Julia Bolton Holloway

February 2, 2022.

The scholar, librarian, and Catholic Hermit Julia Bolton Holloway, Custodian of the English Cemetery in Florence, talks about her scholarship, her role as keeper of an historic cemetery, about cemeteries and libraries as vital mirrors of memory, and her project to develop a cultural heritage library documenting the Cemetery's many notable residents and their histories. 

"Julia Bolton Holloway was born in London, grew up in Sussex, went to America at 16, studied at San Jose State University for the BA, and at the University of California, Berkeley, for the doctorate. Her Comparative Literature dissertation was published in three editions as The Pilgrim and the Book: A Study of Dante, Langland and Chaucer. She next published books on Brunetto Latino, a bibliography and an edition of Il Tesoretto, later a full length study of his life and writings as Twice Told Tales: Brunetto Latino and Dante Alighieri, and is currently editing Brunetto Latino's Latin and Italian Opera.  She edited and translated Birgitta of Sweden's Revelations, in Saint Bride and her Book. That work led to research on Julian of Norwich, resulting in the definitive edition of the extant manuscripts in France and England with Sister Anna Maria Reynolds, C.P., and published by SISMEL, Anchoress and Cardinal: Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton, O.S.B., published by Analecta Cartusiana, ed. James Hogg, Julian among the Books: Julian of Norwich's Theological Library, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and Mary's Dowry: Contemplative and Pilgrim Women's Writings, Analecta Cartusiana, ed. James Hogg. She completed her father's work on Elizabeth Barrett Browning and published editions of Aurora Leigh and Other Poems, Penguin, and Casa Guidi Windows (in English and Italian), Aureo Anello Books. She raised three sons, taught at Quincy University, Princeton University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she was Director of Medieval Studies. She took early retirement to enter an Anglican convent, is now a Catholic hermit in Florence, Italy, where she directs an ecumenical polyglot library and is custodian of the Swiss-owned 'English' Cemetery where Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage Landor, Frances Trollope and many famous others, particularly slavery Abolitionists, are buried."

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Leah Price

May 8, 2013:  SEASON FINALE.

Leah Price, Professor of English at Harvard University and Senior Advisor in the Humanities at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, discusses her book: How To Do Things With Books in Victorian Britain, published by Princeton University Press in 2012.

“Leah Price has challenged every book historian, librarian, and reader of secular or spiritual scripture to think through the object we fondle or maul and the ways in which it circulates in whole and in pieces through our home and global economies. . . . [T]here's no doubt in my mind that this is a potent intervention in the study of material culture. No one who cares about books should miss handling and reading it." -- Robert L. Patten, Review of English Studies

1:05:23 minutes.

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Joanne Martin Lukacher

March 6, 2013.

Joanne Martin Lukacher talks about her book, Imitation and Improvement: The Norfolk Sampler Tradition, published by In The Company of Friends Press, 2013.

“This new volume identifies and interprets a distinctive body of samplers executed by the girls of Norfolk during a dramatic time of social and cultural change in late 18th-century Britian."

 Joanne Martin Lukacher is an independent scholar, curator, and historic preservationist,  and an authority on historic samplers and their makers.  She curated the exhibition in 2004 at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center entitled: "Thanks Be to My Friends: Selected Samplers from the Collections of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College."

55:17 minutes.

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Beth Luey

February 20, 2013.

Beth Luey, Founder of the Scholarly Publishing Program at Arizona State University, talks about her book: Expanding the American Mind: Books and the Popularization of Knowledge, Published by the University of Massachusetts Press.

Ms. Luey is the author of Handbook for Academic Authors, first published by Cambridge University Press in 1987.  After working as an editor for university presses and textbook companies, Ms. Luey founded the Scholarly Publishing Program at Arizona State University and directed the program for more than twenty-five years.

She has also served as president of the Association for Documentary Editing, the International Association for Publishing Education, and the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing.

40:03 minutes.

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Andrew Piper

February 13, 2013.

Andrew Piper, Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and associate member of the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, discusses his book Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times, published in 2011 by the University of Chicago Press.

“Contending that our lived experience of reading belies naive generalizations about the future of books, Book Was There is an elegantly argued and thoroughly up-to-date tribute to the endurance of books in our evolving digital world."

Professor Piper's first book, which won the Modern Language Association Prize for a first book is entitled Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age (Chicago UP, 2009).  He is co-founder of the research group, Interacting with Print: Cultural Practices of Intermediality, 1700-1900.

55:07 mins.

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Alex Byrne

April 8, 2008.

Alex Byrne, University Librarian at the University of Technology, Sydney, and 2005-2007 President of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), discusses intellectual freedom advocacy, libraries, internationalism, and his book: The Politics of Promoting Freedom of Information and Expression in International Librarianship, published by Scarecrow.

49:48 min.

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Mark C. Amodio

December 11, 2007.

Mark Amodio, Professor of English at Vassar College, talks about his book: Writing the Oral Tradition: Poetics and Literate Culture in Medieval England, published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Hailed as "a major revision of oral theory" and "destined to reshape critical thinking about medieval poetry in English," Writing the Oral Tradition was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book for 2005.

60:01 min.
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