Join us Monday 1/14 at 2 pm for a talk by Professor Almidio Aquino, Director of Proyecto Kuatiañe'e, or the Language Notebooks Project

Happy new year!

Please join us on Monday, January 14, 2008 in Gorgas Library room 205 from 2-4 pm for a bi-lingual lecture with Professor Almidio Aquino, Director of Proyecto Kuatiañe'e, or the Language Notebooks Project

(Flier for this event is available to view and print at http://www.lib.ua.edu/events/documents/aquino_flier_final.pdf )

This important project aims to maintain the indigenous Ava Guaraní language and culture in Paraguay by producing reading and other materials for the children of the community. For centuries, the Guaraní were a people whose language formed the cultural foundation of Paraguay. Over the years, their numbers have dwindled and the Guaraní culture and language faces possible extinction. Dr. Aquino leads this effort to maintain the language and culture of the Ava Guaraní people of Paraguay. Aquino and his Language Notebooks Project team have worked to record Guaraní oral histories, as well as other materials, and seventeen books have been published through the project.

Professor Almidio Aquino has devoted his life to preserving the language and culture of the Guaraní. He has conducted extensive qualitative research interviewing, visiting, and interacting with the various aboriginal groups. As a result of Professor Aquino's work, which is called Proyecto Kuatiañe’e, 17 books, three cassettes, and a trilingual dictionary was published. The publication of this material is significant as they were the first books available for Ava Guaraní children (1 of 6 Guaraní tribes) in order to learn and celebrate their unique culture and language. Professor Aquino co-wrote an article entitled Proyecto Kuatiañe’e: Saving a Language for Children (2005), published in Childhood Education (6), 349-354. Prof. Aquino has given talks at UAB, Southeastern La. U. and at the Lasso conference.

Nearly 20 years ago, the powerful motion picture The Mission, starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons, was released, bringing worldwide exposure to the Guarani aboriginal people. Based on historical events from the 1700s and set in Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, the film was simultaneously moving and inspiring, yet also a disturbing presentation of how the Guarani Indians found themselves at the epicenter of a geo-political, religious conflict between the Crown of Portugal, Spain, and the missionary Jesuits. The picture ultimately ends with a spellbinding scene in which three naked, surviving Guarani children board a small canoe to start a new life elsewhere after their community is completely destroyed by European troops. For several centuries, the Guarani, whose language formed the cultural foundation of Paraguay, have significantly decreased in numbers and there is a real danger of their culture and language being completely lost. Indeed, the Ava Guarani aboriginal group numbers approximately 2,000. (1) In order to raise more awareness of the important cultural contributions made by the Guarani and to help preserve their unique identity and heritage, the authors highlight the vital work that is being accomplished through Facultad de Lenguas Vivas / Institute of Guarani Linguistics in Asuncion, Paraguay.

This fascinating lecture will be given in Spanish with translation by Alicia Cipria and students from the Spanish program at The University of Alabama. The talk will be followed by a reception featuring refreshments with Latin American flavors. As always, this event is free and open to the public!

This event is co-sponsored by Modern Languages and Classics, UA Libraries, Capstone International Programs, and the Departments of Anthropology and History.

We hope to see you there! And be sure to visit the UA Libraries events page at http://www.lib.ua.edu/events/ for exciting upcoming lectures and more!

Jessica Lacher-Feldman, MA, MLS, CA
Public & Outreach Services
Coordinator/Associate Professor
The W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library
Box 870266
The University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0266 USA

Join us tomorrow 11/29 in Gorgas 205 for an exciting afternoon with two amazing African American poets!

Thursday November 29, at 4:30 pm
in Gorgas Library room 205

Poets Randall Horton and Duriel Harris will read from their work.
Part of a day-long celebration of African American Poetry!

Randall Horton, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, resides in Albany, New York. He is a former editor of WarpLand: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas (Fall 2005) and co-editor of Fingernails Across the Chalkboard (Third World Press, 2006). He received his undergraduate education at both Howard University and The University of the District of Columbia (B.A. English). He has a MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry from Chicago State University. He is also a first year doctoral student at SUNY Albany. Randall received an Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Foundation Summer Scholarship to attend Fine Arts Workcenter at Provincetown in 2005. He is also a Cave Canem fellow. http://www.randallhorton.com/writings.htm

Duriel E. Harris -Heralded as one of three Chicago poets for the 21st century by WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, Duriel E. Harris is a co-founder of the Black Took Collective and a Poetry Editor for Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora. Drag (Elixir Press, 2003), her first book, was hailed by Black Issues Book Review as one of the best poetry volumes of the year. She is currently at work on AMNESIAC, a media arts project (poetry volume, DVD, sound recording, web site) funded in part by the UCSB Center for Black Studies Race and Technology Initiative. AMNESIAC writings appear or are forthcoming in Beyond the Frontier, Warpland, nocturnes, The Encyclopedia Project, Mixed Blood and The Ringing Ear. A performing poet/sound artist, Harris is a Cave Canem fellow, recent resident at The MacDowell Colony, and member of the free jazz ensemble Douglas Ewart & Inventions. Recent appearances include featured performances at Millennium Park (Chicago), The UCSB Multicultural Center (Santa Barbara), the Studio Museum in Harlem, The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Bowery Poetry Club (NYC) Her teaching and research interests include Modern and Contemporary American poetry, blues and funk aesthetics, oppositional/experimental poetics, trauma studies, and new media. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, an M.A. from the Graduate Creative Writing Program at NYU and a B.A. in Literature from Yale University.

Co-sponsored by New College, UA Libraries, and the Program in Creative Writing.

(Note at 7 pm in the Ferguson Theater, you can spend the evening with poet and activist Nikki Giovanni) For more information on that event visit upissuesandideas@sa.ua.edu)

Please mark your calendars for three great UA Libraries events - a lecture, readings, and a lecture/film!

There are three great events coming up in UA Libraries after the thanksgiving break! Please be sure to mark your calendars! Visit the Libraries events page at www.lib.ua.edu/events for more information .

Tuesday November 27 at 4:30 pm, at the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, 2nd floor, Mary Harmon Bryant Hall

Micki McElya, Assistant Professor of American Studies, The University of Alabama will talk about her new book,
Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America (Harvard University Press, 2007)
Download the flier at: http://www.lib.ua.edu/events/documents/mcelya_flier_001.pdf or read about the talk on the Cool@Hoole blog: http://coolathoole.blogspot.com/

McElya’s powerful and beautifully written book examines the far-reaching image of the nurturing, faithful enslaved woman and her hold on the American imagination. McElya exposes the power of the myth of ‘mammy’, an omnipresent figure in popular culture -- from film, song and literature, to advertising and our grocery store shelves, as well as in national monument proposals, child custody cases, white women’s minstrelsy, activism, anti-lynching campaigns and the Civil Rights movement . These images have existed and persisted from the era of the Civil War to today. It is through her carefully researched and thought provoking narrative that McElya argues, “if we are to reckon with the continuing legacy of slavery in the United States, we must confront the depths of our desire for mammy and recognize its full racial implications.”

Thursday November 29, in Gorgas Library room 205

Poets Randall Horton and Duriel Harris will read from their work.

Download the flier at: http://www.lib.ua.edu/events/documents/horton_harris_3.pdf

Part of a day-long celebration of African American Poetry! ***Note at 7 pm in the Ferguson Theater, you can spend the evening with poet and activist Nikki Giovanni) For more information on that event visit upissuesandideas@sa.ua.edu

Randall Horton, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, resides in Albany, New York. He is a former editor of WarpLand: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas (Fall 2005) and co-editor of Fingernails Across the Chalkboard (Third World Press, 2006). He received his undergraduate education at both Howard University and The University of the District of Columbia (B.A. English). He has a MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry from Chicago State University. He is also a first year doctoral student at SUNY Albany. Randall received an Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Foundation Summer Scholarship to attend Fine Arts Workcenter at Provincetown in 2005. He is also a Cave Canem fellow. http://www.randallhorton.com/writings.htm

Duriel E. Harris -Heralded as one of three Chicago poets for the 21st century by WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, Duriel E. Harris is a co-founder of the Black Took Collective and a Poetry Editor for Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora. Drag (Elixir Press, 2003), her first book, was hailed by Black Issues Book Review as one of the best poetry volumes of the year. She is currently at work on AMNESIAC, a media arts project (poetry volume, DVD, sound recording, web site) funded in part by the UCSB Center for Black Studies Race and Technology Initiative. AMNESIAC writings appear or are forthcoming in Beyond the Frontier, Warpland, nocturnes, The Encyclopedia Project, Mixed Blood and The Ringing Ear. A performing poet/sound artist, Harris is a Cave Canem fellow, recent resident at The MacDowell Colony, and member of the free jazz ensemble Douglas Ewart & Inventions. Recent appearances include featured performances at Millennium Park (Chicago), The UCSB Multicultural Center (Santa Barbara), the Studio Museum in Harlem, The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Bowery Poetry Club (NYC) Her teaching and research interests include Modern and Contemporary American poetry, blues and funk aesthetics, oppositional/experimental poetics, trauma studies, and new media. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, an M.A. from the Graduate Creative Writing Program at NYU and a B.A. in Literature from Yale University.

Tuesday, December 4 at 7 pm in Gorgas Library room 205

Jeff Weddle, Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Studies will talk about his new book, and screen a documentary film
–Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press (University of Mississippi Press, 2007)
Download the flier at: http://www.lib.ua.edu/events/documents/weddle_flier.pdf

In 1960, Jon Edgar and Louise "Gypsy Lou" Webb founded Loujon Press on Royal Street in New Orleans's French Quarter. The small publishing house quickly became a giant. Heralded by the Village Voice and the New York Times as one of the best of its day, the Outsider, the press's literary review, featured, among others, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, and Walter Lowenfels. Loujon published books by Henry Miller and two early poetry collections by Bukowski. Bohemian New Orleans traces the development of this courageous imprint and examines its place within the small press revolution of the 1960s. Drawing on correspondence from many who were published in the Outsider, back issues of the Outsider, contemporary reviews, promotional materials, and interviews, Jeff Weddle shows how the press's mandarin insistence on production quality and its eclectic editorial taste made its work nonpareil among peers in the underground. Throughout, Bohemian New Orleans reveals the messy, complex, and vagabond spirit of a lost literary age.

Wayne Ewing's documentary (Jeff Weddle helped produce this!), The Outsiders of New Orleans: Loujon Press, premiers at the Denver Film Festival on Nov. 11. Please follow the link to the Denver Film Society's webpage about the film. http://www.denverfilm.org/filmcenter/detail.aspx?id=21582

What’s Cool@Hoole? Find out at http://coolathoole.blogspot.com/

Save the dates! Visiting scholar Sylviane Diouf - two great talks 11/12 and 11/13!

I received this notice in my email today. This sounds really interesting. Check it out:

Greetings ---

We are honored to be hosting Dr. Sylviane Diouf,
curator for the Schomburg Center for Research Black Culture in New York next week --She will present two talks on her research and writing -- download the flier here for both talks: http://www.lib.ua.edu/events/documents/diouf_bothtalks_draft.pdf
The first: Monday, November 12 at 11 am in Gorgas Library Room 205 is an informal talk --- African Muslims in the Americas with a slide show "Literate Muslims in Africa and the Americas During Slavery" (based on her 1999 award winning book, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas).

The second talk is Tuesday, November 13 at 4 pm in Gorgas Library Room 205 (followed by a book signing and reception)
This is on her latest book: Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America. (Oxford University Press, 2007) Flier for the Dreams lecture --http://www.lib.ua.edu/events/documents/diouf_flier.pdf
Come hear more about this fascinating and little known part of Alabama History -- "In a tale worthy of a novelist, Sylviane Diouf provides a well-researched, nicely written, and moving account of the last slave ship to America, whose 110 captives
arrived in Mobile in 1860 and, after the war, created their dream of Africa in Alabama." -- Howard Jones, author of Mutiny on the Amistad (and UA Professor of History!)

Sylviane Diouf holds a PhD from the University of Paris and is a curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. Dr. Diouf is the 2007 co-winner of the Wesley-Logan Prize of the American Historical Association. Her website is http://www.sylvianediouf.com/index.htm

As always, these events are free and open to the public! This talk and Dr. Diouf's visit to The University of Alabama is cosponsored by UA Libraries, New College, American Studies, African-American Studies, The Summersell Center for the Study of the South, Modern Languages and Classics, and Religious Studies and the generous support of Lakey and Susan Tolbert. Please contact me if you have any questions or need further information! We hope to see you there!!

Jessica Lacher-Feldman
Public & Outreach Services
Coordinator/Associate Professor
The W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library
Box 870266
The University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0266
USAP:205.348.0500
F:205.348.1699
jlfeldma@ua.edu
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Celebrate International Education Week!

Celebrate International Education Week!

Please join us for a talk with:
Jane Meyers
President,
Lubuto Library Project, Inc.

Headquartered in Washington, DC with an office in Zambia, the Lubuto Project gives the burgeoning numbers of street children in Africa, beginning with one hundred libraries in Zambia, the opportunity for non‐formal education, improving literacy, language skills, general knowledge and participation in society.

From 3‐5 pm on Thursday, November 15, 2007
in Gorgas Library room 205

This event is co‐sponsored by UA Libraries, Capstone International Center, New College, Community Service Center, School of Library and Information Studies, and the Alabama Chapter, SLA

Visit www.lib.ua.edu/events for information on all University Libraries events for fall 2007 or contact Jessica Lacher‐Feldman at jlfeldma@ua.edu or 205.348.0500 or Mangala Krishnamurthy at mkrishna@ua.edu or 205.348.2109

University of Alabama Libraries … Books and so much more! www.lib.ua.edu