Fall 2007 Off the Shelf
F a c u l t y W o r k s
Blank Verse: A Guide to Its History and Use
By Robert B. Shaw (Ohio University Press)
Familiar to many as the form of Shakespeare’s plays and Milton’s Paradise Lost, blank verse— unrhymed iambic pentameter—has provided poets with a powerful and versatile metric line for centuries. Shaw analyzes the work in this meter by these great poets but also gives emphasis to modern and postmodern poets working in the form, the meter’s technical features, and its many uses.
Robert B. Shaw is professor of English at MHC and frequently writes on modern and contemporary poetry. His own books of poems include Below the Surface and Solving for X.
F i c t i o n
Not Like You
By Deborah Davis ’79 (Clarion Books)
Touted by one reviewer as the best mother-daughter story she’d ever read, Not Like You tells the story of fifteen-year-old Kayla, who must learn to take care of herself—even if that means no longer taking care of her alcoholic mother. The book is an emotionally complex novel for teens, and its moving, realistic storyline builds to a hopeful conclusion.
Deborah Davis’s other novels are My Brother Has AIDS and The Secret of the Seal. She was also the editor of You Look Too Young to Be a Mom: Teen Mothers Speak Out on Love, Learning, and Success. Check out her Web site, www.deborahdavisauthor.com.
The Furry Disco
By Jo Ann Siegman Kearley ’62 (iUniverse)
A parable involving guinea pigs, a parrot, musical cats, and sundry rodents, this novella for young readers offers an interspecies romp replete with puns, double entendres, a high-powered vocabulary, and handy glossary. The author’s love of animals shines through this slender volume and is dedicated to “any being who is searching for an insight into reality—consciously or not.”
Jo Kearley is a teacher at Old Orchard School in Campbell, California.
N o n f i c t i o n
The Pleasures and Perils of Raising Young Musicians: A Guide for Parents
By Michelle Siteman ’65 (AuthorHouse)
Called “an essential book on this subject” by flutist James Galway, this guide for the parents of musical children addresses issues such as practicing problems, private teachers, problems at school, and music conservatories. It’s also a book for parents who simply wonder about giving any child music lessons. Siteman’s answer is a definitive yes to the benefits for every child of music education.
Michelle Siteman Shwartz has been teaching for thirty years and has a son well on his way to a career as a classical musician.
Jess: To and From the Printed Page
By Ingrid Schaffner ’83 (Independent Curators International)
San Francisco artist Jess was known for taking ordinary objects and making them into art. In the 1950s, with glue and a knife, Jess took Dick Tracy comic strips and transformed them into the Tricky Cad series, which became well-known icons of the pop art phenomenon. This photographic tribute to Jess’s work explores the timeline of his artistry and style, giving descriptions to the medley of his pieces.
Ingrid Schaffner is the senior curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She has written extensively on modern and contemporary art.
The Little Black Book of Washington, D.C.
By Harriet Edleson ’74 (Peter Pauper Press)
For anyone who has ever needed a well-written, informative, fun-filled, and pocket-sized guidebook for Washington, D.C., this little black book is the answer. Dividing the city into zones, it gives insider tips on where to eat, what to see, how to get there, and where to sleep in the nation’s capital. Foldout maps of the city and metro system are included.
Harriet Edleson is a reporter in New York City and writes about health, travel, and home design.
Sacred Players: The Politics of Response in the Middle English Religious Drama
By Heather Hill-Vásquez ’89 (The Catholic University of America Press)
A consistently powerful and popular form of lay worship, the English religious drama of the medieval period defined and reflected the varying nature of religious discourse and dramatic performance well into and beyond the Reformation. Sacred Players argues that this second life was driven by a focus on the role of audience response and examines the cultural forces that shaped the performance lifetime of these plays.
Heather Hill-Vásquez is director of the women’s studies program and assistant professor of English at the University of Detroit– Mercy.
Cart-wheels
Rusty
By Lela McGuire Rustemeyer; Edited by Theresia Rustemeyer Long and Susan Long Quainton ’57 (Xlibris)
When Susan Quainton ’57 found abandoned manuscripts of her grandmother’s memoirs, she decided to edit and publish the story of Lela Rustemeyer and her childhood on America’s frontier prairie. The result is this two-book series—a witty historical narrative of Lela’s life and coming of age in the prairie lands.
Susan Long Quainton has taught English at high schools and elementary schools in the United States and abroad. She lives in Washington, D.C.
Parsleys, Fennels, and Queen Anne’s Lace: Herbs and Ornamentals From the Umbel Family
By Barbara Perry Lawton ’52 (Timber Press)
When famous Greek philosopher, Socrates, was sentenced to death in the fourth century, he was forced to drink a plant-derived poison. The plant came from the Umbelliferae family, one of the most distinctive families in the plant kingdom. Parsleys, Fennels, and Queen Anne’s Lace is a complete introduction to the Umbelliferae plants, full of gardening suggestions, botanical history, and fascinating plant folklore.
Barbara Perry Lawton acted as editor and manager of publications for the Missouri Botanical Garden and served as president of the Garden Writers Association of America. Her other publications include Hibiscus: Hardy and Tropical Plants for the Garden and Mints: A Family of Herbs and Ornamentals. She writes a weekly garden column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
At War and At Home
By Robert M. McClung and Gale S. McClung ’45 (iUniverse)
As letter writing is fast becoming a lost art in our world of e-mail, megabytes, and instant messaging, this touching collection of one family’s correspondence during World War II is a reminder of earlier times. Readers follow the McClung family through the war as three sons are deployed into the service.
Gale Stubbs McClung is editor emeritus of the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly. She is coauthor of The Book of Distinguished American Women.
Applying Ethics
By Jeffrey Olen, Vincent Barry, and Julie C. Van Camp ’69 (Thomson Wadsworth)
The ninth edition of this best-selling textbook of applied ethics attacks hard-hitting ethics debates such as gay marriage, stem-cell research, Guantanamo Bay, and abortion, offering students case studies through which to apply philosophical theories to contemporary issues.
Coauthor Julie C. Van Camp received her PhD in philosophy from Temple University and a J.D. cum laude from Georgetown University. Other publications include Ethical Issues in the Courts: A Companion to Philosophical Ethics.
Structures and Subjectivities: Attending to Early Modern Women
By Joan E. Hartman ’51 and Adele Seeff (University of Delaware Press)
The realities of life for women in the early modern period are little known. Structures and Subjectivities explores the geographical, political, and social structures that enclosed these women in history, as well as the gendered hierarchies that defined their lives. This collection of essays looks at women through the lenses of portraits, law courts, and even the architectural structure of their homes.
Joan E. Hartman is a professor of English at the College of Staten Island, The City University of New York.
Frances Perkins: First Woman Cabinet Member
By Emily Keller (Morgan Reynolds Publishing)
This detailed biography of America’s first woman cabinet member and acclaimed Mount Holyoke alumna tells the story of Frances Perkins, a young woman whose ideals of worker’s rights and social reform fired her ambition and landed her in the White House as secretary of labor. The book chronicles Perkins’s life, from reviving the nation’s economy together with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to taking care of her often institutionalized, bipolar husband, all with the grace typical of her time.
Emily Keller currently resides in Niagara Falls, New York. She is a retired schoolteacher and a copy editor.
The Aesthetics of Quietude: Ota Shogo and the Theatre of Divestiture
By Mariko Yamazaki Boyd MA ’74 (Sophia University Press)
This book provides an analysis of one of the most radical of Japanese theater artists of the 1960s, Ota Shogo. Inspired by traditional Japanese art forms, he nevertheless veered off to focus on quietude, passivity, and the aesthetics of doing nothing. The book includes translations of three of his representative plays.
Mari Boyd is senior professor of literature and theater at Sophia University in Tokyo. She has translated and edited numerous anthologies of contemporary Japanese drama.
The Derveni Krater: Masterpiece of Classical Greek Metalwork
By Beryl Barr-Sharrar ’56 (American School of Classical Studies at Athens)
This beautifully illustrated book examines the most elaborate metal vessel from the ancient world yet discovered. Found in an undisturbed Macedonian tomb of the late fourth century BC, intricate iconography— including a youthful Dionysus, a sleeping Silenos, and a bearded hunter—informs every area of the krater.
Beryl Barr-Sharrar is the author of numerous publications on classical and Hellenistic art. She is an adjunct professor of art history at New York University.
D V D
Holding Our Own: Embracing the End of Life
By Camilla Rockwell ’72 (Fuzzy Slippers Productions)
Designed to initiate conversations about a time of life that is often difficult to discuss, Holding Our Own is a powerful yet tender treatment of aging and dying. The film highlights the fabric portraits of aging women and men by the artist Deidre Scherer as well as Hallowell, a chorus that sings in hospices. Holding Our Own takes a wise, celebratory approach to loss, grieving, and staying connected to each other. [Note: See p. 20 for a related feature article.]
Camilla Rockwell is an independent director and producer living in Burlington, Vermont. She has coproduced segments for the PBS series Body and Soul, as well as the documentary Pioneers of Hospice. She began working in film in 1983 with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, and with him coproduced Thomas Jefferson, which aired on PBS in 1997.
