7 minute read
Bookshelf
Transnational Chicanx Perspectives on Ana Castillo
Co-edited by Karen Roybal, assistant professor of Southwest Studies
For more than 40 years, Chicana author Ana Castillo has produced novels, poems, and critical essays that forge connections between generations; challenge borders around race, gender, and sexuality; and critically engage transnational issues of space, identity, and belonging. Her contributions to Latinx cultural production and Chicana feminist thought have transcended and contributed to feminist practice, ethnic literature, and border studies throughout the Americas. The book, co-edited with Bernadine Hernández, assistant professor of American Literary Studies at the University of New Mexico, is the first edited collection that focuses on Castillo’s work, which directly confronts what happens in response to cultural displacement, mixing, and border crossing. Published by University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021.
The Very Nice Box
By Laura Blackett ’13 and Eve Gleichman
This book has it all: humor, social commentary, hilarious subway ads, new relationship vibes, toxic males who come to harsh ends, and more. It follows Ava, a product engineer at a slick furniture company. She’s hard-working, obsessive, and heartbroken from a tragedy that killed her girlfriend and upended her life. When Ava’s new boss — the young and magnetic Mat Putnam — offers her a ride home one afternoon, an unlikely relationship blossoms. But Mat isn’t who he claims to be, and the romance takes a sharp turn. The book is a funny, suspenseful, bitingly satirical debut — with a shocking twist. It’s at once a send-up of male entitlement and a bighearted account of grief, friendship, and trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021.
Don’t Forget Us Here, Lost and Found at Guantánamo
By Mansoor Adayfi and Antonio Aiello ’94
At the age of 18, Mansoor Adayfi left his home in Yemen for a cultural mission to Afghanistan. He never returned. Kidnapped by warlords and sold to the U.S. after 9/11, he was disappeared to Guantánamo Bay, where he spent the next 14 years, held without charges, as Detainee #441. Mansoor survived the camp’s infamous interrogation program and became a resistance fighter leading prison riots and hunger strikes. While at Guantánamo, he wrote a series of manuscripts he sent as letters to his attorneys, which he then transformed into this book, written in collaboration with Aiello. Through his story, he also tells Guantánamo’s story, offering a window into one of the most secretive places on earth. Published by Hachette Books, 2021.
Silent Witness: Forensic DNA Analysis in Criminal Investigations and Humanitarian Disaster
Co-edited by Eric Stover ’74, Henry Erlich, and Thomas J. White
Since its introduction in the late 1980s, DNA analysis has revolutionized the forensic sciences: It has helped to convict the guilty, exonerate the wrongfully convicted, identify victims of mass atrocities, and reunite families whose members have been separated by war and repressive regimes. Yet many of the scientific, legal, societal, and ethical concepts that underpin forensic DNA analysis remain poorly understood. Told by more than 20 experts in genetics, law, and social science, “Silent Witness” relates the history and development of modern DNA forensics and its application in courtroom and humanitarian settings. Stover is the faculty director of the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Published by Oxford University Press, 2020.
Founders and Organizational Development: The Etiology and Theory of Founder’s Syndrome
Co-authored by Kat Miller-Stevens, associate professor of business, and Stephen Block
Miller-Stevens’s second book is designed to help today’s researchers, faculty, students, and practitioners become familiar with the causes and dynamics of Founder’s Syndrome as an organizational condition challenging nonprofit/nongovernmental, social enterprise, and for-profit and publicly traded organizations. The book uses applied social and psychological theories to peel away the layers of an organizational enigma. It reveals three causes of Founder’s Syndrome and provides insight into the power and privileges assumed by founders who engage in undesirable and self-destructive behaviors leading to their termination. Insight is provided into accounts of well-known founders who were terminated or forced to resign. Published by Routledge, 2021.
The Christie Affair
By Nina de Gramont ’88
De Gramont’s book is a reimagining of mystery writer Agatha Christie’s famous 11-day disappearance in 1926. Having announced his intention to divorce her so he could marry his mistress, Archie Christie took off to spend a weekend in the country. Sometime that night, Agatha left home, abandoning her car beside a nearby chalk quarry with a suitcase full of clothes (but taking her typewriter). Eleven days later, she turned up at a spa hotel in Harrogate, having signed in under the name of her husband’s lover. Based on those facts, de Gramont weaves imagined storylines for both the mistress and the writer, converging at the spa hotel. Published by St. Martin’s Press, 2022.
Alumni who have written or edited books, or recorded CDs, are invited to send notifications to bulletin@coloradocollege.edu and bookstore@coloradocollege.edu. To mail a copy, send to Bulletin, 14 E. Cache La Poudre St., Colorado Springs, CO 80903. All submitted material will be donated to Tutt Library. Inscriptions inside books are always welcome.
The CC Questionnaire
LONNIE TIMMONS III
Claire Oberon Garcia
Professor of English and Former Dean of the Faculty/Acting Provost
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER YOUR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT? Raising four children who now have independent, interesting lives and who love to read and travel.
WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE CC DOES BEST? Offers smart and curious students an excellent liberal arts education.
IF THERE WAS ONE THING YOU WOULD CHANGE ABOUT CC, WHAT WOULD IT BE? More office, learning, and lab spaces!
WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST FEAR? Missing out.
WHICH PERSON, LIVING OR DEAD, DO YOU MOST ADMIRE? Zora Neale Hurston.
WHO WOULD YOU INVITE TO YOUR DREAM DINNER PARTY? The writers Jessie Redmon Fauset and Alexandre Dumas, the painters Eugène Delacroix and Jordan Casteel, and the filmmakers Ava DuVernay and Michael Powell.
WHERE DO YOU MOST WANT TO VISIT? India is the country that I’m most curious about but haven’t visited.
IF YOU COULD HANG OUT IN ONE SPOT ON CAMPUS, WHERE WOULD IT BE? Tutt Library: I love how the building is such a hive of activity of many different kinds. I especially love how it looks at night from afar.
WHAT MEMORY ABOUT CC REALLY STICKS IN YOUR HEAD? The student town hall in Winter 2020 when hundreds of students announced that they were holding the college accountable for living up to our antiracist and DEI commitments.
WHAT WAS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE BLOCK BREAK OR BLOCK? The first time I taught the class Black Writers in Paris, in Paris with Professor of French Ibrahima Wade, Block 4, 2005.
WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO? “‘Isn’t life,’ she stammered, ‘isn’t life—’ But what life was she couldn’t explain. No matter. He quite understood. ‘Isn’t it, darling?’” (Katherine Mansfield, “The Garden Party.”)
WHAT IS ONE NON-DOMINANT AND/OR NON-VISIBLE IDENTITY YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE ABOUT YOURSELF? I’m visually impaired.
IF YOU DIDN’T WORK IN YOUR CURRENT PROFESSION, WHAT OTHER JOB WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO HAVE? I’d be a professional writer.
ON WHAT OCCASION DO YOU DO A “HAPPY DANCE?” When I see our granddaughters.
WHAT IS A TALENT YOU HAVE THAT VERY FEW KNOW ABOUT? I can always beat the daily Angry Birds challenge.
WHAT WOULD BE THE LAST LINE IN YOUR BIOGRAPHY? Alleluia!
BECAUSE OF YOU…
CC’s Building on Originality campaign has enabled transformative change across campus, from the community to the classroom. Now, thanks to more than 40,000 generous donors, the future for our students and our campus is brighter than ever.
We have so much to celebrate. Here’s a snapshot of what your support has made possible:
Scholarships & the CC Experience
139 new scholarships created to increase access to a CC education
Expanded internship, student research, and exploration opportunities
Fostering Engaged Teaching and Learning
Funding to support CC faculty as teachers and scholars
Bringing visiting scholars, writers, artists, and entrepreneurs to campus
Charles L. Tutt Library Renovation
Largest carbon-neutral, net-zero energy academic library in the U.S. Increased capacity to 90,000 sq. ft. and 1,100 seats
Yalich Student Services Center and Ed Robson Arena
One-stop resource offering services for student health and well-being A versatile arena benefitting the campus and the Colorado Springs communities
Creativity & Innovation at CC
Cultivating resilience, risk-taking, and creative problem-solving through collaboration with nearly 300 classes Creativity & Innovation grants funded 31 faculty projects and 12 student projects
… and so much more.
It’s never too late to make a difference for CC students. Consider supporting Colorado College with a gift to the Annual Fund: coloradocollege.edu/give
Bulletin
End Scene
“Backstage” by Haley Wright ’22, a public installation/performance part of an Advanced Design/Installation course taught in Fall 2021 by Lecturer in Dance Patrizia Herminjard ’96 and visiting artists Joshua Kohl and Crow Nishimura. Photo by Lonnie Timmons III.
