News from the City Tech Library
College Assistant Matthew recommends the following films from the library’s media collection. City Tech students and faculty can check them out for 1 week, or can watch them in the media lab.
A Streetcart Named Desire – NYAV DVD 3019
Inception – NYAV DVD 2944
The Hunger Games – NYAV DVD 2939
Spirited Away – NYAV DVD 3018
Wonder – NYAV DVD 3044
May is Asian Pacific Islander American (AAPI) Month and the library has a number of streaming films that you can watch with your City Tech credentials. These are just a select few films that are available. In addition to these, the library also has a number of physical media that members of the City Tech community may borrow from the library’s media collection.
The City Tech community is also celebrating the release of the next issue of the City Tech Writer, which focuses on the experiences of Asian-American faculty and students’ experiences during the pandemic. Check out our recent podcast episode with Prof. Kwong, who is editing this year’s digital issue.
Another resource to check out is the American Pacific American Heritage site, a joint collaboration between the Library of Congress and National Archives and Records Administration.
This documentary explores the murder of Jennifer Laude, a Filipino transwoman by a U.S. marine in the Philippines. It takes a hard look of the role of US imperialism.
This PBS produced documentary looks at the history of the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act, which made it illegal for Chinese nationals to enter the United States in the late 1800s.
This documentary looks at Japanese internment camps during World War II, where Japanese immigrant and Japanese-American were imprisoned, and where one incarcerated group who protested and resisted. A must watch for a little known and forgotten event in American history.
Produced by PBS, this 5 part documentary series examines the rich history of Asian Americans. Produced in 2020, the series won a Peabody Award in 2021.
This documentary focuses on exiled Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei. Wewei was critical of the Chinese government over the death of several students in a 2008 earthquake.
This romantic comedy stars Constance Wu, Awkwafina, Ken, Jeong, Michelle Yeoh, and many others. Based on a book of the same name by Kevin Kwan, the film focuses on a New York professor meeting her boyfriend’s family in Singapore.
Eat Drink Man Woman is a dramedy directed by Ang Lee. It focuses on a Taiwanese family and the difficult transition from tradition to modernity.
This documentary focuses on Sukibayashi Jiro, a renown sushi chef known for his Michelin star restaurant set in a Tokyo subway station. It was placed on the 2014 American Libraries Association Notable Films for Adults list, described as “An aging sushi chef demonstrates that mastery comes from lifelong dedication to improving one’s craft.”
For other media resources, questions, or concerns, contact Prof. Junior Tidal
The library is now able to provide access to streaming video through Swank Digital Campus. Swank partners with major Hollywood studios, documentary providers, independent filmmakers and international film companies to provide a diverse library of films and TV shows. You can explore what’s available for CityTech by visiting cityte.ch/swank.
We’ve selected a list of films to license through Swank based on what’s not available in our onsite Media Library, or through other video databases like Criterion or AVON. Looking for something that you don’t see? Let us know.
Below are some of the films accessible via Swank.
Clueless (1995)
COVID Diaries NYC (2021)
Us (2019)
The question guiding the Sixth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium is: Who has access to the genre in terms of opportunities to create, enjoy, celebrate, identify with, and connect with others? Access, of course, is a shared concern of many historically marginalized and oppressed groups, including women, the disabled, LGBTQ+ persons, and the working class. Please refer to the Call for Papers for more details.
Organizers Jill Belli, Wanett Clyde, Jason W. Ellis, Lucas Kwong, and A. Lavelle Porter invite proposals for 10-20 minute scholarly paper presentations or 40-60 minute panel discussions related to the topic of Access and SF. Please send a 250-word abstract with title, brief professional bio, and contact information to Jason Ellis (jellis@citytech.cuny.edu) by October 15, 2021.
Issues of access were an important concern before the pandemic, but these were amplified and intensified in new ways, including library closings and book deserts. Reduced access to computers, Internet, and study spaces delayed or derailed important opportunities for many.
These issues with access before and during the pandemic extend to Science Fiction. William Gibson’s aphorism, “The future has arrived–it’s just not evenly distributed yet,” offers a conceptual lens for this. While Gibson’s use of the term “future” equates to the technoscientific, Science Fiction also represents many imagined futures, and those futures are not yet evenly distributed in terms of access to the genre for creators, readers, fans, and critics.
Lack of access isn’t only a problem for those who might find enjoyment, meaning, and community through SF in the present; it may also affect the stories produced, the characters created, and the control of narratives.
The Sixth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium will investigate the theme of “Access and SF” and we will question together: what are the tensions between access and SF, what’s at stake and for whom, how to foster alliances, and how to achieve access for all. Also, Analog Science Fiction and Fact will announce the winner of their inaugural Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices at this year’s symposium.
Topics with a connection to Access and SF include but are not limited to:
• Access to Science Fiction for an Audience
• Access to Science Fiction as a Fan
• Access to Science Fiction as a Creator
• Access to Science Fiction as a Scholar
• Access to Science Fiction where Roles Collide
• Barriers to Access of Science Fiction for an Audience
• Barriers to Access to Science Fiction as a Creator
• Accessibility, Disability, and Science Fiction
• Technologies of Access and Accessibility that Relate to SF
• Access, Openness, and SF
• Affinity Politics and Intersectionality
This event is free and open to the public as space permits: an RSVP will be included with the program when announced on the Science Fiction at City Tech website. Free registration will be required for participation. As with last year’s symposium, the on-going pandemic necessitates holding this year’s event online, too.
The Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction is held in celebration of the City Tech Science Fiction Collection, an archival holding of over 600-linear feet of magazines, anthologies, novels, and scholarship. The City Tech Science Fiction Collection contains near-complete runs of major science fiction magazines and extensive holdings of science fiction anthologies, novels, and scholarship, including rare books and first editions. Additionally, there are significant selections of fringe texts, including mystery, horror, and the supernatural. It is housed in the Archives and Special Collections of the Ursula C. Schwerin Library.
If you would like to inquire about the collection for research purposes, please read the library’s access policy for the City Tech Science Fiction Collection and contact Assistant Professor and Collections Management and Archives Librarian Wanett Clyde by phone at 718-260-5496 or email wclyde@citytech.cuny.edu.
As a bookend to the library’s post on our Black foodways book collection, and this February’s African American Studies Department event on food justice with Tanya Denise Fields, we would like to highlight our books with a culinary focus. These books celebrate Black cuisines and chefs, explore the history and sociology of traditional dishes, and provide contemporary interpretations of classic recipes. Some of these books were purchased to support Emilie Boone’s interdisciplinary course, The Visual Culture & Art of African Diaspora Foodways.
As subject liaison for Hospitality Management, I keep an eye out for new books about and by Black chefs or related to Black food studies. Here’s a selection of some of our books in our collection (these are hard copy books, not ebooks). We look forward to preparing a future book display on this theme.
As a librarian, I find it a pity that we still need to celebrate Banned Books Week, which happens to be September 27th – October 3rd this year. According to the American Library Association (ALA) Banned Books Week is a celebration of “current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools… The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted for removal or restriction in libraries and schools. By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.”
Banned Books Week started in 1982 with a dramatic display to highlight the problem. The American Booksellers Association (ABA) exhibited a display of 500 books in a padlocked cage at a trade show in Anaheim, California. As a tribute to that event 38 years later, books that have been banned or challenged for various reasons continue to be celebrated. The terms banned and challenged books are sometimes used interchangeably but they are some differences. Banned books refer to the removal of items, challenged books are oppositional attempts by groups or individuals to restrict access to materials used in curriculum and libraries.
They are many reasons for censoring materials but some of the common ones are political views; racial content; lifestyle choices that people find objectionable; sexually explicit situations, profanity and violence; witchcraft, religious and blasphemous dialog. As we celebrate another year of Banned Books Week, I urged you to also think about debates on censorship and public outcry for retailers to remove works of authors who write about the experiences of marginalized groups outside of their own. What is your opinion on an author telling others narrative? Does a a public outcry from the offending group constitute censorship? How comfortable are you with the authenticity of the experiences when a writer from outside their group tells your story?
They are many situations why books are challenged; readers get passionate when they are challenges to intellectual freedom. For a list of banned or challenged works, check out the listing of titles that ALA maintains. In honor of Banned Books Week, I urged you to get involved in advocacy. Visit the City Tech library online collection and immerse yourself in one of our many e-books that have been deemed banned or challenged at some point. Happy reading!
“The Stonewall Riots started the night of June 28, 1969 after bar patrons fought back against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in New York City. In the 1960s frequent police harassment and raids on queer bars and establishments were unfortunately regular occurrences. But with Stonewall the queer community fought back against the police, and the riots lasted three nights with many transgender activists of color leading the way, including Martha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Miss Major among others. Stonewall is often cited as the beginning of the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States.” (source: Kel R. Kapinski, Exhibition review: Stonewall 50 at the New-York Historical Society).
Below is a selection of books related to the Stonewall Uprising and queer theory. These books all come from the ProjectMUSE database, a collection of ebooks and journals on contemporary cultural studies. The City Tech community also has access to LGBTQ+ periodical literature through LGBT Life (EBSCO). We also subscribe to TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, a Duke University Press journal which explores the diversity of gender, sex, sexuality, embodiment, and identity in ways that have not been adequately addressed by feminist and queer scholarship.
For the rest of the semester, many publishers have offered expanded access to online resources in an effort to support the sudden move to online learning.
This guide is a list of some of the free vendor resources and City Tech eresources that you can access at home. It is a work in progress as new resources are in process.
Some eresource highlights include expanded access to Gale, EBSCO, Bloomsbury, EBook Central, and JSTOR.
Most of the resources can be accessed using your City Tech Library barcode. Here are instructions for accessing library materials from home. If you have trouble with accessing any library resources, please email kabrams@citytech.cuny.edu.
City Tech’s annual Sci-Fi Symposium kicked off, as usual, with a beautifully crafted library exhibit which made great use of all four of our exhibition cases. The items featured brought together various City Tech contributors with works created by Analog magazine, this year’s symposium partner.
“The exhibits were a collaboration between City Tech and Analog Science Fiction and Fact. City Tech Student Design Intern Julie Bradford created the symposium poster, Prof. Ellis designed posters on the City Tech Science Fiction Collection and the history of the City Tech Science Fiction Symposium, Analog designed posters highlighting the symposium speakers, a timeline of the magazine’s long history, and Analog supplied the cover artwork that fills in the background of each display case. Artifacts in each case were pulled from the City Tech Science Fiction Collection, including the Jan. 1934 issue of Astounding. ” – Professor Ellis
On December 12, 2019 over 100 attendees, many of whom traveled from out of town to participate, gathered in the Academic Complex to celebrate Analog, their contributors and our historic Science Fiction collection.
Visit the collection’s OpenLab page to view the program of the day’s events, video of the readings and panel presentations, peruse the live finding aid, or to learn more about the collection.
Students: destress with a graphic novel! We hand-picked our most fun ones with a focus on superheroes but also manga too!
Look for the special book display near to the library entrance.
