Olivia DrakeJeanine Basinger, the Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, is the author of I Do and I Don't: A History of Marriage in the Movies, published by Knopf in January 2013. This extensively researched and illustrated book examines “the marriage movie;” what it is (or isn’t) and what it has to tell us about the movies—and ourselves. As long as there have been feature movies there have been marriage movies, and yet Hollywood has always been cautious about how to label them—perhaps because, unlike any other genre of film, the marriage movie resonates directly with the experience of almost every adult…
Seth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, is the co-author of "Probing potassium in the atmosphere of HD 80606b with tunable filter transit spectrophotometry from the Gran Telescopio Canarias," published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 419, pages 2233-50, 2012.
An article by Ethan Kleinberg, director of the Center for the Humanities, professor of history, professor of letters, is featured in the 50th anniversary issue of Perspectives on History, the monthly publication of the American Historical Association. The article, titled "Academic Journals in the Digital Era" is part of a forum on "The Future of the Discipline" edited by Lynn Hunt. View the full list of contributors online.
David LowKrishna Winston, the Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature, is the translator of Patrick Roth's Starlight Terrace, published by Seagull Books in 2012. In a rundown Los Angeles apartment building—the titular Starlite Terrace—Roth unfurls the tragic linked stories of Rex, Moss, Gary and June, four neighbors, in a sort of burlesque of the Hollywood modern. In each of their singular collisions with fame, Roth’s dark prose presages a universal and mythical fate of desperation. In “The Man at Noah’s Window,” Rex shares the story of his father, a supposed hand double for Gary Cooper in High Noon. In “Eclipse…
Peter Gottschalk, professor of religion, is the author of Religion, Science, and Empire Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India, published by Oxford University Press in November 2012. In this 448-page book, Gottschalk offers a compelling study of how, through the British implementation of scientific taxonomy in the subcontinent, Britons and Indians identified an inherent divide between mutually antagonistic religious communities. England's ascent to power coincided with the rise of empirical science as an authoritative way of knowing not only the natural world, but the human one as well. The British scientific passion for classification, combined with the Christian impulse…
Krishna Winston, the Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature, is the translator of Günter Grass's From Germany to Germany, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012. In January 1990, just months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Günter Grass made two New Year’s resolutions: the first was to travel extensively in the newly united Germany and the second was to keep a diary, to record his impressions of a historic time. Grass takes part in public debates, writes for newspapers, makes speeches, and meets emerging politicians. He talks to German citizens on both sides, listening to their…
Stephen Angle is the author of Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy, published by Polity in 2012. Angle is professor of philosophy, professor of East Asian studies, and tutor in the College of Social Studies. Confucian political philosophy has recently emerged as a vibrant area of thought both in China and around the globe. This book provides an accessible introduction to the main perspectives and topics being debated today, and shows why Progressive Confucianism is a particularly promising approach. Students of political theory or contemporary politics will learn that far from being confined to a museum, contemporary Confucianism is both responding to current…
Lauren RubensteinAssistant Professor of Economics Abigail Hornstein recently has had two academic papers published. In September 2012, her paper, "Usage of an estimated coefficient as a dependent variable," co-authored with William Greene of New York University's Stern School of Business, was published in the journal Economics Letters. The paper demonstrated the efficiency gains of a particular set of empirical estimation techniques. It is available online here. In addition, Hornstein's solo-authored paper, titled, "Corporate capital budgeting and CEO turnover," was published in December 2012 in the Journal of Corporate Finance. In this paper, she demonstrated the considerable cross-sectional and inter-temporal variation in the quality of a firm's…
Alvin Lucier, John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, Emeritus, is the author of Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music, published by Wesleyan University Press, 2012. In this insider’s view, composer and performer Lucier brings clarity to the world of experimental music as he takes the reader through more than a hundred groundbreaking musical works, including those of Robert Ashley, John Cage, Charles Ives, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Christian Wolff and La Monte Young. Lucier explains in detail how each piece is made, unlocking secrets of the composers’ style and technique. The book as a whole charts…
Lori Gruen, professor of philosophy, environmental studies, and feminist, gender and sexuality studies, is the co-editor of Reflecting on Nature Readings in Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, Second Edition, published by Oxford University Press, August 2012. Spanning centuries of philosophical and environmental thought, Reflecting on Nature: Readings in Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, will inform and enlighten students while also encouraging debate. The comprehensive collection presents 50 classic and contemporary readings on the intellectual climate and patterns of environmental concern. The selections are topically organized into sections on animals, biodiversity, ethics, images of nature, wilderness, aesthetics, climate change and food. This thematic organization, in combination…
Professor of Music Eric Charry is the editor of a new book, Hip Hop Africa: New African Music in a Globalizing World, published Oct. 23 by Indiana University Press. The book is part of the African Expressive Culture series. Hip Hop Africa explores a new generation of Africans who are not only consumers of global musical currents, but also active and creative participants. Charry and an international group of contributors look carefully at youth culture and the explosion of hip hop in Africa; the embrace of other contemporary genres, including reggae, raga and gospel music; and the continued vitality of…
Richard Elphick, co-chair of the College of Social Studies, professor of history, is the author of The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa, published by University of Virginia Press, Sept. 26, 2012. From the beginning of the 19th Century through to 1960, Protestant missionaries were the most important intermediaries between South Africa’s ruling white minority and its black majority. The Equality of Believers reconfigures the narrative of race in South Africa by exploring the pivotal role played by these missionaries and their teachings in shaping that nation’s history. The missionaries articulated a universalist and…