Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 14, 2005|Volume 34, Number 7

"Love and the Law in Cervantes," a new book by Roberto González Echevarría, is based on his 2002 DeVane Lectures.

Yale Books in Brief

The following is a list of books recently or soon-to-be published by members of the Yale community. Descriptions are based on material provided by the publishers.

Love and the Law in Cervantes
Roberto González Echevarría, Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature
(Yale University Press)

"Love and the Law in Cervantes" is a collection of the 13 DeVane Lectures that Roberto González Echevarría delivered at Yale in the spring of 2002. He explores the works of Cervantes, showing how his representations of love were inspired by examples of human deviance and desire culled from legal discourse. González Echevarría also describes Spain's legal policies, legislation and institutions, and explains how the country's literature became filled with love stories derived from classical and medieval sources -- as well as the ways these legal and literary developments interacted in Cervantes' work. Nine of the professor's DeVane Lectures are focused particularly on "Don Quixote de la Mancha."

The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences
Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science and the Henry R. Luce Director of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies
(Princeton University Press)

In this indictment of influential practices in the social sciences and humanities, Ian Shapiro argues that in many disciplines scholars have fallen prey to inward-looking myopia that results from -- and perpetuates -- a flight from reality. He asserts that in this method-driven academic culture, researchers too often make display and refinement of their techniques the principal scholarly activity, with the result that they lose sight of the objects of their study. He specifically targets the law and economics movement, "overzealous" formal and statistical modeling, various reductive theories of human behavior, "misguided" conceptual analysis in political theory and the Cambridge school of intellectural history. Shapiro calls instead for problem-driven social research, rooted in a realist philosophy of science and an antireductionist view of social explanation. He discusses what he believes is at stake for the study of power, democracy, law and ideology, as well as in debates over rights, justice, freedom, virtue and community. Strobe Talbott, a Yale alumnus and president of the Brookings Institution, said of Shapiro's work: "In this book, he helps rescue the study of politics and society from moralists, who believe individuals have more control over their fates than the history of economics would support, and from those scientists who view human behavior as mechanistic."

The Enlightenment & the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture
Louis Dupré, the T.L. Riggs Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Religion
(Yale University Press)

Louis Dupré, a scholar of modern culture, argues in this new book that the Enlightenment -- the importance of which has been debated heavily in recent years -- was a more complex phenomenon than either its detractors or advocates assume. He notes that this period of fundamental change in thinking was dynamic, and that its ideas were often dialetical and argues that "the Enlightenment, though flawed and one-sided, accomplished an indispensible task in the development of Western thought. With admirable persistency it pursued the principle that has dominated our intellectual tradition since its beginning, namely, that things ought to be justified rather than blindly accepted from habit and custom."

OASIS in the Overwhelm: 60-second strategies for balance in a busy world
Millie Grenough, clinical instructor in social work at the School of Medicine
(Beaver Hill Press)

In "OASIS in the Overwhelm," Millie Grenough offers readers four specific strategies that are designed to help busy people become more effective, and happier, at work and home. Each strategy takes 60 seconds. Also an executive coach, Grenough combines personal stories and practical strategies with recent scientific studies regarding stress-related illness and the power of humans to change their own brain wiring to more effectively manage emotions and the stress of day-to-day living. Grenough created the "OASIS Strategies" during her own recovery from a near-death accident.

Aspects of the Theory of Clitics
Stephen Anderson, professor of linguistics, psychology and cognitive science
(Oxford University Press)

This book describes clitics, which are defined as "unstressed words, typically function words, that are incapable of standing on their own and attach in pronunciation to stressed words" -- such as the French "l'arme" (the arm), or the Spanish "las aguas" (the waters). Stephen Anderson covers the grammar of clitics from all points of view, including their phonology and syntax and relation to morphology. His book also deals with the relation of second-position clitics in Germanic and other languages, the grammar of contracted auxiliary verbs in English, noun incorporation constructions and several other topics in grammar. Anderson also includes analyses of a number of particular languages, including Kwakw'ala and Surmiran Rumantsch.

The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism and Historiography
Edited by Dale Martin, professor and chair of religious studies, and Patricia Cox Miller
(Duke University Press)

This book focuses on questions regarding gender and culture in early Christianity. The 15 essays in the collection chart the work that has defined the relatively new field of late ancient studies, which focuses on civilizations clustered mainly around the Mediterranean and covers the period between roughly 100 and 700 CE. In their investigations of three key concerns of late ancient studies -- gender, asceticism and historiography -- the contributors explore such topics as Macrina's scar, Mary's voice and the harlot's body, as well as such personalities as Augustine, Jovinian, Gregory of Nazianzus, Julian and Ephrem the Syrian. Other contributions include an examination of how animal bodies figured as a means for understanding human passion and sexuality in the monastic communities of Egypt and Palestine and the epistemological crisis faced by Theodoret in attempting to overcome the barriers between the self and the wider world.

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

University will work to curb greenhouse gas emissions

From bones to bronze: Building Torosaurus

Yale participating in human genome initiative

Former World Fellows will return to campus for forum

Literary theorist wins Israel's EMET Prize for contributions

'Aesthetics & Politics' in Pakistan to be explored

Experts to address global warming at conference

Treasures from Yale's Collections

Panel to focus on debate over career vs. motherhood

Event honors Jacques Derrida, originator of 'deconstruction'

Chemistry department symposium to celebrate opening of building

Events pay tribute to former University printer Greer Allen

Yale Books in Brief

Edward Kaplan has been designated as an INFORMS fellow