Recent Faculty Publications - November 2020

We are pleased to share with you a listing of faculty publications received this month. When you publish a book, please contact the college's communication and marketing team so that we may share your news!

Theodore Dumas, associate professor in the Department of Psychology and with Mason’s Institute for a Sustainable Earth, has published If Food Could Talk: Stories from Thirteen Precious Foods Endangered by Climate Change, which highlights thirteen important  foods that will likely disappear in the very near future due to climate change. The book discusses the origins of these foods and their cultivation histories, as well as their spiritual, socioeconomic, and nutritional impacts.  Each ends with traditional and nontraditional recipes, and the book highlights intervention strategies to serve as an introductory manual to save these foods. 

David Farris is an adjunct faculty member in the Higher Education Program and additionally serves as Mason’s executive director of safety and emergency management. His new book, Understanding University Committees: How to Manage and Participate Constructively in Institutional Governance, is a handbook that explores the dynamics of committee work, considering their composition, formal and informal leadership, and the elements that contribute to committee success. This book offers guidance on creating committees that promote fair, equitable, and engaging participative decision-making in order to yield best results while promoting enthusiasm for participation. 

Julie Owen is an associate professor of leadership studies in the School of Integrative Studies, a senior scholar for Mason’s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, and is affiliate faculty with the Higher Education and Women and Gender Studies Programs. Her new book, We are the Leaders We’ve Been Waiting For: Women and Leadership Development in College, features input from Mason undergraduate and graduate students and considers how women may best learn to become leaders in a time of flux in the very definition of leadership itself.

Owen will host a session on November 16 as part of the Fall for the Book festival, featuring a conversation with some of the student contributors to the book, who discuss challenges faced by young women today and what can be done to overcome them.

History professor Martin Sherwin’s Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, examines the Cuban Missile Crisis within a broader historical perspective, considering the origins, scope, and consequences of the expansion of nuclear weapons during the Cold War years following World War II. From the debate within the Truman administration regarding the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, to the actions in the United States and the Soviet Union during the crisis itself, this volume uses new sources to present a full picture of a dangerous time.

Sherwin discussed his book on October 16 at Mason’s Fall for the Book festival; a recording of the session is available through the festival’s site. 

Congratulations

Congratulations to Professors Cynthia Lum and Christopher Koper, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, for winning the 2020 Outstanding Book Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Policing. The award recognizes “a monograph published in the three calendar years preceding this year” and was for their book, Evidence-Based Policing: Translating Research into Practice.

Congratulations to assistant sociology professor Amaka Okechukwu, whose 2019 book, To Fulfill These Rights: Political Struggle Over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions, has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Book Award from the Association of Black Sociologists. The award, “named in honor of Wells-Barnett’s pioneering sociology and social justice leadership,” will be given annually to ABS member authors of the best published book in the previous two years.