Over the last year, professors across Pratt Institute contributed to the world’s cultural and creative landscape through their published work. The nearly 30 titles highlighted in this year’s annual look at faculty books span dreamlike poetry, speculative AI architecture, historical deep dives, and more.
Do you know of a Pratt faculty book published in 2024 that we should add to our list? Please email Nikolas Slackman, assistant editor of Prattfolio, at nslackma@pratt.edu.
Architecture
The Complete CAD Exercise Book (revised edition, Book Baby)
Richard Bettini, BArch ’72; Master of Architecture ’73, Adjunct Professor, SCPS
Richard Bettini’s recent revision of The Complete CAD Exercise Book guides readers in drawing projects that progress from simple to complex using AutoCAD and computer modeling. The new edition includes 140 CAD drawings, with enhanced plans and elevations for three architectural projects. Available from Book Baby.
Housing the Nation: Social Equity, Architecture, and the Future of Affordable Housing (Rizzoli)
David Burney, Academic Director of Urban Placemaking Management and Visiting Associate Professor, contributor
Bringing together the voices of scholars, advocates, and architects, this collection of essays examines various features of America’s housing crisis. David Burney—who cofounded and directs Pratt’s Urban Placemaking and Management program—writes about the New York City Housing Authority in his chapter, “What Happened to NYCHA and How Can We Fix It?,” suggesting “a new model that more closely resembles the housing authorities prominent in Europe.” Available from Rizzoli.
Facilities @ Management: Concept, Realization, Vision – A Global Perspective (Wiley)
Audrey Schultz, Chair of Construction/Facilities Management, contributor
This anthology, which won the International Facilities Management Association Award of Excellence, features contributors from more than 50 facilities management (FM) professionals worldwide, exploring the field and its significant growth over the last four decades. Audrey Schultz’s chapter, “My FM Path and Spelling and Defining Facilities Management and Facility Manager Holistically,” introduces the reader to inconsistencies in the vocabulary and spelling of Facility and Facilities Management across the field and highlights her unconventional trek from selling children’s shoes at the local mall to becoming a trailblazer in the FM field. Available from Wiley.
Artificial Intelligent Architecture (ORO Editions)
Jason Vigneri-Beane, Professor, Undergraduate Architecture, contributor
This monograph—a first of its kind—offers a visual and theoretical dive into the potential of artificial intelligence in architectural design. The book highlights faculty member Jason Vigneri-Beane’s piece Bestia Ex-Machina, which he describes in an essay as a “bestiary of architectural entities” that is “precise yet always somewhat out of control.” Vigneri-Beane’s work appears alongside that of 17 other architects and designers and interviews with leaders in the field. Available from ORO Editions.
Art and Design
Hollow and Broken: A State of the World (İKSV and Mousse)
Esen Karol, Visiting Associate Professor, Undergraduate Communications Design, designer and contributor
This two-book publication commemorates Turkish painter, filmmaker, and sculptor Gülsün Karamustafa’s participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. One volume covers Karamustafa’s work in the Biennale’s Türkiye Pavilion—an installation called Hollow and Broken: A State of the World—and the second spans more than 50 years of Karamustafa’s practice, including an interview with the artist by the book’s designer, Esen Karol. Available from Mousse Magazine.
EXCITING PHOTOGRAPHY NOW! (MATTE Editions)
Matthew Leifheit, Adjunct Associate Professor, Photography; and Eve Lyons, editors
EXCITING PHOTOGRAPHY NOW! is a 480-page survey of current American photography, highlighting artists from MATTE Magazine’s first-ever open call in its decade-long history of supporting emerging artists. Coedited by MATTE Editions founder Matthew Leifheit, the survey features photographers, including alumni from Pratt’s Photography, Industrial Design, and Communications Design programs, whose work captures American life’s “humour, heartbreak, melancholy, chaos, communion, and intense beauty” (AnOther Magazine). Available from Matte Editions.
Interior Design on Edge: History, Theory, Praxis (Routledge)
Deborah Schneiderman, Professor, Interior Design; Erica Morawski, Assistant Professor, History of Art and Design; Keena Suh, Professor, Interior Design; Karin Tehve, Professor, Interior Design; and Karyn Zieve, Adjunct Assistant Professor and Assistant Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, editors
Annie Coggan, Associate Professor, Interior Design; and Alexandra Goldberg, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Interior Design, contributors
Interior Design on Edge prompts readers to think beyond traditional ideas about architectural interiors, considering their wider “physical, conceptual or psychological, imagined, implied, necessary or discriminatory” implications. This collection of 14 essays focuses on interiority throughout different periods, cultures, and places, reflecting the latest theoretical developments in interior design history and practice. Available from Routledge.
Criticism and Cultural Theory
Narrative in Crisis: Reflections from the Limits of Storytelling (Oxford University Press)
Martin Dege, Associate Professor, Social Science and Cultural Studies; and Irene Strasser, editors
This volume brings together work by scholars exploring “‘crises’ from a narrative perspective” sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning with their reflections in mid-2020 (before vaccines and variants), each author surveys changes within psychology and clinical practice in a world where—as editors Martin Dege and Irene Strasser write in their introduction—“circumstances keep changing in unpredictable ways.” Available from Oxford University Press.
Women Filmmakers and the Visual Politics of Transnational China in the #MeToo Era (Amsterdam University Press)
Gina Marchetti, Chair of Humanities and Media Studies
Focusing on the years leading up to and following in the wake of #MeToo, Gina Marchetti’s new book sheds light on the treatment of women in the entertainment industries of the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and within the Chinese diaspora. In Marchetti’s words, the book tells the story of filmmakers “pushing back against threats of lawsuits, online harassment, and physical violence.” Available from Amsterdam University Press.
10 Questions sur les féminismes Noirs (Libertalia)
Fania Noël, Visiting Assistant Professor, Social Science and Cultural Studies
Emphasizing grassroots education, political theory, and praxis, 10 Questions sur les féminismes Noirs takes on questions surrounding Black Feminisms in the Global North. Published in French, Afrofeminist activist, writer, and researcher Fania Noël’s book is organized into 10 inquiries that explore fundamental, ideological, and radical aspects of various branches of Black Feminism in Western Europe, the US, and Canada. Available from Libertalia.
Thinking Blue / Writing Red: Marxism and the (Post)Human (Open Book Publishers)
Stephen Tumino, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Humanities and Media Studies
Covering Twin Peaks, Beyoncé, and more, Stephen Tumino’s new book engages contemporary, mainstream culture through a Marxist lens. Connecting global social movements like Occupy Wall Street to works of “high theory” by Jacques Derrida and Bruno Latour, Thinking Blue / Writing Red gives a pop cultural twist to critical philosophy. Available from Open Book Publishers.
Fiction and Poetry
Many Poems by Roberta Iannamico (The Song Cave)
Alexis Almeida, Visiting Assistant Professor, Humanities and Media Studies, translator
Many Poems is Argentinian poet Roberta Iannamico’s first full-length collection of work to come out in the US. Combining surreal vignettes and lively imagery, this translation by the poet Alexis Almeida—who was a Fulbright research fellow in Argentina—introduces Iannamico’s skill for tapping “into poetry’s distinctive ability to magically transform daily scenes into purely ecstatic visions” to English-language readers. Available from The Song Cave.
Don’t Forget to Love Me (Wave Books)
Anselm Berrigan, Adjunct Assistant Professor – CCE
In his latest collection, Don’t Forget to Love Me, the poet Anselm Berrigan gives readers a glimpse at his most intimate self through work written primarily at the height of the pandemic. Composed of six stylistically different parts, Berrigan’s “kaleidoscopic collection is a tender and frenzied call for a much needed respite from the heaviness of life in the face of post-pandemic facelessness” (Antiphony). Available from Wave Books.
Granny Cloud (NYRB Poets)
Farnoosh Fathi, Visiting Instructor, Writing
Granny Cloud is poet and educator Farnoosh Fathi’s second book of poems. Among shorter works, the collection also features the long-form poem “Anyone’s Don’tanelle,” a playful assemblage of revisions and drafts of Fathi’s poem “Fontanelle.” In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls the book “fantastical and strange . . . enthusiasts of formal innovation and linguistic play will savor this astonishing volume.” Available from New York Review Books.
ski mask over my skull (Triple Canopy)
Benjamin Krusling, Visiting Assistant Professor, Writing
Benjamin Krusling’s multimedia digital book ski mask over my skull is part of Our Bad, an issue of Triple Canopy that explores “the possibilities of sabotage, from spectacular acts and mischievous disruptions to subtle subversions and collective plots.” Incorporating found video clips, Krusling’s poetry investigates the uses of the ski mask and where it appears in US culture, from high-fashion runways to protests. Available from Triple Canopy.
The Month of the Flies by Mirtha Dermisache, Sergio Chejfec (Ugly Duckling Presse)
Silvina López Medin, Visiting Instructor, Writing; and Rebekah Smith, translators
In The Month of the Flies, Argentinian writer Sergio Chejfec crafts a poetic response to artist Mirtha Dermisache’s Book N° 8: 1970. Chejfec draws from Dermisache’s original text of asemic writing—illustrations that mimic writing but have no readable meaning—to expose “the cracks in the legibility [of] translation.” A review in Morning Star called this first English translation, cotranslated by Silvina López Medin and Rebekah Smith, “a rare book that transports you to a different state of mind.” Available from Ugly Duckling Presse.
Thorn Tree (Macmillan)
Max Ludington, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Writing
Max Ludington’s newest novel follows protagonist Daniel, an artist in his late 60s who resides in quiet anonymity in Los Angeles after reluctantly experiencing fame for his seminal work Thorn Tree, a scrap-metal sculpture born from personal tragedy in the 1970s Mojave Desert. Taking on themes ranging from 1960s idealism to modern celebrity culture, Ludington’s far-reaching novel “wrestle[s] with the dangerous impulses within us” (The New York Times). Available from Macmillan Publishers.
My Salvation Lateral (The Elephants)
Emily Martin, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Humanities and Media Studies
In this reflective poetry collection, Emily Martin explores two interconnected themes of dependence: one in language, the other in human relationships. Martin’s poetry shares “a unique . . . collaborative vision of language, the world, and what it can mean for all of us” (The Brooklyn Rail). Available from The Elephants.
An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth (Soft Skull Press)
Anna Moschovakis, Adjunct Associate Professor – CCE
Set in a world shattered by seismic disaster, An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth follows an unnamed narrator at the end of a mediocre acting career as she grapples with the disappearance of her younger housemate, Tala. Quickly developing into an experimental thriller, the latest novel by poet, translator, and editor Anna Moschovakis is “a book of riddles or a riddle of a book” (Los Angeles Times). Available from Soft Skull Press.
Fayuca (diSONARE)
Christopher Rey Pérez, Visiting Professor, Writing
Christopher Rey Pérez describes his second collection, Fayuca, a bilingual, Spanish-English book of poetry, as a “collective love novel for the future.” Meshing poetics with “a psychogeographic map of a tireless Mexico City,” Fayuca delves into one of the city’s most famous markets, Tepito, a “hyper-capitalist habitat [teeming] with text and language.” Available from diSONARE.
The Selkie (The Song Cave)
Morgan Võ, Critical & Inclusive Pedagogy Librarian
This three-part series of surreal vignettes is poet and librarian Morgan Võ’s first book of poetry. Anchored by a series of yearlong performance pieces executed by Võ’s character “The Monger”—who buys and sells fish from his stall in an outdoor market—the poems in The Selkie “[consider] the impact of the food industry on the environment, and our relationship to food as an object of consumption” (Poetry Foundation). Available from The Song Cave.
History
Environmental Justice in North America (Taylor & Francis)
A.J. Hudson, Visiting Instructor, Social Science and Cultural Studies, contributor
“Plundered Paradise,” environmental educator and climate justice advocate A.J. Hudson’s contribution to this collection of environmental case studies, examines the overlapping eras of US colonial intervention in Puerto Rico. The chapter details environmental justice implications raised by these economic periods, exploring the “agriculture era of sugarcane monoculture, the rapid industrialization by way of Operation Bootstrap, the region’s militarization, and the modern development of Puerto Rico for tourism and foreign settlement.” Available from Taylor & Francis.
Visual Culture and Pandemic Disease Since 1750: Capturing Contagion (Taylor & Francis)
Marsha Morton, Visiting Professor, History of Arts and Design; and Ann-Marie Akehurst, editors
Looking back far before the COVID-19 pandemic, Marsha Morton’s anthology features essays on the history of visual art and culture during global epidemics in Europe, Turkey, India, Japan, Tunisia, and America. The book’s 11 case studies center on the long 19th century, the period from 1789 to 1914, with a prologue in Early Modern Venice and an epilogue in the 21st century British AIDS epidemic. In her introduction to the collection, Morton writes that whether depicting “emotional despair and fear, public health prevention messaging, [or] class and race bias,” visual culture has always captured “universal concerns that surface during pandemics throughout history.” Available from Taylor & Francis.
Political Economy, Race, and the Image of Nature in the United States, 1825-1878 (Routledge)
Evan Neely, Assistant Chairperson, Adjunct Assistant Professor, History of Art and Design
This book goes back to the mid-19th century US to examine how the era’s key figures in art and literature changed our view of the natural world. Evan Neely—whose scholarship focuses on political theory and art history—combines his research fields to reveal how discussions around the environment, race, and politics from that time period have shaped contemporary views. Neely’s interdisciplinary text is “indispensable for both the landscape art historian and painter” (The Brooklyn Rail). Available from Routledge.
The Photographic Invention of Whiteness: The Visual Cultures of White Atlantic Worlds (Routledge)
Stephanie Polsky, Visiting Assistant Professor, Social Science and Cultural Studies
This study by Stephanie Polsky examines the early days of photography and its role in establishing and expanding the concept of Whiteness throughout the 1800s. The Photographic Invention of Whiteness begins with the creation of daguerreotypes, an early, copper-based method of photography, and follows the form’s proliferation around the globe and impact on racialized perspectives in Western society into the 21st century. Available from Routledge.
Violence & Imagination after the Collapse: Encounters, Identity & Daily Life in the Upper Euphrates Region, 3200-2500 BCE (Brepols Publishers)
Akiva Sanders, Visiting Assistant Professor, History of Art and Design
In this book, archaeologist and art historian Akiva Sanders details the ancient villages of the Upper Euphrates region—modern-day Eastern Turkey—through their visual culture and social life. Taking a specialist’s eye toward seven centuries of conflict and progress, Sanders investigates “what it means to be a human community . . . [during] this dramatic and transformative period.” Available from Brepols.
Library and Information Science
Ethics in Linked Data (Litwin Books)
Alexandra Provo, Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Information; Kathleen Burlingame; and B.M. Watson, editors
Alexandra Provo and her coeditors have brought together case studies and theory on linked data—a method of connecting data on the web— to expand discussions of this technology beyond “often utopian and technophiliac” perspectives that rarely investigate linked data’s “darker implications or harmful consequences.” With Ethics in Linked Data, contributors offer approaches and guidelines to help practitioners in libraries and beyond incorporate issues of gender, sustainability, and critique into their existing linked data models, to create more inclusivity in their projects and the communities they serve. Available from Litwin Books.
Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Identity and Libraries (Volume One) and Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Archives and Practice (Volume Two) (Litwin Books)
Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, Adjunct Assistant Professor, School of Information; and Sara A. Howard, editors
This two-volume set brings together conversations with queer library staff, users, scholars, and practitioners who focus on identity, community practice, and visibility, as well as on the Archive as a site for reclamation, narrative storytelling, ancestral recalling, and historical revisioning within LGBTQ+ communities. Editor Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, who also serves as associate dean for Teaching, Learning, and Engagement at NYU Libraries and a volunteer archivist at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, contributes her own cowritten chapter, “Different Parts of Belize: Compartmentalizing Queerness, Family, and Advocacy,” as a part of volume one. Available from Litwin Books.
Teaching and Learning
Transforming Online Teaching in Higher Education: Essential Practices for Engagement, Equity, and Inquiry (Teachers College Press)
Shireen Soliman, Adjunct Associate Professor, Fashion Design, contributor
Transforming Online Teaching provides approaches to virtual teaching, featuring contributors with years of experience leading online classrooms in higher education. The book includes Shireen Soliman’s experiences, guidance, and contributions to the field throughout three chapters, each providing practical examples of online teaching in action with “ideas for creating engaging, student-centered teaching and learning.” Available from Teachers College Press.
For the Kids
The Doll Test: Choosing Equality (Lerner Books)
David Elmo Cooper, Visiting Instructor, Undergraduate Communications Design, illustrator
This book-length poem by author Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by David Elmo Cooper, introduces young readers to the legacies of Kenneth and Mamie Clark, pioneering Black psychologists who used their research to testify in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. The Doll Test recounts the Clarks’ process of investigating the effects of segregation, presenting schoolchildren with two Black and two white baby dolls to ask questions about racial identity from the dolls’ perspective. Available from Lerner Books.
Call Me Roberto! (Penguin Random House)
Rudy Gutierrez, Professor of Undergraduate Communications Design, illustrator
In this children’s picture book, artist Rudy Gutierrez lends his vibrant illustration style to the story of Roberto Clemente, the baseball player from Puerto Rico who made history as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Gutierrez’s bold imagery brings to life a bilingual Spanish-English text by author and journalist Nathalie Alonso, exploring Clemente’s fight against racism and quest to become one of the greatest players ever. Available from Penguin Random House.