Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Foucault across the Bay -

"The Media Resources Center at the University of
California, Berkeley has made available the most comprehensive collection to date of online audio recordings of lectures and courses by the renowned French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault. The English language collection features two lecture series delivered at UC Berkeley in the 1980’s on Truth and Subjectivity and Parrhesia. The French language collection offers five complete semester length courses, covering such quintessentially Foucauldian concepts as Parrhesia, governmentality, neoliberalism, security, biopolitics, and sovereignty. The collection includes recordings spanning two decades of thought and instruction, including Foucault’s final 1984 course at the Collège de France.

All recordings can be accessed from the Michel Foucault Audio Archive,

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/foucault/mfaa.html

This collection was generously donated to the Media Resources Center by Paul Rabinow, Professor of Social Cultural Anthropology and digitized and edited by Gisèle Binder, Operations Supervisor, Media Resources Center.

Gary Handman, Director
Media Resources Center
Moffitt Library
UC Berkeley"

(Thanks to Claude Potts, my counterpart at UCB, for sending this on)

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Speaking of Computers

The "back to school" issue was just released:

speaking.stanford.edu


You'll find news about various library/digital resources, as well as information for computer users at Stanford software.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Grand Tour database now available

Right before the beginning of this academic year, we were able to push through the purchase of some primary source databases, including:

The Grand Tour (Adam Mathew Digital) : “…this collection of manuscript, visual and printed works allows scholars to compare a range of sources on the history of travel for the first time, including many from private or neglected collections. We include letters; diaries and journals; account books; printed guidebooks; published travel writing; paintings and sketches; architectural drawings and maps.”

This database covers the years 1550-1850, with a spotlight on the eighteenth century. Daily life on the Continent, especially as experienced by British travelers, as well as religious and political life, transportation and science, intellectual exchange, and cultural exploration are all examined through the primary sources and reference materials included in this database. Simple and advanced searching, a dictionary of travelers, and visual resources all make this a worthwhile resource.


If you are a Stanford user, you can access this from the Databases page, or here:

http://www.grandtour.amdigital.co.uk/Introduction/Default.aspx

Friday, September 18, 2009

The Tocqueville Review

... is now included in the Project Muse database. As with all Project Muse journals, coverage starts from the first issue included in the database - in this case, Vol. 30, number 1, 2009 -

Here is the blurb about the journal from the University of Toronto Press:

"The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville


The Tocqueville Review
is a French-American bilingual journal
devoted to the comparative study of social change, primarily in Europe
and the United States, but also covering major developments in other
parts of the world, in the spirit of Alexis de Tocqueville's pioneer
investigations. A journal of social science, the Review publishes essays
on current affairs, history, and political philosophy; it also features
a regular section on Tocquevillean studies."


Stanford's print subscription lapsed in 1990-91, so this addition will pick up coverage with the current issue.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Wednesday primary source #10 - French sailors

This week's primary source is a collection of correspondence between 2 brothers, both French naval officers, in the years immediately preceding the Revolution.

Author: de Saint-Laurent family

Title: Correspondence, 1786-1791.

Physical Description: 60 letters.

Summary: The letters reflect the numerous naval assignments and

ports visited by the brothers; occasionally one

brother or the other lived in Paris. There are good

descriptions of Toulon society and particularly its

women, details of daily life including the expense of

laundry, wigs, and hairdressing, room and board; also

descriptions of hospitals in Martinique and

Guadaloupe, and references to the participation of

French naval vessels in the American revolution.

Note: The correspondence is between two brothers who were

French naval officers based in Toulon in

pre-revolutionary France, at just the time the navy

was threatened with dissolution.

SPEC-COLL CALL NUMBER COPY LOCATION

1)MISC 338 1 MANUSCRIPT


Tuesday, September 1, 2009

New acquisitions -

Here are a few of the books that have recently arrived in the slow days of August...

French

Bériou, Nicole, and Jacques Chiffoleau. Economie et religion: l'expérience des ordres mendiants (XIIIe-XVe siècle). Collection d'histoire et d'archéologie médiévales. Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2009.

Gautier Dalché, Patrick. La géographie de Ptolémée en Occident (IVe-XVIe siècle). Terrarum Orbis. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009

Némirovsky, Irène, and Olivier Philipponnat. Les vierges et autres nouvelles. [Paris]: Denoël, 2009.

Bizarre: anthologie, 1953-1968. Paris: Berg international, 2009.

Glass, Charles. Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation, 1940-1944. London: HarperPress, 2009.

Lethuillier, Jean-Pierre, and Daniel Roche. Les costumes régionaux: entre mémoire et histoire. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009.

Seifert, Lewis Carl. Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009. 339p. $85.00.

Toubert, Pierre and Michel Zink, dirs. Le Moyen Age et la Renaissance au Collège de France. Paris: Fayard, 2009. 665p.


Italian

Cammarosano, Paolo. Siena. Il Medioevo nelle città italiane, 1. Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo, 2009. This looks to be the first in a series of guides with useful bibliographical and research notes.

Kirkham, Victoria, and Armando Maggi. Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Lupo, Salvatore. History of the Mafia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

Ray, Meredith K. Writing Gender in Women's Letter Collections of the Italian Renaissance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.

Patti, Emanuela. La nuova gioventù?: l'eredità intellettuale di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Transference. Novi Ligure (AL) [i.e. Alessandria, Italy]: Joker, 2009.

Saviano, Roberto. La bellezza e l'inferno: scritti 2004-2009. Strade blu. Milano: Mondadori, 2009.

brought to you by...
Sarah Sussman, curator of French and Italian Collections