Taking a good idea from our colleagues at Columbia University Press, we thought you’d enjoy a roundup of what we’re reading from other social university presses and what goes on in our corner of the publishing world.  Dare we ask the question?:  SUP friends?  And be sure to check out our list of SUPs in the left nav bar of our blog!
Oprah’s candid interview with gay celebrity couple Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka on life with their twins has been fueling conversation on the controversial topic of gay parenting. At the NYU press blog, author Abbie E. Goldberg gives a thoughtful reflection on the couple’s experience and why they are an example of the “new nuclear family.”

At the LSU press blog, guest blogger Daniel L. Fountain gives us a glimpse of what it was like for southern slaves in the 19^th century to listen to Christian ministers who used the pulpit as a platform of oppression.

Making a distinction between controlling and protecting oil resources in the Middle East has become critical to the U.S.’s policy in the region over the course of the past twenty years. The Harvard University Press Blog is currently featuring a compelling piece by Toby Craig Jones on the subject, an excerpt from Journal of American History’s special issue, “Oil in American History.”

This week is the 23^rd anniversary of Tiananmen Square. Over at Temple University Press’s blog, North Philly Notes, Belinda Kong urges us to think beyond the protest’s obvious political repercussion across the globe and consider its cultural impact on Chinese identity.

Over at OUPblog, Gordon Thompson captures the sights and sounds at EMI Recording Studios inAbbey Road,London on June 6, 1962, when “four berks fromLiverpool” showed up to change the face of pop music.

The countdown to the London 2012 Summer Olympics is officially on with less than 50 days until the opening ceremonies. The University Press of Kentucky features the story this week of one of the most famous boxers in American history, before he was famous. Cassius Clay was a young man of 18 when he competed in the 1960 Rome Olympics. A gold medal winner he still faced discrimination as an African American in his home state ofKentucky. Fifty-two years later Muhammad Ali is a world famous boxer and the Civil Rights Movement ended outright discrimination.

At the University of Nebraska Press blog they are getting ready to slay the dragon. Slaying the Dragon is a new opera that premiered at the Center City Opera Theater inPhiladelphia yesterday. The opera is based on a book of the same name by Kathryn Watterson and follows the life of a Jewish man and his family.

Thomas Jefferson’s life and philosophies have been a popular topic lately! In A Rich Spot of Earth YUP looks at the pride Jefferson took in his garden and his interest in botanical sciences. He also took great pride in his daughter Patsy who lived with her father while he was in France.  On the UNC Press Blog, Cynthia A. Keener talks about the measuresJefferson took to protect his daughter from the whims of French culture, including schooling her in a French convent.

We join the University of Georgia Press in congratulating Natasha Trethewey on being named the US Poet Laureate. Trethewey will serve as US Poet Laureate while the post celebrates its 75^th anniversary. Trethewey published a memoir in 2010 and won the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry in 2007.

Over at The Chicago Blog is an interview with Jules Fieffer, best known as illustrator of the childhood classic The Phantom Tollbooth or as a cartoonist for The Village Voice. In the interview Fieffer describes his motivations for starting his new novel and whether he prefers to work independently or collaboratively.

And Princeton University Press has traveled back to the 1970s to explore a pivotal decade in American history. Thomas Borstelmann examines how civil rights movement and the Watergate Scandal met in a decade that changed American society.