Publishing

Public Domain Day 2026

One of the most exciting days of the year is Public Domain Day! On January 1 each year, works copyrighted 95 years prior enter the public domain. This means that anything published in the US in 1930 is now in the public domain!

Happy New Year!

For North Dakota Quarterly, this means the volume 20 is now available with no restrictions. You can enjoy the esteemed jurist Sveinbjor Johnson’s article on “The University and the State” Or these two poems dedicated to the memory of Carl Ben Eielson.

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Of course, there are plenty of other things to read from this year. John Dos Passos’s The 42nd Parallel, the first of his U.S.A. Trilogy, Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies, or for more popular faire Dashiell Hammett’s, The Maltese Falcon or Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison. For those “Hellenically inclined” check out Thornton Wilder’s The Woman of Andros. For those who enjoy the more Gothic side of things, check out Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. 

If you’re into magazines, you probably already know that you can find the entire run of the New Masses (1926–1948) is available online, but now the 1930 volume in the public domain (which features unsurprisingly som John Dos Passos!). Volume 4 of Prairie Schooner from 1930 offers perspectives on a perennial question in Higher Ed, “Should Professors Think?” Or a later issue of The Midland which features these nice winter poems from Frederick ten Hoor in volume 16:

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Boeotia III: Some Unboxing Notes

Over the weekend, I spent about 10 hours with John Bintliff, Emeri Farinetti, and Anthony Snodgrass’s latest publication from their work in Boeotia from 1978-2001: Boeotia Project, Volume III: Hyettos. The Origins, Florescence and Afterlife of a Small Boeotian City (2025). 

It is massive (700+ pages), dense (in two columns!), and it is also open access! In fact, you can download it here. Funny story: I was so excited to get a copy, that when I saw people buzzing about it on social media, I ordered a paper copy before I knew that I could just download it. Do I regret this. No. 

I had the vague idea that I could spend 10 or so hours with this book and that might be enough for a preliminary review. It turns out that I was mistaken. That said, I think that I have enjoyed the volume enough to do the equivalent of an product “unboxing” where I can offer a few preliminary observations.

1. Modify and Adapt. If I were going to write a formal, published review of this book, the first thing I would do is hyperlink the living daylights out of the it. For example, the best description of sites is in “Chapter 4: The analysis of the Hyettos rural landscape (ii): the CN rural sites” where Bintliff and Farinetti describe and interpret each site in some detail. These sites are then discussed throughout the volume in different contexts and by different authors. As the book is downloaded, it is difficult to move between the original description of the site and later analysis. The internal link would solve this beautifully. 

I was tempted (for a moment) to see whether I could easily modify the book to allow a reader to move more easily between sections. Then I noticed that the book was published with a ND license and technically my modifications would violate this license. Of course, I could do it anyway, but I suspect that if the authors publish a book with a restrictive license like this, they are not inclined to entertain modifications.

2. Published Data. As readers of my blog know, I am very interested in how projects publish data. It was exciting to see the Boeotia project published their ceramic data as simple .xlsx downloads here. (They also published their data on architectural fragments here). This data appears to not have any license associated with it which makes it tempting to think of ways to allow the reader to integrate it more tightly with the volume. With the vast number of online data presentation and publication platforms available, it seems pretty easy to create a way to link specifically to particular datasets (say, site data) as well as making the entire dataset available. 

3. Sites. The Boeotia survey pioneered offsite survey not only by collecting data at scale, but offering arguments for why this data matters. Foremost among these arguments it the (in)famous manuring hypothesis which suggests that offsite halos around settlement reflect the scatter of trash associated with the spreading of manure into market gardens around more dense settlements. Alternately, the halo could represent lower density settlement and activity areas surrounding a core settlement. The relatively lower density and shorter term occupation would lead to lower density ceramic scatters that appear archaeologically in very similar ways to manuring especially as they are likely to contain similar assemblages of household ceramics.

The Boeotia project also continued to sample higher density assemblages in the landscape at a higher level. These are areas that exceeded the surrounding density to such an extent that they plausibly represent higher intensity activity areas in the past. By sampling these areas more intensively, the survey teams produced a more robust sample of artifacts and a better relative measure of site densities. This allowed them to discern where densities “fall off” around the borders of the site and return to the level of background scatter and to speak more directly to the function of activities at the site. The functional cohesion of the various period assemblages and the continuity of densities creates a compelling argument for these sites as actually existing as activity areas in the past rather than as the accidental or incidental overlap of lower density scatters. In short, the sites documented by this project are convincing.

4. Early Byzantine Pottery, Assemblages, and Settlement. Finally, I was pretty excited to  read Athanasios K. Vionis, with Chrystalla Loizou’s chapter on “A household archaeology and history of Hyettos and its territory: the Byzantine to Early Modern pottery.” The thing that immediately caught my eye was their discussion of Early Byzantine pottery — particularly handmade and slow-wheel made wares. What’s distinct about their discussion is that they do not simply identify random sherds in offsite scatters, which are a rare, but not unexpected occurrence in areas with long settlement history, but they are able to identify assemblages that include amphora, flat bottomed pitchers (or juglets) and even some burnished brown table wares. While the number of sherds remains small, the diversity in the assemblages is perhaps sufficient to define persistent settlement during these often shadowy centuries.

My interest in this is two fold. First, as readers of this blog know, I’m puttering away on publishing the a more fulsome treatment of the “Slavic” (or better Early Byzantine pottery) from Isthmia and I’ve very recently agreed to write a chapter on the economy of the Early Byzantine countryside (with emphasis, I suspect, on Greece and Cyprus). The traces of evidence for this period are quite scant and the appearance of a cluster of sherds that suggest a domestic assemblage is meaningful indeed.

There is much more to say about this volume and there is a good chance that a longer, more detailed review will appear on this very blog in the near future.

Winter Writing Wednesday

Last week, I was able to send my book manuscript to my publisher for review. This means that my book now has a (tentative) title: Archaeology, Photography, Oil: Workforce Housing in the Bakken. This means that I now have some time to work on other projects. For example, yesterday, I did pre-production work on most of the poetry for NDQ. I finished up some letters of recommendation, and I’m working on two books that are in production at my press. And, of course, there is grading. Always grading.

I am committed to making this winter productive even as the dust settles on the fall semester (amid the dying gasps of a winter storm). I have three projects that I really want to complete.

1. A Kiln at Ancient Arsinoe. In 2023 and 2024, we completed work documenting the kiln and surroundings in the area of E.F2 at Polis. We gave a paper on this at the 2024 ASOR conference. The kiln dates to the Roman period and was part of a multiphase installation that seems to have focused on ceramic production. The article, which we plan to submit to BASOR, will document these features and introduce the related ceramic assemblage. In particular, we’ll propose that a group of lamps found nearby might be the product of the ceramic installation. This assemblage of lamps, including several from the same mould and several showing no signs of use, is unusual at Polis because unlike the lamp fragments found elsewhere at the site, there is a remarkable level of consistency in the assemblage found near the kiln installation. The most vexing thing is that there is no clear stratigraphic (or depositional) relationship between the lamp assemblage and the ceramic production installations. This also is the fun and challenging part of this article.

2. Midwestern Modernism and the Regional Magazine: The First 23 volumes of North Dakota Quarterly (1910-1933). This is my major writing project of the new year and for a volume called the Edinburgh Companion to the Regional Magazine. I’m incredibly excited to write this piece and I am intrigued by the editorial team’s decision to host not only a writing day, but also some lightening presentations from the contributors. This is a brilliant way not only to ensure that we are writing, but also that our contributions will coalesce (potentially) around some key themes. Be prepared to see more on this in the coming months!

Here’s the current abstract:

Founded in 1910 at the University of North Dakota, North Dakota Quarterly represented a new type of regional magazine at the intersection of the expansion of higher education into middle of the American continent and new currents modernist thought—sometimes referred to as “Midwestern Modernism.” This movement developed across literature, art, architecture, and education and found fertile ground in turn-of-the-century “little magazines” which celebrated regional voices in an accessible style and at a modest price. While the magazine initially featured the work of University of North Dakota faculty, it soon expanded beyond campus voices with contributions of appeal to a regional audience. The juxtaposition of regional with national (and even global) issues in its pages reflected the growing sense of cosmopolitanism among Quarterly‘s authors and audience. Ironically the global engagement that played out across its pages ultimately paused its publication in 1933 as a result of university budget cuts during the Great Depression. This contribution looks to the first two decades of the Quarterly as a window into “Midwestern Modernism” and the contemporary development of regional magazines across the early-20th century American Midwest.

3. Survey Archaeology and Modern Greece. My colleague Nota Pantzou (University of Patras) and I are slowing bringing together an edited volume on the archaeology of contemporary Greece. This volume will include a paper that I co-authored with Grace Erny and Dimitri Nakassis at the Patras conference. Our paper compares the sites of Lakka Skoutara in the southeastern Corinthia and Chelmis in the western Argolid. The former can now bring in data published by the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey on Open Context. 

Since my paper included a good many references to work by other scholars (and our work in these areas), it should not be particularly complicated to expand it to 5,000 or 6,000 words.

Botxo CHAT in Bilbao

Those of you following my blog probably know that I spent most of last week at the annual CHAT conference in Bilbao, Spain. It was great and like the best conferences, I learned a good bit and it filled my head with ideas.  

Here are some quick thoughts on the conference as go through my notes (and my reading list!).

1. Multiple methods, ontologies, and epistemologies. I am always thrilled by the diversity of papers and approaches present at CHAT. While I tend to be conservative in my approach to archaeology (methodologically at least), I very much want to encounter and engage with more provocative forms of archaeological work.

In other words, I appreciated, say, the use of traditional archaeological methods to document the discarded material after a weekend flea market in Poland, the intensely detailed and careful documentation of migrant landing sites on Gavdos, or the use of aerial photography, view shed analysis, and GIS to locate anti-aircraft batteries in the occupied Czech Republic during World War II. I also enjoyed the use of experimental archaeology to explore the archaeology of dance for example. The construction of a clay dance floor, the casting of part of a removed sprung dance floor in bronze, and ethnographic parallels such as the dancing areas of festival grounds and the preparation of Sumo floors offers ways to understand the materiality of dance.

More provocative still were the use of film and audio not only to form a vivid backdrop for archaeological narrative, but also to create knew forms of experience and embodied knowledge.

2. The City. So many archaeological conferences take place in a hotel rather than in a city. For example, next week, I anticipate shuffling obediently from conference room to conference room for meetings and panels. The city of Bilbao not only formed a backdrop for the conference, but also was a participant in our discussions of contemporary archaeology, heritage, and urbanism. The transformation of Bilbao from an industrial city to a showcase for gentrified contemporary urbanism created a narrative that suffused our conversations in the conference. This inspired us to think about how our work to recognize contemporary heritage can transform not only the past of the city, but also the future.

I thought a good bit about my work in Grand Forks at CHAT and while Bilbao and Grand Forks are fundamentally different historically and in terms of scale, the challenges facing contemporary heritage are similar. Being in Bilbao pushed me to think about how both to memorialize and preserve the traces of past flows and accumulation of capital even as contemporary pressures push us to transform the present. 

3. Leadership. One of the most intriguing and productive panels at the conference was a roundtable on leadership in archaeology featuringSara Perry, Tiffany Fryer, Emma Dwyer, Carmen A. Granell, Francisco Orlandi, and Guillermo Díaz de Liaño. The topics ranged from institutional considerations (e.g. how do we facilitate the kind of discipline that we want within the limits of our current institutions) to more personal reflections on what makes a good leader.

Certain situations on my campus has made me particularly intrigued about how to create situations where positive forms of leadership are possible. For me, this means balancing the need to create institutional guardrails to prevent abuses, while also ensuring sufficient freedom for transformative leadership.  

4. Publishing. I was able to contribute to a roundtable on the challenges of publishing archaeology today with Catherine Frieman (formerly EJA and now Current Anthropology), Jaime Almansa-Sanchez, and Lara Band. As the publishing ecosystem developed to support archaeology remains diverse, so did opinions on publishing.

My position on archaeological publishing is well-known. As appealing as it is to imagine a radically different system of publishing, it is not particularly realistic. As a result, we need to encourage authors, readers, and publishers to work thoughtfully within the system that we have where large non-profit publishers, for profit publishers, open access publishers, and various other forms of publishing operate side by side creating a wide range of spaces and audiences. This means avoiding stereotypes (for profit publishing is “bad” or open access publishers are lower quality) and embracing the dynamism present in contemporary academic “outputs” and audiences.  

5. Conviviality. One of the greatest things about CHAT is that is the conviviality. The informality of the conference, the breaks, the long evening with food and beverages, created a space where ideas flowed freely. I was particularly happy to engage with students ranging from MA to PhD level who were willing to work outside the traditions of archaeological practice. Their presence contributed immensely to the conference and their willingness to present their work and engage in conversation made the conference more welcoming for everyone.

The music in the final session was amazing:  

Open Access Week 2025

It is Open Access Week 2025! 

This is a week where many OA presses do a bit more to make known their work. You can read my semi-regular post on North Dakota Quarterly and Open Access here. It also seems like as good a time as any to make visible the work of The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota over the past 12 months.

This past month, The Digital Press has become a member of the Radical Open Access Collective, and we hope that this alignment will help us share what we do more broadly and learn more about what’s going on in the broader open access world. 

We’ve also enjoyed some productive partnerships over the last year. We partnered with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens to publish David Pettegrew’s Corinthian Countrysides and with the Northern Plains Heritage Foundation to reprint Clell Gannon’s Songs of the Bunch Grass Acres. We worked with North Dakota Quarterly to publish the first English translation of Ismail Gaspirali’s The Muslims of Darürrahat. We are developing closers relationships with the brilliant students in UND’s Writing, Editing, and Publishing certificate program.

We’ve also continued our efforts to embrace the laboratory aspects of The Digital Press by publishing an article on Corinthian Countrysides in the Journal of Field Archaeology this fall: “Mobilizing the Archaeological Report for a Future of Reuse: Linked Open Data and the Scholar-Led Publication” with David Pettegrew.  

Curious about what else we’ve done over the past twelve months?

Here’s some of the late 2024 books: 

Ismail Gaspirali, The Muslims of Darürrahat. Translated by Çiğdem Pala Mull. Edited by Sharon Carson. 2024.

David K. Pettegrew, Corinthian Countrysides: Linked Open Data and Analysis from the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey. 2024. 

Jack Russell Weinstein, Israel, Palestine, and the Trolley Problem: On the Futility of the Search for the Moral High Ground. 2024.

Christopher Neal Price, Big Pandemic on the Prairie: Spanish Flu in North Dakota. 2024.

And here’s what we’ve done in 2025. This year has turned out to be a super exciting year for the press with five brilliant publications (and one more likely!). 

Wild Drawing (WD), Context and Content: The Art of WD. Edited by Kostis Kourelis. 2025.

Eric Burin, ed. Picking the President: Understanding the Electoral College. Revised and Expanded Edition. 2025.

Clell Goebel Gannon, Songs of the Bunch Grass Acres. New Edition. With a forward by Tom Isern and an introduction by Aaron Barth. 2025.

Shawn Graham, Practical Necromancy for Beginners: A Short Incomplete Opinionated Introduction to Artificial Intelligence for Archaeology and History Students. 2025.

Michael G. Michlovic, An Archaeology of the Red River of the North. 2025.

Two Thing Tuesday: Esoteric Orientalism and Reparative Reading

This weekend, I read Mandarin Dubey’s short book in the Cambridge Elements series titled Esoteric Orientalism (2024). Being a Cambridge Elements title, this book offered a minimal commitment to helping my contextualize Blavatsky a bit more clearly in the 19th century context and offered an opportunity for a more sympathetic reading of her work which often stands as a kind of origin point for critiques of pseudo-archaeology. 

Thing the First

Esoteric Orientalism offers what Dubey sees as a reparative reading of Blavatsky that sought to unpack her ideas of race, language, culture, and religion in the context of late 19th century Orientalist thought. Dubey sets Blavatsky in opposition to German Orientalist Max Müller and argues that Blavatsky’s rejection of racial and linguistic categories as the basis for understanding religion offered an alternative to the emerging work on scientific linguistics and religious studies pioneered by Müller. Even the casual reader of Blavatsky will understand that she rejects the methods and conclusions associated with scientific linguistic and studies of religion. In their place, she proposes both the need to acquire esoteric knowledge and a mythic cosmology of race, language, and religion that is universal and totalizing. A reparative reading of Blavatsky allows one to see in her work a narrative that subverts the emerging discourse of scientific linguistics (and religion) which becomes an unfortunate basis for scientific race theory of the 20th century. For Blavatsky, scientific notions of race (as well as caste) were as irrelevant to her esoteric Orientalism as the unenlightened theories sprung forth from German university campuses. 

Thing the Second

Dubey’s reading of Blavatsky pushed me to return to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s brilliant 1997 paper “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction is About You,” which she published as the introduction to her edited volume Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction (1997). In this well-known essay, Sedgwick challenges the prevalence of paranoid reading. For Sedgwick paranoid reading privileges the revealing of institutional power both in the present and in the past (and its looming danger in the future). In its worst form, the result of this is that readers retroject the abuses and injustices of the present back onto texts of the past through genealogical analysis and this renders the present situation not only inevitable but also suggests that future injustice is essentially unavoidable. This allows the paranoid reader to remain unsurprised by the problems of the present that because they recognize that they have always already existed. Sedgwork is clear that such readings are often justified, accurate, and significant. Moreover, she is deeply sympathetic to many of the political positions of the authors whose work embraces paranoid reading. That said, she advocates for a form of reparative reading that goes beyond revealing the roots of institutional and structural injustice and instead emphasizes the power of texts to create new meanings, new positions, and by extension, new futures.  (This is a very ham-fisted reading of what is an incredibly rich and deeply sympathetic article).  

Dubey’s unorthodox reading of Blavatsky and her work to demonstrate how the esoteric texts of Theosophy offered (and offer?) a counter current to both 19th century scientific racism but also tacitly offered a position from which to critique various forms of contemporary social and cultural “exotericism” grounded in persistent Orientalism.

This resonated with me in part because it seems to me that 20th-century pseudoarchaeology offers any number of perspectives susceptible to genuinely reparative reading. An appeal to Sedgwick’s ideas allows me to recognize the value of paranoid readings (and the political and disciplinary positions that these reading occupy) while still offering a productive alternative to their perspectives. For pseudoarchaeology, this may be as simple a continuing to recognize the impact of pseudoarchaeological ideas on the production of disciplinary knowledge as a way to remind ourselves that such contributions are possible in the present and future.

Post Script

For various readings I read Dubey’s Esoteric Orientalism as a paper book. This was a miserable and slightly bizarre experience. First, the font was tiny and produced a massive text block on each page. This was not inviting to read. Second, the book itself was thin, cheaply made, and a rather unfriendly size. Finally, and most bizarrely, the bibliography was alphabetized by FIRST NAME. This is not standard in the Cambridge Elements series and suggest haste or simple carelessness in production.

I’m not naive and recognize that the Cambridge Elements series is designed to make profits for Cambridge University Press and mostly as a digital subscription service for libraries. This doesn’t even really bother me, but I do with that they did a bit more to obscure the corner cutting. This book had too much “Routledge” in its Cambridge.

Publishing as Commons

I very much enjoyed reading Samual Moore’s Publishing Beyond the Market: Open Access, Care, and the Commons (2025). It was a book that I would have liked to have read before David Pettegrew and I published our paper: 

It may have compelled me to shift from thinking about scholar-led publishing as a form of punk-tinged conviviality to an exercise in “commoning” academic knowledge. For Moore, thinking about academic knowledge as part of a commons requires us to recognize our obligations as commoners and the process of publishing academic knowledge as commoning. Commoning involves a commitment of care for the production of academic knowledge for the benefit of all commoners. This should also involve a recognition that the process of commoning must involve care. Moore recognized the advantage of scholar-led publishing is that it places in the hands of those most committed to the well-being of the commons (as academic knowledge is our stock-in-trade as commoners), the obligation of commoning.    

I’ve simplified Moore’s complex arguments here. They largely developed from his incisive critique of open access initiatives championed by large (and mainly for profit) publishers. He was especially critical of their use of article processing charges (APC) as a tool to generate potential revenue lost from subscriptions (which may well be a spurious assumption at this point) and to bankroll these publishers’ shift to content aggregators and curators. Moore’s book didn’t quite anticipate the pace that AI has accelerated the role that open access will play in monetizing private sector curation of academic knowledge (often under the rubric of “data analytics”). That said, he has joined the chorus of critiques that see the current trends in open access driven by for-profit publishers as antithetical to an understand of scholarly knowledge as a commons.

That said, he still recognizes that the market has a role in the commons. After all, one solutions to market consolidation and the emergence of powerful, almost monopolistic  scale of current academic publishers is to encourage the development of new markets. This is the model driven — ostensibly — by Plan S, a publisher influenced plan to fund and develop open access publishing in Europe. Moore realizes that a plan shaped by APCs, data analytics, and market driven measures of success will invariably lead to consolidation, scaling, and efficiencies that encourage the dehumanizing of publishing as an industry. Without attentiveness to the humanity of knowledge making, the promise and potential of academic knowledge will remain subservient to the vagaries of markets and the commercialization and commodification of labor and life.

As a challenge to this plan, Moore proposes the development of a model of publishing that does not simply reify the current market-driven framework for knowledge making. Instead, he proposes that a model of a commons, managed by commoners, through a collective commitment to commoning might be a way to prioritize care in the process of knowledge making. This he contends that this emphasis on care is not only consistent with academic goals of knowledge making, but also with the ethical labor practices, our commitment to disseminating knowledge freely, and desire to innovate through new forms of social and intellectual relationships grounded in partnerships and collaboration.

This book offered an inspiring new model for understanding academic publishing. It neither purports to nor offers all the answers, in large part because it understands that managing the commons, even with a mandate of care, will invariably produce as many questions and problems as answers and solutions. Commoning is messy, complicated, and open ended. It will likely involve conflict and disagreements, but also cooperation and shared commitments.

Practically, this means that scholar-led publishing will always reflect a plurality of practices and this will encourage scholar-led publishers to “scale small” and resist the kind of efficiencies that can lead for-profit publishers to dehumanize their process. (This is particularly interesting to me especially as academic scholarship is increasingly prepared not only for human readers, but also for automated aggregators and summarizers powered by AI, LLM [large language model] algorithms).  

It is also entirely consistent with notions of conviviality and convivial practices. For Ivan Illich, convivial practices and tools center on the capacity to build communities, while also respecting the individual. Moore’s understanding of the commons depends upon the notion of commoning which has affinities of Illich’s notion of convivial practices. Moore’s work, however, makes explicit the good of the commons and ties that to not only process, but also the work of the commoner. And this explicit statement of responsibility transforms conviviality from something that just happens when likeminded individuals find common cause, but because commoners do the work to make the commons happen. 

Three Things Thursday: Books, Photography, and Teaching

It’s on the verge of midterms and I felt like I had a bunch of little things going on that are worth sharing. So it felt like a good time for a Three Things Thursday.

Thing the First

I just received in the mail the first volume of the new Levantine Ceramics Project (LCP) Handbooks Series (LCPH) which I edit with Andrea Berlin and Matt Adams. It’s a new initiative designed to make the data published through the Levantine Ceramics Project, more accessible to a wider audience. Initially, these handbooks were imagined as field guides, but as the first volume of this new series took shape, it became clear that they are more intensive studies of particular classes of pottery.

The first volume, authored by Samuel Grady Gillet and Veronica Iacomi, focuses on Late Roman 1 amphora. These amphora are ubiquitous in the Mediterranean (and beyond) and offer a particularly important window into the Late Roman administrative economy.

Thing the Second

I’ve been playing around more with black and white photography and trying to capture some scenes from everyday life. This weekend, I grabbed these two snapshots of my desk while working on the final edits on Shawn Graham’s book, Practical Necromancy. The photos have a wide range of technical problems, of course, but I enjoy how the slight shift in angle transforms the photograph. The first photo is effectively at my eye level while I push back in my office chair. The second is a view that I get as I stand up. 

Thing the Third

I just finished teaching my last Cornerstone class this semester. As I’ve blogged about before the Cornerstone program was a month-long 1-credit addition to our standard English Composition II class. The class focused on reading, talking, and thinking about how education changes us and our relationships to the world. The readings were short, but provocative (culminating with Ralph Elision’s “Battle Royal”) and stimulated a good bit of discussion in the 16-student classroom.

At the end of class today, the students ask me what classes I’m teaching in next semester. (I responded: depends who’s asking). They also just hung out and chatted. What the hell was that about? 

It’s the first time in years that I felt like I had genuine rapport with students in the class that extended beyond simple appreciation of my instruction and their grasp of material. This class seemed to actually have a sense of camaraderie to it that emboldened them not only to chat with one another before, after, and during class, but also with me. It was a truly remarkable experience that’ll take time to process.

Three Publishing Things Thursday: Graham, Gannon, and Welk

There are a few very cool things going on in the local publishing universe! I have had my hands personally involved in two of them and one is from my friends up the Red River at NDSU Press.

Thing the First

It’s very cool to see some of the buzz surrounding The Digital Press’s republication of Clell Gannon’s prairie classic, Songs of the Bunch Grass Acres. 

Much of this is thanks to Tom Isern who not only contributed a preface to the book, but has stumped for it on his Willow Creek Folk School (a regular Friday evening folk music show) and now in his Plains Folk column with Prairie Public in a piece titled “The Smell of Paint.”

Thing the Second

I’m pretty excited about Shawn Graham’s book, Practical Necromancy for Beginners. It’s due out imminently from The Digital Press. 

In fact, it’s so immanent that it has a book cover thanks to Vitoria Faccin-Herman.

Monosnap practical-necrom-cover-2.pdf 2025-09-10 20-18-36.

Thing the Third

A huge congratulations to Suzzanne Kelley at NDSU Pass for the release of Champagne Times: Lawrence Welk and His American Century by Lance Byron Richey. This a THREE VOLUME biography of Lawrence Welk! The publisher tells us: “The book covers are SKIVERTEX Vellin #5517 blue casing, premium grade, simulated leather material debossed with gold foil.” 

I don’t know what that all means, but it is NOT casual. In some ways, this might be the most amazing book produced by a publisher in North Dakota ever. Check it out here.

Listen to an interview with the author here.

New Book Day: Context and Content: The Art of WD

It’s new book day at The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota and it’s my please to announce the publication of Context and Content: The Art of WD edited by Kostis Kourelis and in collaboration with the artist, WD (Wild Drawing).

Wild Drawing (WD) is the leading figure in Athens’ street art scene that blossomed in the 2010s. His distinctive style of realism, anamorphic perspective, and classical aesthetics has won him international recognition and commissions throughout the world. This volume features over 100 images of WD’s major works accompanied by interpretive essays by historians, urbanists, curators, artists, and conservators. The final chapter is an interview with WD where he reveals the ideas behind his works and explains “Art won’t change anything if the people who see it can’t be inspired to do something. So, let’s create something that can inspire people.”

On a personal note, it was incredibly rewarding not only to work with Kostis Kourelis again, one of the first authors to publish with the press over a decade ago, but also to publish a book so close to my interests in the intersection of modern and ancient Greece. It was also great to work with Andrew Reinhard another long time contributor to The Digital Press on the book design.

Grab a copy of this book as a free download or as a paperback.

The press release is below the fold and go here for the complete media kit.

WD Cover Single Page.

For Immediate Release

The Digital Press at UND Announces New Book on Street Artist WD

Recent travelers through the Athens airport would have seen a monumental owl painted on a corner of a building peering down from large television monitors. The promotional video introducing tourists to the city of Athens juxtaposed its vibrant contemporary culture seen with its familiar antiquities. The owl is a millennia-old symbol for the city of Athens, but the painting on the monitor was the work of contemporary street artist WD.

The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota is proud to announce the publication of the first book-length publication of the street art of WD (Wild Drawing): Context and Content: The Street Art of WD. Alongside over 100 photographs of WDs work, this volume includes studies that situate WD’s art in its social, environmental, political, and even conservation (and preservation) context. The collection concludes with an interview with WD that provides unprecedented insights into how the artist works.

WD’s art isn’t just known for its dramatic paintings that enliven Athens and other cities. It is first and foremost activist art. WD make this clear when he says: “Art won’t change anything if the people who see it can’t be inspired to do something. So, let’s create something that can inspire people.”

Kostis Kourelis, the book’s editor, sees WD’s art in another context: “Whether it’s the Owl or Homelessness, WD’s work will certainly be included in the future textbooks of modern Greek art. Faced with WD’s canonization, our modest volume offers a way to contextualize his work in the recent past. We are excited to produce a story that transcends ethnic parochialism, celebrates the national ‘other,’ and embraces the racially diverse leaders of contemporary Greek art practices.”

For WD, though, the experience of creating art often provides the most immediate rewards: “When I was about to finish painting the mural No Land for the Poor, I wrote a dedication, ‘to the poor and homeless here and around the globe.’ At that moment, I felt someone poke me on my back so I turned back and I saw a guy. He said, ‘Hi, thank you for this,’ and when I asked him why, he said, ‘because I’m homeless.’”

Context and Content: The Street Art of WD is available as a free download or as a paperback: https://thedigitalpress.org/wd/