Dr. Elizabeth Baughan, Associate Professor of Classics and Archaeology, discusses her new book, Couched in Death: Klinai and Identity in Anatolia and Beyond, published recently by the University of Wisconsin Press. In this book, Dr. Baughan offers the first comprehensive look at the earliest funeral couches in the ancient Mediterranean world. Bringing a diverse body of understudied and unpublished material together for the first time, she investigates the origins and cultural significance of burials on couches and charts their development and distribution throughout Anatolia.

Dr. Sheila Carapico, Professor of Political Science and International Studies, discusses her new book, Political Aid and Arab Activism: Democracy Promotion, Justice, and Representation, published recently by Cambridge University Press. In this book, Dr. Carapcio examines what it means to promote “transitions to democracy” in the Middle East. Have North American, European, and multilateral projects advanced human rights, authoritarian retrenchment, or Western domination?