Dr. Christopher von Rueden, an anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, discusses a recent article entitled, “Men’s status and reproductive success in 33 non-industrial societies: Effects of subsistence, marriage system, and reproductive strategy,” which he co-authored with Dr. Adrian Jaeggi, an anthropologist at Emory University.  Their findings were recently published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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.

Dr. Monika Siebert, Professor of English, discusses her new book, Indians Playing Indian: Multiculturalism and Contemporary Indigenous Art in North America, published recently by the University of Alabama Press. Indians Playing Indian explores the phenomenon of multicultural misrecognition of American Indians, explaining its sources in North American colonial history and in the political mandates of multiculturalism, and describes its consequences for contemporary indigenous cultural production.

Dr. Kevin Pelletier, Associate Professor of English, discusses his new book, Apocalyptic Sentimentalism: Love and Fear in US Antebellum Literature, published recently by the University of Georgia Press. The book provides powerful insights into the relationship between nineteenth-century sentimentality, religious discourse, and antislavery reform.