Faculty Canon Fall ’22 – Winter ’23

Black Springs Press Group / Joseph Boone, professor of gender and media, and English, is a queer retelling of Dickens’ Great Expectations set in the American South of the 1960-70s. Issues of gender, sexuality, race and class are central to its take on Dickens’ coming of age tale.

Cambridge University Press / Alison Dundes Renteln, professor of political science, anthropology, public policy and law, and Cher Weixia Chen (PhD, political science and international relations, ’08), provide an interdisciplinary overview of international human rights issues, exploring the interpretive difficulties associated with identifying what constitute human rights abuses and evaluating various perspectives on human rights.

Rowman & Littlefield / Alison Dundes Renteln, professor of political science, anthropology, public policy and law, coedited with Wanda Teays, gathers faculty and administrators from highly respected schools to examine the current situation and mark directions for change. Reviewing the challenges and opportunities that face higher education, this book argues that what holds institutions together over time are the values, principles and traditions that contribute to moral character and lay a foundation for institutional integrity.

University of Nevada Press / Mark Irwin, professor of English, explores the collision between metropolis and wilderness and confronts what it means to be human and how conflict, along with the interface between technology and humanity, can cause us to become orphaned in many different ways.

University Press / Lanita Jacobs, associate professor of American studies and ethnicity and anthropology, examines Black standup comedy over the past decade as a stage for understanding why notions of racial authenticity — in essence, appeals to “realness” and “real Blackness” — emerge as a cultural imperative in African American culture.

University of California Press / Natalia Molina, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, traces the life’s work of her grandmother, Natalia Barraza, a generous, reserved and extraordinarily capable woman who immigrated alone from Mexico to Los Angeles, adopted two children and ran a successful restaurant — the Nayarit — that became a beacon of belonging for marginalized communities.

Stanford University Press / Leland Saito, associate professor of sociology and American studies and ethnicity, traces two parallel trends through specific Los Angeles construction projects and the backlash they provoked, exploring gentrification and drawing new insights on the relationships between race, place, and policy.