Mason Faculty Publish New Books

February 14, 2006

By Christopher Anzalone

Faculty members have recently had books published on Muslim politics in Nigeria, the role of the educator in litigation, history projects on the web, the history of the Washington, D.C., Metro train system and dialogic pedagogy and teaching English as a second language. A synopsis of each follows.

Dan Cohen

Roy Rosenzweig

Daniel Cohen, director of research projects at the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), and Roy Rosenzweig, director of CHNM, provide historians and students of history with a straightforward introduction to the web in “Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving and Presenting the Past on the Web,” published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. They pay particular attention to the production of online historical interactive/multimedia work and the history of such projects.

Denis Dunklee

Denis Dunklee, associate professor in the Graduate School of Education, and Robert Shoop, professor in the Leadership Studies program at Kansas State University, cover issues that educators need to know to prepare for potential litigation in “Anatomy of a Lawsuit: What Every Education Leader Should Know about Legal Actions,” published by Corwin Press and Sage Publications. Among the topics covered are how the court and jury systems work, how to support and work effectively with attorneys, the nuances of litigation, how to reduce the potential risk of litigation by understanding and practicing preventive law and how to assist in the legal process by serving as an expert witness.

John Paden

John Paden, Robinson Professor of International Studies, examines the role of Islam in Nigerian politics and civil society in “Muslim Civic Cultures and Conflict Resolution: The Challenge of Democratic Federalism in Nigeria,” published by The Brookings Institution. He uses the history of Nigeria, where Muslims make up more than 50 percent of the population, as the backdrop for his study of Muslim approaches to state-building and conflict resolution.

Zachary Schrag

Zachary Schrag, assistant professor of history and art history, tells the history of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area’s Metro train system in “The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro,” published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Using archives and oral histories, he examines Metro's earliest roots to its present-day status as the mode of transport for thousands of commuters every day.

Shelly Wong

Shelley Wong, associate professor in the Graduate School of Education, looks at dialogic pedagogy as it relates to the history of methods used in teaching English as a second language (TESOL) in “Dialogic Approaches to TESOL: Where the Ginkgo Tree Grows,” published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. She also examines research by instructors, feminist contributions to voice, social identity and dialogic pedagogy, and the role of individuals and communities as agents of change.

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