front cover of I Give You Half the Road
I Give You Half the Road
Carol Spindel
University of Wisconsin Press, 2021
In Ivory Coast, the farewell “I give you half the road” is an expression of hospitality, urging a departing guest to come back again. After their first stay in a welcoming rural community in 1981, Carol Spindel and her husband did just that. Over the course of decades, they built a house and returned frequently, deepening their relationships with neighbors.

Once considered the most stable country in West Africa, Ivory Coast was split by an armed rebellion in 2002 and endured a decade of instability and a violent conflict. Spindel provides an intimate glimpse into this turbulent period by weaving together the daily lives and paths of five neighbors. Their stories reveal Ivorians determined to reunite a divided country through reliance on mutual respect and obligation even while power-hungry politicians pursued xenophobic and anti-immigrant platforms for personal gain. Illuminating democracy as a fragile enterprise that must be continually invented and reinvented, I Give You Half the Road emphasizes the importance of connection, generosity, and forgiveness.
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front cover of An Illinois Sampler
An Illinois Sampler
Teaching and Research on the Prairie
Edited by Mary-Ann Winkelmes and Antoinette Burton with Kyle Mays
University of Illinois Press, 2014
An Illinois Sampler presents personal accounts from faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and other contributors about their research and how it enriches and energizes their teaching. Contributors from the humanities, engineering, social and natural sciences, and other disciplines explore how ideas, methods, and materials merge to lead their students down life-changing paths to creativity, discovery, and solutions. Faculty introduce their classes to work conducted from the Illinois prairie to Caribbean coral reefs to African farms, and from densely populated cities to dense computer coding. In so doing they generate an atmosphere where research, teaching, and learning thrive inside a feedback loop of education across disciplines.

Aimed at alumni and prospective students interested in the university's ongoing mission, as well as current faculty and students wishing to stay up to date on the work being done around them, An Illinois Sampler showcases the best, the most ambitious, and the most effective teaching practices developed and nurtured at one of the world's premier research universities.

Contributors are Nancy Abelmann, Flavia C. D. Andrade, Jayadev Athreya, Betty Jo Barrett, Thomas J. Bassett, Hugh Bishop, Antoinette Burton, Lauren A. Denofrio-Corrales, Lizanne DeStefano, Karen Flynn, Bruce W. Fouke, Rebecca Ginsburg, Julie Jordan Gunn, Geoffrey Herman, Laurie Johnson, Kyle T. Mays, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, Audrey Petty, Anke Pinkert, Raymond Price, Luisa-Maria Rosu, D. Fairchild Ruggles, Carol Spindel, Mark D. Steinberg, William Sullivan, Richard I. Tapping, Bradley Tober, Agniezska Tuszynska, Bryan Wilcox, Kate Williams, Mary-Ann Winkelmes, and Yi Lu.

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front cover of The University of Illinois
The University of Illinois
Engine of Innovation
Edited by Frederick E. Hoxie
University of Illinois Press, 2017
The founding of the university in 1867 created a unique community in what had been a prairie. Within a few years, this creative mix of teachers and scholars produced innovations in agriculture, engineering and the arts that challenged old ideas and stimulated dynamic new industries. Projects ranging from the Mosaic web browser to the discovery of Archaea and pioneering triumphs in women's education and wheelchair accessibility have helped shape the university's mission into a double helix of innovation and real-world change. These essays explore the university's celebrated accomplishments and historic legacy, candidly assessing both its successes and its setbacks. Experts and students tell the eye-opening stories of campus legends and overlooked game-changers, of astonishing technical and social invention, of incubators of progress as diverse as the Beckman Institute and Ebertfest. Contributors: James R. Barrett, George O. Batzli, Claire Benjamin, Jeffrey D. Brawn, Jimena Canales, Stephanie A. Dick, Poshek Fu, Marcelo H. Garcia, Lillian Hoddeson, Harry Liebersohn, Claudia Lutz, Kathleen Mapes, Vicki McKinney, Elisa Miller, Robert Michael Morrissey, Bryan E. Norwood, Elizabeth H. Pleck, Leslie J. Reagan, Susan M. Rigdon, David Rosenboom, Katherine Skwarczek, Winton U. Solberg, Carol Spindel, William F. Tracy, and Joy Ann Williamson-Lott.
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