Blog Posts by Subject: Italian Literature

I have spent a lifetime reading books and perhaps half a lifetime going to the opera. Each is a very real pleasure — neither can be done without — yet both offer different kinds of satisfaction. Words? Music? Which is more important? Fortunately, I am not in the position of having to choose. Books can sometimes lead to opera; opera can sometimes find its way back into books. Since the library specializes in both these worlds of artistic expression, it might be intriguing to look briefly at some of the places they intersect.

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Jefferson Market Library, in an effort to offer substantive courses that teach the subjects you want to learn, is thrilled to offer its Spring Semester! Each course offers multiple sessions so students can build their knowledge as the course advances, class by class, guided by an experienced professor! And it's all free! Take a look:

Remember (just like in college) — for all courses requiring pre-registration — students are expected to attend all sessions to achieve the maximum 

Books with movable flaps, pop-up pages, and other "interactive" features are known to librarians as "Toy and movable books" and more than a thousand examples can be found in the Library's catalog. Most are modern children's books, but the genre has a surprisingly long history, pre-dating even the dawn of printing, and most early examples were 

Yes, Marlene Dietrich was our mystery lady. While none of us who pay attention to fashion history are surprised anymore by the furor over women wearing pants, it still remains more than a little surprising how little documentation there is on that specific piece of history. I’d recommend to those teaching costume and fashion studies that they get their most promising grad students to work on this aspect of women’s dress.

As I looked through literature on the subject, I was shocked at how sketchy information is about the true origins of something like the pantsuit. The