Dr. Yvonne Howell, Professor of Russian and International Studies, discusses her edited collection, Red Star Tales : A Century of Russian and Soviet Science Fiction, published recently by Russian Life Books. Red Star Tales brings together 18 Russian science fiction works, translated into English for the first time, spanning from path-breaking, pre-revolutionary works of the 1890s, through the difficult Stalinist era, to post-Soviet stories published in the 1980s and 1990s.

Dr. Mari Lee Mifsud, Professor of Rhetoric and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, discusses her new book, Rhetoric and the Gift: Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Contemporary Communication, published recently by Duquesne University Press. Rhetoric and the Gift, taking as its starting point the Homeric idea of the gift and Aristotle’s related rhetorical theory, explores rhetoric not only at the level of the artful response but at the level of the call and response. Throughout the book, Dr. Mifsud pursues a number of questions crucial to thinking about contemporary communication.