front cover of Collections in Context
Collections in Context
The Organization of Knowledge and Community in Europe
Karen Fresco and Anne D. Hedeman
The Ohio State University Press, 2011

The fourteen essays that comprise Collections in Context: The Organization of Knowledge and Community in Europe interrogate questions posed by French, Flemish, English, and Italian collections of all sorts—libraries as a whole, anthologies and miscellanies assembled within a single manuscript or printed book, and even illustrated ivory boxes.

Collecting became an increasingly important activity during the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, when the decreased cost of producing books made ownership available to more people. But the act of collecting is never neutral: it gathers information, orders material (especially linear texts), and prioritizes everything—in short, collecting both organizes and comments on knowledge. Moreover, the context of a collection must reveal something about identity, but whose? That of the compiler? The reader or viewer? The donor? The patron?
 
With essays by a wide array of international scholars, Collections in Context demonstrates that the very act of collecting inevitably imposes some kind of relationship among what might otherwise be naively thought of as disparate elements and simultaneously exposes something about the community that created and used the collection. Thus, Collections in Context offers unusual insights into how collecting both produced knowledge and built community in early modern Europe.
[more]

front cover of Collections of Nothing
Collections of Nothing
William Davies King
University of Chicago Press, 2008

Nearly everyone collects something, even those who don’t think of themselves as collectors. William Davies King, on the other hand, has devoted decades to collecting nothing—and a lot of it. With Collections of Nothing, he takes a hard look at this habitual hoarding to see what truths it can reveal about the impulse to accumulate.

Part memoir, part reflection on the mania of acquisition, Collections of Nothing begins with the stamp collection that King was given as a boy. In the following years, rather than rarity or pedigree, he found himself searching out the lowly and the lost, the cast-off and the undesired: objects that, merely by gathering and retaining them, he could imbue with meaning, even value. As he relates the story of his burgeoning collections, King also offers a fascinating meditation on the human urge to collect. This wry, funny, even touching appreciation and dissection of the collector’s art as seen through the life of a most unusual specimen will appeal to anyone who has ever felt the unappeasable power of that acquisitive fever.

"What makes this book, bred of a midlife crisis, extraordinary is the way King weaves his autobiography into the account of his collection, deftly demonstrating that the two stories are essentially one. . . . His hard-won self-awareness gives his disclosures an intensity that will likely resonate with all readers, even those whose collections of nothing contain nothing at all."—New Yorker

"King's extraordinary book is a memoir served up on the backs of all things he collects. . . . His story starts out sounding odd and singular—who is this guy?—but by the end, you recognize yourself in a lot of what he does."—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

[more]

front cover of Collections of Nothing
Collections of Nothing
William Davies King
University of Chicago Press, 2008

Nearly everyone collects something, even those who don’t think of themselves as collectors. William Davies King, on the other hand, has devoted decades to collecting nothing—and a lot of it. With Collections of Nothing, he takes a hard look at this habitual hoarding to see what truths it can reveal about the impulse to accumulate.

Part memoir, part reflection on the mania of acquisition, Collections of Nothing begins with the stamp collection that King was given as a boy. In the following years, rather than rarity or pedigree, he found himself searching out the lowly and the lost, the cast-off and the undesired: objects that, merely by gathering and retaining them, he could imbue with meaning, even value. As he relates the story of his burgeoning collections, King also offers a fascinating meditation on the human urge to collect. This wry, funny, even touching appreciation and dissection of the collector’s art as seen through the life of a most unusual specimen will appeal to anyone who has ever felt the unappeasable power of that acquisitive fever.

"What makes this book, bred of a midlife crisis, extraordinary is the way King weaves his autobiography into the account of his collection, deftly demonstrating that the two stories are essentially one. . . . His hard-won self-awareness gives his disclosures an intensity that will likely resonate with all readers, even those whose collections of nothing contain nothing at all."—New Yorker

"King's extraordinary book is a memoir served up on the backs of all things he collects. . . . His story starts out sounding odd and singular—who is this guy?—but by the end, you recognize yourself in a lot of what he does."—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

[more]

front cover of Creators in the Academic Library
Creators in the Academic Library
Collections and Spaces
Rebecca Zuege Kuglitsch
Assoc of College & Research Libraries, 2023
Engineering students, designers, studio artists, and other student creators have unique research needs that libraries are well-positioned to meet. They use academic literature to inspire and ground creation, but also seek information from trade literature, patents, technical standards, and how-to manuals. They apply tacit knowledge and need to learn not only how to write within academic discourse but also create objects, designs, and experiences.
 
In four parts, Creators in the Academic Library: Collections and Spaces explores how academic libraries can build collections, spaces, and communities that serve creators.
  • Tailoring Collections for Creators
  • Making in the Academic Library
  • Creating Experiences in the Library
  • Cultivating Creator Communities 
Chapters identify innovative ways the academic library can support creators by building new kinds of collections, resources, and experiences, including the use of rare books and archives; building a comprehensive technology and research equipment lending collection; performing in library spaces; supporting sustainability across disciplines; and creating equitable access to creator spaces, tools, and resources. Creators in the Academic Library documents spaces and collections that strive for equity and authenticity, for playfulness and joy, and offers strategies for creating a library open to all comers seeking a place to create in a liberating environment.
 
[more]

front cover of Drama in English From the Middle Ages to the Early Twentieth Century
Drama in English From the Middle Ages to the Early Twentieth Century
Christopher J. Wheatley
Catholic University of America Press, 2016
At a time when good editions of drama in English are prohibitively expensive and online texts are unedited and lack the apparatus necessary for students to understand and contextualize the plays, this anthology affordably illustrates every significant genre of drama in the English language from the late fourteenth century to the early twentieth century, with plays from England, Ireland, and the United States of America. The mystery and morality plays of the Middle Ages, Renaissance comedy, tragedy and meta-theater, Restoration and eighteenth-century comedy, tragedy, and ballad opera, nineteenth-century melodrama, and early twentieth century realism and naturalism are all presented with the introductions glossaries and notes suitable for a college level reader by an editor with a quarter of a century of experience teaching courses on the history of drama in English. The plays both reflect their times and critique them, while remaining stageable today. The Wakefield Master, The York Realist, Marlowe, Jonson, Dryden, Wycherley, Gay, Boucicault, Synge, and Shaw are some of the playwrights in this representative collection of plays that reveal both the popular appeal of the English-language theater and the dazzling dramatic artistry it embodied over a period of six centuries. Further the collection is in "old spelling" and is thus a useful sourcebook for those interested in the history of the English language.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Dumbarton Oaks
The Collections
Gudrun Bühl
Harvard University Press, 2008

Dumbarton Oaks houses the extraordinary art collection begun by Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss. In this book the museum publishes the specialist collections in Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art, along with examples from the Blisses’ superb European collection, for the first time.

When Robert Bliss recalled handling a jade Olmec figurine in 1913, he said, “That day, the collector’s microbe took root in—it must be confessed—very fertile soil.” The Blisses’ passion for art bore fruit in a remarkably diverse collection: Flemish tapestries, Renaissance furniture, and paintings by the likes of El Greco, Renoir, and Degas. The celebrated Byzantine collection includes floor mosaics from late antique Antioch, sumptuous jewelry, carved ivory reliefs, liturgical silver, and a comprehensive coin and seals collection. The Pre-Columbian collection showcases fine jade carvings, gold jewelry, monumental sculpture, ritual weaponry, colorful ceramics, and intricately woven textiles.

The publication of this new guidebook coincides with the complete refurbishment of Dumbarton Oaks and the creative reinstallation of the galleries. The curators offer highlights of the collection, accompanied by a lucid and thought-provoking text. Dumbarton Oaks: The Collections is intended as a valuable resource and a pleasure to read for scholars and nonspecialists alike.

[more]

front cover of Eight Plays for Children
Eight Plays for Children
The New Generation Play Project
Edited by Coleman A. Jennings
University of Texas Press, 1999

The New Generation Play Project was a daring experiment in American children's theatre. Begun in 1989 by a consortium that included the Seattle Children's Theatre, The Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, Stage One: The Louisville Children's Theatre, and the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, the NGPP raised half a million dollars to commission major American dramatists to create new works for young people and to produce these plays over a several-year period.

This book provides the full text of the plays produced through the NGPP:

  • Constance Congdon, Beauty and the Beast
  • Velina Hasu Houston, Hula Heart
  • Tina Howe, East of the Sun and West of the Moon
  • Len Jenkin, The Invisible Man
  • Mark Medoff, Kringle's Window
  • Eric Overmyer, Duke Kahanamoku vs. The Surfnappers
  • Michael Weller, Dogbrain
  • Y York, The Witch of Blackbird Pond

In his introduction, Coleman Jennings describes the work of the NGPP, some of the controversies surrounding its selection of playwrights who do not ordinarily write for young audiences, as well as the playwrights' reactions to the project, and the critical reception of the plays. Suzan Zeder, one of the nation's leading playwrights for family audiences, supplies the foreword.

[more]

front cover of Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird
Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird
Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry, 1970-76
Donald Hall
University of Michigan Press, 1978
These essays and interviews from 1970-76 are lively, pointed, often polemical. They derive from a unified point of view about creativity and about the function of poetry. For the interested reader they can provide a key to the universe of the contemporary poet. In this work, Donald Hall speaks in a conversational way about his poetry and about his poetic wishes, endeavors, failures, and successes.
[more]

front cover of In Praise of Falling
In Praise of Falling
Cheryl Dumesnil
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009
The poems in this collection are the proverbial spring bulbs abandoned in the basement, growing toward a slim crack of sunlight. They are both aware of the limitations of social structures and forcefully committed to breaking out of those traps, urging toward a better way of living. The characters in these poems resist the twenty-first century’s prescription for a life of emotional-spiritual bankruptcy, reaching toward an ever-elusive glimmer on the horizon.
[more]

front cover of Infinite Constellations
Infinite Constellations
An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions
Edited by Khadijah Queen and K. Ibura
University of Alabama Press, 2023
A gathering of innovative, speculative fictions by writers of color, both established and emerging
 
The innovative fictions in Infinite Constellations showcase the voices and visions of 30 remarkable writers, both new and established, from the global majority: Native American/First Nation writers, South Asian writers, East Asian writers, Black American writers, Latinx writers, and Caribbean and Middle Eastern writers. These are visions both familiar and strange, but always rooted in the mystery of human relationships, the deep honoring of memory, and the rootedness to place and the centering of culture.

The writers in this anthology mirror, instruct, bind and unbind, myth-make and myth-invert, transform and transmute, make us belly-laugh or hum our understanding, gasp or whisper gently, and remember that sometimes we need to holler and fight as we grieve. Any dangers herein, imagined or observed in poem and story, transport us: moving from latent to extant, then unleashed.

This work does not presume; it presents and blossoms, creating a constellation of appearances, a symphony of belonging.

“In collecting this work,” note editors Khadijah Queen and K. Ibura, “we felt humbled by the love threaded throughout the voices speaking to us in stories and poems that vault beyond expectation and settle in our consciousness as an expansion of what’s possible when we tend to one another with intention. We felt lifted, held aloft in these arrangements of language. We hope that as you read each story and poem, you will find the same sense of empowerment and celebration that we know has sustained us over countless generations, and in their beauty and humor and intelligence and complexity, continue to enrich us still.”

CONTRIBUTORS
George Abraham / Kenzie Allen / Shreya lla Anasuya / Thea Anderson / Wendy Chin-Tanner / Alton Melvar M. Depanas / Yohanca Delgado / Jennifer Elise Foerster / Aerik Francis / André O. Hoilette / Brian K. Hudson / K. Ibura / Pedro Iniguez / Ruth Ellen Kocher / Ra’Niqua Lee / Tonya Liburd / Kenji C. Liu / Shalewa Mackall / Lucien Darjeun Meadows / Melanie Merle / Juan J. Morales / Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint / Cindy Juyound Ok / Daniel José Older / Soham Patel / Lynn C. Pitts/ Khadijah Queen / Sheree Renée Thomas /  Sarah Sophia Yanni / dg nanouk okpik / shakirah peterson
 
[more]

front cover of Lofty Dogmas
Lofty Dogmas
Poets on Poetics
Deborah Brown
University of Arkansas Press, 2005
Compiled by three noted poets, this is an eclectic, stimulating, and informed selection of poets' remarks on poetry spanning eras, ethnicities, and aesthetics. The 102 selections from nearly as many poets reach back to the Greeks and Romans, then draw on Chaucer, Shakespeare, Sidney, and Milton, on to Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, and Poe, then Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot, Rilke, and Pound, concluding with many of our contemporaries, including Hall, Clifton, Mackey, Kunitz, and Rukeyser. The book is divided into three sections. "Musing" concerns issues of inspiration, "Making," issues of craft, from diction to meter to persona and voice, and "Mapping," the role of poetry and the poet. Headnotes at the beginning of each selection provide background information about the poet and commentary on the significance of the selection. There is also a useful appendix with a listing of essays arranged according to more specific topics. As the poets write in their introduction: "This book was intended to deepen readers' understanding of age-old poetic ideas while at the same time pointing out new directions for thinking about poetry, juxtaposing the familiar and the strange, reconfiguring old boundaries, and shaking up stereotypes."
[more]

front cover of The Lost Species
The Lost Species
Great Expeditions in the Collections of Natural History Museums
Christopher Kemp
University of Chicago Press, 2017
The tiny, lungless Thorius salamander from southern Mexico, thinner than a match and smaller than a quarter. The lushly white-coated Saki, an arboreal monkey from the Brazilian rainforests. The olinguito, a native of the Andes, which looks part mongoose, part teddy bear. These fantastic species are all new to science—at least newly named and identified; but they weren’t discovered in the wild, instead, they were unearthed in the drawers and cavernous basements of natural history museums. As Christopher Kemp reveals in The Lost Species, hiding in the cabinets and storage units of natural history museums is a treasure trove of discovery waiting to happen.

With Kemp as our guide, we go spelunking into museum basements, dig through specimen trays, and inspect the drawers and jars of collections, scientific detectives on the hunt for new species. We discover king crabs from 1906, unidentified tarantulas, mislabeled Himalayan landsnails, an unknown rove beetle originally collected by Darwin, and an overlooked squeaker frog, among other curiosities. In each case, these specimens sat quietly for decades—sometimes longer than a century—within the collections of museums, before sharp-eyed scientists understood they were new. Each year, scientists continue to encounter new species in museum collections—a stark reminder that we have named only a fraction of the world’s biodiversity. Sadly, some specimens have waited so long to be named that they are gone from the wild before they were identified, victims of climate change and habitat loss. As Kemp shows, these stories showcase the enduring importance of these very collections.

The Lost Species vividly tells these stories of discovery—from the latest information on each creature to the people who collected them and the scientists who finally realized what they had unearthed—and will inspire many a museumgoer to want to peek behind the closed doors and rummage through the archives.
 
[more]

front cover of Mobile Museums
Mobile Museums
Collections in Circulation
Edited by Felix Driver, Mark Nesbitt, and Caroline Cornish
University College London, 2021
An argument for the importance of circulation in the study of museum collections, both past and present.

How did the process of the circulation re-examine, inform, and unsettle common assumptions about the way museum collections have evolved over time and space? Mobile Museums presents an argument for the importance of circulation in the study of museum collections, both past and present. It brings together a diverse array of international scholars and curators from a variety of disciplines to consider the mobility of collections, especially in the context of Indigenous community engagement. By foregrounding the question of circulation, the book represents a paradigm shift in the understanding of the history and future uses of museum collections. Taking on a global perspective and addressing a variety of types of collection, including the botanical, ethnographic, economic, and archaeological, the book helps us to understand why the mobility of museum collections was a fundamental aspect of their history—and why it continues to matter today.
 
[more]

front cover of Playlist
Playlist
Poems
David Lehman
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019
A New Collection of Poetry from the Editor of The Best American Poetry
[more]

front cover of Pushing Boundaries in Southwestern Archaeology
Pushing Boundaries in Southwestern Archaeology
Chronometry, Collections, and Contexts
Stephen E. Nash
University Press of Colorado, 2022
Pushing Boundaries in Southwestern Archaeology draws together the proceedings from the sixteenth biennial Southwest Symposium. In exploring the conference theme, contributors consider topics ranging from the resuscitation of archaeomagnetic dating to the issue of Athapaskan origins, from collections-based studies of social identity, foodways, and obsidian trade to the origins of a rock art tradition and the challenges of a deeply buried archaeological record.
 
The first of the volume’s four sections examines the status, history, and prospects of Bears Ears National Monument, the broader regulatory and political boundaries that complicate the nature and integrity of the archaeological record, and the cultural contexts and legal stakes of archaeological inquiry. The second section focuses on chronological “big data” in the context of pre-Columbian history and the potential and limits of what can be empirically derived from chronometric analysis of the past. The chapters in the third section advocate for advancing collections-based research, focusing on the vast and often untapped research potential of archives, previously excavated museum collections, and legacy data. The final section examines the permeable boundaries involved in Plains-Pueblo interactions, obvious in the archaeological record but long in need of analysis, interpretation, and explanation.
 
Contributors: James R. Allison, Erin Baxter, Benjamin A. Bellorado, Katelyn J. Bishop, Eric Blinman, J. Royce Cox, J. Andrew Darling, Kaitlyn E. Davis, William H. Doelle, B. Sunday Eiselt, Leigh Anne Ellison, Josh Ewing, Samantha G. Fladd, Gary M. Feinman, Jeffrey R. Ferguson, Severin Fowles, Willie Grayeyes, Matthew Guebard, Saul L. Hedquist, Greg Hodgins, Lucas Hoedl, John W. Ives, Nicholas Kessler, Terry Knight, Michael W. Lindeman, Hannah V. Mattson, Myles R. Miller, Lindsay Montgomery, Stephen E. Nash, Sarah Oas, Jill Onken, Scott G. Ortman, Danielle J. Riebe, John Ruple, Will G. Russell, Octavius Seowtewa, Deni J. Seymour, James M. Vint, Adam S. Watson
 
 
[more]

front cover of Sappho to Valéry
Sappho to Valéry
Poems in Translation
John Frederick Nims
University of Arkansas Press, 1990

Revised and enlarged, the second edition of Sappho to Valéry includes both the originals and translations of ninety-eight poems from nine different languages. Nims offers new and lively interpretations of a number of poems that have been translated and others available in no other English translation.

A former editor of Poetry, John Frederick Nims has published several volumes of his own poetry, poetry in translation, and essays on the form.

[more]

front cover of Selected Translations
Selected Translations
2000-2020
Ilan Stavans
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021
For twenty years, Ilan Stavans has been translating poetry from Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew, French, Portuguese, Russian, German, Georgian, and other languages. His versions of Borges, Neruda, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Ferreira Gullar, Raúl Zurita, and dozens of others have become classics. This volume, which includes poems from more than forty poets from all over the world, is testimony to a life dedicated to the pursuit of beauty through poetry in different languages.
[more]

front cover of Theatre for Youth
Theatre for Youth
Twelve Plays with Mature Themes
Edited by Coleman A. Jennings and Gretta Berghammer
University of Texas Press, 1986

Since the beginning of the theatre-for-youth movement in the United States, the majority of plays written for children have been fairy tales. By the 1960s, however, encouraged by changes in social attitudes toward children, playwrights began to respond to a growing tendency on the parts of both parents and teachers to have children face, rather than avoid, the more difficult truths of existence. Thus children's dramatic literature was opened to new subjects, themes and characters previously considered unsuitable for the young audience.

Theatre for Youth seeks to identify and illustrate this trend by examining twelve plays that deal with mature themes: aging, death and dying, conformity, sexuality, divorce, moral culpability. The plays have been chosen not only for their mature content, but also for their professional integrity, the delicacy with which they handle their subject matter, and their respect for their intended audience.

A foreword by Jed H. Davis, an introduction and summary paragraphs for each play by Jennings and Berghammer, and a lengthy annotated list of suggested plays for further reading or viewing make this volume extremely useful both for directors of children's theatre and for teachers.

[more]

front cover of When She Named Fire
When She Named Fire
An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women
Andrea Hollander Budy
Autumn House Press, 2008
When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women is the first major collection of its kind in a generation. It features 97 of the most exciting poets in America including Kim Addonizio, Natasha Trethewey, Robin Becker, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Maxine Kumin, Naomi Shihab Nye, Claudia Emerson, Lynn Emanuel, Mary Oliver, Jane Mead, Mary Ruefle, Kay Ryan, and Pattiann Rogers. The collection includes a photograph and a brief biographical sketch of each poet.
[more]

front cover of Whirlwind
Whirlwind
Sharon Dolin
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012
Whirlwind is one woman’s frank, witty, mordant, sexy look at the breakup of a marriage and its emotional aftermath. With her characteristic linguistic play and mixture of poetic registers and styles, Sharon Dolin takes her readers on an off-the-tracks emotional ride through the whirlwind that goes by the name of divorce. Hang on tight. Here poems are never merely confessional, but use formal aplomb to ride the white-heat rage, hurt, denial, reflection, regret, wistfulness, desire, and sexual passion as they go hurtling through the many stages of grief after the death of a relationship and the rebirth of a more vital self. Dolin tackles difficult subjects unflinchingly in her poems: such as betrayal and the shame of the one being betrayed, being a parent within a volatile breakup, as well as some startling poems on the reawakening of sexuality and an attention to the natural world and politics. In her poem that won a Pushcart Prize, she dons the mask of the Furies to confront her ex-husband and his lover. A journalist of her own heart, Sharon Dolin has written a brazen collection that seethes with the pressure of a story to tell: cathartic and thrilling in equal measure.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Wild Songs, Sweet Songs
The Albanian Epic in the Collections of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord
Nicola Scaldaferri
Harvard University Press, 2021

In the 1930s, Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord, two pioneering scholars of oral poetry, conducted adventurous fieldwork in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and northern Albania, collecting singularly important examples of Albanian epic song. Wild Songs, Sweet Songs presents these materials, which have not previously been published, for the first time.

Nicola Scaldaferri and his collaborators provide a complete catalogue of the Albanian texts and recordings collected by Parry and Lord; a selection of twelve of the most significant texts, including the longest Albanian epic ever collected, in Albanian with accompanying English translations; four essays contextualizing the materials and outlining their significance; and an assortment of related photographs and documents. The book is an authoritative guide to one of the most significant collections of Balkan folk epic in existence.

[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter