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 Bringing a diverse body of understudied and unpublished material together for the first time, she investigates the origins and cultural significance of burials on couches and charts their development and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?

Dr. Eric Yellin, Associate Professor of History and American
Studies discusses his new book, Racism in the Nation’s Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America, published recently by the University of North Carolina Press. In this book, Dr. Yellin argues that President Wilson’s administration successfully segregated the federal government in the age of progressive politics.  He investigates how the enactment of the segregation policy imposed a color  line on American opportunity and implicated Washington in the economic limitation of African Americans for decades to come.

Dr. Yucel Yanikdag, Associate Professor of History
discusses his new book, Healing the Nation: Prisoners of War, Medicine and Nationalism in Turkey, 1914-1939, published recently by Edinburgh University Press. In this book, he explores how Ottoman prisoners of war and military doctors of the First World War discursively constructed their nation as a community, and at the same time attempted to exclude certain groups from that nation. Yanikdag aims to broaden the discussion of nationalism to explore how ideological and biological factors influenced each other.

Dr. Monti Datta, Assistant Professor of Political Science, discusses his forthcoming new book, Anti-Americanism and the Rise of World Opinion.  Drawing from a wealth of research data, interviews and surveys of social media, this book directly examines pro- and anti-American views and asks what we can learn about the nature and impact of world opinion. By treating anti-Americanism as a case study of public opinion at work, Professor Datta reveals how we can better understand the relationship between global citizens and their political leaders, and concludes that anti-Americanism does in fact substantially impact US security, as well as its economic and political interests.