Festschrift is German for "celebratory writing." Such a book is dedicated to a distinguished senior person in an academic field. It includes papers written expressly for that purpose and related to the work of the person being honored.

"Social Interaction, Social context, and Language: Essays in Honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp" is edited by Ervin-Tripp's colleague, Dan I. Slobin, along with two former graduate students, Julie Gerhardt and Jiansheng Guo, and a former postdoc, Amy Kyratzis.

The collection of contributed chapters is devoted to the major themes of Ervin-Tripp's career: pragmatics and socio-linguistics, social and interactive processes in language acquisition, narrative, bilingualism, discourse in institutional settings and gender difference in language acquisition and use. The publisher is Lawrence Erlbaum Associates of Mahwah, N.J.

The UC Pacific Rim Research Program has awarded its 1996-97 grants for collaborative research on issues related to the Pacific Rim.

The program provides support to faculty and graduate students for multidisciplinary research projects that contribute to an understanding of the Pacific Rim. Grants range from $9,000 to $30,000.

Projects were selected for funding by a systemwide committee. Berkeley grant recipients are: for planning, Aihwa Ong and Elizabeth Perry; for research, graduate student Eleanor Casella working with Professor Margaret Conkey, graduate student Peter Gries working with Professor Elizabeth Perry, and faculty members Teh-wei Hu and Pablo Spiller.

Kam Y. Lau, professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, has won the William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, presented by the Lasers and Electro-optics Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Lau has also been selected to serve as the society's distinguished lecturer for 1996-97. Lau, who joined the faculty in 1990, specializes in optical communication networks and optoelectronic devices and systems.

The 1996 book "Call to Home" by Carol Stack, chair of women's studies and professor of women's studies and education, has been selected to receive the Victor Turner Award, one of the highest honors given each year in anthropology.

"Call to Home," subtitled "African Americans Reclaim the Rural South," tells the compelling and little-known story of the reverse exodus of half a million black Americans from cities of the North to the American South.

The Baltimore Sun called the book "a piercing portrait of the end of the Great Migration that changed the economy and cultures of both North and South. It is a must-read," it said, "both inspiring and frightening as it tells of the next chapter in many African-Americans' search for a home place."

Stack will accept the award Nov. 22 from its sponsor, the Society for Humanistic Anthropology, at the national meeting of the American Anthropological Society, to be held this year in San Francisco.