International & Area Studies
Publisher du Jour – Al Manar Éditions
Al Manar Éditions is an independent publishing house dedicated to the art and literatures of the Mediterranean with a notable focus on the Arab world. Established in 1996 within the Galerie Al Manar in Casablanca, directed by Alain and Christine Gorius from 1994 to 2003, the editorial house is now based in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, and has published nearly 400 titles to date. Whether in translation or in original language, the majority of their books are in French. Well-known writers in their catalog from the global south include Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Adonis, Abdelkebir Khatibi, Mohammed Bennis, Abdellatif Laâbi, Mostafa Nissabouri, and Salah Stétié. From Europe and among others, there is Sylvie Germain, Jean-Pierre Millecam, Nicole de Pontcharra, as well as Kabila, a French painter of Andalusian Roma origin. Others include Syrian poets Aïcha Arnaout and Maram Al-Masri, Lebanese writers Etel Adnan, Georgia Makhlouf, Leïla Sebbar and Albert Bensoussan, who, by virtue of their family origins and their background, belong to both shores of the Mediterranean, like Anne Rothschild, an Ashkenazi poet and engraver who is often met in Tahar Bekri Ramallah—a Tunisian poet, or Özdemir Ince a—Turkish poet and man of letters as well as the Catalan translator and literary critic Jaume Pont.
Al Manar serves as a reputable vehicle of dissemination for the staggering diversity of thought and creative talent in the Mediterranean region. The UC Berkeley Library is proud to hold more than 40 of its imprints with several of the more precious artists’ books shelved in The Bancroft Library. The publishing house regularly exhibits at the Codex Book Fair and Symposium held biannually in Richmond and Berkeley.
The Last Flower: A Parable in Pictures
Originally published in November 1939, two months after World War II officially began, James Thurber’s The Last Flower: A Parable in Pictures is a graphic novel ahead of its day. Inspired in particular by the Spanish Civil War and the Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland, it chronicles the eternal cycles of war, peace, love, and the resilience of one little flower and remains as relevant today as it was then. The text has been translated into dozens of languages worldwide, among them a French translation by Albert Camus and published by Gallimard in 1952. A native of Columbus, Ohio, Thurber was not only a cartoonist but also an author, humorist, journalist, playwright, and celebrated wit who joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1927 where he remained for most of his career.
Reissued by the University of Iowa Press in 2007, the first edition and later edition are temporarily available online to the UC community through the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access service until the UC libraries fully reopen this fall. You can learn more about The Last Flower at the Columbus Public Library’s Art Unbound II exhibition installed in its Carnegie Gallery.
4th Annual Nahuatl Conference at UCLA (Friday, June 4, 2021)
Usually, we do not post about what is happening at the other University of California campuses. However, this announcement piqued my interest as it deals with the Nahuatl language and history. One advantage the pandemic has offered us is to virtually attend the conferences instead of traveling at long distances from the comfort of one’s place. One of my faculty mentors was Dr. Kevin Terraciano at UCLA, and his works on the indigenous languages- especially Nahuatl are known all over the country. Please register here.
UC Berkeley Library’s Web Page of Task Force on Racial Justice Launched!
Today our University Librarian Professor Jeff MacKie-Mason, University Librarian, Chief Digital Scholarship Officer, Professor, School of Information and Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley Library made a formal announcement about the report by the Library’s Task Force for on Racial Justice.
The webpage can be accessed here: https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/racial-justice-task-force
The full charge of the Task Force can be accessed by clicking here.
Library Colleagues can access the report below.
“In spring 2020, the Task Force presented an initial report to Library Cabinet. This briefing includes a list of proposed recommendations and actionable strategies for improving the ways in which racism and discrimination can be addressed within the campus library system.
The full statement can be read here by clicking on this text!
https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/racial-justice-task-force
Source: An email dated from the co-Chair Shannon Monroe on 5/25/21 announced the launch of this webpage.
UCB Library Event: Undaunted Archivists and Curators from the American South Speak!
Undaunted Archivists and Curators from the American South Speak!
Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2021
9:30-11 a.m. PDT
12:30-2 p.m. EDT,
10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. MDT,
11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. CDT
The registration link is below. The event is free, and all are invited to attend.
CRL Webinar-Radical Collaboration: Library Publisher Partnerships to Advance the Global Knowledge Commons
The CRL Webinar are available at the end of this post.
The Global Press Archive Charter Alliance is an initiative by East View Information Services and the Center for Research Libraries to develop a unique series of thematically designed collections to meet the priorities of the CRL members. 74 CRL (including UCB) and NERL libraries have committed $4.25 million to help launch the first three years of the project.
So far, we have access to Mexican Revolutionary Newspapers and Russian Imperial Newspapers as a part of this process.
Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers
The Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers collection, with a preliminary release of 135,000 pages from 477 titles, will ultimately include approximately 1,000 titles from Mexico’s pre-independence, independence, and revolutionary periods (1807-1929).
The Imperial Russian Newspapers collection comprises out-of-copyright newspapers spanning the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, up to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. [1782-1918]
Webinar Recording is below:
Mexico and the conquest of Tenochtitlán (May 1521-2021)
The month of May this year marks the five-hundredth anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlán (1521-2021). The tragedies that unfolded in the continent after the conquest are well documented. However, as far as the accounts of the fall of the Tenochtitlán are concerned, there are several different opinions and disagreements. What about the letters of Hernán Cortés? Here is the second letter from the WDL
Also on the archive.org, we see a digitized copy of JCB’s 1552 Francisco López de Gómara’s “La historia general de las Indias, y todo lo acaescido enellas dende que se ganaron hasta agora. ; y La conquista de Mexico, y dela Nueua España.”
What are some of the primary sources that are now open access and can be used to inform us about the events that unfolded five hundred years ago? One such source is Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s is work, “Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España.” On the right, one sees a title page of the 1632 imprint of the same that is available in Google Books.
While some often use paintings from the late 17th century to depict and describe the fall of the capital of the Aztecs, these are often functions of the artistic license, and in some cases, we do not know who could have painted them.
The painting, such as the one below, is one example from the Library of Congress’ collection. Can images narrate the nuanced past accurately? These images are from the LOC’s exhibition and also in Wikimedia commons.
But where are the voices of those who were conquered but not vanquished? Can we rely on Codex Florentino as one perhaps contested source? The WDL (from the collection of Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana) has made it available for the readers to judge the process that began with the conquest of Tenochtitlán. The LOC’s description reads, “Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España” (General History of the Things of New Spain), as the Florentine Codex is formally known, is an encyclopedic work about the people and culture of central Mexico compiled over a period of 30 years by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590), a Franciscan missionary who arrived in Mexico in 1529, eight years after completion of the Spanish conquest by Hernan Cortés. The text is in Spanish and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Its 12 books, richly illustrated by indigenous artists, cover the Aztec religion and calendar, economic and social life, Aztec history and mythology, the use of plants and animals and the Spanish conquest as seen through the eyes of the native Mexicans.”
I leave you with unfinished thoughts. Can a manuscript tell the story? See for yourself by watching Getty Researcher Institute’s five-part series. And with Taibo’s, “¿Historia para qué?”I love Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s argument about who we are? And his questioning of sanitization history where Cortes and Cuauhtemōc are dancing La Sandunga.
Call for Proposals: LAUC-B 2021 Conference Oct 5-6 2021 – Reimagining Libraries Through Critical Library Practices, October 5-6, 2021- Call for Proposals Due June 15, 2021
The Librarian’s Association of the University of California, Berkeley (LAUC-B) invites you to submit a proposal for the 2021 conference, Reimagining Libraries Through Critical Library Practices, an online conference that will take place Tuesday, October 5 to Wednesday, October 6, 10 am to 3 pm PST.
Proposals are due Tuesday, June 15, 2021, and can be submitted using this form. We will notify successful applicants by July 15, 2021.
For further conference information and the full call for proposals, please visit LAUC-B 2021 Conference Website
Call for proposals brief version: Library work is embedded in and inherently tied to socio-political circumstances. We welcome proposals that emphasize and examine critical librarianship through the lens of social justice, diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racist work.
We invite proposals from diverse voices addressing critical library practices including:
- Community Archives, Inclusion, and Underrepresented Communities
- Critical Library Pedagogy
- Developing standards for critical librarianship in Digital Literacy and Digital Scholarship
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
- Open Access
- Social Justice and Anti-racist Work
- The theory and practice of critical library work that includes all library professionals
All proposal abstracts should be no more than 300 words and indicate the type of session you are proposing. We will be holding the following session formats:
- Lightning Talks (5-7 minute presentations)
- 20-minute individual presentations
- 50-minute panel
- Poster session
We encourage proposals for virtual presentations that represent all aspects of library work (including technical services, access services, interlibrary loan, reference, instruction, library administration, technology, youth services, and more) and all library workers (including library students, paraprofessionals, and members of underrepresented groups).
For further conference information, please visit here.
Please submit your proposal by Tuesday, June 15, 2021. Successful applicants will be notified by Thursday, July 15, 2021.
If you have any questions, please contact us through the website or at laucbconfinfo@lists.berkeley.edu
Sincerely,
LAUC-B 2021 Conference Committee:
Paromita B. (UCLA)
Kelsey B. (UCI)
Kristina B. (UCB)
Lia F. (UCSD)
Ann G. (UCB)
Shannon K. (UCB)
Corliss L. (UCB)
Natalie M. (UCI)
Jin M. (UCSD)
Erica N. (UCB)
Liladhar P. (UCB)
Scott P (UCB)
Christina V. (UCB)
Julián Herbert – La Casa del Dolor Ajeno
On May 16th, the Guardian newspaper reported the tragic events in Torreón, Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution under the headline. The headline read: Mexico faces up to the uneasy anniversary of Chinese massacre.
As the librarian, I look mostly for Latin American Studies-related materials without any judgment about the contents and collect for our library a representative and sustainable collection of all aspects of Latin America that are diverse and neverending. After reading the headline, it reminded me of my research on Chinese in Mexicali during my graduate school. Today, I leave you with some library materials that relate to Chinese in Mexico and Latin America.
The house of the pain of others: a chronicle of a small genocide / Julián Herbert; translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, [2019]). The publisher’s description in WorldCat states, “Early in the twentieth century, amid the myths of progress and modernity that underpinned Mexico’s ruling party, some three hundred Chinese immigrants–close to half of the Cantonese residents of the newly founded city of Torreón–were massacred over the course of three days. It is considered the largest slaughter of Chinese people in the history of the Americas, but more than a century later, the facts continue to be elusive, mistaken, and repressed. ‘And what do you know about the Chinese people who were killed here?’ Julián Herbert asks anyone who will listen. An exorcism of persistent and discomfiting ghosts, ‘The House of the Pain of Others’ attempts a reckoning with the 1911 massacre. Looping, digressive, and cinematic, Herbert blends reportage, personal reflection, essay, and academic research to portray the historical context as well as the lives of the perpetrators and victims of the ‘small genocide.’ This brilliant historical excavation echoes profoundly in an age redolent with violence and xenophobia”–Page 4 of cover.”
Here is the presentation by the Author for your information.
On one-hundredth anniversary of the Chinese Massacre of Mexico, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador(AMLO) held a ceremony whose title was, “Petición de perdón por agravios a la comunidad china en México, desde Torreón, Coahuila. Lunes 17 de mayo 2021.” Below is an excerpt from his speech.
Come Celebrate Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, May 11, 2021 @UC Berkeley Library
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage
Month, dedicated to celebrating the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in the United States. During this 90-minute webinar, speakers will discuss historical and contemporary issues affecting the AAPI community. In light of the recent attacks on the Asian American community, this event takes on particular importance.
The event is free and open to all with prior registration: http://ucberk.li/aapihm-event
