Category Archives: Ames Highlights

This Theme Thursday features the story of yet another scientist whose contributions were credited to a man with whom she worked. From the book cover: “Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was a pioneer of nuclear physics and co-discoverer, with Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, of nuclear fission. Braving the sexism of the scientific world, she joined the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry and became a prominent member of the international physics community. Of Jewish origin, Meitner fled Nazi Germany for Stockholm in 1938 and later moved to Cambridge, England. Her career was shattered when she fled Germany, and her scientific reputation was damaged when Hahn took full credit—and the 1944 Nobel Prize—for the work they had done together on nuclear fission. Ruth Sime’s absorbing book is the definitive biography of Lise Meitner, the story of a brilliant woman whose extraordinary life illustrates not only the dramatic scientific progress but also the injustice and destruction that have marked the twentieth century.”

Ruth Lewin Sime’s Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics gives Meitner a full-scale biography wherein we learn that she discovered the element protactinium. Drawing from correspondence between Meitner and Hahn, Sime reveals that Hahn had been initially stumped by what happened to the uranium he fired neutrons at; Meitner wrote back with the explanation. So, in effect, Sime has constructed here an admirable restorative of scientific credit, though she pounds a bit much on poor Hahn. We see Meitner’s true import to the flow of nuclear research of the period, in which she was a premier experimentalist, investigating the theories of Bohr, Planck, and others. Sime also adeptly conveys the private side of Meitner’s storm-tossed 90-year life, through all of which Meitner kept a humane perspective and a solid group of friends.

Tuesday, December 6th

Librarian/Professor Sue Anderson and the Writing Center staff will be in The Ames Library to support students in completing projects/papers/videos etc.

Starting a paper and don’t know where to begin? Anderson can talk you through the research process and help you find just the right articles. Writing Center tutors and Joel Haefner will be on hand to review drafts of papers. Poster printing on demand will be available from 7-10 p.m.

Two massage therapists will be available from 7-9 p.m. to relieve stress; sign-up sheets are on the door of Room 139 for 10-minute slots.

We want to help students finish the semester projects due before finals. Come to Ames to GET IT DONE! Snacks and de-stress fun will also be in the mix.

Over the summer, incoming students read The Underground Girls of Kabul and learned about girls who are raised as boys in Afghanistan. This Theme Thursday features another text about women in Afghanistan, Sally Armstrong’s Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women in Afghanistan. Written in 2002, the book tells the story of Armstrong’s search for Dr. Sima Simar, which started in 1997. Dr. Samar was a woman famous for working underground against the Taliban by keeping schools and medical clinics open for women.

From the book cover: “The women of Afghanistan lived a five-year nightmare under the Taliban regime. In Veiled Threat, Sally Armstrong introduces several of these women—including the deputy prime minister of Afghanistan, Dr. Sima Samar—who describe the living hell they experienced as well as the quiet rebellion—clandestine schools for girls and health clinics for women—that took place in an effort to subvert the Taliban’s hateful edicts.

One of the first Western journalists to visit Afghanistan, Armstrong gives us an insider’s view of the deplorable situation. She also provides a broader perspective, leading us through the history of Afghanistan, including the ebb and flow of women’s rights. She examines what the Koran actually says about women. She points a finger at the international community for accepting women’s oppression in the name of culture, and she accuses the Taliban and other fundamentalist leaders of distorting Islam for political opportunism.”

Happy Thanksgiving, Titans! Did you know that Sarah Josepha Buella Hale was a leading force behind the creation of Thanksgiving as a national American holiday? Prior to her campaign, it had been primarily celebrated in New England, with each state celebrating it on a different day. Her advocacy for the national holiday began in 1846 and lasted 17 years before it was successful. She wrote letters to five US presidents (Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, and Lincoln) with the final letter to Lincoln convincing him to support legislation establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863. The new holiday was considered a unifying day after the stress of the American Civil War.

Hale is also the author of the famous nursery rhyme, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” From the book cover: “Since this nursery rhyme first appeared in 1830, children have loved it.  When Tomie dePaola discovered that Hale had been born near his New Hampshire home, he knew he wanted to illustrate this perennial favorite.

DePaola uses his signature folk art style and sets the poem in a traditional 19th century New England setting.  The result is an endearing interpretation of the little lamb that followed Mary to school and how the teacher handled it.

Back in print after fifteen years and in a board book format for the first time, Mary Had a Little Lamb will be cherished for generations of children to come.”

Considered one of the most prolific female spies of the 20th century, as a triple agent for Communists in China, India, and the Soviet Union, Agnes Smedley was an American journalist and writer well known for her semi-autobiographical work, Daughter of Earth.

Agnes Smedley, author of Daughter of Earth, worked in and wrote about China from 1928 to 1941. These 18 pieces featured in  Portraits of Chinese Women in Revolution —all out of print and most unavailable even in public libraries—are based on interviews with revolutionary women. They include descriptions of the massacre of feminists in the Canton commune, of the silk workers of Canton whose solidarity earns them the charge of lesbianism, and of Mother Tsai, a 60-year-old peasant who leads village women in smashing an opium den.

Want to learn all about the first African-American woman to graduate from IWU? Check out The Ames Library Archives and Special Collections blog post on Jospehine M. Jackson.

“The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.”

– Zora Neale Hurston

This Theme Thursday celebrates the accomplishements and life of civil rights activist Zora Neale Hurston. Zora Neale Hurston was an American novelist, short story write, folklorist, and anthropologist. Of her novels and published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. 

Her works remained rather obscure during her life and for several years after her death, for a number of cultural and political reasons. Many early readers and critics objected to Hurston’s use of dialect, but more recently critics have praised her use of idiomatic speech.

From the book cover: “One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.”

Fifty years after women like Dame Jane Goodall and Gloria Steinem started chipping away at the glass ceiling, their influence remains palpable, especially in a world where we still debate women’s rights. This Theme Thursday celebrates the work of Jane Goodall, a famous primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and all-around awesome woman. Dame Goodall continues to study and write about primate behavior. She founded the Gombe Stream Research Center in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, and the Jane Goodall Institute for Wild Life Research, Education, and Conservation to provide ongoing support for field research on wild chimpanzees. She is the author of many books, including two autobiographies in letters, Africa in My Blood and Beyond Innocence. Today Dr. Goodall spends much of her time lecturing, sharing her message of hope for the future, and encouraging young people to make a difference in their world.

In the Shadow of Man is one of Goodall’s early books. From the book cover: “World-renowned primatologist, conservationist, and humanitarian Dr. Jane Goodall’s account of her life among the wild chimpanzees of Gombe is one of the most enthralling stories of animal behavior ever written. Her adventure began when the famous anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey suggested that a long-term study of chimpanzees in the wild might shed light on the behavior of our closest living relatives. Accompanied by only her mother and her African assistants, she set up camp in the remote Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanzania. For months the project seemed hopeless; out in the forest from dawn until dark, she had but fleeting glimpses of frightened animals. But gradually she won their trust and was able to record previously unknown behavior, such as the use—and even the making— of tools, until then believed to be an exclusive skill of man. As she came to know the chimps as individuals, she began to understand their complicated social hierarchy and observed many extraordinary behaviors, which have forever changed our understanding of the profound connection between humans and chimpanzees.

This week’s Theme Thursday features the works of Kara Walker, whose works explore race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes.

Narratives of a Negress, “accompanied an exhibition organized by the Tang Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and the Williams College Museum of Art, presents a comprehensive overview of Walker’s work, beginning with her first cut-paper wall installation, Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart (1994). Other highlights include the 1996 series of twenty-four watercolor drawings, Brown Follies, which is reproduced in full as an artist’s book within the book, and installation views of many of Walker’s exhibitions. Recent drawings and projections are also featured. Throughout the book are a selection of the Walker’s writings reproduced as they were created typed on index cards. These writings reveal a rarely seen side of the artist, whose words are as provocative as her installations and drawings. The essays discuss Walker’s place in art history, formal and narrative readings of her work, her relation to culture at large, and issues of race, sexuality, and representation addressed in her work.”