As Penn faculty publish books, an occasional column appears on these pages to inform the University community of new releases.
Legal Racism Laid Bare
A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.'s new "Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process" demonstrates the sobering truth that the one agent entrusted to guarantee equal justice under the law -- the judicial system -- more often than not has played a dominant role in enforcing the inferior position of blacks.
"Shades of Freedom" (Oxford University Press) is the sequel to the award-winning "The Matter of Color," and the second in a planned four-volume opus, "Race and the American Legal Process."
Higginbotham, who served as circuit judge and as chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit until he retired on March 5, 1993, documents how early white perceptions of black inferiority slowly became codified into law, and then reveals the tragedy of how, after the Civil War, and even during Reconstruction, the courts construed the new Constitutional amendments guaranteeing equal justice to all with hostility. He terms the 1896 Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, "one of the most catastrophic racial decisions ever rendered," because it legitimized racial segregation under the deceptive rationale of "separate but equal," which in practice became always separate and never equal.
Higginbotham brings to life crusaders of the past, such as Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan and Reconstruction Congressman John R. Lynch, and he also focuses on present-day issues, writing that the Contract with America reminds him of "how, in the past, the states' rights doctrines were used to make African Americans and the poor almost powerless under the dominance of arbitrary state governments."
This former member of Penn's Board of Trustees is a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, received from President Clinton September 1995.
Architecture and the Human Body
One of the major architectural historians of this century, Cret Professor of Architecture Joseph Rykwert spent more than 10 years preparing "The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture" which proposes a sacred, primary relationship between architecture and the human body.
"The Dancing Column" (MIT University Press) examines the way that column and beam construction, was first formulated. Rykwert finds the body-column metaphor in archaeological material from Egypt, Asia Minor and the Levant as well as Greece, citing the latest historical work on Greek society and religion as well as recent archaeological discoveries. He also explores the metaphor's significance in the formation of any contemporary theoretical view of architecture.
The book, with 600 pages and 315 illustrations, tells a history of people, using the evolution of the column as a way to shine a light upon customs, values, myths and legends.
Ancient Epic Poetry
Ugaritic literature is the subject of a revised and expanded book produced by Svi Rin, emeritus professor of Semitic studies, and Shifra Rin, retired Van Pelt librarian. At 962 pages, "Acts of the Gods: The Ugaritic Epic Poetry" is a hefty collection that will be of value for Biblical research and for the study of the Canaanite culture in general.
The texts of Ugarit, dating from about 1500 to 1300 B.C., include ancient legends and epic poetry, texts of religion and ritual and letters of diplomacy. The book deals mainly with the epic poetry of the Ugaritic literature. The poems offer a missing link in the literary tradition of which the Hebrew Bible is an extension. The Ugaritic writings predate the Biblical rhythm and parallelism, imagery and parables drawn from ancient tradition, but even word combinations and expressions in Ugaritic and Biblical texts are identical.
The Rins' work (Inbal Publishers, P.O. Box 42, Narberth, PA 19072)presents the poems in three columns: transliteration, transcription and paraphrase, along with commentary. Sixteen new tablets from Ugarit, released since the first 1968 edition, have been added, as have new introductions and summaries, with literary analysis in Hebrew and English.
Tales of Dinosaur Bones
Peter Dodson's new book, "The Horned Dinosaurs" (Princeton University Press), is not for dinosaur experts only.
This is the first general work ever published about ceratopsians or horned dinosaurs (think triceratops here), which were Cretaceous herbivores known mostly for their great bony frills behind the head, their horns over the eyes and nose, and their hooked upper beaks.
Dodson, who is probably the only person in the world with three geology degrees who teaches in a vet school (Penn's of course), includes entertaining stories about collectors of bones, as well as the history, the evidence and the conclusions about what bones were found. He argues that differences between males and females, the process of growing up and old, and normal population variations account for much of the apparent diversity in the horned dinosaur record; the variations misled experts into believing in a greater diversity in the ceratopsians than Dodson proposes.
The book, which includes illustrations and plates, is described in a review in Science as "engaging, witty and erudite."
Boswell's Boswells
Boswell was more than a great biographer. He also was a man of the world, whose travels and whose curiosity gave breadth to his writing.
Boswell scholar Irma S. Lustig, editor with Frederick A. Pottle of two volumes in the Yale Boswell Editions, has edited "Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters" (University Press of Kentucky), a collection of essays.
"Boswell's sophistication as a writer is inseparable from his cosmopolitanism," Lustig notes. The book is divided into a section of essays on his artistry, and a section on his intellectual, political and religious explorations, not to mention his real travels to the influential places and people of his time.
Lustig, a research associate in English, who contributed an essay as well as the introduction to this volume, is also author of more than 30 articles and review essays on Boswell, Johnson and their circle.
How Does He Do That? Welliver's Prints
Best known for his large canvases capturing the intimate beauties of the Maine landscape, Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts Neil Welliver also expresses his visions of nature through the printmaking process. "Prints" (Down East Books) devotes text and images -- 50 color plates and 20 black-and-white reproductions of etchings, wood blocks, lithographs, and screen prints -- not only to the final products but to the process.
The book is a companion to an exhibition of Welliver prints now showing at the Print Center,1614 Latimer Street, (215) 735-6090, through Dec. 24.
A description of the printing process and photographs of Welliver working with Shigemitsu Tsukaguchi on woodcuts and Arlene Gostin on aquatints follow the Foreword by Mark Strand, former poet laureate of the United States and the Introduction by Ruth E. Fine, curator of modern prints and drawings, National Gallery of Art.
Great Depression's Effect on Jewish Values
With wide-ranging and in-depth research, including oral histories, historian Beth S. Wenger, writes that the Great Depression transformed the Jewish immigrant into the American Jew.
In her book "New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise" (Yale University Press), Wenger writes that Jews survived the poverty of the Depression because of the Jewish traditions of philanthropy and strong community. The ethnic support networks allowed impoverished Jews not only to survive, but to educate themselves and to remain committed to their Jewishness. And because the New Deal and the welfare state seemed to reflect their communal values, Jewish leaders supported the Democratic Party, a lasting bond that still influences today's politics.
Also from Penn authors, some new releases from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Dreiser in Russia: Drawn from the University of Pennsylvania's collection of Theodore Dreiser's papers, "Dreiser's Russian Diary" is an extended record of the American writer's travels in the Soviet Union in 1927-28. Edited by Thomas P. Riggio, editor of the University of Pennsylvania Dreiser Edition, of which this volume is a part, and James L.W. West III from Penn State, the volume includes portraits of such notables as Nikolai Bukharin, Sergey Eisenstein and Konstantin Stanislavsky.
The dark side of human nature I: The expanded edition of "Torture" by Edward Peters, reviewing the history of torture in Western society, includes for the first time a broad and disturbing selection of documents charting the historical practice of torture from the ancient Romans to the Khmer Rouge. Peters, the Henry Charles Lea professor of history, explains what institutional characteristics are linked to torture.
The dark side of human nature II: An innovative, highly persuasive interpretation of eroticism in the Marquis de Sade's writing, "Writing the Orgy" combines literary theory with methodologies from anthropology, history and psychoanalysis. Lucienne Frappier-Mazur, professor of romance languages, argues that the sexual exploitation in de Sade's writing parallels the political exploitation -- imprisonment and repression -- that de Sade experienced.
Gardens and civilization I: A study of the English fascination with Italian Renaissance gardens, "Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination, 1600-1750" is by John Dixon Hunt, chair of the department of landscape architecture and regional planning. He suggests the garden as the focus for many social, aesthetic, political and philosophical ideas. The book includes 113 black and white illustrations.
Gardens and civilization II: "Shade and Ornamental Trees: Their Origins and History," by former director of the Morris Arboretum Hui-Lin Li, ties together human migration with the spread of the cultivation of trees. Civilized societies have almost always cultivated trees for ornamentation and shade, and the book, with 82 illustrations, ties tree dispersion and variation to the rise of civilization.
Politics of religion in modern India: The forces that seek to make the Indian state Hindu is the subject of "Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India," edited by Penn historian and South Asia expert David Ludden. Twelve scholars from India, Europe and the United States provide perspectives from the fields of political science, religious studies, ethnomusicology, history, art history and anthropology on Hindu majoritarian politics over the last century.
Ancient script from the Indus Valley: The script of the civilization that developed in the Indus Valley in Pakistan and India from about 2600 to 2000 B.C. remains undeciphered, but not for lack of trying. In "Indus Age: The Writing System," anthropologist and Curator-in-Charge of the Asia section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum Gregory Possehl presents a detailed typology of the pictographic script and reviews prior attempts to decipher it.
Searching for work in academe: A new edition of "The Academic Job Search Handbook" by Mary Morris Heiberger and Julia Miller Vick, both at the Career Planning and Placement Service at Penn, advises how job seekers can position themselves in the current tight academic market and suggests how to use conferences, how to learn about openings, how to handle telephone interviews and how to negotiate offers. The book also helps applicants create printed materials such as vitas, abstracts and cover letters.
Return to Compass Features for December 10, 1996