December 2, 2010

David Foster Wallace: Brief Interviews with Philosophy Students, Part I

In conjunction with the publication of David Foster Wallace’s undergraduate thesis, Maureen Eckert, coeditor of Fate, Time, and Language, interviewed two contemporary philosophy students whose first exposure to the work of David Foster Wallace came through his philosophical work. These...

December 1, 2010

Daniel Rigney: The Matthew Effect as Social Spiral

The following is a post by Daniel Rigney, author of The Matthew Effect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage. The “Matthew effect” is a term coined by the Columbia University sociologist Robert Merton in 1968 to describe a common pattern in...

November 30, 2010

David Foster Wallace as Philosopher

“I was just awfully good at technical philosophy, and it was the first thing I’d ever been really good at, and so everybody, including me, anticipated I’d make it a career. But it sort of emptied out for me somewhere...

November 30, 2010

New Book Tuesday

The following books are now available: Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts: Stories and Essays Qian Zhongshu The Shift: Israel-Palestine from Border Struggle to Ethnic Conflict Menachem Klein The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth (Updated with a New Preface) Wendy...

November 29, 2010

The Novelist's Lexicon Inspires Other Authors

Taking their cue from The Novelist’s Lexicon: Writers on the Words That Define Their Work, The National Post asked Yann Martel and a cross-section of Canadian writers to choose a word that “opens a door to their work.” Words selected...

November 29, 2010

Caryl Rivers, Rosalind Chait Barnett: Single-Sex Ed Based on Baloney Science

In a recent op-ed Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Chait Barnett, authors of the forthcoming The Truth About Girls and Boys: Challenging Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children, applaud the recent decision by Boston school superintendent Carol Johnson to back away from...

November 24, 2010

Andrew Smith Exposes the Truth About Thanksgiving

In the chapter “Giving Thanks” from his book Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, Andrew Smith reveals that “the whole idea that the Pilgrims were the first to celebrate Thanksgiving in America was, in fact...

November 23, 2010

New Book Tuesday: David Foster Wallace and More

The following books are now available: Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will David Foster Wallace Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right Whitney Strub The Demon at Agi Bridge and...

November 22, 2010

Qian Zhongshu — The Best Chinese Writer You’ve Never Heard of

In an essay for The China Beat, Christopher Rea, assistant professor of modern Chinese literature at the University of British Columbia, calls Qian Zhongshu, “the best Chinese writers you’ve never heard of.” So who was Qian? Qian is perhaps best...

November 19, 2010

The Novelist's Lexicon: "fascinating and strangely disciplined"

The Los Angeles Times book blog Jacket Copy called The Novelist’s Lexicon: Writers on the Words That Define Their Work “a fascinating and strangely disciplined set of responses” to the question posed to writers to find one word that creates...

November 19, 2010

University Press Blog Roundup

To showcase the richness of university press publishing, every so often we like to highlight interesting and provocative items from other university press blogs. Apologies for those we did not include in this installment (see the blog roll for other...

November 18, 2010

A Brilliant Rivalry: Victor Cha and David Kang

Amid the sometimes competitive world of academia and the frequently divisive world of contemporary politics, it would be unlikely to find a collaborative relationship among two people from different sides of the political spectrum. However, the influential scholars David Kang...