Dr. Thad Williamson, Assistant Professor, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, discusses his new book, Sprawl, Justice, and Citizenship: The Civic Costs of the American Way of Life. Published in May, 2010, by Oxford University Press, the book combines the use of both political theory and empirical investigation to assess the benefits and costs of sprawling development patterns in the United States. The dissertation on which the book is based was the co-winner of the American Political Science Association’s 2005 Harold D. Lasswell Award for best doctoral thesis in the field of public policy.

Dr. Woody Holton,  Associate Professor of History and American Studies, discusses his book, Abigail Adams, an engaging biography that reinterprets Mrs. Adam’s life story and reexamines women’s roles in the creation of the republic. Published by Simon and Schuster in November 2009, “Abigail Adams” was a “New York Times Book Review” Editor’s Choice and is one of three winners of the 2010 Bancroft Prize, considered among the most prestigious awards in the field of American history writing.

Dr. Louis Schwartz, Associate Professor of English, discusses his new book, Milton and Maternal Mortality, which focuses on how childbirth was associated with fear, suffering and death in early modern England.  This landmark study examines John Milton’s life and work, uncovering evidence of the poet’s engagement with maternal mortality and the dilemmas it presented. Drawing on both literary scholarship and up-to-date historical research, Dr. Schwartz provides important new readings of Milton’s poetry, as well as the medical practices and religious beliefs that surrounded the perils of childbirth during the seventeenth century.

Sharon Feldman, Professor of Spanish and Catalan Studies and Chair of the Department of Latin American and Iberian Studies discusses her new book, In the Eye of the Storm:  Contemporary Theater in Barcelona. Barcelona is presently experiencing the most dynamic period in its modern theater history. This book describes some of the crucial moments and back stories, as well as some of the theatre companies and playwrights, that have shaped the theatrical life of the city of Barcelona in the aftermath of the Franco dictatorship.

Dr. Kevin Kuswa, Director of Debate in the department of Rhetoric and Communication Studies, discusses “Blowback the Enemy T/here: Errors, Terrors, and the Rhetorical Agenda of WMDs”, a chapter in the recently published book, Entertaining Fear: Rhetoric and the Political Economy of Social Control. Dr. Kuswa has been teaching a class on terrorism and security since 2002, focusing on perhaps the most important social dynamic of our time, the rhetoric of fear. Kuswa’s chapter focuses on understanding the “logics and discourses through the trope of ‘blow-back,'” a phrase describing the ways a state’s aggressive military action can circle back to confront the state itself.