ANN ARBOR— The fall issue of the University of Michigan’s Michigan Quarterly Review (MQR) is now available.

The issue features an essay by Susan Alcock, the John D’Arms Collegiate Professor of Classical Archeology and Classics at the University of Michigan. Alcock, a recent recipient of a MacArthur Award, delivered a lecture on “Power Lunches in the Eastern Roman Empire,” printed in the new issue with illustrations.

What was the role of “foodways” in the ancient eastern Mediterranean (the modern Greece, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon)? What did the aristocracy eat and how–in what hierarchical modes—did they eat it? Did eating-to-excess and/or dieting prevail? Many habits of the ancient world will look familiar to the 21st century.

The issue also features a book review by editor Laurence Goldstein, “Our Faulkner, Ourselves,” which considers three new books about the author some claim is the modernist Shakespeare.

Also in this issue, Jennifer Wang contributes a “Letter from Shanghai.” Reginald Shepherd’s “Against Identity Poetry,” explains why he doesn’t like adjectives in front of his name, while Myles Weber uses a new book by Alan Ayckbourn, “the world’s most widely-performed contemporary playwright,” to reach some generalizations about what makes a play work.

For a copy of this issue send $7 to: Michigan Quarterly Review, University of Michigan, 3574 Rackham Bldg., 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1070.

MQR is published quarterly and also is available as part of a year’s subscription at $25. Contact MQR at (734) 764-9265, e-mail mqr@umich.edu, or write to 3032 Rackham Building, Ann Arbor, MI., 48109-1070, for more details. Or visit: http://www.umich.edu/~mqr/

mqr@umich.edu