Amber Kivinen is moving to Mars. Or at least, she will be if she wins a chance to join MarsNow. She and twenty-three reality TV contestants from around the world--including attractive Israeli soldier Adam, endearing fellow Canadian Pichu, and an assortment of science nerds and wannabe influencers--are competing for two seats on the first human-led mission to Mars, sponsored by billionaire Geoff Task.

Meanwhile Kevin, Amber's boyfriend of fourteen years, was content going nowhere until Amber left him--and their hydroponic weed business--behind. As he tends to (and smokes) the plants growing in their absurdly overpriced Vancouver basement apartment, Kevin tunes in to find out why the love of his life is so determined to leave the planet with somebody else. On screen, Amber competes in globe-trotting, Survivor-meets-Star Trek challenges and seems like she might be falling for Adam. But is that real, or is it just a tactic to keep from being voted off? And since the technology to come home doesn't exist yet, would Amber really leave everything behind to be a billionaire's Martian guinea pig? Sure, the rainforest is burning, Geoff Task has bought New Zealand, and Kevin might be a little depressed, but isn't there some hope left for life on Earth?

An audacious debut from a dazzlingly smart and strikingly original writer (Molly Antopol), Girlfriend on Mars is at once a satirical indictment of our pursuit of fame and wealth amidst environmental crisis, and an exploration of humanity's deepest longing, greatest quest, and most enduring cliché love.

Celebrate--through stunning photographs--Kamala Harris's presidential run in one of the most consequential, surprising, and invigorating, campaigns in our nation's history, one of the most impactful ever of a candidate attempting to become the first woman president of the United States.

Kamala is a beautiful tribute to Kamala Harris's remarkable rise from District Attorney in California to her historic presidential run in 2024. Curated by Deborah Willis and Kevin Merida, this visually captivating book features nearly 150 vibrant photographs that capture the joy, challenges, and triumphs of Harris's campaign.

Rather than following a strict timeline, the book is thematically arranged into sections like Family & Early Life, The Ascent, and Powerful Rooms. Each section offers a unique perspective on Harris's multifaceted life and career, complemented by insightful essays that place this pivotal election in context. It's an essential read for anyone intrigued by American politics, women's history, and the significance of representation.

Regardless of the election's outcome, this book celebrates Harris's indomitable spirit and the groundbreaking nature of her campaign. It's a perfect keepsake of this trailblazing event and is perfect for fans, political enthusiasts, and anyone inspired by a woman who dares to break barriers and make history.

Over 500 glorious black-and-white photographs celebrating black culture throughout American history, from Jesse Owens to Barry Bonds, Ella Fitzgerald to Halle Berry.

Tucked away in the dusty halls of the Smithsonian archives and nearly forgotten by most historians, black culture is a vast, complex, interconnected web of different people, trends, and lifestyles. Deborah Willis has dug through the archives and hunted down the remnants that tell the wonderful and tragic history of a people. Tackling all subjects with bravery and frankness, Deborah Willis's work is a true treasure to behold.

Black: A Celebration of a Culture, which would be a perfect complement to any Juneteenth celebration, presents a vibrant panorama of twentieth-century black culture in America and around the world. Broken up into segments that examine in detail such subjects as children, work, art, beauty, Saturday night, and Sunday morning, the photos detail the history and the evolution of a culture. Each photograph, handpicked by Deborah Willis, America's leading historian of African American photography, celebrates the world of music, art, fashion, sports, family, worship, or play. With five hundred photographs from every time period from the birth of photography to the birth of hip-hop, this book is a truly joyous exhibition of black culture. From Jessie Owens to Barry Bonds, Ella Fitzgerald to Halle Berry, Black: A Celebration of a Culture is joyous and inspiring.

The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. As we commemorate its 150th anniversary, what do we really know about those who experienced slavery?

In their pioneering book, Envisioning Emancipation, renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs--some never before published--from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. The authors vividly display the seismic impact of emancipation on African Americans born before and after the Proclamation, providing a perspective on freedom and slavery and a way to understand the photos as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration.

Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end.

Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture.

Amber Kivinen is moving to Mars. Or at least, she will be if she wins a chance to join MarsNow. She and twenty-three reality TV contestants from around the world--including attractive Israeli soldier Adam, endearing fellow Canadian Pichu, and an assortment of science nerds and wannabe influencers--are competing for two seats on the first human-led mission to Mars, sponsored by billionaire Geoff Task.

Meanwhile Kevin, Amber's boyfriend of fourteen years, was content going nowhere until Amber left him--and their hydroponic weed business--behind. As he tends to (and smokes) the plants growing in their absurdly overpriced Vancouver basement apartment, Kevin tunes in to find out why the love of his life is so determined to leave the planet with somebody else. On screen, Amber competes in globe-trotting, Survivor-meets-Star Trek challenges and seems like she might be falling for Adam. But is that real, or is it just a tactic to keep from being voted off? And since the technology to come home doesn't exist yet, would Amber really leave everything behind to be a billionaire's Martian guinea pig? Sure, the rainforest is burning, Geoff Task has bought New Zealand, and Kevin might be a little depressed, but isn't there some hope left for life on Earth?

An audacious debut from a dazzlingly smart and strikingly original writer (Molly Antopol), Girlfriend on Mars is at once a satirical indictment of our pursuit of fame and wealth amidst environmental crisis, and an exploration of humanity's deepest longing, greatest quest, and most enduring cliché love.

Self-taught photographer Hugh Mangum was born in 1877 in Durham, North Carolina, as its burgeoning tobacco economy put the frontier-like boomtown on the map. As an itinerant portraitist working primarily in North Carolina and Virginia during the rise of Jim Crow, Mangum welcomed into his temporary studios a clientele that was both racially and economically diverse. After his death in 1922, his glass plate negatives remained stored in his darkroom, a tobacco barn, for fifty years. Slated for demolition in the 1970s, the barn was saved at the last moment--and with it, this surprising and unparalleled document of life at the turn of the twentieth century, a turbulent time in the history of the American South.

Hugh Mangum's multiple-image, glass plate negatives reveal the open-door policy of his studio to show us lives marked both by notable affluence and hard work, all imbued with a strong sense of individuality, self-creation, and often joy. Seen and experienced in the present, the portraits hint at unexpected relationships and histories and also confirm how historical photographs have the power to subvert familiar narratives. Mangum's photographs are not only images; they are objects that have survived a history of their own and exist within the larger political and cultural history of the American South, demonstrating the unpredictable alchemy that often characterizes the best art--its ability over time to evolve with and absorb life and meaning beyond the intentions or expectations of the artist.

The essays in this book chart how women's profound and turbulent experiences of migration have been articulated in writing, photography, art and film. As a whole, the volume gives an impression of a wide range of migratory events from women's perspectives, covering the Caribbean Diaspora, refugees and slavery through the various lenses of politics and war, love and family.

The contributors, which include academics and artists, offer both personal and critical points of view on the artistic and historical repositories of these experiences. Selfies, motherhood, violence and Hollywood all feature in this substantial treasure-trove of women's joy and suffering, disaster and delight, place, memory and identity.

This collection appeals to artists and scholars of the humanities, particularly within the social sciences; though there is much to recommend it to creatives seeking inspiration or counsel on the issue of migratory experiences.

Why were women far more likely than men to be executed for witchcraft in the early modern period? Questioning approaches that focus narrowly on the male role in witch-hunting in England and Scotland, Deborah Willis examines the fact that women were also frequently the accusers.Willis draws on the strengths of feminist, new historicist, and psychoanalytic criticism and on such primary sources as legal documents, pamphlet literature, religious tracts, and stage plays. Both the witch and her female accuser, Willis concludes, were engaged in a complex, intricate struggle for survival and empowerment in a patriarchal culture, and they stood in uneasy relation to definitions of female identity that rewarded nurturing behavior.Malevolent Nurture disentangles popular images of the witch from those endorsed by male elites. Among villagers, the witch was most typically imagined as a malevolent mother, while elites preferred to view her as a betraying servant of Satan. Analyzing King James VI and I's involvement in the North Berwick witchcraft trials, Willis shows how his elite atittudes were nevertheless influenced by his relationships with his brith mother, Mary Queen of Scots, and another maternal figure, Queen Elizabeth I.Willis also shows that Shakespeare, in Richard III, Macbeth, and Henry VI, and other middle-class playwrights incorporated the beliefs of the ruling class and villagers alike in their representations of witches.

There has never been a First Lady like her before. While there have been a slew of Obama celebrity books, none contain the message of Deborah Willis and Emily Bernard's eye-opening book. With nearly 200 compelling photographs, these two noted scholars capture Michelle Obama's dramatic transformation from working mother to First Lady, from her first tentative steps on the campaign trail to her spontaneous hug of the Queen, to her fairy-tale-like date night on Broadway. Not since Jacqueline Kennedy has there been a First Lady who has so enchanted America, but in her down-to-earth dealings with all Americans--schoolchildren, military families, and home gardeners alike--and in her diverse fashion taste, from J. Crew to Jason Wu, Michelle Obama is inexplicably all pearls, all business, all mother. The authors show how Michelle Obama represents the culmination of America's evolving views on women, race, motherhood, and beauty. Much more than a mere catalog of style, Michelle Obama is a remarkable pictorial story of one woman's hold on our imagination.

The emotional range and depth of these stories, their clarity and deftness, is astonishing.
--Alice Munro

A finalist for the Governor General's Awards, Vanishing and Other Stories is the stunning debut short story collection from Deborah Willis. Evocative and passionately written, Vanishing brilliantly explores emotional and physical absences; the ways in which people leave and are left; and whether it's ever possible to move on.

What freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era

Published to coincide with a five-channel video installation touring across the United States, including some notable venues such as The Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Exploratorium, San Francisco, California; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Connecticut, Question Bridge: Black Males in America assembles a series of questions posed to black men, by and for other black men, along with the corresponding responses and portraits of the participants. The questions range from the comic to the sublimely philosophical: from Am I the only one who has problems eating chicken, watermelon and bananas in front of white people? to Why is it so difficult for black American men in this culture to be themselves, their essential selves, and remain who they truly are? The answers tackle the issues that continue to surround black male identity today in a uniquely honest, no-holds-barred manner. While the ostensible subject is black men, the conversation that evolves in these pages is ultimately about the nature of living in a post-Obama, post-Ferguson, post-Voting Rights Act America. Question Bridge: Black Males in America is about who we are and what we mean to one another. Most critically, it asks: how can we start to dismantle the myths and misconceptions that have evolved around race and gender in America--how can we reset the narrative about ourselves? The project's founding artists, along with contributions from Andrew Young, Jesse Williams, Rashid Shabazz and Delroy Lindo, contextualize the body of the work and provide closing remarks on our current and future social climate.

The characters in these thirteen masterful and engaging stories exist on the edge of danger, where landscapes melt into dreamscapes and every house is haunted. A drug dealer's girlfriend signs up for the first manned mission to Mars. A girl falls in love with a man who wants to turn her into a bird. A teenaged girl and her best friend test their relationship by breaking into suburban houses. A wife finds a gaping hole in the floor of the home she shares with her husband, a hole that only she can see. Full of longing and strange humor, these subtle, complex stories--about the love between a man and his pet crow, an alcoholic and his AA sponsor, a mute migrant and a newspaper reporter--show how love ties us to each other and to the world. The Dark and Other Love Stories announces the emergence of a wonderfully gifted storyteller whose stories enlarge our perceptions about the human capacity to love.

Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty investigates the transformative experience of the photograph. In this book Deborah Willis explores historical perceptions of beauty and desire through artistic and ethnographic imagery and the role individual photographers play in constructing ways of seeing. Through the themes of idealized beauty, the unfashionable body, the gendered image, and photography as memory, Willis challenges and makes problematic the reading of photographic images in the twenty-first century.

Working from the significant photographic holdings of the University of Washington's Henry Art Gallery, and the University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, the author examines shifting gender attitudes that emerged in work by women photographers such as Gertrude Käsebier and Diane Arbus. Willis discusses ethnographic ideologies underpinning the work of Edward Sheriff Curtis and Fred E. Miller who worked with Native American subjects, as well as the framing and reframing of images of black people in the work of Samuel Montague Fassett and Carrie Mae Weems. Additionally, the effects of fashion and desire on the imaging of beauty are examined in the work of such artists as Don Wallen, Janieta Eyre, and Jan Saudek. The book includes full-page illustrations of works by more than fifty internationally recognized photographers including Lisette Model, Imogen Cunningham, Lewis Wickes Hine, Bruce Davidson, Cecil Beaton, Nan Goldin, André Kertész, Lee Friedlander, Lorna Simpson, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol.

Why were women far more likely than men to be executed for witchcraft in the early modern period? Questioning approaches that focus narrowly on the male role in witch-hunting in England and Scotland, Deborah Willis examines the fact that women were also frequently the accusers.Willis draws on the strengths of feminist, new historicist, and psychoanalytic criticism and on such primary sources as legal documents, pamphlet literature, religious tracts, and stage plays. Both the witch and her female accuser, Willis concludes, were engaged in a complex, intricate struggle for survival and empowerment in a patriarchal culture, and they stood in uneasy relation to definitions of female identity that rewarded nurturing behavior.Malevolent Nurture disentangles popular images of the witch from those endorsed by male elites. Among villagers, the witch was most typically imagined as a malevolent mother, while elites preferred to view her as a betraying servant of Satan. Analyzing King James VI and I's involvement in the North Berwick witchcraft trials, Willis shows how his elite atittudes were nevertheless influenced by his relationships with his brith mother, Mary Queen of Scots, and another maternal figure, Queen Elizabeth I.Willis also shows that Shakespeare, in Richard III, Macbeth, and Henry VI, and other middle-class playwrights incorporated the beliefs of the ruling class and villagers alike in their representations of witches.

As a young South African woman of about twenty, Saartjie Baartman, the so-called OC Hottentot Venus, OCO was brought to London and placed on exhibit in 1810. Clad in the Victorian equivalent of a body stocking, and paraded through the streets and on stage in a cage she became a human spectacle in London and Paris. BaartmanOCOs distinctive physique became the object of ridicule, curiosity, scientific inquiry, and desire until and after her premature death. The figure of Sarah Baartman was reduced to her sexual parts.

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Black Venus 2010 traces BaartmanOCOs memory in our collective histories, as well as her symbolic history in the construction and identity of black women as artists, performers, and icons. The wide-ranging essays, poems, and images in Black Venus 2010 represent some of the most compelling responses to Baartman. Each one grapples with the enduring legacy of this young African woman who forever remains a touchstone for black women.

Contributors include: Elizabeth Alexander, Holly Bass, Petrushka A Bazin, William Jelani Cobb, Lisa Gail Collins, a Ren(r)e Cox, J. Yolande Daniels, Carole Boyce Davies, Leon de Wailly, Manthia Diawara, Diana Ferrus, Cheryl Finley, Nikky Finney, Kianga K. Ford, Terri Francis, Sander Gilman, Ren(r)e Green, Joy Gregory, Lyle Ashton Harris, Michael D. Harris, Linda Susan Jackson, Kellie Jones, Roshini Kempadoo, Simone Leigh, Zine Magubane, E. Ethelbert Miller, Robin Mitchell, Charmaine Nelson, Tracey Rose, Radcliffe Roye, Bernadette Searle, Lorna Simpson, Debra S. Singer, Penny Siopis, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Michele Wallace, Carla Williams, Carrie Mae Weems, J. T. Zealy, and the editor.

The first comprehensive history of Black photographers, Reflections in Black returns in this groundbreaking, magnificently produced pictorial collection of African American life. Now offering nearly 800 images from 1840 to the present, this breathtaking work provides rich, moving glimpses of everyday Black life, from slavery to the Great Migration to suburban life, including rare antebellum daguerreotypes, photojournalism of the civil rights era, and multimedia portraits of middle-class families, along with a contemporary section depicting images of both joy and mourning, beauty and protest that have indelibly changed the world we know. Featuring the works of undisputed masters such as James VanDerZee, Gordon Parks, and Carrie Mae Weems, this expanded edition now includes works from great twenty-first-century artists, including LaToya Ruby Frazier, Lorna Simpson, and Phylicia Ghee. A work so significant that it has the power to reconfigure our conception of American history, Reflections in Black is an essential part of our heritage.

The essays in this book chart how women's profound and turbulent experiences of migration have been articulated in writing, photography, art and film. As a whole, the volume gives an impression of a wide range of migratory events from women's perspectives, covering the Caribbean Diaspora, refugees and slavery through the various lenses of politics and war, love and family.

The contributors, which include academics and artists, offer both personal and critical points of view on the artistic and historical repositories of these experiences. Selfies, motherhood, violence and Hollywood all feature in this substantial treasure-trove of women's joy and suffering, disaster and delight, place, memory and identity.

This collection appeals to artists and scholars of the humanities, particularly within the social sciences; though there is much to recommend it to creatives seeking inspiration or counsel on the issue of migratory experiences.