book corner
How social scientists, humanists can better use computers The editor of a new book about computing thinks of his publication as a bridge for colleagues who are wary of the far side of technology. Orville Vernon Burton, a UI professor of history and sociology, hopes that “Computing in the Social Sciences and Humanities” (University of Illinois Press) will help those who are still uncomfortable with digital media understand where they are in terms of computer know-how and show them where they might be. He concedes that while the larger computing world has been galloping at a furious pace of change, humanists and social scientists are creeping along in their “technological adoption and adaptation.” In the book, Burton and 10 other computer-savvy scholars attempt not only to demystify the ongoing computing revolution, but also to raise consciousness about some of the larger challenges of the revolution, for example, intellectual property protection and sexism on the Internet. Accompanying the book is a CD-ROM, “Wayfarer: Charting Advances in Social Science and Humanities Computing,” an interactive overview of the state of computing in the humanities and social sciences. Capable of being updated through the World Wide Web, it has been called a “seminar on a disk.”
Link to the publisher: Full release from the UI News Bureau.
Anthology focuses on American poetry about the Spanish Civil War
Why have so many American writers remained obsessed with a war that ended 60 years ago? And why does their story suddenly seem so relevant today? A new anthology gathers this history together and provides the answers. So says Cary Nelson, the editor of “The Wound and the Dream: Sixty Years of American Poems about the Spanish Civil War” (University of Illinois Press). Nelson is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a professor of English at the UI. During the past 15 years, he has led a one-man crusade to bring out the literature, including letters, posters and photography, of the war, which drew some 3,000 Americans and 40,000 others to Spain. Nelson argues that although Americans are “fabled as isolationists,” their poetry of the Spanish Civil War “shows a 60-year concern with world history. Many of our well-known poets not only wrote about the Spanish Civil War, but a number of them returned to the topic again and again.” The anthology, which includes a long introduction, a glossary and a biographical section, allows one to see how 56 poets were “both inspired and haunted by this first antifascist cause of the 1930s,” Nelson said.
Link to the publisher:
