2012 - 10/2012 Meeting
Page Created: 09/22/12. Last Updated: 10/08/14.
KAREN GREEN
Karen Green is the Ancient & Medieval History and Religion Librarian of Butler Library at Columbia University. She also created the institution's Graphic Novel collection.She is a medieval scholar with interests in film, New York City and many other areas.
Speaker's Website: http://www.columbia.edu/~klg19
..........Comics Area: http://www.columbia.edu/~klg19/#comics
....................Graphic Novel Page: http://library.columbia.edu/content/libraryweb/eguides/graphic_novels.html
..........Film Area: http://www.columbia.edu/~klg19/#film
..........History Area: http://www.columbia.edu/~klg19/#history
..........New York City Area: http://www.columbia.edu/~klg19/#nyc
.....Comic Book Commentary Column: Comic Adventures in Academia at comiXology:
http://pulllist.comixology.com/columns/comic_adventures_in_academia/
.....2012 Comic New York: A Symposium (Links to videos w/Al Jaffee, Paul Levitz, Chris Claremont & More)
http://conferences.cdrs.columbia.edu/comicny/?page_id=6
Articles of Interest:
..........WALL STREET JOURNAL: Comic Get Scholarly Treatment at Columbia:
..........COLUMBIA MAGAZINE: Space Avengers
http://magazine.columbia.edu/college-walk/fall-2012/space-avengers?page=0,0
MEETING SUMMARY
Meeting Date: October 13, 2012.
Meeting Site: Webber / De Parto Residence.
Meeting Attendance: 18.
Meeting Program: Talk by Librarian / Comic Book / Medieval Expert.
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2012 Philip J De Parto:
The October 12, 2012 General Meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held at the home of Pamela Webber and Philip De Parto in Waldwick, New Jersey. The meeting was held there because of the rental increase imposed by our normal meeting site, the Saddle River Valley Cultural Center in Upper Saddle River.
We had a light attendance for the evening, which affected both our pre-meeting events: our Animation Associates screening of episodes of the anime adaptation of the CW series, SUPERNATURAL, and our Ice Nine discussion of science fiction news.
Our speaker was Karen Green, Medieval Scholar, Comic Book Authority and Librarian for the Butler Library of Columbia University.
Our guest lived with her family in Jackson, Michigan for the first ten years of her life. It was 90 miles to Detroit the nearest oasis of culture. Things changed when her family moved to Fort Lee, New Jersey, where she would stare out the window at the skyline of New York. The two great passions of our speaker were sparked by New York icons: a book of cartoons from THE NEW YORKER got her interested in comics and a trip to the Cloisters got her interested in the Middle Ages.
Although she would remain in her dentist's office reading ARCHIE comic books after her appointments, Ms Green did not become a fan of the medium until much later in life. She did have a subscription to MAD MAGAZINE at a young age and state that MAD and the Marx Brothers taught her how to be a Jew in America. She also enjoyed HEAVY METAL, NATIONAL LAMPOON and the works of Edward Gorey in her teens.
Architecture became another enthusiasm. While the well-know Chrysler and Woolworth buildings are her favorites, there are countless lesser-known treasures like the Kiehl's building which has a wood house upon its roof. In fact, you can turn down any corner of any block and see some vestige of past architecture. Karen recommended the blog, Scouting New York, to anyone interested in the city's architectural delights.
Karen Green was far from a model student in high school and got wilder upon graduation. She drifted and eventually wound up working at a Kibbutz in Israel for a year. The land and its history helped her reconnect with her love of history. She became fascinated in biblical archaeology and returned to America to resume her schooling.
Our guest shot through New York University in three years, switching majors a couple of times, tending bar, working as a licensed masseuse, being a research assistant to a historian, getting married and having children, but basically drifting. It was not until she took a supervisory position oat one of Columbia University's libraries (the school has 22 libraries) that she had an epiphany: "This is where I want to be!" She enrolled in Rutgers New Brunswick, and added a degree in Library Science to those she already had (Ms Green had been to Columbia on a full Fellowship) and convinced the academic powers to allow her to establish a sequential graphic narrative (comic strips / comic books / graphic novels) collection.
Acceptance of these works had been growing in American academic circles for a number of years (they achieved recognition in Europe and Japan much earlier). The Smithsonian has an excellent collection of newspaper comics. Ohio State and Michigan State Universities have noteworthy collections of comics, but the libraries of both schools are research libraries--the works are not available to the general public. The collection at Columbia was designed to be a circulating library whose works could be viewed by anyone.
Karen Green met legendary comic book writer Chris (THE X-MEN) Claremont and his wife, Beth Fleisher, when the collection was in its infancy. the pair desired to find a home for his papers, and a deal was speedily concluded. A major part of our speaker's job became cultivating industry contacts and soliciting their collections. There are over 2800 titles in the library's collection. this includes significant donations by Richard and Wendy Pini, the Comics Code Authority and Fred Lerner. At the time of the meeting, our guest was in donation discussions with Al Jaffe and David Uslin.
Some assorted comics-related tidbits mentioned by Ms Green follow. The three major comic book distinctions are the Eisner, the Harvey, and the Ignatz Awards. Age appropriateness of works is based on language and nipple content. Comixology is a news and review site which particularly spoke to our guest. The first regular American comics appeared in New York City in Hearst magazine. Columbia's collection includes between 200 and 300 graphic novels from Europe. Shigeru Mizuki's ONWARD TOWARDS OUR GLORIOUS DEATHS does not get nearly the respect it deserves.
The other part of Karen Green's talk was on the Middle Ages. The span of time was so long and the geography so broad that almost any generalization about the period is bound to be wrong, or at least incomplete and requiring numerous qualifiers. The Catholic Church was the center of everyone's life, except when it wasn't. Common people lived lives of squalor, except when they didn't. In general, MONTHY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL provides a better depiction of medieval life than, say, THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE. Likewise, there was more to the Vikings than plundering England.
The Middle Ages is generally identified as the period from roughly 500 AD to roughly 1450, depending upon one's criteria. There were a number of cultural and climatic eras within that span: the Dark Ages, various mini-Renaissances, a global warming, a mini Ice-Age and more.
Our guest spoke a bit about the Twelfth Century, the greatest of the mini-Renaissances, stating that it was here that the modern notion of the state developed. The codification of Canon Law was an important judicial accomplishment. It was also the time of the remarkable Christina of Markyate, who defied family, church and state to maintain her vow of chastity. The lady eventually got her way and founded an abbey.
There were numerous technological innovations during the period [the Middle Ages, not necessarily the Twelfth Century -- Phil]. Most were improvements and modifications of inventions from earlier times or from other cultures. These included improved water mills, farm tools and equipment, and metal-working. Others were inventions ranging from simple things like buttons to windmills, crop rotation and cannons. Clocks, wheelbarrows and oil paints all hail from this time frame (some of this list was drawn from Wikipedia and other sources after the talk).
When someone mentioned THE DA VINCI CODE, Ms Green stated that Dan Brown had dug up every legend he could find about Jesus, threw them in a blender, and produced a half-baked best seller.
Ms Green is also a fan of old movies, particularly pre code films (though she is a big fan of GONE WITH THE WIND and still has a soft spot for THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD which she first saw at age seven). She adores the decade of the 1930s: its music, movies and architecture. Our guest considers BLONDE VENUS with Marlene Dietrich an underrated movie of this era. This touched off a back-and-forth about old movies. A fun time was had by all.