Library of The College of St. Scholastica: Home

Librarian Does Southern Grotesque (A Literary Style!)

Librarian & Archivist Heidi Johnson presented her paper “Sisters: Flannery O’Connor’s Connections to Women Religious” at the conference Flannery O’Connor’s Second Century: Looking Forward, Looking Back, held in O’Connor’s home town of Milledgeville, Georgia, as part of the “Flannery at 100,” a series of events celebrating the centennial of O’Connor’s birth.

Johnson is one of approximately 90 scholars chosen to present at this event sponsored by the Flannery O’Connor Institute at Georgia College & State University and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Johnson’s paper explores a line O’Connor wrote in a letter from 1963, “I find that some of my best readers are Sisters.” Why was it that O’Connor felt that “women religious” (nuns & sisters) understood her writing better than anyone? In answering this question, Johnson found a deep connection, both personal and scholarly, between O’Connor and 19 sisters, including a former President of The College of St. Scholastica.

Despair, Blasphemy, and the Hardened Heart

Medieval Christian thinkers nearly uniformly affirm that there is at least one unforgivable action or state of mind: the "sin unto death." What that sin is supposed to be - despair? blasphemy? obstinacy? all of the above? - is less clear. Dr. Ashley Comstock examines influential accounts, attempting to identify common threads.

Raven Room

Friday, October 4th, 2024

3:40 - 5:00 pm CDT

Quantifying Contaminants of Emerging Concern in Northeastern Minnesota

Dr. Heather Brown's lab is focused on developing low-cost methods for routine environmental monitoring. We are currently developing a hand-held, field-deployable spectrofluorimeter capable of quantification of specific contaminants of emerging concern. In-house developed, DNA-based molecular aptamer beacons will provide the concentration-dependent fluorescent light specific to unique contaminants detected in the instrument.

Raven Room

Friday, November 8, 2024

3:40 - 5:00 pm CDT

No. 137

The Vesper Sparrow seems like the right bird to be seen behind a monastery. Librarian Brad Snelling bagged this liturgical crooner with a combination of old fashioned patience and a new fashioned phone app, Merlin, from the Cornell Ornithology Lab!

"The name Vesper Sparrow is given this bird because of its habit of tuning up along towards evening; it is perhaps more often known as the "Bay-winged Sparrow" or "Grass Finch." they are found chiefly in dry pastures or along dusty roadsides, where they start from the ground in front of us, their white tail feathers showing prominently as they fly, so there will be no mistake as to their identity."

Song. - A clear, ascending series of whistles, given from a fence post or bush top; call, a sharp chip."

Text & image from: Chapman, Frank. Bird Life: A Guide to the Study of our Common Birds. 1919.

No. 136

BIG BIRD ON CAMPUS!  It is hard to image but it took 112 years for the bird of Minnesota, our official state avian (OSA), to be spotted on campus. He was caught by the camera of Librarian Brad Snelling in the first days of May, making the loon the 136^th species identified on campus. If we restore the cow pond on campus maybe loons could summer at CSS!

“The Loon … is known to almost every one by name, but only those who have visited its summer haunts among the Northern lakes and heard its wild call can be said to know it. Nuttall writes of its cry as " the sad and wolfish call of the solitary Loon, which, like a dismal echo, seems slowly to invade the ear, and, rising as it proceeds, dies away in the air." It " may be heard sometimes for two or three miles, when the bird itself is invisible, or reduced almost to a speck in the distance."

Text & image from: Chapman, Frank. Bird Life: A Guide to the Study of our Common Birds. 1919.