Each week this fall, we’ll introduce new �ֲ���ý professors who have tenure-track positions on the faculty.

This year’s nine tenure appointments are in the disciplines of art and visual culture, classical and medieval studies, economics, English, environmental studies, dance, politics (two appointments), and psychology.

This week we introduce the seventh of our nine new faculty members, Katie Adkison.

Name: Katie Adkison

Title: Assistant Professor of English

Degrees from: University of California, Santa Barbara, Ph.D. in English; Colorado State University, M.A. in English literature, B.A. in English education

Her work: Adkison studies the role of an individual’s spoken voice in early modern English literature — what the actual feeling of speaking means and conveys, especially in terms of power structures.

In Adkison’s scholarship, voice becomes a “kind of embodied sensation. Not literally a sixth sense, but something more akin to sensing knowledge than to just a tool of communication.”

Her dissertation: “The Sense of Speech: Voice and Sovereignty in Early Modern Tragedy,” describes the relationship between early modern theories of sovereignty and the phenomenology of the voice in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy.

For example: In the opening scene of King Lear, the titular monarch decides to divide his kingdom based on how much his three daughters say they love him. His first two daughters make elaborate but insincere declarations of love.

Lear then turns to his third daughter, Cordelia, and asks, “What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?” Cordelia, who does truly love the king, responds, “Nothing, my Lord.” She continues:

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less…. (1.1.91-93)

In referring to her own voice, Cordelia is trying to tell her father “something about politics and about love that his love test is failing to understand,” says Adkison. She’s saying that “love and politics are not mathematical equations. You can’t give more love through your voice the way that you can give more money or more of something tangible.”

The opening scene is a kernel in the larger lesson of the play. Cordelia, in effect, is vocalizing the fact that her vocalization can’t do what her father wants it to do — it can’t be reduced to words. “She’s saying, ‘There’s more to love here, just as there’s more to language in the very voice I’m speaking through.’”

The scene sets the stage for the tragedy. “Lear wants words to equal inheritance, a kingdom, power.” Cordelia wants no part of it. “And so it ends, with death, tears, and so much pain,” says Adkison.

Iambic sortameter: In King Lear’s opening scene, Shakespeare uses a jarring version of iambic pentameter for some of Cordelia’s lines. “The rhythm is off,” says Adkison, noting that the Bard sometimes “uses an extra syllable, 11 instead of the usual 10 — or even a whole extra two-syllable iamb — in some lines.”

Shakespeare did that often, she explains, usually to draw attention to something. “If the rhythm is off, you are supposed to feel it as an audience member.”

We can’t know the intentions of the author now or 500 years later. But the meaning is there, regardless. That’s magic to me.

Adkison recalls the moment that “something felt off in one of the lines. And so I started counting syllables, the way you’re supposed to when something feels off.” The extra syllable “had to be purposeful. It’s too perfect not to be.”

In Cordelia’s 11-syllable lines, there is “something that literally can’t be divided up. The rhythm of the lines is as out of step with her father’s demands as her inability to speak her love is. She’s really talking about vocal rhythm and the experience of voice to explain what’s going on.”

A beautiful thing: “The beautiful thing about how literature thinks about language is that we can’t know the intentions of the author now or 500 years later,” Adkison says. “But the meaning is there, regardless. There’s always something new to be parsed and to be found. That’s magic to me.”

Classroom magic: Sometimes, magical classroom moments happen when a teacher allows a discussion to go off the straight rails.

Last winter, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Adkison was teaching Thomas More’s Utopia. A student asked, “Is anyone watching The Good Place?” referring to the NBC fantasy comedy about a utopian, but problematic, afterlife.

Rather than guide the discussion back to the 16th century, Adkison took a moment to connect the dots. She noted the etymology of the word “utopia” and how it “can mean ‘the good place’ or ‘no place’ or ‘the good place that cannot exist’ or something along those lines.”

Eager for wordplay, Adkison’s students jumped at the chance to connect More’s Utopia to The Good Place, which led to a “conversation about the way that the show uses and problematizes the notion of a utopia in such interesting ways.”

Then she guided the students back to how More imagined what a good life looked like in his Utopia. “The text is infamously sticky about how one constructs a good life, what it means to live the good life, and all the problems that are wrapped up in that text.”

And a course is born: All of that left Adkison “wanting so badly to teach a class on utopia.” And if you look at utopia, “you have to teach the second half of the class on dystopias because it seems to be true that a good place for some frequently comes to mean a bad place for others.”

“College students are special because they will think with you — taking on the agency of research and thinking of their learning as their own.”

And, voilà! This spring, Adkison will teach such a course on utopian and dystopian fiction, from More’s Utopia and Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World to George Orwell’s 1984 and the first of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. “I’m hoping we’ll end with the first season of The Good Place and try and end on a funny note — even if it’s not necessarily optimistic in all of the ways one wants it to be.”

Why �ֲ���ý? “I was so excited when I visited �ֲ���ý to see how much collaboration happens between departments and between students and faculty. Collaborative research structures the idea of the undergraduate thesis that all students write here.”

Why college? “College students are special because they will think with you — taking on the agency of research and thinking of their learning as their own.”

Finding her path: “At my core, I have always known I wanted to be a teacher,” Adkison says.

“I thought I would be a high school English teacher for the rest of my life. But my path to graduate work was one I found late in the stages of my own bachelor’s degree, when I was taking education courses alongside literature courses. I realized I had more questions about the literature. I couldn’t be done.”

Each week this fall, we’ll introduce new �ֲ���ý professors who have tenure-track positions on the faculty.

This year’s nine tenure appointments are in the disciplines of art and visual culture, classical and medieval studies, economics, English, environmental studies, dance, politics (two appointments), and psychology.

This week we introduce the sixth of our nine new faculty members, Yunkyoung Garrison.

Name: Yunkyoung Garrison

Title: Assistant Professor of Psychology

Degrees from: University of Iowa, Ph.D. in counseling psychology and M.A. in educational measurement and statistics; Yonsei University, M.A. in psychology and B.B.A. in business administration

Nontraditional path: As her undergraduate degree indicates, Yun Garrison initially worked in business after graduating from Yonsei University, in Seoul, South Korea.

“I wasn’t really in touch with my own life values,” she says. Instead, she was initially motivated to please her parents, “a congruent Asian cultural value,” as well as to seek happiness through financial success.

A stint in business, specifically the energy sector in South Korea, prompted Garrison to rethink what gives her purpose and meaning.

“The energy industry is male-dominated and, because it’s effectively a monopoly, very change-resistant. For me, working toward change is really important. I didn’t feel it was a good fit for me.”

Humans vs. numbers: Her first job outside business was in a university setting, as a staff member working with international programs and international students. “I enjoyed working with the humans more than numbers.”

From there, she pursued graduate work in psychology. “Psychology was a great fit for me because it has the tools to uncover knowledge while promoting values that are important to me: diversity, social justice, compassion, and humanity.”

Core identity: Garrison says that her doctoral work has only further solidified her “core identity” as a counseling psychologist, which embraces being a scientist, practitioner, and advocate — “all of which are core roles as a counseling psychologist. That’s how I got into this field, and it’s still continuing, an ongoing journey.”

Her work: A scholar-activist, Garrison wants her research to be a “catalyst for individual and societal change.”

Working with individuals and groups in the place where she’s living, Garrison studies the impacts of racism and classism on mental health — and develops programs to help mitigate those effects.

Meritocracy myth: As a doctoral student at the University of Iowa, Garrison did research that links student stress to the social concept of meritocracy.

Meritocracy suggests that “if you work harder, you’re going to succeed  — a really hopeful message,” Garrison explains. Some scholars call it a myth because, as evidence shows, achieving upward through merit may not be possible due to the constraints of racism and classism.

The American Meritocracy Myth Stress Scale “assesses psychological stress among Americans struggling with the meritocracy myth,” she says, by showing that students’ belief in meritocracy creates “psychological disequilibrium.”

Based on her findings, “I’m hoping to develop more programming and interventions for communities of color or underserved communities,” she says. Such programming would have two goals, the first being to gain “more insight about how students internalize the meritocracy myth.” The second would be to help students “develop critical consciousness,” that is, the skills needed to “better understand intricate relationships between beliefs about society and their personal hopes for work and future.”

In community: For her dissertation, Garrison wanted to understand how Latinx and white youth differently view their career paths.

She found rural white students who believe that society is just and the system is fair “tend to have higher career hopes about their future.”

Interestingly, she also found that rural immigrant Latinx students who have critical awareness about the status quo tend to have higher hopes for their future careers and work. “A young person’s critical consciousness plays an important role in underserved immigrant youth’s career development. The more they have critical consciousness, they’re more likely to have a more functional and helpful career belief system.”

Her dissertation research went hand-in-hand with , a school-based program that connects rural youth with careers in health sciences by helping students understand both potential career paths and their own interests and skills.

Why community partnerships?  For Garrison, academic research should benefit the communities in which researchers work.

“I’m a newcomer to Maine — I don’t want to assert myself as an expert of the community. I need to learn from the community.”

“There has been a historical divide between academia and community,” Garrison says. “I want to function as a person who feels and creates the connection between academia and communities, who knows what they need and knows how they can help themselves. As an academic, I want to provide resources and add to their existing power.”

In Maine, she adds, she seeks research partnerships with the state’s Somali and Somali Bantu communities.

“I’m a newcomer to Maine — I don’t want to assert myself as an expert of the community,” she says. “I need to learn from the community, and the community will show me and teach me what they need and what their strengths are. I’ll also need to take some time to learn, instead of just starting new projects without their interest and collaboration.”

Why �ֲ���ý: “The job description was so powerful,” Garrison says. “They were looking for someone who can do social justice, community-based psychology, serving immigrant populations, and also keenly aware of the impact of poverty.

“So I was really excited to apply for the job. And during the interview, it just confirmed that, wow, this is an incredibly open-minded, innovative place.” Adding to that, she felt appreciated during the interview.

“I am eager to bring my full self to �ֲ���ý and Maine and contribute to these communities in order for all community members to feel truly valued and appreciated.”

Each week this fall, we’ll introduce new �ֲ���ý professors who have tenure-track positions on the faculty.

This year’s nine tenure appointments are in the disciplines of art and visual culture, classical and medieval studies, economics, English, environmental studies, dance, politics (two appointments), and psychology.

This week we introduce the fifth of our nine new faculty members, Lisa Gilson

Name: Lisa Gilson

Title: Assistant Professor of Politics

Degrees from: Yale University, Ph.D and M.A. in political science; Tufts University, B.A. in political science 

Before �ֲ���ý: Postdoctoral fellow in social studies, Harvard University

Her work: Gilson focuses on political reactions expressed outside of mainstream political channels, from abolitionist movements to contemporary far-right groups. 

A political theorist, she is working on a book about the relationship between such social movements and social critics, including artists and writers, and the idea that the various political actors involved in a movement “are each doing particular kinds of things. Each has strengths that are particular to what kind of organizing they’re doing and what kind of protest they are doing.”

Example 1: In one chapter of her book, Gilson looks at Walt Whitman. While his writings were sympathetic to egalitarian and anti-racist ideas, his work didn’t actively call out racists and Southern sympathizers. 

Yet, as Gilson argues, political actors like Whitman must be viewed in context. Whitman was uniquely situated to speak to a particular audience — Southern whites — that otherwise would have been “disgusted by, or not respond well to, a broader anti-racist movement. He spent a lot of time really trying to target that audience and work with that audience.”

Meanwhile, other actors in the movement, including Radical Reconstructionists, “were facing other kinds of demands. They couldn’t speak directly to white Southerners because the white Southerners obviously had no interest in listening to them.”

Example 2: Gilson pointed to recent Twitter comments from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responding to critics who said that Black Lives Matter activists’ language around defunding the police doesn’t play well among voters. 

“We shouldn’t be attacking people for playing a role that is adapted to their specific situation.”

AOC’s response, in effect, sums up Gilson’s book project. “Activists who are trying to get people out into the streets will use language that might not poll well with the broader voting public. But it’s not the activists’ job — nor would it play to their strengths — to use language that polls well.”

While elected officials have to think about what language they use to further their goals, activists “use the language that works best for their specific and immediate goals,” she says. “For example, the slogan ‘defund the police’ may appeal more to people who actually show up at protests rather than those who ��Dz�’t participate. And that’s fine. We shouldn’t be attacking people for playing a role that is adapted to their specific situation.”

Ideas in the classroom: Gilson is teaching “Politics and Literature” this fall, looking at how writers target “different audiences with work that’s outside of what is traditionally considered to be ‘political.’” For example, the class will read, among other works, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which raises questions about race, class, and gender through its depiction of a young Black girl who believes that her dark skin makes her ugly.

Working outside traditional political spheres, writers like Morrison seek to “change our broader culture and the broader discourse that people have around certain topics.”

Finding her path: Gilson grew up in a diverse area and says she quickly learned that her experiences as a white person were fundamentally different from those of her Black neighbors. 

In school, “I started connecting my experiences growing up and being in a more racially diverse neighborhood and being treated better, and not having to think about my skin color, and how that related to my interactions with the police” with a broader system of racist oppression — one she wanted to study and fight.  

Sample lesson: Gilson often teaches introductory courses in political theory. In one class, after having her students read the works of theorists like Hobbes, Rousseau, and Marx, she gave them Politics of Piety, by Saba Mahmood, a book that analyzed a women’s piety movement in Cairo. 

“The women who are in this piety movement are choosing these religious precepts which place them in submission to their husbands,” Gilson says. “Mahmood makes a complicated argument that the women are expressing a type of agency. 

“It’s one of my favorite things that I’ve ever taught because it’s challenging to me, and because the students themselves have to take a step back and ask, ‘What does it mean to say that I support a position that [they wouldn’t naturally agree with?]” 

Why �ֲ���ý? Gilson’s undergraduate college was Tufts, where programs such as the Experimental College Tisch College of Civic Life informed her belief that there were “things that you could do as a scholar that also would contribute to the community,” Gilson says.

During her job search, the “importance of community-engaged learning was one of the first things that I noticed about �ֲ���ý,” she says, finding the college’s approach — forging long-term relationships with community partners — preferable to the drop-in model of community work, where students do a few projects, write their papers about it, and then graduate.

“If you’re really interested in your community, shouldn’t you be thinking about the long-term needs of the community? About how the community has already tried to organize around those needs? And how might you be able to support what exists already?”

Each week this fall, we’ll introduce new �ֲ���ý professors who have tenure-track positions on the faculty.

This year’s nine tenure appointments are in the disciplines of art and visual culture, classical and medieval studies, economics, English, environmental studies, dance, politics (two appointments), and psychology.

This week we introduce the fourth of our nine new faculty members, Tyler Harper.

Name: Tyler Harper

Position: Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

Degrees from: New York University, Ph.D. in comparative literature and M.A. in comparative literature; Haverford College, B.A. in English

His work: Harper researches the evolving ways in which science fiction writers have depicted human extinction, and how the concept of extinction has changed since 1796, when scientist Georges Cuvier proved that species extinction was in fact possible.

Completed in May, Harper’s dissertation was on “The Specter of Extinction: Environmental Nihilism in British Science Fiction (1800–1945).

Why sci-fi? With a literary canon that includes books from L. Ron Hubbard, and with movie titles like Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, science fiction in America is a “heavily stereotyped genre,” Harper says. “We’re often used to thinking of sci-fi as entertainment or as beach reading.” Plus, it’s a genre that’s frequently “coded as both white and male,” he says. 

For a liberal arts professor, stereotype is a door waiting to be kicked open. “One of the joys of teaching science fiction is getting students to see sci-fi differently — as a genre that not only engages with big ideas but also that includes some great works written by marginalized voices.”

A sample lesson: Harper says that he’s always loved introducing students to the novel Dawn, by Octavia Butler, the first Black female science fiction writer to reach national prominence. 

One of her earlier works, Dawn poses the “big questions that I find tend to excite students. Questions like, is the fear of otherness innate? Or is it learned? Can it be unlearned? And, is the exploitation of nature or other species ever justifiable?”

In class, he’ll lead an exercise in argument mapping to “break down the various worldviews presented by a novel or film and look who is presenting those views, how they clash, and how they’re reconciled.”

The exercise “gets students to slow down, look past the aliens and the spaceships, and really confront the profound and topical questions about the environment and our place in it that a novel like Dawn ���DzԱ�����.”

Why �ֲ���ý? “�ֲ���ý struck me as an institution that really strives to navigate a balance,” Harper says. While “upholding the traditional concept of a liberal arts college as a space in which students are able to think on a campus — free from the distractions of the world around them,” the college also works to bring “the liberal arts model into the 21st century.” 

Imagining Extinction: British science fiction writers of the 1800s and early 1900s, like Mary Shelley, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and H.G. Wells, imagined that the natural world was the prime threat to human life.

In their works, “nature was re-imagined as not only a threat to the species, but a threat to the very moral vision that informed Western thinking about humanity in general,” Harper says. He calls this ‘environmental nihilism’: the threat of meaninglessness posed by the recognition that nature is completely indifferent to human existence.”

In Britain during the early Romantic era — the late 1700s into the early 1800s — these initial extinction narratives also tended to “imagine threats to the species as arising from absolute catastrophes that could not be avoided or prevented,” he explains. 

Later, particularly in the wake of Darwin’s discoveries in the mid-1800s, the threat of extinction was re-imagined as “something that could be mitigated by human ingenuity and power, something we might be able to prepare for politically, technologically, scientifically and so on. This view still informs contemporary reflection on human extinction.”

The idea that nature was the major threat to humankind changed after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan: “Human extinction was now recognized as something that humans might bring about,” says Harper.

Now, climate change: A legacy of 19th- and early 20th-century science fiction is today’s belief that “we can confront the threat of climate change with large-scale technological solutions, like geo-engineering,” Harper says. 

However, clinging to a magic-bullet solution, he says, merely “becomes a way to avoid thinking about climate change as a political crisis.” Today’s science fiction can address this avoidance and reinforce the politics of the climate crisis by imagining the “ways different groups of people are more or less implicated by environmental violence.” 

In other words, writers of climate fiction can show us new worlds after climate change and raise the question: Who gets to live in these new worlds? 

Any catastrophe, whether it threatens extinction or not, “impacts different racial groups unequally and acts on different communities in different nations unequally. It’s imperative that we think about a problem that seems fantastical but is in fact quite pressing.”

Do we survive? “I remain an optimist,” Harper says. “But I think one of the reasons I’m drawn to thinking about human extinction is that there are people with tremendous power and wealth who take the question of human extinction very seriously. You have people in Silicon Valley building compounds in New Zealand in preparation for a coming climate catastrophe.”

Harper adds, “We have, especially in academia, a duty to think seriously about this as well and to draw attention to the oversimplifications that we see in a news item, for example, about Elon Musk wanting to establish a human colony on Mars as a backup if Earth were to become uninhabitable.”

Each week this fall, we’ll be introducing new �ֲ���ý professors who have tenure-track positions on the faculty.

This year’s nine tenure appointments are in the disciplines of art and visual culture, classical and medieval studies, economics, English, environmental studies, dance, politics (two appointments), and psychology.

This week we introduce the third of our nine new faculty members, Nivedhitha Subramanian.

Name: Nivedhitha Subramanian

Title: Assistant Professor of Economics 

Degrees from: Duke University, Ph.D. in public policy studies; Northwestern University, M.A. in economics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, S.B. in economics.

Economics because: Like many U.S. high schools, Subramanian’s did not offer economics. “But I really liked math and I really liked social studies,” she recalls.

“One of my favorite teachers — with whom I’m still in touch — suggested that I would really like economics because it combines the two. And she was right.”

Her work: As a development and labor economist with a focus on gender, Subramanian looks at the economic challenges facing less-developed countries.

Specifically, she uses data to explore how gender, social expectations, and even reputation affect workers’ choices in developing countries, particularly Pakistan — questions like, “How do we hire people? What are the constraints that people, particularly women, might face in the labor market?”

For example: For her dissertation, Subramanian conducted experiments on how gender norms affect women job seekers in Pakistan. To gather data, she used Job Asaan, a Lahore-based platform for female job seekers created by a team of development economists at Duke, including Subramanian.

In the first experiment, some job seekers were given extra, gender-specific information about job postings, such as the gender of the job’s supervisor. Boom: Application rates doubled among job seekers armed with that information; in addition, job seekers with that information were more likely to apply to a job with a female supervisor.

“There’s this discrepancy between what women want for themselves and what they think that their parents or their families want for them.”

In the second experiment, some job seekers were reminded, or “primed,” about family expectations, being asked if they had discussed their job search with their family. (The answer was not surprising: “an overwhelming ‘yes,’ because in a South Asian context, especially for young people, it’s something you discuss with your parents,” says Subramanian.)

However, being reminded of family affected job seekers’ behavior, lowering their applications by 30 percent. “This is consistent with women knowing that their families might not be supportive of their job search,” Subramanian says.

At the same time, women who got the family reminder were more likely to apply to jobs when also given information about the gender of coworkers, which suggests that “they believe their families care whether they will be working with men or women,” explains Subramanian.

“There’s this discrepancy between what women want for themselves and what they think that their parents or their families want for them. And that was really impacting which jobs they apply to.”

In terms of policy, Subramanian has suggested some easy-to-implement strategies to increase job application rates, like providing accurate information in a job posting about the gender of a job’s supervisor, or, for businesses seeking workers particularly, “simply publicizing the fact that they have female supervisors and/or that they have mostly or all female employees.”

Why development economics? Subramanian, who is Indian-American, grew up in the U.S. but traveled to India frequently.

“Just seeing the differences in day-to-day life and the two different contexts sparked a lot of questions for me,” she explains. “In college, I took a class on development economics, and I realized that those were exactly the questions that I wanted to answer, using really interesting methods.”

Context matters: “Part of the joy of this kind of research is learning about other contexts — about what other communities and societies look like — and then understanding sort of the bigger picture of your work.”

“There seems to be a lot of interaction across departments, and I thought that was really exciting.”

To that end, “being able to work in a country, living there for longer periods of time, is just incredibly valuable to understanding the context and doing high-quality social science research,” Subramanian says. “Granted, in the current state of the world, that’s not always possible.”

Why �ֲ���ý? “I am an economist, but I really like talking to other social scientists and learning from broader communities,” she says. At �ֲ���ý, “economics and sociology are literally on the same hallway,” sharing a floor in Pettengill Hall with several other academic programs, including Africana and classical and medieval studies.

“There seems to be a lot of interaction across departments, and I thought that was really exciting,” she says. During her visits, “I really liked talking to everyone I met, including all the students. They were fantastic, and so I was really excited about getting to interact with these faculty and students going forward.

Why teach? “Teaching is exciting,” she says. “There’s almost no parallel feeling to seeing something click for a student.”

This semester, she’s teaching statistics, a rite of passage for econ majors. “Students come in with mixed feelings about how excited they are. Even if they are initially less excited, you can help them see why knowing statistics is useful for interpreting the world around us. That’s just really rewarding.”

Each week for the next nine, we’ll be introducing new �ֲ���ý professors who have tenure-track positions on the faculty.

This year’s nine tenure appointments are in the disciplines of art and visual culture, classical and medieval studies, economics, English, environmental studies, dance, politics (two appointments), and psychology.

This week, we introduce Mark Tizzoni.

Name: Mark Tizzoni

Position: Assistant Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies 

Degrees from: University of Leeds, M.A., Ph.D., in medieval studies and history; University of Scranton, B.A., in history and Latin 

The spark: Classical and medieval studies is “not necessarily something that everyone just naturally goes into,” Tizzoni says. 

Growing up, he had a cousin who was a history buff. “When he would visit, we would talk about history. And he was very interested in the medieval period.” That rubbed off on Tizzoni. By high school he was deep into Beowulf, The Wanderer, and The Seafarer.

From there, he was drawn to both classical studies and medieval studies. “Homer also had that same sort of influence on me that Beowulf did. That’s how I ended up with late antiquity — it’s that middle ground where the two things meet.”

Seeking the unknown: “I’m a first-generation to college student. As a child, academia was this really strange, foreign thing to me, a world I had no knowledge of — whatsoever,” he says.

Still, he had, from an early age, “always wanted to be an educator. I wanted to really deal with material in-depth, in complexity, and in intricacies, and to work with students who want to do that. 

“That’s what set me on this path of the total unknown to become a college professor. And it worked. It doesn’t always!”

His work: “I work on the transformation of the Roman world in the West, how it went from being Rome to the Middle Ages,” Tizzoni says. “I do this through the medium of poetry — how this transformation was affected and experienced by Iberians and North Africans. 

For a poet in the fifth century, North Africa was “one of the best places to be. Carthage had a really vibrant intellectual culture. It was where a considerable portion of people from the Roman world would go for their education.”

And by the late fifth century in North Africa, the Vandals had taken power from the Roman Empire, and the poetry that follows reflects existential questions: “How would they exist in this world where Rome was no longer in charge? Who were they going to be? What does that mean?”

Through their verse, which was performed more than read in an era when fewer people were literate, the poets “were building this essentially new and independent Vandal identity that set them apart from Rome, bringing the rest of the populace into this political project of the Vandals. There was great excitement as they were trying to forge these new identities.” 

Much of the poetry that Tizzoni is looking at was written in the last decade of the Vandal Kingdom. “So we ��Dz�’t know what would have happened” had Vandal identity in North Africa had more time to develop.

For example? “I work on a collection called the Anthologia Latina, these really feisty, fiery, strange pieces. One poem is four lines, and the central piece is that there’s a monkey riding a dog. So weird stuff, but culturally relevant. That piece actually asserts a new cultural identity, a new ethnic identity, for the people of North Africa. There’s advanced stuff happening in these poems that ��Dz�’t feel advanced.”

Why it matters right now: “Late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages are very important in discussions of identity, and it’s actually at the forefront of a lot of discussions today. White nationalists have especially grabbed onto these ideas, using it to try to prop up their worldviews. And this needs to be countered.

“One way to fight this is not just to take down the Eurocentric stuff, but also to reassert the role Africans played in the Early Middle Ages. It’s also important, broadly, to understand the ways people make a conscious effort to construct and build identity. That’s happening in late antiquity, and that has wider implications today, as we construct what it means to be an American, or other such identities.

“Identity isn’t something that just exists in the world. We create it, from many different things, including poetry.”

Why teach? “I love bringing primary sources into class, especially things that I work on. It’s always a lot of fun to present the students with these strange little pieces of poetry and have them see how they’re historically significant and how you can actually break down pieces of import out of them, to understand the society that made them.”

Each week for the next nine, we’ll be introducing new �ֲ���ý professors who have tenure-track positions on the faculty.

This year’s nine tenure appointments are in the disciplines of art and visual culture, classical and medieval studies, economics, English, environmental studies, dance, politics (two appointments), and psychology.

This week, we introduce Seulgie (Claire) Lim.

Name: Seulgie Lim

Title: Assistant Professor of Politics 

Degrees from: Boston University, Ph.D. in political science; Seoul National University, M.A. in international cooperation, B.A. in international relations 

Her research: Lim studies efforts at gender equality in West African nations, particularly the effects of a 2010 gender parity law in Senegal that mandates that the country’s National Assembly and other legislative bodies comprise 50 percent women. 

“There are different ways of looking at the concept of gender equality or gender parity,” Lim says. “For Senegalese women, their roles and identities as mothers, wives, and caregivers are very important. Passing this law on gender parity didn’t necessarily mean that they wanted to give up their household work or have men do half the chores, for example.” 

“Law does not exist as a legal tool only. It has to fit within society. My argument is that the gender parity law does face certain social and cultural and religious challenges — but from a theoretical perspective, it contributes to the diversity of feminisms in Africa.” 

Finding her path: Lim was born in South Korea. Her father had a steady job but it “didn’t necessarily allow him to spend that much time with our family.” That’s not what he wanted, she says.

“West Africa definitely holds a special place in my heart.”

So he decided to take “a big adventure, a big risk” by taking a position in Mauritania, a country he’d never heard of until someone he knew went to work there. The family lived there for 15 years before moving back to Korea for Lim’s and her sister’s college education.

“West Africa definitely holds a special place in my heart,” Lim says. She lived there as a young child and teenager, not yet able to grasp its “political, social, or religious aspects.” 

When she arrived at Boston University for doctoral study, “one of the first classes I took was on African politics. It confirmed some of the things I instinctively knew because I had grown up there, but it was a shift in terms of how I can see these things from an academic perspective.” 

Inside out: On a flight to Senegal to do fieldwork, Lim looked out the window as the plane was about to land. “The landscape is just so different from what I was experiencing traveling back and forth between the U.S. and mostly Korea. It was like going back home for me — it’s very similar in many ways to Mauritania.”

Being both an outsider and insider, “thinking about my identity within all of that, was actually a really exciting part of field work and research.”

That aspect of fieldwork was alluring to Lim, the “feeling of going back home — eating the food that I used to eat when I was growing up. It’s not necessarily academic but has to do with how you feel as a researcher. I met childhood friends that I had not seen for more than 15 years.”

Being both an outsider and insider, “thinking about my identity within all of that, was actually a really exciting part of field work and research.” Along the way, Lim learned to interrogate her inside-outside perspective.

During doctoral studies, a professor from Senegal was “really good at making me aware of my own prejudices as I was doing my research — after all, it had been such a long time since I left the country. And so I had some preconceived notions that I wasn’t even aware of, and he pointed those out.”

Why teach: “I really like the fact that students can learn as much from me as I can learn from them. It’s not just a one-way process where I’m regurgitating what they have read. 

“One of the things that impressed me during my visit to �ֲ���ý is that whenever I was talking to a faculty member, there would always be one or two students passing by and waving hands. I really liked that connection, that we get to know students not only as students, but also as individuals who have their own experiences and stories.” 

Sample lesson: “For all the classes I have taught, I show a TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ‘,’�ĝ Lim says. The well-known talk explores how stereotypes and misunderstanding emerge when we hear and accept just one story about another person or country.

“It’s a continent of energetic women’s movement, positive political and social changes, and promising technological advances.”

“I like to set that as the foundation — we are going to pay attention to all the different stories that are out there,” Lim says.

“I want students to know that Africa is not just a continent with civil conflicts, with diseases, with debts, but there are so many different things we can learn about all the different countries on the continent — it’s a continent of energetic women’s movement, positive political and social changes, and promising technological advances.”

Noelle Chaddock 

Juneteenth: The history and significance of this holiday marking the end of slavery — Maine Calling, Maine Public 

When it comes to this year’s widespread celebration of Juneteenth — and of the idea of making it a federal holiday — “I’m of two minds,” Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Noelle Chaddock told Maine Public’s radio program Maine Calling.

On the one hand, it’s useful if we can “pause so Black folks can breathe and be together, re-engage, and do the reflection and healing that comes at this moment,” Chaddock said of the June 19 holiday marking the emancipation of On the other hand, “I’m wary of the rush to acknowledge or institute some sort of holiday [when] it feels like the work hasn’t been done.”

“We have these very specific dates and documents and decorations, [but] we still have not gotten to a place where everyone in the U.S. is treated as if they were equal, and they still do not have the [same] access to basic human needs as white folks in this country.

“I’m hoping for some deep work in acknowledging and bringing together folks to do the healing of racial trauma and intentionally moving forward in ways that ��Dz�’t just mark a day, but mark a moment in which we will actually get to that point.”

Listen to the interview: 

• “,” Maine Public, June 19, 2020

�ֲ���ý College

�ֲ���ý College graduates told to ‘stay strong and walk like you got some sense’ — Sun Journal 

Matthew Daigle of the Lewiston Sun Journal covered �ֲ���ý’ 154th Commencement, held virtually for the first time on May 31. Prominent in this story was the Senior Address of Alexandria Onuoha ’20, who told the story of her mother’s perseverance. 

“[My mother] never lost faith, and never stopped when an obstacle confronted her,” Onuoha said. “She instilled in me the values of consistency, activism, initiative and warmth. I got to exercise these values at �ֲ���ý College, and during my four years here, I got to witness my lovely class embody these values. That’s why �ֲ���ý is like a second home to me.”

Students and families across the country and around the world watched the Commencement livestream. Sun Journal photographer Daryn Slover joined Anna Beaudet ’20 in her Auburn home, celebrating her graduation with sister Grace Beaudet ’22 and mother Celeste. 

Read the story: 

• “,’�ĝ Sun Journal, May 31, 2020

Therí A. Pickens 

Therí A. Pickens — Tonight on WURD 

As part of a wide-ranging discussion with host James Peterson on Philadelphia radio station WURD, Therí A. Pickens, a professor of English at �ֲ���ý and author of the book Black Madness :: Mad Blackness, explained how Blackness and disability — and racism and ableism — are “tethered” and must be considered in antiracist reforms.  

“When I say [Blackness] is tethered to disability, the reason that we had chattel slavery — or one of the reasons given for it — was that Blacks were [considered] lesser human beings, that they were not capable mentally, even though they were capable physically,” Pickens said. 

The racist idea that Black people were not mentally capable was so entrenched that some believed Black people would die off after slavery. Over the next century the idea did not fade but evolved into the still-racist belief that Black people are physically superior to white people. 

Many victims of police violence have some form of disability, Pickens said, but that intersection does not often factor into conversations about reform. 

“Black folks are uncomfortable talking about disability because of the way it has plagued the notion of Blackness in this country,” Pickens said. “So to create an affinity with disability is to also create an affinity with something that people think of as a denigration.” That affinity is necessary, though, because “all of our revolutions are bound up together.”

Listen to the interview: 

• “,” Tonight on WURD, June 17, 2020

Amy Geller ’96

In Focus: ‘The Rabbi Goes West’ goes online — The Boston Globe 

Documentary filmmakers Amy Geller ’96 and her husband, Gerry Peary, spoke with Boston Globe correspondent Peter Keough about how they screened their latest film when film festivals, the main vehicle for showing independent films, were no longer happening. 

The Rabbi Goes West, about a rabbi from Brooklyn who wanted to put a mezuzah on the door of every Jewish household in Montana, had just begun the festival circuit when the pandemic put a stop to large gatherings. Thinking quickly, Geller and Peary worked with the Independent Film Festival Boston to organize a “virtual cinema” with a live Q&A. 

“There’s nothing like seeing a film on a big screen among movie-loving strangers,” Geller acknowledged. “We miss that terribly. But sharing the film online could potentially reach an even wider audience. 

“The challenge is getting through to folks who are being bombarded with online content. We ��Dz�’t have the marketing budget of a Netflix, HBO, or Amazon. For us, word of mouth is absolutely key.”

Read the story: 

• “,” The Boston Globe, May 20, 2020 

Stephanie Kelley-Romano 

Conspiracy theories: What do some people believe, and what makes these theories take hold in society? — Maine Calling, Maine Public

As a guest on Maine Calling, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Stephanie Kelley-Romano explained how conspiracy theories develop and take hold, and why the COVID-19 pandemic is particularly fertile ground for them. 

The 2020 winner of the Kroepsch teaching award, Kelley-Romano explained that conspiracy theories emerge from feelings of fear and a lack of good information. The theories often use “us vs. them” language, look for connections where there may be none, and evolve to fit reality even if they are not themselves real. 

How, a caller to the program asked, do you tell if a conspiracy theory is true or false? How do you know the difference between, say, and the , and actual conspiracy? 

It comes down to media literacy, Kelley-Romano said: reading multiple sources, understanding who’s saying what and why, finding independent sources to vindicate or rebut theories. “Adopting the right orientation to information, a healthy skepticism, and good research practices totally is helpful in figuring stuff out,” she said. 

The other guest on the show was Ryan Neville-Shepard ’04, a communications professor at the University of Arkansas. Timothy Kaplowitz ’20 also called into the show to explain the subject of his senior thesis: the vast, complicated QAnon conspiracy theory.

Listen to the interview: 

“” Maine Public, May 28, 2020 

Rishi Madnani ’23

Dispelling the myth of the model minority — TikTok 

Protests against racism and police brutality against Black Americans have fed conversations about how other groups experience discrimination, and how those groups can be antiracist themselves. 

In a TikTok video, Rishi Madnani ’23 addressed racism against and within Asian communities, rebutting the “model minority myth” that holds that Asians are smarter or more capable than other racial groups. The video went viral: Several celebrities, including Kelly Rowland, shared it, and it featured in news stories about racism.

The model minority myth is fed in part by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which favored immigrants with advanced degrees or special skills. 

“Remember, Black Americans were not introduced to society on the base of education,” Madnani said. “They were brought in as slaves, as property. And then they were lynched and segregated against and forced into ghettos and not given jobs, and they were mass-incarcerated against and criminalized for petty drug crimes and so much more.

“These issues generationally affect their communities because it’s a part of the system. So, yes, South Asians face ignorance — casual racism, hate crimes — but we have never in American history been systematically dehumanized and oppressed in the way that Black people have.”

Caylin Carbonell ’12

W&M grad student’s dissertation breaks historical convention, offers new possibilities for telling stories — College of William & Mary 

Research on 17th- and 18th-century New England households by Caylin Carbonell ’12 is “pathbreaking,” her doctoral adviser told the college’s news site. 

Carbonell studies power and authority within households, gleaning insights about women from creatively interpreted sources, from men’s diaries to court records to loose slips of paper found within those records. 

“It’s so easy to be enamored by our sources and to get absorbed by your archive because, in a way, it’s a world that we want to know intimately,” Carbonell said. “Yet there’s a constant challenge of reminding myself that I am a foreigner, writing against narratives that have been so established.”

Read the story: 

• “,” College of William & Mary, May 21, 2020 

Beverly Johnson

Coast offers climate mitigation potential — The Working Waterfront 

For an article about the potential of coastal plant life to reduce atmospheric carbon, Susie Arnold of The Working Waterfront, a publication of Maine’s Island Institute, spoke with Professor of Geology Beverly Johnson. 

Johnson works on coastal and marine issues for the Maine Climate Council, a government program whose goals include helping the state reach carbon neutrality by 2045. She and her colleagues have found that while salt marshes, seaweeds, and sea grasses cover a tenth of a percentage point of Maine’s land, they could sequester, through photosynthesis, 1 to 6% of its carbon production. 

“The healthier the system, the higher the rates of carbon sequestration,” Johnson told Arnold. 

Read the story: 

• “,” The Working Waterfront, June 19, 2020 

Tom Whalen ’86

Mining Bobby Orr: BU’s Thomas Whalen celebrates hockey great and the Big Bad Bruins of 1970 in new book — BU Today 

Joel Brown of Boston University news site BU Today spoke with university social science professor Tom Whalen ’86, who recently published a chronicle of how Bobby Orr led the Boston Bruins to the team’s first Stanley Cup win in decades, bringing ice hockey a newfound prominence along the way. 

Kooks and Degenerates on Ice: Bobby Orr, the Big Bad Bruins, and the Stanley Cup Championship That Transformed Hockey is Whalen’s third book about Boston sports. It was a story long in the making: Whalen, like many New England kids, had a poster of during the 1970 Stanley Cup final. 

“Orr was kind of like Michael Jordan on ice,” Whalen says. “You never knew what you were going to get. There’d always be some unbelievable new move that you never saw before, and frankly, haven’t seen since.”

Read the story: 

• “,” BU Today, May 20, 2020

Anita Charles 

Sunday Puzzle: Lost IDs — Weekend Edition, NPR  

Senior Lecturer in Education Anita Charles appeared on NPR’s popular Sunday Puzzle with New York Times puzzle editor and NPR Weekend Edition puzzle master Will Shortz.  

Show contestants are chosen from among listeners who correctly solve a “Challenge” puzzle the week before. This was the challenge that Charles solved:

“Think of a familiar three-word name of something. The first word in that name is a number. Let’s call that number X. The last X letters of the second word of the name are a French translation of the third word. What’s the name?” 

How she got to the answer of this wordy clue was “serendipitous,” Charles said to the segment’s hosts. She was driving when she heard the clue. At that moment, her GPS happened to read, “3 MI.” 

Just like that, there was the answer: Three Mile Island. 

Listen to the puzzle: 

“,” Weekend Edition, June 7, 2020   

Nicholas Basbanes ’65

What is there to love about Longfellow? — The New Yorker

James Marcus of The New Yorker reviewed Cross of Snow, a new biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by journalist-turned-author Nicholas Basbanes ’65.

At issue is the Maine poet’s historical reputation: While Longfellow was a giant in American poetry, later critics dismissed his legacy. Basbanes “seems to take Longfellow’s banishment rather personally,” Marcus wrote, and seeks to rehabilitate him.

According to Richard Duckett of the Worcester, Mass., Telegram & Gazette, Basbanes delved into a variety of archives, including at the poet’s Cambridge, Mass., home, and explored Longfellow’s relationships with the people in his life, particularly his second wife, Fanny. 

Longfellow “had a huge, consequential life,” Basbanes told Duckett. “Now we’re in the 21st century — maybe it’s time for a reappraisal.” 

Read the story: 

“” The New Yorker, June 1, 2020

See also:

“,” Telegram & Gazette, June 6, 2020

Joshua Rubin 

COVID-19 and humankind: The lasting effects of the pandemic on our overall culture and society — Maine Calling, Maine Public

As a Maine Calling guest, Lecturer in Anthropology Josh Rubin explored how social scientists are thinking about the coronavirus pandemic. Overall, he’s noticed that a heightened sense of risk has changed people’s behaviors, from technology-assisted social gatherings to young children “playing hospital” to authorities making decisions perhaps too quickly. 

Moreover, risk “gets attached to bodies,” Rubin said — both in terms of how people consider each other more or less risky, and how easily people are able to avoid risk. 

“The risk of who leaves the house and who doesn’t is not equally distributed,” said Rubin, a 2020 Kroepsch award winner. And “who feels comfortable at a police stop is not equally distributed.

“What’s required, particularly for white Americans, is to address the fact that other people are experiencing terror in their lives as a result of social encounters with police — as much as fears about the coronavirus are respected and acknowledged.” 

Listen to the interview: 

• “,” Maine Calling, June 4, 2020 

Andrew Karr ’22

Suburban Philly bodyboarder takes big-wave world by storm — The Philadelphia Inquirer 

Phil Anastasia of The Philadelphia Inquirer talked to Andrew Karr ’22, a bodyboarder who’s “gone higher, dropped faster, and tunneled deeper — into the seemingly breathing heart of a big wave — than most followers of his sport believed possible for a bodyboarder.” 

In the past year, Karr — already unusual in the bodyboarding world for being from Pennsylvania, as opposed to California or Hawaii — has ridden a 60-foot wave at Nazaré, Portugal, and the barrel of a wave off Maui, Hawaii, probably the first bodyboarder to do so. 

“It’s hard in life to find things that really force you to be 100% present,” Karr said. “Riding big waves, it becomes a survival instinct and forces me into another level of focus that is unattainable in anything else. That makes me feel really, really alive.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 23, 2020 

Rebecca Fraser-Thill

How to find direction amid uncertainty and change — Forbes 

Rebecca Fraser-Thill, a visiting instructor in psychology and director of faculty engagement and outreach at the Center for Purposeful Work, rounded out her four-part series in Forbes on purpose during a pandemic by discussing how to recover a sense of purpose when nothing is certain. 

She drew on the work of psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who said that amid uncertainty, we should ask less about the meaning of life and more about what life requires of us right now. For Fraser-Thill, that putting of one foot in front of the other means being present for her young children. 

Then there’s an in-between state, where the state of emergency has abated but things have not returned to normal. In this case, Fraser-Thill wrote, we can turn to work that has a lasting impact beyond ourselves — creating a product, helping a client, taking action against injustice. 

“If we can find our sense of direction when everything around us is up in the air, imagine how powerful and impactful we’ll be in work and life when things eventually firm up,” she wrote. 

Read the story: 

• “,” Forbes, June 4, 2020 

See also: 

• “,” Forbes, April 19, 2020 
• “” Forbes, April 23, 2020 
• “,” Forbes, April 29, 2020 

Alex Baldwin ’93

Alex Baldwin says golf must remain ‘unrelenting’ in its return to competition — The Florida Times-Union 

Garry Smits of The Florida Times-Union spoke with Alex Baldwin ’93, who was preparing for the June 11 reopening of the Korn Ferry Tour, of which she is president. 

Baldwin, who is in her second year as Korn Ferry president, led that PGA Tour through a 103-day pandemic-induced closure and a safe reopening. Precautions the tour is taking include testing 400 people each week, providing charter flights and hotels to help players and staff physically distance, and, of course, no fans on the course. 

Throughout the process, Baldwin said she tried to keep both safety and the Korn Ferry Tour players, who depended on the tournaments for income, front of mind. 

“We have to remember we’re running a business, to maintain opportunities for our players,” she said. “That’s the human side of this that carries us forward.”

Read the story: 

• “,” The Florida Times-Union, June 10, 2020

Krista Aronson

Maine libraries and bookstores seeing increased demand for books about race — Portland Press Herald

As protests spark conversations about race in America, demand for books about racism has skyrocketed in Maine libraries and bookstores, the Portland Press Herald reported. There is a similar demand for children’s books. 

“Books can provide platforms for conversation with our children in a way that is familiar to our kids,” Professor of Psychology Krista Aronson told reporter Emma Sorkin. 

Aronson studies multicultural children’s books and is the director of , a program that, among several other initiatives, created a database of diverse children’s books. DBF also sponsors the Beautiful Blackbird Children’s Festival, which shares the work of Black artists and authors with Maine children. 

“Picture books can not only help children but also parents in their thinking and growth,” Aronson said. 

Read the story: 

• “,” Portland Press Herald, June 13, 2020 

Raj Saha ’03

Widely cited health institute keeps missing the mark on Maine death projections — Portland Press Herald 

For an article about the wild fluctuation in COVID-19 death projections in Maine, Portland Press Herald reporter Kevin Miller talked to Lecturer in Geology and Physics Raj Saha ’03 about the shortcomings of modeling disease spread. 

Models often fail to include the assumptions and data underlying them in a way the public can understand, Saha said, which means people could mix up cause and effect. For example, a community could relax its prevention measures based on a low death projection — when the low projection was caused by the prevention measures in the first place. 

“We are all used to seeing weather projections – for example, the path of a hurricane which always comes with error zones,” Saha said. “But how a public reacts to the projected paths of a hurricane is not going to affect the actual path of the hurricane. The same cannot be said here in the case of disease projections.”

Read the story: 

• “,” Portland Press Herald, June 18, 2020

Anne Williams 

Soaring sales for $4,500 puzzles? In a lockdown, it all fits

John D. Tulenko of The New York Times spoke with Anne Williams, professor emerita of economics and author of The Jigsaw Puzzle, Piecing Together a History, about the history of a puzzle-making company that caters to the rich and famous — and is seeing soaring sales today. 

Par Puzzles was founded by two out-of-work businessmen during the Great Depression and sold one-of-a-kind, hand-cut puzzles to the likes of legendary actor Humphrey Bogart. They passed it down to an apprentice, John Madden, who now runs it with his son Justin. The Maddens still hand-cut each puzzle for a growing clientele. 

Why pay $900 or more for a puzzle? Because they’re handmade, unique, and very challenging. (The puzzles ��Dz�’t come with a picture of the finished image.)

“If you’re someone who starts a puzzle with corners and edges,” Williams said, “a Par puzzle would be very hard for you.”

Read the story:

• “,” The New York Times, June 19, 2020

Isa Moise ’19

“Farming should be the richest trade on earth”: An interview with Isa Jamira — Slow Food USA

Isa Moise ’19 told a writer for the Slow Food USA website about her experience as an urban farmer and how she hopes to grow healthy food in an accessible and sustainable way. 

Moise, who majored in environmental studies and politics at �ֲ���ý and worked with The �ֲ���ý Garden, has made sustainable food central to her burgeoning career. She has worked at her father’s vegan restaurant and at a New York City aquaponics farm; she now works as a seasonal farmer and educator. 

“Farming takes a very deep understanding of Mother Earth and all the interconnected systems. The interactions that you’re making in the earth right now, they matter,” Isa said. She continued: “As a farmer, I have never seen a not-struggling farmer. And to me, that’s just the craziest thing because I know the land is the richest thing on Earth.” 

Read the story: 

• “�Ę” Slow Food USA, June 18, 2020

In the 24th and latest �ֲ���ý compendium of faculty and staff non-required reading recommendations, a new adjective pops up: timely.

It could describe Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, a sobering nonfiction account by David Quammen of past disease outbreaks. Or Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s classic warning against censorship. Or, perhaps, The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, set in World War II France.

But of course, the Good Reads list, started by Bookstore Director Emerita Sarah Potter ’77 (one of her recs: Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver) and currently run by Administrative Assistant and Supervisor of Academic Administrative Services Alison Keegan (hers: anything by Beatriz Williams), contains titles for any taste.

You can learn about the current moment, or escape it, or simply sit down with a good book.

Andee Alford, Lecturer in the Humanities and Assistant Director of the Mathematics and Statistics Workshop 

I would recommend The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson for any fantasy-lovers out there! Also, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok is an oldie, but goodie!

Martin Andrucki, Charles A. Dana Professor of Theater

In memory of Herman Wouk, who died in 2019: This is My God, a wonderful discussion of Judaism as the core of a modern man’s life; and The Winds of War, a Tolstoyan narrative of the years leading to Pearl Harbor.

A Dangerous Liaison by Carole Seymour-Jones. If you’ve been hungry for info about Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, this will fill your plate.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. Picked it up again after a looong interval. A great re-visit.

Main Currents of Marxism by Leszek Kołakowski. With socialism resurgent in some corners, a necessary resource.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro. Robert Moses and NYC in the 20th Century. Think the Cross-Bronx Expressway is a boring topic? You won’t after this book.

Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir, Professor of Politics and Associate Dean of the Faculty

Happiness by Aminatta Forna. Tells the story of an American divorcee in London who researches urban foxes, and how her life intersects in an interesting way with a prominent Ghanaian psychiatrist who is in the city for a conference. Leaves you hopeful.

Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rimes, creator of Grey’s Anatomy. A life-affirming read about taking chances and pushing past our own limitations.

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. Based on her grandfather’s journals, the book details his fight against Native dispossession, vividly detailing his life in North Dakota, and the challenges he and his tribe face in battling those in power in Washington, D.C.

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez. Armed with data and humor, Criado-Perez discusses how our systematic lack of data on females skews policies in predictable ways.

The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power. Power chronicles her drive to succeed, from being a reporter during the war in Bosnia to becoming the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Claremont by Wiebke von Carolsfeld. A book that starts with a traumatic event, but then focuses on a family healing from that trauma.

Cynthia Baker, Professor of Religious Studies

I recommend the nonfiction book Erosion: Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams. Everything she writes is wonderful and this, her latest book, is as rich, deep, and thought-provoking as all that have come before.

Pamela Baker, Helen A. Papaioanou Professor Emerita of Biological Sciences

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson. A well-written story about eastern Kentucky in the 1930s when the WPA had a program for bringing books to rural people. Based on the real history of the Book Women and the “Blue People” that I knew nothing about.

Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving. The author of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle fame also spent many years in Spain. This is part travelogue, part history, and part retelling of legends he heard while living in the Alhambra in Granada in 1828. He is a great observer of humanity and a great storyteller.

One Hundred Names by Cecelia Ahern. I liked this one because it is a sweet story of life in present-day Ireland. Spoiler alert: It has a happy ending!

Jim Bauer, Director of Network and Infrastructure Services, Information and Library Services

The Mike Bowditch series, written by Paul Doiron, editor emeritus of Down East magazine, who takes us into Maine’s wilderness, where natural predators aren’t the only killers. The series follows Bowditch, a game warden in the wilds of Maine with a haunted past. I’ve read the series in order and just started the most recent one, Almost Midnight, and have enjoyed them all.

Just finishing this and it’s well worth the read: Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré.

Jane McInnis Bedard, retired colleague

Some “easy to get caught up in authors” are Lisa Scottoline, Elin Hildebrand, and Maine’s Tess Gerritsen. I’m finding books that require lots of concentration are not keepers of my attention these last few weeks.

Right now I’m reading Hildebrand’s Summer of ’69…I can easily relate to that summer and Nantucket/Martha’s Vineyard, where it is set!

Ashley Bigda, Donor Relations Coordinator, Office of Advancement

I would love to recommend The Overstory by Richard Powers. It was a selection from the Multifaith Chaplaincy’s book club and is centered around people’s experiences with trees. I keep thinking about this book now that so many people are seeking refuge in the outdoors as a means of escape and comfort.

I also would suggest The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. It is such a magnificent story about resilience and helping others at times when it’s needed most — also very timely!

Jennifer Blanchard, Senior Writer and Assistant to the President

One of the best things I read this year was We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. I think it’s filed under YA, but who cares. It is just a beautifully written, deeply moving summer-set story that you’ll devour in a matter of hours. Perfect for long hammock afternoons; best served with a tall glass of lemonade.

Jonathan Cavallero, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies

If She Wakes: Author Michael Koryta splits his time between Bloomington, Ind., and Camden, Maine — two places near and dear to my heart. If She Wakes is the best mystery I’ve read this past year. In addition to being a gripping story set in Maine, the novel really displays Koryta’s talents. Sometimes I would find myself thinking, “That’s a great sentence!” Those sentences usually weren’t even that important to the overall story. I loved that the writing became just as enjoyable as the big plot points.

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement: New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey recount how they broke the Harvey Weinstein story, while also offering a close, critical look at the systemic norms and legal practices that enable(d) his (and other predators’) behavior. Truly eye-opening.

Just Mercy: �ֲ���ý honorary degree recipient Bryan Stevenson recounts his fights for social justice, including his efforts to end the death penalty. Just Mercy has been a popular title on this list for many years, and many �ֲ���ýies have attested to its virtues. It’s amazing.

With a 3-year-old at home, I’ve been reading a lot of children’s books. Maine author Chris Van Dusen is Emmett’s favorite. Van Dusen has written 10 books (and illustrated many more). All of them are wonderful, especially The Circus Ship, If I Built a House, and Randy Riley’s Really Big Hit. Van Dusen is a bit of a Maine legend. Every parent I know knows his work, and truth be told, the parents enjoy the books at least as much as the kids.

Emily Colucci, Library Assistant for Public Services, Information & Library Services

I have been listening to the book Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, via Audible, on my Kindle.

Daphne Comeau, Administrative Assistant for Annual Giving, Office of College Advancement

There were several moments made available to me this year during MLK Day at �ֲ���ý that prompted me to dive into books. They aren’t leisure, but they have had and are having a profound effect on me. 

There’s definitely a theme. Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson and Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving have both deepened my understanding of the foundational ways that white people are socialized to not identify with their own race. This piece of the puzzle has been important to finding my role in white supremacy. Reading these books together has helped me see both sides of the coin at once, and that has been a gift.

Jane Costlow, Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies

Michael Crummey’s Sweetland. One of the most moving books I’ve read in years: a small island off the coast of Newfoundland, by the end of the book you feel as though you know the terrain — and the intertwined lives of the residents — as well as you know your backyard.

By Drew Hayden Taylor (who read at �ֲ���ý in late February), Motorcycles and Sweetgrass. Hilarious misadventures of the chief of a First Nations community in southern Ontario. A mysterious stranger rides in on a 1953 Indian Chief (the motorcycle of the title)…and the fun begins.

Jean Stafford’s The Mountain Lion. Absorbing coming-of-age story about a brother and sister who find refuge with their uncle in the mountains of Colorado. For me the most absorbing part of the book is the girl’s story — the breaking-out of a feisty and unconventional soul (who wants to be a writer) from the small-minded comforts of middle-class life in the 1920s.

Shoshanna Currier, Director, �ֲ���ý Dance Festival

Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin is unexpectedly resonant right now.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo is beautiful and challenging fiction.

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey about the breaking of the Weinstein case is fascinating. Even though we know how it ends, getting a look at the process of investigative journalism is totally riveting. It includes a really important section on Christine Blasey Ford.

Deborah Cutten, Academic Administrative Assistant

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins. “With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.” — Penguin Random House

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. “If it’s only a better life you seek, seek it elsewhere . . . This path is only for people who have no choice, no other option, only violence and misery behind you. And your journey will grow even more treacherous from here. Everything is working against you.” — From the novel

After the Eclipse: A Mother’s Murder, A Daughter’s Search by Sarah Perry. “Perry weaves together her painful memories of that night [of her mother’s murder] with archival research and journalistic interviews to not only piece together the details of her mother’s death, but illuminate the woman she was before it. With clear, powerful prose, Perry paints a portrait of unconventional motherhood while questioning society’s handling of violence against women.” — W Magazine

The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett. “St. Elizabeth’s, a home for unwed mothers in Habit, Kentucky, usually harbors its residents for only a little while. Not so for Rose Clinton, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed, and stays. She plans to give up her child, thinking she cannot be the mother it needs.

“But when Cecilia is born, Rose makes a place for herself and her daughter amid St. Elizabeth’s extended family of nuns and an ever-changing collection of pregnant teenage girls. Rose’s past won’t be kept away, though, even by St. Elizabeth’s; she cannot remain untouched by what she has left behind, even as she cannot change who she has become in the leaving.” — HarperCollins Publishers

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly is a powerful book set in the second World War and based on a true story. It is well-narrated by three different narrators, whose lives are set on a collision course. The story is seen through the eyes of Caroline Ferriday, New York socialite; Kasia Kuzmerick, a young Polish woman; and Herta Oberheuser, a young German doctor. 

Karen Daigler, Director of Graduate and Professional School Advising, Center for Purposeful Work

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a wonderful book by Kim Michele Richardson about the Pack Horse Librarians who, in the 1930s, delivered library books in rural Kentucky to promote literacy.

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey is about the breaking of the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment story. It was a page-turner for me.

Normal People by Sally Rooney is a love story about a complicated relationship between two young people in Ireland.

The Summer Cottage by Viola Shipman is a light, easy read — which was just what I needed in the midst of COVID-19. It’s about family tradition and small-town community.

In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer Fleming is another pretty easy read but a mystery — the main characters are a small-town cop and a minister.

The Memory of Us by Camille Di Maio is set in prewar London and is about a young woman who lives the dream life of the rich, but her world is shaken when she learns that her parents institutionalized a blind and deaf younger brother.

The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms was a lighthearted story about an overworked and underappreciated single mom whose ex-husband comes back to the family home to take care of the kids while she heads off to live the high life in NYC.

David Das, Assistant Director, Center for Global Education

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. A long internal monologue. Perfect for days of quarantine.

Carson Dockum, Coordinator in Accessible Education and Student Support

Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas (he also narrates his own Audible).

Jessica Duff, Assistant Director of Athletics for Internal Operations and Student Athlete Services

Heavy by Kiese Laymon.

Susan Dunning, Associate Director of Gift Planning, Office of Advancement

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty. Doughty has a nice approach for a book about death and the death industry — just irreverent enough without being insensitive. I intend to read more of her books.

The next two recommendations go together:

The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark by Meryl Gordon, AND Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell.

These books tell the fascinating story of Huguette Clark, daughter of a copper baron and disgraced U.S. senator who inherited a vast fortune but lived as a recluse, spent her final two decades (yes, decades) living in a NYC hospital, died at 104 with only the companionship of those whose salaries she paid, and left her massive estate in shambles to be fought over by employees, charitable organizations, and a large group of distant squabbling relatives. And I didn’t even mention the real estate she owned, but didn’t live in . . .

The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin. A lovely story about family, siblings especially, and all the ways they love each other, hurt each other, the choices we make and don’t make — a very relatable, undemanding book.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Somehow never read this in high school or college, but I’m glad I read it now — it’s timely and chilling.

Elizabeth Durand ’76

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman. Set during World War II in Europe, this is one of those books that makes the outside world disappear.

The Huntress by Kate Quinn. A long, engrossing novel that starts in Siberia before WWII, and continues beyond it into Massachusetts.

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue. This title was chosen by a friend’s reading group. If she hadn’t told me to read it, I might never have picked it up. The book, set in Ireland during the second half of the 1800s, explores faith, preconceptions, and responsibility. It starts slow, but is worth the wait. Superb character development and lots to think about.

A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier. Set in the 1930s; reminiscent of Barbara Pym, but tougher. A good read anyway, but particularly of interest if you have a passion for any form of needlework.

Caz Frear has written two mysteries, with the third due late this year. On the one hand, it’s great to discover someone at the beginning of her career; on the other, you have to wait a long time for each subsequent book. She is one of the rare authors whose second book lives up to the promise of the first. Do read them in order: First is Sweet Little Lies, and the second is Stone Cold Heart.

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel. Another book about identity and preconceptions, and also a good story.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Because I always have to throw in at least one YA title. Everything I want to say gives something away — just read it.

Francis Eanes, Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• The Unwinding by George Packer

Melinda Emerson, retired colleague

Skyward by Mary Alice Monroe. “Harris Henderson handles injured birds with ease at his birds of prey rehab center, but he has no idea how to manage his diabetic five-year-old Marion. Enter Ella Majors, a pediatric nurse-turned- nanny.

“As Ella cares for the girl, she becomes an integral part of the Hendersons’ lives and, before long, Harris begins to see her as more than a plain caretaker. Hauntingly beautiful relationships between birds and people add texture to the story.

“Most notable are the connections among an elderly Black man named Lijah and his eagle, Santee, and a rooster that appears to guard both the center and Brady, a troubled teen working off a community service sentence.” — Publishers Weekly

The Overstory by Richard Powers. “There is a world alongside ours — vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.” — W. W. Norton & Company

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. “Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U- Haul.” — Simon and Schuster

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. “This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and soul-stirring wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried near the Pyramids.

“Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles in his path.

“But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within. Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the story of Santiago is an eternal testament to the transforming power of our dreams and the importance of listening.” — HarperCollins

Nathan Faries, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen. May not be for everyone at this moment, but this 2013 account of previous pandemics and thoughtful consideration of “the next big one” is engaging without being sensationalistic. Here in the midst of that next big one, I found these journalistic narratives a comforting reminder that things could be much worse as well as a sobering warning that the worst could still come to pass.

Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne. I’m frustrated I can’t convince my kids to love these stories yet, but maybe they’re not middle-aged enough. As I listened to the flawless estate-authorized Audible recording, I found myself laughing with real grown-up happiness, not just nostalgia.

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout ’77. If you’ve read Olive Kitteridge, you’ve probably already read this continuation of Olive’s story. I was struck dead by the original story collection, in a good way. I lived through the sequel, but I wouldn’t have missed this life for anything.

Carol Farrell, Costume Shop Supervisor

I promise I’ve read (or listened to) books of real substance this year, but right now, it seems more relevant to share my guilty pleasure with you: audio books by Anthony Horowitz (he wrote the whole Foyle’s War TV series).

You could start with The Magpie Murders — really fun and twisted. If you like it, try The Word is Murder, which has wickedly funny self-referential pseudo-nonfictional humor. There’s a second one in that series titled The Sentence is Death — equally entertaining. 

Unrelated to those is The House of Silk, a novel that was actually sanctioned by the Arthur Conan Doyle estate, and is brilliantly read by Derek Jacobi. A real treat. That one also has a second, called Moriarty, but I DON’T recommend that one: the writing and the reader are both sub-par. Enjoy, and don’t feel guilty!

Cary Gemmer Blake ’07, Leadership Gift Officer, Office of Advancement

I really loved Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout ’77. I liked it even better than Olive Kitteridge! Also, Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover.

Dan Girling, Mail and Materials Handling Clerk, Post & Print 

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell. This book is about the problems that can occur when people try to understand and communicate with strangers. Using examples from history as well as current events, Gladwell explains why most people are not able to interpret the actions of those they ��Dz�’t know. I enjoyed learning about the psychology of communication and how it could be applied to real-life situations.

Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig. In this book, Haig talks about mental health in the Information Age. Drawing from his own experiences with mental illness, he gives advice on limiting the negative effects of modern life. Given the current situation, where many of us are interacting via the internet more than ever, the book has only become more relevant.

Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel. This nonfiction book tells the real story of Christopher Knight, the “North Pond Hermit” who hid himself away in the Maine wilderness for almost three decades. The book explains how he survived through the seasons and the effects of his burglaries on nearby homes. Christopher Knight’s actions were destructive at times but the story of his seclusion is interesting and almost unbelievable.

The Institute by Stephen King. In this science fiction novel, a boy named Luke is kidnapped and brought to a secret facility for children with special powers. Luke and the other children are forced to undergo experiments to heighten their abilities so they can be used as weapons by those who run the facility. Like most Stephen King novels, the Institute has memorable characters and a story that takes many exciting turns.

Carolina González Valencia, Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture

On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous and Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong. The two most beautiful books I read in 2019.

My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education and Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet. A window into the experiences of a first-gen Cuban American from Miami, navigating higher ed, and what happens after.

Phyllis Graber Jensen, Director of Photography and Video, �ֲ���ý Communications Office

Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 by Adam Hochschild is a moving story of the heroic members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who engaged in a pivotal struggle for democracy in Spain.

Meg Gresh, Assistant to the Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Bruce Hall, Network Administrator, Information and Library Services

I recommend The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game by Mary Pilon. In our new world you may have been playing board games more than before. If you have a copy of Monopoly, you may find booklets or references to the history of Monopoly included in the box or the rules. You can read them but don’t believe them as there is a lot more to the story that was intentionally left out. 

Reading The Monopolists will show how a game designed around 1900 by the progressive feminist Lizzie Magie shows problems caused by wealth inequality and demonstrates remedies and became the board game that Parker Brothers published as Monopoly in the 1930s. 

Some of my favorite books have been ones that took something I thought I knew something about and showed me an entirely different perspective. The Monopolists does that, and you’ll never look at Monopoly the same way.

Joe Hall, Associate Professor of History

Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-1782 by Elizabeth A. Fenn. I teach this book in my environmental history class, and it is a recurring favorite. This year all the more so. Fenn reveals the horrors of the disease, the ways that it revealed how North America was far more interconnected than you would imagine, and how every event — even one driven by a microbe — is inseparable from the social and political dynamics that define human fortunes.

Pox Americana is a great read, but it is also a helpful reminder that people need to do more than “be in this together” if they are going to confront the inequities of any catastrophe.

Jay Hartshorn, Head Coach, Women’s Cross Country and Track & Field

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start Up by John Carreyrou. Nonfiction that reads like fiction.

Leslie Hill, Associate Professor of Politics

The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years after 50 by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

Bill Hiss ’66, retired colleague

Sometimes a series by a single author, if time allows. While volunteering in Saigon for nine weeks, I found several thorough, fascinating biographies by Walter Isaacson:

• Leonardo DaVinci
• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
• Einstein: His Life and Universe

Isaacson has written five other books, including biographies of Kissinger and Steve Jobs, and two “group biographies” of The Wise Men (six advisers to Truman after WWII (if only Trump had a similar brain trust) and The Innovators (on the geeks, hackers and geniuses who invented the internet).

Sometimes reading books by a single author is a bit humbling, reminding us of our comparatively unproductive lives. Isaacson wrote these books while variously serving as the editor of Time, chairman/CEO of CNN, and president of the Aspen Institute.

And what turned out to be a fascinating book for our current COVID-19 lockdown: Richard Preston’s Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come.

If you love books, you might enjoy any of the 10 volumes written by Nicholas Basbanes ’65. Most are on the history of books and the unique world of bibliophiles, but his most recent is a biography: Cross of Snow, a Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Alexandra Hood, Olin Arts Center Operations Supervisor

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. “For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast.

“So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand.

“Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life — until the unthinkable happens.” — G.P. Putnam’s Sons

I’m sure this will be a repeat selection — it’s just that good. Everyone was talking about it and I was skeptical, but the hype was real. The writing is beautiful, the characters are compelling, and the story poetic and intriguing. Highly recommended.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. (trigger warning: dark content) “Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.” — William Morrow

This is not a light, easy selection — oriented around the #MeToo movement and the psychological impact of sexual assault, it was challenging to read, heartbreaking, often agonizing, and raw. It won’t be for everyone, but it is a powerful book if you’re up for the very heavy content.

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. “The Broken Earth trilogy is set on a massive continent called the Stillness, in a far-future Earth wracked with periodic disasters known as Seasons. These Seasons aren’t just bad storms: they’re massive, apocalyptic events that last for generations, reshaping the world and its inhabitants.” — Andrew Liptak, The Verge

There was a lot of hype behind this trilogy, and yet again I was not disappointed. I discovered that the author is a counseling psychologist, which I find really enhances the characters and elements of the story — every aspect of this series is multifaceted, especially around subjects of trauma/mental health/abuse, racism, climate change, etc. These books are really phenomenal.

The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish by Katya Apekina. “Moving through a selection of first-person accounts and written with a sinister sense of humor, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish powerfully captures the quiet torment of two sisters craving the attention of a parent they can’t, and shouldn’t, have to themselves.

“In this captivating debut, Katya Apekina disquietingly crooks the lines between fact and fantasy, between escape and freedom, and between love and obsession.” — Two Dollar Radio

Another heavy novel (though not nearly as intense as My Dark Vanessa), this one really blew me away. It is both dark and gorgeous, electrically charged and thought-provoking. The language in the book has a unique depth, the characters get under your skin, and the narrative structure is really compelling. By the end of the book I wanted to read it all over again.

Shonna Humphrey, Director of Sponsored Programs and Research Compliance, Dean of the Faculty’s Office

Roughhouse Friday by Maine author Jaed Coffin. This book describes a year in the life of a young man who kayaked to Alaska on a whim after college and then became a boxing league champion while tutoring at-risk kids and struggling with ideas about masculinity and maturity. I loved every page.

The Afterlife of Kenzaburo Tsuruda by Elisabeth Wilkins Lombardo. This novel is about an atheist Japanese scientist who, upon his death, emerges into an afterlife he never believed in. It reads somewhat unfinished because the author died before the book was published, but it’s a gorgeous story that mixes history and Japanese spiritual tradition.

Margaret Imber, Associate Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies and Associate Dean of the Faculty

The Lady Sherlock series by Sherry Thomas. A fun detective novel series in which Holmes is actually a girl! Good plotting and fun to read.

The Deadly Series by Kate Parker. A feminist, genteel, poor, widow in Britain during the runup to WWII — good plotting and fun.

Heavy by Kiese Laymon. I read this after hearing Laymon speak at �ֲ���ý. This is a profoundly moving, important book. I’ve been giving it as a birthday gift to everyone in my family. Extraordinary prose telling a searing tale of coming of age as an African American man in the US.

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald. This is an excellent book that explains the theoretical underpinnings of the implicit association test in a very accessible way.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. As someone who yields to no one in her indifference to the beauty of nature, I find the lyricism of the prose in a novel that is very much about how our relationship to nature shapes our identity utterly compelling. Stunningly beautiful. Please read this book.

The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815–1914 by Richard J. Evans. A very good and accessible survey of a period in history that I find quite challenging to understand.

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott. A fun-to-read novel based on the CIA plot to get Doctor Zhivago published in the West.

Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over by Nell Painter. A wonderful memoir by an excellent American historian about her decision to pursue a career as an artist after she retired from Princeton. If you’re retirement-curious, you should read this.

Laura Juraska, retired colleague

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters. It’s a social critique on Hollywood over time and place with engaging characters all trying to “write” their own stories. There’s even an appearance by Richard Burton. As my book group concluded, a very good pandemic choice — a fun, generally uplifting romp.

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. Finally, the last volume in the trilogy of the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell.

Emily Kane, Professor of Sociology

Earlier this year, I found myself — just by coincidence rather than any plan — reading three novels in a row that all involved time travel. They have very different settings and themes, and very different ways in which time travel figures into the plots, but also some similarities in terms of history and social upheavals intertwining with individual lives. I recommend all three: Richard Powers’ The Time of Our Singing; Helen Dunmore’s The Greatcoat; and Kiese Laymon’s Long Division.

Alison Keegan, Administrative Assistant and Supervisor of Academic Administrative Services

The Golden Hour; The Summer Wives; The Wicked City; and The Wicked Redhead, all by Beatriz Williams. Williams has quickly become my new favorite author. She often intertwines characters from previous books, so it can be a challenge to pay attention and keep them all straight, but she takes us on some historic fictional journeys that are unforgettable and truly compelling.

Always with strong female characters, these books depict espionage, sacrifice, courage, love, and often are set against challenging and threatening circumstances. The writing is beautiful and I’m thrilled when I discover a new Beatriz Williams book.

The Wives by Tarryn Fisher. Fast-paced and suspenseful, this is the type of breathless thriller that I love to not be able to put down. I always try to figure things out in books like this, but have learned to just sit back and wait for it to be revealed in all its twisty glory.

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. I started this book just as the pandemic hit in full force, and I found myself unable to focus, constantly distracted, and not giving it the full attention it deserved.

I snapped out of that funk and was soon enthralled by the gorgeous writing and truly epic journey Krueger took me on that spanned 1930s Minnesota. Much like Where the Crawdads Sing, the landscape of this book is just as much a main character as the people who inhabit it.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough. My notes say, “wicked good — wicked creepy.” Four and a half stars.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. My notes say, “good (not great) characters, well-enough written, with an interesting premise.” Four stars.

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison. Disturbing and complicated story about abuse, poverty, and family. Character development was totally solid. Loved this. Five stars.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Loved this. Idealized but real. Awesome characters — unlikely but loved it anyway. Four and a half stars.

Grace Kendall, Director of Design Services

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman. Set in WWII Europe, it’s a story about a Jewish mother who calls to life a female golem to protect her daughter when she realizes she no longer can. It follows several intersecting characters and stories, each of them focused on connection and humanity in impossible times.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. This book revolves around intersecting identities and how various characters who are attached to femininity in some way (either through gender, sexuality, or gender assigned at birth) navigate that particular identity as it criss-crosses with others like race, class, gender, relationships, and work.

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker. Kolker tells the true story of the Galvins and their 12 children, six of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia. The book follows their story, their attempts at treatment, the tragedy of such a diagnosis, and the adult childrens’ work with scientists to try to find a genetic “key” to the disease.

Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and Hope by Albert Woodfox. Woodfox shares his story of his time in Angola prison in Louisiana, where he spent more than 40 years in solitary confinement as one of the Angola Three — three Black prisoners kept in solitary confinement due to their political activism.

He fought continuously for dignity and humanity (for himself and other prisoners), and he has an exacting radar in this book for how so many prison policies boil down to the removal of those things. He also writes about the Black Panther Party and how vital it was in helping him maintain his identity and his humanity while in prison. He was released in 2016.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. A fantastic story fantastically translated. The further in you venture, the more uncertain you are of who’s sane. The main character is an oddball old crank I kept rooting for.

Jennifer Koviach-Côté, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry

There, There by Tommy Orange. An extremely engaging story about 12 characters, centered on the Big Oakland Powwow. Better in print than audiobook, in order to keep track of the characters.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. A history of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, told through the context of one woman’s murder.

Pride by Ibi Zoboi. A remarkably accurate and fun retelling of Pride and Prejudice, set in modern Brooklyn.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra. Historical fiction set in post-Soviet Chechnya, predominantly during the second Chechen war.

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson. The story of a North Korean man’s life, it sheds light on life in modern North Korea.

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The story of a young Black slave who uses his power of teleportation to help free slaves on the Underground Railroad.

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson. Full disclosure, I haven’t finished this book, but I can’t put it down. It begins with the sweet-16 party of a woman whose parents were teenagers when she was born, and tells the stories of her parents and grandparents.

Cheryl Lacey, Director of Dining Services 

Many are not that new, but I enjoyed every one of these!

• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• Call The Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950s by Jennifer Worth
• Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell 
• Circe by Madeline Miller
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller 
• Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout ’77
• Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
• The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

Peter Lasagna, Men’s Lacrosse Coach 

City by Clifford D. Simak. I am stunned that this futuristic, visionary masterpiece did not come to my attention earlier in life. Very quick read. Stunningly apt for this moment in United States and world history.

Bill Low, Curator, �ֲ���ý Museum of Art

Little, Big: Or, The Fairies’ Parliament by John Crowley. “John Crowley’s masterful Little, Big is the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood — not found on any map — to marry Daily Alice Drinkawater, as was prophesied.

“It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder.” — Harper Perennial

Kathy Low, Professor of Psychology

• The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel 
• Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin 
• How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi 
• Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
• Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
• The Dazzle of Day and Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss
• Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett 
• Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout ’77

Monica McCusker, Accounting Assistant, Financial Offices 

Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies by J. B. West and Mary Lynn Kotz. I found this book to be a very interesting read. Written by the head usher of the White House, it gives a personal view of what life was like with each of the First Ladies — Roosevelts through the Nixons — their personalities, family life and social responsibilities.

What if the Norse gods were still around, and underemployed? American Gods by Neil Gaiman offers an entertaining adventure into that possibility and their struggle with a lack of believers. If you’re into exploring an irreverent look at conventional religious beliefs, Good Omens by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett could provide a good read for summer or any time.

Just One Damned Thing After Another: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s by Jodi Taylor (the first in an 11-book series). The story of a “secret” society of historians who travel in time to obtain first-hand proof of certain historical events in conjunction with a local university. Things ��Dz�’t always go smoothly, and their sojourns into the past provide adventures that make for a fun read.

Tom McGuinness, Director of Institutional Research, Analysis and Planning

Educated by Tara Westover. After seemingly everyone suggested this one last year, I picked it up and it completely lived up to the billing. This memoir of a young woman growing up in an isolated, fundamentalist family in the Idaho mountains is an extraordinary coming-of-age story.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. I had seen and read news stories about the rise and fall of blood-testing company Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes. Reading the whole story, it is shocking how such fraudulent behavior was enabled by powerful people. It was a truly riveting story.

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow. Like Bad Blood, Catch and Kill is an example of stellar investigative reporting into the power structures that shield people (in this case, Harvey Weinstein) from the consequences of their horrible actions.

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. I am not big on science fiction, but this is one that has stuck with me since I read it. If a mystery featuring time travel, multiverses, and the impending end of the world is the type of thing that sounds appealing to you, I give it a strong recommendation.

Meghan Metzger, Leadership Gift Officer, Office of Advancement

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery. This has been an incredible read — fun, moving, fascinating — exploring the consciousness of the creatures around us, and how that awareness can impact us as humans.

The author spends most of her time at the New England Aquarium, and it’s been so interesting to learn more about a place I’ve been so many times, and now can’t wait to revisit once being in public places is a thing we do again!

Kevin Michaud, Third Cook, Dining

You will notice a theme for my reads as I am a researcher and storyteller for the Maine Old Cemeteries Association. As this is Maine’s Bicentennial year, what better way to include my past time with some great reads? 

• Early Gravestones of Southern Maine: The Genius of Bartlett Adams and Portland’s Historic Eastern Cemetery: A Field of Ancient Graves by Ron Romano
• Laurel Hill Cemetery of Saco, Maine by Leslie Rounds and Emory Rounds on behalf of the Dyer Library Association
• The Irish of Portland, Maine: A History of Forest City Hibernians by Mathew Jude Barker

Hoi Ning Ngai, Associate Director, Center for Purposeful Work

My pick is Educated by Tara Westover. It was profoundly moving. Also, If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha. It just came out during the pandemic!

Kerry O’Brien, Assistant Dean of the Faculty 

Euphoria by Lily King. Anthropologists gone wild in this novel based very remotely on the life of Margaret Mead and her first and second husbands, though the author take things on a different trajectory.

The book brings up fundamental dichotomies: the scholars and the subjects, the “primitive” and the “advanced,” fame and knowledge, possession and freedom, women and men, truth and fiction. In the process, the book looks at a range of approaches to anthropological field work, what researchers owe subjects, and the motivations of scholars (spoiler: They’re not all on the level!).

It’s incredible how much stuff early anthropologists brought with them to their field sites: sideboards, tons of books, china, typewriters, and lots of booze; one wonders what the indigenous ethnographers made of them.

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie Jones-Rogers is a scathing account of how white women inherited, owned, sold, and treated enslaved people; it busts open the myth that genteel white women never fully bought into the culture and economy of slavery.

Au contraire, they were full players, and derived from slave ownership considerable social standing and economic power in a male-dominated world. White women’s wealth was typically in slaves, not land; they navigated legal channels to protect their sole ownership of their enslaved property from financially inept husbands in a volatile economy.

Most chilling was the day-to-day treatment of enslaved people by their female owners, the casual dissolution of enslaved families to make a quick buck, and the intimate intersection of white and Black women around wet-nursing, through which the very life of mistress’ babies depended on Black bodies.

Carole Parker, Library Assistant for Acquisitions, Information and Library Services

• The Overstory by Richard Powers 
• The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish 
• The Library Book by Susan Orlean
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Camille Parrish, Lecturer and Learning Associate in Environmental Studies

Sweetland by Michael Crummey. Fantastic portrayal of an isolated Newfoundland island and the remaining inhabitants whom the government is paying to leave their homes. In particular, the book focuses on Sweetland, the same name as the island: his history, thinking, feelings, and relationships to the land, and to the human and nonhuman communities. He is a character that stays with you well beyond the end of the book, as does the island.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. The sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale follows the stories of several women, each with different roles in Gilead and beyond. Initially, their lives appear to be separated by space and circumstance, but then “things happen,” and it becomes clear how intertwined they are as Gilead faces a crisis. I found the book riveting, and not as bleak as The Handmaid’s Tale.

Sonja Pieck, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies

Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered by Ruth Klüger (I’m reading the original German: Weiter leben: Eine Jugend). Klüger is professor emerita of German Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

Her memoir recounts her increasingly constrained childhood in Vienna after the German annexation and the traumatic years thereafter as she and her mother were transported first to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz. Klüger’s poetic, fluid language is deeply moving as she wrestles with the profound ambiguities of her experiences and her memories of them.

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl. I’m just starting on this collection of essays by the New York Times columnist Margaret Renkl. Beautiful, meandering and melancholy, Renkl’s writing meditates on the inextricability of love and loss — how they bind us to each other and to the natural world of which we are part.

Sarah Potter ’77, Bookstore Director Emerita

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. Perhaps it was the English setting, the humble Harold, or the very bizarre nature of his journey that drew me in. Quirky, charming and very human.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver. While this was not my favorite Kingsolver novel, I enjoy her writing. And as I look back over what I have read this year, I remember the details of this story vividly — monarch butterflies, difficult Appalachian life, climate change — she weaves a good tale.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. An immersion into the Victorian language of flowers (fascinating!), the challenges of an overwhelmed foster-care system, how one might love a child, and so much more.

And finally, my annual shout out to Louise Penny for this year’s book The Better Man. I read everything she writes! I am completely absorbed by her characters.

Jack Pribram, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy

Tara Westover, Educated. Remarkable story of growing up in a somewhat rural area of Idaho; followed by making it to college despite no K–12 schooling and almost no home schooling. On her own she learns just enough to pass exams that get her into Brigham Young University.

The role of mentors is crucial to help her get oriented and then to encourage her to go to graduate school. Not at all as smoothly as I’ve made it sound. This reminded me that in my first few years teaching at �ֲ���ý (early ’70s) I didn’t think about the fact that students have very different backgrounds.

Hiram Bingham, Lost City of the Incas: The Story of Machu Picchu and Its Builders. Bingham is rightly given credit for telling the world about Machu Picchu beginning in 1911. This city in the Peruvian Andes was essentially untouched for 400 years — not discovered by the Spaniards who brought down the Inca empire.

Bingham made several trips from Yale and discovered other places in the Andes. Separately he encouraged universities to begin to develop curricula about South America. Maps and Bingham photographs are included. Note: the 2002 edition provides a 20-page introduction by Hugh Thompson providing more context.

Stephanie Pridgeon, Assistant Professor of Spanish

Writers and Lovers by Lily King. King’s prose is effortlessly beautiful. The characters and the writing are understated.

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. The translation, by Sophie Hughes, has been highly acclaimed. It’s bold and haunting.

John Rasmussen, Energy Manager, Facility Services

Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes. Traces the history of the human use of electricity from the Greeks to the late 19th century. Full of great stories of the amazing personalities involved in electrifying the planet, including Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse.

Kirk Read, Professor of French and Francophone Studies

I find myself feeling more than a little guilty each year at this time, realizing that I haven’t read nearly enough outside my job to be able to recommend a lot. Yes, I do spend much of my day job reading literature to earn my keep, but that’s no excuse . . .

Here are some titles on my bedstand that I promise myself to finish around the edges of learning to become a much more effective online teacher this summer. I am sure that many have been recommended in years past. Let this be a reminder.

I am a third of the way through Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and it is truly transformative about the way I view the world and connections between what I now see as rather inadequate notions of natural and social sciences and humanities and how to be a better person on this planet. Subtitle: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

Reading and rereading. There’s a theme. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (Robin DiAngelo); How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram Kendi); Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (Ruha Benjamin).

The French and francophone studies department is offering all its senior majors Alain Mabanckou’s Le Monde est mon langage. Short essays in dialogue with friends and mentors of this engaging author from around the francophone world.

James Baldwin. Anything. I just finished Giovanni’s Room and keep dipping into my anthology for more. I wrote about Another Country for my college application, and have appreciated revisiting him now 43 years later.

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Adam Hochschild). Again, a rereading for an article I have been working on forever in response to Hergé’s Tintin au Congo. This wildly racist and colonialist comic adventure is fondly embraced by readers in all corners of the world and I’m trying to figure that out…

For those looking to brush up on their French, the bookstore might have some copies left of several of Brahim Metiba’s works, Ma mère et moi and Je n’ai pas eu le temps de bavarder avec toi. I may have recommended this in the past.

They are lovely. A son in dialogue with his parents and the ways in which his gay Muslim identity strains their loving relationships. The bookstore would probably love to move them into your readership.

Finally, the library has been offering up books from the annex archives for faculty to add to their personal or department libraries. I offer here a list of titles culled from the most recent list. Books for the moment? More like a poem than a true recommendation (I did not write down the authors at the time…)

• A Thousand Shall Fall
• Let Us Have Faith,
• Lift Up Your Heart
• The White House Mystique
• No Life of My Own
• We Shall Rebuild
• Before the Dawn
• The Howling of the Coyotes 
• Shrinking Dollars, Vanishing Jobs
• The Quality of Bank Loans
• How to Live With Your Teenager: A Guide to Survival
• Yes You Can
• This Damned Campus

Mike Retelle, Professor of Geology

The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks. This is a well-written story on traditional sheep farming life in rural England.

The Game: Harvard, Yale, and America in 1968 by George Howe Colt. This is an amazing story of people from all backgrounds of life across the U.S. involved in the traditional Harvard-Yale football game and how they fit into this tumultuous year and in the future in U.S. history.

The Russian Five: A Story of Espionage, Defection, Bribery and Courage by Keith Gave. This is a story of the five Russian hockey players who defected to the U.S. to play hockey for the Detroit Red Wings in the National Hockey League.

Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier by Mark Adams. This is a mix of modern travel with a historical account of exploration around coastal southwestern Alaska.

Bronwyn Sale, Lecturer in Education

The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Adriana Salerno, Associate Professor of Mathematics

I have been reading the Binti trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor, and I’m loving it! Also, Francis Su’s Mathematics for Human Flourishing (which is a little bit about math but a lot more about humanity and what connects us all).

Tiffany Salter, Visiting Assistant Professor of English

I would like to recommend In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado but with a content warning (domestic abuse).

This is a heavy read, beautifully crafted. Machado’s micro-essays comprise a memoir of same-sex partner abuse during Machado’s time at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where she earned her MFA. She illuminates the processes of the gaslighting and escalating physical and emotional abuse she experienced and only later has been able to process.

There are at least two reasons why this is an important read. There is an extreme dearth of representations of and discussions about same-sex partner abuse, and part of Machado’s impetus for writing the memoir was to let others know they are not alone, to help normalize conversations about this topic so victims will be taken seriously when they reach out for help.

Sitting side-by-side with the heaviness of the subject matter is the fact that this is an exploration of genre and trope in literature. Each section of 1–3 pages presents a portion of the story in a different tradition with titles like “Dream House as Folktale Taxonomy,” “Dream House as Choose-Your-Own-Adventure,” and “Dream House as Noir.”

The exploration of genre in itself is engaging while pushing the reader to question their relationship with stories we tell about partner abuse — what does or does not fit into the scripts our society has written about these urgent, pervasive issues.

Sharon Saunders, Associate College Librarian for Systems and Bibliographic Services, Information and Library Services

Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works — and How It Fails by Yanis Varoufakis. How does our economy work? This book clearly and concisely explains the system we live in that influences every aspect of our lives.

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong. Every chapter in this book is an eye-opener. If you don’t mind having your assumptions turned inside out, this is a book for you.

Paula Schlax, Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry

I recommend the debut novel of Simon Jimenez, The Vanished Birds.

Carl Steidel, Senior Associate Dean of Students

Fiction

• Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
• A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
• Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins 
• Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
•  Misery by Stephen King
• The Powder Mage Trilogy by Brian McClellan
• Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
• World War Z by Max Brooks

Non-Fiction

• Heavy by Kiese Laymon
• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Sawyer Sylvester, Professor Emeritus of Sociology

Last year’s review of Mark Forsyth’s Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language ended with a note that two of his other books — Horologicon: A Day’s Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language and Eloquence: The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase awaited reading.

I have now read them, and both are highly recommended. I hope by next year to have read Forsyth’s The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the Delight of Not Getting what You Wanted.

I also recommend two books on America’s history and political culture: These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore, and The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels by Jon Meacham.

Whether you are a Native Mainer or from away, I guarantee you will enjoy John Cole’s In Maine: Essays on Life’s Seasons.

For an analysis of the ways literature, properly taught and properly understood, can be the major source of intellectual development for students, I recommend Mark Edmundson’s Why Read?

Finally, my current read is Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night. This is a rich intellectual, cultural, and political history of libraries and their contribution to the civilizations in which they rest.

William Wallace, Lecturer in Humanities, Assistant Swimming Coach 

The Overstory by Richard Powers

• Make It Scream, Make It Burn by Leslie Jamison
• Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

Pat Webber, Director of Archives and Special Collections

The mystery trilogy of Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, and The Infinite Blacktop, by Sara Gran.

Claire DeWitt is the self-diagnosed “world’s greatest detective.” And like most similarly self-regarding detectives who’ve come before her, she has a host of personal issues she is wading through while taking on cases and, often, just trying to survive.

The trilogy consists of three separate mysteries, but with several connective through-lines: You should definitely read them in order for maximum effect, but you can take each one on its own. Gran imbues the three with a touch of the occult as well, although that lessens with each book.

The third book resolves some, but not all, of the running narratives from the entire series, and that incompleteness is the only thing that mars the proceedings. (Well, that, and the fact that DeWitt makes some very poor personal decisions that are often hard to take.)

Definitely worth the read, and if you’re like me you’ll wish there was a fourth book already, if only for a better sense of completion. The most recent was published in 2018.

The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors by Dan Jones. 

A flowing and easy-to-read one-volume history of the (in)famous crusading religious military order. Just don’t expect to find anything about Freemasons, the Holy Grail, or any Dan Brown nonsense. (Jones briefly covers some of the subsequent literary and pseudohistorical writings on the Templars in an appendix.)

Jones has also written on the Crusades and the Plantagenets of England, which I’ll probably delve into at some point given how much I enjoyed reading this book.

The NHL: 100 Years of On-Ice Action and Boardroom Battles by D’Arcy Jenish. Are you missing sports in your life right now? Well if you love hockey, give this one a try. Using previously little-known archival sources (yes!), Jenish presents an entertaining tale of the public and private doings of the National Hockey League since its founding in 1917.

He also explores the predecessors to the NHL, as well as other leagues that have come and gone in the last century. Not only a solid hockey book, but a great advertisement for the necessity of preserving documents. What else did you expect?

Graduating into a recession is not something you want to have in common with anyone else. 

Both the Class of 2009 and the Class of 2020 have that dubious distinction. For the Class of 2009, the Great Recession saw national job losses in the hundreds of thousands and hiring freezes across industries. For �ֲ���ý’ most recent graduates, measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus has caused unemployment to shoot to the double digits. 

But it’s not impossible to launch a recession-era career. In a May 26 Zoom discussion sponsored by the Center for Purposeful Work, the �ֲ���ý Office of Alumni Engagement, and the �ֲ���ý Alumni Council, four graduates of the Class of 2009 described their experiences in a range of industries and offered words of wisdom for the seniors graduating into a less-than-stellar job market. 

In the discussion, moderated by Purposeful Work office assistant Maya Church ’20 — herself about to graduate — the 2009 alumni described the twists and turns of their career paths, their setbacks and successes, and the power of the �ֲ���ý community. 

‘Get comfortable with uncertainty’

As class president, Arsalan Suhail ’09 noticed a sense of optimism among his classmates during his senior year. The Great Recession had been raging for months, but the graduating seniors were hopeful that the economy would rebound in time for their job searches. 

And traditional senior festivities provided a welcome distraction, Suhail recalled — something �ֲ���ý’ most recent graduates weren’t able to celebrate in person.

Reality hit in the weeks after Commencement, when the 2009 graduates returned home and “started realizing that the economy was not going to be opening up in the foreseeable future and they had to look at plans B, C, and D,” Suhail said. 

Suhail considers himself lucky to have secured a job during the school year. He had hoped to launch a career in investment banking, but after the collapse of the global finance industries, he started working as a strategy consultant at IBM.

After nine years at IBM he’s now completing his MBA degree at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business — graduating into a recession again. 

“Patience, perseverance, and resilience are going to be the defining characteristics of the Class of 2020,” Suhail said. “The next couple of weeks and months are going to be tough. 

“It’s going to take time for the economy to rebound. There’s no silver bullet. Get comfortable with the looming uncertainty as it’ll be critical to your success.”   

Your first job doesn’t have to define your career

Stephanie Howson ’09 graduated from �ֲ���ý without a job or a clear idea of what she wanted to do. “My life as a postgrad was really me grappling with some big questions, kind of like we do at �ֲ���ý — except I was alone all day and there was no Commons,” she said. 

Howson quickly realized, however, that her first job didn’t have to be perfect. She took a temporary position as a bank loan processor — not quite what she wanted to do, but a way to build her resume while buying the time to think about her strengths, interests, and next steps.

Through a �ֲ���ý contact, she started a career in fundraising; she is now a director of development at Seattle University. 

“The question that kept me moving forward in my job search was, ‘What do I want to do next?’”

“When I graduated, I kept asking myself what I feel was the wrong question: What do I want to do with my life?” Howson said. “That question really scared me, and rightly so. It’s basically impossible to answer, especially when you’re 21 years old. 

“The question that kept me moving forward in my job search was, ‘What do I want to do next?’” 

Something good can lead to something better

The job search was more complicated for Ricky Weisskopf ’09, who is from El Salvador. Like Suhail, he wanted to become an investment banker. Not only was 2009 a bad time for investment banks, some of which were collapsing; other companies were not sponsoring as many work visas. 

So Weisskopf, a squash star at �ֲ���ý, worked as an assistant coach at the college before trying graduate school in Switzerland — though he realized partway through that program that it was not for him.

So he implemented Plan C, returning to the U.S. to continue coaching squash. 

Though he had a work visa and enjoyed coaching, it was not the career he wanted. “I thought I had everything planned out, then all of a sudden it didn’t work out,” he said. 

Weisskopf was able, however, to turn his sense of failure into an opportunity to learn. “Being employed doing something that I loved allowed me to start building confidence and gave me a clear head as to what I wanted to do next,” he said. 

“Next” ended up being a career in tech; Weisskopf is now a product manager at Curalate. “Squash allowed me to get over the hump of that first real failure and realize it wasn’t a failure — it was just a change of path.” 

Figure out what you ��Dz�’t like

Not long after graduation, Manuela Odell ’09 carved out a niche at a series of startups, working in public relations and social media and managing online communities. Though she did this type of work for more than a decade, she realized it wasn’t what she wanted to do. 

So Odell went into product design, learning how to create the best experience for users of websites and apps. 

I needed to learn what I ��Dz�’t like to do in order to figure out what I love to do.”

“I ��Dz�’t regret that it took me 12 years to realize that, because I needed to learn what I ��Dz�’t like to do in order to figure out what I love to do,” she said. “Taking jobs and figuring out what tasks you ��Dz�’t like is arguably more important than figuring out what you do like.” 

Maya Church agreed. “I’ve had some crazy job experiences that I didn’t necessarily like, but that I definitely learned from,” she said. 

Gain experience however you can 

Odell recently finished a course in product design — like Suhail, graduating once again into a recession. 

“Navigating this recession is definitely reminiscent of navigating the job hunt in 2009,” she said. “I find myself asking some of the same questions that I did back then: Is this hard because I ��Dz�’t have much work experience coming into a completely different career, or is it because it’s a recession? I think it’s a little bit of both.”

Odell considered searching for jobs full time, but decided instead to balance the job hunt with freelance work. She’s redesigned websites, created an app to review coffee shops for remote workers, and even developed a personal finance tool for the cash-sharing app Venmo. 

Freelancing provides both income and entries for her design portfolio. And it unknots a familiar paradox of the early career: “My problem was that I couldn’t get a full-time job, and I didn’t have work experience,” she said. “Freelancing is solving that problem for me.”  

Worry about yourself (only) 

Back in 2009, and again in 2020, Suhail “started noticing a lot of people comparing themselves to other people.” That’s not a good idea. 

“Not everyone’s path is the same.”

“Don’t compare yourself with anyone,” he said. “It would be well-worth it to read some leadership books and seek inspiration from the stories of these incredibly successful people who are role models. Everyone has a different story, path, and everyone’s timing differs. Just focus on yourself and improving yourself as much as you can, day by day, step by step.” 

Perhaps more so in 2020 than in 2009, social media can facilitate unhealthy comparisons, said Church. “It’s good sometimes, as I’m getting older, to take breaks from social media, to stop looking at what other people are doing,” she said. “It gets super distracting, and it messes with your mental health.” 

Use the �ֲ���ý network…  

Suhail advised the Class of 2020 to look to fellow �ֲ���ý alumni for help in a particularly tough job market. “There are legions of supporters and people who are rooting for your success,” he said. “They know things are going to be tough. The empathy is there. Leverage it.” 

Members of the Class of 2009 have experienced the power of the �ֲ���ý community. A fellow �ֲ���ýie had helped Stephanie Howson break into fundraising. “Your network helps set you apart in any time, but especially during a recession,” she said.  

After coaching squash for several years, Ricky Weisskopf connected with Ben Schippers ’04, a tech entrepreneur. Weisskopf got a job at Schippers’ design and engineering firm, HappyFunCorp. 

Schippers “introduced me to tech, which I am so grateful for,” Weisskopf said. “Since that day, I love what I do. One of the things I enjoy about �ֲ���ý is meeting people from all classes and trying to create that sense of community where people are willing and able to help each other.” 

…but network authentically 

Networking is most effective when the people doing the networking build long-lasting relationships, Odell pointed out. 

Authentic networking, she said, is “not networking as a way to get a job but as a way to ask questions. Maybe there’s somebody from the �ֲ���ý community who’s a cinematographer, and you’re interested in it. Just ask them, ‘Can I take 15 minutes to ask you what your career trajectory looked like and what your day-to-day is?’” 

“You need to be genuinely interested in understanding something about that person.” 

Take care of yourself 

No amount of job-hunting, skill-building, or networking should come at the expense of mental health. Weisskopf recommended seeking out therapy if it’s necessary and accessible. 

Odell emphasized the power of community, in whatever form it takes. “We’re not alone in this,” she said. “There are other people who are going through this. This is a challenging time in so many ways, but there is so much compassion right now — so many people who want to help, who want to talk, who want to share their advice with you. 

“I can say with 1000% certainty that you will grow and learn so much about yourself and the world from this.” 

“This will get better, and everybody will land on two feet.” 

And ��Dz�’t forget to experience joy, Suhail said. 

“You just graduated,” he said. “Take a step back, enjoy this time, enjoy the good cheer with family and friends. The future is really bright, and we’re banking on you to make sure the future is going to be bright for generations.” 

“Hang in there,” Weisskopf added. “These are very weird times. This will get better, and everybody will land on two feet and move forward.”