ShelfLife@Texas

Nina Godiwalla’s memoir of working on Wall Street begins with a sweaty walk to work through New York City, catching her heel in a grate, begging for help from a nearby blood-soaked fishmonger and eventually arriving at the JP Morgan office only to discover that she was at the wrong building.

Little did she know that temperamental high heels would be the least of her troubles in the years ahead.

Godiwalla, BBA ’97, chronicles the rest of her harrowing finance career in
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The words people use are like fingerprints, revealing amazing insight into their personalities, emotional health, thinking style, group status and relationships. Social psychologist James W. Pennebaker, uses his groundbreaking research in computational linguistics to analyze pronouns, articles, prepositions, and a handful of other small function words in his latest book “The Secret Life of Pronouns:  What Our Words Say About Us” (Bloomsbury Press, August 2011).

“On their own, function words have very little meaning,” says Pennebaker, the Liberal Arts Foundation Centennial Professor
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Historian Neil Foley’s book, “Quest for Equality: The Failed Promise of Black-Brown Solidarity” (Harvard University Press, May 2010) was selected by the Texas Institute of Letters as the most significant scholarly book for 2010.

“Quest for Equality” examines the complicated relationship between African Americans and Mexican Americans in Texas and California during World War II and the post-war era.

Named by the Huffington Post as one of the 17 “best political and social awareness books of 2010, “Quest for Equality” provides a historical context
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The 2011 Lozano Long Conference “From Natural Events to Social Disasters in the Circum-Caribbean,” will include keynote addresses from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey, distinguished chair in poetry at Emory University, and novelist Evelyne Trouillot, a native of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, who has written about human rights issues.

Hurricane Katrina’s hit to New Orleans and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti revealed historical and ongoing social inequality, environmental hazards and political crisis that plague the circum-Caribbean region. Both sites will serve as focal points for
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Despite the hyper-visibility of Latinos and Latin American immigrants in recent political debates and popular culture, the daily lives of America’s new “majority minority” remain largely invisible and mischaracterized. Editors Frank Guridy (University of Texas at Austin), Gina Pérez (Oberlin College) and Adrian Burgos, Jr. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) assemble a collection of essays in “Beyond El Barrio” (NYU Press, Oct. 2010) — that together, provide analyses that not only defy stubborn stereotypes, but also present novel narratives of Latina/o
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Ghada Abdel Aal will discuss her best-selling book “I Want to Get Married!” (University of Texas Press, Oct. 2010) at an event hosted by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Arabic Flagship Program, and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies.

After years of searching for Mr. Right in living-room meetings arranged by family or friends, Ghada Abdel Aal, a young Egyptian professional, decided to take to the blogosphere to share her experiences and vent her frustrations at being young, single,
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The winners of this year’s University Co-op Robert W. Hamilton Book Awards were announced on Wednesday, October 20, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin. The Hamilton Award is one of the highest honors of literary achievement given to published authors at the University of Texas at Austin. Chairman of the University Co-operative Society, Dr. Michael H. Granof hosted the event and announced the winners. President Bill Powers of The University of Texas at Austin presented the awards.

The Hamilton Awards
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Whether you are looking to find your next read or just a fun activity for another gorgeous weekend in Austin, Texas look no further than the Texas Book Festival. Annually, it celebrates Texas authors’ contributions to the culture of the state and nation — and it is a fantastic way to contribute to the state’s libraries. The festival boasts more than 200 authors attending each year, many from The University of Texas at Austin. It regularly draws crowds of more
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Named Best Young American Novelist by Granta, Elizabeth McCracken traveled to London this July for an event promoting the British literary quarterly’s latest issue. Granta hosts a week of events featuring its writers and editors as they discuss the issue’s content and central ideas. This issue’s theme is “Going Back” which includes McCracken’s short story “Property.”  She appeared at several of the week’s events, including a conversation at the British Library with Salman Rushdie, Richard Russo, A.L. Kennedy, and Granta editor John Freeman.

McCracken,
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