Digital New Book Display – 6-16-22

Welcome to the University of Iowa Library’s virtual New Book Shelf. Here we will present new titles for you to browse and check out. Titles listed here will be monographs published in the current year. If you see a title you would like to borrow, please click the link below the item and sign in with your Hawk ID and Password to request a loan.

To Walk About in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner

The extraordinary life of Priscilla Joyner and her quest―along with other formerly enslaved people―to define freedom after the Civil War.

Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where she belonged―feelings that no emancipation proclamation could assuage.

Her life story―candidly recounted in an oral history for the Federal Writers’ Project―captures the intimate nature of freedom. Using Joyner’s interview and the interviews of other formerly enslaved people, historian Carole Emberton uncovers the deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom’s charter generation―the people born into slavery who walked into a new world of freedom during the Civil War. From the seemingly mundane to the most vital, emancipation opened up a myriad of new possibilities: what to wear and where to live, what jobs to take and who to love.

Although Joyner was educated at a Freedmen’s Bureau school and married a man she loved, slavery cast a long shadow. Uncertainty about her parentage haunted her life, and as Jim Crow took hold throughout the South, segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence threatened the loving home she made for her family. But through it all, she found beauty in the world and added to it where she could.

Weaving together illuminating voices from the charter generation, To Walk About in Freedom gives us a kaleidoscopic look at the lived experiences of emancipation and challenges us to think anew about the consequences of failing to reckon with the afterlife of slavery.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21844813410002771

Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice

This inspirational memoir serves as a call to action from prison reform activist Yusef Salaam, of the Exonerated Five, that will inspire us all to turn our stories into tools for change in the pursuit of racial justice.

They didn’t know who they had.

So begins Yusef Salaam telling his story. No one’s life is the sum of the worst things that happened to them, and during Yusef Salaam’s seven years of wrongful incarceration as one of the Central Park Five, he grew from child to man, and gained a spiritual perspective on life. Yusef learned that we’re all “born on purpose, with a purpose.” Despite having confronted the racist heart of America while being “run over by the spiked wheels of injustice,” Yusef channeled his energy and pain into something positive, not just for himself but for other marginalized people and communities.

Better Not Bitter is the first time that one of the now Exonerated Five is telling his individual story, in his own words. Yusef writes his narrative: growing up Black in central Harlem in the ’80s, being raised by a strong, fierce mother and grandmother, his years of incarceration, his reentry, and exoneration. Yusef connects these stories to lessons and principles he learned that gave him the power to survive through the worst of life’s experiences. He inspires readers to accept their own path, to understand their own sense of purpose. With his intimate personal insights, Yusef unpacks the systems built and designed for profit and the oppression of Black and Brown people. He inspires readers to channel their fury into action, and through the spiritual, to turn that anger and trauma into a constructive force that lives alongside accountability and mobilizes change.

This memoir is an inspiring story that grew out of one of the gravest miscarriages of justice, one that not only speaks to a moment in time or the rage-filled present, but reflects a 400-year history of a nation’s inability to be held accountable for its sins. Yusef Salaam’s message is vital for our times, a motivating resource for enacting change. Better, Not Bitter has the power to soothe, inspire and transform. It is a galvanizing call to action.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842905370002771

Chained to History: Slavery and US Foreign Relations to 1865

In Chained to History, Steven J. Brady places slavery at the center of the story of America’s place in the world in the years prior to the calamitous Civil War. Beginning with the immediate aftermath of the War of the American Revolution, Brady follows the military, economic, and moral lines of the diplomatic challenges of attempting to manage, on the global stage, the actuality of human servitude in a country dedicated to human freedom. Chained to History shows how slavery was interwoven with America’s foreign relations and affected policy controversies ranging from trade to extradition treaties to military alliances.

Brady highlights the limitations placed on American policymakers who, working in an international context increasingly supportive of abolition, were severely constrained regarding the formulation and execution of preferred policy. Policymakers were bound to the slave interest based in the Democratic Party and the tortured state of domestic politics bore heavily on the conduct of foreign affairs. As international powers not only abolished the slave trade but banned human servitude as such, the American position became untenable.

From the Age of Revolutions through the American Civil War, slavery was a constant factor in shaping US relations with the Atlantic World and beyond. Chained to History addresses this critical topic in its complete scope and shows the immoral practice of human bondage to have informed how the United States re-entered the community of nations after 1865.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842987860002771

Fear of Black Consciousness

Lewis R. Gordon’s Fear of Black Consciousness is a groundbreaking account of Black consciousness by a leading philosopher

In this original and penetrating work, Lewis R. Gordon, one of the leading scholars of Black existentialism and anti-Blackness, takes the reader on a journey through the historical development of racialized Blackness, the problems this kind of consciousness produces, and the many creative responses from Black and non-Black communities in contemporary struggles for dignity and freedom. Skillfully navigating a difficult and traumatic terrain, Gordon cuts through the mist of white narcissism and the versions of consciousness it perpetuates. He exposes the bad faith at the heart of many discussions about race and racism not only in America but across the globe, including those who think of themselves as “color blind.” As Gordon reveals, these lies offer many white people an inherited sense of being extraordinary, a license to do as they please. But for many if not most Blacks, to live an ordinary life in a white-dominated society is an extraordinary achievement.

Informed by Gordon’s life growing up in Jamaica and the Bronx, and taking as a touchstone the pandemic and the uprisings against police violence, Fear of Black Consciousness is a groundbreaking work that positions Black consciousness as a political commitment and creative practice, richly layered through art, love, and revolutionary action.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21843256670002771

The Silent Shore: The Lynching of Matthew Williams and the Politics of Racism in the Free State

The definitive account of the lynching of twenty-three-year-old Matthew Williams in Maryland, the subsequent investigation, and the legacy of “modern-day” lynchings.

On December 4, 1931, a mob of white men in Salisbury, Maryland, lynched and set ablaze a twenty-three-year-old Black man named Matthew Williams. His gruesome murder was part of a wave of silent white terrorism in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, which exposed Black laborers to white rage in response to economic anxieties. For nearly a century, the lynching of Matthew Williams has lived in the shadows of the more well-known incidents of racial terror in the deep South, haunting both the Eastern Shore and the state of Maryland as a whole. In The Silent Shore, author Charles L. Chavis Jr. draws on his discovery of previously unreleased investigative documents to meticulously reconstruct the full story of one of the last lynchings in Maryland.

Bringing the painful truth of anti-Black violence to light, Chavis breaks the silence that surrounded Williams’s death. Though Maryland lacked the notoriety for racial violence of Alabama or Mississippi, he writes, it nonetheless was the site of at least 40 spectacle lynchings after the abolition of slavery in 1864. Families of lynching victims rarely obtained any form of actual justice, but Williams’s death would have a curious afterlife: Maryland’s politically ambitious governor Albert C. Ritchie would, in an attempt to position himself as a viable challenger to FDR, become one of the first governors in the United States to investigate the lynching death of a Black person. Ritchie tasked Patsy Johnson, a member of the Pinkerton detective agency and a former prizefighter, with going undercover in Salisbury and infiltrating the mob that murdered Williams. Johnson would eventually befriend a young local who admitted to participating in the lynching and who also named several local law enforcement officers as ringleaders. Despite this, a grand jury, after hearing 124 witness statements, declined to indict the perpetrators. But this denial of justice galvanized Governor Ritchie’s Interracial Commission, which would become one of the pioneering forces in the early civil rights movement in Maryland.

Complicating historical narratives associated with the history of lynching in the city of Salisbury, The Silent Shore explores the immediate and lingering effect of Williams’s death on the politics of racism in the United States, the Black community in Salisbury, the broader Eastern Shore, the state of Maryland, and the legacy of “modern-day lynchings.”

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842987980002771

Black American Refugee: Escaping the Narcissism of the American Dream

After following her mother to the US at a young age to pursue economic opportunities, one woman must come to terms with the ways in which systematic racism and resultant trauma keep the American Dream inaccessible to Black people.

In the early ’90s, young Tiffanie Drayton and her siblings left Trinidad and Tobago to join their mother in New Jersey, where she’d been making her way as a domestic worker, eager to give her children a shot at the American Dream. At first, life in the US was idyllic. But chasing good school districts with affordable housing left Tiffanie and her family constantly uprooted–moving from Texas to Florida then back to New Jersey. As Tiffanie came of age in the suburbs, she began to ask questions about the binary Black and white American world. Why were the Black neighborhoods she lived in crime-ridden, and the multicultural ones safe? Why were there so few Black students in advanced classes at school, if there were any advanced classes at all? Why was it so hard for Black families to achieve stability? Why were Black girls treated as something other than worthy?

Ultimately, exhausted by the pursuit of a “better life” in America, twenty-year old Tiffanie returns to Tobago. She is suddenly able to enjoy the simple freedom of being Black without fear, and imagines a different future for her own children. But then COVID-19 and widely publicized instances of police brutality bring America front and center again. This time, as an outsider supported by a new community, Tiffanie grieves and rages for Black Americans in a way she couldn’t when she was one.

An expansion of her New York Times piece of the same name, Black American Refugee examines in depth the intersection of her personal experiences and the broader culture and historical ramifications of American racism and global white supremacy. Through thoughtful introspection and candidness, Tiffanie unravels the complex workings of the people in her life, including herself, centering Black womanhood, and illuminating the toll a lifetime of racism can take. Must Black people search beyond the shores of the “land of the free” to realize emancipation? Or will the voices that propel America’s new reckoning welcome all dreamers and dreams to this land?

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842987890002771

The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World

In 2016, amid an epidemic of police shootings of African Americans, the celebrated NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a series of quiet protests on the field, refusing to stand during the U.S. national anthem. By “taking a knee,” Kaepernick bravely joined a long tradition of American athletes making powerful political statements. This time, however, Kaepernick’s simple act spread like wildfire throughout American society, becoming the preeminent symbol of resistance to America’s persistent racial inequality.

Critically acclaimed sports journalist and author of A People’s History of Sports in the United States, Dave Zirin chronicles “the Kaepernick effect” for the first time, through interviews with a broad cross-section of professional athletes across many different sports, college stars and high-powered athletic directors, and high school athletes and coaches. In each case, he uncovers the fascinating explanations and motivations behind a mass political movement in sports, through deeply personal and inspiring accounts of risk-taking, activism, and courage both on and off the field.

A book about the politics of sport, and the impact of sports on politics, The Kaepernick Effect is for anyone seeking to understand an essential dimension of the new movement for racial justice in America.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842906180002771

Right Within: How to Heal from Racial Trauma in the Workplace

From the powerhouse author of  The Memo, the essential self-help book for women of color to heal—and thrive—in the workplace

In workplaces nationwide, women of color need frank talk and honest advice on how to deal with microaggressions, heal from racialized trauma, and find relief from invisible workplace burdens. Filled with Minda Harts’s signature wit and warmth, Right Within offers strategies for women of color to speak up during racialized moments with managers and clients, work through past triggers they may not even know still cause pain, and reframe past career disappointments as opportunities to grow into a new path. Through action points, exercises, and clear-eyed coaching, Harts encourages women to summon hidden reserves of strength and courage. She includes advice from therapists and faith leaders of color on a full range of ways to heal. Right Within will help women of color strengthen their resolve across corporate America, ensuring that we can all, finally, rise together.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842905670002771

Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption

A radically inclusive, intersectional, and transnational approach to the fight for women’s rights.

Upper-middle-class white women have long been heralded as “experts” on feminism. They have presided over multinational feminist organizations and written much of what we consider the feminist canon, espousing sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial solidarity, all while branding the language of the movement itself in whiteness and speaking over Black and Brown women in an effort to uphold privilege and perceived cultural superiority. An American Muslim woman, attorney, and political philosopher, Rafia Zakaria champions a reconstruction of feminism in Against White Feminism, centering women of color in this transformative overview and counter-manifesto to white feminism’s global, long-standing affinity with colonial, patriarchal, and white supremacist ideals.

Covering such ground as the legacy of the British feminist imperialist savior complex and “the colonial thesis that all reform comes from the West” to the condescension of the white feminist–led “aid industrial complex” and the conflation of sexual liberation as the “sum total of empowerment,” Zakaria follows in the tradition of intersectional feminist forebears Kimberlé Crenshaw, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde. Zakaria ultimately refutes and reimagines the apolitical aspirations of white feminist empowerment in this staggering, radical critique, with Black and Brown feminist thought at the forefront.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842905580002771

Digital New Book Display – 6-13-22

Welcome to the University of Iowa Libraries’ virtual New Book Shelf. Here we will present new titles for you to browse and check out. Titles listed here will be monographs published in the current year. If you see a title you would like to borrow, please click the link below the item and sign in with your Hawk ID and Password to request a loan.

Nice White Ladies: The Truth about White Supremacy, Our Role in It, and How We Can Help Dismantle It

An acclaimed expert illuminates the distinctive role that white women play in perpetuating racism, and how they can work to fight it

In a nation deeply divided by race, the “Karens” of the world are easy to villainize. But in Nice White Ladies, Jessie Daniels addresses the unintended complicity of even well-meaning white women. She reveals how their everyday choices harm communities of color. White mothers, still expected to be the primary parents, too often uncritically choose to send their kids to the “best” schools, collectively leading to a return to segregation. She addresses a feminism that pushes women of color aside, and a wellness industry that insulates white women in a bubble of their own privilege.

Daniels then charts a better path forward. She looks to the white women who fight neo-Nazis online and in the streets, and who challenge all-white spaces from workplaces to schools to neighborhoods. In the end, she shows how her fellow white women can work toward true equality for all.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842905910002771

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live

An NPR Favorite History Book of 2021

The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics.

The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today.

In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women―and they were mostly women―became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education.

Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages.

This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842362550002771

Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality

With the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly shaped the law: Constance Baker Motley” (CNN). The first major biography of one of our most influential judges—an activist lawyer who became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary—that provides an eye-opening account of the twin struggles for gender equality and civil rights in the 20th Century.

“A must-read for anyone who dares to believe that equal justice under the law is possible and is in search of a model for how to make it a reality.” —Anita Hill

Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hair dresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, the first of ten she would eventually argue. The only black woman member in the legal team at the NAACP’s Inc. Fund at the time, she defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham, helped to argue in Brown vs. The Board of Education, and played a critical role in vanquishing Jim Crow laws throughout the South. She was the first black woman elected to the state Senate in New York, the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President, and the first black woman appointed to the federal judiciary.

Civil Rights Queen captures the story of a remarkable American life, a figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country. Burnished with an extraordinary wealth of research, award-winning, esteemed Civil Rights and legal historian and dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Tomiko Brown-Nagin brings Motley to life in these pages. Brown-Nagin compels us to ponder some of our most timeless and urgent questions–how do the historically marginalized access the corridors of power? What is the price of the ticket? How does access to power shape individuals committed to social justice? In Civil Rights Queen, she dramatically fills out the picture of some of the most profound judicial and societal change made in twentieth-century America.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/18gddib/TN_cdi_proquest_reports_2618798640

The Generation Myth: Why When You’re Born Matters Less Than You Think

Millennials, Baby Boomers, Gen Z—we like to define people by when they were born, but an acclaimed social researcher explains why we shouldn’t.

Boomers are narcissists. Millennials are spoiled. Gen Zers are lazy. We assume people born around the same time have basically the same values. It makes for good headlines, but is it true?

Bobby Duffy has spent years studying generational distinctions. In The Generation Myth, he argues that our generational identities are not fixed but fluid, reforming throughout our lives. Based on an analysis of what over three million people really think about homeownership, sex, well-being, and more, Duffy offers a new model for understanding how generations form, how they shape societies, and why generational differences aren’t as sharp as we think.

The Generation Myth is a vital rejoinder to alarmist worries about generational warfare and social decline. The kids are all right, it turns out. Their parents are too.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842905520002771

How Should A Government Be?: The New Levers of State Power

Global in scope, approachable and upbeat in tone, this book explores the new technological capacities of government with clear eyes and an open mind. When the art of government itself is changing, the old political divisions no longer make sense. Now, with revolutions in technology and organisational structure and a world transformed by Covid-19, a revolution is also coming in the essential business of government – whether we like it or not.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21843257330002771

Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media

“The best history of free speech ever written and the best defense of free speech ever made.” —P.J. O’Rourke

Hailed as the “first freedom,” free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat.

In Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama traces the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of this idea. Through captivating stories of free speech’s many defenders—from the ancient Athenian orator Demosthenes and the ninth-century freethinker al-Rāzī, to the anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and modern-day digital activists—Mchangama reveals how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide. Yet the desire to restrict speech, too, is a constant, and he explores how even its champions can be led down this path when the rise of new and contrarian voices challenge power and privilege of all stripes.

Meticulously researched and deeply humane, Free Speech demonstrates how much we have gained from this principle—and how much we stand to lose without it.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21843256430002771

Hitler’s American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany’s March to Global War

A riveting account of the five most crucial days in twentieth-century diplomatic history: from Pearl Harbor to Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States

By early December 1941, war had changed much of the world beyond recognition. Nazi Germany occupied most of the European continent, while in Asia, the Second Sino-Japanese War had turned China into a battleground. But these conflicts were not yet inextricably linked—and the United States remained at peace.

Hitler’s American Gamble recounts the five days that upended everything: December 7 to 11. Tracing developments in real time and backed by deep archival research, historians Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman show how Hitler’s intervention was not the inexplicable decision of a man so bloodthirsty that he forgot all strategy, but a calculated risk that can only be understood in a truly global context. This book reveals how December 11, not Pearl Harbor, was the real watershed that created a world war and transformed international history.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842751010002771

The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them Down

Storytelling, a tradition that built human civilization, may soon destroy it

Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it.

In The Story Paradox, Gottschall explores how a broad consortium of psychologists, communications specialists, neuroscientists, and literary quants are using the scientific method to study how stories affect our brains. The results challenge the idea that storytelling is an obvious force for good in human life. Yes, storytelling can bind groups together, but it is also the main force dragging people apart. And it’s the best method we’ve ever devised for manipulating each other by circumventing rational thought. Behind all civilization’s greatest ills—environmental destruction, runaway demagogues, warfare—you will always find the same master factor: a mind-disordering story.

Gottschall argues that societies succeed or fail depending on how they manage these tensions. And it has only become harder, as new technologies that amplify the effects of disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, and fake news make separating fact from fiction nearly impossible.

With clarity and conviction, Gottschall reveals why our biggest asset has become our greatest threat, and what, if anything, can be done. It is a call to stop asking, “How we can change the world through stories?” and start asking, “How can we save the world from stories?”

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842584980002771

The World Before Us: The New Science Behind Our Human Origins

A fascinating investigation of the origin of humans based on incredible new discoveries and advanced scientific technology

Fifty thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was not the only species of humans in the world. There were also Neanderthals in what is now Europe, the Near East, and parts of Eurasia; Hobbits (H. floresiensis) on the island of Flores in Indonesia; Denisovans in Siberia and eastern Eurasia; and H. luzonensis in the Philippines. Tom Higham investigates what we know about these other human species and explores what can be learned from the genetic links between them and us. He also looks at whether H. erectus may have survived into the period when our ancestors first moved into Southeast Asia.

Filled with thrilling tales of recent scientific discoveries, this book offers an engaging synopsis of our current understanding of human origins and raises new and interesting possibilities—particularly concerning what contact, if any, these other species might have had with us prior to their extinction.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21843257240002771

A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species

“An arresting vision of this relentless natural world”—New York Times Book Review

A leading ecologist argues that if humankind is to survive on a fragile planet, we must understand and obey its iron laws

Our species has amassed unprecedented knowledge of nature, which we have tried to use to seize control of life and bend the planet to our will. In A Natural History of the Future, biologist Rob Dunn argues that such efforts are futile. We may see ourselves as life’s overlords, but we are instead at its mercy. In the evolution of antibiotic resistance, the power of natural selection to create biodiversity, and even the surprising life of the London Underground, Dunn finds laws of life that no human activity can annul. When we create artificial islands of crops, dump toxic waste, or build communities, we provide new materials for old laws to shape. Life’s future flourishing is not in question. Ours is.

As ambitious as Edward Wilson’s Sociobiology and as timely as Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, A Natural History of the Future sets a new standard for understanding the diversity and destiny of life itself.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21843256340002771

Digital New Book Display – 6-7-22

The Deeper the Roots: A Memoir of Hope and Home

The making of a visionary political leader―and a blueprint for a more equitable country

“Don’t tell nobody our business,” Michael Tubbs’s mother often told him growing up. For Michael, that meant a lot of things: don’t tell anyone about the day-to-day struggle of being Black and broke in Stockton, CA. Don’t tell anyone the pain of having a father incarcerated for 25 years to life. Don’t tell anyone about living two lives, the brainy bookworm and the kid with the newest Jordans. And also don’t tell anyone about the particular joys of growing up with three “moms”―a Nana who never let him miss church, an Auntie who’d take him to the library any time, and a mother, “She-Daddy”, who schooled him in the wisdom of hip-hop and taught him never to take no for an answer.

So for a long time Michael didn’t tell anyone his story, but as he went on to a scholarship at Stanford and an internship in the Obama White House, he began to realize the power of his experience, the need for his perspective in the halls of power. By the time he returned to Stockton to become, in 2016 at age 26, its first Black mayor and the youngest-ever mayor of a major American city, he knew his story meant something.

The Deeper the Roots is a memoir astonishing in its candor, voice, and clarity of vision. Tubbs shares with us the city that raised him, his family of badass women, his life-changing encounters with Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama, the challenges of governing in the 21st century and everything in between―en route to unveiling his compelling vision for America rooted in his experiences in his hometown.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842751130002771

What Are the Chances?: Why We Believe in Luck

Most of us, no matter how rational we think we are, have a lucky charm, a good-luck ritual, or some other custom we follow in the hope that it will lead to a good result. Is the idea of luckiness just a way in which we try to impose order on chaos? Do we live in a world of flukes and coincidences, good and bad breaks, with outcomes as random as a roll of the dice—or can our beliefs help change our luck?

What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control. She tells the stories of lucky and unlucky people—who won the lottery multiple times, survived seven brushes with death, or found an apparently cursed Neanderthal mummy—as well as the accidental discoveries that fundamentally changed what we know about the brain. Blatchley considers our frequent misunderstanding of randomness, the history of luckiness in different cultures and religions, the surprising benefits of magical thinking, and many other topics. Offering a new view of how the brain handles the unexpected, What Are the Chances? shows why an arguably irrational belief can—fingers crossed—help us as we struggle with an unpredictable world

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21844235220002771

Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America

A former firearms executive pulls back the curtain on America’s multibillion-dollar gun industry, exposing how it fostered extremism and racism, radicalizing the nation and bringing cultural division to a boiling point.

As an avid hunter, outdoorsman, and conservationist – all things that the firearms industry was built on – Ryan Busse chased a childhood dream and built a successful career selling millions of firearms for one of America’s most popular gun companies.

But blinded by the promise of massive profits, the gun industry abandoned its self-imposed decency in favor of hardline conservatism and McCarthyesque internal policing, sowing irreparable division in our politics and society. That drove Busse to do something few other gun executives have done: He’s ending his 30-year career in the industry to show us how and why we got here.

Gunfight is an insider’s call-out of a wild, secretive, and critically important industry. It shows us how America’s gun industry shifted from prioritizing safety and ethics to one that is addicted to fear, conspiracy, intolerance, and secrecy. It recounts Busse’s personal transformation and shows how authoritarianism spreads in the guise of freedom, how voicing one’s conscience becomes an act of treason in a culture that demands sameness and loyalty. Gunfight offers a valuable perspective as the nation struggles to choose between armed violence or healing.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842356260002771

The Nineties: A Book

An instant New York Times best seller!

From the New York Times best-selling author of But What if We’re Wrong, a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history.

It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn’t know who it was. By the end, exposing someone’s address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn’t know who it was. The ’90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we’re still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job.

Beyond epiphenomena like “Cop Killer” and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a ’90s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it.

In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, “The video for ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany” make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842987410002771

Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League

The groundbreaking story of the National Women’s Football League, and the players whose spirit, rivalries, and tenacity changed the legacy of women’s sports forever.

In 1967, a Cleveland promoter recruited a group of women to compete as a traveling football troupe. It was conceived as a gimmick—in the vein of the Harlem Globetrotters—but the women who signed up really wanted to play. And they were determined to win.

Hail Mary chronicles the highs and lows of the National Women’s Football League, which took root in nineteen cities across the US over the course of two decades. Drawing on new interviews with former players from the Detroit Demons, the Toledo Troopers, the LA Dandelions, and more, Hail Mary brings us into the stadiums where they broke records, the small-town lesbian bars where they were recruited, and the backrooms where the league was formed, championed, and eventually shuttered. In an era of vibrant second wave feminism and Title IX activism, the athletes of the National Women’s Football League were boisterous pioneers on and off the field: you’ll be rooting for them from start to finish.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842751040002771

Watergate: A New History

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “Do we need still another Watergate book? The answer turns out to be yes—this one.” —Len Downie, Jr., The Washington Post * “Dazzling.” —Douglas Brinkley, The New York Times Book Review

From Garrett Graff, the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Plane in the Sky, comes the first definitive narrative history of Watergate—“the best and fullest account of the crisis, one unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)—exploring the full scope of the scandal through the politicians, investigators, journalists, and informants who made it the most influential political event of the modern era.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21843328750002771

Go Back to Where You Came From

“Go back to where you came from, you terrorist!”

This is just one of the many warm, lovely, and helpful tips that Wajahat Ali and other children of immigrants receive on a daily basis. Go back where, exactly? Fremont, California, where he grew up, but is now an unaffordable place to live? Or Pakistan, the country his parents left behind a half-century ago?

Growing up living the suburban American dream, young Wajahat devoured comic books (devoid of brown superheroes) and fielded well-intentioned advice from uncles and aunties. (“Become a doctor!”) He had turmeric stains under his fingernails, was accident-prone, suffered from OCD, and wore Husky pants, but he was as American as his neighbors, with roots all over the world. Then, while Ali was studying at University of California, Berkeley, 9/11 happened. Muslims replaced communists as America’s enemy #1, and he became an accidental spokesman and ambassador of all ordinary, unthreatening things Muslim-y.

Now a middle-aged dad, Ali has become one of the foremost and funniest public intellectuals in America. In Go Back to Where You Came From, he tackles the dangers of Islamophobia, white supremacy, and chocolate hummus, peppering personal stories with astute insights into national security, immigration, and pop culture. In this refreshingly bold, hopeful, and uproarious memoir, Ali offers indispensable lessons for cultivating a more compassionate, inclusive, and delicious America.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842988550002771

Take Up Space: The Unprecedented AOC

A stunning four-color biography of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the bestselling tradition of Notorious RBG and Pelosi that explores her explosive rise and impact on the future of American culture and politics.

The candidate was young—twenty-eight years old, a child of Puerto Rico, the Bronx, and Yorktown Heights. She was working as a waitress and bartender. She was completely unknown, and taking on a ten-term incumbent in a city famous for protecting its political institutions. “Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a video launching her campaign, the camera following her as she hastily pulled her hair into a bun. But she did. And in perhaps the most stunning upset in recent memory, she won. At twenty-nine, she was sworn in as the youngest member of the 116th Congress and became the youngest woman to serve as a representative in United States history.

Before long, Ocasio-Cortez had earned her own shorthand title—AOC—and was one of the most talked-about public figures (loved and loathed) in the world. Her natural ability to connect with everyday people through the social media feeds grew her following into the multimillions. Every statement she made, every tweet and Instagram Live, went viral, and her term had barely begun before people were speculating that she could one day be president. The question seemed to be on everyone’s mind: How did this woman come from nowhere to acquire such influence, and so fast?

Now, in Take Up Space, that question is answered through a kaleidoscopic biography by the editors of New York magazine that features the riveting account of her rise by Lisa Miller, an essay by Rebecca Traister that explains why she is an unprecedented figure in American politics, and multiform explorations (reportage, comic, history, analysis, photography) of AOC’s outsize impact on American culture and politics. Throughout, AOC is revealed in all her power and vulnerability, and understood in the context of the fast-changing America that made her possible—and perhaps even inevitable.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21843328990002771

Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm

“This book is a must for everyone interested in illuminating the idea of unexplainable genius.” ―QUESTLOVE

Equal parts biography, musicology, and cultural history, Dilla Time chronicles the life and legacy of J Dilla, a musical genius who transformed the sound of popular music for the twenty-first century.

He wasn’t known to mainstream audiences, even though he worked with renowned acts like D’Angelo and Erykah Badu and influenced the music of superstars like Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson. He died at the age of thirty-two, and in his lifetime he never had a pop hit. Yet since his death, J Dilla has become a demigod: revered by jazz musicians and rap icons from Robert Glasper to Kendrick Lamar; memorialized in symphonies and taught at universities. And at the core of this adulation is innovation: a new kind of musical time-feel that he created on a drum machine, but one that changed the way “traditional” musicians play.

In Dilla Time, Dan Charnas chronicles the life of James DeWitt Yancey, from his gifted childhood in Detroit, to his rise as a Grammy-nominated hip-hop producer, to the rare blood disease that caused his premature death; and follows the people who kept him and his ideas alive. He also rewinds the histories of American rhythms: from the birth of soul in Dilla’s own “Motown,” to funk, techno, and disco. Here, music is a story of Black culture in America and of what happens when human and machine times are synthesized into something new. Dilla Time is a different kind of book about music, a visual experience with graphics that build those concepts step by step for fans and novices alike, teaching us to “see” and feel rhythm in a unique and enjoyable way.

Dilla’s beats, startling some people with their seeming “sloppiness,” were actually the work of a perfectionist almost spiritually devoted to his music. This is the story of the man and his machines, his family, friends, partners, and celebrity collaborators. Culled from more than 150 interviews about one of the most important and influential musical figures of the past hundred years, Dilla Time is a book as delightfully detail-oriented and unique as J Dilla’s music itself.

https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/permalink/f/9i2ftm/01IOWA_ALMA21842072610002771

2023 OpenHawks grants to help students save on textbooks

University Libraries is pleased to announce another 12 OpenHawks grants for the development of open educational resources (OER). OpenHawks is a campuswide grant program that funds faculty efforts to replace or avoid high-cost textbooks with OERs for enhanced student success.

The cohort of projects, which are slated to be completed in 2023, will save UI students $167,688 in the first year alone. Removing cost barriers to course materials opens student access and positively impacts learning. The funded OER projects, which were selected through a competitive application process, will benefit students in a wide range of disciplines, including law, radiation oncology, communication science and disorders, language learning, mathematics, library and information science, pediatrics, and social work.

The next call for proposals will be in the spring 2023. For more information, visit www.lib.uiowa.edu/openhawks.

Jared Stiles and Emily Heithoff, Radiology, OER Creation Grant

Localization & Treatment Procedures in Radiation Therapy

Stiles and Heithoff team will develop an OER textbook for radiation therapy that would replace the textbooks currently used in the program. The OER will be regularly updated to account for developments in the field and will include a number of multimedia activities developed in collaboration with other radiation therapy programs.

Sean Rodriguez, Margaret Strampe, Andrew Goldstein, Caroline Yu, Salma Dawoud, and David Ramirez, Ophthalmology, OER Creation Grant

EyeRounds Anki: An Openly Licensed Resource for Ophthalmology Education

The group will develop EyeRounds Anki, an OER based on a free flashcard program that uses a spaced repetition algorithm to enhance knowledge acquisition and retention over traditional study methods. The resource is meant to increase global access to a body of knowledge that is currently only available as expensive, multi-volume books.

Jason Rantanen, Stella Elias, Derek Muller, Caroline Sheerin, and Maya Steinitz, Law, OER Creation Grant

Rules and Laws for Civil Actions

Grantee will develop an OER supplement in Pressbooks containing rules and statutory laws related to civil litigation. This will replace one of the textbooks in the intro to civil procedure course and will be referenced by students throughout their legal studies.

Philip Combiths, Communication Sciences and Disorders, OER Creation Grant

A Software Tool for Phonological Analysis and Treatment Target Selection

This project is for further development of phonological analysis software and an accompanying manual for students in speech pathology. It would modernize the process that speech language pathologists use to analyze children’s speech patterns by using digital transcription rather than the manual process currently used.

Maricelle Pinto-Tomas and Mariana Ruiz Nascimento, Spanish and Portuguese, OER Creation Grant

Primeiros passos: Portuguese for Beginners

This project aims to replace the current Portuguese textbook with an OER. It will address the current book’s deficiencies, with a focus on incorporating social justice pedagogy and avoiding the outdated stereotypes. The book is intended to save students money, increase learner motivation, facilitate cultural learning, and has the ability to be adopted outside the university.

Isabel Darcy, Mathematics, OER Creation Grant

Interactive Jupyter Textbook for Differential Equations

Darcy will replace the current text and homework system with an OER textbook in Jupyter Notebooks. She and a colleague have developed most of the content, and the PI hopes to hire a student to compile it all into an interactive text.

Micah Bateman, Library and Information Science, Support Materials Grant

Introduction to Metadata through Dublin Core

Bateman will develop resources for beginning users of the metadata standard, Dublin Core. The project will equip future librarians with skills often used in community and university archives, as well as in the digital humanities.

Alexander Tuttle, Vanessa Curtis, Jeffrey Pettit, and Katherine Schultz, Pediatrics, OER Creation Grant

An Inpatient Pediatric Diabetes Management Resource

The project team will develop a resource on pediatric diabetes management for residents at UIHC. A preliminary version has already been developed on Pressbooks, and this grant would allow them to further develop it and publish it as an OER.

Olga Sokratova, Mathematics, OER Creation Grant

Graph Theory and Applications

This project will replace several commercial texts with an OER targeted to the needs of the course. Sokratova hopes that this resource will allow students to use their class time more efficiently and spend more time actually solving math problems.

Susana Nkurlu, Swahili, OER Creation Grant

Developing Swahili Reading Comprehension Textbook

Nkurlu will develop an OER to supplement Swahili language learning. The objective is to make sure students start with the common knowledge before getting into more complex structures. Grantee will match collected stories with relevant pictures for ease of message comprehension.

Gregory Shill, Law, Remixing Grant

Transportation Law & Policy

For this interdisciplinary project on transportation law and policy, Shill proposes an OER to replace several costly textbooks. The work will incorporate multimedia and archival materials and could be used in several different classes at UI.

Megan Gilster and Aislinn Conrad, Social Work, Course Redesign Grant

Open to Working with Organizations and Communities

This team will create an OER using existing openly licensed materials, new content, and library resources. From the application, “For our pedagogy, we expect the impact to be a succinct, robust set of OER materials and a high-quality, new course that employs active learning teaching techniques.”

UI Libraries Receives NEH Grant to Increase Access to World-Renowned Sackner Archive

Tom Phillips painting from the Sackner Archive

Special Collections and Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries was awarded a prestigious $350,000 grant supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The funding will be used to make the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry—the largest collection of its kind in the world—more accessible.

The Sackner Archive currently includes more than 75,000 items documenting the international avant-garde movement of artists and writers who combined words and visual elements to create a new category of artwork. The three-year Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program grant will provide resources for Special Collections and Archives such as a full-time staff member and a part-time graduate student to focus on continuing to organize, catalog, describe, and preserve materials.

“The University Libraries is committed to promoting accessibility to our collections in as many ways as possible to foster teaching, research, and engagement,” says John Culshaw, Jack B. King university librarian. “We are grateful to the NEH for this opportunity because despite the availability of some data created by the Sackners, the archive remains largely hidden due to the enormous amount of work needed to make materials available to the public.”

The Sackner family chose the University Libraries as the home for the archive due to its reputation as a center for the study of Dadaism, with its substantial holdings in the International Dada Archive. The Libraries’ world-class conservation program, the UI’s nationally recognized Center for the Book and Iowa Writers’ Workshop, collections in the Stanley Museum of Art, and location in Iowa City (a UNESCO City of Literature) were also factors influencing their decision.

“We are thrilled the NEH recognized the importance of continuing to expand the Sackner Archive’s reach and are eager to begin these next stages of work,” says Margaret Gamm, director of Special Collections and Archives. “It’s a privilege for us to be home to this world-renowned archive and stewards for students, researchers, and others to discover and use its unique resources.”

You can learn more about the Sackner Archive, which is not open to the public, here. Students, scholars, and the public can make an appointment to view materials by emailing lib-spec@uiowa.edu.

Celebrating Our Student Workers

During National Student Employment Week and every day, we celebrate all of our student workers. They’re critical to nearly every aspect of Libraries’ operations and their service is greatly appreciated.

Eleven members of the Libraries team recently received 2021-2022 scholarships for undergraduate students. Read what receiving a scholarship and working in the Libraries means in their own words.

Jared Bock, a psychology and political science major from Mason City, Iowa, is the recipient
of a UI Libraries Student Employee Scholarship.

“Employment at the Business Library has helped me foster time management skills in addition to honing interpersonal skills that I can take into my future career and endeavors.

I never realized all of the work that goes on behind the scenes at the libraries. All of the daily ins and outs tend to fly under the radar, but there are a lot of people working hard to provide a wide array of resources and services to students.

This scholarship will help make my undergraduate educational goals more attainable and help reduce the long-term financial burden of pursuing a degree.”

Naudya Chhuon, a global health studies major from Des Moines, Iowa, is the recipient
of the Judy and Mike Greer Scholarship in Memory of Mary E. Greer.

“Working at the library taught me efficient listening and communicating while I helped people at the desk and answer any question that came my way. These two skills will benefit me a lot in my future career because I need to ensure people are heard. These are also great social skills for everyday life.

The biggest surprise for me is the amount of material we have in the library. The stacks go on and on and on! There is definitely a book for everything and anything.

This scholarship will help me tremendously. There have been semesters where I almost could not attend because of the lack of funds. That is the main reason why I obtained a job. This scholarship has taken a weight off my shoulder and off my family’s shoulder too. I am forever grateful for the library offering this.”

Sarah Dodd, an English and creative writing/history double major from Mason City, Iowa,
is the recipient of the Dale M. and Mary Gail Bentz Libraries Student Employee Scholarship.

“I was surprised by the amount of material in Special Collections and I was surprised how much information students have access to through the resources in the library.

I knew it was a wide variety, but Special Collections has so many unique materials that I never thought I would have encountered as a student doing specific research.

This scholarship will help me greatly by offsetting my last semester of tuition as I prepare for graduate school and the next step of my education.”

Steven Garcia, a computer science and journalism and mass communication major from Ottumwa, Iowa, is the recipient of a Benton Family Music Library Employee Scholarship.

“I would say that one of the main things I’ve learned from working at the Libraries would be how to communicate better. My employment at the Rita Benton Music Library is the first job I’ve ever had, so it has shown me how to report to someone and communicate whatever is necessary. I feel like this is one of the fundamental skills I will need for my future career.

I was surprised by how things work behind the desk; I’ve been going to libraries my whole life, and it’s been a really interesting experience to see the whole process of making sure everything operates efficiently so patrons can get the materials they need.

This award will help go toward my tuition next semester, and anything that remains will be used toward savings for when I graduate.”

Emma Kohlenberg, a theatre arts major from Bloomington, Illinois, is the recipient of
a Benton Family Music Library Employee Scholarship.

“I started working at the Rita Benton Music Library the first semester of my freshman year. As finals approached, something clicked in my brain about how much I like working for the library. It clicked when I realized I genuinely enjoy work that serves other people.

When I returned to the Music Library in the fall after quarantine, I figured out I love the curiosity for knowledge. It took working at the library for me to figure out that what I love is how people are curious and then watching them—helping them—find the answers. Even if I did not know a thing about that topic or, better yet, if I thought I never would know a thing about the topic, I got to see the seeds of someone else figuring it out.

Knowing how much I love that very specific thing gives me joy and also gives me much more of an idea of what I am meant to do after I graduate.”

Elizabeth Lovell, a sociology major with a track in family and health services from Peoria,
Iowa, is the recipient of the Dale M. and Mary Gail Bentz Libraries Student Employee
Scholarship.

“My work at Hardin Library has taught me many things about libraries! I have gained a lot of experience working with LibGuides, using Excel, and getting to know the library world. I have also gotten to know many of the wonderful librarians at Hardin and learned about their own paths to librarianship. They have all given me advice as I start my own journey.

The thing that surprised me the most was how much support we provide to everyone, not
just students. People come in with all sorts of questions, and those of us who work in a library are ready for anything.

This scholarship will help me immensely. It will let me cut down on the hours I work to pay for school and help me begin paying off my loans. I will have more time to focus on my research, my studies, and applying for graduate school!”

Kelsey Lyons, a biomedical engineering major (pre-med) and a Spanish minor from
Ankeny, Iowa, is the recipient of the Dale M. and Mary Gail Bentz Libraries Student Employee
Scholarship.

“Working at the Lichtenberger Engineering Library has helped me refine my customer service skills. I have learned the importance of asking patrons specific and direct questions to help them find what they are looking for, which will be relevant in conducting patient interviews.

I have been surprised by the extensive library resources. My knowledge of these resources has been an unexpected yet extremely valuable aspect of my undergraduate education, and the connections I’ve made through the library have been an invaluable component to feeling welcomed by the UI community.

This award will help me to pay for medical school applications. I chose to spend many hours volunteering to help marginalized communities in Iowa City, and this award alleviates some of the financial burden I took on as a result.”

Alexis Redshaw, an ethics and public policy major (pre-law) and art history and philosophy
minor from Underwood, Iowa, is the recipient of the Dale M. and Mary Gail Bentz Libraries
Student Employee Scholarship.

“My work at the Hardin Library has helped me to develop important professional skills through the leadership skills I have gained in guiding new employees, as well as becoming more detail-oriented through the work I do with the book collections. I hope to utilize these skills as an attorney through the work I do in guiding clients, as well as preparing cases.

I was not expecting to gain the many friendships I have with my fellow staff members!

This scholarship will help to financially support me in my ongoing journey of becoming an art law attorney.”

Amalia Sandoval, an interdepartmental studies in health sciences major (pre-dentistry)
and global studies minor from Silvis, Illinois, is the recipient of a UI Libraries Student
Employee Scholarship.

“Working in Special Collections at the Main Library has helped me develop many transferrable skills, including Excel and communication and organizational skills. My job at the library is helping me gain experience and improve the skills that aren’t taught in dental school.

It was super surprising to see all of the different materials and artifacts that have been donated to or collected by Special Collections. I also was surprised to see all of the work that goes into preserving the material and keeping them in the best condition possible.

I am paying for school on my own, so this scholarship relieves some of the stress I have about the high cost of a college education. I work two jobs in order to pay for school, so this scholarship will make it easier and less stressful in the coming semester.”

Graciela Vebi, a microbiology major (pre-med) from Jakarta, Indonesia, is the recipient of
a UI Libraries Student Employee Scholarship.

“Working at the Library has improved my time management skills as well as shaping the work environment that I would thrive in.

As a very indecisive person, working at the library helped me realize that even though directions are nice to follow, autonomy is also nice, especially once you already know what you’re doing.

This scholarship has greatly reduced the financial burden of my higher education as well as providing better opportunities for my little sister to go to a university.”

Abigail Whitford, an ancient civilizations major with medieval studies and museum
studies certificates and an art history minor from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, is the
recipient of a UI Libraries Student Employee Scholarship.

“Working for the Libraries has taught me endurance. As a student, having the consistency of a student job is invaluable. When student life gets difficult, I can count on my job to be steady. No matter what my semester looks like, I know I will work for the Libraries.

I am surprised by the endless amounts of projects and tasks there are to do! I feel that libraries can be seen as stagnant, but they are always in flux. It is a joy to come into work and discover new things to be improved upon.

This scholarship will allow me to continue my undergraduate studies with confidence. Funding provided to me from the Libraries defrays the cost of loan repayment. I am grateful that I feel so supported by my place of employment.”

ABOUT THE SCHOLARSHIPS

The UI Libraries offers four types of scholarships for undergraduate student employees. We are grateful to our donors, including many Libraries staff members, for their generous support for this program.

Student employees at the University Libraries provide critical staffing and services that benefit the entire UI community. Generally, four UI Libraries Student Employee Scholarships of $2,500 each are available each year.

The family of Arthur and Rita Benton established the Benton Family Music Library Student Employee Scholarship, awarded to University Libraries’ student employees who work in the Rita Benton Music Library. Hired in 1952 to catalog music holdings, Rita Benton was head of the Music Library from 1957 until her death in 1980. Later that year, the UI dedicated the Rita Benton Music Library in recognition of her service to the University and her contributions to music librarianship and musicology. Two scholarships of $2,500 are available each year to qualified applicants.

The children of Dale M. and Mary Gail Bentz established the Dale M. and Mary Gail Bentz Libraries Student Employee Scholarship in memory of their parents. Dale came to Iowa in 1953 and served the UI Libraries for 36 years. From 1981 until his retirement in 1986, Dale led the organization as University Librarian. Active in his profession, Dale made numerous contributions to the librarianship over his 45-year career. Four scholarships of $2,500 are available each year.

Judy and Mike Greer established the Judy and Mike Greer Scholarship in Memory of Mary E. Greer to honor the memory of Mike’s mother, who worked for 25 years in the Main Library Circulation Department. The scholarship is awarded to University Libraries’ student employees who work in the Main Library. One scholarship of $2,500 is available each year.

Spanish Language OER with Giovanni Zimotti

Cover image for Salón de clase: Intermediate Spanish for Education Professionals

By Georgia Page, UI Libraries Student Specialist, Scholarly Impact, georgiab-page@uiowa.edu

In early March, UI Libraries celebrated Open Education Week in order to raise awareness about open educational resources (OER) and other open education practices. However, many students and faculty on campus are not yet familiar with the positive impact that OER has on students’ academic success, while also making education more accessible and affordable. To get a better understanding of what it means to “create” OER, I interviewed Dr. Giovanni Zimotti, head of the Spanish and Portuguese programs here at the university.

Zimotti, who is now working on his third OER project, talked about the process of creating OER, and how it has benefitted both students and educators within the Spanish program. When asking him how he decided to make open textbooks, he explained, “We didn’t know anything about writing a textbook, but we knew we wanted to write one. The ones that were available were not good enough for our classrooms. They were either really expensive – like $200 – or they were too easy for our students. We want a textbook for four semesters of Spanish and something that would be challenging. This didn’t exist, so we started to make it.”

But how does one even start making a textbook for four different levels from scratch? Zimotti explains that while he didn’t know for sure from the start, he was up for a challenge. “We created a small team, and decided to apply for another grant,” he explains. “Right now, a year later, we have 10 to 15 professors across the country peer-reviewing the textbook to make sure that it is of quality to be used in our classroom and classrooms in other states as well.”

Zimotti explains that over the past few years, he and a team have been working on creating a new textbook that could be utilized not only by students here at the University of Iowa but also across the world. When asked what part of this project most excited him, he says, “The most exciting part, and my main goal, is trying to get all textbooks to a really low cost. All of our students have to pay a lot of money for these textbooks, so my goal is to get the cost as close to zero as possible. If we can save our students hundreds of thousands of dollars in textbook fees, that’s my goal.”

While cost is one of the biggest issues for these textbooks, Zimotti explains that most language textbooks are also out-of-date, which is an issue for students and educators alike. “When we started creating the OER textbook, we started thinking about how to create localized content. Instead of having interviews with celebrities from 20 years ago, or a random piece of technology that is outdated. For this textbook, we tried to interview people that were real people in the community. We found Spanish speakers from different backgrounds, such as a person from West Liberty that run a dual-language program. He is from Mexico, he is on the school board, and he is an indigenous person. He was super interesting and brought a new perspective to the students.” This is just one example of the many folks that Zimotti and his team were able to interview and include in the new textbook, which will help to better immerse students in the reality of Spanish speaking culture, as well as making sure that students can directly relate with the scenarios and references within the text. As Zimotti explains, “This is not something you can just get from your average textbook.”

OER allows for a more inclusive, immersive, and accessible way to educate, and encourages students to be involved and invested in their success. While this project is just one of many here at UI, it will change the way that Spanish is taught not only at the University of Iowa but at universities across the country. Zimotti and his team’s new textbook will be available for use in Spanish classrooms at the University of Iowa and the University of Nebraska starting Spring of 2023.

If you are interested in receiving grant funding to use, adapt, or create your own OER, check out UI Libraries’ OpenHawks program. We are currently accepting proposals through April 29, 2022.

NEW: Three Women for Equality: Christine Grant, Peggy Burke, and Bonnie Slatton Fund

Three trailblazers who led the national effort for gender equality in athletics are being honored through a new fund dedicated to collecting, archiving, and highlighting their achievements and the efforts of other women.

The Three Women for Equality: Christine Grant, Peggy Burke, and Bonnie Slatton Fund is made possible by a generous gift from Lark Birdsong, Iowa’s first women’s basketball coach, and a gift from Grant’s estate. The fund provides support for the Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries, which houses a number of collections featuring women’s and girls’ sports, including Grant’s papers. The IWA is one of the few archives of its kind embedded within a higher education academic research library in the United States.

Grant’s many accomplishments include being a key figure in implementing Title IX, the federal law passed in 1972 that requires equal opportunity in sports and education. Burke and Slatton joined Grant in being fierce advocates for that right and each served as president of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. The close friends all made a long-lasting mark on history with their many contributions, which include being mentors and role models for numerous people throughout the university, country, and beyond.

A photo of Peggy Burke, Bonnie Slatton, and Christine Grant — Peggy Burke, Bonnie Slatton, and Christine Grant
Courtesy: Lark Birdsong

“This is my way to celebrate these three remarkable women, in addition to other brave women, that did the impossible against insurmountable odds—and I hope it inspires others,” says Birdsong. “Christine, Bonnie, and Peggy led a national effort to ensure equal opportunities for women. What we see in intercollegiate athletics today is testimony to their immense effectiveness. And what they created at Iowa is reflected in loyal Hawkeye pride in today’s teams.”

“We are grateful for this opportunity and to Lark for coming to us with the idea,” says John Culshaw, Jack. B. King university librarian. “It’s a testament to the impact Christine, Bonnie, and Peggy had on her and countless others, and now the IWA will be able to shine an even brighter light on women’s and girls’ sports for generations to come.”

“We’re proud of our collections that chronicle the lives and important work of Iowa women,” adds Janet Weaver, curator of the IWA. “This fund will allow us to expand the size and scope of our holdings in this area and engage an even broader audience through programs, exhibits, and online resources.”

You can learn more about the legacy of Grant, Burke, and Slatton here.

Sadly, Grant passed away on Dec. 31, 2021. Birdsong shared a wonderful tribute in The Gazette. You can also read more tributes to Grant here and here.

You can donate to the Three Women for Equality: Christine Grant, Peggy Burke, and Bonnie Slatton Fund here.

Photo of Christine Grant — Christine Grant, UI women’s athletics director (1973-2000) Courtesy: Iowa Women’s Archives

Photo of Peggy Burke — Christine Grant, UI women’s athletics director (1973-2000) Courtesy: Iowa Women’s Archives

Presidents’ Day Resources

On Presidents’ Day and every day, it’s easy to find information about those holding the highest government office in the United States by visiting the University of Iowa LibGuide for Presidential Resources.

University Libraries is also designated as a Federal Depository Library, so we can help you find public U.S. government information for class assignments or just to satisfy your curiosity. Please visit https://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/us/, or contact John Elson, federal and state information librarian, via john-elson@uiowa.edu for assistance.

The federal Presidents’ Day holiday was originally established to commemorate the birthday of the country’s first president, George Washington, on February 22. It’s since expanded to celebrate the lives of all U.S. presidents and fall on the third Monday in February.

By John Elson, federal and state engagement librarian

Fair Use Week (February 21-25)

During the week of February 21, we celebrate Fair Dealing/Fair Use Week, which uplifts the Fair Use Doctrine and the educational and creative expression that it allows. Fair use of copyrighted information is a right that is guaranteed in the U.S. Code and allows us to use copyrighted material within the contexts of education, parody, accessibility, and reporting.

There are some misconceptions about fair use, however. Not every educational activity is covered under the doctrine, and some cases for fair use are stronger than others. There are four factors that must be considered when determining whether you are covered under fair use:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
the nature of the copyrighted work. Is it more factual or more creative?
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In recent years, courts have determined that the four factors should not be weighted equally in all cases, and a “checklist” method of determining fair use cannot accurately be applied across different cases and different types of use. This means that each time you wish to use material under the Fair Use Doctrine, you should conduct a four-factor analysis and document your rationale. Below are some resources that can help you walk through the process of conducting an analysis for fair use.

Measuring Fair Use: The Four Factors: This guide from Stanford Libraries walks you through how to conduct a fair use analysis.
More Information on Fair Use: This page from the U.S. Copyright Office provides information on fair use and how to conduct a fair use analysis.
Fair Use Evaluator: Use this tool to document your fair use analysis.
UI Libraries Copyright Guide: Learn more about fair use, author rights, seeking permissions, open licensing, and other topics.