This spring and summer marks the premiere of the film and companion book, Journey of the Universe, by Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, an evolutionary philosopher and a historian of religions, respectively. Their science-based narrative tells the epic story of the universe, leading up to the challenges of our present moment. The authors describe the origins of humans on Earth, how we developed a symbolic consciousness, and how our ability to communicate using symbols make humans a “planetary presence.” As the dominant species, humans have become increasingly adept at adapting to, and now commodifying Earth.
Suddenly, we are faced with a new dynamic—one where the survival of the species and entire ecosystems depend primarily on human activity, and the choices humans make.
Weaving together the findings of modern science together with enduring wisdom found in the humanistic traditions of the West, China, India, and indigenous peoples, the authors explore cosmic evolution as a profoundly wondrous process based on creativity, connection, and interdependence, and they envision an unprecedented opportunity for the world’s people to address the daunting ecological and social challenges of our times.
Tomorrow, the documentary film will be broadcast on KQED TV in northern California, and it will premiere nationally on public television in September 2011. (Check your local listings). In the meantime, you can visit the Journey of the Universe website to learn more about the exciting project and get started with the film trailer.
The May 22 cover of the New York Times Book Review featured a photograph of Harold Bloom; the title of Editor Sam Tanenhaus’s essay: “An Uncommon Reader”, accompanied online by an interview at Bloom’s home in New York. As Tanenhaus writes of the new book, The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life, “[Bloom] still has many arresting things to say and says them, often, with exquisite precision. He is, by any reckoning, one of the most stimulating literary presences of the last half-century.”
At the end of the PEN World Voices Festival earlier this month, Bloom appeared in conversation with Paul Holdengräber, Director of LIVE from the New York Public Library. The discussion centered on the new bookand how it responds to Bloom’s 1973 work, The Anxiety of Influence.When colleague John Hollander reviewed Anxiety for the Times, calling it, “more than a little outrageous”, a common reaction to Bloom’s work in the academy at the time, he ultimately conceded that: “In any event, this remarkable book has raised profound questions about where in the mind the creative process is to be located, and about how the prior visions of other poems are, for a true poet, as powerful as his own dreams and as formative as his domestic childhood. From now on, only obtuseness or naiveté, in critic or psychologist, will be able to ignore them.”
The past decades have proved Hollander right, as Bloom moved from Yale’s English Department to found the Humanities Department, an interdisciplinary program of study “designed to contribute to an integrated understanding of the Western cultural tradition”, certainly the relationships and networks of influencing and influenced. Bloom talks with Holdengräber about love, memory, and the power of poetry (and Falstaff :) ). And he talks about the writers who shaped his reading most—Shakespeare, Whitman, Crane—and what the sound and meaning of their verse have brought to understanding the human experience, how we are all influenced by the art of others. With further reading and a lifelong love for literature, Bloom has now written these reflections into The Anatomy of Influence. Here’s a video clip from the event, but you can also download the full audio, take it with you, and listen as you go.
Yale University’s Terry Lectures began in 1905 with a grant from Dwight H. Terry. Intended to bridge ideas of religion with developing modern science and philosophy, the deed of gift declares that
“the object of this foundation is not the promotion of scientific investigation and discovery, but rather the assimilation and interpretation of that which has been or shall be hereafter discovered, and its application to human welfare, especially by the building of the truths of science and philosophy into the structure of a broadened and purified religion.”
Today, we publish the newest addition to the series: The New Universe and the Human Future, by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack. When the authors delivered their lectures in October 2009, they explored the fascinating idea that we can now build a creation story from modern discoveries in cosmology and biology. Sharing and understanding that story across human civilization would transform our mentality, creating what the authors call a Cosmic Society, like the one they are building on Facebook. This new society embraces a vision of the universe that calls upon humans to better understand their place in the cosmos and act progressively to affect problems here on Earth, such as climate change and sustainable growth. Armed with the proper knowledge, we can more consciously and effectively participate in caring for the world in which we live.
Many of the pictures in the illustrated book are frames taken from videos that are based on supercomputer simulations of key aspects of the evolving universe. If you’re reading on a web-connected device that supports video, you can watch these videos on the book’s website, http://new-universe.org, whenever you see the symbol to the right. The website also includes additional videos, information about the illustrations, and links to their sources.
To start our coverage of this book, here is a simulation of Aquarius, showing the formation of a single Milky Way-sized dark matter halo. Stay tuned for more updates and interviews with the authors as our Cosmic Society grows.
In the midst of recent events in the Middle East, YUP is offering a special look at the books that cover religion, politics, and culture of the region, and our authors who are active in contributing to these discussions.
Last month, Marwan Muasher gave a talk at Yale as part of the Jackson Senior Fellows Lecture Series, titled “The Arab World in Crisis: Redefining Arab Moderation.” As a top-ranked diplomat, Muasher has held many high-level positions within the government of Jordan, including Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Ambassador to the United States, and first Jordanian Ambassador to Israel. He is the author of The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation, written prior his appointment as a fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. His recent talk readdresses the issues he presents in his book—the promise and perils of taking the “middle road” toward peace in the Middle East and what must be done to encourage the development of moderate, pragmatic Arab voices—and on YouTube, there is a full lecture from a similar talk he gave that was sponsored by the International Development Research Centre.
For Women’s History Month, we have a forthcoming study of the political and cultural history of the veil over the past half century: A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America, written by Leila Ahmed, the first professor of Women's Studies in Religion at Harvard University and currently the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity at Harvard’s Divinity School. Ahmed was raised by a generation of women who never dressed in the veils and headscarves their mothers and grandmothers had worn. To them, these coverings seemed irrelevant to both modern life and Islamic piety. Today, however, the majority of Muslim women throughout the Islamic world again wear the veil. Why, she asks, did this change take root so swiftly, and what does this shift mean for women, Islam, and the West? When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil's return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. What she discovered, however, in the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations, reaching surprising conclusions about contemporary Islam's place in the West today.
And in looking back on Egypt, where so much action at the start of this year has sparked movement across social media and traditional news outlets—oh, and something of a revolution, too?—we have Egyptian journalist, Tarek Osman, with his newly published book: Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak. His prescient analysis foretold the roles that young Egyptians assumed in determining the future of their nation. The chapter “Young Egyptians” is part of YUP’s “Crisis in the Arab World” free book sampler, also featuring chapters from Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed, by Martin Evans and John Phillips, and Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes, by Victoria Clark, both areas where similar uprisings have begun to stir. The sampler is now available for free download with your choice of PDF, Kindle, and ePub files.
For good measure, watchTarek Osman talk Egyptian politics on Al Jazeera English, the Arabic news network that has provided so many important real time updates throughout these tumultuous times.
We all spend time fretting about the hormones and chemicals in our food, water, and medications—what goes into our bodies and how it will affect us in the long term. In women’s health, this takes special concern because of the careful attention paid to hormone regulation in obstetrics and gynecology; sexual growth, pregnancy, menopause and the differences in male and female anatomies all bring separate concerns for keeping a healthy endocrine system. And then, what goes into one body becomes more important beyond the individual because our vastly interconnected ecosystems take in certain…returns from our own consumption habits, and certain returns for our society accompany this, as well.
In 1941 the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of diethylstilbestrol (DES), the first synthetic chemical to be marketed as an estrogen and one of the first to be identified as a hormone disruptor—a chemical that mimics hormones. Although researchers knew that DES caused cancer and disrupted sexual development, doctors prescribed it for millions of women, initially for menopause and then for miscarriage, while farmers gave cattle the hormone to promote rapid weight gain. Its residues, and those of other chemicals, in the American food supply are changing the internal ecosystems of human, livestock, and wildlife bodies in increasingly troubling ways.
Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES,a gripping exposé by Nancy Langston, shows how these chemicals have penetrated into every aspect of our bodies and ecosystems, yet the U.S. government has largely failed to regulate them and has skillfully manipulated scientific uncertainty to delay regulation. Personally affected by endocrine disruptors, Langston argues that the FDA needs to institute proper regulation of these commonly produced synthetic chemicals.
Watch the retro-style trailer on YouTube to get a glimpse into how easily these problems can spread, or you can read more at www.toxicbodies.org.
Watch on YouTube for a brief interview with Jerome Charyn, author of Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil, on the many sides of Joltin' Joe and the legacy of this iconic player!
And once that whets your appetite, listen to Charyn speak at length with Chris Gondek on the newest episode of The Biography Podcast.
Another book in our Icons of America series has just been published: The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon, by Leo Braudy. Braudy, University Professor and Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature at the University of Southern California, has written the first comprehensive history of the Hollywood Sign, which was erected in 1923 as a temporary real estate advertisement only to become a permanent part of our cultural heritage.
Last week, Braudy interviewed with CBS/KCAL 9 in Los Angeles to talk about the book and the evolution of the sign from its “Hollywoodland” days to its present landmark status, and the many LA visitors who come every year to snap a photo. Check out the video here, and read more on the sign’s history with a slideshow at Slate.
The New York Timesran a story on the changing leadership at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Asian art galleries: the new head will be Maxwell Hearn, author of a number of YUP books on Chinese painting and calligraphy, published in association with The Met.
Watch below as Hearn talks about Chinese scroll painting and rolls out a 14th-century treasure. Or watch on NYTimes.com for more “Arts” section videos and features.
After publishing not one, but twoAnthologies of Graphic Fiction, noted cartoonist and illustrator, Ivan Brunetti, is back with Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, an instructional how-to for cartooning as an art of self-expression. In this book, he presents fifteen distinct lessons on the art of cartooning, guiding his readers through wittily written passages on cartooning terminology, techniques, tools, and theory. Supplemented by Brunetti's own illustrations, prepared specially for this book, these lessons move the reader from spontaneous drawings to single-panel strips and complicated multipage stories.
Through simple, creative exercises and assignments, Brunetti offers an unintimidating approach to a complex art form. He looks at the rhythms of storytelling, the challenges of character design, and the formal elements of comics while composing pages in his own iconic style and experimenting with a variety of tools, media, and approaches. By following the author's sophisticated and engaging perspective on the art of cartooning, aspiring cartoonists of all ages will hone their craft, create their personal style, and discover their own visual language.
Check out the book's promotional trailer, with Brunetti guiding the viewer through the creation of a single-page cartoon.
Fashion has been one of the most notoriously difficult industries for blacks to penetrate. In March 1966, Donyale Luna was the first black model to appear on the cover of Vogue—the British edition. It would be almost a decade later before Beverly Johnson appeared as the first black model for American Vogue, finally gracing the cover with the August 1974 issue.
The work of Alexander McQueen, with its bold, distinctly provocative style, has shown the ways in which fashion and beauty transcend race. The most vocal among black models championing McQueen’s legacy is close friend, Naomi Campbell, the first black model to appear on Vogue Paris’s cover. Last spring, she paid tribute to McQueen’s style with her “Fashion for Relief Haiti” show, highlighting McQueen’s Manta dresses, alongside Kate Moss and Annabelle Neilson. He touched people regardless of race, and many black celebrities including superstars Rihanna, Kanye West, and Michelle Obama have expressed their appreciation for his designs and vision.
Photographer Nick Knight, well known for his “All Black” issue of ItalianVogue, put together a tribute video to McQueen, titled “To Lee, with Love” (sound familiar?) with an exclusive soundtrack by Björk. Many of these iconic pieces will be part of The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for a show opening May 4, “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.” The accompanying catalog, published by YUP in association with The Met, is edited by curators Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda, covering his entire career as a fashion designer, one of the most important of our times.
