Category Archives: Events

Constructing a Century

Post contributed by Shaina Leverett, Harry H. Harkins Intern for the Duke Centennial, Duke University Archives

If someone approached you and asked- “What is this thing you call Duke University? What does it mean? Where does it come from? Who makes it? Who continually makes it?” How would you respond to that?

Four undergraduates applied to create an exhibit showcasing the last 100 years of Duke history. As part of a Story+ summer research program, their jobs were to comb through the University Archive and chose 100 items that evoked Duke’s last 100 years, and subsequently curate an exhibit. Now, to give you some perspective on what that task entails, the university archive contains about 11,000 linear feet of records (including digital records).

Here’s the moment where we scratch the track and ask “Wait, hasn’t Duke been around more than 100 years?”, and the answer is yes, technically speaking Duke began as Brown’s Schoolhouse in the year 1838. Instead, the Duke Centennial celebrates the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Duke Endowment by James B. Duke. This charitable organization supports a number of causes and organizations, one of them being Trinity College. The college quickly changed its name to Duke University to reflect the transformative nature of this ongoing gift. The Story+ scholars looked back through the records since that pivotal year, and their work resulted in a rich and kaleidoscopic narrative of our school, which is now on display in Chappell Gallery in Perkins Library and online.

The students tasked with this project are Caroline Edmondson (T’26), Prisha Gupta (T’ 26), Zoe Tishaev (T’ 24), and Melody Tzang (T’ 25). Their project was managed by Jessica Orzulak, PhD, and they were further assisted by a team of staff at the Rubenstein. I sat down with each of the four undergraduates and asked them a series of questions ranging from the practical and philosophical struggles of the task. Their responses highlighted the difficulty in attempting to tell a ‘complete’ story about our institution, and the reasons we try to do it anyway.

Student Curators (L to R): Melody Tzang, Zoe Tishaev, Caroline Edmondson, and Prisha Gupta

Interviewer: Your task was to create an exhibit showcasing the last 100 years of Duke’s history. How did you find a focus for that wide of a time period?

Caroline: Yeah, that was definitely a big challenge. We came up with a list of themes that we knew we wanted to cover, as well as events that we already knew about just from our experience being here. Then it was a little easier to narrow the search and say, okay, let’s find some stuff that talks about the Woman’s College. Okay, let’s find some stuff that talks about the Graduate School or the Duke Forest. Also, we would look at collections that interested us, or that we thought might contain some insights. We tried to find objects that sort of spoke for themselves or spoke to parts of the stories that we didn’t necessarily know.

Interviewer: Part of looking back, especially over the course of a century, means we have to sometimes look upon some disappointing parts of history. How did you consider including the parts of our history that are more difficult to engage with?

Zoe: I think I’m a big believer that we criticize the institutions that we love. Because we want to learn from our past and we want to make them better, right? So it’s good to look back and to reflect and to see where things have changed and how we can learn from our past and the shortfalls of things that we’ve tried that haven’t worked. Something that’s easy to forget about when we step into leadership positions is [that] we forget to think about what’s been tried already and how we got to where we are, and all the mistakes and all the successes that have led us here. Until we understand that, it’s difficult for us to truly move forward.

Interviewer: How do you hope people will react to this exhibit?

Prisha: [Looking at] the Trinity Archive from the 1920’s, the editor had written their editor’s letter on Duke’s name change. I loved getting to read that. That person was definitely only here for 4 years, but what they had written meant a lot to somebody–to me! I’m somebody in the future! Even small pins, T-shirts, and the photos that people take, I think it builds such an impact on what we understand to be Duke’s history. I just hope that people realize after they leave the exhibit that they matter to this institution in some way.

Interviewer: What have you learned about Duke’s past 100 years that most surprised you?

Caroline: There are some smaller stories that were definitely surprising, like my mind was totally blown when we found out about the parapsychology lab. I was also struck by how frequently I found things that were so similar to what’s happening today. I’m a member of Duke Players, which is our oldest student theater organization. One of the objects that we pulled out to represent that group is a script in a Playbill from a production of the Glass Menagerie. Like decades and decades ago, and now we still read that play all the time!

Interviewer: What advice would you give to your fellow undergraduates, who maybe haven’t utilized the archive yet?

Zoe: You should absolutely do it. At least once in your career. It’s so touching and grounding to connect yourself back to the students who roamed the same halls as you and walked the same ground. There’s something very humbling about that and it’s just so fascinating to see. I think the library staff are nothing but helpful. Just go into the archives, they’re open for everybody. And ask the staff member to walk you through it. They will be delighted and thrilled that you have taken an interest, and honestly, our library system is probably one of the best in schools of our caliber.

Interviewer: Are there any skills you gained from this experience that you see yourself using in your education or your future job?

Melody: For sure, all of the soft skills that are super important in the workplace- collaboration, problem solving, also, just being able to communicate properly with so few words. [My] writing skills definitely came in handy with the label writing. It’s a really difficult learning how to be concise in your writing with so little space, especially for the [artifact] labels.  Cutting it to 100 to 150 words is really tough because we’re doing all that primary source research we come across. Maybe we only write 10% of what we’ve actually researched, and so [from] that whole breadth of knowledge [it] is really hard to pick and choose what our general audience would want to take away from an artifact. Or maybe there’s too much information that we just can’t put in there that we actually really wanted to share. So, a lot of it was how do we be concise with our writing? How do we also be creative in combining information together and spread it across different labels [so] that information still gets out there.

Interviewer: What is your favorite artifact in the exhibit?

Melody: My personal favorite item in the exhibit is this printing plate of the Duke alma mater. The alma mater was originally titled “Hymn to Trinity” by a graduate student named Robert H. James. It was a devotional for Trinity College before Trinity College became Duke University. He was inspired to write a hymn to Trinity in order to show his own gratitude and devotion to his college, and then also to express the feelings of his fellow students and others in what he called “the little worlds of Trinity.” It kind of mirrors that sort of same devotion and gratitude that I have for Duke.

Zoe: I change my answer on this every time. I think my traditional answer has been the roller skates. [Follow the link for more details on a 1949 bus boycott against the rise in bus fares between East and West Campus.] I am a very pedestrian centered person. My whole thing on campus is fighting for more pedestrian access and less auto-centrism.  So just seeing the energy people went through to walk from East to West campus because of a fare hike . . . it was more about the principal than the affordability of it. It’s a combination of civic engagement and people standing up for what they thought was right. Today, [that protest] could never happen. Students would not get that outraged. Or maybe they’d get outraged, but they wouldn’t organize around something of that scale. People drive from East to West Campus every day, and I just think it’s a strange shift because the distance hasn’t changed, but the students have.

Prisha: The picture of Jelly Leftwich and the Blue Devil is . . . [imagine here Prisha’s facial expression of palpable glee and adoration]. I’m a notorious Jelly Leftwich fan. I did a small research project on his scrapbook a while back and we don’t have the scrapbook in the exhibit, but that’s also an object worth checking out. Basically, he came here in 1926 to direct the three main bands at Duke. He’s kind of credited with revitalizing the music department at Duke. His scrapbook is really funny. Newspapers would also often call him handsome or something, and he would underline it every time.

Caroline: One of my favorite things that I totally found by chance was a glass lantern slide from 1935 of the Duke Forest. It’s meant for a projector, so it’s just kind of like tiny green glass image that you would put in front of a projector that would get displayed on a wall. When I checked out the collection, I thought it was going to be documents, but it was all these little glass lantern slides. It’s stunning and it honestly took my breath away a little bit. Because it looks just like it does now, like in 1935, the Duke Forest had as much beauty in it as it does now and I thought there was something remarkable about that. The Forest isn’t one of the institutions at Duke that I engage with very frequently, but it really put things into perspective for me. How lucky we are to have this resource that has been preserved for so long and will hopefully be preserved for decades to come. And to have this image of it from almost 100 years ago that looks so identical to how it looks now . . . it honestly made me a little emotional, this tiny image that someone took for research purposes in 1935 tells such a beautiful story of almost 100 years of the Duke Forest, which I thought was really cool.

The exhibit titled Our Duke: Constructing a Century will have its kick-off event on January 24th, 2024 from 4-6, with our curators set to give remarks at 4:45. On behalf of my fellow staff members in the University Archives department, we are exceptionally proud of the work of these four bright students. You can see from the exhibit, the level of care and gravity they considered when telling their story of Duke. We look forward to officially celebrating the fruits of their several months of hard work, and hope you will join us. To see more on the exhibit, including a virtual exhibition and the curator’s statements, please visit it OUR DUKE: Constructing A Century.

Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South

Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Location: Rubenstein Library Room 153, Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Duke University (the event will be recorded)
Contact: Rachel Ingold (rachel.ingold@duke.edu or 919-684-8549)

               Dr. Kylie Smith

Please join us on Tuesday, January 23, for our next Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series event. Kylie Smith, Ph.D., will present “Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South.”

The Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s sought to end racial segregation in all U.S. public institutions, including hospitals. Psychiatric hospitals became political battlegrounds over segregation and patients’ rights, setting the scene for disparities that continue today.

“Jim Crow in the Asylum” explores the process of desegregation and deinstitutionalization in state psychiatric hospitals in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. It draws on original records, court cases, and personal testimony to expose the racist ideas that underpinned the treatment of African Americans with mental illness and saw psychiatric hospitals used as dumping grounds for some of the South’s most vulnerable people.

Kylie Smith is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Healthcare History and Policy in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, and Associate Faculty in the History Department, at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned her PhD in the history of psychiatry in Australia, and is the author of the award winning book Talking Therapy: Knowledge and Power in American Psychiatric Nursing published by Rutgers University Press in 2020. Her new book entitled Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South will be published by UNC Press early in 2025 and is supported by the G13 Grant from the US National Library of Medicine.

This event is sponsored by the History of Medicine Collections in the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine. The Trent Center is holding another talk by Professor Smith on Wednesday, January 24, at noon

In Conversation about the National Black Justice Coalition – Tuesday, October 24

Date: Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Time: 5:00 p.m.- 6:30 p.m.
Location: Rubenstein Library 153 (Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room)
Please register here. Free parking for registrants.

Please join the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture for “In Conversation about the National Black Justice Coalition with Mandy Carter (Social Justice Activist), Victoria Kirby York (Director Of Public Policy And Programs, NBJC), Eric D. Martin (LGBTA Center Coordinator, NCCU), and Kamau Pope (Ph.D. candidate, Duke University)” exploring the history and future of America’s leading national civil rights organization dedicated to the empowerment of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer+, and same gender loving (LGBTQ+/SGL) people. Learn more about the NBJC on their website.

**Register hereRegistrants will receive an email with a pass for free parking at the lower level of the Bryan Center parking garage.

Portrait of Mandy Carter. She is a Black woman, and is seated facing the camera with her chin resting on her hand. She is wearing a black long sleeve shirt and glasses.
Mandy Carter

This event is part of a series associated with the exhibit, Mandy Carter: Scientist of Activism, honoring the decades-long work of Mandy Carter, a Durham, NC-based Black lesbian feminist activist who has been central in the struggle for social justice. The exhibit was curated with intention by Kamau Pope.

The exhibit will be on view June 10, 2023 – December 3, 2023 in the Jerry and Bruce Chappell Family Gallery, Rubenstein Library.

While celebrating Mandy and her community organizing tactics, this exhibit celebrates four central anniversaries of national and regional organizations that Mandy joined, founded, or led. These organizations: War Resisters League, celebrating 100 years; 60 years since March On Washington; Southerners On New Ground, celebrating 30 years and the National Black Justice Coalition, recognizing its 20th year, are all central to the legacy of nonviolent resistance, Black freedom movements, and queer liberation and through this exhibit shows what it takes to get us free.

The exhibit design was created by a Durham, NC-based, Black-owned firm, Kompleks Creative and the typeface was designed by Tre’ Seals of Vocal Type.

Mandy Carter, Scientist of Activism: Exhibit Opening

Date: Tuesday, June 13, 2023
Time: 4:30pm – 6:30pm
Location: Rubenstein Library 153 (Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room)
Please RSVP here.

Portrait of Mandy Carter. She is a Black woman, and is seated facing the camera with her chin resting on her hand. She is wearing a black long sleeve shirt and glasses.Please join us for a celebration of the opening of Mandy Carter: Scientist of Activism, an exhibit honoring the decades-long work of Mandy Carter, a Durham, NC-based Black lesbian feminist activist who has been central in the struggle for social justice.

  • 4:30-5:15 p.m.: Exhibit viewing and reception (Chappell Family Gallery, Rubenstein Library)
  • 5:15-6:30 p.m.: Formal program with Mandy Carter and others (Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library Room 153)

Parking:

The exhibit will be on view June 10, 2023 – December 3, 2023 in the Jerry and Bruce Chappell Family Gallery, Rubenstein Library.

While celebrating Mandy and her community organizing tactics, this exhibit celebrates four central anniversaries of national and regional organizations that Mandy joined, founded, or led. These organizations: War Resisters League, celebrating 100 years; 60 years since March On Washington; Southerners On New Ground, celebrating 30 years and the National Black Justice Coalition, recognizing its 20th year, are all central to the legacy of nonviolent resistance, Black freedom movements, and queer liberation and through this exhibit shows what it takes to get us free.

This exhibit was curated by Kamau Pope, Doctoral Candidate in History, Duke University with assistance from:

  • Laura Micham, Director, Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture and Curator, Gender and Sexuality History Collections
  • Mandy Carter, Activist
  • Yoon Kim, Senior Library Exhibition Technician
  • Meg Brown, Head, Exhibition Services and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation Exhibits Librarian

The exhibit design was created by a Durham, NC-based, Black-owned firm, Kompleks Creative and the typeface was designed by Tré Seals of Vocal Type.

Designed by Kompleks Creative and Vocal Type

A Love Letter

Post contributed by Michelle Wolfson, Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Intern.

This exhibit is based on a lot of things. Its main foci are the horrors and heroes of Hiroshima. Three out of forty-five hospitals remained standing after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, though greatly damaged still, and according to numerous resources, 90-93% of doctors and nurses were killed or injured. The medical staff who survived suffered from pain—physical, emotional, and otherwise—and extreme uncertainty and fear, but gave the best care possible to their community. Even with rumors of the atomic bomb making for unsafe conditions for seventy-five years, they did not leave; and some came from outside the city with offers of help and supplies.

But what are the actual things in this exhibit and what do they mean? For me, it is an exhibit based on letters. Letters to oneself in the form of a diary  as seen in the Japanese manuscript written for the medical journal Teishin Igaku. A letter from an artist friend, relieved and grateful to hear of his friend’s survival, in the form of a beautiful scroll. The scroll’s contents were translated and sent by letter to eventually be included in the book that became Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6-September 30, 1945 . A letter—and it is one of many—about the book and the process of it, which serves as a window into the grace, gratitude, and genuine respect and friendship between two doctors. This even became a quest for a missing letter, perhaps Einstein’s last one before passing, still lost but, for me, an education in the world of archives anyway.

Handwritten manuscript for the medical journal Teishin Igaku.
Hiroshima Scroll.
Portuguese edition of Hiroshima Diary.
Letter from Dr. Michihiko Hachiya to Dr. Warner Wells.
A note from Dr. Wells about Einstein’s lost letter.

It is a story based on letters. This exhibit is my own contribution—a love letter to Hiroshima Diary and its creators, for teaching me about Hiroshima in a new way, and the medical staff and people who survived, as well as those that did not. This is what it is to me, and this is what I wanted to share with you. I hope you find meaning in it as I have.

Warmest regards,

Michelle

The exhibit, The Horrors and Heroes of Hiroshima, will be on display from August 17 to October 1, 2023, in the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Room. An online exhibit is also available here. This exhibition was curated by Michelle Wolfson, the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Intern. Wolfson is a graduate student in Library Science at East Carolina University and half-Japanese.

Graduate Student Workshop: The Efficient Archival Researcher

Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2023
Time: 9:00am – 1:30pm
Location: Rubenstein Library 249 (Carpenter Conference Room)
Registration required: https://duke.libcal.com/calendar/events/archivesresearch

In this workshop, explore the challenges of working with published and unpublished archival materials. Learn how to find appropriate archives for your research and how to plan a research visit, including for international research. Develop strategies for managing the many files and images you will collect when doing archival research. This session will also cover legal and ethical issues that surround accessing, using, and reproducing rare materials.

The workshop will end with a lunch panel of graduate students who will share the challenges and opportunities of their work in archives and special collections.

Black and white photograph with a white man and white woman wearing mid-century clothing, in a small room filled with file folders, each leafing through documents. Speech bubbles have been added. The man's speech bubble says "I swear it was in one of these folders." The woman's speech bubble says "Please go to the Efficient Archival Researcher"In the workshop you will:

  • Gain skills to locate, use, cite, and manage information related to special collections and archival materials at Duke and elsewhere
  • Learn about key ethical, legal, and scholarly communication-related issues pertinent to special collections research
  • Develop information management best practices and increase your knowledge of tools and expertise available to help you build an information management strategy
  • Connect with other graduate students 

The Strange Case of “Dr. Anonymous,” a Mystery in the Early History of Coronary Artery Disease : Passion, Discovery, and Serendipity in Book Collecting with Paul Kligfield, MD

Date: Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Time: 5:30 p.m.

Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library Room 153

Contact: Rachel Ingold, rachel.ingold@duke.edu

Please join us on Tuesday, April 11, at 5:30 p.m. for our next Trent History of Medicine Lecture Series event. Paul Kligfield, MD, will present The Strange Case of “Dr. Anonymous,”  a Mystery in the Early History of Coronary Artery Disease :  Passion, Discovery, and Serendipity in Book Collecting.

William Heberden’s classic description of angina pectoris in the 18th century contained no speculation as to its cause, now known to be coronary artery disease.  Shortly after publication of his paper by the Royal College of Physicians, he received a letter from a man offering his body for autopsy to help search for a pathologic basis for his symptoms.  Indeed, death occurred within weeks of his correspondence and autopsy was performed by John Hunter.  The writer’s clinical description of his own symptoms of angina and impending sudden death was so medically accurate that historians have identified him as an unknown physician, described as “Dr Anonymous.”  Nearly half a century of interest in the history of cardiology, combined with passion and serendipity in medical book collecting, have now uncovered the true identity of Heberden’s previously unknown correspondent.  Come and share the discovery.

Paul Kligfield, MD, is Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, whose interests in the history of medicine include the development and early use of the stethoscope, the origins and technology of the electrocardiogram, and the development of the pathophysiologic understanding of angina pectoris. Dr. Kligfield has served on the Board of Governors of the American College of Cardiology, as President of the International Society for Computerized Electrocardiography, as President of the New York Cardiological Society, as a Director of the New York Heart Association, as Secretary and Trustee of the New York Academy of Medicine, and as President of the American Osler Society. He is a member of The Grolier Club of New York and an admitted bibliophile and recovering bibliomaniac.

 

 

Inaugural Janie K. Long Speaker Series: Queer Student Activism at Duke, April 29

Dr. Janie Long

Join the Duke University Libraries as we honor Dr. Janie Long, retired Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Duke and former Director of the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, with a dedicated study space and the launch of a new speaker series, the first in our history named for an LGBTQ administrator.

Panel Discussion: Queer Student Activism at Duke

Moderated by Steven Petrow T’78, Contributing columnist, The Washington Post, and author, in conversation with:

  • Mandy Carter, Activist
  • Angel Collie, Duke University Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity
  • Liam Miranda T’16 SPP’21, The Inclusion Playbook
  • Janelle Taylor T’19, Georgetown University Law Center

Date: Saturday, April 29
Time: 3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room (Rubenstein Library room 153)

Reception to follow. Please register here to help us estimate attendance and refreshments.

Upcoming Event – Black Lives in Archives Day 2023

Post Contributed by John B. Gartrell, director, John Hope Franklin Research Center 

Black Lives in Archives Day 2023 – “I Got a Story to Tell: Black Lives in Print 2.0”

Monday, April 3, 2023

11:00am – 2:00pm

Gothic Reading Room, Rubenstein Library, Duke West Campus

Free and open to the public

Scenes from Black Lives in Archive Day 2022

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is pleased to announce it’s second Black Lives in Archive Day.

This one-day only exhibition allows visitors to browse special selections from the library’s collections, chat with library staff, and explore Black authored primary source materials. From rare first editions by Sojourner Truth to published works exploring Black life in Durham to publications by Black students at Duke, the event will give attendees a hands-on experience with the richness of Black print culture!

 

“Behind the Veil at 30: Reflections on Chronicling African American Life in the Jim Crow South.”

Post contributed by John B. Gartrell, Director, John Hope Franklin Research Center

Please join this two-day conference convened over Zoom on March 6 and March 7 will gather the interviewers and project staff of the Behind the Veil project, conducted in the 1990s, to discuss their experiences capturing the stories of African Americans who lived in the US South during the Jim Crow Era. There will also be conversation from scholars who have recently used the Behind the Veil archive for their research and sharing the lessons learned from the interviews.

Registration information:

March 6 – 12:00-3:00pm (ET) – https://duke.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7OX6-OrASZiXD3XwvwxmIg

March 7 – 2:00-3:30pm (ET) – https://duke.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5b3aNCBZTKaTciB_tqT-uA

The Behind the Veil oral history project, which contains over 1,000 interviews and 1,500 images is archived in the John Hope Franklin Research Center at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Duke University Libraries received a grant in 2021 to digitize and publish the archive in the Duke Digital Repository with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities.