Permanent Work by Gabriel Trujillo Munoz

Permanent Work: Poems 1981-1992 by Gabriel Trujillo Munoz covers a variety of poetic genres with visual images that will illuminate and intrigue the mind.  Humberto Felix Berumen claims that Munoz writes with "measured tone of analytical reflection and the sobriety of a language whose fundamental intent is to seek answers to the questions that he puts forth."  Dare to immerse yourself into the poetry and questions of life a death posed by Munoz?  Grab a copy of Permanent Work at SDSU Press.

"in this corner..."

Ever enjoy a little bickering, bantering or even boxing with and a loved one? "In this corner...," a selection of short plays, humorously portrays the vexing side of romance as fights in a boxing ring.  Within each play, written by Rosina Conde, Ignacio Flores de la Lama, Juan Carlos Rea, and Hugo Salcedo, readers and audiences watch the drama of everyday marital life unfold in the middle of a boxing ring. The literary twists of each play reveal different insights about relationships of love and war.  Whether you are married, or have been once upon a time, or have just entered the ring of love, these plays will entertain you with a bit of dread and lots of laughter.

Take a hit from "in this corner..." available only at SDSU Press's Amazon store.

Men Underground: History of Coal Miners, Worker's Rights by an Admirable former SDSU Professor!

Clinton E. Jencks. It feels good to know his name for several reasons. The first being his book, Men Underground in which he compiled his research chronicling the development of the rights of miners and the history behind their setbacks and achievements. Jencks details how a change in social status, working conditions, and the evolution of a protective union were brought about by the miners' struggle for respect and dignity.

Jencks is fascinating simply because he stood up for what he believed in during a time in American history when it could have cost him his life or freedom. The film Salt of the Earth was inspired by many of his experiences and research into the lives of miners and his personal contentions with the US government. Jencks was also a former SDSU professor.

Get Men Underground by Clinton E. Jencks from SDSU Press to learn about the kind of work miners do and gain a more profound respect for them and the protection of their rights, as well as the rights of all working people.

Click here to read about Clinton Jencks.



Enjoy watching part one of Salt of the Earth, the only blacklisted American film:

Brazilian Graphic Genius! Part of What SDSU Press Studies! Latin American Cultural Studies

A new film ponders human greed and the environment--from Brazil!


Escalade from Birdo Studio on Vimeo.
Production: Birdo | Direction: Luciana Eguti e Paulo Muppet


Check out SDSU Press titles on Brazilian cultural studies here, here, here, and here.

The Tyranny of Data: The Ethics of Tech!

In this era of technology, which provides us with instant access to information on our laptops, televisions, and smart phones, when do we stop to question: where and how did these tech-gadgets get all of this information? And how does all of this instant info about the weather, statistics, and geographical maps streaming at high speed through our technology to us, affect our society?

The Tyranny of Data, by Arthur Getis, explores the ethical issues of institutional, scholarly, and social focus and reliance on technologically obtained data.  The book reproduces his prophetic lecture, given by Getis at San Diego State University in 1995, that outlines the problems of relying on data.  He states that, "Questionable research leads to faulty policy, which in turn, can lead to societal disasters."  Although his book relates these issues to the field of contemporary geography, the concepts and concerns expressed in his lecture should be considered by everyone who relies on their computers, smart phones, iPads, and the world wide web for information, in this age of data and technology.
Get this great read from SDSU Press today!

aVANT-pOP: Weakening the Ideologies that Keep the People Calm.

 "The emerging wave of Avant-Pop artists now arriving on the scene find themselves caught in this struggle to rapidly transform our sick, commodity-infested workaday culture into a more sensual, trippy, exotic and networked experience."

-Mark Amerika & Lance Olsen

In Memoriam to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop is a collection of works by some of the main proponents of the Avant-Pop literary art movement. If you need another reason to fuel your passion for the protection and freedom of the internet, this collection will give you a real good one.




Avant-Pop recognizes the popular media for what it is: a vile monster of distracting misinformation and zombifying"entertainment" that holds a tenacious grip on the minds of a majority of people, insidiously defining them from without and diverting their attention from more important things like the revocation of their rights and freedoms. The Avant-Pop artist believes it's too late to fight against it, so he or she gears up for a journey into the heart of the beast in an attempt to change it from within.

Ron Sukenick writes it best in his essay aVANT-pOP, sUR-fICTION, hYPER-fICTION:

"...actually what we have here is a reversal of the old consumerist tactic of 'co-optation' -i.e., if some rebel-rousing movement comes along, defang it, package it and sell it, absorb it into the mass market, render it harmless -Avant-Pop, on the other hand, co-opts mass-market schlock, twists it and tortures it till it becomes dangerous and injects it back into the market as a virus that destroys its host from within...where monolithic mass market was, many mini-markets there shall be, making clear the difference between consumerism's 'free market,' and a democratic market which offers the consumer a wide spectrum of choice." 

That "spectrum of choice" may become much more difficult or impossible to offer if Congress passes SOPA. It would limit the people's choices even further, decreasing their amplitude of vision and insight by serving up only the few narrow options provided by popular media.

Avant-Pop wants to widen and enrich our options, encourage individuality, and support the sharing of our ideas and art.

To learn more about Avant-Pop and get inspired to create art that keeps communication open purchase a copy of In Memoriam to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop from SDSU Press.

Also, check out the editors Mark Amerika and Lance Olsen.
And to learn more about the Stop Online Piracy Act click here. 

Coming Soon From SDSU PRESS: A Re-issue of our Popular BORDER LIVES volume! | Featuring a New IZEL VARGAS-laced COVER!

The Rise of Californian Literature: Get what you need from SDSU Press!

Sometimes we forget how cool it is to be from California, a place that so many people around the world have formed ideas and wild dreams about from movies, books, music...etc.
We're rich in a very unique kind of culture and the academic world has taken notice! More and more courses focused on literature distinctive to California are being offered in colleges and universities across the U.S. 
Hit the image on the right for an article on the rise of Californian literature.

AND...

Be on the forefront of this movement with the help of SDSU Press!

Check out our selection of Californian literature:

The exploration writings of missionary Juan Crespi:
A Description of Distant Roads: Original Journals of the First Expedition into California, 1769-1770

A collection of studies, art, and discussions on everything Steinbeck: 

Homer from Salinas: John Steinbeck's Enduring Voice for California

Plus, click here to browse through our U.S./Mexico Border literature.

Shackled: 2012 pacificREVIEW Call for Papers

SDSU Press is proud to have pacificREVIEW: a West Coast Arts Review in its stable of literary journals; edited by undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty in the Department of English and Comparative Literature for over 20 years, it continues to evolve in the able hands of its present editors Sofia Vidal, Paris Brown, and Andrea Durazo.

Here is their latest call for papers, now expired (though you might be able to twist their arm to accept a late appeal); the editorial email is: pacificreview_sdsu@yahoo.com

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

What images and feelings does the word shackled conjure for you? Do you fetishize it or dread it? Does it evoke a mad pastiche of visions as varied as S&M, prisons, Occupy protest arrests, captives of war, or the constraints of domination by the powerful and wealthy? Any kind of severe repression spawns countless detrimental conditions that affect all aspects of our lives. For many, shackles reify the torturous act of being confined, punished, manacled and oppressed; yet to others, they manifest a means of intensifying desire. In this provocative issue of pacificREVIEW, we want to know how these physical, spiritual, mental, sexual, political and social shackles bind you, and paradoxically, give you a purpose for creative liberation. PacificREVIEW wants your work inspired by the grinding efforts against the shackles of repression. Liberate your short stories, flash fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, poetry, graphic narrative, illustrative art, and photography!

A west coast arts review annual, Pacific REVIEW has published high-quality poetry, prose, and art since 1972. Past issues boast the notable talent of literati and guest contributors including Carolyn Forché, Claribel Alegria, Raymond Federman, Ernesto Cardenal, Robert Coover, Susan Daitch, Steve Kowit, Daniel Halpern, Jorge Luis Borges, Erin Pringle, Ai, Alurista, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Oliver Mayer, and William T. Vollmann.

Editorial queries to: pacificreview_sdsu@yahoo.com

Pacific Review "Shackled" from Burning Fields Productions on Vimeo.
Pacific Review's Internet Spot - Conceptualized, directed, produced and edited by Andrea Durazo. Executive Producer Sofia Vidal, Director of Photography Jessica Wimbley, Assistant Director Magdalena Ramirez, Camera Operator Nate Elegino, Production Designer Jenn Plonski, Director's Assistant Jasmine Hoshino.

A Critical look at Military History: Jean Norton Cru's War Books

After fighting in WWI, Jean Norton Cru realized that the prevailing accounts that made up a widely accepted military history were written by high ranking officials, most of whom never experienced front line combat. War Books is the result of Cru's effort to sift through the romanticized image of a soldier in war. His aim is to get to the true individual accounts of those who lived, toiled, and experienced the war on the front lines and endured life in the trenches.
Cru clearly outlines how he went about the critical process of dissecting military history. He lists age-old legends and common notions that civilians have about war and sets out to dispel them with the compilation of writings from those who really lived it. Cru helps you realize that as a civilian, one really knows nothing about being a soldier.
 
Cru identifies the main flaw in popular military history:

"It is inferior because it concerns itself with special facts, facts which the witnesses, the chroniclers, the historians of the time, all those whose writings constitute our only documents, have exercised their wits to misrepresent, through motives of patriotism, of vainglory, or of tradition."

 and Jean Norton Cru really hoped to provide a work that would prompt people to see that war is not glorious in any way:

"These testimonies will teach...that man comes to the point of making war only by a miracle of persuasion and deception...; that if people knew what the soldier learns at his baptism of fire, nobody would consent to a solution by force of arms; not friends, not enemies, not government, not legislative bodies, not voters, not reservists, not even professional soldiers."

War Books is great because it can knock some sense into any civilian that claims to know what it is to fight in a war and reminds the reader why war is completely senseless and unnecessary. It can also enrich one's perspective because it provides a raw and arguably more accurate military history; a favorable alternative to the common history that is rife with distorting pride.
More specifically, it can provide essential background knowledge for the English literature major because it was compiled by a veteran of World War I; a war characterized by an inhumanity that helped inspire Modernism and some of the greatest English poets and writers.

Get War Books now, on sale from SDSU Press.

Comic Relief for us all!: Hector Ortega's The Comic Trial of Joseph K. from SDSU Press

Hector Ortega’s stage adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial is eerily pertinent to our times. Accused of some unknown crime and put through a wacky, illogical judicial system, Joseph K. feels the strange uncertainty of having his fate in the hands of simple-minded power trippers. What makes this The Comic Trial of Joseph K. is Ortega’s ability to pick up on Kafka’s humor latent in the original. It’s this humor that makes the gravity of Joseph’s circumstances easier to swallow and it breathes a sharp wit into the stage version. The book includes essays analyzing Ortega’s adaptation, giving the reader a better understanding of Joseph’s character and the importance of the comic element. The most beautiful is Ortega’s own essay in which he expresses a genuine passion for Kafka, his personal character, and his work.  Here are some excerpts from Ortega's essay:

"The truth is that the 'Kafkaesque' situation in which we continuously see ourselves involved in the offices of bureaucracy keep on making us experience feelings of impotence; we feel controlled by superior authoritarian forces that manipulate our lives."

Ortega also writes about the common misconception that Kafka had a dire attitude. The truth was that he held out hope for mankind, something so beautiful that we all need to inspire passion and action in us -not from fear- but from a source of love. 

"Kafka, like all prophets, is a man full of rage and pain, but, in spite of all commonplaces, like all prophets of desperation he is a man full of love for mankind, with hope in humanity. From him I have received the most hopeful and desolate phrase I have ever heard; it is a phrase from his diary: 'Even if there is no redemption in this world, we should all live as if there were.' It is the most beautiful example I have found of human dignity."

 It's with that same Kafka attitude that we face things like the Supreme Court saying that corporations are people and Congress passing next year's defense spending bill. Hector Ortega's The Comic Trial of Joseph K. can be inspiring now more than ever. Ortega brings out Kafka's view that no matter how far authority imposes injustice we must keep in mind that there are no "others," we work against injustice all while knowing that eventually everyone will be reminded of the things that make us human. Franz Kafka's convictions are the kind that can help shift the trajectory of mankind for the better.

Purchase a copy of Hector Ortega's The Comic Trial of Joseph K.: Text and Context from SDSU Press.

Comparative WAR Analysis from SDSU PRESS: Jean Norton Cru's WAR BOOKS: A STUDY IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM

click for the link

The Perfect Gift for the (Thoughtful) Sports Fan or a Christmas Super Bowl Fan's Delight: Coroebus Triumphs: The Alliance of Sport and the Arts by Susan Bandy

Hit the image above for the the AMAZON instantlink

or here...

Border Lives! On Sale Now on AMAZON.com

Border Lives: Personal Essay on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Harry Polkinhorn, et al., eds.
(translated by Tomàs Di Bella and Harry Polkinhorn)

Border Lives explores the living, changing genre of the personal essay as it is being practiced along the U.S.-Mexico border. The seventh in the Binational Press border series (SDSU Press/UABC Press), Border Lives contains work by James Bradley, David Clayton, José Manuel Di Bella, Carlos Fabián Saravia, Emily Hicks, Ramona Mejía, William A. Nericcio, Harry Polkinhorn, Leobardo Saravia Quiroz, Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz 1995 | Trade paperback: 680 pages; illustrated ISBN 968-7326-43-3; $25 plus shipping/handling OR $5.00 (through January 31, 2012) plus shipping direct from AMAZON.COM

Here are some screenshots of the book:

the covers...

from an essay by William A. Nericcio

from an essay by D. Emily Hicks

A Couple of Scans from Our Massive FEDERMAN RECYCLOPEDIA VOLUME..... | Hardcover edition on sale now via AMAZON.COM

Our amazing Raymond Federman encyclopedia is on sale now via our cyberbookseller outlet mall @ Amazon.com

Below appear a couple of pages scanned at random from this Federmaniac opus!