An offshoot of the Reading the Past blog, Reusable Cover Art is a collection of book covers that incorporate the same image into their cover art. Some of the juxtapositions are funny; an image that inspired Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale is used for both an edition of the Canterbury Tales and a smutty historical romance (of which, now that I think about it, Chaucer would probably heartily approve). Others are a little more thought-provoking, as when the same image of a veiled woman is used for novels called Kleopatra and Scheherazade. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the images are of females looking feminine,  which makes Reusable Cover Art not just a curiosity, but a handy opportunity to reflect on how these images are used as a kind of shorthand, particularly when it comes to gender and race.

I dare anyone to resist the charms of Abebooks‘ Weird Book Room, a collection of, well, really weird books. Some, like We are the people our parents warned us against,  just have outrageous titles, but some are genuinely perplexing, like The Manga Guide to Calculus or this week’s Weird Book of the Week, Liberace: Your Personal Fashion Consultant:

Never underestimate a man in hot pants. Liberace, the globally-renowned pianist, swings his closet door open in order to coach you on the fine art of extraordinary dressing for ordinary occasions! Need something to wear to your sister’s wedding? Packing for your next Mediterranean cruise? Shopping for a new car? Rest assured, Liberace has the perfect gold lamé number or full-length cape to suit all of your needs.

Not only can you enjoy dazzling photographs of Liberace in the most outrageous of outfits, but you can also punch these photos out to play with twelve paper dolls in hilarious poses!

Ah, the cultures and subcultures that produced these artifacts! And if you happen to know of a weird book that hasn’t made it into the Weird Book Room yet, you can submit it for consideration, as people across the English-speaking world have done.

Finally, three cheers for the blog Curious Pages: recommended inappropriate books for kids, which features offbeat, out of print, abstract, and sometimes not-for-children children’s books. I was thrilled to see a new edition of The Wizard of Oz illustrated by collage artist Graham Rawle, whom I love (anyone who can create a novel exclusively out of clippings from 1960’s women’s magazines is okay by me). Curious Pages doesn’t neglect the classics; there is a post on Der Struwwelpeter (or Shock-Headed Peter), Heinrich Hoffmann’s 1845 collection of German children’s stories chock full of not-so-subtle messages about the dangers of playing with matches, sucking thumbs, going out in bad weather, etc. A nice reminder that children’s stories and fairy tales have rarely been as safe as we’ve tried to make them over the last several decades.

A couple years ago, the New York Times launched its Paper Cuts blog with a fabulous collection of book ads from 1962 to 1973. Here is the slide show. I’m particularly taken with the ad for The Bat-Poet, a children’s book written by Randall Jarrell and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, of which I had never heard, and the ad for Rex Reed’s Do You Sleep in the Nude?, featuring a dishy-looking Jacqueline Susann. I also can’t help noticing the big ads for books of poetry: big names like James Dickey and John Ashbery, sure, but when have I seen such big ads for poetry in my lifetime? Like any other ads, these provide a snapshot of various segments of our culture at the time, and they’re well worth a look.

I should add that the author of the post, Dwight Garner, peppered the blog with vintage book ads for as long as he was the one writing it, and just last month, he published Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements, an excerpt from which can be read here.

UW MFA Reading Series: Rebecca Curtis
Monday, August 24, 7:00-8:30 PM
Second Story Books, Laramie
Free and open to the public

Reading Wyoming: Ranchester
Monday, August 24, 7:00-8:30 PM
Tongue River Branch Library
Women of Mystery series

Northern Arapaho Experience
Tuesday, August 25; Thursday, August 27; and Saturday, August 29; 6:30-8:00 PM
Wind River Casino, Riverton

We invite you to experience Indian Country through the eyes of the Northern Arapaho People.  Celebrate our native heritage through song, dance and storytelling.

Reading Wyoming: Saratoga
Wednesday, August 26, 2:00-3:00 PM
Saratoga Public Library
Rural in America series

Reading Wyoming: Cody
Wednesday, August 26, 7:00-8:30 PM
Park County Library
Canine Companions series

Reading Wyoming: Cheyenne
Thursday, August 27, 6:30-7:30 PM
Laramie County Library
Canine Companions series

Reading Wyoming: Baggs
Friday, August 28, 3:00-4:30 PM
Baggs Public Library
Canine Companions series

Reading Wyoming

Northern Arapaho Experience
Wednesday, August 19, 6:30-8:30 PM
Wind River Casino, Riverton

We invite you to experience Indian Country through the eyes of the Northern Arapaho People.  Celebrate our native heritage through song, dance and storytelling.

Reading Wyoming: Sundance
Thursday, August 20, 5:30-7:00 PM
Crook County Library
Family Photographs series

Reading Wyoming: Upton
Thursday, August 20, 7:00-8:30 PM
Upton Branch Library
Rural in America series

Wyoming Film Festival
August 20-22
Platte Valley Community Center, Saratoga

The Wyoming Film Festival is a unique venue for the community to come together as filmmakers, film lovers, volunteers, corporations, and other organizations from across the state and beyond to celebrate the valuable contribution that film makes to our cultural and economic lives.  Our plan is to present film and video productions that interpret the past, present, and future of the American West in way that embrace the festival themes of environment, equality, and family.

Carissa Mine Tours
Saturday, August 22

Tours will start at the South Pass City parking lot, in South Pass City. The public will be able to see the Carissa Mill House and the newly reconstructed Head Frame and Trestle.

Due to safety regulations, tours are limited to 20 people and reservations must be made with South Pass City State Historic Site. To make a reservation Call 307-332-3684 and ask for Carissa Tour Reservations. The tour is very rigorous and participants should be able to negotiate steep terrain and steep stairs. This tour is not appropriate for young children. For more information visit our web site www.southpasscity.com.

Reading Wyoming: Saratoga
Wednesday, July 08, 2:00-3:00 PM
Saratoga Public Library

Reading Wyoming Canine Companions: Cheyenne
Thursday, July 09, 6:30-7:30 PM
Laramie County Library

To say that Craig was an accomplished poet is an understatement. His first book, Shells, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize, the most prestigious first book prize in American poetry. His second collection, Made Flesh, was published just this year, to great acclaim. Other honors include the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, which allowed him to spend six months in Spain; a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; the Alfred Hodder Fellowship in the Humanities at Princeton University; the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellowship, which allowed him to spend a year at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in Rome; a Fulbright to Columbia this past fall; and a Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission this spring.

Craig was heavily involved in a number of council grant projects, most notably in bringing writers such as Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje, and Art Speigelman to Wyoming. He was also involved with council programs, such as last year’s Beat Generation reading series, Denver tour and traveling poetry slam.

The Wyoming Humanities Council would like to add our voice to  the worldwide chorus now mourning Craig’s passing. Our sympathies are with Craig’s admirers, friends, and family. He will be sorely missed.

At the same time, it is comforting to know that there’s a brave band of grammarians, scattered across the globe, fighting to maintain some sense of order in the chaotic swirls of English that buffet us to and fro. The great essayist and teacher Joseph Epstein used to say that there is elegance in correctness. I’ve yet to find a better reason to at least think about whether I’m following the rules.

So here is a sampling of my favorite online grammar sites. This list is by no means exhaustive; I only included the ones I think are fun:

My hands-down favorite is The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks. Run by Bethany Keeley, a grad student from Athens, Ga., this blog collects and displays signs in public places that misuse quotation marks.

Along the same lines, Literally, A Web Log tracks public misuses of the word “literally.” They’ve found some doozies, though they now seem to be more active on Twitter.

If you prefer your grammar to have a British flair, check out  GrammarBlog. I am indebted to this blog for directing me to a lovely rant about spelling and grammar by David Mitchell of That Mitchell and Webb Look. Marvelous.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Grammar Girl, whose podcasts on English language usage (and their transcriptions, if you’d rather read than listen) are clear, accessible, and memorable.

Finally, if you’ve had enough of thinking about words for now, why not play with them for a while? Deep Leap is an online game that asks you to create words from a panel of letters that slowly appear and (if you don’t use them) disappear. Just don’t let it suck away your entire Friday afternoon…

Last week’s post dealt with how new technology facilitates direct encounters with masterpieces of art. But the whole reason the discipline of Art History exists is that there’s always much more to a work of art than meets the eye.

Enter smARThistory, a “free multi-media web-book” created by two art historians: Dr. Beth Harris, Director of Digital Learning at The Museum of Modern Art, and Dr. Stephen Zucker, Dean of Graduate Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Here’s a nice explanation, in their own words, of what smARThistory is trying to accomplish:

In smARThistory, we have aimed for reliable content and a delivery model that is entertaining and occasionally even playful. Our podcasts and screen-casts are spontaneous conversations about works of art where we are not afraid to disagree with each other or art history orthodoxy. We have found that the unpredictable nature of discussion is far more compelling to our students (and the public) than a monologue. When students listen to shifts of meaning as we seek to understand each other, we model the experience we want our students to have—a willingness to encounter the unfamiliar and transform it in ways that make it meaningful to them. We believe that smARThistory is broadly applicable to our discipline and is a first step toward understanding how art history can fit into the new collaborative culture created by web 2.0 technologies.

So if, for instance, you took a look at Leonardo’s The Last Supper after last week’s post and want to know a bit more about it (this being Holy Week and all), you can check out Beth and Stephen’s nifty screencast on the work.

Another fabulous online resource is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. It’s a little more staid than smARThistory, and not quite as user friendly, but there’s some fascinating content there. There are, as you may have guessed, art history timelines for all regions of the world, which include links to representative pieces from each era (and area). You can also search an image database of 6,000 works of art from the Met’s extensive collections and read succinct, informative essays on everything from Egyptian amulets to Japanese incense to my beloved Georgia O’Keeffe.

Oh, my, look at the time! Let’s continue our online art history discussion next week, shall we?

This event concludes  Williams’ residency at UW. During the past year she has taught a graduate writing workshop, read student manuscripts, and directed MFA theses. She has also presented public readings throughout the state.

Williams is the author of four novels, including The Quick and the Dead, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Harold and Mildred Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her latest book, Honored Guest, is a collection of short stories. She is at work on a new novel.

The MFA graduate creative writing program mentors a new generation of writers. The Eminent Writer in Residence program, created through an endowment from the state legislature, allows the MFA program to bring extraordinary writers to campus each year to work closely with students. Next year’s Eminent Writers in Residence include the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edward P. Jones; the distinguished poet Claudia Rankine; and the editor of The Paris Review and acclaimed nonfiction writer, Philip Gourevitch.

For more information about the reading or about the Eminent Writers program, visit the MFA Web site or contact Beth Loffreda at loffreda@uwyo.edu.