As the world continues to grapple with challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and growing inequality, SFS faculty are developing new thinking and research to meet our historic moment. In 2021, SFS professors published books exploring key issues of diplomacy, history, political science, public health, economics, development and identity to contribute to our shared understanding of the world. Drawing on varied methodologies and using a range of source material, from personal reflections and material culture to epidemiological data, this year’s faculty book publications chart a path forward in decidedly uncertain times.
Jacques Berlinerblau, The Philip Roth We Don’t Know: Sex, Race and Autobiography (University of Virginia Press)
Dr. Jacques Berlinerblau, the Rabbi Harold White professor of Jewish civilization at SFS, takes a new look at the much-studied author Philip Roth in his new book, which investigates the novelist’s work in light of today’s reckonings with race and sexual politics. A scholar of religion, politics and Jewish-American fiction, Berlinerblau draws on the intersection of his expertise to uncover new interpretations of one of his long-time subjects. In exploring Roth’s literary creations and the cultural commentary surrounding them, Berlinerblau found surprising new information, including how Roth maneuvered and networked to win awards and acclaim.
In a review of the book, Dr. Jessica Lang of Baruch College writes, “Berlinerblau asks that we take the long view, one that is rich in nuance, vigorous in its attention to broader trends and experiences and one that doesn’t shy away from asking difficult, challenging and even painful questions.”
Read more about The Philip Roth We Don’t Know: Sex, Race and Autobiography.
Chester Crocker (ed.), Diplomacy and the Future of World Order (Georgetown University Press)
Chester Crocker, the James R. Schlesinger senior fellow in strategic studies at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, is one of three editors of a new collection about the future of peace and conflict diplomacy. Shifts in power from states to non-state actors, shocks to the international liberal order, disunion in governing institutions and turmoil in domestic politics all create challenges for future cooperation and coordination. Crocker, who served as U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa affairs, and his co-editors Pamela Aall and Fen Hampson pull together three possible scenarios for the future of the world order based on the expert analyses in the book.
Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Columbia University Roy Licklider called it “a very important book on how the United States should cope with a very different world. Essential for conflict resolution courses.”
Read more about Diplomacy and the Future of World Order.
Derek Goldman and Clark Young, Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski (Georgetown University Press)
In this book, Professor Derek Goldman, co-founding director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, and Clark Young (COL’12) present an illustrated version of their celebrated play Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, which will continue its global tour in 2022. With additional essays and conversations from diplomats, scholars and artists, the book chronicles the dramatization in which actor David Straithairn played human rights advocate, Holocaust witness and SFS professor Jan Karski. Former Secretary of State and SFS professor Madeleine Albright, President Emeritus of Georgetown Leo J. O’Donovan, S.J., Ambassador Samantha Power, Ambassador Cynthia Schneider and others contribute writings of their own throughout.
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (H’02) said, “This important volume shows us that Karski’s legacy of moral courage should always be a challenge to our conscience. We must bear witness to our history, face the truth and act upon it.”
Read more about the illustrated edition of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski.
Rebecca Katz and Matthew Boyce (eds.), Inoculating Cities: Case Studies of Urban Pandemic Preparedness (Academic Press)
Science, Technology and International Affairs Professor and Director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security Rebecca Katz and doctoral student in the Global Infectious Diseases Program Matthew Boyce meet our public health moment with their new edited volume on urban outbreaks of infectious disease. International contributors experienced in preparing for, detecting and responding to outbreaks offer a global perspective on the importance of urban pandemic preparedness. From controlling dengue in Delhi, India, to preparing for re-emergent smallpox in Sydney, Australia, in-depth case studies explore the threats that infectious diseases pose in urban environments and offer examples of threat reduction and mitigation techniques that could lead the way in preventing future pandemics.
Read more about Inoculating Cities: Case Studies of Urban Pandemic Preparedness.
Charles Kupchan (ed.), Anchoring the World: International Order in the Twenty-First Century (Foreign Affairs)
Professor of International Affairs Charles Kupchan has edited a powerful new anthology that sets forth alternative visions for promoting international order and prosperity in the 21st century. Made possible by the generosity of the family of former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, the publication of this incisive collection celebrates the centennials of SFS, Chatham House and the Council on Foreign Relations. The essays explore creative options for advancing world order, ranging from reforming the United Nations to revitalizing democratic alliances and building transnational networks among civil-society actors. In his essay co-authored with Richard Haass, Kupchan argues that “the best vehicle for promoting stability in the twenty-first century is a global concert of major powers.”
Read more about Anchoring the World: International Order in the Twenty-First Century.
Juan Luis Manfredi Sánchez, Urban Diplomacy: A Cosmopolitan Outlook (Brill)
In his book, Prince of Asturias Distinguished Visiting Professor at the BMW Center for German and European Studies Juan Luis Manfredi Sánchez explores the role of cities in globalization. In examining how cities influence events through diplomatic, political and communicative processes, the author shows how urban environments impact foreign policy, sometimes advancing a political agenda that does not align with their own country’s international goals. Urban Diplomacy addresses the most pressing challenges of our times, turning its attention to how the COVID-19 pandemic, and the city’s position as an epicenter of prevention and response, is accelerating the city’s political and diplomatic role.
Read more about Urban Diplomacy: A Cosmopolitan Outlook.
Paul Miller, Just War and Ordered Liberty (Cambridge University Press)
Dr. Paul Miller, professor of the practice and co-chair for Global Politics and Security at the Master of Science in Foreign Service program, examines the intellectual history of just war through three major theoretical traditions: Augustinian, Westphalian and Liberal. Miller shows how different interpretations of justice, law and sovereignty change the just causes for warfare and sets out an approach for a theoretically unified vision in which war can be justly waged.
Professor Alex Bellamy of the University of Queensland writes of the book, “It combines a rare blend of sophisticated and careful historical analysis that yields not one but three just war traditions with the sort of insight into the critical dilemmas of today that can only stem from practical experience on the front line.”
Read more about Just War and Ordered Liberty.
Abraham Newman, Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell (eds.), The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence (Brookings Institution Press)
Professor Abraham Newman, director of the Mortara Center for International Studies, co-edits this collection examining key implications of weaponized interdependence on the global economy. Newman draws on his prior research on globalization and economic interdependence to contextualize how globalized information networks can be used for strategic advantage.
According to professor emeritus Robert O. Keohane of Princeton University, the book “demonstrates the importance of weaponized interdependence in contemporary world politics and is essential reading for scholars and policymakers alike.”
Read more about The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence.
Daniel H. Nexon, Morten Skumsrud Andersen and Alexander Cooley (eds.), Undermining American Hegemony: Goods Substitution in World Politics (Cambridge University Press 2021)
Professor Daniel Nexon advances a new approach to the study of international order in this new book co-edited with Morten Skumsrud Andersen and Alexander Cooley. Rather than focusing on direct challenges to U.S. military power, contributors draw upon little-known but important case studies to offer new insights revealing how states’ moves toward alternative sources of military, economic and social goods can hollow out the liberal world order.
“Undermining Hegemony helps bring the bleary future into focus,” writes Notre Dame Professor of Political Science Joseph M. Parent. “Anyone looking to understand how states large and small create international order should start with this book.”
Read more about Undermining American Hegemony: Goods Substitution in World Politics.
Katrin Sieg, Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum (University of Michigan Press)
In her new book, Professor Katrin Sieg, director of the BMW Center for German and European Studies, questions the recent memory projects of Germany’s museums as they grapple with colonial history and violence. Sieg examines the tension between the museum’s position within racial power structures and its institutional agency to frame these processes of reckoning and examine how Europeans might envision antiracism on a global scale.
Professor David D. Kim of the University of California, Los Angeles, calls the book a “tour de force whereby the museum represents a radically cosmopolitan space for re-evaluating German postcolonial consciousness in the current transatlantic reckoning with decolonization.”
Read more about Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum.
Ori Z. Soltes (ed.), Growing Up Jewish in India (Niyogi Books)
Dr. Ori Z. Soltes, teaching professor at the Center for Jewish Civilization, paints a historical picture of Jewish communities in India in his new book. Soltes and other contributors weave macro-level discussions of Jewish diaspora and cultural integration in the subcontinent with the story of artist Siona Benjamin, accompanied by over 150 images. Together, the book’s textual and visual elements offer a unique portrait of Indian and Jewish culture and tradition, both in India and throughout the larger Jewish diaspora in eastern Asia.
Read more about Growing up Jewish in India.
Ori Z. Soltes, Eros and Eris: Love and Strife In And Beyond the Greco-Roman World (New Academia Publishing)
This year, Soltes also published Eros and Eris: Love and Strife In and Beyond the Greco-Roman World. An exploration of the inextricable connection between two seemingly incongruous concepts, the book studies the intersection of love and hate in key works of Greek and Latin literature — spanning epic, lyric, tragic and comedic poetry — before turning to works of world literature ranging from the Bible to West Side Story, to make cultural and collective inferences about the societies that produced them.
In a review, Dr. Alex S. Kohav of the Metropolitan State University of Denver wrote that this volume “will stand out, both because of its expansive, panoramic survey of subjects, literary masterworks and their historical creators, as well as due to the skillful and enthralling manner of exposition that the author engages.”
Read more about Eros and Eris: Love and Strife In and Beyond the Greco-Roman World.
Tamara Sonn (ed.), Overcoming Orientalism: Essays in Honor of John L. Esposito (Oxford University Press)
Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in the History of Islam at the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding Tamara Sonn is the editor of a new book that counters Orientalist tropes which reduce Islam and Muslims to harmful and ignorant stereotypes. Instead, the essayists honor Georgetown University Professor John L. Esposito’s expansive and nuanced analysis and his promotion of the deep commonalities that can be found among world religions. They present Islam as a multi-faceted and truly global tradition practiced and adapted by diverse communities across the world.
University of Michigan History Professor Juan Cole writes, “This is an essential book for understanding the contemporary Muslim world, which interrogates the glib assumptions of so much writing about this key region.”
Read more about Overcoming Orientalism: Essays in Honor of John L. Esposito
Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India (Oxford University Press)
Assistant Professor Rajesh Veeraraghavan’s book is an ethnography of the largest public employment program in India and shines new light on the challenges and benefits of using information and technology to implement development programs. Political will and good policy design are critical but often insufficient due to resistance from entrenched local anti-worker systems. The book argues for the necessity of a continuous series of responses to counteract local resistance, a process of “patching development.” Patching is about altering power equations through attention to small, incremental changes in institutions and socio-technical processes. While each patch may have only limited local significance, Veeraraghavan argues, the cumulative impact can potentially transform state-society relations.
Professor Patrick Heller of Brown University writes in a review, “The challenges and conflicts of implementing public policies to fight poverty have never been illuminated in such detail and with such analytic power.”
Read more about Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India.
Erik Voeten, Ideology and International Institutions (Princeton University Press)
In his first book, Dr. Erik Voeten, the Peter F. Krogh professor in geopolitics and justice in world affairs, offers a new approach to understanding the ideological divisions that threaten the liberal international order. Voeten’s central argument, that multilateral institutions represent efforts by states to promote their preferred ideological positions, enables the author to explore weaknesses in global governance and assess populist threats to the international system.
John Ikenberry, the Albert G. Milbank professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, writes in a review, “In this impressive book, Voeten argues that although multilateral bodies such as the World Trade Organization may appear to be ‘neutral’ and ‘universalistic,’ they more often than not reflect the values and ideological orientations of their most powerful sponsors.”
Read more about Ideology and International Institutions.
Anna von der Goltz, The Other ‘68ers: Student Protest and Christian Democracy in West Germany (Oxford University Press)
Associate Professor Anna von der Goltz reframes the momentous political and cultural forces at work in the West German student movement in the first book to explore the role of center-right students and Christian Democrats in the 1968 generation. Von der Goltz traces the influence of these activists from the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 70s to Christian Democratic rule, especially under chancellor Helmut Kohl. In doing so, she develops an original approach to understanding the enduring role of Christian Democracy in German political life.
Read more about The Other ‘68ers: Student Protest and Christian Democracy in West Germany.