University Press Week: How does your press StepUP?

Every day, university presses worldwide step up to educate and enlighten, motivate and inspire, support and act.

During University Press Week 2024, we explore the myriad ways our community’s publications and platforms give context to current issues and events, offer solutions to global challenges, and present diverse voices in a broad range of disciplines. It’s not hard to see how the work of these mission-driven publishers helps all to stride forward with purpose.

This week, the University of Illinois Press (UIP) is highlighting exciting content, projects, and initiatives from our journals and books departments that allow our us and our authors to #StepUP. Make sure to check out blog posts from other university presses in the Association of University Presses’ (AUP) UP Week blog tour and browse the #StepUP gallery and reading list here.

National Education Week starts on Monday, November 18, and we at UIP take our relationship within and support of the education system seriously. Please enjoy our curated list of books and journal articles that address different aspects of education.


Race in the Multiethnic Literature Classroom

Edited by Cristina Stanciu and Gary Totten

How race shapes teaching and understanding US multiethnic literature.

Schooling the Nation: The Success of the Canterbury Academy for Black Women

By Jennifer Rycenga

Cooperation, abolition, and a school for Black women.

Journal of Aesthetic Education 

“Realism in Arts Education” by Howard Cannatella (Vol. 58, Iss. 3) 

When arts education is evaluated, its value is often disputed. However, arts education is pertinent to a good education in general. This essay examines why the arts are educationally troubling and how arts education can improve education. A brief account of arts education is given to explain why the arts in education are not a luxury but, instead, a genuine need.

Arguments for Learning: An Intellectual History of the College of Education at the University of Illinois

By Bill Cope and Walter Feinberg

The evolution of a college and the ideas that brought change.

Public Scholarship in Communication Studies

Edited by Thomas J Billard and Silvio Waisbord

A roadmap for producing knowledge to benefit community.

Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education

“Workplace Well-Being and Classroom Space: An Exploratory Survey of K–12 Music Teachers” by Nicholas E. Roseth (No. 241) 

Kindergarten through 12th-grade music teachers spend much of their professional lives occupying physical workspaces like classrooms and offices. Given that teachers occupy these spaces for extended periods of time, the impact of these spaces on teacher well-being should be considered. This exploratory survey study examined the relationships between K–12 music teachers’ workplace well-being and perceptions of the physical classroom spaces.

Para Power: How Paraprofessional Labor Changed Education

By Nick Juravich

The impact of paraprofessional educators on the classroom, neighborhood, and picket line.

Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History

Edited by Eric Fure-Slocum and Claire Goldstene

An educational crisis from its origins to present-day experiences.

Italica

“Structured Reflection Tasks for Transformative Language and Culture Learning” by Chiara Fabbian and Emmanuela Zanotti Carney (Vol. 100, Iss. 4) 

Drawing on research at the intersection of adult transformative learning and language education, this article argues that by triggering metacognitive processes, language awareness, and perspective transformation, structured reflection tasks across language and culture curricula contribute to the development of learners as interculturally competent world citizens rather than global human capital. This qualitative study seeks to offer a theoretical framework and a discussion of best practices to help educators implement structured reflection tasks into the language curriculum.

To Advance the Race: Black Women’s Higher Education from the Antebellum Era to the 1960s

By Linda M. Perkins

A long-awaited look at the accomplishments of the talented tenth of African American women.

Learning for Work: How Industrial Education Fostered Democratic Opportunity

By Connie Goddard

The past and promise of teaching students to learn by doing.


About Kristina Stonehill