Three Classics Majors Get Dirty

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On March 18, 2013 I spoke with three Temple classics majors about the archaeological digs they participated in during the summer of 2012. Andy Pollack was at the Temple University field school in Artena, Italy, working on a Roman villa; Eamonn Connor was a volunteer at the ancient agora near the Acropolis in Athens, Greece; and Samantha Davidson attended the Davidson College field school at a rural site in Atheneiou, Cypus. We met in my office at 8 AM. With coffee in hand, we had an interesting conversation about the similarities and differences between the three sites. We talked about artifacts, preservation, tools, the daily routine, and the surrounding geography and history of each site.

—Fred Rowland

Prophets and Protons

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benjamin zeller

 

 

 

 

 

Benjamin Zeller is a scholar of religion in America, new religious movements, and religion and science. In his book Prophets and Protons: New Religious Movements and Science in Late Twentieth-Century America (New York University Press, 2010) he looks at how the Unification Church (“Moonies”), the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (“Hare Krishnas”), and the group that came to be known as “Heaven’s Gate” thought about and related to science. He found that science had become such a dominant intellectual force that each of these religions felt compelled to appeal to it for legitimation. In addition to perspectives on science, this interview provides an encapsulated history of each movement and the major figures involved in their founding.

Of special note, Benjamin Zeller gives a big shoutout to librarians at the end of the interview, expressing his great thanks for the work that we do. Thanks Ben!

Benjamin Zeller is an assistant professor of religion at Lake Forest College in Illinois. I spoke with him via Skype on March 11, 2013.

—Fred Rowland

Kathleen Fitzpatrick on scholarly communication & the digital humanities

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KathleenFitzpatrick

 

 

 

 

Kathleen Fitzpatrick is the Director of Scholarly Communications at the Modern Language Association and a visiting faculty member in the English Department at New York University. She has published two books, The Anxiety of Influence: The American Novel in the Age of Television (Vanderbilt University Press, 2006), which analyzed the anxiety and vested interests surrounding the purported demise of literature, and Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy (New York University Press, 2011), a fascinating and incisive look at the future of publishing and scholarship in the academy. She has a blog, also titled Planned Obsolescence, and she is a co-founder of MediaCommons, “a community network for scholars, students, and practitioners in media studies, promoting exploration of new forms of publishing…”

Kathleen Fitzpatrick gave a lecture at the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT) on March 7, 2013, entitled “The Humanities in and for the Digital Age.” Before her talk, she kindly stopped by my office to discuss her work in scholarly communication and the digital humanities.

—Fred Rowland

Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life

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Andrew Isenberg

 

 

 

 

Temple University history professor Andrew Isenberg came by my office in February to discuss his new book, Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life (Hill & Wang: 2013), due out in June. His book and this interview are a fascinating look at the life of a man who lived on both sides of the law and reinvented himself time and time again as he moved from one place to another throughout the West. Having seen several different Hollywood versions of Wyatt Earp, I was interested in learning about the real man and how his legend was born. Untangling myth and legend from historical fact, Western historian Andrew Isenberg traces the journey of Wyatt Earp, from his beginnings in the small-town Midwest, to the saloons, jails, and brothels in cow towns and mining towns of Kansas, Texas, Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Alaska, and California, to his final years in Los Angeles.

—Fred Rowland

What’s new in the Special Collections Research Center?

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Academic libraries are changing rapidly under the influence of digital technology, an expanded outreach and service philosophy, and increasing competition from nontraditional sources and venues.

These changes are particularly evident in special collections, an area which until recently was little known outside hardcore researchers. Often hidden away from the regular traffic of the academic library, the special collections function has been carried out for many years by dedicated professionals and equally dedicated students, interns, and volunteers, who have carefully collected and curated rare books and manuscripts, university records, community history, broadcast media, and ephemera. This is changing as special collections departments become increasingly visible on the web and in and around the academic library.

Margery Sly is the Director of the Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), located on the ground floor of Paley Library. On January 24, 2013, I sat down with her to discuss the SCRC. I was curious to find out how these trends were playing out here at Temple University and what the future holds for the SCRC.

—Fred Rowland

Library Prize for Undergraduate Research and Library Prize for Undergraduate Research on Sustainability and the Environment Winners are Announced

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Congratulations to the winners and honorable mentions for this year’s Library Prize for Undergraduate Research and Library Prize for Undergraduate Research on Sustainability and the Environment. Join us to celebrate in the Lecture Hall on May 2 at 4PM.

2012-2013 Library Prize Winners

Eamonn Connor

“Miasma and the Formation of Greek Cities”
GRC 4182: Independent Study (Fall 2012)
Faculty Sponsor: Sydnor Roy

Emily Simpson

“”Represion!” Punk Resistance and the Culture of Silence in the Southern Cone, 1978-1990”
History 4997: Honors Thesis Seminar (Spring 2013)
Faculty Sponsor: Beth Bailey

Nicole Wolverton

“The Murder at Cherry Hill”
English 3020: Detective Novel and the City (Fall 2012)
Faculty Sponsor: Priya Joshi

2012-2013 Library Prize Honorable Mentions

Jordyn Kimelheim

“The Persistence of Chattel Slavery in Contemporary Mauritania”
Political Science 4896: Theories and Practices of Slavery, Then and Now (Fall 2012)
Faculty Sponsor: Jane Gordon

Kyle Repella

“False Pretenders and Friends of Truth: Pennsylvania, the Keithian Controversy, and the Reorientation of the Quaker Empire in the late Seventeenth Century”
History 4997: Honors Thesis Seminar (Spring 2013)
Faculty Sponsor: Travis Glasson

2012-2013 Library Prize for Research on Sustainability and the Environment Winner

Andrea Gudiel

“Deforestation and the spread of non-native species”

BIOL 4391: Accelerated Research in Biology (Spring 2013) 

Faculty Sponsor: Brent Sewall

2012-2013 Library Prize for Research on Sustainability and the Environment Honorable Mention

Veronica Anderson

“Urban climate catalyst: Lima, Peru”

ARCH 4699: Thesis Studio (Spring 2013)

Faculty Sponsor: Sneha Patel

 

The Scientists: A Family Romance

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On November 15, 2012, I interviewed Marco Roth about his 2012 memoir The Scientists: A Family Romance, described by Lorin Stein of the Paris Review as

“…the first intellectual autobiography by someone our age in the searching nineteenth-century tradition of Edmund Gosse or Henry Adams: the autobiography equally of a reader and of a son, grappling with an inheritance that is both intellectual and emotional–and education for our times.”

I first met Marco Roth in October 2010 when I interviewed him and Keith Gessen about the founding of their literary magazine n+1, where both of them are currently editors.  Since Marco lives in Philadelphia, I run into him from time to time, and, hearing about his book, I asked him if he would talk to me about it. He kindly agreed. The Scientists: A Family Romance is a beautifully written book that I highly recommend.

—Fred Rowland

 

Isaiah’s Suffering Servant

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53:3 He was despised and withdrew from humanity; a man of sufferings and acquainted with diseases; and like someone who hides their faces from us, he was despised and we held him of no account.
53:4 Surely he has borne our diseases and carried our suffering; yet we accounted him plagued, struck down by God, and afflicted.
Isaiah (Disability and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, p.3)

On October 31, 2012, I interviewed Professor Jeremy Schipper of Temple’s Religion Department on his 2011 Oxford University Press book, Disability and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. His work is part of the Oxford series Biblical Reconfigurations, an “innovative series” which “offers new perspectives on the textual, cultural, and interpretative contexts of particular biblical characters.” Professor Schipper brings the insights of disability studies to bear on the Suffering Servant, a very well known and well studied figure in the Hebrew Scriptures. This close reading of third Isaiah not only provides fresh biblical insights, but also shines a lot on some very contemporary social issues.

—Fred Rowland

Open Access Journals and Textbooks

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Colleges and universities face major financial challenges as state and federal funding levels fall and few new revenue sources can adequately fill the gap.  Tuition has already been raised to unsustainable levels, as aggregate student debt recently reached $1 trillion. Higher educational institutions are seeking to be more “entrepreneurial” in order to generate new revenues, but this is a rather slow process in most cases. These issues were pressing even before the housing meltdown in 2008. Now they are urgent.

With this context in mind, the Temple University Libraries are interested in exploring ways that the Internet can be used to reconceptualize and reconfigure how research and educational materials are delivered. If successful, this might both improve research and educational performance at the same time that costs are lowered. As part of the sixth annual Open Access Week (Oct. 22 – Oct. 28, 2012), the Temple University Libraries invited Nick Shockey, director of student advocacy for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and manager of the Right to Research Coalition, and Nicole Allen, director of Student PIRG’s Make Textbooks Affordable campaign, to discuss “The Connection between Open Access and Open Educational Resources: Exploring New Publishing Models.”

Before they’re presentation, they sat down to speak with me about open access journals and open educational resources.

 —Fred Rowland

 

 

Whither the soul?

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The growth of the cognitive and brain sciences has raised interesting questions about the brain and the mind.  No less, it raises interesting questions about traditional notions of the  soul.  Julien Musolino, professor of Psychology at Rutgers University and the director of its Psycholinguistics Laboratory, is interested in science in the public interest and in communicating scientific ideas to the general public.  He is writing a book on the soul for a general, popular audience which looks at the current scientific evidence for the soul’s existence.  Since I’m the classics, philosophy, and religion librarian – all disciplines that have had a long interest in the soul – I thought it was incumbent upon me to find out the latest on the soul.  Julien Musolino was kind enough to share a copy of his introduction with me and agree to an interview.

—Fred Rowland