David LowIn the Feb. 1 issue of The New Yorker, Carlo Rotella ’86, the director of the American Studies Program at Boston College, profiles U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Rotella points out that President Obama has allotted Duncan more than 70 billion dollars in federal economic-stimulus funds to hand out to the states—more money than any Secretary of Education has had before him. Duncan has exceptional leverage with this stimulus money and his close relationship with Obama, which dates back to when Duncan worked in Chicago. Rotella writes about Duncan’s childhood on the South Side of Chicago, his passion for…
In The Un-Americans: Jews, the Blacklist, and Stoolpigeon Culture (Duke University Press) Joseph Litvak ’76 offers a rethinking of the Hollywood blacklist and McCarthyite America by uncovering a political regime that did not come to an end with the 1950s or even with the Cold War, in which the good citizen is an informer, ready to denounce anyone who will not play the part of the earnest, patriotic American. Litvak draws on the work of Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Alain Badiou, and Max Horkheimer to show how the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) conflated Jewishness with what he calls…
Kristin Bluemel ’86, a professor of English at Monmouth University, has edited a new essay collection, Intermodernism: Literary Culture in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain (Edinburgh University Press). This volume of original critical essays encourages readers to accept a new term, new critical category, and new literary history for 20th-century British literature. Its primary subject is the intriguing and typically neglected British writing of the years of the Depression and World War II, including the fiction, memoirs, criticism, and journalism of writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Storm Jameson, William Empson, George Orwell, J. B. Priestley, Harold Heslop, T. H. White, Rebecca West, John…
Acclaimed author Amy Bloom ’75 has published a new story collection, Where the Love of God Hangs Out (Random House), which has already received several fine reviews. The book contains two sets of four related stories and four unrelated works in which the author explores love, loss, mortality, and other human predicaments with compassion and humor. The first quartet of stories concerns the love affair between middle-aged friends William and Clare who are married to others. The other set of interlocking tales explores the relationship over 30 years between Julia and her stepson Lionel who are introduced in the story…
In Skyscraper: The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century (University of Pennsyvania Press), Benjamin Flowers ’96 explores the role of culture and ideology in shaping the construction of skyscrapers, as well as the way wealth and power have operated to reshape the urban landscape. He studies closely the creation and reception of three major architectural sites: the Empire State Building, the Seagram Building, and the World Trade Center. Flowers wrote his new book using a broad array of archival sources, such as corporate records, architects' papers, newspaper ads, and political cartoons. He reveals how…
In Impurity of Blood: Defining Race in Spain, 1870–1930 (LSU Press), Joshua Goode ’91 traces the development of racial theories in Spain from 1870 to 1930 and explores the Spanish proposition that racial mixture, rather than racial purity, was the bulwark of national strength. He begins his study with a history of ethnic thought in Spain in the medieval and early modern era, and then details the formation of racial thought in Spain’s nascent human sciences. He examines the political, social and cultural manifestations of racial thought at the dawn of the Franco regime and, finally, discusses its ramifications in…
Jenny He ’02 is the co-author, along with Ron Magliozzi, of a new book Tim Burton, published by the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City to accompany a major career retrospective that is currently on view at the museum. The publication considers Burton's career as an artist and filmmaker, the evolution of his creative practices and the influence of popular culture and Pop Surrealism on his work. The book traces the path of his visual imagination from his earliest childhood drawings through his mature works, which includes his films Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas,…
In his third poetry collection, Tourist (NYQ Books, 2009), Sanford Fraser ’54 reveals a mastery of the lyric form and plainspoken language. The collection is divided into three sections: Strangers, Roles and Connections. In the first section, the narrator and/or characters in the poems are strangers isolated from and emotionally detached from others; in the second, they play various roles in the world beyond themselves; and finally in the last section, they experience emotional attachments with others. Frasier shares the following observations about his new book: “The busloads of tourists who ride and walk through the streets of my neighborhood…
In the Nov. 16 issue of The New Yorker, staff writer Ariel Levy ’96 looks at two new books: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present (Little Brown) by Gail Collins, and You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe: Sarah, Michelle, Hillary and the Shaping of the New American Woman (Palgrave) by Leslie Sanchez. In her essay, titled “Lift and Separate,” Levy discusses not just the content of the two books but also considers how feminism is still so divisive. She discusses some of the triumphs and defeats of the feminist movement and some…
Grant Brenner ’92, Daniel Bush and Joshua Moses are co-editors of Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience: Integrating Care in Disaster Relief Work (Routledge), which explores the interface between spiritual and psychological care in the context of disaster recovery work, drawing upon recent disasters including the experiences of Sept. 11, 2001. The book contains three sections structured around the cycle of disaster response and focusing on the relevant phase of disaster recovery work. In each section, selected spiritual and mental health topics are examined with contributions from spiritual care and mental health care providers. This is a useful reference volume for theory…
Cynthia RockwellTanya Harrison MA ’08, who studied with Martha Gilmore, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, and is now at Malin Space Science Systems in California, is first author on a report that says her team found evidence of liquid water flowing on the surface of Mars in multiple locations as recently as this year. An abstract of the report, titled "Present-Day Activity, Monitoring and Documentation of Gullies With the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Context Camera," was published in the Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 41, No. 7, p. 267. The findings were reported in a speech at…
Olivia DrakeA father whose 17-year-old son died while driving in 2006, and who went on to take a leadership role in a statewide task force that advised the state legislature on rewriting Connecticut's teen driving laws, has launched a national blog for parents on safe teen driving. Tim Hollister '78, a West Hartford, Conn. resident and attorney, lost his son Reid in a one-car accident on Interstate 84 in Plainville, Conn. in December 2006. During 2007-08, as a member of Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell's Safe Teen Driving Task Force, Hollister immersed himself in the issue of why driving is the leading…