Congratulations Michael, our Kindle winner!
Michael Denham (left) with his new Kindle, presented by Dean of Libraries Will Wakeling
Library News
IRis Highlight: the Department of Sociology and Anthropology collection
The Sociology and Anthropology Department here at Northeastern University is staffed by the most amazing faculty on the planet, for example: Michael Brown Ph.D., Professor in Theory, Cultural Sociology, History of Sociology/Social Thought; and Jack Levin Ph.D., Professor in Criminology, Prejudice, Social Psychology, Aging/Social Gerontology.
It is no wonder that the graduates of this program mirror the excellence of their professors; for example, Katherine Rickenbacker, Stanislav Vysotsky, Peter P. Cassino, Janese Lynette, and Marci Lee Gerulis-Darcy. Check out their disserations and master’s thesis now easily viewable and readily available on IRis. Simply browse “collections,” scroll down to Department of Sociology and Anthropology, or click here.
IRis Highlight: Talker-Specific Phonetics
In the past semester, I cannot even count how many times I have overheard my roommate reciting “HOW NOW BROWN COW” loudly, slowly and often repetitively in our apartment. Although I first attributed this new habit to her unique personality, I soon learned it was part of her “Voice and Articulation” homework to record herself speaking. We started talking about this regularly, and as a result I began paying more attention to my “regional” accent.
This new interest in accents and pronunciation led me straight to Rachel Marie Theodore’s dissertation, “Some characteristics of talker-specific phonetic detail,” a paper on the IRis database highlighting the specific sounds and details that make talkers differ. The dissertation includes an interesting experiment in which “two groups of listeners were differentially exposed to characteristic VOTs [voice-onset-time] for two talkers, one talker produced short VOTs and the other talker produced longer VOTs. Exposure was provided during training phases in which listeners heard both talkers produce one voiceless stop consonant, either /p/ or /k/, in the context of a word (e.g., pain or cane). In test phases, listeners were presented with a short-VOT and a long-VOT variant of the word presented during training as well as a novel word that began with a different voiceless stop than presented during training. In both cases, listeners were asked to select which of the two VOT variants was most representative of a given talker.”
If you find this interesting, be sure to check out the paper in full!
RILM adds to humanities offerings
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature from Ebscohost is the NU Libraries’ latest web resource in the humanities. Musicologists, ethnomusicologists, educators, psychologists, and anyone else interested in music research will enjoy using RILM to search for journal articles, dissertations, books, and much more on music topics.
RILM makes a nice pairing with some of our new music streaming services like the Jazz Music Library and Database of Recorded American Music. Doing research on the flugelhorn? Listen to it in Jazz Music Library and learn more about it in RILM. Need recently published research on a DRAM recording of the music of Ruth Crawford Seeger? Find journal articles about her in RILM.
Like our other abstract databases, RILM is connected to the library’s full text journal subscriptions, and to our interlibrary loan system, ILLiad, for ordering items not available in our print or online collections. RSS feeds and alerts are also available.
Find RILM through the library’s “Articles” database list, or right-click (Mac:control-click) and bookmark this URL:
http://0-search.ebscohost.com.ilsprod.lib.neu.edu/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=rih
IRis Highlight: Studies in American Fiction
Founded by the Northeastern University English Department and published for over three decades, Studies in American Fiction is a well-regarded, peer-reviewed journal that covers both “emergent writers and canons, as well as American literary classics.” IRis has a small selection of recent articles, and will hopefully include more backfiles in the future.
In Studies in American Fiction you can find articles on authors as diverse as John Cheever, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Sarah Orne Jewett, and on topics as diverse as missionary literature, Orientalism, and temperance.
IRis also includes additional contributions from the Northeastern English Department, and you can even browse in IRis for more exposure to the fascinating array of subjects being studied by Northeastern’s other departments and research centers.