Student reading in a river dorm

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Photography: 
courtesy of Rutgers University Archives and Special Collections

Dorm Life

“Residence halls are not mute containers for the temporary storage of youthful bodies and emergent minds,” writes Carla Yanni in her new book Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory (University of Minnesota Press, 2019). “Dormitories constitute historical evidence of the educational ideals of the people who built them,” namely promoting social interaction among students in particular ways. Yanni, a professor in the Department of Art History at the School of Arts and Sciences who specializes in the social history of architecture, reveals how dormitories have reflected architectural fashions from the 17th to late 20th centuries. 

View a video of Carla Yanni explaining the significance of dormitories.

 

Rutgers alumna Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

An Untold Story of Slavery

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (Yale University Press, 2019)—Alumna Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, makes the case that many Southern women of means were engaged economically in the region’s market for slaves because they were a primary source of wealth and independence. Jones-Rogers LC’03, GSN’07, GSNB’12, who says she was heavily influenced by several Rutgers history professors in becoming a historian, challenges the work of many scholars who have depicted Southern white women as naïve, reluctant participants in the system of slavery.

 

Men, You’re Not Getting Older …

Crack the Code: 10 Proven Secrets That Motivate Healthy Behavior and Inspire Fulfillment in Men Over 50 (Somo Press, 2018)—Men over the age of 50 are the least healthy segment of the American population, according to Louis Bezich, a lecturer in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Rutgers University–Camden. But it doesn’t have to be so. As Bezich GSNB’80 outlines, the answer is “social motivation”—that is, not only exercising and eating properly, but also building a “platform of motivation necessary to sustain the behavior and avoid the pattern of failed resolutions.” Men in good mental and physical health value their social relationships, and they understand that healthy behavior is a means to fulfilling them. The  author, vice chair of the Rowan University/Rutgers–Camden Board of Governors, provides 10 strategies to set them right.

 

Pam Jenoff, a clinical professor at Rutgers Law School in Camden

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Photography: 
Mindy Schwartz Sorasky

Women and  WW II Spycraft

The Lost Girls of Paris (Park Row Books, 2019)—Pam Jenoff, a clinical professor at Rutgers Law School in Camden, has written her 12th book, a fictional recounting  of the fate of the young British women—Special Operations  Executive spies—who were recruited, trained, and sent into France before D-Day to serve in clandestine roles helping the British defeat the Germans. The novel, like her other popular books, returns to World War II, a period of history that came to intrigue Jenoff through her former roles as special assistant to the Secretary of the Army and as a member of the United States Consulate in Krakow, Poland.