Published

Matthew Sivils: Transcorporeality and the Pursuit of Happiness in Leonora Sansay’s Laura (1809)

Abstract: Sivils’ article examines how Leonora Sansay’s 1809 novella, Laura, presents suggestive linkages between the early American pursuit of happiness and an appealing, but ultimately doomed, fantasy of conjugal bliss within a pastoral landscape. Sansay, in this largely unstudied novella, employs the seduction novel genre and the pastoral environs…

June 17, 2019

Craig Rood’s After Gun Violence: Deliberation and Memory in an Age of Political Gridlock

Mass shootings have become the “new normal” in American life. The same can be said for the public debate that follows a shooting: blame is cast, political postures are assumed, but no meaningful policy changes are enacted. In After Gun Violence, Craig Rood argues that this cycle is the result…

May 30, 2019

Coastal Lives: Nature, Capital, and the Struggle for Artisanal Fisheries in Peru

Peru’s fisheries are in crisis as overfishing and ecological changes produce dramatic fluctuations in fish stocks. To address this crisis, government officials have claimed that fishers need to become responsible producers who create economic advantages by taking better care of the ocean ecologies they exploit. In…

May 20, 2019

Charlie Kostelnick’s Humanizing Visual Design: The Rhetoric of Human Forms in Practical Communication published

In the book Kostelnick analyzes the role that human forms play in visualizing practical information and in making that information understandable, accessible, inviting, and meaningful to readers—in short, “humanizing” it. Although human figures have long been deployed in practical communication, their uses in this context have received little systematic analysis.

May 20, 2019

Knox publishes two poems in Granta Magazine

Department of English lecturer Jennifer Knox’s fifth book of poems will be published by Copper Canyon press in Fall 2020. Copper Canyon poets have been recipients of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the American Book Award. Knox recently had two poems from the book published in…

May 6, 2019

Betty Dobratz publishes “Power, Politics, and Society: An Introduction to Political Sociology”

“Power, Politics, and Society: An Introduction to Political Sociology” by Betty A. Dobratz, professor of sociology, Lisa K. Waldner, and Timothy Buzzell discusses how sociologists have organized the study of politics into conceptual frameworks, and how each of these frameworks foster a sociological perspective on power and politics in society.

May 6, 2019

DeLisi, graduate students publish “Who will kill again? The forensic value of 1st degree murder convictions”

Matt DeLisi, professor of sociology and two graduate students, Mark Ruelas and James Kruse, have published “Who will kill again? The forensic value of 1st degree murder convictions” in “Forensic Science International: Synergy.” The article, published in February 2019, focuses on examining archival data for the association between prior first…

May 6, 2019

Oberhauser, Kusow, Krier published in The Sociological Quarterly

Abstract The 2016 U.S. presidential election was a watershed event that signaled decreasing political moderation and increasing partisan polarization, authoritarianism, and ethno-nationalism. Iowa, located at the center of the American Heartland, swung to the political right more than any other state. Multivariate regression analysis of county-level data is used to…

May 6, 2019