| MEDIA |
ALAN ROSNER ’65
MICHAEL WESCOTT LODER ’67
SAMUEL K. COHN JR. ’71
SAMUEL K. COHN JR. ’71
An Instructional Chapbook for Translating Horizontal to Vertical Text
Forbidden Games
Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy
Epidemics: Hate and Compassion from the Plague of Athens to AIDS
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Based on contemporary chronicles and archival records, this is the first book to go beyond an episodic view of individual revolts in Italy during the 16th century. From 751 revolts and collective acts of popular protest during the “Italian Wars,” 1494 to 1559, it analyzes patterns of protest, organization, leaders, the role of women, religion, and ideology, and compares these patterns with those of the much better-explored revolts of late-medieval Italy and ones north of the Alps during the 16th century. It argues that the unstudied revolts of 16thcentury Italy and its colonies during a period of galloping growth in authoritarian regimes, could, nonetheless, advance collective practices of defiance that extended beyond the most sophisticated revolts of the late Middle Ages. It concludes that democracies do not just die. Samuel Cohn Jr. has been professor of medieval history at the University of Glasgow since 1995.
This book is the equivalent of three monographs. Its origins derived from the author’s essay, “The Black Death and the Burning of the Jews” (2007); the so-called Mexican swine flu of 2009; and preparation for a plenary address to the 80th AngloAmerican Conference in 2011. From an Egyptian plague of c.2920 BCE to Ebola in West Africa in 2014, the book analyzes ancient literature, chronicles, histories, diaries, archival records, and hundreds of contemporary newspapers across the globe from the 18th century to 2014. It challenges a dominant hypothesis in the study of epidemics: that these catastrophes almost universally provoked hatred, blame and violence against the “other.” Instead, epidemics historically have more often united societies and inspired individuals and communities to extraordinary feats of compassion and abnegation. Oxford University Press recently celebrated its books to have received the most “academics reads” over the past decade. Epidemics won the prize for the “History of Science.”
Independently published
This second Instructional Chapbook transforms the earlier version’s vertical lettering using new texts to demonstrate a functional, directly legible, semi-cursive script. Each booklet provides models of letter forms that lend themselves to efficient visual scanning when controlled according to E. Asian aesthetic principles. The merging of these writing practices, where letter forms join together and line weights vary continuously, allows for a more pictorial and expressive script. In this chapbook, the short texts come from various times and places, illustrating how any Western language can be manipulated to facilitate objectives often associated with visual poetry. The back page, acting as a coda for the opening, middle and closing texts, is a French quote, attributed to Atget, the photographer of empty Paris streets, saying his images were just documents and nothing otherwise: “C’est du documents et rein d’autre.”
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UNION COLLEGE | WINTER 2022
Hemlock Lodge Press/Blurb
Sexual abuse and volleyball form the backdrop for a novel about parental greed and lies as a boy and a girl with a shared past fight for their own independence and truth. Five years earlier, a beloved volleyball coach abused Peter Bain. When Peter reported the abuse, the coach accused him of lying, then killed himself. A pariah in his school and a condemned liar to his parents, Peter, now an 11th grader, speaks only to those who believe him. Then he meets Marty, a friendly girl who has survived herself by lying and hiding for years. Encouraged, Peter goes out for volleyball. His playing skills are enough to carry the team through the district playoffs. Finding Peter in turn gives Marty the courage to free herself from her own sexual abuser, setting in motion deadly events and a climax in a district justice’s courtroom.
