What We're Reading: Dan Philippon

The current Director of Undergraduate Studies is writing (and reading) about food these days. And what food: He recently returned from a short stint in France, where he was Visiting Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon and did research on food writing and the sustainable food movement. "The highlight of my stay was the Lyonnaise cuisine," he recalls, "Saint-Marcellin and Comté cheeses, Beaujolais and Côtes du Rhône wines, quenelles de brochet and saucisson de Lyon." Yep, the book he recommends includes recipes.

What We're Reading: Ellen Messer-Davidow

The Chair of the Department of English has assigned the Affordable Care Act as required reading. Her department classes have titles such as "Probing the Social Text," "Civil Rights Discourse," and "Consumer Culture." In her research, Professor Messer-Davidow explores how one phenomenon is explained differently by different parties, from scholars and activists to lawmakers, the media, and the public. You might say the world is her text, along with such soundings as Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century--and a thriller or two.

What We're Reading: Kim Todd

She's written one book about those cheerful marauders, house sparrows, and another about a female naturalist who, in 1699, voyaged from Amsterdam to South America to study insect metamorphosis. Kim Todd joins the Creative Writing Program this fall as a third creative nonfiction writer, alongside Regents Professors Patricia Hampl and Madelon Sprengnether. What author has she been loving lately?

What We're Reading: John Watkins

What does Professor John Watkins read about besides medieval and early modern diplomacy? Disease, for one.

What We're Reading: Amit Yahav

Assistant Professor Amit Yahav joined the English faculty this spring semester, after teaching at the University of Haifa and Johns Hopkins. A scholar of 18th-century literature, she graduated from Tel-Aviv University and earned her PhD in English Literature at Johns Hopkins University. Yahav's research project is to identify an 18th-century interest in qualitative time, but her reading includes such 20th-century creations as the Gruffalo and a Sneetch or two. (More from Professor Yahav here.)