Category Archives: Features

Read, Hot and Digitized: Italian Poetry, Translated and Sonorized

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this new series, librarians from UTL’s Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship.  Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.


For most of human history, poetry has been an oral tradition, with poets singing their verses to an audience rather than writing them down and disseminating them in print. Italianpoetry.it, an independent digital humanities project without academic affiliation, aims to share the beauty and lyricism of recited Italian poetry with a wider audience, offering recordings of Italian poems alongside the original text and English translations.

The site, which is frequently updated with new poems, focuses on a simple but very effective content model. Poems are published in their entirety in the original Italian, with the English translation of the text beneath each line. An audio file containing the recording of the poem is embedded at the top of each page. When the audio file is played, the word being read is highlighted in both the Italian and the English translation, allowing users to follow along with the recording and to see how the word order and phrasing in the translation compares to the original text. This allows for a streamlined, user-friendly experience that facilitates appreciation and enjoyment of the original text—both for its sonority and its meaning—regardless of the user’s knowledge of Italian. Each poem also has a brief write-up by the site’s creator at the bottom of the page, providing additional context for the work. A guide to navigating the site is also provided to make it easy for new users to interact with its content.

Screenshot of a poem from the site.
The page for the poem “A una zanzara.”

The site is intentionally simple and, per the author, “unapologetically retro-looking” in its appearance, allowing users to focus on the site content without interference from unnecessary or distracting web elements. Focusing on simplicity is not only an aesthetic choice, though, as it helps make the site more accessible for users with slower or unstable internet connections who may have trouble browsing more complex webpages. The site uses the BAS Web Services set of tools to synchronize the poems’ texts with the audio recordings. The BAS Web Services are provided by the Bavarian Archive for Speech Signals, and provide a broad and valuable set of tools for speech sciences and technology.

Screenshot of a list of poem titles available on the site.
The selection of all poems available on the site, including options to sort by composition date, date added to the site, author, and title.

In addition to the main pages created for each poem, there is also an audio-only podcast version of the poems for those who would like to listen to the audio without the interactive elements of the main site. The site’s creator makes clear that the poems selected are in no way representative of Italian poetry as a whole, and that they were chosen at the author’s discretion. This adds a personal touch to the site sometimes absent from more comprehensive digital projects.

Screenshot of the site's podcast offerings.
The podcast audio files included on the site.

Italianpoetry.it is a valuable resource for those wishing to explore Italian poetry, regardless of their experience with the Italian language or knowledge of its history. While intentionally a personal selection rather than a wide-ranging survey of the Italian poetic tradition, its content offers a great introduction to that tradition that can spur further interest and exploration. It also provides a very interesting and accessible way to explore the relationships between written and spoken text, sonority and textual structure, and translation and original texts.


For more information, please consult the UTL resources below:

Picchione, John, Lawrence R. Smith, John Picchione, and Lawrence R. Smith. Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry : An Anthology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019.

Lind, L. R. (Levi Robert). Lyric Poetry of the Italian Renaissance; an Anthology with Verse Translations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954.

Lucchi, Lorna de’. An Anthology of Italian Poems, 13th-19th Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922.

Bonaffini, Luigi, and Joseph Perricone, eds. Poets of the Italian Diaspora : A Bilingual Anthology. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.

Staff Highlighter: Yi Shan

What’s your title, and what do you do for UTL?

Yi Shan: My title is East Asian Studies Librarian. I manage all East Asian language materials at the UTL and support the research and teaching of East Asia-related topics and disciplines on UT campus.

Any library (UT or otherwise) memory worth sharing?

YS: I can never forget my research trip to the Seikado Bunko Library in Tokyo. It’s a relatively small private collection but holds some of the rarest and most valuable premodern Chinese books. The reading room rules are very strict. You have to leave your shoes outside (like many Japanese places), wash your hands, and leave your electronics before entering the reading room. Interestingly, however, you can eat (!) your lunch inside the reading room. There is a designated lunch table at least by the time of my visit in 2019.

I found a lot of valuable primary sources for my dissertation there, and the librarian was so kind, knowledgeable, and helpful. The most exciting story is that I was so lucky to stumble upon a presumably Ming dynasty (1368–1644) manuscript that one 18th-century collector that I studied rescued from a stack of old scrap paper.

You’ve lived in many places. How does Austin compare?

YS: Austin is such a lovely city! Having lived in a few giant cities, I find the size of Austin perfectly manageable. In some way, I surprisingly find that the view of Zilker and Barton Springs area resembles a lot to my hometown, Taiyuan, at least in the way it appears in my memory. I used to say that I was okay with the cold but not the heat. Now I guess I am getting there to make my body think otherwise. Anyway, I spent my college years in one of the most notorious four “oven” cities in China, and having survived last summer in Austin, I guess I can cope. But how the heat has been trending for the future does scare me a lot.


What’s something most people don’t know about you?

YS: I love to cook. This interest in culinary art started during my grad school, and I always went to the occasion cooking lessons at the student union. Another version of myself always dreams to own and operate a restaurant. I’m pretty familiar with cooking in Chinese, French, Italian, and Japanese styles, and now I am foraying into Thai. I like to bake as well, but the oven has not been treating me as kindly as the stove has. Or when I bake a cake, it starts to hate me. 

As a historian, what makes you gravitate to the past, and how does it influence your perspective on the future?

YS: Trained mostly as a premodernist, I think what makes me excited about the past is you really have to use imagination to understand it. There’s the saying that “past is a foreign country,” but I think it is more than that. It’s like a whole different phenomenological and ontological universe. By imagination, I don’t mean that historians are inventing things and events that never existed or happened. It is that we so often need to question the take-for-granted categories and ways we thought what the past was like.

I think the future, like the past, invites bold imaginations. Building a better future, like understanding the past, needs us both to engage and work with the structures we have today but also to break free from their constraints. It’s all about defamiliarizing the familiar and bravely embracing the unfamiliar with an open and empathetic heart.

I understand you may be a train enthusiast. What is it about trains?

YS: I think my enthusiasm for all mass-transportation vehicles, trains, civil aviation, etc, all comes down to my like to travel to faraway places. I spent a big chunk of my childhood in my grandparents’ apartment right next to a train station (the complex and the station share a wall). My grandfather would tell me, “Look, this train is bound for Beijing, that is for Shanghai, that is for Xi’an,” and I always wanted to take the trains to those places.

And most times I just like the feeling of being on the way, and it has to be a long way that you don’t have to constantly worry about missing your stop. The sound of a train ride or the engines of an aircraft kind of calms me down, and I like to read and write on my way. However, I do hate packing for a trip and spending time at a train station or an airport. 

Favorite book, movie or album?

YS: Min Jin Lee’s novel Pachinko is my favorite of all fiction (very few) I’ve read since 2019. Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone (Honglou meng) is an all-time favorite. Since 2022, I’ve been following the #readingthestone reading-together project (mostly listening to their podcasts) started by Prof. Eileen Chow at Duke University. If you are interested in getting small doses of this greatest piece of Chinese literature (in both original and translation), this is the perfect place to start.

Recently I’ve started Four Treasures of the Sky, a fiction inspired by the Dream of the Red Chamber, and I am loving it.

Favorite food or drink? Make it at home or go out (and where)?

YS: My favorite food recently is Cantonese roasted duck. Ho Ho Chinese Barbecue’s roasted duck is, so far, the best that I’ve found in town. It’s very difficult to make at home, and best to leave for the pros. 

What’s the future hold?

YS: There are so many new developments in Higher Education that make the future both exciting and scary. But knowledge/expertise and a strong collection should always be our best assets to embrace the challenges and grow from them. Right now, I am exploring OCR and automated textual processing of CJK (the library jargon for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) texts and also identifying strategic growth points for our East Asian collections.

In the long run, together with my UTL colleagues and the learning community on campus, I hope to build such a collection that makes UT a strong and unique resource for East Asian studies in the world. I hope this collection will not only serve the existing and emerging research and pedagogical needs but also foster, nurture, and inspire scholarly and pedagogical innovations.

Librarian Lens: Customer Reviews Data

The Librarian Lens is an occasional column featuring librarians who support the research lifecycle across a range of disciplines sharing research tips, updates about both Libraries-provided and open source resources, and related topics intended to intrigue, demystify and highlight topics of interest to the research-curious. Posted columns are provided or curated by librarians from the University of Texas Libraries STEM and Social Science Engagement Team.


Customer reviews data are what you look at when you’re deciding which product to buy, which restaurant to eat at, or which hotel to reserve. The data consists of star ratings and the written or video reviews from customers. Most people consult customer review data when making online purchasing decisions.

Customer reviews are also considered a form of advertising. In advertising lingo, customer review data is known as “electronic word of mouth,” meaning it comes from a customer’s experience, not the manufacturer or service provider. Traditional “word of mouth” advertising, especially from people we know, is the most trusted form of advertising. Electronic word of mouth can also influence purchase behavior. Academic researchers have measured that influence and concluded that the most trustable and influential reviews are those that are high quality, i.e., they contain a lot of detail and the reviewer posts regularly.

However, is trusting reviews from people we don’t know a good idea? Like the answer to many questions involving human-centered behaviors, the answer is, it depends.

On its face, customer review data is a compilation of crowd sourced wisdom. If we believe that people are genuinely reporting their experience with the product or service, then why not rely on customer review data?

Guilt

There are many reasons why people don’t always give their honest opinions in a review. They may feel guilty about leaving a poor review. This is common for services such as ridesharing or house rentals in which a consumer’s written opinion can impact the service provider’s ability to earn income. It also happens because service providers can review the consumer. No one wants to be labeled as difficult. These reviews are not always reliable.

Distraction/Hidden Agenda

Other reasons for consumers not giving honest reviews may be unrelated to their experience with the product or service. They could be hungry or in a hurry or they may not read the product’s instructions. Or they could have a political disagreement with the company. There is no way for you as a consumer to know about these conditions unless you research the reviewer and check their other reviews. You may not have time for this kind of investigation.

Consumer Reports tests electric lights in different ways, including for longevity and brightness. Consumer Reports, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Expertise

Another reason to consider not using customer review data is because people leaving the reviews may not be experts in the field. In fact, most reviews are from people who do not have special expertise. You may have noticed this in movie reviews. Film critics review films differently from most people, such as in the case the Netflix show Squid Game: The Challenge. This is why it is interesting to look at a site like Rotten Tomatoes which contains reviews from both experts (Tomatometer) and regular folks (Audience Score).

In situations in which you are not spending a large amount of money, it may not matter all that much what the reviewers write. After all, how much difference is there between one type of hand lotion and another? More details help. The reviewer could write I live in a dry environment, and this product improved my skin’s texture. This why sites that sell clothing often ask reviewers to fill in other criteria such as age and body type so that you can try to choose a reviewer that matches you so that you can use their review to make your best guess about whether to make a purchase.

If you are spending a large amount of money, or procuring something for a child, it’s a good idea to use expert reviews. For investment advice or car purchases, please turn to the folks who work in this field. Or for safety considerations for items such as car seats or booster seats, consult the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. For technical products, such as hardware or networking equipment, use sources such a CNET or PC Magazine.

Another consideration is durability. Some organizations, such as Consumer Reports and Wirecutter are testing experts. They don’t specialize in a particular industry, but they have expertise in testing. For home products such as microwaves or washing machines, it’s a good idea to read reviews from these organizations, because they’ve done the kind of tests where they’ve held a watch under water for 8 hours, or slammed an oven door repeatedly, unlike the regular consumers who post reviews to Best Buy or Lowes. 

Fake Reviews

In a recently published article, New York Times reporter Stuart A. Thompson said that fake reviews are so pervasive that nearly every online shopper has most likely encountered one.  Amazon blocked more than 200 million suspected fake reviews last year and Google said it removed 115 million rule-breaking reviews from Maps in 2022. It is an on-going problem. In some case, people are paid to write fake reviews, so the reviews are coming from individuals, not bots. Sometimes fake review writers are given a script to use, so searching for a phrase that comes up repeatedly could indicate a fake review.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence, or AI could help or hinder the fake review problem. You may have noticed that Amazon now provides summaries of reviews for products. If you click on Reviews, there’s a section that says “Customers say” which summarizes comments about product attributes. In small text beneath the summary paragraph, it says “AI generated from text of customer reviews.” It’s likely that fake reviews are included in this collection, and that skews the summary to be more positive, since fake reviews are almost always positive. One way to combat this is to read the negative reviews.

Customer Review Data was the subject of a UT Libraries’ Data & Donuts Workshop in October 2023. Please link to the Zoom recording for more information on customer reviews.

Read, Hot and Digitized: Fashion History Timeline — Dress Across the Ages

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from the UT Libraries Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship. Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of, and future creative contributions to, the growing fields of digital scholarship.

The Fashion History Timeline is an online, open access resource that seamlessly marries dress history with modern technology, offering users an interactive and engaging way to explore the world of art and fashion. Its roots started in art history, when Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) faculty and students developed a pilot project in 2015, aiming to make fashion history accessible to everyone, regardless of background or prior knowledge. This innovative platform boasts an array of features that redefine how we learn about and appreciate costume throughout the ages.

Screenshot depicting both menswear and womenswear in the early 1900’s.

For example, if I were curious about western garments in the early 1900’s, I would simply click on the appropriate time period, which is available in the main drop down menu. The page features an overview of styles worn and when scrolling further, displays recommendations for primary or secondary sources to further my research. The site also offers articles dedicated to both historical dress in BIPOC and LGBTQ+ cultures. Contributors to Fashion History Timeline range from academic professionals and experts within the fashion and art history fields around the world.

Screenshot showing the visual appearance of Fashion History Timeline’s source database.

One of Fashion History Timeline’s standout features is its reliance on and promotion of published writings.  For example, the source database, a curated annotated bibliography wherein users can dive into citations for a vast bibliographic list of textbooks, catalogs, and monographs that span across time and cultures. I found this to be helpful for digital research, with these particular sources being used as foundational pieces in building the database. The visual approach with information transforms the learning experience, allowing users to gain a deeper understanding of the context and significance attributed to each source. In addition, the website also has a Zotero database, where students and researchers can draw information as well as contribute to the wealth of bibliographic information. The sources are organized in a similar manner as the Fashion History Timeline website, emphasizing cohesion as a goal across the indexing.

As a former apparel design student, I would have loved to explore the Fashion History Timeline in my time as an undergrad. I highly recommend researchers, sewists, and anyone who is interested in costuming to utilize it. Comprehensive images and information for fashion history are not always easy to come by and this database fulfills a longtime need for accessible, reliable information about dress.


Want to learn more about fashion history? Check out these resources from the UT Libraries:

Cumming, V., Cunnington, C. W., & Cunnington, P. E. (2000). The dictionary of fashion history (2nd Ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.

Mahawatte, R., & Willson, J. (Eds.). (2023). Dangerous bodies: New global perspectives on fashion and transgression. Springer International Publishing.

Sposito, S. (2021). Fashion – the ultimate history of costume: From prehistory to the present (2nd Ed.). (K. Krell, Trans.). Promopress.

Want to get started on using Zotero? Check out this LibGuide about citation managers.

Read, Hot and Digitized: Rabbinics, Meet Analytics

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from the UT Libraries Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship. Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of, and future creative contributions to, the growing fields of digital scholarship.


The E-lijah Lab (text in Hebrew) is a digital humanities lab in the Department of Jewish History & Bible Studies at the University of Haifa in Northern Israel. Among many projects that map the history of Jewish culture, HaMapah (Hebrew for ‘The Map’), founded in 2018 by then PhD students Elli Fischer and Moshe Schorr (now a Rabbi and a software engineer respectively), “aims to bring modern tools of quantitative and geographic analysis to Rabbinic literature[1].” Mapping ‘rabbinic networks’ that are based on responsa (Jewish legal texts written in the framework of questions and answers), the project reveals new data that “shows spheres of influence through time and across space.”

Schorr explains that “a true responsum, the answer that a rabbi writes to a query posed by another rabbi, is the basic unit of rabbinic authority. It orders the two correspondents hierarchically; the one asking acknowledges the greater expertise of the one answering, thereby expanding the latter’s influence.” Moreover, “because the hierarchy is … emerging implicitly from the deference of the secondary and tertiary elite, it can tell us more about the dynamics of influence, reputation, and expertise than many other forms of legal authority.”

The metadata of responsa – when they were written, to whom, by whom, from where, and to where they were sent – can be digitally quantified and visualized in different ways. HaMapah examines the effects of national and cultural borders on the spread of rabbinic authority. Data visualization shows the ‘reach’ of Rabbis who lived near one another, either at the same time or in succession, demonstrating rabbis’ authority.

For example, while mapping Noda Bi-Yehuda, a two volume responsa work by Rabbi Yechezkel ben Yehuda HaLevi Landau (1713-1793) who was an influential authority in halakha (Jewish law), the researchers discovered significant differences between the two volumes, as they represent distinct parts of his career.

Volumes 1 & 2 ‘heatmaps’ of Noda Bi-Yehuda (https://tinyurl.com/2pzmv4t7)
Volumes 1 & 2 ‘heatmaps’ of Noda Bi-Yehuda (https://tinyurl.com/2pzmv4t7)

The responsa in volume 1, published in 1776, are scattered across a wider geographic area than those in volume 2 (published posthumously in 1810), even though it contains only about half the number of responsa and was composed earlier. Those in volume 2 are much more densely concentrated in Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary, whereas Volume 1 includes more responsa to Germany and Poland. It seems that the publisher, who was actually Landau’s son, wanted the contents of the book to shape and perhaps geographically expand his father’s reputation. The knowledge gained through visualization leads Fischer to assert that “the implication is that Rabbi Landau had a certain geographic consciousness. He was aware that a greater reach implied greater halakhic authority and had a mental map of his sphere of influence, or at least of the sphere of influence he wished to project to his readers.”[2]

The success of HaMapah has branched out to adjacent projects, including a Searchable Map of Hebrew Place Names, and the comprehensive database of Prenumeranten. Similar to today’s crowdfunding campaigns, the Prenumeranten were lists of readers who presubscribed to books before publication. Those lists were printed in around 1700 Hebrew books published during the 18th-20th centuries. They document almost 10,000 distinct places of Jewish residence, mainly in Europe, as well as the names of hundreds of thousands of individuals. Each subscription – noting a specific person, living in a specific place, buying a specific book in a specific year – is a data point in a vast network of cultural interactions. For example, Fischer used this vast data set to reconstruct the itineraries of three booksellers as they sold subscriptions throughout Europe in the mid-19th century. He also researched the reception of specific authors and their works in various communities, such as that of Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna (1720-1797), better known as the Vilna Gaon.

“Rabbinic Wanderlust and Cultural Transfer” – a visualization of some of the trips taken by Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi, a collector, dealer, copyist, and publisher of Jewish manuscripts.
Rabbinic Wanderlust and Cultural Transfer” – a visualization of some of the trips taken by Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi, a collector, dealer, copyist, and publisher of Jewish manuscripts.

The HaMapah and Prenumeranten projects effectively combine historical documents and cutting-edge technologies to shed new light on the intersections of travel, book culture, and Jewish history.  While these projects are still in their infancy, I encourage readers to visit the website for conference papers on their early findings and to learn more about these important projects.


Additional reading:

Fischer, Elli and Schorr, Moshe. Analysis of Metadata in Responsa : Methods and Findings. Innovations in Digital Jewish Heritage Studies – the 1st International Haifa Conference. July 13, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV9N1Zt15Uc (video).

Haas, Peter. Responsa : literary history of a rabbinic genre : Atlanta, Ga. : Scholars Press. 1996.

https://openlibrary-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/books/OL8151172M/Responsa

Freehof, Solomon Bennett. The responsa literature : Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1955. https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/9e1640/alma991031462519706011

Flatto, Sharon. The kabbalistic culture of eighteenth-century Prague : Ezekiel Landau (the ‘Noda Biyehudah’) and his contemporaries : Oxford, UK ; Portland, Or. : Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010. https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/9e1640/alma991035983629706011 

Fischer, Elli and Ganzel, Tova. A Glimpse of Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann’s Methods as a Decisor of Halakhah (Hebrew). JSIJ – Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal.

https://jewish-faculty.biu.ac.il/sites/jewish-faculty/files/shared/JSIJ22/ganzel_fischer.pdf

Fischer, Elli. The Prenumeranten Project: Digitizing Pre-Subscriber Lists. Digital Forum Showcases, European Association of Jewish Studies. January 21, 2022. https://www.eurojewishstudies.org/digital-forum-showcase-reports/the-prenumeranten-project-digitizing-pre-subscriber-lists/


[1] Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire spectrum of rabbinic writings throughout Jewish history. However, the term often refers specifically to literature from the Talmudic era, as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic writing. In academic research, Rabbinic literature includes the Mishnah, Halakha, Tosefta, Talmud, Midrash, and related writings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbinic_literature).

[2] https://blog.hamapah.org/mapping/super-rabbi/

Archive of Prominent Nicaraguan Writer and Political Figure Gioconda Belli Comes to Texas

AUSTIN, Texas—The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at The University of Texas at Austin has acquired the archive of prominent Nicaraguan writer and activist Gioconda Belli.

The acclaimed author of nine novels, a memoir, two volumes of essays, nine poetry collections and four children’s books, Belli is the recipient of several major literary prizes over her decades-long career, including the prestigious Casa de las Américas Prize for poetry (1978) and the Reina Sofía de Ibero-American Poetry Prize (2023).

Known for her feminist writing and erotic poetry, Belli has a broad international following, with works translated into at least 20 languages. The English translation of her memoir, The Country under My Skin, was a finalist for a Los Angeles Times book prize. 

A woman in her sixties with light brown wavy hair stands at a stone wall at a place where the wall separates. Her hands rest on the parts of the wall beside her on each side. She smiles at the camera. She is wearing a white long-sleeved shirt, black short-sleeved jacket and pants, and a bright red necklace made of two strands of large beads.
Gioconda Belli, photo by Daniel Mordzinski

Belli was among the leaders of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which defeated the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle in the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979, and she worked in support of the Sandinista government until 1993. Amid her increasingly vocal criticism of the Daniel Ortega–Rosario Murillo regime, Belli was forcibly expelled, stripped of her citizenship and declared a traitor to her country in February 2023 along with 93 other Nicaraguans. This is her second exile.

A faded newspaper page from La Prensa Literaria has the name Gioconda Belli at the top in large sans serif capital letters. The page contains various poems and other text. The legend "Poemas y prosemas" appears in large blue serif type in the middle of the page. Along the righthand side of the page there is a large black cartoon illustration of a Classic-age woman who holds a long sword in one hand and, aloft, the severed head of a man, blood dripping from it, in the other.
Newspaper clipping, “Poemas y prosemas,” published in La Prensa Literaria, 1970s. Benson Latin American Collection.

In celebration of her archive’s arrival at the Benson Collection, Belli will visit the campus of The University of Texas at Austin from March 19-22, 2024, for a series of events, including a public lecture.

Belli discussed her work, the contents of her archive and her decision to entrust it to the Benson in an interview with Benson director Melissa Guy. Read the interview in Spanish here or in English translation.

“As a longtime admirer of her literary work and her activism, I am honored that Gioconda has entrusted the Benson with her collection,” Guy said. “We look forward to engaging students and faculty with the archive, and to welcoming Nicaragua’s greatest living poet to Austin in the near future.”


For more information: Susanna Sharpe, Communications Coordinator, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections.

Highlighting Diverse Collections: Hispanic Heritage Month 2023

Hispanic Heritage Month is observed September 15 through October 15 and celebrates Hispanic Americans’ contributions to our nation and society. Before this observation comes to a close, let’s look at some poets who have enriched America with collections accessible at UT Libraries.


The Carrying: Poems

https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/be14ds/alma991047777739706011

From (the first Latina) US Poet Laureate, Ada Limon, comes a collection of poetry that won the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award. “Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance.”

Slow Lightning: Poems

https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/be14ds/alma991034096259706011

The first Latino Yale Series of Younger Poets award winner, Eduardo C Corral seamlessly braids English and Spanish and hurtles across literary and linguistic borders toward a lyricism that slows down experience. He employs a range of forms and phrasing, bringing the vivid particulars of his experiences as a Chicano and gay man to the page.

Loose Woman: Poems

https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/9e1640/alma991006576279706011

Sandra Cisneros is the bestselling author of The House on Mango Street and winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. A candid, sexy and wonderfully mood-strewn collection of poetry that celebrates the female aspects of love, from the reflective to the overtly erotic.

Every Day We Get More Illegal

https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/be14ds/alma991058175747406011

In this collection of poems, written during and immediately after two years on the road as United States Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera reports back on his travels through contemporary America with the multiple powers of the many voices and many textures of every day in America.

Postcolonial Love Poem

https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/9e1640/alma991058037948506011

Written by the first Latina to win a Pulitzer Prize in poetry, Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness.

Unaccompanied

https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/9e1640/alma991045914909706011

Calling into question the concept of the American Dream, Javier Zamora reimagines home, fusing music and memory to address the quandaries that tear families apart and—if we’re lucky—inspire the building of lives anew in this debut poetry collection.

The Woman I Kept to Myself

https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/9e1640/alma991057019529706011

works of award-winning poet and novelist Julia Alvarez are rich with the language and influences of two cultures: the Dominican Republic of her childhood and the America of her youth and adulthood. They have shaped her writing just as they have shaped her life.

Visit the Highlighting Diverse Collections LibGuide.

Read, Hot and Digitized: Katherine Dunham and the Data of Dance

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from the UT Libraries Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship. Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of, and future creative contributions to, the growing fields of digital scholarship.


How does a dance move? Where might a dancer go? Such questions most likely evoke images of choreography, references to physical steps performed or patterns made across the floor. But dance scholars Kate Elswit and Harmony Bench are tracking movement from a different perspective, following the touring and travel routes of groundbreaking choreographer Katherine Dunham and her dance company from 1930-1960. Their project, Dunham’s Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, documents not only Dunham’s own itineraries, but also accounts for “the over 300 dancers, drummers, and singers who appeared with her; and the shifting configurations of the nearly 300 repertory entities they performed.”

The Katherine Dunham Dance Company was the first African American modern dance company, touring extensively both internationally and across the United States, often disrupting the imposed structures of racial segregation. Dunham was also an anthropologist, author, and social activist, challenging the limited roles and opportunities available to Black women artists.

Dunham’s Data features three core datasets paired with both interactive and static visualizations and contextualized through accompanying essays and related media. Taken together, the materials “provide new means to understand the relationships between thousands of locations, and hundreds of performers and pieces across decades of Dunham’s performing career, and ultimately elaborate how movement moves across bodies and geographies.”

The Everyday Itinerary Dataset spans the years 1947-1960, logging Dunham’s daily whereabouts during a period of consistent international touring, including accommodations, modes of transport, and venues visited. Users can access and mobilize this dataset through an Interactive Timeline of Travel, tracing the global and durational scope of Dunham’s artistic reach. There is also a Well-being Timeline Collage, which I am particularly drawn to, that sequences clippings from personal correspondence, evidencing the emotional labor that undergirded Dunham’s career.

Interactive Timeline of Katherine Dunham’s Travel 1947-60, from Dunham’s Data
Interactive Timeline of Katherine Dunham’s Travel 1947-60, from Dunham’s Data

The Personnel Check-In Dataset encompasses the “comings and goings” of company members over time. The visualizations derived from this dataset, for example, the Interactive Chord Diagram, illustrate “who shared space and time together,” offering “a sense of the transmission of embodied knowledge across hundreds of performers.”

Interactive Chord Diagram of Katherine Dunham’s Dancers, Drummers, and Singers, 1947-60, from Dunham’s Data
Interactive Chord Diagram of Katherine Dunham’s Dancers, Drummers, and Singers, 1947-60, from Dunham’s Data

I find the visualizations related to the Repertory Dataset to be especially compelling. The Interactive Inspiration Map depicts locations that Dunham identified as sites of inspiration for choreographic works, enlivened by quotations from her program notes; and The Interactive Network of Dunham Company Repertory highlights connections across pieces and performances. These visualizations prompt me to consider the citational and iterative dynamics of choreography and creative process.

Interactive Network of Dunham Company Repertory, from Dunham’s Data
Interactive Network of Dunham Company Repertory, from Dunham’s Data

Elswit and Bench, along with a team of postdoctoral research assistants, manually curated the datasets from previously undigitized primary source materials held in seven different archives. User Guides explain the organization and decision-making processes behind each dataset, making clear that all data is inherently interpretive. Code and tutorials are available in Github repositories for a few of the visualizations, which were largely created by Antonio Jimenez Mavillard using Python and Javascript libraries and a range of other tools. Instructional resources and a preliminary Teaching Toolkit offer helpful ideas for engagement and entry points into what, for some audiences, might feel like dense material to dive into.

Overall, the project gives us a multi-faceted lens to explore how attention to moving bodies can expand and enrich historical inquiry.


Want to know more about Katherine Dunham? Check out these UT Libraries resources:

Dunham, Katherine., Vèvè A. Clark, and Sarah East. Johnson. Kaiso! : Writings by and About Katherine Dunham. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. Print.

 Dee Das, Joanna. Katherine Dunham : Dance and the African Diaspora. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017. Print.

Dunham, Katherine, and Paul Bieschke. The HistoryMakers Video Oral History with Katherine Dunham. Chicago, Illinois: The HistoryMakers, 2016. Film.

Staff Highlighter: Erika Coronado

Today we meet Erika Coronado, who joined the Libraries in Februrary 2022 and spends her days landing content for our users and finding ways to stretch our budgets while doing so.


What made you decide to work in a library?

Erika Coronado: As someone who is an avid reader, I enjoy being surrounded by books. I love that working in libraries gives me access to thousands of books and many other valuable resources. I feel I work in paradise.

What’s your title, and what do you do for UTL?

EC: I am an Electronic Resources Coordinator and form part of the Content Management team. I am responsible for reviewing and negotiating the licenses of our e-resources, setting up library trials, collecting and maintaining usage statistics of e-resources, and assisting with some of the troubleshooting. I also help maintain the integrity of data within Alma.

What motivates you to wake up and go to work?

EC: I take great satisfaction in helping others and knowing that I can make a positive impact.

What are you most proud of in your job?

EC: The proudest moment for me is each time I realize I can save our library funds – either by negotiating quotes and getting a much lower cost, catching orders that can be canceled, or preventing purchases from happening either because we already own or have access to the resource.

What has been your best experience at the Libraries?

EC: The many good relationships I have developed during the time I have work for the Libraries. I work with such amazing and talented colleagues who are always willing to lend a hand. I am also grateful to work with a team that values and fosters learning, new ideas, and promotes growth.


What’s something most people don’t know about you?

EC: I spend a great deal of my time assembling jigsaw puzzles. I love all kinds, but especially the ones that challenge me!

Dogs or cats?

EC: I don’t have any pets, but I prefer dogs. I sometimes pet sit two dogs – a cute chubby Chihuahua (who is missing an eye) and a very friendly, energetic mutt.

Favorite book, movie or album?

EC: This is hard to answer, as I don’t have favorites. My favorite book genres are psychological thrillers, mystery, and crime novels. I love Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. I also love books that keep me up at night. I am currently reading books by the author Alex North. I find his novels spooky and engrossing – his books are hard to put down.

Cook at home, or go out for dinner? What and/or where?

EC: I have bad eating habits as I tend to eat out most of the time. I usually prefer to explore food trucks over to restaurants, and since I like all kinds of cuisine, there are lots to choose from. One of my favorite places is Beirut Restaurant, a food truck that serves delicious Lebanese dishes.

What’s the future hold?

EC: Travel, read more, and continue learning!

READ HOT AND DIGITIZED: An atlas of redlining, “urban renewal,” and environmental racism.

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from the UT Libraries Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship. Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of, and future creative contributions to, the growing fields of digital scholarship.


Segregation By Design is a compelling personal project by Adam Paul Susaneck, an architect based in New York City. Through spatial analysis, demographic data, historical photos, and extensive research, Susaneck effectively illustrates “how the American city was methodically hollowed out based on race.” It offers an insightful perspective on an important issue that has shaped the country’s history and continues to impact its present. The project’s goal is threefold: to create a print “Atlas of Urban Renewal,” to create digital materials for local groups opposing ongoing freeway expansion, and to raise awareness through social media.

screenshot of the Chicago, Illinois page on Segregation By Design. The top says Chicago and the three images. One of an aerial photo with the highway highlighted yellow, it says Dan Ryan Expressway. Next to it is an image of two maps side by side with neighborhoods indicated, it says Freeway and Unban Renewal. The third in the row is a detail of two photographs of building with a pond in the foreground for 1938 and part of an photograph of an empty lot where the building stood in 2022.
Screenshot of the Chicago, Illinois page on Segregation By Design.

The website offers a preview of what the print atlas will look like. 180 municipalities that received federal funding from the 1956 Federal Highway Act have been analyzed, and so far, there are 14 cities profiled. Each city has multiple sections, such as “Freeways & Urban Renewal,” “Redlining,” and “Transit.” Focus is given to specific highways, neighborhoods, environmental impacts, or buildings.

For example, the “Chicago: Dan Ryan Expressway (I-90)” section includes an animated swipe map juxtaposing aerial photos from 1938 and 1984 illustrating the “path of destruction” and displacement when the I-90 highway was built in the 1960s. It explains that over 81,000 people, many of whom were BIPOC or recent immigrants, were displaced.

Still screenshot from a video juxtaposing black and white, aerial photographs of Chicago from 1938 and 1984. There is a yellow line over the 1984 image indicating freeways that were built between 1938 and 1984.
Video still from Chicago: Dan Ryan Expressway by Segregation By Design.

Likewise, the “Chicago: Bronzeville” section profiles a neighborhood decimated by “urban renewal.” Before and after photos of buildings are combined with Susaneck’s transposed line drawings of buildings over present-day photos, masterfully visualizing and mapping redlining of the area.

side by side comparison of a photo from 1938 and 2022. The 1938 photograph shows an apartment building with a pond in front and the 2022 image shows outline of the building over an empty field.

Redlining is a discriminatory practice that systematically denies services such as mortgages, insurance loans, and other financial services to specific area residents based on race or ethnicity.

A redlining map of Chicago with annotations explaining language used in the notes that were provided with the original map.
Redlining map of Chicago with selected comments from the redlinign notes from Segregation By Design.

Yet another section, “Chicago: Pekin Theater,” focuses on the first black-owned theater in the United States, which was appropriated by the city through eminent domain, a process that left large swaths of the neighborhood cleared for “urban renewal.” The lot has been vacant since 1940. 

Photograph of the inside of Pekin Theater from 1905. There is decorative red border around an image of a large room with a balcony. There's a marching band in the foreground and hundreds of spectators. Everyone is facing the camera.
Established in 1905, the Pekin Theater was the first Black-owned musical theater in the country from Segregation By Design.

The project’s second goal is to create digital materials for local groups opposing ongoing freeway expansion. Susaneck states, “As state governments continue to mindlessly widen freeways, community groups in cities across the country have formed in opposition. This project aims to support these groups by creating easily digestible graphics to spread awareness.” One such project is Stop TxDOT I-45 in Houston, Texas. Their mission is “to challenge the status quo of transportation policy and to fight for all people in Houston to be able to participate in the decisions that affect health, safety, and mobility in their communities.” Similarly, the “Houston: Flooding” section of Segregation By Design discusses the environmental impact of highways and urban sprawl and how nonwhite residents are disproportionately affected by natural disasters.

aerial photograph of Houston Texas with highway I-45 highlighted in yellow and proposed highway expansion highlighted in red. Annotations note the names of neighborhoods to be demolished and how many people will be displaced.
Houston, Texas, proposed I-45 expansion from Segregation By Design.

Susaneck is accomplishing his third project objective of raising awareness through social media. In fact, Segregation By Design first caught my eye with an Instagram post that highlighted a striking map of Atlanta followed by bird’s-eye images of highway construction clearance from 1956 to 1990. The caption is lengthy for Instagram but is engaging. Susaneck describes the images in it: “The first image shows the freeway right of way overlaid on the 1936 HOLC redlining map and a 1960 aerial photo. The subsequent images show the destruction wrought by freeway construction.” Susaneck then explains who was affected by the highway construction, gives the names of neighborhoods decimated, and expounds on the history of redlining. Instagram lends itself to the graphic nature of his work, the dynamic swipe maps (often used to illustrate before and after destructive events), then-and-now comparisons, and augmented photos highlighting the significance of buildings as well as homes and communities that have been demolished.

A 1960 aerial photo with a 1936 redlining map and freeway right of way overlayed, Segregation By Design.
A 1960 aerial photo with a 1936 redlining map and freeway right of way overlayed, Segregation By Design.

For readers not on Instagram who still want updates, you can sign up to receive new entries via email, including high-resolution images and maps. Supporters can contribute to this largely self-funded project through the subscription-based platform Patreon.

Segregation By Design uses engaging infographics and directness to help explain the complicated policies contributing to systemic racism in our country. It’s invaluable in making these issues more manageable and understandable. I look forward to adding the Atlas of Urban Renewal print version to the Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL) Map Collection.


Books highlighted on Segregation By Design:

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: a Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017.

McGhee, Heather. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. One World, 2021.

Seo, Sarah A. Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom. Harvard University Press, 2019.

Fullilove, Mindy Thompson. Root Shock: How Tearing up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It. New Village Press, 2016.

Connolly, N. D. B. A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida. The University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Other suggested reading:

American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History – Susaneck cites this digital project from the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond throughout his works.

Red, Hot, and Digitized: New Website Maps Discriminatory Redlining Practices – an earlier Read, Hot, and Digitized post about Mapping Inequity from the American Panorama.