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Blueprints: Falvey LibraryContents: May 2002
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Dr. Mackey-Kallis chose to research and write about myth in film "because I wanted my scholarship to reflect my own life concerns, my passionate love of film, and to address urgent questions of being and nonbeing in the contemporary moment. I wanted to draw attention to films that, to use Jung’s phrase, ‘dream the myth outward’." |
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For her research, Mackey-Kallis thoroughly analyzed the hero quest as depicted within
top grossing, often critically acclaimed films, including "E.T.," the "Star
Wars" trilogy, "It’s a Wonderful Life," "The Wizard of
OZ," "The Lion King," "Field of Dreams," "Thelma and
Louise," "2001: A Space Odyssey," "The Natural," and
"Gone with the Wind."
Elements of quest mythology prevalent in Homer’s Odyssey, Joseph
Campbell’s writings, and Jungian psychology support Mackey-Kallis’ findings.
During her presentation, Mackey-Kallis shared clips from The Natural, comparing and
paralleling the journey of the film’s central character, Roy Hobbs, to Odysseus’
quest in The Odyssey. As expressed by Mackey-Kallis, "The hero quest
articulates the evolution of the individual as she/he grows up…, faces their shadow,
and sheds ego-consciousness for a larger sense of self in the world."
She is also the author of Oliver Stone’s America: Dreaming the Myth Outward
(Westview/Harper Collins, 1996).
Michael Hoffberg is the assistant director for Instructional Media.
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
New York, Harper Collins, 2000.
[Call number: PS3561.I496P76, 4th floor, circulating collection]
Reviewed by Laura Hutelmyer
I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer last spring. I woke up an hour early every morning, sat in the chair by my picture window, drank my coffee and savored every word of this fascinating novel. I was entranced by Kingsolver’s ability to combine elements of nature and biological fact with fictional characters in three parallel stories that come together in the end.
The three repeating chapter titles, Moth
Love, Old Chestnuts and Predators each signify a shift from story to story. Moth Love
tells the story of Lusa, who has given up a career in entomology to marry Cole, a farmer.
Although his close knit family does not accept Lusa, she is still entrusted with the care
of a confused child whom no one can handle and whose life she changes. Old Chestnuts shows
the love and rivalry between neighbors Garnett Walker, who uses pesticides to save his
American Chestnut saplings, and Nannie Rawley, who gardens organically. Finally, Predators
follows the life of Deanna who lives alone in the wilderness and has an occasional
rendezvous with Eddie Bondo, a drifter.
Kingsolver draws upon her biologist’s background to give facts about the
nocturnal habits of the Io moth, the tracking instincts of the coyote and the importance
of cross pollination in the life of the American Chestnut. All of these facts relate not
only to nature but also to the individual characters and how they interact with one
another. Although I have little interest in biology, Prodigal Summer left me with
the desire to know more about nature, the longing to explore the flora and fauna of the
Appalachian mountains and the reluctance to leave the characters behind.
Laura
Hutelmyer is serials technician.
Handling Sin; a Novel by Michael Malone.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1986.
[Call number: PS3563.A43244H3 1986, 4th floor, circulating collection]
Reviewed
by Jacqueline Mirabile
Are you in the mood for a huge, rollicking picaresque full of quirky characters? Michael Malone's Handling Sin may be just the book to take along on vacation. Upright citizen, hardworking insurance agent, responsible family man, Raleigh W. Hayes, of Thermopylae, North Carolina, is given a set of seemingly unrelated tasks by a taped message from his foulmouthed father, a defrocked minister who has escaped from a nursing home. As a dutiful son, Raleigh sets out to accomplish the tasks in an improbable chain of events culminating in meeting his dying father in New Orleans on Easter weekend. But through these events peopled by very believable characters including his bumbling fat friend, Mingo, his black-sheep half-brother, Gates, his formidable aunt, Vicky, a jazz saxophonist, Toutant and a wizened crook, Simon, Raleigh learns to unbend, laugh and love people for who they are.
In Malone's acknowledgments, he credits Cervantes, Fielding and Dickens without whose friendship, nudges, winks, and wise teaching, I never could have written Handling Sin.@ Whether Malone matches his mentors' skills in weaving into his lavish tale, his underlying concern about the South's racism and his hope that music, especially jazz, will be an integrating force, is for the reader to judge. But I bet, the reader will laugh out loud as I did in reading of the adventures of Raleigh Hayes.
Jacqueline Mirabile is interim head of the reference department and government documents librarian.
Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief
By Andrew Newberg, M.D., Eugene D’Aquill, M.D., Ph.D., and Vince Rause
New York: Ballatine Books, 2001
[Call
Number: BF 733 .N49 2001, 4th floor, circulating collection]
Reviewed
by Bill Greene
Did God create our brains? Or did our brains
create God? In Why God Won’t Go Away, the authors, Newberg, a neuroscientist,
D’Aquill, a psychiatrist, and Vince Rause answer these questions by offering a new
way to understand the relationships between faith, science and consciousness by using
cutting edge technology.
The book is an exploration of the intersection of modern brain science and religious
experience in an attempt to find God. The authors believe that God is unknowable except
for everyday religious experiences and perceptions that are only a shadow of God’s
wholeness; to experience God more fully we should shed the ego, the self and all
subjectivity in a state of deep meditation. If
we do this we become one with what the authors call “absolute unitary being.”
I am always amazed when I read a book that merges ideas I have read about in other books
and put them together in a whole that I can comprehend. This is what I consider
intellectual fun, playing the game of “what if”?
I recommend this book because it makes you think about things that are beyond
mundane, everyday life. It’s good to
have your brain tweaked every once in a while.
Bill Greene is a Periodicals technician.
Truman and civil rights: A tale needing to be told
by Dennis Lambert
Michael R. Gardner describes the significant contribution President Harry S. Truman made
to the cause of civil rights in the United States. On April 4, the Falvey Memorial Library
Distinguished Lecture Series featured Gardner, a Washington attorney and author of Harry
Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks (Southern Illinois University
Press, 2002). As the audience discovered, Gardner’s is a story worth telling.
While recognizing the 1960s as a pivotal period in the
winning of civil rights for African-Americans, Dr. Edward Goff, in his introduction of
Gardner, stressed the importance precedents have played in civil rights history. Goff
affirmed Gardner's thesis that Truman was indeed an unheralded champion of civil rights.
Gardner contends that the civil rights issue provides true insight into Truman's
character, in a way no other issue during his presidency can. For Truman, whose
grandparents on both sides owned slaves, the stand he took on civil rights was a moral
one. Influenced by the significant service given to their country by black veterans,
Truman never compromised his stand, though it was very unpopular among his Missouri
neighbors and, in fact, for most of the country. Truman's position was galvanized by a
1947 crime that went unpunished: the beating and blinding of a black veteran in South
Carolina at the hands a local sheriff.
Truman encountered serious resistance to his civil rights agenda. Congress refused to consider any of his proposals. Despite this, he accomplished much within the special powers granted to the president, and helped establish a climate of change that reaped significant benefits later.
One area of Truman's legacy was his use of the courts.
He was able to appoint judges to the federal courts who were in favor of developing civil
rights law. By 1949, Truman had appointed four Supreme Court justices who were liberal,
including his friend Fred M. Vinson as chief justice.
Several court cases advanced the cause of civil rights, leading up to the Brown v.
Board of Education decision in 1954.
Another avenue for Truman's activism was his creation in
1947 of a Commission on Civil Rights. Its distinguished members worked for ten months to
provide Truman with a significant set of thirty-five recommendations for the president to
pursue. While Truman could not get these passed into law, they were, nevertheless, an
historic platform for an American president.
Truman was also able to use the presidential executive order effectively. As a soldier in
World War I, Truman experienced the segregated U. S. Army firsthand. In 1948, as
president, he issued an executive order which integrated the armed forces. Similarly,
President Truman stood atop an historically segregated executive branch. With another
executive order that same year, he desegregated the government.
Truman's platform on civil rights, and its unpopularity,
provided an interesting scenario as the election of 1948 approached. While the president
had told Congress in February that civil rights was his top priority, his proposals
remained unpopular there and in the country at large, where only 9% favored Truman's
initiatives. Opposition to Truman resulted in Democrats Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace
running against him, and the Republican Party's Thomas Dewey seemed assured of victory.
Truman, undaunted, lured voters by emphasizing economic issues, labeled Congress a
do-nothing body, and managed to win the election.
Harry Truman was a courageous president, preferring to stick with an unpopular civil
rights agenda because it was morally right. Ironically, he later disliked the tactics of
the 1960s civil rights movement. But, after him, no future president could ignore civil
rights as an issue.
[Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and
Political Risks, by Michael R. Gardner. E814
.G37 2002 / Third floor, circulating collection]
Dennis Lambert is head, Collection Development and Management, Falvey Memorial Library.
No "accounting" for
taste. A review of the new database Accounting & Tax
by Michael Foight
In this age of constantly changing information, many questions about access to traditional resources are asked by students and faculty members. Some ask, "How does the Library support new and ongoing graduate programs and initiatives like the new Master of Accounting and Professional Consultancy program or the established Master of Taxation program?" Others wonder, "How do today’s undergraduates in pre-professional majors find reputable and authoritative sources in a sea of misleading and confusing Web sites?"
The information professionals at Falvey Memorial Library are always
seeking newer, better, more comprehensive resources; these sources often will supplement
or even replace print titles in the library collections. Until now, the information
resources in accountancy have been largely limited to print indexes and paper journal
subscriptions. Falvey Memorial Library has just acquired a new electronic database that
will answer many queries about accounting and taxation. This new database, Accounting
& Tax, is the premier research tool for both current accountancy professionals
seeking a graduate degree and undergraduate students in Villanova’s rigorous and
highly competitive accounting program. This resource meets many campus needs and supports
many new initiatives.
Just months ago, scholars examining the accounting literature from scholarly journals and
accounting trade journals were locked into looking through non-dynamic print indexes and
abstracts. Now these same scholars can search the Accounting & Tax database and find
more information faster. With over 1,900 journal titles indexed, Accounting & Tax
looks into the heart and soul of the accounting profession.
Yet, this database will appeal to others as well. With the collapse of
Enron and the charges of fraud and document destruction against Anderson, this nation's
fifth largest accounting firm, students studying philosophy, social justice and business
ethics at Villanova will find many formerly hidden sources detailing the alleged tax
loopholes, covert off-shore banking, and questionable accounting practices reputed to be
in current use throughout the corporate world. For example, a search of "accountancy
and fraud" returns over 500 citations.
But wait, there’s more! Journals can also be browsed by date. For example, in the
November 1999 issue of Accounting History, we can find articles on accounting
practices in Australia, a report on the first International Accounting History conference,
and an article on history of the links between management and accounting. Not only are
most articles abstracted, but over 200 of the core journals are available full text
online, which means that you’ll be able to read and print the source documents from
scholarly journals from off-campus locations. This will make research much more efficient
for busy graduate students taking distance education courses and for students in the
Villanova Professional and Executive MBA programs.
So while there may be no accounting for taste, accounting at Villanova has a database that
will appeal to many palates!
Michael Foight is the business information specialist.
Vincent J. Mostardi, formerly an employee in the Periodical department's bindery, passed away on April 25. Born on Sept. 12, 1920, he'd been with Falvey from 1982 to 2001, binding and repairing hundreds of circulating books, magazines and journals each year. Vince previously was a warehouse foreman at Crucible Steel Company of America and Stainless Steel Products. According to family members, however, his years at Villanova were the most enjoyable.
Also contributing to this issue of Blueprints:
Louise Green, Susan Markley, Judy Olsen and Jacqueline Smith. Photography by Donna Blaszkowski.
