Farm Report

HUMANITIES Battle of the Tomes

Elwood Smith THEY MEET EACH YEAR to roast, er, honor fellow humanists who seized the old publish-or-perish demon by the horns. But at a March gathering to celebrate the 79 books produced last year by Stanford humanities faculty, the real question on everyone's lips was: who won the annual battle between English and history? Drumroll, please . . . English prevailed, with 11 publications to history's 9. Some other winners: Heavyweight Champion Tipping the scale at 4 pounds, 6 ounces was The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935, by art history professor Wanda Corn. Featherweight Champion Goethe und unsere Zeit, by Katharina Mommsen, professor emerita of German literature, weighed in at a mere 2.8 ounces. Longest Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, the Pulitzer Prize winner by history professor David Kennedy, '63, ran 936 pages. Most Productive Team The department of Slavic languages and literatures was particularly prolific, with nine faculty members producing four books. Favorite Author Portrait English professor emeritus Bliss Carnochan clinched this one as the somber schoolboy on the cover of Momentary Bliss: An American Memoir. Favorite Title The honor went to Morkinskinna: The Earliest Icelandic Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings (1030-1157), co-authored by Theodore Andersson, professor emeritus of German. "Morkinskinna" means "rotten parchment" in Icelandic. "Inspired by the Ghost of Jane Stanford" Award Hilton Obenzinger, lecturer in writing and critical thinking, was moved to write American Palestine: Melville, Twain and the Holy Land Mania when he gazed at Memorial Church and was struck by the thought of California as the Holy Land. Most Likely to Be Found in a Tattoo Parlor Art and the Early Greek State: An Interpretive Archaeology by classics professor Michael Shanks, took the prize. Best Last Line It came from Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English, penned by professor of linguistics John Rickford and his son, Russell: "Every shut eye ain't asleep, every goodbye ain't gone." "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" Award Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood and Nation in Postcolonial India, by Purnima Mankekar, MA '85, assistant professor of cultural and social anthropology, begins with this evocative line: "The monsoon . . . was whimsical, full of still days and sultry nights. . . ."