Category Archives: Exhibits

Native Americans in North Carolina: the Path from the Past to the Present

Native Americans in North Carolina:
the Path from the Past to the Present

The research and suggested resources presented in the article Imagining Duke’s Campus in 1000 AD inspire the Lilly Library exhibit: Native Americans in North Carolina: the Path from the Past to the Present. Tangible artifacts and reference material highlighting the history of Native Americans in North Carolina  carry us together on a journey over time to the campus experience of today. The exhibit presents historical evidence predating European contact, records and accounts of the university’s Native American student experience, and a look at the extent of Native American tribal reach in present day North Carolina.

North Carolina: The Arrival of Europeans

Book cover
A New Voyage to Carolina, John Lawson (1709)

When the first Europeans arrived in what they called Carolina, the 16th century surveyor John White depicted in detail the established villages and individuals living on the land near Roanoke. A century later John Lawson catalogued the peoples and bounty of the land he traveled. His account A New Voyage to Carolina (produced in 1709) revealed the diversity of nature especially flora and of the nations of Native Americans. An original edition of Lawson’s book is found in the Rubenstein Library collection but does not circulate.
For Duke community members with NetIDs who wish  to examine Lawson’s work, reprints and online versions are readily available.

Duke: The Arrival of Joseph S. Maytubby

Maytubby
Joseph S. Maytubby (Image from Duke University Archives)

The relationship between Duke and its Native American constituents goes back further in history than one might expect. In 1892, Trinity College (the predecessor to Duke University) saw the arrival of Joseph S. Maytubby on its campus in Durham. Maytubby, a member of the Chickasaw tribe became the first Native American to receive a degree from Trinity College. An excellent student, he served as president of the Hesperian Literary Society, was involved with the Trinity Archive literary magazine, played football, and, as a capstone to his stellar academic career, his oratory skills won the Wiley Gray Medal competition for the 1896 commencement.

Duke Magazine Retro: Native Americans at Trinity in the Nineteenth Century provides more insight into university history and Mr. Maytubby’s experience.

Today: the Path Continues

In present day, the Duke Native American Student Alliance serves as a resource and advocates on behalf of Native American Students on campus. Read its mission statement to learn more. One element of NASA’s stated mission is to advance the awareness of Native American culture throughout campus and the state.

Map of NC Tribal Communities – source: North Carolina Dept. of Administration

It is not generally known that North Carolina has the largest Native American population east of the Mississippi River. North Carolina is home to eight tribes recognized tribes by the state, including the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation – the only federally recognized Native American community in North Carolina.   This exhibit offers a glimpse into the complicated and often uncomfortable history of the Native American tale.

The Lilly Library exhibit Native Americans in North Carolina: the Path from the Past to the Present is on display until March 1, 2022.
Curated by Librarians Greta Boers and Carson Holloway. Artifacts on display are from the collections of Carson Holloway and Greta Boers.

The Big Book in Lilly Library

THE BIG BOOK

by Lee Sorensen
Librarian for Visual Studies and Dance, Lilly Library

Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company / Featured plate: Eugene Atget Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve [PC: Metropolitan Museum of Art: Gilman Collection, Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Henry R. Kravis Gift, 2005]
What is that “big book” on display in the lobby of Lilly Library? Its proper title is  Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company. This book is a gift to Duke University Libraries from the Nasher Museum of Art, and will remain in Lilly through the spring semester.

With the rise of e-books and readers, one of the most uncommon and increasingly rare printed formats is the folio book, defined by one student as, “too damn large to carry.” In the days before book criteria included portability, giant books were produced to contain actual-size documents such as building plans and engravings, detailed scientific renderings and later, photography.

 

man with big book
Librarian Lee Sorensen with the book Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company

The “big book” on display is a modern edition of photographs from the Gilman Paper Company, New York. The firm had one of the best private collections of photographs in the world,  which was acquired by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005 . This magisterial book contains reprinted photographs of photographers such as Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Fox Talbot, Eugene Atget and Edward S. Curtis.  The edition was curated by Pierre Apraxine, with plates created  by renowned photographer and printer Richard Benson (who was also the Dean of Yale School of Art), and notes contributed by photography consultant Lee Marks. This volume, printed by Stamperia Valdonega in Verona, Italy, and half-bound in leather, is the only one in North Carolina outside of the Mint Museum, Charlotte.

Pages are turned periodically to show new images. 47 cm in length, the volume  consists of 480 pages with 199 offset lithographs plus an offset lithographic frontispiece.


Contributor: Carol Smolka Terry
Lilly Library

Grammy Nominees – and Winners! – in the Music Library

Grammys at the ML
Grammy Awards Collection Spotlight

The 61st Annual Grammy Awards wrapped up in February, and now is your chance to catch up with some of the critically-acclaimed recordings that you may have heard about but haven’t had a chance to audition yourself. The Duke Music Library is pleased to unveil a new collection spotlight of recordings nominated for the 2019 Grammy awards, featuring more than 80 albums from just about every category you’ve heard of – and some you might not have!

In addition to some of the finest recordings from the last year in Opera, Musical Theatre, and Classical, this collection spotlight includes Cardi B, Ariana Grande, Kacey Musgraves, Beck, Fred Hersch, Drake, Joshua Redman, Kurt Elling, Buddy Guy, High on Fire, and many more.


Check out our very own “staff picks”:

Philippe Jaroussky and Artaserse, The Handel Album

French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky is among the most famous countertenors in the world right now, and it’s a voice range that has attracted growing interest in recent years. The high range of the countertenor voice and the manner in which its unusual qualities are produced results in a sound that has often been described as unearthly – it’s also a powerful and flexible voice type, able to handle music of stunning virtuosity and highly expressive pathos. All of these qualities are beautifully demonstrated in this album of arias selected by Jaroussky from among lesser-known Handel operas, highlighting pieces which he says “reveal a more intimate, tender side of Handel.”

Preview an incredible aria from the album, “Sussurrate, onde vezzose” from Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula, which evokes the limpid and gentle murmuring of waves. Jaroussky begins with an almost impossibly hushed suspended note on the word “whispering.”

-Laura Williams, Head Librarian, Music Library

 

Fred Hersch Trio, Live in Europe

Fred Hersch and company continue to find new and innovative modes of expression within the jazz piano trio context. Featuring new Hersch originals alongside fresh interpretations of a few standard tunes, this album really shines, both in recording quality and inspired live performance.

-Jamie Keesecker,  Stacks Manager and Student Supervisor, Music Library

 

High on Fire, Electric Messiah

Metal lifer Matt Pike gets the big nod after a year in which this release was not even the best thing he put out (that distinction would go to his other band Sleep’s album ‘The Sciences’). It was also a year in which he had a public struggle with diabetes that cost him a toe and grounded a large part of the tour for ‘Electric Messiah’. That said, when the award was announced early in the Grammy ceremony, the cameras spent many long seconds scanning back and forth looking for the winners in a mostly-deserted theater. Finally, from way in the back, Pike hobbled forward with the help of a cane, and accompanied by his metal peers, to accept his shiny statue. “We never really need an award for doing what we love…” was part of Pike’s on-stage comment, but the commendation was very cool all the same.  

– Stephen Conrad, Order Specialist for Music and Film and Team Lead for Western Languages, Monographic Acquisitions

 

James Ehnes, Violin Concertos by James Newton Howard and Aaron Jay Kernis

The new Kernis Concerto was written for Canadian violinist James Ehnes, and it really serves as a showcase for Ehnes’ strengths. He comes across as such an intelligent musician, really playing with (not just in front of) the other members of the orchestra – Kernis gives them some great moments of interplay here. This work also balances Ehnes’ ability to deliver beautifully straightforward, unfussy lines one minute and astoundingly virtuosic cadenzas the next. Oh, and apparently he watched his Grammy win on a live stream in his neighborhood grocery store parking lot. How much more Canadian and unpretentious can you get?

-Sarah Griffin, Public Services Coordinator, Music Library (and, yes, a violinist)

 


Come over to East Campus to see these and browse through many more on our display of CDs. Don’t have a CD drive on your laptop anymore? No, neither do we! Borrow a portable DVD/CD drive while you’re here.

Fans of accompanying visual materials may find these albums to be of particular interest:

  • Wayne Shorter’s immersive Emanon, packaged with its accompanying graphic novel by comic book artist Randy DuBurke.
  • The Berliner Philharmoniker’s 6-disc box set (4 CDs and 2 Blu-ray discs), The John Adams Edition, featuring the music of legendary minimalist composer John Adams, with photographic artwork by Wolfgang Tillmans. Recorded during the orchestra’s 2016/2017 season during which Adams served as Composer in Residence.
  • At the Louisiana Hayride Tonight, a massive 20-CD box set with 224-page hardcover book documenting the storied radio program broadcast live from the Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana between 1948 and 1960. Includes a previously unreleased recording by Hank Williams, as well as rare gems from Johnny Cash, Kitty Wells, Elvis Presley, and many more.
  • Battleground Korea: Songs and Sounds of America’s Forgotten War brings together an assortment of songs, news reports, public service announcements, and other spoken-word audio (including a plea for blood donations from Howdy Doody) on four CDs, accompanied by a full-color hardcover book featuring song and artist information, record covers, advertisements, propaganda posters, and rarely-seen photographs from the war.
Battleground Korea and Louisiana Hayride

From Shipping Crate to Exhibit Case: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection

Please join us for an event celebrating the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection and the work of our amazing staff!

Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
Phillis Wheatly, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Lisa Unger Baskin Collection.

Date: Friday, April 12
Time: 11:00-11:45 am
Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein 153

In April 2015, the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection arrived at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. Comprising over 11,000 rare books and thousands of manuscripts, journals, ephemera, and artifacts, the Baskin Collection includes many well-known monuments of women’s history and arts as well as lesser-known works produced by female scholars, printers, publishers, laborers, scientists, authors, artists, and political activists. “From Shipping Crate to Exhibit Case” looks at the comprehensive work of libraries, including how we organize, conserve, describe, and exhibit, through the lens of this unique collection.

“Five Hundred Years of Women’s Work: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection” will be available for viewing after the program, in the Mary Duke Biddle Room.

This event is free and open to the public.

 

New Exhibit: Five Hundred Years of Women’s Work

On display February 28 – June 15, 2019

Mary Duke Biddle Room,
Stone Family Gallery, and Trent History of Medicine Room

Rubenstein Library, Duke West Campus
Get directions and parking info

Please check our website for current library hours.

Visit the exhibit website and explore the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection online.


About the Exhibit

Women’s work. The phrase usually conjures up domestic duties or occupations largely associated with women—such as teaching, nursing, or housekeeping. The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection upends those associations. By bringing together materials from across the centuries, Baskin reveals what has been hidden—that Western women have long pursued a startling range of careers and vocations and that through their work they have supported themselves, their families, and the causes they believed in.

In 2015, Lisa Unger Baskin placed her collection with Duke’s Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, part of the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Comprising more than 10,000 rare books and thousands of manuscripts, journals, items of ephemera, and artifacts, it was the most significant collection on women’s history still in private hands—an enormous body of material focusing on women’s work in all its diversity.

This exhibition provides a first glimpse of the diversity and depth of the collection, revealing the lives of women both famous and forgotten and recognizing their accomplishments.

After its premiere at Duke, the exhibit will travel to New York City and be on display at the Grolier Club, America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles, December 11, 2019 – February 8, 2020.

To accompany the exhibition, the Rubenstein Library and the Grolier Club have co-published a 160-page full-color catalog, which will be available for sale at the opening reception on February 27, and at a related symposium on “Women Across the Disciplines,” scheduled for April 15-16, 2019, at the Rubenstein Library.

Free guided tours of the exhibition will be offered every Friday at 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., March 8 – June 14. Sign up for a tour online.

The exhibition catalog was co-published by the Rubenstein Library and the Grolier Club.

Exhibit Opening and Reception: Please Join Us!

Date: Wednesday, February 27
Time: 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Location: Gothic Reading Room and Ahmadieh Family Commons, Rubenstein Library 2nd Floor

Featuring collector and exhibit co-curator Lisa Unger Baskin in conversation with Naomi L. Nelson, Associate University Librarian and Director, Rubenstein Library. Also featuring introductory remarks by Edward Balleisen, Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies. Free and open to the public.

More details and R.S.V.P.


Learn More About the Baskin Collection

For more about the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection, we encourage you to visit the exhibit website.

We have also pulled together a sampling of articles and stories about the collection’s significance as well as selected highlights found within it.

New Exhibit! Duke Kunshan University: From the Ground Up

On exhibit through February 3, 2019
Chappell Family Gallery, Perkins Library, Duke West Campus

Public Hours: Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 7:00 pm; Saturday, 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.; Sunday, 10:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Please check our posted library hours for the most up-to-date information.

About the Exhibit

A new exhibit in Perkins Library celebrates Duke Kunshan University, a partnership between Duke University, Wuhan University, and the city of Kunshan with the mission to create a world-class institution embodying both Chinese and American traditions of higher education. The continued process of learning how to strike balance between differing cultures has made Duke Kunshan’s brief history quite complex.

Duke Kunshan  has integrated the study of kunqu, one of the oldest classical styles of Chinese opera, into its humanities curriculum and extracurricular activities. On display: a gown worn by DKU students in the Kun Opera Club.

This exhibition offers up the story of Duke Kunshan’s development – its accomplishments, opportunities, challenges, and risks – and brings an important perspective to our understanding of how international partnerships can address the changing needs and challenges of global higher education.

Walking through the exhibit, a visitor can explore a timeline of key events, read articles on the collaboration, and explore the rich curriculum that has come out of Duke Kunshan. The sounds of new and traditional Chinese music against the backdrop of a beautiful, architectural mural welcomes visitors to partake in their own peaceful, contemplative discovery of Duke Kunshan.

Reception Celebrating the Exhibit: Please Join Us!

Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Time: 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm

Location: Rubenstein Library Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room 153

The reception program will begin at 5:00 p.m. with welcome remarks by Provost Sally Kornbluth. Mary Brown Bullock, Executive Vice Chancellor Emerita of Duke Kunshan University, will speak about the internationalization of China’s higher education system and current China-US education relations. Peter Lange, Provost Emeritus of Duke University, will discuss the development of Duke Kunshan.

Light refreshments will be served. Free and open to the public.

New Exhibit: Graphic Narratives from Around the World


A new exhibit on the second floor of Bostock Library, next to the East Asian Magazine Reading Room, explores the truly global popularity of graphic novels.

Since ancient times, human beings all over the globe have been bringing text and images together to tell stories. The term “graphic novel” connotes a full-length graphic narrative that uses sophisticated artwork to address serious literary themes for mature audiences. Starting in the 1980s, it gained popularity as an alternative to comics in Britain and America. However, this distinction between “lowbrow” comics and “highbrow” graphic novels is not relevant to Europe, Latin America, and Asia, which have long histories of narrative art that appeals to a wide range of audiences in many genres.

In this selection of graphic novels and cartoons from Duke’s collection, you will see retellings of classics and tales of adventure that have gained massive popularity in Japan and China. You will see stories of revolution and bold political movements from Russia, India, South Africa, and Colombia. You will see tales of atrocities, survival, and redemption in Germany and Israel. You will see humor, both lighthearted and political, in Turkey, Portugal and Spain, and everyday life in Korea and Côte d’Ivoire. This variety demonstrates the power of graphic narratives to reflect and lend new visual interpretations to all aspects of the human experience. We welcome you to explore one of the world’s most popular modes of storytelling in the Duke collection.

The exhibit was curated by Katie Odhner, a graduate student in the UNC School of Information and Library Science who is interning this summer with our International and Area Studies department.

Forever Duke – Alumni in Literature and the Arts

Lilly Collection Spotlight

Duke Alumni Authors and Artists

Oh, the places they have gone!

Our Lilly Collection Spotlight shines on talented Duke Alumni including authors, broadcasters, researchers, as well as many who are accomplished in popular entertainment – both on screen and behind the scenes. Their studies while at Duke are varied, and for many, their majors were not directly related to their career. The featured books encompass a range of genres and styles – from sociological research to critically acclaimed fiction to sports journalism. Duke alumni working in film and television produce and appear in a variety of films including comedies, drama and thoughtful documentaries. Actors, directors, writers – they experience success both in front of the camera and behind. What they all have in common is their “Duke experience”.

Check out the entire list of books in the Lilly Collection Spotlight  and visit Lilly Library to view the exhibit Duke Alumni on the Screen and Behind the Scenes.

Among the Duke Alumni  Books in the Collection Spotlight:

Vinegar Girl: The Taming of the Shrew Retold

Vinegar girl : The taming of the shrew retold

Pulitzer Prize winner and American master Anne Tyler’s inspired, witty and irresistible contemporary take on one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies. Tyler graduated from Duke in 1961.

The Legends Club : Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano, and an epic college basketball rivalry
In the skillful hands of John Feinstein (Duke 1977), this extraordinary rivalry–and the men behind it–comes to life in a unique, intimate way. The Legends Club is a sports book that captures an era in American sport and culture, documenting the inside view of a decade of absolutely incredible competition.

Dollars and sense : how we misthink money and how to spend smarter

Dollars and sense : how we misthink money and how to spend smarter
Bestselling author  (Predictably Irrational) and behavioral economist Dan Ariely  (PhD Business 1998) teams up with financial comedian and writer Jeff Kreisler to challenge many of our most basic assumptions about the precarious relationship between our brains and our money.

The Gaza Kitchen: a Palestinian culinary journey

This is a richly illustrated and researched cookbook that explores the distinctive cuisine of the area known prior to 1948 as the Gaza District–and that of the many refugees who came to Gaza in 1948 and have been forced to stay there ever since. In summer 2010, Laila El-Haddad  (Duke 2000) and Maggie Schmitt traveled throughout the Gaza Strip to collect the recipes and shoot the stunning photographs presented in the book.

Forever Duke: On the Screen and Behind the Scenes

Accompanying the books in the Collection Spotlight, the current exhibit in the Lilly Library foyer is Forever Duke: On the Screen and Behind the Scenes. The works of Duke alumni filmmakers, writers and actors featured  include films and series found in the Lilly Library collections. A few of the more well known titles or personalities:

We Were Soldiers – directed by Randall Wallace (’72)

We Were Soldiers
Directed by Randall Wallace (’72) Wallace wrote and directed We Were Soldiers. Nominated for an Oscar as screenwriter for Braveheart, he also worked on films such as Pearl Harbor and The Man in the Iron Mask.

Community and The Hangover

Community featuring Ken Jeong

Ken Jeong (’90) was a premed student at Duke.  A licensed physician, Jeong found fame in comic roles in both television and film.

Other Duke luminaries include actress and Baldwin Scholar  Annabeth Gish (’93) who stars in the current X-Files, Martin Kratt (’89), the co-creator of the beloved children’s series Zoboomafoo and Wild Kratts, Oscar and BAFTA nominee cinematographer Robert Yeoman (’73) , film editor Alisa Lepselter who has worked on Woody Allen films such as Midnight in Paris and Match Point, and documentary filmmakers Ryan White (’04) and Rossana Lacayo (’79).

The Duke campus and Durham have also been featured in film and television; productions include Bull Durham, The Handmaid’s Tale (the film), The Program, Main Street, Iron Man 3, Kiss the Girls, Brainstorm and the late 1990’s  coming-of-age television series Dawson’s Creek.  Whether it’s American Pie 2Mystic Pizza, The Squid and the Whale or Parks and Recreation, you will find a Blue Devil!

 

 

 

Class of 1968 Books on Display for Reunions Weekend

A selection of books by authors in the Class of 1968 will be on display in the Mary Duke Biddle Room during Reunions Weekend, April 13-14.

Duke alumni will be gathering on campus soon to celebrate their annual class reunions. One class in particular is marking a special milestone—members of the Class of 1968 will come together for their fiftieth reunion this spring.

To help them commemorate the half-century mark, the Duke University Libraries and the Duke Alumni Association are proud to present a display of books by authors from the Class of 1968.

The display includes some 67 titles written by 25 different alumni authors. The range of genres and subject matter is impressive, encompassing everything from novels to academic studies of French history and journalistic memoirs of covering the White House. It’s an inspiring reminder of the creativity, talent, and intelligence that each class of Duke graduates carries with it out into the world, and the many ways Duke alumni leave their mark.

The books will be on display April 13-14 in the Mary Duke Biddle Room galleries.

Visitors are encouraged to drop by any time during the Biddle Room’s hours of operation (Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.) and help us celebrate the achievements of the Class of 1968.

Special thanks to Bill Lawrence T’68 and Gary Nelson T’64 P’95, a member of the Duke Alumni Association Board of Directors, for coordinating the display.

Lilly Collection Spotlight: They Came to Play | Women in Sport

To celebrate Women’s History Month 2018, Lilly Library is shining a spotlight on Women in Sport. Books and movies that feature women athletes are “teeming” in our collections. Come to East Campus and check out this month’s Lilly Collection Spotlight.  Click here for the complete line-up.

While you’re at Lilly, visit the exhibit in the foyer, On the Field, the Courts and Beyond: Women in Sports – TITLE IX, that complements our Lilly Collection Spotlight.

BOOKS

Book Cover, Game Changers: the Unsung Heroines of Sports History
2018 | Molly Schiott

Based on the Instagram account @TheUnsungHeroines, a celebration of the pioneering, forgotten female athletes of the twentieth century that features rarely seen photos and new interviews with past and present game changers including Abby Wambach and Cari Champion.

Book Cover, Kicking Off: How Women in Sport are Changing the Game
2016 | Sarah Shephard

There’s a battle being fought. It’s raging on the sports fields, in the newsrooms and behind the scenes at every major broadcaster. Women in sport are fighting for equality with more vigour than ever, but are they breaking down the barriers that stand in their way? Sarah Shephard looks behind the headlines to see whether progress is really being made and tells the stories that can no longer be ignored. It’s time for women to switch their focus from the battlefield to the sports field, once and for all.

book cover: Charging the Net, a History of Blacks in Tennis from Althea Gibson... to the Williams Sisters
2007 | Cecil Harris and Larryette Kyle-DeBose

Beginning with the Williams sisters, the authors examine the foundation of their development as tennis phenoms during the 1990s and the prophetic yet unabashed approach of their coach, father, and sports psychologist, Richard Williams, in crafting a world within which they would be groomed to be successful. a compelling examination of the impact of African Americans on the world of professional tennis and the various challenges and outcomes of that involvement.

book cover, Sportswomen in Cinema, Film and the Frailty Myth
2015 | Nicholas ChareFILMS

An overview of films about women in sport and a timely critical analysis of their role in shaping perceptions of female athletic ability. It examines themes of aggression, beauty, class, ethnicity, physical feminism, sexuality, synaesthesia and technology in relation to mainstream and arthouse cinematic depictions of sportswomen from Pumping Iron 2 to Bend it Like Beckham. 

 

book cover The Match: Althea Gibson Angela Buxton
2004 | Bruce Schoenfeld

50 years ago when Gibson and Buxton were two of the top women’s tennis players in the world. Coming from widely divergent backgrounds (Gibson from a poor black family in Harlem, Buxton from a well-to-do Jewish family in London), the two hooked up in the mid-1950s and became tennis partners and lifelong friends.

Book cover, Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports
2015 | ed. Alex Channon

Offers a wide-reaching overview of current academic research on women’s participation in combat sports within a wide range of different national and trans-national contexts, detailing many of the struggles and opportunities experienced by women at various levels of engagement within sports such as boxing, wrestling and mixed martial arts.

FILMS

DVD case Offside
DVD 14381

During the 2006 Iran-Bahrain match, the Tehran soccer stadium roars with 100,000 cheering men and, officially, no women. According to Islamic custom, women are not permitted to watch or participate in men’s sports. Many of the ambitious young female fans who manage to sneak into the arena are caught and sent to a holding pen, guarded by male soldiers their own age. Duty makes these young men and women adversaries, but duty can’t overcome their shared dreams, their mutual attraction, and ultimately their overriding sense of national pride and humanity.

DVD cover Playing Unfair: the media image of the female athlete
DVD 21482 and Streaming Video

Examines the post Title IX media environment in terms of the representation of female athletes. It demonstrates that while men’s identities in sports are equated with deeply held values of courage, strength and endurance, the accomplishments of female athletes are framed very differently and in much more stereotypical ways.

DVD cover Personal Best
DVD 11362

A promising hurdler, played by Mariel Hemingway, finds needed emotional and athletic seasoning with a caring mentor. After the two fall in love, their relationship is threatened as both vie for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team.

 

DVD cover Grandes Ligas
DVD 25223 and streaming video

Members of the Cuban National Women’s Baseball Team discuss their passion for the sport and hardships they faced in Cuba’s society filled with machismo, prejudice and daily hardships.

DVD cover Watermarks
DVD 6270

The story of the surviving members of the  Viennese Hakoah sports club women’s swim team, a world-dominating competitor in the 1930s. The club was eventually shut down during Hitler’s reign, though all the women managed to escape capture. Combines historical footage and contemporary interviews to reconnect the women’s lives and memories.

DVD cover Edge of America
DVD 5579

The new man in town has just accepted a position as an English professor on a reservation in Utah. Finding it hard to fit in with the Native American community, he decides to take on the challenge of coaching the girls’ basketball team.

DVD cover Whip It
DVD 18946

Bliss Cavender is a small-town teenager looking for her own path. Tired of following in her family’s footsteps, she discovers a way to put her life on the fast track–literally. She lands a spot on a roller derby team and becomes “Babe Ruthless.” Co-starring Drew Barrymore in her feature film directorial debut.

 

Lilly Spotlight-Cuban-Americans, the Duke Common Experience and Beyond

Cuban-Americans, the Duke Common Experience and Beyond

Need some new reading material or just interested in seeing what’s in Lilly Library’s collection that you might not know about? Check out Lilly’s Collection Spotlight!

Lilly Spotlight on Duke Common Experience

In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month and the Duke Common Experience Reading Program selection of Richard Blanco’s The Prince of Los Cocuyos, our spotlight shines on books and films relevant to his and the Cuban-American experience.  Blanco, the inaugural poet for Barack Obama in 2012, writes in his memoir of his childhood growing up in Miami as a son of Cuban immigrants. The memoir finds Blanco grappling with both his place in America and his sexuality, striving to discover his identity.

Our collections include books on Cuban Art, the Cuban-American immigrant experience in the United States, LGBTQ communities in Hispanic culture, and several books of Blanco’s poetry. Here are a few highlights from our Lilly Collection Spotlight:

Books:

Adios Utopia — Art in Cuba Since 1950
This exhibition catalog covers Cuban art from 1950 to the present viewed through the particular lenses of the Cuban Revolution, utopian ideals, and subsequent Cuban history. The collection covered in this book will be on display at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis starting in November.

Latinx Comic Book Storytelling:Latinx
An Odyssey by Interview by Frederick Luis Aldama

In this book, scholar Frederick Luis Aldama interviews 29 Latinx comic book creators, ranging from the legendary Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame to lesser known up and coming writers/illustrators.

Matters of the Sea / Cosas del mar by Richard Blanco

This bilingual chapbook contains a poem Blanco wrote and read for the reopening of the US Embassy in Havana in 2015. Blanco writes in the opening lines, “The sea doesn’t matter, what matters is this: we all belong to the sea between us, all of us.”

Films:


CubAmerican (2012)  DVD 28418
Exploring the causes leading to the exile of millions of Cubans from communist Cuba by depicting the journey of illustrious Cuban-Americans to their new life in the United States

 

Finally the sea (2007) DVD 12185
“The wreckage of an empty Cuban raft is the catalyst for Tony, a successful Cuban-American businessman, who files from Wall Street to Cuba to discover his roots. His journey develops into a striking love story where politics and romance collide

Mambo Kings (1992) DVD 27116
Musician brothers, Cesar and Nestor, leave Cuba for America (NYC) in the 1950s, with the hopes of making it to the top of the Latin music scene. Cesar is the older brother who serves as the business manager and is a consummate ladies’ man. Nestor is the brooding songwriter, who cannot forget the woman in Cuba who broke his heart. This is an unrated version of the film, with one restored scene.


Visit our Collection Spotlight shelf, in the lobby to the left of the Lilly desk. 
There are many more titles available to you, and if you want more suggestions – just ask us. Stay tuned – We will highlight our diverse and varied holdings at Lilly with a different theme each month.

Submitted by Ira King
Evening Reference Librarian & Supervisor
Lilly Library

 

 

 

New Exhibit: Incredible Insects!

A weevil (family Curculionidae), one of many insects on
display as part of the of the new Incredible Insects exhibit.

Incredible Insects: A Celebration of Insect Biology
On display June 13 – October 15, 2017
in the Chappell Family Gallery and Stone Family Gallery, Perkins and Rubenstein Libraries, Duke West Campus (Click for map)

Please check our website for current library hours.

About the Exhibit

Insects are the most numerous and diverse animals on earth. They can be found in almost every environment. Because of their tremendous diversity, they play many important roles in nature, as well as in human society—enchanting us with their beauty, unsettling us with their strangeness. Whether revered or reviled, these fascinating and ubiquitous organisms can truly be said to have conquered the planet.

A new library exhibit offers a glimpse into the multifaceted world of insects, including research on insects conducted here at Duke.

There are three times as many species of insects than all other animals (mammals, birds, fish reptiles, amphibians) combined. The number of individual insects is estimated to be in excess of a quintillion (that’s a 10 with 18 zeros behind it).

The exhibit is divided into several sections, including insect evolution and diversity, coloration and camouflage, types and stages of insect metamorphosis, the roles of insects in human history and culture, and a fascinating look at two of nature’s greatest mysteries: the migration of the monarch butterfly and the clockwork-like appearance of periodical cicadas.

Periodical cicadas are one of the most remarkable phenomena of nature. They suddenly appear in the millions every 13 or 17 years. Then they disappear as suddenly as they came,

Exhibit visitors can also hear sound recordings of insect calls at a nearby kiosk and see up-close images of insects taken with electron microscopes.

Around the corner from the Chappell Family Gallery, viewers can step inside the Rubenstein Library’s Stone Family Gallery and peruse several selections of rare books that complement the exhibit.  The exhibit curators selected these works because they represent some of the earliest scientific investigations to discover general aspects of biology and natural history through the study of insects.

Image of a fly drawn by Robert Hooke in his Micrographia (1667), one of several rare historical volumes on entomology on display in the Stone Family Gallery.

Incredible Insects was curated by a team of entymology students, faculty and staff from the Duke biology department.

For more information, visit the Incredible Insects exhibit website.

 

Haggadah Exhibit Opening Reception, Mar. 22

CAPTURING THE MOMENT: CENTURIES OF THE PASSOVER HAGGADAH

Opening Reception and Guest Speaker Professor Kalman Bland, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies

DATE: Wednesday, March 22
TIME: 5:30 p.m.
WHERE: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library

Join us to celebrate the opening of a new exhibit of the Passover Haggadah, a Jewish text written for the Passover Seder meal.  This exhibit explores the long and interesting history of the Haggadot (pl. of Haggadah) and how their illustrations and texts shed light on cultural, religious and political changes.

On display in the Jerry and Bruce Chappell Family Gallery (near the main entrance to Perkins Library) February 23 – June 11.

For more information contact Meg Brown, meg.brown@duke.edu.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.

Parking available at the Bryan Center Garage.

From Kielbasa to Sfincione: A Personal and Academic Exploration of Urban Foods

Guest post by Ashley Rose Young, Ph.D. candidate in History at Duke and the Business History Graduate Intern at the Hartman Center.

My life has always revolved around the sale and distribution of food. My food-centric lifestyle is not all that surprising, as my family owns and operates gourmet food stores in Pittsburgh. By the time I was three years old, I was working behind the counter, standing on a plastic milk carton so that customers could see me while I earned my family “business degree.” After years of practice (and a growth spurt or two) I could easily reach over the counter to hand my family’s homemade kielbasas to customers. My grandfather made those sausages. He established the family business, too, by starting as an itinerant vendor at a roadside food stand in the 1940s. Over time, he worked his way towards opening a series of grocery stores with the support of my grandmother, mother, aunts, and uncles. Together, my family created a business committed to supporting small-scale local farmers and artisans while preserving the culinary heritage of Pittsburgh.

A profile of McGinnis Sisters Special Food Stores featuring a photo of the author (age 6) with her grandparents, mother, and aunts.

Inspired by my own experiences and those of my family, my dissertation research focuses on urban food economies in the United States. Specifically, I study street food and market vendors in New Orleans and the global influences on the city’s Creole cuisine. As a major Atlantic port city, New Orleans was connected to communities and food cultures throughout the Atlantic Rim, adopting ingredients like okra from West Africa and cooking techniques like starting soups with a French-style roux. Tracing those influences, I have visited archives and conducted fieldwork in countries like France, Italy, and Morocco, all of which influenced the development Creole cuisine. At the National Library in France, I studied the parallels and dissimilarities between artistic renderings of street food vendors in Paris and those in New Orleans. While the images were different in the ways they revealed cultural bias, in both places it was common for artists to pair images of food vendors with sheet music that captured their cries of “Piping hot rice fritters!” and “Beautiful cakes!”

Fascinated by the prevalence of street cries in New Orleans’ historic soundscape, I sought connections to modern day street food cultures. In order to do so, I conducted fieldwork in Palermo, Sicily—a city known for its musical food vendors. Although most people do not associate New Orleans with Italian food culture, in the late nineteenth century, the city had one of the largest Sicilian immigrant populations in the world. In fact, at that time, New Orleanians colloquially referred to the French Quarter as “Little Palermo.” The sonorous voices of Sicilian food vendors rang throughout the city. Folklorists captured their calls on the page in compendiums like Gumbo Ya-Ya: Folktales of Louisiana (1945). In that volume, an Italian vendor is described as singing while he hawks his wares: “Cantal—ope—ah! Fresh and fine, just off a de vine, only a dime!”

A drawing and sheet music depicting a rice fritter vendor in twentieth century New Orleans. “The Calas Girl,” Cooking in the Old Créole Days: La Cuisine Créole à l’Usage des Petits Menages (New York, R. H. Russell, 1903).

Modern-day Palermo’s urban food scene shares similarities with New Orleans’ historic one. Like the Big Easy, Palermo’s streets are crowded with food vendors who entreat passersby with humorous and delightful calls. One of their more popular grab-n-go foods in the city is sfincione, or street pizza. Sfincione is simple and economical—a tasty combination of spongy crust, tomato sauce, olive oil, and a healthy sprinkling of dried parsley. Commenting on those humble origins with a bit of humor, one of the traditional Palermitano street cries is: “Scarsu d’ogghio e chinu i prubulazzo!” Or, in English, “Lack of oil and plenty of dust!” Another more enticing cry is, “Uara u sfuinnavi uara! Chistu è sfinciuni ra bella viaro!”—“I’ve just taken it out of the oven! This is a very beautiful sfincione!” The street cries of Palermo work in similar ways to those of historic New Orleans, attracting the attention of potential customers with a witty, entertaining performance. For food vendors past and present, charm is a major component of their business strategy. I had witnessed the power of charisma so long ago, perched on my milk carton while my mother wrapped parcels of sausage and joked with customers.

Sfincione vendor, Palermo, Sicily, 2014. Photo by Ashley Rose Young.

Entranced by that charm and my newfound academic approach to food, a dissertation (or one might say obsession) was brought to life. Even when traveling without a research agenda, I was constantly analyzing the local food cultures around me to connect what I observed in New Orleans with what I witnessed abroad. There were a few surprises along the way. While in Peru for an academic conference, for example, I learned about a maize beer called chicha de jora that resembled a fermented corn beverage popularized by Choctaw Indians in colonial New Orleans. Although I had originally focused my dissertation research on New Orleans’ connections to Europe, West Africa, and the Caribbean, the discovery of chicha de jora encouraged me to study Latin American influences on Creole cuisine as well.

Municipal Market, Cusco, Peru, 2014. Photo by Ashley Rose Young.

Photography was a means of crystalizing these connections while also honoring the distinctiveness of community food cultures. Over the years, as I wandered through countless markets, I sought to capture the vibrancy of locally grown produce, the entrepreneurial spirit of food vendors, and the enduring presence of local food cultures in an age of homogenized industrial food.

I now have the opportunity to share these dynamic cultures in an exhibit I’ve curated for Perkins Library: To Market, to Market! Urban Street Food Culture Around the Globe. Through this exhibit, you can compare the texture and shape of ruby red radishes in Paris with their kaleidoscopic counterparts in Durham. Or you can draw parallels between curbside displays of fish in Essaouira, Morocco with those for sale at the Vietnamese Farmers’ Market in New Orleans East. The exhibit, which consists of twenty-four photographs, is loosely organized, encouraging you to create your own narrative of the interconnectivity of urban food around the world.

The exhibit is installed on the Student Wall on the first floor of Perkins Library, opposite the Thompson Writing Studio. It runs through March 31, 2017.

Celebrating 50 Years of Lemurs at Duke

50th lemurs

  • What: Opening of 50 Years of Lemurs at Duke exhibit
  • When: Thursday, October 27, 4:00-6:00 p.m.
  • Where: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room (Rubenstein 153) and Chappell Family Gallery (map)
  • Who: Free and open to the public

The Duke Lemur Center and the Duke University Libraries will debut a new exhibit in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Lemur Center, home to the world’s largest and most diverse collection of lemurs – Earth’s most threatened group of mammals – outside of Madagascar.

A public event celebrating the opening of the exhibit will take place on Thursday, October 27, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm.

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The event will include short introductory remarks by Anne Yoder, Director of the Lemur Center, followed by a drop-in reception with light refreshments to view 50 Years of Lemurs at Duke, an exhibition curated by Lemur Center staff. The exhibition explores different facets of the Center, including ways in which it has worked to support research, both locally and around the world, for half of a century.

Most importantly, the exhibit will feature the true stars of the center: the lemurs! Guests will have the opportunity to admire these honorary mascots of the university in both pictures and on film. Members of the Lemur Center staff will be available to answer questions and share stories.

The event is free and open to the public and all are welcome to join in celebrating a semicentennial era of lemurs at Duke!

50th lemur center

New Franklin Gallery Exhibits in Carr Building Feature Library Materials

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What: Opening of Franklin Gallery
When: Wednesday, October 19, 4:30-6:30 p.m.
Where: Carr Building, East Campus (map)
Who: Free and Open to the Public

A new exhibit space on Duke’s East Campus will debut this month with a display of historical visual materials from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

The Franklin Gallery, named in honor of legendary historian and Duke professor John Hope Franklin, is located in the Carr Building, home of Duke’s history department. The new space will be devoted to displaying visual materials of historical importance.

A public event celebrating the opening of the new gallery space will take place on Wednesday, October 19, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Two of the inaugural exhibits in the Franklin Gallery will feature items from important collections in the Rubenstein Library. John Gartrell, Director of the Rubenstein Library’s John Hope Franklin Research Center, has curated one of them. “John Hope Franklin: Imprint of an American Scholar” features photographs and related materials that illustrate Professor Franklin’s impact as a scholar and public intellectual.

Duke History Professor Sucheta Mazumdar has prepared another exhibit, displaying Chinese posters from the Rubenstein Library’s collections that portray the period of the Cultural Revolution. These posters, such as the one below, feature themes of solidarity among races and classes in society.

Franklin Gallery new exhibit
A poster from the exhibit “Building Solidarity: Themes in Chinese Cultural Revolution Poster Art”

Throughout the year, the Franklin Gallery will be open during the Carr Building’s normal hours. The opening event on October 19 is free and open to the public.

Post contributed by Carson Holloway, Librarian for History of Science and Technology, Military History, British and Irish Studies, Canadian Studies and General History.

Showing Our Stuff

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An undergraduate studies the folio on display

The treasures of Duke’s branch libraries are often hidden.  The circulating collections and services of these smaller libraries often claim the pride of place.  Both libraries on East Campus, Lilly Library and Music Library, however, hold precious material relating to their subject collections.  Known in the library world as “medium rare” (as opposed to the rare materials located in the David M. Rubenstein Library) such primary source materials allow students to examine history first hand.

This fall the Lilly Library added a lobby display case to highlight its unique collections.  The inaugural display is one volume of our three-volume Vitruvius Britannicus, a large and early folio devoted to the great buildings of England to be seen in 1717.

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Vitruvius Britannicus

An outstanding example of a folio (book) format as well as the awakening of interest in British architecture by its own architects –  quoting from the Oxford Art Online – Vitruvius Britannicus was a cooperative venture that appears to have developed out of the desire of a group of booksellers to capitalize on an already established taste for topographical illustration.

Published in 1715 and 1717, the two original volumes each consisted of 100 large folio plates of plans, elevations and sections chiefly illustrating contemporary secular buildings.  Many of these plates provided lavish illustration of the best-known houses of the day, such as Chatsworth, Derbys, or Blenheim Palace, Oxon, intended to appeal to the widespread desire for prints of such buildings as well as  providing their architects a chance to publicize their current work.

We invite you to visit the Lilly Library on East Campus and to enjoy this  “medium rare” folio on exhibit. For more information about the Lilly Library folio or art and image collections, contact Lee Sorensen,  the Librarian for Visual Studies.

Homecoming Hours for Library Exhibits

Exhibits in the Mary Duke Biddle Room (shown here) in the Rubenstein Library will be open on Saturday for Duke Homecoming weekend.
Exhibits in the Mary Duke Biddle Room (shown here) in the Rubenstein Library will be open on Saturday for Duke Homecoming weekend.

The Rubenstein Library exhibit suite (Mary Duke Biddle Room, Stone Family Gallery, and Josiah C. Trent History of Medicine Room) will all be open on Saturday, October 1, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., for Duke Homecoming weekend.

Library visitors can see Virginia Woolf’s writing desk, a copy of the Bay Psalm Book (first book printed in what is now the United States), two of our double-elephant folios of Audubon’s Birds of America, and many other treasures from the Rubenstein Library.

Exhibits currently on display include:

Visit our library exhibits website to find out more.

 

Commencement Weekend Hours for Library Exhibits

The Trent History of Medicine Room (shown here), Mary Duke Biddle Room, and Stone Family Gallery in the Rubenstein Library will all be open on Saturday for Duke Commencement weekend.
Exhibits in the Trent History of Medicine Room (shown here), Mary Duke Biddle Room, and Stone Family Gallery in the Rubenstein Library will all be open on Saturday for Duke Commencement weekend.

The Rubenstein Library exhibit suite (Mary Duke Biddle Room, Stone Family Gallery, and Josiah C. Trent History of Medicine Room) will all be open on Saturday, May 14, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., for Duke Commencement weekend.

Library visitors can see Virginia Woolf’s writing desk, a copy of the Bay Psalm Book (first book printed in what is now the United States), our double-elephant folios of Audubon’s Birds of America, and many other treasures from the Rubenstein Library.

Exhibits currently on display include:

Visit our library exhibits website to find out more.

 

An Iconic Identity: Stories and Voices of Duke University Chapel

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A green devil in a stained glass window in the Chapel

A new exhibit focusing on the history and legacy of Duke Chapel is now on display in the Jerry and Bruce Chappell Family Gallery. The exhibit, which will be on display through June 19, opens wide the doors of the Chapel to reveal the stories within—from the origins of the stained glass windows to the legacy of student protest.

Duke Chapel is the most iconic building on West Campus, and it has a history as rich as its architectural grandeur. Over the past eight decades, Duke Chapel has celebrated thousands of services, welcomed millions of guests, and served as the preeminent icon for the university. The Chapel represents many things to many different people. Its varied roles, constituencies, and history allowed it to cultivate an atmosphere that welcomed world-renowned speakers and musicians while also providing space to express the emotions of life in the silence of a sacred space.

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Students protesting South African apartheid outside Duke Chapel in 1985.

The story of Duke Chapel is not just the story of a building. It represents the story of a community and of the richly diverse group of people who have helped to shape the Chapel’s legacy—and who will ultimately shape its future.

An Iconic Identity: Stories and Voices of Duke University Chapel invites visitors to encounter the Chapel’s rich history, walk down memory lane, and learn about the men and women who helped to make James B. Duke’s “great towering church” what it is today.

The exhibit is co-curated by Andrew Klumpp D’14, former Visitor Relations Specialist at Duke University Chapel and current Ph. D. student in American Religious History at Southern Methodist University, with the assistance of Sara Blaine Clark D’09, Assistant Manager, Special Events, Duke University Chapel.

To learn more, please visit the exhibit website.

View of the Flentrop Organ, one of four organs in the Chapel.
View of the Flentrop Organ, one of four organs in the Chapel. Photo by Brian Mullins Photography.

William Henry Harrison and Reform?

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Guest post by Carson Holloway, Librarian for History of Science and Technology, Military History, British and Irish Studies, Canadian Studies and General History

Why does this beautifully crafted lapel pin connect Harrison’s name with reform? Such questions provide a good deal of the appeal of fourteen campaign pins on display as part of the Kenneth Hubbard Collection of Political Campaign Ephemera in the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. In the current season of election news, Hubbard, a Duke alumnus and donor, has provided tokens of particular interest in contextualizing some notable presidential campaigns between 1840 and 1948.

William Henry Harrison’s is a name to ponder. Some might recognize that he was a President before the American Civil War. The alliteration of his name may sound familiar. Fewer could identify him as hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe, though more would recognize the campaign slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” referring to Harrison and his running mate, and successor.  Harrison, the oldest person elected President until Ronald Reagan, died from pneumonia contracted at his inauguration after serving fewer than forty days.

Harrison Lapel Pin

“Reform,” in Harrison’s campaign of 1840, was economic reform required as a result of a protracted depression known as the “Panic of 1837.”  Over a third of American banks in New York and elsewhere faltered and then failed after President Andrew Jackson’s administration decentralized the Federal banking system and British banks raised interest rates in response to perceived risk. Jackson’s Democratic successor, Van Buren, was unable to correct the economic course and prices for important agricultural export products like cotton plummeted. Whether Harrison’s Whig reforms would have been effective is questionable. The severe economic downturn lasted until 1844.

Like the Harrison pin, each of the items on display in the Rubenstein is interesting in its own right. A few have great aesthetic appeal like the Harrison pin. Other buttons illustrate powerful personalities and world-changing events. One particularly rare pin is from the only presidential campaign in which the candidate was running while serving a term in federal prison!

Horror in the Libraries

Getting ready for Halloween? So is Lilly Library! Come check out our collection of spooky DVDs and graphic novels, on exhibit through the end of October.

The H Word: Horror in the Libraries
The H Word: Horror in the Libraries
Future Imperfect: Dystopian and Post-Holocaust Cinema
Future Imperfect: Dystopian and Post-Holocaust Cinema

Our film exhibit features Dystopian and Post-Holocaust movies while graphic horror novels are highlighted in our The H Word: Horror in the Libraries exhibit. In addition, check out our guide to “Future Imperfect” for more dystopian movies. Last but not least, we have classic Halloween movie listings at the front desk, including a wide range of films from Ghostbusters to Paranormal Activity: Halloween DVDs at Lilly

No matter what you’re looking for, Lilly Library has something for everyone to get into the Halloween spirit!

Learn How the Duke Community Completes this Sentence: “Writing Is Like…”

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In a new exhibit on the Perkins Library Student Wall, Duke students, faculty, and staff all explain what “Writing is like…”

Guest post by Jennie Saia, Thompson Writing Program Coordinator. Jennie worked with Writing Studio Director Vicki Russell and Writing Studio Acting Director Jim Berkey to curate the “Writing Is Like…” exhibit. The exhibit will be on display on the Perkins Library Student Wall through mid-November.

Every October, the Thompson Writing Program (TWP) celebrates how vital writing is to life and work at Duke.

The TWP joins university writing programs around the country in honoring October’s National Day on Writing. Last year, Writing 101 faculty and Writing Studio tutors asked Duke community members to complete the sentence, “Writing is like…”

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Across campus, Duke students, faculty, and staff invented similes that expressed their thoughts on both academic and personal composition. Their comparisons get at the heart of what it feels like to actually sit down and write.

If you want to explore their answers, sixteen of the most creative replies are on display on the first floor of Duke’s Perkins Library. The showcased statements—sometimes profound, often humorous, occasionally sad—represent how the Duke community as a whole views writing. Join the conversation by adding your own simile to the open journal at the start of the exhibit.

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You can also become part of next year’s exhibit by joining the 2014 National Day on Writing celebration. On Monday, October 20, look for writing activities in Perkins Library on West Campus and around the East Campus Quad. Stop by throughout the day to grab some candy, meet other writers, and answer the question, “What is the future of writing?”

Pollinating the Grassroots: The Beehive Design Collective

Guest post by Maria Carla Cella, Graduate Liberal Studies Program. She curated the exhibit of prints currently on display on the Perkins Library Student Wall about the Beehive Design Collective.

Detail from "Mesoamerica Resiste," a poster by the Beehive Design Collective on display in Perkins Library on the Student Wall.
Detail from “Mesoamerica Resiste,” a poster by the Beehive Design Collective on display in Perkins Library on the Student Wall.

In our multimedia world, we are constantly seeking a good way to tell our story. From cave paintings to blog posts, generation after generation of storytellers try to find the most emotive way to record history and pass it on. As a student of Latin America and the Caribbean, I have delved into many mediums in my efforts to understand the complex relationship between the global south and north. Despite the availability of information on the internet, innumerable academic journals, countless books and documentaries on the topic, it is difficult to find a comprehensive examination of what globalization really entails. Transmitting the information in a way that resonates with the widespread population is an even harder task.

Enter the Beehive Design Collective. Founded in 2000, this non-profit, all-volunteer, activist arts collective creates collaborative, anti-copyright images for use as educational and organizing tools. With its mission of “cross-pollinating the grassroots,” the cooperative uses intricate graphic illustration in the form of giant pen and ink posters that communicate stories of resistance to corporate globalization, free trade, militarism, resource extraction, and biotechnology. The Bees spread their art across the Americas, wielding it as an educational tool and aiming to help communities conceptualize alternatives to a globalized economic model based on exploitation. Funding the printing costs with donations, the Bees distribute 50 percent of each print run (full run averaging 20,000-30,000 prints) to communities in the global south free of charge, giving away prints to frontline communities, educators, and organizers actively working on the issues featured in the posters.

The Beehive Collective’s use of imagery and symbolic art ties the local to the global, providing microscopic detail on the interconnected nature of global issues and compiling the images into, literally, a bigger picture that is both overwhelming and hypnotizing. Using a word-to-image approach, the Bees are translators of complex global stories, which they learn and share through conversations with affected communities. The first time I unfurled and laid eyes on their massive poster, Mesoamerica Resiste, I knew I had found a gem that begged to be shared, and that its message would flourish and proliferate in the minds of the Duke community. If you want to dive into the Beehive’s art and see the epic story for yourself, stop by Duke University’s Perkins Library, where four of the Beehive Design Collective’s epic works are on display. You can also learn more about the Beehive Design Collective at their website: beehivecollective.org.

New Exhibit: Queering Duke History: Understanding the LGBTQ Experience at Duke and Beyond

Queering Duke History Exhibit LogoOn exhibit August 14 – December 14, 2014
Perkins Library Gallery, Duke West Campus (Click for map)
Public Hours: Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 7:00 pm; Saturday, 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.; Sunday, 10:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Hours may vary before the start of the fall semester, and on holidays. Please check our posted library hours for the most up-to-date information.

This exhibition is a part of a semester-long commemoration of LGBTQ history at Duke, including other exhibits and events. More details are available on the Queering Duke History website.

 

About the Exhibit

Towerview Magazine, December 2003
Towerview Magazine, December 2003

A new exhibit in Perkins Library highlights the major points of struggle and triumph in Duke’s LGBTQ history over the past 50 years. The exhibit begins with the earliest records of LGBTQ activity on campus—the dark days of arrest and expulsions—and culminates with the thriving and active queer community seen at Duke today. This transition was neither quick nor linear. LGBTQ individuals on Duke’s campus faced major setbacks in every one of the last five decades.

The exhibit also functions as a timeline, marching the observer decade-by-decade in order to view every artifact within the greater context of Duke’s queer struggle. On display are arrest records for “homosexuality” in the 1960s, early 1970s-era queer publications, the official “dechartering” of the gay and lesbian alliance in the 1980s, the establishment of the LGB center during the 1990s, same-sex unions permitted in Duke Chapel at the start of the new millennium, and finally a reflection of the current vibrancy of Duke’s LGBTQ community.

The exhibit was curated by Duke alumnus Denzell Faison (T’14), with special thanks to co-advisors Dr. Janie Long, former director of Duke’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, and Professor Raymond Gavins, Duke Department of History. Thanks also to the Duke University Archives, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, Blue Devils United, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History & Culture for their institutional support and contributed resources.

For more information, visit the exhibit website.

Scene from the first Coming Out Day at Duke, 2007
Scene from the first Coming Out Day at Duke, 2007

 

Commemorative Exhibit Opening Event and Remarks: Please Join Us!

Date: Thursday, September 25
Time: 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. (Program begins at 5:15 p.m.)
Location: von der Heyden Pavilion, Perkins Library
Remarks by: Exhibit curator Denzell Faison (T’14), former director of the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity Dr. Janie Long, and Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead.

Free and open to the public.

 

 

Springsteen’s “Born to Run” First Draft to Be Displayed in Perkins Library

Last December, a unique first-draft manuscript of the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 hit song “Born to Run” was placed up for auction at Sotheby’s. The seller of the document remained anonymous, but it was known that the manuscript once belonged to Mike Appel, Springsteen’s former manager. The bids poured in online, in person, and by phone, and one happy bidder went home with a piece of American music history.

That successful purchaser happened to be Floyd Bradley, a leadership donor to the Duke University Libraries and the Nasher Museum of Art, whose parents met in 1942 while students at Duke.

The Bradley and Springsteen families actually share a number of connections. Mr. Bradley’s mother Carol Lake Bradley (WC’43) and Mr. Springsteen’s mother were neighbors and friends in New Jersey. Mr. Bradley’s father, Floyd Henry “Pete” Bradley, Jr. (T’45), sold his house to Mr. Springsteen’s mother-in-law.

Mr. Bradley is also a proud Duke father whose daughter, Melissa, is a graduating senior this year. And so it came about, through special arrangement with Mr. Bradley and his wife Martha Hummer-Bradley, that the “Born to Run” manuscript will be on public display during Duke’s Commencement Weekend in honor of Melissa’s graduation.

The first draft manuscript of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" will be displayed in Perkins Library. Image courtesy of Sotheby's. Click for high-res version.
The first draft manuscript of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” will be displayed in Perkins Library. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s. Click for high-res version.

The document will be exhibited in front of the Circulation Desk on the Perkins Library main floor Thursday and Friday, May 8-9, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, May 10-11, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

After May 11, the manuscript will be moved to the third floor of Perkins, where it will remain on display in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library until June 27 and be available to view during normal library hours.

The “Born to Run” manuscript, written by Springsteen in 1974 in Long Branch, New Jersey, may look like nothing more than a piece of notebook paper scrawled with thirty lines of blue ink. But it offers a glimpse into the creative process of a musical icon. The draft contains a great deal of material that was never included in the final version. Yet the chorus is nearly identical to what we hear in the finished song. The margins and spaces are crowded with second thoughts and edits, illuminating the moments in which a rock and roll anthem was born.

“Born to Run” was the title track of Springsteen’s third album, released to great commercial and critical success in August 1975. Just a few months later, on March 28, 1976, Springsteen and his E Street Band performed in Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium to a packed house. According to a Rolling Stone reporter who was there, “The band played every song from Born to Run in one set, and at show’s end, ‘Raise Your Hand’ did its job: everybody stayed up through the three-song encore that ended with ‘Quarter to Three.’”

Visitors to campus are invited to stop by the library and view this special piece of music history.

Ticket stub from Springsteen's performance at Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium in March 1976, just a few months after "Born to Run" was released. Image from Brucebase.
Ticket stub from Springsteen’s performance at Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium in March 1976, just a few months after “Born to Run” was released. Image from Brucebase.

Viewing the “Born to Run” Manuscript

Please note: During the summer, all Duke University libraries are open on a more limited schedule than during the academic year. Please check our online schedule of library hours before visiting.

May 8 – 11
On exhibit in front of the Circulation Desk, 1st Floor of Perkins Library
Thursday and Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday, 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

May 12 – June 27
On exhibit in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 3rd Floor of Perkins Library
Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Saturday, 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. (Closed May 24 for Memorial Day Weekend)
Closed Sundays

New Exhibit: Cheap Thrills: The Highs and Lows of Cabaret Culture in Paris, 1880-1939

cabaret couture
Cheap Thrills: The Highs and Lows of Cabaret Culture in Paris, 1880-1939, on exhibit February 18 – May 12 in the Perkins Library Gallery.

On exhibit February 18 – May 12, 2014
Perkins Library Gallery, Duke West Campus (Click for map)
Public Hours: Monday-Friday, 8am–7pm; Saturday, 9am–7pm; Sunday, 10am–7pm
Hours may vary on holidays. Please check our posted library hours for more information.

About the Exhibit

A new exhibit in the Perkins Library Gallery  provides a glimpse into the fascinating world of the Parisian cabaret. Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, the cabaret became a fixture of Parisian culture. Unlike other social institutions of the time, everyone was freely admitted to these venues, so they became a space in which all—regardless of race, color, class, or creed—could freely mingle. Cheap Thrills: The Highs and Lows of Cabaret Culture in Paris, 1880-1939, seeks to shine the spotlight on the wide spectrum of artists who found a home and a stage in the darkened halls of the cabaret.

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Illustrated cabaret sheet music from Gil Blas Illustre, a French periodical from the late-19th to early 20th centuries.

Music was, of course, essential to the cabaret. It animated the crowd, roused the performers, and vivified the dancing. In order to capture power of cabaret music, members of the Duke New Music Ensemble composed and recorded songs for the exhibit. Based on historical cabaret tunes, these songs represent a modern take on a classic experience. The graphic and print materials composing the exhibit all come from the collections of the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Lilly Library, the Music Library, and Perkins Library.

Related Events and Programs

In addition to the Perkins Library exhibit, there are several related exciting events and programs throughout the spring semester that explore the unique social and cultural significance of the cabaret.

The Nasher Museum of Art is exhibiting a coordinating collection of cabaret material in their Academic Focus Gallery. Be sure to check out Night in the City of Light: Paris’s Cabarets 1881-1914, on exhibit February 15 – June 29, 2014.

In addition to the exhibit, the Nasher Museum will be screening French Cabaret from Stage to Screen on March 22, at 2 p.m. The screening is free and open to the public.

The Duke New Music Ensemble will have two concerts featuring cabaret music. On April 6 at 5 p.m., the Ensemble will be presenting “Melodies and Cacophonies from Paris’s Cabarets” at Fullsteam Brewery in downtown Durham.  Later in the month, on April 13, the Ensemble will be hosting their Spring Concert in Baldwin Auditorium at 8 p.m. featuring selections from cabaret tunes.

Life Is a Cabaret: The Library Party

Last, but certainly not least, the entire Duke community is invited to experience the cabaret first-hand, right in the heart of Perkins Library. The annual Duke Library Party, whose theme this year is “Life Is a Cabaret,” will take place this Friday, February 21, from 9:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. The evening will feature appetizers and desserts from Durham Catering; music from the John Brown Band, the Duke New Music Ensemble, and student DJs; and free giveaways to the first 200 guests. Come in your best cabaret or cocktail attire and prepare to dance the night away!

Library Party Logo for web

When: Friday, February 21
Time: 9:00 p.m. to Midnight
Where: Perkins Library
Admission: Free
Dress: Cocktail Attire, or Your Best Cabaret Costume

The Library Party is sponsored by the Office of the Provost, Office of the President, SOFC/DSG, George Grody, Markets and Management Studies Department.

The exhibits and programs are sponsored by the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies; Department of Music; Department of Romance Studies; Department of Theater Studies; Program in Literature; Program in Women’s Studies; Center for European Studies; Center for French and Francophone Studies; Friends of Duke University Libraries; Duke University Libraries; and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.

Sick of winter? Need a remedy for cabin fever?

White Ibis Pair
White Ibis Pair: In Tandem

Experience Nature: Up Close and Personal – a Photography Exhibit in Lilly Library

Spring Semester is a misleading term, as it actually begins in January when the cold and barren landscapes of winter abound.

Lilly Library presents an exhibit of photographs to transport you to warmer times and places. Award-winning wildlife and nature photographer Kim Hawks focuses on shore birds, landscapes, and for those who enjoy the beauty of flowers such as those in Duke Gardens, extremely detailed macro plant portraits.

Featured in this exhibit is Turtle Tracks: False Crawl, winner of the 2013 Wildlife in North Carolina Photography Contest (First Place in Animal Behavior Category).

On exhibit January 6 – March 15, 2014
Lilly Library, East Campus (Directions)

Gallery Reception – Meet the Artist
Date: Saturday, February 8, 2014 Time: 3 p.m.
Location: Thomas Room, Lilly Library,East Campus

Cabaret Couture

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Composite photograph of cabaret star Josephine Baker and the cast of “Plantation Days,” a 1923 musical revue by African American jazz pianist James P. Johnson. Parisian cabarets featured comedians, clowns, acrobats, and a variety of other entertainments. But singers and dancers always attracted the largest crowds.

As you might have heard, the Duke Library Party has been resurrected after a one-year hiatus, thanks to the help of the Duke Marketing Club. The date: February 21, 2014. The theme: “Life Is a Cabaret.” Party-goers will be invited to enjoy a rollicking nightlife scene right out of late 19th- and early 20th-century Paris, in what was only hours earlier just another room in Perkins Library. Of course, one must always be fashionably attired when attending such soirées, so we have put together a gallery of cabaret fashions to inspire your inner Parisian of the Belle Époque.

But first, a note on the phenomenon of the cabaret itself. Cabarets took Parisian culture by storm. Until 1867, song lyrics and theatrical performances were carefully censored and regulated in France. By the 1880s, these restrictions had relaxed, and a freer, more risqué form of entertainment began to flourish in the bohemian, working-class neighborhood of Montmartre. Legendary cabarets like the Moulin Rouge, the Chat Noir, and the Mirliton were filled with comedians, clowns, acrobats, and—most importantly—singers and dancers. The songs were bold and bawdy, the dancing suggestive, and audiences adored it.

The historical, artistic, and cultural impact of cabaret life will be the subject of an upcoming library exhibit—Cheap Thrills: The Highs and Lows of Cabaret Culture in Paris, 1880-1939—which will go on display in the Perkins Library Gallery on February 19 and run through May. The exhibit will highlight the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library’s extensive collection of cabaret-related materials, including biographies, guidebooks, periodicals, and musical scores.

Now back to the fashion show.

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One of the more ladylike ensembles, this particular dress worn by cabaret star and modern dance pioneer Loie Fuller would have you floating through the crowd this February.

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For a more scandalous look, this illustration from Gil Blas is classic cabaret, right down to the black stockings and abundant use of tassels. (Don’t forget the fan!) Gentlemen: note the top hats, high collars, and ubiquitous mustaches.

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Prepare to dance the night away, just like this lovely lady in a flouncy, frilled frock.

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Though we can’t recommend this particular ensemble (the Library Party is a respectable event, and banana leaves are hard to come by in February anyway), Josephine Baker’s iconic “banana girdle” outfit is one of the most famous examples of cabaret style.

So there are a few ideas to inspire you, with more to come. Start assembling your bejeweled, ruffled, bohemian, mustachioed wardrobe and get ready to party in the City of Light!

(With the exception of the composite photo at top, all images are taken from two French publications of the time: Gil Blas, a Parisian literary periodical, and Le Mirliton, a weekly newsletter published by the famous cabaret of the same name. All come from the collections of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.)

 

Honoring the Legacy of Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

 

nelsonmandelaexhibitjanuary2014A photographic exhibit in Perkins Library documents the life of Nelson Mandela as taken by his personal photographer Benny Gool. The images were selected from a historic exhibition that took place at Pop International Galleries in New York in February 2013. The prints were made available for this memorial display with the generous help of Todd Ruppert, a member of the Duke University Libraries Advisory Board, and IconsPhotos the representative of the archive. The images cover historic events, major celebrities and world figures, and the endearing charm and connection that Mandela had to the people of South Africa and the world. All photos are available for purchase. Visit http://www.iconsphotos.com/for more information about the original exhibition.

The exhibit will be on display on the Campus Club Exhibit Wall (located near the Bostock corridor entrance) in Perkins Library until February 14, 2014.

 

Save the Date! “Life Is a Cabaret” Library Party: Feb. 21

Library Party Logo for web

The Library Party is a unique Duke tradition. For one night only, Perkins and Bostock Libraries throw open their doors for a night of music, food, and un-shushed entertainment. The event is free and open to the entire Duke community.

After a year on hiatus as we prepared for the Rubenstein Library renovation, the Library Party is back! Once again, the Libraries are partnering with the Duke Marketing Club to organize this year’s event. The theme—“Life is a Cabaret”—is inspired by an upcoming exhibit on 19th- and early-20th-century Parisian cabarets that will be on display in the Perkins Gallery February–May, with a companion exhibit at the Nasher Museum’s Academic Focus Gallery.

Life Is a Cabaret will feature live music, costumes, decorations, food and beverages, and plenty of joie de vivre!

When: Friday, February 21
Time: 9 PM to Midnight
Where: Perkins Library
Admission: Free
Dress: Cocktail Attire, or Your Best Cabaret Costume

Students: Never been to a Library Party? Check out these images, videos, and recaps from our Heroes and Villains Library Party in 2012 and the Mad Men and Mad Women Library Party in 2011.

Many thanks to the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Duke Student Government/SOFC, George Grody, and the Markets and Management Studies Department for sponsoring this event.

Stay tuned for more updates!

 

Illustration of cabaret girls by Albert Guillaume from Gil Blas, a Parisian literary periodical published 1879-1914.
Illustration of cabaret girls by Albert Guillaume from Gil Blas, a Parisian literary periodical published 1879-1914.

About the Exhibit

Cheap Thrills: The Highs and Lows of Cabaret Culture in Paris, 1880-1939

On display in the Perkins Library Gallery, February 18 – May 12

This upcoming exhibit offers a whirlwind tour of Montmartre’s famed late-19th-century musical revues—the Chat Noir, Folies Bergère, and Moulin Rouge—which boasted such chanteuses as Yvette Guilbert and Josephine Baker. Cheap Thrills highlights the Libraries’ extensive collection of cabaret-related materials, including biographies, guidebooks, periodicals, and musical scores. The exhibit will be sonified, with recreated performances of the cabarets’ raucous ballads and rallying performances, all arranged and recorded by the Duke New Music Ensemble.

Companion Exhibit:
Night in the City of Light: Paris’s Cabarets, 1881-1914

On display in the Nasher Museum of Art’s Academic Focus Gallery, February 15 – June 29

Related Performances and Screenings

Saturday, March 22 (2-4:45 pm): Film Screenings and Discussion: “French Cabaret from Stage to Screen,” Nasher Museum of Art

Sunday, April 6 (5 pm): Duke New Music Ensemble [dnme] presents “Melodies and Cacophonies from Paris’s Cabarets,” Fullsteam Brewery, Durham

Sunday, April 13 (8 pm): Duke New Music Ensemble [dnme] Spring Concert with selections of cabaret melodies to coincide with the exhibitions “Night in the City of Light: Paris’s Cabarets, 1881-1914” and “Cheap Thrills: The Highs and Lows of Cabaret Culture in Paris, 1881-1939,” Baldwin Auditorium, Duke East Campus

Reading Between the Lines: Reflections on a Student-Curated Exhibit

Guest post by Kathryn Desplanque, a third-year Ph.D. student inArt, Art History & Visual Studies. Her work focuses on satirical etchings and engravings in late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century France. This semester she taught a Writing 101 class on modern caricature.

Students arranging artwork for the Student Wall exhibit. Photo courtesy of Kathryn Desplanque.
Students arranging artwork for the Student Wall exhibit. Photo courtesy of Kathryn Desplanque.

In my Writing 101 class, “Laughing Matters: Interpreting and Contextualizing Modern Caricature,” I wanted to give my students a chance to interact with the rich cartoon periodical collection of Perkins Library and the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The cartoon periodicals contained therein, of which my students were particularly drawn to the American Puck and the British Punch, contain gorgeous chromolithographed or woodblock engraved caricatures. These complicated visual objects necessitate interdisciplinary research, and through them, I have encouraged my students to engage with the material history of print culture and the periodical press.

I also wanted to give my students an opportunity to explore a kind of writing which I personally find to be tremendously challenging: writing and curating for public audiences. To prepare our Perkins Student Wall exhibit, the students of W101 “Laughing Matters”  reverse-engineered genre guidelines for label writing, produced magnificent labels, curated and hung our exhibit, Reading Between the Lines: Comical Interpretations of the Nineteenth Century. They did all of this with careful attention to audience experience: they built sub-themes into our exhibit, and hung the caricatures so as to take advantage of the colors and perspectival lines of their pieces. Throughout the curatorial process, I feel like I’ve learned the most of all, thanks to the candid and insightful discussion we’ve had throughout the semester.


Check out the exhibit! Reading Between the Lines will remain up on the Student Wall on the first floor of Perkins Library through the end of the fall 2013 semester.

Library Blogs Monthly Recap: October 2013

October disappeared while we were illicitly munching on Halloween candy, and November has appeared out of nowhere, with its shorter days and longer shadows. In case you missed something, here’s a summary of some of the top stories from around the Libraries for the month of October.

 

DoingDHImageDoing Digital Humanities: New Workshops this Fall

Our Digital Scholarship Services department has organized a series of panels, presentations, and workshops this fall to focus on basic skills in digital humanities research.

 

 

4426568251_f9ed0bd32eThe Big Picture About Peer Review

Kevin Smith, Director of Copyright and Scholarly Communications, reacts to a recent report in the journal Science and why its conclusions on open-access publishing and peer review were so wrong.

 

facultybooks13Fall Faculty Books: Yoga, Cholesterol, and Britten                                              

The faculty at Duke have been busy writing on spectrum of topics, from minority aging to differential equations and everything in between. Check out this extensive list of books penned by our very own Duke faculty members, all available in the library.

 

fantasy_collecting_600x360Fantasy Collecting Source Code Released

The source code for Fantasy Collecting, an art education and market simulation program developed here at Duke, was recently made publicly available. Fantasy Collecting is a bit like fantasy football for the art world. Students aim to increase the value and scope of their virtual art collections through promoting, acquiring, and trading art.

 

 A Postcard from Our National Book Collecting Contest Winner 

Ashley Young, a Ph.D. student at Duke and 2nd-prize winner in the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest, wrote about her trip to the awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Library of Congress.

 

httpexhibitslibrarydukeedupluginsdropboxfilesncmph080010030_609b67fac8Soul and Service: The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company

A new exhibit at the Center for Documentary Arts celebrates the 115th anniversary of NC Mutual, the country’s largest and oldest African-American owned insurance company. The exhibit is co-sponsored by NC Mutual and the John Hope Franklin Research Center, part of the Rubenstein Library.

 

ResearchLibrariesAptman and Middlesworth Prize Winners Announced

The winners of the Aptman and Middlesworth research prize were recognized at a special awards ceremony during Duke Family Weekend. These students were recognized for their outstanding work in research and the utilization of library sources.

 

 

Celebrate the Day of the Dead!

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Day of Dead Altar, created by Carla Cella (MALS 2014). On display outside the International and Area Studies Office in Bostock Library, 2nd Floor.

Exhibit Opening and Day of the Dead Reception 

When: Friday, November 1
Time: 3:00-5:00 p.m.
Where: International and Area Studies, 2nd Floor Bostock Library (click for map)

There will be refreshments at the reception, including Pan de Muertos, in celebration of the Day of the Dead.

Two new exhibits will be opening November 1 in Bostock Library, both celebrating the traditional Mexican holiday the Day of the Dead. The first exhibit, assembled by Carla Cella (MALS 2014), is an altar built in the Day of the Dead tradition. Every year Mexicans create altars to honor the lives of those who have died. The altars include foods or objects that were meaningful to the deceased. The exhibit mimics the style of these altars, but is centered around themes of Diaspora and Indigeneity from the 2013 NC Latin American Film Festival. (Read a guest post by Carla about some of the influences behind the altar and those it seeks to honor.)

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Part of the exhibit on printmaker José Guadalupe Posada

The second exhibit is titled José Guadalupe Posada: Printmaker to the Mexican People, and celebrates his contributions to Mexican art, politics, and society. His work inspired famous Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Posada is best known for his costumed calaveras (skulls) which were often designed as social commentary critiquing the upper classes. However, they have now come to be associated with the Day of the Dead celebration.

Come visit these two fascinating exhibits, while enjoying a taste of the Day of the Dead with some pan de muertos!

These exhibits are presented by the Duke University Libraries Department of International and Area Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South.

 

 

Indigeneity on the Move

Guest post by Carla Cella (MALS 2014), creator of the Day of Dead altar and exhibit on display outside International and Area Studies on the 2nd floor of Bostock Library. Read on as she explains and describes some of the influences behind the altar and those it seeks to honor.

Detail of the Day of the Dead altar on display outside the International and Area Studies offices in Bostock Library.
Detail of the Day of the Dead altar on display outside the International and Area Studies offices in Bostock Library.

In a world of growing global migration, indigenous tribes are often thought of as static relics of a past time, stewarding territories passed down for centuries. However, indigenous people are not exempt from global migratory trends. Although most indigenous groups in Latin America still live in rural areas, an increasing number are becoming urbanized. Some drivers of this diaspora are militarization, land dispossession, natural disasters, deteriorating environments, poverty, and a dream for a better life in the big city. By 2000, a third of Mexico’s indigenous people, approximately 12% of the country’s total population, had migrated to cities. Oftentimes, whole communities are displaced in the global push for energy and development. Such is the case with Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam, which will displace between 20,000 and 50,000 people who live adjacent to the Xingu River.

Aside from representing the incorporation of indigenous groups into a contemporary globalized and mobile way of life, Indigeneity on the Move also aims to keep the memory of past indigenous diasporas alive. The United States’ Indian Removal Act of 1830 was responsible for the Trail of Tears, a cultural trauma that was the Native American’s eviction from tribal lands and consolidation into designated reservations in the mid-west.

This altar honors the efforts of original peoples across the Americas to maintain a connection to their traditional culture, and pass it on to their progeny, as they uproot, pack up, and move away from their ancestral lands.

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Join the Libraries for a special exhibit opening and Day of the Dead reception on Nov. 1. Click on the image for more details.

Nasher Hosts Book Discussions for Doris Duke Exhibit

Persepolis: The Story of A Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
Persepolis: The Story of A Childhood, by Marjane Satrapi

Book Discussion of Persepolis: The Story of A Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

First Session:
When: Sunday, October 20
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Where: The Nasher Museum of Art (click for map)

Second Session:
When: Tuesday, October 22
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Where: Respite Café, Durham

The Nasher Museum will be hosting a series of book discussion in connection with the current exhibit Doris Duke’s Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art. The books will focus on explorations of Islamic art and culture. The first, Persepolis: The Story of A Childhood, by Marjane Satrapi, tells the author’s story of life growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. The critically acclaimed graphic novel was also adapted into an animated film which was then nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.

 

My Name Is Red
My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk

 

Book Discussion of My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

First Session:
When: Wednesday, November 13
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Where: Nasher Museum of Art (click for map)              

Second Session*:
When: Sunday, November 17
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Where: Nasher Museum of Art

* The second session will begin with a talk from the translator, Erdağ Göknar, followed by a discussion of the book.

The second series of book discussion hosted by the Nasher will focus on Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk’s book, My Name is Red. The novel, which was translated by Duke professor Erdağ Göknar, explores the conflict between Islamic and European principles in a 16th-century setting. The book provides an excellent opportunity to delve into the complex topic of cultural conflicts.

 

For more information about Doris Duke, check out our online timeline of her life, with links to digitized documents, photos, and related materials from the Doris Duke Collection, part of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke.

 

New Exhibit: Outrageous Ambitions: How a One-Room Schoolhouse Became a Research University

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An architectural drawing of Duke University’s East Campus

Outrageous Ambitions: How a One-Room Schoolhouse Became a Research University

On exhibit: October 13, 2013- February 17, 2014

Public Hours: Monday-Friday, 8am–7pm; Saturday, 9am–7pm; Sunday, 10am–7pm. Hours may vary of the holidays; please check the library hours page for more information.

 

About the Exhibit

Today’s Duke University, a premier research institution with global reputation, came from the humblest of beginnings: a tiny schoolhouse in Randolph County, NC. From there the organization shifted through many manifestations, ultimately transforming from Brown’s Schoolhouse into Duke University.

A new exhibit on display in Perkins Library, Outrageous Ambitions: How a One-Room Schoolhouse Became a Research University, traces the history of Duke University as it evolved and grew over the past 175 years. The exhibit showcases a selection of events that were fundamental in the creation of University, and focuses on several key themes: foundations, academics, student life, student activism, athletics, presidents, the Duke family, women at Duke, and the architecture of campus.

Brown's Schoolhouse, the humble predecessor of Duke University
Brown’s Schoolhouse, the humble predecessor of Duke University

The materials for the exhibit, which include photographs, documents, ephemera, and other objects, were drawn from the University Archives (unless otherwise noted) and vibrantly illustrate the history of the school. Viewers can further explore Duke history by visiting the recently created online timeline, which highlights other key moments in Duke’s past. An online version of the exhibit is also available.

The title of the exhibit, Outrageous Ambitions, references a speech made by former University President Terry Sanford, in which he expounds on the seemingly impossible ambition that was responsible for creating Duke University. The exhibit seeks not only to remember the incredible aspirations that have supported Duke in the past, but also to inspire the continuing work of Duke students, faculty, staff, and alumni as they craft their own extravagant ambitions.

The exhibit was curated by Maureen McCormick Harlow, 175th Anniversary Intern in University Archives, and Valerie Gillispie, University Archivist. Special thanks to Meg Brown, Mark Zupan, Beth Doyle, the University Archives staff, and the staff of the Conservation and Digital Production Departments in the Duke University Libraries.

Lilly Library Exhibit: Smoke Signals

Bill Anderson
Photographs by artist Bill Anderson (1961-2013) are on display at Lilly Library through Dec. 15.

Smoke Signals: An Exhibit of Photographs by Bill Anderson (1961-2013)
On exhibit October 1 – December 15, 2013
Lilly Library, East Campus (Click for map)
General Public Hours: Monday-Friday, 8am–7pm; Saturday, 9am–7pm; Sunday, 10am–7pm
Hours may vary during academic breaks and holidays. Please check our posted library hours for more information.

 

About the Exhibit

Lilly Library is displaying a new exhibit for the fall semester entitled Smoke Signals by Bill Anderson. The exhibit consists of 17 untitled photographs portraying sinuous patterns and swirls of smoke in a myriad of colors.

The artist, Bill Anderson (1960-2013), had a rich history with the arts. He was involved in the founding of the Athens Poor Theater in college, participated as a member of the Wee Scottie Collective in Atlanta (a group that produced a series of short and feature length films). He also had a career in academic libraries at such institutions as Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. At Georgia Tech, Anderson served as the lead digital library developer. All of his technical skills were self-taught, making his art even more remarkable. The exhibit celebrates Anderson’s art and honors his memory.

 

Gallery Talk and Reception: Please Join Us!

Date: Friday, October 18
Time: 4 p.m.
Location: Thomas Room, Lilly Library, East Campus (Click for map)
Light refreshments will be served.

Before his death, Bill Anderson intended to title the pieces in the Smoke Signals exhibit. Join the staff of Lilly Library in fulfilling his intention by titling the photographs and enjoying his creative vision!

Bill Anderson Smoke Signals
Viewers have responded to Anderson’s “Smoke Signals” images as floral, sensual, and calligraphic.

New Exhibit: Recording the Anthropocene

anthropocene banner

On exhibit July 16 – October 13, 2013
Perkins Library Gallery, Duke West Campus (Click for map)
Public Hours: Monday-Friday, 8am–7pm; Saturday, 9am–7pm; Sunday, 10am–7pm
Hours may vary during the summer months. Please check our posted library hours for more information.

 

About the Exhibit 

In an instant of geologic time, human beings have exploded into a geologic force, altering the planet’s oceans and fresh waters, atmosphere, soils, plants, and animals.

Our effect on planetary conditions and processes has been so significant, in fact, that many people believe we have crossed the boundary into a distinctly new geologic epoch—from Holocene to Anthropocene—a period in Earth’s history primarily characterized by the growth and impact of the human species.

A new exhibit in Perkins Library considers the human record on planet Earth and asks visitors to consider the implications of labeling our geologic epoch the Anthropocene.

Illustration by Theodor de Bry (1591), showing indigenous Americans in Virginia hand-cultivating and planting fields with maize. One theory holds that the Anthropocene began with the rise of agriculture some 8,000 years ago.
Illustration by Theodor de Bry (1591), showing indigenous Americans in Virginia hand-cultivating and planting fields with maize. One theory holds that the Anthropocene began with the rise of agriculture some 8,000 years ago.

You may not have heard the term Anthropocene before, but you will. It has been taken up enthusiastically across a variety of academic and artistic disciplines. It has inspired major critical and artistic works as well as international museum exhibitions.

Originally coined by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, the term follows a relatively recent turn in society that has seen human beings increasingly acknowledged to be an integral part of nature.

A proposal to rename our geologic epoch is accordingly being considered by a working group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the scientific body that sets global standards for expressing the geologic history of the earth. The working group includes one of the curators of this exhibit (Professor Daniel Richter of Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment) and represents the culmination of intense scientific debates in books, conferences, and exhibits such as this one. A decision on whether to adopt the term is expected in 2016.

black rhino
Skull of the near-extinct Black Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis). Another theory traces the origins of the Anthropocene to the Stone Age extinctions of large animals that began some 50,000 years ago and have continued ever since.

The widespread recognition that we have had a global-scale impact on the environment is relatively new, as is the idea that we have a special responsibility to the future and to other life forms. Recording the Anthropocene represents an attempt to acknowledge the scale of our impact on the planet and to face the implications of that realization. What difference do you think the adoption of the term Anthropocene would make to you, and to all forms of life on the planet?

The exhibit was curated by a broad interdisciplinary group of Duke faculty, graduate students, and staff from a variety of departments across campus who share an interest in this topic.

For more information, visit the exhibit in Perkins Library, or check out the exhibit website.

New Exhibit: Botanical Treasures from Duke’s Hidden Library; Reception 4/29

Herbarium Exhibit Banner Image

On exhibit April 10 – July 14, 2013
Perkins Library Gallery, Duke West Campus (Click for map)
Public Hours: Monday-Friday, 8am–7pm; Saturday, 9am–7pm; Sunday, 10am–7pm
Hours may vary during the summer months. Please check our posted library hours for more information.

 

About the Exhibit 

When you hear the word herbarium, you might think herb garden. Not so.

Instead, think of an herbarium as a kind of library of preserved plants. But instead of shelves upon shelves of books, an herbarium contains cabinets upon cabinets of dried and labeled plant specimens. Unlike most books in a library, which can be repurchased or duplicated, each herbarium specimen is truly unique. It is a representative of plant biodiversity at a particular place and time in the history of life on earth.

A new exhibit in Perkins Library explores the beauty and importance of herbaria in furthering our understanding of the natural world and highlights our own “hidden library” of plants right here on campus—the Duke Herbarium.

Detail: Herbarium sample of Rhynchospora, commonly known as beak-rush or beak-sedge.
Detail: Herbarium sample of Rhynchospora, commonly known as beak-rush or beak-sedge.

The Duke Herbarium, located in the Biological Sciences Building next to the French Family Science Center, is one of the largest herbaria in the United States and the second largest at a private U.S. university (after Harvard). With more than 800,000 specimens of vascular plants, bryophytes, algae, lichens, and fungi, the Duke Herbarium is a unique and irreplaceable resource used by local, national, and international scientific communities.

The role of herbaria in housing and protecting plant specimens is invaluable. Herbaria are where biologists turn to identify plant species, check the validity of a newly described species, track how a species has changed over time, and even analyze how entire landscapes have been altered. Herbarium specimens can yield information to help us better protect our planet. This is especially important today, when humans have a greater impact on the environment and plants are exposed to conditions they never would have encountered just a century ago.

Botanical Treasures of Duke’s Hidden Library examines the work of the Duke Herbarium, explains how plant specimens are collected, and highlights some surprising stories from the field, like how Duke biologists recently named a newly discovered genus of ferns after Lady Gaga!

The exhibit was curated by Layne Huiet, Senior Research Scientist and Vascular Plants Collections Manager, Duke Herbarium; Tiff Shao, Trinity 2012 (Biology), Associate in Research, Duke Herbarium; Anne Johnson, Trinity 2013 (Biology); and Kathleen Pryer, Professor of Biology and Director of the Duke Herbarium.

For more information, visit the exhibit website, or check out the website of the Duke Herbarium.

 

Exhibit Reception and Lecture—Please Join Us!

Alfred Russel Wallace in the Amazon: The Making of a Naturalist
Speaker:
 Sandra Knapp, Research Botanist at the Natural History Museum in London (Click for bio)
Date: Monday, April 29
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Perkins Library, Room 217, Duke West Campus (Click for map)
Exhibit reception to follow in the Perkins Library Gallery. Light refreshments will be served.
Contact: Meg Brown, meg.brown@duke.edu, 919-681-2071

Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace: British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist

New Exhibit: Comics and Propaganda: France 1939-1944

French Comics and Propaganda Exhibit

The new student exhibit in Bostock Library explores the juvenile press in France from 1939 to 1945. The exhibit was designed and curated by students in Professor Clare Tufts’s Fall 2012 course, Comics and Culture: Images of Modern France in the Making (French 414/Visual and Media Studies 312).

When Paris was liberated in the summer of 1944, a beautifully illustrated, 29-page hardback comic book appeared on the market seemingly overnight. This publication, La bête est morte! (The Beast is Dead!), presented a pictorial account of war among animals who symbolized all of the major players of World War II. Hitler was portrayed as the big bad wolf, Mussolini as a hyena, and the Japanese as yellow monkeys. Meanwhile, the occupied French were glowingly depicted as docile rabbits and industrious squirrels beset by barbarian hordes from other countries. Their savior, a great white stork wearing a Lorraine cross, clearly symbolized Charles De Gaulle and the Resistance. The story does not touch on the subject of French collaboration.

During this time, comics provided French children and adolescents a regular diet of fact, fiction, and outright propaganda about the Germans, the Vichy regime, the Allies, and eventually the Resistance. The exhibit highlights a selection of representative publications, focusing on the messages they conveyed to their youthful audience. As an art form and means of mass communication, the comic book medium was used to form a post-war generation of young adults primed to accept and support the prevailing political ideology.

In particular, the student exhibit traces the history of the following publications:

  • Three weeklies available in France on the eve of the war: Le Journal de Mickey, Jumbo, and Coeurs vaillants/Ames vaillantes (Stout-Hearted/Brave-Souled), which migrated south to unoccupied France and underwent significant changes in content and format.
  • The comic Le Téméraire (The Audacious), which started publication in Paris during the Occupation; and the weekly Vaillant (Valiant), born with the Liberation and filled with realistic images of fighting and resistance.
  • The exhibit also includes presentations on the Nazi Propaganda comic Vica and the comic book La Bête est morte! Annotations written by students are available in English and French.

The exhibit is located in the International and Area Studies exhibit cases on the 2nd floor of Bostock Library, across from the International and Area Studies Offices. (Map and directions available here.) It will be on display until March 15.

More information about the exhibit can be found on our library guide for French and Francophone Studies.  

Post contributed by Professor Clare Tufts and Heidi Madden, Librarian for Western European Studies

New Exhibit: Caricature and the Dreyfus Affair

Detail from “Le Traître” (The Traitor), a lithograph depicting Alfred Dreyfus that is part of a new exhibit on caricature and the Dreyfus Affair in the Rubenstein Library.

Exhibit Reception—Please Join Us!
Date: Wednesday, January 30
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Rubenstein Library Photography Gallery, Rubenstein Library, Duke West Campus (Map)
Contact: Meg Brown, meg.brown@duke.edu, 919-681-2071

Few legal cases in French history have been so decisive, and so divisive, as the twelve-year trial, re-trial and eventual acquittal of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus, a Jewish military officer, was falsely accused in 1894 of selling military secrets to the German army. The trial sparked a flurry of anti-Semitism in the popular press and inspired Émile Zola’s famous open letter of outrage, “J’Accuse!”

A new exhibition in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke examines how the Dreyfus Affair was depicted in the French popular press, with a particular focus on visual illustrations in newspapers and periodicals that covered the trial. A Mockery of Justice: Caricature and the Dreyfus Affair encourages viewers to reconsider the significance of this historical episode that continues to resonate in the present day. As Zola pointed out, the Dreyfus Affair was about more than one man’s guilt or innocence. Also at stake were the very principles upon which the French Republic rested: liberté, égalité, fraternité. More than one hundred years later, the Dreyfus Affair offers a vivid lesson on the dangers of racial prejudice, blind loyalty to the military, and unthinking nationalism.

Cover illustration from “Le Petit Journal” (1895) showing Alfred Dreyfus being stripped of his military honors and titles.

Drawing on the Rubenstein Library’s extensive collection of  late-19th and early 20th-century French periodicals, the exhibit also features a rare series of colorful and attention-grabbing posters that were disseminated throughout Paris at the time. The posters, collectively known as the Musée des Horreurs, were published pseudo-anonymously and feature unflattering caricatures of prominent Jews, Dreyfus supporters, and other individuals involved in the Dreyfus Affair. Another set of posters, known as Musée des Patriotes, glorifies the so-called anti-Dreyfusards, who publicly condemned Dreyfus and sought to undermine his defense.

A complete original set of the Musée des Horreurs and the Musée des Patriotes was recently acquired by the Rubenstein Library and has been digitized in conjunction with the exhibit.

A Mockery of Justice: Caricature and the Dreyfus Affair was sponsored by the Duke Center for Jewish Studies and curated by Alexis Clark, Kathryn Desplanque, and Emilie Anne-Yvonne Luse, doctoral students in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies.

For more information, visit the online exhibit website. To see the complete set of images from the Musée des Horreurs and Musée des Patriotes, visit our digital collections website.

 

Exhibit Details
A Mockery of Justice: Caricature and the Dreyfus Affair
December 12, 2012 – March 9, 2013
Rubenstein Library Photography Gallery
David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library (Click here for map)
Duke University West Campus
Public Hours: Monday-Friday, 8am–7pm; Saturday, 9am–7pm; Sunday, 10am–7pm
Hours may vary during the holidays. Please check our posted library hours for more information.

A New View of “Gitmo”

Revisiting the U.S. Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, through the Duke University Libraries’ Caribbean Sea Migration Digital Collection

A “Mata de Navidad” (Christmas bush), constructed by Cuban detainees in a Guantánamo Bay tent city, 1994-1995.

When you hear the word “Guantánamo,” you probably don’t think of tent cities with families and children, religious festivals, and locally run newspapers.

But the Guantánamo Bay of the 1990s differed in many ways from the place Americans came to know after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Images of this earlier Guantánamo and its inhabitants, recently digitized by the Duke University Libraries, will soon be touring the country as part of an exhibit developed by the Guantánamo Public Memory Project, an initiative based at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University. The exhibit, opening in New York City on December 13 and touring the United States through 2014, explores the complex and controversial history of “Gitmo.”

Two Haitian boys are given a medical exam aboard the US Coast Guard cutter Chase by Chief Warrant Officer Paul Healey, in October 1981.

“We were fortunate to have advance access to the [Caribbean Sea Migration] collection, so that nearly 100 students at 11 universities across the country could use it extensively to prepare our traveling exhibit on the long history of the U.S. Naval Station at Guantánamo,” said Liz Ševčenko, Founding Director of the Guantánamo Public Memory Project and faculty member at the Institute. “It’s a tremendous resource for researchers and the general public.”

During the years 1991-1993 and again in 1994, tens of thousands of Haitians, fleeing political upheaval and repression, were interdicted by the U.S. Coast Guard and removed to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. While they awaited decisions on whether they would be repatriated to Haiti or allowed to apply for asylum in the U.S., the Haitians made a life in the tent cities established for them by the U.S. military.

In 1994 over 30,000 Cubans set out from Cuba by sea for the United States. Among them was Pavel Rodríguez, a nine-year-old boy who, along with his family, was interdicted by the U.S. Coast Guard and taken to Guantánamo. Pavel, who years later would enroll at Duke University Medical School, remembers both the anxiety arising from prolonged detention at GTMO and the sense of community among the refugees. Pavel recalls fellow Cubans at GTMO forming a newspaper at the camp and opening an art gallery, along with his own memories of “chasing iguanas and flying kites behind barbed wires and fences guarded by heavily armed soldiers.”

Draft of a news release for the camp publication Sa K’Pase, announcing an American-style summer camp for children in Guantánamo Camp IIA, 1992.

Stories like Pavel’s, and those of many others like him, make up the recently digitized Caribbean Sea Migration Collection, which documents the experiences of the more than 200,000 Haitians, Cubans and Dominicans who traversed the Caribbean Sea in the late 20th century, fleeing political instability in their home countries. Materials in this collection provide varying perspectives on Guantánamo in the late 20th century: from military personnel running the camps, to publishers of and contributors to community newspapers, to detainee-artists creating works reflective of their experience.

For more on the Guantánamo Public Memory Project traveling exhibit, visit their website and blog.

To learn more about the Caribbean Sea Migration and other collections digitized by the Duke University Libraries—which are made freely available for teaching, learning, and research—visit our digital collections website.

 

Lilly Library Gallery Talk: Interwoven Histories, Nov. 27

Ashanti Kente cloths, from the exhibit “Interwoven Histories: Luxury Cloths of Atlantic Africa” in Lilly Library

Date: Tuesday, November 27
Time: 5 p.m.
Location: Thomas Room, Lilly Library (Map)
Contact:  Greta Boers, greta.boers@duke.edu

Please join the staff of Lilly Library on Tuesday, November 27, for a gallery talk about a new library exhibit on African weaving.

“Interwoven Histories: Luxury Cloths of Atlantic Africa” draws from the private collection of Professor J. Lorand Matory and Ms. Olubunmi Fatoye-Matory, celebrating the genius of West African weavers, dyers, printers, appliqué artists, and embroiderers who have employed a cosmopolitan array of techniques and materials to create wearable art. They draw their designs from ancient African sources and from as far afield as Indonesia to supply markets, museums, interior designers and couturiers in Africa, Europe and the Americas.

These cloths express not only dignity, heritage, and style but also the old reality of internationalism and changing fashion in Africa, a continent often falsely associated with cultural isolation and stasis.

Moreover, like African drumming, African cloth speaks. Many weaves and printed designs convey literal messages that swathe the body in counsel, consolation, prayer, and warning on the occasion of births, weddings, coronations, elections, diplomatic negotiations, and deaths.

These richest of textile arts from Ghana and Nigeria illustrate tradition and change from the period of independence until the present.

The Center for African and African American Research at Duke University and the Duke University Libraries invite you behind the veil of vivid texture and color and into the world of West African taste, class, and history.

Harvesting a Legacy of Action, Nov. 12

 

North Carolina has a long history of support and activism on behalf of immigrant communities. But only recently have immigrant activists begun to view their work from a human rights perspective.

That will be the topic of a community discussion on immigration and human rights at 5:30 p.m., November 12, in the Rare Book Room of Duke’s Perkins Library. “Harvesting a Legacy of Action: Immigration Activism and Human Rights” will feature a panel of experts discussing the challenges and possibilities of placing immigration activism within a human rights framework.

The panel will be moderated by Robin Kirk, co-director of the Duke Human Rights Center.  Panelists will include Guadalupe Gamboa, Senior Program Officer for Worker Rights at Oxfam America; Ramon Zepeda, Youth Organizer for Student Action with Farmworkers and labor activist and organizer; and Paul Ortiz, History Professor at the University of Florida.

The panel discussion is part of a larger series of events around the state celebrating the 20th anniversary of Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF), a nonprofit organization that brings together students, community members, and farmworkers in the Southeast to work for justice in the agricultural system. What began as a small group of Duke Public Policy students documenting farmworker conditions has since grown to an independent nonprofit with a national impact. The organization’s papers are held by Duke’s Human Rights Archive in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Three exhibitions currently on display at the library explore the human experience of farmworkers and the history of SAF. The exhibits reflect historical and contemporary concerns with student activism, access to safe and healthy food, organized labor, and immigration. The exhibits run through December 9, 2012.

The exhibits and panel discussion are sponsored by SAF, the Duke University Libraries, the Center for Documentary Studies, the Franklin Humanities Institute BorderWorks Lab, the Duke University Service Learning Program, and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.

Extra Credit: Post-Soviet Art at the Nasher

Alexander Kosolapov, “Untitled from Gorby Series.” From the Subverted Icon exhibit at the Nasher.

A new exhibit of post-Soviet artwork is currently on display in the Nasher Museum of Art’s Education Gallery through December 23, and it’s well worth a visit.

The exhibit, The Subverted Icon: Images of Power in Soviet Art (1970-1995), explores the ways in which artists in late- and post-Soviet Russia represented, confronted, and challenged state-sponsored propaganda, Soviet architecture, and the populist art of earlier generations. It was curated by students in Professor Pamela Kachurin’s “Soviet Art After Stalin” seminar. There’s a good review in the October 18 issue of the Duke Chronicle.

For those interested in a little extra credit, Duke is home to one of the oldest and most extensive Slavic research collections in the southeastern United States. Here’s a taste of some additional readings and resources to whet the appetite of your inner Russophile:

Go check out the exhibit, and find more great resources on Russian art and politics at the library.

The Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art

Tile, Safavid period, IranARTstor, one of Duke University Libraries’ image databases, recently announced the addition of about 400 pictures from the collection of Islamic and South Asian art from the Shangri La, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art. The images feature some of the exquisite objects in the collection: Indian jewelry and enamels; Syrian, Indian, Spanish, and Persian furniture, doors, and ceilings; Persian and Turkish tile panels and portable ceramics; and Central Asian, Persian, Turkish, and Indian textiles.

Shangri La, A Center for Islamic Arts and Cultures, the online exhibit of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, is fully searchable by keyword, medium region, and period. Containing about 3500 objects, the artifacts cover a time period from 1500BCE to the 20th century.

I heard about Doris Duke’s interest in Middle Eastern and Islamic art for the first time when Mary Samouelian, Doris Duke Collection Archivist at Duke’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library (RBMSCL), asked me to help her identify locations on photographs Ms. Duke took during her trip to the Middle East in 1938. These pictures, linked to an interactive map, are part of an online exhibit of materials from the Doris Duke Archives. The records from Doris Duke’s Shangri La residence are housed in RBMSCL.

Illuminations

If Santa doesn’t bring you the coffee table book of sumptuously illustrated Middle Eastern manuscripts that you were hoping for, you can now console yourself by browsing through some illuminated treasures of Islamic civilization in a post at  Archivalia. There you can see, among other images, a mighty lion attacking its prey from the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s Kalila wa Dimna, a Qur’an from Persia in The Royal Library at Copenhagen, a Persian miniature from a Diwan by Hafiz at the Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, a 19th century Christian Arabic manuscript at the University of Brimingham, or one of the earliest Mughal manuscripts at the Indiana University Art Museum. And now that all these pictures have made you curious, you can read up about their history in Arabic painting: Text and Image in Illustrated Arabic Manuscripts, available in Duke’s collection at Lilly Library. I hope you enjoy your holidays…

Library and Campus Events

What’s going on at the library or around campus?  There are several events calendars to keep you posted.

You can get to the library’s Current & Upcoming Events page by clicking the News & Events link on the library’s homepage and then the Events >> heading (besides upcoming events, be sure to also check out the News, Exhibits, and Blogs).  This page unifies listings from several of the library’s subunits (the Instruction & Outreach Department, the Data &GIS Services Department, and the Center for Instructional Technology) as well as from the Divinity School Library.  Direct links to these calendars can be found at the right of the page.  You can also receive an RSS feed to stay updated.

Some library users can find interesting lectures, useful software training sessions, and workshops on the use of statistical data from the events calendar page for the Social Science Research Institute or SSRI (some of these, in fact, are cross-listed on the library calendars or taught by library staff).

Many events at Duke can be found from the main Events@Duke calendar.  Use the See all groups link in the left-hand column to get a listing of the many departments and groups at Duke that may sponsor workshops, lectures, and training sessions.  At the top, you can select Day, Week, Month, or Year listings, and the RSS feed might be handy.   Although it might be fruitful to spend time exploring the various Calendar Views and other options, please be aware that although the goal of this calendar is to be comprehensive not all campus events are submitted.  You still may want to check individual calendars that interest you like the ones mentioned above or (for example) from Student Affairs, the Sanford School of Public Policy, the Nicholas School of the Environment, or the Fuqua School of Business.

Soccer in a Global Context

The World Cup will be played in South Africa in the summer of 2010 and important soccer matches are being played around the globe this fall to determine the thirty-two countries that will qualify for the tournament. To prepare you for these games, several books are available in the Duke Libraries on the subject of soccer and its global importance.

Foer's book
In Franklin Foer’s book, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, soccer is described as part of the economic, political, and cultural fabric of society. In a series of essays, Foer explores the cultural roots of fierce soccer rivalries around the world, rivalries that make battles between Duke and Carolina or the Red Sox and the Yankees look tepid. Matches between the Rangers and Celtic in Glasgow reflect the divide between the Protestant Rangers supporters and the Catholic Celtics and has roots in conflicts that date back to the Reformation. Matches between Barcelona and Madrid in Spain are recreations of the Spanish Civil War. Foer examines soccer as a liberalizing force in Iran and as a destructive force in Serbia, where soccer hooligans were used as death squads in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. Although Foer does not, as his title suggests, provide a unifying theory of soccer and globalization, this book is a fascinating study of soccer in its cultural context and provides vivid examples of how national conflicts are reflected in the game of soccer.

Thinking Man's GuideThe Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, provides essays about each of the thirty two countries that qualified for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Each essay presents a short summary of the soccer history of the country and how each team qualified for the tournament, and places soccer in the context of that country’s culture and politics. Examples include the importance of qualification to war-ravaged Angola, the impact of globalization on the English economy, and the relationship between jihad and soccer in Saudi Arabia. Although the 2006 World Cup is in the past, the profiles of each country are fascinating and informative, and deepen one’s understanding of the world and its relationship to the world’s most popular sport.

Long Distance Love

Grant Farred, a Duke University faculty member, traces his passion for Liverpool football from his early years in apartheid South Africa in his book, Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football. He explores the cultural context of soccer around the world. Farred provides a shocking history of how Argentina’s military junta used the success of the Argentinean team to cover its ruthless oppression of dissent. Farred brings an obvious passion for world football and the Liverpool team as a lens to examine the global struggle for freedom. Although American readers will not be familiar with many of the events and players that are important in the history of Liverpool football, the reader is swept along by the force of Farred’s narrative and the deeply personal nature of his writing.


There are interesting films and discussions being held on campus this fall in conjunction with Professor Laurent Dubois’ course, “World Cup and World Politics.” A series of films about soccer are free and open to the general public. Lilian Thuram, Caribbean-born French soccer player, activist and writer, will share his thoughts on sport, racism, and immigration as well as discussing the work of his new foundation. The talk will take place at the Nasher Art Museum on Nov. 10 at 7:00 pm. More information at http://soccerpolitics.com/.

Photo Credit: Anthony Bidard/FEP

New exhibits in Perkins Library

Photo by Mary WalterIf you’ve walked through the lobby of Perkins Library in the past few days you’ve surely noticed the beautiful new exhibit cases that were installed there last week. The other morning on my way in I saw Mary Walter, the Assistant Director of Development for the library, taking photos of the new cases and the shimmering reflections from the lights above them. It reminded me a little bit of the Georges Rousse Bending Space project in downtown Durham a couple of years ago, and I asked Mary if I could post a photo here (see one of them here on the right).

The new exhibit cases are now full, with materials from an exhibit titled Pivotal Books / Personal Reflections, which explores the personal nature of books and the relationships that exist between reader and written word. We hope you’ll visit the exhibit in the lobby, and also the exhibit web site, where we invite you to submit your own reflections on books that were pivotal to you and see what other visitors to the exhibit have already sent in.

Olive Pierce photographJust around the corner from the Perkins lobby, in the hallway between the Rare Book Room and the Special Collections Reading Room, is another new exhibit, featuring photographs by Olive Pierce, documenting life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Maine fishing communities, and Iraq. This exhibit will be up through December 2008.

Both of these exhibits, as well as other library exhibits from the past, are available on the exhibits page on library web site.