Smithsonian Scholarly Press

20/12/2023

Art as money and money as art—these are themes of our newest release, America's Paper Money: A Canvas for an Emerging Nation.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1690 became the first government in the Western world to print paper money, the imagery for which initiated an indigenous American art form of remarkable dynamism and originality. Adorned with a vast variety of images, bank notes soon became the fledgling country’s primary currency; later, during the Civil War, the Confederacy used paper money designs for its competing self-image. For two centuries, imagery on paper money helped create and enhance the nation’s imagined self.
https://s.si.edu/3vcbwAQ

30/11/2023

New report from the Interagency Working Group on Scientific Collections! Federal scientific collections serve the public good by providing access to objects of scientific value regardless of where, when, by whom, or for what reasons they were originally collected and preserved. https://s.si.edu/46CEqXx

17/10/2023

Green Persuasion: Advertising, Voluntarism, and America's Public Lands by Jeffrey K. Stine was recently reviewed in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly (Vol. 113, No. 4) by Bob H. Reinhardt. The reviewer remarks that "Readers may never look at Smokey Bear—or their own participation in volunteer activities on public lands—in the same way again." https://s.si.edu/46SZolH

04/10/2023

New from SISP! Cultural throughlines delineate ways contemporary artistry, new works, and creative methods can be appreciated and seen as a “tri-vision tradition” (then, now, and when) as they tie into cultural linkages from our past and suggest our future. The book comprises a collection of ideas from creative thinkers on the role of the arts and concepts that define and carry societal value. Of note is Banfield’s interview with Ernie Isley of the Isley Brothers. https://s.si.edu/3Q30tSi

14/08/2023

Check out these moths! Systematics, morphology, and distributions are reviewed for the New World Adelidae. Four genera (Adela, 19 species; Cauchas, 16 species; Ceromitia, 51 species; and Nemophora, 1 species) are currently recognized for North, Central, and South America. Keys to all New World genera and species are provided, as are diagnoses, great illustrations, and distributional data; 52 species are described as new. https://s.si.edu/43NTcJD

14/08/2023

More cool fossils from Calvert Cliffs! Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology, no. 107: The Geology and Vertebrate Paleontology of Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, USA – Volume 2: Turtles and Toothed Whales, edited by Calvert Marine Museum’s paleontologist and NMNH research associate Stephen Godfrey. This work comprises two parts, one on turtles by Robert Weems, another on toothed whales by Godfrey and Olivier Lambert. It follows a previous work on the Calvert Cliffs fossils edited by Godfrey and published by SISP in 2018.https://s.si.edu/3KwFmEE

11/07/2023

A book review in Environmental History, vol. 28, no. 3 (July 2023) of SISP’s 2020 monograph Green Persuasion (https://s.si.edu/44H2KqI) by NMAH curator Jeffrey Stine. https://s.si.edu/3XNZuYv

Green Persuasion traces the history and evolution of volunteer-based public lands stewardship in the United States as well as the Advertising Council’s work promoting environmental causes, such as the Smokey Bear fire prevention and the Keep America Beautiful campaigns. The Take Pride in America p...

10/07/2023

New Release! In this unique volume, published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name currently on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, time-based media curator Saisha Grayson explores how 10 leading contemporary artists employ the strategies of musical creation – its styles, structures, and lyrics – to speak to personal as well as shared aspects of American life.
https://s.si.edu/3pHmqMo

18/05/2023

New Release! This book gathers contributions by scholars from the United States, Japan, and Europe, who look beyond Japan’s Western industrialization to examine China’s role in forming the nation’s modern identity. It accompanies a retrospective of the modern Japanese painter Tomioka Tessai (1836–1924) on view in late 2022, at the Freer Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. https://s.si.edu/3pEvXn4

28/02/2023

New from SISP! Smithsonian Contributions to Botany, no. 117: The Marine Benthic Algal Flora of Puerto Rico, II. Chlorophyta and Prasinodermatophyta. Ballantine et al. provide a second taxonomic study of benthic species from Puerto Rico, Caribbean Sea. The first was published in 2021 and covered 77 species. This work includes 2 classes, 8 orders, 25 families, 50 genera, and 150 species, with date, place, authors, type locality, description, habitat, distribution, and keys.
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/all/the-marine-benthic-algal-flora-of-puerto-rico-ii-chlorophyta-and-prasinodermatophyta/

25/01/2023

New Release! Future work in complex issues requires foundational knowledge. In SISP’s newest Contribution to Zoology, authors Jefferson, Mead, and Krinze untangle the taxonomy of beaked and s***m whales, reviewing descriptions for 114 named species, and finding 27 considered valid, 6 nomina dubia, 10 nomina nuda, and 71 junior synonyms.
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/all/nomenclature-of-the-larger-toothed-whales-odontocetes-a-historical-review/

24/01/2023

New Release! Diplomatic gifts, war prizes, or library treasures of royal and princely libraries, handwritten Qurʾans have also been endowed to mosques, tombs, and other religious complexes to perpetuate and transmit their baraka (divine blessing). The artistic, historic, and religious contexts and the materiality of Qurʾans is investigated, from lavish use of costly materials such as gold and parchment to development of special scripts, intricate illuminated designs, and meticulously tooled bindings.
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/all/the-word-illuminated-form-and-function-of-qur%ca%beanic-manuscripts-from-the-seventh-to-seventeenth-centuries/

18/01/2023

Pleased to announce our newest Smithsonian Contribution to Botany no. 116! The Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield (BDG) is a field-oriented program of the National Museum of Natural History. For more than 30 years, the goal of the BDG has been to study, document, and preserve the biological diversity (flora and fauna) of the Guiana Shield in northern South America, which comprises parts of French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, and Venezuela. The BDG program has resulted in numerous publications, and this most recent one documents a decade of specimen collections by Smithsonian botanists Karen Redden and Ken Wurdack.
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/all/smithsonian-plant-collections-guiana-shield-2002-2012-karen-m-redden-and-kenneth-j-wurdack/

13/01/2023

Excited to share that Green Persuasion: Advertising, Voluntarism, and America’s Public Lands by Jeffrey K. Stine has been reviewed by Rachel S. Gross in H-Net Reviews in the Humanities & Social Services. The reviewer notes that "Stine succeeds in showing that this seemingly innocuous program [Take Pride in America] carried a much deeper message about environmental politics."
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=58512
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/life-sciences-biodiversity/green-persuasion-advertising-voluntarism-and-ameri/

09/12/2022

One of Smithsonian’s nicknames is “the nation’s attic.” Check out some of the collection in our new release! Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology no. 654 documents the type specimens of Caudata (salamanders) and Gymnophiona (caecilians) in the collection of Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s Division of Amphibians and Reptiles. Spoiler alert—there are a lot! The catalog presents 288 names of taxa and represents more than 2,670 specimens!
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/new-releases/catalog-type-specimens-recent-caudata-and-gymnophi/

03/10/2022

New Release! The digital, open access edition of Handbook of the North American Indians, Volume 1: Introduction (https://doi.org/10.5479/si.21262173) presents new perspectives on the history of North America’s indigenous societies, issues facing North American indigenous communities in the 21st century, a thorough update of the studies of Native American indigenous peoples, and the first-ever history of the Handbook project.

05/08/2022

Happy to share that Green Persuasion: Advertising, Voluntarism, and America’s Public Lands by Jeffrey K. Stine has been reviewed by The Public Historian! The reviewer notes that “Public historians will enjoy the creativity with which Stine engages the book’s illustrations and photographs.”
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/861873
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/all/green-persuasion-advertising-voluntarism-and-ameri/

13/06/2022

Pleased to announce that Arctic Crashes: People and Animals in the Changing North edited by Igor Krupnik and Aron L. Crowell has been reviewed in the June 2022 issue of Arctic! The reviewer "highly recommend[s] it to everyone interested in the ecology and management of Arctic wildlife, past, present and future, through an inclusive lens of human-animal relations."
https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/arctic/article/view/75500
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/all/arctic-crashes-people-and-animals-changing-north/

27/05/2022

Three new bat species! New in Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology, no. 106, Volactrix simmonsae gen. et sp. nov., Palaeochiropteryx sambuceus sp. nov., and Sonor handae gen. et sp. nov. are named after examination of dentaries and a partial skeleton excavated at Elderberry Canyon Quarry in the Egan Range of eastern Nevada.
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/new-releases/three-new-early-middle-eocene-bats-mammalia-chirop/

25/05/2022

Excited to share that ¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues En los barrios y las grandes ligas was recently reviewed by NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture! The review states that "This study provides broad coverage of the story of Latinos/as and the sport of baseball. The texts and artifacts tell the story of the game at the local and professional levels from various parts of the country."
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/800764
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/all/peibol-barrios-and-big-leagues-en-los-barrios-y-la/

17/05/2022

Pretty South American flowers! New in Smithsonian Contributions to Botany, no. 115: An updated study of genus Leucheria Lag. (Asteraceae, Nassauvieae) adds morphological information, with new combinations, varieties, and species proposed. This work includes a key to species, brief species descriptions, detailed illustrations, and distribution maps.
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/new-releases/synopsis-leucheria-asteraceae-nassauvieae-notes-mo/

17/05/2022

The Society for History in the Federal Government (SHFG) Member Award committee has recognized Dr. Jeffrey Stine and his Smithsonian publication Green Persuasion: Advertising, Voluntarism, and America’s Public Lands for the 2022 award. Congratulations!
http://www.shfg.org/page-18380
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/all/green-persuasion-advertising-voluntarism-and-ameri/

16/05/2022

New Release! Hiring women. Postcards from POWs. Fighting radicalism. Censorship. Printing stamps. Developing transcontinental communications networks. These wartime issues and more were presented in 2018 by postal historians to mark the centennial of the end of WWI in The Tenth Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposium convened at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/new-releases/tenth-winton-m-blount-postal-history-symposium-wor/

01/05/2022

Pleased to announce that Green Persuasion: Advertising, Voluntarism, and America's Public Lands by Jeffrey K. Stine was recently reviewed by Advertising & Society Quarterly.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/853011
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/all/green-persuasion-advertising-voluntarism-and-ameri/

28/03/2022

Museum collections have so much to offer! Check out our newest Contribution to Anthropology. This edited volume presents a comprehensive approach to collections-based research using anthropological collections housed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and National Museum of Natural History. The volume will also serve as a pedagogical manual for conducting collections-based research within current museum milieus.

https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/new-releases/contextualizing-museum-collections-smithsonian-ins/

31/01/2022

New Release!
This herpetofauna had never been the focus of a countrywide survey and study until recently (1997–2010). George Zug provides an overview of this fauna through generic identification keys and checklists for adult amphibians, crocodilians, and turtles of Myanmar, which include 150 species of formally described amphibians and more than 200 species of reptiles.
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/new-releases/amphibians-and-reptiles-myanmar-checklists-and-key/

08/11/2021

New article by Jennifer Tucker, editor of A Right to Bear Arms? (SISP, 2019): "Why are medieval weapons laws at the center of a US Supreme Court case?"

https://theconversation.com/why-are-medieval-weapons-laws-at-the-center-of-a-us-supreme-court-case-169604
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/all/right-to-bear-arms-contested-role-history-contemp/

Many gun rights advocates claim that the right to carry guns is a universal right that has spanned centuries and nations. History tells a different story.

27/10/2021

Winner of the Circus Historical Society's Stuart Thayer Prize -- When the Circus Came to Town! (SISP, 2020). Congratulations to authors Dawn Rogala (MCI), David Haberstich (NMAH), and Shannon Perich (NMAH) for having their book recognized as a superior work of circus history scholarship.

https://circushistory.org/thayerprize/
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/all/when-circus-came-town-american-tradition-photograp/

20/10/2021

Check out the latest report from Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute, MCI #6955, examining an 18th-century iron lock found during renovations at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland.
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/new-releases/examination-and-treatment-report-carpenter-co-lock/

13/10/2021

A new study of ancient botany! SISP announces Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology, no. 105—a Miocene era palynological study of a well core drilled in Tabatinga, Amazonas, Brazil; 91 new taxa are erected (25 spores and 66 pollen, including one new genus), 16 new combinations are proposed, and botanical and ecological affinities are updated.
https://scholarlypress.si.edu/store/new-releases/miocene-palynology-solimoes-formation-well-1-105-a/