Crocodile Festival in Papua New Guinea

Held annually, the Sepik River Crocodile Festival will be held this year on August 5 - 7, 2019 in Ambunti, East Sepik Province. This celebration honors crocodiles which hold a special significance in Sepik culture where traditions, beliefs, and legends are based around this animal.

There is also a special bond between man and crocodile where crocodiles symbolize strength, power, and manhood.  To emphasis this bond, skin cutting ceremonies are held in this area as a right of passage to manhood. The skin is cut and the scars resemble the back of a crocodile from the shoulders to the hip.

Image from PapuaNewGuinea.Travel

Below is a list of selected resources to help share information on Papua New Guinea and the region:

Aikhenval'd, A. (2008). The Manambu language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea. [electronic resource] New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

This book is the first comprehensive description of the Manambu language of Papua New Guinea. Spoken by 2,500 people in 5 villages, Manambu is considered to be endangered and have many unusual properties where every noun is gendered and relates to shape of the object. 

Moyle, Richard. (2007). Songs from the second float: a musical ethnography of Taku Atoll, Papua New Guinea. Honolulu, HI: Center for Pacific Island Studies, University of Hawaii Press.

Includes the history and geography of the region, religious context for their music, the process of creating their songs, and nature of Taku dance. 

Stella, Regis. (2007). Imagining the other : the representation of the Papua New Guinean subject. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.

Much has been written about Papua New Guinea over the last century and too often in ways that legitimated or served colonial interests through highly pejorative and racist descriptions of Papua New Guineans. Paying special attention to early travel literature, works of fiction, and colonial reports, laws, and legislation, Regis Tove Stella reveals the complex and persistent network of discursive strategies deployed to subjugate the land and its people. - from book description

Quanchi, Max. (2007). Photographic Papua : representation, colonial encounters, and imaging in the public domain. [electronic resource] Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishers. 

Photographing Papua switches attention from a few well known prints in museums and archives. It deals instead with thousands of photographs, often used in ways not intended when the photograph was taken, but which editors and publishers (and subsequent photographers) gradually made conform to an iconographic imperative, a sort of abbreviated visual gallery of "natives" and a quick-access pathway to the actual and imagined lives of Papuans in the "last Unknown" as New Guinea was titled.  - from book description 

Bastille Day Reading List

Known in English-speaking countries as Bastille Day, the 14th of July is a very special day in France when celebrations are held to commemorate the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and a major turning point in the French Revolution.

Known legally as le 14 juillet (the 14th of July) and formally as le fete nationale (the National celebration), the day is now celebrated with feasts, musical performances, dances, firework displays, and the oldest and largest military parade along the Champs-Elysees.

Below are some selected titles our librarians wanted to share with you to commemorate Bastille Day:

Desan, Suzanne. (2013). The French Revolution in global perspective. [electronic resource] Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Situating the French Revolution in the context of early modern globalization for the first time, this book offers a new approach to understanding its international origins and worldwide effects. This international approach helps to explain how the Revolution fused immense idealism with territorial ambition and combined the drive for human rights with various forms of exclusion... examines role of smuggling and free trade, entwined nature of feminism and abolitionism, etc.  - from book description

Furet, Francois. (1981).  Interpreting the French Revolution. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press. 

Furet's book is based on the complementary ideas of these two writers in an attempt to cut through the apparent and misleading clarity of various contradictory views of the Revolution, and to help decipher some of the enigmatic problems of revolutionary ideology. It will be of value to historians of modern Europe and their students; to political, social and economic historians; to sociologists; and to students of political thought. - from book description

Mignet, F.A.M. (2012). History of the French Revolution : from 1789 to 1814. [electronic resource] Luton, U.K.: Andrews UK Limited.

François Mignet's 'Histoire de la révolution française' is a study of the events that caused a huge shift of power in France around the turn of the 19th Century.This was primarily a study of the theories and ideologies behind the events, rather than a factual record. - from book description

Miller, Mary. (2011). A natural history of revolution : violence and nature in the French revolutionary imagination, 1789-1794. [electronic resource] Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 

In examining a series of tropes that played an important role in the public language of the Revolution, A Natural History of Revolution reveals that understanding the use of this natural imagery is fundamental to our understanding of the Terror. Eighteenth-century natural histories had demonstrated that in the natural world, apparent disorder could lead to a restored equilibrium, or even regeneration. This logic drawn from the natural world offered the revolutionaries a crucial means of explaining and justifying revolutionary transformation. - from book description

4th of July -- Library Closed

The Sullivan Family library will be closed on Thursday, July 4, 2019 in observance of the 4th of July holiday. We will re-open on Friday, July 5, 2019 at 9 am.

Independence Day, or the "4th of July" as it is colloquially known, is celebrated annually on the 4th day of July to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the acknowledgement that the original 13 American colonies were no longer subject to British rule.

The Declaration of Independence underwent multiple revisions until it was agreed upon and signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by representatives from the 13 newly sovereign states. There were 56 signatures on the Declaration of Independence -- two men who signed the document, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, went on to become Presidents of the United States of America.

Below is a list of selected materials related to the 4th of July, the Declaration of Independence, and American history of the time for you to enjoy:

Thomas, Jefferson. (2018). America's founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the United States Constitution, the Federalist papers, and the Bill of Rights. Minneapolis, MN: First Avenue Editions.

These important documents set the foundation for which the United States was built and now you can read each of these documents written by Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. This collection features unabridged versions of the five most famous and influential documents that founded our nation.


Kersh, Rogan. (2001). Dreams of a more perfect union. [electronic resource]Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

With its fascinating and novel approach, Dreams of a More Perfect Union offers valuable insights about American political history, especially the rise of nationalism and federalism. Equally important, the author's close retracing of the religious, institutional, and other themes coloring the development of unionist thought unveils new knowledge about the origination and transmittal of ideas in a polity. - from book description

Purcell, Sarah J. (2010). Sealed with blood: war, sacrifice, and memory in Revolutionary America. [electronic resource] Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Sealed with Blood reveals how public memories & commemorations of Revolutionary War heroes helped Americans form a common bond and create a new national identity. Drawing from extensive research on civic celebrations and commemorative literature that followed the War for Independence, Purcell shows how people invoked memories of their participation in and sacrifices during the war when they wanted to shore up their political interests, make money, argue for racial equality, solidify their class status, or protect their personal reputations. - from book description

Sandefur, Timothy. (2014). The conscience of the constitution : the declaration of independence and the right to liberty. [electronic resource] Washington, D.C.: CATO Institute.

Today, more and more Americans are realizing that their individual freedoms are being threatened by the ever-expanding scope of the government. Americans have always differed over important political issues, but some things should not be settled by majority vote. In The Conscience of the Constitution, Timothy Sandefur presents a dramatic new challenge to the status quo of constitutional law. - from book description

Haulman, Kate. (2011). The politics of fashion in eighteenth-century America. [electronic resource] Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

Haulman shows that the elite in cities relied on fashion to present their status and attempted to undercut its ability to do so for others. Disdain for others' fashionability was a means of safeguarding social position in cities where the modes of dress were particularly fluid. Concerns over gendered power expressed through fashion in dress, Haulman reveals, shaped the revolutionary-era struggles of the 1760s and 1770s, influenced national political debates, and helped to secure the exclusions of the new political order. - from book description