International & Area Studies
Orienting Os Lusíadas @ 450
This online bibliography brings together resources and scholarship to mark the 450th anniversary of the publication of The Lusiads (Os Lusíadas), the magnum opus of Luís Vaz de Camões (c. 1524/5–1580), an epic that “sings” the story of Portugal’s colonial expansion. Long revered as the most important work in the Portuguese language, it draws inspiration from Greco-Roman epics such as Virgil’s Aeneid and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as well as Persian and Hindu mythology. The ten cantos which structure the long narrative poem are in ottava rima and total 1,102 stanzas.
The Lusiads form a key pillar of an entire mythos constructed around nostalgia for the empire, though one that has received increasing critical attention in scholarly and political circles alike. Anthony Soares, for example, highlights the material and bodily violences that lie behind discursive elements of the text’s poetic cantos. Other scholars have traced the Persian and Indian lyric influences in the text (notably Hāfiz and Omar Khayyam), interpreting the national epic against itself. Some have even identified critiques of Empire, as well as satirical treatments of etymologies and ancestral pretenses, within the text itself, calling into question the poet’s own consent for his work to be interpreted as the uncritical pro-imperialist national epic, par excellence. As 2022 marks the 450th anniversary of its publication, new scholarship (see Camões at Harvard: Navigating 450 years of Os Lusíadas) will continue to critically resituate The Lusiads both in its historical moment and in Portuguese and global literature today.
We hope you make use of this bibliography which highlights resources in UC Berkeley’s distinguished Portuguese collection but also which provides access to open and freely available sources online.
Cameron Flynn
Ph.D. student, Romance Languages and Literatures
Claude Potts
Librarian for Romance Languages Collections
Languages of Berkeley exhibition archived on Pressbooks and eScholarship
The Languages of Berkeley: An Online Exhibition
The Languages of Berkeley: An Online Exhibition has now been archived as a catalog in both the Pressbooks open publishing platform and eScholarship—the UC system’s open access repository. Because of the impermanence of the blog environment in which it was created as a sequential exhibit from September 2019 to August 2020, we wanted the content of the multi-dimensional project to live on and remain accessible.
This library exhibition comprises short essays of nearly all of the 59 modern and ancient languages that are currently taught across 14 departments on campus plus a dozen more languages that contributors wished to include. More than 45 faculty, lecturers, librarians, staff, and students contributed to this project which celebrates the magnificent diversity of languages that advance research, teaching, and learning at the University of California, Berkeley.
Since its founding in 1868, students and faculty at UC Berkeley have concerned themselves with a breathtaking range of languages. In support of teaching and research, the University Library, which collects and preserves materials in all languages, now boasts a collection of nearly thirteen million volumes. It is among the largest academic libraries in the U.S. with more than one third of its print resources in more than 500 non-English languages.
Claude Potts,
Librarian for Romance Language Collections
UC Berkeley
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The Languages of Berkeley is a dynamic online sequential exhibition celebrating the diversity of languages that have advanced research, teaching and learning at the University of California, Berkeley. It is made possible with support from the UC Berkeley Library and is co-sponsored by the Berkeley Language Center (BLC).
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Cinco de Mayo (El Día de la Batalla de Puebla) through books
Each year, Cinco de Mayo (El Día de la Batalla de Puebla) is celebrated in the United States and Mexico to commemorate the victory of Mexico over the invading imperial French forces at the Battle of Puebla. While today, many “Western” powers adhere to the democratic principles of governance, in the 19th century, most of them practiced imperialism without much guilt. We all know that the self-ascribed civilizing missions of these Western European and Russian Imperial forces, including our democratic American expeditionary force in the Phillippines and other places, remain well-documented in the books and news media of the time. After all, David did overpower Goliath; such was the case for ill-equipped Mexican forces who triumphed over better-equipped French forces. The battle took place 160 years ago, on May 5, 1862, outside of Puebla. Here are some books that would refresh our memories about the significance of Cinco de Mayo.
Some subject designations like the one below will help us quickly locate the books from our collections.
European Intervention in Mexico (1861-1867)
Mexico — History — European intervention, 1861-1867
France — Foreign relations — Mexico
Mexico — Foreign relations — France
Mexico — Foreign relations — 1861-1867
France — History — Second Empire, 1852-1870
And below are a few books that might be of interest to our readers.
Cluseret, G. Mexico, and the Solidarity of Nations. New York: Blackwell, 1866. Print.
Chevalier, Michel. L’expédition du Mexique. Paris: E. Dentu, 1862. Print.
And here is a clip that one might watch to understand further the complex nature of European involvement in Mexican affairs.
New UN Archives Geneva Platform
The United Nations Library & Archives Geneva is pleased to announce the new UN Archives Geneva Platform launch. This new online platform makes it easier to navigate and search approximately ten linear kilometers of archives managed by the UN Library & Archives Geneva, including different fonds such as 19th-century peace movements, the League of Nations, UN Geneva, and additional UN entities based in Geneva.
Thanks to the LONTAD project, the platform provides access to over 10 million digitized pages of the League of Nations archives. By 2022, the entirety of the archives of the League of Nations will be available online (including photographs and maps).
The launch of the platform enables researchers to search exceptional primary sources. It also opens new ways of conducting research in the archives. More information is available here.
With the new platform, we are now offering free tailored online presentations and trainings for researchers and students to explain the structure of the UN archives in Geneva, how the platform works, the material available online and the documents which are still not digitized but available for consultation in site. These presentations can be provided for faculty meetings, seminars and courses, or whatever setting is desirable. Catering to your needs, our specialists can present the wealth of archival documents – digitized and physical – available at the UN Library & Archives Geneva, explain how to use the platform, and show the work of the Institutional Memory Section. For further information, do not hesitate to contact us: https://ask.unog.ch/archives
Contact Info:
Pierre-Etienne Bourneuf, UN Library & Archives Geneva
Palais des Nations, 8-14 Avenue de la Paix, 1211 Genève
Source: Email-Guy Burak-Mela-NYU 04/22/2022
Voices from Ukraine: Ukrainian librarians in the struggle against Russian invasion!
We invite you to join us for a Zoom-based event where librarians across Ukraine will speak to us about their daily lives, work, and heroic efforts to preserve their collections and provide services during the war. Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine is a tragedy of cultural and humanitarian dimensions. The organizing committee members think it is vital to hear from our brave colleagues in Ukraine.
Date: April 6, 2022
Time: 9 am PST/ 10 am MST/ 11 am CST/ 12 noon EST/ 7 pm Kyiv
Duration: 90 minutes
Registration Link: http://ucberk.li/3o9
Organizers: The Coalition of Slavic Librarians for Peace (CSLP): Olha Alkesic (Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University), Ksenya Kiebuzinski (University of Toronto), Liladhar R. Pendse (University of California-Berkeley) and George Andrew Spencer (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Ukraine: Language, Literature & Religion Virtual Event @UC Berkeley Library
Ukraine: Language, Literature & Religion
When: Thursday, April 14, 2022
Time is shown below:
12:30 pm to 2 pm PST
2:30 pm to 4 pm CST
3:30 pm to 5 pm EST
Registration: http://ucberk.li/3nX
First, log in to your institutional or personal zoom accounts and then register for the event.
This event is a non-political event, and all are welcome to attend with prior registration.
Latinx Research Center (LRC) Faculty-Mentored Undergraduate Research Fellowship
Latinx Research Center (LRC) Faculty-Mentored Undergraduate Research Fellowship
LRC is excited to launch the LRC Faculty-Mentored Undergraduate Research Fellowship program, pairing outstanding faculty with outstanding undergraduate students to advance research in US Latinx Studies.
The LRC has been awarded $550K by the Office of Financial Aid & Scholarships for the next 5 years to support this program. Every year, eleven $10K awards will be made in the liberal arts, and across the professional schools and the museum, to support faculty-mentored undergraduate research fellows throughout a full year: two semesters and a summer. The first round of awards will begin as early as Spring 2022. However, research can also begin in the summer of 2022. The application period has been extended to February 16th. Awards for applications that met the original January 31st deadline will be announced on Monday, February 7th; awards for applications received by February 16th will be announced on February 23rd. The award jury will consist of senior humanities and social sciences professors and will be distributed equitably across disciplines.
Applications should be submitted by faculty, who will nominate an outstanding undergraduate student that has agreed to work with them. Faculty in earlier stages of their career will be favored, however, all faculty are encouraged to apply. Selected student fellows will receive the $10K award throughout the course of a year, and will work closely with their faculty mentor, assisting in research, and developing their research skills, critical thinking, and intellectual creativity. Student fellows and mentors will be expected to meet weekly or biweekly, and to discuss their research at the LRC at the end of the award cycle. As an outcome of this mentored research fellowship, under the guidance of their faculty mentors, students will develop their own honors or capstone thesis, art practice, or other projects.
To apply, please visit https://forms.gle/H4hy1oRJhm39G1KT9.
For questions, email latinxresearch@berkeley.edu.
The Legacies of Ukrainian Culture [online event]
Thursday, Mar 10, 2022
12:00 pm
12:00 pm
Free and open to the public. No registration required.
Even as much of the world has been preoccupied with the immediate military and geopolitical stakes of Russia’s war on Ukraine, panelists turn their attention to the trajectory of Ukrainian culture over the longer arc of history and in the contemporary post-Soviet era.
In a conversation moderated by Harsha Ram (Slavic Languages & Literatures and Comparative Literature), Ukrainian intellectuals and scholars of Ukraine share their perspectives on Ukraine and its culture.
Participants:
Alex Averbuch, poet and literary scholar originally from the Luhans’k region.
Vitaly Chernetsky (University of Kansas), Ukrainian-American literary scholar and author of Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization.
Mayhill Fowler (Stetson University), cultural historian and author of Beau Monde on Empire’s Edge: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine.
Alisa Lozhkina, independent art curator and critic.
Cosponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, and the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
Artwork: Untitled (Detail) by Kinder Album, mixed media on paper, 2019, Lviv.
War is not an answer: Ukraine 2022
In the face of unfolding horrendous tragedy in Ukraine, I was remembering my “families and friends” in Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow. There was this Soviet saying- Znanie Sila (Knowledge is power). In face of this tragedy, as a librarian, I was thinking of doing my part by presenting the readers of this blog with some choices on information sources.
I have been thinking about presenting some items from UC Berkeley Library’s collections that speak to Ukraine’s rich yet nuanced history. All histories are nuanced, and I am trying to avoid my implicit biases and opinions about the current tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. Ukraine was never a state until the Bolsheviks created the Ukrainian SSR is as problematic as cutting the long-standing intertwining of Russo-Ukrainian histories. However, the post-Soviet Ukraine is an independent modern European nation-state whose sovereignty and freedom to chart its destiny matter to humanity.
I remember today Gogol‘s Cтрашная месть or A Terrible Vengeance. This story is a part of a larger collection with the title: Vechera na khutori︠e︡ bliz Dikanʹki Mirgorod
Please think a minute about Ivane and Petro! And I refrain from discussing the modern-day Oligarchs from both sides.
History of Ukraine–Rus‘
Hrushevsʹkyĭ, Mykhaĭlo, 1866-1934, author.; Грушевський, Михайло, 1866-1934, author.; Pasicznyk, Uliana M., editor.; Poppe, Andrzej, editor.; Sysyn, Frank E., editor.; Frost, Robert, editor.; Fedoruk, I︠A︡roslav, editor.; Raffensperger, Christian, editor.; Skorupsky, Marta, translator.; Wynnyckyj, Andriy, translator.; Press, Ian, 1947- translator.
1997-2021
Below are some subject-based links that will allow you to browse our catalog for additional resources on Ukraine.
Here is an article about some classics of Ukrainian Literature that might provide some cursory information about the rich literary tradition of Ukraine. Have you read Lesya Ukrainka‘s works or Serhii Plokhii’s contemporary works? War is not an answer!
Journal Portal for Scholars of Decolonial and Diaspora Studies
The Portail Mondial des Revues/Global Journals Portal of the French Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) comprises a collection of over one thousand decolonial and diasporic periodicals spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Often ephemeral and with brief publication histories, these journals offer glimpses into the literary critical and social critical practices of their times.
Publications in the database can be filtered by geographical area, language, and topic (literature, gender studies, diaspora, etc.). For those that are open access, links are provided directly inside the database. Each entry contains a list of articles and books that have recently cited the journal, allowing scholars easy access to critical work surrounding each publication.
At the core of the collection are works published in Paris, particularly during the entre-guerres period, that convey the voices of migrant and diasporic communities. Among these are journals such as the anti-imperialist Phản-Đế (1934), published by the Ligue contre l’impérialisme et l’oppression coloniale, and Césaire and Senghor’s L’Étudiant noir (1935). Many publications such as L’Arche (1944-1948), with joint editions from both Paris and Algiers, publish literary texts from around the world, placing them alongside reflections on contemporaneous philosophical and political debates.
Works span across several dozen languages and every continent of the globe. Publications such as the Catalan El Cami and the Haitian Bon Nouvèl account for just two of many periodicals published in minority languages and creoles. Other publications offer transnational and multilingual perspectives such as the Franco-uruguayan Entregas de la Licorne and Tricontinental, a social critical periodical published through the Organization for Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Cameron Flynn