Adam G Beaver

One of the pleasures of my new job as Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies is that I now have a good excuse for reading widely beyond my own field–since most of our undergraduates specialize in modern American and international history, I have good reason to explore those fields and make sure that I’m current with their interests. And since two of my primary duties are (1) to advise new students on course selection, and (2) to connect the senior thesis writers in my seminar with individual advisers, I can also call it my “job” to read books by our faculty. I’ve recently read Maya Jasanoff’s Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East 1750‚Äì1850,¹ and I’m now working through (only six years after the rest of the world!) Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club.² (Alright, so Menand doesn’t technically belong to our department–but he often teaches our students!) One of the most surprising aspects of my job is how frequently I meet undergraduates who simply aren’t aware of the kinds of research and writing that we do here in our department, and I’m embarrassed to say that I’m probably guilty of the same–but no longer!

1. Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East 1750‚Äì1850 (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2005). [↩]
2. Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001). [↩]