Hutchins Library News Blog

Meg Colwell, a student in Ray Gonzalez's Ceramics class, set up an art installation at the library today. She presented the installation to the class this afternoon. In the photo below, she is the student wearing green standing to the right next to the art piece. Ms. Colwell has also included an artist statement, which  you can read below. Her installation will remain at the library for the next few days.

Hutchins Library has a tradition of hosting student art and installations, and we are happy Ms. Colwell shared her talents and art with her class and the college community.

Artist Statement:

My multiples project is intended to raise awareness of, and protest against, rape culture. Rape culture is the appropriation of rape. The media is the perfect outlet for rape culture to fester, spread, and thrive. For instance, TV sitcoms, movies, songs, etc. often joke about or make light of sexual assault. A good example is the horror, "Blurred Lines," by Robin Thicke. The song's title explicitly references consent (or rather, the lack of), and continues to tear down any sort of appropriate sexual conduct throughout the rest of the song.

Another good example is the slogan Bud Light printed on their beer, which I have replicated. "The perfect beer for taking 'no' out of the equation." Bud Light is endorsing rape culture to make money off of desensitized consumers, while also contributing to the desensitizing. I believe the multiples project was the most appropriate project to incorporate rape culture into. When you look at the bottles, you'll read the slogan over and over again. This helps replicate how we become so oblivious to society's diseases. The repetitive nature of the bottles represents how we can hear something so often it begins to seem normal. The multiple pieces also represent how many people are being affected by these messages. Rape culture is not particular to the mind it invades, and is projected throughout the media and our everyday lives always. Hence, the television. The TV is broken and filled with the bottles to depict how the media is full of these messages, and how messed up it is.

I hope this raises awareness and we call do our part to fight rape culture.

Karim Nagi

March 31, 2016, 3:00PM

Phelp Stokes

Berea College Convocation

​Co-sponsored with the Francis and Louise Hutchins Center for International Education.

Karim Nagi, musician, performer and orator, shows how Arabs can be misunderstood in the U.S. and how the arts can help familiarize people with Arab culture. Through his interactive and performance-based presentation, Nagi provides examples of Arab music and dance to educate and enthrall non-Arab audiences.

Karim Nagi is a native Egyptian drummer, DJ, composer and folk dancer. He is the creator of Turbo Tabla , and has released four internationally distributed CDs of this unique brand of Arab House/Electronica using acoustic instruments. Karim has authored instructional DVDs for the Tabla/Doumbek, Riqq tambourine, Maqam & Taqsim, Drum Solo for Dance, and Arab Folk Dance.

He is well versed in the ultra-traditional styles of music, and has lead the Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble since 1999. He promotes and fosters the study of Arab dance in the USA as the director of the Arab Dance Seminar. Karim performs and teaches Tahteeb Cane Dance, Dabka Line Dance, and Zikr Sufi Dance.

Come check out our book display and these items listed below!

Music and Media in the Arab World by Michael Frishkopf (Editor)

Call Number: E-Book

ISBN: 1617976032

Since the turn of the twentieth century the dramatic rise of mass media has profoundly transformed music practices in the Arab world. Music has adapted to successive forms of media dissemination--from phonograph cylinders to MP3s--each subjected to the political and economic forces of its particular era and region. Carried by mass media, the broader culture of Arab music has been thoroughly transformed as well. Simultaneously, mass mediated music has become a powerful social force. While parallel processes have unfolded worldwide, their implications in the Arabic-speaking world have thus far received little scholarly attention.This provocative volume features sixteen new essays examining these issues, especially televised music and the controversial new genre of the music video. Perceptive voices--both emerging and established--represent a wide variety of academic disciplines. Incisive essays by Egyptian critics display the textures of public Arabic discourse to an English readership. Authors address the key issues of contemporary Arab society--gender and sexuality, Islam, class, economy, power, and nation--as refracted through the culture of mediated music. Interconnected by a web of recurrent concepts, this collection transcends music to become an important resource for the study of contemporary Arab society and culture.Contributors: Wael Abdel Fattah, Yasser Abdel-Latif, Moataz Abdel Aziz, Tamim Al-Barghouti, Mounir Al Wassimi, Walter Armbrust, Elisabeth Cestor, Hani Darwish, Walid El Khachab, Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri, James Grippo, Patricia Kubala, Katherine Meizel, Zein Nassar, Ibrahim Saleh, Laith Ulaby.

Modern Arab Art by Nada M. Shabout

Call Number: 709.174 S524m 2007 - Circulating (3rd Floor)

ISBN: 0813031508

"Groundbreaking. Shabout elucidates two critical issues that have thus far received inadequate scholarly attention--the distinction between Islamic Art and Arab Art and the relatedness of the political and artistic processes in the history of Arab modernity."--Shiva Balaghi, coeditor of Picturing Iran: Art, Society and Revolution "One of the first publications to consider the various cultural and social conditions that have helped shape Modern Arab Art as a recent phenomenon linked to the rise of Arab identity, the impact of western art training, and a search for a contemporary language which links with Islamic art but is discontinuous with it."--Fran Lloyd, Kingston University   "Art is one way to visualize the interconnectedness of people and this book shows us how related in influence and aspirations we all are."--Linnea S. Hedrick, Miami University Modern Arab Art provides a historical and theoretical overview of the subject from the 1940s through today. With particular emphasis on production, reception, and the intersection between art and politics in Iraq and Palestine, Nada Shabout reveals the fallacy in Western fascination with Arab art as a timeless and exotic "other."  

The Arab World by Halim I. Barakat

Call Number: 909.097 B224a - Circulating (3rd Floor)

ISBN: 0520079078

This wide-ranging examination of Arab society and culture offers a unique opportunity to know the Arab world from an Arab point of view. Halim Barakat, an expatriate Syrian who is both a scholar and a novelist, emphasizes the dynamic changes and diverse patterns that have characterized the Middle East since the mid-19th century. His is a picture that differs dramatically from the static one portrayed by much of Western scholarship. Barakat maintains that the unequal power relationships between Western imperial forces and Arabs have strongly influenced Western writing, thereby limiting our understanding of what it means to be Arab.

Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People by Jhally, Sut. Earp, Jeremy. Shaheen, Simon. Killoy, Andrew. Patierno, Mary. Shaheen, Jack G., 1935- Media Education Foundation.

Call Number: DVD 791.4308 R327 2006 - DVD Collection (2nd Floor)

ISBN: 193286900X

Based on the book of the same title by Jack Shaheen. Throughout its history Hollywood has portrayed Arabs as buffoons or bandits. The video seeks to rectify this stereotyping by comparing it to other forms of racist imagery and by suggesting alternative narratives that treat the Arabs as human, not demons.

 

Count Your Way Through the Arab World by James Haskins; Dana Gustafson (Illustrator)

Call Number: 909.097 H351c - Childrens & Young Adults (1st Floor)

ISBN: 0876144873

Uses Arabic numerals from one to ten to introduce concepts about Arab countries and Arab culture.

GYUDE MOORE

March 24, 2016, 3:00PM

A Berea College Convocation

Sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Learning through Service (CELTS). Service Convocation.

In all communities, patterns of privilege and power persist, perpetuated through enforcement of clear lines of separation or “margins.” Gyude Moore, ’06, Liberia’s Minister of Public Works asserts that the role of just people everywhere is to regard margins with skepticism and to push them back further and further.
 

A Berea College graduate, William Gyude Moore, was appointed as one of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s cabinet-level ministers. Moore was head of his country’s Public Works Ministry.

From 2009 until 2012, he was Senior Aide in the Office of the President.

Moore currently serves as Deputy Chief of Staff/Head of the Program Delivery Unit in the Executive Office of the President.

Privilege, Power, and Difference by Allan G. Johnson

Call Number: 303.3 J661p 2001 - Book Display (2nd floor vending area)

This brief supplemental book provides students with an easily applied theoretical model for thinking about systems of privilege and difference. Writing in accessible, conversational prose, Johnson joins theory with engaging examples in ways that enable students to see the nature and consequences of privilege and their connection to it.

 

 

 

Privilege by Michael S. Kimmel; Abby L. Ferber

Call Number: 305.509 P961 2014 - (Book Display 2nd floor vending area)

Privilege is about more than being white, wealthy, and male--as Michael Kimmel, Abby Ferber, and a wide range of contributors make clear in this innovative and timely anthology. In an era when "diversity” is too often shorthand for "of color” and/or "female,” the personal and analytical essays in this collection explore the multifaceted nature of social location and consider how gender, class, race, sexual orientation, (dis)ability and religion interact to create nuanced layers of privilege and oppression. The individual essays are powerfully thought-provoking; taken together, they help guide students to a deep understanding of the dynamics of diversity and stratification, advantage and power. The third edition features ten new or newly-recast essays which will help students understand the intersectional nature of privilege and oppression. Enhanced pedagogy (including new discussion questions and "personal connections” activities at the conclusion of each section) encourages students to examine their own assumptions, beliefs, values, practices, and social locations--without becoming overwhelmed.

 

Learning Privilege by Adam Howard

Call Number: 371.962 H848L 2008 - (Book Display 2nd floor vending area)

How can teachers bridge the gap between their commitments to social justice and their day to day practice? This is the question author Adam Howard asked as he began teaching at an elite private school and the question that led him to conduct a six-year study on affluent schooling. Unfamiliar with the educational landscape of privilege and abundance, he began exploring the burning questions he had as a teacher on the lessons affluent students are taught in schooling about their place in the world, their relationships with others, and who they are. the concept of privilege itself and the cultural and social processes in schooling that reinforce and regenerate privilege. Howard explores what educators, students and families at elite schools value most in education and how these values guide ways of knowing and doing that both create high standards for their educational programs and reinforce privilege as a collective identity. This book illustrates the ways that affluent students construct their own privilegea - not, fundamentally, as what they have, but, rather, as who they are.

March is Women's History Month and to celebrate, we have created a display at the back of the Reference area dedicated to female writers which spans genres, styles, and time. Since our display area is limited in space, the books chosen are just the tiniest drop in an ocean of inspiring women's writing.

To supplement our display, we have created a reading list below of additional favorite titles. Like our display, it is by no means exhaustive.

Stop by and check out a book from the display or stop by the Reference Desk for assistance locating any of the additional titles listed below.

Further Reading 

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver; Camille Kingsolver; Steven L. Hopp

Call Number: 641.097 K554a 2007 - Circulating (3rd Floor)

 

Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet. "This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."

 

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange

Call Number: 821.914 S528f 2010 - Circulating (3rd Floor)

 

Passionate and fearless, Shange's words reveal what it meant to be of color and female in the twentieth century.Here is the complete text, with stage directions, of a groundbreaking dramatic prose poem written in vivid and powerful language that resonates with unusual beauty in its fierce message to the world.

 

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez

Call Number: A4735h - Fiction (3rd Floor between 822-823)

 

Uprooted from their family home in the Dominican Republic, the four Garcia sisters-Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia-arrive in New York City in 1960 to find a life far different from the genteel existence of maids, manicures, and extended family they left behind. What they have lost-and what they find-is revealed in the fifteen interconnected stories that make up this exquisite novel from one of the premiere novelists of our time.

 

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Call Number: 828 A584i 1993 - Circulating (3rd Floor)

 

This memoir traces Maya Angelou's childhood in a small, rural community during the 1930s. Filled with images and recollections that point to the dignity and courage of black men and women, Angelou paints a sometimes disquieting, but always affecting picture of the people, and the times, that touched her life.

 

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Call Number: B869j 1940 - Fiction (3rd Floor between 822-823)

 

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves?

 

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

Call Number: J948n 2007 - Fiction (3rd Floor between 822-823)

 

Screenwriter, director, and star of the acclaimed film Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection.

 

 

 

 

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Call Number: 822 H249r Copy 2 - Circulating (3rd Floor)

 

When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. "A play that changed American theater forever."--The New York Times.

 

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Call Number: T195s 1992 - Fiction (3rd Floor between 822-823)

 

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.

 

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

Call Number: O985ta 2013 - Fiction (3rd Floor between 822-823)

 

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there's only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates' bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who's lived more than a century.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Call Number: J14w - Fiction (3rd Floor between 822-823)

 

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.