Ben Parsons introduces his book, Introducing Medieval Animal Names. Technically we could call animals anything we wished. They would not care what incomprehensible noises we silly humans attached to them. Nor would their names be likely to embarrass them: as Mark Twain reminds us, man is the only ‘Animal that Blushes’ or ‘has occasion to’,
Megan DeVirgilis introduces The Female Vampire in Hispanic Literature: A Critical Anthology of Turn-of-the-Twentieth Century Gothic-Inspired Tales. My interest in the gothic lies primarily with women as Other; with how female protagonists and women authors create, embody and/or expose ‘monstrosity’. Perhaps this interest in female monstrosity was kindled early on by the fact that my
The cover illustration for my book, Wales, the Mercantile Marine and the First World War, is taken from a depiction by a popular German marine artist of the following First World War encounter between a U-boat and a Welsh merchant vessel. On 30 January 1915 Lord Penrhyn’s newest steamer, the Beaumaris-registered Linda Blanche 530 GRT
Congratulations to Professor Gary Beauchamp on receiving the Hugh Owen Medal from the Learned Society of Wales. All three editors of the Wales Journal of Education have now received the prestigious award, following Professor Enlli Thomas in 2019 and Professor Tom Crick in 2023, recognising their significant contributions to educational research. The Hugh Owen Medal
The University of Wales Press wishes to pay tribute to Geraint H. Jenkins, who made a huge contribution to its publishing history and to the study of Welsh history in general. Geraint authored and edited numerous ground-breaking and pioneering studies of early modern Welsh history in particular, writing for the Press in both Welsh and
Camilla Sutherland introduces The Space of Latin American Women Modernists, from our Iberian and Latin American Studies series. Sitting on the terrace of a café in Madrid last week, a Mexican colleague shared with me that she has always felt conflicted by the idea of writing about Frida Kahlo. Having spent a good part of
Sophie Handler introduces her monograph Seeking Childhood: The Emergence of the Child in the Visual and Literary Culture of the French Long Nineteenth Century. To think of this book, as I often do, as an adaptation or outgrowth of my doctoral thesis, doesn’t actually tell the full story. It is perhaps in the first instance
Heidi Backes introduces her monograph Spectral Spain: Haunted Houses, Silent Spaces and Traumatic Memories in Post-Franco Gothic Fiction. In late April 2019, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed and came upon a post by Spain’s far-right party, Vox: it was the famous Lord of the Rings scene of Aragorn facing the Mordor Orcs, only
Natalia I. Petrovskaia introduces her book, This is Not a Grail Romance: Understanding Historia Peredur Vab Efrawc. Writing This is Not a Grail Romance has been something of a voyage of discovery. The book started with a realisation, during a rather long lockdown evening, that I have been working on the medieval Welsh narrative Historia
UWP would like to extend their condolences to the family and friends of Robin Okey on their recent loss. Robin Okey was born in Cardiff during the Second World War. He received his higher education at Oxford University before lecturing in modern history at Warwick University for over forty years. He was an Emeritus Professor
We are thrilled that Karen Grumberg has received an honourable mention from the Modern Language Association Prize for an Edited Collection for her title Middle Eastern Gothics: Literature, Spectral Modernities and the Restless Past. The committee’s citation for Middle Eastern Gothics reads: Middle Eastern Gothics: Literature, Spectral Modernities and the Restless Past reorients the literary
Dawn Keetley introduces Folk Horror: New Global Pathways, an edited volume in our Horror Studies series. Folk horror’s popularity is not, it seems, going to be waning anytime soon. Director Ric Rawlins, for instance, recently directed a folk horror anthology, Rewilding (2023), steeped in M. R. James’s early twentieth-century fiction and the BBC’s A Ghost
Heather O. Petrocelli introduces their monograph, Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator. Growing up, I was a kid who knew they were queer and loved horror films, both facts I often hid from others to feel safer or not so out of place. This changed in my 20s when I sat in
Eurwyn Wiliam introduces Man, Myth and Museum: Iorwerth C. Peate and the Making of the Welsh Folk Museum. Twenty years ago I was asked to lecture on what was regarded as a seminal book by Iorwerth C. Peate called The Welsh House (1940). In delving deeply into the book I realised how much it owed
The publication of the UK higher education funding bodies’ high-level initial decisions on arrangements for the 2028 Research Excellence Framework (REF 2028) have been announced. Details and next steps can be found in this document: https://www.hefcw.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/W23-13HE-Research-Excellence-Framework-2028-initial-decisions-and-issues-for-further-consultation-English.pdf If authors have any questions, please contact your Commissioning Editor at UWP.
Lori Beckett continues a series of blog posts on the upcoming edited volume, Child Poverty in Wales: Exploring the Challenges for Schooling Future Generations. There’s strength in numbers. The Bangor PLUS team’s commitment to build a place-based action study on Trem y Mynydd sat well with other city-based teams doing similar work and trying to forge
Lori Beckett continues a series of blog posts on the upcoming edited volume, Child Poverty in Wales: Exploring the Challenges for Schooling Future Generations. Following the completion of the Trem y Mynydd Children First needs assessment and guided by its principles, a core group, including Caryl Lewis, stayed together for two series of six monthly seminars
Lori Beckett continues a series of blog posts on the upcoming edited volume, Child Poverty in Wales: Exploring the Challenges for Schooling Future Generations. What do we know? It’s a fairly straightforward question that’s common enough, but it was a pointed question when it came to the findings of the 2018 Children First needs assessment
In the first of a series of blog posts, Lori Beckett introduces the upcoming book, Child Poverty in Wales: Exploring the Challenges for Schooling Future Generations. A moment of truth has arrived. The publication of this edited volume on child poverty, specifically its causes and effects on schooling, provokes debate about Wales and its professed
During one of the first meetings of the University of Wales Press Board in early April 1923, it was noted that the Board had received copies of the very first book published in the history of UWP exactly a century ago, The Poetical Works of Dafydd Nanmor. The book was edited by the late Thomas
Michael J. Blouin introduces his monograph, Stephen King and American Politics. As a result of his popularity on social media, Stephen King’s political opinions have become a daily obsession. Whether getting into hot water because of his comments on race and Hollywood awards, or heatedly engaging with Senator Ted Cruz or former president Donald Trump,
Louise Campion introduces Cushions, Kitchens and Christ: Mapping the Domestic in Late Medieval Religious Writing. My book is about medieval religious literature. I have to admit, though, that much of the inspiration for the research that shapes the monograph came from an encounter with a much later work of literature. In Iris Murdoch’s 1980 novel
Miranda Corcoran introduces Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture: Teen Witches. The teenage girl is a surprisingly novel cultural archetype. Although conceptions of both adolescence and youth have a long history, the ‘teenager’ as a distinct demographic is a comparatively recent innovation. As Jon Savage points out in his thoughtful study Teenage: The Creation
We’re very pleased to announce that The World of the Newport Medieval Ship: Trade, Politics and Shipping in the Mid-Fifteenth Century has been awarded the G.T. Clark Prize for the best scholarly work on the history and archaeology of medieval Wales. Congratulations to the editors Evan T. Jones and Richard Stone! The Newport Medieval Ship
ECRs: the challenges Open Access publication is becoming ever more important for researchers, research funders and readers. With limited resources available for funded Open Access, early career researchers (ECRs) face significant barriers. They must compete with established scholars while they build a successful track record of publication, their employment contracts may be short-term, or otherwise
I came to this role from the civil service as a publishing novice, but with degrees in Welsh literature and a love of books. Fortunately, I inherited a small but enthusiastic team of staff already well versed in the field and able to induct me to the mysteries of printing and publishing. Each Director inherits
Meredith Conti and Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. introduce their edited volume in our Horror Studies series, Theatre and the Macabre. ‘Le Respit de la Mort’, a 1376 poem by Jean le Fèvre, marks the first recorded use of the word macabre. ‘Je fis de macabre la dance’, the didactic poem declares, or ‘I made the
Rhiannon Ifans introduces her new book, Stars and Ribbons: Winter Wassailing in Wales. Wassailing has been part of Welsh folk life for centuries, bringing light and life to the dark winter months. Wassail songs are still sung at several rituals held over Christmastide, at the New Year, and on Twelfth Night. The initial function of
The UK and Ireland’s major university presses are pleased to announce the launch of a new framework for collaboration. EvenUP demonstrates the commitment of UK and Irish university presses to equity, diversity, inclusivity and belonging in our workplaces, in who we work with and in what we publish. Recognising that different presses and parent institutions
Darren Elliott-Smith introduces New Queer Horror Film and Television, part of our Horror Studies series. Horror scholars such as Robin Wood, Harry M. Benshoff, Ellis Hanson and Jack Halberstam have written extensively on depictions of the symbolic Other in the horror genre as representative of sexual difference, either in homosexuality or bisexuality. What is perhaps
Bridget M. Marshall introduces her new book, Industrial Gothic: Workers, Exploitation and Urbanization in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Literature. The path that led me to write about the Industrial Gothic was, perhaps, a bit overdetermined: the daughter of a casket salesman, I grew up one block away from a tyre factory, worked for a summer in a
Lloyd Bowen introduces John Poyer, the Civil Wars in Pembrokeshire and the British Revolutions. Many years ago, I attended a lecture given under the auspices of the Historical Association at Cardiff University. Chatting to one of the steadfast supporters of the local HA branch following the talk, I mentioned that I was doing some research
Kathryn Smithies explores the inspiration behind Introducing the Medieval Ass, a title in our expanding Medieval Animals series. Ever since I was a small child and found a Ladybird book at my grandparents’ home, I’ve always had a soft spot for donkeys. In that book, Ned the Lonely Donkey, Ned sought companionship and eventually found
Nicola Bruton Bennetts introduces William Morgan: Eighteenth-Century Actuary, Mathematician and Radical. This biography began in a tea caddy, part of a legacy from a maiden aunt. A beautiful mahogany tea caddy, inside which was a clutch of letters – sepia writing on brittle, snuff-coloured paper, shedding new light on the life of my great-great-great-grandfather William
We are delighted to announce the new Advisory Board for the Wales Journal of Education. The Advisory Board is formed of key representatives from across the education sector in Wales, playing an important role in acting as advocates for the Journal in its new Open Access era, and engaging with the direction of the Journal
The editors of Utopia and Reality: Documentary, Activism and Imagined Worlds introduce their edited volume in our New Dimensions in Science Fiction series. The literary genre of utopia has a long and venerable tradition. Starting with the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia in 1516, there has been a steady stream of works that depict a
Jonathan Newell introduces A Century of Weird Fiction, 1832-1937: Disgust, Metaphysics and the Aesthetics of Cosmic Horror. Deliquescent corpses murmuring from beyond the grave; slimy molluscoid horrors oozing through the ancient hills; a ravenous, miles-long pig stirring in a miasmatic abyss – the pages of weird fiction teem with grotesques, a bestiary of dripping, festering,
Sam Blaxland introduces his new book, Swansea University: Campus and Community in a Post-War World, 1945–2020. At the end of 2016, I was employed by Swansea University to collect a series of oral history interviews that would be part of marking the institution’s centenary in 2020. The following year, the project expanded and we decided
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas introduces her book Masks in Horror Cinema: Eyes Without Faces. In 2019, the University of Wales Press published my book, Masks in Horror Cinema: Eyes Without Faces, as part of its Horror Studies series. During the many years of research and writing that led to the book’s release, one question was always at
I am delighted to announce that we have confirmed our brand new Journal Editor team for the Wales Journal of Education: Gary Beauchamp from Cardiff Metropolitan University, Thomas Crick from Swansea University, and Enlli Thomas from Bangor University. Our new Journal Editors bring with them a wealth of educational experience. Each has a strong track
The publication of the third edition of Coastal Systems in 2016 by the University of Wales Press was timed so that, as I outline in my preface to the book, the edition included the most up-to-date information from the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in 2014. Indeed, the publication
Jen Wilson introduces her book, Freedom Music: Wales, Emancipation and Jazz 1850-1950 This book was a slow burn, probably from that day in school when the piano lid was slammed down by the deputy head, near-missing my fingers, all for ‘lowering the decorum of the whole school’ etc. I was 14, and the piano remained
A new series from the University of Wales Press, introduced by series editors Dr Diane Heath and Dr Victoria Blud. Animals are good to think with, wrote Claude Lévi-Strauss, and ‘Medieval Animals’ is designed to enable the curious reader to do just that. The aim of this series is to promote work that challenges preconceptions about
Luci Attala introduces How Water Makes Us Human: Engagements with the Materiality of Water, the first book in the Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology series. I am not a great water drinker; I prefer to get into it. As I have grown older it is the quietness that is created by going deep under the water that
David Stephenson introduces Medieval Wales c.1050-1332: Centuries of Ambiguity. Long after it was published in 1911, Sir John Edward Lloyd’s History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest remained the most influential book on the medieval centuries in Wales. The picture painted by Lloyd was in essence simple: a succession of great Welsh
David Callander introduces Dissonant Neighbours: Narrative Progress in Early Welsh and English Poetry. Scholars in recent years have shown an increased and more explicit interest in medieval multilingualism. The study of codices and texts in multiple languages, quite a norm for much of the medieval period, has led to exciting new work and opened up fresh avenues
Gethin Matthews introduces Having a Go at the Kaiser: A Welsh Family at War, which has been nominated for Wales Book of the Year 2019. The book ‘Having a Go at the Kaiser’: A Welsh Family at War was launched at an event in Mynyddbach chapel, north Swansea, on 8 November 2018. It is based
The University of Wales Press is delighted to receive two nominations for Wales Book of the Year 2019. Congratulations to Gethin Matthews and Lisa Sheppard, whose books have been shortlisted in the Creative Non-fiction category. Having a Go at the Kaiser: A Welsh Family at War by Gethin Matthews This book is based on more
Elizabeth Neiman introduces her new book, Minerva’s Gothics: The Politics and Poetics of Romantic Exchange, 1780-1820. Between 1790 and 1820, William Lane’s London printing press Minerva published an unprecedented number of novels, many by obscure female authors. Because Minerva novels catered to the day’s fashion for sentimental themes and Gothic romance, they were and still are
John Baylis introduces his new book, Wales and the Bomb: The Role of Welsh Scientists and Engineers in the British Nuclear Programme. The history of the British nuclear weapons programme from the Second World War onwards is now well known. We also know quite a lot about some of the central figures, like William Penney, involved
Daniel McCann introduces his new book, Soul-Health: Therapeutic Reading in Later Medieval England. The connection between reading and healing has a history far deeper and far darker than modern ‘bibliotherapeutics’ would lead us to believe. While you don’t have to look far to find accounts of ‘consoling fictions’ offering mental and physical health, looking a
Kathleen Hudson introduces her new book, Servants and the Gothic, 1764-1831: A half-told tale. In William Godwin’s 1794 novel Things as they are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams, servant protagonist Caleb recounts a story of a complicated, often antagonist employer-employee relationship as a means of preventing the circulation of a future ‘half-told and mangled tale’.
Rhiannon Ifans introduces her new book, Red Hearts and Roses? Welsh Valentine Songs and Poems. Who was Saint Valentine, the saint who gave his name to the festival of lovers? Where do red hearts and roses fit in? Or do they? This volume is a lively introduction to a little known subject, the celebration of Saint
Kathrin McCann introduces her new book, Anglo-Saxon Kingship and Political Power: Rex gratia Dei. During the late 8th century it was said that England’s powerful ruler, King Offa of Mercia, sought to depose Pope Hadrian. He allegedly hoped to persuade his role model, Charlemagne of Francia, to replace the current pontiff with a Frankish ally. The pope,
David Annwn Jones introduces his new book, Re-envisaging the First Age of Cinematic Horror, 1896-1934: Quanta of Fear. Currently, if you Google the name Nosferatu, you’ll receive well over six million hits – that is in relation to a silent film nearly a century old, and for long considered lost. The remarkable longevity of fear and
Aled Eirug introduces his new book, The Opposition to the Great War in Wales 1914-1918. As we arrive at the hundredth anniversary of the end of the Great War, it is timely to consider how the war affected not only those 35,000 Welshmen and 780,000 British servicemen killed as a result of their war service,
Jonathan Lewis introduces his new book, The Algerian War in French/Algerian Writing: Literary Sites of Memory. The Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), which led to the birth of the Algerian nation and marked the end of the French Empire, remains a divisive topic in contemporary France. Characterized as a ‘war without a name’ for decades after
Richard Leahy introduces his new book, Literary Illumination: The Evolution of Artificial Light in Nineteenth-Century Literature. It is easy to take artificial illumination for granted in our modern, twenty-first century culture of twenty-four hour supermarkets and brightly-lit roads and streets, yet this technology has only really shaped our lives for the past century and a half
By Rebecca Duncan, author of South African Gothic: Anxiety and Creative Dissent in the Post-apartheid Imagination and Beyond. Emerging in the shadow of eighteenth-century Enlightenment, as the first shudders of industrialising change were becoming palpable in Britain, Gothic fictions have, over the two hundred and fifty years since the mode’s genesis, tended to proliferate at moments
From August 23rd 2018, the University of Wales Press will be located at the University Registry in Cardiff’s Civic Centre. Our new address is: University of Wales Press University Registry King Edward VII Avenue Cathays Park Cardiff CF10 3NS For general enquiries: Telephone: 44 (0) 29 2049 6899 E-mail: press@press.wales.ac.uk The University Registry was built
Ignacio Aguiló introduces his new book, The Darkening Nation: Race, Neoliberalism and Crisis in Argentina. At the turn of the twentieth century, and after a decade of drastic neoliberal reforms, Argentina experienced the worst economic crisis in its history. At the time, half of the population was living in poverty, the unemployment rate was 25% and
Rachael Jones introduces her new book, Crime, Courts and Community in Mid-Victorian Wales: Montgomeryshire, People and Places. Montgomeryshire is a marvellous place in which to live. It has a stunning landscape and friendly and welcoming people. It has a fascinating history too – particularly, for me, around the nineteenth century when the rural and agricultural nature of
The University of Wales Press wishes to send its deepest condolences to the family of Dr Lucia Villares, who sadly passed away this week. Dr Villares co-edited Graciliano Ramos and the Making of Modern Brazil: Memory, Politics and Identities, a significant collection of essays in our Iberian and Latin American Studies series, which examines the
Meic Stephens, who passed away this week, made a huge and vital contribution to the development of the University of Wales Press as both an author and an editor. Along with R. Brinley Jones, he established the pioneering series ‘Writers of Wales’ in 1970, which he edited for over forty years – a period that
The University of Wales Press would like to congratulate Professor M. Wynn Thomas on winning the 2018 Wales Book of the Year Award for Creative Non-Fiction with his book, All That Is Wales: The Collected Essays of M. Wynn Thomas. The Wales Book of the Year Award is presented annually to the best Welsh-language and
Diana Wallace introduces her new book in the Writers of Wales series, Christopher Meredith. The inspiration for this book came out of a kind of joke against myself. Talking to Professor Jane Aaron, one of the editors of the Writers of Wales series, I remarked that it was surely high time for a volume in
Evan T. Jones introduces the new edited volume, The World of the Newport Medieval Ship: Trade, Politics and Shipping in the Mid-Fifteenth Century. Ships have always played a prominent role in the popular imagination, and not just of seafaring communities. From the Ancient world to modern times, ships were the largest, most expensive and most
Lisa Lewis introduces Performing Wales: People: Memory and Place. Performing Wales: People, Memory and Place, begins from the premise that culture can be analysed in terms of performance, and focuses on four distinct areas of Welsh culture – Museum, Heritage, Festival and Theatre – in which performance helps to sustain specific relationships between people, memory
Patrick B. Sharp introduces Darwinian Feminism and Early Science Fiction: Angels, Amazons, and Women. Despite all the work that has been done on women’s SF over the past two decades, I still hear people at conferences state with confidence that women didn’t publish – or were excluded from publishing – in SF magazines before the Second World
On the fiftieth anniversary of May ’68, Chris Reynolds introduces his book Memories of May ’68: France’s Convenient Consensus. The commemorative fervour currently sweeping France on the topic of mai 68 is further confirmation of the thesis set out in Memories of May ’68: France’s Convenient Consensus. In it, I outline and analyse the role the
