Web page, electronic library reserve list set for 'Heaven, Hell & Judgment'

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

The UB Libraries will post an electronic reserve list for the course, a "totally experimental" endeavor, according to Karen Senglaup, Lockwood Library coordinator for access services. When the list is completed, it will be available via the Lockwood electronic reserve page ( http://www.buffalo.edu/libraries/services/reserve). Senglaup added that there also is the possibility of linking students to databases that will provide full texts of reserved books and articles.

In addition to the reserve page, Senglaup said the libraries will work with Christian and co-instructor Dorothy Glass, professor of art history, to extend access to course material. Through the course web page and the library reserve pages, they will offer students access to other electronic resources related to this subject matter on the world wide web.

"These will include web sites throughout the world and links to other libraries-the Vatican Library, for instance, so that students can look at specific works of art, literature and illuminated material," Senglaup said.

The Illustration Program in the UB Department of Art will be involved as well. A course taught by Visiting Professor Elka Kazmierczak of Poland's Jagiellonian University will present an exhibition of her students' illustrations of hell from Jan. 23 through Feb. 11 in the Art Department Gallery on the lower level of the Center for the Arts.

Although the course will not formally cover material beyond that of William Blake, it will end with a wild leap into the 20th century to demonstrate how the course material informs contemporary treatments of the post-death experience.

On April 28, Glass and Christian, who also is a film scholar, will sponsor a public screening of the filmatically intense 1946 British afterlife fantasy flick, "Stairway to Heaven," a tour de force piece of movie making that describes a vast, hygienically clean Other World in which the British dead, gamely and with good humor, maintain their dignity at any cost.