Book Marks
Recent books by Indiana University faculty members and titles from IU Press
Many disciplines, one message: Environmental literacy matters. A new book by a wide range of Indiana University Bloomington scholars explains how universities and colleges can improve environmental literacy among their graduates. Teaching Environmental Literacy: Across Campus and Across the Curriculum (IU Press, $21.95) includes chapters by 27 Bloomington scientists, artists and historians, as well as experts in law, politics, economics and language, among others. The authors emphasize that environmental issues are profoundly entwined with all aspects of society and should not be limited to a few science or science policy classrooms on campuses. The scholars assert that as environmental issues become more apparent and pressing, educators have an obligation to provide students with "an understanding of the environmental, social and economic dimensions of human-environment interactions," preparing them to make wise decisions, both in their immediate lives and in their voting careers. The textbook, aimed at collegiate educators everywhere, was edited by Heather Reynolds (Biology), Eduardo Brondizio (Anthropology), and Jennifer Meta Robinson (Communication and Culture), with Doug Karpa (Instructional Development) and Briana Gross (Biology). Also contributing chapters and overviews are Scott Russell Sanders (English), Lisa Sideris (Religious Studies), Vicky Meretsky (School of Public and Environmental Affairs), Emilio Moran (Anthropology), Eric Baack, Keith Clay, Craig Nelson, and Keith Vogelsang, (Biology), Phaedra Pezzullo (Communication and Culture), Christine Glaser (GreenFire Consulting Group LLC), James Reidhaar (School of Fine Arts), Victoria Getty (School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation), James Capshew (History and Philosophy of Science), Whitney Schlegel (Human Biology Program), John Applegate (School of Law), Andrew Libby, Claire King, and Nicole Schonemann (Office of Service-Learning), Bennet Brabson (Physics), Matt Auer and Diane Henshel (School of Public and Environmental Affairs), and Catherine Larson (Spanish and Portuguese).
Who was Catalina de Erauso, the Lieutenant Nun? Eva Mendieta, professor of Spanish at Indiana University Northwest, intends to answer that question in her new book, In Search of Catalina de Erauso: The National and Sexual Identity of the Lieutenant Nun (Center for Basque Studies, $39.95). "How can one fail to be fascinated by her?" Mendieta asks in the book. A woman, yet a man; a soldier, yet a nun; Spanish, yet Basque. Catalina de Erauso embodied the contradictions and conflicts of the Early Modern Period, but she also transcended them in her own way. She became a stage on which we see how tensions between different identities played out in 16th and 17th century Spain, particularly the tensions between two sexual identities, male and female, and between the competing and multiple national identities within Spain. This book explores the different facets of Erauso's persona; her sexual identity and the factors that determined her choice of gender roles; and her Basque origin and its impact on her life and her self-image.
Empathy, compassion and global issues. Violence and acts of hatred worldwide -- from the Sept. 11 bombings to wars in Afghanistan, Darfur, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine and Sri Lanka -- call attention to the critical importance of empathy in human affairs, writes Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, an associate professor in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University Bloomington. Her new book, Empathy in the Global World: An Intercultural Perspective (Sage Publications), examines the role of compassion in decision making, how it is communicated in the media, and how it affects global problems such as poverty and environmental disasters. In the preface to her book, Calloway-Thomas said her scholarship continues to be motivated by her personal experiences growing up as an African American in rural Louisiana, such as the time she could not enter a drugstore to buy an ice cream because of her race. "My intellectual and affective world was framed by that painful moment, and in this book, years later, as a result of being studiously attentive to both national and international events, as a result of my intercultural experiences, and as a result of my cognitive engagement with scholarship on empathy, intercultural communication, anthropology, psychology, history, political science, religion and other areas, I came to see the world in a whole new way," she said. "I set out to understand more fully the role of empathy in public culture."
New source of knowledge about Islamic Central Asia. With the recent focus on Central Asia and its significance among academics, policy makers and the public has come the need for new and improved resources on the region's history. Ron Sela, assistant professor of Central Asian history at Indiana University's Department of Central Eurasian Studies, and Scott Levi, assistant professor of Central Asian history at Ohio State University, have produced a new book that they hope fills that need. Islamic Central Asia: An Anthology of Historical Sources (Indiana University Press) is the first English-language anthology of primary documents for the study of Central Asian history. Sela and Levi draw upon a vast array of historical sources to illustrate important aspects of the social, cultural, political and economic history of the region. Central Asia, which lies at the heart of the "Silk Road" and has been at the center of world empires, stretches from the Caspian Sea to China's Xinjiang province and includes portions of modern-day Afghanistan and Iraq. The book's 55 chapters include many newly translated documents that previously were not readily available for study. "Another one of our goals in this volume has been to demonstrate the significance of studying Central Asia's history within the framework of the study of the Muslim world," Sela and Levi wrote in the book's introduction. "Much of the recent scholarship on Central Asia exhibits an unfortunate tendency to approach the region and its history with very little knowledge of Islamic history . . . For more than a millennium, most of Central Asia has been part and parcel of the Muslim world."
Giving voice to "the six million." For many years, most research on the Holocaust focused on the Nazi persecutors, what they did and how they did it. A new volume co-authored by Indiana University professor Mark Roseman is part of a recent effort by scholars to redress that imbalance. Jewish Responses to Persecution, 1933-1946, is being co-published by Rowman & Littlefield and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. Volume 1, by Roseman, professor in the Department of History and Pat M. Glazer Chair in the Jewish Studies Program at IU Bloomington, and Jürgen Matthäus, research director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, covers the years 1933-1938. It draws on diaries, letters, archives, photos and other sources to take readers from Hitler's rise to power through the aftermath of Kristallnacht, revealing the devastation and confusion wrought in Jewish communities in and beyond Germany. "While this first volume stands on its own as a book well worth reading, it also promises to become an invaluable aide to scholars, teachers, students, and all others who want to know more about 'the six million.' It is long overdue," writes Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University.
Linking globalization, governance, the environment and violence. In Democracy and Economic Openness in an Interconnected System, IU professor Rafael Reuveny and co-author Quan Li employ formal and statistical methods to study the interactions of economic globalization, democratic governance, income equality, economic development, military violence and environmental degradation. Reuveny, a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IU Bloomington, and Li, a professor of political science at Texas A&M University, uncover policy tradeoffs in an increasingly interconnected political-economic-environmental system that places growing demands on national leaders and their policy advisers. Democracy and Economic Openness (Cambridge University Press) crosses disciplinary boundaries, engages various academic debates and brings insights from compartmentalized bodies of research literature to bear on pressing international concerns. Reviewer Yi Feng of Claremont Graduate University calls the book "a brilliant attempt to tackle some of the world's most fundamental issues with academic candor, statistical eloquence and policy insights."
New perspectives on gender politics. With Bloomington, Ind., harboring one of the most gender-friendly campuses in the nation, discussion over sexual politics is common at Indiana University. Feminism Meets Queer Theory, edited by Naomi Schor and Elizabeth Weed and published by Indiana University Press, provides an inside look at concerns over women's and gay and lesbian rights. The book focuses on the engagement between feminist and queer theories, targeting the ways in which basic concepts such as male and female, man and woman, black, white, sex, gender and sexuality generate new meaning as they move from one body of theory to another. This informative, political book includes essays written by Judith Butler, Evelynn Hammonds, Biddy Martin, Kim Michasiw, Carole-Anne Tyler, and Elizabeth Weed; the essays are accompanied by personal interviews with Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti and Gayle Rubin. Naomi Schor is a professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University and Elizabeth Weed is the associate director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University.
