Bookends

Robert Mayer’s sourcebook, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Greenhaven Press/Thomsen & Gale, 2004) has won the Carter G. Woodson Book Award for 2005 for the best book on ethnicity for secondary- level readers.

Woodson (1875-1950) was known as the “Father of Black History” for his books and his belief that African- Americans needed to know their past in order to make their mark on the present and future.

“I’m somewhat overwhelmed at getting feedback suggesting that someone else sees value in the book,” says Mayer, professor of education, advisor to the historical studies major, and longtime student of the civil rights era. He says editing the book was “a pleasure unto itself.”

It contains original texts of the legislation, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s statements in support of public equality for black Americans, thoughtful essays by great participants in the civil rights movement, newspaper editorials and op-eds, and much other information, supported by a narrative connection and period photographs.

Mayer accepted the award from the National Council for the Social Studies at its 85th annual conference in Kansas City.

Thanks to the Spanish Empire’s ambition to conquer new lands and find a shorter trade route to Asia in the 16th century, Spanish is spoken nowadays all over the Western Hemisphere, as well as in the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea in Africa—but in many accents and dialects, depending on its cross-fertilization with indigenous languages from Mayan to Patagonian and with other colonial tongues.

Carmen Ferrero Pino and Nilsa Lasso-von Lang, associate and assistant professor of Spanish, have edited a book with the hefty title of Variedades Lingüísticas y Lenguas en Contacto en el Mundo de Habla Hispana (Linguistic Varieties and Languages in Contact across the Spanish- Speaking World), about the many ways Spanish has changed and modified after contact with other languages in regions where it has become dominant.

Among the 19 authors from Spain, Latin America, and the United States are Mirta Pimentel ’81, visiting instructor of Spanish, who wrote a chapter about the contact of Spanish with other languages in Puerto Rico, including Taíno (the speech of the original inhabitants of the island) and the Varlanguages brought by African slaves.

Lasso-von Lang and Ferrero Pino each wrote a chapter on Mexico: Nilsa about the influence of the Indian languages Zapotec and Mixtec on Spanish spoken in the Oaxaca region; Carmen about the influence of Náhuatl on the Mayan language in the Yucatán peninsula and then on contemporary Mexican Spanish.

More book news: the second edition of A Companion to Calculus, a popular text for calculus review, is by Alicia Sevilla and Kay Somers, professors of mathematics, Doris Schattschneider, professor emerita of mathematics, and Dennis Ebersole, who teaches at Northampton Community College and has been for many years an adjunct instructor of mathematics at Moravian.

Dana Dunn, professor of psychology, has written Best Practices in Teaching Introduction to Psychology, with Stephen Chew of Stanford University.