Considered “the founder of modern philosophy,” René Descartes is famous for the declaration, “I think, therefore I am.” (While this formulation is famous in Latin as “Cogito, ergo sum,” it was originally written in French as “Je pense, donc je suis.”)
The SCA has Descartes’s Meditationes de Prima Philosophia. This book, as the title indicates, was first published in Latin in Paris in 1641, then updated and published again in Amsterdam in 1642. The item that the SCA has, also in Latin, was published in Amsterdam in 1685.
Descartes made his famous argument in his first book, Discours de la Methode, which he published in 1637 and he reiterated and expounded on it in his Meditationes, his most popular book today, according to Descartes scholar Kurt Smith.
Descartes died of a respiratory infection in 1650. His books were banned by the church in 1663. The item at the SCA was published in 1685 and, despite his early death, despite the banning, he continues to be read and discussed. Contemporary interpretations of his philosophy continue to be published in various academic journals and The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism, a collection of fifty essays from “an international group of leading scholars of early modern philosophy,” was published in 2019.
The SCA copy is part of the collection that came from the old Klapper Library. It does not have the original binding but the textblock is in good condition.
New Subscription: The QC Library has a new subscription to the following resource:
Human Kinetics: Health Care in Sport and Exercise
Access Provider: Bloomsbury Description: Human Kinetics Health Care in Sport and Exercise is a comprehensive digital collection of 33 ebooks and over 450 videos (approximately 11 hours). Digitally exclusive on an unlimited access basis, this product offers students, researchers and instructors unrivaled access to Human Kinetics’ market-leading physical therapy, athletic training, and sport-related health care content. Format: E-books, Plays, Texts, Streaming Videos Access Portals:OneSearch, A-Z Database List
New Trial: The library has a trial to Drama Online for January 2022.
Drama Online
Access Provider: Bloomsbury Description: This award-winning digital library has been created as a response to the need for a high-quality online research tool for drama and literature students, professors, and teachers. It is the only resource to combine exclusively available playtext content and scholarly publications with filmed live performances, film adaptations, and audio plays. Note: Complimentary Access through January 31, 2022. Note 2: Titles are available in OneSearch Format: E-books, Plays, Texts, Streaming Videos Access Portals:OneSearch, A-Z Database List
On Saturday November 20th the QC Makerspace @ QC Library hosted QC Staff, Faculty, and one student (thanks, Kevin!) along with an associate from the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) for the kickoff event for ‘Make STEAM Q‘ – a project of Award # 1928565 issued by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award was issued the semester prior to lockdown in 2020, and since then this is our first large, group gathering (interim group meetups were virtual and online).
Trevor Taylor from NYSCI (seen here) facilitated ‘design thinking‘ workshops to inspire awareness of “human centered design” to address issues of empathy, ideation, and prototyping in problem-solving or challenge-driven moments.
One of these challenges was for participants to construct a self-portrait using supplied LEGO parts, with only 10 minutes to go from concept to completion – with discussion afterwards for each participant to discuss their thought process, material limitations, etc.
Renne Castro (Computer Science) contemplates his LEGO avatar.
A workshop later in the day provided 30 minutes to challenge the participants to construct a balloon-powered vehicle with little more than supplied materials and whatever else they could find around the facility.
The initial group of Faculty Fellows associated with the project come from various disciplines across the arts & sciences at Queens College (typically ‘STEM,’ or, preferably ‘STEAM’-aligned studies) who either already are or will be folding in making & design thinking components into their curriculum.
We’ll be talking about these courses, these professors, and hopefully the students involved with our research questions and applications in the years to come. For now congrats to the core team for their initial launch event during these transitional times, and stay tuned for more Make STEAM Q at Queens College (and from our partners at NYSCI in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park)!
Group photo from the kickoff event of Make STEAM Q on Saturday, November 20, 2021. Standing (left to right): Nick Normal, Bradley Bergey, Allan Edmond, Larry Liebovitch, Nathalia Holtzman, Christopher Hanusa, Sabrina Avila, James Mellone, Corinna Singleman, Jose Sanchez, Al-karim Gangji, Kevin Hernandez Kneeling (left to right): Renne Castro, William Blanford, Trevor Taylor, Matthew Greco, Danne Woo
(Classes currently associated with the project include: ARTS 282, ARTS 369, CSCI 100, DESN 214, DESN 265, DESN 270, ENSCI 112, MATH 128, MATH 250, PHYS 008, & PHYS 014)
Bleak House was Charles Dickens’s ninth novel, and, according to Dickens scholar Paul Schlicke, “technically his most ambitious novel and widely held to be his masterpiece.” The novel had four important editions while Dickens was alive—as monthly serials from 1852 to 1853 (in twenty parts that came out in nineteen pamphlets because the nineteenth and twentieth parts were combined), the Cheap Edition of 1858, the Library Edition of 1868, and the Charles Dickens Edition of 1869.
The first edition of the novel, the monthly serialization in nineteen pamphlets, is one of the most exciting items in the SCA collection of rare books.
Bleak House had mixed reviews when it first came out. While the structure of the novel was praised, its forceful indictment of oppressive social institutions and its straightforward didacticism were criticized by some. But each serial part sold well and allowed Dickens to accumulate enough wealth for a contemporary to call him a “literary Croesus.”
While many of us are probably aware that Dickens’s novels were serialized when they first came out, it is still extraordinary to see these original pamphlets—their pale blue covers, thin sheets, and Victorian advertisements are highly evocative of the era.
First-page advertisements
The advertisements, in particular—the specific items, and their descriptions and illustrations—are remarkable. The advertisements were for Dickens’s books as well as other authors’ and from other publications, but also for a variety of merchandise that included, among others, the following: waterproof garments (“No umbrella required”!); a variety of hair products, including an actual head of hair; skin ointment (“These medicines excel all others in the cure of scrofula or king’s evil, glandular and other unnatural swellings, scurvy, leprosy, and all diseases of the skin.”); frocks, coats, and pelisses; cloaks, hoods, hats, and bonnets; Parr’s Life Pills (“They mildly and speedily remove all Skin Eruptions, Sallowness of Complexion, Nervous Irritability, Sick Head-Ache, Depression of Spirits, Irregularity, or general derangement of the system.”); chrystal spectacles and cough jujube lozenges; life insurance policies and loans; Rimmel’s toilet vinegar; a chest expander; pulmonic wafers that will give “perfect freedom from coughs in ten minutes”; shawls and needles and “papier mache elegancies”; mourning outfits; a self-acting pipe tube which is a “novelty in smoking”; wools and parasols.
An article published in 1970 argues that reading Bleak House as a novel, “all at once from cover to cover,” is a misreading, that serialization was essential to Dickens’s art, that “the slow, deliberate pace of publication, and the suspense which the monthly interruption of the narrative naturally aroused,” is vital to understanding its artistry and implications.
A slow and deliberate pace. The suspense of monthly interruptions. Living as we do in a world in which we can binge-watch one whole season of a show on a single afternoon, it is, for most of us, an effort to read Bleak House as a novel “all at once from cover to cover” and it is difficult to imagine reading it as a serial in the course of a year and a half.
These first edition pamphlets are powerful aids for us to envision a different way of reading and entertainment, a different way of engaging with our imagination, perhaps even a different way of relating to time.
Join us on December 10 at 2pm for a workshop on Manifold, CUNY’s very own open-source publishing platform! During our time together you will learn how Manifold is being used across our 25 campuses and become familiar with different course models for using Manifold in your classroom. You will also learn how to create a project on Manifold, add texts and multi-media resources to a project, create a reading group, and learn how to annotate and place resources in a text.
This workshop is open to the QC community and coincides with the final event in the OER Faculty Fellowship Seminar Series for Fall 2021. The OER Faculty Fellowship trains QC faculty to find, adapt, and use open and zero-textbook-cost course materials. To learn more about the fellowship, or apply for Spring 2022, visit the OER Faculty Fellowship website.
The Library welcomes applications for the OER Faculty Fellowship program, now in its fourth year, for the 2021-2022 cohort! Applications are due by December 15, 2021.
Fellows will participate in a four-part seminar series that will guide them through the process of finding, creating, evaluating, and implementing open and/or zero-cost materials for a course that will run in Fall 2022 or Spring 2023. The fellowship carries a $2,000 stipend for the creation of a single-section course.
Fellowship Requirements
Both full-time and part-time faculty are eligible for the fellowship. Applicants are expected to clear their participation with their department chair prior to applying. If you are interested in converting a course with multiple sections from a pricey textbook to a free, open alternative, please contact Leila Walker at lwalker@qc.cuny.edu prior to applying, as an alternative arrangement involving multiple instructors and course leads may be more appropriate than an individual fellowship.
Faculty fellows commit to:
Actively participate in an OER fellowship seminar in Spring 2022, which will consist of four units with synchronous and asynchronous elements
Develop a fully OER or ZTC course (materials due June 6, 2022)
Teach at least one section of the OER or ZTC course in Fall 2022 or Spring 2023
Submit course materials to our institutional repository, CUNY Academic Works
Write a brief (200-500 word) end-of-fellowship narrative (due June 6, 2022)
Opportunities for Large-Scale Projects
The Library is also interested in partnering with course leads for those courses with multiple sections and high enrollments to develop high-quality course materials at a lower cost. The fellowship would offer training and a $2000 stipend for course leads, as well as a $500 stipend for faculty and adjuncts the first time they teach a section of a course using the zero-textbook-cost materials. We have had several successes with multiple section courses, including the creation of an OER lab manual for Biology under the guidance of Prof. Nathalia Holtzman, and the transition from an expensive homework system to a free, open-source alternative under the guidance of Prof. Chris Hanusa in the Math Department.
If faculty have any questions or would like to learn more about OER, they are encouraged to contact our OER coordinator, Dr. Leila Walker, Digital Scholarship Librarian at lwalker@qc.cuny.edu.
Resources for Native American Studies by James Tasato Mellone, Historical Cultural and Social Sciences Librarian
The QC Library celebrates Native American Heritage Month! It is fitting that this commemoration of Native American heritage occurs during Thanksgiving time. As such, we acknowledge that Native American history, culture, and society are intrinsic components of American life. Our recent climate crises have shown how essential it is for all Americans, indeed all of humanity, to adopt the physical and spiritual connections to the land that Native Americans have long held. Native American reverence for the earth is seen across the continent as first peoples advocate for clean water, land, and air.
As the leading advocacy cooperative for Native Americans, the National Congress of American Indians produces a State of Indian Nations report each year, as well as other publications like Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction, that can provide a window into current Native American life, including their environmental advocacy. For instance, we can learn that the more than 570 tribal nations of the United States inhabit reservations and trust land areas which encompass about 100 million acres, enough to make Native land equivalent to a fourth largest state in the U. S.
The archival collection of influential cross-media artist Barbara Rosenthal ’75, “Old Master of New Media,” has been acquired by Queens College CUNY in a combined sale and donation facilitated by a generous patron. The artist’s materials are being organized and transported in stages to the newly renovated Pine Tree Foundation Special Collections within the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library.
Born in the Bronx, Barbara Rosenthal—no relation to the library’s namesake—studied at numerous local institutions, including the Arts Students League of New York and New York University, before completing a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. At Queens College, she earned an MFA in painting. In the decades since she graduated, she built up an international career, holding solo exhibitions and residencies across North America and Europe and winning acclaim for her distinctive photography, installations, and performance art.
“Barbara Rosenthal’s lifetime of record-keeping, notes, drafts, versions, and materials for every project in many media, plus household and moment-to-moment life-recording and professional correspondences, holds enormous value for current and future generations of artists and researchers,” said Annie Tummino, Head of Special Collections and Archives. “Her archives are revelatory of the creative process in ways unique among our archival collections.”
Watch Rosenthal speak about her work, archival collection, and the acquisition here:
Welcome to the inaugural post of the new monthly series, “Treasures from Special Collections and Archives.” This series will initially feature items from the Rare Books and Print History Collections of the Department of Special Collections and Archives (SCA) but will eventually expand to feature items from other important collections held by the department.
To inaugurate the series, we are proud to announce that the SCA holds two copies of the first American edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. According to Blanck’s Bibliography of American Literature, there have been three printings of the first edition of this American classic. The two copies in the SCA are most likely from different printings because, while they have the same publication date, the two books are paginated differently.
A nearly fine copy of the first American edition is listed on AbeBooks for $45,000 and very good condition copies are listed for $12,000 to $15,000. The two copies at the SCA have been exposed to moisture and mold but have been professionally cleaned and are now in stable condition, thanks to the generosity of Shirley Klein, a lifelong bibliophile and loyal friend of Queens College. Both have the original blue cloth covers with gold-stamped stars and lovely illustrations. Over the longer term, the department hopes to acquire funding to repair the bindings and small tears in the volumes.
The first edition of this American classic came out in London first. It was published by Chatto and Windus and came out in June 1876. The American edition, published by the American Publishing Company, came out in December 1876. Between these two official editions, a pirated edition from Canada was published in July 1876. The case of the English edition is covered in red cloth instead of the blue cloth of the American edition and is considered rarer and more valuable. Biblioctopus sold a nearly fine copy for $60,000, and the Bodleian Libraries happily announced in 2012 that their copy, previously uncatalogued because it probably “slipped in the stack shelves,” was found during a move of library collections.
Remarkably enough, the original and complete manuscript of the novel, in Twain’s own handwriting and with his various erasures and emendations, has been preserved in the Booth Family Center for Special Collections at Georgetown University. Also called a holographic manuscript, it was the manuscript that Twain submitted for the typesetting of the American first edition and that he seemed to have allowed Elisha P. Bliss, the president of the American Publishing Company at the time, to keep after the publication of his novel. This manuscript was also exhibited at the MOMA in 1937.
The SCA also has one copy of the first American edition of the other Twain classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and a post about that treasure will be forthcoming in this series. All three of Twain’s first editions in the stewardship of the SCA are originally from a Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library Rare Book Collection which had formerly been held on the 6th floor of the library, but had been exposed to moisture and had suffered a mold outbreak. The entire collection was recently cleaned and remediated by a vendor. Head of Special Collections and Archives Annie Tummino wrote about its triumphant return to Rosenthal Library last year.
The SCA staff is currently busy working to preserve, process, and arrange these marvelous treasures so that they may be used and enjoyed by the Queens College community.
QC Research Highlights is a monthly blog series featuring work from Queens College (QC) authors in CUNY Academic Works. Fascinating, important research is happening here at QC and we want you to know about it! Sometimes (but not always) this series may feature several works on related topics; other times it will simply feature a few works of interest.
All the works featured in this series are available to read and download for free from CUNY Academic Works.
Local Knowledge, Universal (?) Applicability
Welcome to the November edition of QC Research Highlights! This month, I wanted to feature some articles that consider how things learned locally might be of interest both inside and outside that local context – and especially when we are learning about our local context, New York.
In “Education Faculty as Knowledge Brokers: Competing for Access to New York State Print Media and Policy Influence,” Nakia Gray-Nicolas (Education and Community Programs) and co-authors consider how education researchers can reach a larger public, thus influencing public debates about educational policy and practice. This article focuses specifically on the media in New York State. This article considers the reasons it’s so difficult for academics to get access to the media.
Communicating in different contexts is important to students as well as faculty. “Workin’ Languages: Who We Are Matters in Our Writing” is a book chapter by Sara Alvarez (English), Amy Wan (English), and Eunjeong Lee (formerly a member of the English department, now at the University of Houston). In this chapter, Alvarez, Wan, and Lee consider how to ensure that students’ rich linguistic diversity is valued in the writing classroom. The authors suggest strategies for supporting students as they recognize their own work as “language architects” and come to understand that their language strategies are valuable in an academic context.
We should all be interested in how the built environment of New York affects those who live and work here.Kara Schlichting (History) and coauthor Melanie Kiechle (Virginia Tech) consider how heat and ventilation can post health threats to city dwellers (and New Yorkers specifically) – during COVID, but also long before. Their article, “Invisible Inequalities: Persistent Health Threats in the Urban Built Environment,” considers the history of health reform in New York City through the lens of environmental inequality, with a reminder to think of cities as collections of people and not just landscapes. This perspective allows for a larger-scale structural look at how urban planning and public health are deeply intertwined.
Of course, New York is not just a built environment but also a natural one. César Castillo (Biology) worked with coauthors from the New York Botanical Garden and the US Department of Agriculture to describe a plant naturalized to New York in “First Report of Mummenhoffia alliacea (Brassicaceae) for New York.” This report includes information on how to identify this plant – one key is the scent!
A little further afield, Fred Cadieu (Physics) examines rocky planets in his article “A Consistent Model of Terrestrial Planet Magnetospheres and Rotations in Our Solar System.” In this article, he explains how the presence or absence of magnetospheres has affected the atmospheres and tectonic behavior of the four terrestrial planets of the solar system – Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars – and perhaps exoplanets as well.
Having taken us from New York all the way into the depths of space, I wish you all a happy and productive November!
Thanks to all the authors featured here for sharing their work in the repository!
This is one of a series of blog posts featuring faculty publications in CUNY Academic Works. Academic Works is a service of the CUNY Libraries dedicated to collecting and providing access to the research, scholarship, and creative and pedagogical work of the City University of New York. In service to CUNY’s mission as a public university, content in Academic Works is freely available to all.
