BOOKSHELF
Recent Releases A Feminist Critique of Police Stops Josephine Ross ’81 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
“How is stop-and-frisk like sexual harassment of men, women, and teenagers?” That’s a central question in this book, which Ross answers with ample evidence, some taken from high-profile cases, but many from stories told to her by her students at Howard University School of Law, where she is a professor. In what’s been called a “provocative mash up in which #metoo meets #blacklivesmatter,” the book argues that three feminist principles should be imported to police reform: consent, bodily integrity, and victim/survivor’s point of view. Believing that the supposed right to withhold consent to searches of bags and books is an illusion, given the unequal power dynamic between police officers and civilians, Ross ultimately “argues for the end of so-called consent stops and searches and the abolition of stop-and-frisk.”
Tucson Water Turnaround: Crisis to Success Michael J. McGuire and Marie Slezak Pearthree ’77 AMERICAN WATER WORKS ASSOCIATION
Two decades before leadcontaminated water poured from the faucets of Flint, Michigan, the city of Tucson, Arizona, faced a similar problem: its hasty switch from sourcing its water supply from groundwater to Colorado River water resulted in widespread pipe corrosion and rusty water in Tucson’s taps. Pearthree, who was project manager and deputy director at Tucson Water from 1997 to 2008, and her coauthor chronicle the errors and politics that led to the debacle, and what was done to fix it and create a more sustainable water supply for the desert city.
OBERLIN ALUMNI MAGAZINE 2021 SPRING
Anthropology and Radical Humanism: Native and African American Narratives and the Myth of Race Jack Glazier, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Glazier revisits the late 1920s’ scholarship of Fisk University ethnographer Paul Radin and graduate student Andrew Polk, who brought radical humanism to anthropology. Radin and Polk collected autobiographies and religious conversation narratives from elderly African Americans, which represent the first systematic record of slavery as told by slaves. In his studies of Native and African Americans, Radin sought to counteract the disparaging portrayals of Black people by white historians and provide an argument against the racial explanations of human affairs that had been common in popular thinking and in academic scholarship.
The Coming Good Society William F. Schulz ’71 and Sushma R Aman HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cry of Murder on Broadway: A Woman’s Ruin and Revenge in Old New York Julie Miller ’81 THREE HILLS/CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Many of the rights we take for granted now would have been unthinkable 200 years ago, while rights some are hoping to expand—like those for trans individuals—were barely thought of two decades ago. What will be considered a basic right years from now? Which rights might be commonplace? These are the central considerations of the book co-written by Schulz, who spent a dozen years as the head of the U.S. section of Amnesty International. “We humans adapt rights to history,” the authors explain. “As history changes, so do rights.”
Miller, who is curator of early American manuscripts at the Library of Congress, tells the story of Amelia Norman, a servant whose mid-19th century affair with wealthy merchant Henry Ballard ended first with him dumping her and their unborn child, and later, with her stabbing him on the steps of New York’s luxurious Astor House. Ballard survived the attack, but did less well with the public, who viewed him as a symbol of the oppressor and Norman as the oppressed during the economic depression that followed the Panic of 1837. Norman’s case became more than a salacious story for tabloids and cause célèbre; it helped to fuel the emerging women’s right’s movement.
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