Hall Center to host 12th annual Celebration of Books
LAWRENCE – The Hall Center for the Humanities will host the 12th annual Celebration of Books published by humanities, social sciences and arts faculty in 2013.
The event will take place from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 1, in the Hall Center Conference Hall. It is free and open to the public, but space is limited. Contact the Hall Center by email to attend. The Friends of the Hall Center sponsor this event.
The celebration will recognize the 32 faculty members who published 36 books in such varied topics as evolution in Victorian novels, policing in Jack the Ripper’s London, American black Israelite religions, Muslim women’s education and the way political leaders speak, representing the depth and breadth of humanities research at the University of Kansas. The celebration will feature a reception and a display of books.
Three featured faculty authors will make brief presentations on their work and take questions from the audience:
Christina Bejarano, associate professor of political science, will discuss "The Latino Gender Gap in U.S. Politics," which delves deeper into the complex gender differences for Latino political behavior. Bejarano carefully unpacks more aspects of the gender category for Latinos, including analyzing the gender differences in Latino political behavior across national origin, foreign-born status and generational status.
Gregory Cushman, associate professor of environmental history, will discuss "Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History." The book provides a global history of guano, a once little-known but vastly important commodity that originates in the Pacific Basin. Cushman argues that this unique resource played an integral role the Western Industrial Revolution, influencing modern developments such as environmental consciousness and conservation movements, the ascendance of science and technology, and world war.
Keith McMahon, professor of East Asian languages and cultures, will discuss "Women Shall Not Rule: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China from Han to Liao," which offers a fascinating history of imperial wives and concubines, especially in light of the greatest challenges to polygamous harmony — rivalry between women and their attempts to engage in politics. Besides ambitious empresses and concubines, these vivid stories of the imperial polygamous family also are populated with prolific emperors, wanton women, libertine men, cunning eunuchs and bizarre cases of intrigue and scandal among rival wives.