Biography: general Books

Book Synopsis Becoming My Mother's Daughter: A Story of Survival and Renewal tells the story of three generations of a Jewish Hungarian family whose fate has been inextricably bound up with the turbulent history of Europe, from the First World War through the Holocaust and the communist takeover after World War II, to the family's dramatic escape and emmigration to Canada. The emotional centre and narrative voice of the story belong to Eva, an artist, dreamer, and writer trying to work through her complex and deep relationship with her mother, whose portrait she cannot paint until she completes her journey through memory. The core of the book is Eva's riveting recollection of the last months of World War II in Budapest, seen through a child's eyes, and is reminiscent in its power of scenes in Joy Kogawa's Obasan. Exploring the bond between generations of mothers and daughters, the book illustrates the struggle between the need for independence and the search for continuity, the significant impact of childhood on adult life, the reshaping of personality in immigration, the importance of dreams in making us face reality, and the redemptive power of memory. Illustrations by the author throughout the book, some in colour, enhance the story. Trade Review``[A] delicate, poetic exploration of three generations of women in the context of a grieving daughter's attempt to understand her relationship to her mother and reclaim the truth of her childhood experience.... Regretting that she did not paint her mother's portrait while she was still alive, Gottlieb paints a verbal `portrait in time,' and realizes that in searching for her mother's portrait, she has been searching for herself. Ultimately there are no answers to some of her questions about mourning, memory, and forgiveness; despite this, Becoming My Mother's Daughter provides a valued contribution to autobiographical accounts of Jewish-Hungarian life in the twentieth century and a moving examination of how an adult woman comes to terms with her childhood expectation that her mother be omnipotent and omniscient.'' -- Adreinne Kertzer -- Canadian Literature, 200, Spring 2009, 200909``Despite the immediacy of its content the narrative has a complex structure, operating on several differect time levels and employing...a number of recurrent symbols.... [and it] give[s] an insight into one of the lesser-known aspects of the Holocaust. In Hungary the `Final Solution' started late and took an exceptionally brutal course. Within four months of the German invasion in March 1944, nearly 450,000 of Hungary's 750,000 Jews were deported from the provinces to perish in Auschwitz, while 100,000 men were being decimated in the lethal forced-labour service and 200,000 men, women and children remained in Budapest at the mercy of the bloodthirsty Arrow Cross thugs. What Eva, with her sister and mother, suffers in Budapest--with their father and husband on the run--is typical of the ordeal of those who were spared Auschwitz but little else. However, the Holocaust is only one of the two central themes of the book. The other is Eva's--or the author's--personal development, determined mainly by the impact of her mother. The two themes are closely connected, and the relationship of mother and daughter is intensified far beyond the norm by the extraordinary conditions of the Holocaust. Eva's dependence on her mother for her survival against extraordinary odds imposes on her an unusual sense of obligation, but if she is to develop her own individuality she must liberate herself.... Whether [the resolution she achieves] is a profound piece of psychological wisdom or a counsel of despair is for the reader to decide.'' -- Ladislaus Löb, University of Sussex -- East European Jewish Affairs, Vol. 39, #2, July 2009, 200907``Gottlieb's memoir is tender, sad and touching.... The book is...enhanced with reproductions of sketches and paintings of Gottlieb's family, and of the scenes she depicts so vividly.'' -- Catherine Thompson -- The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo), June 14, 2008, 200806``In this deeply moving memoir, Erika Gottlieb--thinly veiled as her narrator Eva--evokes the trauma of her childhood and youth in Hungary during the Second World War, the miracle of her survival, and her triumphant emigration to Canada as a young woman. In writing of herself and probing her formative influences, Gottlieb also writes of her grandmother, her mother, and her two sisters. She weaves a compellingly honest narrative of three generations of women whose personal narratives inform and enrich one another. Eva's grief following the death of her beloved mother leads her to revisit painful wartime memories. As Eva finally realizes, reconciliation is made possible by the sustaining love of her mother--an inspiring and redemptive love that she bequeaths to her own children.'' -- Ruth Panofsky, Ryerson University, author of Laike and Nahum: A Poem in Two Voices -- 200802Table of Contents Becoming My Mother's Daughter: A Story of Survival and Renewal by Erika Gottlieb The Bridge The Maze The Tunnel, 1913-1944 The Tunnel, 1944-1945 The Tunnel, 1952-1982 The Handbag

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Book Synopsis This book is the first major study of Canadian women filmmakers since the groundbreaking Gendering the Nation (1999). The Gendered Screen updates the subject with discussions of important filmmakers such as Deepa Mehta, Anne Wheeler, Mina Shum, Lynne Stopkewich, Léa Pool, and Patricia Rozema, whose careers have produced major bodies of work. It also introduces critical studies of newer filmmakers such as Andrea Dorfman and Sylvia Hamilton and new media video artists. Feminist scholars are re-examining the ways in which authorship, nationality, and gender interconnect. Contributors to this volume emphasize a diverse feminist study of film that is open, inclusive, and self-critical. Issues of hybridity and transnationality as well as race and sexual orientation challenge older forms of discourse on national cinema. Essays address the transnational filmmaker, the queer filmmaker, the feminist filmmaker, the documentarist, and the video artist - just some of the diverse identities of Canadian women filmmakers working in both commercial and art cinema today. Trade Review``The Gendered Screen: Canadian Women Filmmakers is an important contribution to Canadian film studies, ensuring the centrality and significance of Canadian women's contribution to filmmaking. This new collection of essays tackles the intersections of film authorship, gender and nation, and while these terms may be undergoing challanges as organized principles for the study of film, as the editors note in the introduction, they 'had not lost their troublesome fascination for us as teachers and scholars of film.' The editors refrain, however, from employing any rigid definitions, encouraging the debates and tensions that arise from the various usages of these potentially vexing terms to shape the anthology. A wide range of filmmakers, regions, and filmmaking practices is covered, and this expansiveness is easily the book's greatest strength.... An ambitious volume that covers a lot of ground. Many of the essays function as excellent introductions to a filmmaker's work and are easily adaptable to course curricula while also yielding some new insights and approaches to Canadian women's cinema.'' -- Liz Czach -- Canadian Literature, 209, Summer 2011, 201201``The uniform excellence of insight and writing, the variety of critical approaches, and the range from unfamiliar to established artists (and critics) make this a substantial, groundbreaking study.'' -- M. Yacowar, emeritus, University of Calgary -- Choice, December 2010, 201012``The Gendered Screen is a much-needed update that surveys the recent developments and contemporary field of Canadian women's cinema.... An especially significant dimension of this collection is the attention to filmmakers whose work has been largely neglected by critics and scholars.... The essays together ... address a wide cross-section of women's media production in this country. They examine the specificities of different regional contexts and address a variety of media approaches, from experimental film and video to independent features, television, and documentary production. More significant, the book investigates feminist and Canadian cinema beyond counter-cinema forms and art house aesthetics, respectively. The studies here attend to women producers not only working within the mainstream entertainment cinema but also presenting women-centered narratives and using humour as a means of critique. They demonstrate how the commercial sector, traditional women's genres, and comedy can function as sites of resistance that express feminist attitudes and politicized positions. In this way, The Gendered Screen expands the definitions of both feminist and Canadian cinema, contributing significantly to scholarship in both fields.'' -- Sylvie Jasen -- H-Net Reviews, January 2013, 201312``The Gendered Screen expands the discursive space for scholarly engagement with women filmmakers in a predominantly masculinist terrain. The contributors provide fresh approaches to filmmakers of the canon and give solid first starts on filmmakers who had previously been left out of the picture of Canadian cinema studies.'' -- Susan Lord, Film and Media, Queen's University, co-editor with JanineMarchessault of Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinemas (2007), and withAnnette Burfoot, Killing Women: The Visual Culture of Gender andViolence (WLU Press, 2006) -- 201005Table of Contents The Gendered Scream: Canadian Women Filmmakers, edited by Brenda Austin-Smith and George Melnyk Acknowledgements 1. Introduction Canadian Women Filmmakers: Re-imagining Authorship, Nationality, and Gender Brenda Austin-Smith and George Melnyk 2. Feminist/Feminine Binaries and the Body Politic The Art of Craft: The Films of Andrea Dorfman Andrew Burke Feminist Ambiguity in the Film Adaptations of Lynne Stopkewich Lee Parpart On the Edge of Genre: Anne Wheeler's Interrogating Maternal Gaze Kathleen Cummins Fluidity: Joyce Wieland's Political Cinema Kay Armatage 3. Queer Nation and Popular Culture The Art of Making Do: Queer Canadian Girls Make Movies Jean Bruce Feminist Filmmaking and the Cinema of Patricia Rozema Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo Léa Pool: The Art of Elusiveness Florian Grandena 4. Transiting Nationality and the Battlefields of Otherness On the Field of Battle: First Nations Women Documentary Filmmakers Anthony Adah Eradicating Erasure: The Documentary Film Practice of Sylvia Hamilton Shana McGuire and Darrell Varga Women, Liminality, and ""Unhomeliness"" in the Films of Mina Shum Brenda Austin-Smith Beyond Tradition and Modernity: The Transnational Universe of Deepa Mehta Christina Stojanova Les Québécoises Jerry White Index Contributors Anthony Adah is an assistant professor in film studies at Minnesota State University, Moorhead, Minnesota. He specializes in post-colonial cinemas, especially those from settler states (Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) and Africa. He is published in Postscript and Film Criticism and has a forthcoming article in Pompeii. His current research projects include theoretical exploration of authorship and genre in Nollywood as well as land and memory in Aboriginal cinemas. Kay Armatage is a professor cross-appointed to the Cinema Studies Institute and Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto. She is the author of The Girl from God's Country: Nell Shipman and the Silent Cinema (University of Toronto Press, 2003) and co-editor of Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women's Cinema (University of Toronto Press, 1999). She has also directed documentary films, including Artist on Fire: The Work of Joyce Wieland (1987). Her current research is on film festivals. Brenda Austin-Smith is an associate professor in the Department of English, Film, and Theatre at the University of Manitoba, where she teaches a variety of courses, including Cult Film, Film and the City, and Film and Affect. She has published on emotional responses to film melodrama, symbolism in American literature, adaptation, the late novels of Henry James, Patricia Rozema, Manitoba feature films, cinema memory and World War II, and Lars von Trier. Jean Bruce teaches film theory and cultural studies at Ryerson University in the School of Image Arts, where she is currently the associate chair. She also teaches visual culture in the joint graduate Program in Communication and Culture at Ryerson and York universities. Her research interests include melodrama, consumer culture, sexuality and the cinema, and the home-improvement genre of reality television. Andrew Burke is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Winnipeg, where he teaches critical theory, cultural studies, and British literature and culture. His current project is on representations of modernity and modernization in contemporary British cinema, part of which is forthcoming in the journal Screen. His recent articles on contemporary cinema and cultural theory have appeared in Historical Materialism and English Studies in Canada. Kathleen Cummins is a Ph.D. candidate in the graduate program in women's studies at York University. Her doctoral research focuses on the reconstruction of frontier histories in women's feminist cinemas. Kathleen has taught film production, screenwriting, and media studies in a variety of institutions, such as the Department of Film at York University, the Media Arts Department at Sheridan College, and the Department of Communication, Culture and Information Technology at the University of Toronto Mississauga/Sheridan College. Her short films have been screened and broadcast internationally. Florian Grandena is assistant professor in the Department of Communication of the University of Ottawa, where he teaches film studies. He researches gay-themed French-speaking films, particularly the films of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, on which he is currently writing a book. He is the author of Showing the World to the World: Political Fictions in French Cinema of the 1980s and the early 2000s (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) and co-editor of New Queer Images and Cinematic Queerness (Peter Lang Publishing Group, 2010), which focus on the representations of homosexualities in contemporary visual cultures in France and in Quebec. Shana McGuire is completing a Ph.D. in French at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her doctoral research, funded by both the Killam Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, examines representations of the body in contemporary French cinema, namely the films of Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, and Bruno Dumont. She has taught film studies at Mount Saint Vincent University and at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. George Melnyk is associate professor of Canadian Studies and Film Studies in the Department of Communication and Culture, University of Calgary. He is a cultural historian who has authored and edited over twenty books on cultural and political issues relating to Canada. In the field of Canadian cinema he has authored One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema (2004) and edited The Young, the Restless, and the Dead: Interviews with Canadian Filmmakers (WLU Press, 2008) and Great Canadian Film Directors (2007). He is currently completing a manuscript on urbanity in postmodern Canadian cinema. Lee Parpart is a Toronto-based writer and lecturer whose work on Canadian cinema and visual culture has appeared in Canadian Art, POV, The Globe and Mail, The Whig-Standard, The Canadian Journal of Film Studies, and Essays on Canadian Writing. Her essays on gender and cinema and television (including critical writings about Canadian filmmakers Lynne Stopkewich, Patricia Rozema, and the American TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer) have appeared in numerous anthologies, including North of Everything: English-Canadian Cinema since 1980, Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women's Cinema, and Athena's Daughter's: Television's New Women Warriors. After a care-giving hiatus of several years, she is completing a dissertation that explores feminist film and new-media adaptations of Canadian women's fiction. Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo is a Toronto-based film programmer and writer who has programmed Canadian feature films for the Toronto International Film Festival since 2005. She holds an M.A. in film studies from York University and has written articles on Patricia Rozema, Canadian cinema, and women's filmaking. She has served on a number of film juries, including the Imagine NATIVE Film Festival and the National Screen Institute and was a lecturer in American cinema at the University of Genoa, Italy. Currently she is completing a research project on national cinemas and cultural identity. Christina Stojanova is an academic, curator, and writer who focuses on cultural semiotics, gender, genre, and ethnic representation in Canadian multicultural cinema, the cinema of Québec, and Russian and Eastern European cinema. As a member of the Association of Quebec Film Critics, she writes for a number of critical journals and sits on international film festival juries. She also sits on the editorial boards of Rhodopi Publishing House and of Studies in Eastern Europe Cinema. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Media Production and Studies at University of Regina. Among her major publications are chapters in Making It Like a Man: Canadian Masculinities (2009), European Nightmares (Wallflower, 2009), Berlin Culturescapes (University of Regina Press, 2008), The Cinema of Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2005), Traditions in World Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2005), Horror International (Wayne University Press, 2005), Cinema of Central Europe (Wallflower, 2005); Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Expoitation Cinema since 1945 (Wallflower, 2004). She is currently co-editing an anthology on Wittgenstein on Film and a monograph on New Romanian Cinema. Darrell Varga is associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Contemporary Film and Media Studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. He is the co-editor of Working on Screen: Representations of the Working Class in Canadian Cinema (2006) and editor of Rain/Drizzle/Fog: Film and Television in Atlantic Canada (2007). Jerry White is associate professor of Film Studies at the University of Alberta. He is author of The Radio Eye: Cinema in the North Atlantic, 1958–1988 (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009) and Of This Place and Elsewhere: The Films and Photography of Peter Mettler (Toronto Film Festival/Indiana University Press, 2006). He is the editor of The Cinema of Canada (Wallflower Press, 2006), co-editor (with William Beard) of North of Everything: English-Canadian Cinema since 1980 (U of Alberta Press, 2002), and the former editor of the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies.

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Book Synopsis Borrowed Tongues is the first consistent attempt to apply the theoretical framework of translation studies in the analysis of self-representation in life writing by women in transnational, diasporic, and immigrant communities. It focuses on linguistic and philosophical dimensions of translation, showing how the dominant language serves to articulate and reinforce social, cultural, political, and gender hierarchies. Drawing on feminist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial scholarship, this study examines Canadian and American examples of traditional autobiography, autoethnography, and experimental narrative. As a prolific and contradictory site of linguistic performance and cultural production, such texts challenge dominant assumptions about identity, difference, and agency. Using the writing of authors such as Marlene NourbeSe Philip, Jamaica Kincaid, Laura Goodman Salverson, and Akemi Kikumura, and focusing on discourses through which subject positions and identities are produced, the study argues that different concepts of language and translation correspond with particular constructions of subjectivity and attitudes to otherness. A nuanced analysis of intersectional differences reveals gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, and diaspora as unstable categories of representation. Trade Review"Eva Karpinski has taken on questions that arise for every reader in a transcultural, multi-linguistic, and diasporic world. Although she focuses on translated texts, her title, 'Borrowed Tongues', names all our tongues; her insights into the ethical and psychosocial dimensions of autobiography, translation, and theory will open new intellectual trade routes among us. This is a sophisticated, smart, and beautifully readable book, and an important addition to WLU Press's wonderful Life Writing series." -- Jeanne Perreault, University of Calgary, co-editor of 'Tracing the Autobiographical' (WLU Press, 2005)"Working within a thoroughly inter-disciplinary framework informed by poststructuralist, feminist, and postcolonial approaches, Eva Karpinski's book articulates a novel and multifaceted concept of translation that approaches immigrant women's life writing as a project of meaning transfer between differing signifying contexts. Through her nuanced close reading s of migrant, diasporic, and postcolonial self-narratives, Karpinski's book displays the potential of translation to unsettle the conventions of the autobiographical genre, problematize monolingual understandings of the relation between language and subjectivity, and elucidate the historical and material conditions underlying the production of immigrant women's writing, as well as the cultural politics informing these texts' reception. What emerges through Karpinski's versatile back and forth between the memoirs and the more theoretical analysis is a rich account of the intertwined registers of translation as textual practice and lived experience for immigrant women writers." -- Paola Bohórquez -- Canadian Woman Studies"The study expands the field of life writing by explicitly theorizing the relationships among translation, gender, ethnic identity, and ethics. Summing Up: Recommended." -- J.M. Utell, Widener University -- Choice"Only recently have autobiographies been theoretically linked to translation studies, and this book offers an important glimpse into how subjectivity and power in migrant contexts is very much a product of such interlinking. More interesting, the book itself is connected to translation insofar as the process is indeed correlated to those migratory practices that are employed by migrants in their life narratives and by the respective authors as they transfer meaning from one signifying context to another. Both migrants and authors, it seems, are living and writing in 'borrowed tongues' which forms the core of this study.... The author...also...makes us aware of evidence of 'non-translation'...that which memory, trauma, and recollection may not render as 'translatable.'" -- Anastasia Christou, Middlesex University -- Auto/Biography StudiesKarpinski's work Borrowed Tongues: Life, Writing, Migration, and Translation deserves a broad audience for this reason...[it is a] serious meditation about the impact that translations have on texts, as well as the forces that influence those translations.... Karpinski beautifully weaves the disparate life stories and strategies of [her] authors into a larger narrative of resistance. In the conclusion of her book, Karpinski points out why it is important that we, in academia, pay attention to these narratives: "If academic institutions can be viewed as a microcosm of such transnational contact zones, I am convinced that we can benefit from the findings of research on life writing in order to learn to read each other's stories, listen to multiple voices, and find the possibility of plurivocal exchanges...." I can think of not better words to illustrate why [this] book [is] important for a more general audience, in addition to those who specialize in the often marginalized sub-genres of translation, theatre, and life-writing. -- Lee Skallerup Bessette -- Canadian LiteratureTable of Contents Borrowed Tongues: Life Writing, Migration, and Translation by Eva C. Karpinski Introduction Migrations of Theories: Autobiography and Translation 1 Literacy Narratives: Mary Antin and Laura Goodman Salverson 2 Immigrant Crypto(auto)graphy: Akemi Kikumura and Apolonja Maria Kojder 3 Experimental Self-Translations: Eva Hoffman and Smaro Kamboureli 4 Translation as Allegorical Metafiction: Marlene Nourbese Philip and Jamaica Kincaid Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisOffers an intriguing glimpse into the daily life of an average Toronto woman in the mid-nineteenth century. Mary Armstrong's diaries are a window into the daily life of a middle-class woman in a new and changing land, and a revealing account of life in early Toronto just before and after confederation. Her journals are one of very few published by Canadian women, especially women outside the upper classes, in the decades surrounding the mid-nineteenth century. Mary Armstrong was the wife of a butcher / farmer who lived in what is now the Yorkville and Deer Park area of Toronto from the 1830s to the 1880s. She had immigrated with her parents and siblings from England in 1834. Her diaries, which cover five months in 1859 and eight months in 1869, reflect her multiplicity of interests and concerns including family, women's work, faith, status and class, occupation and trade, community networks, and local and national identity. Jackson W. Armstrong's introduction examines who Mary was, what her world was like, and how she saw her own place in it; it also explains the origin and history of the diaries. His extensive primary research supports the well-annotated diaries, and gives contextual information on the events, people, and places that Mary mentions. Seven Eggs Today offers new information and a new perspective on mid-Victorian English Canada, and will be welcomed by general readers and scholars interested in colonial life, biography, immigrant experiences, family or local history, or women's studies.Trade Review"Both text and commentary are a worthwhile contribution to the publisher's Life Writing series." -- British Journal of Canadian Studies, 200604"This explains the literary and historical significance of Seven Eggs Today. Jackson Armstrong's publication of his great-great-great grandmother's diaries from the years 1859 and 1869 provides a rare glimpse into the life of a middle-class woman living in Victorian-era Toronto around the time of Canada's Confederation. Armstrong has done an excellent job editing the diaries. While the value in such documents lies in their recital of everyday events (`two eggs yesterday, three today') and personal reflections (`Father is once more himself'), nonetheless such mundane items can provide a wealth of information concerning not only Mary's family background, and the history of the family, but also relevant issues such as the importance of social position and status within Victorian Canada, the role of women in the family and society, and the impact of faith and religion in colonial society. Nonetheless, it is Mary herself who holds the reader's attention as she tells her own story of life in the young colony in her own words, bringing to life a bygone era and society. This volume will be of interest not only to scholars, but also to general readers who are interested in discovering a new perspective on a historical period." -- Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray -- Canadian Book Review Annual 2006, 200702"The diaries reflect the changing economic, political, and social temper of the times....But in 1869, the idea of being 'Canadian' was, in Jackson Armstrong's estimation, still largely unformed....With a fine eye for detail...Armstrong isolates and discusses in...his introduction...the importance of women's work, changing understandings of class and status, and the role of religion and community networks in colonists' lives." -- The Canadian Historical Review, 200507"These accounts of a...woman's life in Toronto around the time of Confederation do provide insight into what a middle-class woman's life must have been like." -- Globe and Mail, 20040814"Seven Eggs Today: The Diaries of Mary Armstrong, 1859 and 1869 [is] a well-edited, well-researched treasure from Victorian Canada....These kinds of diaries are an often overlooked source of information about women's lives and labours....The editor thoughtfully includes seemingly unimportant household accounts in the published version....He leaves in gaps, stricken mistakes, odd punctuation, underlining; in short, he has done as much as he can to transmit in printed text the idiosyncratic presentation of the diary manuscripts...Armstrong...is adept at making [the diaries'] relevance clear in historical and literary contexts. It stands as a useful template to anyone else editing a nineteenth-century diary and offers its readers unusual insight into the life of a middle-class woman in mid-century Canada." -- Kathryn Carter -- University of Toronto Quarterly, Letters in Canada 2004, 200606Table of ContentsTable of Contents for Seven Eggs Today: The Diaries of Mary Armstrong, 1859 and 1869 edited by Jackson W. Armstrong List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Editor's Note List of Abbreviations Introduction I. A Canadian's Story II. A Diarist's World Illustrations and Family Trees Diary of Mary Armstrong, 1859 Diary of Mary Armstrong, 1869 List of Individuals Notes Bibliography Index List of Illustrations Walworth and Camberwell Jane Tuesman Wickson John Wickson Eliza Chilver Wickson John Rusby Wickson Whitefield lithograph, Toronto, Canada West Wickson business calendar Yorkville map Thomas Armstrong business card Philip Armstrong Thomas and Fidelia Armstrong Fidelia and Thomas Norman Armstrong Sarah Wickson Hamilton, sketch of Paris, Ontario Wickson painting, Portrait of Arthur Wickson Paul Giovanni Wickson Family Trees Descendants of James and Jane Wickson (abridged) Descendants of Philip Armstrong (abridged)

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Book SynopsisI Remember Laurier is the storyâactually, thirty-seven storiesâof the little university that could, told by some of those who devoted themselves to transforming the school from its modest beginnings into a superb small liberal arts college, and in turn to the university whose growth, diversification, research, and partnerships characterize it today. Although the stories are diverse in content, viewpoint, and tone, readers will note a number of unifying themes, one being nostalgia for a small university where faculty, staff, and students were close and new initiatives were readily approved and easily implemented. Here too are reflections, sometimes bemused and sprinkled with humour, on professors, administrators, and students, the "Laurier Experience," and significant events such as "WLU" becoming "WLU" (Waterloo Lutheran University was renamed Wilfrid Laurier University in 1973). Evident throughout is the pride of the contributors in the development of the university to its current status and in having played a role. In the photo album at the back of the book readers will find vintage prints of the authors and of many others mentioned in the book. More photos will soon be available on the website of the Wilfrid Laurier Retirees' Association: http://www.wlu.ca/retirees.Trade Review``The great author Virginia Woolf said that 'Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.' This volume is a wonderfully welcome attempt to ensure that the leaves of the book of Wilfrid Laurier University are read by many. Intimate and highly personal glimpses into the soul of an institution are relatively rare. Here, and in celebration of the centennial of the university, are glimpses to remind us both that our future springs from our past and that our past is a rich and strong foundation on which to build. The vignettes presented in this book are a wonderful read--enjoy!'' -- Max Blouw, president and vice-chancellor, Wilfrid Laurier University -- 201108Table of ContentsTable of Contents for I Remember Laurier: Reflections by Retirees on Life at WLU , Harold Remus, general editor, Rose Blackmore and Boyd McDonald, editors Preface: Recalling Life and Livelihoods at WLU Part I: Foundations Money: Counting It and Making It Count | Tamara Giesbrecht Waterloo College Student to University Lawyer: On the Legal Side of Things | Reginald A. Haney The Bookstore Grows Up | Paul Fischer Odyssey: Waterloo College, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, WLU | Delton J. Glebe An R.C. Comes to WLU: Early Days of Social Work and a Threefold Maturation Process | Frank Turner Part II: Getting Started From Two to Four and MoreâEarly Days in Chemistry at WLU | Ray Heller The Best Job I Ever Had | Ralph Blackmore Spatial Memories, Mostly Geographical, Mostly of the Sixties and Seventies | Herbert A. Whitney In the Beginning: Life at Biologyâand Off Campus | Robert W. McCauley Physics, Administration, Astronomyâand Music | Arthur Read Community Psychology, Community Building, and Social Justice | Ed Bennett Our Home on Native Land: Digging Up a Pre-Contact Site (and Beyond) | Eduard R. Riegert Part III: âLutheranâ to âLaurierâ Putting a New University on the Map | Arthur Stephen The Perks and Perils of a University Photographer | James Hertel A University Press Comes into Being | Doreen Armbruster Procurement: A New Day | Bob Reichard The LibraryâGrowing with a Growing University | John Arndt The Computer Comes to WLU: Honeywell 316, Xerox Sigma 7âand Great People | Hart Bezner Donât Judge a Book by Its Cover (Or, Peeling the Onion) | Bruce Fournier Making Canadian History | Barry Gough From Poverty to War: An Historianâs Odyssey | Terry Copp Multiculturalism at WLU: Opening to the Wider World | Josephine C. Naidoo Reflections: One Personâs Perspective | William Marr Old English, Old Norse, Dr. Roy (and Bishop Berkeley): Fifty Years at WLU | Peter C. Erb Laurier Looks Abroad: Waterloo, Marburg, and Laurier International | Alfred Hecht The Golden Hawks Take Flight | Rich Newbrough Part IV: Quotidian: The Day-to-Day (Or, Keeping the Wheels Turning) Getting Everyone and Everything Just Right | Jim Wilgar Five Years as University Secretary | Frank Millerd On Students and Deaning | Fred Nichols A Picture Is Worth a Thousand WordsâAV and Beyond | Wilhelm E. (âWilliâ) Nassau Part V: I Came to WLU (Whereâs That ?) How I Almost Got a Job at a New University Down the Street and Instead Found a Career at WLU | Loren Calder One Job + One Job + One Job = A Job | Harold Remus French House: A First, and Then Some | Joan Kilgour Peripatetic Peregrinations | Andrew Lyons Part VI: Arts and Culture Voices from the âScales Houseâ: Music at WLU 1965â76 | Walter H. Kemp The First Four Years: Foundations for the Next Thirty | Paul Tiessen Remembering Maureen Forrester | Gordon Greene About the Editors and Contributors I Remember Laurier: Photo Album About the Editors and Contributors The Editors Rose Blackmore was a member of the faculty of the Graduate School of Social Work (later renamed the Faculty of Social Work) from 1970 to 1993. She has been a member of the WLU Retirees Association almost since its inception and served for many years on the executive committee. Boyd McDonald taught piano, harmony, and counterpoint in the Faculty of Music 1976â1996. He became interested in fortepiano in 1980 and has since recorded Beethoven, Brahms, and Molique using various fortepianos. Following retirement, he taught piano part-time until 2008 and served for many years on the executive of the WLU Retirees Association. Harold Remus came to WLU in 1974, teaching in Religion and Culture and as adjunct faculty in Waterloo Lutheran Seminary; he served as director of Wilfrid Laurier University Press (1978â83) and as executive officer of the Council on the Study of Religion (1977â85) when its office was located at WLU. He retired as professor emeritus in 1994. The Editorial Committee Robert Alexander taught philosophy at WLU from 1964 to 1984, including four years as chair of the department. Since retiring from the Ontario civil service in 2002, he has been teaching courses for the Laurier Association of Lifelong Learning. Loren Calder was born in Trail, B.C., in 1929. He joined the WLU Department of History in 1960, where he taught Russian, Soviet, and modern diplomatic history, serving at times as department chair; he retired in 1994. Joan (Weber) Kilgour taught French language, literature, and culture at WLU from 1964 until her retirement in 2007. Frank Millerd joined the Department of Economics in 1970, serving as chair of the department from 1987 to 1993 and as university secretary from 1994 to 1999. He retired in 2006. Baldev Raj, professor emeritus, School of Business and Economics, came to WLU in 1972. The former editor of Empirical Economics , he was honoured as university research professor for 1989â90 and has held visiting professorships in the UK, Norway, Austria, Australia, Japan, New Delhi, and Canada, and now serves on the executive of the WLU Retirees Association. The Photographer James Hertel began his career at WLU on September 1, 1977, after being hired by Dr. Flora Roy and Willi Nassau with the title of University Photographer, retiring from 2009 from a career he had always dreamed of. The Authors John Arndt graduated from WLU in 1964; the holder of the B.L.S. and M.L.S. degrees from the University of Toronto, he came to the WLU library in 1967, where he served variously as head of information services, collections management, and acquisitions. He retired in 1999. Doreen Armbruster began at WLU in 1973 in Academic Publications, the forerunner of the Wilfrid Laurier University Press (established in 1974). Production Coordinator for two decades until retiring in 1998, she continues as a freelancer on the production of the Pressâs sixteen-volume Collected Works of Florence Nightingale . Ed Bennett taught in the WLU Department of Psychology from August 1971 until his retirement in June 2005. He introduced community psychology courses and community-service learning at WLU and served as the director of the Community Psychology M.A. program for many years. Hart Bezner obtained a B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from McMaster University. He was a member of WLUâs Department of Physics from 1967 until retiring in 2003, during which time he also served for twenty-three years as director of Computing Services. Ralph Blackmore (1916â2002) began teaching economics in the School of Business and Economics in 1966 after serving as financial editor at The Globe and Mail and in public relations at Massey Ferguson. He retired from WLU in 1981 and again in 1991. The Ralph Blackmore Award is given annually to a first-year student in honours Economics. Terry Copp joined the Laurier Department of History in 1975, retiring in 2004 to become director of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, a position he still holds. Peter C. Erb was a student in Honours English at WLU from 1961 to 1965, taught English in the English 10 program in 1966â67, in the Department of English 1971â1984, and in the Department of Religion and Culture 1984â2008. In 1989 he was honoured with Laurierâs Outstanding Teacher Award. Paul Fischer, after nine years in a parish ministry, served as manager of the WLU bookstore from 1965 until 2004. Bruce Fournier joined the School of Business and Economics in 1978, after seventeen years spent hunting submariines and conducting personnel research in the military. In addition to teaching management and organizational behaviour he served as associate dean and in the Research Centre for Management of New Technology and in the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy. He retired in 2002. Tamara Giesbrecht began in accounting at WLU in 1960, became comptroller in 1963, and vice-president: finance in 1967, retiring in 1978. She was also a member of the Board of Directors of Equitable Life Insurance Co. from 1970 to 2002. Delton Glebe (1919â2011) graduated from Waterloo College (1947) and Waterloo Lutheran Seminary (1950). He chaired the Board of Governors when Waterloo Luterhan Univeristy was established, taught at the seminary and university 1960, and served as the principal-dean of the seminary 1970â84. Barry Gough joined the Department of History in 1972. He was university research professor and served as assistant dean of Arts and Science. In 2004 he reitred to Victoria, B.C., as professor emeritus. Gordon Greene joined WLU as professor of music history in 1978. A year later he became dena, serving for ten years, and again in 2005â06. The Aird Building was constructed during his tenure in the 1980s. Reginald A. Haney taught law in the School of Business and Economics from 1970 to 1995 and also

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Book Synopsis“Harvey Broome was an early, indefatigable friend of the Great Smokies whose book combines an eloquent interpretation of the seasons of life they nurture with the urgent message that their conservation remains perpetually relevant. At once poetic and practical, Harvey Broome takes us into his Great Smokies and shows us that they are also ours, a unique treasure of endless discovery.”—Wilma Dykeman, Tennessee State Historian “It is a seminal work and is ‘must reading’ for anyone seriously interested in the early interpretation of the Great Smoky Mountains.”—Arthur McDade, author of The Natural Arches of the Big South ForkFirst published in a limited edition in 1975 by the author’s widow and now available in paperback for the first time, Out Under the Sky of the Great Smokies brings together the personal journals of a great environmentalist and nature writer.The book combines descriptions of Broome’s innumerable hikes in the Great Smoky Mountains with extended meditations on the meaning of the mountains to the region as a whole. It is at once a historical document, preserving a perspective on the Smokies before full-scale development of the national park, and a work whose message about the importance of the environment is even more timely today than when it first appeared.In a foreword written especially for this edition, the noted environmental writer Michael Frome describes the book as “a timeless work,” adding, “Here we find Harvey, the wilderness apostle on his home turf. He reveals himself exactly as I knew and loved him: a gentle spirit, sensitive to the needs of nature and humankind, always with tolerance and good humor.” The Author: Harvey Broome (1902–1968) was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and discovered the Great Smoky Mountain at an early age. An attorney, he helped found the Wilderness Society and served as president of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club. He was the author of two other posthumously published books, Faces of the Wilderness and Harvey Broome: Earth Man.

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Book SynopsisThis is the best book about Cheatham's brigade, nearly forgotten soldiers in the ill-fated Confederate Army of the Tennessee.

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Book SynopsisAmong those drawn to jobs in the booming West Virginia coal mines during the first part of the twentieth century were thousands of African Americans. They proved successful in this industry—despite low wages and discrimination at the hands of mine operators. This book, the first published memoir by an African American coal miner, is a stirring tale of survival and achievement. Bob Armstead interweaves stories of family and community with a broad history of underground mining to paint an engrossing picture of the work, the dangers, and the drama of that industry.Armstead remembers his childhood, growing up in a segregated coal camp during the Great Depression, and he recalls his family's efforts to confront economic challenges while also dealing with the reality of racism. His father worked as a horse driver in the mines until machinery put him out of work. Even though, as a youth, Armstead saw how his father had suffered, he himself went to work in the mines in 1947. From his first day on the job, coal mining fascinated him. He initally labored in a timber crew, shoring up mine roofs. Then, in a life peppered with mine closings and layoffs that sent him from one place to another in search of work, he eventually became a mining machine operator, a foreman over predominantly white crews, and finally a safety inspector.Black Days, Black Dust evokes a vivid sense of a coal miner's life. Armstead's recollections of his father provide descriptions of primitive mining methods in the 1930s and grueling twelve-hour work days. Armstead's memories of his own career document his enthusiasm for mining and the work ethic that earned him responsible positions in the mines.Engagingly told, Armstead's story is both a rich historical document and a moving portrait of one man's life and how he overcame adversity.The Authors: Robert Armstead retired from the coal mines in 1987. He died in 1998.S. L. Gardner is a former teacher and librarian who has written feature articles about coal camps for the Times West Virginian in Fairmont, West Virginia. Her article on the Armstead family appeared in the magazine Goldenseal.

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Book SynopsisHaines argues that expanding black radicalism enhanced the successes of mainstream organizations and furthered many of the goals pursued by moderate black leaders.

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Book SynopsisReviewed in the United States on December 14, 2009 In the 1950s and early 1960s, Estes Kefauver was everywhere in politics and government. He ran for president twice, was the 1956 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, pioneered the use of television in Congressional hearings, and dug deep into many policy areas in the US Senate. Most students of politics or government have seen Kefauver's name, but there is surprisingly little comprehensive treatment of him as an individual and not as a part of a broader campaign, Senate history, or legislation. Charles Fortenay spent years trying to correct this vacancy in political biography. Fortenay's effort began during Kefauver's life, but took twenty-five years to get published and not in the form Fontenay had originally imagined.But the product is a good one. Fontenay takes us from Kefauver's childhood in Tennessee, to his law career, to his service in the US House, to his campaign for the Senate, his pursuit of the presidency in the 1950s, and his legislative battles up to his early death in 1963. In doing so, Fortenay shows us the many paradoxes of Kefauver. Kefauver was a hard working, not particularly charismatic legislator. But he was also a great retail politician, embarrassing Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson in multiple primaries throughout the 1950s. He was a something of a liberal, but he also looked down at women and was a swing vote on civil rights (To be fair, as a southern senator being a swing vote in civil rights is better than most of his colleagues). Kefauver maintained a close family life despite his active political career, but cheated on his wife fairly openly. Kefauver was ethical and principled (except when it came to monogamy), refusing to cut political deals to win the presidential nomination or keep gifts, but he had a constellation of wealthy friends who paid his personal expenses and bought stock based on the findings of a Congressional investigation.Any politician, really any person, studied so closely shows some wrinkles. Kefauver is no different. But overall, Kefauver was a hard worker, progressive particularly for his state, and helped democratize the nominating process. In those respects, he is a model for modern senators.A few nitpicks about the book. First, Fontenay writes that a Congressman Reece died and was replaced by his wife by appointment. Reece's wife won a special election because there are no appointments to fill House vacancies. Second, Fontenay short changes some of Kefauver's policy battles, including presidential succession which is of particular interest to me.That aside, Fontenay writes a great book. His sources are varied from many personal interviews, to Kefauver's letters, to the biographies of other senators. He manages to balance the many names and personalities and does a particularly good job of explaining the political convention intrigue of the 1950s.I highly recommend this book to students of politics, government, and history. It fills a void in the literature with the tale of a significant senator of the mid-20th century.

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Book SynopsisAs a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, an army chaplain, a college professor, and a prolific writer, Theophilus Gould Steward was one of America’s leading black intellectuals during the half-century following Emancipation. He was not only a theologian deeply committed to challenging his church’s outlook, he also epitomized postbellum efforts to create an African American civil society through religious, educational, and social institutions integral to citizenship.Steward actively constructed a theological discourse that challenged both black and white religious and secular institutions, yet his tenacious pursuit of high standards often led him into conflict with the very community he served. A. G. Miller takes a new look at this key figure in African American history to establish Steward’s place among the most influential thinkers and activists of the late nineteenth century. Augmenting what is already known about Steward’s life with a thoughtful combination of intellectual and social history, Miller presents Steward’s ideas within the context of the social, political, economic, and religious trends of his day.Miller examines Steward’s accomplishments and writings—including his unpublished manuscripts and his overlooked Victorian novel—to assess the ideas that he left to posterity and to consider how they shaped his times. The book devotes individual chapters to the key themes that dominated Steward’s life: African American education, reconciling theology with modern science, the intersection of rational theology and moral virtues, the contradictions of race, the role of women in African American civil society, and Steward’s views on the military and imperialism.With great insight and clarity, Miller discloses in a new and original way the rich life and thought of this extraordinary man. His study is both a groundbreaking analysis of Steward’s legacy and an important contribution to the history of American religious thought.

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Book SynopsisA longtime agitator against war and social injustice, Lawrence Wittner has been tear-gassed, threatened by police with drawn guns, charged by soldiers with fixed bayonets, spied upon by the U.S. government, arrested, and purged from his job for political -reasons. To say that this teacher-historian-activist has led an interesting life is a considerable understatement. In this absorbing memoir, Wittner traces the dramatic course of a life and career that took him from a Brooklyn boyhood in the 1940s and ’50s to an education at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin to the front lines of peace activism, the fight for racial equality, and the struggles of the labour movement. He details his family background, which included the bloody anti-Semitic pogroms of late-nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and chronicles his long teaching career, which comprised positions at a small black college in Virginia, an elite women’s liberal arts college north of New York City, and finally a permanent home at the Albany campus of the State University of New York. Throughout, he packs the narrative with colourful vignettes describing such activities as fighting racism in Louisiana and Mississippi during the early 1960s, collaborating with peace-oriented intellectuals in Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, and leading thousands of antinuclear demonstrators through the streets of Hiroshima. As the book also reveals, Wittner’s work as an activist was matched by scholarly achievements that made him one of the world’s foremost authorities on the history of the peace and nuclear disarmament movements—a research specialty that led to revealing encounters with such diverse figures as Norman Thomas, the Unabomber, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Caspar Weinberger, and David Horowitz. A tenured professor and renowned author who has nevertheless lived in tension with the broader currents of his society, Lawrence Wittner tells an engaging personal story that includes some of the most turbulent and significant events of recent history. Trade Review"Larry Wittner's life and work are inspiring on their own, but he recounts them in such a frank, open manner that he has crafted a real page-turner. Working for Peace and Justice takes you along on a joyful ride of discovery through the life of a model citizen/scholar/activist."—Kevin Martin, Executive Director, Peace Action “Scholar, activist, and troubadour Larry Wittner has gifted us with his bold life’s journey for world betterment. Vividly written and deeply moving, this timely, splendid book will inform and hearten everyone concerned about peace and freedom, justice, democracy, and human rights.”—Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt and Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s Studies, John Jay College & Graduate Center, CUNY “The season has come for memoirs of the children of the 1960s who became academics and changed the academy, and this memoir is a jewel of the genre: wonderfully lucid, evocative, honest, unpretentious, precise, and interesting. Larry Wittner’s splendid account reflects his deep good-spiritedness and describes his many years of activist struggle for peace and social justice.”?Gary Dorrien, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary; Professor of Religion, Columbia University “It is fascinating to peer into the personal life of Lawrence Wittner—the great chronicler of the antinuclear movement—in this quite amazing autobiography. He has lived an exemplary life, one that we all should try and emulate in our own individual ways.”?Helen Caldicott, Founding President, Physicians for Social Responsibility “Working for Peace and Justice provides a readable narrative of what it takes and the price one pays when the choice is made both to live a life of thought and contemplation and to act on a genuine commitment to make the world a safer and better place. Whether he was formulating ideas for world peace or walking a picket line, Larry Wittner was there and his impact was felt. We can all learn lessons from this wonderful memoir.”?Bill Scheuerman, former President, United University Professions; retired President, National Labor College "Larry Wittner's engaging and important memoir reminds me of why his work, his scholarship, and his activism have made me proud to be an American historian. It is a record of democratic social struggle, as well as a gift to those in the next generation who will have the courage and ambition to follow his example of working for a better world."?Martin J. Sherwin, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for biography “Larry Wittner has been—and remains—a great union activist. Read this book andyou’ll learn what Solidarity really means!”?Bill Ritchie, President, Albany County Central Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO

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