Maxine Gordon has loved jazz music all her life. From going to hear Miles Davis and John Coltrane as a teenager, to working as a road manager and promoter when she was a young woman, to becoming the personal manager and ultimately the wife of one of the most influential jazz artists of the twentieth century, Maxine has seen it all. She makes full use of these experiences in her new book, Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon (University of California Press). [Read more…] about Love and jazz
Film
On survival and freedom in 1958 America: Mike Wallace and Reinhold Niebuhr
In April 1958, the American Broadcast Company (ABC) began a special 13-part series of The Mike Wallace Interview devoted to “discussing the problems of survival and freedom in America.” Wallace’s first guest in the series was Reinhold Niebuhr, who Wallace introduced as “a Protestant minister, one of the most important and challenging religious thinkers in the world.” [Read more…] about On survival and freedom in 1958 America: Mike Wallace and Reinhold Niebuhr
Decades of movie poster history go online
It is difficult to envision the sheer volume of the Movie Poster Collection at the Harry Ransom Center. The collection encompasses upwards of 10,000 posters and spans decades: from when the film industry was just beginning to compete with vaudeville acts in the 1920s to the rise of the modern megaplex and drive-in theaters in the 1970s. The sizes range from that of a small window card to that of a billboard. [Read more…] about Decades of movie poster history go online
In the galleries: Dressing for success in Mad Men’s Season 6
The Ransom Center’s Stories to Tell exhibition features a rotating selection from the Ransom Center’s holdings.
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Thousands of cultural heritage materials now instantly shareable in new online platform
Ransom Center adopts IIIF and Mirador viewer
More than 50,000 images in the Ransom Center’s digital collections portal are now available via the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). IIIF offers new ways to view, compare and engage with images. [Read more…] about Thousands of cultural heritage materials now instantly shareable in new online platform
Classical cinema’s Mexican revolution
Dr. Charles Ramírez Berg is Joe M. Dealey, Sr. Professor in Media Studies in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. His most recent book The Classical Mexican Cinema: The Poetics of the Exceptional Golden Age Films was named the Grand Prize winner of the 2016 University Co-Op Robert W. Hamilton Book Awards and an Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association. It traces the history and evolution of Mexican cinematic aesthetic from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s and traces key influences in the development of the unique “Cine de Oro” aesthetic. [Read more…] about Classical cinema’s Mexican revolution
