Book Notes

Book Notes

“Women Medievalists and the Academy”
Edited by Jane Chance, professor of English
Published by The University of Wisconsin Press

This comprehensive volume brings to life a diverse collection of inspiring — though often overlooked — women through memoirs, biographical essays and interviews. Each essay explores a woman’s life, intellectual contributions and efforts to succeed in the male-dominated world of medieval studies. Diverse nationalities and academic disciplines — including literature, history, archaeology, art history, theology and philosophy — are represented. Together these personal histories form a new standard reference for the growing numbers of those interested in the role of women in the development of this field.

Containing more than 70 profiles, the collection begins in the 17th century with Elizabeth Elstob and continues through the 20th century, profiling, among others, Anna Jameson, Lina Eckenstein, Georgiana Goddard King, Eileen Power, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy Whitelock, Susan Mosher Stuard, Marcia Colish and Caroline Walker Bynum.

Sheila Delany, Simon Fraser University, said this “pioneering collection set the record straight on the role of women in medieval studies. Young scholars will find in it models of courage and persistence, warnings, humor and perhaps even consolation.”

This is the 20th book Chance has authored or edited.

“English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980”
Martin J. Wiener, the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of History
Published by Cambridge University Press

Although England led the world as the first great industrial nation, the country has maintained an uncomfortable ambivalence to industrialism. At the heart of this book is a revelation of a pervasive hostility among the middle and upper class toward economic growth and industrialism.

Beginning in the mid-1800s, this paradox shaped a broad spectrum of cultural expression including literature, journalism and architecture, as well as social, historical and economic thought.

Written on an undergraduate level, this second edition features a new introduction that reflects on the debate that followed release of the first edition. Its accessible style includes reference to a broad range of people and ideas, making the book of interest to readers who want to delve deeper into the history and current struggles of modern England.

The Economist called this “an important book … that deserves to be read and pondered by everybody who has some portion of Britain’s destiny in his (or her) hands.”

“Cube”
David Morrow Guthrie, the G.S. Wortham Assistant Professor
of Architecture
Published by Princeton Architectural Press

Each year, Guthrie challenges his students to design and build interesting versions of a familiar shape, the cube. More than 50 of these creations are presented in this handy little block of a book, providing inspiration and ideas crafted from the humblest ingredients.

A cube is one of nature’s purest primal forms, but tempered by the talents of Guthrie’s students it becomes a complex object of art made from plywood, bamboo, foam, hay, chopped-up telephone books, chicken wire and even rolled-up copies of the Rice Thresher. These unexpected textures lend tactile interest to the 16-inch-square shapes, creating beautiful and intriguing objects.

In the forward of this trim book, Guthrie wrote, “The intent is to close the gap between conceptual speculation and material reality, to put aside rhetoric and lay the cards on the table. Full-scale and autonomous, the cubes embody the concepts that shape them. They are it, the thing itself.”

Thirty-six of the cubic forms will be on exhibit at Brazos Projects Gallery, 2425 Bissonnet, through May 14.

“Book Notes” is a column featuring academic books written or edited by Rice University faculty. To submit information on recently or soon-to-be-published books for inclusion in “Book Notes,” send the the name of the author and publisher, the publication date and a brief description of the book to Margot Dimond, Office of News and Media Relations, MS 300 or <mdimond@rice.edu>.