March - April 2021: Autobiography and Biography - Frederick A. Marcotte Library Digital Display - Research Guides at University of Cincinnati

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Usually, UC Clermont Library curates monthly physical library material displays that pertain to timely issues. You’ve probably seen these throughout campus and maybe even checked out materials from one. For these physical displays we lay out books, DVDs, and periodicals relating to a particular topic. While we are off campus, we wanted to share this same information with you, but in formats accessible from home.

The digital display for March and April 2021 provides online biographies and autobiographies of various figures throughout history.

Books

As If She Were Free by Erica L. Ball (Editor); Tatiana Seijas (Editor); Terri L. Snyder (Editor)
ISBN: 9781108493406
Publication Date: 2020-10-08
As If She Were Free brings together the biographies of twenty-four women of African descent to reveal how enslaved and recently freed women sought, imagined, and found freedom from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries in the Americas. Our biographical approach allows readers to view large social processes - migration, trade, enslavement, emancipation - through the perspective of individual women moving across the boundaries of slavery and freedom. For some women, freedom meant liberation and legal protection from slavery, while others focused on gaining economic, personal, political, and social rights. Rather than simply defining emancipation as a legal status that was conferred by those in authority and framing women as passive recipients of freedom, these life stories demonstrate that women were agents of emancipation, claiming free status in the courts, fighting for liberty, and defining and experiencing freedom in a surprising and inspiring range of ways.
The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist by Ben Barres; Nancy Hopkins (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9780262039116
Publication Date: 2018-10-30
A leading scientist describes his life, his gender transition, his scientific work, and his advocacy for gender equality in science.Ben Barres was known for his groundbreaking scientific work and for his groundbreaking advocacy for gender equality in science. In this book, completed shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer in December 2017, Barres (born in 1954) describes a life full of remarkable accomplishments-from his childhood as a precocious math and science whiz to his experiences as a female student at MIT in the 1970s to his female-to-male transition in his forties, to his scientific work and role as teacher and mentor at Stanford. Barres recounts his early life-his interest in science, first manifested as a fascination with the mad scientist in Superman; his academic successes; and his gender confusion. Barres felt even as a very young child that he was assigned the wrong gender. After years of being acutely uncomfortable in his own skin, Barres transitioned from female to male. He reports he felt nothing but relief on becoming his true self. He was proud to be a role model for transgender scientists. As an undergraduate at MIT, Barres experienced discrimination, but it was after transitioning that he realized how differently male and female scientists are treated. He became an advocate for gender equality in science, and later in life responded pointedly to Larry Summers's speculation that women were innately unsuited to be scientists. Privileged white men, Barres writes, "miss the basic point that in the face of negative stereotyping, talented women will not be recognized." At Stanford, Barres made important discoveries about glia, the most numerous cells in the brain, and he describes some of his work. "The most rewarding part of his job," however, was mentoring young scientists. That, and his advocacy for women and transgender scientists, ensures his legacy.
An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth by M. K. Gandhi; Mahadev Desai (Translator); Tridip Suhrud (Introduction by)
ISBN: 9780300234077
Publication Date: 2018-03-20
In the mid-1920s, prompted by a "small, still voice" that encouraged him to lay bare what was known only to him and his God, M. K. Gandhi began writing and publishing his autobiography. Drafted during a period of intensive fasting and "in-dwelling" at his ashram in Ahmedabad, his story of the soul portrayed the deeper, more inward experiences that made him externally an innovator in the struggles against violence, racism, and colonialism. The book, written in Gujarati and translated into English by Mahadev Desai, would become an international classic, hailed as one of the "100 Best Spiritual Books of the 20th Century." This first critical edition of this seminal work by leading Gandhi scholar Tridip Suhrud offers an unprecedented window into the original Gujarati text. Including both alternative English translations and illuminating notes, as well as a deeply researched introduction, it will bring renewed critical attention to one of the world's most widely read books.]]>
Black Woman in Green by Gloria D. Brown; Donna L. Sinclair; Laurie Mercier (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9780870710018
Publication Date: 2020-02-20
From an unlikely beginning as an agency transcriptionist in her hometown of Washington, DC, Gloria Brown became the first African American woman to attain the rank of forest supervisor at the US Forest Service. As a young widow with three children, she transferred to Missoula, Montana, and embarked on a remarkable journey, ultimately leading the Siuslaw National Forest in Oregon and later the Los Padres in California. The story of Brown's career unfolds against the backdrop of a changing government agency and a changing society. As scholars awaken to the racist history of public land management and the ways that people of color have been excluded from contemporary notions of nature and wilderness, Brown's story provides valuable insight into the roles that African Americans have carved out in the outdoors generally and in the field of environmental policy and public lands management specifically. Drawing on her powerful communication and listening skills, her sense of humor, and her willingness to believe in the basic goodness of humanity, Brown conducted civil rights trainings and shattered glass ceilings, all while raising her children alone. Written in an engaging and accessible style with historian Donna Sinclair, Brown's story provides a fascinating case study for public administration and contributes to a deeper understanding of the environmental and civil rights movements of the twentieth century, particularly the role that racial discrimination has played in national forests, parks, and other wilderness spaces. It also highlights issues of representation in the federal government, women's history, the history of the American West, and literature associated with African American experiences in predominately white societies.
Bread, Cement, Cactus by Annie Zaidi
ISBN: 9781108840644
Publication Date: 2020-05-28
In this exploration of the meaning of home, Annie Zaidi reflects on the places in India from which she derives her sense of identity. She looks back on the now renamed city of her birth and the impossibility of belonging in the industrial township where she grew up. From her ancestral village, in a region notorious for its gangsters, to the mega-city where she now lives, Zaidi provides a nuanced perspective on forging a sense of belonging as a minority and a migrant in places where other communities consider you an outsider, and of the fragility of home left behind and changed beyond recognition. Zaidi is the 2019/ 2020 winner of the Nine Dots Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access.
Building a Life Worth Living by Marsha M. Linehan
ISBN: 9780812994612
Publication Date: 2020-01-07
Marsha Linehan tells the story of her journey from suicidal teenager to world-renowned developer of the life-saving behavioral therapy DBT, using her own struggle to develop life skills for others. "This book is a victory on both sides of the page."--Gloria Steinem "Are you one of us?" a patient once asked Marsha Linehan, the world-renowned psychologist who developed Dialectical Behavior Therapy. "Because if you were, it would give all of us so much hope." Over the years, DBT had saved the lives of countless people fighting depression and suicidal thoughts, but Linehan had never revealed that her pioneering work was inspired by her own desperate struggles as a young woman. Only when she received this question did she finally decide to tell her story. In this remarkable and inspiring memoir, Linehan describes how, when she was eighteen years old, she began an abrupt downward spiral from popular teenager to suicidal young woman. After several miserable years in a psychiatric institute, Linehan made a vow that if she could get out of emotional hell, she would try to find a way to help others get out of hell too, and to build a life worth living. She went on to put herself through night school and college, living at a YWCA and often scraping together spare change to buy food. She went on to get her PhD in psychology, specializing in behavior therapy. In the 1980s, she achieved a breakthrough when she developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a therapeutic approach that combines acceptance of the self and ways to change. Linehan included mindfulness as a key component in therapy treatment, along with original and specific life-skill techniques. She says, "You can't think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking." Throughout her extraordinary scientific career, Marsha Linehan remained a woman of deep spirituality. Her powerful and moving story is one of faith and perseverance. Linehan shows, in Building a Life Worth Living, how the principles of DBT really work--and how, using her life skills and techniques, people can build lives worth living.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas by Frederick Douglass; John R. McKivigan (Editor); Peter P. Hinks; Heather L. Kaufman
ISBN: 9780300204711
Publication Date: 2016-10-25
"This edition is the most valuable teaching tool on slavery and abolition available today. It is exceptional."--Nancy Hewitt, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Rutgers University One of the most influential literary documents in American and African American history, now available in a critical edition Ideal for independent reading or for coursework in American and African American history, this revised edition of the memoir written by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) of his life as a slave in pre-Civil War Maryland incorporates a wide range of supplemental materials to enhance students' understanding of slavery, abolitionism, and the role of race in American society. Offering readers a new appreciation of Douglass's world, it includes documents relating to the slave narrative genre and to the later career of an essential figure in the nineteenth-century abolition movement.
The Only Wonderful Things by Melissa J. Homestead
ISBN: 9780190652876
Publication Date: 2021-04-01
A groundbreaking new look at American novelist Willa Cather's creative process What would Willa Cather's widely read and cherished novels have looked like if she had never met magazine editor and copywriter Edith Lewis? In this groundbreaking book on Cather's relationship with her life partner, author Melissa J. Homestead counters the established portrayal of Cather as a solitary genius and reassesses the role that Lewis, who has so far been rendered largely invisible by scholars, played in shaping Cather's work. Inviting Lewis to share the spotlight alongside this pivotal American writer, Homestead argues that Lewis was not just Cather's companion but also her close literary collaborator and editor. Drawing on an array of previously unpublished sources, Homestead skillfully reconstructs Cather and Lewis's life together, from their time in New York City to their travels in the American Southwest that formed the basis of the novels The Professor's House and Death Comes for the Archbishop. After Cather's death and in the midst of the Cold War panic over homosexuality, the story of her life with Edith Lewis could not be told, but by telling it now, Homestead offers a refreshing take on lesbian life in early twentieth-century America.
Sophie Germain by Dora Musielak
ISBN: 9783030383749
Publication Date: 2020-03-24
This biography of the mathematician, Sophie Germain, paints a rich portrait of a brilliant and complex woman, the mathematics she developed, her associations with Gauss, Legendre, and other leading researchers, and the tumultuous times in which she lived. Sophie Germain stood right between Gauss and Legendre, and both publicly recognized her scientific efforts. Unlike her female predecessors and contemporaries, Sophie Germain was an impressive mathematician and made lasting contributions to both number theory and the theories of plate vibrations and elasticity. She was able to walk with ease across the bridge between the fields of pure mathematics and engineering physics. Though isolated and snubbed by her peers, Sophie Germain was the first woman to win the prize of mathematics from the French Academy of Sciences. She is the only woman who contributed to the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. In this unique biography, Dora Musielak has done the impossible―she has chronicled Sophie Germain's brilliance through her life and work in mathematics, in a way that is simultaneously informative, comprehensive, and accurate.

Films

Thurgood Marshall: America's First African American Supreme Court Justice
The great grandson of a slave, Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908. At the age of 25, Marshall graduated first in his class from Howard Law and joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the nation's largest and oldest civil rights organization. As NAACP counsel, Marshall used the constitution to successfully argue for a slew of rights now taken for granted, and forced the University of Maryland Law School to admit its first black student, just five years after that same school had rejected Marshall due to his race. Between 1940 and 1961 Marshall won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, the most significant being the landmark case, Brown v Board of Education. Marshall argued that separate school systems for blacks and whites were inherently unequal, violating the "equal protection clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In September 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson named Marshall the nation's first black Solicitor General to conduct government legal action before the Supreme Court. Two years later on October 2, 1967 at the age of 59, Marshall became the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. President Lyndon Johnson who declared it was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." He never forgot where he came from, consistently ruling in favor of the rights of "organized labor, racial minorities, the advancement of women, the broadening of rights to freedom of expression, and the narrowing of police authority." Harvard Law Professor Randall L. Kennedy wrote. "No member of the Supreme Court has ever been more keenly alive to social inequalities." He remained a champion of individual liberty. As more conservative justices were appointed by Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, he became known as "The Great Dissenter," but remained unwavering in his commitment to liberal precepts. In increasingly poor health, on June 27, 1991 Marshall submitted his resignation to President George H. W. Bush. He was replaced by conservative black Justice Clarence Thomas. Marshall died of heart failure on January 24, 1993 at the age of 84. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Posthumously Thurgood Marshall was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian award by President Bill Clinton in November 1993. His words govern how the United States extends its rights to this day.

Databases

American National Biography
The landmark American National Biography offers portraits of more than 17¸400 men and women -- from all eras and walks of life -- whose lives have shaped the nation. More than a decade in preparation¸ the American National Biography is the first biographical resource of this scope to be published in more than sixty years. (from the Web site).
Gale in Context - Biography
Biography in Context provides research support with nearly a million biographical entries spanning history and geography. It is a curriculum-aligned resource that offers media-rich content in context that is updated daily to meet the needs of today's user. It includes: 600¸000+ biographies covering more than 525¸000 individuals¸ 50¸000 new or updated bios added annually in addition to daily updates to account for awards and events¸ integrated reference material¸ periodical information and multimedia content¸ plus hundreds of hand-crafted topic pages covering the highest-interest features.
Biography Reference Bank
The database combines the complete content of Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated with the complete and enhanced content of Biography Index Plus. Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated contains more than 95¸000 biographies and obituaries and more than 26¸000 photographs of the subjects. Many of the biographies are enhanced with full text¸ abstracts¸ and citations from H. W. Wilson databases. Biography Index Plus is a bibliographic database that cites biographical material appearing in periodicals indexed in other Wilson Company databases and additional selected periodicals¸ current books of individual and collective biography¸ and incidental biographical material in otherwise non-biographical books.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (DNB)
The Oxford DNB aims to provide full¸ accurate¸ concise¸ and readable articles¸ based on current scholarship¸ on noteworthy people from all walks of life who have left their mark on British history. No living person is included in the dictionary. In September 2004 the Oxford DNB comprised 50¸113 substantive articles telling the life stories of 54¸922 individuals from the earliest times to the end of the year 2000.

Other Online Resources

Narrative of Sojourner Truth
Narrative of Sojourner Truth [electronic resource] : a bondswoman of olden time, emancipated by the New York Legislature in the early part of the present century : with a history of her labors and correspondence drawn from her "Book of Life" : also, a memorial chapter, giving the particulars of her last sickness and death
The Story of My Life - Gale Primary Sources Nineteenth Cenutry Collections Online
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller with Her Letters (1887-1901) and a Supplementary Account of Her Education, Including Passages from the Reports and Letters of Her Teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan.