Books - Scholarship & Academic Achievements

Books

(3/7/03) Professor of English Steven Millhauser has published a new book, The King in the Tree: Three Novellas (Knopf, 2003). The book, Millhauser's 10th in 30 years, explores the many shapes of love. "Revenge" is about erotic love and betrayal, told through the voice of a woman showing her home to a stranger with a disturbing secret, while "An Adventure of Don Juan" and the title novella transform classic fables into original tales of romance.
    Critics have been generous in their praise. In the March 9, 2003, edition of the New York Times Book Review, critic Laura Miller writes: “This writer is in love with a large, very beautiful and not especially tame tiger, and at its best the fiction he produces is an exquisite negotiation with the beast.”
    Michael Dirda, in the Washington Post Book World, said, "No one alive writes better about yearning and heartbreak than Steven Millhauser. So enchanting is his prose, so delicate his touch, that one surrenders to his plangent word-music as one does to the wistful piano pieces of Ravel and Chopin."
    Rocky Mountain News critic Jenny Shank notes, "All three novellas have Millhauser's gifted storytelling voice going for them—a voice that grabs the reader by the ear and makes him pay attention … A fine collection [that] proves old stories, in the care of the right hands like Millhauser's, can still run like a dream." The New Yorker called the book "Irresistible…Millhauser is a virtuoso of waking dreams."
    Millhauser's earlier works include Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (Crown, 1996), winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for fiction; Enchanted Night (Crown, 1999), The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (Crown, 1998), Little Kingdoms (Simon and Schuster, 1993), and The Barnum Museum (Simon and Schuster, 1990). His stories have been published in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Esquire, and Harper's Magazine, and have been included in a number of anthologies.
    Millhauser's honors include election in 1998 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the 1994 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction; and a 1987 award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. More

(1/28/03) Erica Bastress-Dukehart, assistant professor of history, is the author of The Zimmern Chronicle: Nobility, Memory, and Self-Representation in 16th-Century Germany, published in November by Ashgate Press, London.
    The book brings the history of the Zimmern family to English readers for the first time with an examination of the most famous noble family chronicle to come out of 16th century Germany. Bastress-Dukehart relates the history of the chronicle and introduces the longstanding mystery surrounding the text’s authorship. She portrays the Zimmern Chronicle as more than a family history, arguing that because the authors filled their work with legends, sexual tales, and farcical stories of daily life in Southwestern Germany, they proved themselves adept at stimulating the curiosity of their readers, thus ensuring that the audience would read the work to its conclusion.
    Bastress-Dukehart came to Skidmore in the fall of 2002 from the University of Oregon, where she earned several citations for her teaching. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Oregon, where she earned a B.S. degree in history and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in early modern European history at the University of California at Berkeley. More

(12/2/02) Daniel Nathan, assistant professor of American Studies, has published Saying It's So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal (University of Illinois Press, 2002). More than a mere recounting of events, Nathan's cultural history focuses on the way the scandal is remembered by journalists, historians, novelists, filmmakers, and fans. More

(8/27/02) Sheldon Solomon, professor of psychology, has co-authored In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror (American Psychological Association, 2002). The book looks at the despair, fear, and anger that arose after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001.
    Solomon and co-authors Tom Pyszczynski and Jeff Greenberg analyze the events of last fall through the lens of Terror Management Theory, which they originally defined about 20 years ago. The theory seeks to explain the way humans react to the threat of death, and how this reaction influences their post-threat cognition and emotion. In their new book, the authors explain how Terror Management Theory provides ways to understand and reduce terrorism’s effect. More

(8/5/02) Professor of English Kathryn Davis has received critical acclaim for her latest novel, Versailles (2002, Houghton Mifflin). A review in the Aug. 4, 2002, New York Times Book Review calls Versailles "splendid ... rapturous."
    A member of the Skidmore faculty since 1989, Davis has published four other novels and is the recipient of a Kafka Prize for fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 1999 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award. More

(7/18/02) Charles M. Joseph, interim vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty, explores the artistic collaboration between composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer George Balanchine in Stravinsky and Balanchine—A Journey of Invention (2002, Yale University Press).
    A front-page review in the Aug. 4 New York Times Book Review calls Joseph “a master of an elegant and refreshingly courteous prose." According to a Publisher’s Weekly critique of Stravinsky and Balanchine, "Joseph’s detailed analyses of the music’s form and structure in relationship to the dance is excellent ... he is able to articulate precisely what it is about Balanchine’s choreography that allows us, in Balanchine’s words, ‘to see the music and hear the dance.’ "
    Joseph's other works on the composer include Stravinsky Inside Out (2001, Yale University Press) and the 1993 Edwin M. Moseley Faculty Research Lecture at Skidmore. More

(6/27/02) Michael C. Ennis-McMillan, assistant professor of anthropology, has written La Purificación Tepetitla: Agua potable y cambio social en el somontano ("Drinking Water and Social Change in the Foothills") published by Universidad Iberoamericana and Archivo Histórico del Agua, México.
    Ennis-McMillan analyzes the relationship between drinking water management and social change, exploring how communities use traditional civil and religious institutions to address conflicts over local control of water supplies. More

(Spring '02) Jennifer Delton, assistant professor of history, Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (University of Minnesota Press). Delton's book explores how the state of Minnesota, overwhelmingly white, led the way in civil rights legislation in the 1940s. (Spring '02)

(4/6/02) David Karp, associate professor of social work, (co-author) What is Community Justice: Case Studies of Restorative Justice and Community Supervision (Sage Publications, 2002). More

(4/6/02) Lewis Rosengarten, lecturer in Liberal Studies and academic advisor in the Higher Education Opportunity Program, Jazz in Short Measures (Authors Choice Press, 2001). More

(3/14/02) Peg Boyers '75, executive editor of Salmagundi, Hard Bread, University of Chicago Press; Marc Woodworth '84, lecturer in English and Salmagundi associate editor, Arcade, Grove Press. More

(11/20/01) Deborah Rohr, associate professor of music, The Careers of British Musicians, 1750-1850: A Profession of Artisans, Cambridge University Press. More

(11/7/01) Roy Ginsberg, professor of government, The European Union in International Politics: Baptism by Fire, Rowman & Littlefield. More

(11/7/01) Charles M. Joseph, professor of music and interim vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty, Stravinsky Inside Out, Yale University Press. More

(Spring '01) James J. Kennelly, assistant professor of management and business, The Kerry Way: The History of Kerry Group, 1972-2000, Oak Tree Press (Dublin), 2001 More

(Winter '01) Mary C. Lynn, professor of American studies, Make No Small Plans: A History of Skidmore College. More

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