Life & Letters Magazine

Books

Be Kind to Animals

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Since Janet Davis’ early childhood in Honolulu, Hawaii, she says she remembers a life surrounded by animals: chickens running around the yard, horse rides, caring for her pet dogs and cats. “It was a world saturated with animals, the formation of my moral consciousness, if you will,” says Davis, associate professor of American studies at The University of Texas at Austin. […]

Architecture of Coexistence

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Stephennie Mulder, an associate professor in the Departments of Art and Art History and Middle Eastern Studies, was invited to Tehran, Iran, in February 2016 to receive the country’s World Award for Book of the Year from the Iranian Ministry of Culture, which was to be awarded in a ceremony by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Her […]

All Grown Up

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What it Means to be an Adult Chances are at some point in your life, you have been told to “grow up” or “start acting your age.” Faced with the pressures of paying bills, holding down a steady job and frequenting home improvement stores, it’s easy to see why adulthood may have lost some of […]

Not Lost in Translation

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Fifteen-year Project Introduces India’s Earliest Text to Modern Readers Like so many big ideas, it all started over drinks — in this case, glasses of wine in New Orleans. Fifteen years later, a labor of love finally came to fruition for Joel Brereton, associate professor of Asian Studies and Religious Studies, when his joint translation […]

History Professor Wins Prestigious Book Award

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History Professor Seth Garfield received the Bolton-Johnson Prize Honorable Mention Award for his book In Search of the Amazon: Brazil, the United States, and the Nature of a Region (Duke University Press, Dec. 2013). The award was announced earlier this month at the annual conference of the American Historical Association in New York City. According to the […]

Pulitizer Finalist Tells Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary People

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The Pulitzer Prize nominating jury has named Jacqueline Jones, chair of the Department of History at The University of Texas at Austin, a 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist in history for her book, A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race From the Colonial Era to Obama’s America. The nomination surprised Jones, who didn’t know her publisher […]

Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an

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It was a chance discovery of a 1782 broadside—advertising a play performed in Baltimore about the Prophet Muhammad—that piqued the curiosity of Denise Spellberg, professor of history and Middle Eastern Studies. She wondered, why did Americans perform this play during the Revolutionary War? More importantly, the historian of Islamic civilization asked, what did early Americans know […]

Rebhorn Translation Wins Prestigious PEN Award

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Wayne A. Rebhorn, Celanese Centennial Professor of English, has won the PEN Literary Award for his translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s masterpiece The Decameron. The PEN Literary Awards have honored and introduced some of the most outstanding voices in literature for more than 50 years. The awards will be presented at the 24th Annual Literary Awards […]

English Professor’s Translation of ‘The Decameron’ Wins PEN Award

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Wayne A. Rebhorn, the Celanese Centennial Professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin, has won the PEN Literary Award for a translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s masterpiece “The Decameron.” The PEN Literary Awards have honored and introduced some of the most outstanding voices in literature for more than 50 years. The awards will […]

Q&A with Ecosickness Author Heather Houser

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Take a look at your surroundings. Are you sitting in a climate-controlled office next to a window overlooking a sea of traffic? Or are you skimming this article on a porch swing underneath a shady oak tree? Whether you’re surrounded by wide open spaces or a concrete jungle, your environment is significantly affecting your emotional […]

Q&A with Chris Barton

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Keeping It Real Chris Barton, History ’93, is an award-winning, bestselling children’s author of Shark Vs. Train, The Day-Glo Brothers and Can I See Your I.D.? He lives in Austin with his wife, Jennifer, and their four children. Who are your favorite authors?Aside from the one I’m married to—Jennifer Ziegler, who writes novels for young readers—the authors that come […]

Writing Home

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Chicano Literature Professor Rolando Hinojosa-Smith Wins National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award The National Book Critics Circle has honored Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, an author and professor in the Departments of English and Spanish and Portuguese at The University of Texas at Austin, with the 2013 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. He received the award during a […]

Tales for Troubled Times

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Wayne Rebhorn’s Translation Brings Boccaccio’s Decameron  to Life On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Professor Wayne Rebhorn was preparing to teach Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron when news came of the terrorist attacks in New York City. He wondered if he should go ahead with the class, or cancel in light of the tragedy. “Then I thought, […]

UT Faculty Chronicle Texas Cultural History

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Texas Bookshelf is a 16-book series that will be published by University of Texas Press chronicling the state’s rich culture and history. The five-year project is set to launch in 2017 and will cover a diverse range of topics—from the Tejano experience to Texas food culture to performing arts. This is the first project undertaken […]

A Stack of Books

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Recently the dean’s office asked liberal arts faculty to provide copies of the books they had authored over the years for a collection to be exhibited in  the Gebauer Building. To comply with this request I began making a stack on my office desk. My stack grew to 13 books, including two I had edited […]

‘Gingrich Senators’ Behind Washington’s Legislative Gridlock, Research Shows

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A University of Texas at Austin government professor argues in his new book that rising polarization in the U.S. Senate has been caused almost entirely by a particular breed of Republican lawmakers known as the “Gingrich senators.” In his new book “The Gingrich Senators: The Roots of Partisan Warfare in Congress,” Sean Theriault, associate professor […]