A new chapter: CardiffUP gets bookish

Today is CardiffUP’s fourth birthday – the official launch of the Press was on 9^th July 2015.  We’ve come a long way since that launch event, when we had 2 journals in our portfolio (there are now 12 of them) and 8 people on our Editorial Board (now 18).  Find out more about these on our website at https://www.cardiffuniversitypress.org/site/journals/ and https://www.cardiffuniversitypress.org/site/about/ respectively.

Two weeks ago we reached another publishing milestone, when our very first book was published on our website.  Like the CardiffUP journals, this is free to read and download, thanks to our Open Access policy.  You can find it at https://doi.org/10.18573/book1 and download it to your desktop or any mobile device, including smartphones and Kindles.  A print-on-demand paperback edition will also be available to order from our site shortly.

The book, Deconstructing Martial Arts by Cardiff University’s Professor Paul Bowman, examines different definitions of “martial arts” and their place in culture and society.  If you’d like to tell us what you think about this book and its subject matter, please feel free to add your comments at the bottom of the web page, or Tweet them with a mention of us @CUopenresearch .

From the earliest days of CardiffUP, the intention always was for it to become a monograph publisher eventually, as well as a journal publisher.  As we expected, publishing monographs has proved to be rather more complex, so we’ve taken plenty of time to get ready and set it up.  There are currently three more monograph titles going through the publication process, which should all appear by early 2020.  We’re happy to receive further submissions of monograph manuscripts at any time – guidelines and instructions for submitting these are on our website at https://www.cardiffuniversitypress.org/site/publish/ .  All academic staff and PhD students are welcome to submit manuscripts to us, whether they’re affiliated to Cardiff University or any other recognised higher education institutions throughout the world.

If you’re a Cardiff University author with a manuscript that needs a publisher, this summer is a particularly good time to submit it to us, as we’re offering a small number of Cardiff University Press Awards.  These Awards, known as “the Diemwnts” after our dragon mascot Diemwnt, will cover most of the publication costs of a limited number of monographs by Cardiff University authors, subject to our approval of the selected monograph manuscripts for publication after peer review. Further details of the Awards will follow later this month, so watch out for those!

Feature: Martial Arts Studies no. 7

We’re happy to announce that Martial Arts Studies issue 7 is now freely available at https://mas.cardiffuniversitypress.org/9/volume/0/issue/7/ . Martial Arts Studies is the premier scholarly source for interdisciplinary work on a variety of topics surrounding the practice, sociology, history and media representation of the modern combat sports and traditional martial arts. Published twice yearly, it presents the best research written and reviewed by leaders in the field.

This issue contains an editorial, five articles and three short reviews. The editorial starts by discussing what an “open issue,” such as this one, suggests about the current state of martial arts studies.  The editors note that issue 7 stretches the discussion of the Asian martial arts in geographic terms, and contemplates many complex interactions between physical practice and identity formation.

In their article “The creation of Wing Tsun: a German case study,” Swen Koerner, Mario S. Staller and Benjamin N. Judkins take a detailed look at the global spread of Wing Chun, a hand combat style of kung fu from Guangdong Province.

Next, Kristin Behr and Peter Kuhn examine the “Key factors in career development and transitions in German elite combat sport athletes.” The purpose of their study was to identify factors that facilitate and constrain career development and career transitions. They conclude that an athletic career is a highly complex, multi-layered and individual process.

In the third article, “Fighting gender stereotypes: women’s participation in the martial arts, physical feminism and social change“, Maya Maor explores the social conditions that facilitate gender subversive appropriation in full-contact martial arts, in terms of: 1. close and reciprocal bodily contact, 2. learning new embodiment regimes, and 3. effects of male dominance in the field.

Veronika Partikova continues the ongoing discussion of martial arts and identity formation in “Psychological collectivism in traditional martial arts.” Her paper argues that ‘traditional’ martial arts offer physical skills, moral codes, rituals, roles and hierarchical relationships which, taken together, create the perfect environment for psychological collectivism.

Tim Trausch’s paper “Martial arts and media culture in the information era: glocalization, heterotopia, hyperculture” is derived from the Editor’s Introduction to the collection Chinese martial arts and media culture: global perspectives [Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018]. It argues that recent media texts reflect and (re)produce three paradigms of martial arts and media culture in the information age: glocalization, heterotopia, and hyperculture.

In the review section of this issue, Andreas Niehaus, Leo Istas and Martin Meyer report on the 8th Conference of the German Society of Sport Science’s Committee for Martial Arts Studies, for which the theme was “Experiencing, training and thinking the body in martial arts and martial sports.” Then Spencer Bennington reflects on Udo Moening’s volume Taekwondo: from a martial art to a martial sport. Finally, Qays Stetkevych provides a candid review and close reading of the recently-published Martial arts studies reader [Rowman & Littlefield, 2018].

As always, this issue is freely available online. To find the latest calls for papers and learn more about the journal, go to http://masjournal.org.uk