The Mark Keller Collection in the Annex never fails to amaze us! After organizing the content of the seven boxes into series, we found a huge surprise in the last one, Writings and Manuscripts, an entire book, almost ready to publish hidden in over twenty archival folders.
Keller’s portrait by Vera Efron
As illustrated by the growing list (nearly 100 as of today) of his presentations gleaned from the Keller Papers, he was an incredibly popular speaker, equally sought after by hosts of events geared toward scholarly, professional, and lay audiences. From workshops in hospitals and professional developmental seminars for the alcohol industry to major national and international scientific conferences, Keller, the documentalist, presented at a large variety of gatherings, contributing to the evolving science of alcohol studies. Dedicated to promoting shared definitions in the field, Keller chose to highlight the most pressing and challenging topics in his lectures, presentations, and dinner talks. Some of them were based on hard data, with the majority tending to approach the alcohol problem from perceptions and attitudes. However, both types were presented with abundant examples, erudition, and deep understanding, based on his experience reading, reviewing, organizing, and publishing alcohol literature.
According to the introduction, some of Keller’s original ideas expressed in many of his lectures had never been published, but, instead, many of them were picked up by listeners, who incorporated them to their own writings.
Often Mark has been amused to see the seeds he had planted tentatively, in some of his talks, germinated and some to a fruition –perhaps not exactly in the form he expected them to develop but still in a meaningful way. (Introduction, p. 3)
The ephemeral nature of scholarly presentations shows in Keller’s works too. The Mark Keller bibliography, still in progress, lists only seventeen published conference presentations. Some of his talks grew into a book chapter or even a scholarly article. However, nothing can substitute Keller’s wit, puns, offhand remarks, or humor as shown in the transcripts of his talks. For example, he gave a lecture on the same topic for several decades at the Summer School of Alcohol Studies starting in 1953 at Yale and later at Rutgers, constantly updating and modifiying the content to meet the needs of his audience.
We are lucky to have the manuscript of the lectures considered as the most representative in his career, both in draft and edited versions in the Keller Papers. The proposed book, entitled Alcohol . . . Because: Twenty lectures by Mark Keller, was initiated and edited by Vera Efron, and from their correspondence, can be dated to the early 1990s. The title was suggested early by Keller as the title of the only talk he never gave. But, between starting to compile the collection and finishing it, he did get an invitation to give that talk, so all of the lectures were presented somewhere, many of them multiple times in multiple formats for multiple audiences over time. Rather than publishing the lectures delivered from 1953 to 1973 in chronological order, Keller and Efron decided to divide the book into five sections.
The titles are as follows. If the lecture was published in any format, such as a book chapter or conference proceeding listed in this bibliography, it’s noted after the record.
Section I. About the Nature of Alcoholism
Introduction (by Vera Efron)
- On the Nature of Alcoholism (Presentation on April 22, 1968, at the American Medical Society on Alcoholism, Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York, NY).
- Alcoholism: Image and Reality (Presentation on October 30, 1964, at the 62nd Annual Convention of the New Jersey State Nurses’ Association, in Atlantic City, NJ).
- Current Problems of Excessive Drinking (Presentation on May 17, 1966, at the Institute on Public Health Aspects of Alcoholism, Columbia University School of Public Health, New York, NY).
- Changing Attitudes toward Alcoholism and Alcoholics (Presentation on January 20, 1954, in Boston at the Annual Meeting of the Boston Committee on Alcoholism, an affiliate of the National Committee on Alcoholism, Boston, MA).
- Alcoholism as Disability (Presentation on December 1, 1966, at the Seminar on Comprehensive Statewide Planning for Vocational Rehabilitation, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ).
Published as
Keller, M. (1967). Alcoholism as disability. In Berkowitz, M., (Ed.) Estimating rehabilitation needs: a conference on planning for vocational rehabilitation (pp. 28-36). New Brunswick, NJ.
Section II. About Science and Research
- Trends in Alcoholism Research (Presentation on May 8, 1964, at the Summer Course on Alcohol and Problems of Addiction, University of Western Ontario in association with the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada).
- Alcoholism: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Understanding (Presentation on August 29, 1962, at Springfield Hospital, Sykesville MD. The same talk, with a somewhat shorter introduction and concluding statements, was delivered on April 2, 1958, at the Professional Association on Alcoholism in Boston, MA).
- Open Areas for Basic Research in Alcoholism (Presentation on 25 May 1965 at the Workshop on Research in Alcoholism, sponsored by the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, Rochester, NY).
- The Scientific Approach to Alcohol Problems: A Tribute to E. M. Jellinek (Presentation on August 15, 1966, at the International Symposium on Alcohol and Alcoholism, Medical School of the University of Chile, Santiago, Chile).
Published in Spanish as
Keller, M. (1969). Homenaje a la memoria del Prof. E. M. Jellinek. 3. Discurso del Sr. Mark Keller. In J. Mardones & A. Varela (Eds.), Simposio internacional sobre alcohol y alcoholism (pp. 10-16). Arch. Biol. Med. Exp., Chile, Suppl. No. 3.
Published as
Keller, M. (1970). Tributes to E. M. Jellinek. In R. E. Popham (Ed.), Alcohol and alcoholism (pp. xi-xvi). University of Toronto Press.
Section III. About Statistics and Statwistics
- Some Measures of Drinking in the United States and Certain Other Countries: Problems of Interpretation of Statistics (This lecture was presented, with modifications and updates annually (1953-61) in July, first at the Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies, New Haven, CT, and later (beginning in 1962) at the Rutgers Summer School of Alcohol Studies, New Brunswick, NJ).
- Estimating about Alcoholism (Presentation on July 18, 1966, at the Alumni Institute, Summer School of Alcohol Studies, at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ).
- Alcoholism: Scope of the Problem (Presentation on April 10, 1964, at the annual meeting at the National Council on Alcoholism, New York, NY).
Published in part as
Keller, M. (1965, February). The Jellinek formula for the rate of alcoholism. A. Grapevine, 21(9), 29-34. - The Prevalence of Alcoholism in Washington (Presentation on January 25, 1963, before the Washington, DC Council of Alcoholism, Washington, DC. Portions of this lecture that parallel the discussion of the Jellinek Estimation Formula and can be found in other chapters have been omitted).
Section IV. About Literature and Documentation
- Problems of a Scientific Alcohol Literature (Presentation on 25 July 1953 at the Fourth Annual Meeting of the North American Association of Alcoholism Problems, at that time known as the National States’ Conference on Alcoholism, New Haven, CT).
- The Language of Alcohol Problems (Presentation in August 1954, at the Research Symposium sponsored by the Ontario Alcoholism Research Foundation in connection with the 5th International Congress on Mental Health in Toronto).
Published as
Keller, M., & Seeley, J. R. (1958). The alcohol language. With a selected vocabulary. (Alcoholism Research Foundation, Brookside Monograph No. 2.) University of Toronto Press. - Documentation of an Interdisciplinary Field of Study: Alcohol Problems (Presentation on August 30, 1971, at the ISLIC International Conference on Information Science, Tel Aviv, Israel).
Published as
Keller, M. (1972). A special-library information-center model for a societal-problem field. In L. Vilentchuk & G. Haimovic (Eds.), Proceedings of the ISLIC International Conference on Information Science; Tel-Aviv, 29 August – 2 September 1971 (pp. 121-129). Tel-Aviv National Center of Scientific and Technical Information.
Section V. About This and That
- Cultural Aspects of Drinking and Alcoholism (Presentation on October 29, 1958, before the Commission on Temperance Policy and Program of the United Church of Canada in Toronto, Ontario).
Published as
Keller, M. (1958). Cultural aspects of drinking and alcoholism. Toronto; Commission on Temperance Policy and Program, United Church of Canada. - Alcohol and Food in Health and Disease: Some Historical Perspectives (Presentation on January 12, 1966, as the dinner talk at the Conference on Alcohol in Health and Disease of the New York Academy of Sciences).
Published as
Keller, M. (1966). Alcohol in health and disease; some historical perspectives. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 133(3), 820-827. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1966.tb50929.x - The Great Jewish Drink Mystery (Presentation on April 19, 1967, at the Luncheon Meeting of the Hillel Faculty Group, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ).
Published as
Keller, M. (1970). The great Jewish drink mystery. British Journal of Addiction, 64(3), 287-296. [CAAAL 13802.] https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1970.tb03688.x - Alcohol . . . Because (Presentation on June 27, 1973, at the Convention of the Canadian Association of Provincial Liquor Commissions, St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia).
In her introduction, Vera Efron calls Mark Keller “next to Bunky, probably the most knowledgeable man in the field of alcohol problems” by the time the Center moved to Rutgers in 1962. This manuscript is now available in RUcore, the Rutgers Community Repository for future scholars to understand the statement and what it means for alcohol studies.