Campus Currents

Faculty Book Picks

Martha Mason, associate professor of art, recommends The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron (1992). This book is for ambitious and working artists. Through the course of the book, Cameron leads the reader through a program to remove creative blocks including fears, jealousy, guilt, self-sabotage, and other intimidating powers.

Pam Harris, chair of the Communications Department, recommends The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2001), selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy. For each holiday, the Kennedy children either wrote or chose a poem for their mother, which they hand-illustrated, and the poems were collected in a scrapbook. Best-Loved Poems includes many poems from that scrapbook with comments, notes, and photographs added by Caroline Kennedy. According to Harris, “Jackie’s poem about Jack Kennedy, ‘Meanwhile in Massachusetts,’ is worth the price of the book alone.”

Beverly Beem, professor of English, recommends Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery by Richard Selzer (1996), a collection of 19 essays in which Selzer describes the surgeon’s art. Beem says, “The surgeon’s art and the anatomy of the body become about the soul, mortality, and the art of writing.”

Julie Scott, associate professor of marketing, recommends A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue by Wendy Shalit (2000). The author provides a cultural history of sexual modesty for women, and considers whether this virtue would benefit today’s world. Scott recommends the book because it offers “a really interesting argument for moral issues without the religious undertones.” W

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