated Cover category at the 2007 Washington Book Publishers Design and Effectiveness Awards, taking home first, second, and third places! Congratulations to the publishers, printers, designers, project managers, authors, and editors!

First Place

Ninety Miles:Cuban Journeys in the Age of Castro (Rowman & Littlefield)

Designer: Piper Wallis

Second Place

No Time Outs: What It's Really Like to Be a Sportswriter Today (Taylor Trade)

Designer: Piper Wallis

Third Place (three way tie)

A Concise History of Nazi Germany (Rowman & Littlefield)

Designer: Jen Huppert

 

A Moth to the Flame: The Life of the Sufi Poet Rumi (Rowman & Littlefield)

Designer: Jen Huppert

A Thousand Miles of Dreams: The Journeys of Two Chinese Sisters (Rowman & Littlefield)

Designer: Piper Wallis

Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution Wins Award

Jürgen Buchenau’s Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution received the 2007 Alfred B. Thomas Award of the South Eastern Council on Latin American Studies, which is awarded annually for the best book on a Latin American subject published by a SECOLAS member in the previous year. Congratulations!

Kenneth Dorter wins Canadian Philosophical Association/ Broadview Press Prize in the History of Philosophy

Lexington Books would like to congratulate Kenneth Dorter on winning Canadian Philosophical Association/ Broadview Press Prize in the History of Philosophy with his new book The Transformation of Plato's Republic. Ken Dorter, in  passage-by-passage analysis, traces Plato's depiction of how the most basic forms of human functioning and social justice contain the seed of their evolution into increasingly complex structures, as well as the seed of their degeneration. Kenneth Dorter is professor of philosophy at University of Guelph, and his book was also a CHOICE Outstanding Title for 2006.  Congratulations Dr. Dorter!

Virgilio Elizondo Named Top Catholic Theologian

The Catholic Theological Society of America, a venerable association of leading theologians in the United States, whose membership includes the outspoken Rev. Charles Curran, named Rev. Virgilio Elizondo of the University of Notre Dame its 2007 John Courtney Murray Award Winner for his distinguished work in theology. R&L proudly publishes several works by Fr. Elizondo, including The Treasure of Guadalupe (2006), A God of Incredible Surprises (2004), and Way of the Cross (2002).

The CTSA's commendation for Fr. Elizondo reads as follows:

* John Courtney Murray Award 2007:
Virgilio Elizondo *

The person who will receive the John Courtney Murray award tonight embodies many of the contending forces and identities that characterize our world today, and he does so with grace and humor. One commentator has described our honoree as someone committed to the basic message “that God cherishes, esteems, values, respects, treasures, forgives, and loves every one of us.” Another has described this person as bringing out the best in others, but our colleague would be more inclined to say that the first proclamation of the Gospel occurs when we are willing to learn from everyone, even the most inconspicuous of people.

Our honoree has reported that as a child, “the parish was the only institution where we felt fully at home” and yet today seems “at home” in a variety of nations and cultures.

Our colleague has written on topics as diverse as poverty, preaching, modern culture and Christian faith, creativity, ritual, and catechesis. He served twenty years on the editorial board of Concilium. Among the places he has taught are UC Santa Barbara, Union Seminary, Boston College, and the Claremont School of Theology.

He studied on three continents, doing his doctoral work at the Institut Catholique in Paris. He has served as faculty member, director of religious education, academic dean, and president. He has received several honorary doctorates and has been honored with awards from various universities, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the National Federation of Priests Councils.

His stature has been recognized beyond academe. He has appeared on the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour and Ted Koppel’s Nightline. Time magazine recognized him as one of the leading spiritual innovators in the US. In addition, I would venture to guess that he is the only member of the CTSA who has had a city plaza named in his honor.

When our honoree decided to enter the seminary, he didn’t even have to leave his home parish. In fact, although he is an internationally renowned author and speaker, he has lived in the same neighborhood most of his life. Like the Israelites of old, our honoree is no individualist: his theological vision is fundamentally shaped by his belonging to a people, a minority culture in the United States. And of course, it is precisely those who know multiple cultures who can show us how to break down the divisive barriers between peoples.

His own experience of straddling boundaries has given him great empathy for those who must struggle to live in the present without feeling torn apart (or as he puts it, without feeling “disintegrated”) in their encounters with marginalization and injustice. For him, this very search for meaning is decisive to the experience of faith and the proclamation of the Gospel. And yet in spite of the injustices, he has also said that “the totality of life is reflected in celebration . . . which is not an escape from the world of problems but a bringing of the whole day into the recognition that life is a gift. Life is to be lived, appreciated, and celebrated.”

Our honoree tonight was born in 1935, was ordained a diocesan priest in 1963, and served as the rector of the Cathedral for twelve years. He has spoken often of the two conquests that the indigenous peoples of the region have endured: the Spanish conquest of a continent and a half and the U.S. conquest of what is now the Southwest. Thus it is out of the experience of this history that he founded a series of liturgical rituals, including the re-enactment at Christmas of the journey of Mary and Joseph, with the couple being turned away at city hall, the courthouse, and hotels, before finding shelter at the cathedral.
Our honoree founded the Mexican American Cultural Center in 1972 and was its first president. He was the executive producer, chief liturgist, and frequent celebrant of the only internationally televised live Mass in the Americas. His books include The Human Quest: A Search for Meaning through Life and Death; A God of Incredible Surprises: Jesus of Galilee; Galilean Journey: The Mexican-American Promise; Guadalupe: Mother of the New Creation; and Way of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in the Americas. He is currently Professor of Pastoral and Hispanic Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

This colleague of ours is widely recognized in the religious and academic world as “the father of U.S. Latino religious thought.” He has not only written extensively in this field but has been a mentor and even a father figure for many of our colleagues in Hispanic, Latino, and Latina theology. In fact, the highest award given by ACHTUS, the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States is named in his honor. But he has also helped innumerable of us Anglos in the North to understand the insights that arise from Hispanic faith and theology in the South

For all these reasons, the Catholic Theological Society of America tonight presents the John Courtney Murray Award, its highest honor for distinguished achievement in theology, to Fr. Virgilio Elizondo.