From Stress to Success

May! A busy potentially stressful time for students. Exams, dissertations, assignments – the culmination of the years’ work. Here at your University library, we will do all we can support you. We are focusing our Books unlocked this month on easing Exam Stress. As with many things this year, we will be supporting you virtually as well as on campus. On campus we will have a selection of suggested reading and helpful tips for study, as well as takeaway mindful colouring and exercise suggestions.  

Be sure to check our social media feeds for regular tips on de-stressing, relaxing your mind, looking after yourself and for revision and study tips:

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

To start our stress busting month, try this simple breathing technique to calm your mind:

  

https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/self-help/guides-tools-and-activities/breathing-exercises-for-stress/ 

And breathe…. 

International Women's Day 8th of March 2021

International Women's Day is when we celebrate social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. 

This year's campaign theme is #ChooseToChallenge, where the word challenge is used as alert. From challenge comes change, so we can all challenge our world to remove gender bias and inequality. We can all challenge our world and question stereotypes. Lets all help to make our world an inclusive one. 

Visit our library sites and you will find a great selection of books to find out either the life and achievements of important women or to raise your awareness on gender inequality. 

Bedford Campus

Luton Campus

February is known as the month that we celebrate LGBT+. It is an annual month-long celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and non-binary history. It gives an opportunity to remember LGBT+ rights and related civil rights movements. It is also an opportunity to raise awareness of the LGBT+ community. The reason that we celebrate LGBT+ in February is to coincide with the 2003 abolition of Section 28. The theme this year is ‘Body, Mind and Spirit’ in order to explore the complexities of who we are and what we can aspire to be. In 2021, we remember Lily Parr, Mark Ashton, Maya Angelou, Michael Dillon and Mark Weston. For more information on the subject visit https://lgbtplushistorymonth.co.uk/ 

 The library holds a variety of books that celebrate the LGBT+ community and its ethos. You can have access through the library catalogue to either view them online or to reserve and collect. 

 The University of Bedfordshire also has the UOB Staff LGBTQ Alliance which supports all staff and students in their journey towards being their true selves at work, all the time. Whoever their true self may be. Therefore, if you would like to get in touch with the UOB LGBTQ Alliance network, please email lgbtqalliance@beds.ac.uk or tweet @LGBTQ_beds 

 Below you can see pictures of our Books Unlocked display in both Luton and Bedford Library.

January’s book displays are all about boosting your mood

This year, more than ever, there is a need to focus on ways to enhance your mental and physical health through the winter months. Our displays have books on nutrition and exercise to give ideas on how look after your body so that you can feel healthy and energised. There are self-help books giving guidance on how have a positive outlook and there are novels and memoirs to lose yourself in. Additionally, there are uplifting and inspiring quotes and images to give an instant boost. Our libraries are open but if you can’t make it on to campus then search for ebooks on the library catalogue. Also don’t forget that local libraries are still loaning books and have an abundance of digital resources to help you through the winter lockdown.

 Ghost , Horror and Mystery Stories

From medieval cathedrals to moody (or pretending to be) teenagers, to films, novels and computer games, the word Gothic, the Gothic sensibility, has been with us a long time. The first Goths were Germanic tribes forced into the Roman Empire by the ferocious Huns advancing towards Europe from the east. You might say they came originally as refugees, but they were part of the mass migrations that contributed (a bit) to the fall of Rome in the West.

So, when Renaissance writers on architecture were looking for an abusive term to describe several centuries of a style they despised, they picked on the Goths. After all, the Goths had ‘destroyed Rome’ and replaced the purity of Classical styles with their ‘barbaric’ pointy arches, coloured windows and fussy decoration. Of course, the cathedral style that began in medieval France had nothing to do with the Goths, but the name stuck.

Moving on to the eighteenth century, a new kind of emotional, romantic literature appeared. It mixed in a whole stew of ever-popular fascinations such as sex, death, bats, fear and virgins. As the setting was often the tumble-down remains of the original architectural style, the name Gothic was applied from the beginning and has remained as a shorthand for a wide range of literary genres. The Victorian Gothic Revival, a building style that is still all around us, helped preserve that familiar sensibility.

So anything with ghosts, blood, graveyards, sickly young women, spooky music, Halloween and all its cheesy paraphernalia, can all be labelled Gothic.

Suggested Reading:

Seduced by Twillight: the allure and contradictory messages of the popular saga by Natalie Wilson (2011)

American gothic culture: an Edinburgh companion, edited by Joel Faflak and Jason Haslam (2017)

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (1998)

Both campuses in Luton and Bedford display a selection of items on the subject for further inspiration and reading. 

Graphic Novels

Every picture tells the story

This month we are celebrating graphic novels. These are novels which tell their story with the use of pictures. Sometimes bright and colourful, sometimes in black and white, the images inspire the imagination to fill out the story in new and exciting ways. Different strategies are used by the authors and illustrators to engage the reader with powerful and evocative designs. These novels can take readers to different and exciting worlds. Graphic novels can also be simple in their design, allowing the reader to imagine the story in their own way.

Graphic novels definitely aren't just for children, although these can be fun.

Try something different and take a look at graphic novels this November. 

Maybe even try designing your own graphic novel.

Black History Month - Black History is British History

 

Black History is British History

October is the month designated for Black History but I have always wondered why Black history, my history, should be relegated to one month.  Part of creating an unprejudiced and tolerant society is having an understanding of history, of culture and of difference.  Removing division is to look at Black history as British history.  It isn’t separate but integral into understanding what makes Britain, Britain.  I challenge Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech delivered at a Conservative Association meeting in 1968.  He draws on the perils of the “Commonwealth immigrant” (Powell, 1968) who, in his view “…came to Britain as a full citizen” (Powell, 1968).  It’s funny, I wonder how many “full citizen[s]” experienced the torrent of abuse, the hate crimes, and the disadvantage that my Black British ancestors did.  My Mother, born in Ealing to Grenadian parents and my Father, born in Trinidad, and immigrant to this country in 1966, have talked to me about growing up in London and the unspeakable things they tolerated.  I often wonder what my Grandparents thought.  I have a daughter; what if she told me it was commonplace for her and her Black friends to have peanuts thrown at them during lessons or that she was called a gollywog (a caricature on jam and marmalade jars that became used as a racial taunt).  Or for fear of ridicule from peers, fashioned every excuse not to go swimming because our hair shrinks when wet.  I would be incensed but it was a different time.  My Father enjoys Jazz music, and pronounced it ‘ja-hz’ because he thought the Queen’s English would assimilate him better in British culture rather than his thick Trini accent.  Typical of many Black folks, my parents just got on with it for one reason or another - perhaps under the guise of the very British characteristic to ‘stiff upper lip’, or in my Fathers case, just for a ‘better life’ in the UK and not in the Caribbean where (in the main) one was not castigated for shade of skin, no - but economic opportunity was limited.  What a perplexing consideration with apparently opposing paradigms.  The acceptance of one because there is benefit in the other. 

Black British history is largely understood in terms of Windrush - the mass descent (on invitation) to help rebuild a Britain ravaged by the ramifications of the Second World War. Powell lamented that Blacks would unfairly benefit “from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service”, but he failed to mention the insurmountable sacrifice and invaluable contribution Blacks made to leave their families and rebuild a foreign country; the Motherland as it was called.  My Grandmother, Pamela Augustina Ramirez, worked in the NHS - she was Matron in Edgware General hospital.  The role of Matron was dissolved in 1972 but during her tenure, this was a prestigious position as she was the most senior

nurse in the hospital. 

I am from a ’normal’ family!  I have 4 siblings and I am the eldest. Each of us would comment differently on our Black experience.  Our passage into adulthood was made easier by our parents - as much as was possible anyway.  My Mother was conscious of how areas can limit opportunity so I went to school in Mill Hill, North West London.  Put it this way, I was one of six Black girls in my year, which had ramifications within itself, for example I remember being called ‘coconut’ or Bounty – yes, as in the chocolate bar!  My parents were not only profoundly aware of where we went to school, but where we lived.  It was deemed essential to consider the settings where my siblings and I were growing up.  My parents shared the pre-emptive concerns of many Black families and as an adult I fully appreciate their decision-making.  My sister and brothers would never forgive me if I was to share a pic of us all.  Instead I have chosen to share one of my parents and I, when I was two years old.  I still have this little coat. The other is of my parents now.

There is a tendency to look at BHM through American eyes; we know about the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman et al.  It’s also quite rightly understood in terms of slavery.  But what about Black British history pre-Windrush?  For example, have you heard of the ‘Beachy Head Lady’, a sub-Saharan African whose skull was discovered in Sussex in 1953?  It is believed she lived in AD245 and her face was cleverly created in 2014 using 3-D imaging techniques (BBC News, 2014).  Or have you heard of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’?  She was buried with her bangles, pendants, earrings and many more precious items in first century York.  She was of North African descent and incredibly wealthy (Yorkshire Museum, 2020).  Or how about the Aurelian Romans at Hadrian’s Wall? Historians believe an army of at least 500 ‘Moors’ occupied a fort near Carlisle during the 3^rd century (Bernard, 2011)!  This is British history and it is rarely told unless sort out.  There are more stories I know nothing about, and I will be first to admit how little my knowledge is on the subject, but I have a lifetime to learn.  One thing is for sure – Black history is a ‘forgotten’ history.  One hopes with the tide changing, Black history will become the status quo.