Welcome to our weekly roundup of news from university presses! Once again, there is a lot to share this week from our fellow academic publishing houses and much to learn on What SUP at the social university presses. This week, we found conversations on food stamps and the prejudices that surround them, Edith Wharton, and what’s special about the Bronx. What did you read this week?

Harvard University Press thinks through grief, mourning and the politics of memorialization of those killed on September 11, 2001. Families of the victims have very different views of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and the storing of unidentified victims’ remains in its basement.

Columbia University Press dispels the popular myth that welfare recipients are using food stamps to purchase luxurious food items such as filet mignon and lobster. Food stamps provide low-income people with nutritious meals, and budget cuts and prejudice ignore the harsh reality of extreme poverty. For many individuals receiving SNAP benefits, purchasing expensive raw seafood or steak is illogical, because they are so poor that they lack the means to prepare them.

The University Press of Florida shines a spotlight on Edith Wharton, the first woman to win a Pulitzer Price and a transnational author who attempted to understand and appreciate the culture, history, and artifacts of the regions she encountered in her extensive travels abroad.

The University of California Press highlights the New York borough the Bronx, an often dismissed place that is actually home to natural beauty, growth and creativity. The Bronx is home to the New York Botanical Garden and known as the birth-place of hip hop.

Princeton University Press analyzes how higher education figures more than ever in the current presidential campaign. With the cost of college being a daunting burden for most students and families, the article asks the question: will higher education be free?

Stanford University Press talks about how Europeans once looked at themselves at the opera through Turkish eyes. Operas about Turks were a staple of the performance repertory throughout the eighteenth century and into the early nineteenth century, Europeans and could even explore a European sense of self as mirrored in the figure of the singing Turk.