Jennifer Chang on Plato, patriarchy, and her Pulitzer-finalist poetry collection
Books
Encountering Albania
Chelsi West Ohueri explores belonging and the communist afterlife
Foreign in a Domestic Sense
Mónica Jiménez on Puerto Rico and “Making Never-Never Land”
Don’t Call It a Cult
Bret Anthony Johnston on his new novel, “We Burn Daylight”
A Tale of Three Nations
Sociologist Kim Pernell on what financial policy can tell us about what nations do or don’t prioritize — and why
Writing Portraits
Javier Auyero on his new book, “Portraits of Persistence: Inequality and Hope in Latin America”
Eye of Guaraná
Historian Seth Garfield tells the rich cultural and commercial story of guaraná, the world’s most caffeine-rich plant
The Clothes Make the Manuscript
In “Fashioning Spanish Cinema: Costume, Identity, and Stardom,” Jorge Pérez decodes Chanel suits and starched shorts in Spanish cinema.
Art, Science, and the Wide World of Infowhelm
Overwhelmed by information about climate change? Heather Houser has a word for a that, and a possible solution: Art.
Creating Human Nature: Government professor Benjamin Gregg delves into the fraught politics of genetic engineering
For Benjamin Gregg, professor of government at The University of Texas at Austin and author of the new book Creating Human Nature: The Political Challenges of Genetic Engineering, the potential of gene editing technologies is too great to leave it to ad hoc reactions, either from a skittish public, a sensationalistic media, or a heavy-handed state.
Book Excerpt: How and How Not to Be Happy
Could happiness lie in health, wealth, responsibility, or pleasure? Should we settle for imperfect happiness? What would it even mean to attain perfect fulfillment? In his new book, J. Budziszewski separates the wheat from the chaff, exploring how to attain happiness—and just as importantly, how not to.
Her Neighbor’s Wife: Uncovering the Hidden History of Lesbian Desire in Post-war American Marriage
Lauren Jae Gutterman’s new book explores lesbian desire in the context of post-war heterosexual marriage.
Spring Books Unfold
Disentangling: The Geographies of Digital DisconnectionOxford University Press, July 2021Edited by Paul C. Adams, Professor, Department of Geography and the Environment, and André Jansson, Karlstad University After the rapid rise of digital networking in the 2000s and 2010s, we are now seeing a rise of interest in how people can disentangle their lives from the […]
Book Excerpt: A Time to Gather by Jason Lustig
The Nazi Party’s rise to power and the concomitant exclusion of Jews from public life led to a somewhat surprising strengthening of Jewish institutions, the Gesamtarchiv included.
Leaf Through a Good Book
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.
Book Excerpt: With the Bark Off by Neal Spelce and Thomas Zigal
In all the years I was working at KTBC as a reporter and then as news director—making decisions about what stories to air and what not to air—never once did LBJ or the Johnson family give orders to cover this and not that.
History and Black Studies Scholar Awarded Prestigious Nonfiction Grant
Ashley D. Farmer, associate professor of history and African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, has been awarded a 2021 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant to complete her historical biography of radical activist Audley Moore.
Book Excerpt: From Prophets of Doom to Chroniclers of Gloom by M.R. Ghanoonparvar
Much of the post-revolution fiction of Iranian authors presents the reader with often confused and desperate characters who live in an unstable world and express, as it were, a sense of urgency and focus on the present rather than the future.
Book Excerpt: Gaslighted by Christine Williams
After years of education policy and diversity campaigns encouraging women to pursue scientific careers, the industry was kicking them out.
Book Excerpt: Armies of Arabia by Zoltan Barany
A major legacy of the conflict is Arabia’s increased dependence on US weapons, training, and power projection capabilities, and this reliance has only increased in the past three decades.
A Look at Our Latest Books
2021 Spring and Summer titles from our college community.
Travel by the Book
Literature and life guide Peter LaSalle’s latest collection of travel essays, The World is a Book, Indeed.
Shake Up Your Winter Reading
Winter 2020-21 books from our college community.
Writing to Beauvoir
In her new book, Sex, Love, and Letters, Judith Coffin reveals the private lives and intimate bond found in Simone de Beauvoir’s letters with her fans.
Ticket to Read
Fall 2020 books from our college community.