Georgian Times Lauds Cornell Book on the Caucasus

In a review posted on January 31, 2007, to the website of The Georgian Times (originally published in the Caucasus Research Resource Centers blog), Aaron Erlich notes, “Many social researchers working on the Caucasus bemoan the lack of good scholarly works on the region. However, one recent book, which is both excellent and readable, seems to have fallen under people’s radars: Mathijs Pelkmans’ Defending the Border: Identity, Religion, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia, which came out in 2006 with Cornell University Press.” The book, part of Cornell’s Culture and Society after Socialism series, was recently announced as co-winner of the 2007 William A. Douglass book prize given by the Society for the Anthropology of Europe.

In it, Pelkmans illuminates the ways in which residents of the Caucasus have rethought who they are since the collapse of the Soviet Union through an exploration of three towns in the southwest corner of the Republic of Georgia. “Pelkmans’ book,” Erlich writes, “is deeply embedded within the literature on the studies of borderlands. Using the case of Sarpi (and Ajara more generally), Pelkmans argues convincingly that the Georgian (Soviet) border was not like other borders treated in the academic literature, which were porous and where strong cross-border networks have and continue to play an important role. Conversely, the Georgian border still plays a strong role, despite the ease with which it is now crossed.”

Understanding Indonesia’s Recent Past

The death of Suharto has brought renewed attention to the political landscape of Indonesia, past and present. John T. Sidel’s Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia provides insights into the political climate that saw the end of Suharto’s 32-year rule.

Old News: Cartographies of Tsardom in Leonardo

There was an absolutely terrific review of Valerie Kivelson’s Cartographies of Tsardom in the February 2007 issue of Leonardo—this is very old news, for a blog, but when I happened upon this review today I couldn’t resist. Steafaan Van Ryssen writes: “Students of Russian history will find in this book a balanced and very careful re-evaluation of some aspects of the Muscovy worldview. How did people think of Nature, the power structure they were living in, and the rights of colonized and colonizers? They will also get access to full-color reproductions of some of the most extraordinary maps made in that period. For the lay reader, with little or no background in either cartography or Russian history, this is simply a delightful treasure of novel ideas and eye-openers. From now on, forget about Mercator, and remember Semen Remezov!” Your correspondent loves those maps, too. Read the whole review here: Leonardo Reviews

The Eye’s Mind

There’s a review of The Eye’s Mind by Karen Jacobs up at the Cinema and Literature Blog.

Nabokov’s Laura

For the past week or so, the litblogs have been abuzz with discussion about the final disposition of Vladimir Nabokov’s manuscript The Original of Laura—will VN’s son Dimitri publish or destroy this work, written on fifty notecards? Ron Rosenbaum’s essay Dimitri’s Choice at Slate is the focal point of this discussion, but Rosenbaum has been on the case for a few years now—see his New York Observer article Dear Dmitri Nabokov: Don’t Burn Laura! Let Draft Gather Dust, from November 2005. And, wouldn’t you know it, a Cornell author started all the fuss. In 2005, Rosenbaum wrote,

“I came across an essay by Harvard professor Leland de la Durantaye [author of Style Is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov] on Lolita in The Village Voice, in which he mentions the existence of The Original of Laura:

‘When Nabokov died in 1977, he left behind an unfinished novel entitled The Original of Laura. His express wish was that it be destroyed upon his death. Before him, Virgil and Kafka had left similar instructions [to destroy their work]; neither was obeyed. Nor was Nabokov. His wife, Véra, found herself unable to carry out her late husband’s wishes, and when she passed away in 1991 she bequeathed the decision to their son. The manuscript’s location is kept secret.’”

Here is de la Durantaye’s Village Voice piece: The Original of Lolita

JAMA review of Murder After Death

Murder After Death: Literature and Anatomy in Early Modern England by Richard Sugg has just received a great review in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. The review, in the January 23, 2008, issue, is behind a paywall, but here’s an excerpt: “Richard Sugg has written an impressively interdisciplinary work, one that combines science, literary analysis, and medical history. In the end he claims that ‘it was writers rather than experimenters who first grasped the direction and potential of this new form of medical inquiry.’ Physicians might take umbrage at the natural, irresistible reflex to defend and magnify one’s own métier, but that should not prevent anyone interested in early modern literature and medicine from reading this book.”

Literary Studies on Sale on Cornell University Press Website

Save 20 percent on our new and recent books in Literary Studies at the Cornell University Press website! Titles on sale include:
Knowing Dickens by Rosemarie Bodenheimer
Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture by Eliot Borenstein
The Deceivers: Art Forgery and Identity in the Nineteenth Century by Aviva Briefel
The Same Solitude: Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva by Catherine Ciepiela
The Novel of Purpose: Literature and Social Reform in the Anglo-American World by Amanda Claybaugh
Thinking in Time: An Introduction to Henri Bergson by Suzanne Guerlac
Collaborations with the Past: Reshaping Shakespeare across Time and Media by Diana E. Henderson
Frame, Glass, Verse: The Technology of Poetic Invention in the English Renaissance by Rayna Kalas
Color Monitors: The Black Face of Technology in America by Martin Kevorkian
Dirt for Art’s Sake: Books on Trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita by Elisabeth Ladenson
Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature, and English Community, 1000–1534 by Kathy Lavezzo
Sung Birds: Music, Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages by Elizabeth Eva Leach
The Occult Mind: Magic in Theory and Practice by Christopher I. Lehrich
Treason by Words: Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeare’s England by Rebecca Lemon
Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880–1930 by Jean Marie Lutes
The Irish Art of Controversy by Lucy McDiarmid
The Aesthetics of Antichrist: From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe by John Parker
To Set This World Right: The Antislavery Movement in Thoreau’s Concord by Sandra Harbert Petrulionis
Subterranean Cities: The World beneath Paris and London, 1800–1945 by David L. Pike
Murder after Death: Literature and Anatomy in Early Modern England by Richard Sugg

Smoke and Mirrors and $7.1 Billion

The New York Times reports today on a trader at the French bank Société Générale who defrauded his employer to the tune of $7.1 billion. Described by the bank’s chairman as “an imprudent employee in the corporate and investment banking division,” the trader’s “whereabouts are unknown.” By comparison, the infamous Nick Leeson case involved a loss of *only* $1.8 billion (but those were 1995 dollars). How can a fraud of this magnitude be perpetrated? What measures do financial institutions take to try to prevent such offenses? Some answers may be found in Cornell’s Smoke & Mirrors, Inc.: Accounting for Capitalism, by Nicolas Véron. Raghuram Rajan, Economic Counselor and Director of Research, International Monetary Fund, said of this book: “ Smoke & Mirrors, Inc., is an intriguing introduction to the use and abuse of accounting in the modern capitalist enterprise. It is a must-read for students, investors, regulators, and anyone interested in understanding the shenanigans behind recent corporate scandals.”

Fraud Costs French Bank $7.1 Billion

Cornell Now Exclusive North American Distributor for Leuven University Press

Cornell University Press is proud to announce that it is now the exclusive North American distributor for English-language books from Belgium-based publisher Leuven University Press. Established in 1971 by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven University Press currently has more than 1000 books in print, in fields including art, music, religion, philosophy, history, medieval studies, Neo-Latin studies, anthropology, psychology, politics, and culture. Leuven is well known for its critically acclaimed Ancient and Medieval Philosophy series. Leuven University Press exceeds over one million dollars in sales annually and is a distinguished member of the Association of American University Presses.

Marike Schipper, Director of Leuven University Press, is excited about this new joint venture. “Cornell was the perfect choice for us. With extremely complementary lists in medieval studies, philosophy, European history, and the arts, both of our houses make quite an excellent fit, and we are very proud to be working together.”

Leading off Leuven’s Spring 2008 list this year are two long-anticipated titles—Jeff Lipkes’s Rehearsals, a shocking and revelatory in-depth account of German atrocities in Belgium during World War I, and the first English translation of world-acclaimed photographer Henri Van Lier’s Philosophy of Photography. Rounding out the lead titles are new books on Allan Sekula’s photography, surrealism in Belgium, and the nineteenth-century European revival of illuminated manuscripts.

Cornell University Press will be distributing and marketing all of Leuven’s 450 English-language titles in North America as well as nearly one hundred of its mixed-language titles, which are mostly in English, with some select chapters in French, Dutch, or Italian.

Awaiting the Heavenly Country in The New Yorker

Adam Gopnik looks at a cluster of new books about the American Civil War and death in the January 21, 2008 issue of The New Yorker. Mark S. Schantz’s Awaiting the Heavenly Country is among them.

The New Yorker: In The Mourning Store