University of Arkansas Press

09/23/2025

Now Available!

Architects of Being: The Creative Lives of Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina, edited by Catherine Walworth.

“Architects of Being sets two imposing artists against a vivid backdrop of New York City struggling under an economic depression, Robert Moses’s wrecking ball, and the rise of American abstraction. In the midst of these and other more personal obstacles, Nevelson and Slobodkina built independent artistic lives of inspired audacity. In telling their stories, the book’s authors take us on a romp through the mid-twentieth-century New York art scene, which both women navigated with fashionable flair. The exploration of Nevelson’s largely black-and-white world benefits from the colorful parallel story of Slobodkina, while Slobodkina’s ‘anything goes’ approach to transforming objects is viewed through the lens of Nevelson’s assemblage practice. Over everything is the pervasive presence of architecture—art and artistic personas constructed, apartments refurbished, houses designed, and art studios that took over domestic spaces. In the era of McCarthyism and Leave It to Beaver conformism, Nevelson and Slobodkina led dazzlingly original lives.”
—Susan Fisher Sterling, Ph.D., Alice West Director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts

https://www.uapress.com/product/architects-of-being/

09/22/2025

Playhouse to Powerhouse: Locating Black Power Women and their Movement in the Black Theatre by Kerry Goldmann is now available!

The rise of Black cultural nationalism in the 1960s came with resounding promises of assertive new methods to achieve Black liberation in America, especially through art. Nowhere were these efforts more impactful or lasting than in the Black theatres founded or led by Black women between 1960 and 1990. Prior to the 1960s, most Black theatre was barred from mainstream white venues, limiting public access, Black artistic and economic opportunity, and cultural ownership. Playhouse to Powerhouse: Locating Black Power Women and Their Movement in the Black Theatre examines the revolutionaries who brought about this change, merging arts and entrepreneurship to embed theatres in Black communities from California to New York to Texas.

In Playhouse to Powerhouse, Kerry L. Goldmann explores the Black theatre movement through the lens of three significant women-led theatres that are still in operation today: Nora Vaughn’s Black Repertory Group in Berkeley, Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre in Harlem, and George Hawkins and Eileen Morris’s Ensemble Theatre in Houston. Goldmann concludes with a discussion of the current moment, examining contemporary obstacles such as gentrification, the co-opting of Black theatres, and the impact of COVID-19.

This remarkable work sheds light on the foundational role that Vaughn, Teer, and Morris played in the Black cultural revolution of the mid- to late twentieth century, securing theatre houses that thrived in multiple capacities as sites for revolution organizing, revenue generation for communal uplift, and unapologetic Black cultural representation.

https://www.uapress.com/product/playhouse-to-powerhouse/

09/15/2025

The University of Arkansas Press is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of The Metal of a Thousand Uses: Mercury Mining in Arkansas, 1930–1946 by John T. Reynolds.

Publishing scholarship and literature of enduring value since 1980.

09/11/2025

The University of Arkansas Press is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of the third, authoritative edition of Frank Stanford’s The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You.

https://www.uapress.com/2025/09/10/announcing-the-forthcoming-publication-of-the-battlefield-where-the-moon-says-i-love-you/

09/08/2025

Wes Tirey interviews James McWilliams, author of The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford

JM: I first discovered Frank Stanford’s epic poem The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You in 2000, just after Lost Roads published the second edition. Reading it felt like I’d caught a rogue wave during a fever dream in the middle of some mythical ocean, rode it like a banshee until it dumped me in some wayward Delta cotton patch, where I woke up naked and disoriented, panthers and hawks circling. Changed. That’s about the best I can do for telling you what Frank’s work initially meant to me. Over the last two decades, especially during the research and writing of the biography, I’ve recovered some of my balance, knocked the shine off a few Stanfordian myths, and partially demystified the fumarole that fueled Frank’s poetry. But–and this is critical–knowledge has not ruined experience (I’m an historian, and we can make anything boring.). Even though I have probed the depths of Frank’s life and work as much as I can imagine anyone probing into it, reading his poems still transports me back to that ocean. I still lose myself on that crazy ride. The facts of Stanford’s life have done nothing to diminish the magic of the poetry. Perhaps they have enhanced it.

https://highhorse.blog/2025/08/17/wes-tirey-interviews-james-mcwilliams-author-of-the-life-and-poetry-of-frank-stanford/

09/08/2025

The University of Arkansas Press is excited to announce the forthcoming publication of In the Shade of the Pine: Artists, Writers, and Trees in America, 1825-1876 by Christiana Payne.

A visually compelling, historically grounded account of how trees shaped the intellectual and emotional landscapes of a generation—and how their representations laid the groundwork for the ecological consciousness to come—In the Shade of the Pine offers timely insight into the deep-rooted cultural histories that trees bring as sources of meaning, memory, and moral insight in an era of ecological precarity.

A visually compelling, historically grounded account of how trees shaped the intellectual and emotional landscapes of a generation.

09/05/2025

Off to print! The 150th anniversary edition of A CAPITAL IDEA: An Illustrated History of the Capital Hotel by Steven B. Weintz

https://www.uapress.com/product/a-capital-idea-150/

09/04/2025

Now Available! A Games Changer: The International Olympic Committee, Tokyo 2020, and COVID-19 by Stephen R. Wenn and Robert K. Barney

From the emergence of the COVID pandemic in early 2020 through the delayed staging of the Tokyo Olympic games in summer 2021, A Games Changer takes the reader behind the scenes to explore the myriad challenges the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Japanese officials faced during the months of uncertainty leading up not only to the postponement of the Games but also to their delayed.

Drawing on a thorough review of contemporary newspaper and magazine coverage as well as personal interviews with current and former IOC officials, Stephen R. Wenn and Robert K. Barney examine Japan’s rising excitement in 2019 as preparations for the Games accelerated; whispers of a mysterious disease spreading first in China, then worldwide; organizers’ initial resolve to press forward with the Games; the tumultuous discussions that ultimately resulted in the joint March 2020 decision by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and IOC President Thomas Bach to postpone the Games; and the numerous negotiations with venues, media, and sponsors required to extend contracts and protect all parties’ health. Wenn and Barney reveal how human relationships—among planners, politicians, competitors, and vaccine researchers—were vital to presenting an Olympics where, in July and August 2021, world records were set, deferred dreams were achieved, and fears of a superspreader event went unrealized.

While tracing the struggles of multiple athletes who had to pause their Olympic hopes and training as COVID-19 closed the world, Wenn and Barney focus on the journey of Canadian decathlete Damian Warner and his coach, Gar Leyshon. Denied his usual training venues, he prepared for the rescheduled Games with ingenuity, determination, and adaptability, reflective of the resilience demonstrated by Tokyo’s Olympians around the globe. The authors’ close account of Warner’s two days in Tokyo recaptures the excitement and drama of sport that home viewers sorely needed amid pandemic lockdowns and incalculable personal loss.

https://www.uapress.com/product/a-games-changer/

09/04/2025

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It's almost here! EAT LIKE THE HOGS: A Collection of Favorite Recipes from Razorback Greats

https://www.uapress.com/product/eat-like-the-hogs/

09/03/2025

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