The Archives & Special Collections unit of the Library (Building 1L) is proud to host a series of Author Talks, on Thursday, Sept. 30 at 1:30pm in Building 1L, Room 216, to give CSI authors an opportunity to discuss the research that went into their books. Featured authors include:
Jessica Burke, Department of English
The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who.
Kitsune Books, 2010.
This volume of essays examines the abundant mythological elements underpinning the 46-year run (and many more!) of popular BBC television series Doctor Who. Contributors include a well-known Doctor Who novelist, an organizer of one of the largest Doctor Who online communities, plus several university scholars and founders of the American Northeast Tolkien Society. Explore the universe of The Doctor as seen through the eyes of myth and legend.
Todd Craig, Department of English
tor’cha.
New York: Swank Books/Blacker Inkwell, 2008.
The novel is a coming of age story of three African American brothers growing up in the inner city. Each chapter is based on one of the Ten Commandments, while drawing its morals from Supreme Mathematics, an Islamic concept originated from the Nation of Gods and Earths. In each chapter one of the three brothers is faced with the choice of breaking one of the Ten Commandments (before, during, or after). Craig seamlessly interweaves these seemingly disparate philosophies as his characters navigate the urban U.S. The story unfolds in a cinematic sequence that engages readers, propelling them to reposition this literary jigsaw puzzle.
Timothy Gray, Department of English
Urban Pastoral: Natural Currents in the New York School.
Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2010.
In Urban Pastoral, Timothy Gray urges us to reconsider our long-held appraisals of Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, and their peers as celebrants of cosmopolitan culture and to think of their more pastoral impulses. As Gray argues, flowers are more beautiful in the New York School’s garden of verse because no one expects them to bloom there. The New York School poets and their coterie have become a staple of poetics, literary criticism and biography, cultural studies, and art criticism, but Urban Pastoral is the first study of the original New York School poets to offer sustained discussion of the pastoral and natural imagery within the work of these renowned “city poets.”
George Jochnowitz, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics
The Blessed Human Race: Essays on Reconsideration.
Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2007.
George Jochnowitz is a professor emeritus of linguistics whose specialty is Jewish languages, in particular the dialects of the Jews of Italy and southern France. He taught for many years at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, and was an exchange professor at Hebei University in Baoding, China, during the spring semesters of 1984 and 1989. The Blessed Human Race addresses the changes in Jochnowitz’s views on Marxism after his experiences in China. His interests range far and wide, and include politics, music, the Bible, and humanity itself.
Matthew Solomon, Department of Media Culture
Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century.
Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010.
Disappearing Tricks revisits the golden age of theatrical magic and silent film to reveal how professional magicians shaped the early history of cinema. The first to reveal fully how powerfully magic impacted the development of cinema, the book combines film and theater history to uncover new evidence of the exchanges between magic and filmmaking in the United States and France during the silent period. Highlighting early cinema’s relationship to the performing body, visual deception, storytelling, and the occult, Solomon treats cinema and stage magic as overlapping practices that together revise our understanding of the origins of motion pictures and cinematic spectacle.
This event is co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost/Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs.
