Ames Library News

Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women is the focus of this Theme Thursday. From the book cover: “In today’s world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women’s movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It’s the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society’s impossible definition of “the flawless beauty.””

Naomi Wolf was born in San Francisco in 1962. She was an undergraduate at Yale University and did her graduate work at New College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Her essays have appeared in various publications including: The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Glamour, Ms., Esquire, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She also speaks widely to groups across the country.

The Beauty Myth, her first book, was an international bestseller. She followed that with Fire With Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change The 21st Century, published by Random House in 1993, and Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, published in 1997. Misconceptions, released in 2001, is a powerful and passionate critique of pregnancy and birth in America.

In fall 2002, Harper Collins published a 10th anniversary commemorative edition of The Beauty Myth. In May of 2005, Ms. Wolf released The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from my Father on How to Live, Love and See. The End of America, published in September 2007 by Chelsea Green, is Naomi’s latest book.

Naomi Wolf is co-founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization devoted to training young women in ethical leadership for the 21st century. The institute teaches professional development in the arts and media, politics and law, business and entrepreneurship as well as ethical decision making.

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.