Category Archives: Readings and Talks

Events, Exhibits, Readings and Talks

Gallery Talk for “Memories of the Civil War”

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Date: Monday, January 23
Time: 3:00 p.m.
Location: Perkins Gallery and Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Meg Brown, 919-681-2071 or meg.brown(at)duke.edu

Handmade playing cards, now on exhibit in the Perkins Gallery

If you haven’t stopped by to explore the Rubenstein’s latest exhibit, now is your chance for a guided tour! Join curators Jessica Janecki, Meghan Lyon, and Kim Sims for an exhibit gallery talk for “I Recall the Experience Sweet and Sad: Memories of the Civil War,” featuring memoirs, manuscripts, maps, and more from the Rubenstein’s collections. As we walk through the cases, the curators will highlight some of their favorite artifacts and objects, such as these handmade Confederate playing cards from the St. Clair Dearing Papers. Come to the gallery talk; stay for some refreshments in the Rare Book Room. And, free bookmarks for all who attend!

Remember, if you can’t visit the exhibit in person, be sure to visit the online exhibit — which has additional letters, songsheets, maps, and photographs that just didn’t fit into the Perkins cases.

Events, Exhibits, Readings and Talks, University Archives

Bob Harris on the 1942 Rose Bowl

Date: Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: Biddle Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Amy McDonald, 919-681-7987 or amy.mcdonald(at)duke.edu

Join “Voice of the Blue Devils” Bob Harris as he shares thoughts on how Duke football has changed from the legendary 1942 Rose Bowl held in Wallace Wade Stadium to today’s modern game. He will also talk about the impact of the game on campus beyond the stadium walls.

Rosemary Davis and Jessica Wood, curators of the current “From Campus to Cockpit” exhibit, will highlight photographs and other artifacts from the 1942 Rose Bowl, including archival film from the game.

Following the presentation, game day refreshments will be served, and Harris will sign copies of his autobiography, How Sweet it Is! From the Cotton Mill to the Crow’s Nest.

“From Campus to Cockpit” is on display in the hallway cases outside the Biddle Rare Book Room through January 29th. An online exhibit—including the complete film of the game recorded by Duke’s coaching staff—is also available.

Articles on the 1942 Rose Bowl and the exhibit recently appeared in Duke Magazine and the Durham Herald-Sun.

Aerial Photograph of Duke Stadium during 1942 Rose Bowl
Aerial Photograph of Duke Stadium during 1942 Rose Bowl. From the University Archives Photograph Collection.

 

Events, From Our Collections, History of Medicine, Readings and Talks

Neelon to Speak on Parry’s Disease

Dr. Frances A. Neelon
Dr. Frances A. Neelon will speak on Caleb Parry and Parry's Disease

Please join us on Tuesday, December 6, 2011, in Room 102 of the Duke Medical Center Library for the next lecture of the Trent History of Medicine Society Speaker Series. Dr. Francis A. Neelon, Medical Director of the Rice Diet Program and Associate Professor, Emeritus will be discussing Dr. Caleb Parry and the brief life of Parry’s disease.

Caleb Hillier Parry was a polymathic physician and natural scientist of late 18th-century and early 19th-century England. A graduate of the medical school at Edinburgh, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, not for his doctoring but for his work on breeding Merino sheep.

Parry made a number of important observations on the nature of angina and recognized that it reflected an inability of the heart to respond to physiological demand. He was the first to record an accurate description of exophthalmic goiter, and recognized the connection between thyroid gland enlargement and cardiac abnormalities (although he did not realize which was cart and which horse). His plans to include his case notes in a magnum opus on disease went awry when he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1816, but his physician-son, Charles, published his unfinished works in 1925.

Parry’s observations clearly antedated the descriptions of toxic goiter by Graves and Basedow, but their names remain associated with this disorder to the present (which you choose depends on where you live) while Parry’s does not. William Osler briefly championed Parry’s case, but eventually abandoned his attempts to immortalize the “fine old Bath physician.” Dr. Neelon will try again to rescue Parry’s name from obscurity.

There will be a light buffet supper at 5:30 pm, and the lecture will begin at 6 pm. The event is open to the public. Please contact Rachel Ingold at (919)684-8549 or rachel.ingold@duke.edu for more information.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Events, Exhibits, Readings and Talks

Opening Reception for “Iraq | Perspectives”

Date: Thursday, November 10, 2011
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Biddle Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu

Join the staff of the Archive of Documentary Arts and the Center for Documentary Studies for an opening reception for our new exhibit, “Iraq | Perspectives: Photographs by Benjamin Lowy.”

Lowy is the winner of the fifth Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography. During tomorrow night’s reception, he will speak about his work and sign copies of his book, Iraq | Perspectives, published by Duke University Press and the Center for Documentary Studies

Lowy’s powerful and arresting color photographs taken through Humvee windows and military-issue night vision goggles capture the desolation of a war-ravaged Iraq as well as the tension and anxiety of both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

Lowy received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002 and began his career in 2003 when he joined Corbis and embedded with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to cover the Iraq War. In 2005 Photo District News chose Lowy’s Iraq images as some of the most iconic of the start of the 21st century. Lowy’s photographs appear regularly in national and international such publications as the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Fortune, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Stern, and Rolling Stone. His work has been exhibited at San Francisco MOMA, Tate Modern, Open Society Institute’s Moving Walls, Noorderlicht Photofestival, Battlespace, and the Houston Center for Photography, among others.

For more details about the exhibit, on display through December 11th in the Rubenstein Library Gallery, visit this blog post or view the online exhibit.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Events, Films, Readings and Talks

Decasia

Our Archive of Documentary Arts is co-sponsoring two events with filmmaker Bill Morrison.

Film Screening

Date: Monday, November 7, 2011
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Carolina Theatre (309 W. Morgan St.; directions and parking information)
Contact Information: Duke Performances

Still from DecasiaMade from deteriorating reels of film, Bill Morrison’s experimental film Decasia is a symphony in decay. With a score composed by Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon, this “haunting modern masterpiece” (The Guardian) will be presented in a rare screening, followed by a Q & A with Morrison. Tickets are $5 at the Carolina Theatre box office.

Conversation

Date: Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: Bone Hall, Mary Duke Biddle Music Building 019
Contact Information: Duke Performances

Filmmaker and artist Bill Morrison will talk with Duke graduate composers about the process of collaborating with composers scoring for film. Morrison has collaborated with an impressive line-up of composers, including John Adams, Bill Frisell, Steve Reich, and Vijay Iyer. This event is free and open to the public.

Morrison created a film for Bill Frisell’s new work, The Great Flood, which Duke Performances presented this past Saturday.

Both events are co-sponsored by Duke Performances, Duke’s Master of Fine Arts in Experimental & Documentary Arts, and the Archive of Documentary Arts.

Events, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive, Readings and Talks

Kathryn Sikkink Reads from The Justice Cascade

Date: Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu

Kathryn SikkinkKathryn Sikkink, recipient of this year’s Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)-Duke University Human Rights Book Award, will read from and discuss her award-winning book, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics during tomorrow’s award presentation. A reception and book signing will follow.

Sikkink’s book examines what she calls “the justice cascade,” a very new development in world politics. “Only 30 years ago, it was virtually unheard of, almost unimaginable, for a national or international tribunal to hold state officials criminally accountable for human rights violations,” Sikkink notes.

Now, around the world, former government and security force officials accused of human rights crimes are facing prosecutions in unprecedented numbers. In Chile, for example, the number of court cases has sharply increased and now involve the highest ranks of the security forces. Prosecutions have also expanded beyond deaths and disappearances to torture and forced exile.

This year’s panel of judges called The Justice Cascade “compelling” and “eye-opening,” recognizing it for its important contribution to the field of human rights, Latin American studies and accountability.

For further information about the book and the award, visit the related Devil’s Tale blog post or the WOLA press release.

Sikkink is a Regents Professor and the McKnight Presidential Chair in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. She has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. Her publications include Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy and Latin America; Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (co-authored with Margaret Keck and awarded the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas for Improving World Order and the ISA Chadwick Alger Award for Best Book in the area of International Organizations); and The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (co-edited with Thomas Risse and Stephen Ropp).

Duke sponsors for the event include the Rubenstein Library’s Human Rights Archive, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Office of the Vice Provost for International Studies, and the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies.

Bingham Center, Events, Readings and Talks

Scholars’ Tea with Emily Thuma

Date: Thursday, November 3, 2011
Time: 3:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Tea KettleEmily Thuma, recipient of one of this year’s Mary Lily Research Grants awarded by the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, will discuss her post-doctoral research to revise her dissertation, “Not a Wedge, But a Bridge”: Prisons, Feminist Activism, and the Politics of Gendered Violence, 1968-1987.

She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Race and Gender at University of California, Berkeley.

Light refreshments will be served. This event is co-sponsored by the Program in Women’s Studies as part of the “Future of the Feminist 1970s” series.

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

Bingham Center, Events, Readings and Talks

The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life

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

Cover of The Literary Ladies' Guide to the Writing LifeNava 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.

(Mis)labeling Hillary
(Mis)labeling Hillary, 2008.
Events, Franklin Research Center, Readings and Talks

Nelson Mandela and a Centering of Memory

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.

Nelson Mandela and Verne HarrisVerne 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.

Events, History of Medicine, Readings and Talks

Gangrene and Erysipelas

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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.)