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.