Keep it Short Collection

Book covers to celebrate varying shades of pink.

BOOKS WITH ONE-WORD-ONLY TITLES

Let's keep things short, simple (sometimes), straightforward (mostly): Here are books whose titles have only one word. From the beginning to the near-end of the alphabet (Asemic to Watershed), and from the transparent (Walleye, Stone, Felt, Cosplay, Canoes) to the somewhat ambiguous (Insecurity, Intolerable, Clang, Disconnect, Diaboliques), and even from Writing to Writings, here are some books with the shortest titles we know of.

Enjoy!

Strike! Twenty Days in 1970 When Minneapolis Teachers Broke the Law William D. Green 2023 Fall: The complex and dramatic history of an illegal teachers’ strike that forever altered labor relations and Minnesota politics
Walleye A Beautiful Fish of the Dark Paul J. Radomski 2022 Spring: Walleye, the holy grail of game fish: on catching them, understanding their biology and history, and ensuring their survival
Game Animals, Video Games, and Humanity Thomas R.J. Tyler 2022 Spring: A playful reflection on animals and video games, and what each can teach us about the other
Tsuchi Earthy Materials in Contemporary Japanese Art Bert Winther-Tamaki 2022 Spring: An examination of Japanese contemporary art through the lens of ecocriticism and environmental history
Noopiming The Cure for White Ladies Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 2022 Spring: The new novel from the author of As We Have Always Done, a poetic world-building journey into the power of Anishinaabe life and traditions amid colonialism
Cacaphonies The Excremental Canon of French Literature Annabel L. Kim 2022 Spring: Exploring why there is so much fecal matter in literary works that matter
Cosplay The Fictional Mode of Existence Frenchy Lunning 2022 Spring: An exploration of cosplay and its relationship with the realms of its global fandom, performance, and the modes of fictional existence
Accumulation The Art, Architecture, and Media of Climate Change Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, Daniel A. Barber and Anton Vidokle, Editors 2022 Spring: Examines how images of accumulation help open up the climate to political mobilization
Insecurity Richard Grusin, Editor 2022 Spring: Investigating insecurity as the predominant logic of life in the present moment
Modelwork The Material Culture of Making and Knowing Martin Brückner, Sandy Isenstadt and Sarah Wasserman, Editors 2021 Fall: How making models allows us to recall what was and to discover what still might be
Reeling A Novel Sarah Stonich 2021 Fall: RayAnne’s next adventure takes our intrepid heroine, haunted by her beloved grandmother’s death, to New Zealand to film a new season of her all-women fishing talk show
Sickening Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States Anne Pollock 2021 Fall: An event-by-event look at how institutionalized racism harms the health of African Americans in the twenty-first century
Outward Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Solitudes Ed Pavlić 2021 Spring: The first scholarly study of Adrienne Rich’s full career examines the poet through her developing approach to the transformative potential of relationships
Intolerable Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970–1980) Michel Foucault and Prisons Information Group Edited by Perry Zurn 2021 Spring: A groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France’s inhumane treatment of prisoners
Watershed Attending to Body and Earth in Distress Ranae Lenor Hanson 2021 Spring: A personal health crisis, stories from environmental refugees, and our climate in danger prompt a meditation on intimate connections between the health of the body and the health of the ecosystem
Clang Jacques Derrida 2020 Fall: A new translation of Derrida’s groundbreaking juxtaposition of Hegel and Genet, forcing two incompatible discourses into dialogue with each other
Prosthesis David Wills 2021 Spring: An examination of the presumed opposition between the natural human body and artificial inanimate objects
Timescales Thinking across Ecological Temporalities Bethany Wiggin, Carolyn Fornoff and Patricia Eunji Kim, Editors 2020 Fall: Humanists, scientists, and artists collaborate to address the disjunctive temporalities of ecological crisis
Grounded Perpetual Flight . . . and Then the Pandemic Christopher Schaberg 2021 Spring: As commercial flight is changing dramatically and its future remains unclear, a look at how we got here
Unraveling Remaking Personhood in a Neurodiverse Age Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer 2020 Fall: Developing a cybernetic model of subjectivity and personhood that honors disability experiences to reconceptualize the category of the human
Capture American Pursuits and the Making of a New Animal Condition Antoine Traisnel 2020 Fall: Reading canonical works of the nineteenth century through the modern transformation of human–animal relations
Synthesis Lost and Found in America: The Art of Vesna Kittelson Vesna Kittelson 2020 Fall: A vibrant review of the international career and passionate spirit of a longtime Twin Cities artist
Fishing! A Novel Sarah Stonich 2020 Spring: A hilarious saga of fishing, family, and three generations of tough, independent women—the first in a trilogy
Asemic The Art of Writing Peter Schwenger 2019 Fall: The first critical study of writing without language
LatinX Claudia Milian 2020 Spring: Nationality is not enough to understand “Latin”-descended populations in the United States
Uproarious How Feminists and Other Subversive Comics Speak Truth Cynthia Willett and Julie Willett 2019 Fall: A radical new approach to humor, where traditional targets become its agents
Archives Andrew Lison, Marcel Mars, Tomislav Medak and Rick Prelinger 2019 Fall: How digital networks and services bring the issues of archives out of the realm of institutions and into the lives of everyday users
Remain Ioana B. Jucan, Jussi Parikka and Rebecca Schneider 2019 Spring: Engaging with remains and remainders of media cultures
Machine Thomas Pringle, Gertrud Koch and Bernard Stiegler 2019 Spring: On the social consequences of machines
Markets Armin Beverungen, Philip Mirowski, Edward Nik-Khah and Jens Schröter 2019 Spring: A media theory of markets
Communication Paula Bialski, Finn Brunton and Mercedes Bunz 2019 Spring: On contemporary communication in its various human and nonhuman forms
Gringolandia Lifestyle Migration under Late Capitalism Matthew Hayes 2018 Fall: A telling look at today’s “reverse” migration of white, middle-class expats from north to south, through the lens of one South American city
Herlands Exploring the Women’s Land Movement in the United States Keridwen N. Luis 2018 Fall: How women-only communities provide spaces for new forms of culture, sociality, gender, and sexuality
Disconnect Facebook’s Affective Bonds Tero Karppi 2018 Fall: An urgent examination of the threat posed to social media by user disconnection, and the measures websites will take to prevent it
Superhumanity Design of the Self Nick Axel, Beatriz Colomina, Nikolaus Hirsch, Anton Vidokle and Mark Wigley, Editors 2018 Spring: A wide-ranging and challenging exploration of design and how it engages with the self
Advances Jacques Derrida 2017 Fall: An unlimited prehistory of the world that opens up its unpredictable future
Onigamiising Seasons of an Ojibwe Year Linda LeGarde Grover 2017 Fall: Fifty short essays evoke the four seasons of the year, and of life, for the Ojibwe in northeastern Minnesota
Shareveillance The Dangers of Openly Sharing and Covertly Collecting Data Clare Birchall 2018 Spring: Cracking open the politics of transparency and secrecy
Brouhaha Worlds of the Contemporary Lionel Ruffel 2017 Spring: A rigorous inquiry into the question of the “contemporary” in an era of hypermediation and globalization
Metagaming Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux 2017 Spring: A playful and provocative call to stop playing videogames and begin making metagames
Sexography Sex Work in Documentary Nicholas de Villiers 2017 Spring: A bold challenge to rethink the ways we view sex work and documentary film
Creekfinding A True Story Jacqueline Briggs Martin 2017 Spring: An enchanting picture book about restoring a creek, with all the wildlife it once hosted, in a farm field in Iowa. Ages 4-9.
Compulsory Education and the Dispossession of Youth in a Prison School Sabina E. Vaught 2017 Spring: A groundbreaking look at America’s public education system through the lens of prison schooling
Canoes A Natural History in North America Mark Neuzil and Norman Sims 2016 Fall: A natural history of one of North America’s most enduring cultural artifacts
Fuel A Speculative Dictionary Karen Pinkus 2016 Fall: Undoing the dream of free, clean power from A to Z
Recovery John Berryman 2016 Fall: Renowned poet John Berryman’s first and only novel, unfinished at the time of his suicide, about “the disease called alcoholism”
Grafts Michael Marder 2016 Fall: A vital call for the cross-pollination of philosophy and plant sciences
Inanimation Theories of Inorganic Life David Wills 2016 Spring: An exuberantly original perspective on what it means to be “alive”
Neofinalism Raymond Ruyer 2016 Spring: The masterwork of an influential French philosopher, available in English for the first time
Freegans Diving into the Wealth of Food Waste in America Alex V. Barnard 2016 Spring: Freegans, who try to live on what we throw away, reveal the limits of capitalism but also the limits of consumer activism in changing it
Portage A Family, a Canoe, and the Search for the Good Life Sue Leaf 2015 Fall: North American waterways by canoe: a memoir of family and nature, history and culture, along the rivers
Diaboliques Six Tales of Decadence Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly 2015 Fall: “Literature doesn’t express even half of the crimes that society commits behind closed doors.” —Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly
Flusseriana An Intellectual Toolbox Vilém Flusser Siegfried Zielinski, Peter Weibel and Daniel Irrgang, Editors 2015 Fall: An intellectual toolbox on the work of Vilém Flusser
Stone An Ecology of the Inhuman Jeffrey Jerome Cohen 2015 Spring: A beautifully written account of stone’s intimacy to what it means to be human
Necromedia Marcel O’Gorman 2015 Spring: An unusual answer to a common question: Why does technology play such a powerful role in our culture?
Laruelle Against the Digital Alexander R. Galloway 2014 Fall: Explores the digital as a philosophical concept
Gestures Vilém Flusser 2014 Spring: An analysis of gestures great and small, from a renowned media theorist—available in English for the first time
Cinders Jacques Derrida 2014 Spring: A haunting work of poetic self-analysis that finds in the fragility and resilience of ashes a paradigm for the relation of language to the living and the dead
Hyperobjects Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World Timothy Morton 2013 Fall: The world as we know it has already come to an end
Humanesis Sound and Technological Posthumanism David Cecchetto 2013 Spring: A search for acoustic resonance leads to an important new critique of posthumanist studies
Hikikomori Adolescence without End Saito Tamaki 2013 Spring: A best-selling work of Japanese psychology that brought attention to the widespread problem of acute social withdrawal
Virality Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks Tony D. Sampson 2012 Fall: A new theory of viral relationality beyond the biological
Biogea Michel Serres 2012 Fall: Presents a philosophy that merges the humanities with all creation
Cosmopolitics II Isabelle Stengers 2011 Fall: A sweeping inquiry that critiques modern science’s claims of objectivity, rationality, and truth
Rifftide The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones Papa Jo Jones 2011 Fall: The life and times of Papa Jo Jones, gifted raconteur and one of the greatest drummers in the history of jazz
Writing Marguerite Duras 2011 Fall: Celebrated writer Marguerite Duras on the artistic process
Swamplife People, Gators, and Mangroves Entangled in the Everglades Laura A. Ogden 2011 Spring: Alligator hunters, mangroves, and the (mis)adventures of the Ashley Gang in the Florida Everglades
Felt Fluxus, Joseph Beuys, and the Dalai Lama Chris Thompson 2011 Spring: What happens when nothing happens?
Junkware Thierry Bardini 2010 Fall: The essential junkiness of our culture and biology
Cosmopolitics I Isabelle Stengers 2010 Spring: A sweeping critique of the role and authority of modern science in contemporary society
Screens Viewing Media Installation Art Kate Mondloch 2010 Spring: Investigates how viewers experience screen-based art in museums
Region Planning the Future of the Twin Cities Myron Orfield and Thomas F. Luce Jr. 2009 Fall: How can the Twin Cities become a model for responsible, just, and environmentally sound urban and suburban planning?
Casablanca Movies and Memory Marc Augé 2009 Fall: A poetic and meditative essay on the impact of film on our personal and collective memories
Otaku Japan’s Database Animals Hiroki Azuma 2009 Spring: A publishing event—the highly influential best seller in Japan translated into English
Embodied Victorian Literature and the Senses William A. Cohen 2008 Fall: Making sense of the body in Victorian literature
Ex-foliations Reading Machines and the Upgrade Path Terry Harpold 2008 Fall: A sophisticated consideration of technologies of reading in the digital age
Dorsality Thinking Back through Technology and Politics David Wills 2008 Spring: An ambitious investigation of what lurks behind our humanity and our technology
Bíos Biopolitics and Philosophy Roberto Esposito 2008 Spring: A significant political theorist advances the discussion of biopolitics
Writings Vilém Flusser Andreas Ströhl, Editor 2004 Fall: Key writings from one of Europe’s most provocative theorists