Published by Europa Editions, The Passenger series offers an unconventional take on typical travel guides with new writing, original photography, art, and reportage from around the world. The series was first launched in 2018 by the independent Italian publisher Iperborea, and was brought into English by Europa in 2020. It has also been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean.
The book-magazine travels far and wide to bring back the best writing from the places it visits. It assembles not only reportage, but also long-form journalism and narrative essays with the aim of telling stories of the contemporary life of a place and its inhabitants: “It takes readers beyond the familiar stereotypes to portray the shifting culture and identity of a place, its public debates, the sensibilities of its people, its burning issues, its pleasures and its pain.”
An Author Recommends section provides cultural tips on books, films, music and more from contemporary authors such as Valeria Luisell (Mexico), Banana Yoshimoto (Japan), Enrique Vila-Matas (Barcelona), Pitchaya Sudbanthad (Thailand), Paolo Macry (Naples), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria) and more. Digging Deeper provides short bibliographies for further reading, and The Playlist links to curated Spotify playlists of music from the featured city, country, or region. To date there have been eighteen volumes published in English, and all are shelved in Morrison Library’s travel section, waiting for their next trip.
Map of Luso-African Literary Publishers by City generated by Bee Lehman
More than 80 works of literature from Angola, Cabo Verde, and Mozambique arrived in Doe Library last week. This selection of poetry, short stories, and novels in Portuguese was made possible through a generous 3-year grant from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) in Lisbon. The absence of Lusophone African literature from mainstream African literary studies (mostly in English and French) has been noted by contemporary scholars. These new works of post-colonial fiction and verse listed below are held by few academic libraries and reflect the UC Berkeley Library’s longstanding commitment to collect and make accessible underrepresented voices from across the world in more than 400 distinct languages. Please enjoy this curated list by book dealer Susanne Bach Books which provides a snapshot of the rich literary output from Lusophone Africa over the past three years:
100 poemas para Neto / Poetas da União dos Escritores Angolanos. Luanda, Angola: EAL – Edições de Angola, 2022.
Just in time for the end of the semester, a couple hundred ebooks have recently flown in from from Spain from publishers like Akal, CSIC, Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, Ediciones Universidad de Cantabria, Plaza y Valdés, Dickinson, Editorial Egales, Trotta Editorial, Ediciones Complutense and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. All are available through the Digitalia Hispánica platform. Below are some highlighted from Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert available to you wherever you may find yourselves this summer:
Originally part (from 1894) of the quarterly issues of the Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France (RHLF), and since 2002, it has been an annual volume published in special editions. It gathers together references of French and Francophone literatures from the 16th century to the present day. The BLF was first published by Armand Colin until 1997; then by the Presses Universitaires de France; and since 2017 by Classiques Garnier.
Since 1996, the BLF has been the result of the joint work of a team at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, who is in charge of the indexing, and the Société d’histoire littéraire de France. The digital publisher of the BLF, Classiques Garnier Numérique, ensures the technical management and updates of the database.
The BLF is updated daily, as soon as new publications are indexed. Thanks to this, it constitutes a unique tool for researchers, teachers, students, and all those who are seeking to inform themselves about French literature, writers, subjects or periods. More than 200,000 detailed records from 1998 to the present day are currently online, including 105,000+ book chapters; 75,000+ journal articles; and 28,000+ reviews.
Today, we are launching a new library research guide for Iberian Literatures & Criticism. The new guide will improve navigation and discovery in UC Berkeley’s vast literature collection in Romance languages, mostly found in a classification commonly known as the PQs. Over the course of the past year, we have critically reviewed the former guides, weeded outdated resources, and replaced them with more current content with links to digital resources when available.
This literary research guide, like the others for Italian and French & Francophone literatures launched last year, is now benefiting from the LibGuides platform, which makes it much easier to revise than the former PDFs. The guide is structured by sections for article databases, general guides and literary histories, reference tools, poetry, theater & performance, and literary periods. In addition to literature in Spanish and Portuguese, it also includes less commonly taught literatures and languages such as Catalan, Galician, Basque, Arabic, Ladino, and more. There is also a new section for Luso-African and Hispano-African literature.
The online guide also interfaces seamlessly with related guides published by the UC Berkeley Library. For example, on the home page, there is a prominent link to the online list of recently acquired publications on the general Spanish & Portuguese guide, making it even easier to stay current on new books in all of the call number ranges.
Because the guides are much easier to update, they encourage user interaction and invite community suggestions for inclusion (or deletion).
When you have time, please take a look at this new resource and let us know what you think.
La semana pasada colgué las versiones últimas y finales de BETA, BITECA y BITAGAP en la web de PhiloBiblon de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Desde este momento no habrá más cambios en los datos presentados allí. Dentro de unos meses, un PhiloBiblon nuevo y renovado aparecerá en FactGrid:PhiloBiblon en la universidad alemana de Jena, donde compartirá espacio virtual con otros cuarenta proyectos históricos, desde los estudios cuneiformes hasta la época nazi en Alemania.
Es el final de un largo periplo que empezó en 1975 con el proyecto Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language de la University of Wisconsin, encabezado por Lloyd Kasten, con quien había estudiado yo ecdótica unos diez años antes. Fue el primer proyecto de humanidades digitales en el ámbito hispanico. Kasten fue secundado por su joven colega John Nitti, el arquitecto del entorno informático del proyecto. Para garantizar la autenticidad del corpus de español antiguo, se necesitaba un repertorio de manuscritos españoles escritos antes de 1501. Tal repertorio no existió y pusieron a ayudantes de investigación a vaciar dos obras, el Catálogo de los manuscritos castellanos de la Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, del benemérito, y martirizado, padre Julián Zarco Cuevas; y la Bibliografía de la literatura hispánica del igualmente benemérito José Simón Díaz. Identificaron 966 obras y Kasten y Nitti imprimieron el resultado como Bibliography of Old Spanish Texts en 1975. Siguió una segunda edición en 1977, con 1869 fichas. Al año siguiente yo me encontraba en la Hispanic Society, redactando su catálogo de manuscritos medievales y enviando adiciones y correcciones a BOOST. En 1981 Kasten y Nitti me ofrecieron la dirección de BOOST como proyecto autónomo, y lo demás, como dicen, es historia.
Pronto tuve un colaborador, un jovencísimo Ángel Gómez Moreno (UCM), que acababa de pasar un año de estudios de posgrado en Wisconsin. Al volver a España se lanzó con entusiasmo a la tarea de repasar los ficheros y catálogos (en papel, por supuesto), de la BNE, la Biblioteca de Palacio, la RAE y la RAH, siempre en busca de nuevos manuscritos para BOOST. En los años 80 estudiantes de carrera y posgrado sirvieron como ayudantes de investigación, primero María Morrás (UPF), y en los 90 Ángela Moll Dexeus y Antonio Cortijo (UC Santa Barbara), durante su paso por las aulas de Berkeley. Ya desde 1993 BOOST era BETA, la Bibliografía Española de Textos Antiguos en CD-ROM y en la red en 1997. En 2000 Ángel me mandó como becario por dos años a Óscar Perea Rodríguez; y desde entonces Óscar ha sido mi mano derecha en el proyecto, organizando los seminarios de PhiloBiblon, primero en San Millán de la Cogolla y luego en Madrid. Más recientemente ha trabajado como ayudante en Berkeley Heather Bamford (George Washington University), mientras que, en España, en la UCM, Álvaro Bustos ha participado en varias campañas de investigación conmigo y ha reclutado nuevos miembros del equipo de BETA.
Kasten y Nitti fueron responsables también de la Bibliography of Old Catalan Texts(BOOCT, 1985), base de datos gemela a BOOST, compilada por Beatrice Concheff (†), antigua alumna de la University of Wisconsin y que, en aquel tiempo, ejercía como profesora de inglés en una escuela de lenguas de Barcelona. Era una aficionada a la literatura catalana, pero no era experta en ella en términos académicos; por ello, la inmensa mayoría de sus citas a obras y manuscritos medievales provenía de fuentes secundarias. Y además, en el año de 1989, por desgracia, Concheff se encontraba con una salud muy delicada y era consciente de que no podría dedicarse a la compilación de una segunda edición de BOOCT.
En una de las sesiones de trabajo del congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas de Barcelona de 1989, mi amigo Francisco Marcos Marín me presentó a Vicenç Beltrán. Expuesto el caso a Vicenç, vio inmediatamente la importancia de seguir adelante con BOOCT. En seguida Vicenç embarcó en el proyecto a su jovencísima alumna, doctoranda en aquel entonces, Gemma Avenoza i Vera (†). Fue Gemma la que enseguida quedó al cargo del mismo. Era ya una codicóloga consumada, como se puede comprobar en su tesis doctoral, Repertori dels manuscrits en llengües romàniques conservats a biblioteques barcelonines. Además, Gemma era de los escasos expertos en filología de la época que sabía manejar un ordenador, habilidad absolutamente necesaria para trabajar con PhiloBiblon. Ambos, Gemma y Vicenç, romanistas al estilo antiguo y expertos no sólo en las literaturas medievales ibéricas, sino también en las de Francia e Italia, comprobaron la utilidad del (entonces recién bautizado) PhiloBiblon, pues podría facilitar la tarea de catalogación y descripción de los textos y testimonios del corpus de literatura medieval ibérica en lenguas castellana, catalana, portuguesa y gallego-portuguesa.
A los pocos meses de ese primer encuentro en Barcelona, en el otoño de 1989 Gemma ya pudo visitarme en Berkeley para adentrarse en el arcano mundo de PhiloBiblon y encargarse, junto con Vicenç, de BOOCT, que pronto cambiaría su nombre en BITECA (Bibliografia de Textos Catalans Antics), de forma paralela a BETA. Desde entonces hasta su demasiado temprana muerte en 2021, Gemma fue la mano directriz de BITECA, pronto secundada por Lourdes Soriano, alumna tanto de Gemma como de Vicenç. Durante casi 20 años, pues, Gemma, Lourdes y yo estuvimos en contacto constante. Las dos supieron atraer a más de medio centenar de colaboradores y ayudantes de investigacíon. Los miembros actuales del equipo de BITECA son Joan Mahiques Climent (Universitat Jaume I), Joan M. Perujo (Universitat d’Alacant), Helena Rovira Cerdà (Universidad de Murcia), Glòria Sabaté (Universitat de Barcelona) y Ferran Triadó Sales, (Universitat de Barcelona), todos ellos alumnos o antiguos alumnos de Gemma y Lourdes.
Ya por la misma época, en 1988, entablé discusiones con mi querido colega y vis-à-vis (literalmente) en el departamento de español y portugués de Berkeley, Arthur Askins, sobre la posibilidad de crear una base de datos paralalela a BOOST y BOOCT. Se llamaría Bibliography of Old Portuguese Texts (BOOPT) y formaría un nuevo tomo en la “Bibliographic Series” de la Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. Pero ya la época de publicación en papel había pasado. Con una subvención de la Sociedad Estatal del Quinto Centenario, BETA, BITECA y el recien bautizado BITAP (Bibliografia de Textos Antigos Portugueses) saldría en disco CD-ROM en 1993. Más tarde, el nombre BITAP se cambiaría en BITAGAP (Bibliografia de Textos Antigos Galegos e Portugueses).
Arthur había sido testigo ocular de mis investigaciones con BOOST desde 1981 y se había dado cuenta de la utilidad de las bases de datos en sus propias investigaciones sobre la biblioteca de Fernando Colón. Estaba intrigado, pero se dio cuenta desde el principio que esto tendría que ser un proyecto de equipo. Reclutó a sus amigos y antiguos compañeros de estudios de Berkeley, Harvey Sharrer (†), profesor en la University of California, Santa Bárbara, y Martha E. Schaffer, en aquel entonces profesora la University of Chicago y actualmente en la University of San Francisco.
Iniciados sus viajes de investigación anuales en Portugal, muy pronto los tres persuadieron a Aida Fernanda Dias (†), profesora de la Universidade de Coimbra, que se uniera al equipo. Luego, comenzando en 2008, se incorporaron Pedro Pinto (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), con su olfato extraordinario para encontrar manuscritos de interés, Cristina Sobral (Universidade de Lisboa), Filipe Alves Moreira (Universidade do Porto, actualmente Universidade Aberta), Maria de Lurdes Rosa (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Ricardo Pichel Gotérrez (Universidade de Santiago y actualmente Universidad de Educación a Distancia), Mariña Arbor (Universidade de Santiago y Diana Fontão (Universidade de Porto / Universidad de Salamanca).
Como en los casos de BETA y BITECA, el equipo de BITAGAP ha contado con al menos una centena de buenos colaboradores, entre estudiantes y colegas del mundo entero.
PhiloBiblon no sólo ha sido creación de las personas mencionadas aquí, sino de todos aquellos colegas que nos han escrito pidiendo u ofreciendo información sobre tal o cual texto, manuscrito o persona. Por y para ellos hemos dedicado tanto esfuerzo durante más de cuarenta años, el mismo esfuerzo precisamente que todos los miembros del equipo vamos a continuar haciendo en esta nueva etapa que se abre ante nosotros.
Charles B. Faulhaber University of California, Berkeley
Various issues of the third series of Que vlo-ve ?
In these austere times where both financial resources and shelving space are limited, it has become a rare occasion when we are able to pursue full-runs of older periodicals. However, the recent acquisition of these two—one from France and the other from Belgium—in more or less the same time period has sparked the idea of hosting a hands-on journal presentation for those interested in interacting with the journals before the issues are processed, cataloged, bound, and stored in their distinct library locations.
Que vlo-ve?: bulletin de l’Association internationale des amis de Guillaume Apollinaire was published from January 1973 to 2004. Centered on the work of the celebrated 20th century French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Polish descent, its intention was not to duplicate articles published in the annual Guillaume Apollinaire series by Lettres Modernes. Instead, it was meant to welcome articles that could not easily find a place, news of the association and of the museum as well as news that members of the scholarly society wished to disseminate internationally.
Sardonic and visually rich, this wartime French literary and artistic journal published by Jean Cocteau and Paul Iribe, was characterized by a restrained modernism and a fiercely nationalistic, anti-German perspective. Le Mot (The Word) was a wartime sequel to François Bernouard’s Schéhérazade: Album Mensuel d’Oeuvres Inédites d’Art et de Littérature (1909-11). Its primary purpose was to establish an entirely French artistic style and taste—anti-bourgeois and uninfluenced by German modernism.
Reports of the brutal treatment of noncombatants (such as mass executions that included women, small children, and the elderly) and damage to towns and cultural centers shocked the public, leading to a characterization, particularly within France, of the German soldiers as destructive and uncivilized “huns” particularly within wartime propaganda. The bi-monthly periodical included cover designs by not only Iribe and Cocteau but also Sem, Raoul Dufy, Léon Bakst, André Lhote, Albert Gleizes, and Pierre-Emile Legrain. Cocteau signed his drawings as Jim, the name of his dog. In August 1914, when war was declared with Germany, he was twenty-five years old. Like many patriotic young Frenchmen, Cocteau tried to enlist but was turned down because of his health. Looking for other ways to serve his country and the war effort, he collaborated with Iribe to launch Le Mot. As a teenager, Iribe drew illustrations for the popular caricature journal L’Assiette au Beurre (The Butter Plate), which ran from 1902 to 1912. He also freelanced for Le Témoin, Rire, Sourire and other periodicals and was enthusiastic about starting a satirical journal of his own.
Please join us for an interactive show and tell with special guest Willard Bohn, alumnus of the Department of French and Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature at Illinois State University.
Thursday, February 6 4-5:30 pm 223 Doe Library (accessible through south end of the Heyns Reading Room)
Nova História do Cristianismo Negro na África Ocidental e nas Américasmakes a historiographical intervention aimed at the history of black Catholicism and black religion in the Americas in a broader way. Dewulf’s central and well-documented assertion is that black Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, has roots in pre-Tridentine Portuguese Catholicism. Even before the advent of the slave trade, Catholicism had become an indigenous African religion, at times assuming pre-Tridentine and syncretic forms that have become irreconcilable for the Europeans of the post-Tridentine period. This argument has significant historiographical consequences; the long-standing confusion about the religiosity of the enslaved people is, at least in part, the result of assumptions that Africans knew little about Christianity before their enslavement. On the contrary, Dewulf traces these religious forms to the slave ships that transported human “cargo” to the Americas. This book is a timely salute to the Catholic and Christian studies that has for a long time portrayed Christians of African descent as marginalized and atypical people, rather than important global actors. (Citation of the Committee of the Prize John Gilmary Shea of the year 2023)
Jeroen Dewulf is Queen Beatrix Professor in Dutch Studies at the UC Berkeley Department of German and a Professor at Berkeley’s Folklore Program and an affiliated member of the Center for African Studies and the Center for Latin American Studies. He recently completed his long-term role as director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies where he is chair of the Center for Portuguese Studies. His main area of research is Dutch and Portuguese colonial history, with a focus on the transatlantic slave trade and the culture and religion of African-descended people in the American diaspora. He also publishes in the field of Folklore Studies and about other aspects of Dutch, German, and Portuguese literature, culture, and history.
Judging by the explosion of new books on artificial intelligence, or AI, being published in Italy, you might think this Mediterranean country is the the editorial epicenter for one of the hottest interdisciplinary topics. Whether you are in the humanities, social sciences, human sciences, computer science, or STEM fields, “intelligenza artificiale” as it’s called in Italian will eventually find its way into your coursework or research. Here are just a few of the books on AI to recently reach bookstores in Italy and that have not automatically been sent to the UC Berkeley Library. However, if you are inclined just let your friendly Romance languages librarian know and he’ll be happy to push the first button to initiate this demand-driven order.*
*Demand-driven acquisition (DDA), is a model of library collection development in which a library only purchases materials when it is clear that a patron has demonstrated the need for a resource. If implemented correctly, DDA can make it possible to purchase only what is needed, allowing libraries to spend the same amount of money as they previously spent on monographs, but with a higher rate of use.
At the intersection of Chicana/o/x Studies, Digital Humanities and Library History, Bibliopolítica: A Digital History of the Chicano Studies Library chronicles the history of one of the first Chicana/o/x collections, the Chicano Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley.
Bibliopolítica shares the stories of trailblazing library workers, students and community members who worked to preserve and make Chicana/o/x resources available. Featuring photographs, ephemera, archival documents, and oral histories, Bibliopolítica offers an original digital collection of primary sources and is the first audiovisual history of this special place that helped redefine what libraries could be.
Bibliopolítica takes its name from a book of the same title that Richard Chabrán and librarian colleague Francisco García-Ayvens published in 1984, BiblioPolítica: Chicano Perspectives on Library Service in the United States. In 2024, it remains one of the few titles dedicated to the discussion of Chicana/o/x librarianship. Bibliopolítica: a Digital History of the Chicano Studies Library adds to this important conversation, but it is only the beginning of a much needed longer and more detailed history of the Chicano Studies Library and the contributions of Chicana/o/x library workers.
Co-curated by Amanda Belantara – Assistant Curator at New York University Libraries, Lillian Castillo-Speed – former Chicano Studies Library Coordinator, now Head Librarian of the Ethnic Studies Library at UC Berkeley, and Richard Chabrán – former Chicano Studies Library Coordinator, Team Leader Latino Digital Archive Group.
Digitization of archival items by Chrissy Huhn and UC Berkeley Library IT and Oral history recordings at Berkeley by Pablo Gonzalez and Angelica Garcia. See additional credits.
