In Brief

Whitman’s 2014 rankings

The 2015 U.S. News and World Report rankings named Whitman the 37th best liberal arts college in the country, placing the college four spots higher than in the previous year. U.S. News highlighted Whitman’s graduation rate (88 percent), freshmen retention rate (94 percent) and its small class sizes in its ranking.

Whitman ranked in the top 20 in 11 categories of The Princeton Review’s annual college rankings, including: 4th easiest campus to get around, 6th best classroom experience, 8th best college library, 9th best quality of life and 11th happiest students.

The Princeton Review’s “Guide to Green Colleges” also ranked Whitman as one of the 332 most environmentally responsible colleges in the U.S. and Canada, while its “2014 Best Value Colleges” list included Whitman as one of the 150 undergraduate schools that provide the best value nationwide.

Washington Monthly named Whitman the 29th best liberal arts college in the country. Its rankings are based on social mobility, research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and Ph.D.s) and service (encouraging students to give something back to their country).

Finally, Business Insider’s “Best College Campuses” ranking called Whitman’s campus the 3rd best in the nation.

Faculty publications

Associate Professor of French and Interdisciplinary Studies Zahi Zalloua has published Reading Unruly: Interpretation and its Ethical Demands with the University of Nebraska Press. Part of the Symploke Studies in Contemporary Theory Series, Reading Unruly focuses on modern French literature, considering unruliness “as both an aesthetic category and a mode of reading conceived as ethical response.”

Shampa Biswas, the Paul Garrett professor of political science, recently published Nuclear Desire: Power and the Postcolonial Nuclear Order (University of Minnesota Press). Biswas’ book argues that the nonproliferation regime helps sustain a global nuclear order that generates the desire for nuclear weapons. Making a compelling case for nuclear abolition, Nuclear Desire shows that the path to nuclear zero is more successfully traversed through the perspective of post-colonialism and the political economy of injustice, rather than through the prism of “security.”

Associate Professor of French Jack Iverson continues to contribute to the Voltaire Foundation’s ongoing critical edition of the Complete Works of Voltaire (Oxford University Press). The latest volume includes Iverson’s critical edition of the Lettre de M. Cubstorf, pasteur d’Helmstad, à M. Kirkerf, pasteur de Lauvtorp (1764). Iverson’s edition includes a thoroughly annotated version of the original text, which he situates in relation to Voltaire’s major preoccupations during late 1763 and early 1764, as he sought to respond adequately to several attacks from members of the ecclesiastical establishment.