Category Archives: Readings and Talks

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

Ariel Dorfman: Feeding on Dreams

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.

Bingham Center, Events, Exhibits, From Our Collections, Readings and Talks

Celebrating the Dorothy Allison Papers

Dorothy AllisonLast September, several years of work happily came to fruition, as the Dorothy Allison Papers arrived at the RBMSCL. Now, the papers have been processed and are open for research–and Dorothy Allison herself is returning to the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture for a series of celebratory events.

Two or Three Things: Readings from the Works of Dorothy Allison
Date: Thursday, September 22, 2011
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room

This afternoon of readings from Dorothy Allison’s works includes a performance of selections from her memoir, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, by Duke undergraduate Jennifer Sherman. Light refreshments will be served. This event is co-sponsored by the Program in Women’s Studies.

Out in the South: Writers in Conversation
Date: Friday, September 23, 2011
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: White Lecture Hall (map and directions)

Please join us for a fantastic opportunity to hear four distinguished Southern authors—Dorothy Allison, Shirlette Ammons, Jim Grimsley and Minnie Bruce Pratt—discuss their lives and work. Each author will read selections from his or her writings, followed by a panel discussion. A book-signing and reception will follow. This program is co-sponsored by Carolina Wren Press and the Program in Women’s Studies.

The papers of Allison, Grimsley, Pratt, and Carolina Wren Press are held by the RBMSCL.

Author biographies:

Dorothy Allison describes herself as “a feminist, a working class story teller, a Southern expatriate, a sometime poet and a happily born-again Californian.” She is perhaps best known as author of Bastard out of Carolina among other works and as a renowned activist in the LGBTQ community.

Shirlette Ammons is a poet, writer, musician and director of an arts program for children. Her second collection of poetry, entitled Matching Skin, was published by Carolina Wren Press in June 2008.

Jim Grimsley is a playwright and novelist, and currently director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University. Jim’s second novel Dream Boy won the American Library Association GLBT Award for Literature (the Stonewall Prize) and was a Lambda finalist, and his gay-themed fantasy novels Kirith Kirin and The Ordinary both won Lambda awards, just to name a few of his many literary honors.

Minnie Bruce Pratt is an award-winning poet who began teaching and grass roots organizing in North Carolina in the 1970s, and has continued her work as a professor, writer, and activist through today. Her latest book, Inside the Money Machine, was recently published by Carolina Wren Press.

If you’re unable to make these events, stop by the Duke University Libraries and check out “Language, Power, Stories, Words: An Exhibit from the Dorothy Allison Papers,” which will be on display in the Rare Book Room cases through October 25, 2011. (Or, view the online exhibit.)

For more details on the events and the exhibit, contact Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Bingham Center,  at 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu.

 

Events, From Our Collections, Manuscripts, Readings and Talks, University Archives

Julian Carr and the Magical Occoneechee Farm

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Date: Sunday, August 28, 2011
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Big Barn Convention Center at The Shops at Daniel Boone (map and directions)
Contact Information: Historical Foundation of Hillsborough and Orange County, 919-732-2201 or info@orangeNChistory.org

Julian Shakespeare Carr
Julian Shakespeare Carr. From the Picture File, M671.

At his summer home in Hillsborough, Trinity College trustee (and donor of much of the land that is now East Campus) Julian Shakespeare Carr built a model farm that became nationally-known for its innovative farming practices.

This latest event in the “Stores and Stories” series, which is sponsored by the Historical Foundation of Hillsborough and Orange County, will focus on Carr’s Occoneechee Farm.

The dramatic presentation—which will feature Tom Stevens, Hillsborough’s mayor, as Carr—is based on Carr’s farm journal, part of the RBMSCL’s Julian Shakespeare Carr Papers. Additional stories and photos from the farm in its heyday will also be shared.

Events, News and Features, Readings and Talks

An Artist’s Adventures with the Supernormal

Date: Thursday, August 18, 2011
Time: 3:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Elizabeth Dunn, 919-660-5824 or elizabeth.dunn(at)duke.edu

"Artist as Medium," 2008Video and installation artist Susan MacWilliam will speak about her archivally-based art, which focuses on the world of the paranormal, the tradition of psychical research, the supersensory, and ideas about perceptual phenomenon.

This summer, she is studying the experimental and groundbreaking ESP and telepathy research of Dr. J. B. Rhine through materials in the RBMSCL (focusing on the Parapsychology Laboratory Records) and at the Rhine Research Center. Susan MacWilliam’s residency in Durham is supported through funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

For Thursday’s talk, she will show some of her video pieces and discuss the ways that she transforms her archival discoveries and interviews into artistic creations.

Light refreshments will be served.

For more background on Susan MacWilliam’s work, please visit her website.

Post contributed by Elizabeth Dunn, Research Services Librarian.

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Events, Readings and Talks, Travel Grants

Unnatural Intimacies

Date: Friday, August 12, 2011
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Join the staff of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture for a discussion, titled “Unnatural Intimacies: Deviance, Sexuality, and the Historical Relationships of Lesbians and Prostitutes, 1935-1965,” with Marika L. Cifor, the recipient of a Mary Lily Research Grant.

Ms. Cifor is a candidate for a Masters of Arts in History and a Masters of Science in Library and Information Science, with a concentration in Archives Management, at Simmons College. During her research visit, she will be studying the Bingham Center’s lesbian pulp fiction collection. Light refreshments will be served.

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

Events, Readings and Talks, University Archives

Durham Before Duke (and After)

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Date: Sunday, June 5, 2011
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Durham County Library, Main Library, 300 N. Roxboro Rd. (map and directions)
Contact Information: Amy McDonald, 919-681-7987 or amy.mcdonald(at)duke.edu

Cover of Durham County by Jean Bradley Anderson

For the past twenty-one years, those of us with questions about Durham’s history have made a beeline for one book: Jean Bradley Anderson’s Durham County, first published in 1990 by our friends at the Duke University Press.

Now, Mrs. Anderson’s second edition of Durham County, released in April, tells Durham’s history up to the end of the twentieth century.

To celebrate, the Duke University Archives has joined with the Durham County Library to present an afternoon with Jean Bradley Anderson. Join us at the Durham County Library’s Main Library, where Mrs. Anderson will discuss this monumental book, as well as interesting and surprising moments in her research. She’ll also answer questions from the audience—so here’s your chance to ask the expert historian everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Durham! A book signing and refreshments will follow the discussion.

Can’t make the event? Leave us a comment and let us know what you’d like to ask Jean!

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Events, From Our Collections, Readings and Talks, Travel Grants

Art, Abortion, Activism

Date: Thursday, May 5, 2011
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

New York Feminist Art Institute poster, ca. 1980s
New York Feminist Art Institute poster, ca. 1980s. From the Irene Peslikis Papers.

Tomorrow, please join the staff of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture for “Art, Abortion, Activism: Facets of Feminist History,” a Scholars’ Tea with Mary Lily Research Grant Recipients Jennifer Nelson and Michelle Moravec.

Jennifer Nelson, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Redlands, will be speaking on her research for her book, Abortion Referral and Feminist Health in the 1970s. Her research at the Bingham Center focuses on the Feminist Women’s Health Center Records.

Michelle Moravec, Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Rosemont College, is researching an article entitled “While Historians Debated, Artists Created: Culture, History and the Women’s Movement.” Her research will explore the papers of feminist artists Kate Millett and Irene Peslikis, among others.

Light refreshments will be served. The tea is co-sponsored by the Program in Women’s Studies.

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

Archive of Documentary Arts, Events, From Our Collections, Readings and Talks

Photographing South Africa

Date: Thursday, 31 March 2011
Time: 3:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu

Graeme Williams, Cape Town, 2005.
Graeme Williams, Cape Town, 2005.

Karen Glynn, the RBMSCL’s Visual Materials Archivist, will give an historical overview of the South African Documentary Photography collections in the Archive of Documentary Arts from 1986 until today. Paul Weinberg, photographer and Senior Curator of Visual Archives in the Manuscripts and Archives Library at the University of Cape Town, will pick up the thread and describe the process of building a documentary photography archive in South Africa today.

Twenty of Weinberg’s photos are available online at the website for Then and Now, an exhibit on South African documentary photography that he curated for the Archive of Documentary Arts in 2008.

Weinberg’s photographs are archived at the RBMSCL. You can view the finding aid for his collection here.

Do Your Research, Events, Franklin Research Center, Readings and Talks, Travel Grants

Bus Boycotts and the Politics of Race

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Date: Thursday, 17 March 2011
Time: 3-4 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Jennifer Thompson, 919-660-5922 or jennifer2.thompson(at)duke.edu

Cover of Freedom's Main Line by Dr. Derek CatsamPlease join the staff of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture for a program with Dr. Derek Catsam, recipient of a 2010-2011 Franklin Research Center travel grant. Dr. Catsam is an associate professor of history at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

Dr. Catsam’s talk, “Tired Feet, Rested Souls and Empty Pockets: Bus Boycotts and the Politics of Race in the U.S. and South Africa,” will examine comparative aspects of these movements in the United States and South Africa.

During his research visit to the RBMSCL, Dr. Catsam will be studying our collections related to apartheid South Africa.

(More details about Derek Catsam’s book Freedom’s Main Line: the Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides and his research interests can be found on his departmental website.)

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

Bingham Center, Events, Human Rights Archive, Readings and Talks

Daughters of the American Revolution

Date: Thursday, 3 March 2011
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Richard White Lecture Hall
Contact Information: Laura Micham, 919-660-5828 or laura.m(at)duke.edu

Dorothy Q. ThomasDorothy Q. Thomas will speak about recovering  a legacy of progressive Americanism for contemporary women’s rights activists, drawing on her on-going research for a book that chronicles the lives of some of her female ancestors, including descendants of former presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams and mother of the American Revolution Dorothy Quincy Hancock. Thomas is currently a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She was previously a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and was founding director for the Human Rights Watch Women’s Division.

The lecture is cosponsored by the Archive for Human Rights, the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, the Duke Human Rights Center, Women’s Studies, the Program in the Study of Sexualities, and the Franklin Humanities Institute. Generous support was also provided by the Trent Foundation.