Summer 2001
Hilary Appel (Department of Government) worked toward completing a book, tentatively titled Bringing Ideology Back In: Rethinking Privatization in Post-Communist Economies, which she plans to submit for publication at a major university press. Professor Appel's book explores the role of ideas in the development of post-Communist property rights systems, with a comparative analysis of the Czech and Russian cases. Through a detailed study of the choices and strategies of economic elites in designing and implementing large-scale privatization programs, Professor Appel means to show how ideology and beliefs profoundly influence the transformation of ownership regimes.
Martha Bayles prepared the Gould Center Undergraduate Seminar and speakers series for AY 2001-02, "Democracy and Art."
Audrey Bilger (Department of Literature) continued her research and writing on comedy and feminism in the works of 18th- and 19th-century British women writers. Drawing upon current feminist criticism, comic theory, and the methodologies of literary history to provide a context for re-assessing the works of such authors as Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen, Professor Bilger's study examines these writers' contemporary cultural milieu to expose the rebelliousness inherent in their work. She then connects eighteenth-century comic theory to gender issues of their day to show how each writer exemplified Enlightenment feminist humor.
Carrie Chorba (Department of Modern Languages) completed research for, and began the writing of, a book manuscript entitled Metaphors of a Mestizo Mexico: National Identity and Recent Representations of the Conquest. Professor Chorba's book examines Mexican national identity and the ways it is produced and reproduced in both official government discourse and a number of artistic genres. In her book, Chorba identifies and analyzes shifts in Mexican national identity which have occurred in the past decade.
Lisa Forman Cody (Department of History) is in the final stages of completing a book manuscript provisionally entitled The Birth of a Nation: Childbirth, Medicine, and Cultural Identity in England 1660-1840. Professor Cody's study joins together several different fields within European cultural, medical, and gender history, and is based on more than a decade's research in over thirty British, French, and American archives and libraries.
Mark Costanzo (Department of Psychology) worked on a study entitled "Stories of Injustice in the Workplace." Professor Costanzo writes:
Nearly two decades of research indicate that [empirical] models have not explained jury decision-making [in employment-related court cases] as successfully as literary models. [In the] "story model"...jurors construct narratives of the events being disputed at trial and then rely on those narratives to guide their verdicts. Jurors make inferences about the motivation, character, and intentions of plaintiffs and defendants. The same elements of structure that make a story coherent and compelling (e.g., motivation, characterization, and plot) make either the defendant's story or the plaintiff's story plausible and compelling for jurors.
Gary Gilbert (Department of Philosophy/Religious Studies) has authored a study entitled "Pagans in a Jewish World: Representation and Reality of God-fearers." "God-fearers" are those persons who, according to various ancient sources, participated in Jewish social and religious life, but were not identified as Jews-either by themselves or by the Jewish communities of which they were a part. Professor Gilbert's study examines a number of theories about identity formation and identity subversion in developing a stable sense of belonging among Jewish communities in antiquity.