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A Modern Midsummer

I’m Daniella Snyder, a second-year graduate student at Villanova University, and your ‘Cat in Falvey Library’s Stacks. I’ll be posting about academics– from research to study habits and everything in between– and how the Falvey Library can play a large role in your success here on campus.

Villanova Theatre is proud to present A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Edward Sobel, on stage November 12-24.

Beware the forest outside Athens, where mischief reigns and faeries tease and torment. Shakespeare’s comedy of passion and power throws two mismatched couples into the fray of a lovers’ quarrel between the faerie king and queenand soon they’re all entangled in enchantments. Add to the mix the devious Puck and hapless troupe of amateur actors, and mayhem abounds. This magical tale, boldly reimagined for our time, reveals the dangers of unbridled desire and the healing potential of the imagination. 

Angela Rose Longo as Hermia and Sarah Stryker as Lysander. Photos by Kimberly Reilly.

Director Edward Sobel leads a cast of 16 Villanova graduate students, portraying the lovers, faeries, and novice actors drawn to the Athenian woods. Sobel’s contemporary staging zeroes in on issues of gender politics while showcasing the darker forces at play in Shakespeare’s well-loved comedy. According to Sobel, the Athens of this production is “a male-dominated world that thinks it’s a democracy – but it’s not.” This Athenian worldview impacts its characters both politically and romantically. “Love is a dangerous thing,” he adds, “and we want to reveal the way male characters manipulate passion in order to absorb rebellion and maintain their power.”

The production features female-identifying actors in various male roles while the most politically powerful male characters are played by male-identifying actors. Female-identifying actors will portray the young lovers Lysander and Demetrius and members of the relentless acting troupe The Rude Mechanicals. The cross gender casting allows actors to both hilariously embody and also critique gender stereotypes.

Angela Rose Longo as Hermia and Sarah Stryker as Lysander. Photos by Kimberly Reilly.

Dramaturg Travis Milliman has extensively researched gender roles in society, both in Elizabethan England and modern-day America, suggesting that the oppressive forces at play will resonate with our audiences in a way that will cause them to perk up and listen. Milliman’s research has also helped to illuminate the faerie world as it related to an Elizabethan audience. He says, “I want to prepare audiences for a Midsummer no one would have expected.”

An Elizabethan audience would have regarded the “Faerie World” as being a very real threat to sinners in their human society and believed that their wrongdoings could result in punishments or torture from vengeful faeries. While our understanding of “fairies” today has been infiltrated by the cute, Disney characters many of us know and love, this production plans to use the fearing subconscious to inspire the faerie world of Titania, Oberon, and Puck. Check out Milliman’s dramaturgical guide to learn more.

Angela Rose Longo as Hermia and Sarah Stryker as Lysander. Photos by Kimberly Reilly.

Costume designer and second-year graduate student Asaki Kuruma’s ambitious design conjures three distinct worlds: the regal Athenian court, ominous faeries, and lower-class actors. While audiences might not see wings on these faeries, they can expect to feel as though these haunting spirits are from a world mortals dare not enter. What’s more, she has created silhouettes that allow female bodied actors to inhabit male roles in a way that is realistic and affecting. Kuruma blends repurposed materials, classical silhouettes, and couture inspiration to wardrobe a large ensemble, each of whom play multiple roles.

Deepening the world of the play is set designer Stephanie Hansen. Hansen’s unified set marries the natural forest and classical architectural structures in order to suggest that these locations are far from separate and that the powers and mysteries of the woods are, in fact, an extension of the desires of the real world. Jerold Forsyth’s lighting design will illuminate the foliage of the woods and create the dark and starry skies required to evoke the shadowy nighttime. John Stovicek’s soundscape will emphasize the play’s bewitching themes, bringing encroaching winds and haunting lullabies into the mix of theatrical spectacle.

Sarah Stryker as Lysander. Photos by Kimberly Reilly.

For those of you who haven’t seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream before, you might want to check out a more traditional production of the play before you see Villanova Theatre’s modern re-imagining. Don’t worry, Falvey has you covered. We have two DVD versions of the play in our permanent collection, we have the 1994 issue of The Villanovan that reports a previous production of Midsummer, and you can stream at least 3 different productions of the play through our subscription to Digital Theatre +. We also have access to the BBC version of Midsummer with video and text transcripts. Finally, check out the Midsummer educational guide from Villanova Theatre.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is on stage from November 12 to 24. Buy your tickets here.


Daniella Snyder HeadshotDaniella Snyder is so excited to see Villanova Theatre’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her favorite Shakespearean play is Othello. She also wants to thank Sarah Wingo, the Falvey Subject Librarian for English, Theatre, and Romance Languages, for her help and information about valuable Shakespearean resources.


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New Resources for LGBTQ Research: LGBT Magazine Archive and LGBTQ Thought and Culture

LGBTQ Resources ScreenshotThe library has recently purchased access to two essential LGBTQ+ research resources: Alexander Street’s LGBT Thought and Culture and Proquest’s LGBT Magazine archive. These new additions will greatly bolster the University’s LGBTQ+ research resources and help fill important gaps in our LGBTQ+ and Gender and Women’s Studies collections.

LGBT Thought and Culture provides coverage of the essential works and archival documents of the global LGBTQ+ movement. It includes the Pat Rocco and Jeanne Cordova collections, which contain speeches, correspondences, and ephemeral from these important LGBTQ+ activists. The collection also includes the Magnus Hirshfeld collection, which includes professional correspondence, confidential reports, and court documents from the renowned early 20th century sex researcher.

The collection includes a huge array of limiters including subject heading, archival collections, and media-type, allowing researchers to hone in on very specific aspects of LGBTQ+ culture. Whenever possible the resource includes a high definition direct scan of the source material with a sidebar table of contents for the scanned resource.

The LGBT Magazine Archive feature full coverage of 26 of the most influential LGBTQ+ magazine and newspapers. This archive also includes, for the first time, the entire run of the Advocate from its inception in 1967 to the present. The ProQuest interface allows researchers to search all the tiles simultaneously or restrict their searching to a specific title or titles. A place of publication limiter also allows researchers to search by region.

Both resources will provide researchers with long overdue access to a huge store of LGBTQ+ primary resources.

For any research-related questions regarding LGBTQ+ or gender studies, contact Susan Turkel,  the Sociology & Criminology, Global Interdisciplinary Studies, and Gender & Women’s Studies librarian.


Rob LeBlanc is First year Experience Librarian at Falvey Library.


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Use Data from ICPSR this Fall

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Source: ICPSR

ICPSR makes integrating data into your course easy with a host of instructional materials! Check out their website for data-driven exercises, the Crosstab Assignment Builder, and specific data modules.

 

Students who use ICPSR data for a project might consider entering the ICPSR Research Paper Competition. Students with a passion for data might pursue the ICPSR summer internship program.

 


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Recent DVD Arrivals

Thinking of adding some media to your syllabus? Take a look at the DVDs that arrived in the library this summer! Browse the highlights below.

Academy Award Nominees, Best Picture

Argo (Winner)
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Beasts of Southern Wild
Les Miserables
Django Unchained

Documentary Films

Big Mama
A devoted grandmother struggles to raise her orphan grandson alone in southcentral Los Angeles.

Terra Blight
Examines America’s consumption of technology and the global problem of e-waste. The documentary traces the life cycle of computers from creation to disposal, and uncovers how these products are disposed of and where exactly they wind up.

5 Broken Cameras
A deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil’in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements.

See more!


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ICPSR Unveils New Website Design

ICPSR, the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, unveiled its new website design on September 4, 2012. Explore the redesigned site.

ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community.


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Welcome Back, Faculty!

Welcome back to campus! Falvey Memorial Library is ready to help you and your students meet all of your research goals this semester.

Don’t forget to take advantages of Falvey’s services:

If you are requiring your students to complete a research project, please consider scheduling a library workshop, or requesting a tailored course guide. Workshops can be conducted in one of the library’s classrooms, or a librarian would be happy to come to you. Act now: calendars fill quickly!

Librarians for Sociology, Criminal Justice, Psychology, Education, and Communication:

Kristyna Carroll
610-519-5391
kristyna.carroll@villanova.edu
Room 223

Kimberley Bugg
610-519-3073
kimberley.bugg@villanova.edu
Room 227


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Recent DVD Arrivals

The library has received many DVDs across the social sciences recently.  Ease into the new semester with some new documentaries or movies.  As always, see a few highlights below, or browse the full list.

SoLa: Louisiana Water Stories
Documentary Film (2010)
Investigates how the exploitation of Southern Louisiana’s abundant natural resources compromised the resiliency of its ecology and culture, thus multiplying the effects of the BP oil spill and Hurricane Katrina.

Waiting for “Superman”
Documentary Film (2011)
Provides an engaging and inspiring look at public education in the United States. [This documentary] has helped launch a movement to achieve a real and lasting change through the compelling stories of five unforgettable students such as Emily, a Silicon Valley eighth-grader who is afraid of being labeled as unfit for college, and Francisco, a Bronx first-grader whose mom will do anything to give him a shot at a better life.

Biutiful
Academy Award Nominee (2010)
Uxbal is a man on the wrong side of the law who struggles to provide for his children on the dangerous streets of Barcelona. As fate encircles him, Uxbal learns to accept the realities of life, whether bright, bad, or biutiful.

 

Not Just a Game
Documentary (2010)
We’ve been told again and again that sports and politics don’t mix. In this documentary, Dave Zirin, sports editor of The Nation magazine, takes viewers on a tour of the good, the bad, and the ugly of American sports culture — showing how sports have helped both to stabilize and to disrupt the political status quo throughout history. Explores how American sports, at their worst, have reinforced repressive political ideas and institutions by glamorizing things like militarism, racism, sexism, and homophobia, as well as looking at a history of rebel athletes who dared to fight for social justice beyond the field of play.

Beginners
Feature Film (2011)
Golden Globe® nominee Ewan McGregor (Star Wars I, II, III), Academy Award® nominee Christopher Plummer (Inside Man), and Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds) star in Beginners, an uplifting comedy about how funny and transformative life can be. When graphic designer Oliver (McGregor) meets free-spirited Anna (Laurent) shortly after his father (Plummer) has passed away, Oliver realizes just how much of a beginner he is when it comes to long-lasting romantic love. Memories of his father, who, following the death of his wife of 45 years, came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full, energized, and wonderfully tumultuous gay life, encourage Oliver to open himself up to the potential of a true relationship. Inspired by writer/director Mike Mills’ own father. (Amazon.com product description)


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SUMMER INSTITUTE FOR SEXUALITIES, CULTURES AND POLITICS

 

15th OHRID SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2012

SUMMER INSTITUTE FOR SEXUALITIES, CULTURES AND POLITICS

August 12th-30th, Ohrid, Macedonia

Full info here

The Summer Institute for Sexuality, Culture and Politics is a new permanent project initiated by the Department for Gender Studies at the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities “Euro-Balkan”, Skopje, Macedonia.

The general aim of the Institute is to gather young post-graduate students, activists, scholars and teaching staff from both Eastern and Western Europe and promote a shared platform for research and trans-disciplinary theoretical reflection on the complex modes of interweaving sexuality, culture and politics, and consequently of exchanging and questioning geopolitically determined discourses in the research of sexualities, gender studies, and queer theory. Our idea is to provide students, scholars and teachers with the opportunity to question, decenter and democratize these areas by way of deferring the notion of theoretical and geopolitical privilege which is often implied by these research areas, and thus to introduce new models of rethinking context-specific phenomena related to sexualities and, vice versa, to enrich theoretical paradigms with context specific phenomena and research. In this way, the Institute’s long-term goal is to:

  1. strategically stimulate the particularization and application of key ideas and theories in sexuality research locally and to
  2. universalize and popularize crucial and underprivileged positions and ideas on the European level, regardless of the  ast/West divide which is still central to the development of queer theory and sexuality research.

Our endeavor is not to relativize the embeddedness and situatedness of knowledges about sexualities, but to recognize and disrupt the existing invisible borders that obstruct the free dissemination of ideas as they are being determined by various hegemonic forces – political, educational, economic – in both Eastern and Western contexts of doing academic and artistic work related with our desires, bodies, and sexualities.

Please find the full descritpion and information about the Summer Institute. We would also kindly ask you to forward and publicize this information to other interested institutions and individuals.

For any further questions and information, please contact the Summer Institute coordinators:

Slavco Dimitrov, slavco.euba@gmail.com
Stanimir Panayotov, spanayotov@gmail.com

Department of Gender Studies
“Euro-Balkan” Institute
No. 63, “Partizanski odredi” Blvd
Skopje, Republic of Macedonia
tel/fax: +389 2 3075570
e-mail: genderstudiesskopje@gmail.com

www.euba.org.mk
www.identities.org.mk
www.gendersee.org.mk


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ICPSR Undergraduate Summer Internship

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world’s largest archive of digital social science data, is now accepting applications for its annual summer internship program. ICPSR is a unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. ICPSR’s data are the foundation for thousands of research articles, reports, and books. Findings from these data are put to use by scholars, policy analysts, policy makers, the media, and the public.

Interns spend ten weeks from June 4 – August 10, 2012, at ICPSR (Ann Arbor, Michigan), during which they will:

  • Work in small groups and with faculty mentors to complete research projects resulting in conference-ready posters
  • Gain experience using statistical programs such as SAS, SPSS, and Stata to check data, working in both UNIX and Windows environments
  • Attend courses in the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research
  • Participate in a weekly Lunch and Lecture series that covers topics related to social science research and professional development.

Compensation:
$3,000 – $5000* stipend, room and partial-board in university housing, and a scholarship covering the cost of fees, texts, and materials for coursework in the ICPSR Summer Program.


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Two New Guides

Introducing two new library guides!

Finding Full Text

This guide includes several video tutorials demonstrating different methods for accessing the full text of library materials.  Topics include how to access the full text when you have a full or partial article citation, how to link to full text when searching a library database, how to find full text from the library’s online catalog, and how to link to the library’s full text subscriptions through Google Scholar.

DOI: Digital Object Identifier

Have you been painstakingly searching out DOIs for your reference lists but don’t really understand what they are all about or how they are useful to you?  This guide covers what a DOI is, where to find it, how to cite it, and how to use it to quickly find articles.


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Last Modified: November 9, 2011

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