Fred Rowland - Librarian: 2012-2013 Interviews with Authors

Andrew Smith is a prominent food writer with over a dozen books to his name, including the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America and The Tomato in American History: early history, culture, and cookery. On March 26, 2013, he visited Paley Library to give a lecture on his most recent book, Drinking History: 15 Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages.

Benjamin Zeller is a scholar of religion in America, new religious movements, and religion and science. In his book Prophets and Protons: New Religious Movements and Science in Late Twentieth-Century America (New York University Press, 2010) he looks at how the Unification Church, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and the group that came to be known as “Heaven’s Gate” thought about and related to science.

On March 18, 2013 I spoke with three Temple classics majors about the archaeological digs they participated in during the summer of 2012. Andy Pollack was at the Temple University field school in Artena, Italy, working on a Roman villa; Eamonn Connor was a volunteer at the ancient agora near the Acropolis in Athens, Greece; and Samantha Davidson attended the Davidson College field school at a rural site in Atheneiou, Cypus....

Kathleen Fitzpatrick gave a lecture at the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT) on March 7, 2013, entitled “The Humanities in and for the Digital Age.” Before her talk, she kindly stopped by my office to discuss her work in scholarly communication and the digital humanities...

Temple University history professor Andrew Isenberg came by my office in February to discuss his new book, Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life (Hill & Wang: 2013), due out in June. His book and this interview are a fascinating look at the life of a man who lived on both sides of the law and reinvented himself time and time again as he moved from one place to another throughout the West....

Margery Sly is the Director of the Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), located on the ground floor of Paley Library. On January 24, 2013, I sat down with her to discuss the SCRC. I was curious to find out how these trends were playing out here at Temple University and what the future holds for the SCRC....

On November 15, 2012, I interviewed Marco Roth about his 2012 memoir The Scientists: A Family Romance....

On October 31, 2012, I interviewed Professor Jeremy Schipper of Temple’s Religion Department on his 2011 Oxford University Press book, Disability and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant....

As part of the sixth annual Open Access Week (Oct. 22 – Oct. 28, 2012), the Temple University Libraries invited Nick Shockey...and Nicole Allen...to discuss “The Connection between Open Access and Open Educational Resources: Exploring New Publishing Models.” Before they’re presentation, they sat down to speak with me about open access journals and open educational resources....

The growth of the cognitive and brain sciences has raised interesting questions about the brain and the mind. No less, it raises interesting questions about traditional notions of the soul. Julien Musolino, professor of Psychology at Rutgers University and the director of its Psycholinguistics Laboratory, is interested in science in the public interest and in communicating scientific ideas to the general public....

With over 300 sidewalk cafes opening up since the late 1990s, this is an important urban phenomenon that deserves study. Why such an explosion? Why did it take so long? What does it mean for the future of our city? I interviewed Stephen Nepa on July 19, 2012 to talk about “The New Urban Dining Room.”

Earlier this year, Carolyn Kitch’s book Pennsylvania in Public Memory: Reclaiming the Industrial Past was published by the Penn State University Press. She investigated industrial heritage sites across the state in an attempt to understand how Pennsylvanians understood their state’s rich history of business and industry....

Professor Lucy Bregman of the Temple University Religion Department is the author of Preaching Death: The Transformation of Christian Funeral Sermons (Baylor University Press, 2011). She uses collections of funeral sermons and manuals for practicing clergy as a lens through which to illuminate changing notions of death in American society.

On May 15, 2012, Peter Logan stopped by my office to discuss Victorian Fetishism, which details the development of ideas about the primitive and how these concepts set the boundaries of culture in Victorian Britain.