Olivia DrakeDecember 16, 20101min
Suzanna Tamminen, director of Wesleyan University Press, received a $50,000 grant from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving for the Driftless Connecticut Series. The Driftless Connecticut Series is a publication award program established in 2010 to recognize excellent books with a Connecticut focus or written by a Connecticut author. To be eligible, the book must have a Connecticut topic or setting or an author must have been born in Connecticut or have been a legal resident of Connecticut for at least three years. The Driftless Connecticut Series is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation…

Olivia DrakeDecember 16, 20101min
Giulio Gallarotti, professor of government, tutor in the College of Social Studies, is the author of  The Power Curse: Influence and Illusion in World Politics, published by Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010; and Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism, and Constructivism, published by Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Olivia DrakeDecember 16, 20102min
Joyce Lowrie, professor of romance languages and literatures, emerita, is the translator of the book, Arthur Rimbaud ILLUMINATIONS, published by XLibris in 2010. Norm Shapiro, professor of romance languages and literatures, wrote an introduction to the book. According to Lowrie: “to see – or not to see: that was[ Rimbaud’s] option. 'To See' became his will. In his poetic career, Rimbaud chose 'to see' by confounding the very instruments of vision: his eyes and his intellect. He dreamed about and 'saw' the Crusades, he 'saw' enchantments, magical dream-flowers, a flower that says its name, a digitalis that 'opens up over…

Olivia DrakeDecember 16, 20101min
Laurie Nussdorfer, professor of history, professor of letters, is the author of Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. A fast—growing legal system and economy in medieval and early modern Rome saw a rapid increase in the need for written documents. Brokers of Public Trust examines the emergence of the modern notarial profession -- free market scribes responsible for producing original legal documents and their copies.

Olivia DrakeDecember 16, 20101min
Franklin D. Reeve, professor emeritus of letters, is the author of The Puzzle Master and Other Poems, published by NYQ Books, August 2010. “For nearly 50 years, [Reeve] has found in nature both a refuge from human imperfection and an exquisite rejoinder to it," acccording to Amazon.com. "Whether that imperfection be the war in Afghanistan, worsening economic inequality, or even the ridiculous pretense of a thoroughly professionalized poetry, Reeve makes of aesthetic perception a kind of subjunctive faith. With its elegant short lyrics and long dramatic poem, which reworks the Daedalus-Icarus myth by situating it on a Caribbean island and…

David LowDecember 16, 20103min
Bossa Nova, a play by Kirsten Greenidge ’96, recently had its world premiere opening at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, where it runs through Dec.18. Greenidge’s play centers around Dee Paradis, a young African American  woman who struggles to define herself under the watchful eyes of her mother and her jazz-loving white history teacher. The play moves around in time from the early 1980s to Dee’s school days a decade earlier and then back again. In her New York Times review of the play, Anita Gates wrote: “Ms. Greenidge has a lovely way with language and piercing insight…

David LowDecember 16, 20103min
Best-selling author James Kaplan ’73 has written an acclaimed new biography, Frank: The Voice (Doubleday), about the early life of one of America’s best known American singers and entertainers of the 20th century, Frank Sinatra, from the years 1915 through 1954. Kaplan reveals how Sinatra helped to make the act of listening to pop music a more personal experience to his fans than it had ever been before. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times recently chose Kaplan’s book as one of her Top 10 Books of 2010. In her review in the Times, she wrote that Kaplan “has produced…

Eric GershonDecember 16, 20101min
Laura Stark, assistant professor of sociology, is the author of "“The Science of Ethics: Deception, The Resilient Self, And the APA Code of Ethics, 1966-1973,” published in the fall 2010 issue of the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. The paper examines the process by which the American Psychological Association determined that deception could be used as an acceptable research method.

David LowDecember 16, 20103min
Jeanne Peterson ’85 has written a new novel, Falling to Heaven (St. Martin’s Press), the story of two American Quakers who trek into Tibet in 1954. In this work of historical fiction, Emma and Gerald Kittredge leave their secure Quaker community and travel to the Tibetan city of Shigatse where they soon find companionship with their neighbors, Dorje and Rinchen, and their small family. But the arrival of Maoist soldiers shatters these characters’ quiet life. Gerald is captured by the soldiers, leaving a pregnant Emma facing an agonizing decision: flee Tibet or stay and risk imprisonment herself. Dorje and Rinchen…