They meet each year to roast, er, honor fellow humanists who seized the old publish-or-perish demon by the horns. But at a March gathering to celebrate the 79 books produced last year by Stanford humanities faculty, the real question on everyone's lips was: who won the annual battle between English and history? Drumroll, please . . . English prevailed, with 11 publications to history's 9. Some other winners:
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Heavyweight Champion Tipping the scale at 4 pounds, 6 ounces was The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935, by art history professor Wanda Corn. |
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Featherweight Champion Goethe und unsere Zeit, by Katharina Mommsen, professor emerita of German literature, weighed in at a mere 2.8 ounces. |
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Longest Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, the Pulitzer Prize winner by history professor David Kennedy, '63, ran 936 pages. |
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Most Productive Team The department of Slavic languages and literatures was particularly prolific, with nine faculty members producing four books. |
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Favorite Author Portrait English professor emeritus Bliss Carnochan clinched this one as the somber schoolboy on the cover of Momentary Bliss: An American Memoir. |
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Favorite Title The honor went to Morkinskinna: The Earliest Icelandic Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings (1030-1157), co-authored by Theodore Andersson, professor emeritus of German. "Morkinskinna" means "rotten parchment" in Icelandic. |
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"Inspired by the Ghost of Jane Stanford" Award Hilton Obenzinger, lecturer in writing and critical thinking, was moved to write American Palestine: Melville, Twain and the Holy Land Mania when he gazed at Memorial Church and was struck by the thought of California as the Holy Land. |
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Most Likely to Be Found in a Tattoo Parlor Art and the Early Greek State: An Interpretive Archaeology by classics professor Michael Shanks, took the prize. |
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Best Last Line It came from Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English, penned by professor of linguistics John Rickford and his son, Russell: "Every shut eye ain't asleep, every goodbye ain't gone." |
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"It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" Award Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood and Nation in Postcolonial India, by Purnima Mankekar, MA '85, assistant professor of cultural and social anthropology, begins with this evocative line: "The monsoon . . . was whimsical, full of still days and sultry nights. . . ." |
