Anna Rinaggio, Campus Carrier arts and living assistant editor

The Memorial Library has added Professor of Communication Brian Carroll’s new book to its collection of faculty books. Carroll began the writing process for the book, “Shakespeare’s Sceptered Isle: Finding English National Identity in the Plays,” 12 years ago when the idea came to him at a Shakespeare Festival in Utah. After hearing the only Irish character in a production of Henry V ask “Nation? What is my nation?” Carroll began to question the very idea of national identity.

“Having been to Ireland, it’s like ‘That’s a great question,’” Carroll said. “Is he Northern Irish? Is he Irish? Is he old English? Is he New English? Is he of French origins? Who is this guy and what is his nation and why is he fighting for anyone?”

Carroll has written seven books prior to this one. However, this was the first book he used to delve into the world of Shakespeare. The book explores the idea of national identity, specifically what contributions Shakespeare may have made to how the English define themselves as English.

Carroll said that the book came along chapter by chapter. He read scholarship from a variety of disciplines, including source documents Shakespeare used to write his history plays, and would spend all day at the library researching.

Carroll aims to reach both Shakespearian scholars and general readers with his publication, hoping that his more generalist approach will make it more accessible for wide audiences.

“I hope it’s really topical, because, you know, we’ve got cultural wars raging around us,” Carroll said. “So, what is nation, and how do nations get built; how do they fracture, how do they maintain, survive?”

Overall, Carroll said that he enjoyed the process and plans to write more on Shakespeare in the future.

“It was a labor of love,” Carroll said, “and I already miss it.”

Among the numerous other Berry faculty members with published books is Sandra Meek, the creative writing coordinator for the English department, who published a book of poems in 2020 titled “Still.”

“[The book] looks at various creatures and places and situations, thinking about power and resistance, especially regarding environmental and sexual violence,” Meek said.

Seven years in the making, the book is meant to be structured in a way that resembles cabinets of curiosity—a cabinet that held small objects of fascination to their onlookers, such as animal skulls or manmade art object—that come together to create a renaissance studiolo.

“I found that to be a really evocative idea for thinking about more contemporary awarenesses of environmental violence at the hands of humans and sexual violence as well,” Meek said.

Meek aims to find an audience in people who are interested in the world, but also language and all its capabilities.

Soon to join the group of facultywith published books is Abigail Vegter, an assistant professor of political science. Vegter’s research began while she was completing her undergraduate degree, where she worked with a professor on a research project concerning the connection between gun politics and religion from a political science perspective.

“[I] fell in love with the research process and was really excited by the idea of investigating my own questions about the world and being able to do that in a systematic way,” she said.

Vegter is currently working on a book titled “Faith and Firearms: Religion’s Entanglement with Guns in America,” a public opinion book that traces the history of how religion and gun politics have been entangled throughout history in the United States, and how specifically Evangelical Christians and gun owners have strong commitments to notions of individualism and how they may be connected.

“One of the best things is there are not deadlines, which allows me to kinda go on appropriate tangents when things happen in the world that I think deserve attention,” Vegter said.

Vegter said that while her book is meant to be a strong academic book, she hopes its presentation will be appealing to wider audiences as well.

Berry faculty have published far more than just books, however, and as Sherre Harrington, the library director, pointed out, one should not limit their scope quite so much.

“I think one of the things we have to be careful about is talking just about books,” Harrington said. “If you’re over in chemistry, or any of the sciences, or some of the many social sciences, the scholarly product is not just a book, it’s an article in a peer reviewed journal.”

Harrington mentioned that scholarly products can take form in more than just writing as well. The music and theater faculty, for example, possess scholarship in the form of their performances, and Berry students can benefit from far more than just scholarship in the physical product.

Be sure to check out the faculty publications collection in the Memorial Library and keep an eye out for any new additions throughout the year.