April 2015 Archives

Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall, Tuesday May 5, 1:00 pm

Remi Castonguay and Suzanne Lovejoy from the Gilmore Music Library, and Brian Meacham, Archive and Special Collections Manager at the Yale Film Study Center, will present on an Arcadia-funded project entitled: Preserving Films in the Benny Goodman Archive. The Benny Goodman Archive is an amazing special collection in the Gilmore Music Library and part of it is composed of 16 and 35 mm films that were in serious need of preservation treatment. The films mostly date from the 1950s with contents ranging from home movies, to Hollywood feature excerpts, television broadcasts, and documentary footage. This presentation will provide an historical overview of the Goodman Archive to put the films into a larger context. Then, we will discuss some basic aspects of film preservation and the challenges this collection presented. Most importantly, we will provide an overview of the film collection’s contents through the projection of numerous excerpts. Join us for this exciting opportunity to watch some rarely seen footage. BYO Popcorn! All welcome!

This talk is sponsored by SCOPA.

Thursday, April 30, 1:30-3:00 PM, Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS), A001

This talk on Thursday–the latest in the Day of Data series–will examine a computer simulation recreating the universe from the Big Bang to today.

We live in a remarkable era. We can directly see how our universe has evolved over time in the past 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang. Today, we use astronomical observations and computer simulations in combination to test some of our wildest imaginations about what our universe is made of and how it began and evolved over the cosmic time. In this lecture, Daisuke Nagai will describe the state of affairs on our understanding of the universe and how computational modeling plays an essential role in interpreting ever-growing astronomical datasets of galaxies, stars, and planets and addressing some of the most confounding questions about our own universe.

Daisuke Nagai is an Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Yale University. His research interests lie in the area of cosmology and astrophysics, specializing in theoretical and computational modeling of the structure formation of the Universe and its application to cosmology.

Opening hours in Bass Library and Sterling Memorial Library have been extended in the coming weeks. Between April 24 and May 4, Bass Library will remain open until 2:45 am Sunday-Thursday, and until 11:45 pm on Friday and Saturday. Bass will also open early at 10:00 am on Sunday. Sterling will remain open until 11:45 on April 24, April 25, and May 2. To view the daily hours for seven of Yale’s libraries, access the Library homepage. From the homepage, follow the links at “Today’s Hours” to see hours for the entire week at all libraries.

The staff and collections of Oral History of American Music (OHAM) have moved from their previous location on Prospect Street to Sterling Memorial Library (SML). OHAM’s director, Libby Van Cleve, is now located in a reconstructed office in room 332 on the third floor of SML. Adjacent to her office is the work area for OHAM Assistant Maura Valenti and student workers, as well as the audio workstation and the OHAM collection. OHAM’s Research Archivist, Anne Rhodes, and Founder, Vivian Perlis, have moved to a new office located in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library. This affords easy public access that will facilitate the work of OHAM’s many users.
 
OHAM was founded in 1969 with a pioneering study of Charles Ives conducted by Vivian Perlis. During its first decades of existence, it was affiliated with the Yale School of Music, and offices were located in Stoeckel Hall. In 2006, it moved to a location on Prospect Street, the first floor of a former stately home. The offices were gracious and elegant, but far from central campus. In 2010, OHAM became an official component of the Gilmore Music Library, part of the Yale University Library. The move to SML situates OHAM just down the hall from the Benjamin Franklin collection, the Boswell Papers, and the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. The collection will be more easily accessed, and the OHAM staff will be better able to use library services and to take part in the larger central campus community.
 
OHAM’s phone and fax numbers, PO Box, and website remain the same:

Libby Van Cleve, Director: 203-432-8586
Anne Rhodes, Research Archivist: 203-432-1988
Vivian Perlis, Founder: 203-432-1988
Fax: 203-432-1989
PO Box 208307, New Haven, CT  06520-8307  
OHAM Website

Oral History of American Music is the preeminent project in the field of music dedicated to the collection and preservation of oral and video memoirs in the voices of the creative musicians of our time. It is a special kind of history, one that captures sights and sounds and recreates the spontaneity of a moment in time. Over 2,500 audio and video recordings make up this unique and valuable collection.

Sunday, April 26 at 4:00pm at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, 80 Wall Street.

This recital is in honor of the 25th anniversary of the endowment of the Joseph and Rosalyn Newman Yiddish Collection at the Yale University Library. It will be performed by Yale students with accompaniment by Jay Gitlin on the piano and Vinny Oneppo on the clarinet. The recital will be preceded with talks given by Mark Slobin, the Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, who will speak on "Yiddish Sheet Music in the Tenement Era"; and Dr. Michael Ochs, retired Richard F. French Music Librarian at Harvard University and senior lecturer on music, who will speak about "Tailoring an Operetta to Its Audience: Joseph Rumshinsky’s Di goldene kale (1923)". The event is sponsored by the Yale Library Program for Judaic Studies, the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, the Yale Program in Judaic Studies, and the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. The recital and talks will be followed by a reception to which all are welcome.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015 3:00pm at the Center for Science and Social Science Information (CSSSI), 219 Prospect Street

In conjunction with the new CSSSI media exhibit "Anthropology at Yale", Professor Claudia Valeggia will share aspects of her current research on the biological and cultural correlates of life transitions among the indigenous Toba/Qom people of northern Argentina. She is the Director of the Chaco Area Reproductive Ecology Program and the Co-director of the Reproductive Ecology Laboratory. A reception will immediately follow her talk and all are welcome!

The Digital Humanities Lab partnered with the Digital Humanities Working Group to bring Yohei Igarashi to campus for a talk titled "Statistical Analysis at the Birth of Close Reading." The abstract for his talk was:

"What is the actual historical relation between close reading and non-close or 'distant' methods of textual analysis? This talk demonstrates that I. A. Richards’s inaugural theories of close reading were shaped by his era’s statistical analyses, particularly the genre of the frequency-based word list. Recovering an important chapter from the history of literary studies that has eluded digital humanities discourse, this talk hopes to enrich our understanding of the digital humanities as well as close reading by looking to the former’s pre-digital history."

Yohei Igarashi is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. He received his Ph.D. from New York University and specializes in poetry and poetics — particularly British Romantic poetry — literary history, media studies, and the histories of reading, writing, and literary criticism. He participates as well in the Concept Lab, a project of the Cambridge Centre for Digital Knowledge, based in CRASSH at the University of Cambridge.

The talk was held in Bass Library L01.