Dreams & Swords
March 2006 issue
February 2006 issue
November 2005 issue
Dreams & Swords
All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
- Amy Lowell (Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds)
Check the Library's website for the archives of the Dreams & Swords column.
March is Women's History Month and in a nod to this observance this month's Dreams & Swords highlights just a few of the resources your campus library has to offer:
Women Working, 1800 - 1930. This electronic database (to be found on the Library's website) "focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections. The collection features approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images including 7,500 pages of manuscripts, 3,500 books and pamphlets (and) 1,200 photographs."
Tupperware : the promise of plastic in 1950s America by Alison J. Clarke. If you thought Tupperware was just something you mother (or grandmother) stored leftovers in, you may be surprised by this scholarly analysis of this utilitarian mid-century icon and the revolutionary social and marketing impacts its introduction had.
Hawaii's Last Queen. Originally broadcasted as part of PBS' The American Experience, this program (videocassette) tells the story of the life of Queen Lili'uokalani of Hawaii, focusing on the last days of the Hawaiian monarchy, which was illegally overthrown by the United States government in 1893. On November 23, 1993, the United States officially apologized to the Native Hawaiian people for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Celia Cruz & Friends - a Night of Salsa. This PBS dvd celebrates the career and influence of the Queen of Salsa. Cruz left Cuba in the 1950s soon after Fidel Castro came into power. After a brief stay in Mexico she arrived in the United States, which became her home. During her career she earned multiple Grammy Awards and several honorary doctorates include one from Yale University. Cruz died in 2003 of brain cancer.
Great Speeches Today's Women. This three volume (to date) dvd series covers the years 1995 through 2001 and presents speeches by such well-known women as former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, former U.S. surgeon general Jocelyn Elders, Elizabeth Dole, Barbara Jordan, Maya Angelou, and Condoleezza Rice.
Bill Moyers in Conversation with Sister Wendy Bill Moyers interviews Sister Wendy Beckett, the British nun who in the 1990s became a media sensation for her television programs in which she led viewers on tours through the art world. While Sister Wendy may fit most people's visual stereotype of a nun, this video offers some surprises. Responding to Moyers' inquiries about the sheer openness and ease with which she discusses the erotic nature of much of the world's great art, and the overall subject of human sexuality, Sister Wendy very unabashedly responds to "dear" Bill that "God would never give you a toy and not let you play with it." Also available in our library's collections are videos of Sister Wendy's programs and books written by her.
Barbie Nation: An Unauthorized Tour. Love Barbie or hate her, this dvd is a unique look at the cultural phenomenon and is both informative and entertaining. The segment on a Barbie convention held in Birmingham (AL) alone is worth the viewer's time.
Kathryn: The Story of a Teller . You may have attended the Capri premiere of this film on the woman who is quite possibly Huntingdon's most celebrated alumnus.
Sexual Personae : Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia. Paglia, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, could have any number of labels attached to her - scholar, social critic, feminist, political commentator, radical - just to mention a few - and she might well take issue with many of these. During her career she has managed to tick just about everyone off, but she's thought provoking if nothing else, and in 2005 was named one of the "100 Top Public Intellectuals in the World" by the magazines Foreign Policy and Prospect.
The Woman's Bible by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In 1870 a (all-male) committee of the Church of England issued a revision of the Authorized English Version of the Bible. Stanton, taking issue with the use of the Bible as a means of subjugating women, decided it was time to free the Bible from all-male control and through her own intensive research produced The Woman's Bible.
The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art and Bitches, Bimbos, and Ballbreakers : the Guerrilla Girls' Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes by the Guerrilla Girls. The Guerrilla (note the spelling) Girls was founded in the mid-1980s by a group of New York female artists, curators and gallery owners who had past the point of patience with the art world and its neglect of women and minority artists and their work. Donning gorilla masks (to hide their identities and to off-set accusations that there actions were motivated by self interest and furtherance of their own careers), these women began plastering their now famous posters of protest (demonstrating a wry sense of humor) all over the Big Apple (ironically, originals of their posters are now held in the collections of major museums and libraries). Visit their website: http://www.guerrillagirls.com/.
Grace & Glory : a Century of Women in the Olympics edited by Siobhan Drummond and Elizabeth Rathburn. This exhibit was created as part of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and provides a history of women's involvement in the Olympics and the obstacles that have been overcome (and perhaps a few still left).
Beauty Queens on the Global Stage: Gender, Contests, and Power edited by Colleen Ballerino Cohen, Richard Wilk and Beverly Stoeltje. We may think "only in America", but this work takes a look at beauty pageants in fourteen cultures around the world.
Uplift : the Bra in America by Jane Farrell-Beck and Colleen Gau. If you've ever had a topic on your mind and wondered if a book has been written about it, it probably has as this tome demonstrates. But this is a serious study (though the authors do have a healthy appreciation for the humorous potential of their subject) published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Love and the Goddess, part of the Joseph Campbell Power of Myth series. In this video Campbell leads the viewer through a discussion of romantic love and the image of woman as goddess, virgin and Mother Earth.
Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism by Daniel Horowitz. The Feminine Mystique (1963) became a seminal work. As the back cover of the 2001 Norton edition states, "This is the book that defined the 'problem that has no name,' that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and that has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh ever since then."
The Women's Bank of Bangladesh. This 1997 video introduces the viewer to the Grameen Bank, founded in the village of Jobra, Bangladesh in 1976, and its concept of micro-lending to the poorest of the poor. Ninety-six percent of its borrowers are women, according to a December 2005 report on the bank's website. Borrowers own 94% of the bank's equity, with the remaining 6% being owned by the government. Among the obstacles these women entering into business must overcome is that of religious belief as many men avow that loaning to women is contrary to Islamic law. In the video, the bank's founder, who is an economics professor, considers his bank's lending practices as simply sound business, stating that, " … women in the region are more competitive in business than men."
Eric A. Kidwell
Director of the Library