Building the Games Students Want to Play: BiblioBouts Project Interim Report #3

The University of Michigan's School of Information and its partner, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, are undertaking the 3-year BiblioBouts Project (October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2011) to support the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the web-based BiblioBouts game to teach incoming undergraduate students information literacy skills and concepts. This third interim report describes the BiblioBouts Project team’s 6-month progress achieving the project's 4 objectives: designing, developing, deploying, and evaluating the BiblioBouts game and recommending best practices for future information literacy games. This latest 6-month period was marked by extensive progress in the deployment and evaluation of the alpha version of BiblioBouts. Major tasks that will occupy the team for the next 6 months are applying evaluation findings to game redesign and enhancement. For general information about game design, pedagogical goals, scoring, game play, project participants, and playing BiblioBouts in your course, consult the BiblioBouts Project web site.Institute of Museum and Library Serviceshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69157/1/bbInterimReportToIMLS03.pd

Men Without Women?: Can Hemingway and Women Writers Coexist in the Classroom?

Pedagogical approach pairing Hemingway with women writers such as Martha Gellhorn, Dorothy Parker, and Eudora Welty in three typical undergraduate courses: War and Literature, Modern American Writers, and The American Short Story. To provide students with a richer understanding of each author’s works and contributions to the craft of writing, Kosiba outlines strategies for comparison and practical classroom activities contrasting author approaches in perspective, characterization, theme, and sense of place

Memories of Hemingway: A Letter from Dawn Powell to Carlos Baker, 10 May 1965

Transcription of a recently recovered letter in which the woman whom Hemingway called “his favorite living writer” recounts her personal experience with Hemingway spanning forty years. Page’s introduction contextualizes the letter and provides background on the relationship between the two authors

Dawn Powell: Hemingway’s Favorite Living Writer

Examines Hemingway’s overlooked yet significant friendship with contemporary writer Dawn Powell whom Hemingway admired. Correspondence with their editor, Max Perkins, reveals most completely their relationship and interaction, which was mutually respectful but also constructively critical. Kosiba proposes Hemingway as the model for Andrew Callingham in Powell’s novels Turn, Magic Wheel (1936) and A Time to Be Born (1942)

Uncovering ancient Maya exchange networks: using the distributional approach to interpret obsidian exchange at Actuncan, Belize

This study seeks to understand the type of exchange at work at Actuncan, a mid-sized Maya site located in the upper Belize River valley, by examining the distribution of obsidian across households of differing rank. Hirth's "distributional approach" is applied at Actuncan and later critiqued as an inappropriate model for identifying marketplace exchange at eastern lowland Maya sites. Comparative distributional analyses were conducted on six elite households and six non-elite plazuela groups. In addition, the obsidian was evaluated for type and efficiency of production, color, and geological source. The color and source were analyzed in order to better understand whether different types or colors of obsidian were exchanged differently by the ancient Maya of Actuncan. The evidence provided by this research led to a better understanding of the obsidian sources accessed at Actuncan which include the central Mexican source, Pachuca, and Guatemalan sources: El Chayal, Ixtepeque, and San Martin Jilopeteque. In addition, it became clear that households of all ranks had access to obsidian, but the amount of access varied over time and across space. The data was inconclusive as to the type of exchange occurring at Actuncan, since differing forms of standardization provided inconsistent results. When the results of this study are examined in the light of other investigations at Actuncan, it seems unlikely that marketplace exchange ever emerged at this site, however more research is required before any well supported arguments can be made for or against a marketplace at Actuncan (Published By University of Alabama Libraries