Talk:University of Minnesota Press

Theory and History of Literature Series

A recent addition was reverted. Rather than have this be discussed in edit summaries, I have started a talk page section here. The edit summaries were:

• "Large edit on a book series of subject (the one generally mentioned in lead), big table with book cites + series cites. Cite data (years etc) need cleanup and edit needs review but looks robust at deploy. RM stub markers: even though this edit makes the article "lopsided", it's certainly no stub anymore." (by MinnesotanUser)
• "Undid revision 918148068 by MinnesotanUser (talk) sorry, no. essentially, this is a kind of spam, or at least just catalog information. the series is likely worth mentioning (though not in this detail), but not without secondary sources" (by Drmies)

See also the discussion here. Courtesy pings to Randykitty and DGG. My view is that a paragraph on this series (and other series for which secondary sources exist) is worthwhile trying to source, plus some way (maybe external links) to aid the reader who is trying to find listings of what this publisher produce (I think we can do better by the readers of Wikipedia than just pointing them to the University of Minnesota Press official website). Carcharoth (talk) 11:17, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

• I think DGG pointed to Wikisource. I maintain that this is too big, too detailed, too much like a catalog for a Wikipedia article; without secondary sourcing it's not even clear why this content is notable--"they published it" isn't enough of an argument, since that would suggest we list everything published by every press. Drmies (talk) 14:39, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
  • DGG suggested Wikidata, not Wikisource (a good example of that is here, a bad example of that is here). I suggested a paragraph, not the list. Maybe a starting point could be this text (from the original edit):

    One of the Press's book series is the Theory and History of Literature Series, a series on the humanities consisting of European works translated into English, intended for an American audience. The series was published from 1981-1998 and edited by Wlad Godzich and Jochen Schulte-Sasse [de]. Topics treated in the series include literary criticism, poetics, aesthetics, Continental philosophy, feminism, and structuralism. The series was notable for its English translation of The Postmodern Condition, a basic text on postmodernism by the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. Additionally, the series included works by the literary critics Paul de Man and Mikhail Bakhtin, German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, and French feminist Hélène Cixous.

    Is it possible to source and/or rewrite that? Carcharoth (talk) 16:52, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

How about this proposed revision ?

• only works having existing (English Wikipedia) articles are mentioned (which are few, giving representative illustration)
• a few secondary sources are cited (which themselves are admittedly recycled from their respective articles)
• both lists linked are moved to EL (the Press website only gives a partial listing); alpha categories while we're at it.

The motivation for the recent large (and current related) edits is to expand treatment of the "European and Latin American" editions hinted at in the lead; "THL" seems to me to be a representative case of this (which is why I picked it as one example rather than everything the press ever published, to Drmies' above point)-in the thread mentioned above, some of the folks mentioned here indicate personal/general awareness of the book series (not the same thing as establishing encyclopedic notability of course, but lends some credence to "a paragraph or two" on the series, something which has been floated more than once and which I also agree is sensible, hence the above proposal).

Lastly, since the issue under discussion has attracted significant admin attention (and since my username may raise COI suspicions in connection with this particular matter), I also wish to state for the record that I am not an employee of the University of Minnesota, the article's Press, or any other organization affiliated with the article's subject. Rather, I'm simply a Minnesota resident who has taken interest in the book series, to the point of thinking it appropriate to expand the current article (if a bit enthusiastically!) If any user has further concerns about my editing, I invite them to leave a note at my personal talk, off-line from this article's on-topic talk. Kind regards, MinnesotanUser (talk) 17:33, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

As a general rule, in is not just acceptable but desirable, in this or any other article, to list and link to those members of the group that have separate Wikipedia articles (or are obviously qualified for them by major awards, etc.) . When we do this, we normally say nothing further, because the articles give the information, or give just the barest minimum for identification, which in this case would I suggest be author and date of publication. I(The nearest equivalent is the way we handle notable alumni of a college) We could do similarly with linking to authors, but in that case the books if significant would be mentioned in the article on the author.

But in any case, I would do this only for works originally published by the press, not just reprinted. There might be an exception if the reprints themselves were notable, which will be the case only very rarely, except for the first print publication of a famous manuscript.

I really think anything morethan this would be over-emphasis within the context of an encyclopedia . DGG ( talk ) 22:27, 1 October 2019 (UTC)