Spot Attends a Pop-Up Display

Posted on 17 April 2023 by Ruth — No Comments ↓

During the odd lunchtime during term, the Upper Library at Christ Church becomes host to pop-up displays of special collections material. Part of my Graduate Trainee role that I’ve really enjoyed is assisting with these displays, whether through invigilation, talking with visitors about the collection or selecting texts for display. Today I’ve put together a selection of texts that featured in our display on Early Modern conceptions of skin. Through the lens of travel books, anatomical texts and medical manuals we invited visitors to explore a range of cultural and medical understandings of skin during this period. I’ve chosen just three items from this display to share in this post today – read on for fugitives (of a kind), duels, and medical drama…

Johann Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum

It’s possible that one comes across most lift the flap books during childhood. Literary giants such as Eric Hill’s Spot Bakes a Cake[1] come to mind. In this charming story flaps serve as an important ingredient of the mischief and excitement of the book. A flap that takes the form of a wave of chocolate cake batter can be lifted by the intrepid reader to reveal Spot stirring up a storm beneath, for example.

A screen shot of a listing of spot bakes a cake on a book seller's site. The cover features spot the dog at a mixing bowl and the listing titles asys 'original lift the flap book'. — Literary masterpiece, Spot Bakes a Cake

Much to my dismay, we do not hold Spot Bakes a Cake in our collection at Christ Church, but that does not mean we are completely bereft of lift the flap books. Despite Abe Books listing this as the ‘Original Lift the Flap’, there are in fact earlier examples of such a technique, and one such text featured in our display.

Johann Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum (Augsburg, 1619) is the first anatomical atlas to use flaps to illustrate layers of anatomy. Instead of joining Spot in his mission to bake a birthday cake for his dad, you are invited to step into the shoes of the 17^th century physick, learning about the intricacies of the muscles, bones and beyond of the human body. The plates show first a male and a female figure surrounded by figures of isolated body parts, including the eye, ear, tongue and heart. All of these are represented at their different levels with flaps – the man and woman to a depth of 13 superimposed layers. Each new layer reveals what can be found in the body at different stages of a dissection.

A page from Johann Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum

A later edition of this text, published in 1670, sets out on the title page that this book contains:

‘an anatomie of the bodies of man and woman wherein the skin, veins, nerves, muscles, bones, sinews and ligaments are accurately delineated. And curiously pasted together, so as at first sight you may behold all the outward parts of man and woman. And by turning up the several dissections of the paper take a view of all their inwards’ [2].

The face of an 'ogre' or Medusa is the top layer of the femal figure on this page from Remmelin's book — A Medusa-like figure with snake hair is the first layer to this pregnant body – a somewhat foreboding starting point…

The flaps themselves are referred to as ‘dissections’ here, the act of the reader lifting a flap becoming amalgamated with the incision of the anatomist’s scalpel. ‘Curiously pasted together’ is a good description – the nature of the ‘lift the flap’ anatomy book imbues the medical diagram with an enact-able curiosity that only increases with interaction with the different layers.

Despite my attempts to tip the balance with this blog post, when it comes to breath-taking 17^th century anatomical books, the phrase ‘lift the flap’ is not bandied around with much regularity. Strange! Rather, they are grouped within a pioneering class of anatomical print known as the ‘fugitive sheet’ or ‘compound situs’. This technique is first recorded as being seen in 1538 in works by Heinrich Vogtherr, which made use of layers of pressed linen[3] to create the same effect we see in Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum.

These fugitive sheets would have been a fantastic way for users to understand the internal workings of their bodies, even without proximity to a cadaver. However, writing about Remmelin’s anatomised Eve, one commentator notes how the figures in these engravings ‘[sit] amid the horrific attributes of sin and death […]. If this is self-knowledge, one might prefer extroversion.’[4]

Gaspare Tagliacozzi’s De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem

Also included in our display was Gaspare Tagliacozzi’s De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem (Venice, 1597). The copy held at Christ Church is a pirated edition of the first book devoted entirely to plastic surgery. In fact, multiple un-official editions of this text appeared soon after the original due to its popularity[5].

Tagliacozzi’s stylish suit in action

The realities of plastic surgery met a real need in the 1500s, largely because duelling and violence were pretty rife. If you had taken a rapier to the face in a duel for your honour (perhaps your reputation is on the line when the last slice of chocolate cake has disappeared and you are found with crumbs round your mouth) a spot of light plastic surgery might be just what you’re after.

Around thirty years before Tagliacozzi wrote De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was taking some time out from considering the stars and turned to the far more terrestrial pursuit of losing his nose in a duel against Manderup Parsberg, his third cousin. While he and Parsberg later became friends, Tycho was landed with wearing a prosthetic nose for the rest of his life. Word on the 16^th century street was that this prosthesis was crafted from finest silver, but when Tycho’s corpse was exhumed in 2010, it was a brass nose that was found, not silver.[6]

While coming a little too late to be of use to Tycho, Tagliacozzi’s text focuses on the repair of mutilations of the nose, lips and ears, using skin grafts in an operation that became known as the ‘Italian graft’. This technique allowed for facial reconstruction via a skin graft taken from the left forearm. The graft would remain partially attached to the arm while grafted to the mutilated area so the skin cells would not decay. Tagliacozzi’s talents did not stop at medical innovation however – he also had an eye for (practical) fashion. Due to the importance of the patient being able to hold their arm to their face after the surgery to facilitate the complete adherence of the graft, Tagliacozzi designed a complex vest, not unlike a straightjacket, to make sure there was no unwarranted movement. The process was supposed to take from two to three weeks.

William Cowper’s Anatomia corporum humanorum

The final book that will feature in my post today is William Cowper’s Anatomia corporum humanorum (Leiden, 1750) and at the heart of this text is one of the most famous controversies in medical history.

The plates that feature in Anatomia corporum humanorum were not originally produced for this text, but rather the earlier Anatomia humani corporis, by Govard Bidloo (1649 – 1713). Originally published in 1685, Anatomia humani corporis features 105 striking copperplate engravings of the human body. The plates illustrate the muscular, skeletal, reproductive, and systemic organization of the human body and are seen alongside scientific commentary.

An English contemporary of Bidloo, William Cowper, bought the printing plates from the printing house and reissued them under his own name with new accompanying text in his Anatomy of humane bodies. A text that, in a profound lack of tact, also featured ‘numerous harsh criticisms towards Bidloo’s contributions’[7]. Unlike today, plagiarism – especially over national boundaries – was largely tolerated at the time, as it was difficult to police. Bidloo objected strongly to this instance of plagiarism from Cowper, however, promptly and publicly excoriating him in a published communication to the Royal Society.

What could be termed as Cowper’s lack of imagination when swiping someone else’s prints was more than made up for by Bidloo’s creative insults in this pamphlet – on one occasion calling him a ‘highwayman’, and another a ‘miserable anatomist who writes like a Dutch barber’[8]. I think I’d rather be on the anatomist’s table than have such lines about me circulating in print. All’s fair in love and science I suppose…

An image of microscopic drawings of the layers and surfaces of skin. Different diagrams fill a large page. — A closer look at skin in this text

Title page from Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica — Title page from Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica

The plates in question were produced by the Dutch painter Gerard de Lairesse. For Lairesse, the anatomical illustrations commissioned by Bidloo were an opportunity for an artistic reflection on anatomy. They are very different from the tradition kick-started by the Vesalian woodcuts in De humani corporis fabrica[9].

Lairesse displays his figures with a tender realism and sensuality, which at first glance seems unfitting for an anatomy book. The figures seem docile, as if in a light sleep rather than deliberately posed objects of scientific inquiry. In these illustrations dissected parts of the body are contrasted with soft surfaces of un-dissected skin and draped material. Flayed, bound figures are depicted in ordinary nightclothes or bedding, as if they will soon be put back together again and woken up.

That’s all I’ll share today – I’m off to make a case for Spot Bakes a Cake as being a prime investment for Christ Church library’s collection.

References

[1] https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/122786/spot-bakes-a-cake-by-hill-eric/9780723263586

[2] https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A93593.0001.001/1:1?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

[3] Find out more here! https://artsci.case.edu/dittrick/2014/06/26/flipping-through-anatomical-fugitive-sheets/

[4] Review: Paper Bodies, by Mimi Cazort https://www.jstor.org/stable/41825971?seq=4

[5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24610608/

[6] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tycho-Brahe-Danish-astronomer/Mature-career

[7] https://digex.lib.uoguelph.ca/exhibits/show/bidloo-and-cowper–anatomists-/the-beginnings-of-conflict–pu

[8] https://digex.lib.uoguelph.ca/exhibits/show/bidloo-and-cowper–anatomists-/criminis-literarii–anatomists

[9] https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/358129

Promoting an Exhibition

Posted on 10 February 2023 by Caitlín K. — No Comments ↓

One of the exciting projects we can get involved in as trainees is preparing for and promoting library exhibitions, whether open to the public or exclusively to university staff and students. For LGBT+ History Month, New College Library will be putting on an exhibition on Queer Love & Literature in our collections on 25th February. We have a display case in the main library for small, longer-term exhibitions of about ten items, accessible to college members only. However, this is not suitable for large exhibitions like this one. We therefore book a room in college with enough space for long tables, which also allows us to open our exhibitions to the public. The downside is the room is not secure enough to leave any of our rare books and manuscripts overnight, therefore our large exhibitions are open for one day and one day only! This involves a lot of preparation to make sure we can set up and take down the exhibition as quickly and securely as possible on the day.

However, without people coming to see our wonderful collections, all our preparation would be in vain. For this exhibition, we’ve used some successful promotion tactics from our previous exhibitions as well as some new ones to usher as many people as possible through our doors on the day. First of all is the fun bit, designing a poster for the exhibition on Canva, with a uniform logo we’re using on all of our social media channels. We then sent the design off to a print company to have it printed in A2, A3, and A4. We “launched” the news of our upcoming exhibition on the 19th January on our social media, and sent an email out to the OLIS, Oxford Libraries Information System, mail list. I also changed our Twitter and Facebook profile headers to advertisements for the exhibition. Thanks to my fellow trainees, I sent out some posters to go up in other libraries and increase awareness of the exhibition throughout the university. I also go on a wander around college putting up posters in common areas such as the café/bar and the JCR. I’m also trialling some QR codes, linked to the event page on our website, displayed around the library. The LGBTQ+ Officers for the college’s JCR and MCR do a great job of organising their own events throughout the year such as queer drinks and LGBTQ+ formals, so we let them know about our exhibition so they can spread the word around college.

As our exhibition is for LGBT+ History Month, a campaign founded by Schools OUT to increase the visibility of queer people’s histories and experiences, we added our event to their public calendar. However, we’ve found social media is the most effective method to reach a wider audience outside just New College and the University. On our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, we’ve been further teasing our exhibition by posting some of the items we’ll be displaying on the day with our exhibition banner underneath to make sure our followers don’t get sick of the same poster over and over again. I have scheduled a sneaky motion graphic to go out in the week before the exhibition, just to add a little spice. We also asked the Lodge to let us put a poster in an A-frame outside the college entrance on Holywell Street on the day to draw in any walk-ins and notify visitors where the exhibition actually is, as New College can be a bit of a maze. We’re quite lucky that our collections speak for themselves, including a 15th-century manuscript copy of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, early printed books relating to King James VI and I, Oscar Wilde’s Ravenna inscribed by the author, and a first-edition copy of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. There might be a few surprise additions on the day as we continue compiling the labels, but we’re hoping to show at least 30 items of queer literature.

We’re quite a small library and our exhibitions only last one day, so we don’t have the same resources and following to generate as much hype as some larger libraries’ incredible exhibitions, such as those at the British or Bodleian libraries, but we try our best! We’re also looking into putting on online exhibitions, so that our collections can be viewed digitally for longer, as it’s a shame they’re only on display for 6 hours at a time. This is the first of our exhibitions that we’ve put in this much work to promote, particularly on social media, so only time will tell if it works.

Marking Holocaust Memorial Day at Christ Church Library

Posted on 30 January 2023 by Ruth — No Comments ↓

‘What is abnormal is that I am normal. That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life – that is what is abnormal.’ Elie Wiesel, survivor of the Holocaust

Holocaust Memorial Day takes place on the 27^th of January every year, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and to remember the more recent genocides which followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website provides life stories, information and resources: https://www.hmd.org.uk/

We put together a display at Christ Church library to mark the day. This post shines a spotlight on three of the books in our display: a graphic novel, a memoir and a collaborative autobiography.

Maus, Art Spiegelman

Photo of book cover. Maus in red font, two cartoon mice cowering in eachothers arms together under an image of a cat drawn to resemble Hitler In Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Spiegelman interviews his father, Vladek, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust. The comic moves between the father and son’s conversation and depictions of Spiegelman’s father’s memories. Throughout Maus, as the title hints to, characters are depicted as animals rather than people, and specifically depicts Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. This novel combines biography, autobiography, history and fiction in a piece that became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Maus comes from humble beginnings, originally published in serial form in Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman’s eclectic comics anthology ‘RAW’ in the 1980s. Chapters one to six were later published in ’86 in a volume titled Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale and the latter five chapters were published in 1991 as Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles. The text in our display contains both these volumes.

RAW Magazine began life in whirrings of a living room printing press in the house that Spiegelman and Mouly still share[1]. (Each publication was adorned with its own cheeky subtitle, two of my favourites being ‘Required Reading for the post-literate’ and ‘Open wounds from the cutting edge of commix’). This set up goes a little way to paint a picture of the world Spiegelman was living in. He was working in the underground comic scene, the predecessor of which he had grown up on in ‘60s New York. It was from Justin Green, a fellow alternative cartoonist whose work was often featured in RAW Magazine, that Spiegelman learnt:

“confessional, autobiographical, intimate, unsayable material is perfectly fine content for comics.”[2]

Maus shows how the medium of comics can be one that communicates harrowing themes and strained relationships in a way that feels both sensitive and charged. The experience of reading Maus is one of constant stock-taking. You have to sit with the often-disturbing images, move back and forth between them as you progress through the novel. Spiegelman’s conversations with his father about his experiences in Auschwitz not only frame the recollections, but also often intrude upon the narrative. The form of a comic works exceedingly well as something that can interrupt itself. Embodied memories barge into the present as Spiegelman plays with comic strip borders and ratios. In an interview with Alexandra Alter for the The New York Times, Spiegelman says of the cartoon format, and particularly of depicting the people in the story as animals, that:

“For me, it was powerful just because it allowed me to deal with the material by putting a mask on people. By reliving it microscopically, as best I could, moment by moment — it allowed me to at least come to grips with something that otherwise was only a dark shadow.”[3]

An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin, Gad Beck

“For them I was a boy from outside. Why? I was visiting theatres, I was dancing, even ballet dancing.”[4]

Gad Beck and his sister Margot were born in Berlin in 1923. An Underground Life recounts the story of how Beck was able to escape the Nazis and stay living in Berlin throughout the duration of World War Two. Being both Jewish and gay, Beck was doubly at risk of persecution from the Nazis. Nazi conceptions of race, gender and eugenics very much shaped the regime’s aggressive policy on homosexuality. Repression commenced within days of Hitler becoming Chancellor. In spite of all this, Beck’s voice throughout the memoir is playful and unbelievably positive.

Beck decided to actively resist Nazi persecution, taking on a principal role in the Chug Chaluzi Jewish resistance group. The Chug Chaluzi (circle of pioneers) was an illegal group founded on the day that all Jewish forced laborers were arrested and most of them deported. The group was as small as 11 members when it started, but had grown to around 40 by the end of the war.

Jizack Schwersenz was the director of a Jewish youth group that Gad Beck attended in Berlin. In a letter from March 1942, Schwersenz writes about how Erwin Tichauer responded to the continued deportations during a secret gathering of the group in 1942:

“Then one of our members, Erwin Tichauer, stepped forward—at first we had no idea what he was about to do —and read to his group the names of all those who had been taken from us during the past months, since the deportations had begun, and as he read each name the members replied as one: ‘Here’, that is to say, that even those who were missing were with us on this occasion, for we are always with them in our thoughts, just as they are surely with us in their thoughts…”[5]

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum holds a very precious item in its collection – a handmade book made by a boy that Gad fell in love with, Manfred Lewin[6]. In the same way that the youth group remembered those that had been deported, Gad remembered Manfred through this gift. Small enough to fit in a pocket, this book and Beck survived the war.

Beck and Lewin met at the Jewish youth group in the build up to the war. Clumsy illustrations in green felt tip pen populate the pages of this token of affection, depicting shared memories and private jokes. Slightly underwhelmed with the gift at the time, Beck recollects thinking ‘It’s very simple book, booklet, very simple … and he’s not an artist’[7]. I hope the thoughtful Beck we meet in An Underground Life was on duty that day, and he managed to keep these thoughts to himself…

With time, and the outbreak of the war, this gift took on a new significance.

‘Dear, kind Gad, I owe you a present, no, I want to give you one, not just so that you get something from me that you can glance through and then lay aside forever, but something that will make you happy whenever you pick it up.’[8]

What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achek Deng Dave Eggers

‘Since you and I exist, together we can make a difference!’[9]

I had only encountered Dave Eggers through his short stories up until this point, so this novel felt like something of a departure for me.

While nominally a novel, the experiences recounted in this book are true. Written in 2006, What is the What is based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng. Deng was a child when the second Sudanese Civil War broke out, a civil war that was to last twenty-two years. Deng was able to immigrate to the United States through the Lost Boys of Sudan programme[10]. Escaping conflict required moving through war zones, however. Named ‘lost boys’, many of these children spent years in life threatening circumstances. Many lost their lives due to hunger and dehydration. Travelling to Ethiopia and then Kenya for safety, around 10,000 boys between the ages of eight and eighteen arrived at the Kakuma refugee camp, ‘a sprawling, parched settlement of mud huts where they would live for the next eight years’[11].

Deng and Eggers came together through Deng’s desire for his story to reach a wider audience. He says that he sees his mission as being to help others ‘understand Sudan’s place in our global community’[12]. While having told his story to many audiences through public speaking, he felt a book about his experiences would reach more people.

‘Dave and I have collaborated to tell my story by way of tape recording, by electronic mailings, by telephone conversations and by many personal meetings and visitations.’[13]

This collaboration has resulted in a gripping read – Deng’s story, communicated to Eggers through so many different modes, finds a fluidity on the page that you can’t help but be engrossed by. As with Maus, the story moves back and forth between past and present. At the time of recounting his story to Eggers, Deng is ‘trying to survive an altogether different struggle: assimilation into a culture defined by its short-term memory and chronic indifference to the world beyond its borders’[14].

I hope this starting point will encourage you to follow Elie Wiesel’s model from the top of this post for a normal life – make yourself some toast and some tea and get reading – just remember no food in the library.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/books/art-spiegelman-maus-breakdowns.html

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] A quotation from an interview with Gad Beck from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/do-you-remember-when/page-2

[5] https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/do-you-remember-when/page-6

[6] Find a page by page break down here: https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/do-you-remember-when/cover

[7] https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/do-you-remember-when/page-1

[8] A translation of the first page of Manfred’s book

[9] What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achek Deng, Dave Eggers (Penguin Books: London, 2006) p.xv

[10] https://www.rescue.org/article/lost-boys-sudan

[11] https://www.rescue.org/uk/article/lost-boys-sudan

[12] What is the What, p.xiv

[13] Ibid., p. xiv

[14] https://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/23147/

A Display for Disability History Month

Posted on 12 December 2022 by Ruth — No Comments ↓

Behind the enquiries desk at Christ Church library there is an array of board games that students can borrow. They used to perch at the bottom of the stairs to the Upper Library, among the various busts of ghosts of Christ Church alumni past. Among the busts that stared longingly at these board games are Richard Busby[1], a headmaster of Westminster school in the 17^th century[2] and Richard Frewen, who actually studied at Westminster under Busby and later studied and taught at Christ Church where he became a physician, among other things[3].

A bust of Richard Busby, a severe face with angled head. Also in imitation marble. — Richard Busby – looking a tad imperious – I think he would favour a round of Carcassonne…

A photograph of a bust of Richard Frewen as an old man. He wears a robe in a the Roman style, the bust is made to look like white marble. His name is in Latin underneath. — Richard Frewen atop his perch

Cut off just below the shoulders, these chalky figures are unlikely to ever get truly stuck into a game of Munchkin Deluxe to the degree of enthusiasm that it demands. So, in an effort to put these poor statues out of their misery, we have since moved the board games, but were then left with a spare display shelf. The sensible thing to do seemed to make use of it for a rotation of displays that would keep anyone entertained, even a figure as imposing as Dr Busby…

Over the past few months this shelf has variously been a display point for titles including Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell, Victorian Keats: Manliness, Sexuality and Desire by James Najarian and People Person by Candice Carty Williams as part of ‘New Acquisition’ displays and a display for Black History Month in October.

The 16^th of November saw us enter a new awareness period: Disability History Month. While far from an expert in this area, I volunteered to put together a display to mark the month. It has been a great experience in learning about a subject I knew little about and exploring what Christ Church library’s collections hold on the topic.

Using SOLO

I began my hunt for material for this display by jumping onto SOLO (which stands for Search Oxford Libraries Online). SOLO is the first port of call for all resource discovery at the University of Oxford – here you can find locations of physical resources, databases, links to online articles…the list goes on. Handily, you can filter searches on SOLO, so I made sure to select ‘Christ Church Library’ as opposed to ‘search everything’ in the drop-down list when looking up items. This made searching broad terms like the phrase ‘disability history’ a viable option! Such a search will produce 727 results as opposed to 1,097,223 (as of writing this post…) without filtering.

From an initial search I gathered together some promising titles that Christ Church already had as part of its collections:

Disability: the Basics, Tom Shakespeare[4]
The Oxford Handbook of Disability History, ed. Michael Rembis[5]
Early Modern Theatre and the Figure of Disability, Genevieve Love[6]
The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability, Elizabeth Barnes[7]
The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability, Barker and Murray[8]
Illness and Authority: Disability in the Life and Lives of Francis of Assisi, Donna Trembinski[9]

Here already was a range of texts that covered quite literally ‘the basics’, but also historical approaches, literary lenses and theory, up to and including an indulgently specific look at Francis of Assisi.

My next task was to identify a theme – what could be drawn out from this array of titles to bring this display together? ‘Founders of religious orders’ seemed, while tempting, perhaps a shade too obscure. My eye was caught by Love’s text on Early Modern theatre and disability. The Early Modern period is a historical crush of mine, and one I studied during the latter part of my degree. I was really interested to learn about the period from a new angle, that of disability history. So, I continued my search beyond the realms of the Christ Church Library. Below are a few of the finds I made – some now feature on our display!

Taking to the stage with Recovering Disability in Early Modern England, Wood and Hobgood[10]

Photograph of the front cover of a book, white with a blue and green cubist image of a face — *Recovering Disability in Early Modern England*, ed. Allison P. Hobgood and David Houston Wood

One of the first books that caught my eye on this venture was this selection of essays. In a journey through representations and misrepresentations in Early modern texts, plays and prayer books, these essays touch on Renaissance jest books, revenge tragedies, and propaganda.

Among the essays that drew me in to this collection was ‘Richard Recast: Renaissance Disability in a Postcommunist Culture’. In this piece, Marcela Kostihová takes the reader on a journey to the postcommunist Czech Republic.

We are invited to examine ‘a wildly popular’ staging of Richard III produced by Divadelní Spolek Kašpar in 2000[11]. An injury sustained while protesting the communist regime by the lead,Jan Potměšil, becomes Richard’s “natural deformity” on stage. Kostihová draws out the political nuances of this decision, and it makes for a fascinating read.

Music > tarantulas in The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body

While not a text dedicated solely to the topic of disability, this book appeared in my SOLO search. Upon examining the sections within the book, I saw that there was a selection of articles on the theme of ‘Music and the Disabled and Sexual Body’. In Howe’s chapter, ‘Musical Remediation of Disability’, Blake Howe discusses the ‘cure narrative’[12], traceable across many cultures in writings about music. This narrative casts music as something with the power to move bodies into states of so-called perfect health. ‘With energetic melodies instead of scalpels, and resonant harmonies instead of potions, the blind simply blink their eyes open, while the dumb simply open their mouths to speak.’[13] Howe warns against the ways this narrative often casts the disabled body as something that needs to be ‘cured’ rather than accepted.

In a slightly more frivolous moment, the article leads us down a delightfully bizarre path; to a case study in which music is elevated above even antivenins. In the introduction to a psalm book from the 1770s, the author (who has later been said to be a Dr Charles Stockbridge) provides a no-nonsense how-to guide for anyone facing the perils of a tarantula bite:

‘whoever is bit by them after some Time loses both Sense and Motion, and dies if destitute of Help. The most effectual Remedy is Music.’[14]

Astute readers might note some parallels from this tale with the tarantella – a folk dance originating in Italy[15]. Once again the story goes that victims of the tarantula bite can be cured with fevered dancing, inspired by the right music, of course. This cultural context would have been a much appreciated piece of the puzzle on all the Saturday mornings I spent confusedly prancing around a church hall with a tambourine as a child…

It’s not all books!

A photograph of the display. Books and posters rest on a wooden set of shelves in an orange hallway — The display in Christ Church library – featuring books, James’ write up and QR codes!

Once I’d learned how to successfully cure any friends of mine that may be struck down by a tarantula bite, I felt ready to venture into the world of online resources.

Historic England[16] have a fantastic page that provides an overview of disability throughout history for those looking to increase their awareness and knowledge. ‘A History of Disability: from 1050 to the Present Day’[17] tracks the changing and varied treatment, perception of and facilities for disabled people in England throughout history.

A feature that makes this page really great is its accessibility – users are able to learn about the different historic periods through audio format or British Sign Language. This inspired me to include some accessible elements in our display at Christ Church. We whipped up QR codes that would take viewers to the Historic England page, the Disability History Month website and also online books so there were multiple ways to access the resources on offer.

Team work makes the dream work

The pièce de résistance of this display was a wonderful contribution we had from a student at Christ Church. James is a PhD student studying the history of ideas, but very kindly took some time out of his schedule to create a piece relating to our display![18] It walks you through the texts available and really brings the display to life, putting the range of resources we selected in conversation with each other – all while inviting you to join in.

Resource discovery becomes a bit of a treasure hunt when you have SOLO and its filtering wonders at your fingertips, so I really enjoyed putting this display together. We were also able to purchase some titles to strengthen Christ Church’s collection in this area of study. Books including Literature and Intellectual Disability in Early Modern England: Folly, Law and Medicine, 1500-1640, by Alice Equestri and Intact by Clare Chambers have made their way onto the display, and soon on to the shelves of the library.

It’s been a great opportunity to learn about a subject I was not well versed on and to dust off my research skills. Here’s to hoping the statues in the stairwell (as well as the students of Christ Church!) were suitably informed by this display – we can but hope!

References

[1] The British Museum hold a selection of portraits of Busby – see them here! https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG131489

[2] A not very generous description of whom can be found in Pope’s Dunciad for those willing to put up with its infamously relentless referents.

[3] An interesting and varied character was Richard Frewen! Read more about him here: http://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-busts-of-richard-frewin-by.html

[4] Shakespeare, Tom. Disability : The Basics. London, 2018

[5] Rembis, Michael A., Catherine Jean Kudlick, and Kim E. Nielsen. The Oxford Handbook of Disability History. New York, NY, 2018. Oxford Handbooks.

[6] Love, Genevieve. Early Modern Theatre and the Figure of Disability. London, 2020. Arden Studies in Early Modern Drama

[7] Barnes, Elizabeth. The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability. Oxford; New York, 2018. Studies in Feminist Philosophy

[8] Barker, Clare, and Stuart Murray. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability. Cambridge, 2018. Cambridge Companions to Literature.

[9] Trembinski, Donna. Illness and Authority: Disability in the Life and Lives of Francis of Assisi. Toronto, 2020.

[10] Hobgood, Allison P., and David Houston Wood. Recovering Disability in Early Modern England. Columbus, 2013

[11] Ibid., p. 137

[12] Howe, Blake, ‘Musical Remediation of Disability’, in Youn Kim, and Sander L. Gilman (eds),

The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body, Oxford Handbooks (2019; online edn, Oxford Academic, 10 July 2018), p. 259

[13] p. 260-61

[14] Dahlhaus, Carl. 1982. Esthetics of Music. Translated by William Austin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[15] https://www.britannica.com/art/tarantella

[16] https://historicengland.org.uk/

[17] https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/disability-history/

[18] https://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/blog/disability-history-month-mini-display

Trans Awareness Week at New College Library

Posted on 18 November 2022 by Caitlín K. — No Comments ↓

Here at New College Library, we put on a number of different book displays each term, ranging from new acquisitions that catch our eye, to showcasing certain awareness campaigns. This week it’s Trans Awareness Week, in which the trans community and its allies highlight the issues faced by trans, non-binary and gender-diverse people, and celebrate those raising awareness. This annual week of observance will culminate in Transgender Day of Remembrance on Sunday, to honour the memory of those whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence. In light of this week-long campaign for trans issues, I pulled together a display of books from our ‘Q’ shelfmark, set up a few years ago by a former trainee, comprised of LGBTQ+ histories, biographies, and fictional works. With so many interesting titles, I thought I’d take the opportunity to showcase a few of my favourite reads!

Juliet Jacques, Trans: A Memoir

This memoir by writer and filmmaker, Juliet Jacques, explores the personal story of her transition, while also critiquing 1990s and 2000s trans theory, literature and film. Jacques narrates her journey of self-discovery, giving an in-depth account of her entry into the LGBTQ+ community and her struggles with her identity; ‘I felt trapped not by my body, but by a society that didn’t want me to modify it.’ From her earliest experimentation with her presentation, we learn how films, books, and music that focus on trans identities helped Jacques explore and come to terms with her own identity. In 2012, Jacques chronicled her sex reassignment surgery in the Guardian, hoping to educate others on the harsh reality of transitioning and the importance of trans rights. Jacques’ memoir combines the personal with the political, exploring controversial issues in trans politics and promising to redefine our understanding of contemporary trans lives.

Jen Manion, Female Husbands: A Trans History

In this dynamic LGBTQ+ history, Jen Manion uncovers the stories of ‘female husbands’, a term from the 18th and 19th centuries that referred to female-assigned individuals who lived as men and married women. Manion recounts the stories of these queer pioneers, who exposed themselves to media sensationalism and, at worst, violence or threat of punishment. Rejecting the notion that reclaiming transness in the past is ahistorical, Manion refuses to define the gender identity of these ‘female husbands’, among them Charles Hamilton, George Johnson, Frank Dubois, walking the line between recovery and historicization. It is precisely this complexity that makes this such a powerful read, forcing us to challenge modern binaries of gender and sexuality as we retrace the histories of our queer ancestors.

Christine Burns, Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows

Through a number of very personal stories, this book retraces the journey of the trans community in Britain from the margins of society to the visible phenomenon we recognise today. In their own words, trans rights advocates tell the story of the fight for their rights in the face of overwhelming opposition, and it is impossible not to respect their determination. For those interested in the current ongoing discussions about trans rights, this book is an excellent resource, despite being a difficult read at times.

Kai Cheng Thom, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir

This surrealist novel tells the story of a young, unnamed, transgender woman who lives with other trans women on the Street of Miracles, where different kinds of sex work take place. In response to the murder of another trans woman, the others form a vigilante gang and start attacking men on the street. Kai Cheng Thom herself is a non-binary transgender woman, who, as a writer and poet, exaggerates people from her life as characters in her work. As a response to the trope of transgender memoirs educating cisgender individuals about trans lives, Thom instead wrote Fierce Femmes to be the book that would have best helped her as a transgender teenager.

Pharaoh-d to Discovery: Tutankhamun 100 Years On

Posted on 4 November 2022 by JAI — No Comments ↓

‘Never give up, you might be closer than you think’ seems like the kind of statement you would find on a fridge magnet, but also has surprising relevance when it comes to one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in modern history.

After several fruitless dig attempts, Howard Carter and his team were almost at the point of downing tools and leaving the Valley of Kings for good when, one hundred years ago exactly, the steps to the tomb of Tutankhamun were suddenly unearthed, and the field of Egyptology changed forever (Carter, 1972).

Although Carter seemingly adopted an air of nonchalance, simply recording ‘first steps of tomb found’ in his diary (The Griffith Institute, 2022a), the excitement at such a significant discovery must have been palpable. 100 years on, Tutankhamun remains somewhat of a figurehead of Egyptology, and our fascination with the Boy King shows no signs of slowing. In Oxford alone, there are talks and exhibitions celebrating the anniversary of the discovery, and I was lucky enough to assist the Egyptology subject librarian, Susanne Woodhouse, with a book display in the Sackler.

As the Sackler houses a large collection of Egyptology books, there is naturally a plethora of resources related to Tutankhamun. Fortunately for me, Susanne had already decided which books should be featured in the display, focusing on four clear categories: the excavation of the tomb; Tutankhamun and the British Museum; Tutankhamun and Oxford (Howard Carter’s excavation archive was moved to the Griffith Institute, housed within the Sackler by his niece, Phyllis Walker after his death (The Griffith Institute, 2022b)); and Tutankhamun’s place in history. All that was left for me to do was track down the required titles (with a little help from the incredible interactive floorplan of the Sackler) and create a mock-up of the display to make sure it was aesthetically pleasing but with enough structural integrity to prevent collapse if readers wanted a closer look at some of the items, before setting up the final display on the ground floor. As well as the books and journals, we also added some flyers for the exhibition on Tutankhamun at the Weston Library and used a reproduction of one of the painted sides of a box found in the tomb to create a visually striking display (Davis and Gardiner, 1962).

As someone working in the library sector, I particularly enjoyed learning how objects from the tomb were handled- Carter had no formal archaeology training, but working with a small team, managed to carefully catalogue, transport and protect over 5000 items (López and Healy, 2022).

Tutankhamun has captivated people around the world for one hundred years- from cigarette cards and hieroglyphic wallpaper in the 1920s (Masters, 2014/ Riggs, 2019) to today’s increase in Egyptian-led excavations in and around the Valley of the Kings. And with the new 889-million-pound home for the objects found in Tutankhamun’s tomb (The Grand Egyptian Museum) hopefully opening in 2023 (Mueller, 2022), Tutankhamun’s popularity shows no sign of waning.

Although we may never know the full truth about Tutankhamun’s short life and unexpected death, the tomb and its contents still have secrets to share. Professor Yehia Gad, a geneticist and expert in the field of DNA analysis of ancient mummies, is currently studying samples from Tutankhamun with the hope of shedding some light on his family history and potential hereditary conditions (Mueller, 2022).

It’s clear that although Tutankhamun may be long gone, his legacy continues to inspire- who knows what the next 100 years will uncover?

Tutankhamun: Excavating the Archive is a free exhibition at the Weston Library (in collaboration with The Griffith Institute) running until the 5th of February 2023. More information can be found here.

A table with books on Tutankhamun — The finished book display at the Sackler Library

Carter, H. (1972) The tomb of Tutankhamen. [Abridged]. London: Sphere. CHAPTER 5, p.31

Davies, N.M. and Gardiner, A.H. (1962) Tutankhamun’s painted box : reproduced in colour from the original in the Cairo Museum. Oxford: Griffith Institute.

López, A.L. and Healy, P. (2022) Filled with riches- and meaning. Washington: National Geographic. November 2022, pp.74-75

Masters, T. (2014) ‘Tutankhamun: How ‘Tut-mania’ gripped the world’, BBC News, 24 July. Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28403598 (Accessed 31 October 2022)

Matḥaf al-Miṣrī (1926) A short description of the objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun now exhibited in the Cairo Museum. [Cairo: Egyptian Museum].

Mueller, T. (2022) ‘Egypt’s new £889 million museum is fit for a pharaoh’ , National Geographic, 19 October. Available at https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2022/10/egypts-new-ps889-million-museum-is-fit-for-a-pharaoh (Accessed 31 October 2022)

Riggs, C. (2019) Photographing Tutankhamun : archaeology, ancient Egypt, and the archive. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts (Photography, history: history, photography).

The Griffith Institute (2022a) Excavation journals and diaries made by Howard Carter and Arthur Mace. Available at: http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringTut/journals-and-diaries/season-1/diary.html (Accessed 31 October 2022)

The Griffith Institute (2022b) Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an excavation. Available at: http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringTut/journals-and-diaries/season-1/diary.html (Accessed 31 October 2022)

A look at New Books for Black History Month at the EFL

Posted on 28 October 2022 by Abby — No Comments ↓

One of my favourite trainee jobs is getting to spend time with all the new books that arrive at the EFL – from stamping and stickering to putting them out on display. I also write a blog post each month highlighting a few of the new books that caught my eye. Some months, we have so many interesting books that I simply can’t choose and end up writing two posts! That’s what happened in October – we had a lot of new books by black British and African American writers arrive at the library and, seeing as October is Black History Month, it seemed like a good opportunity to spotlight a few. If you’re interested in other new books at the EFL, you can check out our monthly blog posts or find all our new books on LibraryThing. If you’re visiting the library, be sure to check out the selection on the new books display!

Ferdinand Dennis, The Black and White Museum (2022).

Ferdinand Dennis was born in Jamaica before moving to London with his family at the age of eight, and themes of migration and one’s roots are woven into the very fabric of his work. The Black and White Museum, a short story collection which follows a series of characters in London, is no exception. Together, the stories encompass ‘generational conflict, the social threat of black men, the wistful longings that disrupt lives, [and] the powerlessness of the old’ (from the publisher) against a backdrop of gentrification and change in London since the mid-twentieth century. As Dennis’s characters grow older, some are tempted to leave London and return ‘home’, only to find that just like the London of their youth, home has changed too. Dennis often leaves his characters and their stories abruptly, before any sense of resolution is reached. This has the effect of underlining the uprooted, interrupted, and diasporic experiences of so many of Dennis’s characters, all of whom ultimately want only to feel that they belong.

Also by Ferdinand Dennis at the EFL: Duppy Conqeuror (1998) ; Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (2000).

Natasha Brown, Assembly (2021).

Perhaps the first thing you might notice about Natasha Brown’s debut novel is its brevity – it runs to only 100 pages, and even the narrative style is characterised by brief and fleeting vignettes in the life of its unnamed narrator. That narrator is a black British woman who has achieved all the trappings of success, from an Oxbridge education to homeownership and a successful career. But when she is diagnosed with cancer, those successes start to ring hollow. By unpacking her narrator’s experiences, Brown confronts the reader with the endless, everyday racism black British women face. This, then, is ‘a story about the stories we live within – those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers’ (from the publisher). The brevity of Brown’s prose does not detract from the relentless and exhausting racism her narrator comes up against, nor does it diminish the emotional punch of the novel’s conclusion.

June Jordan, The Essential June Jordan (2021). Edited by Christoph Keller and Jan Heller Levi.

June Jordan (1936-2002) was an American poet, activist, journalist, essayist, and teacher. She wrote prolifically, publishing over 25 works of poetry, fiction, and essays, as well as children’s books, journalism, and even lyrics for musicians, plays and musicals. Not only was she an active participant in the politics and struggles that defined the USA in the second half of the twentieth century – from civil rights and feminism to the anti-war and gay and lesbian rights movements – she chronicled those movements too. In this collection, you will find poems exploring issues of gender, race, immigration, and much more, all characterised by Jordan’s ‘dazzling stylistic range’. These are poems ‘moved as much by political animus as by a deep love for the observation of human life in all its foibles, eccentricities, strengths and weaknesses’ (from the publisher). While her poems can and indeed should be read as revealing the heart of the politics, debates and struggles of twentieth-century America, they should also be celebrated for their beauty and musicality.

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song (2020). Edited by Kevin Young.

This anthology of African American poetry, edited by Kevin Young, covers an incredible breadth of poets, poetry, and time periods. The poems are presented in chronological blocks, taking the reader all the way from 1770 to 2020. The poetry styles range from formal to experimental, vernacular, and protest poetry. The selections are hugely varied in terms of theme, too, encompassing ‘beauty and injustice, music and muses, Africa and America, freedoms and foodways, Harlem and history, funk and opera, boredom and longing, jazz and joy’ (from Young’s Introduction). Featuring contemporary African American poets alongside little-known and often out-of-print older works, this is a truly expansive anthology. But Young doesn’t only offer us an enormous breadth of poetry and poets. Each work sits alongside a biography of its author, as well as comprehensive notes which highlight the cultural and historical contexts of the works and, indeed, of the African American experience since the late eighteenth century.

NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory (2022).

Glory is NoViolet Bulawayo’s second novel and, just like her debut (We Need New Names, 2013 – also at the EFL), it features on the Booker Prize shortlist. Bulawayo here satirises Robert Mugabe’s surprise fall from power in Zimbabwe, in the form of a reimagining of Orwell’s Animal Farm described as ‘allegory, satire and fairytale rolled into one mighty punch’ (from The Guardian’s review, March 2022). The country of Jadada has the longest-serving leader any country has ever had, a horse named Old Horse – that is, until he is deposed and supplanted by his erstwhile vice-president turned rival. The hope that regime-change brings quickly gives way to despair once it becomes clear that the corruption, violence, and struggles of daily life in fact remain the same. Into the gap left by lost hope steps Destiny, a young goat newly returned from exile, who seeks to witness and document the cycle of revolution and violence. While anyone familiar with the events in Zimbabwe of late 2017 will recognise certain figures and moments, there is also a universality to Bulawayo’s observations and the innovative dexterity of her prose that speaks to something timeless and entirely human.

Also by NoViolet Bulawayo at the EFL: We Need New Names (2013).

Race in American Literature and Culture (2022). Edited by John Ernest.

In this volume of essays, edited by John Ernest, you’ll find explorations of the representations of race in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, representations which – it is argued – are key to understanding the whole of the United States. After all, race shapes everything, from economic policy to where people live, forming the ‘ominous subtext’ of the legal, judicial, and wider governmental infrastructure of the state. The contributors to this volume explore how literature has variously been used both to cement racial visual images in the public consciousness and to fight back against those images, to separate people along racial lines and to form communities. Taken together, the essays do not aim to provide a comprehensive or chronological history of race in American literature; rather, they seek to ‘place readers in this chaotic process of literary and cultural development – caught up in a story, already in progress’ (from Ernest’s Introduction).

Also available as an ebook.

A Day in the Life (Social Science Library)

Posted on 17 January 2022 by Lucy Davies — No Comments ↓

A Day in the Life at the SSL

9:00 – I switch on my computer, load up the main enquiries email box and begin filtering through queries from readers. These commonly include researchers struggling to access a database, students who can’t return to the UK but have a pile of books due at the SSL, and suggestions for resources to add to our collections. I really enjoy being able to make a difference to someone’s research by helping them find a resource they’ve been struggling to access. Additionally, the main inbox is where the room booking requests from our Google Form are delivered, so I filter through these and add them to the calendar.

9:15 – I begin opening up the library with a colleague, switching the self-issue machine and printers on, and deleting any expired hold requests. Once we’ve wheeled in the out of hours book returns box, we open up the doors and begin to let readers in.

A photo of the entrance to the social science library. There are large glass automatic doors which are open. — The entrance of the SSL inside the Manor Road building

9:30 – The library is now open, and I take the first desk shift of the day. This involves assisting readers with their questions, lending and returning books, and answering the phone. When I first started this job, I was nervous to be on the desk on my own as the thought that the readers could ask me anything felt intimidating. However, working with the students and academics has become one of my favourite parts of the job, and I know I can always ask a colleague for advice if the question is a bit rogue. When the desk is quiet, I work on a project which involves making sure any online resources for Social Science courses (eBooks, podcasts, YouTube videos) are marked clearly as viewable online on the reading list, and that the links to these work.

10:30 – I take a break! Sometimes I take a trip to The Missing Bean Café in the St Cross Building next door to catch up with a fellow trainee and reward ourselves with a doughnut.

10:50 – For the rest of the morning, I’m processing new books. This involves some physical processing: sticking in a slip about returning books, stamping it with an SSL stamp, covering it with sticky back plastic, and inserting “tattle tapes”, which are thin magnets that stick in between the pages of our books to trigger the exit gates unless desensitised when loaned to the reader. After this, I process the book on Aleph, our library management system, which involves creating a holding and adding the shelf mark, reading list codes, and marking the book as loanable or a library use only copy. Once this is complete, the information will display on the user’s end – SOLO – so that they can search for and find the book.

A new book - Quantitative Social Science: An Introduction to Strata by Imai and Bougher - is pictured, along with two stamps, an info slip and a tattle tape — A newly arrived book along with some physical processing supplies

12:30 – It’s lunchtime! Time to take a walk to the University Parks around the corner for some fresh air and a break away from the library.

1:30 – Another desk shift! I continue responding to the enquiries in the SSL’s email box. I also log a reader onto our Bloomberg terminal. This is a high demand PC that has access to current and historical financial data on currencies and the stock market. To keep the data secure we don’t give out the password for it, which is why we have to assist researchers in accessing the terminal. I also make sure to organise the post that has been delivered to us, sifting through new physical copies of journals and letters for the librarians before popping them in their pigeonholes. I finish up by scanning in and popping onto the shelves the newly arrived Bodleian stack requests that readers order from the storage facility to be accessed in the reading rooms.

An image of the closed stack shelves. Books are pictured with slips coming out of the top denoting who has requested them. — Our closed stack shelves – looking rather empty here as this photo was taken before all the students returned

2:30 – I take some time to create a blog post advertising upcoming Bodleian iSkills sessions which are relevant to researchers and students in the Social Sciences. These usually cover topics such as Open Access, referencing, or finding appropriate research materials. Once this is written up, I schedule the post along with a Tweet and Facebook post so the sessions reach as wide an audience as possible. I then fetch some books requested by the Accessible Resources Unit who take our print copies of books and transform them into electronic text, Braille, audio and tactile diagrams for users with disabilities. I make sure to select a clean copy as sadly there is often lots of highlighting or written notes which can make the process difficult! However, the turnaround for this process can be really quick, which always impresses me and is great news for the students that require them.

3:30 – Time for another break! Snacking gets me through the day.

4:30 – After taking 5 minutes to water the plants, I update the new books display with brand new legal deposit books, research books and print outs of some new eBook covers too. This helps keep the library looking fresh and up to date whilst also allowing our readers to access the new releases in their field quickly. It’s also an opportunity to be a bit creative and directly contribute something to the readers’ experience at the library.

The New Books Display from November 2021, featuring research books, eBooks and legal deposit copies, as well as the subject librarian’s book of the month.

5:30 – Time to go home! No need to lock up as the SSL is open until 10pm on weeknights, so after handing over to my evening colleagues, my day is done.

LGBTQ+ Month @ the Sainsbury Library

Posted on 3 February 2020 by Tom Vickers — No Comments ↓

February is LGBTQ+ month and I’ve been putting together a display to celebrate LGBTQ+ in business for the Sainsbury Library. As always happens when digging into it, the past has proven more lively, varied, and knit with the present than expected. The pace of change is remarkable even knowing to expect it, and over the three decades covered here it is also mostly positive change. I hope you find it inspires you a little as it does me.

The books are presented as a timeline from left to right.

Top Row (1990s):

1991 – The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life – Kenneth J. Gergen. Social psychologist Kenneth J. Gergen is an example of academic ally-ship whose work at the start of the 1990s is as sophisticated as current ideas in its approach to LGBTQ+ issues. Although not an overtly queer work, The Saturated Self constructs a theory of modern identity that makes room for and obliges the legitimacy of LGBTQ+ identities. His work on The Social Construction and The Transformation of Identity Politics was also remarkably prescient in 1999 about where the discourse around these questions would go and how it would change in the subsequent two decades.

1994 – Ivan Massow’s Gay Finance Guide. In the UK during the 1990s Ivan Massow was able to use both a new, growing acceptance of homosexuals in public life and their continued stereotyping to his advantage. His London advisory firm completely changed the conversation around gay clients in the insurance industry, who during the AIDs epidemic were being shut out by discriminatory premiums. Off the back of this success he entered politics, shocking many of his left-leaning clientele by calling the Conservative party “the gayest party in Europe”, and was determined to change it from within. While he was briefly close to the Thatcher leadership, by the early 2000s his business was in danger of collapse and Massow agreed to become an agent for Zurich. The legal fall-out after Massow claimed Zurich refused to cover most of his clients almost bankrupted him.

1995 – The Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender – Martine Rothblatt. Rothblatt is the founder and chairwoman of the board of United Therapeutics, making her the highest earning CEO in the biopharmaceutical industry. Written the year after Rothblatt’s gender reassignment surgery and as a prelude to beginning her PhD in medical ethics with a specialisation in xenotransplantation, The Apartheid of Sex not only argued for a continuum of gender from both biological and sociological grounds before the idea gained public prominence but also laid the groundwork for Rothblatt’s current radical arguments for high levels of financial and social investment in transhumanism.

1997 – Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian and Gay Life – Amy Gluckman and Betsy Reed. Gluckman and Reed’s Homo Economics was the first thorough account of the relationship between gay people and the market. Drawing on experts in journalism, activism, academia, the arts, and public policy, it fully contextualised the state of mixed progress contemporary LGBTQ+ groups find themselves in as well as highlighting its fragility, demonstrating how both the continuation of modern capitalism in its current form and the looming threats of reduced social investment frustrate the LGBTQ+ movement in different ways.

2000 – Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to the Market – Alexandrea Chasin. Selling Out is an accessible, personal, agitative work that blends the academic and vox pop elements of works like Homo Economics and charted what effect the “embrace” of consumerism and capital was having on the LGBTQ+ community. An associate professor of literary studies at The Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, Chasin charts what had been gained and what had been lost in the mainstreaming of the LGBTQ+ movement, as well as what she feared and hoped might happen in the coming decade.

Middle Row (2000s):

2002 – The Pink Pages: The Gay and Lesbian Business and Services Directory. As with numerous previous marginalised groups, the LGBTQ+ community created guides to allow safe navigation through a world that was inherently hostile to them. As acceptance grew, a flurry of travel guides appeared in more public forms. Acting as the name suggests (a Yellow Pages for the queer community) The Pink Pages still operates as a list of ally tradespeople. Now replaced by pinkpagesonline and similar sites, this 2002 copy of the directory was the only print edition.

2005 – Business Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market – Katherine Sender. In this work Katherine Sender, a professor in the Department of Communication and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Cornell University, refutes two major pieces of conventional wisdom in this work. 1 – that the LGBTQ+ community exists independently of how it is marketed to, and 2 – that LGBTQ+ marketing exists independently of political action around that community. Sender shows how marketing as a form of media has helped construct the community as well as increased visibility for its members, while also inherently creating restrictions in its definition.

2006 – The G Quotient – Kirk Snyder. As inclusion and diversity of all kinds was gaining ground not just as a political and moral orientation but also as a strength of modern teams, Kirk Snyder followed up his 2003 Career Guide for the Gay Community with this work arguing that gay men were making the best managers precisely because their gay lives meant they understood inclusion and diversity best. Snyder’s work is focused around what the business community can learn from the LGBTQ+ community to change itself, rather than change them.

2008 – Queer Economics, A Reader – Joyce Jacobsen and Adam Zeller. Jacobsen and Zeller’s collection of academic works includes extracts from Homo Economics, recontextualised a decade later. Queer Economics presents the results of that intellectual provocation, and its movement into areas of demography, labour markets, consumer representation, political economy, and economic history.

2008 – Opportunities and Challenges of Workplace Diversity: Theory, Cases and Exercises – Kathryn A Cañas. Cañas began editing Opportunities and Challenges of Workplace Diversity in 2008 and new editions were produced until 2014. Cañas works as a member of the Management Department in the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, where she has helped shape the department since 1999, incorporating changes in attitudes towards diversity including towards the LGBTQ+ community. Opportunities and Challenges has been a core-text internationally for courses in Diversity, Organizational Behavior, and Human Resource Management Diversity and the Workplace.

Lower Row (2010s):

2014 – The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out is Good Business – John Browne. Browne was chief executive of BP between 1995 and 2007 and was known as the “sun king” by employees due to BP’s increased interest in renewables under his leadership. Having started his career as an apprentice with BP in 1966, his time as it’s CEO ended acrimoniously when allegations were printed in 2007 by the Mail on Sunday that he had mis-used company funds to support a partner during and after their relationship. Having fought injunctions to stop the allegations being published, Browne resigned. He described later that what “terrified” him was not the financial scandal or potential early retirement, but that his sexuality would become public knowledge. By the time he wrote The Glass Closet Browne was advocating for a wide-spread, top-down corporate policy of LGBTQ+ inclusiveness as proposed by Snyder in 2006.

2015 – Queer Business: Queering Organisation Sexualities – Nick Rumens. Queer Business took the thoroughly business-minded approach of seeing opportunity in problems. He identifies that, despite the developments over the past 25 years, there is a continued lack of association between business studies and LGBTQ+ issues when compared to other areas of scholarship, but argues that there are potential positives to this situation. Rumens describes management and organisational studies as a field in which queer theory may make new advances, and as an area where it “has yet to become exhausted and clichéd”.

2016 – Inclusive Leadership: The Definitive Guide to Developing and Executing an Impactful Diversity and Inclusion Strategy – Charlotte Sweeney and Fleur Bothwick. Charlotte Sweeney Associates launched in 2012 as inclusion, diversity, and equality consultant specialists, following a 20-year career in the finance sector for Sweeney. Fleur Bothwick is Director of Diversity and Inclusion at multinational firm Ernst & Young. She received an OBE in 2013 for services to Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace. Sweeney received the same in 2017 for services to Women and Equalities. A follow-up to Inclusive Leadership, which won the Chartered Management Institute’s Book of the Year 2016, is expected in 2020.

2019 – Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level – Leander Kahney. Tim Cook is routinely cited as the most powerful LGBTQ+ leader in business. In 2014 he was the first Fortune 500 chief executive to come out as gay – a remarkable contrast to Browne’s experience just 7 years prior. While before coming out Cook was not overt in his support of the LGBTQ+ struggle, he has since admitted that in valuing his privacy he “was valuing it too far above what I could do for other people, so I wanted to tell everyone my truth” and ensure LGBTQ+ youth knew that he had relied on the work of people who had fought for their rights before him.

2019 – The Queering of Corporate America: How Big Business Went from LGBT Adversary to Ally – Carlos A. Ball. Covering street protests and boycotts during the 1970s, AIDS activism directed at pharmaceutical companies in the 1980s, and the push for corporate non-discrimination policies and domestic partnership benefits in the 1990s, Ball describes how LGBTQ+ activism has changed the business community’s understanding and treatment of the queer community. This is the current way the history of these two groups is being described and it’s vital to consider it in context of the works that have preceded it.

For more information about the month’s celebrations visit https://lgbtplushistorymonth.co.uk/

Summaries of Showcase Talks

Posted on 28 July 2016 by Lee Colwill — No Comments ↓

If anyone’s wondering about the sort of work the trainees get up to during their year in Oxford, below are the summaries of the talks we gave at the Showcase. Slides from the presentations can be found on Slideshare. Due to technical issues, Clare Hunter’s presentation has been uploaded as a separate file.

Read more Summaries of Showcase Talks ›

making displays