Current Projects (Apologies for Light Posting Recently)
In the first posting of this blog, I used the opening from my forthcoming book, Class, Race, Gender & Crime. I've been busy going through the page proofs, which are the last chance to correct errors. It's actually difficult to look carefully at each sentence at this point because I've been through it so many times with writing, editing and copyediting (dealing with the editors questions and approving or rejecting their suggestions). But it is email off to the publisher now and we're wrapping up eveything.
After what seems like hundreds of emails (but is probably a few dozen), we have a copy of what the book cover will look like:
The information from the publisher prices the book at $25 (special for ordering off their website) and has a realease date of late October. You can also check out the table of contents and reviews from their website. As a reminder, I'll be doing a series of posts going through the book chapter by chapter as we get into october and November.
Union Activities
As another current distraction project, I'm on the negotiating team for our faculty union that is negotiating a contract with the administration. Many seem to think unions are blue collar, but we're a local chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) - and we have all the hassles with pay, health care, working environment, frustrating management practices, part-time workerrs, etc that other unions (and many want to be unionized employees) have.
I'm so-so about Stephen Colbert, but his "the Word" segment on unions was excellent.
Our contract exires Aug 31, so time commitments and stress will build up over the month. I'll have some updates when it starts to get interesting, especially as we approach the marathon sessions. I did this two years ago for the previous contract, and the final session started at 3 pm on Aug 31; at midnight we went on strike; and we negotiated until reaching a settlement about 7:30am, at which time the strike ended and classes started at 8.
Promise it will nto be quite so long before the next post. Really.
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