Students tend to see their professors as regular UW-Milwaukee employees. However, they do a large amount of their work outside of school. This work can include grading papers, making test questions or preparing the next lesson plan. Outside of this work for UWM, many professors spend their free time doing scholarly research in their field. Every now and then, this research culminates into a book, and it just so happens that three UWM professors are releasing books in the same month, March 2023. Check out these three professors and their unique projects below:
“When in Rome” by Liam R. Callanan
Liam R. Callanan has been a professor in the English Department of UWM for 18 years. According to his website, Callanan has contributed to local and National Public Radio and has written for Commonweal, Esquire.com, Slate, the New York Times Book Review, the Times’ op-ed page, the Washington Post Magazine, Forbes FYI, Good Housekeeping, Parents and a number of other publications.
A variety of literary journals have featured Callanan’s short fiction, including the Writers’ Chronicle, Blackbird, Crab Orchard Review, Southern Indiana Review, Caketrain, failbetter and Phoebe. Callanan has written 4 other titles including “Paris by the Book.” His novels have been translated into Chinese, German, Italian, and Japanese. Callanan has had many accolades including the Edna Ferber Novel Prize, the George W. Hunt, SJ Prize in Arts, Letters & Journalism and being longlisted for the 2019 Simpson Literary Prize. He’s also been an Edgar Award finalist. Callanan is also the creator and co-executive producer of the animated film series “Poetry Everywhere.”
“When in Rome” is the story of a woman with a career in real estate, specializing in old religious properties. She’s had enough, but when a crumbling convent in Rome calls on her for help, she answers their call. She falls in love with the city, the convent, the women, and the life they lead. Soon she wonders—instead of helping them sell, could she help the nuns stay? And could she stay herself and take vows? It’s a complicated question, and that’s even before her old college flame shows up.
According to Callanan, to research this novel he “did everything that my character did — not just sightseeing but visiting a hospital and jogging laps around St Peter’s Square in the middle of the night. I visited Rome several times and interviewed quite a few people—everyone from international realtors to Hollywood directors—and quite a few nuns.”
“I was fascinated by the number of people I’ve met recently who are starting over,” said Callanan. “Not just the 50 year olds, but everyone. It seems after the pandemic, people are looking for a chance to make a change, and pursue lives with greater meaning.”
Callanan spent his spring break on a nationwide book tour to promote his release.
“The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance” by Daniel Egan
Daniel Egan is the Brico Fund Journalist in Residence at the Center for Water Policy in UWM’s School of Freshwater Sciences. Egan is also an environmental journalist and was a reporter with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, covering the Great Lakes from 2002 until 2021. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Death and Life of the Great Lakes.” He has won many awards including the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, John B. Oakes Award, AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award, and J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award.
“The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance” is a book about the element phosphorus. Phosphorus is widely used in fertilizers to support life, but phosphorus also has the potential to harm our environment. According to W.W. Norton, ”Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth like firebombs, rat poison and nerve gas.”
Egan explores the history of phosphorus, beginning in a seventeenth century alchemy lab in Hamburg, as well as how it is used in fertilizers today. However, overuse of fertilizers is causing toxic algae blooms and “dead zones” in waterways all over America.
Booklist describes the “The Devil’s Element” as a “revelatory book that exposes human use of [phosphorus] as a double-edged sword capable of sustaining and destroying life.”
“Tina Mafia Soldier” by Dr. Robin Pickering-Iazzi
Dr. Robin Pickering-Iazzi is the Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, and has been teaching at UWM for 37 years. She is the author of four books, the editor of five books and the translator of five books, not to mention the translation she does in her ongoing research. Dr. Pickering-Iazzi has also given 39 oral presentations on her scholarly research and written 14 invited chapters in books as well 17 articles and entries in journals and digital media including Italica, Selecta and Stories for a Year. Given her extensive career, she has also received several awards including the Wistalia Teacher of the Year Teaching Award and seven awards from UWM, mostly celebrating her scholarly research.
“Tina Mafia Soldier” is an english translation and interpretation of an Italian book that was originally written and released by Maria Rosa Curtrufelli in 1994. Cutrufelli’s novel was a journalistic approach to a fictional biography of a character inspired by a young female mafia boss in Sicily. According to Dr. Pickering-Iazzi, “It’s a book about writing a book by conducting these interviews and building these pieces of a puzzle little by little to reconstruct the life of Tina.” The main question the book is trying to answer is: Why are so many young girls attracted to joining the mafia?
Dr. Robin Pickering-Iazzi worked very closely with Cutrufelli to bring her novel to realization in an entirely different language. In describing Cutrufelli’s writing style, Dr. Robin Pickering-Iazzi explained, “Maria Rosa Cutrufelli gives us, as readers, bits of information little by little in the course of the novel, but we have to do the thinking. She’s not giving us any easy answers.”
Celebrating Three New Books
So there you have it, three new books entering the UWM professional library. What a range of topics too! We have real estate agents turned nuns, dangerous fertilizers and young female mafiosas. Congratulations to all three professors, we hope this article has sparked your interest in some of these eclectic book releases, or at least inspired you to see your professors for all the hard work they do on and off campus.