Peter Catapano, Editor, Opinion Section, New York Times
October 2, 2018 4-5pm, with reception to follow

Catapano began his career at The Times as an assistant to The Times Editorial Board in 1998. He became a copy editor in 2000 for The New York Times News Service and joined the Opinion section as an editor in 2005, where he began developing projects specifically for the web.
Catapano has created and edited some of the most popular New York Times online series — The Stone, Anxiety, Happy Days, Menagerie and Home Fires — which helped launch the careers of several writers. He received a Publisher’s Award in 2008 for his work in pioneering the online series.

Catapano has edited and published more than 1,000 pieces in The Times, and has worked directly with both beginners and highly accomplished thinkers and writers, including Arthur Danto, E.O. Wilson, Frans de Waal, Peter Singer, Simon Critchley, Thomas Nagel, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Pico Iyer, Phil Klay, Roy Scranton, Steven Pinker, Siri Hustvedt and Oliver Sacks.

In 2015, Catapano was asked by Dr. Sacks to edit his final essays in The Times chronicling his illness and death, which were collected in “Gratitude” — now a best-selling book by Knopf.

Catapano’s The Stone, established in 2010, is the longest-running online series in Opinion, and draws millions of readers each year. In 2015, Liveright published “The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments,” an anthology of essays from the series. Catapano has sold more than 15,000 copies. Since 2012, about half of the American Philosophical Association’s public philosophy awards have been given to essays published in The Stone. The series has helped bring philosophical thought back into the national conversation.

October 3, 2018: 12-1:30pm

Andrew Beck, Senior Editor, Philosophy, Routledge and Andrew Weckenmann, Routledge Research Editor

Co-sponsored by the Philosophy Department

Christine Smallwood,
New York Times
October 15, 2018, 4 pm

Christine Smallwood is a writer and critic living in New York. Her reviews, essays, and short stories have been published in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The New Yorker, Bookforum, The Paris Review, n+1, and Vice. She holds a PhD in English Literature from Columbia University and is a core faculty member of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He has been interviewed by Tavis Smiley, Charlie Rose, Seth Meyers, and Terry Gross, among many others. His current book is the bestselling short story collection, The Refugees. Most recently he has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and le Prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book in France), for The Sympathizer. He is a critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s thoughts on reading, diversity and Excel spreadsheets:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2018/03/08/uses-excel-ensure-his-reading-diverse/iBKTtBHGqnnNlTnhStA0EN/story.html

If you require an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact Humanities Institute staff
(Jo-Ann Waide/Nasya Al-Saidy) by email at uchi@uconn.edu or phone (860) 486-9057 by April 5, 2018

Ken Wissoker, Duke University Press
April 4, 2018, 3 pm

Ken Wissoker is the Editorial Director of Duke University Press, acquiring books in anthropology, cultural studies, and social theory; globalization and post-colonial studies; Asian, African, and American studies; music, film and television; race, gender and sexuality; science studies; and other areas in the humanities, social sciences, media, and the arts.  He joined the Press as an Acquisitions Editor in 1991; became Editor-in-Chief in 1997; and was named Editorial Director in 2005. In addition to his duties at the Press, he serves as Director of Intellectual Publics at The Graduate Center, CUNY in New York City.

He has published over a thousand books which have won over 100 prizes.  Among the authors whose books he has published are Stuart Hall, Donna Haraway, Achille Mbembe, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jack Halberstam, Charles Taylor, José David Saldivar, Lisa Lowe, Lauren Berlant, Brian Massumi, Arjun Appadurai, Sara Ahmed, Fred Moten, Chandra Mohanty, and Cherríe Moraga.  He has written on publishing for The Chronicle of Higher Education and in Cinema Journal, and writes a column for the Japanese cultural studies journal “5.”  He speaks regularly on publishing at universities in the US and around the world.

If you require an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact Humanities Institute staff
(Jo-Ann Waide/Nasya Al-Saidy) by email at uchi@uconn.edu or phone (860) 486-9057 by March 29, 2018

March 19^th, 4pm,
A conversation with Dan Gerstle, Senior Editor, Basic Books  and Adina Berk, Senior Editor for History, Yale University Press

Adina Popescu Berk
Senior Editor for History, Yale University Press

I acquire in all periods and subfields of American and European history. I look for projects that challenge and change the historiographical conversation, as well as projects that address and inform essential questions in the public sphere and that seek to bring a historian’s perspective to a broad readership. I am particularly interested in projects that conceptualize American history broadly and place the United States in a global context. Themes and topics of particular interest are the way environmental factors and climate crises have shaped societies, the history of empires and the resistance to empires, the history of economic and financial development, connections between the United States and Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, the history of borderlands, histories of human migration, the rise of the right, African American history, Latino history, and Native American history. At Yale I am building on a distinguished history list including, among many other leading historians, recent prize-winners Manisha Sinha, Benjamin Madley, Steve Pincus, Carlos Eire, Pekka Hämäläinen, Martha Hodes, and many others.

Dan Gerstle
Senior Editor, Basic Books

Dan Gerstle joined Basic Books in 2013 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and acquires mainly in history, politics, current affairs, and the social sciences. The books he has edited and published include the 2017 Lincoln Prize–winning Thunder at the Gates by Douglas Egerton, Engines of Liberty by ACLU National Legal Director David Cole, Jefferson by John B. Boles, Locked In by John Pfaff, and Toussaint Louverture by Philippe Girard. Forthcoming titles include next works from historians Manisha Sinha, Walter Johnson, Matt Sutton, Jeremy Popkin, and Jared Farmer; and from journalists Bhaskar Sunkara, Joan Biskupic, and Andrew McCarthy. Dan holds a BA from Princeton University and an MA in American Studies from Yale University.

Christine Smallwood, Harper’s Magazine
March 8, 2018, 4 pm

Christine Smallwood is a writer and critic living in New York. Her reviews, essays, and short stories have been published in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The New Yorker, Bookforum, The Paris Review, n+1, and Vice. She holds a PhD in English Literature from Columbia University and is a core faculty member of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.

George has been a professional editor since 1984, beginning his career at Johns Hopkins University Press as an acquisitions editor. At JHUP, George developed the geography and environmental studies list, including the “Creating the North American Landscape” series.  In 1990, George founded the Center for American Places, which he directed and served as publisher until November 2010, when he founded his own imprint. Books developed and published under George’s care have won more than 100 book awards, honors, and prizes, including best-book recognition in 31 academic fields.  George is also the editor, co-editor or author of five books of his own and has served as publisher-in-residence at a number of universities. He can provide help and advice on book and article projects at any stage of development.  More information is available here http://www.gftbooks.com/about.html

George’s schedule: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14gMkYc2Y1m1PyFxcF_40R65Wg5Ofb8kdQmNPBH4HrAI/edit?usp=sharing

To make appointments, contact Stephanie Beron in GEOG at Stephanie.beron@uconn.edu