Date: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 Time: 3:30 PM Location: Rare Book Room Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu
Detail of portrait of Irene Peslikis by Alice Neel. From the Irene Peslikis Papers.
The summer research project season is in full swing!
Next Tuesday, Katie Anania, graduate student in Art History at the University of Texas-Austin and recipient of a Mary Lily Research Grant, will discuss her research on the feminist adoption of drawing as an intimate means of artistic expression.
“Canoeing at Camp Teconnet.” From the New England Girls’ Summer Camps Photograph Album.
These days are filled with happiness, Encouragement, and zest. Companionship we never lack, Or chance to play—or rest; No silly rules there are, and yet, No doubt of loving care. Each girl has opportunities To serve, enjoy, and share.
—From a 1917 brochure about Camp Teconnet
In 2008, we made a lucky find in a rare book dealer’s catalog: a lovely New England girls’ summer camp photograph album. We were utterly charmed by this album of black and white photos of girls at Camp Mascoma, in New Hampshire in 1916 and Camp Teconnet Maine in 1917. The unidentified teenage girl who created this album clearly had a wonderful time swimming, canoeing, and sitting around campfires with the friends she made, each with her own nickname like “Parsnips.”
The album also included material clipped from a promotional brochure about Camp Teconnet, which described camp life as “the wisest and sanest solution of the vacation problem for girls.” The brochure also proclaimed, “Physical measurements are taken at the beginning of the season for each camper and from these the ‘Missus’ and councilors form the foundation for the work with the individual, encouraging here and holding back there, so that the end of the season may bring its own reward in better health and physique.” These girls certainly do look healthy and fit!
You’ll find a detailed description of this album here. If you’d like to look through the album yourself and reminisce about your own days at camp (or if you have any questions about the album), e-mail us at special-collections(at)duke.edu.
Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.
“Waiting for Dinner.” From the New England Girls’ Summer Camps Photograph Album.
Frank Foster, ca. 1970s. From the Frank Foster Papers.
The Jazz Archive at Duke University announces the recent arrival of the Frank Foster Papers. Foster is one of the leading jazz saxophonists, big band leaders, and composer/arrangers of the post-World War II era. While serving as the primary arranger for the Count Basie Orchestra since the 1950s, Foster continued to compose and arrange for a variety of ensembles, receiving two Grammy Awards in the 1980s for his work. In 2002, Foster received the Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The papers (which range from 1927 to 2009) reveal Foster’s personal and professional lives. Scores and parts composed or arranged by Foster for jazz big bands, as well as business records, publicity, reviews, and news clippings documenting Foster’s career, are complemented by personal correspondence, photographs, and a variety of Foster’s own prose writings. There are also roughly fifty hours of concert recordings featuring various bands Foster performed in.
While portions of the papers are currently open for research, the entire collection should be processed and available for use by the fall of 2010. If you’d like to arrange a visit to view the collection, or if you have any questions, please e-mail us at special-collections(at)duke.edu.
Lori Brown, Associate Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University, will also present her examination of relationships between space, abortion, and issues of access to reproductive health services based on research using our women’s health clinic records.
Light refreshments will be served.
Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center of Women’s History and Culture.
According to an informal and completely unscientific survey, five out of the eight women who work in the RBMSCL’s reading room are wearing pants today. This might not be the case were it not for the efforts of Amelia Bloomer, early feminist and fashion pioneer, who celebrates her 192nd birthday today.
To honor Amelia, we quote from a 6 August 1851 letter from University of North Carolina chemistry professor Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick to his future wife, Mary Ellen Thompson (from our Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick Papers).
Remarking on current cultural matters from his position at the Nautical Almanac in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he writes:
There is something said every day or two about ‘Bloomers.’ I have seen several of them and like them. The young ladies have changed the fashion of putting up their hair, combing it up and back, something like what is vulgarly called a ‘cow-lick.’ I do not like it.
Professor Hedrick’s progressive opinion on the bloomer suit was not widely shared. Witness the chorus of “The Bloomer’s Complaint,” a charming song also from 1851:
I’ll come out next week, with a wide Bloomer flat
Of a shape that I fancy will fright them,
I had not intended to go quite to that,
But I’ll do it now, only to spite them—
With my pants “a la Turque,”
And my skirts two feet long
All fitting of course, most completely
These grumblers shall own after all, they are wrong,
And that I, in a Bloomer, look sweetly,
And that I, in a Bloomer, look sweetly.
Thanks to Mitch Fraas, RBMSCL Research Services intern, for suggesting this post.
We thought we’d revisit those school days of long ago by reprinting a few headlines from that fledgling paper for the 1909-1910 school year.
“Fortnightly Club Meets: Good Attendance at Postponed Meeting Last Friday Evening: Prof. Webb Selected Dante Theme,” October 27, 1909
“Doctor Kilgo’s Sermon: President Gives Masterly Defense of Faith Faculty of Our Mind,” November 17, 1909
“Watts Hospital Opening: Thousands View the Various Rooms and Listen to Addresses,” December 8, 1909
“Ninety Nineteen Initiate: Six New Men Taken through the Mysteries of the Order: Candidates Undergo Mystic Stunts,” February 23, 1910
“Mr. Nash on Fertilizers: Good Attendance at Regular Meeting of Science Club: Growing Interest in Club Work,” March 9, 1910
“Chronicle vs. Archive: Yearly Exhibition of Strictly Amateur Players, a Few Ringers Excepted: Most Exciting Game, Chronicle Wins,” April 20, 1910. (Yes, as the headline says, the Trinity Chronicle staff won that baseball game 8-5.)
“Commencement Program: All Arrangements for the Last Week Have Been Completed: Secretary Nagel to Make Address,” April 27, 1910
“Mr. Brogden Speaks: Popular Durham Attorney Makes Forcible Talk to a Large Assemblage—His Subject: ‘Habit and Thought,'” May 4, 1910
The RBMSCL warmly congratulates the Class of 2010!
Rebecca Mitchell will present her findings on the proto-feminist aspects and eroticism of Victorian mourning attire. Mitchell is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas-Pan American.
Michelle Moravec will speak about feminist art activism as a U.S. social movement. Moravec is Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Rosemont College.
These two diverse topics will be sure to spark a lively conversation! Light refreshments will be served.
Just think how many loads of laundry you could do or how many cases of . . . soda you could buy with $1,000.
If you, like the gentlemen on the left, have pored over RBMSCL manuscripts, books, broadsides, maps, etc. (with or without a magnifying glass) and turned your brilliant discoveries into a brilliant paper, why not submit it for a chance to receive one of two Chester P. Middlesworth Awards?
The two awards, one for an undergraduate and one for a graduate student, each carry a cash prize of $1000.00. The awards will be given at a reception held during Parents’ and Family Weekend (October 22-24, 2010).
Click here for our post about last year’s happy recipients!
A few stipulations:
Your paper must have been prepared to meet requirements of a course in any academic department at Duke University or of an independent study project for credit at Duke University.
Your paper must be based largely or wholly on sources in the RBMSCL.
Your paper must be nominated by a faculty member. Faculty may use this nomination form.
Oh, and the deadline for submissions is Saturday, May 15th!
On this special day, we’re sharing this cover from the sheet music from 1915 song (words by Edward Morton and James S. Donahue and music by Newton B. Heims). We love the sweet chorus:
Just write her a nice little letter,
Tell her you hope she is well,
Send her some little remembrance,
Something to make her heart swell,
Pet her and call her your sweetheart,
Cheer her and make her feel gay,
Don’t say a word that will grieve her,
Let this be your Mother’s Day.
Of course, we can’t write about mothers without mentioning one of the beloved treasures of the RBMSCL: enslaved woman Vilet Lester’s 1857 letter to her former mistress (from the Joseph Allred Papers). Vilet asks about her precious daughter, whom she had to leave behind when she was sold (ultimately) to a Georgian family. Each time we read it, our eyes get teary and our hearts break all over again.
Happy Mother’s Day, Vilet. Happy Mother’s Day to moms everywhere!
Shanna G. Benjamin, Department of English, Grinnell College, for work on a biography of the late Nellie Y. McKay, Bascom Professor of English and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Derek Charles Catsam, Department of History, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, for a chronicle of the events of 1985 in South Africa, a tumultuous year in that country’s history.
Jametta Davis, Department of History, Howard University, for research for her dissertation detailing the effects of New Deal policies and programs on African American women.
Jacob S. Dorman, Department of History, University of Kansas, for an examination of the formation and development of black Jewish religions in the past 45 years.
Elizabeth Herbin, Department of History, St. John’s University, for an analysis of racial conflicts and segregation among small Southern farmers from 1900 to 1945.
Karen Kossie-Chernyshev, Department of History, Geography, and Economics, Texas Southern University, for an account of “boomerang migration”: the return of African American Southerners from their new homes in the North to participate in social and political uplift activities during the Jim Crow era.
Deborah Lee, independent scholar, for a study tracing the networks of anti-slavery activists in the Potomac River basin from 1810 to 1870.
Joseph Moore, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Greensboro,for research on the 1850 trial of George Grier, an enslaved South Carolina man, for seditious speech, with emphasis on an exploration of the community of Abbeville County, South Carolina.
Watch The Devil’s Tale for news about upcoming discussions with several of the travel grant recipients from the Bingham, Hartman, and Franklin Research Centers.
Dispatches from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University
