Critical Feminist Pedagogies presentation

This past weekend I had the opportunity to present on a panel at a conference held in my home state, Connecticut! The conference was called “Critical Feminist Pedagogies: Towards an Education of Activism” and was held at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven.

My panel was called “Technology and Pedagogy,” which my presentation fit into nicely, as I discussed free Internet resources for feminist researchers/activists. In the open access spirit, I wanted to make the presentation available to anyone, and thus here’s a link to it via SlideShare: Feminist Activism is for Everybody.

 

http://www.slideshare.net/KateAngell/feminist-activism-is-for-everybody-free-resources-for-research-action

Open Access Scholarly Publishing event

Once again, CUNY is hosting another awesome, free library event! This time it’s called Open Access Scholarly Publishing as Thought and Action, and is a culmination of CUNY Open Access Week.

The panel is tomorrow, October 28th, from 5-7PM in room 9204 at the CUNY Graduate Center. Presenters are Emily Drabinski, James Davis, Joseph Entin, Matthew K. Gold, Michael Mandiberg, and Trebor Scholz.

I can’t make it because I’m speaking at a conference the next morning in CT, but if I wasn’t going away for the weekend I would be there in a heartbeat!

Library 2.011 Virtual Conference

I love when conferences are free. It makes me so happy. It makes me happiest when they pertain to libraries! Thus, I was really pleased to learn about the Library 2.011 worldwide virtual conference. Founded by San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information Science, the conference will be held from November 2-4 online.

Those interested can browse the current list of sessions, as well as a time zone viewing page, as the conference is international in scope. As far as I can tell, the conference looks like it could be useful to people in public, academic, and school libraries.

Artcyclopedia

Interested in learning more about a specific artist or art movement? Artcylopedia is an excellent (and free!) place to begin! My favorite part of the site is that you can browse artists by a number of categories, including alphabetically by name, medium, and nationality.

Artcyclopedia also includes art news from around the world, which is updated nearly daily and spans a wide range of periodicals.  Over 9000 artists and 2900 art-related sites are included!

Que(e)ry V: Open Access Party

Dear fellow queer librarians and people who <3 queer librarians:  The Desk Set’s Que(e)ry is throwing an amazing party on November 19th at the Stonewall Inn. The event, Open Access, will benefit the Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP), a website which digitizes past and present queer zines.

Queer zinesters are invited to bring their zines along – the first floor of the club will feature queer zines for sale and trade! The second floor, as I understand, will be a wild dance party with “queer-lit drinks” (my vote is for something called the “Beebo Drinker”).

Admission is suggested donation of $5-10, and all proceeds will go to QZAP. Check out Open Access’s Facebook page for more details on the event.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I was this excited about a party.

And don’t forget to ask a queer librarian to dance!

Triangle Factory Fire Digital Collection

March 25, 2011 marked the 100 year anniversary of the tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. 146 garment workers died in the fire, most of whom were immigrant women of Italian and Jewish heritage. Despite the fact that I grew up close to NYC and studied women’s history in college, somehow I never learned about this disaster in the classroom. Instead, I first learned about it from a song by the brilliant band Rasputina called “My Little Shirtwaist Fire.”

Without question, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire should be part of any curriculum on American Studies, Gender Studies, and Labor Studies. I was thus pleased to learn that Cornell University’s ILR School created a digital collection earlier this year honoring the 100 year anniversary of the fire.

The site contains both primary and secondary documents, and includes newspaper and magazine articles, reports, survivor oral histories, and songs/plays. Most importantly, the collection also includes commemorations, including a detailed list of the people who perished in the fire. Anyone who knows of any biographical information of the fire’s victims  is urged by the collection’s creators to contact them.

New Occupy Wall Street Baking Page

Last week I wrote about my vegan baking project for Occupy Wall Street People’s Library volunteers in NYC. I just created a web page in addition to the existing Facebook page in hopes that it will better promote this baking adventure/venture! In particular, I would love to see this idea spread to occupiers in other cities. For example, I just recently learned that there is now a library at Occupy Boston!

As always, please do contact me with any ideas, comments, delicious vegan recipes, etc.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers

If you’re ever wondering where the name of my blog came from, the answer is from Gertrude Stein’s brilliant book Everybody’s Autobiography. Gertrude Stein has been highly influential on me as a writer, reader, and queer for a long time – I keep a postcard of Stein and Toklas on the wall next to my desk at work as aesthetic caffeine.

For Steiniacs like me, a fabulous place to virtually visit is Yale University’s Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers digital collection. Although one would need to visit Yale in person to view the collection in its entirety, the website has an impressive array of digitized letters, photos, drawings, etc. spanning the years 1837-1961. Check out this home movie of Stein and Toklas from 1927!

I haven’t made it up to Yale yet to visit the collection in person, but I will, believe me, I will!

Documenting the American South

Several of my closest friends are PhD students and as such I am always on the prowl for resources that pertain to their research. My friend Stina, who I’ve blogged about before, does really amazing work on rural queer land movements. Thus, on a quest to find information pertinent to her work, I came across a site called Documenting the American South (DocSouth).

Amberg, Rob. "Interior of the Little Creek Cafe, Highway 23 and the Laurel River Road, Madison County, NC." Web. <http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/K-0246/cafe.html&gt;.

For anyone looking for primary documents on Southern history, literature, and culture – this is the digital place for you! DocSouth has texts, images, and audio files in fifteen different thematic collections, including songs, oral history interviews, and books. A couple which interested me most greatly are Going to the Show, which describes the history of movie going in North Carolina and North American Slave Narratives.

Baked Goods for Good Librarians: Vegan Baking for OWS Librarians

As an open access blogger I was blissfully happy to learn about The People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street. I read on their blog that they were looking for book and zine donations and plastic bins to shelve the books, as well as volunteers to staff the library. Some members of the NYC Radical Reference collective went on Friday to help process books – my friend Jenna wrote an account of her experience there.

In addition to loving books, I also love baking- and figured I’d bake some vegan cookies to bring down to the occupiers. I dropped the cookies off at the kitchen and the next day baked some vegan muffins. My first stop last night at Liberty Park was the People’s Library, where I dropped off some books. It struck me while talking to the librarians there that they could use some tasty baked goods, so I left some muffins there.

Taken on 10/8/2011

During the train ride home I began to hatch a plan on how I can replicate this vegan baked goods project on a bigger scale. I created a Facebook page for this fledgling project inviting others to either join me in baking and/or delivery, as well as encourage people to do it on their own!