Fall 1998
Covering black holes, fossil worms, and a cure for cancer
Soundings is a publication of the School of Humanities and Social Science at MIT
Comments and questions to www-shss@mit.edu
Book notes
Klaus Bade and Myron Weiner eds., Migrations Past, Migrations Future: Germany and the United States. Berghahn Books, 1997.
Rainer Munz and Myron Weiner, eds., Migration and Refugees: U.S. and German Policies toward Countries of Origin. Berghahn Books, 1997.
Myron Weiner, a professor of political science, is the general editor of a five-volume series on German and U.S. migration and refugee policies, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Elaine Campbell and Pierrette Frickey, eds., The Whistling Bird: Women Writers of the Caribbean. Lynne Rienner Publishers, London and Boulder, 1998.
A collection of fiction, plays, and verse by established Caribbean authors, including Jean Rhys and Maryse Condè.
Elaine Campbell is a lecturer in the Program of Writing and Humanistic Studies.
Dora L. Costa The Evolution of Retirement: An American Economic History, 1880-1990. University of Chicago Press, 1998.
A comprehensive economic history of retirement in America. Costa argues that retirement as a convention has arisen from historical trends initiated more than a century ago, not from any abrupt social or institutional change.
Dora L. Costa is the Ford Career Development Associate Professor of Economics.
Suzanne Flynn, Gita Martohardjono, and Wayne O'Neil, eds., The Generative Study of Second Language Acquisition. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998.
Examines recent theoretical and empirical developments in the specific domain of second language acquisition developed within a Universal Grammar framework.
Suzanne Flynn is professor of linguistics and second-language acquisition.
Wayne O'Neil is professor of linguistics.
Kal Raustiala, Eugene B. Skolnikoff, and David G. Victor, eds., The Implementation and Effectiveness of International Environmental Commitments: Theory and Practice. MIT Press, 1998.
Is it possible to draw systematic conclusions about the implementation process of international environmental commitments? This book suggests answers and explores ways to enhance the process.
Eugene B. Skolnikoff is professor of political science.
Frederic C. Schaffer Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture. Cornell University Press, 1998.
Challenges the assumption often made by American scholars that democracy has been achieved in foreign countries when certain criteria, such as free elections, are met.
Frederic C. Schaffer is assistant professor of political science.
Irving Singer, Reality Transformed: Film as Meaning and Technique. MIT Press, 1998.
Offers a new approach to the philosophy of film by returning to the classical debate between realists and formalists and uniting the two opposing positions. Focuses on questions of appearance and reality, the visual and the literary and the interplay between communication and alienation.
Irving Singer is professor of philosophy.
Susan Slyomovics, The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.
Explores ways in which the people of Ein Houd and Ein Hod remember and reconstruct their past in light of their present, and their present in light of their past.
Susan Slyomovics is the Geneviève McMillan-Reba Stewart Professor of the Study of Women in the Developing World and professor of anthropology.
Edward Baron Turk, Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald. University of California Press, 1998.
Based on the author's exclusive access to MacDonald's private papers, this biography traces the life of the movie musical's first superstar, whose onscreen radiance mirrored her beguiling, real-life personality.
Edward Baron Turk is professor of French and film studies.
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