Category Archives: Events

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Events, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, Just for Fun, Manuscripts, Rare Books, University Archives

Haunted Library Screamfest

October 25, 2011 Amy McDonald 2 Comments

Date: Halloween, Monday, October 31, 2011
Time: 11:00 AM-1:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Rachel Ingold, 919-684-8549 or rachel.ingold(at)duke.edu

Have you ever wandered around a library’s stacks in the dark? Or wondered what might go bump in an archival box?

Stop by the Rubenstein Library’s Rare Book Room for a special Halloween “eeeks”-ibit and open house. We’ll be dragging out some of the creepiest and most macabre items from the shadowy depths of the library’s vaults—including the thirteen unlucky items below.

This event is free and open to the living and the dead. There will be candy. Lots and lots of candy.

49 Glass Eyeballs. From the History of Medicine Collections.

1. A travel diary written by John Buck, a young American who found himself face-to-face with Bram Stoker (before he wrote Dracula)

2. Letters to Duke University’s Parapsychology Laboratory describing the 1949 poltergeist case that became the basis for The Exorcist

3. Opera Omnia Anatomico-Medico-Chirurgica by 18th century Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch, featuring illustrations of fetal skeletons playing instruments among “trees” made of veins and arteries and “rocks and stones” that are actually organs, gallstones, and kidney stones

4. An entire box of glass eyeballs (49, to be exact)

5. “Jack the Ripper” and “Cthulhu by Gaslight,” two board games from the Edwin and Terry Murray Role Playing Game Collection

6. Artists’ books Mountain Dream Tarot by Bea Nettles and Femmes Fatales by Maureen Cummins. Tarot cards and pictures of medieval torture devices!

7. Brochures and advertisements for coffins and other funeral-related paraphernalia from the Advertising Ephemera Collection

8.Two copies of Henry Milner’s 1826 melodramatic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with the very first illustration of (the actor portraying) “the Monster”

9. Bela Lugosi’s signature

10. Maps and photographs of the Rigsbee Graveyard (yes, the graveyard in the Blue Zone)

11. Comics Review #1, 1965, which includes Stephen King’s first published story, “I Was a Teenage Grave Robber,” from the Edwin and Terry Murray Fanzine Collection

12. Halloween postcards (complete with spooky messages . . . or invitations to Halloween parties) from our Postcard Collection

13. Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Whispering Witch by Kathryn Kenny, 1980

Which one will give you nightmares come the witching hour?

Halloween Postcard, 1908. From the Postcard Collection.

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Events, From Our Collections, History of Medicine, Instruction, Rare Books

The Anatomy of Anatomy Day

October 19, 2011 Amy McDonald 1 Comment

Monday was the annual Anatomy Day visit to the History of Medicine Collections. This is one of my favorite times of the year!

In the fall, all of the first year medical students here at Duke—about one hundred of them—visit the History of Medicine Collections to view historical anatomical atlases. This is a chance for them to see how anatomy has been represented over hundreds of years, and also provides stimulating and interesting texts that they can compare to what they are seeing in the dissection lab.

Curator Rachel Ingold talks with medical students at Anatomy Day. Photo by Angela Mace.

Faculty and staff contribute to Anatomy Day by engaging with students and asking questions about the texts on display. This year, participants included the main coordinator of the event, Dr. Jeff Baker, along with Dr. Ara Tourian, Dr. Rick Madden, Professor Valeria Finucci, Professor Shannon Withycombe, and Rubenstein Library staff members Laura Micham, Kate Collins, Andy Armacost, and Jessica Janecki. Materials on display ranged from a 17th century copy of a 14th century illuminated Islamic medical manuscript to the controversial Pernkopf atlases from the mid-twentieth century.

The comments I heard this year were “awesome,” “I love anatomy so I loved everything,” and “overall, this experience was great and I liked to see the progression of anatomical representations.” I overheard students have serious ethical discussions about dissection and talk about the variety of ways they learn about the human body. I also talked to a student who told me that the greatest tool out of all the tools a student could have in the anatomy lab is the hand.

Dr. Rick Madden talks with medical students at Anatomy Day. Photo by Mark Zupan.

I’m already looking forward to next year’s Anatomy Day and talking with students about the array of anatomical texts here at the History of Medicine Collections!

For more photos, visit the “Anatomy Day 2011” set on our Flickr photostream!

Post contributed by Rachel Ingold, Curator for the History of Medicine Collections.

Bingham Center, Events, Readings and Talks

The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life

October 16, 2011 Amy McDonald

Date: Thursday, October 20, 2011
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: The Regulator Bookshop (720 9th Street, Durham)
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Nava Atlas will discuss and sign copies of her new book, The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Process: Inspiration and Advice from Celebrated Women Authors Who Paved the Way.

Filled with more than 100 archival images, The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life presents twelve celebrated women authors (including Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, Anaïs Nin, and Virginia Woolf), drawing on their diaries, letters, memoirs, and interviews to create inspiring portrayals of their views on the craft of writing.

Nava Atlas is a visual artist and the author and illustrator of many well-known vegetarian and vegan cookbooks, as well as two previous books of humor, Expect the Unexpected When You’re Expecting and Secret Recipes for the Modern Wife. The Sallie Bingham Center’s artists’ books collection contains two of her artists’ books, Love and Marriage and (Mis)labeling Hillary.

Events, Franklin Research Center, Readings and Talks

Nelson Mandela and a Centering of Memory

October 11, 2011 Amy McDonald

Date: Monday, October 17, 2011
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Jennifer Thompson, 919-660-5922 or jennifer2.thompson(at)duke.edu

Please join the staff of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture for a program entitled “Nelson Mandela and a Centering of Memory,” with Verne Harris, Head of the Memory Programme at the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Centre of Memory and Dialogue. A reception will follow.

Verne Harris has been Nelson Mandela’s archivist since 2004. As Head of the Centre of Memory, he has been the project leader on several publications about Nelson Mandela’s life: Nelson Mandela: Conversations with Myself (Macmillan, Johannesburg, 2010); Nelson Mandela: The Authorised Comic Book (Jonathan Ball, Johannesburg and Cape Town, 2008); and A Prisoner in the Garden: Opening Nelson Mandela’s Prison Archive (Penguin, Cape Town, 2005). He has also written about and presented on a number of topics concerning archives, records management and freedom of information in South Africa.

Verne Harris’ visit to Duke is co-sponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute, where he will also be speaking on archives and justice on Tuesday, October 18th. Please find more information on this event at http://www.fhi.duke.edu/events/verne-harris-seminar.

Post contributed by Jennifer Thompson, John Hope Franklin Research Center Librarian.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Events, Films

Triangle Home Movie Day

October 11, 2011 Amy McDonald

Date: Saturday, October 15, 2011
Time: 1:00-4:00 PM
Location: First floor auditorium, North Carolina State Archives (maps and parking information)
Contact Information: Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

What hidden treasures lie in those old home movies that you have in the closet? Come to the Triangle Home Movie Day and find out the value of these unique cultural and historical documents and how to save them for future generations. Spend the day watching old films and playing Home Movie Day bingo. Go home with prizes and a free DVD transfer of your film!

WHAT IS HOME MOVIE DAY?

Home Movie Day was started in 2002 as a worldwide celebration of amateur home movies, during which people in cities and towns all over would get to meet local film archivists, find out about the long-term benefits of film versus video and digital media, and—most importantly—get to watch those old family films! Because they will happen in communities across the globe, Home Movie Day events and screenings can focus on local and family histories, taking us back to a time when Main Street was bustling and the beehive hair-do was all the rage, with images of people we may know or resemble. Home movies are an essential record of our past, and they are among the most authoritative documents of times gone by.

HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE?

It’s simple: rifle through your attics, dig through your closets, call up Grandma, and search out your family’s home movies (8mm, Super8mm, or 16mm) and bring them to the Triangle Home Movie Day event to see them projected. Or just show up and watch the films of others. It’s not just historically significant—it’s fun!

The Triangle Home Movie Day is co-sponsored by A/V Geeks, North Carolina State University’s Film Studies Program, Duke’s Archive of Documentary Arts, and the North Carolina State Archives.

Events, History of Medicine, Readings and Talks

Gangrene and Erysipelas

October 10, 2011 Amy McDonald 1 Comment

Date: Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Time: 5:30 PM dinner, 6:00 PM lecture
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Rachel Ingold, 919-684-8549 or rachel.ingold(at)duke.edu

Gangrene patient, ca. 1860s. From the National Library of Medicine.

Join the staff of the History of Medicine Collections for the next Trent History of Medicine/Bullitt History of Medicine Club lecture series. Shauna Devine, Ph.D. will present Science, Disease and Experimental Medicine: Gangrene and Erysipelas during the American Civil War, 1861-1865.

Dr. Devine is a historian of science and medicine and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke’s Department of History and Managing Editor of the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. She has won awards for her work on Civil War medicine including the H. N. Segall Award and the E. M. Wightman Thesis Award. Her forthcoming book, Civil War Medicine: The Transformation of American Medical Science in the Nineteenth Century, examines the development of scientific medicine during the American Civil War, and the impact of the War’s events on American medicine. She is currently researching projects on the Civil War South and human experimentation in the Civil War hospitals.

(Note: this image was used as a teaching aid in medical schools. Hence the hand-drawn arrow, indicating where this patient was wounded.)

Events, Exhibits, From Our Collections, Just for Fun, Manuscripts

Long, Beautiful, Archivally-Preserved Hair

October 5, 2011 Amy McDonald 4 Comments

Just a few more days to see hair on display!

The current Perkins Gallery exhibit, “The Life of Memorials: Manifestations of Memory at the Intersection of Public and Private,” explores the tradition of commemorating events and remembering people. Memorials can be large-scale statues and museums but can also include more personal items, such as mementos and souvenirs.

One very common practice has been to retain the hair of our loved ones—and some of these locks, from the Rubenstein Library’s collections, are on display as part of this exhibit through October 16. (Or, visit the online exhibit!)

Many of our collections contain locks of hair—some are the typical parental memory of youth, like the young blonde curls of Sallie Bingham; some are the desire to connect to our literary heroes, like a nice lock of the poet William Cullen Bryant or a few strands tied together from Walt Whitman; and some are from other kinds of heroes, like envelopes full of hair from Jefferson Davis (the envelope reads: ” . . . hair from Jefferson Davis at Fort Monroe. . . “).

Our collection also contains “one strand” of hair, with certification, from Abraham Lincoln; a few very small hairs allegedly from John Wesley; and some hair from our own Reynolds Price. Come by and visit the hair on display through October 16 in the Perkins Gallery, or come by the Rubenstein Library’s reading room and ask to see the hair in person!

Tomorrow, in conjunction with their exhibit, Team Kenan will be presenting a a moderated panel discussion that will examine the ways people live with traumatic experiences in different political and cultural contexts.

Living with Memory: A Moderated Panel Discussion of Memorials
Date: Thursday, October 6th
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room

Panelists Jehanne Gheith, Associate Professor of Russian Literature, and Stephanie Seiburth, Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies will take part in a student-moderated discussion and offer multimedia presentations on their work on collective memory in Russia and Spain.

For more information, visit http://kenan.ethics.duke.edu/team-kenan-curates-memorials-exhibit/.

Post contributed by Meg Brown, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation Exhibits Librarian and Conservator for Special Collections.

Events, From Our Collections, Manuscripts, New at the Rubenstein Library, Readings and Talks

Ariel Dorfman: Feeding on Dreams

October 3, 2011 Amy McDonald

Date: Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Gothic Reading Room, Perkins Library
Contact Information: Aaron Welborn, 919-660-5816 or aaron.welborn@duke.edu, or Will Hansen, 919-660-5958 or william.hansen@duke.edu

Draft of Feeding on Dreams in English, annotated by Dorfman and editor Deanne Urmy. From the Ariel Dorfman Papers.

What better way to celebrate the arrival of an acclaimed author’s papers than by having him read from his newly-published work? On Wednesday, Ariel Dorfman will read from his new memoir, Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile. The reading is free and open to the public.

Dorfman placed his papers with the Rubenstein Library earlier this month, and we are just starting to inventory the many fascinating materials therein. Drafts of Feeding on Dreams in both English and Spanish are included in the papers, revealing the process by which Dorfman crafted the language and themes of his memoir out of the “earthquake of language” of bilingualism. Indeed, the papers are a rich trove of information for students and scholars of translation, containing Dorfman’s own translations of his works as well as his notes, suggestions, and corrections for translations by others. Here are a few additional previews of the papers’ contents:

An astounding collection of ephemeral and clandestine Chilean resistance literature from the era of Pinochet’s regime
Scripts and notes for Dorfman’s innovative plays, including Widows, Speak Truth to Power, and Purgatorio
Annotated books from Dorfman’s personal library, and books inscribed to him by many notables (including Nelson Mandela!)

We look forward to seeing you in the Gothic Reading Room on October 5!

Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections.

Events, Exhibits, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive

“I Have No Right To Be Silent”

September 28, 2011 Amy McDonald

Date: October 3-December 18, 2011
Location: York Room, Duke University Divinity School (map and directions)
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu

“I have no right to be silent in the face of injustice!” Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer said in a sermon delivered at his alma mater, Dartmouth University, in 1991. “I cannot dare to hide in my garden when people scream in pain! Nor can you, whether you are conservative or liberal, rightist or leftist or centrist. . . . That’s one of the reasons to be an activist.”

An ordinary American whose extraordinary convictions, faith, and impetuous personality impelled him to become a leading human rights activist during Argentina’s Dirty War (1976-1983), Meyer (who passed away in 1993) left not only a legacy of faith and teachings to his students and congregations, but also a compelling model of how a person of faith can embrace activism as a central part of their religious life.

The exhibit consists of 12 stunning banners, each of which incorporates materials culled from Meyer’s personal papers, held by the Human Rights Archive at the Rubenstein Library, including intimate family photos, moving letters from prisoners, original artwork, internal government memos, and rare human rights publications.

The exhibit has been on display at the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C., as well as B’nai Jeshurun and the Jewish Theological Seminary, both in New York City—all places where Meyer studied or worked. Wherever the exhibit has traveled, it has inspired not only an admiration of Meyer’s work but also community dialogue about faith, activism, and human rights.

The exhibit text was prepared by Katharine French Fuller, a graduate student in Duke’s History Department, under the supervision of Patrick Stawski, Human Rights Archivist. The design was executed by Pam Chastain and James Jarvis of Pam Chastain Design. The exhibit is funded by the generosity of an anonymous donor and is a joint project of the Human Rights Archive at the Rubenstein Library, the Duke Human Rights Center, and Duke’s Center for Jewish Studies.

An on-line version of the exhibit is also available.

Opening Celebration for “I Have No Right to Be Silent”

Date: Monday, October 3, 2011
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Goodson Chapel, Duke University Divinity School (map and directions)
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu

The exhibit opening will include comments by Gabriel Meyer, social activist and Marshall Meyer’s son, as well as a performance of sacred Ladino music by the Jewish Chorale of the Triangle. Among the singers is Meyer’s nephew, Professor Eric Meyers, Bernice & Morton Lerner Professor of Center for Jewish Studies and Religion and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies. A reception will follow outside the Goodson Chapel.

Bingham Center, Events, From Our Collections, RL Photos, University Archives