Keep your to-read list up-to-date with our fall book list, featuring a selection of titles from College of Liberal Arts faculty members and alumni.
From Prophets of Doom to Chroniclers of Gloom
Mazda Publishers, May 2021
By M. R. Ghanoonparvar, professor emeritus, Department of Middle Eastern Studies
This book examines modern Persian literature from its inception in the first decade of the 20th century to the present from a variety of perspectives, including within the context of the sociopolitical events and upheavals in the past 120 years as well as the developments and changes in Persian poetry, prose fiction, and drama.
Tom Stoppard in Context
Cambridge University Press, June 2021
Edited by David Kornhaber, associate professor, Department of English, and James N. Loehlin, professor, Department of English
Tom Stoppard in Context provides multiple perspectives on the life and works of one of the most important modern playwrights. This collection covers the array of intellectual, aesthetic, and political concerns with which Stoppard has engaged. Essays on subjects ranging from science to screenwriting illuminate Stoppard’s rich body of work.
Power, Participation, and Private Regulatory Initiatives: Human Rights Under Supply Chain Capitalism
University of Pennsylvania Press, July 2021
Edited by Daniel Brinks, Professor, Department of Government, Julia Dehm, Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University, Karen Engle, Professor, School of Law, and Kate Taylor
This volume brings together academics and practitioners from a number of regions to engage in theoretical analysis, case study exploration and reflection on a variety of private regulatory initiatives (PRIs). Ultimately, the contributions coalesce around one basic claim—that the inequalities of power and wealth that are a key characteristic of the contemporary global economy also mark the origins and operation of PRIs.
Her Şey Bir Merhaba ile Başlar! (Everything Begins with a Hello!)
COERLL, Aug. 2021
By Jeannette Okur, Assistant Professor of Instruction, Department of Middle Eastern Studies
Her Şey Bir Merhaba ile Başlar was developed for intermediate level Turkish language courses at The University of Texas at Austin. The lessons in Her Şey Bir Merhaba ile Başlar integrate reading, listening and viewing comprehension, writing and speaking practice, grammar, vocabulary and cultural activities.
The Blood of Gutoku: A Jack Riddley Mystery in Japan
Balestier Press, Sept. 2021
By J. W. Traphagan, professor, Department of Religious Studies
Jack Riddley is an anthropologist ready to retire to a small village in Japan. What wasn’t involved in his plan is for a murder to occur just as he arrives in town. With Jack’s passion for ethnography, he cannot help but get involved with the investigation, eager to discover not only who committed these crimes, but why.
Reimagining the Gran Chaco: Identity, Politics, and the Environment in South America
University Press of Florida, Sept. 2021
Edited by Silvia Hirsch (Universidad Nacional de San Martín), Paola Canova, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, and Mercedes Biocca (Universidad Nacional de San Martín)
This volume traces the socioeconomic and environmental changes taking place in the Gran Chaco, a vast and richly biodiverse ecoregion at the intersection of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay, and illuminates how the region’s many Indigenous groups are negotiating these transformations in their own terms.
Teaching Black History to White People
University of Texas Press, Sept. 2021
By Leonard Moore, Executive Director of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Initiative in the Office of the President and Professor, Department of History
Drawing on decades of experience in the classroom and on college campuses throughout the South, as well as on his own personal history, Moore illustrates how an understanding of Black history is necessary for everyone. He delivers an accessible and engaging primer on the Black experience in America.
Cut-and-paste Genetics: A CRISPR Revolution
Rowman and Littlefield, Sept. 2021
By Sahotra Sarkar, professor, Department of Philosophy
A look at the potential implications of the explosion of CRISPR technology for human germ-line editing, including the elimination of genetic diseases and genetic enhancement. This book sets these developments in their historical, philosophical and societal contexts and warns of potential misuse if there is no credible public regulation.
Armies of Arabia: Military Politics and Effectiveness in the Gulf
Oxford University Press, Sept. 2021
By Zoltan Barany, Professor, Department of Government
The Arabian Peninsula is among the most strategically and economically important areas in the world but its militaries remain terra incognita. This book, drawing on over 150 interviews, comprehensively analyzes the Gulf monarchies armed forces and explains their notorious ineffectiveness with a combination of political-structural and sociocultural factors.
Gaslighted: How the Oil and Gas Industry Shortchanges Women
University of California Press, Oct. 2021
By Christine Williams, Professor, Department of Sociology
Through a decade-long investigation, Christine Williams found that while women may be able to walk through the door of the oil and gas industry as it expands, when the industry contracts, the door becomes a revolving one, as companies retreat to their white male core. These gendered outcomes are obscured by firms’ stated commitments to diversity in hiring, resulting in organizational gaslighting.
Bēl Lišāni: Current Research in Akkadian Linguistics
Eisenbrauns/Penn State University Press, Oct. 2021
By Rebecca Hasselbach-Ande (University of Chicago) and Na’ama Pat-El, Chair and Professor, Department of Middle Eastern Studies
Akkadian, a Semitic language attested in writing from 2600 BCE until the first century CE, was the language of Mesopotamia for nearly three millennia. This volume examines the language from a comparative and historical linguistic perspective.
Interfaces and Domains of Contact-Driven Restructuring: Aspects of Afro-Hispanic Linguistics
Cambridge University Press, Oct. 2021
By Sandro Sessarego, Associate Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
This book is primarily concerned with exploring a set of grammatical phenomena characterizing the Afro-Hispanic languages of the Americas. In addressing these issues, it provides new theoretical and methodological perspectives to account for contact-driven restructuring across language interfaces and linguistic domains.
Ever Since I Did Not Die
Seagull Books, Nov. 2021
By Ramy Al-Asheq, translated by Isis Nusair, Associate Professor, Denison University, edited by Levi Thompson, Assistant Professor, Department of Middle Eastern Studies
Ever Since I Did Not Die vividly depicts what it means to live through war. Exquisitely weaving the past with the present and fond memories with brutal realities, this volume celebrates resistance through words that refuse to surrender and continue to create beauty amidst destruction.
The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era
Princeton University Press, Nov., 2021
By Mark Atwood Lawrence, Associate Professor, Department of History
At the beginning of the 1960s, Americans set out to remake the Third World by promoting democracy and economic uplift. Ten years later, little remained of these ambitions. This book explains this transformation of U.S. foreign relations, adding a new dimension to the study of America’s most consequential decade.
Performing Power in Nigeria: Politics, Identity, and Pentecostalism
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Nov. 2021
Abimbola A. Adelakun, Assistant Professor, Department of African and African Diaspora Studies
A study of Pentecostalism as a performance of power identity, this book explores the politics of sacred reality in Nigeria.
Our First Civil War
Doubleday, Nov. 2021
By H. W. Brands, Professor, Department of History
This book offers a fresh and dramatic recasting of the American Revolution, not just as a war between the American colonists and the British redcoats, but also as a violent battle between neighbors, friends, and family members, where those committing sedition were ultimately remembered as heroes and Founding Fathers.
Shakespeare’s Returning Warriors – and Ours
Routledge, Nov. 2021
By Alan Friedman, Professor, Department of English
Through the investigation of the tragedies and model returning warrior experiences, Shakespeare’s Returning Warriors – and Ours highlights a central and understudied feature of Shakespeare’s plays and what they can teach us about PTSD today when it is a wide-spread phenomenon in American society.
Violent First Contact in Venezuela: Nikolaus Federmann’s ‘Indian History.’
Penn State University Press, Dec. 2021
By Peter Hess, Associate Professor, Department of Germanic Studies
This volume discusses the attempted conquest of the interior of Venezuela in 1530–31, led by the German mercenary Nikolaus Federmann. It also presents the only English translation of his account, describing the dynamic of the violent first contact with Indigenous nations and strategies of survival in hostile terrain.
A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture
Oxford University Press, Dec. 2021
By Jason Lustig, Lecturer, Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies
A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture is a systematic study of 20th century Jewish archival activities with a focus on Germany, the United States, and Israel Palestine. It explores the power of archives in modern Jewish life, and how they became battlegrounds over the control of Jewish culture.
Common Sense and Legal History in India: Collected Essays on Hindu Law and Dharmaśāstra
Primus Books, Dec. 2021
By Richard W. Lariviere, introduction by Donald R. Davis, Jr., Chair and Professor, Department of Asian Studies
Essays by former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts Richard W. Lariviere that examine the history of Hindu law and demonstrate the value of both careful philological study and critical modern perspectives in the study of India’s legal history.