The Sonoma State University Bookstore, in partnership with the University Library, presents its annual "Campus Author Series" featuring the literary talents of SSU faculty on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from noon to 1 p.m., April 5-28, in Schulz 3001.
The schedule of readings includes:
Tuesday, April 5:
Marilyn Dudley-Rowley, Sociology lecturer, leads off with her co-authored essay, "Culture Clash/Media Demons" from "Defeating Terrorism Developing Dreams: Beyond 9/11 and Iraq War" by Arthur B. Shostak. This book explores the cultural aspects of the war on terrorism and the second Gulf War and America's lack of understanding about Islamic nations.
Wednesday, April 6:
Debora Hammond, Assistant Professor and Provost of the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, will read from her book, "The Science of Synthesis: Exploring the Social Implications of Synthesis." Her book explores the development of general systems theory and the Society for General Systems Research. Hammond traces the emergence of system ideas through a broad range of disciplines: biology, ecology, social, psychology and technology in the mid-twentieth century.
Thursday, April 7:
Elizabeth Coonrod Martinez, Department Chair for Chicano and Latino Studies, presents "Before the Boom: Latin American Revolutionary Novels of the 1920s." Martinez proposes a post-modern analysis of early twentieth century or avant garde novels by authors from four different Latin American countries: Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina. Each chapter detailing the socio-political context of each novel and chronicling the events which led the authors to create an entirely new Latin American fiction.
Tuesday, April 12:
Steve Estes, Assistant Professor in History, presents his book, "I Am Man! Race, Manhood and the Civil Rights Movement." Tracing the strategies from the integration of the U.S. military in the 1940s through the Million Man March in the 1990s, Estes shows that masculinism rallied men to action but left unchallenged many of the patriarchal assumptions that underlay American society. The civil rights movement was foremost a struggle for racial equality, but questions of gender lay deeply embedded within this struggle. Estes explores key groups, leaders, and events in the movement to understand how activists used race and manhood to articulate their visions of what American society should be.
Wednesday, April 13:
Nan Alamilla Boyd, Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, presents her book, "Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965." Boyd argues that police persecution forged debates about rights and justice that transformed San Francisco's queer communities into the identity-based groups of today. This vivid re-creation of bar and drag life, its portrayal of central community figures and chronicling the period in the one of the country's most progressive cities, offers a lively new chapter of American queer history.
Thursday, April 14:
Marco Calavita, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, will present his book, "Apprehending Politics: News Media and Individual Political Development." Through direct interviews with Generation X, Calavita has succeeded where others have failed at exploring the contextualized and ecological nature of individual political development, and the specific roles of media in that development. This book illuminates the subtle but fundamental power of the new media in who we are politically and how we got that way.
Tuesday, April 19:
Liz Thach & Panel, Associate Professor of Business Administration, edited "Wine: A Global Business." This is the first book of its kind to review all aspects of the wine industry today to create winning strategies and decisions for success in the twenty-first century. She will be joined by contributors: Mack Schwing, Director, Wine Business Program; Robert Eyeler, Economics Department Chair and Associate Professor; Armand Gilinsky, Professor of Business; Terry Lease, Associate Professor of Business, and Tom Atkin, Assistant Professor of Business.
Wednesday, April 20:
Gillian Conoley, Assistant Professor in English, Poet in-residence and founder and editor of Volt, will present her newly released book of poetry, "Profane Halo." Conoley takes her title from Italian philosopher and critic, Giorgio Agamben's notion of a post-rapturous world. In this book, Conoley continues her exploration into the impossible questions of grace and redemption, self and other, death in life, language and being, democracy and song.
Thursday, April 21:
Roger Bell, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, has written an important and original work, "Sounding the Abyss: Reading Between Cavell and Derrida." Bell digs deep into the controversy surrounding the abyss in American philosophy between Cavell's hard analytic thought and Derrida's soft Continental thought.
Tuesday, April 26:
Lynne Morrow, Assistant Professor of Music, is also a soloist with the Pacific Mozart Ensemble. Under the direction of Kent Nagano and performing as a Pacific Mozart Ensemble soloist, Morrow participated in Leonard Bernstein's Mass recorded in 2004, which originally premiered in 1971 at the opening of John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It is a stylist piece that crosses classical, jazz, folk, blues, gospel, Latin American and rock. Only the listener can decide if Bernstein's work is blasphemous and sacrilegious or sheer genius and lush.
Wednesday, April 27:
William Babula, Dean of the Arts and Humanities, presents his fifth and last in his St. John detective series, "St. John's Bread." Listen as Babula reveals how St. John's partner, Mickey needs "bread" to support his life-style choices and the cost it creates. Babula's inspiration for this series is the search for justice in an unjust world and the history of the setting itself, San Francisco.
Thursday, April 28:
Suzanne Toczyski, Department Chair of Modern Languages and Literature. There are very few who don't love chocolate in all forms. It is centuries old. "Chocolate French," with its forward written by Toczyski, takes readers on a chocolate lover's exploration of the relationship between French culture and global chocolate cuisine. University Chef Mark Dierkhising offers a chocolate demonstration.
Copies of each author's work will be on sale. The readings are free and open to the public although there is a $2.50 daily parking permit required to park on campus.
For more information, visit http://bookstore.sonoma.edu/Events/events.html or phone (707) 664-2259.
