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.