Junior Valerie Kuznik’s reading list reflects her interests in Spanish and communication studies. In addition to material for class, she just finished

• Qué les pasa a los hombres (the Spanish
  version of He’s Just Not That Into You) by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
• Hey Whipple! Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan (a witty take on advertising—her field of interest)
• The Bride Quartet series by Nora Roberts

• The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa by Yasunari Kawabata

—Alex Wagner, junior, mathematics

• Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Charles Wheelan

—Bryann DaSilva, senior, economics

• USA Today
• The Tennessean
• Good Housekeeping and People

—Paulette Lynch, manager, chemistry storeroom

• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
• The Archaeology of Disease by Charlotte Roberts and Keith Manchester

—Rachel Witt, senior, anthropology

• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for 
the World Food System by Raj Patel
• Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

—Sebastian Rogers, junior, anthropology

• Notes on Democracy by H.L. Mencken
• In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays by Frank S. Meyer
• Freedom and Federalism by Felix Morley
• The Man Versus The State by Herbert Spencer
• Reading now: Saint Augustine’s Confessions

—Keith Neely, junior, history

• The Wall Street Journal, mediapost.com (daily)
• Advertising Age
• Flight Journal Magazine, Car and Driver, Cooking Light, Cook’s Illustrated
• Just read: The Good Life by Peter Gomes (I’m a faculty VUceptor)
• The Idea Writers by Teressa Iezzi
• A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and Battle of Manassas by Ethan S. Rafuse
• Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander ed. by Gary W. Gallagher
• The Pembroke Welsh Corgi by Susan W. Ewing
• Reading concurrently: Generals South, Generals North by Alan Axelrod
• The Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson
• Next: Men of Fire: Grant, Forrest, and the Campaign That Decided The Civil War by Jack Hurst
• Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne

As you can tell, I like reading about the American Civil War.

—Arthur Johnsen, associate professor of the practice of managerial studies

• The Good Life by Peter Gomes (another VUceptor)
• A Time to Kill by John Grisham

—Newton Adkins, sophomore, Latin American studies

Senior Will Johnson (pictured) is reading Africa: A Biography of the Continent by John Reader. (Will traveled to South Africa a few semesters ago as part of Vanderbilt’s VISAGE program). The economics major is also reading:

• The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons
• From Poverty to Prosperity by Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz

• Shakespeare’s Richard II, Richard III, As You Like It and Henry IV Part 1
• The Routledge Drama Anthology and Sourcebook, edited by Maggie B. Gale and John F. Deeney

—Maddie Fansler, junior, theater

• The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
• Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert
• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel by Michael Chabon
• Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• Beautiful Democracy: Aesthetics and Anarchy in a Global Era by Russ Castronovo

—Jennifer Fay, associate professor of film studies and English

And since film is her field of study, here’s what she’s viewing:

• Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg, 2010)—recently at the Belcourt
• The President’s Mystery (Phil Rosen, 1936)
• The Hole (Tsai Ming-Liang, 1998)
• TV on DVD: Friday Night Lights

• The Sacrament of Language by Giorgio Agamben
• The Implications of Immanence: Toward a New Concept of Life by Leonard Lawlor
• Hatred and Forgiveness by Julia Kristeva

—Sarah Hansen, PhD’10, lecturer in philosophy

• “On Faith” blog, Washington Post.com
• The Cider House Rules by John Irving

—Gabe Horton, senior, political science

• Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss
• Double Talk by Virginia M. Scott
• Elementary Hindi by Richard Delacy and Sudha Joshi
• Rajasthan: Delhi, Agra and Jaipur (Fodor’s Travel Guide)

—Todd F. Hughes, director, Vanderbilt Language Center, and associate editor, Hispania Journal

Meg Risen (pictured) serves as the education coordinator for the managerial studies program. In addition to reading The New York Times, House Beautiful magazine and Gawker.com regularly, she’s just finished:

• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
• Moneyball by Michael Lewis
• Baltimore’s Alley Houses by Mary Ellen Hayward
• Shop Class As Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford
• The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher

• Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
  (The Japanese title is Umibe no Kafuka)
• Gentle Japanese (language): The expressions that cannot be translated into English by Rumi Sei

—Keiko Nakajima, senior lecturer in Japanese

• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
• Truckpatch: A Farmer’s Odyssey by Ward Sinclair (wonderful, Twain-like reading—written by my late uncle, a writer for the Washington Post. I’ve read this many times and am reading it again—it speaks to the seasons so well.)
• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J. Ratey and Eric Hagerman
• Made By Hand: Searching For Meaning in a Throwaway World by Mark Frauenfelder
• New York Times (daily)

—Connie Sinclair, program coordinator, Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy

• Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado
• Generation Kill by Evan Wright
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

—Christian Anthony Lehr, senior, history

• Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant (audio)
• Lectures on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason by J. M. Bernstein (audio)
• The Epistle to the Romans by Karl Barth

—Matt Pagan, senior, art studio

• On War by Carl von Clausewitz, edited by Anatol Rapoport
• Memorial Day by Vince Flynn

—Joel Walden, junior, communication studies and economics

• A Gilded Lapse of Time by Gjertrud Schnackenberg

—Christopher M. S. Johns, Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Professor of History

Joya Hampton, (pictured) a junior psychology major, focuses on course-related reading:

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
• African American Family Life by Vonnie C. McLoyd (for Psychology 2100)
• Perception by Randolph Blake (for Psychology 214)
• Excerpts from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (for Spanish 243)

• The Associate by John Grisham
• The Shack by William P. Young

—Barbara R. Kaeser, administrative assistant, women’s and gender studies

• Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI
• The Thrill of the Chaste by Dawn Eden
• The Drudge Report, Post Politics and Vandyright.com
• The National Review
• The Wall Street Journal

—Frannie Boyle, junior, history and Earth and environmental science

• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
• You Better Not Cry by Augusten Burroughs

—Clint Hendrix, senior lecturer, coordinator of Spanish 104

• What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
• Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

—Clay Skipper, sophomore, English

Obenchain

The mix of written material that Arts and Science people read is always intriguing. Here’s what some of them have been reading for study and pleasure.

Junior interdisciplinary studies major Tommy Obenchain (pictured) recently finished reading several books, among them South: The Endurance Experience by Ernest Shackleton.

His other reading material:

• Business Stripped Bare by Richard Branson
• RuinAir by Paul Kilduff
• Understand My Muslim People by Abraham Sarker
• The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller
• The Southwest Airlines Way by Jody Hoffer Gittel

• Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer by Tracy Kidder
• Science Journal articles

—Deepa Subbi Joshi, junior, medicine, health and society

• Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA by Daniel J. Fairbanks
• Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters by Donald R. Prothero
• The Concept of the Gene in Development and Evolution by Peter Beurton, et. al., eds.,
• Autonomy in Jewish Philosophy by Kenneth Seeskin
• De Usu Partium by Galen, translated by Margaret Tallmadge May
• The Seven Books of Paulus Aegineta, translated by Francis Adams
• The Song of Songs (and its Arabic & Hebrew commentaries)
• TLS (Times Literary Supplement, London)
• Review of Metaphysics
• History of Philosophy Quarterly, etc.

—Lenn E. Goodman, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and professor of philosophy

• Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance by Tony Dungy
• The Blind Side by Michael Lewis
• Meat Market by Bruce Feldman
• Sports Illustrated

—Daniel Powers, senior, neuroscience

• The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
• Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
• Buster Olney’s baseball blog on ESPN
• NYMag.com’s Daily Intel blog

—Kat Miller, senior, economics

• The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman
• Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon S. Wolin
• The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler (a re-read)
• kunstler.com
• peaksurfer.blogspot.com
• energybulletin.net

—Pam Jones, editorial assistant, mathematics

• USA Today
• The Bourne Supremacy by Robert Ludlum
• The Testament by John Grisham

—Patrick Benoist, senior, economics

When you ask someone from Arts and Science if they’ve read any good books lately, be prepared to be amazed, entertained and informed.

Richard McGregor (pictured), assistant professor of religious studies, is reading Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey by Hans Gumbrecht. 

Picture Theory by W.J.T. Mitchell (explores the conundrum that we fill our world with images, but then have no control over them)

Light of the Heavenly Bodies to Explain the Secrets of the Pyramids by Abu Jafar al-Idrisi 

On Suicide Bombing by Talal Asad (challenges our impulse to explain the motives behind acts of public violence)

Symptoms of Unknown Origin by Clifton K. Meador, BA’52, MD’55 (for a sociology of medicine class) 

Does My Child Have Autism? by Wendy Stone

Sports Illustrated 

—Gabrielle Levine, junior, psychology

The Daily Beast (a news blog with a cheat sheet of the important information out there)

The Saucy Sisters’ Guide to Wine by Barbara Nowak and Beverly Wichman

Ilium by Dan Simmons

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (for French 272)

The Art of the Short Story by Dana Gioia (for English 211)

—Katy Adams, senior, English and French

The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor edited by John Morreall 

How to Talk Dirty and Influence People by Lenny Bruce 

Women in Congress by Aristophanes 

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

(I study comedy. I’m teaching Humor, Ancient to Modern this semester—I can’t deny it’s fun.)

—Amanda Krauss, assistant professor of classics

The Secret Lives of Citizens: Pursuing the Promise of American Life by Thomas Geoghegan

The Temple Gate Called Beautiful by David Kirby

Apollo’s Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination by Michael Sims

A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision by Simon Ings

20 Questions to Ask if You Have a Great Idea or Invention by Michael H. Jester

—Jon Erickson, biological sciences bibliographer and coordinator, patent and trademark depository, Science and Engineering Library

The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman

Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Performing Songwriter

Reader’s Digest

Prevention

National Geographic

USA Today and The State newspapers online

—Tonya Mills, administrative assistant, political science

          

Junior Vivien G. Haupt (pictured), psychology, is reading Brain Sex by Anne Moir and David Jessel for her neuroscience class. 

Other recent reads:

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer (as part of a reading group with her mom)

The State Of The Earth by Paul Conkin, professor of history, emeritus (makes me want to meet the author)

Papers on the synchronous discharge of nerve cells in the cerebral cortex

The Bourne Betrayal by Robert Ludlum (airport reading)

—Ford Ebner, professor of psychology and professor of cell and developmental biology

The New Yorker

The New York Times (online)

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

The Republic in Print by Trish Loughran

The Postal Age by David M. Henkin

—Teresa A. Goddu,
director of American studies and associate professor of English

Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb

Spider Woman’s Web: Traditional Native American Tales about Women’s Power by Susan Hazen-Hammond

Traditions of the Arapaho by George A. Dorsey and Alfred L. Kroeber

— Anne Hill, administrative assistant, history of art

Rethinking Expertise by Harry Collins and Robert Evans

Why Posterity Matters by Avner de-Shalit 

New Foundations of Cost-Benefit Analysis 
by Matthew D. Adler and Eric A. Posner 

Worst-Case Scenarios by Cass Sunstein 

Climate Change 2007, Vol II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
by IPCC Working Group 2 

Experience and Nature by John Dewey

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
by Lawrence Sterne 

Judge Fogg by Randy O’Brien 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (bedtime reading to my daughter) by J.K. Rowling

Out of the Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free by Robert Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan 

—Jonathan Gilligan, senior lecturer in earth and environmental science and public policy

Linda Tressel by Anthony Trollope

Miss Majoribanks by Margaret Oliphant

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton

The Monk by Matthew Lewis

—Jo Ann Staples, senior lecturer in mathematics and director of teaching

The New Yorker 

Now a Major Motion Picture by Christine Geraghty

Scripts by a very talented Russian script writer of the 1970s, Iurii Klepikov

— Irina Makoveeva, Mellon Assistant Professor of Russian

Blogs: Hot Air, Protein Wisdom, The Next Right and American Thinker

Defending Identity by Natan Sharansky

— Mike Warren, junior, economics

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon

Back issues of The New York Times and various books on the Vietnam War 

Propitious Esculent: The Potato in World History by John Reader (reading it was more fun than it sounds) 

—Peter Brush, librarian and East Asian studies bibliographer

Apple’s Steve Jobs recently uttered the bromide that people don’t read anymore. Don’t tell that to people connected to the College of Arts and Science. Here’s a selected bibliography of what we are reading now.

   

Senior Allison Riley (pictured), a French major, reads for class and pleasure:

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

La Princesse de Clèves

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Absurdistan: A Novel by Gary Shteyngart

Bearing Witness against Sin: The Evangelical Birth of the American Social Movement by Michael P. Young

The Art of Moral Protest by James Jasper

— Steven Jay Tepper, assistant professor of sociology and associate director, Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy

The New York Times and The New Yorker (faithfully but selectively, i.e. not cover to cover)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice by Bonnie Miller-McLemore

— Patricia Armstrong, senior lecturer of French and Italian and assistant director, Center for Teaching

Photo by John Russell.