Dr. Leila Ahmed's memoir, "A Border Passage: From Cairo to America--A Woman's Journey", pulses with a theme of many women's stories: the struggle to define oneself in the face of social restraints. The 1999 book by Ahmed, the first professor of women's studies in religion at Harvard's Divinity School, came long before the recent wave of memoirs…

A reminiscence of Willard Hurst with reference to events occurring over more than a quarter-century is presented. Emphasis is on the training of graduate law students in legal historical research. (Journal available from: University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison, WI 53706, $4.00.) (MLW)

Creating ways to make a discipline come alive for those who are not experts--even for students who may not take more than one or two courses in the disciplines they study--requires rigorous thought about what really matters in a field and how to engage students in the practice of it. Faculty from Alverno College representing a range of liberal…