ROBERTA STEWART

CLASSICS FAVORITE BOOKS TO TEACH A Chapter of Hats and Other Stories, by Machado de Assis (translated by John Gledson) La Respuesta, by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Women in Western Political Thought, by Susan Moller Okin MUST-READ BOOKS IN YOUR FIELD Apology, by Plato Annals, by Tacitus The Odyssey, by Homer The Law of the Twelve Tables The Souls of Black Folk, byW.E.B. Du Bois FAVORITE PLEASURE READS Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro The Gadfly, by E.L. Voynich The Painter of Battles, by Arturo Perez-Reverte Seeing, byJoseSaramago CURRENTLY READING African American Writers and Classical Tradition, by William W. Cook and James Tatum Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them, by James Wright The Known World, by Edward P. Jones The Road Back, by Erich Maria Remarque The Collected Poems, by W.B.Yeats "I co-taught a new course on slave societies in Imperial Rome and Brazil with my colleague Jessica Smolin and was introduced to the work of Machado de Assis, who is absolutely delightful. In teaching 'Roots of Feminism' I encountered Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz's La Respuesta. The tract shows an educated woman deploying her learning to defend herself and save her life. The text exudes her enormous intelligence and her personality, and I felt that I had found a sister. Susan Moller Okin's Women inWestern Political Thought is one of the most eye-opening books I have read on gender and history. Moller Okin observes that thinkers, who have examined the capacities of men, have asked of women 'what are women for?' This observation literally changed my thinking about the problem of gender and how to read arguments about gender." "The dialogue in Plato's Apology provides our best evidence for a trial of conscience in 399 B.C.E. An Athenian democratic jury decided that thinking was a crime. The historical, intellectual consequences are profound. Tacitus' Annals chronicles history in the first years of the Roman Principate, from the death of Augustus to the end of Nero, and examines individuals who attempted to live with integrity-or not-in a political system that has betrayed the founding tradition that politics actually matter. Homer's Odyssey is an epic account of homecoming from war. I use this book in reading groups with veterans. W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk articulated the idea of double consciousness, the differing self-conception and social judgment of African Americans within American society." "Never Let Me Go examines the medical harvesting of human body parts. Kleenex required. The Gadfly is an historical novel set in Italy before the birth of the modern Italian State. It kept me reading all night. The Painter of Battles offers a meditation on violence and the effects on those who witness and are thus complicit in it. Jose Saramago is now one of my favorite authors, even though he has little regard for paragraphing." "African American Writers and Classical Tradition, written by two colleagues and a product of their many years of collaboration at Dartmouth, has won the American Book Award for 2011. The Road Back is the sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front and chronicles the homecomings of German soldiers. As for Yeats-sometimes I just need a poem."