Rutgers University Press Blog

Gods and Goddesses of the Garden

A short excerpt from Gods and Goddesses of the Garden, by Peter Bernhardt:

TAGES-Mexican marigolds (Tagetes erecta) are such cheerful annuals of summer window boxes and autumn borders it is astonishing that Linnaeus named the genus after an Etruscan underworld god. Domesticated by inhabitants of Mexico and Guatemala, long before conquistadors brought the seeds to Europe, marigolds were death flowers. The Aztecs used them in rituals of human sacrifice. In modern Mexico some graves are strewn with marigolds on the Day of the Dead. Mayan descendents, living in the mountains of Guatemala, left trails of marigold petals from the graveyard to their houses. A marigold trail allowed the spirit of a loved one to find its way back to the netherworld after enjoying the hospitality of the living.

Backstory in Blue

Earlier this year, we published John Fass Morton's Backstory in Blue, which recounts Duke Ellington's set at Newport in 1956. Listen to the famous track, Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, featuring Paul Gonsalves's solo:

Buy the album here.

Q&A with Ellen Leopold

Ellen Leopold, author of Under the Radar, answers some questions about her new book, which explores the connection between cancer and the cold war. -Elizabeth Christman

In the preface to your book, you state that “Devotees of the history of cancer, though steadily gaining in numbers, still remain more of a coterie than a crowd among contemporary social scientists.” (x) Why do you think that is the case?

Cancer is a much more complex disease than, say, polio or cholera.  It is, in fact, an unwieldly collection of diseases rather than a single illness (and even individual cancers can involve several  kinds of mutations).  Its story, in other words, is not simple.  So it cannot be addressed globally the way something like cholera can be.  But more importantly, cancer is still with us; it will kill half a million Americans this year.  This deprives studies of cancer of the feelgood factor that historians of polio can draw upon to round out their narratives, bringing a sense of closure and accomplishment to a tale of misery and death. Writing—and reading—about cancer requires a tolerance for indeterminacy and an acceptance of the limits of medical science that many people cannot easily muster.  And because it is still such a live issue, cancer also courts controversy, among scientists, practitioners and patients.  This complicates the angle of retrospection with which historians approach the past; there is still no clear consensus to use as a guide in reconstructing a path to ultimate enlightenment. So our approach must, perforce, remain oblique.    

After learning of stories like that of Irma Natanson’s experience with cancer and doctors, have your views of the medical community and its practices changed? If so, in what ways?

Mama PhD's at Bluestockings

Susan O'Doherty, Elrena Evans, Caroline Grant, Nicole Cooley, and Jennifer Cognard-Black (l-r) read from Mama PhD at BLUESTOCKINGS in New York last week:

New in paper: Science Talk by Daniel Thurs

Each and every day, the great world of science advances as new discoveries are made. Americans are often confused by these new scientific developments, which frequently leads people to abandon any hope of understanding such discoveries as they leave it up to scientists, doctors, and others in the scientific community to grapple with. As the realm of innovations broadens, as does the term “science” and its many sub-categories. It has become increasingly difficult in recent years to determine what is considered “science” and what falls into other, variant categories of existence.

In Daniel Patrick Thurs’s Science Talk, recently released in paperback by Rutgers University Press, the author examines how scientific controversies have changed, and will likely continue to alter, the way in which Americans view issues connected to the world of science.

Showbiz Demeans Politics

Russ Peterson, author of Strange Bedfellows, was just featured in the RALEIGH NEWS AND OBSERVER in an article called Showbiz Demeans Politics:

A survey by the Pew Center for the People and the Press in 2004 found that 61 percent of people under the age of 30 got some of their political "news" from late-night comedy shows.

So what is wrong with this? Plenty, says Russell Peterson, a former stand-up comic and political cartoonist turned political scientist at the University of Iowa.

The effect of endless jokes lampooning our political leaders is "implicitly anti-democratic," Peterson says. It plays to the deeply ingrained American belief that our political leaders are jokes and that the democratic system is "an irredeemable sham."

"Election after election, night after night, joke after joke, they have reinforced the notion that political participation is pointless, parties and candidates are interchangeable, and democracy is futile," Peterson writes in his new book "Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke" (Rutgers University Press, 2008).

Shock Therapy in TLS

Edward Shorter and David Healy's Shock Therapy was reviewed in the 9/5 edition of the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT:

As a historical account, Shorter and Healy's volume relates a fascinating story in a plain and accessible style...the authors tell their history in more detail and with greater authority than earlier scholars.

Martin Bernal on Chicago Public Radio

Martin Bernal, author of the Black Athena books, most recently Volume 3, which was published in 2006, discussed his work and the controversy surrounding it on CHICAGO PUBLIC RADIO's Worldview:

Will the Millennials Win it for Obama?

Morley Winograd and Mike Hais, authors of Millennial Makeover, appeared on The Digital Age with James Goodale, a program on WYNE in New York:

Negras in Brazil

A review of Kia Caldwell's Negras in Brazil appears in the Autumn 2008 issue of SIGNS: JOURNAL OF WOMEN IN CULTURE AND SOCIETY, which is based at Rutgers:

Caldwell tries to show that the "use of essentialist discourses and practices offers a means of challenging hegemonic nationalist discourses which are premised on racial anti-essentialism" (179). The move seems complicated, but it is also part of a cultural war going on, and not just in Brazil. In order to dispense with the traditionally evoked Brazilian notion of "an ostensibly fluid and nonpolar color continuum" (36) as a form of "mestico essentialism" (28), her book is looking for race in a place where it seems that race has dissolved into the air - or rather into flesh of all colors.

Download the review as a PDF here.