Ever since last year’s American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Baltimore, the Religion and Bibles team at Oxford University Press has eagerly awaited San Diego in 2014. As we gear up to travel to the west coast, we asked our staff across divisions and offices: What is on your to-do list while in San Diego?
Tom Perridge, Academic/Trade, UK:
I’m looking forward to returning to San Diego, having previously visited for the 2007 AAR/SBL. Oxford is cold, grey, and autumnal at the moment, so some Californian sunshine will be welcome! It’s always a pleasure to connect with both authors and readers and to cook up ideas for exciting new projects.
Don Kraus, Bibles, US:
As part of my task in publishing Oxford Study Bibles, I am meeting with the editorial boards of various projects in order to keep them moving along. I also hope to see some of the scholars I’ve worked with over the past years, just to catch up and have a chance to hear how they are doing. I look forward to meeting, either again or for the first time, as many scholars as possible who have worked on the second edition of The Jewish Study Bible, our brand-new, fully revised and updated revision of a text that’s already a classic.
Steve Wiggins, Academic/Trade and Bibles, US:
I hope to meet a long-lost cousin (literally!), as well as authors I’ve only met by email. Of course, seeing people I’ve known over the past two decades of attending is always a highlight. It’s all about the people.
Sara McNamara, Journals, US:
Though spending as much time outside exploring San Diego’s parks and beaches is definitely a priority, number one on my to-do list is a breakfast event for journals editors I’ve organized with the AAR and SBL. The breakfast will provide a rare opportunity for religious, biblical, and theological studies journals editors to come together to discuss the unique challenges facing journals and their editors. Emceed by Amir Hussain, the editor of Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the breakfast promises to be both fun and informative.
Gina Chung, Academic/Trade, US:
This year will not only be my first time at AAR, but also my first time in San Diego! I’m really excited to meet our authors in person, and I’m looking forward to getting some sun and 70 degree weather in November as well.
Alyssa Bender, Academic/Trade and Bibles, US:
I can’t wait to meet this year’s new batch of authors at the meeting, and hopefully snap some pictures of them with their books. I’m also excited to explore the city and find some fun restaurants! Hopefully at least one with outdoor seating—have to take advantage of the beautiful San Diego weather!
We hope to see you at Oxford University Press booth 829! We’ll be offering the chance to:
- Check out which books we’re featuring.
- Browse and buy our new and bestselling titles on display at a 20% conference discount.
- Peruse our conference ebook promotion (up to 90% off!)
- Get free trial access to our suite of online products.
- Pick up sample copies of our latest religion journals.
- Enter giveaways for free OUP books.
- Meet all of us!
See you there!
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In an effort to get to know our Oxford University Press staff better, we’re featuring interviews with our staff in different offices. Read on for our Q&A with Alyssa Bender, marketing coordinator for our religion and theology Academic/Trade books and Bibles in New York.
When did you start working at OUP?
July 2011.
What is the most important lesson you learned during your first year on the job?
Take notes on everything! From training sessions for programs to meetings where I had no idea what anyone was talking about, filling up my notebook (and constantly revisiting later) was my saving grace.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve found about working at OUP?
How many books we come out with every year. Never could have guessed we publish the volume that we do.
What’s the least surprising?
While it surprised me at first, it really shouldn’t have—everyone here is so intelligent and talented. It’s likely that those are just the type of people who are drawn to work at university presses, but it’s still great to work with such smart people every day.
What drew you to work for OUP in the first place? What do you think about that now?
It was a job in publishing! Those are hard to come by when you’re first out of school. Luckily, it turned out to be an awesome job with a great team. Still is.
What’s the first thing you do when you get to work in the morning?
Open my inbox and sort the emails by priority.
What is your typical day like at OUP?
Lots of answering emails. Also, lots of meetings. In between emails and meetings, there’s creating marketing plans, pulling sales reports, gathering social media content, proofing newsletters and catalogs, updating website copy, submitting review copy requests, making flyers…the list goes on.
What is the strangest thing currently on or in your desk?
A 3D paper pear made out of note paper. A gift from my manager, who brought it back from her trip to Japan.
What’s the most enjoyable part of your job?
Seeing my efforts pay off when a book does really well.
What’s the most difficult part of your job?
Determining reprint quantities. No matter how much research you do, you can still be way off in your estimates. It’s one of the many aspects of my job that only gets easier the more experience you have doing it.
What is the most exciting project you have been part of while working at OUP?
Helping to launch the @OUPMusic Twitter, back when I still worked on the music team. It was really fun to be a part of the strategy conversations and learn what goes on behind the scenes of company Twitter accounts. It was also fun to be behind some of the tweets and interact with the followers.
Tell us about one of your proudest moments at work.
Pulling off a successful American Academy of Religion/Society for Biblical Literature conference this past November. As the team leader for the conference, I was responsible for organizing almost every detail about our presence there, from deciding the booth layout, to determining the books we would bring (and how many of each), to making sure enough people were present for set-up/tear down. It was my first AAR/SBL, and my first large meeting in general, and I was really happy with how it all turned out.
What will you be doing once you’ve completed this Q&A?
Cleaning my desk! So many piles of paper, bookmarked galleys, meeting notes, books, and folders everywhere!
Alyssa Bender joined Oxford University Press in 2011. She is currently a Marketing Coordinator for our religion and theology Academic/Trade books and Bibles in New York.
The post Catching up with Alyssa Bender appeared first on OUPblog.
By Alyssa Bender
Love is in the air at Oxford University Press! As we celebrate Valentine’s Day, we’ve asked staff members from our offices in New York, Oxford, and Cary, NC, to share their favorite love songs. Read on for their selections, and be sure to tell us what your favorites are too. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Owen Keiter, Publicity
All-time is impossible, so…“Girlfriend” by Ty Segall is a feat of simplicity. Ty manages to stuff the headlong rush of a new, young, senseless love into about two breathless minutes. Nobody’s getting excited about the caveman-ish lyrics, which are almost incomprehensible anyway, but that’s not the point. The point is: when Ty hollers “I’ve got a girlfriend/She says she loves me,” you can tell it’s got him feeling like nothing can touch him.
Click here to view the embedded video.
For those having less pleasant Valentine’s Days: “Lipstick Vogue” by
Elvis Costello.
This Year’s Model is the Bible of those who are mistrustful of sex and love; “Lipstick Vogue” contains gems like “Maybe they told you were only one girl in a million/You say I’ve got no feelings; this is a good way to kill them.”
Lana Goldsmith, Publisher Services
My actual favorite love song right now is “Crazy Girl” by Eli Young Band. I love this song because I feel like I live it all the time. It’s easy to feel insecure or unappreciated, but this song shakes you by the shoulders and reminds you that you’re the greatest thing that ever happened to somebody.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Purdy, Director of Publicity
When you are single and in your 40s love has come and gone enough that I find it hard to narrow my choice down to just one favorite love song. I have three that make me wistful for another lover, and maudlin for love and lovers long lost:
Nina Simone’s “Do I Move You” is a bluesy jazz plea for recognition from some indifferent lover that is at times sultry, needful, demanding and lustful.
Another classic by Ms. Simone, “Turn Me On,” is a simile-saturated reminiscence of a lover gone too long and the heightened anticipation of his/her return.
Finally, there is Miss Etta James’s version of “Deep in the Night.” Etta’s mournful moan reminds me how love can come to plagues one’s every thought and action:
Read a book and I think about you
Put it down and I think about you
I make some coffee and I think about you
Wash up the cup and I think about you
Wind the clock I think about you
Turn on the light and I think about you
Then I punch the pillow and think about you
Anwen Greenaway, Promotion Manager, Sheet Music
“True Love” by Cole Porter is one of the most memorable songs in the 1956 film High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra. When I was a child my Dad had an old vinyl record of the film soundtrack. I remember being mesmerized by the film stills on the LP cover and listening to the record over and over at Christmas. It’s the soundtrack of all my childhood Christmases, a beautiful song, and unashamedly sentimental — what’s not to love about that?!
Click here to view the embedded video.
Flora Death, Editorial Admin Assistant, Sheet Music
“So In love” by
Cole Porter, from
Kiss Me Kate, because it’s gloriously melodramatic and haunting, and has wonderful lyrics like all Cole Porter’s music.
Emma Shires, Editorial Assistant, Sheet Music
Marvin Gaye’s “How Sweet it is to be Loved by You” is so fun and upbeat. I love putting it on when I’m cooking, really turning up the volume, and dancing round the kitchen like a mad thing.
Ruth Fielder, Sales Administrator, Sheet Music
Biffy Clyro’s “Mountains” is my all-time favorite love song because it represents the ugly and beautiful sides to being in love, and therefore, for me, this song paints a more realistic picture: This being that most of the time love is a selfish act, but on occasion love itself as a thing of togetherness and intimacy; that ultimately nothing can tear you apart.
Jeremy Wang-Iverson, Publicity
“Laid” is a very sly love song by the British band James. The best line is the women’s clothes/gender roles couplet (if not the kitchen knives and skeeeeeewers) rather than the famous opening verse unfit for the OUPBlog. I sang this song, including the falsetto ending, COUNTLESS times with my friend Clara, who is now the history editor at NYU Press, when we were both assistants, as there wasn’t much to do in Princeton except go to the Ivy on Thursdays for karaoke and $1 beers. I hadn’t heard the song in ages until this past December at The Archive, a bar around the corner from our offices on Madison Avenue, and the television jukebox was playing, improbably, “The Best of James.” My friend and colleague Owen, the bassist for the great new band Journalism, said “The Best of James?? What the hell is James?” Probably for the best…
Matt Dorville, Online Editor, Reference
“The Book of Love” by
The Magnetic Fields is a favorite of mine that is very apropos for a publishing house blog and one that I find myself singing all too often. It is from
69 Love Songs, an ambitious, and somewhat cheeky, look at love from The Magnetic Fields. If you haven’t listened to the album, I highly recommend it. It contains songs that are bittersweet, tender, pithy and catchy as hell. They’re not all winners, but the ones that are will make you smile all day.
Alana Podolsky, Publicity
“Tere Bina” composed by
A. R. Rahman, lyrics by Gulzar is my favorite. Meaning “Without You”, “Tere Bina” is the great A.R. Rahman’s composition for the Hindi film
Guru (2007) starring Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, Bollywood’s Brangelina. Rahman’s score derives from Sufi devotional music and is paired with Gulzar’s simple lyrics, creating a song that will resonate with any heartsick romantic no matter your language background. The cherry on top: the film’s dance sequence.
Kimberly Taft, Journals
My favorite love song is “At Last” by Etta James. I think it’s great because of her powerful vocals and the accompanying instruments. It’s truly a classic and I’m sure will be around forever.
Jessica Barbour, Grove Music/Oxford Music Online
“
I’m Your Moon” was written by Jonathan Coulton in reaction to Pluto’s demotion from planet to dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union. Coulton,
stating that Pluto clearly must have found this “very upsetting,” wrote a love song to the slighted celestial body from the point of view of Charon, one of Pluto’s moons. (You can watch another live video in which Coulton tells the
whole backstory here.) Pluto is only twice as big as Charon, and they orbit a point between each other instead of Charon circling Pluto the way our moon orbits around the Earth. And they’re always facing each other as they orbit, like two people
doing this. Coulton says on his blog that he was just thinking about Pluto when he wrote it. But the way Charon sings about how the rest of the world doesn’t really understand them, encourages Pluto to stay true to itself, and promises that they’ll always have each other no matter what—what else can you ask for in the perfect love song?
Click here to view the embedded video.
Anna-Lise Santella, Grove Music and Oxford Reference
Back when we were dating, my husband and I used to hang out at Cafe Toulouse in Chicago where the great jazz violinist
Johnny Frigo used to play with Joe Vito on piano. We loved the way he played “A Fine Romance.” If we had to pick something to be “our song,” that would be it. When it came time to picking a song for the first dance at our wedding, that was the first thing that came to mind. Then we looked at the lyrics — which are the opposite of a love song:
A fine romance, with no kisses
A fine romance, my friend, this is
We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes, But you’re as cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes….
Not a song with which to celebrate the start of a marriage. The song was written by Jerome Kern for the movie Swing Time, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Fortunately, the movie also includes one of the great love songs of all time, “The Way You Look Tonight.” We picked that instead. And we asked Johnny Frigo to play at our wedding. It was perfect. It’s one of the great romantic songs:
Some day, when I’m awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you And the way you look tonight….
A month after we got married, I ran into Johnny playing a Columbus Day gig in Daley Plaza in Chicago. I reminded him who I was and told him how much we’d enjoyed his playing at our wedding. “Great night, great night,” he said. “And you weren’t so bad yourself.”
Click here to view the embedded video.
Your Oxford-Approved Playlist:
Alyssa Bender joined Oxford University Press in July 2011 and works as a marketing associate in the Ac/Trade and Bibles divisions. Read her previous blog posts.
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Image Credit: scanned from period card from ca. 1910 with no notice of copyright via Wikimedia Commons
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We print many different types of bibles here at Oxford University Press, one popular line being our 
