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HOT TYPE: New releases by Swarthmoreans
Eden Wales Freedman ’03
Reading Testimony,
Witnessing Trauma
University Press of Mississippi
Freedman’s timely examination of race, gender, and violence in American literature presents a reading theory of dual-witnessing as a means to overcome trauma. Analyzing works by Sojourner Truth, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and others, Freedman explores the intersection of race and gender as written by and about African American women, encouraging collective witnessing between the narrator and reader.
David French ’89
Heart Full of Soul
McFarland
With a foreword by Alice Cooper, this biography explores the life of Yardbirds frontman Keith Relf, who lent his vocals to a string of influential hits in the 1960s. Unlike the band’s more famous guitarists, who reached great levels of stardom, Relf lived a private life, shrouded in mystery, and died tragically at age 33 amid emotional and financial strife.
Sasha Issenberg ’02
The Engagement: America’s
Quarter-Century Struggle Over
Same-Sex Marriage
Pantheon
The lead-up to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage in the U.S. is longer and less straightforward than many people realize. In this narrative, Issenberg highlights the conflict that divided America, from early court hearings in Hawaii, to the Defense of Marriage Act, to California’s Proposition 8.
Gil Rosenberg ’00
Ancestral Queerness
Sheffield Phoenix Press
Applying a queer studies lens to the biblical stories of Abraham and Sarah, Rosenberg identifies the normative and the deviant in their narratives and highlights bias in past scholarship about the pair. By drawing on modern-day queer theories and stories, Rosenberg reinterprets their relationship, placing them in a category of cross-cultural queer.
Miguel Urquiola ’92
Markets, Minds, and Money: Why America Leads the World in University Research
Harvard University Press
When it comes to research, higher education in America dominates on the global stage, but that hasn’t always been the case. Urquiola takes an economic look at American universities, arguing that a free-market approach to education has led to a greater demand for talented experts and students.
Michael Wertheimer ’47
Facets of an Academic’s Life
Springer
The son of one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, Wertheimer documents his life story and the modern history of the field in this richly illustrated memoir. A professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Wertheimer examines how the merger of European and American schools of thought created the broad discipline studied today.
Stephen Henighan ’84
Blue River and Red Earth
Cormorant Books
Henighan covers a lot of physical ground in this collection of 11 short stories, with characters that could only exist in the 21st century. As one reviewer notes: “The stories collected in Blue River and Red Earth are ambitious, cosmopolitan, and quixotic; their real theme is the emotional errancy of their outsider characters.”
John Goldsmith ’72 and Bernard Laks
Battle in the Mind Fields
University of Chicago Press
Goldsmith and Laks explore the interdisciplinary history of the study of linguistics, incorporating psychology, philosophy, and mathematical logic. Tracing the field from its 19th-century roots in the mind sciences through the political and intellectual ruptures ahead of World War II, the book argues that linguistics’ past is impossible to understand in isolation from its related fields.