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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Laurie Lisle

Louise Nevelson with her cats, 1975, Pedro E. Guerrero, Vintage Silver Bromide Print

March 25, 2020.

Author and biographer Laurie Lisle discusses her book Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life (Simon & Schuster 1990; Rev. Ed., Open Road, 2016.)

'From her birth in Russia, her girlhood in Maine, to her years as an artist in Manhattan, Nevelson's life was difficult, dramatic and, after years of struggle, finally triumphant. Her rich iconography expressed in black, white, and gold wooden assemblages is an enormous and extraordinary prize-winning body of work found in parks, plazas, and museums throughout the world. Lisle has conscientiously investigated the numerous bizarre events in Nevelson's long life" -Washington Post Book World 

"Lisle's book is impressive in its thoroughness . . . its eclectic introduction of psychological analysis" -Woman's Art Journal

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Peipei Qiu

February 11, 2015. 

Peipei Qiu, Professor of Chinese and Japanese on the Louise Boyd Dale and Alfred Lichtenstein Chair and Director of Asian Studies at Vassar, talks about her book Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves, published this year by Oxford University Press.

"Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves features the personal narratives of twelve women forced into sexual slavery when the Japanese military occupied their hometowns. Beginning with their prewar lives and continuing through their enslavement to their postwar struggles for justice, these interviews reveal that the prolonged suffering of the comfort station survivors was not contained to wartime atrocities but was rather a lifelong condition resulting from various social, political, and cultural factors. In addition, their stories bring to light several previously hidden aspects of the comfort women system: the ransoms the occupation army forced the victims' families to pay, the various types of improvised comfort stations set up by small military units throughout the battle zones and occupied regions, and the sheer scope of the military sexual slavery-much larger than previously assumed. The personal narratives of these survivors combined with the testimonies of witnesses, investigative reports, and local histories also reveal a correlation between the proliferation of the comfort stations and the progression of Japan's military offensive."

39:01 minutes.

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Maria Höhn

April 2, 2014.

Maria Höhn, Professor of History and International Studies on the Marion Musser Lloyd Chair  at Vassar College, talks about her most recent book, co-authored with Martin Klimke, entitled: A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany, published by Palgrave in 2010.

"Depicting the African American GI as the unheralded keystone of the civil rights movement in America during the post-WWII era, this book exhilaratingly exposes the two-facedness of America denazifying Germany while practicing Jim Crow segregation in its own military. With a thorough analysis of the African American press’s role in disclosing this hypocrisy, it reveals the many ways in which subsequent civil rights leaders owe their success to the groundwork laid by African American GIs. Together, they forged the space to launch a civil rights revolution in America." -- Calvin Robinson, President, NAACP

58:23 minutes.

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View the new film based on the book.
View the project website.