Author Archives: 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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—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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—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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–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!

Talking about the Roman Wedding

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Professor Karen Hersch is the author of The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity, published by Cambridge University Press in 2010 (Temple catalog record).

I spoke with her on September 20 about her new book. We discuss ancient sources and modern scholarship. She explains the social, legal, and religious significance of the Roman Wedding and its similarities to the modern American wedding. The role of the Roman woman, the significance of the (mythic) Sabine women, and details of the wedding day are covered. The listener will come away with a much greater appreciation of the lives of women in the ancient world.

The first recording is a snippet from the full-length interview.  The complete interview appears directly below it.

Weddings, ancient and modern

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Roman Wedding

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–Fred Rowland

Integrating the Library into Blackboard 9

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Temple University Libraries’ subject specialists create guides to library resources for general subjects as well as for specific courses and assignments. Faculty should contact Subject Specialists to get more information on these. Here is the Research Guides homepage.

Blackboard is a great place to make these guides available to students. View the Screencast below to see how easy it is to embed a library guide into your Blackboard course.

For more information, see Integrating the Library Into Blackboard.

TU Libraries switches to Refworks 2.0

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Refworks is the citation management program that the Temple University Libraries offers to the university community that makes it easier to store, organize, annotate, and output citations as bibliographies. On Monday, August 23, the Libraries’ switched over to the new Refworks 2.0 interface, which provides a more intuitive and efficient user experience. Anyone familiar with the first version of Refworks (now called Refworks Classic) should be able to make this transition with relative ease.  (The Refworks Classic interface will be available until December simply by clicking on the “Refworks Classic” link in the upper right corner of the Refworks 2.0 interface.)  As before, users can access Refworks 2.0 from the Libraries’ homepage under “Find Articles.”

Here are some of the improvements in Refworks 2.0:

  • Shortcuts that allow quick access to important features
  • Reduced menu bar that includes only the most important items
  • Tabs for quick access to (all) References, Folders, and shared folders

In Refworks 2.0 you don’t need to constantly shift from one page to another to perform simple functions as was often necessary in Refworks Classic.  The same great features are now easier to find and use.  Take a spin on Refworks 2.0!

Here’s a Refworks 2.0 preview. 

—Fred Rowland

 

Discussion with Temple Classicists: Part 2

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This is the second 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 the impact of new theoretical approaches on classics research, the effect of the Internet on interdisciplinary research, and new channels for distributing PhD dissertations.

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.

Listen to Part II of the Conversation

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(Listen to Part I of our conversation.)

—Fred Rowland

Using LexisNexis Congressional

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I was recently reading this article, Wealthy Reap Rewards While Those Who Work Lose, and came upon this paragraph: “‘The nation’s jobs crisis is so catastrophic that, unless Congress acts on the scale of the New Deal, millions of Americans will experience extremely long periods of unemployment for many years ahead,’ Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, told a panel of the Committee on Ways and Means recently.” I wanted to read exactly what Lawrence Mishel said in his testimony before the Committee. This provided a perfect opportunity to use LexisNexis Congressional, which indexes (and often provides full-text to) committee transcripts and hearings. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Go into LexisNexis Congressional and click on the Advanced Search tab
  2. Make sure just the Hearings box is checked
  3. From the search dropdown box, select Witness
  4. In the search field type: Mishel, Lawrence
  5. Click Search And, Voila! You’ll get this citation: [Job Creation], CIS-NO: Not Yet Assigned, SOURCE: Committee on Appropriations. Senate, DOC-TYPE: Hearing , DATE: Jan. 21, 2010., CIS/Index

From there, it’s easy to find your way to the full-text. Watch this SCREENCAST to see how it’s done.

Interviews: Library Prize Winners 2010

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Interviews with the winners of the 2010 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research are now available.

bermudez.jpgDonald Bermudez speaking at the Library Prize Awards Ceremony, May 5, 2010

Donald Bermudez – author of Keystone of the Keystone: The Falls of the Delaware and Bucks County 1609-1692 (History 4997) – and faculty sponsor Rita Krueger are interviewed by Adam Shambaugh

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

 

hussey.jpgBrian Hussey speaking at the Library Prize Awards Ceremony, May 5, 2010

Brian Hussey – author of Setting the Agenda: The Effects of Administration Debates and the President’s Personal Imperatives on Forming Foreign Policy During the Reagan Administration (History 4997) – and faculty sponsor Rita Krueger are interviewed by Fred Rowland

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

 

young.jpgCharise Young speaking at the Library Prize Awards Ceremony, May 5, 2010

Charise Young – author of African American Women’s Basketball in the 1920s and 1930s: Active Participants in the “New Negro” Movement (History 4296) – and faculty sponsor Bettye Collier-Thomas are interviewed by Fred Rowland

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

For more information on this year’s winners and honorable mentions, go to the Winners page.