Bookshelf
This
issue of Campus News introduces a new column, Bookshelf, highlighting
books written by UNM employees. The feature will run semi-regularly
in conjunction with campus events.
The
General Library honors one of its own, author Bruce Boling,
associate professor, Tuesday, April 1, at 2 p.m. in the Willard
Reading Room in Zimmerman Library.
Boling,
a 17-year UNM employee, collaborated with Kerby A. Miller, University
of Missouri, Columbia, on the book, Irish Immigrants in
the Land of Canaan: Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary
America, 1675-1815, published by Oxford University Press,
2003.
As
the basis of our research we transcribed more than 10,000 letters
from public and private sources. In Ireland we appealed in every
imaginable publication for emigrants letters, said
Boling, who will discuss the book at the event, a faculty acknowledgement
reception.
Boling,
a student of Irish dialects, noted that the letters were mostly
composed in dialect. The emigrants wrote the way they
talked, he said.
Although
the book is a resource for reconstructing the history of English
dialects in Ireland, that is not its primary purpose. Preeminently
it is a work of social history, which aims to explore the reasons
and consequences of the earliest stage of the Irish immigration
to North America. To do this the book uses personal letters.
The
letters reveal the writers way of thinking about things
in a way that cant be attempted by second-hand sources,
Boling said. The letters often portray the migration from Ireland
to North America as exile, a forced uprooting from the familiar
to the alien, he said.
Boling,
a member of the librarys Ibero-American cataloging team,
said he is delighted to be honored by the library.
The UNM
Bookstore will be on site to sell paperbound copies of the book
for $35.
The librarys
Faculty Acknowledgement series honors outstanding faculty across
campus.