E-Book of the Week: Chic Ironic Bitterness

Magill, R. Jay. Chic Ironic Bitterness. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009.

In Chic Ironic Bitterness, author Jay Magill takes a rambling stroll through Western popular and intellectual traditions to discern the origins, purposes, and perception of irony in current culture and individual consciousness. His focus and anchor is recent (post-9/11) American culture, and he is trying to locate both what irony is and what it does. He champions the validity of comedic/political discourse in American popular culture such as The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Simpsons, and The Onion, and makes compelling arguments that satire speaks most effectively to people who have turned ironically ‘inward’ in an effort to hold themselves above the inauthentic mainstream of American culture.

Magill’s prose lurches between the drily academic and the snarkily adolescent, in ways that are sometimes charming and sometimes clumsy, but the overall effect is entertaining, informative, and even thought-provoking. This shelf-life of this sort of cultural argument is brief (it’s only two years old, and some of its references already seem slightly dated), so read it today! Then you can be, like, all ironic and stuff, or whatever.*

*This closing sentence is a self-aware device meant to ironically distance the writer from any earnest conclusions he appears to have reached in the course of the review.**

**This second footnote, like the first, is meant to evoke the multilayered consciousness necessary to maintain an ironic viewpoint – a technique popularized by such popular postmodern authors as David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers, both of whom are quoted by Magill in his book.Ψ


Ψ Magill likes footnotes. A third footnote on a page, like this one, is a common occurrence in the text.

Previewed by John Breitmeyer, Research and Instruction Librarian/Web Support Specialist. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: The Motivated Student

Sullo, Bob. The Motivated Student: Unlocking the Enthusiasm for Learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2009.

The Motivated Student provides strategies to engage and internally motivate students in order to create a meaningful learning environment. Chapters offer firsthand accounts of classroom management techniques to integrate into the classroom as well as those to avoid. Sullo’s book presents an approach that educators can incorporate into their teaching in order to minimize classroom disruptions and inspire achievement.

Previewed by Julie Nanavati, Research and Instruction Librarian. Click here to read this book.

New Interface for RefWorks Staring May 25

On May 25th we will be moving from the current Refworks platform to Refworks 2.0. You can access Refworks 2.0 right now by logging in and clicking on "Refworks 2.0" at the top right. To change back prior to May 25th, click on Refworks Classic.

To help with this transition, the library will be offering a session on Thursday, June 2, from 2-3pm. Come enjoy cookies and tea and get a demo on the new Refworks platform. Please RSVP to Joanne  Helouvry at jhelouvry@loyola.edu / jhelouvry@ndm.edu or 410-617-6834.

The new platform has a clean design and has many features that will make it easier for you to organize your research. Some of these features include rollovers to allow you to view a reference without clicking on it, a new right hand navigation bar that allows you to quickly access the things you need, and RefShare, which will allow you to share folders with students and classmates. The familiar toolbars at the top of the page are still there and our search for full-text button is still with each reference.

RefWorks has created a multi-part tutorial for the new platform. Click here to access the tutorial - you have the option of watching screencasts or downloading PDFs.

E-Book of the Week: The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture

Fahs, Alice, and Joan Waugh, eds. The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture is a collection of essays which explores the Civil War’s continuing social and political impact from the beginning of the war to the present. It describes changes in the portrayal of the Civil War in American culture over time and across place, and it illustrates how the varying representations of the Civil War in celebrations, monuments, textbooks, fiction, and political speech are the result of differing views of the meaning of the war. Essays on the following topics, among others, are included:

• Ulysses S. Grant’s accounts of Civil War battles in his Memoirs and in contemporary periodicals
• The “Southern Textbook Crusade,” in which southern textbook writers in the decades after the war replaced northern accounts of the War with ones that emphasized Confederate heroism and viewpoint
• Controversies over erecting Confederate monuments and statues in both northern and southern regions, and
• The portrayal of the Civil War throughout the United States during the Civil War centennial celebration.

Previewed by Anna D'Agostino, Serials/Cataloging Librarian. Click here to read this book.

Update to final exam hours

Please note that starting at 2am on Thursday, May 12, only the Main Level Gallery and Cyber Café will be open between 2am and 8am. The full library will be open at all other scheduled hours.

Remaining hours for final exams:

LNDL will be open continously until 10pm on Friday, 5/13.

Saturday, 5/14, hours will be 8am - 10pm.

Starting at 10am on Sunday, 5/15, the library will remain open continuously until 5pm on Friday, 5/20.

The library will be closed on Saturday, 5/21 and Sunday, 5/22.

E-Book of the Week: Making Reform Work

Zemsky, Robert. Making Reform Work: The Case for Transforming American Higher Education. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009.

Robert Zemsky has been an important and influential scholar of American higher education for many years at the University of Pennsylvania. This book tackles the difficult matter of changing the American university for the better, to be bolder and take more risks to improve the quality of teaching and learning. He examines the key issues of access, affordability, accountability and quality within the context of the new technologies that have emerged to challenge the way higher education has been delivered for a millennium:  as “a guild of expertise.” He recommends the development of long-term strategies and a clear, definitive process of change rather than a reactionary approach to global and political forces now at play.

Previewed by John McGinty, Library Director. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Body Panic

Dworkin, Shari and Faye Wachs. Body Panic: Gender, Health and the Selling of Fitness. New York: NYU Press, 2009.

In this work the authors explore cultural portrayals of health and body image, and how the two have been conflated, focusing primarily on health and fitness magazines. Do they encourage readers to stay fit in order to stay healthy, or for better performance in sports or outdoor activities? Or are they focused on how the reader can improve their looks and sexual success? In exploring these questions, the authors look at gendered presentations of men and women depicted in these publications, and how the pursuit of health and fitness has been commercialized.

Previewed by Alison Cody, Public Relations & Instruction Librarian. Click here to read this book.