Kom-mun-i-ka’-ti-o

Amidst all of the hoopla concerning Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, other Nobels were awarded, too.

The Romanian-born German writer, Herta Müller, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for "depict[ing]" the landscape of the dispossessed."

Müller often writes of corruption and intolerance under a dictatorship, as is evidenced  in her earlier works, Niederungen (1982) and Drückender Tango (1982), which were censored in her native Romania during the Ceauşescu era.

View a bibliography of her other works.

Banned Books Week (BBW) is this week! 

BBW is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.  Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Here in Philly, The Free Library and the American Civil Liberties Union will celebrate as local artists, musicians, actors, and TV personalities will read from their favorite censored volumes on Wednesday, September 30th, 7:30pm at the Central branch of the Free Library.

Interested in learning which books have been challenged or censored in the past -- as well as the not so distant past?  Chances are there is a classic or favorite book that you have read which has underwent some challenges. 

TU Libraries is currently trialing two new databases:  GREENR and Global Issues in Context.

GREENR (Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources) offers authoritative content on the development of emerging green technologies and discusses issues on the environment, sustainability and more.






Global Issues offers global perspectives on issues of international importance and current world topics in the news related to these issues.  It focuses on broad issues like war, genocide, terrorism, human rights, poverty, famine, globalization, world trade, nuclear proliferation, and global warming.  Global Issues complements nicely with another library database, CQ Global Researcher.

Both GREENR and Global Issues in Context organize their information easily, and they also provide relevant multimedia sources (video, podcasts, images, and more) - all of which can be easily extracted for use in the classroom or in a powerpoint presentation.

The trials will last until November 3rd.  Let us know if you believe this resource should be added to our eResource collection permanently.

JSTOR recently added the Sewanee Review (1892-2003) to its collection of full-text journals. 

Having never missed an issue in more than a century, the Sewanee Review is the oldest continuously published literary quarterly in the country. Begun in 1892 at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, the Review is devoted to American and British fiction, poetry, and reviews – as well as essays in criticism and reminiscence.

Credo Reference recently added new items to its collection of reference materials, including:

• Key Concepts in Postcolonial Literature -- provides an overview of the main themes, issues, and critical perspectives that have had the greatest effect on postcolonial literatures. Discusses the historical, cultural and contextual background that has affected postcolonial literatures and our reading of them

• Key Concepts in Feminist Theory and Research -- explores core concepts in feminist theory and addresses the implications of postmodernism and post-structuralism for feminist theorizing.

• 50 Key Concepts in Gender Studies -- reflects the shift in thinking about gender as a complex, multi-faceted topic but within which feminist perspectives remain central.

In a recent Slate article, Grady Hendrix argues that vampires in contemporary literature and mass media seem even paler than usual.  What was once portrayed as a bloodthirsty -- and even evil -- creature (largely in part to Bram Stoker) is now a "brooding, crying-on-the-inside, leather-jacketed emo boy" who no longer always shuns sunlight, but most definitely shuns human blood. 

Pointing a finger at Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Angel and Twilight's Edward Cullen, Hendrix claims that this growing "sensitive-vampire industry" may send teens, especially young women, conflicting messages about gender roles, sex, and relationships.

In his Slate article, Jonah Weiner argues that three things have helped spur on the "music-mag death march":

1. The shrinking pool of monolithic stars
2. The professional music critic's demise in status
   
3. The increased use of social networking media to distribute and comment on music and music movements
   

This year celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the audacious "little book," The Elements of Style. 

Noted linguist and grammarian Geoffrey Pullum wrote a pretty scathing review of the book in the Chronicle of Higher Education, needling away at Strunk's more ambiguous, if not downright inaccurate, directives which have caused "grammatical angst" for college students and graduates for decades. Subsequently, Pullum contends that

English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten rules.

Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, highlighted her own beef with Strunk & White, noting that the little book is "the only grammar book so many people have ever studied."  And because of this, those prickly stylistic suggestions have taken on the vaunted status of hard-and-fast rules.  How true! 

I was introduced to Strunk & White in my high school composition classes.  Days were set aside where the class broke into small groups and completed handouts devoted to sections of the book.  I remember having to revise sentences according to the "rules of usage" and "principles of composition," as well as explain why "effect" was preferred over "affect."  I wasn't seriously introduced to another grammar book until graduate school when I had to use Lunsford & Connors' The Everyday Writer in the freshmen composition courses I taught.  Yet, by that time, Strunk & White's recommendations were what I knew and thought to be true.

I'm left wondering how much exposure today's college students have in terms of grammar books.  A quick glance in my library's reference collection reveals citation style manuals galore (MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian, AMA, etc.) but few grammars.  Two that did catch my eye: Strunk & White's The Elements of Style (4th ed.) and Shertzer's The Elements of Grammar.   

Quirk Books, the publisher of this year's surprise hit Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has announced that the new title in its series will be Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, to be published on September 15th.

In this mash-up, the Dashwood sisters battle giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed serpents, and other ferocious sea monsters as they set out on their quest for love.  Check out the book trailer below.

Other publishers are also joining in on the seeming literary mayhem: Orion plans to publish I am Scrooge: A Zombie Story for Christmas this autumn.

As a follow-up to my earlier post, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has sold over 50,000 copies in the UK and 600,000 in the US since its publication in April.

More than 1,500 historic TV commercials from the Duke University Special Collections Library are available on iTunes U in a collection called “AdViews.”

The commercials span across the past 60 years (most are from the 1950s and 1960s) and pitch everything from shampoo and toys to dog food and coffee. New York ad agency D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) originally produced the ads for iconic American companies such as General Foods, Texaco and Kraft.

The AdViews collection of commercials shows not only what products Americans have bought through the decades, but also tracks changes in advertising strategies.