Research Recognition
Hamilton Book Author Awards Program: 2002 Awards
Grand Prize Winner
- Mounira M. Charrad, Professor of Sociology
States and Women's Rights
University of California Press
Runners-Up
- John Kalb, Texas Memorial Museum
Adventures in the Bone Trade
Copernicus Books
- Glenn Alan Peers, Professor of Art & Art History
Subtle Bodies
University of California Press
- John J. Ruskiewicz, Professor of Rhetoric & Composition
Keith Walters, Professor of Linguistics
Everything's an Argument
Bedford/St. Martin's
Textbook
- Martha Ann Selby, Professor of Asian Studies
Grow Long, Blessed Night: Love Poems from Classical India
Oxford University Press
About the Books
"States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco" by Mounira M. Charrad
At a time when the situation of women in the Islamic world is of global interest, here is a study that unlocks the mystery of why women’s fates vary so greatly from one country to another. Mounira M. Charrad argues that many analysts miss what is going on in Islamic societies because they fail to recognize the kin-based model of social and political life, which she contrasts with the Western class-centered model. In a skillful synthesis, she shows how the logic of Islamic legal codes and kin-based political power affect the position of women. (Excerpts from a review by the University of California Press Web site.)
Mounira M. Charrad is a professor of Sociology, and she on the faculty for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.
"Adventures in the Bone Trade: The Race to Discover Human Ancestors in Ethiopia’s Afar Depression" by Jon Kalb
In the fall of 1971, Jon Kalb, a young geologist from Texas, was presented with the opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to explore Ethiopia’s forbidding Afar Depression, long considered a kind of hell on earth. The Afar’s searing heat, sub-sea-level elevation, unreliable water supply, and treacherous windstorms had for centuries repelled explorers. …Although it was geology that initially drew Kalb to the region, it was the astounding archeological finds that became the reason to stay. … By the end of the decade, the area had become the source of the longest and most complete single record of hominid habitation in the world – a span covering 4.5 million years.
But Afar yielded more: it was the site of the “bone wars” that arose from one of the great archeological hunts of all time … And it was the site, tragically, a of a very real war. In this remarkable memoir, Kalb recounts not just the turf battles of scientists but the armed conflict … All told, this gripping memoir shows how science is shaped not just by the search for truth, but by the demands of politics, the media, money – and the needs of the human heart. (Excerpts from a review by Copernicus Books)
Jon Kalb is a geologist and paleontologist, and a research fellow for the Texas Memorial Museum of Science and History at The University of Texas at Austin.
"Subtle Bodies: Representing Angels in Byzantium" by Glenn Peers
Throughout the course of Byzantine history, Christian doctrine taught that angels have a powerful place in cosmology. It also taught that angels were immaterial, bodiless, invisible beings. But if that were the case, how could they be visualized and depicted in icons and other works of art? This book describes the strategies used by Byzantine artists to represent the incorporeal forms of angels and the rationalizations in defense of their representations mustered by theologians in the face of iconoclastic opposition. Glenn Peers demonstrates that these problems of representation provide a unique window on Late Antique thought in general. He also provides an intriguing look at the history of angels as they emerged from the Hebrew Bible, moved into Judaism and early Christianity, and finally were given shape and form. (Excerpts from the University of California Press)
Glenn Peers is an assistant professor of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin.
"Everything’s an Argument" (Textbook winner) by Andrea A. Lunsford, John J. Ruszkiewicz, Keith Walters
"Everything's an Argument" introduces a broad range of thinking about argument …and it has great real-life examples. (Excerpt from a review by Julie Price, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
This book tries to do something very different. Most importantly, it breaks the pro/con pattern of argument texts and allows students to truly see what an argument is and all the forms it can take. (Excerpt from a review by Lance Rubin, Arapahoe Community College)
Co-author Andrea A. Lunsford is a professor of English at Stanford.
John J. Ruszkiewicz is a professor of Rhetoric and Composition at The University of Texas at Austin, and Keith Walters is an associate professor of Linguistics at The University of Texas at Austin.
"Grow Long, Blessed Night: Love Poems from Classical India" by Martha Ann Selby
Captured in these centuries-old verses are the intoxication of new love, the romance of courtship, and the longing separated lovers. Here are the voices of older women advising their younger friends, the word of messengers conveying secrets between lovers, and the musings of lovers to themselves. …Culled from large anthologies that date from as early as the first century CE to as late as the eighth, Martha Ann Selby’s masterful translations allow the poems to stand on their own in English while still maintaining the flavors of the original verses as reflected in idiom and structure. …(Excerpts from review by Wendy Doniger, professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago)
Martha Ann Selby is an assistant professor of Asian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.
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