The Archives & Special Collections unit of the Library is proud to host a another in a series of Author Talks to give College of Staten Island authors an opportunity to discuss the research that went into their books. This talk will take place on Thursday, Apr. 16 in the Library (Building 1L), Room 216 at 2:30pm and will feature:

-Christina M. Tortora • Department of English
A Comparative Grammar of Borgomanerese
Oxford University Press, 2014
This book presents and analyzes various features of the morphosyntax of Borgomanerese, a Gallo-Italic dialect spoken in the town of Borgomanero, in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy. The study is highly comparative, drawing on the literature on numerous other Italian dialects and Romance languages (as well as English), to inform our understanding of the Borgomanerese phenomenon.

-Siona Wilson • Department of Performing and Creative Arts
Art Labor, Sex Politics
University of Minnesota Press, 2015
Contrary to critics who have called it the “undecade,” the 1970s were a time of risky, innovative art—and nowhere more so than in Britain, where the forces of feminism and labor politics merged in a radical new aesthetic. In Art Labor, Sex Politics, Siona Wilson investigates the charged relationship of sex and labor politics as it played out in the making of feminist art in 1970s Britain.

-John T. Wing • Department of History
Roots of Empire
Brill, 2015
This book examines Spain’s forest management policies from the 16th century through the middle of the 18th century, connecting the global imperial level with local lived experiences in forest communities impacted by this manifestation of expanded state power. As home to the early modern world’s most extensive forestry bureaucracy, Spain met serious political, technological, and financial limitations while still managing to address most of its timber needs without upending the social balance.
-James A. Kaser • Library Archives & Special Collection
The New Orleans of Fiction
Rowman & Littlefield, 2014

The importance of New Orleans in American culture has made the city’s place in the American imagination a crucial topic for literary scholars and cultural historians. While databases of bibliographical information on New Orleans-centered fiction are available, they are of little use to scholars researching works written before the 1980s. This book provides detailed synopses for more than 500 works of fiction significantly set in New Orleans and published between 1836 and 1980, while highlighting major aspects of social history and cultural studies (i.e., class, ethnicity, gender, immigrant experience, and race).