Each summer, the College of Arts & Sciences at UNC Greensboro shares a list of books published by its faculty over the past academic year. This year, CAS professors continued in their prolificacy, with books covering poetry, evolutionary biology, parenting, Queer theory, and much more.
Pick up one — or several — of these books and get a taste for the rich scholarship found across disciplines in the College of Arts & Sciences!
African American and African Diaspora Studies
Anne Spencer Between Worlds
By Noelle Morrissette
University of Georgia Press, 2023
Anne Spencer Between Worlds provides an indispensable reassessment of a critically neglected figure. Looking beyond the poetry she published during the Harlem Renaissance, Noelle Morrissette provides a new critical lens for interpreting Spencer’s expansive life and imagination through her archives, giving particular focus to her manuscripts authored from 1940 to 1975. In Anne Spencer Between Worlds, Spencer emerges as a deeply engaged political poet who used the creative possibilities of the unpublished manuscript to explore pressing political and cultural concerns and to develop experimental cultural forms.
Naming Africans: On the Epistemic Value of Names
Edited by Hewan Girma (UNCG) and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí
Palgrave Macmillan, 2023
Focusing on the epistemic value of African names, this edited collection is based on the premise that personal names constitute valuable sources of historical and ethnographic information and help to unveil endogenous forms of knowledge. The chapters assembled here document and analyze personal names and naming practices in a slew of African societies on the geographically vast and ethnically diverse continent, including contributions on the naming practices in Angola, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda.
A Voice in the Wilderness: A Pioneering Biologist Explains How Evolution Can Help Us Solve Our Biggest Problems
By Joseph L. Graves, Jr.
Basic Books, 2022
Evolutionary science has long been regarded as conservative, a tool for enforcing regressive ideas, particularly about race and gender. But in A Voice in the Wilderness, evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Graves Jr.—once styled as the “Black Darwin”—argues that his field is essential to social justice.
Classical Studies
Kleronomia: Legacy and Inheritance: Studies on the Aegean Bronze Age in Honor of Jeffrey S. Soles
Edited by Joanne Murphy (UNCG) and Jerolyn E. Morrison
Prehistory Monographs, 2022
The 27 papers in this volume harken to the themes that Jeffrey Soles (a UNCG emeritus professor) has influenced during his illustrious career in Aegean Bronze Age archaeology: ancestry, burial customs, religion, trade, jewelry, the development of the Minoan settlement of Mochlos in eastern Crete, and the rise and fall of the Minoan civilization.
English / MFA Writing Program
Andalusian Visions
By Stuart Dischell (UNCG), Cyril Caine, and Laurent Estoppey
Unicorn Press, 2023
Andalusian Visions is an array of paths crisscrossing the desert. Landscape photographs by Cyril Caine portray the deserts of Andalusia and the southwestern United States. A poem in eight parts by Stuart Dischell traces a journey whose end echoes in the desert. A French translation of Dischell’s poem and eight pieces of experimental music, both by Laurent Estoppey, present a new dimension to the experience.
History
The Business of Emotions in Modern History
Edited by Mandy L. Cooper (UNCG) and Andrew Popp
Bloomsbury, 2023
The Business of Emotions in Modern History shows how businesses, from individual entrepreneurs to family firms and massive corporations, have relied on, leveraged, generated and been shaped by emotions for centuries. With a broad temporal and global coverage, ranging from the early modern era to the present day in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, the essays in this volume highlight the rich potential for studying emotions and business in tandem.
Räume der Deutschen Geschichte (Spaces of German History)
Edited by Teresa Walch (UNCG), Sagi Schaefer, and Galili Shahar
Wallstein Verlag, 2022
This volume takes stock of the “spatial turn” that has reshaped the field of German history in the past decade. The authors investigate topics of space, place, borders, landscapes, and territorialization. Collectively, they underscore how various worldviews and shifting ideas about space have shaped and reshaped Germany in the modern era.
Informatics and Analytics
Phylogenetic Trees and Molecular Evolution: A Hands-on Introduction with Uncertainty Quantification Corrected
By David R. Bickel
Springer, 2022
This book serves as a brief introduction to phylogenetic trees and molecular evolution for biologists and biology students. It does so by presenting the main concepts in a variety of ways: first visually, then in a history, next in a dice game, and finally in simple equations.
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Un siglo de teatro y diplomacia en el Coliseo del Buen Retiro: 1640-1746 (Theater and Diplomacy at the Theatre of Buen Retiro, 1640-1746)
By Ignacio López Alemany
Publicacions de la Universitat de Valènci
This monograph studies the diplomatic and propagandistic use of the theater represented at the Royal Theater of Buen Retiro Coliseum from its construction in 1640 to the passing of King Philip V in 1746. The book argues that Theater of Buen Retiro appears to us as a palimpsest whose study reveals the evolution of the political role of Spain in its European context and the evolution of aesthetic tastes in the crucial years that bridged the Baroque with the Enlightenment.
Philosophy
Scientific Understanding and Representation: Modeling in the Physical Sciences
Edited by Insa Lawler (UNCG), Kareem Khalifa, and Elay Shech
Routledge, 2022
This volume assembles cutting-edge scholarship on scientific understanding, scientific representation, and their delicate interplay. Scientific Understanding and Representation will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, philosophy of mathematics, and epistemology.
Psychology
The Cambridge Handbook of Parenting
Edited by Julia Mendez Smith (UNCG) and Amanda Morris
Cambridge University Press, 2023
Parenting is a critical influence on the development of children across the globe. This handbook brings together scholars with expertise on parenting science and interventions for a comprehensive review of current research. Global perspectives and the cultural diversity of families are highlighted throughout. Offering in-depth analysis of key topics such as risky adolescent behavior, immigration policy, father engagement, family involvement in education, and balancing childcare and work, this is a vital resource for understanding the most effective policies to support parents in raising healthy children.
Diversity and Developmental Science: Bridging the Gaps Between Research, Practice, and Policy
Edited by Gabriela Livas Stein (UNCG) and Dawn P. Witherspoon
Springer, 2023
This book examines the challenges faced by developmental scientists as the population under the age of 18 in the United States has become a majority-minority, with no racial/ethnic group having a numeric majority. The volume tackles how these demographic shifts compel scientists to consider the unique and universal processes that promote the growth, thriving, and resilience of these populations across this new landscape and also takes into account systems of oppression, power, privilege, racial justice, and structural disadvantage.
Religious Studies
Awkward Rituals: Sensations of Governance in Antebellum America
By Dana W. Logan
University of Chicago Press, 2022
In the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War, there was an awkward persistence of sovereign rituals, vestiges of a monarchical past that were not easy to shed. In Awkward Rituals, Dana Logan focuses our attention on these performances, revealing the ways in which governance in the early republic was characterized by white Protestants reenacting the hierarchical authority of a seemingly rejected king.
Sociology
Unsafe Words: Queering Consent in the #MeToo Era
Edited by Trevor Hoppe (UNCG) and Shantel Gabrieal Buggs
Rutgers University Press, 2023
This provocative book brings together academics, activists, artists, and sex workers to tackle challenging questions about sex, power, consent, and harm … Telling a queerer side of the #MeToo story, Unsafe Words dares to challenge dogmatic assumptions about sex and consent while developing tools and language to promote more ethical and more pleasurable sex for everyone.
Want even more faculty books? View our lists from academic years 2022 and 2021.
Story and graphics by Elizabeth Keri, College of Arts & Sciences
