Novelist Chris Bohjalian To Read at Amherst College Nov. 8

October 29, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Novelist Chris Bohjalian will read from his work at 8 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 8, in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College. Bohjalian is a 1982 graduate of the college. The event, sponsored by the Creative Writing Center, is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

"Few writers can manipulate a plot with Bohjalian's grace and power," wrote The New York Times Book Review-a talent that might explain the novelist's success: Midwives was a number-one New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah's Book Club, and Bohjalian's works-nine novels, including the new Before You Know Kindness-have been translated into 17 languages and twice become acclaimed movies. Bohjalian has written for a variety of magazines, including Cosmopolitan and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. His novel Water Witches is the first One Book/One Town selection for Northampton. He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.

The Amherst College Creative Writing Center puts on a yearly reading series featuring both emerging and established authors. More information is available at the center's Website, www.amherst.edu/~cwc .

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Robert Jay Lifton To Speak on "Americans as Survivors" at Amherst Nov. 9 and 10

October 29, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Robert Jay Lifton will speak on "Americans as Survivors-Vietnam and Iraq" on Tuesday, Nov. 9 at 8 p.m. in Stirn Auditorium at Amherst College. Anthony W. Marx, Amherst College President, and Gerald Fink, founding member of the Whitehead Institute and American Cancer Society Professor of Genetics at MIT, will join Lifton for a discussion of national security and academic freedom on Wednesday, Nov. 10 at 4 p.m. in the Babbott Room in the Octagon. Both talks are free and open to the public.

A lecturer in psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, Lifton is the author of more than 20 books, including The Nazi Doctors (1986), The Protean Self (1993) and Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shrinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism (1999). His path-breaking study of the survivors of Hiroshima, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1968), received the National Book Award.

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William Cronon To Deliver Hugh Hawkins Lecture at Amherst College Nov. 4

October 29, 2004
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, will deliver the annual Hugh Hawkins Lecture at Amherst College on Thursday, Nov. 4, at 4:30 p.m. in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115). Sponsored by the Department of History, the lecture and a reception to follow are free and open to the public.

Cronon, one of the nation's leading scholars of Western American and environmental history, will speak on "The Portage: Time, Memory and Storytelling in the Making of an American Town." The lecture will offer a preview of his forthcoming book on Portage, Wisc., home to historian Frederick Jackson Turner and environmentalist Aldo Leopold.

A prolific writer and influential teacher, Cronon is the author of Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983), winner of the Francis Parkman Prize, and Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), winner of the Bancroft Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Award.

The Hawkins Lecture honors Hugh Hawkins, longtime professor of history and American studies at Amherst College who retired in 2000.

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Enrico Mario Santí To Speak on Neruda and Paz at Amherst College Oct. 28

October 22, 2004
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Enrico Mario Santí, the William T. Bryan Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Kentucky, will present a lecture titled "Parallel Lives: Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz" on Thursday, Oct. 28, at 4 p.m. in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College. Sponsored by the Spanish department at Amherst, Santí's talk and a reception to follow, are free and open to the public.

An authority on modern Latin American literature, Santí is the author of Pablo Neruda: The Poetics of Prophecy and El acto de las palabras: Estudios y diálogos con Octavio Paz. He is also the editor of Neruda's Canto general and Paz's El laberinto de la soledad. He previously taught at Cornell, Georgetown and the University of Miami.

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Peabody Trio with Maria Lambros To Present Music at Amherst Nov. 6

October 20, 2004
Director of Media Relations
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AMHERST, Mass.-In the latest installment of the 2004-05 Music at Amherst Series, the Peabody Trio and guest violist Maria Lambros will present Beethoven's Trio in G-Minor, No. 2, Opus 1, Ives's Piano Trio and the Brahms C Minor Piano Quartet on Saturday, Nov. 6, at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall at Amherst College.

The Peabody Trio-Violaine Melançon, violin; Natasha Brofsky, cello; and Seth Knopp, piano-has served as the resident faculty ensemble at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore since 1989. They frequently perform educational residencies and act as visiting professors at conservatories and universities both in America and abroad. The trio members continue their positions as Valentine Visiting Professors of Music at Amherst College this year.

Complementing the stylings of the Peabody Trio at this concert is what The New York Times calls "the warm sonority of the viola…belonging to the guest artist, Maria Lambros." Maria Lambros has performed around the world as a member of three of the country's finest string quartets. She currently performs with La Fenice, a New York-based chamber ensemble.

The latest information can be obtained from the Amherst College Concert Website at www.amherst.edu/~concerts. Admission to the concert is $22; senior citizens and Amherst College employees $19; and students $5. For more information and brochures call the Concert Office at 413/542-2195, or e-mail concert manager Michael Baumgarten at mhbaumgarten@amherst.edu.

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Historian John Dower To Speak at Amherst College Oct. 26

October 19, 2004
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-John Dower, the John J. McCloy '16 Professor of American Institutions and International Relations at Amherst College and the Ford International Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will deliver a lecture on "Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9/11" on Tuesday, Oct. 26 at 4:30 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room at Amherst College. The event will be free and open to the public.

Dower, a 1959 graduate of Amherst who earned a Ph.D. in history and far eastern languages from Harvard University, is a leading scholar of modern Japan and US-Japan relations. His most recent book, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (1999), was a "magisterial, beautifully written account of Japan between August 1945 and April 1952 [that] assesses the impact of Allied activity on modern Japanese history," according to a reviewer in The New York Times. It received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the Bancroft Prize.
Beyond his scholarly work, Dower has engaged in the public debate over American historical memory and foreign policy, especially the role of racial prejudice in stimulating mass violence, and the moral implications of massive bombing of civilians. He has been speaking out recently about the analogies, or lack of them, between the occupation of Iraq and the occupation of Japan.

Dower has also broken new ground in his scholarly use of visual materials and other expressions of popular culture in reexamining Japanese and US-Asian history. His publications include War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986), which was honored with several prizes; Empire and Aftermath (1979), a study of the life and times of the diplomat and later prime minister Yoshida Shigeru; and Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays (1993). He also was the executive producer of a documentary film Hellfire-A Journey from Hiroshima, which was nominated in 1988 for an Academy Award.

The John J. McCloy '16 Professorship was established at Amherst College in 1983 to honor John J. McCloy and his outstanding career of service and accomplishment in American politics and international diplomacy. Dower will deliver the second McCloy lecture in the spring. Dower's visit is hosted by the Department of History at Amherst College.

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Jonathan Kozol To Speak at Amherst College Nov. 11

October 19, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Jonathan Kozol, public school teacher, award-winning writer and educational activist, will speak about "The Artificial Meritocracy: The Silence of our Academic Leaders on the Savage Inequalities and Deepening Resegregation of the U.S. Public Schools" on Thursday, Nov. 11, at 8 p.m. in Johnson Chapel at Amherst College. Sponsored by the Office of the President and the Victor S. Johnson Lecture Fund, Kozol's talk is free and open to the public.

A working activist and also a perceptive theorist, Kozol documented his first year as a teacher in Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools (1967), for which he received the National Book Award in 1968. He speaks from first-hand experiences that humanize social issues. For 40 years, Kozol has worked to expose racial inequalities in the education system and speak against the plight of disadvantaged children, bringing the plight of students in under-funded urban schools to the attention of the nation.

His literary work addresses the major educational problems connected to poverty, hunger and illiteracy. Kozol has written several award-winning books, including The Night is Dark and I am Far from Home (1975), Children of the Revolution: A Yankee Teacher in the Cuban Schools (1978), Illiterate America (1985) and Amazing Grace: the Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation (1995).

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Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz To Speak at Amherst College Oct. 21

October 19, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Joseph E. Stiglitz, recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, will lecture on "America's Recent Economic Experiences: Lessons for the Future" at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, at the Alumni House at Amherst College. The event is open to the public at no charge.

A 1964 graduate of Amherst, Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University. From 1997 until 2000, he was chief economist and senior vice president of development economics at the World Bank. The chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration, Stiglitz has taught at Stanford, Princeton and Yale and All Souls College, Oxford.

Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics, "The Economics of Information," exploring the consequences of information asymmetries and pioneering such pivotal concepts as adverse selection and moral hazard, which have now become standard tools not only of theorists, but of policy analysts. He has made major contributions to macro-economics and monetary theory, to development economics and trade theory, to public and corporate finance, to the theories of industrial organization and rural organization, and to the theories of welfare economics and of income and wealth distribution. In the 1980s, he helped revive interest in the economics of R&D.

His work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets do not work well, and how selective government intervention can improve their performance.

Recognized around the world as a leading economic educator, he has written textbooks that have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He founded one of the leading economics journals, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, and is the author of many books, most recently The Roaring Nineties (W.W. Norton). His book Globalization and Its Discontents (W.W. Norton June 2001) has been translated into 20 languages and is an international bestseller.

The Amherst College Alumni House is located just southeast of the Lord Jeffery Inn.

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William Kristol and Joseph S. Nye To Speak at Amherst College Oct. 27

October 14, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and Joseph S. Nye of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, will speak "America in the World: Hard vs. Soft Power," in a free public lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 27 at 8 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room at Converse Hall at Amherst College. The Victor S. Johnson Lecture Fund and the Office of the President at Amherst are sponsoring this lecture.

A founding editor of the conservative political magazine The Weekly Standard, William Kristol is a leading political analyst, appearing regularly on Fox News Sunday and on the Fox News Channel. Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future, where he helped shape the strategy that produced the 1994 Republican congressional victory. Kristol also served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the Bush administration and to Secretary of Education William Bennett under President Reagan. Kristol has taught politics at the University of Pennsylvania and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His most recent book is The War Over Iraq: America's Mission and Saddam's Tyranny (co-authored with Lawrence Kaplan, 2003).

Joseph S. Nye has served as Deputy to the Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology; chair of the National Security Council Group on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons; chair of the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates intelligence estimates for the President of the United States; and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Nye is a University Distinguished Service Professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where he has taught since 1964. His most recent books are The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (2002) and Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (2004).

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Writers lê thi diem thúy and May-lee Chai To Present "Gangsters & Glamour" at Amherst Books Oct. 26

October 14, 2004
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Performance artist and novelist lê thi diem thúy, with memoirist May-lee Chai, the visiting writer in the Creative Writing Center at Amherst College, will present "Gangsters & Glamour" at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 26, at Amherst Books (8 Main Street, Amherst.). The reading, sponsored by the Amherst College English Department and the Eastman Fund, is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

A 1994 graduate of Hampshire College, lê thi diem thúy is the author of The Gangster We Are All Looking For (2003), which The New York Times named a Notable Book and praised as "a tale of persecution, tragedy and gritty determination, told with a poetic sensibility and a sharp eye for the matter of everyday life." Recently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, lê has also worked in residency at the Lannan Foundation, the Headlands Center for the Arts and Hedgebrook. She has performed solo works at the New World Theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the International Women's Playwrights' Festival in Galway, Ireland.

Of Glamorous Asians: Short Stories and Essays, May-lee Chai's new collection of stories and essays, Marilyn Krysl has remarked, "We're in the hands of a sophisticate with a piercing eye, a nuanced intelligence and a sprightly sense of irony." Chai's earlier work earned similar praise: her first novel, My Lucky Face, an intimate investigation of China's cultural revolution, was called "beautifully told." Her second book, The Girl from Purple Mountain, a family memoir that Chai co-wrote with her father, was nominated for a National Book Award in 2001. Chai's fiction and essays have been widely published in such places as the San Francisco Chronicle, ZYZZYVA and Missouri Review.

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Painter and Printmaker Michael Mazur '57 To Speak at Amherst College Oct. 22

October 12, 2004
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Distinguished painter and printmaker Michael Mazur will give an illustrated lecture about his recent work titled "A Funny Thing Happened To Me on My Way To the College Last Fall" in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (115 Fayerweather) at Amherst College at 4 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 22. Sponsored by the Friends of the Amherst College Library, the lecture and a reception afterward at Archives and Special Collections in the Robert Frost Library, where there will be a small exhibit, are free and open to the public. Other artworks by Michael Mazur will be on view beginning October 19 at the Mead Art Museum.

A 1957 graduate of Amherst College, Mazur studied with sculptor and printmaker Leonard Baskin at the college. The recipient of B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees from Yale University, Mazur has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Brandeis University and Harvard University. One of the foremost monotype artists in the U.S., he has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1962. A solo retrospective exhibition of his prints was presented by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2000. In 1992, he collaborated with Robert Pinsky on a translation of The Inferno of Dante, published in January 1993 with prints by Mazur. An edition of this portfolio, exhibited on a national tour from 1993 to 1997, was acquired by the Mead Art Museum in 2002.

The Oct. 22 presentation is held in conjunction with Mazur's October 18-22 residency as a Robert Frost Fellow at Amherst College. He and master printer Bob Townsend will be in the print shop of the Fine Arts Department working with the students of Amherst faculty member Betsey Garand on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

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Amherst College Professor Javier Corrales Receives Fulbright Award

October 6, 2004
Director of Media Relations
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AMHERST, Mass.-Javier Corrales, associate professor of political science at Amherst College, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to travel and conduct research in Venezuela. Corrales will study why so many ex-presidents and complete newcomers are running for office in Latin America and winning. Corrales suspects that this choice of candidates is both symptomatic and a cause of some of the region's democratic malfunction. While in Caracas, Corrales will also lecture at the Institute for Higher Studies in Administration.

Corrales considered the office of the president in his most recent book, Presidents Without Parties: The Politics of Economic Reform in Argentina and Venezuela in the 1990s (2002). He argued that the crisis of political parties in Latin America often affects not just the ways citizens are represented, but also the way states govern the economy.

Corrales, who has taught at Amherst since 1996, has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. He has taught in Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela, and earned a B.S. in foreign service from Georgetown University, and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.

Corrales is one of approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad to some 140 countries in the 2004-05 academic year as Fulbright Scholars. Established in 1946 by the late Senator William J. Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright Scholar Program seeks to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the world.

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Images of "Pain of War" at Mead Art Museum at Amherst College Oct. 28 to Dec. 19

October 6, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-The Mead Art Museum at Amherst College will present "The Pain of War," an exhibition of some 60 prints, photographs and videos that address the theme of suffering associated with war. This timely show, organized by Carol Solomon Kiefer, curator of European art at the Mead, with the assistance of Erin Sullivan, graduate intern, will run from Oct. 28 until Dec. 19.

"The Pain of War" provokes viewers to ask: Why are we so captivated by images of pain and suffering? Does their incessant presence in our media-saturated world inure us to their awfulness? How do we respond emotionally, psychologically, intellectually and politically? What issues of truth, sensationalism, exploitation, aesthetics, history and memory do such images raise?

"The Pain of War" addresses issues raised by Susan Sontag's celebrated meditation Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), in which she wrote, "One can feel obliged to look at photographs that record great cruelties and crimes. One should feel obliged to think about what it means to look at them, about the capacity to actually assimilate what they show."

With works from the permanent collection of the Mead Art Museum and important loans, "The Pain of War" will present images from the 17th century to the present day, documenting atrocities from the Thirty Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the First and Second World Wars, the Holocaust, the Vietnam War and more recent conflicts such as September 11, 2001 and the war in Iraq. Highlights will include prints by Jacques Callot, Francisco Goya, Edouard Manet, George Bellows, Käthe Kollwitz, Otto Dix, Pablo Picasso and Dinos and Jake Chapman; photographs by Robert Capa, W. Eugene Smith, Lee Miller, Larry Burrows, Joel Meyerowitz, James Nachtwey and Sebastião Salgado; and films by Mona Hatoum and Richard Levine.

Several academic departments at Amherst College are co-sponsoring related programs in conjunction with the exhibition. These programs include lectures, gallery talks, films and a panel discussion, all to be held in Stirn Auditorium. Kim Phuc, the subject of the famous 1972 Vietnam photograph of the naked young girl burned by napalm as she runs screaming from her village, and today a UNESCO Ambassador of Goodwill, will speak at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 4. Noted psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, will speak on "American Survivors: Vietnam and Iraq" at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 9.

On Nov. 11 Amherst professors Robert Bezucha (History), Lawrence Douglas (Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought), Margaret Hunt (History) and Heidi Gilpin (German) will participate in a panel discussion of "The Pain of War." Members of the Amherst faculty have written responses to the exhibited works; these responses will accompany the show.

Viewers should be advised that this exhibition contains graphic images, some of which may not suitable for children.

The Mead Art Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Thursday evenings until 9 p. m. More information is available on the museum's Website at www.amherst.edu/~mead or by calling the Mead Art Museum at 413/542-2335. All events are free and open to the public.

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Public Health Advocate David A. Kessler '73 To Speak at Amherst College Oct. 21

October 6, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-David Kessler, dean and vice chancellor for medical affairs at the University of California at San Francisco, will talk about "Tobacco Wars" on Thursday, Oct. 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College. Kessler's talk, the annual Everett H. Pryde Lecture, will be free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served after the talk.

Former dean of the Yale School of Medicine and former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Kessler is best known for taking on the tobacco industry under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton (1990-97). He instituted a program to regulate the marketing and sale of tobacco products to children, and later revealed that the tobacco companies had known for 50 years that nicotine was an addictive drug and manipulated its levels in cigarettes. He chronicled these efforts in A Question of Intent (2001).

After his B.A. degree in 1973 from Amherst, Kessler earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1979 and did his internship and medical residency in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He received a J.D. from The University of Chicago Law School, and a professional certificate in management from New York University Graduate School of Business Administration. He has published numerous articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and other medical journals, and is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Everett H. Pryde Fund, established in 1986 by Mrs. Phyllis W. Pryde in honor of her husband, is used to bring to Amherst distinguished alumni who specialize in chemistry and to honor a senior who is an outstanding research assistant in chemistry. Everett Pryde graduated in the Amherst College Class of 1939, obtained an M.A. at the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, and went on to become a distinguished scientist and researcher in natural chemistry, publishing more than 100 papers and was awarded 20 patents.

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Amherst College Law Professor Austin Sarat Defends "Cause Lawyering" in "Something to Believe In"

October 1, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College, is the co-author of Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism and Cause Lawyering ($35, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, 2004). Sarat and Stuart Scheingold, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Washington, explore the controversial work of cause lawyers-human rights lawyers, feminist lawyers, right-to-life lawyers, civil rights and civil liberties lawyers, anti-death penalty lawyers, environmental lawyers, property rights lawyers and anti-poverty lawyers.

Lawyers in the United States are trained to see lawyering as a technical activity, not a moral or political calling, and are supposed to be willing to set aside their own beliefs and work for any client. Cause lawyers, according to Sarat and Scheingold, refuse to deny their own convictions, and challenge the conventions of what lawyers should do and of how they should behave. Something to Believe In examines the role of social commitment in their practice, their relationships to the organized legal profession and the contributions they make to democratic politics.

Sarat has taught at Amherst since 1974, and is the author of When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition. He has served as President of the Law and Society Association and of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities.

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