Posts by Juli McLoone

Although largely forgotten today,The Water-Babies was once one of the most popular Victorian literary fairy tales. Charles Kingsley's imaginative tour de force leaps from realistic adventure, to fantastical exploration of aquatic biology, to an imaginary voyage in the tradition of Gulliver’s Travels.

Our last Fairy Tale Friday recounted Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes - a story about a girl whose vanity led to the loss of her feet and, ultimately, her life. Footwear features prominently again in today’s fairy tale. However, unlike Karen’s cursed dancing shoes, Aschenputtel finds that her golden slippers are the vehicle of her own reward and of revenge against her cruel stepsisters.

In culmination of this year’s Poetry at Literati series, Anne Waldman, whose papers are part of the U-M Special Collections Library, will be performing tonight with fellow poet Anne Carson at 7:30pm at Ann Arbor’s Literati Bookstore (124 E. Washington). Anne Waldman is renowned for her dynamic poetry performances, which are intended "to conjure states of mind and possibilities, and to wake people up to poetry as an active condition. As an experience in and of itself."

With thanks to the Digital Library Production Service (DLPS), we are happy to announce the launch of a new online collection. John James Audubon's The Birds of America was the founding purchase of the University Library in 1839 and as U-M celebrates its bicentennial, the Special Collections Library and the William L. Clements' Library have jointly purchased Audubon’s The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. All of Audubon’s mammals and a selection of the birds are now available online.

Spring has sprung and it's time to celebrate the season of new growth with poetry!

"Utterly stunned, I walked down Broadway with a frie[n]d, repeating over and over to him, “Do you realize there are some things I will not be able to do simply because I am a woman? Do you realize…” I could not stop recounting the incident." In these words, anthropologist Eleanor Leacock recalls the moment in 1943 when she was denied an Assistantship solely because of her gender and she realized the full extent of discrimination that she would face as a female academic.

Hans Christian Andersen's “The Red Shoes” tells the story of an orphan girl whose uncontrolled desire for material pleasures and social status leads to her downfall.

Feeling nostalgic for print-forms gone by? Or eagerly seeking the next production medium for your postmodern creativity? Either way, come join the Harlequin Creature typing bee in the gallery of Hatcher Graduate Library on Wednesday, February 18th from 11:30am-4:30pm.