Category Archives: Library News

John Raines, Freedom Rider

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From May to December 1961, the Freedom Riders fanned out on buses and trains across the deep south in order to test the 1960 Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia which determined that segregated vehicles and facilities in interstate travel were illegal. Organized by CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), Freedom Riders consisted of groups of blacks and whites traveling together and refusing to recognize any barriers placed between blacks and whites. They would sit together on buses and trains, wait together in terminals, and eat together in restaurants. They met with resistance, often extremely violent, but were committed to responding nonviolently.

Temple religion professor John Raines, who will be retiring on June 30, 2011, was a Freedom Rider. From July 8-15, 1961 he traveled by bus with black and white companions from St. Louis, Missouri to Little Rock, Arkansas to Shreveport, Louisiana and finally to New Orleans, Louisiana.

Recently, in his office in Anderson Hall, he told me the story of his freedom ride.

—Fred Rowland

West African Muslims of Harlem

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Zain Abdullah is a professor of Religion at Temple University who recently published Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem(Oxford University Press, 2010). It is an ethnographic study of francophone Africans from Guinea, Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire who have made a home in Harlem, radically transforming this section of New York City. On Monday, February 28, 2011 he stopped by my office to discuss his new book.

The Interview is in two parts.

Black Mecca Interview with Zain Abdullah, Part 1

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Black Mecca Interview with Zain Abdullah, Part 2

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—Fred Rowland

 

Library Prize Info Sessions

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2011 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research 2011 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research on Sustainability and the Environment Would you like to win $1,000 and a prestigious award from Temple Libraries? The deadline for submitting your work to our two library prizes is Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Learn more at two upcoming info sessions: 1) Friday, March 18 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Paley Library, Information Commons (1st Floor) 2) Tuesday, March 22 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Paley Library, Information Commons (1st Floor) These sessions are your opportunity to ask questions and get a leg up on the competition!

***Coffee and Cookies provided while they last***

Who’s Harry Gold?

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Allen Hornblum has written The Invisible Harry Gold: The man who gave the Soviets the atom bomb, published by Yale University Press in 2010. Surprisingly, this is the first biography of Harry Gold. In this interview, Mr. Hornblum talks about Harry Gold’s South Philly roots, his entry into spying, and his eventual arrest and conviction. He also talks about his sources for this work, including the papers of Joseph Gold, Harry’s brother, which are housed in the Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections.

The interview is in two parts.

Harry Gold: the early years
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Harry Gold becomes a spy
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—Fred Rowland

n+1 Interview: Gessen & Roth

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On October 27, Keith Gessen and Marco Roth spoke in the Paley Lecture Hall about starting n+1 in the midst of the online transformation of the early 2000s.  n+1 is a print literary journal which released its first issue in 2004.  Before the lecture, we had a long discussion about their journal, the literary and competitive pressures of publishing, the death and life of the author, the life of print after the Internet, and just how n+1 got its name.

Gessen and Roth – Part I[ensemblevideo contentid=uUB04PkXKkikhWZT0bD6jA audio=true showcaptions=true]

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Gessen and Roth – Part II[ensemblevideo contentid=6t6LAHylbEaCQTV-0s2y1g captions=true height=150]

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(More on Gessen and Roth)

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—Fred Rowland

 

Discussion with Temple Classicists: Part 3

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This is the third part of my conversation with Classics professors Dan Tompkins, Robin Mitchell-Boyask, and Sydnor Roy, which took place on March 18, 2010. We talked about how they share their ideas with other scholars, publishing, classics web sites, and scholarly repositories.

Dan Tompkins received his PhD from Yale University in 1968 with a dissertation entitled Stylistic Characterization in Thucydides. Robin Mitchell-Boyask graduated in 1988 from Brown University with a dissertation entitled Tragic Identity: Studies in Euripides and Shakespeare. Sydnor Roy is a 2010 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation is entitled Political Relativism: Implicit Political Theory in Herodotus’ Histories.

 

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(Listen to Part I and Part II of our conversation.)

 

—Fred Rowland

Talking Tuna

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On September 24, Professor Daniel Levine of the University of Arkansas Classics Department spoke at Temple University about “Tuna in the Ancient Greek World”.  The Zeta Beta Chapter of Eta Sigma Phi brought him to campus after hearing him speak at a national conference.  Zeta Beta is a group on campus that promotes the teaching, study, and appreciation of Latin, Greek, and the ancient world.

Before his talk in the afternoon, Dr. Levine was kind enough to stop by my office to discuss his topic.  We had a lively conversation punctuated by lengthy classical quotes, strange-sounding Greek words, and a few laughs.  It was a thorough education on the ancient tuna, some of whose relatives still exist today, though in ever sparser numbers.  The interview is broken into two parts.

Tuna in the Ancient Greek World

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

Tuna in the Ancient Greek World – Part II

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

Subscribe to this podcast series

—Fred Rowland

Lost Tribes of Israel: The Interview

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On November 15, Paley Library hosted the 5th Annual Symposium on Race and Judaism. Entitled “Lost Tribes: Ancient and Contemporary Perspectives”, it featured eight speakers who spoke on a range of topics from the ancient context to modern interpretations. The keynote address was delivered by Rabbi Debra Bowen, the leader of Congregation Temple Beth El in North Philadelphia.

Before the symposium, three of the speakers sat down with me for an interview: Lewis Gordon, director of the Institute for Afro-Jewish Studies and philosophy professor at Temple; Mark Leuchter, chair of the Jewish Studies program; and David Koffman, history professor at York University.

Listen to the audio of the interview: Lost Tribes

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

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—Fred Rowland

Climatologist Michael Mann

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On October 13, climatologist Michael Mann spoke to a packed house in the Paley Library Lecture Hall about global warming and the politicization of science.  He is the director of the Earth System Science Center and a professor at the Pennsylvania State University.  In 2007, he and other members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  In 2009, many of his emails and the emails of other climatologists were hacked from a server at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, an incident which came to be known in the popular press as “climategate.”

Before his lecture, I interviewed Michael Mann about some of the details of climate change research and the email hack that spilled across the Internet.

Listen to the interview with Michael Mann

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

Subscribe to this podcast series


–Fred Rowland

2010-2011 Library Prize Dates

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The dates for the 2010-2011 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research have been set. The submission date for student applications is March 30, 2011 at 5:00 pm. The awards ceremony will be held on Tuesday, May 3 from 4:30 to 6:00 pm. The application consists of a number of different items including the research paper or project, research essay, and faculty recommendation. For full details on the Library Prize and a look at last year’s winners, visit the prize web site.

The Library Prize for Undergraduate Research is now in its seventh year and was created to highlight Temple University’s best undergraduate library research. The winning papers/projects are vetted by a panel of four librarian and three faculty (one each from the humanities, social sciences, and sciences) judges. Winners receive $1000 and their prize-winning submissions are made permanently available on the library’s web site. The Temple University Libraries take research seriously.

If you’re an undergraduate we hope you’ll consider participating in the 2010-2011 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research. If you’re a faculty member, please encourage your students to submit their best work. Whether student, faculty, staff, or public, join us at the awards ceremony on May 3!