A Dozen Picks: Books by MALS Graduates, Students, Faculty

Wole Ojurongbe, MALS '08, director of Dartmouth's Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program, keeps a bookshelf in his Anonymous Hall office reserved for works published by authors associated with the program. Dartmouth Now asked Ojurongbe for a sample of works by MALS faculty, alumni, and current students. "It's been difficult narrowing it down to just a few titles, but that's a really good problem to have, I think," he says.

Creative writing is one of the specializations offered in Dartmouth's MALS program (other tracks in addition to the general liberal studies program include cultural studies and globalization studies), although Ojurongbe notes that the Dartmouth program is different from an MFA (master of fine arts) degree, and intentionally so: "The MFA is considered a terminal degree," he points out, "while many MALS students continue on from their masters-level studies. And generally speaking, the MFA tends to be a technique-focused degree; our MALS writers often want to make room for in-depth research on the subjects they write about."

"Here are a few MALS books, by no means an exhaustive list," he says.

MALS Faculty:

•     Always Up Front (Gefen Publishing House, 2005) by Myrna Katz Frommer
•     American Mischief (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1973) by Alan Lelchuk
•     The World in a Minute (Hanging Loose Press, 2010) by Gary Lenhart
•     The Killing of Crazy Horse (Random House, 2010) by Thomas Powers
•     Walking to Vermont (Simon & Schuster, 2004) by Christopher S. Wren

MALS Alumni:

•     Train: Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World (Viking Adult, 2014) by Tom Zoellner, MALS '12
•     The Little Rippers (Novel Nibble, 2013) by Rebecca Munsterer, MALS '05 (Munsterer is an associate director of admissions at Dartmouth.)
•     Africa Solo: A Journey Across the Sahara, Sahel and Congo (Steerforth Press, 1998) by Kevin Kertscher, MALS '97
•     Suits: A Woman on Wall Street (Atlas, 2011) by Nina Godiwalla, MALS '04
•     I, Emma Freke (Carolrhoda Books, 2010) by Elizabeth Atkinson, MALS '95

Current MALS students:

•     Moosilauke: Portrait of a Mountain (Fresh Tracks Publishing, 2009) photography by Eli Burakian '00 (Burakian is the Dartmouth College Photographer.)
•     Poison Mind (St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1996) co-authored by Jeffrey Good