Celebrating Our Faculty Books 2021

An online display of new publications by Washington University's faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences

The 2021 Faculty Book Celebration looks different from years past. One of our favorite parts of the event — drifting along the displays of recent books by our colleagues — isn’t possible in these pandemic times. But we are determined to recognize these achievements nonetheless!

Alongside the virtual lectures by WashU faculty and a keynote speaker, we present as part of the Faculty Book Celebration this virtual display of recent books and digital projects by faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. A selection of these books is also on display for WashU ID holders at the Campus Bookstore in Mallinckrodt Center. They are happy to hook you up with many of the titles below (see link below); everyone can order here!

Please peruse the books and read about the journey many of these authors made in the sections below. Then, join us Thursday, April 1 at 4 pm as we hear from our exciting lineup of speakers!

Faculty Books 2019–21

The publication of a monograph or significant creative work is a milestone in the career of a scholar in the humanities. It represents a decades’ worth — and sometimes much longer — of research, writing and rewriting. This work is made possible by fellowships, sabbaticals, research grants and a deep dive into materials in often far-flung locations. Finally, and amid the competing demands of teaching, service and other research projects at various stages, a book is born.

Please join us in celebrating these accomplishments!

Click on an image to read the book’s overview. Once the popup window is open, click on the right arrow to advance the image, or close the popup and select another book from the grid. To purchase one of the books, contact marym@wustl.edu at the Washington University Campus Bookstore.

William Acree (Romance Languages & Literatures), Staging Frontiers

Pamela Barmash (Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies), The Laws of Hammurabi

Nancy Berg (Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies), Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making

Lingchei Letty Chen (East Asian Languages and Cultures), The Great Leap Backward

Tili Boon Cuillé (Romance Languages & Literatures), Divining Nature: Aesthetics of Enchantment in Enlightenment France

Jonathan Fenderson (African & African American Studies), Building the Black Arts Movement

Douglas Flowe (History), Uncontrollable Blackness

Matthias Göritz (Comparative Literature), A Brief History of the Heart

Bret Gustafson (Anthropology), Bolivia in the Age of Gas

Ignacio Infante (Comparative Literature and Romance Languages & Literatures), Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven

Rebecca Lester (Anthropology), Famished

Erin McGlothlin (Germanic Languages and Literatures), The Construction of Testimony Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Its Outtakes

Erin McGlothlin
Professor of German, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

*The Construction of Testimony Claude Lanzmann’s ‘Shoah’ and Its Outtakes* (editor with Brad Prager, and Markus Zisselsberger) (Wayne State University Press, 2020)

In *The Construction of Testimony: Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Its Outtakes,* editors Erin McGlothlin, Brad Prager, and Markus Zisselsberger gather contributions on how *Shoah* (1985) fundamentally changed the nature and use of filmed testimony and laid the groundwork for how historians and documentarians regard and understand the history of the Holocaust. Critics have taken long note of *Shoah*’s innovative style and its place in the history of documentary film and in cultural memory, but few scholars have touched on its extensive outtakes and the reams of documentation archived at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and at Yad Vashem, or the release of five feature-length documentaries based on the material in those outtakes.

*The Construction of Testimony,* which contains thirteen essays by some of the most notable scholars in Holocaust film studies, reexamines Lanzmann’s body of work, his film, and the impact of Shoah through this trove—over 220 hours—of previously unavailable and unexplored footage. Responding to the need for a sustained examination of Lanzmann’s impact on historical and filmic approaches to testimony, this volume inaugurates a new era of scholarship, one that takes a critical position vis-à-vis the filmmaker’s posturing, stylization, and editorial sleight-of-hand. The volume’s contributors engage with a range of dimensions central to Lanzmann’s filmography and the outtakes, including the dynamics of gender in his work, his representation of Nazi perpetrators, and complex issues of language and translation.

In light of Lanzmann’s invention of a radically new form of witnessing and remembrance, *Shoah* laid the framework for the ways in which subsequent filmmakers have represented the Holocaust cinematically; at the same time, the outtakes complicate this framework by revealing new details about the filmmaker’s complex editorial choices. Scholars and students of film studies and Holocaust studies will value this close analysis.

Steven Miles (History), Chinese Diasporas

Steven Miles (History), Opportunity in Crisis

Casey O’Callaghan (Philosophy), A Multisensory Philosophy of Perception

Carl Phillips (English), Pale Colors in a Tall Field

Jenny Price (Sam Fox), Stop Saving the Planet!

Jake Rosenfeld (Sociology), You're Paid What You're Worth and Other Myths of the Modern Economy

Jake Rosenfeld
Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology

*You’re Paid What You're Worth and Other Myths of the Modern Economy* (Belknap Press, 2021)

*A myth-busting book challenges the idea that we’re paid according to objective criteria and places power and social conflict at the heart of economic analysis.*

Your pay depends on your productivity and occupation. If you earn roughly the same as others in your job, with the precise level determined by your performance, then you’re paid market value. And who can question something as objective and impersonal as the market? That, at least, is how many of us tend to think. But according to Jake Rosenfeld, we need to think again.

Job performance and occupational characteristics do play a role in determining pay, but judgments of productivity and value are also highly subjective. What makes a lawyer more valuable than a teacher? How do you measure the output of a police officer, a professor, or a reporter? Why, in the past few decades, did CEOs suddenly become hundreds of times more valuable than their employees? The answers lie not in objective criteria but in battles over interests and ideals. In this contest four dynamics are paramount: power, inertia, mimicry, and demands for equity. Power struggles legitimize pay for particular jobs, and organizational inertia makes that pay seem natural. Mimicry encourages employers to do what peers are doing. And workers are on the lookout for practices that seem unfair. Rosenfeld shows us how these dynamics play out in real-world settings, drawing on cutting-edge economics, original survey data, and a journalistic eye for compelling stories and revealing details.

At a time when unions and bargaining power are declining and inequality is rising, *You’re Paid What You’re Worth* is a crucial resource for understanding that most basic of social questions: Who gets what and why?

Luis Alejandro Salas (Classics), Cutting Words

Matthew Shipe (English), Updike & Politics: New Considerations

Claudia Swan (Art History & Archaeology), Rarities of These Lands

Akiko Tsuchiya (Romance Languages & Literatures), Unsettling Colonialism

Abram Van Engen (English), City on a Hill

Abram Van Engen (English), A History of American Puritan Literature

William E. Wallace (Art History & Archaeology), Michelangelo, God’s Architect

Rebecca Wanzo (Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies), The Content of our Caricature

Adia Harvey Wingfield (Sociology), Flatlining

Rafia Zafar (English/AFAS), Recipes for Respect

Join us virtually at the Faculty Book Celebration

4 pm | Thursday, April 1

Walter Johnson is the Winthrop Professor of History and professor of African and African American studies at Harvard University. He is author of The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States (Basic Books, 2020).

Rebecca Wanzo is professor and chair of the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Washington University, and author of The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging (New York University Press, 2020).

Douglas Flowe is assistant professor in the Department of History, Washington University, and author of Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

Follow the link below for more details and to RSVP (registration is required for Zoom link).

Click here to RSVP

Faculty Books Display 2021

Celebrating Our Faculty Books 2021

Faculty Books 2019–21

William Acree (Romance Languages & Literatures), Staging Frontiers

William Acree Associate Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures

Staging Frontiers: The Making of Modern Popular Culture in Argentina and Uruguay (University of New Mexico Press, 2019)

Pamela Barmash (Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies), The Laws of Hammurabi

Pamela Barmash Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible & Biblical Hebrew, Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies

The Laws of Hammurabi: At the Confluence of Royal and Scribal Traditions (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Nancy Berg (Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies), Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making

Nancy Berg Professor of Modern Hebrew Language & Literature, Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies

Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making (State University of New York Press, 2020) (edited with Naomi B. Sokoloff)

Lingchei Letty Chen (East Asian Languages and Cultures), The Great Leap Backward

Lingchei Letty Chen Associate Professor of Chinese, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Years (Cambria Press, 2020)

Tili Boon Cuillé (Romance Languages & Literatures), Divining Nature: Aesthetics of Enchantment in Enlightenment France

Tili Boon Cuillé Associate Professor of French, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures

Divining Nature Aesthetics of Enchantment in Enlightenment France (Stanford University Press, 2020)

Jonathan Fenderson (African & African American Studies), Building the Black Arts Movement

Jonathan Fenderson Associate Professor of African & African-American Studies, Department of African & African American Studies

Building the Black Arts Movement: Hoyt Fuller and the Cultural Politics of the 1960s (University of Illinois Press, 2019)

Douglas Flowe (History), Uncontrollable Blackness

Douglas Flowe Assistant Professor of History, Department of History

Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York (University of North Carolina Press, 2020)

Matthias Göritz (Comparative Literature), A Brief History of the Heart

Matthias Göritz Professor of the Practice, Program in Comparative Literature

A Brief History of the Heart (Vydaviectva Halijafy, 2019) (translated from German by Olga Gapeeva)

Bret Gustafson (Anthropology), Bolivia in the Age of Gas

Bret Gustafson Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

Bolivia in the Age of Gas (Duke University Press, 2020)

Ignacio Infante (Comparative Literature and Romance Languages & Literatures), Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven

Ignacio Infante Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures and Program in Comparative Literature

Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven (Coimpress, 2020) (by Vicente Huidobro; translated by Ignacio Infante & Michael Leong)

Rebecca Lester (Anthropology), Famished

Rebecca Lester Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology

Famished: Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America (University of California Press, 2019)

Erin McGlothlin (Germanic Languages and Literatures), The Construction of Testimony Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Its Outtakes

Erin McGlothlin Professor of German, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

The Construction of Testimony Claude Lanzmann’s ‘Shoah’ and Its Outtakes (editor with Brad Prager, and Markus Zisselsberger) (Wayne State University Press, 2020)

Steven Miles (History), Chinese Diasporas

Steven Miles Professor of History, Department of History

Chinese Diasporas: A Social History of Global Migration (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Steven Miles (History), Opportunity in Crisis

Steven Miles Professor of History, Department of History

Opportunity in Crisis: Cantonese Migrants and the State in Late Qing China (Harvard University Press, 2021)

Casey O’Callaghan (Philosophy), A Multisensory Philosophy of Perception

Casey O’Callaghan Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy

A Multisensory Philosophy of Perception (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Carl Phillips (English), Pale Colors in a Tall Field

Carl Phillips Professor of English, Department of English

Pale Colors in a Tall Field (Macmillan, 2020)

Jenny Price (Sam Fox), Stop Saving the Planet!

Jenny Price Research Fellow, School of Architecture

Stop Saving the Planet! An Environmentalist Manifesto (W.W. Norton, 2021)

Jake Rosenfeld (Sociology), You're Paid What You're Worth and Other Myths of the Modern Economy

Jake Rosenfeld Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology

You’re Paid What You're Worth and Other Myths of the Modern Economy (Belknap Press, 2021)

Luis Alejandro Salas (Classics), Cutting Words

Luis Alejandro Salas Assistant Professor of Classics, Department of Classics

Cutting Words: Polemical Dimensions of Galen’s Anatomical Experiments (Brill, 2021)

Matthew Shipe (English), Updike & Politics: New Considerations

Matthew Shipe Senior Lecturer, Department of English

Updike & Politics: New Considerations (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) (edited with Scott Dill)

Claudia Swan (Art History & Archaeology), Rarities of These Lands

Claudia Swan Mark Steinberg Weil Professor in Art History, Department of Art History & Archaeology

Rarities of These Lands: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Dutch Republic (Princeton University Press, 2021)

Akiko Tsuchiya (Romance Languages & Literatures), Unsettling Colonialism

Akiko Tsuchiya Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures

Unsettling Colonialism: Gender and Race in the Nineteenth-Century Global Hispanic World (State University of New York Press, 2019) (edited with N. Michelle Murray)

Abram Van Engen (English), City on a Hill

Abram Van Engen Associate Professor in English, Department of English

City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism (Yale University Press, 2020)

Abram Van Engen (English), A History of American Puritan Literature

Abram Van Engen Associate Professor in English, Department of English

A History of American Puritan Literature (Cambridge University Press, (2020) (edited with Kristina Bross)

William E. Wallace (Art History & Archaeology), Michelangelo, God’s Architect

William E. Wallace the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor, Department of Art History & Archaeology

Michelangelo, God’s Architect (Princeton University Press, 2019)

Rebecca Wanzo (Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies), The Content of our Caricature

Rebecca Wanzo Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Chair, Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

William Acree
Associate Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures

Pamela Barmash
Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible & Biblical Hebrew, Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies

Nancy Berg
Professor of Modern Hebrew Language & Literature, Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies

Lingchei Letty Chen
Associate Professor of Chinese, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Tili Boon Cuillé
Associate Professor of French, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures

Jonathan Fenderson
Associate Professor of African & African-American Studies, Department of African & African American Studies

Douglas Flowe
Assistant Professor of History, Department of History

Matthias Göritz
Professor of the Practice, Program in Comparative Literature

A Brief History of the Heart (Vydaviectva Halijafy, 2019)
(translated from German by Olga Gapeeva)

Bret Gustafson
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

Ignacio Infante
Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures and Program in Comparative Literature

Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven (Coimpress, 2020)
(by Vicente Huidobro; translated by Ignacio Infante & Michael Leong)

Rebecca Lester
Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology

Erin McGlothlin
Professor of German, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

Steven Miles
Professor of History, Department of History

Steven Miles
Professor of History, Department of History

Casey O’Callaghan
Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy

Carl Phillips
Professor of English, Department of English

Jenny Price
Research Fellow, School of Architecture

Jake Rosenfeld
Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology

Luis Alejandro Salas
Assistant Professor of Classics, Department of Classics

Matthew Shipe
Senior Lecturer, Department of English

Updike & Politics: New Considerations (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019)
(edited with Scott Dill)

Claudia Swan
Mark Steinberg Weil Professor in Art History, Department of Art History & Archaeology

Akiko Tsuchiya
Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures

Unsettling Colonialism: Gender and Race in the Nineteenth-Century Global Hispanic World (State University of New York Press, 2019)
(edited with N. Michelle Murray)

Abram Van Engen
Associate Professor in English, Department of English

Abram Van Engen
Associate Professor in English, Department of English

A History of American Puritan Literature (Cambridge University Press, (2020)
(edited with Kristina Bross)

William E. Wallace
the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor, Department of Art History & Archaeology

Rebecca Wanzo
Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Chair, Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Adia Harvey Wingfield
Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor, Department of Sociology

Rafia Zafar
Professor of English, Department of English and Department of African and African American Studies