Results by title

Campus planning is often a crucial underlying set of goals for university administrations, even if, over time, the mix of new and old buildings, changes in usage patterns and activities of students, and evolution of styles present challenges to a cohesive campus plan. In its two-hundred year history the University of Michigan has planned its campus in waves, from the earliest days of the iconic buildings around the Diag to the plans for the hospitals and the North Campus. This immensely informative and entertaining second volume in the history of the evolution of the campuses offers an absorbing narrative from the perspective of Fred Mayer, who served for more than three decades as the campus planner for the university during an important period of its growth during the late twentieth century.

By tracing the development of the Ann Arbor campus from its early days to the present, within the context of the evolution of higher education in America, Mayer provides a strong argument for the importance of rigorous and enlightened campus planning as a critical element of the learning environment of the university. His comprehensive history of campus planning, illustrated with photos, maps, and diagrams from Michigan’s history, is an outstanding contribution to the university’s history as it approaches its bicentennial.

 

In the years following its publication, F. A. Hayek’s pioneering work on business cycles was regarded as an important challenge to what was later known as Keynesian macroeconomics. Today, as debates rage on over the monetary origins of the current economic and financial crisis, economists are once again paying heed to Hayek’s thoughts on the repercussions of excessive central bank interventions.

 

The latest editions in the University of Chicago Press’s ongoing series The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, these volumes bring together Hayek’s work on what causes periods of boom and bust in the economy. Moving away from the classical emphasis on equilibrium, Hayek demonstrates that business cycles are generated by the adaptation of the structure of production to changes in relative demand. Thus, when central banks artificially lower interest rates, the result is a misallocation of capital and the creation of asset bubbles and additional instability. Business Cycles, Part I contains Hayek’s two major monographs on the topic: Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle and Prices and Production. Reproducing the text of the original 1933 translation of the former, this edition also draws on the original German, as well as more recent translations. For Prices and Production, a variorum edition is presented, incorporating the 1931 first edition and its 1935 revision. Business Cycles, Part II assembles a series of Hayek’s shorter papers on the topic, ranging from the 1920s to 1981.

 

In addition to bringing together Hayek’s work on the evolution of business cycles, the two volumes of Business Cycles also include extensive introductions by Hansjoerg Klausinger, placing the writings in intellectual context—including their reception and the theoretical debates to which they contributed—and providing background on the evolution of Hayek’s thought.

These two special issues focus on estrangement, a concept that pervades twentieth-century literary study and related fields. Estrangement lies at the heart of human experience in art and life: how the familiar is made strange, perceptible, disturbing, as if never before encountered. Also known as defamiliarization or disautomatization, estrangement originated as a form of literary and poetic theory within Russian formalism in 1917 and was elaborated largely through the work of Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky. In essence, estrangement is a method of analyzing the artfulness, rather than the psychological meaning or logical message, of imaginative works of prose and poetry.

Each essay in these special issues proceeds from a different perspective. Two essays compare the ideas of Shklovsky with those of equally well-known thinkers—such as Hannah Arendt and Mikhail Bakhtin—regarding freedom and aesthetics. Other essays are historical surveys of estrangement theories and their diasporas during the last century. One contributor considers Diderot's views on art alongside certain modern views on poetry. Another discusses estrangement as seen in the visual artwork of the Russian painter and art theoretician Kazimir Malevich. A third contributor explores estrangement in the work of Dostoyevsky. The special issues end with a previously unpublished interview with Shklovsky, who looks back on a long and troubled career, speaking his mind about literary issues, Communist oppression, and friends and enemies, including Stalin.

Contributors. Svetlana Boym, Marietta Chudakova, Jacob Edmond, Caryl Emerson, Michael Holquist, Anna Wexler Katsnelson, Ilya Kliger, Nancy Ruttenburg, Greta N. Slobin, Tatiana Smoliarova, Meir Sternberg, Galin Tihanov, Cristina Vatulescu

Meir Sternberg is Professor of Poetics and Comparative Literature at Tel Aviv University. Svetlana Boym is Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Harvard University.

Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Statesman are a trilogy of Platonic dialogues that show Socrates formulating his conception of philosophy as he prepares the defense for his trial. Originally published together as The Being of the Beautiful, these translations can be read separately or as a trilogy. Each includes an introduction, extensive notes, and comprehensive commentary that examines the trilogy's motifs and relationships.

"Seth Benardete is one of the very few contemporary classicists who combine the highest philological competence with a subtlety and taste that approximate that of the ancients. At the same time, he as set himself the entirely modern hermeneutical task of uncovering what the ancients preferred to keep veiled, of making explicit what they indicated, and hence...of showing the naked ugliness of artificial beauty."—Stanley Rose, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal

Seth Benardete (1930-2001) was professor of classics at New York University. He was the author or translator of many books, most recently The Argument of the Action, Plato's "Laws," and Plato's "Symposium," all published by the University of Chicago Press.