Spring 2021 Catalog Preview

Our Spring 2021 catalog is here! We have an exciting array of new titles coming and we can’t wait to get them into your hands. The stunning cover features UFC fighter Rose Namajunas, from the cover of the book Fighting Visibility by Jennifer McClearen.

Browse the catalog here and learn more about some of the great forthcoming titles below!


First up are two guides that will be the perfect complement to your post-pandemic travels. First, the Guide to Chicago’s Twenty-First Century Architecture by The Chicago Architecture Center and John Hill takes readers on a journey into an ever-changing architectural mecca. It showcases 200 architecturally significant spaces and buildings from the Loop to the suburbs and is designed for both the tourist and local alike.

Next, Charles Titus’s new book, Exploring the Land of Lincoln: The Essential Guide to Illinois Historic Sites launches our new regional trade imprint 3 Fields Books! It’s a travel guide to 20 historic sites in Illinois that takes readers on a journey from Cahokia Mounds and Starved Rock to the South Side Community Art Center to explore the Prairie State’s most extraordinary historic sties.

Next, Cara A. Finnegan tells a fresh and fascinating history of the ways presidents have engaged with photography in Photographic Presidents: Making History From Daguerreotype to Digital.

And in music history, John Milward chronicles the evolution and resonance of Americana in Americanaland: Where Country & Western Met Rock ‘n’ Roll. Featured throughout are stunning hand-embroidered portraits of the musicians profiled by artist Margie Greve. Then, Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett tell the story of the DIY punk rock scene in the 1980s and 90s in a typical American small city in Punks in Peoria: Making A Scene in the American Heartland.

In Black Studies, Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community by Vanessa M. Holden tells the story of the women, children, and community that created Nat Turner and returns enslaved women to the history of slave rebellions. In Afro-Nostalgia: Feeling Good in Contemporary Black Culture, Badia Ahad-Legardy details how contemporary Black artists have creatively reimagined the Black historical past to create good feelings in the present.

In The Black Intellectual Tradition: African American Thought in the Twentieth Century, Derrick P. Alridge, Cornelius L. Bynum, and James B. Stewart edit an interdisciplinary collection of essays that offers a long view of the Black freedom struggle through the thought and ideas of African American thinkers in the twentieth century. And in our latest addition to the Disability Histories series, Jenifer L. Barclay presents a revelatory history of the relationship between ableism and racism in American slavery with The Mark of Slavery: Disability, Race, and Gender in Antebellum America.

And in sports history, former international gymnast Georgia Cervin presents the first big history of gymnastics in Degrees of Difficulty: How Women’s Gymnastics Rose to Prominence and Fell From Grace. Next, George Ruth’s Tennis: A History from American Amateurs to Global Professionals tells the story of how tennis went from a game played on lawns to a profit-generating modern day sport entertainment with bankable superstars. Brian D. Bunk refutes the notion of the U.S. as a land outside football history in From Football to Soccer: The Early History of the Beautiful Game in the United States. And Jennifer McClearen argues that the UFC’s promotion of diverse female athletes serves as a seductive mirage of progress that enables the brand’s exploitative labor practices in Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC.

And that’s just in the first few pages! Browse the full catalog and check out the other amazing titles we have coming!


About Heather Gernenz

University of Illinois Press Publicity Manager