Six professors write new books;
President contributes to Catholic Bible

GOSHEN, Ind. – Goshen College faculty have been especially busy outside of the classroom recently with their scholarly research and writing. Six professors authored books on topics ranging from an advertising-free newspaper to Mennonite history to the Serengeti. As well, President James E. Brenneman’s introductions for the Pentateuch were included in the just-released “College Study Bible” by Saint Mary’s Press.

• Professor of History John D. Roth’s straightforward interpretation of how Mennonites have dealt with conflict and renewal serves as a new introduction to the Mennonite story. “Stories: How Mennonites Came to Be” (Jan. 2007, Herald Press) begins with the “Newborn Christian Church as it struggled with being a movement to becoming a structure to contemporary issues for Mennonites in relating to other Christians.” Because of the interest in Roth’s book, Herald Press is asking him to write another one on “Practices” to complement “Beliefs” (2004) and “Stories.” Roth is the editor of the Mennonite Quarterly Review and director of the Mennonite Historical Library.
  
  Roth was also the co-editor, with James M. Stayer, of “A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521-1700” (Nov. 2006, Brill) volume six of Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition series. Since the last half of the 20th century, the historiography of the Radical Reformation has been the focus of vigorous debate. The volume carefully untangles the fluid boundaries of Spiritualism and Anabaptism in Early Modern European history. In addition to a narrative summary, each chapter also provides a bibliography of sources and current scholarship, and concludes with suggestions for future research.
  
  
• Professor of Bible, Religion, and Philosophy Keith Graber Miller and Visiting Scholar in Religion and Women’s Studies Malinda Berry are the co-editors of “Wrestling with the Text: Young Adult Perspectives on Scripture” (Feb. 2007, Cascadia Publishing House/Herald Press). Second in Cascadia’s “Journeys with Scripture” series, this volume contains 16 personal narratives by Mennonite young adults who prepared their essays for a 2003 colloquy held in New York City. Among the contributors are alums Jeremy ’96 and Buffy Cummins Garber ’99, Chad Martin ’98, Alicia Miller ’02, Daniel Shank Cruz ’02, Yvonne Zimmerman ’98 and Pam Dintaman ’79.
  
  
• Associate Professor of Communication Duane Stoltzfus’s new book “Freedom from Advertising: E. W. Scripps’s Chicago Experiment” (Feb. 2007, University of Illinois Press) focuses on how press baron E. W. Scripps rejected conventional wisdom and set out to prove that an ad-free newspaper could be profitable entirely on circulation in 1911.The tabloid-sized newspaper, which began in Chicago amid great secrecy, was called the Day Book, and at a penny a copy, it aimed for a working-class market, crusading for higher wages, more unions, safer factories, lower streetcar fares and women's right to vote. Though the Day Book's financial losses steadily declined over the years, it never became profitable, and publication ended in 1917. Nevertheless, Stoltzfus explains that the Day Book redefined news by providing an example of a paper that treated its readers as citizens with rights rather than simply as consumers.
  
  
• Assistant Professor of English Robert J. Meyer-Lee authored “Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt” (Feb. 2007, Cambridge University Press), illuminating the relationships between poets and political power from the 14^th century to Tudor times. In the early 15th century, English poets responded to a changed climateof patronage, instituted by Henry IV and successive monarchs, by inventing a new tradition of public and elite poetry. Following Chaucer and others, Hoccleve and Lydgate brought to English verse a new style and subject matter to write about their King, nation and themselves, and their innovations influenced a continuous line of poets.
  
  
• Associate Professor of History Jan Bender Shetler is the author of “Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present” (May 2007, Ohio University Press), as part of the New African Histories Series. Long before the creation of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, the people of the western Serengeti had established settlements and interacted with the environment in ways that created a landscape now misconstrued as natural.Western Serengeti peoples imagine the environment not as a pristine wilderness, but as a differentiated social landscape that embodies their history and identity. Conservationist literature has ignored these now-displaced peoples and relegated them to the margins of modern society. Their oral traditions, however, provide the means for seeing the landscape from a new perspective.

 “Imagining Serengeti” strengthens the case for involving local communities in conservation efforts that will preserve African environments for the future.
  
  
• President James E. Brenneman wrote a scholarly introduction to the Pentateuch, Genesis to Deuteronomy, for the “College Study Bible” (Feb. 2007, Saint Mary’s Press). The Study Bible is designed to “meet the academic and spiritual needs of students taking undergraduate or theology courses and those studying the Bible for the first time.”

Editors: PHOTOS OF THE AUTHORS AREAVAILABLE TOO. For more information about this release, to arrange an interview or request a photo, contact Goshen College News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

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Goshen College, established in 1894, is a residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” “Making a Difference College Guide” and U.S.News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit www.goshen.edu.