Research and Education
http://ksgaccman.harvard.edu/iop/events_forum_listview.asp
If you are looking for a place online to find William Julius Wilson, Cesar Chavez, or Lech Walesa, you should look no further than the very fine online video archive of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum from Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. Over the past thirty years, the Institute has held hundreds of public addresses and panel discussions on a myriad of topical issues. Recently, they created this online archive so that the web-browsing public could view some of these events at their leisure. Currently, the archive contains over 1200 Forum events, including those that deal with the environment, Afghanistan, aging, and the Cold War, among other themes. Visitors can use the online search engine to locate videos by participant, year, keyword, or topic. [KMG]
The ancient urban world is one that is becoming more well-known, largely through the work of dedicated scholars and numerous other passionate individuals. This website offers an interesting and compelling look inside Mohenjo-daro (“Mound of the Dead”), a city that is located in the Indus Valley in Pakistan. The site was created and developed by Professor Jonathan Mark Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin, and it contains an illustrated essay on the site and 103 images taken over the past thirty years. First-time visitors will want to peruse an introductory essay that discusses the history of various excavations on the site, along with providing some details about the composition of the site. Visitors can proceed to look through the images, which are organized into sections that provide views of the site’s different areas, including the courtyard and a number of wells. [KMG]
In response to a Congressional mandate, the Department of Veterans Affairs created the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in 1989 “to address the needs of veterans with military-related PTSD”. Over the past sixteen years, the Center has created a cornucopia of helpful resources on this subject, including fact sheets, research papers, and handbooks. Many of these items are available on this site, and will be helpful to health care professionals and those who might have a friend or loved one living with PTSD. Persons with a scholarly interest in PTSD may wish to utilize the PILOTS Database, which is the largest interdisciplinary index to the worldwide literature on traumatic stress. The “Facts” area is quite good as well, as it contains a number of fact sheets and how PTSD is most effectively treated. [KMG]
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine/
Over its twelve-year history, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has certainly never avoided tackling immensely controversial and important subjects, and this latest online feature is certainly no exception to this trend. Designed to complement a current exhibition at the Museum, this site looks at the ways in which the Nazi regime attempted to transform the genetic makeup of the population through the use of eugenics. Legitimized by numerous trained scientists, these ideas surrounding “racial hygiene” were tested through experiments on “imperfect” human beings who were perceived as biological threats. Within the site, visitors can view a video introduction by the Museum’s curator, Dr. Susan Bachrach, and a number of rather interesting video testimonies on the subjects of genetics and eugenics by various experts. Additionally, visitors can also view profiles of the physicians and scientists involved in these activities. It should be noted that there is a remark on the site’s homepage that states that the exhibition is “…recommended for visitors of 11 years and older.”
The world has many great textile traditions, and the art and practice of quilt-making is certainly one of them. The International Quilt Study Center (IQSC) was founded in 1997 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with the kind assistance of Ardis and Robert James, who donated 900 quilts. Since then, the Center has grown to include research symposia, a graduate program in textile history, and numerous online resources. Visitors may want to search the quilt collection online through their helpful search engine. Users can search by primary pattern, quilt title, quilt maker, country of origin, and predominant technique. One very interesting feature of the site is the “Quilt of the Month” area, where visitors can learn about some of the Center’s most unique quilts, such as the Chicken Ribbons Quilt from 1913, which features blocks of blue, red, and white silver printed ribbons. [KMG]
James Earl Jones credited a love of poetry for helping him overcome a problem with stuttering, and many others have spoken to a great love for the power of reading verse aloud. The National Endowment for the Arts and The Poetry Foundation are encouraging high school students to memorize and perform great poems through the Poetry Out Loud initiative. While the program is intended for high school students, the general poetry-loving browser will find much of interest on the site. Visitors to the site can look through through dozens of poems that are part of the initiative, and also listen to a number of the poems being read by such personages as Anthony Hopkins and Angela Lansbury. The site is rounded out by press releases about the initiative and a guide for teachers. [KMG]
