Daphne C. Watkins Receives Pynn-Silverman Lifetime Achievement Award From TAA

Daphne C. Watkins, a Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan, has been awarded the Pynn-Silverman Lifetime Achievement Award from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA). The award was established to honor individuals whose achievements over a career of devoted effort and service demonstrate the highest degree of commitment to excellence in authoring works to advance their discipline; encourage, enlighten and support the work of colleagues; and educate students in the field. The award is named for Ron Pynn and Franklin Silverman, two charter members of TAA who pursued and modeled these qualities in their own work.

“I am deeply honored to have been selected for this award,” said Watkins. “Thank you!”

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Why You Shouldn’t Publish a Custom Textbook (And Why You Should)

By Sierra Pawlak

In her 2023 TAA webinar, “Is Custom Textbook Publishing Right for You?” Rebecca Paynter describes the journey of creating a custom textbook. Paynter is the associate director of the editorial team at the University of Arizona Global Campus, or UAGC. UAGC hosts online courses that are five weeks long, “which is not a lot of time for students to read a traditional textbook in full,” says Paynter. Because of this, her department creates custom textbooks for many of these courses, with the help of “faculty and other subject matter experts to better meet student needs… and potentially [create] books that can meet unmet needs out in the broader market,” she says.

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TAA Member Phil Wankat’s Curation and Commentary of ‘The Academic Author’ Archives – Installment 2

The second installment of TAA Member Phil Wankat’s curation and commentary of the archival issues (1994 to 2010) of the The Academic Author, Bios, is now available. Articles include “And now, 50 books later, a bio of Mike Keedy, author of mathematics textbooks and the founder of TAA,” and “Cognitive Aspects of Writer’s Block,” and “Author Profile: Philip Zimbardo, Improving the human condition.”

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Lauren Weingarden Awarded TAA Publication Grant

Lauren S. Weingarden has been awarded a Publication Grant from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association to cover image permission costs for her forthcoming academic book, A ‘Neuroarthistory’ of Nineteenth-Century Painters: Embodying Baudelairean Modernity. Routledge will publish the book in its “Science and the Arts since 1750” series in 2024.

A “Neuroarthistory” of Nineteenth-Century Painters: Embodying Baudelairean Modernity takes a transdisciplinary approach—combining art history, literary studies, and neuroaesthetics—to examine the modern urban experience of nineteenth-century Paris through language and images of fragmentation and transformation.

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From the Archives – Articles on ‘Writer’s Block’ From TAA Report, Compiled by TAA Member Phil Wankat

The tenth installment of TAA Member Phil Wankat’s curation and commentary of the archival issues of the TAA Report (now The Academic Author), Writer’s Block, is now available. Articles include “Emotional Aspects of Writer’s Block,” “Cognitive Aspects of Writer’s Block,” and “The New Paradox of the College Textbook.”

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