BLOG: Current Happenings in OER

The University of North Alabama Digital Press is proud to announce the publication of My X’s by Alina Stefanescue.

This book is literary non-fiction, and the first in a new imprint developed by Prof. Jason McCall and his students in a publishing internship course. 

Lion Bridge Publishing, founded in 2024, is an in-person publishing internship class at the University of North Alabama (UNA) located in Florence, Alabama. The press is run by UNA students who collaborate in the copy editing, marketing, and design process of each text. Lion Bridge Publishing focuses on open-access publishing as an imprint of the UNA’s Digital Press at Collier Library. Our name is influenced by the pride we have for our University, its mascot, and our hope to connect literary works and people through open-access publishing. We are interested in publishing inspiring works of all genres.

Here's a link to the book: https://una.pressbooks.pub/myxs/ 

Librarians and faculty from Earlham College were recently highlighted for their work with the PALSave program.

The Spring 2024 issue of Earlhamite Magazine details how these individuals are using the program to save students money and create a more equitable system for acquiring and using textbooks.

Read the full story, titled “Next-gen Textbooks,” on the Earlhamite website. You can also access the print edition online.

You're welcome to join us for a free webinar in a couple of weeks!

Creative Teaching Solutions: Open Pedagogy and Student-Centered Learning 

April 16^th, 11:30-12:20pm ET 

Register: https://forms.office.com/r/pLEwLZw3ga  

Our students are looking for classroom experiences that are meaningful, engaging, and empowering. One way to achieve this is to employ open pedagogy, an approach to teaching that prioritizes student-centered learning and the use of open educational resources. Join us for a special guest presentation by Heather Miceli, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at AAC&U and former faculty member at Roger Williams University. Heather will share her own experience with open pedagogy and lots of practical tips for how to integrate this approach to teaching into your classroom. 

North Broad Press, the collaborative open-access textbook initiative between Temple University Libraries and Temple University Press, presents the latest publication: "Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood" by Dr. Terry Rey. Delving into the intellectual and cultural histories of the zombie and apocalypse, Dr. Rey explores their origins and widespread influence, tracing their roots from Haitian Vodou to ancient religious traditions. 

Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood explores the intellectual and cultural histories of two highly influential and essentially religious ideas, that of the zombie and that of the apocalypse. The former is a modern idea rooted in Haitian Vodou and its popular African and European religious antecedents, while the latter is an ancient one rooted in Zoroastrianism and the Bible and widely expanded in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and is arguably one of the most influential ideas in world history. Today the merger of the zombie and the apocalypse has pervaded popular culture, with the zombie surpassing the vampire and Frankenstein as the most prolific monster in popular American consciousness.
 

Drawing on biblical studies, African studies, Caribbean studies, and the sociology and history of religion, Parts I (Holy Land) and II (Haiti) explore the religious origins of these ideas. Part III (Hollywood) uses aspects of cultural studies, literary analysis, critical race theory, and cinema studies to document the (primarily) American obsession with the zombie and the zombie apocalypse.
 

The apocalypse and the zombie have been momentous intellectual, historical, and cultural realities and social forces in both very ancient and very recent human history and culture. As such, Zombie Apocalypse provides a focused analysis of certain fundamental aspects of human existence. It challenges readers to cultivate their critical thinking skills while learning about two of the most compelling notions in human religious history and the impact they continue to have.
 

Terry Rey is Professor and Undergraduate Chair of the Department of Religion at Temple University, where he specializes in the anthropology and history of African and African diasporic religions. His current research projects focus on violence and religion in Central African and Haitian history. Rey developed the Temple course “Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood,” which he began teaching in spring 2020.