ProQuest Congressional…where the past meets the present.
ProQuest Congressional is the only site anywhere that offers a comprehensive collection of congressional documents from 1789 to the present. This primary source collection offers students an unparalleled opportunity to understand the present by comparing today’s events and opinions with trends and patterns throughout our nation’s history. Congressional hearings offer a unique perspective on all aspects of U.S. social, economic, and political history by presenting differing views from representatives of all societal sectors, including business, industry, labor, education, health, criminal justice, and government.
Testimony is presented by foreign policy experts, economists, Native Americans, civil rights leaders, public health officials, scientists, farmers, fishermen, environmental advocates, and ordinary citizens. House and Senate publications document the transformation of the U.S. from thirteen colonies into a world power, with primary source content on subjects ranging from war and military incursions to nuclear energy, space exploration, terrorism, and human rights. When examined in conjunction with ProQuest news and archival sources, congressional content can facilitate the ability of even novice researchers to develop critical thinking skills necessary for full participation as citizens and workers in a secure and competitive society of the future.
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Image one: E-Book titled Tulip in the Desert: A Selection of the Poetry of Muhammad Iqbal (1999) - synopsis: Muhammad Iqbal (1877 1938) is one of the pre-eminent writers of the Indian subcontinent and the attention he has received from writers, translators and critics in western as well as Islamic countries testifies to his stature as a world literary figure. In his translation of Iqbal s poetry, Mustansir Mir seeks to convey every level of meaning and mood in the poems, while making the text as readable and idiomatic as possible.
Image two: E-Book titled Arrival Cities: Migrating Artists and New Metropolitan Topographies in the 20th Century (2020) - synopsis: Exile and migration played a critical role in the diffusion and development of modernism around the globe yet have long remained largely understudied phenomena within art historiography. Focusing on the intersections of exile, artistic practice and urban space, this volume brings together contributions by international researchers committed to revising the historiography of modern art. It pays particular attention to metropolitan areas that were settled by migrant artists in the first half of the 20th century. These arrival cities developed into hubs of artistic activities and transcultural contact zones where ideas circulated, collaborations emerged, and concepts developed.
Image one: E-book titled The Soul in the Brain: The Cerebral Basis of Language, Art, and Belief (2007) - synopsis: In this provocative study, Michael R. Trimble, M.D., tackles the interrelationship between brain function, language, art—especially music and poetry—and religion. By examining the breakdown of language in several neuropsychiatric disorders, he identifies brain circuits that are involved with metaphor, poetry, music, and religious experiences. Drawing on this body of evidence, Trimble argues that religious experiences and beliefs are explicable biologically and relate to brain function, especially of the nondominant hemisphere.
Image two: E-book titled The Afterlives of Animals: A Museum Menagerie (2011) - synopsis: This collection of essays—from a broad array of contributors, including anthropologists, curators, fine artists, geographers, historians, and journalists—comprises short "biographies" of a number of famous taxidermized animals. Each essay traces the life, death, and museum "afterlife" of a specific creature, illuminating the overlooked role of the dead beast in the modern human-animal encounter through practices as disparate as hunting and zookeeping.
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Picture of a painting of Sappho with her poem "To a Girl in a Garden:"
O soft and dainty maiden, from afar I watch you, as amidst the flowers you move, And pluck them, singing. More golden than all gold your tresses are: Never was harp-note like your voice, my love, Your voice sweet-ringing.
Image one: E-book titled Syria's Monuments: Their Survival and Destruction (2016) - synopsis: Syria's Monuments: Their Survival and Destruction examines the fate of the various monuments in Syria (including present-day Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine/Israel) from Late Antiquity to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. It examines travellers’ accounts, mainly from the 17th to 19th centuries, which describe religious buildings and housing in numbers and quality unknown elsewhere. The book charts the reasons why monuments lived or died, varying from earthquakes and desertification to neglect and re-use, and sets the political and social context for the Empire’s transformation toward a modern state, provoked by Western trade and example.
Image two: E-book titled Modern Architecture in Mexico City: History, Representation, and the Shaping of a Capital (2017) - synopsis: Mexico City became one of the centers of architectural modernism in the Americas in the first half of the twentieth century. Through an exploration of schools, a university campus, a government ministry, a workers' park, and houses for Diego Rivera and Luis Barragán, Kathryn O'Rourke offers a new interpretation of modern architecture in the Mexican capital, showing close links between design, evolving understandings of national architectural history, folk art, and social reform.
Picture of Edna St. Vincent Millay with her poem "The True Encounter:"
"Wolf!" cried my cunning heart At every sheep it spied, And roused the countryside. "Wolf! Wolf!"—and up would start Good neighbours, bringing spade And pitchfork to my aid. At length my cry was known: Therein lay my release. I met the wolf alone And was devoured in peace.
Image one: E-book titled Beyond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and Science (2011) - synopsis: The explorations within Beyond the Finite range from the images taken by the Hubble Telescope to David Bohm's quantum romanticism, from Kant and Burke to a "downward spiraling infinity" of the 21st century sublime, all lucid yet transcendent. Squarely positioned at the interface between science and art, this volume's chapters capture a remarkable variety of perspectives, with neuroscience, chemistry, astronomy, physics, film, painting and music discussed in relation to the sublime experience, topics surely to peak the interest of academics and students studying the sublime in various disciplines.
Image two: E-book titled Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (2015) - synopsis: Medieval robots took such forms as talking statues, mechanical animals, and silent metal guardians; some served to entertain or instruct while others performed disciplinary or surveillance functions. Variously ascribed to artisanal genius, inexplicable cosmic forces, or demonic powers, these marvelous fabrications raised fundamental questions about knowledge, nature, and divine purpose in the Middle Ages. Medieval Robots recovers the forgotten history of fantastical, aspirational, and terrifying machines that captivated Europe in imagination and reality between the ninth and fourteenth centuries.
Picture of Robert Frost with his poem "Design:"
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth -- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth -- A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?-- If design govern in a thing so small.
Image one: E-book titled Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures (2012) - synopsis: Divided into three sections, Error brings together established critics and emerging voices to offer a significant contribution to the field of new media studies. In the first section, OC Hack, OCO contributors explore the ways in which errors, glitches, and failure provide opportunities for critical and aesthetic intervention within new media practices. In the second section, OC Game, OCO they examine how errors allow for intentional and accidental co-opting of rules and protocols toward unintended ends. The final section, OC Jam, OCO considers the role of error as both an inherent OC counter strategy OCO and a mode of tactical resistance within a network society.
Image two: E-book titled Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater (2012) - synopsis: The Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater covers history from 1887 to the present, in a chronology, and a dictionary with over 600 substantial and cross-referenced entries on authors, books, and genres as well as more general ones describing the historical background, cultural features, techniques and major theatres and clubs.
Picture of Audre Lorde with a quote from her: "Art is not living. It is the use of living."
Image one: E-book titled Extraordinary Partnerships: How the Arts and Humanities are Transforming America (2020) - synopsis: This inspirative and hopeful collection demonstrates that the arts and humanities are entering a renaissance that stands to change the direction of our communities. Community leaders, artists, educators, scholars, and professionals from many fields show how they are creating responsible transformations through partnership in the arts and humanities. The diverse perspectives that come together in this book teach us how to perceive our lives and our disciplines through a broader context.
Image two: E-book titled The Yom Kippur Anthology (2018) - synopsis: Unequaled in-depth compilations of classic and contemporary writings, they have long guided rabbis, cantors, educators, and other readers seeking the origins, meanings, and varied celebrations of the Jewish festivals. Drawing on Jewish creativity from hundreds of sources—the Bible, postbiblical literature, Talmud, midrashim, prayers with commentaries, Hasidic tales, short stories, poems, liturgical music—and describing Yom Kippur observances in various lands and eras, The Yom Kippur Anthology vividly evokes the vitality of this holiday throughout history and its significance for the modern Jew.
3 paintings and 3 sculptures by Bill Reid.
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Image one: E-book titled The Poetry of Physics and the Physics of Poetry (2010) - synopsis: This is a textbook for a survey course in physics taught without mathematics, that also takes into account the social impact and influences from the arts and society. It combines physics, literature, history and philosophy from the dawn of human life to the 21st century. It will also be of interest to the general reader.
Image two: E-book titled Historical Dictionary of Romanticism in Literature (2014) - synopsis: The Historical Dictionary of Romanticism in Literature provides a large overview of the Romantic Movement that seemed at the time to have swept across Europe from Russia to Germany and France, to Britain, and across the Atlantic to the United States. This volume takes a close and comprehensive look at romanticism in literature through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 800 cross-referenced entries on the writers and the poems, novels, short stories and essays, plays, and other works they produced; the leading trends, techniques, journals, and literary circles and the spirit of the times are also covered.
Picture of Langston Hughes with his poem "Harlem:"
Image one: E-book titled A Painted Herbarium: The Life and Art of Emily Hitchcock Terry, 1838-1921 (1992) - synopsis: Emily Hitchcock Terry (1838-1921) was the scientifically and aesthetically gifted daughter of a highly intellectual and artistic Massachusetts family. An early graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she began her formal study of art at The Cooper Union in New York City in 1865, where her training in drawing and watercolor painting was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite movement. In 1872 Terry moved to Minnesota, where she was an avid plant collector and painted the flora she saw. Rather than creating a conventional herbarium of pressed specimens, she created instead a "painted herbarium."
Image two: E-book titled The Allied Arts: Architecture and Craft in Postwar Canada (2012) - synopsis: The Allied Arts investigates the history of the complex relationship between craft and architecture by examining the intersection of these two areas in Canadian public buildings. Sandra Alfoldy explains the challenges facing the development of the field of public craft and documents the largely ignored public craft commissions of the post-war era in Canada. The book highlights the global concerns of material, scale, form, ornament, and identity shared by architects and craftspeople.
6 paintings by Kehinde Wiley
Image one: E-book titled Edgar Allan Poe: Beyond Gothicism (2011) - synopsis: Most frequently regarded as a writer of the supernatural, Poe was actually among the most versatile of American authors, writing social satire, comic hoaxes, mystery stories, science fiction, prose poems, literary criticism and theory, and even a play. As a journalist and editor, Poe was closely in touch with the social, political, and cultural trends of nineteenth-century America. Recent scholarship has linked Poe's imaginative writings to the historical realities of nineteenth-century America, including to science and technology, wars and politics, the cult of death and bereavement, and, most controversially, to slavery and stereotyped attitudes toward women.
Image two: E-book titled The Early American Daguerreotype: Cross-Currents in Art and Technology (2015) - synopsis: The daguerreotype, invented in France, came to America in 1839. By 1851, this early photographic method had been improved by American daguerreotypists to such a degree that it was often referred to as “the American process.” The daguerreotype—now perhaps mostly associated with stiffly posed portraits of serious-visaged nineteenth-century personages—was an extremely detailed photographic image, produced though a complicated process involving a copper plate, light-sensitive chemicals, and mercury fumes. It was, as Sarah Kate Gillespie shows in this generously illustrated history, something wholly and remarkably new: a product of science and innovative technology that resulted in a visual object.
Picture of Keith Haring with a quote from him: "Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic."
Image one: E-book titled History and Literature: New Readings of Jewish Texts in Honor of Arnold J. Band (2020) - synopsis: Arnold Band ran the graduate program in modern Hebrew literature at UCLA. He insisted that understanding the texts required both close readings and an attention to historical context. Band also stressed the interrelationship between Hebrew and Yiddish works, as well as the importance of the impact of Western languages and the classical Jewish texts. Cutter and Jacobson present 38 essays chosen to honor his work by reflecting the range of his concerns.
Image two: E-book titled The Shaping of Persian Art: Collections of Interpretations of the Art of Islamic Iran and Central Asia (2013) - synopsis: Discusses how the impact of the Persian style is undeniably reflected in most aspects of the art and architecture of Islamic Central Asia and how this Perso-Central Asian connection was chiefly formed and articulated by the Euro-American movement of collecting and interpreting the art and material culture of the Persian Islamic world in modern times. This had an enormous impact on the formation of scholarship and connoisseurship in Persian art, for instance, with an attempt to define the characteristics of how the Islamic art of Iran and Central Asia should be viewed and displayed at museums, and how these subjects should be researched in academia.
6 pictures of architecture in the Brutalist style.
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Image one: E-book titled Visualizing the Street: New Practices of Documenting, Navigating, and Imagining the City (2019) - synopsis: From user-generated images of streets to professional architectural renderings, and from digital maps and drone footages to representations of invisible digital ecologies, this collection of essays analyses the emergent practices of visualizing the street. Visualizing the Street investigates the social and cultural significance of these new developments at the intersection of visual culture and urban space. The interdisciplinary essays provide new concepts, theories and research methods that combine close analyses of street images and imaginaries with the study of the practices of their production and circulation.
Image two: E-book titled Shadows of Reality: The Fourth Dimension in Relativity, Cubism, and Modern Thought (2006) - synopsis: In this insightful book, which is a revisionist math history as well as a revisionist art history, Tony Robbin, well known for his innovative computer visualizations of hyperspace, investigates different models of the fourth dimension and how these are applied in art and physics.
Picture of Gwendolyn Brooks with a quote from her: "Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home."
Image one: E-book titled My Life in Focus: A Photographer's Journey with Elizabeth Taylor and the Hollywood Jet Set (2017) - synopsis: When Gianni Bozzacchi accepted an assignment as a photographer on the set of The Comedians (1967), he didn't know that his life was about to change forever. His ability to capture the beauty of candid moments drew the attention of the film's star, Elizabeth Taylor, and prompted her to hire him as her personal photographer. Not only did he go on to enjoy a jet-set life as her friend and confidant -- preserving unguarded moments between the violet-eyed beauty and Richard Burton as they traveled the world -- but Bozzacchi also became an internationally renowned photographer and shot some of the biggest celebrities of the 1960s and 1970s.
Image two: E-book titled Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Fresh Perspectives, New Methods (2000) - synopsis: Classicists and medievalists from Europe and North America highlight, distill and reflect on the remarkably productive progress made in many different areas of the study of maps. The interaction between experts on antiquity and on the Middle Ages evident in the thirteen contributions offers a guide to the future and illustrates close relationships in the evolving practice of cartography over the first millennium and a half of the Christian era.
6 paintings by Jorge Gonzålez Camarena
Image one: E-book titled Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era (2017) - synopsis: Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era profiles the most important figures of this cultural and intellectual movement. Highlighting the accomplishments of black women who sought to create positive change after the end of WWI, this reference work includes representatives not only from the literary scene but also activists, actresses, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, musicians, political leaders, and scholars.
Image two: E-book titled A Dictionary of Color (2004) - synopsis: This comprehensive resource explores every aspect of color and its many applications across the disciplines and through the ages. With more than 4,100 entries, this dictionary explores the language of color from historical, design, language, symbolic, literary, and commercial perspectives. Appendixes include adjectives of color, more than 1,000 colors arranged according to color groupings, and color phrases such as blue funk and scream blue murder.
Picture of E. E. Cummings with a poem by him titled "Next to of Course God America I:"
“next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh say can you see by the dawn’s early my country tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum why talk of beauty what could be more beaut- iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute?”
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
Image one: E-book titled Gothic Art (2016) - synopsis: Gothic art finds its roots in the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that evolved throughout Europe over more than 200 years. Leaving curved Roman forms behind, the architects started using flying buttresses and pointed arches to open up cathedrals to daylight. A period of great economic and social change, the Gothic era also saw the development of a new iconography celebrating the Holy Mary – in drastic contrast to the fearful themes of dark Roman times. Full of rich changes in all of the various art forms (architecture, sculpture, painting, etc.), Gothic art paved the way for the Italian Renaissance and International Gothic movement.
Image two: E-book titled Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science (1996) - synopsis: The contributors to this volume examine the historical and philosophical issues concerning the role that scientific illustration plays in the creation of scientific knowledge. They regard both text and picture as resources that scientists employ in their practical activities, their value as scientific resources deriving from their ability to convey information.
Six pieces of art by Yayoi Kusama
Image one: E-book titled If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript (2014) - synopsis: What if William Shakespeare were asked to generate the Fibonacci series, or Jane Austen had to write a factorial program? In If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript, author Angus Croll imagines short JavaScript programs as written by famous wordsmiths. The result is a peculiar and charming combination of prose, poetry, and programming.
Image two: E-book titled Love and Its Critics: From Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton's Eden (2017) - synopsis: This book is a history of love and the challenge love offers to the laws and customs of its times and places, as told through poetry from the Song of Songs to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It is also an account of the critical reception afforded to such literature, and the ways in which criticism has attempted to stifle this challenge.
Picture of Frida Kahlo with a quote from her: "Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light."
Image one: E-book titled The Sukkot and Simhat Torah Anthology (2018) - synopsis: The Sukkot and Simhat Torah Anthology offers new insight into the Festival of Ingathering, celebrating the harvest in the land of ancestors, and the Festival of Rejoicing in the Law, marking the new cycle of public Torah readings, by elucidating the two festivals’ background, historical development, and spiritual truths for Jews and humankind. Mining the Bible, postbiblical literature, Talmud, midrashim, prayers with commentaries, and Hasidic tales, the compendium also showcases humor, art, food, song, dance, essays, stories, and poems.
Image two: E-book titled The Arts and the Brain: Psychology and Physiology beyond Pleasure (2018) - synopsis: Combines the work of an excellent group of experts who explain evidence on the neural and biobehavioral science of the arts. Topics covered include the emergence of early art and the evolution of human culture, the interaction between cultural and biological evolutionary processes in generating artistic creation, the nature of the aesthetic experience of art, the arts as a multisensory experience, new insights from the neuroscience of dance, a systematic review of the biological impact of music, and more.
Six sea paintings by Ivan Aivazovsky
Image one: E-book titled Designing Motion: Automotive Designers, 1890-1990 (2016) - synopsis: For a long time, car design was considered to be anonymous, the designers stood in the shadow of the perception of the design, even though their designs can be found on the roads in millions. This richly illustrated book captures the origin of a profession and maps the development of car design based on a comprehensive introduction and the career biographies of over 200 selected designers who contributed to the design of cars and many different associated products in the USA, Europe, and Japan between 1900 and 2000.
Image two: E-book titled Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature (2010) - synopsis: Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature presents a broad perspective on the development and history of literature in modern China. It offers a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, literary and historical developments, trends, genres, and concepts that played a central role in the evolution of modern Chinese literature.
Image one: Art and Poetry Month
Image two: E-book titled Developing a Sense of Place: The Role of the Arts in Regenerating Communities (2021) - synopsis: Cultural planners, artists, and policy makers must work through the arts to create communities—and a place within them. Developing a Sense of Place brings together a series of case studies and success stories drawn from a different geographical or sociocultural contexts. Selected for their lasting effect in their local community, the case studies explore new models for opening up the relationship between universities and their surrounding regions, explicitly connecting creative, critical, and theoretical approaches to civic development.
Image three: E-book titled Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archeology of Forms, 1959-1995 (2007) - synopsis: A singular and major historical view of the birth of electronic poetry. For the last five decades, poets have had a vibrant relationship with computers and digital technology. This book is a documentary study and analytic history of digital poetry that highlights its major practitioners and the ways that they have used technology to foster a new aesthetic, focusing primarily on programs and experiments produced before the emergence of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s.
Image three: Picture of Georgia O'Keeffe with a quote from her: "Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing."
