The Michigan Quarterly Review’s (MQR) special winter issue, “Reimagining Place,” will whisk you away on a journey through the country with a collection of prose, poetry and visual art that explores questions of human interactions with natural environments.
Included are aerial photographs revealing human alterations to landscapes, faculty members’ prose, selections by Gary Snyder and much more. The issue was guest-edited and its introduction was written by Robert Grese, associate professor of landscape architecture and director of the Nichols Arboretum, and John Knott, professor of English.
Research scientist Catherine Badgley describes her experience in East Rosebud, a valley in the mountains of southern Montana. The location has “so many familiar qualities and details—of scale, texture, color, the scent of the air—that it seems to be the discovery of a long-lost home,” writes Badgley in her article, “Your Real Destination.”
An article by Rachel Kaplan, professor of psychology, titled “Nature in the Eye of the Beholder,” reflects her research career and how it changed the way people understand the effects of exposure to natural settings. “Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly, we take the hint,” Kaplan writes.
The spring edition of MQR contains fiction and essays that are based on issues with academics and the way professors may or may not teach and model ethics for their students.
An essay by Simon Gikandi, professor of English, titled “Race and the Idea of the Aesthetic” is a revised version of his inaugural lecture for the Robert Hayden Collegiate Professorship.
Also included is a memoir by Jane Burbank, professor of history, titled “Meeting with the KGB: A Midsummer Night in Russia.”
MQR also has book reviews in the spring edition, including one by Gorman Beauchamp, professor of humanities, titled “Intellectuals Undercover,” which reviews Frances Stonor Saunders’ recent book, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. Arlene Keizer, professor of English and of African American studies, reviews Gayl Jones’ latest novel, Mosquito.
MQR is published quarterly. Yearly subscriptions can be purchased for $18, and single copies are available for $5. For more information, call (734) 764-9265 or (734) 763-4059.