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Dawn Durante

@dawnd.bsky.social
2.3K followers 944 following 406 posts

Editorial Director at @uncpress.bsky.social • acquiring books in history, Black studies, girlhood studies, carceral studies • H-Net's #FeedingTheElephant

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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I’m honored to serve as a judge for @asalh-bhm.bsky.social’s Felix Armfield Dissertation Lightning Round Competition at #ASALH2026.
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It was a great first day at #ASALH2026! Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth today. Looking forward to catching up with more people tomorrow!
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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 19/09/2026
The Kennedy Center was financially stable until Trump took over: "In the fiscal year ending in 2024, when the center was led by President Deborah Rutter and a bipartisan board of trustees, it brought in about $40 million more than it spent" www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
theatlantic.com
What the Kennedy Center’s Tax Return Reveals
A previously unseen filing captures the state of the institution seven months after Donald Trump’s takeover.
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Such great advice! It is also useful for editors trying to learn more about your work. If I see an interesting panel in a conference program, for example, I’ll look someone up. What I find online can confirm if that scholar’s work lines up with my acquisitions work and inform whether I reach out.
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Earlier this week, an author told me how helpful they were finding all the #PeerReviewWeek info that was circulating! Here’s what #FeedingtheElephant added to the Peer Review Week mix.
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
And hitting the @uncpress.bsky.social book exhibit at the @asalh-bhm.bsky.social conference next week!
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Rachel Shelden @rachelshelden.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Terrific review of SUPREMACY by @nikobowie.bsky.social and @daphnarenan.bsky.social alongside my book, THE POLITICAL SUPREME COURT: 
Picture of this quotation from Pema Levy’s article “How the Supreme Court seized power to rule over the rest of us”:

“As Bowie, Renan, and Shelden show, this is not how its always been, or how it's supposed to be. To take back their power, the people must simply demand it.”
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Congratulations to Kathryn Benjamin Golden! THIS INSURGENT GROUND: Black Women, Marronage, and Rebellion in the Great Dismal Swamp is out in the world! This is a tremendously well-written and insightful history of Black women’s fugitive world making.
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Monica L. Mercado @monicalmercado.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
"To understand Dolly, you have to read her as a writer. Writing her own story was the most radical, precise way to define herself in a world that kept trying to fit her into a box." -- @tressiemcphd.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Greatest Story Dolly Parton Ever Wrote Was Herself
She didn’t see herself as a saint; she identified as something we needed even more: a writer.
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
It’s Library Card Sign-Up Month. Do it for Dolly, forever our literacy queen.
ala.org
Library Card Sign-up Month
September is Library Card Sign-up Month, a time when the American Library Association (ALA) and libraries nationwide join together to remind parents, caregivers and students that signing up for a libr...
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
I love seeing this when it happens to authors I’m working with, especially between proposal and manuscript.
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Paul Renfro @renfro.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Here's a really thoughtful and generous review of THE LIFE AND DEATH OF RYAN WHITE in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. Many thanks to the great Jonathan Bell for taking the time to read and sit with my book. 🗃️
The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America. By Paul M. Renfro. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2024. Pp. 216. $99.00 cloth; $24.95 paperback; $19.99 ebook)

More than fifteen hundred mourners attended the funeral of Indiana teenager Ryan White in April 1990, including First Lady Barbara Bush, pop superstars Michael Jackson and Elton John, and talk show host Phil Donaghue. Hundreds more, unable to squeeze into the enormous Indianapolis church, observed from outside. White gave his name to a landmark federal bill, the Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, passed the year of his death. The source of his fame was simple: a hemophiliac, he had contracted HIV after a transfusion with contaminated blood and was diagnosed as positive for the virus just as he turned thirteen. He therefore soon became a poster child for "innocent" Americans living with HIV during the early years of the epidemic, who could be contrasted with other stigmatized populations who bore the brunt of the public health crisis. As Paul Renfro explains in this sensitively told account, White's status "as a white, midwestern, middle-class, cisgender, superficially able-bodied teenager," together with the fact that he had contracted HIV "through no fault of his own … helped make him a vulnerable and sympathetic 'AIDS victim,' one who could conceivably assimilate into mainstream, 'normal' society" (p. 12).Renfro uses the case study of Ryan White as a route to explore the multiple structural inequalities that rendered the HIV-AIDS crisis so challenging for American society and the political system during the 1980s. While hemophilia was one of the early markers of HIV transmission in the so-called "4-H club" (alongside homosexuals, IV drug (heroin) users, and Haitians), it offered a path to political respectability during the crisis that the others clearly lacked. In the words of a 1986 report of the New York City Commission on Human Rights' AIDS Discrimination Unit, prejudice "against racial and ethnic minorities ('they're all on welfare'), homosexuals ('they're only f--s'), immigrants ('they're taking our jobs away'), sexually active women ('she's a w---e and deserves what she gets') and drug users ('they're nothing but junkies anyway') interferes with our ability to respond to AIDS as a health crisis."1

White, by contrast, had contracted HIV as a result of the development of the industrialization and commodification of blood products. New technologies in freezing blood and plasma from multiple donors allowed recipients to infuse themselves at home, while simultaneously exposing them to risks of viral contamination the industry did little to prevent. Far from engaging in behaviors that attracted the opprobrium of many Americans, including non-heterosexual sex and drug use, Ryan White had trusted a for-profit medical infrastructure that had failed him. At the same time, he also experienced prejudice and discrimination as fearful parents and school board members in his hometown of Kokomo, Indiana, went to great lengths to exclude him from school. His story allows Renfro to explore the interplay of problematic dynamics separating popular presumptions of innocence and guilt, able-bodiedness and disability, media publicity and invisibility, and valorized and stigmatized identities in US society in the Reagan era. Renfro has conducted exhaustive archival research, a task made more daunting in the context of the COVID pandemic during which he carried out much of the work for the book. He writes with empathy and compassion, together with an economy of style that results in a rich and wide-ranging portrait of a multifaceted public health crisis in a mere 136 pages. The book is a valuable addition not just to the growing historical literature on the HIV-AIDS crisis itself but also to the larger historiography on the politics of the 1980s and the multiple inequalities that characterize the modern United States.

JONATHAN BELL is professor of US History at the Institute of the Americas, University College London. He is the author or editor of several books and is currently completing a study of the relationship between LGBTQ rights politics and the US healthcare system since the 1970s.
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KEW @kidadaewilliams.com · 13/08/2026
If you're prepping your syllabi and other class materials on African American history and culture, don't forget about the NMAAHC's amazing 'Searchable Museum,' which uses artifacts from Smithsonian collections. It even includes resources for teaching this history. www.searchablemuseum.com #edusky
searchablemuseum.com
Homepage
A museum that seeks to understand American history through the lens of the African American experience.
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Citizen.Coping @propcazhpm.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
"Authors who are currently completing a book-length manuscript on Black women’s history are encouraged to apply to the Black Women’s History Series Incubator." August 31: Application Deadline October 15: Selected author will be notified *Please include alt-text. #Historians #Blackademics
uncpress.org
Black Women’s History Series Incubator
The editors of the Black Women’s History series invite applications for the series’ annual incubator. Authors who are currently completing a book-length
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
“Along with the Morrison and le Carré, Obama has chosen The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, and All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren.”
theguardian.com
Barack Obama launches podcast about books that ‘shaped his worldview’
The former US president will host six episodes of A Great Book for Audible, discussing work from Toni Morrison and John le Carré to James Baldwin
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Caelyn Cobb @caelyncobb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
We're hiring for an entry-level position in our Rights & Contracts department. A great opportunity to get publishing experience, especially for people interested in translation and foreign publishing markets! opportunities.columbia.edu/jobs/subsidi...
opportunities.columbia.edu
Subsidiary Rights Assistant - Other NYC Locations, New York, United States
Job Type: Support Staff - Non-Union Regular/Temporary: Regular Hours Per Week: 35 Standard Work Schedule: Monday-Friday, 9-5 Building: Off campus near Lincoln Center Salary Range: 47,792.00-47,792.00 ...
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UNC Press @uncpress.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
It's the last day of #ASA2026! If you haven't made it to our booth yet, be sure to stop by today before 12pm or visit our virtual exhibit 👇 uncpress.org/amsocioassn-virtual-ex…
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Pub day!!!! ✨💫📚🌟
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Inside Higher Ed @insidehighered.com · 07/08/2026
Student Success | How HBCUs Are Redefining Student Success From helping stopped-out students return to creating faster routes to graduate school, HBCUs are removing barriers at every stage of college. bit.ly/4hlFDfa #EDUSky #AcademicSky #HigherEd
University students sitting on the steps on campus talking to each other animatedly.
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UNC Press @uncpress.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
A moving remembrance of Johanna Fernández from @democracynow.org reflecting on her life, scholarship, activism, and extraordinary work preserving the history and legacy of the Young Lords 💚 www.democracynow.org/2026/8/4/joh...
democracynow.org
Johanna Fernández Dies at 55: Leading Scholar on the Young Lords & Latinx Freedom Movement
We look at the life and legacy of Dominican American historian, activist and prison abolitionist Dr. Johanna Fernández, who died on July 30 after a long battle with cancer. She was 55 years old. As a ...
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Congratulations to ArCasia D. James-Gallaway. Advance copies of her book, ORDINARY SITES: Student Resistance and the 1970s Texas School Desegregation Struggle, just arrived @uncpress.bsky.social.
uncpress.org
Ordinary Sites
For nearly a century, legal battles over school desegregation have attracted significant attention. What desegregation meant for the day-to-day lives of Blac...
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Eric Harvey @ericdharvey.com · 06/08/2026
only flipped though so far this but it appears to be 🔥
W. Jason Miller’s new book about Langston Hughes, Nina Simone and the black power movement
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Joel Pinckney @jpinckney.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Man this looks good, hadn't seen this one yet. Coming in September from @uncpress.bsky.social.
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Congratulations to Augustus Wood! His book Class Warfare in Black Atlanta: Grassroots Struggles, Power, and Repression under Gentrification (@uncpress.bsky.social, Justice, Power, and Politics series) has been shortlisted for the Museum of African American History (MAAH) Stone Book Award!
maahstonebookaward.org
Class Warfare in Black Atlanta: Grassroots Struggles, Power, and Repression under Gentrification — MAAH Stone Book Award
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Congratulations to Ashley Howard for being named a 2026 Mellon Emerging Faculty Leader! If you haven't read Ashley's book, Midwest Unrest: 1960s Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement (@uncpress.bsky.social), this is your sign to pick up her award-winning book.
cands.org
2026 Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Named – C&S
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Samantha Brennan @samanthabrennan.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
"Wyoming will become the first state in the US where you cannot receive a B.A. in Philosophy." dailynous.com/2026/07/23/u...
dailynous.com
University of Wyoming to Drop Philosophy Major - Daily Nous
As for Fall 2027, incoming students at the University of Wyoming will no longer be allowed to major in philosophy. The news was shared by philosophy professor Bradley Rettler in posts on social media....
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Dr. Jessica Lepler @jlepler.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Registration is now open for my "Bookworm" webinar with @clementslibrary.bsky.social on September 18, 10-11:30 AM. I can't wait to discuss "Canal Dreamers" with the good folks at the University of Michigan! Registration is free: events.umich.edu/event/149188 @uncpress.bsky.social #skystorians 🗃️
events.umich.edu
Bookworm #95 - Author Conversation with Jessica M. Lepler, "Canal Dreamers: The Epic Quest to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific in the Age of Revolutions" | Happening @ Michigan
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
ICYMI: The Black Women’s History series is accepting applications for its annual incubator. The incubator provides support for developing projects that center the voices and experiences of Black women using a historical methodology. #CFP #skystorians
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SHEAR @shearites.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Congratulations to Lauren Duval winner of The Mary Kelley Prize in Gender & Women’s History for The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence. (@uncpress.bsky.social)
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SHEAR @shearites.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Congratulations to Craig Thompson Friend winner of The James C. Bradford Best Biography Prize for Becoming Lunsford Lane: The Lives of an American Aeneas. (@uncpress.bsky.social)
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SHEAR @shearites.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Congratulations to Lauren Duval the second winner (not finalist!) for The SHEAR Book Prize for The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence. (@uncpress.bsky.social)
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Association of University Presses @aupresses.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
What are some examples of digital projects? bit.ly/3JrWl8g University press publishers answer frequently asked questions like this one on our #AskUP site. Curious about how university press publishing works? #AskUP!
Ask UP logo, tagline: Authors seeking knowledge from university presses
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UNC Press @uncpress.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Although we wish we were in Chile for #NAISA2026 we still have a virtual exhibit, a conference discount, and a message from editor, Andreina Fernandez! uncpressblog.com/2026/07/22/2...
uncpressblog.com
2026 Native American & Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting - UNC Press Blog
Although UNC Press will not be attending the Native American & Indigenous Studies Association annual meeting in-person this year, you can still visit our virtual booth to browse our recent titles on d...
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Monica L. Mercado @monicalmercado.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
There is one grant on this list of 81 projects that specifically focuses on the history of women and girls and that is just my tiny sigh for the day.
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Ronald Angelo Johnson @ronajohnson.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Haitian scholar-diplomat Weibert Arthus wrote a piece in @lenouvelliste.bsky.social about our @oah.org 2026 conference panel—including @dawnd.bsky.social—on Rayford Logan’s *The Diplomatic History of the United States with Haiti* from @uncpress.bsky.social. 🇺🇸🇭🇹📚 lenouvelliste.com/en/article/2...
lenouvelliste.com
From Pawn to Perceived Threat: Revisiting Rayford Logan’s Analysis of Haitian-American Relations
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence—the first independence in the Americas—I had the opportunity, during a panel at the annual conference of the Organization of A...
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
If you're like me and weren't able to attend #AUPresses26, then @michellechn.bsky.social's reflection on of the conference will make you feel like you were there! Check out her thoughts in "AUPresses 2026: Swimming Upstream Together" on @hnetbookchannel.bsky.social's #FeedingTheElephant
networks.h-net.org
AUPresses 2026: Swimming Upstream Together | H-Net
A guest post from
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Renata Keller @renatakeller.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Julia, Chris, and I will be at SHAFR next week! Reach out if you’d like to connect! @shafrhistorians.bsky.social
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Drafting the Past @draftingthepast.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
As a fellow archive rat, I loved hearing that @gauthamrao.bsky.social sneaks in an archive trip wherever he goes--even on vacation. Hear about the two decade journey to writing WHITE POWER: POLICING AMERICAN SLAVERY, and why--and how--he rewrote it for a wider audience. (@uncpress.bsky.social) 🗃️
draftingthepast.com
Episode 102: Gautham Rao Completes Each Vacation with an Archive Trip
Kate Carpenter interviews legal historian Gautham Rao about his book White Power: Policing American Slavery.
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melanie newport @melanienewport.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
MISSISSIPPI LAW was a huge hit in my undergraduate and graduate carceral history courses last spring uncpress.org/978146968948...
uncpress.org
Mississippi Law
In the segregated American South, policing was war. Rampant police violence came to the back roads and cattle pastures of America’s rural countryside as i...
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Bridgette Werner | Developmental Editor @drbwerner.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
uncpress.org
Searching for Memory
This biography of Brazilian journalist and activist Aluízio Palmar (b. 1943) tells the remarkable story of a revolutionary who, after surviving torture as a...
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UNC Press @uncpress.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Your TBR is about to get longer 📚 @aupresses.bsky.social put together a US at 250: University Press Books list 👏 bookshop.org/lists/us-at-...
bookshop.org
US at 250: University Press Books
Insightful reads on the American experiment, 250 years along
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scholarschoice.bsky.social @scholarschoice.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
And here is @uncpress.bsky.social author Allison S. Curseen, pictured below with her book Minor Moves: Black Girls and Unruly Performance in Antebellum Narratives. @the-ala.bsky.social #ala2026
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Brian Halley @brianbhalley.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
It's that day of the year, fellow #readers! The day the @nytimes.com talks about #summerreading with a reference to the @umasspress.bsky.social book on this very topic! #books #publishing (Was just linked in a Times Book Review email.)
umasspress.com
Books for Idle Hours
The publishing phenomenon of summer reading, often focused on novels set in vacation destinations, started in the nineteenth century, as both print culture a...
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Gautham Rao (pronounced: Knicks in 5) @gauthamrao.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
It is publication day for my book, White Power: Policing American Slavery. Here’s the unboxing, with a trip down memory lane. Thanks so much to those who helped make this a reality, esp. my amazing agent Dani Segelbaum, @dgershenowitz.bsky.social @uncpress.bsky.social @sonyabonczek.bsky.social
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Michelle Chen @michellechn.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Piggy-backing off of this to say that buying books direct from a publisher's website means higher net revenue for the press, which often translates to higher royalties for the author. So resist the temptation to "buy with one click" on Amazon; the couple extra clicks are worth it, we promise.
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Elizabeth Zaleski (@greatfartsoflit.bsky.social and project editor at @ohiostatepress.bsky.social) discusses her observations about and the impacts of “puzzling citation style variation” when it comes to using style guides like MLA, APA, and Chicago. @hnetbookchannel.bsky.social #FeedingTheElephant
networks.h-net.org
Nonarbitrary Style Points in Citations: When Departures Affect Functionality | H-Net
A guest post from
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American Council of Learned Societies @acls1919.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
BREAKING: Federal Judge Rules to Restore National Endowment for the Humanities Funding In Historic Case This afternoon's ruling declared that the mass termination of more than 1,400 grants by the NEH was “unlawful, unconstitutional, ultra vires, and without legal effect.” bit.ly/4wmbFg8
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Dawn Durante @dawnd.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
We are in celebration mode at @uncpress.bsky.social because Sandra Korn is joining the acquisitions dept! Sandra will acquire environmental history, history of science and medicine, urban history, labor history, and oversee two series: Flows, Migrations, and Exchanges & Studies in Social Medicine.
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Jonathan Coley @jonathancoley.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
My first copy arrived! 🥳 My and Golshan Golriz’s new edited volume LGBTQ Religious Activism is officially out June 9 from The University of North Carolina Press (@uncpress.bsky.social). Order at uncpress.org/978146969292...
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